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+{"text":" \nCATS' PAWS\n\nand\n\nCATAPULTS\n\nMechanical Worlds of  \nNature and People\n\nSTEVEN VOGEL\n\nIllustrated by Kathryn K. Davis  \nwith the author\n\nW. W. NORTON & COMPANY\n\nNew York \u2022 London\nFor Jane\nContents\n\nPreface\n\n1. Noncoincident Worlds\n\n2. Two Schools of Design\n\n3. The Matter of Magnitude\n\n4. Surfaces, Angles, and Corners\n\n5. The Stiff and the Soft\n\n6. Two Routes to Rigidity\n\n7. Pulling versus Pushing\n\n8. Engines for the Mechanical Worlds\n\n9. Putting Engines to Work\n\n10. About Pumps, Jets, and Ships\n\n11. Making Widgets\n\n12. Copying, in Retrospect\n\n13. Copying, Present and Prospective\n\n14. Contrasts, Convergences, and Consequences\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nIndex\nPreface\n\nLife is what biology's about. Technology is something else altogether. Or so I believed before I got into a kind of biology that's about technology as well as life. More to the point, it\u2014biomechanics\u2014looks at the technology of life, at the mechanical world of nature. Sometimes that world resembles the mechanical world that we humans have created. But sometimes the two differ strikingly. This book compares those technologies. It's about the ordinary things and creatures around us; it intends, immodestly, to change the way you look at your surroundings\u2014at least a little. It has some other missions as well.\n\nI've come to realize that engineers are as curious about our world as we are about theirs. Some suspect that a look at organisms might help them create designs and fabricate devices. How could a biologist disagree? But shifting from one world to the other isn't a trivial matter, and the traveler needs a road map and a guidebook. This book tries to provide them by introducing biomechanics in a point-by-point comparison with the more familiar world of our own technology.\n\nAt the same time I want to inject an element of sobriety into our romantic view of living things. The elegance of natural design seduced a lot of us into becoming biologists. Nature does what she does very well indeed. But\u2014and here's the rub\u2014why should she do so in the best possible way? And why should she provide a model for what we want to do? I want to ruffle our tendency to view nature as the gold standard for design and as a great source of technological breakthroughs.\n\nBeyond that, I want to argue that natural design provides no honest foil for skewering human technology. In getting together the material for this book, I've repeatedly bumped into an antitechnological literature\u2014nature-worshiping, engineer-bashing tracts. Its authors take a thoroughly unrealistic view of our contemporary situation and prospects and lay blame inappropriately; hanging the social consequences of technology on engineers amounts to hanging airport congestion on the Wright brothers.\n\nAbout this last mission I cheerfully admit personal bias. I have no formal background in engineering and only a primitive knowledge of the underlying physics and mathematics. I couldn't have done what science and writing I've done without the unfailing generosity and support of engineers. For nearly forty years, and at several institutions, they've explained things, steered me out of cul-de-sacs, pulled my foot out of my mouth before I published nonsense, and suggested accessible source material; in short, they've done everything imaginable to welcome me to their domain.\n\nDoing this book has treated me to an intellectual feast. I indulged my fondness for building things by making a version of an ancient Egyptian drill, and I had a pretext to lay hands on (and read) the first book printed on paper derived from wood pulp. I had an excuse to use nine libraries on the Duke campus (and several elsewhere), not to mention interlibrary loans, CD-ROMs, government documents, various on-line databases, old newspapers on microfiche, and network news groups.\n\nI remain daunted by the clear relevance and separate sophistication of anthropology, archaeology, paleontology, economics, architecture, geometry, geography, law, and the histories of science, technology, exploration, domestication, and culture. All the complex interconnections bring to mind the biomechanical problems of keeping your finger in the air while your ear's to the ground and of keeping your feet on the ground while your head's in the clouds.\n\nI've drawn quite shamelessly on professional colleagues and other friends. In no other project have I received such a treasure of useful suggestions, ideas, and examples. I'm especially indebted to Matthew Healy, Michael LaBarbera, Catherine Loudon, Jane Vogel, and Stephen Wainwright, each of whom read the entire manuscript in first draft and made copious but always kind and tactful suggestions. In addition, useful ideas emerged from conversations with David Alexander, Michael Blum, Richard Burian, Steven Churchill, Ruth Day, Martha Dunham, Betsey Dyer, Shelley Etnier, Robert Full, Margaret Hivnor, Diane Kelly, Peter Klopfer, Daniel Lieberman, Dan Livingstone, Anne Moore, M. Patricia Morse, Bruce Nicklas, Francis Newton, Fred Nijhout, George Pearsall, Charles Pell, Henry Petroski, Jeffrey Podos, Michael Reedy, Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, Kalman Schulgasser, John Sharpe, Robert Teer, Edward Tenner, Lloyd Trefethen, John Wourms, and many other people of whom I lack a proper list. I'm grateful to a host of helpful librarians, especially Richard Hines and David Talbert.\n\nEdwin Barber, my editor at W. W. Norton, has done more for my writing than anyone since my student days. In particular, he has given detailed guidance as well as general admonishment in the struggle for spontaneity and the battle against academic pretentiousness and obfuscation.\n\nFinally, I'd like to pronounce words of passionate appreciation and advocacy for libraries where what you need\u2014or don't know you need until you see it\u2014sits on end user\u2013accessible shelves. Or their electronic equivalents.\n\nSeveral of the figures derive from previously published material. For permitting redrawing, I gratefully acknowledge the following copyright holders. Figure 2.4: Columbia University Press (Fig 8.5 of B. D. Dyer and R. A. Obar, _Tracing the History of Eucaryotic Cells_ ); Figure 4.15: Academic Press, Inc. (Fig. 2 of J. T. Finch and A. Klug, _J. Mol. Biol_. 15: 344 and Fig. 5.4 of R. E. F. Matthews, _Plant Virology_. 3rd ed.); Figure 5.12: Dr. Mimi Koehl (Figure 1-9 of Duke University Ph.D. dissertation); Figure 8.4, American farm and Darrieus rotor windmills: Van Nostrand- Reinhold, Inc. (Figs. 22, 42 of F. R. Eldridge, _Wind Machines_ , 2nd ed.); Figure 10.10: Dr. Vance A. Tucker (Cover, _Science_ , 14 Nov. 1969); and Figure 13.3: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. (Fig. 5.19 of M. E. Rosheim, _Robot Evolution)_. For permitting direct copying of Figures 11.1 and 13.2, I acknowledge the copyright holders, Gordon and Breach Scientific Publishers, Inc. (Fig. 27 of J. Kastelic et al., _Connective Tissue Research_ 6: 11) and Dr. William M. Kier (Fig. 11 of Duke University Ph.D. dissertation), respectively. For allowing redrawing of the mollusk shell of Figure 6.8 (from S. W. Wise and W. W. Hay, p. 427 in _Trans. Amer. Micr. Soc_. 87), I thank Dr. Vicki Pearse, editor, _Invertebrate Biology_. For loaning the _Arctium_ for Figure 12.12, I thank Dr. Robert Wilbur, director, Duke University Herbarium. Sam (Soft and Mellow) Cat suggested the title's feline allusion; he never confuses the mouse of one technology with that of the other and remains ever hopeful that the printer will emit something better than paper.\n\nSTEVEN VOGEL\n\n**Durham, North Carolina**\nCATS' PAWS\n\nand\n\nCATAPULTS\nChapter 1\n\nNONCOINCIDENT WORLDS\n\nWhen some of us were much younger\u2014for me the late 1940s\u2014we read _Flash Gordon_ every Sunday in the comics. With the casual confidence of kids, we assumed that space travel to extraterrestrial civilizations was just around the corner. Mr. Gordon seemed as close to our world as George Washington and a lot closer than Julius Caesar. While _Star Trek_ , with Mr. Spock, is leagues ahead of _Flash Gordon_ in sophistication, reaching other beings has become a much dimmer prospect. At fault is neither the loss of our youthful certitude nor any inferiority of Spock to Gordon. What's happened is that the arrival of the space age, like any reality, has brought its potion of sobriety, its diminution of innocence. Space travel has proved a lot trickier\u2014and more expensive\u2014and extrater- restrial civilizations a lot more remote than we ever imagined.\n\nNonetheless, the success of _Star Wars_ and _Star Trek_ and the continued popularity of science fiction testify that the allure remains. Much of the appeal obviously turns on their views of alternative cultures, things in short supply here on earth. Ours is a single world. The civilizations of the Orient and those of Europe and Africa have interacted for more than a thousand years, and extensive intermingling with those of the Americas has now gone on for five centuries. Human technology may have become vastly more complex, but it has lost diversity and frozen into a stereotype. The global convergence leaves no Atlantis in the offing. Meanwhile we're ever more doubtful that we'll bump into any other technology.\n\nA shame, perhaps, but not all that bad. We do have an alternative technology as a mirror in which to view our own\u2014the technology of organisms, the result of evolution by natural selection over the past few billion years. Life forms a technology in every proper sense, with a diversity of designs, materials, engines, and mechanical contrivances of every degree of complexity.\n\nAs systems to compare we could ask for nothing better than nature s designs and human inventions. Nature's technology occurs on the surface of the same planet as that of human culture, so it endures the same physical and chemical limitations and must use the same materials. But nature copes and invents in a way fundamentally different from what we do. At the very least, the rate at which she alters herself is glacial by our cultural standard.\n\nThe very shapes of the two technologies differ dramatically. Just look around you. Right angles are everywhere: the edges of this page, desk corners, street corners, floor corners, shelves, doors, boxes, bricks, and on and on. Then look at field, park, or forest. Where are the right angles? Absent? No, but rare, which raises questions. Why so few right angles in nature? Why do civilizations find them so serviceable?\n\nNatural and human technologies differ extensively and pervasively. We build dry and stiff structures; nature mostly makes hers wet and flexible. We build of metals; nature never does. Our hinges mainly slide; hers mostly bend. We do wonders with wheels and rotary motion; nature makes fully competent boats, aircraft, and terrestrial vehicles that lack them entirely. Our engines expand or spin; hers contract or slide. We fabricate large devices directly; nature's large things are cunning proliferations of tiny components. One can easily continue; indeed, much of this book is simply an exploration of such contrasts\u2014of their mechanical aspects in particular.\n\nAt some very basic level all of us recognize how different are the products of humans and of nature. Artists take advantage of that subconscious perception to jar us by depicting one culture using the forms of the other. The cubists draw human faces with flat sides and harsh, straight edges, often at right angles to each other. Salvador Dal\u00ed, in painting, and Claes Oldenburg, in sculpture, re-create the hard objects of manufactured technology\u2014watches, engine blocks, and such\u2014with the natural world's lack of rigidity. The incongruity startles, intentionally and dependably.\n\nFIGURE 1.1. _Corrugated or fanfold surfaces as cheap routes to stiffness: scallop shell, corrugated paperboard, and ridge and valley roof_.\n\nBut one can easily make too much of these differences. Both bicycle frames and bamboo stems take advantage of the way a tube gives better resistance to bending than a solid rod. A spider extends its legs by increasing the pressure of the fluid inside in much the same way that a mechanical cherry picker extends to prune trees or deice planes. Both technologies construct things using curved shells (skulls, eggs, domed roofs), columns (tree trunks, long bones, posts), and stones embedded in matrices (worm tubes, concrete). Both use corrugated structures (as in Figure 1.1) to get stiffness without excessive mass\u2014whether the shell of the scallop, one of the rare swimmers among bivalve mollusks, or the stiffening structures of doors, packing boxes, and aircraft floors, or fan-folded paper and occasional roofs. Both catch swimming or flying prey with filters through which fluid flows\u2014whether spiders or whales, gill-netting fishers or mistnetting birders.\n\nI care very much about the ways of engineering, but by profession and predilection I'm a biologist, not an engineer. The implied equivalence between the two fields is a little misleading, though; the two are not merely opposite sides of the same fence. The biologist studies something that exists: nature, in all its splendor. The engineer, by contrast, creates. Further, the engineer's successes have more immediate impact than those of the biologist, and failure exacts penalties far beyond the approbation of a few peers.\n\nIn practice, calling my calling biology isn't specific enough since the mechanical interests of most biologists don't go beyond keeping their scientific equipment cooperative. So we who look at nature's mechanical aspects call our field biomechanics (or, as on a reimbursement check I once received from the American society of the same, biomechantics\u2014 whether in high spirits, high dudgeon, or pure accident). Awkwardly, something called biotechnology looms large on the contemporary scene. As it happens, biotechnology in its current sense is quite a different endeavor and will play almost no role here. Biotechnology is largely a synthetic rather than our analytic activity; in addition, it mainly focuses on the molecular and microscopic while we care more about the mechanical and macroscopic. By contrast, what goes by the name biophysics is analytic enough, but it's similarly rooted in a molecular domain.\n\nThe biomechanic ought to make a candid, if unflattering, admission at the outset. Simple logic suggests examining nature's mechanical technology as a first step toward both creating and understanding human technology\u2014at least to establish the range of possibilities. Who can deny that nature got here first? In fact, the shoe is almost always on the other foot. The biomechanic usually recognizes nature's use of some neat device only when the engineer has already provided us with a model. Put another way, biomechanics mainly still studies how, where, and why nature does what engineers do.\n\nOne might reasonably expect any proper biologist to find natural, human-free systems impressive, even aesthetically standard-setting. And often we do; without our affection for nature, we might have chosen other ways to spend our time, so almost without exception biologists are biophiliacs. But loving nature is not at all the same as finding her perfect, a gold standard for design. A lot of famous and otherwise estimable people have viewed nature as some Edenic perfection of process and product. Using short quotations out of context may be a little unfair, but as a biologist I cringe at statements such as those that follow. I can forgive the ancients more easily than my contemporary post-Darwinians.\n\nIf one way be better than another, that you may be sure is Nature's way. (Aristotle, fourth century B.C.E.)\n\nHuman ingenuity may make various inventions, but it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting and nothing is superfluous. (Leonardo da Vinci, fifteenth century)\n\nSources of hydraulic contrivances and of mechanical movements are endless in nature; and if machinists would but study in her school, she would lead them to the adoption of the best principles, and the most suitable modifications of them in every possible contingency. (Thomas Ewbank, mid-nineteenth century)\n\nOne handbook that has not yet gone out of style, and predictably never will, is the handbook of nature. Here, in the totality of biological and biochemical systems, the problems mankind faces have already been met and solved, and through analogues, met and solved optimally. (Victor Papanek, contemporary)\n\nThis casual attitude toward nature's automatic excellence can't be casually dismissed. For one thing, it implies that the engineer or entrepreneur who copies nature will leap ahead of those plodders who rely on mere human ingenuity. For another, it appeals all too persuasively to those who blame engineers for the ills of the modern world. I find neither attitude attractive. (But engineer bashing has receded somewhat, even as an antiscientific community has flourished; maybe some of its acolytes of the sixties and seventies got hoisted in the eighties and nineties by their undeniable affection for personal computers.)\n\nSo is this a book about copying nature? Emphatically not. As we'll see, on surprisingly few occasions has copying proved useful. Indeed, felicitous transfer of bits and pieces should not be expected. We're dealing with separate contexts of mechanical design, each system uniquely integrated by its own elements of internal harmony and consistency. Moreover, one of these systems, even though it includes ourselves (we are, after all, creatures of nature), is a far stranger mechanical technology than commonly realized. So nature's version needs special attention, and thus a biologist-biomechanic feels compelled to write a book about technology\u2014or, better, about technologies.\nChapter 2\n\nTWO SCHOOLS OF DESIGN\n\nAlmost anything starts from a plan, whether a blueprint, template, some macromolecular chemical code, or just a scheme held in mind. But no plan is without antecedent, whether in an individual's mysterious alchemy of experience or as the result of innumerable ancestral adjustments. And neither human nor natural technology represents a single act of creation. But nowhere do they diverge more than in how their plans originate, in the processes we might call design.\n\nNature's process is that mechanism Darwin uncovered, evolution by natural selection. Human technology springs from what is variously called invention, discovery, development, or planning. A little confusingly, the word \"evolution\" has recently been associated with human technological progress. Sometimes that implies a kind of selective process, but most often it just alludes to incremental change, with things building one upon another.\n\nTHE NATURE OF NATURAL SELECTION\n\nOddly enough, the familiar act of human creation is harder to explain in acceptably scientific terms than the way nature creates her devices. The very everyday character of human creativity, though, to anyone who has drawn a picture, written a poem, or baked a cake allows us to evade any precise formulation. By contrast, the intuition recoils when we are faced with evolution by natural selection. It can have direction and can perhaps even make progress, yet do so with no semblance of planning. Its information is carried and dealt with by molecules, and molecules lack proper perceptual reality. And its time course ordinarily exceeds anything in our direct personal experience. Even if its reality is now beyond serious doubt, the whole thing just seems overwhelmingly unlikely.\n\nWhat concerns us here is its mechanism, for in that specific mechanism called natural selection lie both the power and the disabilities of the evolutionary process. Putting that mechanism as a series of observations and interconnected statements (see the following box) should emphasize the persuasive underlying logic as well as offset a lot of misconceptions and mystical notions of nature's perfection.\n\n1. Observations:\n\na. Every organism can produce more than one offspring, so populations, if unrestrained, will increase continuously.\n\nb. Every organism needs some minimum amount of material from the environment to survive and reproduce.\n\nc. The material available to a population of organisms is finite in extent, restraining its increase.\n\n2. Consequence of a, b, and c:\n\nd. A population in a given area will rise to some maximum size.\n\n3. Consequences of a and d:\n\ne. For a population at this maximum size, more individuals will be produced than the environment can support.\n\nf. Some individuals will not be able to survive and reproduce.\n\n4. Further observations:\n\ng. Individuals within populations vary in ways that affect their success in reproduction.\n\nh. At least some of this variability is inherited; individuals resemble their parents more than they do more distantly related individuals.\n\n5. Consequences of e through h:\n\ni. Characteristics that increase the number of an individual's surviving offspring will be more prevalent in the population in the next generation.\n\nThe final statement, of course, encapsulates evolution by natural selection. Notice that nowhere in the scheme does \"design\" appear. Using the word as a noun raises no hackles, but making it an honest verb is nearly impossible. To design ordinarily requires a designer. In evolution, though, change happens as a blind result of selection for whatever improves reproductive success. In this sense, nothing in nature is \"designed\" or has \"purpose.\" Nonetheless, most conspicuous bits of biological structure do serve specific functions. How else could they increase reproductive success? The ear of an animal that's preyed upon enables it to hear a predator's approach, to take evasive action, and perhaps to live and breed. So in another sense, the one relevant here, the ear's \"design\" certainly does have a \"purpose.\" A seminal work in biomechanics has provoked neither controversy nor offense with the name _Mechanical Design in Organisms_.\n\nIn short, design in nature is a process of generating variability (item g above\u2014mutation and recombination, to get technical about it) and then selecting those variants that are beneficial. Naturally, most variations are either neutral or detrimental. The late George Beadle, who received a Nobel prize for his work in genetics, used the analogy of a typist repeatedly copying a page of manuscript. Each copy is proofread for errors; if an error appears, the copy is discarded\u2014except for the rare error that improves the prose. If one of these appears, then the new version becomes the model to be copied. So nature's process is inefficient but inexorable, given a supply of errors and some kind of selection. Random errors yield nonrandom change, and anticipation or planning needn't occur.\n\nThis thoroughly stupid process of natural selection can generate results we'd hardly characterize as progress. Consider the consequences of a mammalian mating system in which males have some innate preference for large-breasted females. With remorseless logic, selection will supply increasingly well-endowed females, quite beyond any utility for nursing neonates and well into the range of mechanical awkwardness. Perhaps the example might not be hypothetical; even with our prothoracic cultural bias, breast reduction surgery is far from uncommon.\n\nTHE LIMITATIONS ON EVOLUTIONARY CHANGE\n\nThe dazzling diversity of the living world too easily disguises the fact that the evolutionary process faces constraints far more severe than anything impeding human designers. We biologists recognize these constraints, but we don't often rise above our natural chauvinism and make enough public noise about them.\n\nEvery organism must grow from an initially smaller to an ultimately larger size. Nature, in effect, must transmute a motorcycle into an automobile while providing continuous transportation. The need for growth without loss of function can impose severe geometrical limitations. Consider the possible shapes of mollusks, a widespread and diverse group that includes scallops, slugs, snails, and squid. Mollusk shell doesn't grow, so a shell cannot enlarge except by adding incrementally to edges and inner surfaces. For most shapes, such incremental additions would quickly lead to awkward changes in proportions, as in Figure 2.1. For example, enlarging a cylindrical shell by lengthening would make it relatively skinnier and more vulnerable to breakage; a long rod is more easily broken than a short one, as you can show with a strand of dry spaghetti. Compensatory internal thickening would reduce the relative volume available for the critical guts and gonads. Hollow cones are much better than cylinders or most other shapes if what matters is growth in size without simultaneous change in shape. And mollusk shells are basically cones, whether single cones, as in the snail- and nautiluslike forms, or doubly conical, as in the clamlike forms. Hypothetical mollusk shells can be generated as conic derivatives with a computer, something first done by the paleontologist David Raup thirty years ago. The constraint on their shapes is so severe that almost all the forms of real shells can be produced by a fairly simple program.\n\nFIGURE 2.1. _Increasing size by adding to an edge. Cone and pyramid retain their shapes, while cylinder and rectangular solid are disproportionately elongated_.\n\nLife can't easily pause periodically for renovation, although such things as the pupal stage of insects come close to a growth hiatus. Arthropods in general\u2014insects, spiders, and crustaceans, mainly\u2014grow fitfully, periodically shedding their outside casings as well as some of the inside equipment. Molting thus provides an alternative to the edgewise growth of molluscan skeletons. But it restricts structural possibilities also, surely precluding many useful internal pillars, trusses, and the like. In addition, while insects are consummate fliers, no insect molts functioning wings, so the flying stage is always a final, nongrowing one; little flies are never baby flies. Finally, molting costs material and imposes periods of mechanical vulnerability.\n\nOne major group of animals has reconciled support and growth. We vertebrates have a skeletal system that can grow and remodel itself continuously. By contrast with mollusk shell and arthropod cuticle, bone is a living tissue, a complex and unusual accomplishment of fishes, frogs, birds, and people. A growing skeleton may be the greatest vertebrate innovation, the central item in our success as moderate-size to large creatures.\n\nOrganisms must also reproduce, so they (the females, in species with separate sexes) need the full equipment to make more of their kind. That's adding a requirement that an automobile tow behind it a factory for making automobiles or at least making motorcycles. Again, some partial evasions are known among complexly colonial creatures. Among bees and ants, for instance, workers are nonreproductive. Among colonial coe- lenterates (the group that includes jellyfish and sea anemones) only a few specialized polyps of the colony\u2014what looks to us like an individual is really a colony\u2014can have offspring. Even so, the reproductive units are still recognizable organisms\u2014queen bees and reproductive polyps. No organism has invented a proper out-of-body progeny production plant.\n\nAfter growth and reproduction comes dispersal. Sometimes the three may be done by a single form of an organism, as in creatures like us that have simple life histories. In other cases elaborate metamorphoses may separate dramatically different forms. We're the unusual ones; metamorphoses and the resulting complex life histories characterize most plants, many insects, and almost all of the great diversity of marine invertebrates. We humans tend to take mobility for granted, but it's tough for a tree, an oyster, a parasitic worm, or a sponge to get from here to there. Each of these discharges special samples of itself to spread its kind. In many barnacles and clams, tiny, swimming, predatory larvae convert into sessile, reproductive adults that feed by filtering microorganisms from water. In butterflies, leaf-munching growing crawlers become nectar-sipping reproductive fliers. Such conversions must seriously constrain the range of possible designs.\n\nOther limitations are imposed by what we might call informational constraints. The plan for making any organism has a problem that deserves more attention. In this era of bytes and computers, we recognize information as something quantitative and measurable. The basic unit, the bit, resolves the uncertainty in a choice between two equally probable alternatives, the information you gain when you look at which way a flipped coin lands. In essence, plans are stores of information. To construct a human or similar animal, a fertilized egg has available around 1010 (1 followed by 10 zeros) bits of information in its DNA. That may sound like a lot\u2014until one realizes that each of us has about 1014 cells, a number no less than 10,000 _times_ greater. So 10,000,000,000 bits isn't such a big deal. As we've learned from our computers, two-dimensional representations\u2014graphics\u2014absorb far more memory than mere text. Whether a picture is worth a thousand words, it surely uses as much disk space. Organisms, though, are _three_ -dimensional, and details as fine as a millionth of a millimeter are important. Specifying that much detail should require a truly vast store of information, many millions of times greater than the 1010 bits in egg or sperm. Thus the shape of an organism has to be set by, relatively speaking, a very sketchy set of plans. That the chickens in a flock look identical cannot result from identical specification of every detail of each.\n\nFIGURE 2.2. _A helix of identical wooden blocks and a model of a microtubule. The latter has thirteen elements per turn. each consisting of a pair of protein molecules. In either case, each element is in a position equivalent to that of every other_.\n\nThis shortage of information clearly underlies a lot of biological design. Back in 1950 a prescient physicist, Horace R. Crane, predicted that a lot of subcellular structures (he didn't know which) would turn out to be helical in form, not because helices necessarily worked best but because they could be assembled with especially simple instructions. A helix can be built from identical subunits (as a wall is built from identical bricks); also, every subunit is inserted in exactly the same way as every other, as in Figure 2.2. If you know how to install one subunit, you know how to do the rest. Crane anticipated not only the double helix of DNA but its supercoiling (a helix of helices), the so-called alpha helix of parts of many proteins, and, on a larger scale, helical microtubules and microfilaments important in maintaining the shape and motility of cells. Microtubules and microfilaments have a remarkable capacity for self-assembly; if all the components are put together (with perhaps a bit of the formed structure as a starter), they ordinarily fall into place without any need for mold or scaffolding or, more important, for any additional information.\n\nBuilding large organisms out of lots of cells is probably made necessary by that shortage of information. Cells may look diverse, but they all have a lot in common; if you can build one kind, you need only a little more information (relatively, of course) to build all the others. Furthermore, in the development of each individual, one group of instructions can set more than one structure. In humans, hand size is an excellent predictor of foot size; before stretch fabrics were common, the salesperson wrapped a sock around your fist to tell whether it would fit your foot. A single alteration of the genetic material\u2014a mutation\u2014ordinarily affects both sides of the body of an animal. A mutant fruit fly doesn't have one white eye; it has two. Beyond these informational economies are others. The hearts and lungs of all of us are in the same places, but at some level of detail the locations of our parts are unpredictable. Anatomy students learn the names of the large blood vessels, but the small ones stay blessedly anonymous\u2014simply because their arrangement varies from one person to the next.\n\nNor does evolution easily manage fundamental change. For one thing, the variation that provides its raw material\u2014genetic mutations and the juggling of characters accomplished by sexual recombination\u2014consists mainly of small changes. Natural selection merely tests changes, such as a little thicker fur or a little longer ear for possible reproductive advantage. For another, natural selection operates on every individual. Thus any change must yield a fairly immediate advantage if it's to increase its representation in a population. Much less useful is a structure whose reproductive advantage is realized only when some other change appears. As the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins eloquently argues (without controversy), the evolutionary process is a tinkerer rather than a proper designer, a perpetual modifier rather than a creative innovator.\n\nQuite obviously major innovations have occurred, and biologists have exercised lots of ingenuity devising possible scenarios in which such innovations don't require long periods of elaboration of yet functionless structures. Birds, bats, and insects fly with flapping wings. Since no small protowing makes a proper aircraft, we worry about how wings got started in each of these lineages. Did a running birdlike creature make longer hops with outstretched feathered arms? Or did such appendages permit longer jumps from branch to branch? Or did extended appendages\u2014 longer \"arms\"\u2014help shed heat produced by extended runs? Both flying squirrels and gliding lizards have membranous skin between fore and hind limbs. Are these creatures reasonable models for birds or bats at a stage before active, powered flight?\n\nThe evolutionary process has its hands tied in yet another way. Every organism is a product of its particular evolutionary history. Such a history limits design far more than ensuring that today's disk will work in yesterday's computer. It's tempting to assume that every organism is optimally attuned to its personal circumstances as a result of its lengthy evolution, but it's profoundly wrong. Ancestry traps an organism. Consider a few fine features that appear only in one lineage.\n\nEarlier we spoke of the shells of mollusks, the cuticle of arthropods, and the bones of vertebrates. Mollusks and arthropods never figured out how to make a proper growing skeleton. Each adopted a scheme for coping with the problem of support, one with the advantage (whether incidental or not, one can't easily say) of providing outer protection. Vertebrates solved the problem of making a skeleton that could grow although in doing so, some of us\u2014turtles and armadillos, at present\u2014 had to make additional structures to gain that outer protection.\n\nArthropods make an elastic protein, resilin, that has a higher resiliency (more of the energy used to stretch it is recovered when it's released) than anything found in a mollusk or vertebrate. Mollusks like clams and scallops use an alternative protein, abductin, to open their paired half-shells, as when a scallop swims by clapping them together. Vertebrates use yet another protein, elastin, in ligaments and blood vessel walls: See Figure 2.3. One of resilin's main roles is storing the energy that decelerates an insect wing at the end of one stroke to accelerate the wing at the start of the next. Is making insect wings beat efficiently more crucial than either making a good hinge ligament to connect the half shells of a swimming scallop or making a low- loss elastic to support the head of a grazing sheep? Probably not; most likely scallop and sheep would be better off if they could trade proteins with a fly.\n\nFIGURE 2.3. _Three different elastic proteins, characteristic of three different organisms. The scallop uses abductin in the hinge of its shell; the fly has a pad of resilin in the hinge of each wing; the ligament connecting the head and thoracic vertebrae of a cow is largely elastin_.\n\nMollusks aren't inevitably losers in these comparisons. They alone have mastered the trick of keeping a muscle contracted without expending energy. Ideally, you don't need energy to produce a force that just supports a load; you need it only to move a load. Exerting force against an immovable load\u2014Atlas holding up the sky or a chain supporting a chandelier\u2014ought to use no energy. In practice, though, our own muscles take energy to do anything, even if nothing moves. But the sedentary clam can stay clammed up at virtually no cost.\n\nSo nature must follow an inherited plan. The human designer, on the other hand, can borrow devices from other designers. If the device is covered by patents, then royalties or litigation form part of the process, but most useful items are common knowledge in the public domain. For that matter, two competing manufacturers can buy identical parts from the same supplier. Nature has trouble doing anything analogous. Still, crosslineage transfer of technology is not absolutely ruled out, and a pair of examples illustrates its nicely offbeat flavor.\n\n1. Termites harbor in their digestive systems protozoa called mixotrichs that are critical to their ability to get energy by digesting cellulose. Colonial life in termites may even have originated as a device to ensure adequate opportunities for passing along \"infections\" of mixotrichs. These protozoa were long assumed to be propelled by organelles called undulipodia on their surfaces. Oddly enough, the undulipodia turn out to be a bunch of bacteria, spirochetes in particular, arranged as shown in Figure 2.4. The protozoa have adopted bacteria as engines the way a human might use a team of horses. The symbiotic association of course is much closer; it's obligatory for both kinds of organism. Even more curious, this kind of symbiosis has occurred on at least one other occasion, with a different bacterium in a different intestinal protozoan in another termite. In this latter case the engines are the flagella of rod-shaped bacteria. Each of several thousand bacteria on each protozoan has about a dozen flagella, oriented on its surface so they all contribute to moving the protozoan around.\n\n2. Only coelenterates, such as jellyfish, know how to make certain special stinging cells, their nematocysts. Contact with a big coelenterate (the Portuguese man-of-war is especially vicious) is extremely unpleasant for a person and often fatal for a fish. A few creatures somehow manage to contact coelenterates without triggering the nematocysts. These, including a few fish, then use the coelenterates for shelter, protection, and even food. Certain nudibranch mollusks (marine snails without shells) take the trick a giant step farther. Not only can they contact coelenterates without damage, but they can incorporate the nematocysts into their own skins quite undischarged and still defensively potent. Here no symbiosis occurs; rather a jellyfish technology is appropriated and redeployed: They steal loaded guns from the army.\n\nFIGURE 2.4. _A mixotrich with a pox of spirochetes. While the mixotrich has several flagella of its own (at top), for some reason it doesn't use them for locomotion_.\n\nIn both these cases something mechanical crosses from one lineage to another. More frequent are chemical transfers, in which, for instance, an animal becomes poisonous to potential predators by ingesting a normally toxic plant (as when monarch butterflies eat milkweeds). The general point is that recognizing such cases shows that we know what to look for. So we can confidently declare such transfers uncommon and assert their difficulty for natural selection.\n\nAs a designer, then, nature is not only glacial in speed but lacking in versatility and erratic in performance. Fundamental innovation comes hard, and once achieved, it disseminates almost entirely within a lineage. To a remarkable extent the dazzling diversity in nature represents superficial features of systems of an exceedingly conservative and stereotyped character. No patents exist to be licensed; infringement by copying is impossible (although fortuitous infringement\u2014convergence\u2014carries no penalty); and the bottom line is immediate profit\u2014surer reproduction. Trial, error, patience.\n\nDESIGN FROM A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE\n\nDesign in human technology is far less constrained. All the complications of life histories are swept away. Fundamental change may be hard to bring about, but it faces no fundamental barrier. Of course, for the most part we build on past accomplishments, and we do so within limits set by human ingenuity and modes of thinking, by materials at hand, and by the social support at any time and place for innovation. The inventor, after all, must eat, and society must be willing to adopt an invention. Without a doubt, human societies have run the gamut from hostility to hospitality toward technological innovation. The Roman Empire, given its size and duration, must be rated quite low; ships, building materials, even weaponry changed little for hundreds of years. By contrast northern Europe and North America during the nineteenth century were obviously high; innovations included railroads, steamships, telecommunications, synthetic fibers, and electric motors and lighting, just to name a few.\n\nDesign in human technology generates change and progress in a way that's a lot easier on the intuition than design in nature. On the other hand, if's a lot harder to encapsulate succinctly. An inventor, a concept, a model; testing, approval, dissemination, improvement\u2014the elements come easily to mind. Alexander Bell thinks of a simple way to convert sounds to electrical signals and back again. After a lot of tinkering he builds a successful model, he patents the model, and then he and others commercialize the telephone. Thomas Edison's more efficient mouthpiece then supersedes this element of the Bell system. The design process clearly involves the planning, anticipation, and deliberation of which natural selection is incapable. But the really basic items of human design are so old that we know little or nothing of their beginnings. Who, after all, invented the right angle? Who first fabricated things from metals? Good histories of technology have been written, but they can't see back more than a few millennia.\n\nWhile the processes of design differ dramatically between the two technologies, important elements are common to both\u2014perhaps more than are commonly realized.\n\n**Cultural dissemination**. Nothing forbids invention and cultural transmission among animals (plants are a different matter). Monkeys and apes invent copiously, but my favorite case involves birds, not known as such a brainy bunch. Some years ago individuals of four species of tits in Britain found that if they pecked just right at the caps of milk bottles left on doorsteps, they'd be rewarded with fine meals of cream. Cream might seem an unusual food for birds, but if they can get it, it's a grand source of fat, their fuel for flight. Those cream-fattened fliers might have enjoyed greater reproductive success; their offspring might have preferred pecking at objects in some class that included bottle caps; natural selection might have fine-tuned the behavior in succeeding generations. Dissemination among British tits in fact proved far more rapid. Milk bottle pecking spread quickly as birds learned from one another\u2014until a change in the design of the caps foiled birds and some fascinated biologists. As our biobard John Burns quipped, the case \"smacks of the loosely preadaptive inasmuch as tits were the birds to try it.\"\n\n**Natural selection**. Nor does anything prevent accident and selection by percipient humans. Lucky accidents must have been fairly important in early human history. Domestication of plants and animals, the origin of cooking, the use of a strangely shaped stone followed by deliberate shaping of others\u2014all need only minimal foresight or initial deliberation. Certainly folk medicine is mostly selection from among nearly random ministrations. We learned that chronic aspirin therapy lowers the risk of clot-associated cardiovascular diseases from observations incidental to the use of aspirin for arthritis. Many a toothsome recipe must derive from accidental alteration of a routine procedure.\n\nBoth natural and human technologies bow to economics. Improved reproductive success\u2014\"fitness\"\u2014and corporate advantage are much alike. Corporate advantage is especially close to what the biologist means by fitness according to the economist John Kenneth Galbraith. He points out that corporate managers typically favor expansion\u2014equivalent to population growth\u2014over payout of profits to anonymous stockholders. Furthermore, one hears complaints that the corporate culture takes an unduly short-term view of what's beneficial; immediate utility is thus the main measure of success in both technologies.\n\n**The role of isolation**. A lot of evolutionary change apparently occurs in small, genetically isolated populations, in which competition with other members of a species is limited by geographic or ecological barriers. In general, organisms that don't do a lot of moving around generate more different species than those that do. When a barrier falls, a now well- tuned form may come into renewed competition and displace another\u2014 part of why biogeography has become such an important part of evolutionary biology.\n\nWith a globally uniform technology, we've less opportunity for such temporary sheltering, and continuous stirring replaces the rare mixing of a Marco Polo. But we still set up isolated habitats of reduced competitive pressures. For better or worse, a lot of secret work done under military auspices ultimately appears in open, nonmilitary circumstances. The space program of the United States sheltered and subsidized the microelectronics industry. Surely government-supported biomedical research (with results available in the public domain) and the profitability of the pharmaceutical companies are joined at the hip.\n\n**The conservative bias**. No dominant technology displaces easily in a purely competitive encounter. Cars long ago standardized on the Otto cycle internal-combustion engine. Its nearly universal use doesn't prove it the most economically appropriate way to power passenger vehicles. A hundred years of refinement and easy access to fuel and maintenance are advantages not easily overcome. If that engine is ever displaced by another, it won't be through pure competition in an open, global marketplace. Present standards for the resolution of broadcast television are clearly anachronistic, but with hundreds of millions of sets in use, they're proving hard to shake off. Similarly, insects constitute the majority of the world's animal species despite the awkwardness of periodic molting and the resulting difficulty of making large terrestrial forms. In neither technology does fundamental superiority of a newcomer give assurance of success. Their respective histories hold each a captive.\n\n**The time course of change**. In times past we believed in the steady advance of human culture; everything went \"onward and upward.\" Nowadays we recognize that our history is bumpier, more episodic. In biology we now generally accept the idea that evolutionary change may occur as intermittent bursts, something first brought to our attention by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould. The issue remaining is just the relative importance of their \"punctuated equilibrium\" and steadier change through time (phyletic gradualism). Most of the examples on which arguments turn are fairly arcane. But consider the explosive radiation of an already old group of small creatures called mammals following the demise of the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago. Millions of years of stagnation and then, wow! Another such episode happened more recently, a mere twenty million years ago. Grasses evolved, and with them came extensive grasslands. Grass may be easy to get to, but it's poor fodder for the unprepared, abrasive stuff with a low energy content for its bulk. Within a relatively short time, teeth in many lineages of mammals evolved into a form (Figure 2.5) that could manage to munch this miserable material. Less dramatically, punctuated equilibrium implies that most of the time natural selection just maintains forms well arranged for what they do; once an organism is well established, random alterations are especially unlikely to improve it.\n\nLooking for equivalent bumpiness in human technology requires that we speed up our time scale. Doing so reveals the same variation in how fast change occurs. The small electric fan you buy today has changed little in eighty years, but the laptop computer was almost unimaginable forty years ago. Fans, toasters, and other small appliances came hard on the heels of light bulbs and the wiring of households. Even for a stand-alone device, change is irregular. The body of a single-lens reflex camera looks and works like one of twenty or fifty years ago, but between skin and skeleton a layer of novel electronics has recently been interposed. Probably the development of semiconductor amplifiers (transistors) in the late 1940s and the related creation of digital integrated circuits (chips) in the 1960s have been the main instigators of the most explosive changes in contemporary human technology. By contrast, our homes, our vehicles, our household appliances, and our clothing have changed far less than we might have predicted forty or fifty years ago. Besides radically new electronics and a few pieces of soft plastic, I see precious little novelty when I look around my house.\n\nFIGURE 2.5. _A horse's teeth are typical of those of large, grazing mammals. Vertical columns and layers of materials (enamel, cementum, and dentin) differ in hardness. In use the harder material will always protrude farthest, so the teeth do not get smooth as they wear down_.\n\n**Incremental progress**. Natural selection, as emphasized a few pages ago, is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary process, one building on small changes. Of course we humans can make major technological revolutions. But what do we really do? Early education gives the impression that James Watt invented the steam engine and Henry Ford the automobile. When examined in detail, though, almost every recent human invention is part of an incremental sequence. Key individuals certainly play important roles, but almost every recent history of technology views the development of specific technologies as more gradual than what most of us learned. That long-term progress is unsteady doesn't mean that short-term change isn't incremental; just as in nature, geologically episodic change isn't revolutionary when viewed generation by generation.\n\n**New uses for old devices**. Evolutionary biologists speak of preadaptations, preexisting features that make organisms suitable for new situations. For instance, amphibians and the rest of us legged vertebrates appear to have evolved not from familiar ray-finned fishes but from a group of lobe-finned fishes. (One representative of this group survives in deep water off the east coast of Africa. Until its discovery in 1938 we thought that coelacanths had been out of the picture for the past hundred million years.) Living in oxygen-poor swamps, these lobe-finned fishes had evolved air-breathing lungs and muscular fins that allowed them to keep their heads above water, perhaps as in Figure 2.6. The lungs and lobe fins that permitted life in ancient swamps amounted to preadaptations for our kind of ambulatory, air-breathing, terrestrial life.\n\nFIGURE 2.6. _Not prehistoric lobe-finned fish but contemporary ray finned ones, a pair of mudskippers. They prop themselves up in the manner suggested for creatures in the transition from fishes to tetrapods. No proposal of descent is involved; the mudskippers just show that fish can do it_.\n\nThe sudden expansion of human culture has brought to light all kinds of preadaptations among organisms. For instance, a weed with seeds that are hard to separate from those of a crop plant can suddenly find itself superbly well suited to a vast new habitat. And some small flies (chironomids), whose larvae normally live attached to the rocks in rapid streams, now thrive as a nuisance in the aerators of sewage treatment plants.\n\nPreadaptation may be so common in human technology that no one pays it much attention. Computers that displayed programs as text and were instructed from a keyboard were obviously preadapted to become word processors. The waterwheels long used as power sources provided a way to apply rather than extract power in the first generation of steamboats. Indeed, using preexisting things in novel ways enjoys a special countercultural mystique, giving particular gratification if the items have outlived their original applications. For instance, an old oil drum can be sliced lengthwise to make a rotor for one kind of windmill. Some of us do it all the time. I recently pressed a plastic water pipe into service as a curtain rod and used an ordinary metal lathe as a torsion-testing machine.\n\n**Parallel developments**. Nature often makes the same thing in several different lineages. Such convergence includes some truly remarkable cases. Fleshy, spiny, leafless plants evolved in the deserts of the Old World within one family, the euphorbs (such as the crown of thorns plant); and similar plants evolved in the American deserts within another family, the cacti. The most recent common ancestor of cacti and euphorbs was not fleshy, spiny, and leafless; they're truly convergent. Marsupial and placental mammals are in many cases amazingly similar. Marsupial mice, moles, flying squirrels, dogs, and others look like their placental equivalents but (on overwhelming evidence) represent an independent bush of mammalian evolution. The human (vertebrate) eye and the octopus (cephalopod) eye look alike and work alike but form another case of independent and convergent evolution. A good design is a good design, and that different lineages are driven by natural selection in similar directions shouldn't be surprising. Convergence tells us a lot about functionally important characters, since anything that converges must make a difference to reproductive success. It also directs attention to what is relatively easy (in some sense) for the evolutionary process.\n\nWe pay less specific attention to convergence in human cultures and technology, but it's there. Some parallels, such as the invention of the calculus by Leibniz and Newton in the seventeenth century or the suggestion of evolution by natural selection by Darwin and Wallace in the nineteenth, are purely intellectual. In each instance the intellectual climate must have been right. Technological parallel development is probably commoner. Did Marc Brunel or Eli Whitney invent interchangeable parts, Howe or Singer the sewing machine, Swan or Edison the light bulb? Or, in each case, both? Bell\u2013s first telephone patent beat a competitor by a few hours. Others were so close to flight that the Wright brothers had to strike a careful balance between immediate public disclosure and proper patent protection for their aircraft. When technology is changing, obvious next steps (need and ease, as in nature) will occur to more than one person.\n\nIn early human history, when contacts between cultures were much more limited, convergence must have occurred. Whether it's common or uncommon is debated between anthropologists of isolationist (independent origin) and diffusionist (spread from a single origin) predilections. Did such things as weaving, archery, and metallurgy arise more than once or only on single occasions? Impressed with the extreme commonness of convergence in nature, I ally more easily with the isolationists.\n\n**Extinction**. We usually think of extinctions in Darwinian terms, but they result as much from general change in habitat or circumstance as from directly competitive inferiority. Characteristics beneficial during normal times are likely to work against an organism faced with catastrophic change. After all, those normally nice characteristics were selected when the future mirrored the past; a plant that does well in the shade will have a hard time when the forest disappears! At the least, when the world changes rapidly, extreme specialization is likely to be counterproductive. One wonders whether the role of habitat change in large-scale extinctions and the disadvantage of specialization hold practical lessons for human technology. Certainly, the causes of extinction in human technology must be comparably complex. Saddlemakers and farriers declined not because of automation but because of automobilization. Perhaps the internal- combustion engine will fade too, in the face of more expensive fuel or unacceptable emissions (in effect, habitat change), not a competitor that's superior under current conditions.\n\nMuch has been written about evolutionary and revolutionary change. But these terms acquire special connotative hazards from their biological associations and political analogs. Maybe we ought instead to stick with less burdened words, such as \"gradual\" and \"jumpy\" or (more pedantically) \"incremental\" and \"saltatory\" for changes in small steps and great leaps. We're biased toward a jumpy view of history since we like to focus on heroes and to divide things up into discrete events, time periods, and categories. An incomplete fossil record makes us think that nature is similarly jumpy. Perhaps recognizing that we're prone to one bias will alert us to the pitfalls of the other.\n\nThe larger point is our recurrent theme that looking at both natural and human technologies forces us to think about each in novel ways. Here we've seen surprising similarities in practice despite the vast difference in underlying mechanism. Similarities have had center stage; farther along the differences will loom larger.\nChapter 3\n\nTHE MATTER OF MAGNITUDE\n\nSize matters, and like evolution, it will pervade all that follows. For one thing, an effective design for large things often works poorly for small things, and vice versa. For another, our two mechanical technologies span an enormous range, from a virtual macromolecule to the largest of human structures. For yet another, nature's products are generally smaller than ours, although the ranges overlap extensively. Since the two technologies share the same planet, they experience the same pressures, temperatures, gravitational accelerations, winds, and water currents. In many ways, though, the influence of such physical factors on the two often proves profoundly different; practical reality depends very much on how big something is.\n\nHow much size matters has long been recognized. Galileo gave it his full attention, correctly calculating that (in the absence of air resistance) an animal of any size ought to be able to jump as high as any other. This means that relative to body length, the small ones win hands down. (Even in the real world of draggy air, fleas are truly impressive, clearing the bar at several hundred times their own length.) The great seventeenth-century French polymath Descartes put the matter this way: \"The only difference I can see between machines and natural objects is that the workings of machines are mostly carried out by apparatus large enough to be readily perceptible by the senses (as is required to make their manufacture humanly possible), whereas natural processes almost always depend on parts so small that they utterly elude our senses.\"\n\nWhat confuses our intuitions\u2014but didn't mislead Descartes\u2014is our own atypical size. The smallest fully competent organism (thus excluding viruses), a bacterium that gives you a mild pneumonia, is about 0.2 micrometers long, about a fifth of a thousandth of a millimeter and just visible as a dot in a good light microscope. The largest in volume is a large whale, a little more than 20 meters or 60 feet long. That's roughly a hundred million\u2014fold range. On an appropriate geometric scale, as in Figure 3.1, we humans hug the upper end. At about 2 meters long, we're about ten times shorter than the biggest whale but ten million times longer than the smallest bacterium. We use, for these comparisons, a geometric rather than an arithmetic scale, counting each additional zero, or order of magnitude, as an equivalent increment. As a pioneer of biomathematics, D'Arcy Thompson, puts it, \"It is a remarkable thing, worth pausing to reflect upon, that we can pass so easily and in a dozen lines from molecular magnitudes to the dimensions of a Sequoia or a whale. Addition and subtraction, the old arithmetic of the Egyptians, are not powerful enough for such an operation.\" (D'Arcy Thompson needs a few words. He's almost exclusively known for _On Growth and Form_ , a large book written in 1917 and again in 1942, unquestionably the best- known work on mechanical aspects of biology. Part of the book's continuing impact\u2014it's still in print\u2014comes from its shear linguistic splendor; more, perhaps, reflects its accessibility, startling breadth, and creative insight. While certainly worth reading, as biology it's strange and anachronistic, a search for a kind of geometrical perfection in nature to which evolution by natural selection is largely irrelevant. Nonbiologists such as architects often assume that _On Growth and Form_ is in the mainstream of biology or biomechanics. So I hasten to explain that Thompson is a much-beloved godfather rather than someone whose intellectual genes we proudly carry.)\n\nFIGURE 3.1. _The size ranges of organisms and our mechanical devices. Some arbitrary judgments beg forgiveness. The longest (if very thin) organisms are probably some multinucleate fungi, and the Great Wall of China is vastly longer than the longest bridge. Nor are subcellular items, such as microtubules and bacterial flagella, included_.\n\nNot only are most organisms smaller than we, but in most groups smallness is the ancestral condition and largeness the specialization. Big fossils are impressive, but little ones are more likely to lead somewhere. Nature starts small. Organisms are basically built up from cells rather than divided into cells; the earliest fossils are microscopic. Human technology goes the other way. Our ships, buildings, and bridges may be larger than ever, but the factor of increase has been small and the times involved have been long. More impressive is the way our systems (or their parts) have gotten smaller. The first steam engines were enormous, operating slowly and at low pressures. Jet turbines are small, fast, high-pressure devices. Most extreme of course are electronic devices; compare today's microscopic semiconductor junctions within large-scale integrated circuits with the huge vacuum tubes of the 1930s.\n\nLENGTH, SURFACE AREA, AND VOLUME\n\nLength, surface, and volume aren't at all the same kind of thing. Consider a pair of cubic boxes, as in Figure 3.2. If an edge of one is twice as long as that of the other, then the larger one will have not twice but four times the surface area of the smaller. At the same time the larger will have fully eight times the volume of the smaller. Similarly, if one of the cubes has edges ten times longer than the other, it will have a hundred times as much surface area and no less than a thousand times as much volume. Put as a general rule, area increases as the square of length (22 = 4; 102 = 100), while volume increases as the cube of length (23 = 8; 103 = 1,000). The rule works for any set of similarly shaped objects, such as spheres or (at least roughly) salmon. When things grow big, volume increases more drastically than does surface area. Therefore, being big means having lots of inside relative to your outside; being small means having lots of outside relative to your inside.\n\nFIGURE 3.2. _Two cubes, one with sides twice as long as those of the other. The bigger has four times the area, eight times the volume, but only half the surface relative to volume of the smaller_.\n\nBiological objects, whether trees, people, or bacteria, don't vary much in density\u2014all are about as dense as water\u2014so mass and weight follow the rules for volume. A fish twice as long as another of the same shape will weigh about eight times as much; let cooks take notice.\n\nThus variables that follow volume, such as weight, will increase faster than variables that follow surface or length. The consequences aren't trivial. For instance, heat is generated throughout an animal's insides but is lost across its surface. If two animals, a large one and a small one, produced heat at the same rate (relative to their volumes), the larger one, volume rich and surface poor, would be warmer. But body temperature varies little among mammals and birds of all sizes. We larger creatures simply produce less heat (relative to our volumes). We need proportionately less food. We can get by with a thinner shell of insulating fur, fat, or feathers. We can also walk or swim about in a cooler climate. Being warm-blooded would have been no enormous accomplishment for a large dinosaur but a lot more remarkable for the small mammals contemporary with the dinosaurs. Indeed, warm-bloodedness occurs only in animals above a few grams in mass; as a fine convergence, the smallest birds (hummingbirds) are about the same size as the smallest mammals (shrews). Both hummingbirds and shrews are voracious eaters, and at night both let their temperatures drop, essentially hibernating, lest they starve before morning. For warm-blooded aquatic animals the minimum size is still greater. Warm-bloodedness is no small trick for tiny animals; all that surface makes trouble.\n\nOur technology makes elaborate use of heat\u2014for instance, in fabricating materials. But we use large ovens and fabricate in large batches, so the actual energy requirements aren't that bad. For an organism only a millimeter or centimeter across, making a hot spot either internally or externally would be far more costly, relative to its volume. Keeping a large building heated is cheaper, relative to its volume, than is heating a small house. Colonial bees can heat their nests communally; no solitary insect can do so. Nor is this business of heat exchange the only consequence of how the relationships among length, surface area, and volume depend on size. All processes that involve exchange of material with the surroundings are ruled by those relationships\u2014for both better and worse. If you're small, getting oxygen in and out is relatively easy, even without resort to lungs or gills, but at the same time you're more vulnerable to chemical assault by predator or pollution since no part of your inside is very far from your surface.\n\nAs noted, organisms have to grow in size without serious interruption of their functioning. That raises peculiar complications for size-dependent variables. An adult can't be, and in fact isn't, just an enlarged child, as you can see from Figure 3.3. Consider two people of ordinary corpulence. One is tall, and the other short. (It doesn't matter if the short one is a small adult rather than a youngster.) The weight of each ought to follow the cube of height, at least roughly, and the soles of the feet of each will have to bear that weight. But soles\u2014now we're talking about an area. If the tall person were just an enlarged version of the short one, then the tall one would impose more pounds (weight) on each square inch (area) of those soles. As it happens, though, we're more subtly made. As investigators at the Nike Research Center found out, tall people have disproportionately large feet, just disproportionate enough to fix the weight per area of sole. Of course weight here is a kind of anticipated weight based on the cube of height; if you get fat, your feet don't enlarge in compensation, even if they flatten a bit in response.\n\nFIGURE 3.3. _An adult and an infant of about five months drawn to the same apparent height, each with head, limbs, and torso in correct proportion. To emphasize the change in shape, the baby has been given adult posture_.\n\nAnother example: A falling body falls faster and faster, until its increasing drag just equals its weight and it gets to a final, steady velocity. The surface of a falling object determines its drag while the volume of the object sets the weight that draws it earthward. Since a larger body has more volume for its surface and since weight equals drag at its final velocity, the larger body will fall faster, as you can see from Table 3.1. Falling is mechanically hazardous for a human; it's a serious danger for a nestling bird only because predators may lurk below. As a great biologist, J. B. S. Haldane, put it in an essay entitled \"On Being the Right Size,\" \"a mouse is uninjured, a man is broken, a horse splashes.\" (In a bleak book about coal mining in England, _The Road to Wigan Pier_ , George Orwell\u2014who later wrote _Animal Farm_ and _1984_ \u2014wondered about how mice get into the mines: \". . . possibly by falling down the shaft\u2014for they say that a mouse can fall any distance uninjured, owing to its surface area being so large relative to its weight.\" Common knowledge to Orwell and other British Socialists at least\u2014Haldane's essay first appeared in their newspaper.)\n\n**DIAMETER**|  **FALLING SPEED**  \n---|---  \n**1 meter**|  **330 m\/s or**|  **738 mph**  \n**10 centimeter**|  **104**|  **233**  \n**1 centimeter**|  **15**|  **33.6**  \n**1 millimeter**|  **3.6**|  **8.1**  \n**0.1 millimeter**|  **0.27**|  **0.6**\n\nTABLE 3.1. _Final falling speeds for spheres of water's density at sea level. (Over this huge range one can't simply assume that drag varies with the square of speed. I've ignored transonic phenomena in the calculations_.)\n\nIn short, we big, terrestrial animals live in a gravity-dominated world. For an animal of more ordinary size, gravity matters a lot less. For aquatic animals, it's of no great gravity at all.\n\nSIZE AND FLIGHT\n\nNo mechanical feat is more impressive than flight. Nature showed us that flight was possible, something that could not have been self-evident. But while flying animals pointed the way to airplanes, they misled us badly on the particulars\u2014mainly because the practical problems of flight are strongly size-dependent. Put another way, a flying machine's size controls both its design and performance.\n\nFirst, a flying machine has two separate size-dependent missions, staying aloft and making headway. For a tiny flying insect, staying aloft against gravity's pull is easy. But making headway against the drag of the air is tougher than for a bird or airplane. At issue, again, is how drag and weight scale with size. To stay aloft takes an upward force that just counterbalances weight; going forward requires a force equal to drag at that flying speed. Weight depends on volume, while drag depends on surface area. Halving body length reduces weight fully eightfold while reducing drag about fourfold. Thus the smaller creature finds weight less troublesome but drag more so. Thus it flies more slowly and finds itself more severely affected by any wind\u2014for better (taking advantage of air currents) or worse (dealing with headwinds and navigational complications).\n\nSecond, a wing's lift varies with its area, just as its drag does. Therefore, doubling length (while keeping shape unaltered) gives a craft four times the lift but eight times the weight, which doesn't sound auspicious. One solution is having really large wings on the larger craft; another is to fly somewhat faster: Like drag, lift goes up with speed through the air. So here again, larger ought to mean faster, roughly what we see among flying animals, from tiny insects to large birds and larger planes. It needn't (and doesn't) mean very much faster, though, since a doubling of speed increases both lift and drag, not twice but about four times. A fruit fly might hit three miles per hour, a bumblebee can do twelve or so, only large birds can exceed forty or fifty miles per hour, while for airplanes that's about the slowest they can go.\n\nA third size-dependent factor complicates design and performance. The best wings produce a lot of lift while suffering little drag. This relationship between lift and drag depends slightly but significantly on size and speed, especially for small wings traveling slowly. Lift relative to drag gets worse as the craft gets smaller. The culprit is a property of fluids, whether liquids or gases, known as viscosity. Put simply, viscosity is a fluid's resistance to flowing, its internal stickiness. Its influence gets steadily more pernicious as systems get smaller and slower. The wing of a tiny insect moves through air a bit like a rod pushed through thick syrup; its shape, upon which its lift depends, is considerably obscured by the air carried with it. Very small and slow wings have more drag relative to their lift; here nature is the designer with the harder assignment.\n\nConsider gliders, whether living or not. The angle at which a glider descends in still air depends almost entirely on that ratio of lift to drag; maximization of the ratio gives the flattest, most nearly horizontal glide. Birds can't make glides as flat as sailplanes, simply because they're smaller, as in Table 3.2. In practical terms, a bird can't glide as far from a given height. Is human technology better since our wings have less drag for their lift than those of birds? The comparison is so clouded by size that no simple judgment is fair or useful. As gliders, insects are still worse off than birds, and only large ones, such as locusts and butterflies, do much gliding at all.\n\nGliding through moving air makes matters still murkier. Both human gliders and gliding animals ride air currents to prolong and direct their flights; it's called soaring. So time aloft may be quite as important as the distance that might be covered in a simple still-air glide. Time aloft depends equally on descent angle and descent speed. Smaller generally means both steeper and slower, so while the gliding bird may descend more steeply than the sailplane, it descends more slowly. Thus time aloft is about the same for an eagle and a sailplane. Gliding insects descend still more steeply but more slowly yet, and the monarch butterfly is little worse than bird or plane.\n\n**FLIER**|  **MINIMUM GLIDE ANGLE**  \n---|---  \n**Sailplane**|  **1.5\u00b0**  \n**Small airplane, engine off**|  **3.0\u00b0**  \n**Albatross**|  **3.0\u00b0**  \n**Falcon**|  **3.5\u00b0**  \n**Pigeon**|  **9.5\u00b0**  \n**Monarch butterfly**|  **12\u00b0**  \n**Flies, etc. (calculated)**|  **30\u00b0**\n\nTABLE 3.2. _Least (and thus best) angles of descent for a variety of gliders_.\n\nSize affects the design of flying machines in a fourth way, a subtle one that misled most of our early attempts to fly. Flying animals use beating wings to produce both lift and thrust. Efficient human aircraft (which helicopters and harrier jets are not) divide lift and thrust production between fixed wings and propellers. Should birds emulate our separation of the two functions? Or why can we achieve decent efficiency only by disentangling the two while birds needn't bother?\n\nAn aircraft must push air rearward faster than its flying speed in order to keep going forward. At the same time it has to push air downward faster than its ascending to keep up its ascent. But ascent speeds are tiny compared with forward speeds; indeed, for most of any flight of bird or airplane the ascent speed is zero. For level flight, _any_ downward push will make lift, and the greatest efficiency (for a reason best avoided at this point) is realized when the largest amount of air is given the least downward speed. If the craft is going forward, though, it must push air that's already moving fast. Long, fixed wings deflect a lot of air downward; short propellers spin rapidly, so pushing less air but giving it that necessarily greater speed. The separation of functions buys efficiency\u2014smaller engines and less fuel\u2014for airplanes. But flying animals, being smaller, proceed more slowly and don't encounter such rapid, oncoming wind. Thus separating propeller and wings buys little advantage, and flapping wings make both lift and thrust quite nicely. We'll return to this comparison in Chapter 10.\n\nSURFACE TENSION AND DIFFUSION\n\nIf we humans, so large and lumbering, care little about viscosity, we care even less about surface tension and still less about diffusion. But for the tiny insect that accidentally touches a wing to a puddle of water, surface tension can be a matter of life or death. Nature gives it close attention, making surfaces that either wet easily or vigorously repel water, depending on the roles they play.\n\nSurface tension comes from mutual attraction among the molecules of a liquid such as water. If molecules attract each other, they prefer to cluster\u2014which is to say that they prefer to form the least amount of outer surface. Surface tension works much like a bunch of people trying to get close together, perhaps to lessen heat loss. A droplet of water tends to take the shape that gives it the least surface for its volume. If the droplet of water rests on a surface to which its molecules are less attracted than they are to each other, it will round up into a flattened sphere, as, for instance, a raindrop on a well-waxed car. In an orbiting spacecraft the droplet will be almost perfectly spherical. If, by contrast, the water molecules are more strongly attracted to the surface than to each other, the droplet will spread as a thin film over the surface.\n\nWe see that water rises in a thin glass tube since water and clean glass attract each other strongly; we note that mercury drops in the same tube because of its low attraction to glass. We commonly add a little detergent to water to reduce its surface tension and make it give a more cleansing wash. We notice (usually without knowing why) that an absorbent, say, a cotton ball or a cloth of natural fiber, compresses as it dries; \"absorbent\" means that water adheres to it, and the surface-minimizing tendency of water pulls the wet fibers inward as the water evaporates and loses volume. One can use the phenomenon to make a self-starting, small-scale siphon; a glass of water will empty if you drape a piece of cotton fabric from the bottom of the glass up and over its rim and down into an adjacent, lower sink. Still, such things are far from critical to our daily lives.\n\nBut for a water strider, as in Figure 3.4, surface tension is life itself. Its legs have a waxy coating and don't attract water; its weight depresses the water's surface under each leg; the water pushes upward as it tries to flatten its surface and thus minimize its area; the water's surface ends up depressed just enough so that its upward force offsets the water strider's weight. If the insect lifts two legs off the water, the other four depress their surface dimples slightly more. In its world surface tension is a major player; some surface insects move forward by squirting detergent behind. What about us? Why can't we walk on water? A downward force, weight, has to be balanced by an upward force, surface tension times the length of the foot-water-air contact line. The downward force is a matter of a volume, the upward one of a length. We're so big that we weigh too much for feet of any manageable edge length. My sixty-kilogram mass would require feet with eight thousand meters (five miles) of edge, but a ten- milligram mosquito-size insect needs a mere millimeter of total foot edge.\n\nFIGURE 3.4. _A water strider standing on the surface of a pond. Notice the dimples in the water's surface under each leg_.\n\nThe downside of being small enough to walk on water is being unable to get through the water's surface. That surface has about the same behavior for an insect about a millimeter long as the canvas wall of a tent has for us. We can dive in, we can row a boat by repeatedly dipping the oars, and we can swim using crawl, butterfly, or backstroke; the tiny insect, though, must remain above or below the surface.\n\nNor is the surface of pond or puddle the only place surface tension matters. Water rises in the conduits of trees and evaporates from leaves. If you stop sucking on a straw, air enters the top, and the soda goes back down, so why doesn't air go back into the leaves? Surface tension turns out to be critical for keeping the air out; the pores in a leaf's cell walls will let water evaporate out, but they're just too small for air to get in. Around thirty atmospheres of pressure would be needed to pull air through the air-water boundary in pores a ten-thousandth of a millimeter across. Again, the relevant size (here pore diameter) is small, so surface tension can be enlisted for a major role.\n\nDiffusion comes into play on an even smaller scale. It's a consequence of the endless random and independent wandering of every molecule of every gas or liquid; left alone, substances such as oxygen and nitrogen or fresh and salt water mix together. The usual demonstration of molecular diffusion involves opening a bottle of perfume in a classroom; after a short while everyone smells the aroma. The odorant is spread, it is claimed, by that random wandering of molecules\u2014to diffusion. Not so. Except for the tiniest bit next to one's nasal epithelium, the perfume has been carried around by the irregular and turbulent motion of air in the room, something totally different from random molecular motion. So ubiquitous is such convective motion of air and water that diffusion is almost impossible to demonstrate on a perceptually relevant scale.\n\nBut as we go from small to smaller, to subcellular dimensions, diffusion becomes a potent agency of transport and mixing\u2014within ourselves and all other organisms. Impulses most often go from one nerve cell to another by the diffusive spread of a transmitter substance. With a gap between cells of only about one fifty-thousandth of a millimeter, the diffusional delay is about one ten-thousandth of a second. For subcellular distances, diffusion is certainly speedy. Indeed, almost all transport of material within animal cells takes advantage of diffusion. But the usefulness of diffusion depends drastically on size; a tenfold increase in distance slows diffusive transport a full hundredfold. Animals made up of more than one or a few cells can't ordinarily rely just on diffusion for moving material within themselves. They have to augment it with hearts, blood vessels, pumped lungs, digestive tubes, and other devices that force fluids to move.\n\nThe machines of human technology, much larger than cells, only occasionally make use of diffusion. One blood-cleansing machine used for dialysis of people with kidney failure relies on diffusion in and out of very tiny pipes with a huge aggregate surface area. One famous (or infamous) process takes advantage of the different rates of diffusion of molecules of different sizes. The rare but fissionable uranium 235 moves faster than the common, bigger, and nonfissionable uranium 238 as they diffuse (as gases) through a porous barrier. Being big and impatient, we ordinarily resort to stirring and pumping to get around the slowness of diffusion over appreciable distances, doing just what animals do when they make circulatory systems. A cell-size creature might well wonder why we bother.\n\nGRAVITY AND INERTIA\n\nWe've now noted three phenomena\u2014viscosity, surface tension, and diffusion\u2014especially important in small systems. Others\u2014in particular, gravity and inertia\u2014dominate large ones. Gravity has already raised problems here. It causes large objects to fall faster than small ones. It doesn't let large creatures support themselves with surface tension on water's surface. And it makes it necessary for large aircraft to fly faster if they're to stay up with decent economy.\n\nGravity's size-related mischief takes more subtle forms as well. Consider the moving waves made by wind blowing across a body of water. What keeps them wavy is the water's inertia. What makes the water flatten out are the water's surface tension and weight. For ripples two-thirds of an inch or less between crests, surface tension is the more important thing flattening the water; its molecules pull together and minimize its surface area. For larger waves, weight\u2014gravity\u2014predominates, and water's preference for flowing downward is what flattens the water. The shift makes big waves and small waves behave differently. In particular, the relationship between the size of waves and the speed at which they roll along depends on whether they're big or small. For big waves, bigger is faster; increase their crest-to- crest distance, or wavelength, fourfold, and waves travel twice as fast. An ordinary boat can't easily exceed the speed of waves as long as its hull, so a boat four times as long can go twice as fast before the cost of propulsion starts to rise disproportionately: Large ships go faster than small ones, and even small ones go faster than ducks and muskrats. But for tiny ripples, ones less than two-thirds of an inch apart, the rule is just the opposite: Smaller is faster. The world of a minute surface boat, such as a whirligig beetle, must be something like a freeway with small, fast sports cars and large, slow vans.\n\nInertia, a property of both solids and fluids, is the tendency for something either to remain at rest or to keep moving unless persuaded otherwise by some external force. Put another way, to get an object going takes force, and a moving object exerts a force when it stops. More specifically the force equals the mass of the object times the acceleration or deceleration that alters its motion. What matters here is that the force associated with inertia follows an object's mass. A massive system can exert a lot of force by stopping suddenly. Conversely, bullets must have enormous speeds to offset their limited masses, and the lower speeds of short-muzzle handguns are commonly offset by using heavier projectiles. Humans have long used stone-ended clubs and metal-headed hammers, sledges, mauls, picks, and axes\u2014heavy things that stop abruptly. Large pieces of metal can be shaped by dropping even larger pieces on them, something of industrial importance for well over a century. A large animal can inflict substantial damage on another by kicking; even a human can injure another by punching. But inertial aggression without weaponry has little value for creatures much smaller than we are; the most pugnacious ants don't kick their antagonists. Even for us, the effectiveness of a punch depends on the inertia\u2014the mass\u2014of its mark. Kicking your cat is nasty; kicking a mouse is ineffectual.\n\nPut the other way around, small things, with less mass, are easier to start and stop\u2014to accelerate and decelerate. As noted earlier, all of nature's jumpers could, if air resistance didn't matter, achieve about the same height. That implies that their takeoff speeds must be the same. But the short-legged flea achieves that speed in a vastly shorter distance than does the long-legged kangaroo; the flea's acceleration is much greater. Bigger may mean higher speed, but bigger also means lower acceleration, a rule of thumb that works for both living and nonliving systems. Try catching a resting housefly in your hand! The jackrabbit starts faster than the best racehorse and the most violent drag racer. Once started, though, the large mover can coast better than the small one. Stopping a large ship takes miles; a ferry must reverse its engines or it will smash the dock; automobiles must be equipped with brakes. But a swimming microorganism will halt almost instantly\u2014typically in less than its body length. Its surface- dependent drag is relatively huge; its mass-dependent inertia is trivial.\n\nInertia also affects how fluids flow. At small sizes, viscosity predominates, and flows are orderly, laminar affairs. Each bit of fluid does nearly the same thing as its neighbors. At larger sizes, inertia increasingly offsets viscosity, so the bits of fluid tend to keep doing whatever they have been, despite any different motion of their now more temporary associates; we call such flows, with their chaotic eddying, turbulent. (Figure 3.5 illustrates the difference.) Flow immediately around an aircraft or ship is inevitably turbulent; flow around a microorganism is as assuredly laminar. (In between some tuning of transition points may be achieved by changes of shape or surface texture.) Turbulent flow really stirs things up; laminar flow is surprisingly ineffectual at mixing. A microperson's spoon wouldn't easily stir milk into coffee. Blood flow in all but the largest vessels of large mammals is laminar; almost all flows in industrial and household plumbing are turbulent.\n\nFIGURE 3.5. _As speed increases, the flow of a liquid within and from a pipe shifts from being laminar (above) to turbulent (below). The bigger the pipe, the lower the speed at which the transition occurs_.\n\nThe two regimes don't just differ in self-stirring; almost every rule for fluid flow comes in two versions. Viscosity is a kind of internal stickiness, and it causes small objects moving slowly through fluids to carry along a lot of the fluid. Seeds of such plants as dandelions and milkweeds can thus descend slowly by using a bunch of fine hairs as an analog of a parachute, as in Figure 3.6; the hairs carry along enough air so the bunch behaves like a balloon. But the device scales up badly since for larger sizes and speeds, viscosity becomes less important than weight and inertia. So neither technology can use the fluffy seed solution for slowing the descent of larger items. For slowing these, rather curiously, the two have gone separate ways. The parachutes used by humans or our bundles of baggage have only fairly crude analogs among terrestrial or arboreal organisms. Nature prefers another design, that of spinning, autogyrating seeds (fruits, strictly) of maples and other trees. While these passive autogyros scale up satisfactorily and have been considered for use by humans, parachutes have consistently proved handier. Physical reality precludes using tufts of fluff if one is large, but it imposes no rigid choice between autogyro and parachute.\n\nCOLUMN AND BEAM\n\nIf you double the length of a column that supports a roof, how much fatter must you make it? Even a casual look at some of the rules used by mechanical engineers reveals still another role of size. These rules must apply equally to designs in nature. For a simple example, we'll consider two circular cylinders (Figure 3.7) made of an ordinary material and carrying loads that don't vary over time.\n\nFIGURE 3.6. _Three ways to descend more slowly in air: the drag-increasing fibers of a dandelion seed, the lift-producing autogyrating samara of a maple, and a drag-increasing conventional parachute_.\n\nLook first at the upright column, a cylinder supporting its own weight and the weight of some load on top. As you might guess, failure by crushing will happen only in a short, fat column. We'll worry about one long and thin enough so it fails by sudden buckling to one side or another, as when the ends of a piece of dry spaghetti are pushed together. What does it take to start such a collapse? The critical force varies with the fourth power of the column's diameter divided by the square of the column's height. That's a combination sufficiently hard on the unaided intuition to demand specific numbers. What, then, would happen if we make the column twice as big, doubling both diameter and height? The force that starts buckling then goes up by 24 divided by 22, or 16\/4, or fourfold. Swell, a twofold size increase gives a fourfold increase in resistance to buckling.\n\nBut it's really not at all good. If we're being completely consistent about doubling size, we end up increasing fully eightfold the weight of both the column and whatever loads it. So scaling the entire system up by a factor of two gives a column that is four times stronger, to be sure, but one that must bear eight times the load! At best, the safety factor is halved; at worst, the column breaks. For the larger column to serve as well as the smaller one, it must be fatter. Worse, being fatter, it suffers still greater self-loading, which requires it to be fatter still. At the least, the larger structure will need different proportions, and if the differences in size are very great, it may need a stiffer material or have to be designed differently. Large mammals have stiffer (and thus more fracture-prone) bones than small ones. The daddy longlegs (or harvestman) walks easily on spindly, multiply flexed legs, while the legs of the elephant are straight, substantial columns.\n\nFIGURE 3.7. _A cylindrical column with a load on top; a similar circular cylinder supported near its ends and loaded in the middle_.\n\nThe same rule applies to a cylinder serving as a horizontal beam between two supports. And it works whether the load acts at a single point in the middle or uniformly over its length. For the cylinder to bend downward in the same proportion after a doubling of size, something must be altered; its material must be stiffer or its thickness must be more than doubled. Put another way, if the distance between the beam's supports, the beam's diameter, and the length, width, and height of the load all are doubled, then the beam will sag downward not twice as far but four times as far. Once again, larger is weaker, relatively, whichever technology is in charge. Thus, if the same design is used, the larger bridge will incur a greater penalty from self-loading; scaled up sufficiently, it will collapse from self-loading alone. Elephants are bonier than cats but still must tread more carefully.\n\nThese examples are just that\u2014examples, picked from a rich diversity of size-related phenomena. But they show how severely size affects design, both imposing constraints and affording opportunities. Gravity is important if you're big, diffusion if you're small. And so on. Of particular relevance here is the fact that the technology of people must be different from that of nature simply because the two span different size scales. A rule for design may apply to both, but if the rule has in it a size-related factor, the particular way it applies will differ between the two.\nChapter 4\n\nSURFACES, ANGLES, AND CORNERS\n\nTurning from size to shape, we start with things of such everyday commonality that they normally pass unnoticed. That's of course one of this book's main purposes: drawing attention to what we might otherwise overlook.\n\nFLAT VERSUS CURVED SURFACES\n\nWe humans have a great affection for flatness. We make floors flat. And walls and roofs and steps and desktops and paper and books. We make our roads as flat as possible; the fancier the highway, the flatter the paving. Beneficence in the Book of Isaiah includes \"making the rough places plane\"\u2014not domed or trough-shaped, but flat. Of course we're not fanatically flat. Our automobiles and airplanes have few flat surfaces. Jars, cans, and pipes are almost always cylindrical.\n\nNature, on the other hand, makes very few flat surfaces. The only ones both common and fairly large are photosynthetic structures: the leaves of many plants and the fronds of large algae. Flatter is better for these latter, since surface area facing skyward matters most for gathering light. Looking for flat surfaces beyond leaves and fronds, one scrapes around among such small fry as fish scales, bat wings, and duck feet.\n\nFirst, the advantages of being flat. A floor that's easy to walk on at any point and in any direction will be flat\u2014uniformly horizontal. So flatness has definite utility in a world dominated by gravitation, which is the world of large, terrestrial creatures like us. But the gravitational imperative can't be the only virtue. A wall of minimal area that separates two compartments will ordinarily be a flat one. If you want a set of surfaces that pile smoothly on top of one another in any alignment, flat surfaces are the easiest to make and the most versatile in use. How would one read a hemispherical page? How would one shelve a library of conical or dome-shaped books?\n\nRoofs, whether horizontal or sloping, don't have to be flat; domes and arches have long and distinguished histories. But flat roofs are especially easy to make and handy to use, at least if they're tipped so water runs off. Identical, straight beams can be laid parallel to each other, flat boards to fit on top need cutting in only two rather than three dimensions, roofing paper can be unrolled and fastened down with minimal fitting, and shingle or slate can be applied as a strictly two-dimensional operation. Intersections between roof elements form straight lines, so junction devices are simple. By contrast, intersections of elements of vaulted or domed roofs (as in Figure 4.1) are usually curved, often complexly so.\n\nIn short, flat is easy and convenient, and our technology capitalizes on that. We stockpile material in a limited number of sizes and shapes; with only simple cuts we then make a wide range of structures. The practicality of both sawmill and paper mill rests on the flatness\u2014and consequent versatility\u2014of their products.\n\nFlGURE 4.1. _Each of these intersecting barrel vaults supports the outward thrust of the other's walls. The resulting groin vault, used first by the Romans, makes efficient use of stone construction, but at the cost of awkwardly curved roof intersections_.\n\nFIGURE 4.2. _Wires, unless absolutely weightless, must sag between supports. A beam that's supported at its ends may look uncurved, but only because its thickness conceals the effective curvature; it has a virtual hammock inside_.\n\nAt the same time flatness has its disabilities. In the real world extending a straight line indefinitely is no trivial task, unless the line is exactly vertical. Neither a person nor a spider has trouble stretching a thread between two points. But neither can avoid gravitational sag in the middle. For a long rope the sag is obvious. The longer the distance to be spanned, the harder the surveyor must pull on the measuring tape to get an accurate reading. To achieve perfect straightness, to thwart the malevolence of gravity and self-loading, takes an infinitely forceful pull. That of course will break thread, rope, or tape. Hang something in the middle, and the situation grows worse, the sag more obvious. So, as in Figure 4.2, telephone wires always sag between poles, and hammocks droop earthward in use even if minimally swaybacked on their own.\n\nWe now see that a flat floor is something special. How might we make one? Stretched sheets simply won't work, and in practice we use beams\u2014structural members with some thickness so they can resist bending. In a very crude sense (as the figure shows) a beam's thickness hides a curve, a concealed sag. The greater the load (including, of course, self-loading), the thicker must be the floor or the horizontal beams that support it. The flat surface exacts a considerable price, paid as thickness in flat roofs, sagless bookshelves, and so forth.\n\nBookshelves\u2014mention of them brings up a concrete example that could easily repay the cost of this book. A bookshelf is a beam supported at its ends like the one in Figure 3.7. How does the sag of the shelf depend on its load and dimensions? First, the distance the center sags follows the load. (We'll ignore self-loading since books greatly outweigh shelves.) Doubling the load doubles the sag. Second, the sag varies with the _cube_ (third power) of the length of the shelf. With the same load, a thirty-six-inch shelf sags 73 percent farther down than a thirty-inch-long shelf. But ordinarily the load itself increases with the length of the shelf since the longer shelf carries more books. So as a practical rule the sag increases with the _fourth power_ of length, and a thirty-six-inch shelf actually sags just over twice as far as a thirty-inch one.\n\nSo stick with short shelves! If, however, you insist on long ones, bear in mind that even a little extra thickness helps a lot. Sag varies inversely with the _cube_ of beam thickness. So the thirty-six-inch shelf need be only a little thicker\u2014about 40 percent\u2014to sag no more than the thirty-inch shelf. A thickness of one inch instead of three-quarter inch will do nicely. That's not an off-the-shelf piece of lumber, but glue and clamps don't deter the determined bibliophile. In any case, assiduously avoid furniture suitable solely for bric-a-brac, and load a sample shelf before booking delivery.\n\n(The general point\u2014longer means weaker when something is bent\u2014 came up in the last chapter and will reappear later. In recent months it has become a personal matter. To illustrate the principle for a television program on size, I first put a board between two sawhorses three feet apart and loaded it with a 140-pound weight: me. Midpoint sag was half an inch. I then separated the sawhorses by six feet to get the four-inch sag expected in theory and by my test the day before. But I had inadvertently switched to a board with an oblique grain, and I crossed the line between treading the boards and walking the plank. Fortunately the board was the only real casualty.)\n\nHow does nature manage flatness? Dealing with the awkward problem of sag underlies the design of leaves quite as much as that of bookshelves. Leaves commonly stick out from branches more or less horizontally. Those veins on the undersurfaces of many leaves, as in Figure 4.3, may look trivial, but they're a way to increase the functional thickness of leaves with only a little extra investment in material. They are in fact beams, and with them, leaves sag a lot less than they would otherwise.\n\nA second approach effectively thickens and thus stiffens a flat surface with a little curvature. You can't make a flat sheet of paper stay upright when you hold it at the bottom\u2014unless you curve it a little, as you do every time you hold up a page to read it. Quite a few biological surfaces get stiffness with just a little bit of curvature. A lot of leaves have a pair of downwardly concave surfaces, one on each side of the midrib. The southern magnolia is a good example; besides their midribs, its leaves lack conspicuous venation. But with that little curvature (and some thickness of the blades themselves) they form decently stiff beams.\n\nFIGURE 4.3. _Thin leaf surfaces avoid bending in various ways. Veins may provide supportive trusses (a), the whole leaf may be cambered lengthwise (b), or pleats can make a ridge and valley self trussing system (c_ ).\n\nFeathers are similarly curved on either side of their lengthwise central axes. The curvature helps offset the pull of gravity, as with leaves. For feathers it also serves an aerodynamic function, one particularly important for the long feathers that form the fingerlike tips of many wings. About a century ago several people discovered that airfoils work best if they're curved, with their concave faces downward. Early aircraft really did use curved plates for wings, and modern planes just hide the curvature a little by covering the lower concavity with a flat surface. Similarly, we make the blades of electric fans of thin, curved plates of plastic or metal, getting both stiffening and better aerodynamic performance from the curvature. Incidentally, stiffening increases whichever way a blade is curved, but the aerodynamics improve only if the concavity is on the surface that faces more nearly downstream. Check your fans; you'll occasionally find one with its blades installed backward, and it's a breeze to reverse the blades on the shaft.\n\nA third way to stiffen a flat surface: Give it a set of pleats running in the direction in which bending is expected. A piece of paper extending between two supports will sag under self-loading alone, but if you fanfold the paper a few times so the creases go from one support to the other, it will hold many times its own weight. By pleating, you're increasing effective thickness without going to the trouble of adding proper beams beneath the surface. We use the device in corrugated cardboard, as well as in grooved and rippled ceilings and roof panels. Nature sometimes uses the scheme in large leaves, particularly those with veins that radiate rather than branch.\n\nWhen it comes to stiffening flat plates with a minimum of material, nothing touches insect wings. Insects commonly invest only about 1 percent of body mass in their wings. Yet the wings move at several meters per second through the air, and many reverse their movement several hundred times each second. To get sufficient stiffness for this demanding application, they combine curvature, veins, and lengthwise pleats. Curvature may be an aerodynamic necessity in all but very small insects, but it presents a special problem for beating wings: The direction of curvature that's right for a downstroke is wrong for an upstroke. Many insects have a fine solution: Their wings are built so they're curved by the force of the wind that strikes them. Since the wind on the wings reverses between upstroke and downstroke, their curvature reverses too.\n\nThin, flat surfaces deflect with even small loads. The rounded shapes of our automobiles seem made for minimizing drag and wind noise and for maximizing sales appeal\u2014the latter perhaps by tacit allusion to well- curved human bodies. In fact, the roundness of cars serves primarily to stiffen them, if more attractively than folds or ripples. Pressing a piece of metal into a curved shape is much simpler and uses less material than spot-welding a lot of stiffening strips to a plate. Sometimes we use a cruder fix; heating ducts are most often rectangular in cross section, so they form huge arrays of thin, flat, metal sheets. Minor changes in pressure or even temperature all too easily bow these sheets sideways and produce disconcerting noises. We minimize the problem (but don't fully fix it, at least in my house) by putting slight diagonal creases in the flat surfaces.\n\nOne can take a more general view of the problem of flatness. Consider a hollow sphere made of a thin material with a greater pressure inside than outside. What pressure can the sphere withstand before bursting? In effect, what you're asking (as in Figure 4.4) is how much stretch\u2014or tension\u2014 the surface can take before you're left with two hemispheres. What's the relationship between the pressure difference across the wall of the sphere and the tension generated in that wall? Oddly enough, the amount of tension produced by a given pressure depends on the size of the sphere. The rule, often called Laplace's law, is that the tension is equal to the pressure times one-half the radius of the sphere. For a given pressure, the bigger the sphere, the greater is the tension stretching _each bit of_ its surface. Or, for a bigger sphere, less pressure is needed to get a given tension. (Starting to blow up a large balloon is easier than starting a small one; you need to blow less hard to get enough tension to do the job.)\n\nOne more piece of the argument: A bigger sphere has flatter, less sharply curved walls. Thus, in general, the flatter the wall, the more tension a given pressure difference produces. A fully flat wall would occur only on an infinitely large sphere; any pressure difference across such a flat wall would generate an infinite tension. That's just the same problem as drawing a string out straight between two supports: Any load (equivalent to pressure) and the string can't be drawn straight unless pulled outward with infinite force (equivalent to tension).\n\nFIGURE 4.4. _The amount of tension in the walls of thin-walled spheres or cylinders produced by a given pressure inside depends on their size. The larger the sphere or cylinder_ ; _the greater is the resulting tension_.\n\nAmong its other implications, Laplace's law rules out making flat walls on balloons or any other internally pressurized structures. (One can of course fake flatness by using thick enough walls to conceal curved lines of tension, the way we use thick floors to internalize the curvature.) It instructs us, among other things, to make our pipes round rather than rectangular in cross section lest they split their seams with little provocation. It also explains why a rectangular carton of milk always (if filled) has bulgy sides. The sides must bulge, creating some curvature, or else they'll split. Only when packed together can full cartons have flat walls because only then do the pressures across their walls balance out. Aircraft fuselages are almost always cylindrical or elliptical. Grace has nothing to do with this, and drag minimization has only a little. Pressure is what counts; most aircraft in flight are pressurized to carry people at high altitudes, and that rules out thin, flat walls. One common commuter craft, a Shorts, has flat walls\u2014it looks like a bus with wings\u2014but since it can't be pressurized, it's limited to low altitudes. Canisters for tea leaves can afford flat sides, but cans for beans or soup ought to be cylindrical. Their shape doesn't, as I once heard claimed, represent deliberate phallic symbolism, although can and phallus do have Laplace's law as common denominators.\n\nLiving things are usually made of flexible materials, and both they and their parts often have different pressures inside from outside. So Laplace's law tells us much about why nature abhors flat surfaces. Worms, guts, blood vessels, the alveoli of lungs, free-living cells\u2014all must be cylindrical, elliptical, or spherical, indeed anything but flat-walled.\n\nA similar rule relates the size of a dome and the load it can support. A bigger dome is less curved and therefore relatively weaker under load. Above some particular size, its weight alone becomes an unbearable load. Analogous rules apply to arches, to the main cables of suspension bridges, and so forth. In each case, the flatter the curve, the worse the tension generated by a given load, which limits how large we can make them. Nature may not use many rigid flat surfaces, but her stiff domes are legion; examples include eggshells, nutshells, clamshells, and our own heads.\n\nRIGHT ANGLES\n\nFor humans, they're just right. In our world they're so ubiquitous that their roles defy short summarization: pages, desks, windows, floor and ceiling tiles, walls, shelves and drawers, boxes, shingles, any set of straight lines encompassing the wheels of a car or the legs of most furniture. Almost all the stock sizes of wood in the lumberyard are rectangular solids, as are bricks and cement blocks. Both Egyptians and Mayans made pyramids of rectangular blocks on square foundations. That twentieth-century style of art cubism (Matisse's derisive name) flaunts our obsessive rectilinearity. By contrast, from tropics to Arctic, simple dwellings are more often round: cones, domes, upright cylinders with conical or domed roofs, and so forth. I recently visited a museum that traced tens of thousands of years of archaeological and historical change; I noticed that millennium by millennium right angles become better established. They're almost unfailing signatures of cultures of high technological complexity.\n\nNature has neither clear affection for right angles nor clear antipathy toward them. At least one bacterium is square, and right angles occur between the edges of the skeletons of certain protozoa, the foraminiferans. Where a surface is covered with a single layer of cells, the walls or membranes that separate individual cells form right angles with that underlying surface. Where trees grow upward from level land, each trunk makes a right angle with the land; where the land slopes, there's still a right angle between trees and ultimate horizon. The pine trees in my front yard, for instance, have almost perfectly vertical trunks. We have to ask, then, not why nature avoids right angles but why we prefer them. Of particular interest in this regard are the semicircular canals of our inner ears. A set (Figure 4.5) consists of three canals, each at a right angle with the other two. They're important parts of the system with which we keep track of our orientation and acceleration. Do we like right angles just because our sensory equipment regards them as a simplest case in a geometrically complex world?\n\nIn the last chapter size loomed large, and it plays a major role here as well. We're big creatures; between our size and terrestrial habitat, we're ruled by gravity. You don't tip over as long as you keep your center of gravity\u2014the effective location of your weight\u2014over your feet. So you stand vertically. You prefer to walk on horizontal surfaces, which much of the earth's surface is anyway. Vertical plus horizontal generates right angles, for you and the ground, for the walls and floor of a building, for a tree and the horizon. Stacks of things must stay close to vertical, or they'll tip. Walls of stacked blocks are far easier to make if upright, and the walls of large structures have over most of human history been made from stacked blocks.\n\nNot so for smaller structures, for dwellings light enough to be packed up and moved, for ones easy to keep warm. For these, round and perhaps inwardly tilting walls are better; tepees and similar conical and hemispherical houses have been invented by numerous cultures. Anthropologists and archaeologists tell us that round houses typify nomadic or seminomadic societies; curvilinear buildings are more economical of material and easier to erect. By contrast, rectangular houses characterize sedentary societies. They permit more buildings in a small area\u2014say, within a walled compound or city. Their interiors partition more easily, and since their outer walls can serve as common walls for adjacent structures, they're easier to add on to. On average, the round houses of primitive societies have less than half the floor area of the rectangular ones. A family may occupy several round houses, with still others serving as storage structures; a round building as a whole works like a single room of a rectangular one.\n\nFIGURE 4.5. _We have three semicircular canals (beyond the arrow) associated with our inner ears. Each forms a plane at right angles with the others, so they occupy mutually perpendicular planes, as in the inset_.\n\nOne's view of one's world is shaped by personal experience. For most of us that reflects our incorrigibly rectilinear culture. A peculiar test reveals an odd acquired bias. Back in the 1950s some psychologists tested the way two groups of Zulu reacted to a particular visual illusion. A rural group lived in traditional circular huts, while the other was urban, housed in conventional rectangular dwellings. The illusion, called the Ames window or rotating trapezoidal illusion (Figure 4.6), consists of a model of a window that's rotated about a vertical axis in front of a subject. Now windows are normally rectangular and not, as in the model, trapezoidal. When conditions for depth perception are marginal (one eye closed or the model quite distant, for instance), the urban Zulu (as do non-Zulu) commonly perceive the model as an oscillating rectangle slanted away from the viewer. In effect, we imagine a perspective that forces the model to fit our notion of a properly rectangular window. The rural Zulu are much less easily fooled. For that matter, their language lacks words for \"square\" or \"rectangle.\" Other cross-cultural comparisons yield similar results. For instance, tepee-dwelling Cree Indians of northern Canada are more resistant to the illusion than are other Canadians.\n\nFIGURE 4.6. _An Ames window. This is not a perspective drawing_.\n\nBack to stacks. If you want to build with stacked blocks, rectangular solids are wonderfully versatile. As suggested in connection with flat surfaces, pieces of some shapes constrain designs more than pieces of other shapes. Curved blocks determine a specific size of room or house; foot- long blocks curving by ten degrees each will make a circular house 36 feet in circumference, about 11.5 feet in diameter. Uncurved rectangular blocks, by contrast, make rectangular houses of any size and internal partitioning. Rectangular houses can be roofed over with a set of identical beams, whether the roof is flat or sloped. Once you have a rectangular house, rectangular furniture is positively made to order. Rectangular books then fit nicely on rectangular bookshelves, and rectangular drawers into rectangular cabinets. So one right angle leads to another, starting with the decision to stack blocks.\n\nStacking blocks or bricks is particularly attractive for a technology that lacks good adhesives and cables. A stack is held together by compressive forces, blocks above pushing down on blocks below. Tensile\u2014 that is, pulling\u2014forces matter little. Resisting tensile forces takes adhesives, cables, or tensile joinery, all more sophisticated than blocks or bricks. We put bricks together with mortar, but the brick-mortar joint isn't particularly resistant to tension. The mortar actually has two other roles: It keeps bricks from slipping sideways across one another, and it fills the spaces between them so bricks press evenly on one another without the separate contact points that might make these brittle materials crack. When building wooden houses, we join boards with nails. Like mortar, though, nails merely keep adjacent boards from slipping sideways under so-called shearing loads. For resisting tension, nails are hopeless; indeed, one uses just that weakness (and a claw hammer) to pull out misplaced or bent ones. So nailed structures are essentially stacked ones also, as you can see by examining the frame of a house (Figure 4.7). When wooden structures must be pulled on, we use screws and glue instead of nails, but that's too slow and expensive for making wooden houses. Boats face far less uniform and less predictably compressive loads than houses, so builders of wooden boats have had no choice but to master tensile joinery.\n\nFurthermore, rectangular solids\u2014such as bricks, beams, and boards\u2014facilitate storage and delivery. Most piles of identical items\u2014 sugar crystals, dry seeds, gravel, nails\u2014are unstable if their walls are steeper than some critical angle of repose, but rectangular solids evade the problem by fitting easily into regular, nonrandom piles. Stockpiles are simply larger rectangular solids made up of smaller rectangular solids, with vertical walls and no internal cavities. If one matches the larger solids with hollow boxes, also rectangular solids, one has a fine system for packing as well as stacking. The only awkwardness in the scheme is cultural. Having five fingers per hand, we persist in counting with a ten- based, or decimal, system. Rectangular solids persist in packing into larger solids in rather different arrays. Consider convenient packs or stacks made up of individual items. You might arrange eight items two across, two deep, and two high. Or you might arrange items in other arrays:\n\nFIGURE 4.7. _The frame of the wall of a wooden house. With real care and straight up-and- down stacking (and no wind) it could be self-supporting without nails_.\n\n2 x 3 x 2 or 12 items| 2 x 4 x 4 or 32 items  \n---|---  \n2 x 4 x 2 or 16| 3 x 2 x 5 or 30  \n2 x 3 x 3 or 18| 3 x 3 x 4 or 36  \n2 x 4 x 3 or 24| 3 x 4 x 4 or 48\n\nMultiples of ten aren't prominent. Hence the continued popularity of wholesale purchasing by the dozen and by the gross and the persistence of those words in our decimalized world.\n\nNature rarely builds by stacking but rather laces things together with cables of one kind or another. These include ligaments, muscles, and tendons in creatures like us; membranous outer stretched sheathing in worms, caterpillars, sea anemones, and such; and internal tensile fibers in plants. We have good access to nature's tension-resisting materials\u2014we've long made our ropes of natural fibers\u2014but nature more readily attaches tendons to bones than we attach cables to struts. Conversely, stacking isn't so good if your materials aren't very dense; weight is what gives a stack decent resistance to sideways forces, such as those that winds produce. Stacking loses its appeal if your materials are soft. Forget about stacking low-density material underwater, where buoyancy offsets weight and where the forces of flow get quite extreme. She may not stack much, but nature does sometimes pack things. Still, as we'll see, she doesn't pack them into rectangular boxes.\n\nOrthogonality\u2014right angleness\u2014even if less useful for nature, sounds ideal for us. \"Ideal,\" though, sweeps further relevant matters under the rug. If four rigid struts are joined by hinge pins to form a foursided, two-dimensional structure, as in Figure 4.8, the result has no set shape and is unstable. Such an arrangement is called a mechanism\u2014a poorly chosen term but one that at least implies mobility. As the figure shows, mechanisms make nice mechanical linkages. We use them for all manner of machines. Nature even uses them for complex movements, such as those of snake jaws, where animals swallow remarkably large and unmasticated mouthfuls, and fish jaws (as in the figure), where a mouth can open and extend forward in a single motion.\n\nHowever good for eating, such sets of struts won't support much. By contrast, three rigid struts joined by hinge pins have a fixed and reliable shape; such arrangements (Figure 4.9 gives a more complex one) are called statically determined structures. If you frame a wooden wall with vertical and horizontal pieces (such as the vertical studs running between the top and bottom horizontals of Figure 4.7), you've unfortunately made a mechanism. Some cross bracing must stabilize it against lateral loading; either a diagonal or two must be worked in, or else a sheet of plywood that will remain reliably rectangular must be nailed on. We make great use of such diagonals to create stable, rigid triangles out of the unstable, flexible rectangles that our overall designs keep generating. And we've been doing it for a long time. I was amused to see just this in a Bronze Age rock carving of some sort of sled or boat, near the west coast of Sweden, shown in Figure 4.10. A less aesthetic example is the scoreboard of the football stadium of my own campus, shown in the same figure.\n\nFIGURE 4.8. _Mechanisms. An especially simple one and two views of some (not all!) of the stiff elements of a complicated, biological one\u2014the scheme by which a fish (a wrasse), on approaching prey_ , _suddenly protrudes both upper and lower jaws_.\n\nFIGURE 4.9. _A statically determined structure. This one is nonredundant. Remove any pin, and it becomes a mechanism, as you can check with cardboard and straight pins_.\n\nNature doesn't use triangles much\u2014partly because she rarely goes in for real stiffness and partly because she gains what stiffness she uses in other ways. A few trusses formed of triangles, though, are recognizable\u2014inside the wing bones of large birds, for instance. I know of no case in which rectangles are, as an afterthought, transmogrified into triangles with cross bracing. Not that natural afterthought is unthinkable. Nature is forever adding a little here and a little there to make an existing structure serve some new function. That's the point of Steve Gould's fine essay about the thumb of the panda; the leading popular expositor of evolution describes how pandas make functional thumbs by dividing the first digit on each hand to give an apparent sixth finger, one unrelated to our own thumbs.\n\nFIGURE 4.10. _A contemporary structure in which the critical cross bracing looks like an afterthought, and a shallow carving (painted for contrast) of a cross-braced structure. The latter, from the Bronze Age, is on a rocky outcrop near the west coast of Sweden_.\n\nSince four end-to-end struts are nicely flexible, one might imagine that a construction system with no predilection toward stiffness would prefer quadrilateral rather than trilateral arrangements of struts, but that's not quite the case. Most sponges have flexible skeletons made of stiff struts with their ends interconnected by flexible pads of protein, as in Figure 4.11. I once looked at a lot of sponge skeletons in search of triangles, geodesics, and other efficient strutting and trussing arrangements. None was obvious, and I realized that I was looking at sponges with my human bias toward stiff structures. I then looked for quadrilateral strutting but came up almost as dry; I had just brought to bear another human bias. While the tiny struts (spicules) never formed triangles, quadrilaterals were no more common than five-, six-, and seven-sided arrays. The greater the number of struts hitched end to end in each loop, the greater the overall flexibility that's possible.\n\nFIGURE 4.11. _A sponge (left) and the skeleton of a sponge (right). The skeleton is a meshwork of protein in which stiff struts are embedded. (Natural bath sponges are the supportive systems of animals that have the protein meshwork but_ , _unusually lack the stiff and scratchy struts_.)\n\nYet another problem of a world of right angles. For a chair or table that sits on the ground, stability minimally requires, first, three points of ground contact that form the corners of a triangle and, second, a center of gravity somewhere above that triangle. Four legs would appear better; the location of the center of gravity will be less constrained, so load shifting will be less likely to make the structure tip over. A four-legged chair tips less readily than a three-legged one. Furthermore, a little redundancy sounds attractive. The fourth leg, though, makes subtle trouble. With three, leg length isn't critical, and the structure will behave itself on almost any floor. That's why we mount cameras and telescopes on tripods. Making simultaneous contact with all four means that floor and legs must be carefully adjusted to fit each other or that one or the other must be a bit flexible. Our ordinary quadrupedal tables often come with height-tuning screws on their legs to minimize wobble on uneven floors. Tripedal tables need no such adjustability.\n\nCats, camels, and crocodiles use four legs, but analogy with tables isn't appropriate. For one thing, jointed legs are naturally adjustable in length. More important, a quadruped with one leg lifted forms a nicely stable tripod. Watch a cat slowly stalking; it keeps a leg off the ground for long periods. (That's a lot harder for people, who wobble a bit when standing monopedally.) But four legs may be too few for easiest walking since only one can be lifted at a time without losing stability. Most insects walk on six legs, so they can use their legs as alternating tripods\u2014one on one side and two on the other\u2014without loss of stability. That looks like a better arrangement. Six looks like the optimal number of legs for a legged, walking biomimetic vehicle, about which more in Chapter 13.\n\nBut we've strayed a bit from right angles, to which we now return. On reasonably flat terrain, we divide land into rectangular (and often square) plots, whether eighth-acre house sites or state and national boundaries. By far the largest number of arbitrary surveyed borders between states in the United States and provinces in Canada run east-west or north-south and thus intersect at right angles. Again, no rule requires it. Some diagonals have been used, and one interstate border (between Delaware and Pennsylvania) is a surveyed circular arc.\n\nSimplicity suggests rectangular surveying. But it's not uniquely easy or automatically virtuous. Equilateral triangles divide a surface without gaps, and these can be laid out by drawing taut a set of strings of equal length. Since no angles need to be measured or divided, it may be the simplest surveying method of all. Its main drawback is the large amount of boundary of its plots relative to their enclosed areas. Regular hexagons, in which all six sides are of the same length, also divide a surface without gaps. As an amalgam of six equilateral triangles, a hexagon is no more difficult to lay out. For boundary relative to area, hexagons are as good as can be done. And they have another advantage if our whole spherical planet has to be divided. With the addition of twenty pentagons to make the system close on itself, the earth can be partitioned into hexagons without any distortion from its curvature. (Wyoming looks rectangular, but its northern border is shorter than its southern one.) But hexagonal division precludes running unidirectional roads along sequential boundaries. Neither triangles nor hexagons give the farmer fields that can be planted in rows of equal length. And neither facilitates arranging rectangular structures. Of course buildings don't have to be rectangular. A behavioral laboratory near where I live uses a hexagonal room surrounded by six others. An observer in the middle of the central room can keep watch on every bit of five others (the sixth provides access). Such reasonable schemes are merely unfamiliar and less than convenient to make from standard components. Figure 4.12 shows a street plan with the predominant elements hexagonal; to my eye it looks as functional as what we usually do.\n\nWe've clearly preferred to use rectangular plots of land for a very long time. While the ancient Egyptians used triangles of stretched ropes for surveying, the sides of their triangles weren't equally long but had a 3:4:5 ratio. A 3:4:5 triangle has a right angle between the shorter sides, so they could keep their corners square. Nor were the Egyptians alone in that preference. The great Pythagorean theorem applies to a 3:4:5 triangle or any other triangle with a right angle: The squares of the short sides add up to the square of the long side, as, for instance, 32 \\+ 42 = 52. (Or 9 + 16 = 25.) Only people concerned with right angles should care about that subtle theorem. It was known (and quite likely was independently discovered) in ancient China, India, and the Middle East well before the formal proof that we attribute to the school of Pythagoras. Some logical person once suggested that we mark a bare place on the earth (such as the Sahara) with a pattern that demonstrates the theorem, the one shown in Figure 4.13. Anyone looking at the earth would then know that it harbored intelligent life.\n\nFIGURE 4.12. _A street plan that makes substantial use of hexagonal elements. Going \"around the block_ \" _is a more literal matter in this arrangement_.\n\nBack to hexagons. Consider how a group of animals might divide a habitat into individual territories. Our use of squares and rectangles certainly excels for plowing and road building. But other animals do little of either. If a border to be defended must be minimized, if all area is part of one or another territory, if all area is equally good to live in, and if individuals are equally effective in establishing and defending territories, then territories should be hexagonal. Even with such stringent requirements, natural selection occasionally finds the logic sufficient. Partitioning that closely approaches hexagonal has been found among sandpipers in the tundra, terns on the barrier islands off North Carolina, and bottom-living African cichlid fish in a breeding tank. Of course the most famous cases of hexagonal partitioning in nature are the honeycombs and larval cells of bees and wasps. We make occasional use of the arrangement for internal stiffening partitions in hollow doors and for stiffening beamwork under the floors of airplanes. The latter is no minor matter. Flatness costs material, and aircraft designers are properly fanatical about weight economy. And the stress\u2014force per unit area\u2014of a stiletto heel on a floor is remarkably high. Thin floors braced with aluminum honeycomb puncture a lot less easily than if they were braced with well-spaced beams.\n\nFIGURE 4.13. _A geometric representation of the Pythagorean theorem. If the angle between sides a and b is ninety degrees, then area C is exactly as big as A and B combined_.\n\nJust as squares don't give the best edge-minimizing partitioning of area, so cubes don't give the best surface-minimizing partitioning of volume. The best geometric solid for such close packing is distinctly arcane. It's a fourteen-sided figure, one made with eight triangular faces (a regular octahedron) that then has its six apexes cut off so each of those faces beomes a hexagon. For most of us that's beyond imagining, so Figure 4.14 is a necessity. Anyhow, such solids have eight hexagonal faces and six square faces (yes, right angles do appear), and mirabile dictu, they actually pack with no voids. Close approximations of them can be made by compressing a container filled with identical lead shot until the shot deforms enough to squeeze out all the air. So where in nature might such a shape occur? The thin-walled cells that fill the middles of the stems of many herbaceous (nonwoody) plants approach that ideal shape, with an average of about fourteen faces on each. I know of no specific use in human technology of this strange truncated octahedron, although it probably occurs fortuitously where large pieces of foam are made from small beads of the stuff.\n\nFIGURE 4.14. _An eight-sided regular solid called an octahedron (a). Cutting off each of its six apexes produces a fourteen-sided figure (b), a cuboctahedron or (gulp!) an orthotetrakaidec- ahedron. If the cuts are done just deep enough so all edges are again the same length_ , _then (c) the cuboctahedrons will pack together without any spaces between. They turn out to do so with less surface area than any other volume-partitioning, close-packing shape_.\n\nNor are right angles best for making shells of struts or flat panels; the geodesic domes of R. Buckminster Fuller are much more efficient ways to invest material. As in Figure 4.15, a series of struts (or intersections between panels) in such structures follows what, on a globe, we call great circle routes. Nowhere do they intersect at right angles. I once built several geodesic domes out of metal tubing. They worked well as jungle gyms for climbing\u2014they were light in weight, were stable under load, and needed no anchorage\u2014but when I tried to design a geodesic cabin\u2014 something more than bare metal strutting\u2014I discovered their impracticality. In a culture of rectangular lumber and plywood sheets, the labor needed to make a satisfactory geodesic structure is excessive, and wasted material ordinarily offsets its efficiency.\n\nFIGURE 4.15. _Geodesic domes are derivatives of icosahedrons, figures with twenty triangular faces and twelve points at which five edges converge. The dome in the middle divides each face into nine smaller triangles (notice the five-strutted junctions retained from the original icosahedron). A viral shell of equivalent form (such as the cowpea chlorotic mottle virus on the right) has 180 protein molecules; the old icosahedral apexes are replaced by rings of five and the old faces by rings of six_.\n\nOrganisms don't make much use of geodesic domes either. Perhaps that's because they make unstrutted, smooth domes when they want such regular things. Perhaps they rarely need hollow, regular, truncated spheres. One collection of geodesics is usually cited: the protein coats of spherical viruses. Identical protein molecules combine in such coats in just the same numbers\u201480, 180, and 320\u2014as the number of faces in full-sphere geodesic structures. I think, though, that neither mechanical strength nor material economy explains their occurrence. More likely we're glimpsing the shortage of information brought up in Chapter 2. These structures permit a virus to cover itself with multiple copies of a single protein, with each molecule of that protein fitting into an equivalent position, something that can self-assemble with minimal complication.\n\nCORNERS AND CRACKS\n\nWhen two components come together, they usually form a corner. We've been asking, in effect, whether such a corner should form a right angle. Now let's look at the corners themselves. Here once again nature and human technology have different preferences. We build things with sharp corners\u2014unless good reason dictates otherwise. Nature builds things with rounded (faired) corners\u2014again unless some functional imperative supervenes. The underlying questions here are simple. First, what's wrong with sharp corners? Second, for human technology at least, where will sharp corners actually prove intolerable?\n\nAnswers to both questions flow from a third. In a stiff structure under load, where will the first crack appear? We all know the answer to that one: where there's the most force on the structure. Straighten out a bend or corner in a brittle bar, and any crack will start on the inside of bend or corner. Moreover, starting the crack takes a much lower force than you'd need to start one in a straight bar. The effect doesn't depend on some weakness caused when the bar was bent in the first place; a bar cut with a bend from a larger piece of material or one cast with a bend will behave in the same way. The inside of a bend is apparently a naturally weak place. What determines how much the bar is weakened by the bend is not so much the overall angle of the bend as, oddly enough, the sharpness of the inside of that angle. Making a bend deliberately less sharp, fairing it, can gain a lot of strength.\n\nTo get a quick look at the effect of fairing the inside of a corner, cut out a flat strip of aluminum foil, about an inch wide, with an angle of about sixty degrees at its midpoint\u2014a roughly boomerang-shaped piece. Pull on the ends with it flat on a table, and it tears in two, beginning at the inside of the angle. Make another strip, using a paper punch or a carefully rounded cut to get a less sharp inside angle, and pull again. The force required to tear the second is probably greater; fracture is foiled. Doing the same thing with plastic wrap may (depending on the kind of plastic) be even more dramatic; the rounded corner may prevent tearing altogether. Force concentration\u2014that's what's wrong with sharp corners. The stiffer the material, the worse the problem becomes. We use the phenomenon to cut glass. Scratching the glass makes a kind of corner or at least a place where force is concentrated and from which a crack will predictably propagate. We can also get cloth to tear where we want it by making an initial slit, at least if the cloth isn't too stretchy. Tearing then perpetuates the slit, so the process easily continues.\n\nWorse even than a sharp corner is a sharp corner at which two pieces of solid material are joined together, as at the corners of a picture frame. To the intrinsic fragility of the corner are added all the difficulties of applying fastenings that resist tensile loads; straightening a corner stretches its inside edges. But that's just how we build window and door frames, wooden boxes, drawers, furniture with legs, and so forth. You know from experience where such things fail\u2014at the joints and usually at their insides. We know that making joined corners is a bad practice, but it's ever so convenient for construction!\n\nRounding corners helps, as you perhaps saw with the foil. Our technology does just that, but usually only where mandatory. I once broke an interior door handle of a car; examination showed a sharp inside corner in the bit of cast metal within its plastic trim. In the \"exact factory replacement part\" that corner was faired; someone had wised up. Long ago the teeth of gears were found less prone to break off if the bottoms of the gaps between the teeth were rounded rather than sharp-cornered. The portholes of a ship are always round to avoid initiating cracks when waves stress the ship's hull. We deliberately use windows with rounded corners on aircraft. An airplane's windows are gaps in the skin of the craft, and the skin is part of the mechanical structure, not just some covering that just keeps people and air inside and wind and weather outside. The claw of a decent hammer has a bit of fairing where it connects to the rest of the head. If we make two pieces come together at a corner, we often round the welded joint or attach a third piece that rounds or cross-braces the corner. And so on.\n\nNature's structures, more limber, must be less prone to cracking at corners. In addition, natural structures only rarely use separate pieces rigidly joined at corners. Most often we find single pieces of material, grown from a single site, with fairing incorporated into the basic element rather than added adventitiously. The key here, I think, is the growth process. Whatever the complications it entails, growth greatly simplifies the construction of faired corners on single structural elements. Figure 4.16 gives a pair of examples. The long ridge on a mammalian scapula (shoulder blade) is nicely faired with the rest of the bone. The branch of a tree grows smoothly out from the trunk with wood fibers running across the upper (functionally the inside) angle of the joint. One of my less smart acts was to hit a wedge with a sledge into such a crotch in a piece of oak. Smashed eyeglasses a fraction of a second later gave real impact to a fair lesson about fairing, a lesson reinforced by a small scar on my brow. Where nature makes a sharply angled junction between pieces, the pieces usually form part of a mobile mechanism, as where the forearm attaches to the upper arm. There, of course, cracking isn't an issue.\n\nWe're gradually making more things from single pieces of material with nicely rounded internal and external corners. That we're deliberately copying nature is unlikely; rather we're taking advantage of plastics that can be cast or molded into more complex forms than we can get by stamping things out of metal sheet. The curves not only make the products easier on shins and simpler to clean but, by reducing force concentrations and lessening the problem of crack initiation, also permit useful economies of weight and material. Garden carts made mainly from single plastic pieces can have far more intricate shapes than wheelbarrows with stamped pans. Fiberglass shower-baths share the same advantages over metal tubs and enclosures.\n\nFIGURE 4.16. _Faired corners in nature: the scapula, or shoulder blade, of a cat and a branch forking from another in a tree_.\n\nThree contrasts in mechanical design between nature and human technology are evident even at this geometric level. We build flat, nature builds curved; we hold right angles dear, nature is untouched by such affection; our corners are sharp, hers are rounded. Even in these most ordinary matters, we see pervasive differences between the two technologies. Of greater importance, we see repeated examples of the insights available if one avoids premature judgment of superiority and inferiority. Of still greater importance, we begin to see how each technology forms a separate, well- integrated entity, operating in an internally coherent context.\nChapter 5\n\nTHE STIFF AND THE SOFT\n\nNatural and human technologies diverge as much in the materials they use as in their shapes. We prefer stiff and brittle materials while nature opts for pliancy. An airplane's shape at the gate differs little from its shape in flight, but a leaf in still air looks nothing like one in a storm. The difference takes us into materials science, a field both interesting and immediately relevant, one deserving more attention than it gets from us nonengineers. Blame it, if you wish, on how we're taught about the physical world. Elementary physics classes assume that masses act as if concentrated at points and that solid bodies are perfectly rigid. These fine abstractions, useful fictions, prove inadequate for the present story. If, horrors, an object is flexible, then forces acting on it may change its shape and the center of its mass, complicating things considerably. Worse yet, the changed shape may then incur different forces. Such analytical complications, though, represent our problem, not nature's. As we'll see, flexibility provides all manner of opportunities for clever design.\n\nWe need special tools with which to describe this more complex world. \"Solid\" will mean only that something isn't fluid, that it doesn't flow. Forget perfect rigidity; no solid is perfectly rigid. Even the formal test for telling a solid from a fluid presumes that solids give at least a little. Forcibly distort (without breaking) a solid object, and it snaps back when the force is removed; distort a fluid similarly, and it obligingly adjusts its shape. The jelled salad, a soft solid, retains the shape of its mold; by contrast, the coffee fits any cup.\n\nFurthermore, what usually matters is not force but _stress_ , force divided by the area over which it acts. Even a small force will push a needle into a hard material; the needle is sharp, so the effective area of action is minute, and the small force creates the large stress that does the job. Likewise, a sharp knife penetrates better than a dull one when both are pressed with the same force; the sharp one exerts a greater stress on steak or string bean.\n\nMATERIAL EVIDENCE\n\nA solid object stretches when you pull on it. If stone or bone, it won't stretch visibly, but it will certainly stretch measurably. You might plot data for a gradual stretch on a graph where distance stretched runs horizontally and force runs vertically, as on the left in Figure 5.1. The graph, though, describes only your particular object. More useful is a graph relating force and stretch, not for a specific object but for a kind of material\u2014for stone or bone, Vermont granite or cow femur. To achieve that generality, instead of force we use stress\u2014pulling force divided by the cross-sectional area of what we're pulling on, once again. Instead of distance stretched, we divide stretch by the original length of the object and call the result strain, or fractional elongation. Then, as on the right in Figure 5.1, we plot stress upward and strain across. In materials science, \"stress\" and \"strain\" are far from synonymous. Anyway, odious nomenclature aside, we now have a graph that applies _not just to our object but to a material_. A tensile stress of a million newtons per square meter (abbreviated MN\/m2, about 150 pounds per square inch) might give a strain of 0.1, or 10 percent; that's the value for one kind of rubber.\n\nFIGURE 5.1. _A graph of force against stretch and the same converted to stress against strain. Strain is unitless; it's extension divided by original length or (multiplying by 100) percent extension. Stress is usually given in newtons per square meter or (as here) meganewtons per square meter. A newton is a force about equal to the weight of an apple_.\n\nWith nonrigid solids, the world gets still more complicated; a rubber band and a lump of taffy lack rigidity in obviously different ways. The stress-strain graph of Figure 5.2 may help the reader as we make our way through a m\u00e9nage of relevant properties of materials. One such property is how _forcefully_ a material can be stretched before it breaks\u2014the maximum stress that it can withstand. That we call its strength. A second is how _far_ the material can be stretched before it breaks\u2014the maximum strain it can withstand. That's usually known as its extensibility. On the graph, these are the maximum height of the plotted line and the maximum distance it extends to the right. For a lot of materials (many metals, for instance) something else complicates extensibility. If extended up to a certain point, these materials snap back properly, but if extended farther, they stretch and stay stretched. Such materials have an elastic limit, and that may be the extensibility that matters in use. The elastic limit isn't limited to stretching; a bar bent beyond the elastic limit of its material stays bent.\n\nFIGURE 5.2. _Four material properties that can be extracted from a stress-strain graph: strength, extensibility, stiffness, and work of extension_.\n\nBeyond strength and extensibility we encounter a third property: stiffness. Pull on something, and ask how much pull (stress) it takes to get a given stretch (strain). That's stiffness\u2014stress divided by strain. Rubber is easy to stretch, which is to say that it has a low stiffness. For the rubber just mentioned, a stress of 1 MN\/m2 divided by a strain of 0.1 gives a stiffness of 10 MN\/m2. Steel, vastly stiffer, is harder to stretch by the same amount. One kind demands a stress of 20,000 MN\/m2 (3 million pounds per square inch) to stretch by the same 10 percent and so has a stiffness of 200,000 MN\/m2. Engineers call stiffness Young's modulus of elasticity after Thomas Young (1773\u20131829), one of the people who struggled to apply Newtonian mechanics to real materials and to whom, incidentally, we owe our notion of energy. But \"stiffness\" will do for us since it corresponds quite closely to both our perceptions and our common speech. On the graph, stiffness appears as the slope (the steepness) of the plotted line.\n\nAnother slight complication: For many materials, stiffness depends on how hard or far they're stretched; a material may be hard to start or resistant to the last bit of stretch before it breaks. On the graph, its stress- strain line will be curved rather than straight. As it happens, the materials we humans most commonly use\u2014metals, especially\u2014give fairly straight lines, so we're accustomed to quoting specific values for the stiffnesses of specific materials. Almost all biological materials, though, have dramatically curved stress-strain lines, sometimes curved upward and sometimes curved downward. On the one hand, values for their stiffnesses either are only rough averages or else apply only to specific conditions. On the other hand, the complications permit great flexibility (to pun slightly) in how different materials can be used. For instance, as in Figure 5.3, the  material of our tendons gives a curve that's concave downward with a lot of area underneath it. By contrast, the material of our arterial walls gives a curve concave upward with a relatively small area underneath.\n\nFIGURE 5.3. _Stress-strain curves for a tendon (data from Alexander, 1988) and for a large blood vessel (data from Shadwick, 1994_ ).\n\nThose areas underneath the curves represent a fourth property. Stretching something takes energy, and stretching something thicker or stretching something farther takes more energy; everyday experience does not mislead. We use \"work of extension\" as a measure of that energy (strictly, energy per unit volume) needed to stretch a material. On the graph that's the area under the stress-strain line, from zero out to the material's breaking point. Were all stress-strain lines straight, this wouldn't be a particularly interesting property. But as just noted, nature's materials give diverse curves whose shapes are fraught with functionality. \"Work of extension\" is sometimes called toughness, an agreeably intuitive term that we'll find quite useful.\n\nAnd another, property number five\u2014resilience\u2014what rubber has that taffy lacks. Say you keep track of the work of extension while stretching an object (such as a rubber band or steel spring) to something short of the breaking point. Then you release the object and keep track of the work or energy it returns. In our imperfect world the two won't be equal. The work going in as you stretch it will always be more than what comes out when it's released. The work you get back divided by the work you've done is the material's resilience, a property alluded to several chapters ago when we considered the hinge pads of insect wings and the hinge ligamerits of scallops. On the stress-strain graph it comes from two areas, the one representing the work obtained during release divided by the one representing the work done in the stretch.\n\nAt this point let's summarize in a list (with some nonbiological examples) for quick reference farther along:\n\n**MATERIAL PROPERTIES THAT MATTER**|  **LOW**|  **HIGH**  \n---|---|---  \n**_Strength_ stress (force per area) needed to break a material**|  **jelly**|  **steel cable**  \n**_Extensibility_ , strain (relative stretch) needed to break a material**|  **brick**|  **rubber band**  \n**_Stiffness:_ stress divided by strain as a material is stretched**|  **soft plastic**|  **brick**  \n**_Work of extension, toughness:_ energy to stretch a material to breaking**|  **cast iron**|  **spring steel**  \n**_Resilience_ , energy output upon release divided by input during stretch**|  **taffy**|  **rubber band**\n\nWHICH PROPERTIES MATTER WHEN?\n\nWith five properties of materials rattling around, superiority or inferiority can't be judged on a single scale. A lot of talk goes on about the wondrousness of biological materials. Much of it is simplistic blather; one has to consider the suitability of materials for specific applications. Even here, though, a little mental extensibility is in order since almost any task can be done in a variety of ways. Some examples ought to flesh out these points.\n\nWe fashion tension-resisting things out of many materials: steel and other metals; natural fibers, such as jute, sisal, manila, and hemp; synthetic polymers, such as nylon, polyethylene, and polypropylene. We also make them in many forms: chains, bands, and bars as well as twisted and braided ropes and cables. Their task seems specific enough: to resist pulling (tensile) forces. Making them best should be simply a matter of maximizing strength relative to either weight or cost. But no, the business is more subtle and multifaceted.\n\nConsider stiffness. If you anchor a boat with a line made of unstretchy stuff, you'll get into trouble. If the boat moves about its anchorage, sooner or later the line will come taut and try to stop it. How much force will that take? According to the best authority, Sir Isaac Newton, the force will equal the large mass of the boat times the deceleration of the boat. If the line comes taut at a very specific length\u2014that is, if it has a high stiffness\u2014 the boat will stop abruptly, with a lot of deceleration and thus a lot of force. That might break even a hefty anchor line, or worse, it might rip off part of the boat or dock. Much better to use a stretchier, less stiff rope, one that stops the boat less abruptly and thus with a lower force. Not only is damage less likely, but a weaker rope will do; using a material of lower stiffness allows using one of lower strength! (Similarly, a longer mooring line may be better than a short one. Extensibility may be the same for long and short, but the actual extension will increase with the length of the line.) In other applications, stiffness is clearly a virtue. Both bicycle chains and the belts on your car's engine work by resisting tension, and the less they stretch in the process, the better. Flex, yes; stretch, no.\n\nThe same argument applies to living systems. A large, grazing mammal has a ligament that runs from a ridge on the back of its skull, beneath the skin on the back of the neck, to the bony upward extensions of the vertebrae of its neck and chest (Figure 5.4). That ligament has fairly low stiffness\u2014it's stretchy\u2014which helps keep a heavy head from being badly shaken or the ligament from getting torn loose when the animal trots along. If you buy an unsliced lamb's neck (a good source of chunks of meat for skewering), you can dissect out that ligament and feel its elasticity. By contrast, tendon, connecting muscle to bone, has to be stiffer stuff. A muscle works by shortening, usually pulling two bones closer together. Any stretch of its tendons means that the bones move that much less. The shank end of a leg of lamb has a nice long tendon that you can remove and pull on to get a feel for its resistance to stretch. Its response contrasts sharply with that of a neck ligament.\n\nThrough the 1800s natural technology far outdid humans in making unstiff tensile elements\u2014that is, stretchy ropes. We humans did play some tricks with our stiff ones, creating what might be called virtual elasticity. One can, for instance, use a rule mentioned earlier about not being able to draw a string out to a perfectly horizontal line. Try pulling on a heavy chain that sags in the middle; you have to pull harder and harder as the slack is diminished. The chain doesn't stretch, but its weight makes the two ends move apart as if it did. If you must moor your boat with a chain, use a heavy one, or else hang a weight from the chain's midpoint. These days, of course, we routinely make stretchy stuff, such as rubber and other polymeric materials. We've converged with nature not only in making such materials but in what we make them from; even our fully synthetic ones are mostly the products of carbon-based organic chemistry.\n\nFIGURE 5.4. _The approximate location of the nuchal ligament that supports the head of a grazing animal, such as this horse, and the hamstring on the rear of the hind leg roughly equivalent to our Achilles tendon, which connects the big muscle on the rear of the calf to the heel_.\n\nFor resilience as well as stiffness, what's best depends on the application. If one wants a good hinge ligament for a swimming scallop, then high resilience is important. In clapping its half shells together\u2014to expel water in a pair of jets\u2014a scallop contracts a large (and tasty) muscle. What reopens the shell is the elastic recoil of the hinge ligament; in shortening, the muscle not only has closed the half shells but has strained the ligament, giving it the energy it will then use for reopening. The higher the resilience, the less of that energy is wasted. Conversely, high resilience may be quite undesirable. For a spider to catch insects that fly into its web, the prey must remain attached to the silk. A web of high resilience would, like a trampoline, tend to fling the prey back out. Best would be a web made of silk with high strength, extensibility, and toughness but low stiffness and resilience. Spider silk fits this peculiar bill superbly, compared with the other materials of both technologies. But the requirements are unusual, and what's noteworthy is the match of material and application.\n\nResilience management highlights the dichotomy between nature and human technologies. We don't do well at making materials that extend a long ways and then return to their original lengths with low resilience\u2014 materials like spider silk. To do so, a material must turn into heat most of the energy put in, but it mustn't flow (as a fluid) or get self-destructively hot in the process. Our springs, whether of steel or rubber, are just that: nicely springy. Our normal way to get lower resilience, as in Figure 5.5, is to use additional mechanical elements in parallel with springs, so-called shock absorbers, as found alongside or within the springs of our cars and as parts of door closers. These devices, properly called dampers, have no preferred length and no resilience at all. Like springs, they resist any stretch or crunch; unlike springs, they don't spring back, converting mechanical energy into heat instead of storing it elastically.\n\nKeeping resilience and rebound low is equally important in nature; the orb web of a spider is only an extreme example. For instance, for a tree to sway in the wind with too much resilience\u2014too little damping\u2014 wouldn't be at all handy. The magnitude of sway would increase, and the roots would gradually work loose. Nonetheless, nature doesn't limit resilience with anything quite like our shock absorbers. Instead, she commonly provides damping right in her basic materials, such as the wood of trees. Materials of low resilience predominate in nature. High resilience is a sign of something special going on, such as reversible energy storage (as in hinge pads and ligaments) or deliberate flow-induced shaking (as in our vocal cords and the seed-flinging equipment of some plants).\n\nFIGURE 5.5. _The shock absorber of an automobile, consisting of a cylinder with a leaky piston inside, and a spider web of silk in which a single material provides both elasticity and (through low resilience) damping_.\n\nAnimals often offset unwanted motion with schemes much fancier than simple damping: with sensors, feedback circuits, and contracting muscles. You're more stable when standing upright than any department store mannequin. Why? Your base of support is equally narrow, and your tendons are highly resilient. But if you shift your center of gravity slightly outward from your base of support, sensors in your tendons and muscles detect the shift, and your brain then tells a host of muscles to make slight adjustments in their lengths. (\"Postural reflexes\" is the general subject in textbooks of physiology and neurobiology.) Only occasionally does human technology achieve such sophistication. Large airplanes, for instance, use the same kind of active controls to reduce the bumpiness of flying through irregularly moving air. You may notice flaps on the rear of the wings that seem to wander slightly but disconcertingly up and down as the plane flies along. They're computer-controlled and not under the pilot's direct command; no pilot could react fast enough as the plane whizzes along. One hears talk of active automobile suspensions, systems that would detect a bump just before a wheel hit it and then extend or retract the wheel as needed.\n\nNo material better illustrates the complex diversity of mechanical properties than wood. To most of us it's ordinary stuff, with nothing more than superior and inferior varieties. But specifying quality demands that we look at the match of its wide range of mechanical properties with an equally wide range of applications. To identify our local trees, I use a book that mentions the traditional uses of the wood of each species. The specificity may represent tradition, but the tradition comes from experience, not arbitrary ritual. White pine makes matchsticks, red spruce makes canoe paddles and the sounding boards of pianos, black willow makes artificial limbs, black walnut makes airplane propellers, white oak makes whiskey barrels, American beech makes clothespins and spools, Osage orange makes bows, yellow poplar makes barrel bungs, lignum vitae makes pulleys, and basswood makes drawing boards. That's in addition to structural timbers, for which yellow pine is notable among the softwoods and red oak among the hardwoods. These things were sorted out by generations of craftspeople, ignorant of the arcana of stress-strain graphs but finely attuned to the practical behavior of what they had available.\n\nINTERRELATIONSHIPS AND CONSEQUENCES\n\nSpider silk is extensible, strong, and tough but not particularly stiff or resilient. Collagenous tendon is stiff, tough, and resilient but not very extensible or strong. The mechanical properties we're worrying about may be defined quite distinctly, but they don't necessarily go their separate ways in the real materials available to the two technologies. In short, the full range of properties in all combinations isn't available to either technology. Put another way, seeking a material with a desirable value of one property limits one's choice of values of the other properties. So a design that capitalizes on advantageous characteristics of a particular material must also deal with that material's less handy properties. More generally, if two technologies use different basic materials\u2014say, concrete versus fresh wood\u2014many other differences will follow.\n\nConsider stiffness, strength, and toughness. Stiff materials are usually not very tough, but strong materials (if not too stiff) are commonly quite tough. Bricks, for instance, while stiff are notably nontough. The problem with such stiff materials is that cracks all too readily extend through them. A sharp blow by a hard object cracks a brick, especially if the brick is supported at its ends and the blow is delivered in the middle. Mortar keeps bricks supported along most of their surfaces lest the bricks crack under force concentrations that they can't redistribute (as does wood) by sagging a little. By contrast, mild steel, nylon, spider silk, and fresh wood are strong materials; none is especially stiff; all are nicely tough. Objects made of them can't easily be cracked in two but must usually be cut completely across. You don't hear of people splitting blocks of freshly cut wood with karate chops.\n\nJames Gordon, retired naval engineer, student of crack propagation, and biology watcher, has pointed out that humans usually build to a criterion of adequate stiffness while nature most often builds to a criterion of adequate strength. Perhaps it implies too much judgment by both technologies to call their contrasting preferences for stiffness and strength a fundamental difference in philosophy of design. For both the preference is essentially accidental, since no one's really in charge, and incidental, a matter of the materials most readily available. While far from absolute\u2014 we're really viewing tendencies or alternative defaults\u2014the difference certainly represents a pervasive divergence between human and natural technologies.\n\nBricks, cement blocks, cast concrete, stone, ceramics, and glass are the most extreme of our stiff materials. Cast iron and high-tensile steel are notably stiff as well, and wood in the form of cut and dried timber is much stiffer than the stuff in trees even if less stiff than steel or ceramics. Making value judgments, cracks about being stiff and uptight, are all too easy. They're also unfair. The materials we've found plentiful, versatile, and durable happen to have been stiff ones. If your tool is a hammer, you'll prefer nails over screws; if you discover a good mortar, then stones suddenly look attractive; given a power saw, you might build cabins of squared-off timbers rather than logs. With an ample supply of rot-resistant cypress or red cedar, you might choose wooden pilings over stone piers. Furthermore, tall structures on land\u2014and thus fully vulnerable to gravity\u2014are simpler to build from stififer than from less stiff material.\n\nWhat's important are the consequences of our predilection for stiff materials, the strictures it puts on our structures. First, it makes them peculiarly vulnerable to any accidents or unusual loads that might start cracks. These include both unanticipated loads imposed by our uses of the structures and loads from extreme but rare environmental forces, such as hurricanes, heavy snow or ice, and earthquakes. Second, fractures are more perilous than deformations; a structure can't so easily bounce back or grow back from a complete break. So our stiff materials court disaster more than nature's flexible materials. These disasters have stimulated both soul-searching and useful analysis by engineers as well as some very readable literature.\n\nGordon also pointed out a third and more subtle consequence. Most amply stiff structures will be sufficiently strong as well, but adequately strong structures may not be especially stiff. Put another way, more material is usually needed to build something that's stiff enough than to build something that's strong enough. Should we conclude that our technology is wasteful because it puts such a high value on stiffness? We certainly find unstiff floors, ones with too much \"give,\" disconcerting, even when they're strong enough to avoid breakage quite safely. I rebuilt a deck on my house a few years ago using thicker beams; the original deck had given long service even under heavy partying, but it felt just a bit too lively. The low stiffness of modern skyscrapers, suspension bridges, and airplane wings bothers quite a few of us. But any value judgment between strength and stiffness as design criteria is unfair unless we examine the practical and historical options and alternatives. Still, earthquakes are undeniably harder on stiff houses than on limber trees.\n\nThe bones of large animals are fairly stiff; they support the animals against gravity and serve as the levers and attachments that allow muscular engines to drive body movements. Just as a stretchy tendon would defeat the action of a muscle, so a leg bone that bends would lack standing. While nature does use stiff materials, she ordinarily reserves them for applications where stiffness is crucial. Much stiffer than bone are the real biological ceramics, the ones with less protein and more inorganic material than bone. Hard coral is a particularly stiff material, but coral forms new and more widely dispersed colonies after a reef breaks up in a storm, so failure of stiffness doesn't mean failure of fitness. The shells of marine mollusks are stiff too. But the shells provide enviable protection. Anyway, both mollusk shell and hard coral skeleton are made of calcium compounds that may cost very little. The ocean isn't at all short of calcium. Quite the opposite, it's supersaturated with the stuff, and very little energy need be invested to extract calcium from seawater. The enamel of our teeth is even stiffer than mollusk shell, but soft teeth would lack bite. For each instance we can recognize a specific rationale for making stiff materials and structures.\n\nLike engineers and architects, nature must deal with the lack of toughness of stiff materials. Teeth and bones and hard coral, after all, do crack. Significantly, both technologies commonly use their stiffest and thus most crack-vulnerable materials in small pieces. Tooth enamel forms only thin layers or outer surfaces; teeth contain more dentin than enamel. Similarly, if you want to cut hard materials or get very long service from the blade of your power saw, you choose carbide-tipped blades. \"Tipped\"\u2014we limit the stiff ceramic to tiny pieces at the tips of the saw's teeth.\n\nTHE VIRTUES OF FLEXIBILITY\n\nUsing unstiff materials can do far more than circumvent a few cracks on the cheap, and here nature wins hands down. I've picked examples from a wide range of possibilities to emphasize two general points. First, flexibility pays off both under tough external conditions\u2014winds, waves, impacts, and the like\u2014and in connection with internal operations\u2014the flow of blood and the tugs and twists of muscles and tendons. Second, flexibility can do more than improve toughness and impact resistance. It provides a way to make structures that can change their shapes when loaded in highly specific and useful ways.\n\nHow might one design a long structure that needs a lot of surface area and is exposed to rapid water currents? Something stiff, like the hull of a ship, requires substantial bracing. It may break suddenly, and it's in real trouble if it hits another stiff structure. A kind of marine alga or seaweed\u2014a kelp\u2014that lives on a wave-swept rocky coast (as in Figure 5.6) may be as much as a 150 feet long, as long as a big ship. The attachment to a rock at one end seems remarkably weak for a long structure subjected to the drag of storm-generated waves, and the whole plant seems not just flexible but positively flimsy.\n\nFIGURE 5.6. _An especially long marine alga_ , Macrocystis, _from the Pacific coast of North America_.\n\nMimi Koehl, who works on all kinds of flexible marine organisms, identified the kelp's trick. She's a flexible thinker and recognized what earlier observers hadn't considered. Waves produce flows that reverse direction every few seconds. When a nicely flabby kelp grows longer than the distance the surrounding water travels between reversals, its drag stops increasing. Any additional length simply goes with the flow. Its speed is zero relative to the water around it, so it has no drag! If water flows three feet per second and reverses every four seconds, then only the first dozen feet of kelp pull on the attachment. Koehl's seaweeds grow to great lengths to avoid drag. But the trick works only if you're really flexible: One part has to extend in a different direction from another. Long kelps flex like ropes.\n\nOur flags and pennants have a distressing tendency to tatter in strong winds, distressing unless, as do some plant ecologists, you use the tattering as a measure of exposure to wind. Flags in flows are draggy things; for the same shape and area, a flag has around ten times as much drag as a rigid weather vane. So flexibility clearly confers no automatic advantage. The kelp's evasion is impractical on land because winds are too fast and don't reverse often enough. With a wind speed of forty miles per hour (fifty-nine feet per second) and a reversal even as often as every ten seconds, a limp object would have to be almost six hundred feet long to reach the dragless zone. Nature certainly flies flexible flags on long poles; hers are called leaves, and they aren't hauled down during storms. To do its business, capturing energy from sunlight, a tree needs a big area of leaf, which could make big trouble. Most of the drag of a tree comes from its leaves; the trunk contributes little. Transfer of that force, drag, from leaves to trunk to roots makes trees go down in storms.\n\nSo what's the drag of a leaf? A few years ago I did some measurements in a highly turbulent wind tunnel at speeds a leaf might meet in a storm. A leaf may be flexible, but leaves experience more nearly the low drag of a rigid weather vane than the high drag of a flag. Their strategy involves a clever use of flexibility. For instance, as a wind pulls a single maple or tulip poplar leaf away from the tree, the wind catches the lobes on either side of the stem end of the leaf blade. Those lobes bend upward, and the blade curls into a cone, as in Figure 5.7. As the wind increases, the cone rolls ever tighter. Even in highly turbulent and fluctuating winds, the cone is stable and experiences relatively low drag\u2014around a quarter of that of a square flag of the same area as the leaf. One can imitate the behavior with simple models of paper or plastic, but they work only crudely; mere flexibility isn't enough. It takes just the right amount in just the right places. The leaf's solution, though, isn't without its disadvantage. Curled up, a leaf exposes less area to the sky, and exposure to light, after all, is central to its business. So a maple tree curls its leaves the way a sailing ship furls its sails, to lower its drag temporarily.\n\nFIGURE 5.7. _The leaf of a tulip poplar (also called a tulip tree or yellow poplar) in still air and winds of 11, 33, and 44 miles per hour (5, 15, and 20 ms_ ).\n\nFIGURE 5.8. _The compound leaf of a black locust in still air and winds of 11, 33, and 44 miles per hour (5, 15, and 20 ms)_.\n\nCurling into a cone is only one scheme leaves use to reduce drag in windy weather. Leaves made up of pinnate\u2014that is, feather-arranged\u2014 leaflets, such as those of black locust and black walnut, reconfigure into cylinders that tighten as the wind rises (Figure 5.8). Besides individual tricks, leaves play communal ones. In rough weather the needles of pines splay out less and get more like the hairs on the tail of a horse, once again achieving relatively lower drag. The stiff leaves of the American holly swing together over the stem, packing like a multilayer sandwich (Figure 5.9). Leaves that curl into individual cones can also curl into communal cones when they grow close tdgether. Other strategies for leaf reconfiguration undoubtedly exist, but no one has yet done a systematic survey.\n\nNot that we've never done what leaves do; in high winds the blades of many old windmills would furl, if made of fabric, or pivot, if rigid. Perhaps we rarely face the tree's problem since we don't often need to expose a lot of surface to the sky while that surface is well off the ground. Would some slight saving in material make us tolerate utility poles and antennas that bent over in storms?\n\nFIGURE 5.9. _A group of leaves on a branch of an American holly in still air and winds of 22, 33, and 44 miles per hour (10, 15, and 20 ms)_.\n\nThe mechanical bases of some of these reconfigurations interest us here. A cluster of leaves usually feels even less drag than do individual leaves. To cluster, the flexibility of the stems of the individual leaves is as critical as that of their blades since the stems have to twist readily. That presents a queer problem in design. To hold the blade outward so it can absorb sunlight, the stem of a leaf must resist bending. Thus it must be resistant to bending loads while being compliant to twisting loads; it has to twist more easily than it bends. \"Twisting in the wind\" isn't just a slogan from the last days of the Nixon presidency.\n\nOne way to aid twisting while preventing bending turns on a simple device that's easily demonstrated. Try first to bend and then to twist either the cardboard core of a roll of foil, plastic wrap, or toilet paper or else a plastic soda straw. Then make a lengthwise slit in your cylinder, and try again. The slit weakens it, but not equally so in both respects; the cylinder's resistance to twisting is reduced far more than its resistance to bending. In fact, any lengthwise groove or line of weakness or even any deviation from a round cross section will do the same, if less dramatically. Many leaf stems have lengthwise grooves along their tops (Figure 5.10). Together with some peculiarities of the cells and fibers inside, the grooves ease twisting relative to bending, which reaches four or five times that of cylinders of plastic or metal.\n\nFIGURE 5.10. _Lengthwise grooves on the upper side of the leaf stem (petiole) of a dogwood and on the underside of the wing feather of a bird_.\n\nThe feathers that form the tips of a bird's wings face an equivalent problem. Here again, ease of twisting is functionally important. Wings propel a bird the way a propeller moves an airplane; they just beat up and down instead of spinning around and around. A propeller blade has to be twisted lengthwise to give a decent push to the air passing across it. If it were to spin in the other direction, the twist would have to be reversed. But twice per stroke the feathers of a beating wing reverse direction and so must reverse their twist. At the same time the feathers must resist bending; after all, the wings lift the bird, so in flight its body truly hangs from its wings. Again a structure must twist but not bend, and as on many leaf stems, a lengthwise groove runs along each feather's shaft. Melina Hale, now an accomplished biologist but at the time a first-year undergraduate, drew my attention to the possibility, which measurement then confirmed.\n\nOne difference, though, between wing feather and leaf stem: The groove on the feather is on the bottom, while that of the leaf stem is on the top. That too makes some sense, as you can see with your cardboard core or plastic soda straw. In bending, one side is stretched while the other is compressed, and the slit makes least trouble for bending when it's on the side that's stretched. For the leaf stem that's the top since the weight of the blade bends it downward. For the wing feather it's the bottom that's stretched; its own lift makes the feather bend upward.\n\nA lengthwise groove, then, indicates twistiness. Where else and for what else might the device be used? Consider a starfish. Using the suction cups on the tiny feet that protrude beneath its five arms, it can (very slowly) grab a clam. It then pulls steadily until the clam tires and gives enough so the starfish can insert its stomach between the half shells and digest its dinner. But a starfish bears arms that must adjust to fit all clams. Patricia O'Neill looked at how starfish, sand dollars, and other echinoderms work. She found that the groove that runs outward along the bottom of each arm permits a starfish to twist each arm to perfect its grip\u2014as it must, since living clams clam up forcefully and persistently.\n\nIn this look at bending and twisting, we again encounter something possible but rarely used by human technology. We mainly put twist-prone structures where no forces will twist them. A road sign neither bends nor twists much if it's mounted on a round pole. But it twists readily on a cheaper pole, one merely creased lengthwise (Figure 5.11). We just avoid any wind-caused twist of creased poles by putting only well-centered signs on such poles. Similarly, an ordinary I-beam girder is very prone to twisting, but we hide that flexibility. We always use at least two such beams adjacent to each other, so each keeps the other in line.\n\nAnother aspect of how flexible structures bend matters to nature more than to us, or at least nature makes a virtue of what for us is mainly a nuisance. The way a structure bends depends not only on the stiffness of its material but on the amount of material and the way it's arranged. Altering the amount of material even a little can have a large effect; recall how slightly thicker bookshelves sagged much less. For a cylinder, resistance to bending follows the fourth power of its radius; doubling the radius gives a fully sixteenfold greater rigidity. Or, looked at the other way, a simple kind of bending joint can be made by judicious local thinning. Mimi Koehl showed how a tall sea anemone (see Figure 5.12) lets a current bend its crown of tentacles just enough to position it best for capturing the small edibles that the current carries. Normally a sideways force on the top has its greatest effect lowest down; an anemone of uniform stiffness and diameter would bend over at the bottom. But the trunk of the anemone is a little skinnier at the top, and that's enough to make an adequate bending joint about which the crown rotates.\n\nFIGURE 5.11. _The creased poles often used for road signs twist easily, but we mount the signs symmetrically so winds cause little twisting force. For less well-centered loads, we use more twist-resistant cylindrical poles. I-beams twist easily, but we circumvent that weakness by using them in pairs or groups_.\n\nFIGURE 5.12. _Both a large sea anemone_ , Metridium, _and the flower stem of a daffodil bend at specific, predetermined places_.\n\nSomething like this happens when a daffodil flower emerges. The main difference is that it happens only once. Initially the bud points skyward, but it bends at a specific point just before opening. What appears to be happening is creation of a temporary joint, more likely by temporarily decreasing stiffness than by thinning, and then letting gravity do the work. I've made strange-looking daffodil flowers by inserting the stems upside down in siphons so the buds point down instead of up. No bending then happens, and the resulting flower, turned upright again, looks expectantly skyward rather than shyly downward.\n\nNot that we never use localized flexibility. On my desk I have a small file box made of a single piece of soft plastic. The hinge is just a horizontal thin zone between trough and lid that makes bending happen where it's wanted. The box has now opened and closed when prompted for about a decade, and it's not obviously worse for the experience.\n\nSWELL PIPES\n\nBut enough twisting and bending of protruding parts. Let's go inside. Contraction of your left ventricle generates a hearty pressure that forces blood out into your arteries. Then that ventricle relaxes and gets refilled. Blood pressure at the heart varies in each stroke from about 0 to 120 millimeters of mercury. Zero? Why then do we measure a range of about 80 to 120 with a cuff on the arm? Simply because our arteries are stretchy enough to damp the pressure fluctuations of the heart. When the heart contracts, the blood it pumps stretches the arterial walls. When the heart relaxes, the arteries deflate and in the process do a little passive pumping on their own. The synchrony is automatic, and it's why you can count heartbeats by feeling arterial diameter changes at your wrist or neck. The damping is a good thing too. Blood entering the small vessels moves a lot more smoothly, and lower peak pressures produce sufficient flow of blood. Atherosclerosis\u2014stiffening of the arterial walls\u2014means trouble. One signal of its presence is a wider spread between the maximum and minimum pressures measured on your arm.\n\nMany ordinary pumps (for instance, the piston pumps we use to inflate bicycle tires) are as pulsatile as any heart. We might smooth the flow with arterylike elastic pipes, but we ordinarily take a different tack. Our pumps often have several chambers that work at different points in the cycle. Thus each chamber produces its peak pressure at a slightly different time, and the overall pressure never drops to zero. For the same problem we use a different solution, one that doesn't need materials that are especially flexible and, as I'll now explain, most peculiarly flexible.\n\nInflate a cylindrical balloon or a rubber condom. What happens isn't like stretching a rubber band. Starting to stretch a rubber band is easy, while it takes more and more force to stretch it farther and farther. Starting to inflate any balloon takes as much pressure as (and often more than) further expansion; after the start a constant pressure does the rest of the job. Furthermore, one part of a cylindrical balloon inevitably expands almost to the bursting point before the remainder does much at all. This odd (if familiar) behavior reflects something that came up in the last chapter, Laplace's law. In expanding, the wall of a balloon gets flatter. The rubber may be stretched farther, but pressure stretches a flatter wall more effectively. So the rubber gets harder and harder to stretch while the pressure gets better and better at stretching. The two just about balance. (Only the fact that the stress-strain line for rubber has an extra steep bit just before the breaking point permits cylindrical balloons to work at all. If the line were fully straight, one part would actually break before the rest stretched at all.)\n\nIn an artery, such ordinary elastic stretchiness would produce a local bulge, an aneurysm, something even worse than atherosclerosis. Fortunately, normal arteries expand uniformly, unlike balloons. How do they manage this crucial trick? To achieve uniformity, a stretchy pipe has to be very flexible when inflation starts but get stiffer and stiffer as the process continues; expansion must start easily but then become more and more difficult, disproportionately so. In their walls arteries have fibers of collagen, the same unstretchy material that makes up most of a tendon. But the fibers kink up when the walls aren't expanded, so they're mechanically irrelevant; a slack rope withstands no pull. As in Figure 5.13, expansion of the wall extends more and more of the fibers to the point where they provide tensile stiffening. This very unordinary stretchiness produces the upwardly curved stress-strain plot for arterial wall of Figure 5.3. Again we see how flexibility in nature is a subtle and multidimensional business. We (our arteries, at least) are really special.\n\nStill, however nicely designed, we're not unique. Robert Shadwick, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and his associates looked at some creatures whose circulatory systems work much like ours but that are about as distantly related to us as animals can be. They found almost precisely the same variable flexibility in the arteries of squid and octopus. The main difference was that these creatures tune their arterial stretchiness to work at their lower blood pressures, as do our low-pressure closer kin, toads and lizards. Most startling, octopus and squid achieve their variable flexibility with a different elastic protein from the one we vertebrates use. So their arterial flexibility must have a substantially different genetic basis and must represent an independent evolutionary innovation. Wherever a pulsating heart pushes blood through flexible vessels, the vessels simply must be designed to avoid aneurysms.\n\nFIGURE 5.13. _Arterial wall unstretched and stretched, showing how initially kinked fibers straighten out, making the material gradually get stiffer_.\n\nAs if to emphasize the point, a third group of animals has evolved aneurysm-resistant vessels. Shadwick found variably flexible arteries in crabs and lobsters, with yet another material basis and once again tuned to work at the appropriate blood pressures. He also recognized that this tuning of flexibility permits portentous predictions. Given a sample of its arterial wall, one can pretty well guess an animal's blood pressure. By this test, giant squid (which we've never kept alive) apparently have blood pressures as high as our own.\n\nAn upwardly curved stress-strain plot means that little energy is stored up when the material is stretched; the line has no great area underneath it. That can be a safety feature. A balloon, with a less curved plot, absorbs a lot of energy when you inflate it (whew!), and most of the energy gets liberated violently if the balloon bursts. Upwardly curved plots are common among biological materials such as skin, including the stretched skin of bat wings and duck feet; such as cartilage, as in our external ears; and such as ligaments. A cut or puncture doesn't release much energy, and (here we anticipate the next chapter) release of energy is what keeps cracks propagating. So a slight injury to such a material doesn't have the catastrophic consequences of a pinprick in a balloon.\n\nBut upwardly curved plots aren't universal. The plot for tendon (as in Figure 5.3) has what looks like a dangerously high area underneath. But on that area hangs functional significance of another kind. Tendon is stiff and doesn't stretch very far\u201410 percent beyond original length is about the limit\u2014nor could it and still do its job. R. McNeill Alexander, probably the foremost investigator of bioelasticity, found that its energy storage even at these low strains permits a kangaroo to jump more cheaply. On landing, tendon is stretched; tendon and animal then rebound, with about 40 percent of the absorbed energy reappearing. We do likewise when we run. An Achilles (heel) tendon absorbs a lot of the energy released when a leg decelerates at the end of one step. That energy then helps reaccelerate it at the start of the next. Energy storage makes getting about on legs much more efficient. Legs with energy-storing tendons don't reach the efficiency of wheels, but they're better than legs without step-to-step storage. These tendons, then, represent still another way to put nonrigidity to practical purpose.\n\nIf you want specific imagery for the present comparisons, consider a cat's ear and a door hinge. In one technology, orientation is changed by making things bend; in the other, by making them slide or roll. My plastic file box has bending hinges; when my joints move, my bones slide along one another. Once again the distinction between the technologies is one of degree and default. And once again such things as historical and evolutionary continuity, the availability of materials, and the modes of manufacture underlie the distinction, in short, the factors that underlie the different ways objects get designed and built.\n\nIf you want a context for the present comparisons, consider whether without the contrasting world of natural design, you would have wondered about the consequences of living in structures and using devices that are built of stiff stuff. Or would you have guessed how multifaceted is flexibility? What's most familiar biases our thinking, and what's most familiar is mostly what we ourselves make.\nChapter 6\n\nTWO ROUTES TO RIGIDITY\n\nNature teaches us the virtues of flexibility. Leaves, large algae, and feathers show us how to economize on material, how to change shape as environmental forces change, how to enlist the environmental forces themselves to produce those changes. Still, nature doesn't entirely avoid stiffer stuff. Shell, coral, tooth, bone, and wood are relatively stiff. So too are the chitinous exoskeletons of lobsters and big beetles. Stiff materials may not be necessary for building large creatures, but they certainly help. But while both technologies use stiff materials, they differ in what kinds they use. One difference is startlingly absolute: no \"relative to this\" or \"preponderance of that.\"\n\nTHE NONMETALLIC WORLD OF ORGANISMS\n\nNo organism that we know uses any piece of metal for any mechanical purpose; for that matter, none biosynthesizes a piece of metal at all. Here \"piece of metal\" means something fairly specific. Alloys of different metals are included; we use precious little in the way of unalloyed metals ourselves. But excluded from the definition are both organic and inorganic materials in which chemical compounds bind metal atoms with nonmetal ones. No legalistic subterfuge is meant since such metal-containing compounds don't behave mechanically like metals. Steel and bronze are proper metals because the metal atoms bind directly to each other, while iron oxide or copper sulfate are simply metal-containing compounds.\n\nQuite peculiar, this complete absence of metallic materials in nature. To start with, most (perhaps all) organisms contain atoms of the kinds of metals that might do mechanical tasks. These atoms aren't there by accident; creatures require them, and they have enzymes that can synthesize large metal-containing molecules. The most familiar of course is hemoglobin, which contains iron. Other iron-containing compounds help cells transfer energy from compounds that store it to ones that fuel biosyntheses, that work muscles, and so forth. Hemoglobin itself has evolved on numerous occasions in both animal and plant kingdoms. To these iron- containing compounds within us we add ones containing copper, zinc, chromium, tin, and possibly nickel. One group of animals, the ascidians or tunicates (called sea squirts or sea pork; one is shown in Figure 6.1), has blood cells mysteriously loaded with vanadium. A few other metals are needed in small amounts by other organisms. Small quantities, to be sure; our own most abundant metal is magnesium, still only a twentieth of 1 percent of our weight. As a pure metal magnesium reacts too readily to make safe structures; burning magnesium made the flash of old-fashioned photographic flash powder. Of iron, an adult has only about four grams (mostly in hemoglobin), ten times less than our magnesium. Still, we contain metal, we use metal, we require metal.\n\nFIGURE 6.1. _Several adult ascidians, one cut away to show how water passes through its filtration apparatus. These animals are reasonably common on rocks and wharf pilings, usually below the low-tide line. They're in the same phylum, the Chordata, as are vertebrates such as we_.\n\nSome organisms even build serious mechanical devices out of metal- containing compounds. Many mollusks (snails in particular) feed with organs called radulae (Figure 6.2). A radula works like a cross between a cat's tongue and a chain saw. The flexible, horny structure goes in and out, rasping food from a surface and carrying it mouthward. Hard denticles on the radula do the rasping, and some of these contain a lot of metal. But the metal turns out to be in the form of metal salts\u2014of iron or copper\u2014suitably hard, but minerals rather than metallic materials. Nor are radulae unique in this respect. Chewing poses a peculiar problem for animals that feed on leaves and wood\u2014cows, caterpillars, and such. For their volume, these parts of plants don't provide much nourishment, so the animals have to eat large amounts. Worse yet, the plants seem to have taken considerable trouble (evolutionarily) to make themselves difficult to bite off and grind up. Grasses and tropical woods are full of sand (silicon dioxide), most likely just to hobble herbivory. So tooth wear poses a worse problem for herbivores than for carnivores; recall the horses' teeth of Figure 2.5. Metal salts can harden nonmetallic materials; herbivorous insects, for instance, have zinc or manganese in their mandibles, but again as salts rather than as metallic materials.\n\nFIGURE 6.2. _A snail and its radula, a toothed strap that comes out of the snail's mouth and moves in and out, scraping like a rasp_.\n\nAbout twenty years ago a short paper announced the presence of \"iron-rich particles\" in bacteria that oriented and moved directionally in magnetic fields. Superficially the magnets sounded metallic. But the original report made no such claim and gave no indication of the form of the iron. It proved to be not metallic iron but a compound of iron and oxygen called, for obvious reasons, magnetite. Nothing obscure or radical\u2014we use compounds such as magnetite to coat magnetic tape and computer disks. Magnetite has now turned up just about everywhere that magnetic sensitivity is known and in some places where it's only suspected: in bird brains, in honeybees (in the abdominal segments, as it happens), in salmon, in some rodent brains. For that matter, it occurs in our own brains. Our sensitivity to magnetic fields remains uncertain.\n\nWHY DOESN'T NATURE USE METALS?\n\nSo, ironically, no chunks of metal in organisms. In a sense this absence of metallic materials tests one of our main points: that natural design is severely constrained. If you take the opposite viewpoint\u2014that nature will do all that's best and brightest\u2014then you have to make the case for metals being unavailable, inappropriate, or at least no better than naturally produced nonmetallic materials. How good is that case?\n\n**Supply limitations**. Perhaps living things find metals scarce because their distribution on the earth's surface is too spotty. After all, humans long ago found that ores or crudely refined metals were worth moving long distances despite their weight and bulk. In classical antiquity, Spain, Brittany, and Cornwall exported tin, the crucial additive that made soft copper into hard bronze. Organisms build themselves of more widely distributed elements: carbon, from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by way of photosynthesis in plants; hydrogen, from water, also through photosynthesis; oxygen, from the atmosphere, where it is a by-product of photosynthesis; nitrogen, from the atmosphere through the action of nitrogen-fixing bacteria and a few other agencies. Calcium and phosphorus complete the list of elements in us in amounts over 1 percent. Calcium occurs in many rocks and in most natural waters. Phosphorus makes up less than a tenth of 1 percent of the earth's crust and a still smaller fraction of seawater, but it's well spread around. So far so good with the argument for effective scarcity of metals.\n\nStill, the list of major ingredients in organisms corresponds poorly to the composition of the surface of the earth. While none of the elements just mentioned is rare, some elements present in abundance aren't used in any quantity. Aluminum, a splendid structural material, is the most notable; it makes up about 8 percent of the earth's crust. Iron, long our favorite nonprecious metal, makes up fully 5 percent. While rich ores are spotty, decent supplies of aluminum and iron are widespread at least on land. Besides, organisms do well at acquiring elements from dilute sources. The ascidians that concentrate vanadium get it from seawater, where it constitutes only two parts per billion. Upon closer scrutiny, therefore, ill distribution weakens as a basis for arguing the effective scarcity of metals. Metals are better spread than one might think, and organisms get many elements from sparse sources.\n\nNonetheless, for at least two reasons the scarcity argument shouldn't be casually dismissed. First, using a small amount of metal as a cofactor for some enzyme isn't the same as using enough to build a respectable amount of mechanical equipment. Our bodies use iron, but we use far less of it than, for instance, calcium. Calcium, a major component of bones, makes up two hundred times as much of our weight as does iron. Maybe organisms can't afford the cost of extracting large amounts of iron. Second, abundance in the earth's solid crust may be a misleading criterion if the earliest and most biochemically innovative episodes of evolution occurred in the sea. Seawater doesn't just contain calcium; it's supersaturated with the stuff. So the sea gives up its calcium for free. Iron, copper, and aluminum are vastly scarcer in the sea\u2014one part in twenty-five hundred for calcium against one part or less in one hundred million for these latter.\n\n**Chemical trouble**. Perhaps chemistry limits the use of metals. Organisms may be versatile chemists, but not all reactions are equally easy for them. Mechanically useful metals occur in nature almost entirely as compounds rather than as pure materials; they're combined with such other elements as oxygen, chlorine, silicon, and sulfur. Getting metal out of ore demands a lot of energy; worse, it requires a concentrated energy input, such as high heat or high voltage. In chemical terms, metals have to be reduced from the oxidized compounds in which we find them. A scale called an electrochemical series gives a good view of the relative difficulty of purifying different metals; it looks at the barrier to sticking enough electrons on to the oxidized form to get the pure stuff:\n\n**Easiest to reduce to pure metal** |   \n---|---  \n  | **gold**  \n**mercury, silver**  \n**copper**  \n**lead, tin, nickel**  \n**iron**  \n**zinc**  \n**vanadium**  \n**titanium, aluminum**  \n**magnesium, calcium, potassium, sodium**  \n**Hardest to reduce to pure metal**\n\nThe scale runs from very stable, inactive gold, so indifferent to oxygen that it doesn't even need periodic polishing, to highly reactive sodium, which combines with just about anything it touches and spontaneously burns when exposed to air. The reactivity of the chemical compounds of these elements runs in the other direction. Compounds of mercury and gold are weakly bound and unstable. The top three elements occur in free, uncombined form in nature, copper ores sometimes contain metallic copper, and metallic lead is very rare. Their ores easily yield copper and lead. Reducing iron, farther down, from compounds to metallic form is tougher. Reducing aluminum, still farther down, is even harder.\n\nMetals harder to isolate are also harder to maintain. The issue here is spontaneous oxidation, rusting. Silver tarnishes a little; sodium reacts violently even with water. We can use nearly pure aluminum only because it forms a white rust, aluminum oxide, a nicely impervious coating that protects the underlying metal. Rusting is rapid, but it's also self-limiting. (We also use various coatings and other processes to offset aluminum's reactivity in the presence of oxygen.) Iron oxidizes less eagerly, but the ordinary oxide has the inconvenient habit of flaking and peeling to expose fresh metal. Most organisms are aerobic; they use oxygen to oxidize carbon-containing compounds as energy sources. Under oxidizing conditions, perhaps metallic structures are impractical or less desirable than alternatives. In other words, preventing rust may be more trouble than it's worth.\n\nAn indication that these chemical limitations\u2014the cost and difficulty of reduction (blast furnaces and so forth) and the subsequent cost and difficulty of preventing reoxidation (periodic painting of steel ships and bridges)\u2014may be important comes from a dog that didn't bark. Aluminum is the third most abundant element on the surface of the earth, after oxygen and silicon. Every clay contains the element. Yet as far as I know, no organism does anything with it, even as some trace nutrient or biochemical cofactor. Exposure to aluminum leads to internal accumulation of the element but to no notorious pathology; it's much less toxic than the heavier metals. The fact that aluminum (and titanium, for that matter), far down the electrochemical series, isn't used at all suggests that iron, a little higher, can be used only with difficulty.\n\n**Excessive density**. Perhaps organisms don't use metals because life evolved in water. Of the metals that might make decent structures, only chemically troublesome aluminum isn't particularly dense. It's only 2.7 times as dense as water. The equivalent figure for copper is 8.9, for iron 7.9, for tin 5.8; even titanium is fully 4.5 times water's density. Just a little structural iron, for instance, would make an organism a lot denser than water. Thus gravity would impose a serious load if an organism grew up from the bottom of a body of water, and it would just about rule out swimming. The minerals with which nature builds bones, shells, and the like are less dense. Silicon dioxide has a density 2.2 to 2.6 times that of water, calcium carbonate 2.7 to 2.9, and calcium phosphate 2.2 to 3.1; the ranges reflect different crystalline forms. Organisms that don't have air inside (as do trees) are mostly denser than seawater, but only slightly. Even a thick-shelled clam sinks more slowly than a chunk of iron. A small deposit of fat or a tiny bladder of gas can offset slightly denser minerals and keep an organism from sinking at all. With substantial use of iron or copper, density compensation would take much greater investments of space, material, and energy.\n\nThis difference in density between metals and these minerals may also be important for animals that live in sediments beneath bodies of water. If agitated, particles sort themselves out by density (and, of course, size). Particles of most sands, silts, and clays have densities between two and three times that of water, so animals made of lightweight organic compounds, even with a lot of mineral, are less dense than the surrounding sediments. By contrast, an organism with substantial amounts of metal might be self-burying. The habitat is far from unusual; most organisms are small, and an extremely diverse fauna of tiny creatures live in the spaces between the grains of lake bottoms, coastal beaches, and continental shelves. Yet despite these consistent and suggestive differences in density, the heaviness of metals doesn't seem a weighty enough factor to account for their complete absence in nature.\n\n**Inability to grow**. I once encountered the argument that metallic structures couldn't grow the way the nonmetallic components of organisms grow. I'm not persuaded that they couldn't grow. Furthermore, neither mollusk shell nor arthropod cuticle grows, but both grace eminently successful phyla of animals. Similarly, trees make their wood once and for all, increasing their girth by adding new wood peripherally as annual rings. In short, the argument is so much vertebrocentricism.\n\nWhen we ask why organisms don't use metals, we need to consider another possibility: Maybe metals lack mettle and aren't all they're cracked up to be. To explore that possibility, we need to look both at what makes metals special and at how human technology uses them.\n\nTHE UTILITY OF METALLIC CONSTRUCTION\n\nHumans have long been willing to expend enormous effort to obtain metals. Ancient Middle Eastern and Mediterranean metallurgy is well known. Iron smelting was widespread in Africa. The Indians of North America strove to obtain metallic copper where they had any access to it, as in northern Michigan and adjacent areas of Canada. The Inuit of Cape York in northern Greenland laboriously pounded bits of iron from a meteor deposit to use as edges for their tools. Did human technology have easy access to some better alternative to metals? The possibility seems remote. Why, then, are metals so useful? In particular, they're malleable and ductile; with minimal risk of breakage, they can be pressed or hammered into shape, or they can be drawn out into thin wires and sheets. Good malleability and ductility imply as well an agreeably high level of toughness, defined in the last chapter as requiring a lot of energy to be broken.\n\nWhat's special about metals is easiest to see by stretching a sample of one and plotting the result on a now-familiar stress-strain graph. Figure 6.3 gives a plot for steel: for the lower edge of an I-beam that's being bent downward or the bowed-out side of a round column that's pushed sideways. The stretch initially meets a high resilience response; removal of the weight on the beam or the push on the column restores the original length immediately and forcefully. In this region the plot ascends along a fairly straight line. Double the stress, and you double the strain. Used like this, a piece of metal makes a handy spring for a scale to weigh things; the numbers on the scale will be equally spaced, and the scale will rezero itself between uses. Most biological materials such as tendons give curved rather than straight lines in equivalent plots of stress versus strain. Organisms, as we saw, put the curvature to good use. That metals give straight lines indicates intrinsic superiority only for making simple spring scales. What matters is their high resilience.\n\nThings get special beyond this initial upward line, beyond what's called the elastic limit. Typically, the plot levels (or nearly levels) abruptly as the metal is stretched farther; it enters its plastic region. Without any (or much) additional loading, the metal can be deformed a lot further, which is what ductility is all about. This horizontal extension of the stress-strain line generates a lot of functionally important behavior.\n\nIf you use a metal in its resilient, elastic region, you've got something that can be loaded repeatedly without getting permanently bent out of shape. The piece of metal tolerates abuse. Overload it, and it deforms plastically. That may spoil it for further use, but metal hasn't actually broken, and with good design, catastrophe needn't follow. The structure just bears its load in a slightly different position. The bicycle frame may be bent, but you haven't been dumped off, and you may even be able to ride home. The bed and side walls of my old pickup truck got pretty dented, but only the resulting rust demanded attention. Recall that the area under the stress-strain curve represents the energy absorbed in straining something. For a metal accidentally distorted beyond its elastic limit, all that area under its curve enhances its safety; straining the material soaks up energy that might otherwise make trouble. A well-strained resilient material, such as rubber, will snap back dangerously when unloaded again. But metals in the plastic region aren't at all resilient; they're plastic, not elastic, and the work of deformation gets benignly converted into heat rather than stored as elastic energy. Repeatedly stretch or bend a piece of rubber, and it warms almost imperceptibly (tires are a little warmer after rapid driving). Repeatedly bend a strip of metal beyond its elastic limit, and it warms noticeably.\n\nFIGURE 6.3. _Stress-strain curves for mild steel and for cow bone (data from Currey, 1984_ ).\n\nAnother view of breakage comes from a look at how cracks propagate. Cracks extend because of force concentrations at their tips. Cracking relieves the force, releasing energy that powers further progress of the crack. Force concentration means that the stress at a crack's tip is much higher than just the force applied to the object divided by its overall cross-sectional area. In their plastic region, ductile metals respond to higher local stresses by stretching rather than cracking. Stretching distributes the force over a greater area and thereby reduces the stress\u2014or at least ensures that an increase in force doesn't cause a corresponding increase in stress. By contrast, cracking merely moves the location of the high stress from one place to another as the crack extends. That can increase the stress further since less material then remains intact to bear the load. Put one way, metals are fairly safe considering how stiff they are. Put another way, ductile failure is better than brittle failure; a dented cup holds water better than a shattered one.\n\nWe make good use of the ductility and particular stress-strain curves of metals when we make things of them. Push or pull on a metal piece with enough violence, and it will bend to your will as you force it into the plastic region. Remove the load, and the metal retains the new shape, but it now has a new elastic region; it now follows the dashed line of Figure 6.3. The new shape can then give long, dependable service, snapping back elastically when modestly deformed. Neither the stiffness nor the strength of the material has suffered much by the treatment. That's what its maker did to my pickup truck before I bought it, and that's how almost every curved panel on almost every automobile is made. With the aid of huge presses and hammers, that's how we make all kinds of ordinary objects, such as nails with heads. For large objects we extend the plastic region by working with hot metal; the process is called forging. To make wire and hollow pipes, we take similar advantage of the ductility and malleability of metals.\n\nThe stress-strain plot of bone, to take a well-studied biological material, looks superficially like that of mild steel. It has an initial upward-sloping elastic portion and then behaves plastically at greater extensions (Figure 6.3, again). Loading is most often in the elastic region, and the plastic portion provides a margin of safety. But as John Currey, who has loaded all kinds of bones in all kinds of ways (picking a bone with Currey is a serious matter), points out, what happens in bone differs from what happens in metals. Bone isn't ductile but is instead viscoelastic. That is, in its plastic region it's viscous; it flows. Worse, it develops tiny cracks in all directions and softens from their interactions. A bone so loaded then has to be rebuilt, even if it hasn't actually fractured. Rebuilding depends on its being a living, growing material. As we use it, bone works about as well as does a decent metal, perhaps even a little better in terms of the mass needed to support a given load. But it does so only by virtue of continuous micromaintenance. Without such rebuilding, bone loses much of its value. Humans have long had access to bone but have mainly used it\u2014as do the Inuit in particular\u2014when little else, such as wood, stone, or metal, has been available.\n\nAny proclamation of the magnificence of metals must be tempered by a few cautions. Metals are even more mechanically diverse than are woods, and no one metal proves perfect in all properties at once. Our cultural biases, stemming from both personal experience and the way we teach history, may give metalworking undeserved credit for permitting technological complexity. The use of metal for more than ornamentation was a glory of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations. We mustn't forget that sophisticated but largely nonmetallic cultures flourished elsewhere, particularly in the Americas. Furthermore, early metals weren't particularly good. Copper is soft; if hammered, it gets harder but more brittle. Bronze is better, but it still takes an edge far less sharp than flaked obsidian. I was much impressed watching an anthropologist eat a meal with an obsidian knife he'd made. He said (and I have no doubt) that he could shave with such a knife. Bronze, though, is less likely to crack when inexpertly used. That last point, in fact, may hold the key to the initial attractiveness of metals. Stone axes are hard, and flaked flints are sharp, but both are brittle, thus fragile, and their use calls for both skill and care.\n\nFinally, metals can be stamped, drawn, forged, cast, ground, sliced, and sawed. But living systems need to do none of these; they make materials into artifacts by internal growth and surface deposition. So our wonderfully diverse array of fabricational techniques may hold little appeal for nature. Once again, we're looking at two distinct but individually well- integrated technologies; an impressive aspect of one may have little relevance to the other.\n\nHOW NONMETALLIC MATERIALS CAN AVOID CRACKS\n\nOrganisms may eschew metals, but human technology uses both metallic and nonmetallic materials. Through most of our history and prehistory we've been almost as nonmetallic as organisms; truly large scale use of metals is less than two centuries old. James Gordon points out that even the main cylinder of Fulton's steamboat of 1807 (although not the boiler) was made of wood, and he claims that the tenfold drop in the cost of iron was the most important thing that happened during the long reign of Queen Victoria. The main materials of human technology have been stone, selected, shaped, flaked, or polished; ceramics, including brick, pottery, and glass; wood, from tied bamboo poles to seasoned timber and glued plywood; and a diverse assortment of natural fibers, mainly keratin from animal hair, and cellulose from plants. During the past century or so we've added a few things: rubber, starting with Goodyear's vulcanizing process; plastics, from Bakelite, the first, to ever more diverse polymers; artificial fibers, such as nylon and polyester; and more complex materials, such as chipboard and fiberglass. Our use of metals, relative to other materials, has probably passed its peak. During the fifty-odd years that I've observed such things, one metallic object after another has been re-created in plastic: file boxes, garden carts, even the side panels of our new car.\n\nIn this respect our technology is moving toward nature's. But I don't mean back to nature. We rarely use nature as explicit model, much legend to the contrary; as we'll explore in Chapter 12, we didn't learn spinning from spiders. We also subject naturally synthesized materials to increasingly complex processing before reusing them; for instance, we make both paper and rayon of the cellulose from wood, but neither much resembles nature's original product.\n\nOf greater interest is how we're adopting nature's approach to dealing with the trade-off between stiffness and toughness in nonmetals. As noted, metals have decent values of both properties. (Nonetheless, improvement in one usually entails deterioration of the other. High-tensile steel stretches less than does mild steel, but it also cracks more easily.) Nonmetallic systems are worse, at least if made of ordinary, single-component materials. Glass is wonderfully stiff but cracks so easily that it probably wouldn't be approved as a new material today. Plexiglas is less stiff, but it still cracks without much provocation. The softer plastics, such as the polyvinyl chloride of pipes, are nicely tough, but \"softer\" is just a gentle way of saying \"less stiff.\"\n\nSomething odd, though, is at work. Our stiff, nonmetallic, single-component materials, such as glass or Plexiglas, bricks or ceramic tiles, are much more brittle than nature's wood, horn, or bone. Even seemingly brittle natural materials are often tougher than they look. Mollusk shell may look like ceramic tile, but it resists shattering much better when hit or drilled. I once made hanging ornaments from a bunch of scallop shells left over from lab work. Drilling a small hole near the thin edge of each took no special tools or care, and no shell shattered in the process. A number of primitive cultures fashioned fully functional fishhooks out of shell. Somehow organisms deal with the awkward tendency of stiff nonmetals to crack.\n\nFrom measurements of the strength of a material such as steel, one can calculate the strength of beams made of the material. But by the early 1900s sad experience showed that such calculations provided poor guidance for how beams behaved in use. Ships broke in half at stresses that their steel should have easily withstood. The culprit turned out to be force concentrations\u2014small places where the stress was unusually high\u2014 and cracks that spread from such places. At least steel suffered less from crack propagation than many other materials, particularly stiff, nonmetallic ones. Sharp corners and preexisting cracks were bad things, but the exact nature of the problem remained mysterious.\n\nAround 1920 a British engineer named A. A. Griffith, working at something other than what he was supposed to be doing, found that glass fibers could be pulled harder than could glass rods\u2014that is, fibers could withstand great stress. The thinner the fibers, the more stress they could take, down to the finest that could then be made, with diameters around one ten-thousandths of an inch. Put another way, a bundle of fine fibers would support a lot more load than a single rod of the same thickness, even where no bending was involved. Still, the strength of the finest fibers didn't quite reach the strength of their chemical bonds. So the real issue wasn't the strength of fibers but the weakness of rods. What made the difference were microscopic cracks.\n\nGriffith went on to provide the basis for our present understanding of what makes cracks extend. The tip of a crack is a place where force is concentrated, as mentioned earlier and crudely illustrated in Figure 6.4. If you cut halfway through a sample of a stiff material and then pull on it, it usually breaks at far less than half the force needed to break an uncut sample. The concentration of force makes the crack extend, the sample is fractured further, more force is concentrated at the crack tip, and in an instant the unbroken sample is history. Whether a crack will propagate depends on the initial depth of the crack and the sharpness of its tip; the deeper and sharper the initial crack, the more likely it is to extend farther.\n\nMaking additional surface on either a solid object or a body of liquid absorbs energy\u2014whether slicing bread, cracking eggs, or even as a water strider's leg makes a downward dimple on a pond. Since cracking makes surface, it absorbs energy. But cracking also releases energy as it relieves the force concentration at its tip. As a crack gets deeper, more force is concentrated at its tip. Thus, as a crack progresses, it relieves ever more force and releases more and more energy. Eventually the energy released by relieving the force concentration at the crack's tip surpasses the energy needed to make new surface as the crack propagates. Then stand back, for the system is out of control, and the crack will spontaneously extend at a fair fraction of the speed of sound. You deliberately crack a brittle material such as glass or plasterboard by making (scoring) an initial groove\u2014a potential force concentration. You then apply a slight force, and the material breaks in two where you've started the crack. Breaking a piece of glass incompletely isn't at all easy.\n\nFIGURE 6.4. _Force trajectories bunch just beneath a crack_ , _so force is more concentrated (stress is higher) there_.\n\nAll real objects have cracks. What matter are their depths, the sharpness of their tips, and the loads on the objects. Griffith's critical crack length is reached when the energy released becomes enough to keep a crack advancing. Thinner objects normally have shallower cracks, which make them stronger, able to withstand greater stresses. That's why a bundle of skinny glass fibers is stronger than a thick glass rod. Using a bundle of skinny fibers instead of a single rod gains something else as well. If the stress is high enough so a fiber does crack in two, that's usually the end of the matter. What chance that the next fiber will have a preexisting crack just where necessary for breakage to continue? When you break a bundle of spaghetti, the individual strands don't all break at the same place.\n\nStress a piece of metal, accommodatingly ductile, and its plastic stretch blunts the tips of its cracks. As a result, critical crack lengths in metals are between ten thousand and a million times longer than those in stiff nonmetals like glass. Cracking still matters\u2014ships do break up, so portholes and hatchways still need to be rounded\u2014but a steel rod is far less fragile than one of glass.\n\nHow might this crack-prone fragility of stiff materials, especially nonmetallic ones, be avoided? The obvious fix is to use very skinny fibers and run lots of them in parallel, as a kind of ropework. It works as long as the individual fibers can slide fairly freely against each other. A rope is weakened if the individual strands are glued together\u2014perhaps a problem when ropes get iced up. But ropes take pulls and not bends. A second and better (or more general) fix uses an interface as a crack stopper. An interface is nothing special; in fact, it's no thing at all, just the place where one material stops and another begins\u2014where the rubber meets the road, as a recent ad put it. But an interface can act in a curious way.\n\nWhether a crack extends or not depends, again, on the sharpness of its tip. You can often stop a crack by making a round hole at its tip; an elderly machinist introduced me to the trick when I was a graduate student, and I suggested how you might demonstrate it with aluminum foil in Chapter 4. How, then, to blunt the tips of cracks? Think about that ubiquitous material Styrofoam. For its weight, it's strong stuff. What keeps strength up and weight down are the microscopic holes that make it a foam. Plastic and air come together at the edges of those holes; they're interfaces. A crack moving across the stuff can't avoid a hole, which blunts its tip. So the crack can't build up a sufficiently concentrated force on the other side of the hole to keep itself going, as put diagrammatically in Figure 6.5. Thus a simple way to build in crack stoppers is to make a foam of the material. The small, hard elements that stiffen and support such echinoderms as starfish are formed of such a foam. They're made of calcium carbonate (as crystals of calcite), which is pretty brittle stuff. But the interconnected holes, between one two-thousandths and one fiftieth of an inch across, have rounded, smooth surfaces, as in Figure 6.6.\n\nOne crack may even stop another; a crack is just an interface between a solid and air, and interfaces can have the same blunting effect as round holes. Imagine a material with a lot of lengthwise cracks, perhaps ones so small and subtle that you'd not normally notice them. Cracks running lengthwise are innocent bystanders as far as load bearing is concerned, with about as much effect as the medians of divided highways have on traffic capacity. But when a crosswise crack, the kind that breaks an object, runs into a lengthwise crack, it's stopped\u2014like a car running into one of those medians.\n\nFIGURE 6.5. _Voids, if oriented lengthwise or if rounded, can reduce the ease with which a crack propagates across a loaded piece of material_.\n\nFIGURE 6.6. _The hard elements (ossicles) of echinoderms are really foams of calcite and round-surfaced voids_.\n\nHow might lengthwise cracks be built into a material? Bundled fibers might make good ropes, but they won't make good beams and columns. For the latter, less dramatic interfaces work better, interfaces between two solids of very different mechanical properties rather than between a solid and air. Fiberglass uses just this trick. Glass still bears the stress, but the strength of a fiberglass pole dramatically exceeds that of a glass rod. In fiberglass, as shown in Figure 6.7, hard, stress-bearing glass fibers are joined with a relatively soft glue. After passing through the hard stuff, a crack hits the soft stuff, which stretches (gives) rather than transfers the crack across to the next hard element.\n\nMaterials that use this scheme are called composites, the name alluding to having more than one component. If you want to experience a composite, mix wheat bran, for fiber, and egg white, for glue, and bake the product until hard; shaping can be done either before or after solidification. Adjusting the mixture, baking time, and temperature changes the character of the product, while adding some sweetening and flavoring gives you a satisfyingly tough, munchable material. (Don't do as several students did when 1 challenged them to produce an edible composite. Mixing marshmallow and Rice Krispies makes a material midway between solid and fluid, so shapes slowly sag into amorphousness.)\n\nFlGURE 6.7. _Tough composite materials are made of fibers or layers of stiff material separated by material of much lower stiffness_.\n\nFiberglass is neither the most common nor the best composite material that human technology has produced. Particleboard combines wood chips and binder; it's now the stuff beneath the veneer of our furniture. Soft steel in the reinforced concrete of our highways and public buildings offsets the brittleness of pure concrete. Composites compose a versatile technology. Individual fibers need not run the entire length of a structure; short ones (whiskers) are effective as long as the glue binds well. Nor must all fibers run in the same direction, as in a fiberglass fishing pole; the direction is random (in two dimensions) in fiberglass sheet. Nor are fibers the only useful geometry for the hard material; thin, flat plates or sheets work well.\n\nFor human technology, the main drawback of composites is cost, typically greater than that of ordinary metals or single-component plastics. In addition, material and structure usually have to be made together, something a little complicated and unfamiliar. Sheets or rolls of metal can be cut, bent, and riveted together to make an aluminum canoe. By contrast, a felt of glass fiber is combined with epoxy glue over a mold to make fiberglass and canoe simultaneously.\n\nNature uses composites for all her hard materials, usually quite complexly organized composites; Figure 6.8 illustrates just two. Wood is a composite of cellulose, a hard, fibrous material, and lignin, a glue. The cuticle of arthropods is a composite of chitin fibers in a proteinaceous matrix, with some calcium carbonate salts used to stiffen the larger crustaceans. The shells of mollusks are made of layers of hard mineral separated by a critical few percent of protein. Bone is a composite of the protein collagen, some other protein, and calcium phosphate salt. Even your teeth are composites of mineral and protein; when teeth are drilled, burning protein makes the sulfurous smell. In each case the structure is highly tuned for its specific applications. Not only does wood vary from one kind of tree to another, but the wood of a tree's roots has very different properties from the wood of its trunk. Bone isn't just bone, even in an individual; its composition and properties depend very much on what it's called on to do.\n\nFIGURE 6.8. _Natural composites: the shell of a mollusk (left) and the egg of a bird (right). Both are made largely of brittle calcium salts with small but critical amounts of softer material to toughen them and prevent crack propagation_.\n\nA NONMECHANICAL INTERLUDE\n\nLet's briefly leave the world of materials and structures. Important nonmechanical differences between our two technologies arise from the absence of metallic materials in organisms. In particular, metals and nonmetals differ greatly in thermal and electrical conductivities. Both kinds of conductivity are hundreds to thousands of times greater for metals than for nonmetals, and both properties determine how we do many things.\n\nTo give a few examples, the thermal conductivity of copper is more than 3,000 times the conductivity of wood, 500 times that of glass, 660 times that of water, and 1,000 times that of fresh leaves. The consequences aren't minor. The higher the conductivity, the faster heat moves from the hotter parts to the colder parts of an object, so the object will more rapidly approach a uniform temperature. If you cook on an electric stovetop, pots and pans of high conductance give a more even heat distribution and take much less stirring and scraping of their contents. Relative to its volume, aluminum has about two and a half times the conductance of iron or steel and thus works better as cookware. Pans of pure stainless steel are a nuisance, and cast iron is satisfactory only when thick and heavy; this slows its response to your adjustments of the stove and trades one disadvantage for another. Ceramic vessels, even if heatproof, heat up still less uniformly and mainly find use (their manufacturers' claims notwithstanding) as ovenware.\n\nWhen the food reaches the table, though, high thermal conductivity becomes a nuisance. The coldness of metal and the warmth of wood\u2014 celebrated in aphorisms and figures of speech (\"cold steel,\" etc.)\u2014is the perceptual signal of the difference in thermal conductivity. A piece of aluminum feels colder than a piece of pottery because the aluminum more rapidly conducts heat away from your hand. Similarly, a silver or aluminum dish conducts the heat away from the food, increasing the area over which the heat is shifted to the surrounding air and moving heat to the place where you're holding the dish. We ate cold food from metal mess kits on scout trips but blamed it entirely on the weather. Tea or coffee cools more rapidly in a metal pot, especially in aluminum, copper, or silver, which have the highest conductivities. According to at least one guide, the governor of colonial Williamsburg, in Virginia, ate off silver dishes\u2014the worst of all possible materials. Since cooking was done in an outbuilding, one suspects that no governor ever enjoyed a nice hot meal at home. Conversely, metal handles often get uncomfortably warm. Stirring a cup of boiling liquid with a silver spoon shows the downside of high thermal conductivity. The upside is good value as radiators for cooling internal-combustion engines and for steam heating in homes.\n\nThe high thermal conductivity of metals would be useful to living things in a number of situations. When large and moderate-size animals do heavy physical activity, they generate waste heat that they have to transfer to their surroundings. High conductivity would help get the heat from muscles to skin, but human conductivity is low, about that of water. So we resort to convection and evaporation instead of conduction. In convection, heat is moved from one place to another by physically moving some heated material rather than just shifting the heat from one bit of material to the next. The usual materials moved are fluids\u2014hot blood and hot breath\u2014and moving them requires pumps and energy. In evaporation, heat is moved by making water evaporate and then moving or discarding the water vapor. Evaporation takes energy, which the vapor contains; when the vapor drifts away, the body is left cooler. We sweat; dogs pant; we both lose water thereby. But water must be obtained and carried around, and both activities can prove troublesome.\n\nLeaves do likewise. When the wind drops and they're still exposed to the sun, they get considerably hotter than the air around them; they can warm as much as 20\u00b0 C. Their centers, less exposed to what air movement remains, face the problem at its worst. Hot centers would be less hot if leaves were made of nicely conductive metal, but no such luck. Instead plants do things that must limit other activities or interfere with other desirable features of their design. They make elaborately lobed leaves to get a lot of edge and perhaps absorb less light. They use a lot of water for evaporative cooling, which requires a decent water source. They make thickened leaves, which takes material, so they heat more slowly and can endure longer lulls in the wind. And when the sun is strong, the wind is low, and water is scarce, many leaves droop down to a less sun- struck and more airflow-exposed vertical position, which compromises photosynthetic activity.\n\nWe also take advantage of the high electrical conductivity of metals. Every electric wire is metallic; the only nonmetallic components of most electronic devices are active ones, such as transistors, or components, such as resistors, whose function depends on low conductivity. What about nerves? We may think of them as wires since nervous systems and electronic devices do similar tasks. But the analogy between nerve and wire misleads. A nerve impulse moves along the axon of a nerve cell by a different physical scheme from that of a pulse of electricity traveling along a copper wire. Which is better? I'd go with the wire. For instance, nerve conduction is glacially slow compared with that along wires. One hundred twenty meters per second, a mere 270 miles per hour, is about as fast as any nerve conducts impulses; by contrast, wires transmit electrical pulses some _five million_ times faster. A thousand impulses each second is about the limit for a nerve; wires carry millions of pulses per second. All the fancy stuff we do with our brains requires the most massive parallel processing\u2014using many nerves running alongside each other and great numbers of circuits working simultaneously.\n\nWhen rigidity is the aim, we make great use of metals and a little of composites; nature makes elaborate use of composites but none at all of metals. I've suggested several reasons why nature doesn't use metals, but none was fully persuasive. Two further explanations, alluded to earlier, share the same uncertainty\u2014admittedly an unsatisfying state of affairs.\n\nPerhaps nature doesn't use metals simply because she has something every bit as good. If we ask whether natural composites are in the same class with metals, we have to say yes. If, for instance, stiffness relative to density is the criterion, wood and steel are about equal. If work of extension is what matters, and weight rather than volume is the reference, then yew wood (as used in English longbows), collagen (as used in Roman catapults or ballistae), bone (much used by Inuit), and horn (used in Chinese composite bows) all surpass spring steel. One can pick alternative comparisons in which our manufactured materials come out ahead. Overall, the rigid materials of the two technologies, though dramatically different, do about equally well. Our present aggressive development of composites is driven not primarily by the excellence of nature's but by the good performance of even the crude ones we already use. At least in small quantities, we've now made composites that, in the ways that matter to us, do better than anything in nature.\n\nHow curious a process is \"design\" in nature! For better or worse, composites are what a mindless, blundering, information-starved, and minimally coordinated system might be expected to make. Specifically, their properties are highly sensitive to tinkering with the amounts and arrangements of their constituents on a microscopic level. In short, they're what one ought to expect from microscopic improvisation, nature's way, as opposed to macroscopic deliberation, our human mode. And that brings us to the last possibility.\n\nMaybe in noticing that nature uses composites rather than metals, we're simply looking at a result of the conservative, noninnovative, stick- with-the-tried-and-true process of evolution by natural selection. Once organisms of nonmetallic construction became established, what chance had initially crude metallic forms? Future benefit is something evolution knows nothing about; she has precious little venture capital. But even if evolutionary inertia is a reasonable explanation, defending it is difficult. How could one ever come within shouting distance of either proof or disproof? Perhaps our best bet is to regard evolutionary inertia as a hypothesis of last resort\u2014distasteful but unavoidable, its mention deferred as long as possible.\nChapter 7\n\nPULLING VERSUS PUSHING\n\nRopes resist having their ends pulled apart; bricks resist having their ends pushed together. To formalize the distinction, let's call structural elements that resist pulls _ties_ and those that resist pushes _struts_. For ties we use cables, ropes, belts, and some glues as well as some metal, wooden, and plastic rods and bars. For struts we use walls, columns, rods, and bars of brick, stone, concrete, wood, and plastic. Nature's ties include muscles, tendons, ligaments, strands of silk, and the stems of fruits. Most bones, hard coral, and tree trunks and a lot of insect cuticle serve as struts. In this simple\u2014perhaps over-simplified\u2014distinction between ties and struts lie some interrelated contrasts between human and natural technologies. The contrasts aren't as tidy as those between metals and composites, but they're equally pervasive and no less significant. What human technology does about pulls and pushes is ancient in origin and cross-culturally consistent\u2014so ordinary and familiar that only viewing an alternative reveals its peculiarity.\n\nTwo chapters back, the reader's toughness and resiliency were stressed and strained by a great batch of information about mechanical properties. In talking about all the properties, though, we considered only what happened when we pulled on things\u2014tensile tests on samples of different materials. But when push comes to shove, more than tension deserves our attention. One can also press on a material, loading it in compression, and one can shear a material, distorting, say, a rectangular block into a so- called parallelepiped, as in Figure 7.1. So three stresses matter: tensile, compressive, and shearing.\n\nIn reality one doesn't test a material per se but only a particular piece with a particular shape. In a tensile test, shape matters very little. After you pull on a round rod or an I-beam or a tendon, you divide the force of the pull by the cross-sectional area of the piece to get stress. For tensile stresses, the shape of that cross section doesn't matter; a rope, a rod, and an I-beam give the same results. By contrast, in a compressive test, shape matters a lot. Push on something short and fat, and it squashes. Push on something long and thin, and it bows out to one side before it breaks. Push on a tube with a very thin wall\u2014such as a drink can\u2014and the walls crumple suddenly from a single point. Round, square, and flattened rods of the same cross-sectional areas collapse under different loads. Pulling is simple; pushing is anything but. When we worried only about differences between materials, we could (usually) get away with tensile testing alone. But materials serve as components of structures, and to understand structures, we have to worry about shape.\n\nFIGURE 7.1. _Three ways to stress a sample of material_.\n\nFIGURE 7.2. _The stresses on a protruding beam bent downward by a weight at its end and what happens if the beam lacks resistance to shear_.\n\nBesides tensile (pulling), compressive (pushing), and shearing loads, two more complicated loads matter for structures: bending and twisting. When a structure as a whole is either bent or twisted, parts of it experience each of the three simple loads. Think about what must happen when a weight on its end bends a long, protruding beam, as in Figure 7.2. The weight is eager to move toward the center of the earth, while the right- minded beam opposes any such tendency. In the process the top of the beam stretches, at least slightly. Stretching\u2014that's what ties resist, so we can view the top as a tie. A little less obviously the bottom of the beam compresses, again at least slightly. Compression\u2014that means the bottom works as a strut. But if we actually substitute tie and strut, disaster ensues: Instead of the tie taking tension and the strut taking compression, the whole thing collapses downward and inward. The beam, initially rectangular in side view, has become a parallelogram. Subtly but crucially the middle of the beam has been resisting shear. Thus, when a beam bends, all three stresses\u2014tensile, compressive, and shearing\u2014load its material, and the amount of each stress varies from place to place in the beam.\n\nFIGURE 7.3. _The stresses_ \u2014 _tensile, compressive, and shearing\u2014on a cylinder as you twist one end one way and the other end the other_.\n\nSomething analogous happens when a structure, such as the cylinder in Figure 7.3, gets twisted. Tension loads the outside, and compression loads the inside. You can see both by twisting a wet cloth: Tension on the outside is obvious, and compression of the middle is what squeezes out the water. In addition, shear loads the whole thing (except the exact center line). That's clear enough if (as in the figure) you draw a square on a long balloon and then twist it; the square becomes a parallelogram. Yet again, a single load on a structure induces three stresses in the material of which it's made.\n\nWe humans take great advantage of this combination of stresses in twisted cylinders. We lay alongside one another short natural fibers, such as linen, cotton, or wool, and twist (spin) them into long threads or ropes. Even though their fibers aren't joined end to end, these ropes are remarkably strong. The fibers are kept from pulling apart by their resistance to shearing (sliding) across one another when they're compressed. Pulling on a spun thread or a twisted rope has the same effect as shearing a structure; it presses together the fibers in the middle. If the fibers aren't too slick, they'll break before they slide apart. This tension-induced compression is especially obvious with fluffy yarn. Spinning, either for ropemaking or prior to weaving, dominated many ancient cultures, consuming a large fraction of the working hours of women, who in almost every case performed the task.\n\nNature never does this wonderful trick. She makes her long threads and ropes as continuous strands\u2014spider silk, for instance. Or, as in vines, she uses a system of joinery based on something other than helical twisting and frictional resistance to shear between fibers. Not that multiply stranded helices are at all rare in nature's load-bearing structures\u2014the double helix of microtubules (Figure 2.2) and the triple helix of collagen are far from obscure\u2014but these twists don't gain tensile strength by resisting shear. Spinning is a human activity, despite our misuse of the word for thread extrusion by silkworms and spiders.\n\nOur protruding beam bent simply and obviously when weighted at the end. Less obviously almost the same thing can happen when a long structure gets its ends pushed together. The classic case is an erect column, what the old Egyptians and Greeks liked to put around temples to keep their roofs aloft. The force of gravity pulls down on the column; since the column doesn't accelerate downward, forces must be balanced, and the ground must be pushing upward. Thus, overall, the column faces a compressive stress. But as soon as it starts to bend, a compressively loaded column develops tension in the side that's outermost, as in Figure 7.4. The side inside the bend experiences additional compression, and shear develops within the column just as it does in a beam. So except for very short, fat columns, where the significant hazard is simple crushing, columns, just like beams, get loaded in tension, compression, and shear. The main difference is that the column can buckle in any direction, whereas most beams know which side is up and which is down and therefore where tension and compression will occur. A proper I-beam should be higher than wide, while columns can't deviate far from circularity.\n\nTENSION VERSUS COMPRESSION\n\nSay you're designing a structure and you're free to use struts and ties in any combination. What factors bear on your choices? Primary among them are the properties of the materials at your disposal. Of these properties, what matters most is relative performance under tensile and compressive loading.\n\nStone, bricks, masonry, and other ceramic materials are terrific at resisting compression. If you put something on top of them, they stay put and stay intact. An ordinary brick can support several hundred thousand pounds. Conversely, these ceramics resist tension poorly, with at least ten times less strength. In part that goes along with their stiffness; again, stiff materials tend to be brittle\u2014which is to say that they don't resist crack propagation. Cracks present far more of a problem in tensile loading, which tends to spread them apart, than in compressive loading, which has no such reprehensible habit. In addition, the traditional cements and mortars used to join bricks and stones are only weakly adhesive as well as being brittle themselves. Since in our uncertain world, purely compressive loading can't be guaranteed, a little tension insurance pays, presumably why (as one learns in Exodus 5:7-5) sun-dried bricks do best with a little straw. It's also why plaster for cornices was made with horsehair.\n\nFIGURE 7.4. _Counterintuitively, local tension can crack a column that overall is loaded in compression_.\n\nHowever, if you can be assured that all loads will be compressive, and if weight economy isn't uppermost (as it is in structures that move), then ceramics are excellent materials. Their high stiffness makes it safe to ignore their weight in all but very large structures; bricks at the bottom of a wall aren't squashed much by the ones above. Gothic cathedrals, truly spectacular structures, must be the greatest things humans have ever built that tolerate only compressive loading. Vaulted roofs press outward on the walls, and external buttresses press inward, with the two in very close balance. The less massive the walls, the better must be that balance, or the walls\u2014just piles of stones\u2014will topple inward or outward. Building a cathedral entailed a lot of mid-course adjustments of vaulting and buttressing to keep everything in proper compression. Failures were common during construction, in part why building one sometimes took a century. St. Peter's in Rome took no less than 181 years to construct, but St. Pierre's of Beauvais, France, retains the record. Two spectacular collapses punctuated 350 years of intermittent building, and the cathedral remains unfinished to this day. But once correctly done, a cathedral proves durable and maintenance-free. The same can be said for stone arch bridges, aqueducts, and, of course, pyramids.\n\nRopes, cables, chains, and vines resist tension, but compression causes immediate flabby collapse. Hammocks are loaded in tension, and suspension bridges are tensile structures except for their towers and roadways. Tensile structures form subsystems that support elevators and the masts of cranes. Tension in the rubber walls of tires\u2014as much as air pressure\u2014keeps automobile bodies off the road, and tension in their outer fabric maintains the shape of blimps. But compared with compression- resisting structures, the items are fewer and smaller, and more of them are contemporary.\n\nOne of the best things about metals is that they take pulls and pushes about equally well. That suits them for use in many of our best-loved devices, which must withstand both stresses, sometimes in rapid alternation. Consider the framework that resists a car's weight and motion as the car speeds along a bumpy road. Or think of the hull of a ship in a wavy ocean. If the ship spans two wave peaks, its ends get pushed upward and its middle sags. If the ship straddles a single wave, its middle gets pushed upward and its ends sag. The fine ability of metals to deal with both compression and tension means that the casual observer often can't guess from structural details what kind of load a particular member was designed to resist.\n\nBiological materials differ only slightly. Like cables, our muscles, tendons, and ligaments resist only tension. Muscles pull and are pulled on, and you suffer pulled muscles, not pushed ones. Like steel beams, our bones and cartilage resist both compression and tension. The differences, though, are significant. For one thing, purely compression-resisting elements, such as bricks, almost never occur. Even teeth must resist tension; the way we load our teeth, imagine how much more prone to breakage they'd be if weaker in tension. For another thing, biological materials don't behave as similarly in tension and compression as do metals. Wood, thoroughly fibrous stuff, is about twice as good at taking tension as compression: Bend a live twig or a thin dowel, and it buckles on the inside of the curve before cracking on the outside. Bone, by contrast, is slightly stronger in compression than tension. Not surprisingly, mollusk shells are stronger in compression. What's interesting about shells and other biological ceramics is that most are only about three times weaker in tension, far less than the tenfold of conventional ceramics of human manufacture. That's of course the advantage of being composites or foams.\n\nTIE VERSUS STRUT\n\nNot surprisingly, both human and natural technologies use both struts and ties. But functional requirements don't fix the exact mix of the two. The designer of something complex, like a large bridge, has considerable flexibility in deciding how much to rely on struts and how much on ties. I think each technology has a perceptible bias in its designs. Historically, humans have done better at handling compressive loading; in struts we trust, not in the ties that bind. Nature prefers to pull and is fonder of ties.\n\nSuch a bias will have a dramatic impact on the structures you'll make. If you stand with struts, you might build an arch bridge (Figure 7.5), in which almost everything is compressively loaded, and the ends push (unsuccessfully) the banks of the river apart. That's why arches figure so prominently in stone-based classical architecture. If you're hung up on ties, you'll be more inclined toward a suspension bridge, where the ends try to narrow the river. Besides cost, properties, and availability of materials, several other factors might bear on the choice between struts and ties.\n\n\u2022 As we shift attention from materials to structures, size takes on renewed importance. But it does so in counterintuitive ways\u2014the general point of Chapter 3. Fishing line labeled \"Ten pound test\" can take a ten-pound pull no matter how long a piece you unreel. To support a given load, a long tie need be no thicker than a short one, at least until the weight of the tie itself\u2014self-loading\u2014 becomes significant. (Digression: In theory an earth satellite can dangle a rope down to the earth's surface yet stay in orbit. If the satellite's center of mass is high enough so the orbit is geosynchronous, the rope won't even shift around. Terrific. For something to get into orbit thereafter, it simply climbs up the rope, pushing upward just enough so the center of mass of the whole system doesn't drop. So what's wrong? Physics isn't offended, but material science fails. No known material has sufficient tensile strength for a rope that long not to break of its own weight).\n\nFIGURE 7.5. _The arch of an arch bridge is loaded in compression, while the main cables and suspenders of a suspension bridge are loaded in tension._\n\nFor compressive loading, though, making something longer makes it weaker. A short stick is harder than a long one to break by pushing the ends together. Try it with any long, thin, stiff thing such as a dowel, a soda straw, or a strand of spaghetti. The guilty party is sideways buckling, to which the long one is more vulnerable. Proportionately increasing the thickness of a strut as its length increases doesn't solve the problem. As noted in Chapter 3, doubling the size of a strut-supported system without changing its shape doubles the stress on the struts. To keep the stress constant, their thickness must increase disproportionately.\n\nNature appreciates the problem of scaling struts. Among trees an increase in height comes with a disproportionately great increase in trunk diameter. The bones of large terrestrial mammals make up a larger fraction of their body masses than do the bones of small mammals. The skeleton of a 10-pound cat makes up about 7 percent of its weight; a 130-pound person is 8.5 percent skeleton; a 1,300-pound horse is 10 percent; the skeleton of a 15,000-pound elephant is all of 13 percent of its weight. In fact, even these increases in skeleton don't keep all mammals equivalently sturdy, and the larger ones are more fragile than they appear. As D'Arcy Thompson poetically puts it, \"Elephant and hippopotamus have grown clumsy as well as big, and the elk is of necessity less graceful than the gazelle.\"\n\nThus when scaled up in size, the strut gets into trouble that the tie knows nothing about. Gibbons provide an instructive case, since they both walk on two feet and swing branch to branch (brachiate) from two arms. Their arms are loaded almost entirely in tension as they swing. The weight to be managed may be the same, but the bones of their arms are longer and thinner than the bones of their legs. Ties can be long, but struts should be kept as short as possible.\n\n\u2022 The stability of struts and ties differs in a curious but entirely reasonable way. Once a strut starts buckling, it does so more and more, and it quickly collapses. The failures of the cathedral at Beauvais must have been scary. Problem: As soon as a strut begins to bend, it loses strength, and the more it bends, the weaker it gets. In part that instability comes from the increasing leverage of the bent strut as it moves outward. In part it comes from the way crosswise cracks extend ever faster as buckling proceeds. As an engineer, Michael French, pointed out, once Samson pushed enough to bow the columns of the temple by some critical amount, he could ease up and let the roof do the rest.\n\nIn this respect a tie is intrinsically stable. Stretch a tie between two posts, and hang a weight in the middle; the tie will deflect downward. More weight means more deflection, as either the posts bend or the tie stretches. But at no point does the process become self-sustaining; clotheslines pose few hazards. For stability as well as for scaling up to larger size, ties do better than struts. Once again, nature responds rationally. Larger mammals may be bonier, but they're no more muscular. Forty percent muscle does for us all.\n\n\u2022 But building with ties is trickier than building with struts. Struts go together easily; they stack, with gravity providing the glue. Ties are hard to connect to each other or to struts, as we've noted several times already. The technologies of fasteners and adhesives have challenged every culture that has built things by any scheme other than piling rocks or blocks one upon another. In a dome, for instance, tension loads the lower periphery. Great tensile chains of iron, hidden within the masonry, encircle Brunelleschi's great dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy. By making rings in which the chain connects only to itself, Brunelleschi circumvented the problem of tensile fastening. Another problem for ties is gravitational loading. Most of our structures extend upward from the earth's surface, something that can be done with struts alone but not solely with ties. Wooden ships provide an especial challenge to effective joinery, and by long tradition shipwrights enjoy more prestige than carpenters; according to an old saying, even a poor shipwright makes a good carpenter.\n\nNot that ties aren't used in ordinary construction. Conventional frame houses with peaked roofs have horizontal members (stringers) that run at right angles to the ridge of the roof; they often form the floor of an attic. Two roof supports (rafters) and a stringer form a triangle (Figure 7.6). Gravitationally loaded, the roof will tend to force the walls apart; the stringer is the tie that binds the walls. Alternatives are available, so a peaked roof needn't be tied by stringers. One, again, is external buttressing, providing a counterforce pushing inward at the tops of the walls, as in Gothic cathedrals and some A-frame houses. Another, which gives my house the pleasant openness of so-called cathedral ceilings, is a large, stiff beam just under the ridge that's held up by inconspicuous vertical columns. That lengthwise, horizontal ridge piece then keeps the rafters from spreading.\n\nFor some reason (or, more likely, reasons), tensile joinery doesn't faze nature. Once in a while a tendon pulls loose from a bone, but the commonest examples of tensile disconnection\u2014leaves, seeds, and fruits from their parent plants\u2014can't be dismissed as cases of failure.\n\nFIGURE 7.6. _A conventionally framed house in which stringers act as tension-resisting elements and a post and beam house that manages without stringers_.\n\n\u2022 Getting the stiffness that we humans like presents difficulties for a structure that makes elaborate use of ties. A chain or steel cable may be stiff in our original sense of material stiffness\u2014that is, in resisting stretch when pulled lengthwise. But it isn't stiff in a structural sense; it bends with little provocation. That's the downside of the length and slenderness tolerable in ties. Since nature tolerates low structural stiffness, she's better poised to take advantages of ties.\n\nNowhere have we used tensile ties on a larger scale than in suspension bridges. Aside from primitive suspension bridges built of vines, the scheme goes back only as far as the availability of reasonably cheap metal\u2014first wrought iron and then steel\u2014that could resist tension. (Most suspension bridges use steel wire for both the main cables, in wrapped bundles, and the road hangers. But a lovely wrought-iron one spans the gorge of the Avon at Bristol, England. It has no wires. Bone-shaped links (eyebars) make up the main cables, with transverse pins connecting them, and the hangers are very long rods that descend from those connecting pins. The great engineer Isambard Brunel designed it in 1831; when it was built in 1864, steel had become cheaper, and the bridge was anachronistic.) Suspension bridges are flexible things. More than a century ago railroads found them unsuitable. A steam locomotive is a heavy, moving load\u2014a bad combination for the continued integrity of both bridge and rail- bound train. On at least one occasion the flexibility of a suspension bridge proved its undoing. The best-known American bridge disaster was the plunge of the Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge into Puget Sound in 1940. The immediate cause wasn't just wind but the violent oscillations that resulted from the interaction of wind from a particular direction with the deck of this narrow, graceful, but flexible bridge. Collapse took an hour or so as spectators were awed, and a movie\u2014shown to almost every engineering student since\u2014 recorded the event.\n\nTENSION VERSUS COMPRESSION, AGAIN\n\nRecall that a load stretches the top of a protruding beam, compresses the bottom of the beam, and shears the middle. How might we design an efficient beam? One popular solution is the I-beam, so called because its cross section looks like the letter _I_. Its excellence depends in part on the similarity in performance of metals under tension and compression; the identical upper and lower flanges (the serifs of the _1)_ represent lots of material well above and below the center line so they can better oppose the beam's bending. Vertical \"webbing,\" which takes the shear, separates the flanges.\n\nFIGURE 7. 7. _A protruding truss. The compressively loaded elements are the darker and fatter ones_.\n\nThe word \"webbing\" hints at how one can do a bit better. We can and do replace it with a latticework of diagonal elements\u2014an actual web. To withstand shear, the elements of the lattice have to run diagonally, since a set of verticals would fold very nicely as the protruding beam sagged into a parallelogram; recall Figure 7.2. When the beam is equipped with this latticework, as in Figure 7.7, we call it a truss, but little has really changed. Consider that lattice more closely: Half its diagonals are loaded in tension and the other half in compression. As with the flanges, if we're using metal, the diagonals can be identical. But weight might be saved if we use cables for the tensile diagonals. Of course we'll lose a little overall stiffness, and we're limited to downward loads lest the cables come slack. In fact, we can push the logic a step farther. If the load is consistently downward, then the top flange always feels tension and can also be replaced by a cable\u2014again if we accept the loss of stiffness. Struts and ties thus emerge as identifiable items, solid bars and cables.\n\nNature uses such specialized beams to support the heads of many mammals, as D'Arcy Thompson pointed out long ago. As in Figure 7.8, the lower, compression-resisting flange is provided by the bony centers of the vertebrae of the neck and thorax and the cartilaginous intervertebral disks between them. The tension-resisting upper flange is provided by muscle and by a ligament, the one mentioned in Chapter 2 as having a lot of stretchy elastin. The compression-loaded diagonals are bony extensions.  of the vertebrae, and the tension-loaded diagonals, running oppositely, are made up of more muscle, tendon, and ligament. The whole thing may be flexible, but being stiff-necked isn't the object. The trusses used in human technology, by contrast, rarely make any distinction between their struts and their ties. In a sense, we construct only struts and use half of them as ties, accepting a slight loss in weight economy for simpler construction and greater stiffness.\n\nFIGURE 7.8. _Another protruding truss, this one (thoroughly idealized) the vertebrae, intervertebral disks, muscles, tendons, and ligaments supporting the head of a large mammal. Tension-resisting elements are shown as lines._\n\nA horse carries most of its weight on its forelegs. These don't attach to the backbone and rib cage any more directly than the attachment between the wheels and body of a car. Even the best of roads have bumps, and so teeth don't get rattled or torsos tossed, proper vehicles need suspensions\u2014springs, at least, and perhaps dampers (as mentioned in connection with spider silk) to keep the springs from repeated rebounding. When road and body move closer, the springs are compressed; when they move apart, the springs are stretched. But both horse and car have weight, so the springs bear loads even when the road behaves itself\u2014what's called preloading. A suspension can be designed so either preloading and active loading can be either tensile or compressive. A weight (such as a rider) or an antiweight (such as a pothole) can be made to work either way, depending on how the suspension's components are arranged.\n\nFIGURE 7.9. _Automobile bodies are commonly supported on compressed coil springs near each wheel, while horses and other quadrupedal mammals have tensile suspensions; their torsos effectively hang from their pectoral girdles and forelegs_.\n\nHorse and car happen to use opposite loading and preloading. As Figure 7.9 shows, a horse's body is hung from its pectoral girdle. Sturdy muscles, tendons, and ligaments descend from the scapulae (shoulder blades, in humans) to the backbone and rib cage. An increase in weight on the horse raises the tension on these components above their tensile preloading; compression of the whole system stretches its springs! Most cars have springs coiled underneath, arranged so an increase in the car's weight compresses them. Metal springs work well in either tension or compression, and cars have been built that (like horses) are really suspended from their suspensions. Such cars have a mildly disconcerting way of leaning inward rather than outward on turns, since their masses are centered below the level of attachment of their suspensions. Putting compressed springs underneath is simply more convenient, given the other imperatives and constraints on the designer. We make wide use not only of tensile and compressive springs but of bending, torsional, and even occasional shearing ones as well\u2014springs that resist every load that's been mentioned.\n\nNature's springs are much less diverse. Only a few, such as the hinge pads of scallops and other bivalve mollusks, absorb energy by compressing rather than stretching. Even less often, as in the wishbones of birds during flight, do bones or exoskeletal components act as bending springs like the leaf springs on some cars. The vast preponderance of natural springs works by stretching.\n\nDeliberate preloading, though, is more than a minor convenience for vehicle suspensions. Both technologies make wide use of the device to ensure that materials will be loaded in the ways they withstand best. We put preloading to particularly good use in what we appropriately call prestressed concrete. We cast a large piece with steel rods running through it and then tighten the rods, or else we stretch and hold rods in tension while concrete hardens around them. Either way, the steel is preloaded in tension, and the concrete in compression. Stretching the concrete then just relieves preexisting compression and doesn't tickle its dangerous weakness in tension. We sometimes get even fancier. Using curved rods, we can prestress a long beam with a bend that will then be offset by its weight and live load. Prestressing doesn't simply provide reinforcing and crack stopping, as when concrete is cast around rods of steel; it's a finer thing altogether.\n\nJust as a material that behaves badly in tension can be precompressed, so a material that does worse in compression can be pretensioned. Wood is such a material, and trees do exactly that. The inner portion of a tree trunk, which bending affects little, is normally compressed by more than just the weight of wood above it. Additional compression comes from tensile squeezing by the wood surrounding it. When the trunk bends, the outside of the bend is stretched, a load wood withstands well. The inside of the bend is compressed, a load wood takes poorly. But that compression mainly relieves preexisting tension, thus making better use of wood as a structural material.\n\nTHE FORMS OF TIES AND STRUTS\n\nCables and bars are unmistakably different, even when both are made of the same material. The best shape for a tie will rarely coincide with the best shape for a strut\u2014surely no surprise at this point. At the least, compression elements should be relatively short, whereas the length of tensile elements doesn't much matter. Both technologies recognize the principle, but they apply and compromise it in different ways.\n\nSuspension bridges, again, give a good view of our best efforts: They're big, their builders care about minimizing cost and self-loading, they use both tensile and compressive components, and most of their components are visible at a glance. The tensile elements\u2014the main cables and the road- suspending descenders\u2014are long and thin. The compressive structures, the towers, have a sturdier look. If made of masonry, as in nineteenth-century designs, the towers are imposing piles, tall but far from thin. Even if made of steel, they're much fatter than even the main cables. Steel towers may be made of latticework grids or their equivalent in plated tubes. But they work much like solid columns in that individual struts (or their equivalent in the walls of the plates) are fairly short. Buckling must be prevented, something that just isn't a problem with tensile loading.\n\nOther structures also follow the general rule of keeping individual compressive elements short. The two-by-fours that form the vertical studs in the walls of a house may be eight or ten feet long, and individually they're prone to side-to-side buckling. But we nail siding, Sheetrock, and various kinds of paneling to the studs and thus make them into an interactively self-bracing array. Even flimsy siding can keep the studs from buckling; preventing the initial lateral movement is easy even if the process gets more forceful further on.\n\nIn nature the picture is less clear, even with a great diversity of tensile elements to look at. Purely tensile structures may be quite thin relative to their lengths; look at the threads of a spider web or at a hundred-foot- long seaweed. But compressive structures aren't always fat\u2014consider the trunks of tropical trees and the leg bones of gazelles and storks\u2014although compressive structures are thicker relative to their lengths than are tensile ones. Tall, woody terrestrial plants have evolved on several occasions. No lineage has made extensive use of external tensile braces\u2014guy ropes\u2014 despite the fine strength of wood loaded in tension. Still more peculiar, to me at least, is how arthropods so often use very skinny compression elements. At least some members of each major group of arthropods have what seem to be counterproductively thin appendages: Long, skinny legs characterize crane flies (insects), harvestmen (arachnids), spider crabs (crustaceans), some centipedes (myriapods), and sea spiders (pycnogonids). All are jointed and have muscles inside, so they must be compressively loaded. Figure 7.10 shows a few of these mechanically bizarre creatures. Our book of biomechanics still lacks whole chapters!\n\nFIGURE 7.10. _Some arthropods that have very long, thin legs: scutigerid centipede (left), harvestman or daddy longlegs (center top), crane fly (center bottom), and sea spider or pycnogonid (right, considerably enlarged)_.\n\nOne group of animals deserves special mention. Most sponges, as described in Chapter 4, are supported by tiny hard spicules of calcium salts or silica (essentially glass) laced together by flexible pads of a protein much like that of our tendons. The entire group of animals lacks substantial muscles, so they don't need long, stiff struts for their ties to pull against. With that major constraint relaxed, the general rule about short compressive elements becomes decisive. Their hard parts, the compression-resisting spicules, are less than a millimeter long. Sponges aren't all small or weak\u2014individuals three feet high survive hurricanes and typhoons\u2014but sponges built this way are fairly flexible.\n\nA small jump from sponges leads to something we haven't yet encountered: an attractive-looking scheme that's little used by either technology. Where struts and ties are distinct elements, we expect the struts to form a continuous, interconnected network with ties inserted here and there. How else to resist anything but purely tensile loads? In fact, the continuously interconnected network of struts isn't crucial. Structures that resist bending, twisting, and compression can be made in which the continuous array\u2014one hesitates to call it a framework\u2014consists only of ties. The struts need make no contact with one another. Whether such a structural scheme was invented by a specific person isn't clear, but R. Buckminster Fuller took out the key patents and named the scheme tensegrity. In rich language for a patent, he spoke of \"islands of compression in a sea of tension.\"\n\nA picture such as Figure 7.11 serves better than words for explaining how a mast or tower, for instance, can stand up without interconnected struts. The key is putting ties where pushing, bending, or twisting the structure as a whole increases their tensile loading. Ties, after all, resist only tensile loads and collapse helplessly under any other kind. Masts and towers aren't the only possible tensegrities; domes, for instance, aren't hard to design. One can, I'm sure, make a fabric tent with noninterconnecting pockets for stiff battens; perhaps it has already been done. The main disadvantages of structures based on tensegrity are those of tensile construction in general: the lack of stiffness and the dependence on fasteners. So tensegrities remain mainly an art form.\n\nSponges may make some use of the concept; at least their spicules most often don't interconnect directly. But the arrays of spicules bear only limited resemblance to Fuller's designs, probably because even tensegrities are stiffer than optimal for sponges\u2014animals that accept rather than minimize flexibility. Spicular skeletons\u2014that is, tension-resisting tissue with small pieces of hard material embedded in them\u2014aren't limited to sponges. They occur in some soft corals, sea cucumbers, stalked barnacles, and elsewhere. These look even less Fulleresque and more like steps in a continuum between deviant tensegrity structures and composite materials.\n\nFIGURE 7.11. _A tensegrity tower or mast. The strutted tetrahedrons don't touch except through sets of ties, yet the thing will stand erect. Imagine pulling on a rope and raising the flagpole as well as the flag; a tensegrity tower permits such intuitive preposterousness_.\n\nMy best guess about why tensegrity hasn't been elaborated by nature is as much of an evasion as those guesses I gave for the absence of metals. Where stiffness is important, tensegrities are too flexible. Where flexibility is tolerable, something better is available. We turn, then, to the ultimate expression of tensile support, hydrostatic systems.\n\nFLUID STRUTS AND HELICAL TIES\n\nSomething close to home for half of us. Consider the penis of yourself or your nearest and dearest; in an immediately evolutionary sense fitness depends on stiffness. Discontinuous struts were odd enough, but here's a stiff structure with no solid strut at all! Does a strut really have to be solid to resist compressive stress? In fact, it doesn't. Consider how the three ordinary states of matter behave. Solids resist tension, compression, and shear; liquids resist tension and compression; gases resist only compression. Thus all three states of matter fight back\u2014they resist compression\u2014when pushed into a corner. So a fluid, whether liquid or gas, might serve as a strut. That sounds peculiar, but maybe we just haven't taken a sufficiently broad view of possible struts. Fluid struts would certainly be economic; water and air are boundless resources. How, then, can we make them?\n\nMaking a fluid strut is simple. A tension-resisting sheath need only be wrapped around a body of compression-resisting fluid to get a structure that has a discrete shape as well as appreciable stiffness, strength, and so forth. We're talking about nothing more than a balloon of air or a canvas fire hose of water. Not to prolong any suspense, we're also talking about blimps and buildings supported by air pressure as well as about lots of worms and a host of cells\u2014plus plenty of penises. Of course the character of the structure depends a lot on whether it's filled with gas or liquid. Water is eight hundred times denser than air and much more resistant to compression. A water-filled balloon has an almost constant volume whatever the load, but its shape reflects gravity's downward pull. The shape of an air-filled balloon cares little about gravity, but its volume varies more. We lack a single word for such inflated, pressurized, balloonlike structures: If water-filled, they're hydrostatic; if air-filled, they're aerostatic.\n\nAs practical pressurized bodies, rubber balloons have serious limitations. For one thing, rubber isn't too stiff, so the whole structure ends up a bit flabby. For another, rubber's stress-strain plot is nearly straight rather than concave upward. As a result (and as brought up in Chapter 5), balloons are prone to aneurysms; a cylindrical one doesn't inflate uniformly. Furthermore, inflation stores up a potentially dangerous amount of elastic energy; a balloon fails violently. Using a less stretchy wall material improves the situation. But practical and versatile aerostats and hydrostats depend on complex, multicomponent walls containing tension-resisting fibers. These most often run not lengthwise or in circular rings around the cylinder, but in helices, as in Figure 7.12\n\nThe two technologies use this general scheme in different ways and to different extents. Humans make relatively limited use of it, and a gas usually serves as the fluid of choice, as in air-supported buildings. Sometimes, though, we fill the inside with liquid, as in collapsible fire hoses and fiber-reinforced storage tanks. Nature uses the device extensively, and her fluid of choice is either water or some muscle or mucus. Here and there she does use gas, as in various floats, such as that of the notorious Portuguese man-of-war.\n\nWhile the classic zeppelins had rigid frames and internal gas bags, modern blimps are proper aerostats, with the helium inside doing structural service as the compressive counterpart to the tensile skin. Walking into an inflatable building through the antechamber\u2014a real breezeway\u2014 may feel a little strange, but you can't feel any increased internal pressure once you are inside. All the inflatable rubber tires of our vehicles do the same thing on a smaller scale but with higher pressures. But none of these applications is both common and large. Hydrostats are scarcer still. Besides the hoses and tanks already mentioned, a few barges for carrying liquid cargo have been built as tensile bags, as have the skins of large rockets with internal fluid propellants.\n\nFIGURE 7.12. _If a cylinder that's wrapped with helical fibers is compressed, the fiber angle increases; if it is stretched, the fiber angle decreases_.\n\nNature may rarely inflate with air, but her water-filled hydrostats are wonderfully diverse in appearance and function. In addition to cases already mentioned, they provide the main stiffening for the tiny tube feet of starfish and sea urchins. They add stiffening to that provided by the skeleton in swimming sharks. And they contain the pressurized water that a squid squirts in its jet propulsion system. To understand how these schemes work, we need to look at how the volume of a cylindrical hydrostat changes with alterations in its length, as in Figure 7.13. At one extreme the cylinder is squashed into a volumeless disk with the fibers running circumferentially, while at the other end it's a volumeless line with the fibers lengthwise. The cylinder has its greatest volume almost midway between, where reinforcing fibers run helically at a fifty-five- degree angle\u2014a little more circumferentially than lengthwise. At that angle an increase in internal pressure has the least chance of increasing the volume of the cylinder and an equal tendency to make the cylinder get longer or fatter. That specific angle represents a divide between two ways that nature uses hydrostats.\n\nFIGURE 7.13. _The relationship between volume and length as fiber angle (noted on the curve) is changed. The helical fibers of the hydrostat are assumed to be inextensible. Beneath the curve the hydrostat is limp; above the curve it has exploded._\n\nConsider how a squid squirts a jet of water. It has an outer mantle with muscles running almost circumferentially around its girth and helical fibers running more lengthwise than circumferentially. Contracting these muscles might make the mantle get longer (as when you squeeze a cylinder of clay or dough), but that would make the fibers run even more nearly lengthwise, moving the system to the right on the graph and reducing its volume. Water doesn't compress; instead it squirts out as a jet, and the squid is suddenly elsewhere.\n\nAlternatively consider a limp worm that wants to burrow. If it's a fairly simple, unsegmented worm, fibers in its outer cuticle run almost circumferentially. Contracting lengthwise muscles might make the worm get fatter, but that would make the fibers run even more hoop-wise, moving it to the left on the graph and reducing the worm's volume. Since the worm is closed, what happens is that the muscle contraction greatly increases its internal pressure, stiffens it, and facilitates burrowing. Contracting muscle on one side of the body curves as well as pressurizes it, so the worm can move by manipulating its hydrostat. That's good for the worm, although perhaps not so good for us; we're explaining (among other things) how some parasitic worms can make their way through our flesh.\n\nAnother application of this mechanism doesn't involve a passive core of compression-resisting water, blood, and guts but instead uses active muscle throughout. Muscle of course can only shorten, so all muscular devices need some way to extend\u2014either initially or when getting reset for their next pull. If a cylinder has a constant volume, then decreasing its diameter must make it lengthen. That's how our tongues, the arms and tentacles of squid and octopus, and even the trunks of elephants manage to extend. These \"muscular hydrostats\" are versatile. Muscles can be arranged so the overall cylinder extends relatively slowly and forcefully for a short distance (as does an elephant's trunk) or relatively rapidly and less forcefully for a longer distance (as does a squid's tentacle). We'll defer more specific explanation until we consider the general topic of leverage. The general theme is what matters here; resisting compression, what struts do, doesn't require solid materials.\n\nTwo final questions about aerostats and hydrostats. First, why does nature make elaborate and creative use of hydrostatic support in aquatic systems but rarely use them in terrestrial ones? While hydrostats can't be made without water, even terrestrial creatures are full of the stuff. Our tongues and penises, some plant cells and small stems, and a few other cases don't come close to the several phyla of worms, to snail and starfish feet, to all cephalopod arms, and to sharks. I suspect, and the suspicion may be relevant to human use of the mechanism, that gravity poses a heavy problem. Hydrostats can't achieve great stiffness, penises notwithstanding, a serious disability where gravity dominates and organisms must extend above the ground. Tree trunks and long bones, for instance, must not be prone to bending if trees and mammals are to remain erect.\n\nThe second question concerns one of those odd omissions in nature. She makes no blimps\u2014no lighter-than-air craft. Flight by heavier-than-air craft doesn't come cheaply, dispersal matters in nature's scheme of things, and a lighter-than-air flier should be splendidly well suited for completely passive dispersal. Is making hydrogen beyond nature's ability? Unlikely\u2014photosynthesis in every green plant starts by splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen. Every one of our cells continuously removes hydrogen from fat or carbohydrate as it rechannels stored chemical energy. My best guess, but one lacking great conviction, invokes scaling. Nature starts small and perhaps finds a tiny blimpish seed or fruit hard to make or not too useful. To keep the thing buoyant, wall thickness must not exceed some fixed fraction of diameter, so a very small blimp must have a very thin wall, raising difficulties of gas penetration and mechanical integrity.\n\nThis book uses natural technology to provide perspective on our own. Going beyond a scientist's analysis to an engineer's synthesis can aid in gaining that perspective. As an exercise in creative synthesis, you might try devising (on paper) an alternative technology based on ropes, hydrostats, and other tensile schemes. Imagine a culture whose solid materials resist only tension and not compression, a culture in a world in which compression can be resisted only by fluids, either gaseous or liquid. How might buildings, vehicles, furniture, and other everyday structures and machines look and work?\nChapter 8\n\nENGINES FOR THE MECHANICAL WORLDS\n\nUp to now we've mainly looked at static systems\u2014at the geometric, material, and structural aspects of buildings, bridges, and their living counterparts. We turn now to dynamic systems, ones that move themselves or their parts. Whether they are living or not, the same basic principles must apply, but once again the practicalities will prove remarkably different.\n\nMaking moving machinery involves two or three kinds of component. First, energy must be fed into the system. Neither natural nor human technology really _makes_ energy in any normal sense, but instead each manages to get it from external sources. Bending the ordinary definition a little, we'll label as \"engines\" all devices that feed nonmechanical energy into mechanical systems. These engines use forms of energy, such as heat and electricity, to push, pull, swell, shrink, bend, turn, or slide. Second, the mechanical energy has to be applied to a specific task, such as galloping, grinding grist, or gathering gold. Stretching another definition, we'll call all the requisite coupling devices, from simple cables and shafts to complex pulleys and gears, transmissions. Third\u2014at least sometimes\u2014 mechanical energy is stored for a while between being generated by an engine and being used to move something around. The energy may be supplied in pulses (as with the separate firings of an engine's cylinders), or its task may be intermittent (as with any back-and-forth saw) or it may be needed in more concentrated packets (as when the slowly developed momentum of the hammer suddenly assails the nail). We'll call all such energy accumulators batteries. The focus of this chapter will be engines; of the next, transmissions and batteries.\n\nBoth technologies use energy for purposes other than moving matter around: for such things as biological growth and the synthesis of useful chemicals, for heating bodies and buildings, and for communications with nerves or with wires. The big bang, where it all began, left aside, the ultimate source of almost all this energy is the sun. Living systems capture it through the photosynthetic activity of plants and bacteria. Human technology gets most of its energy from the same process, preferring, though, the well-aged product, fossil fuels. Both technologies make a little use of aero- and hydropower, ultimately just different pathways for obtaining solar energy. We get some additional energy from nuclear reactions and a very tiny bit from geothermal sources, neither of which is a significant source for nature. Finally, we co-opt nature's engines themselves\u2014our own muscles and those of our domestic animals. Figure 8.1 puts all this energy transfer in diagrammatic form. It should point up two things: the central position of photosynthesis for both technologies and the greater diversity of processes used by humans.\n\nAnother digression: Talking sensibly about motility requires a few additional terms in their scientific senses. So then . . .\n\n**Work**. It gets done when something that resists being moved is nonetheless moved some distance. Quantitatively it's the force that's used times the distance the thing moves. If you hoist a ten-pound something or other a foot upward, you've done ten foot-pounds of work. The resistance you're working against is the gravitational attraction between earth and weight. Lifting five pounds two feet does the same amount of work, irrespective of how the lifting is done. The same work is done on the object if, with a lever, pulley, or windlass, you exert only one pound while moving your end of the device ten feet. Only force times distance matters, and both must be in the same direction. Lever, pulley, and windlass are just transmissions.\n\nFIGURE 8.1. _How energy gets into the mechanical domains of the two technologies. The thicknesses of the connecting lines give a crude indication of the relative magnitude of the pathways._\n\n**Energy**. This is mysterious stuff. But the standard evasion, \"the capacity for doing work,\" will do for our mundane purposes. What matter here are two points. First, energy and work are nearly the same thing, and we measure both on a yardstick marked with the same units: foot-pounds, or calories, or (in official scientific usage) joules. Second, the notion of energy permits statement of some general rules about our physical universe. The first is what's called a conservation law: In any real process energy is neither created nor destroyed but is at most shifted from one form to another. When we say that energy is \"used,\" we really mean that it's transformed from a potentially useful form (the electricity in a battery or the high water behind a dam) into some less useful form (heat, in particular). Conservation laws serve us so well that a quantity such as energy is worth inventing just so we can state one.\n\n**Power**. It's simply how fast a process uses energy or does work\u2014energy or work divided by time. We measure it in horsepower, or foot-pounds per second, or (officially) watts. Quite straightforward, an engine's output power is how fast it does mechanical work, and a more powerful engine takes less time to do the same work. The elevator with the bigger motor gets you up in shorter order. Power can be viewed another way too: Force times distance divided by time is the same as force times speed. So, just as a certain amount of work can be done with any combination of force and distance, so a certain amount of power can be expended in any combination of force and speed. Things that swim and fly care about this last trade-off. One can invest an airplane's fuel in big, slowly turning propellers or small, rapidly spinning jets.\n\n**Efficiency**. Even though the notion isn't complicated, we need to be careful to use it precisely. Efficiency is what you get out of some device divided by what you put in. It's the weight of the elevator times the height it ascends divided by the energy consumed by its motor. If work or energy is the currency (energetic efficiency), then that conservation law just mentioned limits the quotient to one. You can't get an efficiency over one, or 100 percent. In short, you can't get something for nothing, or shorter, there's no free lunch. In our real world all mechanical devices have energetic efficiencies below 100 percent, which means that some energy ends up where it does you no good. If you run, you get hot, and the engine of your car needs a radiator to dispose of heat.\n\nThe main measures of an engine are power output (or power relative to weight) and efficiency. Relevant also, if a little less so, is how the power output of an engine changes as its operating speed changes. For instance, many of our electric motors deliver proper output with decent efficiency only within a very narrow range of speeds. The operating speeds of automobile engines, while less critical, are still so limited that the engines need complicated and costly transmissions. Old-fashioned steam engines were much more tolerant; steam-driven cars and locomotives connected their engines directly to their wheels.\n\nTHE VARIETY OF ENGINES\n\nNature and humans have engines of great importance and engines with minor roles. For contemporary humans the main players\u2014the prime movers, so to speak\u2014are heat engines. These include all the external- and internal-combustion engines that burn fuel to make steam or that move pistons or turbines directly\u2014almost all the engines we use to move our cars, boats, and airplanes. Nuclear power must be included here since it gets fed into our systems by transferring heat. A nuclear power plant uses heat from its reactor to generate steam, which then does the same job as the steam in a coal-fired plant. Our second team consists of electric motors, although we don't take electricity as such from the environment, so these aren't quite analogous to heat engines. Instead they're paired with generators as systems to transfer power from generating plant to kitchen. Electric motors serve the same role as the array of overhead shafts and descending belts that, in a nineteenth-century stream-side factory, drove all the machines from a common waterwheel. Beyond heat engines and electric motors, the list of engines grows long, but the overall contributions are slight: hydroelectric plants, windmills, tidal and wave-energy plants, and so forth.\n\nFor most of human history, the principal engine has been muscle\u2014 first human and then, increasingly, animal. To be useful, animals must be domesticated, trained, and their power harnessed toward plowing, hauling, or whatever else we want them to do. Harnesses\u2014transmissions, essentially\u2014were rudimentary before the Middle Ages. Waterpower\u2014as waterwheels\u2014played some role in the classical world, but wide use of wind power, except in the sails of boats, is more recent. By the Middle Ages both windmills and waterwheels were common. Hero (or Heron) of Alexandria invented a steam engine in the first century C.E. but the design wasn't auspicious for practical applications, as will be clear when we look at jet engines specifically. Thus our major engines are recent. Practical heat engines appeared in the eighteenth century, and electric motors came into wide use barely more than a century ago.\n\nNature's engines are of no greater fundamental diversity. The most familiar is muscle, as noted earlier, about 40 percent of the weight of a typical mammal. We also use motile cilia, microscopic cylinders that can actively bend, for such things as propelling sperm and moving mucus in our respiratory passages. Such cilia are widely used by animals both big and small for locomotion, pumping, and other purposes. (Curiously, motile cilia are absent in the entire phylum Arthropoda\u2014insects, crustaceans, arachnids, centipedes, and such. Recall the comments in Chapter 2 on the limitations imposed by one's lineage.) Beyond these relatively rapid major engines loom some slow but not insignificant ones, at least if we relax our zoocentric sense of speed enough to give plants proper attention; over its lifetime a corn plant or a tree lifts many times its own weight of water from soil to leaves. In addition, a few engines extract power directly from moving air and water, doing what windmills and waterwheels do, if in different ways.\n\n**ENGINE**|  **OUTPUT,WATTS\/KG**|  **OUTPUT,HP\/LB**  \n---|---|---  \n**18th-century steam pump**|  **10**|  **0.005**  \n**Cilia**|  **30**|  **0.02**  \n**Skeletal muscle**|  **200**|  **0.12**  \n**Electric motor**|  **200**|  **0.12**  \n**Automobile engine**|  **400**|  **0.24**  \n**Motorcycle engine**|  **1,000**|  **0.6**  \n**Aircraft engine, piston**|  **1,500**|  **0.9**  \n**Aircraft engine, turbine**|  **6,000**|  **3.6**\n\nTABLE 8.1. _The power output relative to mass of a variety of engines_.\n\nIf our criterion of excellence is power relative to mass, nature's best engines match only low-level examples of human technology. By this measure, modern heat engines are truly superb. Table 8.1 compares the power output (watts or horsepower) per unit mass (kilograms or pounds) for some living and nonliving engines\u2014devices we rarely consider at the same time.\n\nCOMBUSTION ENGINES\n\nAt some risk of oversimplification, heat\u2014that is, combustion\u2014engines can be divided two ways. Combustion may be external, with some working fluid carrying energy from the heater into the engine proper, as in all steam engines, whether piston-driven locomotives or modern steam turbines. Or it may be internal, as in our automobiles, where the burning of fuel in the cylinders generates the pressure that moves the pistons. The motion may be intermittent and reciprocating, as when pistons go to and fro. Or it may be continuous and rotational, as in all turbines, whether the steam-injection ones of power plants or internal-combustion jet engines.\n\nHeat engines are unique to human technology, and the obstacles to their development were formidable. No natural analogs provided hints for their design, understanding of the underlying science came slowly, and metallurgical and fabricational limits long precluded steady operation at high temperatures.\n\nThe earliest practical combustion engines were about what one might guess. Thomas Newcomen's mine pump (Figure 8.2), popular during much of the eighteenth century, was an external-combustion piston engine using steam at atmospheric pressure as the working fluid. Motion of the piston was generated not by expansion of steam in a cylinder but instead by the press of the atmosphere on the other side of the piston when a spray of water lowered the temperature and made the steam condense. Thus especially high temperatures, good pressure-resistant fittings, and carefully machined crankshafts were not needed; the engine made modest technological demands. Conversely, the low pressure difference (one atmosphere at most) demanded huge pistons to produce much power, and wasteful heating and cooling of the cylinder's walls guaranteed very low efficiency. Still, these huge, slow machines gave fine service, especially for pumping water out of coal mines, where fuel supply was not an issue.\n\nNineteenth-century steam engines were much better machines, efficient enough in weight and fuel consumption to move themselves and some payload around\u2014at least on hard rails and with gentle grades. James Watt, late in the eighteenth century, took advantage of improved metals and better machining to make steam push pistons instead of condensing the steam in the cylinder and getting only the push of the atmosphere outside. His engines were better in other ways as well. Paired steam inputs pushed the pistons in both directions, incoming water was preheated with waste heat, the cylinders were kept hot by condensing steam outside, and piston rods turned wheels rather than just rocked arms. Watt and his contemporaries conceived of the steam turbine\u2014after all, the principle is simply that of windmill or waterwheel\u2014but both the precision needed to construct such an engine and the availability of transmissions adequate for its high speeds delayed its practical realization until the present century.\n\nFIGURE 8.2. _The main components of Newcomen's steam engines of 1712 and thereafter. A huge rocker arm connected the piston's chain and the pump's chain. The power stroke of the piston was the downward one as steam was condensed by water sprayed into the cylinder. The counterweight then pulled the piston back up while more steam was let into the cylinder. In the early versions a person working the controls alternately sprayed in water and admitted steam._\n\nThe story of internal-combustion engines is a similar tale, needing only a time shift of fifty or a hundred years. Piston engines came into wide use toward the end of the nineteenth century, and turbines around the middle of the twentieth. What must be emphasized, again, is the novelty of this whole technology next to anything in nature. Only the fuels are similar: hydrocarbons resulting from the biosynthetic activities of organisms. Metals, high temperatures, gases at high pressures, the large size of early engines, the high speeds of modern ones, pistons, crankshafts, flywheels\u2014 none has a close natural analog. Even the basic mode of operation of heat engines is unnatural; these engines work by either pushing (stretching the point just a little for Newcomen's atmospheric engine) or rotating.\n\nWhy doesn't nature use anything like our heat engines? Because the fundamental rules that govern heat engines are alien to the living systems on our planet. And why is that? A heat engine needs not only a high temperature but also a difference in temperature\u2014both a hot source and a cooler sink. Down this temperature gradient energy will flow, as when hot coffee cools in air or warm water melts ice. The temperature difference sets an absolute limit on how good a heat engine can be. The basic rule is simple, but it does require that we use a temperature scale with a real zero point\u2014the coldest possible cold. To convert a Celsius (centigrade) scale to one with a real zero, just add 273\u00b0; to do the same with a Fahrenheit scale, add 459\u00b0. Using such a scale, the maximum efficiency equals the sink temperature divided by the source temperature with the result subtracted from one. (Multiply by 100 to get percent efficiency.) Thus one could get perfect efficiency (1.0 or 100 percent) only if the sink were at an unrealizable -273\u00b0 C or -459\u00b0 F or the source at an unthinkable infinite temperature. For a steam engine, the hotter the steam put in and the colder the steam finally released, the better this underlying thermodynamic efficiency.\n\nCompare what our technology does with what nature might do. We can easily use a source at 1,000\u00b0 C (1,800\u00b0 F) and a sink at the boiling point of water, 100\u00b0 C (212\u00b0 F); thermodynamic efficiency is then 71 percent\u2014not at all bad. Nature might use a source at 40\u00b0 C (104\u00b0 F) and a sink of 0\u00b0 C (273\u00b0 K), about the maximum range of temperature tolerated by active animals. If so, the efficiency of her engine will be less than 13 percent. For a more easily realized ten-degree difference, ideal efficiency drops to a disastrous 3 percent. And these maximal thermodynamic efficiencies always exceed those of real devices.\n\nIncidentally, nature's nonuse of heat engines carries a message that's familiar to almost every engineer but to few of the rest of us. Might we use the temperature difference between surface water and deep water in lakes or oceans to tap an unlimited and benign energy source? Yes, the energy is there and available; after all, a temperature difference indisputably exits. From the rule about energy conservation one can easily calculate that monumental quantities of energy are available. But the result is monumentally misleading. What must be factored in is the thermodynamic tax imposed by the small temperature difference; the energy used to run such things as pumps would most likely be greater than the energy obtained from the underlying resource.\n\nELECTRIC ENGINES AND GENERATORS\n\nThe other major engine of contemporary human technology is the electric motor. Practical versions range from microdevices a fraction of an inch in length to ones weighing many tons that drive the propellers of large ships. They perform a wide range of tasks with remarkable effectiveness and reliability. My not especially high-tech household has more than sixty small electric motors. Try such a count yourself, including such easily forgotten ones as the fans, compressor, and defrost timer of the refrigerator; you'll be surprised at how many you happily harbor. Electric motors are more efficient than combustion engines and don't get too hot when running. Still, their high efficiency can mislead us since (as noted earlier) most electric motors just provide output devices for large heat engines, much like multiple dumb terminals for a mainframe computer. Their heat engines are of course the fossil fuel and nuclear power converters in generating plants. (Hydro- and wind-powered generators make only a small contribution to our production of electricity.) Thus a full accounting should consider overall efficiency, from fuel to mechanical power output, including substantial losses in the electrical generating plant and transmission lines. We'll come back to that shortly.\n\nOnce again we're looking at a distinctly human class of engines. Electricity is common among organisms; every cell has a charge across its outer membrane, for instance, with potentials approaching a tenth of a volt. Not too many cells in a series would give quite a good voltage, nor would all that many, working in parallel, deliver an eventful current. Several kinds of electric fish modify muscles into arrays with series and parallel connections that deliver stunning performances, reportedly up to 650 volts. While that's an eclectic habit, it shows that producing electric power in quantity takes only minimal alteration of normal tissue and ordinary metabolic chemistry. Our muscles, even those of our hearts, may be electrically controlled, but they're not electrically powered.\n\nWhy doesn't nature build electric motors? Must these motors use unnatural wheels and axles and engage in unnatural rotational motion? Probably not. While all familiar electric motors rotate, rotation simply serves a technology that finds the wheel and axle easy to make and likes the versatility of belts and gears. Every kind of rotary electric motor has its linear or reciprocating counterpart. Linear engines have been developed for driving trains; the track forms half the motor. Short-stroke repetitive pullers (solenoids) do chores such as opening and shutting the water lines and drains of our washing machines; turn on the electricity, and a metal core moves forcefully through a coil. The earliest electric motors of Joseph Henry, in the United States, and Charles Wheatstone, in England, in the first half of the nineteenth century were reciprocating devices. One early reciprocating electric motor drove a pump the same way a Newcomen steam engine did. Closer to home, motors in which a piece of metal vibrates rapidly back and forth sometimes power electric razors, massagers, and reciprocating sanders.\n\nA more likely obstacle to living electric motors is that dullest of components' wire. Good conductivity comes hard without metals, as noted two chapters ago. The salt solutions of cells don't come close. For instance, a strong solution of potassium chloride (seventy-one grams per liter, a so-called one molar solution), an especially conductive brew, is still nine million times less conductive than copper. Equal performance would require that a copper wire a mere tenth of a millimeter across be replaced by a pipe of potassium chloride at least a foot in diameter. Nothing remotely appropriate to get power from generator to rotor exists in nature's armamentarium; electric motors are mainly practical in a metallic technology. Neuromuscular systems use electricity in a way peculiarly adapted to or limited by (take your choice) their low conductivity. In a nerve, electrical currents flow only for short distances. Long-distance transfer of information takes place by an odd scheme in which a local electrical event incites a similar event adjacent to it\u2014the way a wave travels across the ocean without moving any bit of water very far.\n\nElectric power's popularity comes from its handiness as a transportable intermediate form of energy. We generate electricity in one place and then transmit it for long distances at (to reduce power losses) several hundred thousand volts. For safety and convenience, we then reconvert the high-voltage electric power to lower voltage (240 and 120 volts, mainly) near the sites of use. We vertebrates do much the same thing to power our muscles, although we do it chemically rather than electrically. We move the sugar that results from carbohydrate digestion through a special set of veins to our livers, which store it (as a polymer, glycogen) and meter it out to the rest of the circulation. In muscle cells the sugar charges up a more immediately usable energy transfer system: Breakdown of sugar to either lactic acid (short term) or carbon dioxide and water (in sustained activity) converts adenosine diphosphate (ADP) to adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This last then feeds power into the actual muscular motor. The coupling of sugar breakdown to ATP synthesis in muscle has about the same function as the conversion of high- to low-voltage electricity in an electrical transformer.\n\nWIND AND WATERPOWER\n\nFirst, we should remind ourselves that getting power takes more than just air or water in motion. A windmill on a freely floating balloon won't turn; the balloon moves with the wind, and no apparent motion of the earth beneath helps at all. Having its feet on the ground matters as much for a windmill as having its rotor in the air. Extracting power requires a device that experiences a difference in speed: between air and ground for a windmill, between water and ground for a waterwheel, or between air and water for a balloon towing a submerged turbine. The requirement has the same basis as that for two poles on a functional battery, for different water levels on the two sides of a power-producing dam, and for a hot source and cold sink in a heat engine. It's incumbent on both our law-abiding technologies.\n\nFIGURE 8.3. _Three kinds of horizontal-shaft waterwheels_.\n\nThe classic water-powered engine is the waterwheel, of which Figure 8.3 shows several useful versions. Water runs over the top in overshot wheels, where the weight of the water (gravitational energy) pulls one side down. The water's motion (kinetic energy) pushes paddles on the bottom in undershot wheels. Water enters in the middle, tapping both resources, in breastshot wheels. Less commonly, a stream of water may fall against inclined paddles around a wheel with a vertical shaft. None of these arrangements achieves great efficiency, and for at least a century they've been superseded by various kinds of turbines\u2014rapidly turning rotors concealed within the ductwork of large hydroelectric plants. Small-scale hydropower as used by old grain and sawmills has been largely abandoned, as a result both of the widespread availability of electricity and good electric motors and of the change to the large-scale production of flour and lumber.\n\nThe classic wind-powered engine is the windmill, of which Figure 8.4 gives representative designs. Windmills are more recent devices than waterwheels for the same reason that internal-combustion engines followed external-combustion ones: The technological problems are more challenging. To develop much useful power, the rotors of windmills must be large, but if large, they become vulnerable to storms. The speed of atmospheric winds varies a lot more than does the pressure of water stored behind a dam. The basic setup is also less forgiving for primitive devices; a waterwheel needn't be completely immersed in water, but a windmill must work entirely in air.\n\nAlmost all windmills use one or the other of two physical mechanisms. The oldest ones had vertical shafts and turned in a horizontal plane. Like whirling cup anemometers, they turned in winds coming from any direction. But turning depended on blades that had higher drag when facing into the wind than when facing away from it, a sure recipe for inefficiency. A recent version is the Savonius rotor, which enjoyed a brief countercultural fashion since it could be made from a metal drum sliced lengthwise. By contrast, most windmills of the present (second, not third) millennium have horizontal shafts, with a set of propellerlike blades that rotate in a vertical plane. While the blades are useful during their entire circuit, the whole structure must turn to face the wind. Aerodynamically they work by producing lift, a force at a right angle to the wind direction, rather than depending on the difference in the drag of bodies facing into and away from the wind. Generating lift is a subtle business whose physical basis wasn't understood until the early part of this century. (The airplane's demand for really good wings and propellers of course provided the impetus.) Not surprisingly, old windmills were aerodynamically poor, and the drag on the blades and their supports was unnecessarily high relative to the power that could be extracted.\n\nFIGURE 8.4. _Windmills of various designs. Above are three with horizontal shafts: classic Dutch, American farm, and a modern high-efficiency design. Below are two less conventional ones with vertical shafts: Darrieus turbine and Savonius rotor_.\n\nAll these waterwheels, turbines, and windmills use wheels and axles. So none of this sounds like a technology that has natural analogs, and in a strictly mechanical sense it doesn't. Nevertheless, it does have energetic analogs. Sometimes nature draws power from speed differences between the ground and flows of air or water. We know of a number of cases and several different arrangements.\n\nConsider, as in Figure 8.5, a wind across the two openings of some U-shaped pipe beneath the ground, a pipe whose openings differ in height. The higher opening will ordinarily be exposed to faster flow, and, by Bernoulli's principle, the faster the flow, the lower the pressure. Since any fluid\u2014gas or liquid\u2014left to itself flows from high pressure to low pressure, then flow within the U-shaped pipe will go from low opening to high opening\u2014irrespective of the direction of the external flow driving it. The arrangement is used by the prairie dogs of the North American Great Plains to ventilate their long, deep, multiapertured burrows. I was involved in investigating the phenomenon in the early 1970s. At the time I thought that the ventilation supplied the animals with oxygen, but now I'm less sure; it's far better than necessary for that purpose. More likely, airflow through the burrow gives the animals the scents of what's above; the scheme is an olfactory sensation. With water as the moving fluid, various worms and crustaceans may use an analogous arrangement to irrigate their burrows in sandy substrata beneath shallow bays.\n\nIf air or water moves across an elevation, normally the air or water will flow fastest at the peak; ridges are more windy than valleys. If pipes or a porous medium (such as sand) connect a valley with a peak, as in Figure 8.6, then air or water inside will move from one to the other. Again, the direction of the external flow makes no difference, and the physical basis remains Bernoulli's principle (plus some secondary effects). This second arrangement makes wind draw air and thus oxygen through giant termite mounds in the open country of East Africa. Similarly, sponges, which live by filtering microscopic organisms from seawater, use the flow of water around themselves to reduce their cost of filtration. That improves the (net) profit that determines if they're viable in a particular place. And slotted sand dollars form slight elevations on sandy bay bottoms, so water flowing across them draws water and edible particles up though their slots from interstices in the sand.\n\nFIGURE 8. 5. _A scheme for using ambient flows of air or water to induce a secondary flow in a burrow or other passage through the substratum, and a prairie dog viewing the world from the crater-shaped opening on one end of a burrow that uses the scheme for ventilation_.\n\nFIGURE 8.6. _Another scheme for using ambient flow to induce a secondary flow, this one through some elevated structure; and a keyhole limpet, which uses the scheme to draw water in beneath the edge of its shell, over its gills, and out the apical hole_.\n\nIn a still simpler arrangement, shown in Figure 8.7, one opening of a pair is directed upstream and the other faces crosswise to the flow. This third arrangement depends, though, on proper orientation with respect to the external flow. At least one kind of insect larva does it; some caddisflies that live in streams make appropriate tubes in the substratum and equip the tubes with catch nets. In addition, many fish that use nostrils in interconnected pairs put enough of a hood on the front one so it faces upstream. Since streams flow downhill and fish swim forward, orientation to flow presents no problem in either case.\n\nWe know a few other schemes by which nature takes advantage of flows across solid surfaces to obtain a little power. Some seabirds, for instance, repeatedly make long vertical loops without beating their wings. Gliding alternately high and low is a way to use altitudinal velocity differences to stay aloft without expending energy.18 For that matter, we sometimes ventilate simple buildings, such as Indian tepees and partially buried mound houses, with the same tricks as sponges and prairie dogs. Mine ventilators often use reversible fans to take advantage of any wind-induced flows. Such flows will occur in all tunnels that have multiple openings except where the external wind is the same over all openings, the openings are geometrically identical, and the land is perfectly flat.\n\nFIGURE 8.7. _A more potent scheme for using ambient flow to induce a secondary flow, but one no longer independent of the direction of the ambient flow. This one drives water in the mouth, across the gills, and out the operculum of many fish when they're swimming rapidly_.\n\nAll these cases use wind or water currents to drive internal flows of air or water. One flow induces another, which takes a minimum of transducing machinery. However interesting as bits of natural history, they're insignificant next to photosynthesis as a way by which nature gets energy from the environment. Moreover, none provides energy in a storable form, the most important feature of photosynthesis.\n\nMUSCLES AND CILIA\n\nBy this point the reader may wonder whether nature always comes off second best. For one type of engine, though, nature has the only team on the field. I refer here to what are coming to be called molecular motors. Human technology works large, dealing with materials in bulk and using such processes as casting, pressing, slicing, dicing, and crushing. We struggle mightily to make ever tinier components for our complex electronic devices so they can be powerful without getting dysfunctionally large. Nature works the other way; hers is a microscopic, even submicroscopic technology aggregated with some minimal integration into larger systems. Molecular motors, if a value judgment is permissible, show nature both at her finest and at her most distinctive. Two of these\u2014muscles and cilia\u2014drive her fastest motions.\n\nFIGURE 8.8. _A cilium cut across (imagine a sliced strand of cooked spaghetti), showing the typical set of nine doublet microtubules surrounding a pair of singlet microtubules_.\n\nCilia (and flagella, any distinction being unimportant here) of a fairly stereotyped kind occur in a wide variety of animals and plants. They're tiny hairlike machines that push stuff around by waving, beating, or wiggling, either singly or in coordinated arrays. Some stick out of single cells\u2014such as our sperm\u2014and other tiny creatures, propelling them along. Others line surfaces (clam gills, for instance) and pipes, acting as pumps and filters. In fallopian tubes, they propel eggs toward the uterus. All use chemical energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), as does muscle. Figure 8.8 gives a simplified look at the structure of a cilium. Of particular relevance to us are two proteins of their internal structure. A polymer of one, tubulin, makes up the nine lengthwise doublet tubules; a polymer of the other, dynein, forms a pair of arms on each of those doublets. Tubulin and dynein slide along each other to generate motion; the dynein arms cyclically attach to and detach from sequential sites along the adjacent tubules. Bending of the overall cilium results when sliding occurs only on one side. In short, the basic motor moves by ratcheting along somewhat the way a person does when poling a boat up a shallow stream.\n\nMuscle uses the same chemically powered ratcheting motion, however that differs from what seems to happen when you lift something by shortening your biceps. Shortening occurs because the basic filaments increasingly interdigitate as they ratchet along each other, as when you slide the fingers of one hand between those of the other, as in Figure 8.9. The fundamental motion may resemble that of cilia, but the main proteins of muscle, myosin and actin, have evolved separately from dynein and tubulin. Muscle can also tighten without actually getting shorter; it can just develop an end-to-end pull. So either microscopically or macroscopically, were misled a little by the term \"contraction\" for what muscle does. A muscle develops force, which may or may not (depending on the load) bring its ends closer together and make its belly fatter.\n\nFIGURE 8.9. _The basic contractile unit of ordinary muscle. Cross bridges on the thick myosin filaments alternately attach and detach from sequential sites on the thin actin filaments. That makes the two sets of filaments interdigitate farther so the whole apparatus gets shorter_.\n\nMuscle's need to use energy to develop force, even when it doesn't shorten and thus do work, generates much of our common confusion between the terms \"force\" and \"work.\" The peculiarity is peculiar to muscle. The chandelier's chain exerts enough force to hold up the chandelier, and it does so year after year with no fuel supply whatsoever. (Oddly, one kind of muscle can maintain a force without additional expenditure of energy. It's the muscle that holds together the half shells of clams, mentioned in Chapter 2. But offsetting that cheap, steady pull is a slowness of action perhaps tolerable only by an unhurried clam.) Muscle has another slight disability compared with the engines of our technology. Active contraction is completely irreversible. Not only can't muscle actively reexpand, but stretching it doesn't make it produce chemical energy. If you turn the shaft of an electric motor, you can get electricity back out; you've made a generator. Forcing pistons back and forth or spinning the rotors of turbines makes them work as pumps. A loudspeaker can be used as a microphone. But you can't regain energy by running downhill or by putting a motor on your exercise bike to drive your legs.\n\nIn at least one way, though, muscles behave like most of our internal- combustion engines. The maximum power that either kind of engine can produce depends on how long it has to sustain that power. We get higher power by briefly supercharging (pressurizing the intake) when an aircraft takes off or by briefly tolerating high heat production in the starter motors of our cars. Nature goes us one better, tailoring muscle for specific durations of use. For good sustained output, muscle sacrifices some of its contractile fibers (and thus power) to provide space for more oxygen-processing metabolic machinery. Dark meat on a bird or fish is the sustained output muscle; light meat is the more fiber-rich, higher output, intermittently active version. Lots of so-called white muscle (a little lighter in color) makes for success in a hundred-yard dash; red muscle produces less power but wins in the long events. How much of each kind you develop depends on your training regimen. The strategy for brief bouts of high output may be the same for heat engines and muscle, but the tactics differ. Our heat engines increase their peak output by laying on extra fuel and oxidant. Muscle, by contrast, changes the way it uses its fuel, temporarily doing without oxidant and accumulating (to our discomfort) lactic acid instead of carbon dioxide.\n\nMusclelike systems occur elsewhere among organisms. All nonbacterial cells contain the basic motor proteins, actin and myosin. Such things as the movements of the contents of plant cells and the locomotion of amoebas seem to be driven by ratcheting interactions of actin and myosin filaments. Similarly, when a cell divides, tubulin appears involved in moving the chromosomes around, although probably without the same kind of ratcheting as in cilia. (We find it much easier to discover what proteins are present in a system than to understand how they operate.)\n\nWhile organisms are a diverse lot, these proteinaceous motors aren't. Nature invented a few versions early on and stuck with them. Perhaps that's not too surprising. Enzymes, virtually all of them proteins, are nature's chemical machines. But they do their chemistry in a mechanical way: They work by grabbing, manipulating, and releasing other molecules. Both myosin and dynein are enzymes; they just move other proteins, actin and tubulin, instead of performing more conventional chemical transformations.\n\nMuscle does something very different from what any human machine can manage. This presents a terrible problem for biomedical engineers as they try to contrive prostheses for muscular organs. A heart is quite a simple thing, compared, say, with a kidney or a liver, but if's mainly muscle. We can make fine valves (although as replacements pig valves still have certain points in their favor), but we can't yet make a full prosthesis thats anything like one's original equipment.\n\nOTHER NATURAL ENGINES\n\nBesides cilia, muscles, and a few other schemes in which proteins ratchet along one another, nature, as noted earlier, has several other kinds of engines up her sleeve. While they're slower and thus not so obvious to us impetuous animals, they're undeniably powerful. They also have few parallels in our technology, and they're of particular interest because they work without solid parts that move. Three are especially common.\n\n\u2022 An ordinary corn plant lifts about four quarts of water each day from the soil. Lifting is work, so a corn plant must have an engine, as must almost all terrestrial plants. The main engine is simple but strange: a direct-acting solar-powered evaporative engine. If (1) pipes filled with water run continuously from the roots up into the leaves, if (2) water can evaporate into the atmosphere from the leaves without air leaking in, and if (3) the pipes are stiff enough so they don't collapse, then water lost to evaporation will be replaced by water ascending from the soil by way of roots, trunk, and branches. The necessary conditions appear to be met, and most of the ascent of water in a corn plant or a tree is due to this pull from the top. Evaporation of course takes a lot of solar energy; evaporating a gram of water at room temperature takes a bit more energy even than boiling off a gram in a hot pot. We'll return in Chapter 10 to this remarkable machine that may pull against pressures of more than one hundred atmospheres (nearly a ton per square inch) without any moving parts.\n\n\u2022 Most carbohydrates (starch, mainly) and proteins are hydrophilic; they avidly attract water. Cornstarch and gelatin do just that in the kitchen, which is why we use them as thickening agents. Put a lump of either starch or protein (many kinds of protein, at least) in water, and the lump will swell almost irresistibly. If dry seeds beneath concrete pavement get wet, their expansion can crack the pavement. Germinating seeds commonly use this engine to split their seed coats and to penetrate soil. One case of this so-called imbibition is known in animals: The male mosquito hydrates pads of protein to raise the hairs on its antennae in order to sniff out the location of an odoriferous, receptive female.\n\n\u2022 Like all other molecules in gases and liquids, water molecules diffuse around\u2014that is, they continuously move around at random, mixing themselves. Work can be extracted from this random motion in the following way. If water is more concentrated in one place than in an adjacent place, more water will move from the concentrated place to the dilute place than the other way around simply because there _is_ more water in the concentrated place. How to do it? Say we dilute some water by adding a solute such as a salt or sugar. We then place the diluted water in a compartment that's separated from another compartment filled with pure water. As a barrier between the  compartments we use something through which only water can pass, as in Figure 8.10. The compartment with the added solute will swell up as more water enters than leaves it. While it may swell slowly, it will do so very forcefully, working as yet another expansion engine. Pressure generated by such a scheme ejects the stingers (nematocysts) of jellyfish from their parent cells. Roots absorb water from soil and pump it into stems with a version of this engine. Movements of leaves and other parts of plants depend on pressure changes inside nonrigid cells; such pressure changes are generated by adjusting the concentration of solutes in the cells and letting diffusion do the rest.\n\nFIGURE 8.10. _The basic pressure-generating osmotic engine. Water enters a compartment in which it is less concentrated_ , _passing through a barrier that's impermeable to the solute that dilutes the water_.\n\nCOMPARING EFFICIENCY\n\nBoth power relative to weight and energetic efficiency measure the quality of engines. But even together they don't provide a full yardstick, and for some engines, such as the evaporative, imbibition, and osmotic ones just described, neither measure is particularly revealing. Still, energetic efficiency merits at least the attention that weight economy got in Table 8.1. For electric engines one ought to include the generator's efficiency as a factor. For none of the engines is it easy to peg the costs of obtaining and processing fuel, whether by mining or by digestion. And the costs of transporting fuel vary a lot. Nor can we easily account the use of \"waste\" heat for thermoregulation in warm-blooded animals (and some large, active fish and flying insects) and for space heating of our building. Bearing these limitations in mind, let's look at a few figures for energetic efficiency.\n\nPiston engines have a lot of virtues, but efficiency is not high among them. At best automobile engines reach about 25 percent, but we usually run them far below their optimal output level. Diesel engines do somewhat better, but their efficiency also is often compromised by the ways we use them. In steam piston engines where the steam expands in successive cylinders, efficiency got up to about 17 percent by 1900 and can reach about 19 percent currently. (Watt's single-stage engines did about 2 percent.)\n\nTurbines do better and have superseded piston engines for power plants, large ships, and most aircraft. A coal-burning steam power plant might have an efficiency of 40 percent, a nuclear steam plant (using, for safety, slightly cooler steam) an efficiency of 32 percent, or a gas (internal- combustion) turbine a 26 percent efficiency.\n\nConsider an electrical system composed of a turbine, a generator, and a motor. The turbine has an efficiency of 40 percent or less, so it  represents a huge power loss. Large generators are better than 95 percent efficient, so very little is lost at this step. Electric motors are widely variable, ranging from 20 percent for the motor of a small electric fan to a most impressive 90 percent for a hundred-horsepower polyphase induction motor optimally loaded. So the overall efficiency of only the best systems will exceed 30 percent. One does better with hydroelectricity\u2014water turbines pass around 90 percent of the energy of the stream to the generator\u2014but since one has to have a decent head of water on tap, the benefits are not universally available.\n\nWhat about muscle? It turns out to be flabby, if functional. Even ignoring losses in, for instance, locomotory machinery, it's still less than 25 percent efficient, and sometimes it's a lot less. The shortening machinery isn't too bad, but the chemical operations that transfer energy from sugar to adenosine triphosphate and thence to myosin suffer substantial losses. Also, in muscles (as in other engines), efficiency depends a lot on speed of operation, something that varies a great deal from muscle to muscle, animal to animal, and moment to moment. Muscle may win no prize, but on the other hand, it's no disaster either.\n\nBoth nature and human technologies give energetic efficiency a fairly high priority in their respective designs. The evidence of this for natural technology may be indirect, but it's persuasive: Most structural and behavioral aspects of organisms make sense only if energy is considered precious. For human technology we have good historical records, whether we look at improvements in the harnesses of draft animals or at the historical development of steam engines. The similarity of engine efficiencies is curious, even if accidental\u2014in the 20 to 30 percent range for gas turbines, steam or gasoline piston engines, electrical systems, and muscle. If either technology has any slight edge, it's our human one. Also, we're still improving, as nature probably isn't.\n\nBeyond all the detail, what might we say about the good and bad of all these engines? Heat engines and engines that expand or rotate dominate one technology; constant-temperature engines, most of which shorten or shear, dominate the other. One technology transports energy over long distances, either as electricity or as chemical fuel; the other transports energy for only short distances and uses electricity only for signaling. While human technology may be marginally better in energetic efficiency, we definitely win in power output relative to weight; nothing comes close to modern aircraft engines.\n\nNonetheless, we can still look with envy on muscle nature's preeminent large and fast engine. An individual muscle of a tiny insect might weigh a microgram; a large muscle of a big whale may approach a hundred kilograms\u2014several hundred pounds. Those masses are a hundred billion times different, 1011-fold, and performance doesn't deteriorate noticeably at either extreme. Very little in either technology does so well over such a gigantic size range.\n\nBesides, muscle is good to eat. This is no mere Parthian shot. Expeditions that used beasts of burden sometimes exercised the option of consuming them. The Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific Northwest of the United States in extremis ate horses, and a century later Amundsen's expedition to the South Pole ate its dogs on a predetermined schedule. Try that with your internal-combustion engine.\nChapter 9\n\nPUTTING ENGINES TO WORK\n\nMaking an engine run efficiently doesn't make it run usefully; it must be persuaded to do its assigned task. Once in a while sagacity or sheer luck lets us couple an engine directly to a machine, the way the shafts of their motors bear the blades of lawn mowers, fans, and blenders. More often machines need things between motor and output device to couple the two\u2014transmissions. While the machines of our devising usually need transmissions, muscle-powered machines _always_ need them. That's because our rotary engines, at least, make full cycles under their own power. Muscles can't do this; a muscle does its work by shortening, but it always needs something to restore it to its original length. In human technology transmissions are ubiquitous, but in nature they're universal.\n\nFor engines the important factors are power produced relative to power consumed, power produced relative to weight, and how power varies as speed changes. For transmissions, the only relevant power is the maximum that can be handled without failure. Weights run well below and efficiencies well above those of engines. Two things, though, matter a lot for transmissions. First is the particular trade-off of force and distance (for a given amount of work) or force and speed (for a given power level). You start a car moving with the transmission in a low range, meaning a lot of force (to accelerate) while the car's speed is low. You then shift (or the car shifts) to a higher range, with less force but a higher speed. Meanwhile the engine only has to operate over a narrow range of speeds (RPMs). Second is the match of motion between engines and final components, what's called the kinematics of machines\u2014the way the hipbone is connected to the thighbone, and so forth. Proper kinematic design lets a piston going up and down make wheels turn and lets the rotor of an electric motor make a saw blade go back and forth.\n\nIn both technologies the diversity of transmissions exceeds that of engines. But each technology has its bag of favorites, with less overlap between the two than one might guess. Transmissions in fact contrast almost as sharply as do engines. That's partly driven by differences in the components from which they're crafted, partly by differences in the initial engines, and partly by differences in what the machines finally do.\n\nLEVERAGE\n\nProbably no mechanical device is older than the lever; simple and versatile, it's no doubt older than we humans. Prying with a lever is something that must be done at least occasionally by the finch of the Galapagos Islands, which uses a thorn to extract insects from bark, or by a chimp dealing with a moundful of delectable termites. Levers are powerful devices\u2014Archimedes exaggerated only a little in claiming he could move the earth if given a fulcrum for his lever\u2014and ubiquitous devices; without levers how could you pry the cap off a bottle, puncture a can, tighten a nut, switch on a light. . . ?\n\nA lever at its most basic consists of a stiff rod along which three locations can be recognized. One is the fulcrum, the spot around which the lever turns. Another is the load, where what's being worked on makes contact. Finally there's the effort, where the driving force is applied. Levers come in two precisely opposite versions, both shown in Figure 9.1. In one version, a force amplifier, the distance between fulcrum and effort is greater than the distance from fulcrum to load. In the other, a distance or speed amplifier, the distance between fulcrum and effort is less than that from fulcrum to load. We'll defer talking about speed for a few pages.\n\nFIGURE 9.1. _Two basic kinds of levers. The crucial feature that distinguishes them is the relative distance of load and effort from the fulcrum_.\n\nA lever is about the simplest possible transmission. It does no work, which we have defined as force times distance. It just changes the particular mix of force and distance of an engine (muscle or motor) into a more useful mix of force and distance. Levers allow one to apply an effort force less than the loading force (as with a prying bar). They also allow moving the effort a shorter distance than it moves the load (as when one swings a golf club or baseball bat).\n\nLevers are just the simplest of a diversity of devices that trade force against distance and find use as transmissions. All give the same choice between force amplification and distance amplification. Figure 9.2 shows a few that find use in human technology: a windlass in which ropes run around coupled wheels of different sizes, a so-called block and tackle in which a rope goes around several pulley wheels, and a belt drive that uses pulleys of different sizes. The windlass resembles a simple lever in both structure and operation; for the others one shouldn't let structural differences obscure the functional equivalence. In natural technology, levers are common enough, but lever analogs like the block and tackle aren't quite so obvious.\n\nIn this distinction between force amplifiers and distance amplifiers lies an interesting difference between natural technology and the gadgets we humans use. We have a strong preference for force-amplifying devices, a few of which are shown in Figure 9.3. Your appendages move far, but they don't move very forcefully, so you use force amplifiers to get, as we say, \"leverage.\" Look around your kitchen. Almost all the hand-operated tools are force amplifiers. In our kitchen the only distance-amplifying devices are a salad server, hinged between short handles and long tines, and a pair of wooden tongs, hinged at one end, that hoists English muffins from the depths of the toaster. Among the hand tools on our workbench are screwdrivers, pry bar, wire snips, metal shears, socket wrenches, and pliers\u2014force amplifiers all. Among our garden tools the only distance-amplifying device is the pair of snips used to trim grass that's too close to barriers for the power mower to reach; all others are force amplifiers.\n\nFIGURE 9.2. _Devices that get \"leverage,\" shifting the relative magnitudes of force and distance or speed_.\n\nWe use hand-operated force amplifiers whenever we crank something. If you haul a boat onto a trailer, you use the crank handle of the winch or windlass so a lot of arm motion by the crank exerts a lot of force on the wire cable. Door handles and faucet levers are just small-scale cranks. Our bias toward force amplifiers shows in the way we use the term \"mechanical advantage\" for \"force advantage\"; evidently distance advantage isn't as advantageous. Thus we say that a lever in which the effort-to-fulcrum distance is twice the load-to-fulcrum distance has a mechanical advantage of two, not one-half.\n\nA biologist would have made the opposite choice. In nature, distance amplifiers rule the roost. They do so because muscles are short-stroke engines; they make lots of force but shorten a relatively short distance. A muscle does its greatest work (again, load times distance) when it shortens by only about 10 percent of its length, even though most muscles can shorten as much as 30 percent with lighter loads. To make arms and legs swing through substantial arcs, to make their far ends move substantial distances, to permit muscles to run close in alongside the bones that they move\u2014such tasks require distance amplifiers. Consider the muscles and bones that raise and lower your forearm, shown in Figure 9.4. Both the biceps muscle of the front of your upper arm and the triceps behind your humerus are substantial distance amplifiers.\n\nFIGURE 9.3. _Household devices using levers that increase force at the expense of distance or speed: jar lid loosener, nutcracker, garlic press, and can opener_.\n\nSo our muscles are force specialists, and our bodies compensate with distance-amplifying internal levers of tendons and bones. That makes our appendages distance specialists, for which our technology compensates with force-amplifying hand tools\u2014our can piercers and pliers. Paradoxical, even irrational perhaps, but we do prefer to use our tools without first being surgically adjusted.\n\nWhen substantial force is still needed, less drastic distance amplifiers are used, as with the attachments of its muscles to the forearms of a mole, which burrows through soil. Its bones are shorter and the muscles attach farther out from the joints than do our equivalent ones. The same choice sets the relative positions of jaw muscles and teeth in mammals and reptiles. The front teeth of a protruding jaw snap at prey, with lots of distance but little force, while the rear teeth, closer to the jaw-closing muscles, chew and grind with lots of force. Still, both the mole's forearms and the lion's molars remain distance amplifiers, just less drastic ones than our forearms and the lion's incisors. Conversely, where great distance (or speed) is needed, distance amplifiers get really extreme. The flight muscles of many insects shorten less than 5 percent of their lengths\u2014such a short stroke may be necessary for insects to achieve their high wingbeat frequencies\u2014and since the muscles are tucked inside the insects' thoraxes, they have to be short. Insect wing tips may move as much as a hundred times farther than their muscles shorten.\n\nFIGURE 9.4. _The muscles that work the forearm flank the bone (the humerus) of the upper arm. The arrangement allows short, forceful contraction of these muscles to give long but less forceful movements of the forearm_.\n\nTo move body parts either farther or faster, nature often raises distance advantages by hooking up muscles in a peculiar way. Instead of running straight from the tendon on one end to the tendon on the other, the fibers are short and oblique, usually running from a pair of outer tendons to a central one, as in Figure 9.5. The outer tendons attach to one skeletal element, the central one to another. The arrangement greatly limits the muscle fibers' shortening distance, but it much enlarges the total crosssectional area of the fibers, on which the force depends. The arrangement is especially common in insects and crustaceans, which need it because their muscles run inside their tubular skeletons. With muscles inside, getting a substantial sideways distance between the hinge of a joint and the attachment of a muscle is nearly impossible. Muscles simply can't shorten very much, so they have to produce a lot of force and then turn to distance amplification. A lobster claw is a fine case, closing its pincer with one of these pennate (penlike) muscles and opening it with another. A look at the relevant anatomy might provide adequate excuse to eat one; otherwise Figure 9.5 will have to suffice. Another example is the fattest part of the hind leg of a grasshopper; fiber directions correspond to ridges visible on the outside.\n\nFIGURE 9.5. _An ordinary muscle, such as one of those of the previous figure, and the really drastic high-force, low-distance arrangement of a pennate muscle_.\n\nSeveral other arrangements let nature move things farther, faster, and less forcibly than does a direct muscular hookup. Near the end of Chapter 7 a class of hydrostatic devices called muscular hydrostats was mentioned; examples included the tentacles and arms of squid, various tongues, and the trunks of elephants. If a squid's tentacle is made entirely of muscle, as it very nearly is, and if it's long and thin, as it certainly is, then a slight decrease in diameter ought to give a great increase in length. If muscle contraction reduces the diameter of an incompressible cylinder by 10 percent, then the cylinder will lengthen by almost 24 percent. But a tentacle is already long and skinny. If its length is twenty-five times its diameter, then in absolute, not percentage, terms a one-unit decrease in diameter will give an almost sixty-unit increase in length. Force, of course, will work the other way, with a sixtyfold decrease in force from input to output. Squid snag moving prey by extending tentacles far and fast but not very forcibly.\n\nA more widespread and personally relevant way to make the most of limited shortening is to wrap a thick coat of incompressible muscle around a spherical chamber, as in a heart. A little calculation reveals that if the volume of the wall is twice that of the chamber inside, shortening the muscle fibers by 6 percent will drive out half the contents of the chamber, and shortening by 13 percent will fully empty the chamber. Six percent and 13 percent span muscle's efficient range of shortening. Similar calculations can be done (the reader might be inclined to try) for muscle-wrapped cylinders, as in our intestine. The wall is thinner, a little greater shortening is needed, and we use a different kind of muscle, but the principle is the same.\n\nNor is the problem of converting high force to high distance unique to muscle-driven machines. The proteins that ratchet past one another in a cilium are near enough to the center of the cilium so a little ratcheting gives the whole thing a substantial bend. And the wilting of the leaf of a plant from horizontally outward to vertically downward takes only a small loss of volume of a few cells in its stem, as shown in Figure 9.6.\n\nThe engines of our technology are more diverse in their force-distance behavior than are muscles, cilia, and swelling cells. But in most instances their moving parts travel far but less forcibly\u2014quite the opposite of living engines. What particularly characterizes engines of recent vintage\u2014whether electrical or combustion\u2014is that they move fast. High speed has consequences similar to long distance: Power output is force times speed just as work output is force times distance. Higher speeds let us use smaller and lighter engines. For instance, we use particularly highspeed motors to power hand-held power tools and aircraft, cases in which size and weight must be minimized. In effect, higher speed means that a given engine is used more often. Higher speed also means that we often have to slow things down between engine and application, and a speed- reducing transmission is a force-amplifying one.\n\nIn short, muscles most often need distance-amplifying things like tendons and bones to couple them to their tasks, while rotary motors commonly need force-amplifying gearboxes to drive useful machines.\n\nStill, distance and speed aren't quite the same, and our arms and legs move relatively far while the engines of human technology move relatively fast. As a result, motorizing a hand-operated machine rarely works well. Years ago almost every household had a hand grinder designed to be turned about once each second by a willing arm. Most of its tasks now get done by a food processor, a radically different design with a directly connected electric motor. Less common is a grinder of the old design but with a motor. We have one, and its performance is unimpressive.\n\nFIGURE 9.6. _Osmosis can generate spectacularly high pressures. Slight but forceful swelling and shrinking of the large cells in the lower part of this leaf stem (petiole) raise and lower the leaf's blade as sunlight and water supply change_.\n\nWhere simple motorization works, though, the comparison is instructive. Consider the hand-operated and electric forms of meat grinders and ice-cream freezers. For hand operation a long crank is used, the usual force amplifier undoing the distance amplification between arm muscles and hand. The motorized versions replace that long lever with motors that turn between fifty and a hundred times each second, so a problem of excessive speed replaces one of excessive distance. Lest the motor stall or the contents be immediately liquefied, a set of gears must be used to reduce the speed and increase the force. We make textile thread with machines not at all like old spinning wheels, spinning blade power lawn mowers have displaced the motorized reel type of mower, and the most effective bits for use in electric drills differ from those that work best in a hand-cranked drill.\n\nWHEELS\n\nHuman technology turns on wheels. Except for the odd sled or sledge, all our land vehicles ride on them. Our ships are driven by rotating paddle wheels or propellers. Our aircraft use rotary turbines with or without rotary propellers. Snow blowers, trench diggers, conveyor belts, and chain saws go in circles around axes. Internally we use crankshafts, rotary electric motors, rotating pulleys, gears, capstans, hinges, cams, windlasses, ratchet wheels, roller bearings, and spindles\u2014just to mention the more obvious ones. Nature, with only one exceptional case, doesn't go around using wheels. Only metal use provides as dramatic a contrast.\n\nWhen I was a student, the issue was simply put. \"Nature has never invented the wheel,\" went the textbooks. But science progresses, and we now know that a perfectly fine and true wheel and axle does occur in nature. It's new only to us since the organisms equipped with wheels are of enormous antiquity. The discovery of this wheel\u2014by Howard Berg and his associates during the 1970s\u2014demands that we ask not why nature hasn't invented the wheel but why she uses it in only one instance. First, of course, we have to examine that instance.\n\nThe talk about cilia and flagella in the last chapter quietly excluded bacterial flagella. They're much smaller than the standard appurtenance of higher organisms, and they lack the \"normal\" internal gear with which cilia actively wave around. In the high magnification of an electron micrograph, a bacterial flagellum usually looks like a carefully drawn set of very regular waves\u2014suspiciously like a rigid structure. It turns out to be a rigid helix much like a corkscrew. Instead of passing one wave of bending after another along its length, it spins around, ten to one hundred times each second, as in Figure 9.7. The base of the flagellum forms a driveshaft that passes through the cell membrane, connecting it to a rotary engine. And the membrane works like a proper set of bearings. The engine bears a curious similarity in both appearance and operation to our electric motors. It's even reversible. The whole thing\u2014engine and corkscrew\u2014either singly or in groups, pushes or pulls a bacterium around much the same way a propeller pushes a ship or pulls an airplane.\n\nFIGURE 9.7. _A bacterium with its flagellum, and the base of the flagellum in more detail as we presently understand it. The magnification here is extremely high, about three hundred thousand times, so specific details represent interpretations of smudges. How this rotary engine works is far from clear_.\n\nHow well does the bacterial flagellum perform? In terms of power output per unit weight it's more than fifty times better than muscle, better even than a gas turbine. Still, even protozoa, some only a little larger than a typical bacterium, swim with conventional flagella. These latter rely on the much less potent tubulin-dynein engine described earlier. This situation is powerfully puzzling. Could it be that key bits of information simply never got passed on to the nonbacterial world? Odder yet, higher organisms have adopted other bits of bacterial machinery by the drastic step of symbiotically expropriating the bacteria themselves, as noted back in Chapter 2. Perhaps for some reason the bacterial engine can't be enlarged: impracticality of making larger bearings, difficulty in electrical transmission over any longer distance in a nonmetallic world, or something else entirely.\n\nBy wheels we mean proper wheel and axle devices that can rotate without limit with respect to the rest of a machine. If you roll down a hill, your whole body may be a wheel, but you're no wheel and axle. So we're not talking about tumbleweeds, or about the tiny turds that dung beetles roll homeward for their grubs, or about a few crustaceans that get around by rolling as a whole. Nor are we worrying about how far we can rotate our fists around our arms or our heads on our shoulders. By \"rotation\" we also mean something fairly specific. When you draw a circle on a piece of paper, do you rotate your hand? You may move it in a circle, but you don't truly rotate it; after all, your hand at all times points in the same compass direction. Human dances make elaborate use of such circular but nonrotational motion, most likely because it doesn't make us dizzy. Not all dances, of course; waltzes are rotational and, one suspects, intentionally vertiginous. The wheels of a bicycle rotate; your feet and the pedals just move around in circular paths. The Ferris wheel rotates as a whole, but the seats and people just go in circles. In this precise sense\u2014 excluding both rolling as a whole and merely going in circles\u2014the only known instance of a wheel and axle in nature is the bacterial flagellum.\n\nThe classic view is that wheels are terrific, but that nature (sweeping the bacteria under the rug) just can't figure out how to make them do decent service. Stephen Jay Gould made just this point, noting the difficulty of moving nutrients into structures with sliding connections to the rest of an organism. That suggestion fits nicely with one of the main points here; the different contexts of human and natural technologies. He mentioned, additionally, the problem of evolutionary continuity. How could an incompletely evolved wheel have conferred benefit on a creature? The argument, like the equivalent one made here for metals, may be attractive but isn't fully persuasive. Gould's whole discussion, though, hinges on the absolute superiority of wheeled transport.\n\nAs with so many issues, close scrutiny uncovers complications. At least two people, Michael LaBarbera and George Basalla, a biologist and a historian, have taken exception to Gould's freewheeling assumption of superiority. They admit that wheels may give cheaper transport than legs. After all, bicycling is more efficient than walking or running; adding twenty-five pounds of passive machinery reduces the cost of transport severalfold. But they point out that wheels realize their advantage only on smooth surfaces\u2014on roads or floors. A wheel on a cart can go over bumps no higher than a quarter of its diameter, and even those bump up the cost of transport. Prairie schooners had enormous wheels, much larger than the ones on ordinary on-the-road wagons. To use wheeled transport routinely and productively, a culture must be sufficiently settled and organized to do a lot of civil engineering. For most organisms, much smaller than we, the natural world is an even bumpier place.\n\nWheels, however wide our use of them, don't define human technology. They seem to have appeared first in the Middle East, about five thousand years ago, in two applications: wheeled vehicles and potters' wheels. Whether the two were linked or the wheel was invented on more than one occasion remains unclear. But they were absent from the pre-Columbian New World; pack animals and sledges were used for transport, and even axisymmetrical pottery was built up by coiling long, thin cylinders of wet clay rather than by turning on potters' wheels. A visit to a museum of Incan or Mesoamerican artifacts should persuade anyone that these weren't technologically primitive cultures. Moreover, they knew about wheels; Mayan and Aztec toys have been found in which animals had wheels on the ends of their legs. Nor was the Western Hemisphere the only site of non-wheel-ridden cultures. The inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Australia got along without them as well.\n\nFor wheeled transport to make sense, streets must be wide enough for a cart and draft animal to turn around since the combination can't easily back up. Draft animals of sufficient size must be domesticated, and that seems not to have happened in pre-Columbian America. Furthermore, roads must be hard. Shag or well-padded carpet almost completely immobilizes a rider-propelled wheelchair, and government standards prohibit thick carpeting in public buildings. Wheeled vehicles were given up in North Africa and the Middle East between the third and seventh centuries (C.E.) and not used there again for a thousand years. Domesticated camels that carried rather than pulled apparently provided a better alternative under the circumstances.\n\nSo one may be skeptical of claims of wheeled transport's absolute superiority. But the arguments don't shed much light on other uses of wheels in technology. Here I think the case for the broad utility of wheels and axles is much clearer. Wheel-based transmissions are highly versatile and efficient. Pairs of simple gears (Figure 9.8) routinely pass power from one shaft to another with better than 99 percent efficiency. The efficiencies of such things as bevel gears (which connect shafts at right angles), belting, and roller chains range between 95 and 99 percent. In worm gearing, a long, turning driver (the worm) slides through the teeth of the gear it turns (the wheel), but even this turns out to be about 80 percent efficient.\n\nRoads may limit the use of wheels for vehicular transport, but bearings limit their general use as mechanical elements. Doing without bearings is possible only by using such unattractive schemes as placing free rollers (such as tree trunks) under an object and moving the rollers as they come free from the rear to the front of the object. Large stone blocks were certainly moved this way by the builders of ancient monuments, and I've found it a useful way to move long, unsplit logs for short distances. Alternatively, of course, the whole vehicle can simply roll. But in properly upstanding vehicles some parts must slide against one another, the sliding surfaces must bear loads, and friction between sliding surfaces costs power. So a cart needs smoothly turning bearings, either between the wheels and their axles or between the axles and the frame.\n\nFIGURE 9.8. _Several kinds of gears and such, a far from exhaustive selection (clockwise from the upper left): spur gears, a cam, a worm and wheel speed reducer, and bevel gears_.\n\nSo everything turns on bearings and on the twin problems of friction and wear. These must have made big trouble until metal lathes of decent precision were developed a few hundred years ago. The underlying problem is a nasty one. A thicker axle gives good support with low stresses on its material, but its bearing surfaces move around one another at higher speeds and thus with more heat and wear. The opposing surfaces of a thinner axle move more slowly, generating less heat and wear, but stresses are higher, and the axle is more likely to break. Good bearings, like electric wires, are mundane but critical items whose present excellence we take for granted\u2014except, of course, when they seize up or screech thirstily for lubricants. Or during wartime, when ball-bearing factories become targets of the highest priority.\n\nEven though she uses no wheels, nature makes some impressive bearings. On the ends of our bones are layers of porous cartilage. A lubricant (synovial fluid) oozes through them, so adjoining bones never actually touch each other. The resulting friction is about as low as anything in engineering practice\u2014unless you suffer from arthritis or bursitis. One can get a feel for the impressive slipperiness of our joints by dissecting the muscle and connective tissue away from the knee or hip of a lamb and then moving the bones on either side of the joint while pressing them together as hard as one can. At least perceptually, the joint is frictionless. Nature's bearings won't bear blame for the absence of the wheel and axle.\n\nIn using wheel-based devices, humans can't copy nature. Our widespread use of them proves their technological value better than any verbal argument or calculation. Their scarcity in nature, though, isn't so simply explained. At least we don't understand what mix of factors might matter. Are they less useful to an unstiff technology in a bumpy world? Are they hard to evolve and maintain? Had they worn out their welcome when organisms got much over a thousandth of a millimeter long?\n\nMATING MOTORS AND ROTORS\n\nThe lack of wheels and rotational motion among organisms, on one hand, and their commonness among human devices, on the other, raise a peculiar problem: how to turn a rotary machine. If, as in every human- or animal-powered machine, the engine doesn't rotate, then linear or reciprocating motion must be converted to rotary motion. We commit mechanical miscegenation when our pushes and pulls work rotating machines. But the conversion problem doesn't face only muscular drivers.\n\nHow can a push-pull engine, whether it has muscles or moving pistons, make rotation? The engines of our cars use piston rods to turn crankshafts, and some of us recall the slider cranks attached to the driving wheels of steam locomotives. But these devices weren't common until late in the eighteenth century, when James Watt introduced a version of the crankshaft so his stationary steam engines could turn wheels. Nor was Watt the first to get rotation from a reciprocating engine. Rotary motion had sometimes been produced with Newcomen beam engines, using a heroic but inefficient scheme: The engine drove a pump that raised water that then dropped onto an overshot waterwheel.\n\nThis problem of getting repeated rotation out of muscle can be circumvented if the engine itself goes in circles, as happens when an animal tethered to a long cranking arm walks in monotonous circles. Otherwise one needs cranks like those of our piston engines. Modern cranks may have been invented by Archimedes, about 200 B.C.E.; they're first mentioned in Chinese literature in 31 C.E., surely as an independent development. But the idea goes back to the ancient Egyptians, although their version required practice and skill to use effectively. The difference between theirs and ours lies in how much freedom of motion the main shaft is allowed. Most of our cranks use fully guided rotors in which a set of bearings keeps the main shaft from doing anything other than turning about its axis. The operator's hand or foot is guided around a predetermined circle, as in an old-fashioned meat grinder or a bicycle. Using the opposite extreme, an unguided rotor such as a spinning lasso, takes real dedication.\n\nIntermediate is the partially guided rotor, which is what some Egyptian relief sculptures seem to show. As in Figure 9.9, one end is fixed and the other swings in a circular path. It's all too prone to wobble; with only one end fixed the operator has to keep the shaft from swinging to one side or the other. The scheme does make a perfectly serviceable drill, although one that takes a little practice to operate and works best for shallow holes, where a little wobble is acceptable. We still use a few partially guided rotors. A conventional brace and bit require that the operator maintain the alignment of the drill shaft. But alignment only requires that the aligning hand act as a stationary upper bearing rather than move in a specific circle. On the other hand, the brace and bit occupies both of the operator's hands, while the old Egyptian device left a hand to hold the object that was being worked on. A hand-operated eggbeater is another partially guided rotor, and like a brace and bit, it demands a little skill.\n\nA device that's now fully obsolete, the bow drill, may be used to make a muscle-powered arm drive a rotor. As in Figure 9.10, a flexible cord connects the ends of a bow; the cord is looped around the shaft to be spun. The lower end of the shaft holds a drill or is otherwise pointed, while the upper end turns against a hand-held thrust bearing. Pulling the bow back and forth makes the shaft revolve first one way and then the other. True conversion to rotary motion isn't strictly involved, since periodically reversing the shaft balances the clockwise and counterclockwise turns. Still, it realizes most of the advantages of rotation for tasks such as drilling. Bow drills are ancient and multicultural. North American Indians, who used no other obviously rotary devices, used them to generate sufficient heat (through friction with the lower bearing block) to start fires, a fine, nonobvious (as a patent office would put it) invention.\n\nFIGURE 9.9. _A partially guided crank, in this case an interpretation of the mechanics of an ancient Egyptian drill. The details come from my test version rather than actual antiquity. The operator grasps the handle and moves it in a circle, watching to make sure the drill stays vertical and doesn't wobble. The weight swings out and around on its own; it smooths the motion and provides downward force on the drill_.\n\nHYDRAULIC CONNECTIONS\n\nIn a hydraulic device something solid gets pushed by a pressurized liquid. (Where a gas gives the push, if's a pneumatic device, but the principles are the same.) We've already run across such devices in various guises. In Chapter 7 we looked at hydrostatic and aerostatic supportive systems, such as worms and blimps; in Chapter 8 we considered water transport, water absorption, and evaporative engines (mainly in plants); and earlier in this chapter we talked about muscular hydrostats like a squid's tentacle. Except for a few aerostatic blimps and buildings, all the examples involved organisms, and they ranged from unicells to trees and sharks. Nature apparently finds this an \"easy\" technology. That shouldn't surprise us since nature pumps a lot of fluid around for other purposes and since a muscle encircling a spherical chamber or a cylindrical tube suffices for pressurization.\n\nFIGURE 9.10. _A bow drill, shown with a modern bit. The upper, hand-held block has a small concavity on its lower side to guide the drill. Making and using one of these are easy, although you'll need to roughen the bit's surface so the string or leather thong doesn't slip_.\n\nThe brakes of cars are our most familiar hydraulic machinery. You push on a pedal that pushes a piston farther into a cylinder. That in turn forces brake fluid out of the cylinder, through some pipes, and into another cylinder, where the fluid pushes another piston outward. The second piston then pushes the brake lining against the brake drum (or disk), creating lots of car-slowing friction. The system works because a pressure applied at any point in a closed fluid-filled system appears everywhere else in that system; pressure is transmitted almost undiminished and instantly.\n\nThe handiness of hydraulics comes from its basic principle. The pressure in the hydraulic fluid is the force on the piston times the area of its face, and that pressure remains the same throughout the system. Thus a wide range of forces can be produced by doing nothing more devious than changing the face area of the pistons. If, as in Figure 9.11, you push inward on a piston with a force of ten pounds in a cylinder one square inch in cross section (a pressure of ten pounds per square inch), a piston in a cylinder of four square inches will be pushed outward with a force of no less than forty pounds. Although this sounds like getting something for nothing, work and energy in fact are properly conserved. The piston in the big cylinder may move more forcibly, but it won't move as far. If you push the small piston in an inch, the large one will move outward only a quarter of an inch. In short, the device behaves just like a lever. What a nice way to move force, work, or power from one place to another, trading force and distance (or force and speed) whenever convenient!\n\nFIGURE 9.11. _A hydraulic connection that achieves a fourfold force amplification_.\n\nWhere does nature use hydraulic transmissions? Put a freshly cut flower in a vase of water, and the water is hydraulically sucked up the stem from the vase. A starfish moves around on a thousand or so tiny tube feet, hydrostatic devices interconnected in a low-pressure hydraulic system. A worm adjusts the pressures in its sequential compartments so that with the aid of some rearward-pointing bristles, it can penetrate soil. A spider flexes its legs with an ordinary set of muscles, but instead of using extensor muscles, it moves its legs outward hydraulically; it squeezes together the top and bottom of its body (the cephalothorax), increasing its blood pressure and extending its legs. On emerging from its pupal skin, a butterfly briefly pulls its abdominal segments inward to increase its blood pressure, inflating the veins of the wings, and expanding their membranes. We run the filtration equipment (glomeruli) in our kidneys hydraulically, using our high arterial blood pressure to force plasma (but not blood cells) through tiny pores as the first step in making urine. That's partly why keeping proper fluid balance depends on having a good heart. We (male humans and some but not all other male mammals) use the same blood pressure to erect our penises. At least we do so in part, with valves and local muscle activity then pushing the pressure up to much higher levels. Hydraulic devices are nothing if not widespread among organisms.\n\nBut for human technology, hydraulics and pneumatics have come harder. We have no handy squeezer like muscle, and most of our manufactured pipes are rigid. We make pressure with pistons; indeed we use pistons for little else. But pistons must fit snugly and smoothly in their cylinders if they're to slide freely yet not leak. (Detecting such leakage is the purpose of a compression test on an automobile engine.) The ancients could do none of this, and hydraulic devices were limited to siphons and other pistonless schemes that worked at close to atmospheric pressure. Leakage between pistons and cylinders limited the pressures that could be used in early steam engines. Now that leakage is a manageable problem, hydraulic and pneumatic devices find an ever wider variety of uses. The technology may have presented great difficulties early on, but it turns out to be so marvelously handy. But while our applications resemble nature's, our machinery looks thoroughly different.\n\nConsider, again, the brakes of a car. These days the brake pedal works not one but two cylinders, a safety feature to make the system leak-tolerant. If your car has power-assisted brakes, the reduced pressure associated with the engine's intake works as a pneumatic element to generate the hydraulic pressure. If the system leaks a little, you add extra brake fluid to the reservoirs or remove air or froth from the system (\"bleeding\" the brakes). Some cars use hydraulic connections to run their clutches as well; the device simplifies construction of models available with either right- or left-hand drive. Farm tractors usually have a hydraulic system that raises and lowers various attachments, with the hydraulic pressure produced by an engine-driven pump. Control surfaces\u2014rudder, elevator, ailerons, and flaps\u2014and retractable landing gear on aircraft are often hydraulically operated. Heavy construction equipment steadily increases its use of hydraulic power transmission. Closer to home, door closers, shock absorbers, and hand-operated squirt or spray bottles are all hydraulic or pneumatic devices.\n\nA particularly subtle and clever use of hydraulic power transfer is basic to almost every automatic automobile transmission. These fluid couplings aren't especially efficient\u2014early automatic transmissions had to be water-cooled to dispose of their waste heat\u2014but they have the nice property of slipping badly (or usefully) when run slowly. That means that the driver can let the engine idle impotently without mechanically disconnecting it from the wheels (as a manual clutch does). The basic scheme of a fluid coupling is shown in Figure 9.12. It works in the following way. First, any mass prefers to go straight rather than to turn in a circle; if you turn around while holding a string with a weight at the other end, the weight flies outward and pulls the string taut. Liquids have mass, so when spun, the liquid in a chamber tries to move outward, experiencing what's ordinarily called centrifugal force. Second, moving mass in toward the axis of rotation makes a system rotate faster, a notion familiar from watching skaters increase their spinning rates by pressing their arms closer to their bodies. (To look up the details, try \"conservation of angular momentum.\") If fluid moves outward as a result of the spin of an input shaft and moves inward again in an adjacent chamber attached to an output shaft, the output shaft will speed up. Rotary motion and force (together, torque) have thus been transferred from input to output. Within limits, the faster the input shaft is spun, the more efficient the coupling. So when you speed up the engine, the wheels recall that they have an engine attached.\n\nFIGURE 9.12. _A fluid coupling. Input and output shafts each have hollow half toroids running around their circumference. The half toroids, filled with oil and baffling, are sealed together but are free to slide against each other. Imagine the well-buttered sliced surfaces of a halved bagel pressed together_.\n\nBRIEF BATTERIES\n\nSpeeding up or slowing down anything that has mass takes force. To exert a force over a distance takes work, and that implies expenditure of energy. Yet a pendulum repeatedly accelerates downward and decelerates upward, needing only slight periodic pushes to keep it going. Where does the pendulum's energy come from? What it does is shift its energy investment four times for each full swing. As it rises and slows, it gets out of energy of motion (kinetic energy) and into gravitational energy. Only a small amount (offset by the occasional push) is diverted to heat. As the pendulum swings earthward again, the gravitational investment is cashed in and reappears as increased speed. It then swings up the other way and does two more energy transfers. In effect, the pendulum repeatedly stores kinetic energy in a gravitational battery.\n\nBesides using gravity, how else can energy be stored? The next most obvious agency is elastic resilience, the reversible deformation of material\u2014what the springs of our cars do. In addition, rechargeable electric batteries are common in cars, portable appliances, the clocks of computers, and elsewhere. Finally energy can be stored inertially, by making a flywheel spin; a machine can then be run by slowing that spin. Some old potters' wheels took only an occasional push, maintaining their motion by doling out the energy of that push.\n\nHuman technology uses all four storage modes: gravitational, elastic, electrical, and kinetic. Pendulums have long served as speed regulators for mechanical clocks, and counterweights within the frames of windows and in the shafts of elevators allow us to raise heavy things with the energy from previous lowerings. In a medieval catapult, energy was slowly put in by raising a counterweight; letting it fall released the energy, which was used to throw a missile. We occasionally use gravitational storage on a large scale when we generate electricity; the scheme is called pumped storage. Our use of electricity varies a lot\u2014but predictably so\u2014with the time of day, so utilities must be able to adjust production. Nuclear plants aren't much help because they cost so much to build and so little to run that they're best operated near full capacity. Coal-burning plants are better for meeting intermittent demand, but they leave a utility with a lot of unused capacity for much of each day. And electrical batteries to smooth out the demand would be uneconomically large. A pumped storage system makes no new electrical energy. It just uses excess capacity when demand is low to pump water into an uphill reservoir; it then operates as a hydroelectric plant when demand is high. But it requires a handy mountain and local people willing to tolerate a reservoir whose level fluctuates daily.\n\nLocal acceptability can't be brushed aside. Pumped storage works best in undeveloped hilly country near centers of population\u2014a formula for maximizing offense to people who value access to scenic nature. During the 1960s New York City's main electrical utility proposed building such a plant about fifty miles up the Hudson River, near West Point, in the beautiful and historic Highlands. A mighty outcry eventually put an end to the matter. As a biologist who grew up only a few miles from the site I am perhaps predictably biased: Keeping the Highlands unsullied merits a little energy conservation in the lower Hudson. One must remember that, their image makers notwithstanding, utility companies are in business to sell, not save, power.\n\nMore common is elastic storage, although most of the springs in our cars and appliances are there more for our comfort or because they permit simpler designs than for storing great amounts of energy. Mechanical typewriters used large numbers of springs, and every dishwasher, tape player, and camera has a few. They provide more serious storage in clocks, watches, and wind-up devices, such as toys and an occasional lawn mower starter. As mentioned a few chapters back, metals have high resilience and accept a wide range of deformations: tensile, compressive, flexural, and torsional. In addition, springs may be nonmetallic (rubber bands, for instance) or even gaseous. Squeeze a gas such as air, and it can reexpand with almost no loss of energy. Elastic storage was of great importance in weaponry before explosive charges came into use: An arrow is propelled by energy stored in the bent bow, and the great rock-throwing ballistae of classical antiquity used twisted cow tendon. Still, the use of elastic storage has declined relative to the next scheme.\n\nUntil recently most rechargeable batteries stored electricity to restart internal-combustion engines. Such batteries now grace all kinds of small appliances, even though they're heavy for the energy they store; electric vehicles run into just that drawback. In addition, batteries deteriorate far more rapidly than springs and pendulums. Fashion may play a role; fine wind-up mechanical shavers, devices that could be left in car or briefcase and didn't care at all about chargers or local voltage, were available a few years ago.\n\nFinally, we use an occasional flywheel, nothing more than a large mass rotating in a wide circle. These simplest of short-term batteries may also be the most ancient; intermittently driven potters' wheels have been used for more than five thousand years. We use flywheels to smooth out the action of our engines, both piston engines and (in turntables and tape recorders) electric motors, and we use them in toys, such as tops, Yo-Yos, and tiny model cars. Occasionally one hears suggestions that automobiles might employ flywheels along with smaller internal-combustion engines that run at more efficiently high and steady speeds; the flywheel would intermittently supply energy for acceleration and hill climbing.\n\nTwo of these four schemes, gravitational and elastic energy storage, find wide application in nature, probably more than in human technology. Just about every way that animals move around\u2014walking, running, jumping, flying, swimming\u2014uses one or the other. Three of nature's peculiar disabilities cry out for short-term energy storage. One is her lack of wheels and consequent reliance on reciprocating or pulsating devices like legs and wings. A second is muscle's inability to reexpand itself and the resulting need for some easy way to undo its contraction; an opposing muscle is bulky and expensive. The third is that muscle contraction isn't instantaneous, and chemical explosives aren't part of nature's ordinary armamentarium, yet motion with high initial acceleration has obvious advantages: Predators from alligators to cats get their food by springing forward. Through slow accumulation and sudden release, energy storage permits pulses of extreme power output.\n\nElastic storage must be more common than gravitational storage simply because the latter works only for terrestrial organisms of significant weight and the bulk of the earth's creatures are aquatic or tiny or both. No absolute choice, though, need be made; a single animal may use both. Consider how we get around on our hind legs. Legged locomotion isn't especially efficient\u2014recall that the cost of getting from one place to another can be substantially reduced by attaching a bicycle to oneself\u2014 but getting around on legs would be worse without energy storage. Gravitational or elastic? As shown in Figure 9.13, we use both, switching back and forth effortlessly and almost mindlessly. We cheapen our walking gait with a little gravitational, pendulumlike storage between strides. As we walk faster, we tend to swing our legs farther rather than more frequently. Just as with a pendulum, one frequency is \"natural\" or most efficient for a given leg length. Eventually, of course, your anatomy resists any greater amplitude, and you switch to a gentle jog, another gait altogether. For a typical human, that happens at about a twelve-minute mile.\n\nFIGURE 9.13. _The essential difference between walking and running. In the former what matters is the weight of the appendage since storage between strides is gravitational. In the latter the elasticity of tendons provides the equivalent reservoir for absorbing and releasing energy_.\n\nR. McNeill Alexander, of Leeds University, who has done the best work ever on the mechanics of walking and running, found the rule that sets the switch point. Except for the value of a constant, the formula for the gait transition point is the same one that gives the period of a pendulum. Whether you're a crow or kangaroo shifting from walking to hopping, or a human or dog (or even an insect) switching from walking to trotting, you follow Alexander's rule. Switching happens when the square of your speed is around half of gravitational acceleration times the distance between your hip and the ground. For a middle-size human, again, that's about a twelve-minute mile or five miles per hour. For a smaller animal, the transition speed is lower; you walk while a small child, dog, or cat must trot to keep pace.\n\nWhile gravitational storage isn't of much value above the transition speed, energy storage is still very much in the picture. When jogging or running, you use elastic rather than gravitational energy storage, stretching tendons rather than swinging legs up and down. The storage mode differs, and the two gaits are unmistakably distinct. In a way, gravitational storage is the special case, used only as legs rise and fall in walking. All the other common gaits\u2014trotting, galloping, hopping, and so forth\u2014 depend on elastic storage. A hopping kangaroo, for instance, regains about 40 percent of the energy absorbed in landing when it bounces up again. In storing the energy by stretching tendon, it's using the protein collagen as its battery\u2014the same stuff the ancients took from cows for their ballistae and the main material of our own tendons. Collagen has a resilience of about 93 percent\u2014that is, 7 percent of the energy put in when it's stretched fails to reappear in mechanical form when it springs back. That's not bad, better than the ordinary rubber we make from the sap of rubber trees. But where collagen brings home the bacon is in the amount of energy it can store relative to its weight\u2014nearly twenty times that of spring steel.\n\nThe problem of appendages that repeatedly change directions isn't limited to terrestrial locomotion with legs. Insects beat their wings up and down at frequencies up to almost (in the smallest ones) a thousand times a second. We've known about (and wondered at) these remarkable rates for a long time. During the 1940s an unusually gifted Finnish investigator, Olavi Sotavalta, compiled a compendium of wingbeat frequencies simply by listening to them. Or perhaps not so simply: Sotavalta not only had perfect pitch but had trained himself to distinguish fundamental notes from overtones, avoiding, as he put it, the \"soprano-tenor error.\" Tone-deaf people like me resort to microphones, recorders, and other bits of electronic assistance. (In my youth I tethered fruit flies by fine wires to phonograph needles.) Sotavalta's data have always proved reliable. Incidentally, one can force the frequency even higher by unloading the system\u2014snipping the ends off the wings. The record is 2,218 beats per second, held (and checked by others from a recording) by the same Olavi Sotavalta; that's by far the most rapid back-and-forth movement made by any organism.\n\nAs with stride frequencies in walking, wingbeat frequencies don't vary much for a given insect, and changes in wingbeat amplitude and other variables handle adjustments of flying speed. A sharp optimal frequency characterizes almost any gravitational and elastic energy storage system\u2014 why we use either pendulums or tiny springs to regulate our mechanical timepieces.\n\nFlying insects use elastic storage, and in their wing hinges are pads of the best elastic polymer known to either technology, resilin, which got brief mention in Chapter 2. Resilin was discovered about 1960 by a great Danish scientist, Torkel Weis-Fogh, who measured its resilience as an astonishing 97 percent. Resilin thus loses only 3 percent of the energy put in rather than the 7 percent of our collagen. The difference in power economy, though, is probably trivial, for 97 percent is only a little better than 93 percent. What must matter more is the mischief caused by any energy that's lost: It turns into heat, and 3 percent is less than half of 7 percent, which means that the muscular flight motor can be run a lot harder without cooking itself.\n\nReextension of muscle was mentioned as another place where shortterm energy storage is common. We use some gravitational storage every time we raise an arm. But we mostly use muscles in pairs or groups so one muscle can be used to reextend another. For instance (as in Figure 9.4), the biceps on the front of your upper arm both raises your forearm and extends the triceps on the other side of your humerus. That triceps both lowers your forearm and extends the biceps. A more important role for storage occurs in bivalve mollusks, such as clams and scallops. The two half shells are brought together and held together by muscles; elastic hinge ligaments reopen the shells and reextend the muscles. The process happens rapidly in scallops, which repeatedly clap their half shells together and squirt out water in brief bouts of swimming. Their hinge ligaments, of the protein abductin, have a respectable 91 percent resilience. The 9 percent loss to heat shouldn't matter much for a water-cooled machine that runs for only a few seconds at a time.\n\nAn important case of elastic energy storage came up in Chapter 5. Our hearts beat; they're pulsating pumps. Part of a heart's work pushes blood directly around our circulatory circuits. But part of that work, using the blood as a hydraulic fluid, pushes out\u2014stretches\u2014the walls of our arteries. In between beats the arteries then rebound, constricting elastically and pushing blood onward. In this way the elasticity of your arterial walls reduces the extreme blood pressure fluctuations generated by your beating heart and makes blood flow more smoothly through the capillaries and other small vessels downstream.\n\nFinally, energy storage can be used to get high acceleration, something of especial importance to small creatures. To go any decent distance, a projectile needs a high initial speed\u2014no matter whether it's jumping, being kicked, or being shot. A projectile's speed is at its highest when it leaves its pusher. The smaller the creature, the shorter the distance in which that speed (\"muzzle velocity\" for a firearm) must be reached. So a shorter distance demands a greater acceleration to reach the same final speed. A flea, a grasshopper, and a kangaroo have about the same takeoff speeds, but the flea must have about a hundred times and the grasshopper about ten times the acceleration of the kangaroo. The kangaroo can jump mostly with direct muscle power, but fleas and grasshoppers use their muscle to store up energy by deforming resilient material\u2014resilin pads for fleas and chitinous cuticle for grasshoppers. They then use trigger mechanisms to release the accumulated energy in short order. Many plants do the same thing in order to throw their seeds. Their devices form a wonderfully diverse lot. One way or another, all crank energy into elastic material; triggering is variously done by drops of water, by drying to a critical point, by brushing against animals, and so forth.\n\nWe commonly use four different ways of storing mechanical energy for brief periods: gravitational, elastic, electrical, and inertial. Nature uses only two: gravitational and elastic. Here again, ours looks like the more versatile technology. Nonetheless, short-term energy storage matters more for nature. Why? Simply because most of nature's brief batteries solve problems that using rotational devices, explosives, and other such tricks, we don't ordinarily encounter.\n\nTwo general points about the engines and transmissions of the two technologies. First, the very intricacy of nature's alternatives perhaps best points up the usefulness of rotational machinery. Second, the behavior of engines interacts with the character of transmissions. Each technology makes a great diversity of transmissions perhaps because each, in its own way, calls on engines that are few in number and fairly similar in performance to do a wide range of tasks.\nChapter 10\n\nABOUT PUMPS, JETS, AND SHIPS\n\nHow can human technology help us understand the nonhuman world? Let's ask the question of more complex devices than we've worried about so far, turning to whole systems rather than individual components. We'll look, in particular, at three cases where we can make sense of what nature does by combining physical rules with the practical experience of human designers. By \"make sense\" I mean seeing order amid diversity and discerning rules that transcend mere accidents of ancestry. The three cases are pumps for moving fluids around, propulsion by means of jet engines, and swimming on the surface of bodies of water. Notice that all are physical rather than biological categories. Getting the most mileage out of these comparisons requires us to begin with physical phenomena and consider pump, jet, and surface swimming rather than heart, squid, and duck.\n\nPUMPS\n\nOur blood circulates; sap rises; a clam filters food; a squid jets. These share a crucial common feature: In each case a pump moves a fluid. Still, hints of commonality get hidden in the dazzle of diversity. Perhaps that diversity should come as no surprise; beyond the diversity of pumping creatures, the pumps manage a ten million-fold range of pressure.\n\nWhat does a pump\u2014any pump\u2014do? It uses power to raise the pressure of fluid flowing through it. So three things matter: power output, increase in pressure, and rate of flow. Power is the increase in pressure times how fast the fluid flows (volume flowing per time, not the speed of a bit of fluid). Put another way, a pump makes fluid go through some system (load) that it wouldn't go through by itself. If the load resistance is high, as when fluid has to flow through a long and skinny pipe, then a lot of pressure produces only a modest trickle. Conversely, if the load resistance is low\u2014as with a short, fat pipe\u2014a little pressure gives a great gush of fluid. Obviously a pump needs sufficient power to do its intended job. A bit less obviously a pump ought to be appropriately matched to the resistance of its intended load.\n\nThe designer faces a choice. One pump might produce a great pressure but deal with a relatively low flow rate. Another pump might invest its power in a high flow rate but give only a small increase in pressure. If you use a pump that's a good pressure producer for an application that mainly needs a high flow, things will go awry. I say this with the conviction that comes from learning the hard way. Long ago, so long that the embarrassment has faded, I built a recirculating flow tank (or flume) that used a two-horsepower centrifugal pump to pump its water around. That pump, the largest that could be plugged into the room's electrical outlet, moved only two gallons per second. A few years later I built a flow tank that instead used a marine propeller to push the water around; a half-horsepower motor now moved over thirty gallons per second. So I got sixty times as much flow relative to power expended, and flow is what matters in a flow tank.\n\nMy first pump would have been a good choice for lifting water ten or twenty feet or making it squirt through a nozzle; it produced unnecessarily high pressure and too little flow. The propeller, by contrast, did good service as a low-pressure, high-volume pumper. At least I wasn't the first to pick a pump that gave the wrong combination of pressure and volume. Before the Normandy invasion in 1944 harbor components were prefabricated and then, to prevent storm damage, flooded with water and sunk off southern England. The pumps expected to empty them for floating across the English Channel, while big enough, were the wrong sort and couldn't generate enough pressure. An alert naval officer forced his superiors to face the problem by staging a persuasively unsuccessful demonstration. To save the day, the pumps of the London fire department were borrowed, no trivial accommodation at a time of air raids.\n\nFIGURE 10. 1. _Several positive displacement pumps in common use. The piston pump is of course a tire inflator. The diaphragm pump is often used to push gasoline into a car's engine, and the gear pump moves its lubricating oil_.\n\nTwo general classes of pumps can be recognized by their particular trade-offs between pressure and flow. The first are so-called positive displacement or fluid static devices; see the examples in Figure 10.1. They include the piston pumps we commonly use as hand-operated tire inflators, the diaphragm pumps that serve as fuel pumps in most automobiles, and the vane or gear pumps that move a car's lubricating oil around. In all these, either the volume of a chamber is decreased, pushing fluid out some intended opening, or else the position of a chamber is moved, and the fluid it contains moves with it.\n\nThose of the second class are called fluid dynamic, or rotodynamic, or kinetic pumps; several are shown in Figure 10.2. Some, just enclosed versions of aircraft propellers, push fluid lengthwise down pipes. Others (like my centrifugal pump) spin the fluid and thus fling it outward. Still others use the motion of one stream of fluid to move another stream of fluid, without having any moving parts themselves. One version of the latter is a jet pump. It squirts fluid from a nozzle, drawing other fluid along with it. Another is an aspirator. Here, as in automobile carburetors, the pressure reduction caused by the motion of one fluid can draw in another fluid\u2014what in Chapter 8 we saw in sponges, prairie dog burrows, and similar systems.\n\nFIGURE 10.2. _Several fluid dynamic pumps. Centrifugal blowers are used for tiny cooling fans and for the large circulators of forced air furnaces. In an aspirator (once in every automobile) fuel is drawn in by motion of air past an orifice. A jet pump works in the opposite manner, with a high-speed flow out of a small pipe drawing with it a flow in the large pipe_.\n\nWhile \"fluid dynamic\" sounds superior to \"fluid static,\" in fact neither one wins in any general sense; each is suitable for a particular range of applications. Fluid static or positive displacement pumps produce high pressures and low flows, doing best with loads of high resistance. You need one, for instance, if you're to raise water up from a deep well. Fluid dynamic pumps produce higher flows and lower pressures. Within each class, pumps cover a wide range of pressures; thus the pump that was too strongly biased toward pressure for my old flow tank was still a fluid dynamic one. Also, functionally competent exceptions exist. For instance, air entering a jet engine first goes through an axial compressor (Figure 10.5), a fluid dynamic pump that manages to reach high pressures. It does so step by step, compressing air as it passes through a long series of alternately rotating and stationary blades.\n\nWhat of living pumps? Can the distinction that works for the pumps we build help us recognize common features among nature's? Nature's pumps certainly look nothing like ours, but they do the same job of pushing liquids and gases and do it over an equivalently wide range of operating conditions. Table 10.1 summarizes the character and performance of several biological pumps.\n\nWithout much doubt, the biological pump operating against the highest resistance is the evaporative sap lifter of trees and vines. It's about as different as can be from any common machine, but it's a true positive displacement pump. Recall how it works. A continuous column of liquid water extends from roots to leaves through conduits (xylems) less than a millimeter in diameter. Evaporation through the fibrous meshwork of the walls of cells in the leaves reduces the volume of sap in them, and that in turn pulls water up from below. A column of water a little more than thirty feet, or ten meters, high exerts a pressure of one atmosphere on its base. So for every ten meters of height, a tree has to pump water against a gravitational pressure of one atmosphere. In fact, it has to work against two other sources of resistance. The skinny conduits offer a hydrodynamic resistance to flow about as high as their gravitational resistance. In addition, the soil around the roots (especially if nearly dry) may hold its water with great tenacity. Separating water from soil is much like wringing out a wet towel; it's harder and harder to extract water as the supply decreases. Faced with the problem, we inevitably switch schemes and resort to a state change\u2014evaporation\u2014to extract the final bit and dry the towel. But the tree can only raise liquid water so its roots can't make that switch. Desert plants, in the driest soil, have to pull the hardest; to raise water, they may work against pressures of as much as a hundred atmospheres. That's the pressure that would be exerted on the base of a column of water thirty-three hundred feet high or the pressure on the hull of a submarine thirty-three hundred feet down.\n\n**TYPE**|  **CATEGORY**|  **SYSTEM RESISTANCE**|  **EXAMPLES**  \n---|---|---|---  \n**Evaporative**|  **positive displ.**|  **highest**|  **leaf sap sucker**  \n**Osmotic**|  **positive displ.**|  **very high**|  **root sap pusher**  \n**Valve and chamber**|  **positive displ.**|  **high**|  **heart, bird lungs, squid jet**  \n**Peristaltic**|  **positive displ.**|  **high**|  **intestine, some hearts**  \n**Piston**|  **positive displ.**|  **medium**|  **some tubicolous worms**  \n**Vane or gear**|  **positive displ.**|  **medium**|  **other tubicolous worms**  \n**Valveless chamber**|  **positive displ.**|  **medium**|  **jellyfish jet, mammalian lung**  \n**Paddles**|  **fluid dynamic**|  **medium**|  **crustaceans in burrows**  \n**Propellers**|  **fluid dynamic**|  **low**|  **hive ventilating honeybees**  \n**Ciliary layer**|  **fluid dynamic**|  **low**|  **bivalve mollusk gills**  \n**Flagellar**|  **fluid dynamic**|  **low**|  **sponge pumping cells**  \n**Venturi aspirator**|  **fluid dynamic**|  **very low**|  **prairie dog burrow**\n\nTABLE 10.1. _Various kinds of pumps used in biological systems_ , _arranged in descending order of the system resistance they encounter_.\n\nAnother positive displacement device is an osmotic pump, also one of the engines described in Chapter 8. Like the evaporative pump, it involves no moving parts and strikes us as a strange machine. Offsetting relatively ordinary concentration differences takes pressures of tens of atmospheres, so an osmotic pump can work against a high load resistance. Osmotic pumps find their greatest use in small-scale systems of one or a few cells, where very high pressures are associated with only modest tensile stresses (recall Laplace's law from Chapter 4). But they're important in water secretion in our pancreases, in water absorption in roots, and in pushing sap upward in stems\u2014the latter a lower-pressure process complementary to the evaporative sap lifter.\n\nThe best-known positive displacement pump is the valve and chamber heart, shown as a generic device in Figure 10.3. A muscular chamber between two conduits forms the basic element, with a one-way valve where each conduit connects to it. By allowing only one-way flow, the valves ensure that one conduit leads fluid in and the other leads it out. These pumps often produce higher overall pressures by using several pumping chambers in sequence\u2014atria and ventricles, for instance\u2014 but none comes anywhere near the pressures generated by the sap lifter. Our hearts, for instance, manage no more than a quarter of an atmosphere, not tens or a hundred. The highest pressures, reached by giraffe hearts and squid jets, are still less than half an atmosphere. The gills of many fishes and the lung inflators of frogs also use valve and chamber pumps. All the jet engines of animals appear to be positive displacement devices. Some have valves (squid, for instance); others (such as jellyfish and the anal jets of dragonfly larvae) have single, valveless conduits through which both squirting and refilling happen, as in a kitchen baster. Nature's valve and chamber pumps resemble our piston and diaphragm pumps despite the absence of sliding parts like piston rings in nature and of any actively contractile element like muscle in our own devices.\n\nFIGURE 10.3. _Positive displacement pumps in nature: a human heart, with its valves and chambers, and a marine worm_ , Arenicola, _that lives in subtidal sand and, by passing waves of contraction down its body, pumps water down through the sand and up through its burrow_.\n\nYet another kind of positive displacement pump propels digesting food down our intestines. In one of these peristaltic pumps, waves of constriction pass down a muscular tube and push along blobs of fluids or slurries. Many worms have hearts\u2014or large blood vessels, since the distinction gets blurry\u2014that pump peristaltically. The ugly lugworm, _Arenicola_ (shown in the figure), moves water through its partially sand-filled (and thus high-resistance) burrow by passing peristaltic waves down its body. Peristaltic pumps find only limited technological use (they'll come up again in Chapter 13, and one is shown in Figure 13.1), mainly where we want to keep the fluid in the tube that conveys it and where the inefficiency of the devices (lacking a decent analog of muscle) isn't prohibitive.\n\nIn our technology fluid dynamic pumps mostly use wheels and axles, so nature's versions (a couple are shown in Figure 10.4) don't look much like ours. Furthermore, our fluid dynamic pumps are big, fast things, so pushers, such as fan blades, work well. By contrast, most of nature's fluid dynamic pumps are smaller and slower, so pushing with propellerlike blades is hydrodynamically less effective. Instead the basic push works better if done in the fashion of a submerged oar: by alternately moving something downstream in a high-drag orientation and then upstream again in a low- drag position. Human technology hasn't used that scheme much since the demise of paddle wheels; propellers blow away oars if they're large. But despite such divergent appearance and operation, the basic principles and the applications of natural and human-made fluid dynamic pumps are every bit as close as those for positive displacement pumps.\n\nFIGURE 10.4. _Fluid dynamic pumps in nature: a ciliated epithelium (as lines much of our respiratory tracts) pushing a layer of mucus across itself and a sliced sponge_ , _in which chambers of flagellated cells draw water in through the general surface and out into the central cavity and apical opening. This sponge is highly diagrammatic since in reality the chambers and passages are far too small to be visible in an overall view_.\n\nLiving or not, fluid dynamic pumps deal with low-resistance systems. Some of the lowest resistances are handled by devices that we don't think of as pumps at all. These move large volumes of an external rather than an internal fluid. We're talking here about swimming and flying by moving some appendages, whether by beating wings or paddles or by oscillating cilia or flagella. All such locomotion requires processing huge volumes of fluid but imparting only slight pressure increases. Slightly higher, but still relatively low, resistances face the fluid dynamic pumps (mainly ciliated surfaces) that push mucuses around. Most of the rest of nature's fluid dynamic pumps are involved in suspension feeding. Far more animals than most people imagine make livings in this quiet but demanding way\u2014from the simplest sponges to the largest whales. Most natural waters contain edible particles, but they don't often reach high concentrations. So a lot of water has to be processed to get a little food. For the nutritional benefit to exceed the processing cost, a separation system can't afford great pressure differences. Thus the task calls for fluid dynamic pumps. For suspension feeders, life becomes a competitive battle of extraction efficiencies, with the winner the one that can put the most energy into growth and reproduction and the least into food collecting.\n\nWe have lots of data on suspension feeding pumps, mainly because they're used by bivalve mollusks, of both ecological importance and culinary appeal. Soft-shell clams and mussels, pushing hard, can press about one two-thousandths of an atmosphere, but in normal operation they (and sponges too) work at about one hundred-thousandths of an atmosphere. But while these pressures sound trivial, they push impressively high volumes; water equal to as much as half of an animal's body volume gets processed _per second_. (Our circulatory systems don't come close to these volume flows; even during vigorous exercise the human heart pumps less than 1 percent of body volume each second, fifty times less.) Similarly low pressures are involved when sponges use local water currents to augment their pumping and prairie dogs ventilate their burrows; only very low resistance systems can take advantage of ambient flows. Yet another fluid dynamic pump working in the same pressure range is the honeybee hive ventilator, a pump consisting of stationary bees beating their wings at the hive's entrance. This last can be a multistage pump, like the compressor of a jet engine, since the bees often stand one behind another. Lacking decent ductwork, though, it's suitable for only low-resistance work.\n\nThus the distinction we make between our two general classes of mechanical pumps helps us see order in some diverse natural devices; the same resistance-based difference in performance drives the choices made by both technologies. And we need help if we're to understand nature. Just assuming that natural selection leads to good design doesn't take us very far. Not only do organisms differ dramatically in size and anatomy, but their different lineages form separate technological microcosms. The sap lifter isn't available for use by a vertebrate heart, nor can a plant order up any muscular device. But a few thousand years of human technology let us see the forest through the trees. At the least it counteracts the unnatural division of natural systems among people who study different kinds of organisms, who consider different biological functions, who publish in different journals, and who write different chapters in different textbooks.\n\nThe analysis also helps us understand why certain arrangements don't occur. Our circulatory system uses tiny pipes\u2014capillaries\u2014to exchange material between blood and cells, and it uses large pipes\u2014arteries and veins\u2014to interconnect different capillary beds. Pumping of course is done with muscular hearts joining the largest vessels. Why not build a circulatory system that uses ciliated capillaries instead of muscular hearts? After all, blood flows through capillaries at speeds consistent with ciliary pumping, and clams pump vast amounts of water with cilia. Some years ago Michael LaBarbera and I guessed that cilia were simply so much less efficient than muscles that the scheme would be impractically costly\u2014 whatever the advantages of decentralization of function. We should have argued that cilia, as fluid dynamic pumps, don't match the high resistances of circulatory systems. Keeping resistance low enough for ciliary pumps would demand huge interconnecting vessels containing a great volume of blood, along with extremely short capillaries\u2014if the system could fit into the body at all.\n\nOne final note on nature's pumps for fluids, a point that might not occur to us except through a comparison with human technology. The biologist studies what occurs, not what doesn't occur, since what doesn't occur isn't available for examination. But the comparisons in this book have repeatedly drawn our attention to oddly glaring omissions in the natural world. Each of these has either told a tale or raised some provocative question. What follows is another of nature's peculiar omissions.\n\nPotential mismatches such as using cilia to drive blood through a mammal can be fixed with a device that trades off pressure change against volume flow. We're invoking nothing more radical than what levers do with force and distance or electrical transformers do with voltage and current. Our technology uses many such converters and has done so since antiquity. A device of the ancient Mediterranean world called a noria is shown in Figure 10.5. A noria used the flow of a stream either to drive paddles that ran a revolving chain of buckets or to drive an undershot waterwheel equipped with buckets. Either way, a lot of slightly descending flow in the stream moved a lesser volume to a much greater height\u2014 high pressure and low flow from low pressure and high flow. A so-called hydraulic ram, still in occasional use, accomplishes the same conversion in a different way. A stream flowing downhill makes a small amount of water flow considerably farther uphill\u2014here by capturing the energy released when some of the moving water stops. In effect, the sudden end of a surge of flow drives a smaller volume to a higher level\u2014repeatedly. A best-selling book of the late 1940s, _The Egg and I_ , talks about how much life on the farm improved when the family got its ram; the modern urban reader might wonder about the odd ovine allusion. All of nature's valve and chamber pumps produce pulsating flows, but no hydraulic ram has yet been described in nature.\n\nWe reduce pressures and increase volumes as well as the opposite. A ducted fan-jet engine, as in Figure 10.5, uses a big fan in front to move additional air through ducts that go around the engine itself. It thus gets greater volume flow with less overall pressure change. (We'll face the \"why bother\" shortly). Animals commonly make one flow induce another, but no squid or jellyfish uses such a converter. The combination of long fixed wings and small propellers on an airplane does the same conversion. The propeller produces its thrust by giving the small stream passing through it a large pressure increase. The long wing uses some of that horizontal thrust to make a lot of air flow just a little bit downward. So it converts a high-pressure, low-volume flow to a low-pressure, high-volume flow in a different direction. But among flying animals only beetles make any use of this separation of propeller and wing.\n\nFIGURE 10.5. _Old and new ways to trade pressure against volume flow. A noria run by an undershot waterwheel increases pressure and decreases flow, so the motion of a stream can lift water into an irrigation system. A fan-jet engine decreases pressure and increases flow to improve efficiency at subsonic speeds. Air enters the front; fuel is pumped directly into the combustion chamber_.\n\nNature uses many devices that make flows go faster or slower by changing the sizes of pipes. The nozzle on the squid's jet speeds the water, working just like the nozzle on a garden hose. But all these trade speed for area, not pressure for volume flow. The scarcity of pressure flow converters in nature is a puzzle. Perhaps we're missing something or looking at these systems in the wrong way. Perhaps the extreme range of pressures spanned by nature's pumps reduces her need for converters. But that makes the improbable assumption that natural selection has a wide choice of pumps in each specific instance. Or perhaps the small size of organisms is an insurmountable burden. For small, slow flows, viscosity places a severe tax on the efficiency of fluid mechanical devices, so maybe nature simply can't build converters efficient enough to be worthwhile.\n\nJET PROPULSION\n\nWhat could be simpler? Eject a fluid in one direction, and get propelled in the other. If ambient fluid (usually air) is used, we call the engine a jet; if the fluid comes entirely from within, we call it a rocket. The distinction doesn't matter much here, so we'll refer to what all such reaction engines do as jet propulsion. The process can drive an airplane, a surface ship, or a submarine; it can even work in a vacuum. What could be more natural for an animal? One need only wrap a muscle around a bag of fluid and give the bag a squeeze; out will come fluid through any hole, deliberate or fortuitous. Someplace or other, it's done by almost every animal big enough for us to see. Squeezing our hearts sends blood outbound; contracting our leg muscles helps send blood inbound again; a traveling squeeze of the esophagus pushes food stomachward, while a similar squeeze of the intestine propels the processed slurry farther aft. Expel rather than just propel the fluid, and you have a jet engine. Furthermore, the most ordinary fluid, liquid water, is nicely dense, flows easily, and thus serves admirably. Plastic water rockets are splendid toys; just half fill the rocket with water and pump air into the remaining space. When the rocket is launched, reexpansion of the air expels the water downward. Recoil sends the rocket up a hundred feet, and the experienced operator gets only minimally dampened by the effluent.\n\nNature has many such engines. Perhaps no other locomotory scheme has independently evolved in so many different lineages. Jellyfish do it. And the cephalopods\u2014squid, octopus, and cuttlefish\u2014do it. A scallop swims in short bursts using a pair of jets on either side of the hinge of its shell. A young dragonfly swims in a pond by squirting water out its anus. Frogfish maneuver by squirting the water that has passed over their gills out through nozzles placed more or less amidships. And on and on.\n\nAll these jets work like toy water rockets. A squid, certainly nature's champion jetter, has a water-filled cavity between an outer muscular sheath (which got notice earlier as a hydrostatic skeleton) and its various viscera. When a squid tightens that sheath, the water inside is forced out through a nozzle, and the squid can get elsewhere in a hurry; fifteen to twenty miles per hour is impressive for an aquatic animal less than a foot long. Avoiding an approaching mouth, a squid can briefly outdistance all but cetaceans or the fastest fish. It can shoot sixteen feet up from the ocean's surface or take an arcing aerial trajectory as much as fifty feet long.\n\nSo jets sound terrific. But while jets may be simple and common, no jet-driven animal ever goes both fast and far. Squid can't maintain top speed for more than a few pulses. Jellyfish may swim steadily, but they reach only about a quarter of a mile per hour. Frogfish do only about twice that, terribly slow by piscine standards. Dragonfly larvae swim at a little more than one mile per hour, and scallops up to one and a half miles per hour; both, like squid, perform only intermittently. Where's the rub? Is the limitation biological or fluid mechanical?\n\nHow we ourselves use jets is revealing. Jet and rocket engines may be the oldest devices that burn fuel to make motion; in principle they're the simplest of all heat engines. The earliest-known steam engine was a direct jetting device; it had only one moving part and needed little precision in its construction. This was the famous engine of Hero of Alexandria, in the first century C.E., shown (with necessary artistic license) in Figure 10.6. A fire heated water in a spherical chamber mounted on an axle. The chamber had two tangentially pointing nozzles through which steam emerged; the jets of steam thus spun the chamber. But Hero's engine never made anything better than a heroic steam whistle for reasons that, as we'll see, cast no aspersions on Roman culture. The steam engines that drove the Industrial Revolution were based on a completely different scheme.\n\nEven after fifty years of development we mostly use these reaction engines for very fast aircraft and almost never for cars or trains or boats. Why do both natural and human technologies take this peculiar arm's- length attitude toward what seems an attractively simple and powerful scheme? Because the scheme has a major and fundamental flaw.\n\nThe crux of the problem is the low efficiency of jets under all too many circumstances. Here's how it arises. By pushing fluid rearward ejecting momentum\u2014a jet engine produces a forward force. One might take a lot of fluid and increase its rearward speed just a little. Or one might take a small amount of fluid and greatly increase its rearward motion. All that matters is mass flow rate multiplied by velocity. Air or water passing at one kilogram per second and given an extra speed of two meters per second yields the same thrust as two kilograms per second given one extra meter per second.\n\nBut the efficiency of the device cares a lot about the particular mix of amount and speed of expelled fluid. For a given flow rate, the rearward thrust you get depends directly on the speed you give the passing fluid. But the cost in energy needed to produce that push increases not directly with the speed but with the square of the speed. Double the speed, and you double the thrust, but doubling the speed costs you four times as much energy. So you want to keep the speed of the expelled fluid as low as possible; minimizing cost means using lots of fluid and giving it only a little rearward push. There's the rub. That's just the opposite of what jets and rockets do: They squirt small but rapid streams.\n\nFIGURE 10.6. _The steam engine attributed to Hero (or Heron) of Alexandria, first century C.E. A fire beneath a metal sphere spins the sphere by causing a mix of water and steam to squirt out the jets_.\n\nHow can an engine be made to use lots of fluid? Definitely not by making all the fluid pass through its middle and out a nozzle; too little fluid can get through, so what goes through has to go too fast. You need to take the opposite approach. Instead of forcing a little fluid through the engine, you ought to force a lot of fluid around the engine. Better to make the engine go through the fluid than to make the fluid go through the engine. How to do this? Attach long, moving appendages to the engine\u2014fins, wings, paddles, or propeller blades. Any of these will beat the jet in propulsion efficiency. All, though, are more complicated than Hero's engine or the simple squirting machine of a jellyfish. Nonetheless, the complication pays off. A trout, waving its body and tail, deals with about ten times as much water per unit time as a jetting squid of the same size. As a result, the trout takes half the power to go twice as fast.\n\nShould jets be dismissed as primitive because of their simplicity and inefficiency? Are they just the bad hands dealt out by an animal's ancestry? Wrong as well as unfair. To swim or fly by pushing the local fluid backward, a machine (living or not) must push it faster than the rate at which the craft goes forward. Consequently, the speed of fluid emerging from its propulsion device sets the craft's maximum forward speed. If going fast is what matters, then jet engines look a lot more attractive. That's how we use jet aircraft: We make both small and large ones, but we don't make slow ones. A squid does much the same. With small fins on its rear, it has a choice of systems. For slow swimming, as when feeding, it mainly uses its fins. But when pursued by a fish or cetacean, it turns on its jet and zips away. In a brief life-or-death maneuver, biological fitness doesn't turn on energetic efficiency!\n\nFor that matter, the jet engines of commercial aircraft have changed over the past few decades, processing ever larger amounts of air and reducing their average output speeds. They've added turbine-driven ducted fans, evolving from pure jets to ducted fan jets (Figure 10.5), as noted when we considered pressure flow converters. Early jets had small intake openings, and all the air coming in entered a fanlike compressor prior to receiving its charge of fuel. Fan jets have big intakes with large, conspicuous entrance fans. Engine designers have worked hard to increase the amount of air going around relative to that going through the combustion chamber\u2014the bypass ratio\u2014to improve efficiency and thus get lower fuel consumption and greater range and payload.\n\nPoor propulsion efficiency makes jet aircraft impractical for flight at the sizes and speeds of animals. We know of no living jet aircraft\u2014almost certainly nature never made one\u2014some engaging bits of science fiction (and flatulent humor) notwithstanding. But oddly enough, jets aren't all that bad for slow swimming. In steady swimming, the thrust produced equals the drag incurred. Low speeds generate disproportionately low drag, so balancing it takes very little thrust. Some squid make lengthy migrations using their jets, but they do so at speeds of around a body length per second, less than a mile per hour. Evading drag simply by being slow probably underlies the success of slow jetters such as jellyfish.\n\nWhile the same fluid mechanical rules govern motion through air and water, flying is a lot harder than swimming. The lower density of air may help a craft go forward, but it demands an additional force to keep the craft aloft. This additional component consumes (except for buoyant blimps and balloons) a lot of power, whether or not the craft goes forward at all. For flight, never mind moving slowly to take advantage of low drag. To the cost of going anywhere must be added the cost of staying aloft, and slower flight means longer periods aloft. In short, the drag-evading slow swimming of jellyfish or frogfish provides no model for any heavier- than-air flying machine.\n\nTo stay aloft, an aircraft must push air downward. Some air must be given an increase in speed, but now the speed that matters is downward. Again the choice is between giving a large amount a small speed increase and giving a small amount a large speed increase. But for staying aloft by making air flow downward, the relevant speed of the craft is how fast it's ascending. If (as is usual) it's simply holding altitude, then ascent speed is zero. So the lower the speed of the downward airflow, the better. Concomitantly, the greater the volume of air moved downward, the better. Thus directing a small, high-speed stream of air\u2014a jet\u2014downward is a particularly inefficient way to stay up. A small downward-facing propeller works only a little better.\n\nThat's why helicopters have long rotors and why tilting the engines of an ordinary propeller plane from horizontal to vertical produces a very inefficient hoverer. One military aircraft, the Harrier, is a jet that can hover, but it gulps fuel when it does. The opposite extreme would be a helicopter with blades infinitely long; it could hover at no cost at all!\n\nThis issue of propulsion efficiency explains a basic difference between flying animals and ordinary airplanes. Birds, bats, and insects get both thrust, to go forward, and lift, to stay aloft by beating their wings. Their wings ordinarily beat not just up and down but to some extent fore and aft. Slower flight usually comes with less up-and-down and more fore- and-aft motion; a creature just tilts the plane of beating backward when it slows down, as in Figure 10.7. When hovering at flower or feeder, a hummingbird has its head up and tail down, and its wings mainly move back and forth. What a helicopter does when hovering is almost identical. Like a hummingbird's wings, a helicopter rotor moves in a horizontal plane when it hovers, tilting the plane front down a bit for forward flight. But ordinary airplanes use propellers to go forward and fixed wings to stay aloft, successful airplanes preceded successful helicopters by about thirty-five years, and helicopters are still profligate fuel consumers. We managed to build airplanes when we gave up the bird or helicopter arrangement and began using airfoils in two different ways on the same craft. (A crosswise slice of a propeller reveals a shape just like that of a wing; they're the same kind of device.)\n\nFIGURE 10.7. _A hummingbird switches from hovering to rapid forward flight mainly by changing the plane in which its wings beat from horizontal (back and forth) to vertical (up and down_ ).\n\nThe fixed wing airplane produces its thrust by moving air backward at a speed greater than that of the plane's forward motion, which is usually quite rapid. It produces its lift with long, fixed wings that give a large amount of air a little downward push. What's subtle is the power source for operating fixed wings. It can only be the propeller since that's the only thing that has an engine attached. What happens is that the power to stay aloft is felt by the propeller and engine as an additional drag that requires more thrust; when producing lift, a wing (unless it's infinitely long!) has more drag than when simply sticking out into the moving air. In effect, the airplane produces forward thrust by using small airfoils or jets operating at high horizontal speeds. It converts some of that thrust to lift by using large wings operating at near-zero vertical speeds, as we noted when talking earlier about pressure flow converters. The arrangement is efficient, which is why, long after fine helicopters first became available, we persistently build planes that take long runways to reach high takeoff speeds.\n\nHow then do birds, bats, and insects manage so well with only one set of airfoils? The argument, alluded to in Chapter 3, turns on the relative sizes of the flying machines of the two technologies. A wing produces lift in proportion to its area. But an aircraft requires lift in proportion to its weight. After all, for steady, level flight, lift and weight must balance just as do thrust and drag. Consider what happens if the size of a craft doubles, with no change of shape or density. All lengths\u2014length, wingspan, etc.\u2014will double. All areas\u2014total external surface, wing area, etc.\u2014will go up fourfold. Volume and weight, though, will increase no less than eightfold. So weight relative to area will double; the bigger craft will have twice the weight relative to its wing area. Thus it will be relatively lift-deprived, something not at all propitious for flight.\n\nTwo evasions suggest themselves. The first is to use disproportionately large wings for larger craft. The original Wright Flyer of 1903 had huge wings as does the ultrasophisticated Gossamer series of human-powered aircraft. But both are intentionally slow, disdaining the second evasion, which is to go faster. Double the flying speed, and the lift of a wing goes up fourfold. (So a doubling of weight can be balanced by a 1.4-fold increase in speed.) Ordinary aircraft may weigh more relative to their wing areas than do birds, but they fly faster. Only a few large birds can exceed fifty miles per hour in level flight, while only a few specialized airplanes can fly so slowly. Larger size not only permits higher speed (less total surface to incur drag relative to volume) but practically requires it (less lifting surface relative to volume). Higher speed, in turn, requires a smaller and faster air pusher. Airplanes gain efficiency by separating wings and propellers. Birds, smaller and thus slower, find larger and slower air pushers practical, and they have little cause to use fixed wings for lift and flapping ones for thrust.\n\nBut even flying animals aren't completely out of the woods. Big animals weigh more, relative to their wing areas, than do small ones. Big birds may fly faster than small ones, but they don't have enough wing area to hover effectively; their propulsive systems move too little air too fast for decent efficiency in hovering. Large aquatic birds often need to taxi furiously to reach takeoff speed. A pigeon can hover for a few seconds, but it can't maintain sufficient power output to keep it up for long. Only hummingbirds are proper avian hovercraft. But for small flying insects hovering is routine. These small, slow creatures have a high ratio of lift-producing wing area to lift-requiring body weight. With all that wing area they move a lot of air downward, so they don't have to move it downward very fast.\n\nA pair of lessons: First, something absent in both, jet engines propelling craft of moderate size at moderate speeds, draws attention to the unromantic but inescapable issue of propulsion efficiency. That in turn provides proper skepticism of proposals for jet backpacks, jet boats, and the like. Second comes a point made repeatedly. Comparing situations where fixed wings work best with those where flapping wings prove practical turns on the subtle, pervasive, perhaps even pernicious influence of size. Size differences all too often confound judgmental comparisons between what we make and what nature makes.\n\nSWIMMING AT THE SURFACE\n\nTwo kinds of machines, surface ships and submarines, swim, and both technologies make both. That every submarine we've built can also swim at the surface shouldn't be allowed to obscure basic differences between the two kinds of swimming. One might guess that surface swimming is easier; only at the surface can a thrust-producing appendage enjoy a recovery phase in low-density air. Rowboats, canoes, and paddle-wheel steamers use aerial recovery, but it's ignored by all our better boats as well as by nature's. So aerial recovery can't be all that valuable. A more important difference, one with the opposite effect, emerges from the various ways water resists a swimmer's motion. Beneath the surface lurks ordinary drag, most of which can be avoided by careful streamlining. The surface ship must also contend with drag from surface waves. With less of its hull submerged, the surface ship avoids some ordinary drag, but the saving is less than the ship pays in wave-induced drag. A submarine can go faster with less fuel than a surface ship of the same size.\n\nBoth technologies build both kinds of swimmers, just as both build positive displacement and fluid dynamic pumps and just as both build jet engines. Here, though, we see a major bias. Nature's swimmers are almost all submarines, with only an occasional duck, muskrat, or water strider moving at the surface. Our swimmers are nearly always surface ships, with self-propelled submarine technology of any kind barely two centuries old. Even now, submarines are limited to damn-the-cost military use. So we have two questions: What limits submarines for us, and what's wrong with surface swimming for living boats?\n\nAnswering the first question is easier but not as interesting as the second. For one thing, we like to breathe air at sea-level atmospheric pressure, so we build our submarines with rigid, pressure-resisting hulls. Such hulls have to be rigid because with air inside, a submarine faces a peculiar instability. As it dives deeper, the rising pressure tries to compress hull and air. That makes the overall density of the submarine rise, so it gets less buoyant and all too eager to go deeper yet. (Whale and skin diver contain air only in the lungs, although compression of air in the lungs and the resulting transfer of nitrogen gas from lungs into blood do present a serious problem.) In addition, most of our engines breathe air, and they demand more oxygen than the humans inside the craft. So fully submerged boats were first hand-cranked, then driven by electric motors and rechargeable batteries and most recently by nuclear reactors driving steam turbines.\n\nIf nuclear engines were commercially available, we might use submarines at least for transporting bulky and incompressible cargoes such as oil for long distances. Fuel efficiency would be better, vulnerability to storms might be reduced, and the whale-shaped ships themselves would be more compact than present supertankers. A small pressure hull would of course be needed for the crew.\n\nThe trickier issue is why nature's swimmers so rarely keep their heads above water. Avoiding the surface is remarkably widespread. Ducks swim on the surface, but they do so slowly; they're far faster either submerged or in flight. Air breathers, such as penguins, seals, and cetaceans, do most of their swimming underwater even though they have to come up to breathe. Nature's submarines vary in size from the smallest microorganisms to the largest whales, while her surface ships encompass a size range from just below a centimeter to less than a meter in length. By contrast, think how ancient and successful are our surface ships, how varied in materials and designs, how diverse the cultures that have built them, how many places on earth were settled long ago by people who came by boat. In short, why do surface ships present a problem for nature, or does she simply build such good submarines that surface ships are superfluous?\n\nThe culprits, waves, pose a worse problem for swimming animals than for boats. The waves that give the most trouble aren't the ones that winds generate but the ones that surface swimmers themselves make. Neither duck nor ocean liner can avoid making waves as it moves along. As in Figure 10.8, a floating craft moving along the surface creates a pair of waves separated by roughly its own waterline length\u2014so-called bow wave and stern wave. That waterline length (hull length) thus sets the distance between waves, the wavelength. Waves always move, and their wavelengths set their speeds. As has been known for at least a century, wave speed increases with the square root of wavelength; double the wavelength, and you increase the wave speed about 1.4 times. By making waves of longer length, the bigger boat makes waves that travel faster. With a string, a stopwatch, and some toy boats (add weight if they ride too high) you can test the assertion in any swimming pool.\n\nFIGURE 10.8. _An ordinary boat generates a pair of wave crests as it moves\u2014a bow wave and a stern wave\u2014separated by about the length of its hull (here marked \"L\"_ ).\n\nTrouble comes because an ordinary floating ship or a swimmer finds it hard to go faster than its waves. If it tries, a hill of water faces it, and it has either to cut its way through or go perpetually uphill\u2014up the down escalator as it were, as in Figure 10.9. So a surface ship faces a practical speed limit, what's called its hull speed. Above its hull speed its drag increases suddenly and severely. Since hull speed depends on hull length, the larger ship can go faster before hitting that limit. Tinkering with the shape of the hull can have some effect on the speed and suddenness of that drag increase, but the underlying problem can't easily be evaded. We build fairly large ships, and a hundred-foot-long ship reaches hull speed at about a respectable fifteen or so miles per hour. Hull speed for a ten-foot- long boat, about as small as we ever use, is about five miles per hour. For the foot-long duck hull, it's only one and a half miles per hour\u2014for an animal that can fly at thirty. For a muskrat the speed limit is even lower. Even swimming humans, far from streamlined, can go faster underwater than on the surface, despite giving up any aerial recovery phase for their arms. So much better is underwater swimming for us that excessive use of it has been banned for races lest fanatic competitors injure themselves; it's healthy to breathe when working maximally.\n\nFIGURE 10.9. _A small boat hits hull speed at a low speed; for this rubber duck being towed in a tank it's uphill all the way above about one mile per hour. Notice the slight tilt of the duck at the highest speed shown_.\n\nOne can evade the limit by hydroplaning, scooting across the surface, which we do in small to medium-size motorboats in fairly calm water. A few birds, such as razorbills and loons, hydroplane for short distances. But it's just not a practical way to carry large masses for respectable distances. The problem then is one of size. Surface ship technology is more attractive if you're big than if you're small. So the profound divergence turns on nothing more obscure than the difference in scale between the two technologies.\n\nAs if in the interest of symmetry or fair play, quite a different way of getting around on a liquid's surface works better for nature than for human technology. Whirligig beetles, small black ovals (Figure 10.10), use it to dash around on streams and ponds. An ordinary surface wave involves two competing phenomena. The inertia of the moving water keeps the surface wavy while gravity tries to flatten the surface, and the interaction of these phenomena sets the speed of a wave. Gravity, though, isn't the only agency trying to flatten the surface; it's just the important one for large waves. The phenomenon that makes droplets round up, that causes water to bead on a waxy surface, that permits us to rest a clean needle on the surface of a pan of water, that we minimize by using soaps and detergents\u2014surface tension\u2014also flattens the water's surface. Gravity works at large scales, while surface tension becomes significant when things are small. So the interaction of inertia and surface tension rather than inertia and gravity rules waves shorter than about two-thirds of an inch.\n\nIf only gravity were relevant, then a centimeter-long hull could make only about five inches per second. But when surface tension is taken into account, the speed limit reaches almost ten inches per second. For a halfcentimeter hull, surface tension makes even more of a difference: twelve inches per second instead of three and a half. So the speed limit is by no means as bad as we might have guessed for creatures in the millimeter to centimeter range of hull length. What's more, in this peculiar domain smaller is faster, not slower.\n\nFIGURE 10.10. _A whirligig beetle on a pond is a surface ship so small that it encounters waves whose speeds are determined more by surface tension than by gravity_.\n\nNonetheless, whirligig beetles are among the few inhabitants of this world of small surface ships. (Water striders, springtails, and a few other creatures walk on the surface rather than swim in the present sense.) Using surface tension requires fairly calm water. Also, it's not a friendly world for animals less than a few millimeters long. For these still-smaller animals the speed limit isn't the problem. Instead surface tension itself becomes a trap, as you may have noticed when a tiny fly falls onto the surface of a pond or puddle. Sprinkle a little talcum powder in a bowl of water, and you'll see the problem. Talc is several times denser than water, but the particles get caught on the surface and stay there persistently.\n\nPumps, jet propulsion, and surface swimming are each used by both technologies. What do we learn from the comparisons? Both technologies make elaborate use of pumps of diverse designs; for both the same rules link basic design with practical applications. Both make substantial use of jet propulsion, but each gives the scheme something less than a clear and sweeping endorsement\u2014for the same reason. Jets get used when something transcends their inefficiency, something such as the desire for high speed, the need for a brief burst of speed, the acceptability of very low speed, or the simplicity with which preexisting structures can be modified. Both technologies use surface swimming, but human technology finds it far more attractive than does nature. The problem for nature is one of size, the difficulty that the mechanics of wave propagation poses for small ships trying to move rapidly. Looking at pumps, jets, and ships, we're once again reminded that however divergent their aims and appearances, the underlying constraints and imperatives are very much the same for human builders and nature.\nChapter 11\n\nMAKING WIDGETS\n\nBefore they work, things must be made; to keep them working, they must be repaired. We've looked extensively\u2014exhaustively, the reader might declare\u2014at what natural and human technology make, but we've yet to ask about how each produces and services its things. In no aspect do the two diverge farther. The primary story is the biological one; being competent organisms gives us no intrinsic sense of how we operate! But human technology needs a little attention as well; participating in a modern industrial society doesn't instill much understanding of that either.\n\nTHE LIVING FACTORY\n\nWe large creatures operate in two distinct domains. On one hand, our pieces make up a single product, an organism tested against other organisms in the marketplace of natural selection, with reproductive success as criterion. On the other hand, the factory that makes our pieces is the cell. A tiny organism may be just a cell, but the animals and plants we see about us are decidedly supercellular. A human contains about 100,000,000,000,000 cells (a hundred trillion, or 1014). Assuming a typical diameter of a hundredth of a millimeter, in single file such cells would stretch a million kilometers, a thin line encircling the earth about twenty- five times. These microscopic production units vary little to either side of their typical length of four ten-thousandths of an inch. It's no accident that the ancient icon of the biologist, the light microscope, views structures at this scale. Biology textbooks discuss levels of organization such as organs and communities, but only the species approaches in importance the cell and the organism.\n\nIf this dualism of cell versus organism strikes you as theological or metaphysical, expunge such heretical thoughts; this is reporting, not New Age analysis. Never mind, at this point, why a cellular scheme of organization was retained almost every time macroscopic organisms evolved. What matters here is the strangeness of a manufacturing system whose products are larger than its factories. This is cottage industry with a vengeance, and it has important consequences for how nature makes and maintains her things and for what particular things she makes.\n\n**Building Up, Not Down**. The basic production units, cells, make things bigger than themselves, organisms, from parts smaller than themselves, molecules. The nearest equivalent of a single cut, cast, or pressed part is a single protein molecule. If a cell were simply filled with such molecules and nothing more, it would hold roughly 10,000,000,000 of them (ten billion, or 1010). Despite their small size, these parts are complex. A protein may be a polymer of a few hundred monomeric chemical units strung together, but it differs in two important ways from any polymer produced industrially. The monomeric units (amino acids, if you need a name) are nonidentical, and the sequence in which different ones are strung together is all-important. Not just the proportions but the specific sequence matter. Complexity starts within the molecules themselves.\n\nMaking proteins is the most important thing that cells do. These proteins either get used within cells or get exported, mainly to form intercellular structures or to flow in intercellular fluids. As a manufacturing system a cell should find it easiest to make things smaller than itself. Of course assembling subcellular things made of several kinds of proteins isn't necessarily automatic. But it should be a lot less tricky for a cell than making things larger than itself. The evidence of microfossils in the oldest rocks accords with this view; for most of the time that life has existed on earth, supercellular structure was limited to whatever gluey stuff stuck a few cells together.\n\nFIGURE 11.1. _The hierarchical structure of a tendon_.\n\nThe larger things made by organisms reflect this process of building up from the molecular level. A steel beam is uniformly composed of steel, while the wooden beam taken from a defunct tree has level beneath level of structure. In making metals and plastics, we try to achieve material homogeneity, while living systems seem strongly biased against homogeneous materials. Homogeneity isn't reached until one gets well below cellular dimensions. A tendon (Figure 11.1), for instance, isn't just a stiff elastic band; it's divided into fascicles, which are made up of fibrils, which are formed of subfibrils, themselves composed of microfibrils, the latter mostly bundled triple helices of amino acid chains. Even hair, of a single protein, keratin, has a hierarchical (or as Julian Vincent shamelessly quips, hairarchical) structure. Nature routinely and easily introduces organizational complexity at a microscopic level, at least compared with the barriers that face our own fabricational techniques.\n\nNature uses composites for all her rigid materials while we crow a bit when we make a composite that's competitive in a nonmilitary marketplace. Perhaps nature just does what comes naturally, taking advantage, though, of some coincidence in how cell size coincides with the best size for the components of good composites. Only a little coordination among cells yields highly anisotropic composites\u2014composites with regularly rather than randomly arranged components, composites whose properties depend on the direction of loading. We do that with fiberglass, making sheets in which the glass fibers run in the same plane and rods in which all the fibers are parallel. But even the fanciest fiberglass is monotonous next to wood or bone, as in Figure 11.2.\n\nFIGURE 11.2. _Recognition of the complex composite character of bone and wood is no new thing. Here are micrographs of lengthwisey glancing (tangential) sections of the two_ , _from the 1878 edition of Gray's human anatomy and Sachs's plant physiology of 1882_.\n\nMaking a biological composite amalgamates the outputs of a multitude of microfactories to good advantage. For other biological products, any superiority of cellular over macroscopic synthesis is less clear. What can't be doubted, though, is that cellular synthesis has consequences far beyond the internal arrangements of structural materials. Consider muscle: It differs from an electric motor in a way not yet mentioned. The motor is a single machine; omit almost any part, and it will fail to work, and no portion of the motor can run by itself. The muscle, by contrast, is an amalgam of small, identical units, the sarcomeres (Figure 8.9), each about two micrometers, about one ten-thousandths of an inch, long. Whether one operates doesn't depend at all on whether the others can do so. We put that independence to use, adjusting how hard a muscle works by changing the number of motor units\u2014somewhat larger operational elements than sarcomeres\u2014that are active.\n\nNor is muscle the only living machine in which larger simply means more of the basic units. A kidney and an intestine and a liver look substantial enough, with their functions, as organs, described in textbooks. But the functions of these organs are just the functions of identical elements made up of individual cells or small groups of cells. Each of us carries a strong sense of organismic individuality, and none of us holds special affection for our cells as individuals, yet we're minimal confederations of these tiny elements. In even the most complex organism, far more information moves within cells than between cells. Even our brains are bit players compared with the rate at which information from the genetic material directs the synthesis of protein, an entirely intracellular activity.\n\nPut another way, nature achieved something glorious when, something more than half a billion years ago, she invented well-integrated, multicellular, macroscopic organisms. Nature builds up more often than she miniaturizes. With rare exceptions, large size is the specialization, whether in how creatures work, how they mature as individuals, or how they evolve. Evolution has engendered big things many times, but major evolutionary change happens mostly in small organisms. In short, big creatures usually descend from small ancestors, not the other way around.\n\n**Recipe or Blueprint?** \"Bake until golden brown.\" \"Boil, stirring constantly, until the temperature reaches 230 degrees.\" \"Reduce heat,until just barely simmering.\" Each instruction specifies an end point rather than a specific course. Each demands that you observe something and then alter a process on the basis of that observation. Each employs feedback, called that because you _feed_ information about results _back_ to control a process. In the first two instances you terminate the process, while in the third you adjust something. By analogy with cookbooks, we'll call these kinds of instructions recipes, even if recipes for cooking don't inevitably involve feedback. By contrast, instructions may be outcome-independent and lack such an informational loop; we'll call these latter blueprints. The level of detail doesn't matter; what's relevant is whether or not the instructions depend on the results. Figure 11.3 puts a result-dependent scheme in more general form.\n\nFeedback control may be automatic, with no human link in the feedback loop. The earliest clear cases of automatic controls, according to Mayr, were a few float valves of classical and early Islamic civilizations. These worked like the ones we use to regulate the water level in the tanks of household toilets: High water raises a float and turns off the water supply, as in Figure 11.4. Early in the seventeenth century Cornelis Drebbel, a remarkably prolific Dutch inventor about whom we rarely hear, invented thermal controls for ovens and incubators. In them, high temperature reduced the rate of fuel combustion. One of James Watt's finest accomplishments was a governor for a steam engine; an increase in the speed of the output shaft cut back the steam entering the engine. Feedback controls now occur everywhere: temperature controls on ovens, furnaces, and refrigerators; error-correcting protocols in modems; load-dependent speed controls on motors; and on and on. Nor have feedback controls with human links become obsolete or superfluous. You close a feedback loop when you steer a car. If it drifts toward the left, you turn the front wheels a little rightward; when it drifts too far rightward, you turn toward the left. No road runs so straight that you can take aim and then close your eyes.\n\nFIGURE 11.3. _The crux of a feedback system is the ability to adjust what it does depending on conditions outside itself where those conditions include the results of its own actions. In a strictly mechanical and formal sense, it has self-awareness_.\n\nIn organisms, feedback controls in physiological systems get most attention. Such things as the tension produced by a leg muscle, the output of the heart, the rate of breathing, and the diameter of the pupil of each eye are result-regulated. Lift one leg off the ground, and the muscles that stiffen the other leg detect the increase in load and pull harder in compensation; you don't sag down toward the ground, as would a system that wasn't keeping track of what it was accomplishing. Less widely appreciated is how extensively feedback loops lace together the process of making an organism in the first place. Its genetic material, DNA, is often referred to as the blueprint for making an organism. If \"blueprint\" implies a detailed and complete set of instructions that need only be read out by the synthetic machinery, then the word misleads.\n\nFIGURE 11.4. _A specific feedback control system, as machinery and as a formal scheme_ \u2014 _the water-level control of a household toilet. Not only will it restore the level after a flush, but it will compensate for evaporation from the tank and is unaffected by changes in water pressure_.\n\nDNA in fact functions as a recipe in the present sense. No instructions could be precise enough to make something as complex as an organism without adjusting course on the basis of how things were going. You might program a car to drive a hundred miles without running off the road, but only if you equipped it with lane-detecting sensors whose outputs feed back to the steering apparatus. Otherwise, if there's even the tiniest alteration in tire pressure, if a passing cloud causes the road temperature to drop ever so slightly, if a crosswind comes up, you're done for. Chemical processes, such as those central to the development of an organism, depend both on the concentration of reactants and on temperature, and different reactions differ in their exact dependence. A minor change in environmental temperature, in the concentration of some minor ion, or in any of a host of other variables would fatally derail development. Without elaborate use of feedback, the possibility of success would be remote.\n\nThe realization of how self-regulating were the processes that generated organisms caused shocks that rumbled through biology and philosophy. In 1891 Hans Driesch, a German embryologist, let a fertilized sea urchin egg divide into two cells. He then separated the cells and watched the further development of each. To his surprise (frog eggs had given the opposite result for Wilhelm Roux a few years earlier) each cell went on to make a perfect, albeit smaller, larva. That any cell could so reorganize its developmental program converted Driesch from his mechanistic view of life into a staunch supporter of vitalism\u2014the idea that life involves something not explicable in terms of physics and chemistry. Retrospectively, Driesch's problem was the unimaginability of feedback control at a cellular level to the biology of his time.\n\nUp to this point the development of an organism doesn't sound all that different from modern industrial practice, where machines and operators provide lots of nice error-correcting feedback control. But nature takes things a step farther, and the word \"recipe\" gets even more apt. To a large extent, two products of a modern manufacturing process perform alike because they're formed alike. We most often achieve acceptably precise products by making them of equally precise components. By contrast, two organisms, even genetically identical ones, resemble each other only superficially. The closer one looks, the greater the differences one sees. We put names on the large blood vessels but not the small ones; the latter vary from individual to individual. Nature strives for fitness rather than for precision or consistency, and at every stage development is goal- regulated rather than programmed precisely. The investigator can often remove large pieces of early embryos with little or no postpartum effect. In their DNA itself, different individuals vary greatly; nature tolerates and (in an evolutionary sense) even values diversity. That of course is why we can distinguish among individuals by testing the DNA of blood samples and other bits of body. Some of the variation among individuals may be put to use in social species to facilitate recognition of one member by another; that's a fancy way to say that we'd have problems if all of us looked alike. But most of the variation in detail serves no immediate purpose; it's tolerated because it's without effect on our fitness.\n\nWithout the gene you couldn't make the structure\u2014that's usually how we identify genes\u2014so the gene is indisputably necessary. But while necessary, the gene isn't sufficient, even in a purely informational sense. An earlier generation of developmental biologists coined a name, equifinality, for the phenomenon they uncovered when they (starting with Driesch) saw how much abuse embryos could stand without affecting the viability of the complex organism that resulted. The word \"equifmality\" isn't much used anymore. Words may be poor substitutes for understanding, but this one did call attention to how nature, using elaborate feedback control, makes machines only crudely similar in structural detail yet exquisitely similar in performance.\n\n**Scheduled Maintenance**. Almost no machine serves its full term without attention to its well-being. Beyond incidents and accidents, some part will wear out before the whole contraption deserves scrapping. Perhaps a temporary part, such as a filter or a flexible gasket, is handier or more economical than a permanent one. Or perhaps a part works by wearing out, as with the brake pads on a car. Or perhaps routine operation of the machine depends on cleaning filters and periodically adding lubricants. Do living machines need such scheduled maintenance? Being out of service for repair risks the continued existence of an organism; the weak, the sick, and the injured are neither effective predators nor evasive prey. Perhaps sleeping and hibernating play some role in maintenance, but most organisms do neither. Or are organisms designed so maintenance doesn't put them out of action?\n\nWhat happens is truly remarkable. Organisms continuously rebuild nearly everything within themselves! So unexpected and inconspicuous is the phenomenon that it long escaped either suggestion or notice. Rudolph Schoenheimer came across it during the late 1930s, when he began feeding mice isotopically labeled compounds, which had just become available. Schoenheimer's account, entitled _The Dynamic State of Body Constituents_ , is still worth reading. He missed on a few details, but most of the work has stood up well. Schoenheimer died in 1941, shortly after giving the lectures from which the book derived. He would probably have been awarded a Nobel prize had he lived; unfortunately the prizes aren't given posthumously.\n\nIsotopic labeling allows marking atoms so they can be distinguished from other, chemically identical atoms. By feeding animals food that had labeled nitrogen atoms, Schoenheimer could look at where those new nitrogens went without being swamped by the huge number of nitrogens already in their bodies. He wanted to see how the extra nitrogen came out\u2014which excreted compounds ended up with the labeled atoms. Specifically, he fed nongrowing adult mice protein with labeled nitrogen. Extra protein input led to extra nitrogen excretion, in the form of urea, the ordinary and expected result. But, unexpectedly, much of the labeled nitrogen failed to appear in the murine urine at all; unlabeled nitrogen took its place. That unlabeled nitrogen could have come only from the existing protein of the bodies of the mice. Since the mice weren't shrinking or otherwise deteriorating, they must have been adding a lot of new protein to their bodies, protein that exactly matched in amount and composition the old stuff that was converted to urea and excreted. The expectation was confirmed by finding, postmortem, labeled nitrogen in their body proteins.\n\nThe conclusion is inescapable. An organism isn't an engine in which food simply supplies energy and any material needed when the engine needs servicing. Instead much of the food becomes part of the living machine even when it's not growing; simultaneously an equivalent amount of machine breaks down and gets excreted. This happens almost all the time in all organisms and for almost all the material within the cells of organisms. Remarkable: Intracellular material gets continually replaced without changing the overall composition of either cell or organism. The organism retains the same structure and remains made of the same kinds of molecules, but the particular molecules residing and participating are ephemeral. Hence Schoenheimer's phrase \"dynamic state of body constituents.\"\n\nThis dynamic state represents a profound difference between living and nonliving systems. The same molecules the ancient Egyptians hauled into place more than four thousand years ago still make up the pyramids, but you're not the same person you were a year ago. Organizationally, yes, but materially, no. The organization of the individual organism persists far beyond the material of which it's made. And the replacement process doesn't just copy what's scheduled for demolition; it's an entirely fresh synthesis. The instructions for making our most critical and complex material, protein, get continuously reread from the genetic material. Cells don't need to divide to do it, and organisms give no morphological or microscopic hint of their dynamic state.\n\nWhy bother? And why bring up protein turnover, a biochemical story, and the dynamic state of body constituents, a physiological story, in a biomechanical tale? To begin with, proteins are not the stablest of compounds, and their stability decreases (they rot faster) as the temperature goes up. Warm-blooded animals\u2014mainly mammals and birds\u2014keep their bodies at temperatures high enough for protein to go bad at a significant rate, and even non-warm-blooded organisms face a slower version of the same kind of spontaneous deterioration. That makes maintenance mandatory. The schedule for replacement tells us a lot about an organism's problem. The more stable structural proteins are the most persistent; the less stable soluble proteins the least. It's handy to speak of \"half-life\" the way the physicists do when they compare how fast different radioactive isotopes break down; 'half-life here is how long it takes for half of a given kind of material to be replaced. The average half-life of the proteins of a rat's carcass\u2014muscle, tendon, and bone\u2014is twenty-one days, while the half-life of the proteins of its liver and blood plasma is only six. The average half-life for the proteins of an adult human is about eighty days. So perfect is the replacement process that you can recall the events of many years ago.\n\nAll intracellular proteins participate in this, dynamic state. (Spontaneous changes in the genetic material, DNA, by contrast, are repaired\u2014usually\u2014without wholesale replacement.) Extracellular stuff, such as hair, we simply make and discard continuously. Mammalian red blood cells are discarded in their entirety, with an average life-span of 120 days. But they're not true cells; with no nuclei, they can't direct the resynthesis of their protein. So we have to remake them in their entirety.\n\nIn short, nature doesn't _make_ her widget but _keeps making_ her widget in an unending Sisyphean process. Once again, why bother? Probably the instability of proteins makes continuous maintenance necessary if they're to be usable within organisms. Probably because they're made up of specified sequences of amino acids, they're complex and informationally rich enough that no error detection system could do the whole maintenance job. So probably their combination of complexity and instability leaves organisms with no alternative but a wholesale replacement schedule.\n\n**Unscheduled Maintenance and Dynamic Alteration**. In addition to random molecular disarrangement, organisms sustain large-scale breakage and injury. Bones fracture, skin tears, and appendages get bitten off. Sometimes controlled proliferation of adjacent cells just covers wounds with scar tissue, while sometimes injuries get repaired so precisely that no mark remains. We're battle-scarred by adulthood, despite modern medicine's intervention. How much repair and regeneration go on varies greatly among organisms and their parts, but all multicellular animals and plants manage some degree of restoration.\n\nRepair and regeneration may be familiar and expected, but they're no trivial tasks. Even making a bit of scar tissue where a branch has broken from a tree or where a person has been cut or burned demands that the system have extraordinary self-knowledge. Cell proliferation has to be stimulated, directed appropriately, and then turned off. For full regeneration, at which we humans happen not to be especially good, the right kinds of cells have to be made in the right places at the right times, blood and nerve supplies have to be reconnected, external covering layers have to be extended, and so forth, all _as things were before_. Somehow nearly autonomous cells, acting in response to their individual instructional codes, must carry out the complex task in precise coordination. Injured vertebrates are especially vulnerable to death from infection or blood loss, but they still patch themselves up after severe tissue loss. Salamanders and lizards can completely regenerate lost tails; a salamander can re-create an entire leg. Invertebrates, though, can do much more spectacular feats. For instance, a starfish can regenerate well over half of itself. This came as an unpleasant surprise to some oyster gatherers, who had been inadvertently increasing the numbers of their adversaries by cutting oyster-eating starfish in half and tossing the halves back in the water. Some simpler flat- worms and sea anemones that live on sufficiently hard surfaces deliberately confound regeneration and reproduction; one becomes two when parts simultaneously have a mind (or half a mind) to crawl off in opposite directions.\n\nNor are replacement and regeneration the full extent of nature's provision for perpetual care. Another is so familiar we forget how special it is. Exercise a muscle, and it gets larger; put an appendage in a cast for a month or so, and the muscles atrophy as the body recycles their constituents. Bone responds similarly, losing mineral and thus softening if out of use and increasing in density in response to repeated loading. Increase the blood flow to an organ\u2014say, by exercise-induced proliferation of its capillaries\u2014and the blood vessels that supply that organ widen. A lot of the degeneration associated with aging may reflect disuse rather than old age itself. Lengthy spaceflights cause all kinds of serious physiological deterioration; fortunately most of the changes are reversible. The components of animals like us continuously readjust themselves in response to changes in how we use them.\n\nUsage-tuned structural change isn't only an animal thing. Add weight to the branch of a tree, and it grows thicker. Bend a branch down to the ground, attach a weight to it, and it will (if the weight isn't excessive or the branch damaged) slowly lift the weight off the ground. Cut down one tree, and the adjacent ones grow longer branches where their illumination has been increased. Load one side of a tree, and the trunk will grow additional wood neatly positioned to offset the additional stress. The evolutionary theory that preceded Darwin's, the Lamarckian idea that increased use of a feature led directly to its hereditary amplification, simply extended these familiar phenomena from individuals to lineages. The extrapolation, an entirely reasonable one, just doesn't happen to be correct for life on earth.\n\nWe now know a lot about how organisms manage to be so responsive, but the details matter less than two larger points. First, the routine character of such responses in living machines stands in sharp contrast with the absence of almost any equivalent in nonliving machines. An archaeologist decides whether a rock might have been a tool, or how a tool was used, or whether some item was decorative or utilitarian by checking for wear and examining the pattern of wear. By contrast, the same archaeologist learns how people did repetitive tasks, such as grinding grain, by studying how bones have hypertrophied\u2014worn larger, as it were. Only extracellular parts, ones that weren't strictly living in their functional heyday, wear down from use\u2014tooth surfaces and mollusk shells, for instance.\n\nThe second point is that this repair, regeneration, and demand- responsive alteration turns on feedback control. The system must compare what ought to be with what actually is, and that takes information about what it has or hasn't done. The whole process depends on taking action to minimize any difference between goal and present state, defining, again, feedback control. The key elements of the system are the sensors that inform it about its present state. More than anything else, they distinguish natural technology from our own. We understand quite well the sensors used in controlling the positions of our appendages or the rates at which our hearts beat\u2014parts of high-speed neuromuscular and neuroendocrine feedback systems. We also know a lot about the information-carrying links, things such as chemicals that diffuse away from a sensor or else move in blood or other internal fluids. One rarely thinks of sensory equipment in plants. But growth away from the earth depends on gravity detectors, and growth toward sunlight can't happen without photoreceptors\u2014just to point to a few.\n\nOrganisms control themselves at an even more basic level. With few exceptions, every cell contains the full set of genetic instructions the complete recipe book. Most of the time, though, most of the information in most cells stays on the disk, even under the dramatic demands of regeneration. Except in a few instances\u2014cloning being the most notorious\u2014we can't call the information back into functioning software. Organisms are highly inhibited, elaborately repressed. To keep everything from being attempted all at once, a lid must be kept on almost all the possibilities. The repression may fail, as when cells that should know better produce a cancerous growth in a reproductive orgy. In a certain sense this restrained totipotency isn't uniquely biological\u2014only predominantly so. Long ago the neurobiologist Sir Charles Sherrington pointed out (by analogy with the brain, as it happens) that when you use a telephone, the important thing isn't so much getting the right connection as avoiding the entire world of wrong numbers.\n\nIn nature, then, the processes of production and maintenance intermingle so thoroughly that we can't make any tidy distinction. Some individual organisms (like ourselves) may grow to fixed sizes while others (such as many trees and fish) may keep growing however long they live, but for neither does development ever finish.\n\n**How Good Is Good Enough?** Living machines are a competitive bunch, doing overt or subtle battle for nutrients, for energy, for space, and for mates. Competition produces winners and losers, those more fit and those less fit. The conflicts resemble those of unrestrained capitalistic economies enough to have generated the nasty doctrine of social Darwinism. The latter is basically the claim that well-to-do individuals, races, or nations are well off because they are biologically fitter and that while the not so well off might deserve sympathy, attempts to alleviate their plight will inevitably founder on their lower fitness. The inapplicability to human society of fitness in anything like its evolutionary sense is fortunately a fatal flaw for the notion.\n\nBut recognition of competition in nature brings up a different parallel with human activities. How good is biological design? The assumption of good design in nature, at least within her intrinsic constraints, pervades studies of how animals work. Whether one justifies the assumption by natural selection or by divine omniscience makes little practical difference.\n\nIn recent years the assumption of good design has been variously reassessed, criticized, qualified, and subjected to quantitative analysis. Strict optimality (what we might call perfectionism) has taken a well- deserved beating from the evolutionary biologists. To a large extent, though, they've criticized a straw man; good design isn't a rigorous principle but a working hypothesis of physiologists. We know that organisms aren't paragons of perfection\u2014after all, no biological element has evolved for an unlimited time in an unconstrained context\u2014but the assumption that we're rationally assembled without a host of useless features provides a reasonable starting point for investigating how our features function. We do seem well tuned, however hazardous the assumption of good design. The practical problem for studying how we work is that most structures are multifunctional, and it's rarely self-evident which function was preeminent in determining the design of a structure.\n\nBut well tuned or well designed doesn't imply perfectly precise production; we're just not built that way. Uncertainty and scatter in scientific data often come from inaccuracy in measurements, but in biology they as often reflect real variation among the things being measured. Constancy of the speed of light or the mass of a carbon atom may be limited only by our ability to measure them. But the diameters of human liver cells vary intrinsically. Such natural slop and scatter don't get much attention. At least from anecdotal evidence, nature's tolerance for variation itself varies from structure to structure. She builds some things to very tight specifications and other things less consistently; natural selection must target variability per se.\n\nMany things in nature must vary less than what would be tolerable without loss of fitness. Where no extra cost comes from excessive standardization it ought to persist. For instance, many substitutions can be made in the amino acid sequences of proteins without changing how well they work. But most such substitutions rarely occur; the synthetic machinery doesn't have the option of inserting one amino acid instead of another when one is more abundant and the consequences of change are insignificant. (On the other hand, individual-to-individual variation may enhance fitness. Where offspring are released into an uncertain environment\u2014climatically or otherwise\u2014and only a few will survive, cloning may not maximize the number of survivors. That's one of the arguments commonly advanced for the ubiquitousness of sexual reproduction.)\n\nWe can ask in another way about the quality of natural design. The sagacious engineer, mistrusting all estimates and assumptions, designs everything to be better than minimally adequate. We prefer to overbuild. Does nature? The ratio of the load that would produce failure to the greatest load expected in use is usually called the safety factor. Any safety factor above one indicates overbuilding. But determining nature's safety factors turns out to be far from easy. For one thing, natural selection doesn't anticipate, and safety factor in its usual sense means anticipating possible failure rather than reacting after the event\u2014whether by redesign by the engineer or by subsequent selection in nature. For another, we can't easily estimate the greatest expected load for a natural structure. Some things are loaded steadily and predictably while others face highly variable loads. For still another, the service life of natural products varies greatly. Worse, organisms vary in their life histories as well as in their lifespans. An oak tree that blows over in year ten loses all its fitness if it normally grows skyward for twenty years before making acorns. The vine on the tree loses a lot less if it has been putting out seeds since year five. Most human products give full service from the start, while for organisms true profit awaits the reproductive payoff.\n\nDespite such formidable complications, some biologists have had the temerity to tackle safety factors and the cost-benefit analyses underlying them. The loss of a branch for a tree or a tail for a lizard costs little, and both losses are ordinary events. So branches and tails aren't attached with high safety factors. The buoyancy chambers of two deep-sea cephalopod mollusks, cuttlefish and nautilus, face collapse from the pressure of the water around them. Their safety factors are only about 1.4 relative to the pressures at which they live. But those pressures are especially constant and predictable. Bones and tendons have higher safety factors, running between 2 and 6, with tendons usually lower than bones. Flying animals have lighter bones than nonfliers; probably their bones have lower safety factors because for creatures that fly, excess weight carries a great penalty. Tree trunks have safety factors around 4, and the stems of annual plants around 2, although data are limited and uncertain. We care a lot how plants behave since we deliberately alter them for agricultural purposes, since storms are notoriously irregular, and since whole fields of crops and whole plantations of farmed trees do blow over from time to time.\n\nAND THE NONLIVING FACTORY\n\nSince few of us ever set foot on a factory floor, how we make things is only a little more familiar than how nature makes them. That's unfortunate because we live by the products of division of labor, mass production, and assembly lines. Handcrafts are viable only for occasional and optional use, unless we accept drastically reduced economic conditions. Farming methods increasingly reflect the same economics of specialization, scale, and labor minimization; the purveyors of fast food bring the same imperatives to yet another domain.\n\nEven though ancient Egypt, Rome, and China manufactured a diversity of items, mass production is recent. Many historians, especially in America, have described the evolution of the modern factory; the New World may have led the Old in the process. North America experienced a slightly different industrial revolution from northern Europe, one marked by waterpower rather than by steam engines, by small cities located where fast creeks dropped into navigable rivers rather than by large ones at rail hubs, and by the incentive to mechanize of high-cost labor. The story comes with characters whom we elevate to heroic status. Thus we meet Eli Whitney and his revolutionary idea that parts could be produced precisely enough by minimally skilled labor to be interchangeable, Frederick W. Taylor and the Gilbreths with their time and motion studies that systematized the organization of the manufacturing system itself, and Henry Ford and the integration of multiple assembly lines for large products. As chauvinistic Americans we ignore major figures such as Marc Brunel, who mass-produced wooden tackle blocks for the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.\n\n**Size Trends**. We build downward rather than upward. The factory\u2014even the factory that assembles our largest airplanes, Boeing 747s\u2014dwarfs the product. For exceptions, such as large construction projects and the global telecommunications network, one might argue that factory and product simply need redefinition. In any case, we're then not talking about mass production in the usual sense. We build down in another sense as well, one that reverses Copes rule about how size most often increases in the evolution of living lineages. Early steam engines were huge, slowly moving things, slow enough at their inception that inlet and outlet valves were manually operated; recall Newcomen's engine, in Figure 8.2. Increasingly precise manufacturing permitted higher pressure differences and faster operation, so ever smaller engines produced as much power. Early waterwheels were huge and slow; modern turbines are small and fast. The dramatic miniaturization of electronic devices started with the decrease in size and increase in number of elements within electron tubes in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s; the recent elaboration of digital integrated circuits just takes to a previously unimaginable level a trend begun much earlier.\n\n**Control**. Relative to the complexity of the tasks, industry probably uses more specific and detailed instructions than does nature. Conversely, we make less use of feedback, at least in the number of loops involved in carrying out a particular task. Not that feedback isn't important in manufacturing; modern machinery is unimaginable without it. This use of feedback has a curious history. In a way the most extreme use of feedback antedates factories since piece-by-piece handwork depends critically on the artisan's sensitivity, visual and tactile, even auditory and olfactory, to what's being made. The machine lacks such sophisticated sensory input, so it must make do with fewer and simpler, if faster, loops. Ultimately the precision and versatility of the machine become dependent on the level of feedback\u2014on its awareness of what it's accomplishing at each stage. Testing to determine whether the end products meet some standard becomes really an afterthought. Shifting from artisan to machine-based manufacture provides an incentive to push machines toward the level of sensory equipment and judgment of skilled operators. Much of robotics is about just that: sensory equipment, fast and sophisticated calculations, and feedback loops.\n\n**Maintenance**. Only in a loose sense does human technology do anything analogous to organisms' continuous turnover of material. Here and there we replace things on schedules determined by their expected safe service lives. The more technically demanding the device, the more hazardous any failure, the greater the cost of redundancy in design or of unscheduled downtime, the greater our willingness to replace bits and pieces before they've failed in the normal sense. Of course what I've described is a commercial airplane. We ask airplanes to give long service now that the basic technology has stabilized and they don't quickly become obsolete. But after ten or twenty years little except the frame may remain of the craft that first flew from the factory. Replacement without failure happens elsewhere as well. I'm told that in some large buildings light bulbs are changed on schedule whether or not they've burned out, and the discards are sold on the cheap to users with dimmer cost accountants.\n\n**The Criteria of Quality**. While reproductive fitness is a uniquely biological attribute, suitability for the task at hand provides a similar general criterion. For nature, uniformity matters only when it correlates with fitness, and we encounter in the phenomenon of equifinality a world largely beyond our technological experience. For human technology, uniformity in detail takes on specific importance. Uniformity in performance usually depends on consistency in construction, and interchangeability of parts demands a similarly high level of consistency. Nature, by contrast, cares almost nothing about interchangeability and may even be actively hostile to it. To make us inhospitable to pathogens, our immune system has become so potent that we must almost destroy it in order to interchange tissues and organs among individuals. Transplanting a heart presents fewer difficulties than persuading the body to accept it. (But the rejection phenomenon isn't biologically general; insects, for instance, are tolerant of dramatic transplants of glands and other organs. And French grapes grow on American roots, roots of a species resistant to a particular pathogen.)\n\nQuality in human technology has an aspect roughly analogous to biological fitness. \"As good as possible\" isn't a useful way to specify either a part or an entire machine. For the machine what's important is being good enough to do its intended task satisfactorily. Does making it a little better repay the cost, or does making it a little worse generate a true saving? For an element on an assembly line, what matters is how bad it can be, how far from some ideal it can deviate and still fit in satisfactorily\u2014 \"fitness\" in a different sense. An important criterion of design quality for complex devices is the tolerable range of variation of their parts. The better design is the one that can be made with sloppier parts.\n\n**Safety Factors**. These of course have a long and honorable history in human technology; the biomechanic borrows the concept but must strain it almost out of recognizable shape. Whether they represent uncertainties about loads that might be encountered or uncertainties in our analysis of a design, modern engineering without safety factors is unimaginable. Real truth, full certainty, and fully assured safety exist only in the domains of lawyers and theologians. The rest of us have to make do with a fallible world of purely statistical anticipations, simplified assumptions, and inattentive inspectors. We learn well from failure, but we prefer other schools of education.\n\nOne other aspect of human manufacturing ought to be noted. Historically, human technology has both reduced its direct use of natural materials and increased the degree to which natural materials are modified before use. Partly that comes from our increasing sophistication in metallurgy and polymer chemistry. Less obviously it recognizes that natural materials were naturally selected for their suitability for natural structures and not for our applications. In native form they're usually less suitable for modern manufacturing methods, which demand homogeneous composition and consistent properties. Natural materials call for the sympathetic treatment of the craftsperson rather than the rapid and uniform processing of the assembly line. Wood grows by itself, but canoes of aluminum or fiberglass are cheaper than those of wood. Stone need only be quarried while bricks must be formed and baked, but a wall of brick has a lower final cost than one of stone.\n\nThe point made at the start bears reiteration. The production methods of natural and human technologies appear different at first glance, and a more penetrating analysis and more extensive search for underlying factors find them not closer but even more divergent. They're so divergent that even a common terminology often proves elusive. Everyday terms such as \"assembly,\" \"polymer,\" \"blueprint,\" \"safety factor,\" \"design,\" and \"intended application\" were meant for our production systems, and we run considerable risk of self-deception when we use them for natural systems. Similarly \"selection,\" \"fitness,\" \"regeneration,\" \"dynamic state,\" and \"derepression\" describe biological phenomena, and using them for human production risks real danger of inadvertent linguistic misguidance.\nChapter 12\n\nCOPYING, IN RETROSPECT\n\nMaking better widgets by copying nature\u2014bioemulation\u2014is no new notion. In classical mythology Daedalus and Icarus fly from captivity in Crete on wings cleverly copied from birds: \"Then he fastened the feathers together with twine and wax at the middle and bottom; and, thus arranged, he bent them with a gentle curve, so they looked like real birds' wings.\" Then Ovid (43 B.C.E.\u201317 C.E.)\u2014in the _Metamorphoses_ \u2014makes a second reference to profitable copying. After the death of Icarus (his waxy wings were definitely not FAA-approved) Daedalus takes on a twelve-year-old apprentice of real creativity: \"This boy, moreover, observed the backbone of a fish and, taking it as a model, cut a row of teeth in a thin strip of iron and thus invented the saw.\"\n\nLegendary benefits aside, copying nature holds at least three attractions for us. Foremost is the impression of nature's superiority conveyed by the sophistication and diversity of her technology. A tall tree in a storm, a running horse, a spider's web, a flying bird, a jumping flea\u2014 their commonness doesn't obscure awesome mechanical performances. Nor does close examination dispel one's initial sense of excellent design. Each device of nature does something beyond easy reach of our technology, and a lot more besides.\n\nSecond comes a more curious motivation, one entwined with contemporary attitudes. For most of human history, the natural and human worlds stood opposed. Nature was something to be tamed and utilized; we had the ordinary attitude of organisms toward other species. Nowadays the natural world intrudes far less but gets venerated far more. And why not? When one's meat is bought in a store, when locusts don't threaten one's corn crop, when central heating and plumbing are the norm, the aesthetics of nature hold greater appeal. We embrace a kind of pantheism or, to use E. O. Wilson's less pejorative term, \"biophilia.\" That affinity for nature drives our eleventh-hour efforts at conservation. It also drives the feeling of a natural rectitude, a moral superiority in nature's ways of doing things.\n\nThe third attraction reflects a combination of culture and economics. Support for science and technology rests on a steady supply of explicit promises at least as much as on the record of past success. Whatever the real motives of the participants, such promises work best if couched in terms of practical payoff, not intellectual or spiritual enlightenment. Several kinds of promises are especially effective: industrial profit, alleviation of ill health, and military superiority. Each of these fits well with suggestions that we might make dramatic leaps forward by copying nature.\n\n\"Copying,\" though, isn't the ideal motto to march behind, so better words have been coined. First came \"bionics,\" defined about 1960 by J. E. Steele as the \"science of systems whose function is based on living systems, or which have the characteristics of living systems, or which resemble these.\" The word \"systems\" came naturally to those, mostly engineers, initially involved; neural systems and physiological controls formed biological parallels to human technology's cybernetics and systems theory. Pattern recognition and feedback devices got particular attention. Use of \"bionics\" has receded lately. \"Robotics\" and \"artificial intelligence\" now hold center stage. A more recent designation is \"biomimetics,\" whose imperatives are more explicitly mechanical\u2014composite materials and walking vehicles, for instance.\n\nBut does it work? Not as well as every book, article, and symposium on bionics and biomimetics would have us believe. Most of the lovely allusions to past successes do no more than recognize elements of mechanical commonality. That the jet emulated the squid, that the  suetion cup copied the octopus sucker should not be our default explanation. A common physical context is far more likely to drive technological commonality. For that matter, we're taking a pretty dim view of human creativity when we assert that copying has been extensive and successful in the past.\n\nI claim in fact that successful copying has been rare. But defending the claim against the more appealing affirmative claim puts me in an awkward position. My best recourse is to search hard for good cases of copying. I've therefore examined the track record with some care, playing historian and aided by the professional reference librarian to whom I'm wedded.\n\nWe set some ground rules to circumscribe our search. The present book is about mechanics, so we restricted our purview accordingly. Copying had to be both credible in concept and documented in practice. The result had to be a practical thing that has achieved fairly wide use, not a prototype or a proposal. At the end we were left with fewer than a dozen acceptable cases of bioemulation. These, though, turn out to be far more interesting than mere items for a list or count.\n\nBUCOLIC ROMANTICISM?\n\nLet's consider, for a start, three repeatedly cited cases that wilt under scrutiny. All happen to be British and of roughly the same antiquity.\n\n**The Oak Tree and the Eddystone Light**. Atop a shoal about fourteen miles from Plymouth, England, stands the Eddystone light, which has guided ships in the English Channel for three hundred years. The first Eddystone light fell in a storm, and the second (of timber) burned. Between 1756 and 1759 the first great British civil engineer, John Smeaton, built the third lighthouse (Figure 12.1) from interlocking stones prepared at Plymouth. Instead of using the rectangular cross section of its predecessors or the uniformly tapered cones now in favor, Smeaton chose the graceful taper of, as he said, \"a large, spreading Oak.\" More of his own words, written in 1791: \"Let us now consider its peculiar figure. Connected with its roots, which lie hid below ground, it rises from the surface thereof with a large, swelling base, which at the height of one diameter is generally reduced by an elegant curve, concave to the eye, to a diameter less by at least one-third, and sometimes to half its original base. From thence its taper diminishes more slowly, its sides by degrees come into a perpendicular, and for some height form a cylinder.\"\n\nTwo problems becloud a claim of copying. First, by any engineering standards, these specifications are much too vague. \"Generally reduced,\" \"at least one-third,\" and \"sometimes to half\" are far from ample instructions\u2014analogy or inspiration, perhaps, but not a quantitative model. The other problem, pointed out by Alan Stevenson in 1850, is that no enlightened engineer would emulate an oak tree. Its main load comes from the drag of its leaves, so it's an end-loaded rather than area-loaded beam. Moreover, it's made of light, tension-resisting wood rather than heavy, compression-resisting stone. Smeaton is simply calling to his reader's mind something that's sufficiently similar to the lighthouse to substitute for an illustration, which the account lacks. Incidentally, the lighthouse still exists, although in a different location. The rock on which it originally stood began breaking up, so in 1882 the lighthouse was removed and replaced with a bigger one a short distance away. Reassembled, the upper part now stands as a monument to Smeaton on the headland above the Plymouth waterfront.\n\nFIGURE 12.1. _The third Eddystone lighthouse_ , _built between 1756 and 1759 by John Smeaton_.\n\n**The Shipworm and the Tunneling Shield**. Early in the nineteenth century Marc Isambard Brunel bored a vehicular tunnel\u2014still in use by the London Underground\u2014under the Thames. Little experience was available to guide this first tunnel under a river. Preliminary borings suggested a river bottom much drier, more stable, and altogether more suitable for tunneling than actually proved the case. In fact, during the seventeen years between starting and completion, just about everything that could go wrong did: money, labor, Brunel's health, and so on. Everything, that is, except Brunel's tunneling technology. It centered on his new tunneling shield, which needed almost no modification as work proceeded. The shield (Figure 12.2) allowed thirty-six workers to dig at once at the advancing face of the tunnel with a minimum of unbraced excavation.\n\nThe burrowing equipment of a shipworm supposedly provided the model for that critical shield. The shipworm isn't strictly a worm at all, but an infamous bivalve mollusk whose paired shells, much smaller than the rest of the animal, serve as the hard parts for tunneling in wood. According to a biography of Marc Brunel, written by a younger engineer who had worked with him on the tunnel:\n\none day, as he himself related to me, when passing through the dockyard, his attention was attracted to an old piece of ship timber which had been perforated by that well known destroyer of timber, the Teredo navalis. He examined the perforations, and subsequently the animal. He found it equipped with a pair of shelly valves which enveloped its anterior integuments, and that with its foot as a fulcrum, a rotatory motion was given by powerful muscles to the valves, which acting on the wood like an augur, penetrated gradually but surely. . . . To imitate the action of this animal became Brunel's study.\n\nFIGURE 12.2. _The front end of the shipworm_ Teredo _with its rasping shell halves, and the drawing of Marc Brunel's tunneling shield in Beamish's 1862 biography_.\n\nThis sounds splendidly specific, but it simply can't be true. Boring by _Teredo_ resists observation and was first described (after much trouble) by a zoologist a century later. It doesn't happen by a rotating augurlike action at all, but instead the shells rock back and forth as rasps, scratching off bits of wood that are then ingested. Furthermore, neither what Brunel supposedly saw nor how _Teredo_ really works resembles the way the tunneling shield operated. Within the shield a workman removed a single board, excavated perhaps a foot in front of it, replaced the board, and then did the same with the next one. The shield as a whole was pushed forward bit by bit with jackscrews. The shipworm must penetrate hard wood rather than soft sediment, but as a fully aquatic creature it faces no air-water interface or pressure difference. So Brunel's problem was exactly the opposite: providing access to an all too soft substratum without letting in the river. _Teredo_ may have provided inspiration for tunneling rather than bridging, but the rest is mythology. Brunel deserves all the credit.\n\nFIGURE 12.3. _The underside of the floating leaf of_ Victoria amazonica _and Paxton's patented ridge and valley roofing system being installed during construction of the Crystal Palace\u2014from the Illustrated London News, October 19, 1850_.\n\n**The Giant Water Lily and the Crystal Palace**. In 1850 Joseph Paxton designed and built an enormous exhibition hall, the Crystal Palace, in London. In every aspect the structure\u2014see Figure 12.3\u2014was extraordinary. Opened less than a year after the design was accepted, the building made unprecedented use of glass and modular components, its appearance was dramatic and unlike any contemporary style, and it was later successfully disassembled and reconstructed on another site. Paxton is often referred to as a gardener. This, although strictly true, gives a false impression of his prior accomplishments and reputation. He was the preeminent innovator of his time in greenhouse construction and, among other things, patented the ridge and valley system that permitted extensive areas to be covered by a horizontal self-draining glass roof, a key feature of the Crystal Palace.\n\nThis roofing system is repeatedly cited as a successful case of copying nature, in particular a giant water lily native to South America, _Victoria amazonica_ (formerly _V. regia_ ). Now this is no ordinary lily. Its leaves span as much as six feet and form boats buoyant enough to support a child. An elegant system of interconnected trusses on its undersurface stiffens each flat leaf. But it's still a floating structure, with the trusses offsetting small waves and the lateral forces of currents rather than downward gravity. Paxton was the first to raise these lilies in England, in a special structure he built for his patron the duke of Devonshire; the crucial innovation was provision of a continuous current of slowly recirculating water in its pond.\n\nThe claim of copying from nature comes right from the horse's mouth, from a speech given by Paxton to the Royal Society of Arts while the Crystal Palace was under construction. From the _Times_ (London), November 14, 1850:\n\nIt was determined in 1836 to erect a new curvilinear greenhouse, 60 feet in length and 26 feet in width. . . . This house was subsequently fitted up for the Victoria Regia, and it was here I invented a water-wheel to give motion to the water in which the plant grew; and here this singularly beautiful aquatic plant flowered for the first time in this country on November 9, 1849. [He then shows a leaf.] You will observe that nature was the engineer in this case. If you will examine this, and compare it with the drawings and models, you will perceive that nature has provided it with longitudinal and transverse girders and supporters, on the same principle that I, borrowing from it, have adopted in this building.\n\nBut Paxton's words, taken literally, don't support the usual story. _Victoria_ uses a trussing system in which all the trusses, in whatever direction each runs, stay in contact with the supported surface. That's quite different from Paxton's ridge and valley system. Horizontal iron girders running in two perpendicular directions supported the ridge and valley roof of the Crystal Palace, but these girders were arranged with one set beneath the other in the ordinary way, not in the same plane, as are the lily's. And of his innovative ridges and valleys the leaf of _Victoria_ shows no trace, although the large aerial leaves of some other plants are pleated into just this arrangement, as shown in Figure 4.3. But something else is wrong. \"This building,\" the final words quoted above, refers not to the Crystal Palace of 1850 but to his greenhouse of 1836. Giving the greenhouse a roof in the pattern of its intended occupant indulged aesthetics more than it solved a problem of engineering. Finally, there's not a word about _Victoria_ in the supplement to the _Illustrated London News_ of a month earlier entitled \"Mr Paxton's History of the Building for the Great Exhibition of 1851. \"\n\nIn all three cases nature may have played some role, but inflating her contribution demeans splendid engineering achievements. Perhaps the legends persisted until canonized through an antitechnocratic and bucolic romanticism that came with the Industrial Revolution, something obvious enough in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English novels, poetry, and paintings. The poet William Blake intended no praise when he called attention to \"those dark Satanic mills.\"\n\nWHERE COPYING HAS WORKED WELL\n\nHaving aroused the reader's skepticism, we can turn to a series of more persuasive claims. Yes, successes exist, and impressive ones at that.\n\n**Trout, Dolphins, and Streamlined Bodies**. A body that travels through air or water experiences least resistance (drag) if it's rounded in the front and tapers to a rear point in the familiar, streamlined shape of tuna or whale. Watch a proper marine animal\u2014fish, seal, porpoise, or penguin\u2014glide about underwater. No illusion: The animal moves almost effortlessly because it meets little drag, around ten times less than would a sphere or a person of the same size.\n\nHow can a rounded front and elongated, pointed rear so dramatically reduce drag? This subtle matter defied explanation until the present century. But long before, around 1809, Sir George Cayley had devised the first deliberately streamlined, low-drag shape, using the best thing at hand: animals that moved rapidly through fluids. He was explicit about what he did: \"It has been found by experiment that the shape of the hinder part of the spindle is of as much importance as that of the front in diminishing resistance. . . . I fear, however, that the whole of this subject is of so dark a nature as to be more usefully investigated by experiment than by reasoning and in absence of any conclusive evidence from either, the only way that presents itself is to copy nature; accordingly I shall instance the spindles of the trout and woodcock.\"\n\nCayley measured the girth of a trout at a series of points along its length. He then divided each datum by three, and he used the results as diameters to make an elongate wooden body. As Theodore von Karman, a great twentieth-century aerodynamicist, pointed out, Cayley's streamlined body closely matches the form of the best modern low-drag airfoils and hydrofoils. So he did very well indeed. Cayley got analogous data from a dolphin (Figure 12.4), but the work on trout has received more attention.\n\nWhat happened next was less serendipitous. Cayley split his wooden model lengthwise and used the shape of the resulting half body for a boat hull, saying, \"We should then be deriving our boat from a better architect than man, and should probably have the real solid of least resistance.\" But that approach doesn't give an auspicious hull for a shipshape boat, either for low drag or for decent rolling stability. Recall that most of the resistance met by surface ships comes from gravity waves at the surface, not from the kinds of drag faced by trout or submarine. More rationally shaped hulls came along a few decades later.\n\nFIGURE 12.4. _A page from George Cayley's notebooks, with a dolphin and the streamlined body that he derived from measurements of its girth_.\n\n**Bird Wings and Cambered Airfoils**. Airplane wings have curved tops and flatter bottoms as in Figure 12.5; they're spoken of as \"cambered.\" With that asymmetrical combination they get much more lift relative to their drag than either inclined flat plates or inclined wings symmetrical top to bottom. High lift-to-drag ratios mattered a lot in the early years of aviation, when planes flew at lower speeds with less weight-efficient engines and less refined designs. As with low-drag bodies, practical experience preceded theory; several decades elapsed between the discovery of cambering and an adequate theory.\n\nDuring the 1880s two people showed the superiority of cambered airfoils over tilted flat plates. For both, bird wings provided the key\u2014or least very important\u2014models. In England, Horatio Phillips tested a variety of shapes, including the wing of a rook (Figure 12.6). Otto Lilienthal, in Germany, made a much more extensive series of measurements. He found that plates cambered just slightly gave the best results\u2014 an upward bowing of about a twelfth (8 percent) of the distance from the front to the back of a wing. This, he noted, is the camber of the wings of the best birds. The dramatic effect of such slight curvature surprised him and probably reinforced his conviction that birds were worth close emulation. In the years before his accidental death in 1896, Lilienthal simultaneously studied the flight of birds and constructed aircraft that we'd now call hang gliders. The ultimate aim was powered flight using a flapping wing craft. Lilienthal's main legacy is an impressive book entitled _Bird Flight as the Basis for Aviation_\n\nFIGURE 12. 5. _Airfoils in cross section, showing the convex upper surface and (sometimes) concave lower surface_.\n\nFIGURE 12.6. _The airfoil cross sections tested by Horatio Phillips, along with the results he obtained_.\n\n(Neither Phillips nor Lilienthal but a third person who looked at curved airfoils in the 1890s, Frederick Lanchester, took the first major steps toward understanding why they work as they do. The explanation of how an airfoil generates lift is based on the fact that air flows faster across the top of a wing than across the bottom. By Bernoulli's principle, that gives a lower pressure above than below, so the plane is pulled upward. But the origin of that faster flow is much more peculiar than one might guess from the polite fictions we're taught in schools and museums.)\n\nAs with Cayley's boat hull, the sequel makes the protagonists look less prescient and heroic. The Wright brothers initially trusted Lilienthal's numbers; he was, after all, a proper engineer. So they used both his airfoil shapes and his data for their first full-size glider. The glider gave too little lift, so they then built a wind tunnel and got their own data. Lilienthal's errors may have arisen because he swung wings on the end of a whirling arm rather than put them in a wind tunnel; after the first revolution on the whirling arm, the test object meets the disturbed air of the previous circuit. I'm sympathetic since I once ran afoul of the same problem.\n\n**Birds and Turning Aircraft**. In the two-dimensional world of automobiles and boats, steering involves nothing more complicated than changing one's heading by reaiming the front wheels or turning a rear rudder. Airplanes, though, fly in three dimensions: They can roll from side to side or pitch up and down as well as turn left and right. Early attempts to fly paid little attention to three-dimensional control. Some designs relied on familiar rudders; in others the flier was supposed to shift position like a bicycle rider so the craft would make banked turns without any specific aerodynamic adjustment.\n\nMore than any others of their pioneering generation, Wilbur and Orville Wright took control seriously. Their initial and most important patent described a system of control, and the basic scheme they worked out is still almost universally used. Bird watching helped, although much later Orville tended to minimize its contribution. But a letter written in 1900 from Wilbur to Octave Chanute contains the following: \"My observation of the flight of buzzards leads me to believe that they regain their lateral balance when partly overturned by a gust of wind by a torsion of the tips of their wings. If the rear edge of the right wing is twisted upward and the left downward the bird becomes an animated windmill and instantly begins to turn, a line from its head to its tail being the axis. . . . In the apparatus I intend to employ I make use of the torsion principle.\"\n\nIn short, the Wrights found that a bird adjusted the angles of the tips of its wing for roll control. One tip was tilted so its front was slightly upward, and that would increase its lift; the front of the other was tilted downward to decrease the lift. That asymmetry in lift would cause banking, and in a banked position the overall lift would be directed slightly sideways instead of straight upward. That sideways force (with perhaps a little compensation from the rudder) would pull the plane around in a curve. The key, then, was to twist or warp the wings, as the Wrights did with the ingenious arrangement of cables shown in Figure 12.7. You can demonstrate the change in shape, as they did, by twisting an elongate rectangular box (such as a milk carton) without ends. Of course, as Orville said about learning flight from birds, \"After you once know the trick and know what to look for you see things that you did not notice when you did not know exactly what to look for.\" The only major change in the system since the Wrights has been replacement of warping by a pair of flaps or ailerons, one on the outer rear end of each wing. That's better for the more rigid wings of later airplanes. Ailerons, though, work the same way, producing banked turns by raising one wing and lowering the other.\n\n**Wasps and Paper from Wood**. While papermaking is an old art, only recently have we made use of wood fiber as our normal starting material. Up through the eighteenth century most paper was made from cotton and linen rag, and the limited supply of rag became troublesome as increasing literacy and more complex commerce raised demand. The dead were buried in wool (in England by law) to save cotton and linen for papermaking. Around 1719 the great French entomologist and polymath Ren\u00e9-Antoine R\u00e9aumur suggested making paper from wood, as were the nests of paper wasps ( _Polistes_ and related genera):\n\nFlGURE 12.7. _The system used by the Wrights for wing warping\u2014from_ How We Invented the Airplane, _by Orville Wright_.\n\nThe American wasps form very fine paper, like ours; they extract the fibers of common wood of the countries where they live. They teach us that paper can be made from the fibres of plants without the use of rags and linen, and seem to invite us to try whether we cannot make fine and good paper from the use of certain woods. . . . The rags from which we make our paper are not an economical material and every papermaker knows that this substance is becoming rare. While the consumption of paper increases every day, the production of linen remains about the same.\n\nR\u00e9aumur himself made no paper, but during the century that followed a number of people attempted to produce paper from wood, and decent evidence links R\u00e9aumur and the wasps with their efforts. The German Jacob Christian Sch\u00e4ffer made paper in the 1750s from a wide variety of plant material (and from wasps' nests themselves) with only a small fraction of rag. He clearly followed R\u00e9aumur's path, with conspicuous drawings of the adult wasp, its larvae, and its nest in his treatise on papermaking. In London, in 1800, Matthias Koops (an otherwise obscure figure) managed to make paper from both straw and wood with no rag at all, and his paper was suitable for printing presses. He demonstrated his achievement with a small book whose final pages were printed on his paper; the subject was\u2014what else?\u2014the history of papermaking. (No other area of technology seems to leave as extensive a paper record as papermaking.) In the book he cites both R\u00e9aumur and Sch\u00e4ffer as important predecessors with \"ideas on substitutes for paper-materials.\" Wasps are not explicitly mentioned, but the connection is plausible.\n\nThe wasps thus set the stage by showing what was possible: that cellulose fiber from wood, an almost unlimited source, could be separated from its binder, lignin, and re-created as a two-dimensional mat. They were much less forthcoming with practical guidance, and a long and arduous struggle followed the original suggestion. Koops himself went bankrupt after building a large mill; despite the fine product and the high cost of rag paper, wood paper could not yet compete. But progress thereafter was steady, and within a few decades paper mills started eating forests in quantity.\n\n**Silkworms and Extruded Textile Fibers**. The same R\u00e9aumur had another suggestion that ultimately proved practical. Just before they pupate, moth larvae produce the protein we know as silk. Immediately after extrusion through a fine orifice as a liquid, the protein solidifies into a continuous fiber. The silk designed by nature for the cocoons of silkworms (the family Saturniidae) has long been appropriated by humans for beautiful and commercially valuable textile fiber. We either chop the cocoons and dissolve a gluing protein (wild silk) or, in the domesticated species of silkworm, _Bombyx mori_ , unwind the fiber. Robert Hooke, in the seventeenth century and R\u00e9aumur, in the eighteenth, suggested that a textile fiber might be manufactured by an analogous extrusion process. Hooke viewed silk as \"a dried thread of glue\" and casually speculated \"that probably there might be a way found out, to make an artificial glutinous composition, much resembling, if not full as good, nay better, than that excrement, or whatever other substance it be out of which, the silkworm wiredraws his clew. If such a composition were found, it were certainly an easy matter to find very quick ways of drawing it out into small wires for use. I need not mention the use of such an invention. . . .\"\n\nHooke's \"easy matter\" proved, to say the least, wishful thinking. During the nineteenth century this possibility\u2014extruding or \"drawing out\" fiber from an orifice\u2014was explored by a number of people. Louis Schwabe, in England, extruded glass fiber as early as 1842. Georges Audemars, in Switzerland, drew threads of \"artificial silk\" of cellulose nitrate in 1855. One M. Ozanam, in 1862, suggested that silk scrap might be reconstituted by dissolving and reextruding. In the 1880s Hilaire de Chardonnet, with great labor and expense, finally developed a commercially viable process for making an extruded artificial silk, initially the same dangerously flammable cellulose nitrate. The silkworm's footprints are unmistakable. Schwabe, Audemars, and Chardonnet each were involved in the natural silk industry Schwabe made silks in his mill for Queen Victoria, and Chardonnet worked with Louis Pasteur on diseases of silk moths\u2014an insufficiently appreciated branch of veterinary medicine. Chardonnet later said he intended \"imitating, as closely as possible, the work of the silkworm.\"\n\nBy the start of the twentieth century both rayon and cellulose acetate fiber were being made by versions of the silkworm's (and Chardonnet's) extrusion process, and we now make many other fibers the same way. Was the silkworm a useful model? Although indirect, the evidence is persuasive. To start with, the name of the industrial extruder, spinneret, is the same as that given the silkworm's organ. Better yet, the word is thoroughly inappropriate for either, a term borrowed earlier by entomologists from the spinning process long used to make long threads from short fibers. In the spinneret of neither silkworm nor fiber mill does anything spin, rotate, or go around in any sense at all. Silkworms (and spiders) don't actually \"spin\" their cocoons and webs, and in a fiber mill thread is spun from extruded fiber in a subsequent operation. So industry probably adopted the existing lingo of entomology.\n\nEarly mechanical extruders in fact looked very much like the analogous parts of insects\u2014small pipes tapering down to fine apertures, as in Figure 12.8. These pipes were made of glass, and the demanding work of pulling out hot glass just enough (to a little under one tenth of a millimeter) produced a delicate product all too prone to breakage and clogging. Around the turn of the century multiple-orifice precious-metal spinnerets came into use. These thimblelike devices (as in the figure) work much better, although, operating with high pressure across a flat surface, they're not the kind of arrangement likely to occur in nature. Still, as described in 1930:\n\nFIGURE 12.8. _The silk gland and extruder of a silkworm, an early tapered spinneret and a modern multiple-orifice spinneret_.\n\nThe method of producing artificial silk [rayon, etc.] closely simulates the process by which real silk is formed. The silkworm extrudes fibroin through two apertures below its mouth, and cements the two threads together with sericin, which is ejected from the glands at the same time. In the manufacture of artificial silk, the silk glands are represented by large tanks and the apertures by fine jets. In the spinning process, i.e. the transformation of the viscous mass into threads, it is customary to make a distinction between dry spinning and wet spinning. . . . Dry spinning utilizes single spinnerets consisting of thick-walled glass tubes contracted to a fine capillary, with an internal diameter of 0.08 mm., and the separate filaments are assembled into a thread.\n\n**Eardrums and the Telephone's Transducers**. By the 1870s telegraphic communication was routine. But the advantage of an instant connection was offset by the need to use Morse's dots and dashes, with slow and cumbersome coding and decoding. A telegraphic circuit had only two states, connected or not connected. (Such binary coding is what our present computers use, but they can switch from one state to the other millions of times more often.) Among others, Alexander Graham Bell worked on the problem of transmitting voices instead of mere telegraph signals. One possible scheme broke a complex sound into separate frequencies that were transmitted along parallel lines; the receiver then recombined them. Bell's important insight was that such complexity was unnecessary; a single device could convert all frequencies of sound into a single electrical signal. Bell, no electrical guru, got the idea from an analogous biological device.\n\nAt the time Bell was a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University. He and his father pioneered in teaching deaf people to speak intelligibly, making sounds that they themselves had never heard, so he was immersed in the physiological and behavioral aspects of making and perceiving sounds. Bell recognized that the eardrum was a single device that handled all frequencies at once. Its movements in and out set the bones of the middle ear into motion, and these in turn communicated with the liquid-filled inner ear, where the neural equipment was located. In his own words, \"It occurred to me that if a membrane as thin as tissue paper could control the vibrations of bones that were, compared to it, of immense size and weight, why should not a larger and thicker membrane be able to vibrate a piece of iron in front of an electromagnet. . . and a simple piece of iron attached to a membrane be placed at the other end of the telegraphic circuit?\"\n\nFIGURE 12.9. _Bell's diagram of the telephone transmitter (or microphone) and receiver_.\n\nNot that all then went smoothly, but the invention of this microphone broke the back of the problem. The same device in reverse served as a receiver to get the sound back out, as in Figure 12.9, taken from what may be the most profitable patent in history. Thus the device was automatically bidirectional. Although Bell's transmitter was soon replaced by Thomas Edison's more sensitive carbon microphone, his receiver survives in earphones and (at least its basic principle) in loudspeakers.\n\nModern life would be impossible without aircraft, cheap paper, artificial fabrics, and telecommunication of speech\u2014major matters, all of them. Three further cases meet our criteria for emulation but involve task-specific devices of narrower application and lesser everyday impact.\n\n**Barbed Wire**. Keeping livestock pinned within hedgerows of thorny plants is an old practice, one especially useful where wood or stone for fencing is in short supply. Settlers of the North American prairies faced an ever-worsening wood shortage as they moved westward. The plant of choice for the Midwest was a shrubby tree native to East Texas and nearby areas\u2014the Osage orange ( _Maclura pomifera_ )\u2014and a small industry during the 1860s and 1870s supplied its seeds and seedlings for use farther north. This thorny bush, though, had substantial disadvantages. Growing an effective hedge took about three years, the grapefruit-size but inedible fruits were a nuisance, and the hedge was both immovable and a nuisance to maintain. Michael Kelly's patent of 1868 for an early form of barbed wire was explicit: \"My invention [imparts] to fences of wire a character approximating to that of a thorny hedge. I prefer to designate the fence so produced as a thorny fence.\" Indeed, the wire was produced by an enterprise called the Thorn Wire Hedge Company, perhaps advertising its utility by drawing attention to a familiar antecedent. Figure 12.10 shows the similarity of plant thorns such as those of the Osage orange to this early form of barbed wire.\n\nFIGURE 12.10. _Branch and thorns of an Osage orange, Kelly's \"thorny fence\" of 1868, and the barbs of a modern version_.\n\nKelly barbed wire was eclipsed by two competing brands of cheaper wire after 1874; as with wings, spinnerets, and telephone transmitters, fidelity to nature guarantees no economic magic. Patents for the new types were held by Joseph Glidden and Jacob Haish. With the usual personification of invention, Joseph Glidden is often listed as the inventor of barbed wire. Haish, almost certainly not coincidentally, had a lumberyard that sold Osage orange seed. As the historian George Basalla puts it, \"barbed wire was not created by men who happened to twist and cut wire in a peculiar fashion. It originated in a deliberate attempt to copy an organic form that functioned effectively as a deterrent to livestock.\" Barbed wire has been an enduring success. Current consumption in the United States runs to well over a hundred thousand tons a year.\n\n**Chain Saw Cutters**. Small gasoline engines were developed early in this century. A saw blade in the form of an endless chain with teeth on the links was patented in 1858. Chain saws both with attached gasoline engines and with electrically powered ones designed to work with adjacent generators appeared in the 1920s and 1930s. Yet commercial logging still made much use of hand-operated crosscut saws. Motorized crosscuts and circular saws were huge, unwieldy things quite unsuitable for felling trees in a forest. Chain saws didn't work smoothly and required frequent resharpening; even with large, heavy motors, they cut slowly. The arrangement of teeth (shown in Figure 12.11) so effective in the crosscut just doesn't cut the mustard for a saw that cuts a wider kerf (groove) with teeth that move unidirectionally as small, guided links.\n\nFIGURE 12.11. _The teeth of a crosscut saw, one mandible of a timber beetle, and a section of a saw chain showing cutter and depth feelers_.\n\nDuring the 1940s a machinist working as a logger took a careful look at the tunneling equipment and technique of the larva of a large woodboring beetle, _Ergates spiculatus_. These beetle larvae are among the few insects (termites are others) that digest wood\u2014that is, they break the cellulose polymer down into metabolically usable simple sugar. But they start by biting off wood with pairs of mandibles that (in insect fashion) move sideways rather than (as in vertebrate jaws) up and down. Unsurprisingly, these wood borers (the subfamily Prioninae of the family Cerambycidae) have robust mandibles. They splay out from the head so their sharp front edges cut at the walls of the extending tunnel\u2014the equivalent of the bottom and sides of a saw's kerf.\n\nThis ex-machinist-logger, Joseph Cox by name, then devised a chain with cutters of the shape and in the equivalent position of those of the beetle larva. They didn't move side to side, and they pointed alternately left and right (adjacent pairs would have jammed immediately), but they were unquestionably beetlelike. These wood-cutting teeth worked so well that millions of portable chain saws now use the design, so well that the company Cox founded in 1947 now dominates the business. If you buy a chain saw, it will probably have an Oregon chain.\n\n**Velcro**. This flexible and alignment-independent hook-and-loop fastener has found a secure niche in modern life, gradually replacing shoelaces, buttons, zippers, snaps, picture wire, curtain rings, and many other modest but ancient adhesive devices. It does yeoman joinery, socially rehabilitating those disadvantaged by limited manual dexterity. For the more traditional among us, the sound and feel of separating halves still carry a sense of something self-destructing, but we'll eventually adjust. Velcro (from \"velvet\" and \"crochet\") gained wide acceptance more slowly than barbed wire or the modern chain saw because it neither satisfied a critical need nor replaced predecessors found wanting. But like them, it capitalizes on a model from the living world.\n\nAbout 1948 a Swiss engineer and avid walker named Georges de Mestral contemplated the burs that clung to his socks and dog after a hike in the local hills. The burs, variously reported as cocklebur ( _Xanthium_ ) or burdock ( _Arctium_ ), had tiny hooks at their tips that engaged anything fuzzy, as in Figure 12.12. Nylon, then less than ten years old, turned out to be an ideal material to make the hooks\u2014when heated and then cooled, it would retain a curve in the face of all kinds of abuse\u2014but the hooks had to be made from cut loops, which required the invention of some novel machinery. In addition, the hooks were more fastidious in choosing what to grab than were the natural burs, so Velcro ended up as a pair of mating surfaces\u2014hooks and loops. Improvements and derivative products have come along, such as stainless steel Velcro (stronger) and silent Velcro (for military use), but the basic material has changed little.\n\nA person could hang from a patch of standard Velcro less than five inches in diameter, but such a patch can be peeled loose with one hand. To hold strongly but release with ease, Velcro (like adhesive tape) takes clever advantage of what's called a dimensional reduction. It holds against a force extending over a broad area, while it peels in response to a force concentrated along a line; it attaches in two dimensions but releases in one. A pair of scissors or a zipper does the same thing, except that instead of reducing an area to a line, it reduces a one-dimensional line to a nondimensional point. To bring matters full circle, dimensional reduction is important in nature as well. As they get food, lots of animals peel and tear\u2014that is, they reduce an area to a line or a line to a point; that's how a cat uses its claws and a caterpillar cuts through a leaf. Conversely, some limpets have broad skirts that make them hard to peel off rocks. Also, grasses have lengthwise veins that help them resist crosswise tearing.\n\nFIGURE 12.12. _The hooked burs of a plant_ , Arctium minus ( _courtesy of the Duke University Herbarium), and those of Velcro_.\n\nWHEN COPYING WORKS, WHY DOES IT?\n\nThese cases don't add up to a statistically significant set of data. But we can dimly discern some common threads that, if not definitive, are at least suggestive.\n\nFirst, mere imitation isn't likely to be productive. George Cayley made a leap of abstraction by carving not a trout but an axisymmetrical body derivative of trout girths. Horatio Phillips's best airfoils gave greater lift-to-drag ratios than his rook's wing. Otto Lilienthal's airfoils were arcs of circles in section, not cross sections of actual bird wings. And while wing warping may be what birds do, Wilbur and Orville Wright did it in a thoroughly unavian way. Besides, wing warping was quickly eclipsed by ailerons, a still less avian device. Barbed wire is a tensile structure, a wire, closer to vines than to branches. The barbs were originally attached rather than integral, with their radial orientation fixed in nonbiological fashion. The way the cutters of a chain saw blade move scarcely resembles the motion of larval mandibles; what's common are the shape of the cutters, their flexible connection to the saw or head, and where in the tunnel or kerf they cut. Velcro is a paired adhesive system like zippers or snaps, while burs are a single element more like the reversible adhesive of Post-It note papers. Only the crucial hooks are a common element. The idea, the inspiration, or the strategy\u2014whatever one chooses to call it\u2014not the details or tactics that humans use, is what nature has provided. Practicality seems to lie somewhere between general inspiration and exact emulation.\n\nSecond, success depends inversely on how well we understand the underlying science. Where our science is strong, copying produces at best narrowly targeted items, such as barbed wire, saw chains, and Velcro. But where our science is weak, copying can generate devices of broad utility. Fluid mechanics was a murky business before the present century, so streamlined bodies, cambered airfoils, and ailerons could not easily be deduced from first principles. As Cayley took pains to emphasize, copying was the best one could do under the circumstances. Electrical signals with complex wave forms were almost unknown, so appreciation of the eardrum allowed technology to leap ahead of theory. Papermaking and fiber extrusion involve complex combinations of solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, and chemistry, but such complexity doesn't bother natural selection, so nature provided useful hints both of what's possible and of how to proceed.\n\nA third point, the most important, turns on the difference between the two technologies. Nature's is typically tiny, wet, nonmetallic, nonwheeled, and flexible; human technology is mainly the opposite: large, dry, metallic, wheeled, and stiff. Where one technology operates in what is normally the domain of the other, emulation holds promise. As natural structures go, thorns and beetle mandibles are especially stiff, so they're closer to what we do with our materials. Among devices made by humans, Velcro is relatively flexible, so with it we brush against a world whose possibilities have been more thoroughly explored by nature.\n\nHUMAN FLIGHT AS A CASE HISTORY\n\nTo look at successes is to look with perfect hindsight. To counteract such post hoc bias, we might focus on a specific human endeavor. The history of flight, which has given us several examples of successful emulation, contains still more of failure. Even ignoring the completely bizarre, such as men jumping off barns with improvised wings, a nicely multidimensional story emerges. One side of the story was put well by Hiram Maxim, in 1909. He had just spent a lot of money\u2014money made from his machine guns\u2014on a spectacularly large and unsuccessful flying machine: \"Man is essentially a land animal, and it is quite possible that if Nature had not placed before him numerous examples of birds and insects that are able to fly, he would never have thought of attempting it himself.\" The other side of the story is that in most respects the flight of organisms proved to be a notably bad source of guidance. As Maxim also put it, \"The successful locomotive was not based upon an imitation of an elephant.\" Quite beyond their nonflapping wings, the Wrights' aircraft were thoroughly unbirdlike: propeller-pushed biplanes with horizontal stabilizers in front and large vertical control surfaces behind. To sharpen the argument that nature speaks with forked tongue, consider several specific aspects of aircraft design.\n\nUsing a single set of structures to produce both upward and forward force is a reasonable scheme only for a flier of low wing loading, which is to say a small one, an argument made in Chapter 10 and not unknown at the end of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, nature's reciprocating motion\u2014up and down, up and down\u2014is a fairly cumbersome way for our motors to apply a large amount of power. So a single pair of flapping wings is an inauspicious route to human flight. No successful human- powered aircraft, where power is most severely limited, works that way. The glider that killed Lilienthal was about to get an engine that would flap the wings with a pair of hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders. It's extremely doubtful that Lilienthal would have flown the first fully powered aircraft but for the accident that killed him.\n\nMost of the early attempts at flying machines had very bird- or batlike wings; if anything, they were even shorter and broader than those typical of flying animals. Figure 12.13 gives an example. But other things being equal, the best ratio of lift to drag is obtained with the longest wing, although that might not have been completely obvious a century ago. For a given wing area, longer and skinnier are better. Bird and bat wings are compromises; flapping is probably easier for shorter wings, and shorter wings give greater maneuverability and better ability to deal with erratic air currents. A little less attention to animals and a little more experimentation with isolated wings would have been helpful.\n\nProbably the animals misled us worst by giving the impression that control of flight was no big problem. In locomotory machines in general, and with especial severity in aircraft, maneuverability and stability tend to be antithetical characteristics. Each of the three extant lineages of flying animals is of considerable antiquity, so, as pointed out by the evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith, they've had time to become unstable, time to evolve neural systems that could manage the instability that goes with good maneuverability. After all, maneuverability will almost always be advantageous for animals since they're either aerial predators or targets of aerial predators, or they fly among obstacles, or they soar on atmospheric irregularities.\n\nLilienthal was especially single-minded about imitating birds. His book on bird flight spells out his operational philosophy: \". . . natural birdflight utilizes the properties of air in such perfect manner, and contains such valuable mechanical features, that any departure from these advantages is equivalent to giving up every practical method of flight.\" Thus he was fatally trapped in an excessively birdlike and unstable glider. The instability of Lilienthal's craft worried Octave Chanute, an older man who had experimented with gliders earlier. Birds, for instance, have horizontal tail surfaces but no vertical rudders, since they get adequate control of sideways turning with their wings alone, so vertical tail surfaces were small or absent in many hopeful aircraft built between about 1880 and 1905.\n\nFIGURE 12.13. _Cl\u00e9ment Ader's batlike \u00c9ole of 1890, which made a partially powered hop; the wing (top view) of lgo Etrich's plane of 1906, which copied the gliding fruit of the Javanese cucumber, and the gliding fruit itself_.\n\nSome aircraft, just a little later, went overboard in the other direction, with such great stability that they were almost unmaneuverable. At least one copied another natural flier. Animals can do wonderful things with delicate sense organs and fast-acting feedback loops. Plants obviously can't, so gliding plant parts must be highly stable. The samara (seed in fruit) of a maple, mentioned as an alternative to a parachute, glides helically (it \"spirals\") downward. The glide slows its earthward movement so it can be carried farther by the wind that blew it off the tree. A few fruits glide along a straight path, gaining distance from the parent tree without the need for wind. Among these is the fruit of the Javanese cucumber, a flying wing that glides earthward in the still air beneath the forest canopy in Southeast Asia (Figure 12.13). After the death of Lilienthal, Ignaz and Igo Etrich bought his remaining gliders, whose instability converted them (scared them?) into advocates of extremely stable craft. Igo obtained flying fruits from the Hamburg Botanical Museum and copied them in a series of craft\u2014unmanned, manned, and then powered. But as gliders they were almost unmanageably stable and lacking in maneuverability. Worse yet, they combined the worst of both worlds since too much stability was lost when motors were installed.\n\nEventually it became clear that an aircraft, unlike a bird, ought to be so inherently stable that it didn't require continuous activity by the pilot. At the same time it ought not be too stable to be controllable, thus unlike a gliding fruit. Modern aircraft manage the compromise quite well. As a former colleague, Molly Bernheim, describes learning to fly, \"So a pilot, before he flies safely, must learn a very difficult lesson, one which is contrary to all his natural instincts. A headlong descent toward the ground? Pulling back won't help you! You must let go of the stick, so that it moves forward. A wing that won't come up? Let go! The airplane can look after itself better, now, than you can do! Turn it loose! Then, and only then, you may guide it gently where you want it to go.\"\n\nOne domain, though, differs. Small, high-performance military aircraft are made deliberately unstable to achieve great maneuverability. But they feel stable to their pilots because they've adopted a crucial feature of animal flight. Modern control technology, which means sensors and actuators in rapidly acting feedback loops, gives them the best of both worlds. The pilot makes the strategic decisions while the tactical details are handled by servomechanisms, just as a mammal or bird divides control between the cerebral executive and the middle management of the rest of the central nervous system.\n\nSticking close to nature's methods has proved no boon in at least one other form of locomotion. We're most often told that Robert Fulton invented the steamboat in 1807. In fact, steamboats existed, and Fulton knew about them. He had a better engine (from Boulton and Watt, in England) and better financial backing, but the main advantage of his boat lay in that very unbiological device the rotating paddle wheel. James Rumsey's boat of 1787 used a steam-driven piston to make a squidlike pulse jet, taking water in beneath the bow and expelling it forcefully at the stern. A piston engine naturally reciprocates, so a few valves suffice to make it power a pulsating squirter. But Rumsey's boat suffered from the squid's problem: the low-propulsion efficiency that comes with a highspeed, low-mass output. John Fitch's boat of 1790 used a set of reciprocating rear paddles that alternately dipped into the water and pushed rearward like a person doing a crawl stroke with duck feet as hands. Paddle wheels, first in the rear and then at the sides of boats, were simpler, more effective, and more efficient.\n\nThis has been a skeptical and polemical chapter. But its message of disbelief and irritation at excessive romanticism and self-deception is hard to paint in brighter colors. Historians are fated to look backward, whereas scientists usually look forward. In all the debunking, however, a positive message should not be lost: The record of copying may be sparse, but good cases do exist. Blind emulation may have nothing to recommend it, but we've sometimes been much smarter than that. Indeed, a good argument can be made that as our technology takes on more of the characteristic's of natures\u2014more flexible materials and structures, increased miniaturization, greater use of nonmetallic materials, and so forth\u2014nature will be an increasingly useful teacher.\nChapter 13\n\nCOPYING, PRESENT AND PROSPECTIVE\n\nHistory isn't destiny. If it were, then we'd have known in 1875 that cities were doomed, that by 1925 the ever-increasing volume of horse manure would produce total urban inundation. We've looked at the past; its messages about what's to come in the business of copying nature are both mixed and unreliable. The best we can claim is that an informed guess is better than none. Bioemulation makes the news\u2014or at least a lot of corporate advertising copy\u2014but balance and perspective aren't the hallmarks of day-to-day journalism.\n\nA MIXED BAG OF MAYBES\n\nProblems: Copying may work but hold insufficient advantage over an alternative. Or copying may be assumed\u2014mistakenly\u2014to have worked. Or else the \"nature-copied\" device works but turns out not to have been copied. Here are examples of each, intentional fuel for the fires of skepticism. The concentration on fluid mechanical cases should be blamed on the author's experience and not taken as defining the current mainstream of work in bioemulation.\n\n**Guts and Peristaltic Pumps**. Our intestines act as their own pumps, pushing along slurries of digesting food. Waves of muscle contraction move lengthwise down our twenty feet of small intestine and eight feet of large intestine in the process known as peristalsis\u2014much the way we squeeze toothpaste from the bottom of a nearly empty tube. The digestive systems of animals most often use this kind of pump; even the circulatory systems of a lot of worms pump peristaltically. Peristaltic pumps\u2014the name borrowed from physiology\u2014find occasional small-scale use in human technology, especially in biomedical applications; an example is shown in Figure 13.1. The various versions have in common an arrangement for flattening successive elements of a tube with elastic walls, pushing the contents along. Peristaltic pumps have two selling points. The viscosity of the material being pumped can vary from that of water to that of a sloppy slurry without affecting the pumping rate, as you know from everyday personal experience. And the material doesn't have to leave the elastic tube while it passes through the pump, which avoids contamination from contact with the rest of the pump and simplifies sterilization. Otherwise, peristaltic pumps are a nuisance. Elastic tubing must be replaced often, and as pumps go, they're inefficient; deforming the elastic tube takes a lot of energy, little of which gets recovered.\n\nWas the peristaltic pump copied from nature's peristalsis? The name suggests emulation, but the evidence argues otherwise. In 1894 a British inventor, John G. A. Kitchen, patented a pump much like one of our contemporary ones but without using the name. He intended the pump as a hand-operated, portable device for reinflating bicycle tires, a low- speed, occasional use in which rubber tubes wouldn't quickly fail from the repeated squashing. The present name most likely comes (perhaps as advertising) from its use by a biomedical community.\n\nFIGURE 13.1. _The major components of a modern peristaltic pump; it's belt-driven through a pulley immediately behind the plane of the drawing. John Kitchen's version differed mainly in having one rather than two peripheral rollers and a hand crank on the central shaft_.\n\n**Dolphins and Low-Drag Submarines**. A lovely story that tells how a dolphin's almost dragless swimming was discovered and then mimicked. In the mid-1930s Sir James Gray, one of the founders of modern biomechanics, got a curious result when he calculated how hard a dolphin had to work at its top swimming speed. Flow around a body can be either laminar or turbulent, depending on such factors as the body's size, speed, smoothness, and shape. Gray calculated that only if flow around a dolphin was laminar could a dolphin's muscles produce the power needed for the speeds it attains; turbulent flow would cause too much drag. But a body as big and fast as a dolphin's normally experiences turbulent flow. The result became known as Gray's paradox.\n\nAbout twenty years later Max Kramer claimed that dolphins maintain laminarity with a soft, compliant skin that damps incipient turbulence and that his Lamiflo coating system for submarines imparted the same impressive effect. Unfortunately the story doesn't hold water. First, we now know that Gray underestimated how much aerobic power can come from mammalian muscle and overestimated how fast a dolphin could swim continuously. A dolphin should manage well enough even if flow is turbulent. Second, no one has demonstrated that dolphins work as Kramer suggested, although they have soft skin and do appear to disturb the water remarkably little as they swim. Finally, the Lamiflo coating never gave the promised reduction in drag.\n\n**Fish Slime and Polymers for Drag Reduction**. If you add to water substances made of big molecules, the water, now more viscous, flows less readily. Under some circumstances, though, the opposite happens. Adding small amounts of a long, linear, soluble polymer to turbulent flows can reduce friction and speed up flow through a pipe or across a body. Some fish seem to use such polymers on some occasions, shedding fish slime into the water as they swim. Fish slimes and other biological polymers can lower resistance to flow on fish, on flow through pipes, or on solid test bodies. But practical use of the trick requires continuous shedding, since the flow carries the polymer away from the surface. Even fish probably secrete polymers only during brief predator-prey chases. Furthermore, while a lot of effort has focused on fish, since they apparently use the stuff, the original discovery and investigation of friction reduction by adding polymers didn't involve biological systems. It turned up in investigations of so-called non-Newtonian liquids, complex liquid systems in which viscosity isn't constant from time to time and place to place.\n\n**Shark Scales and Drag Reduction**. Not all fish are slimy. Sharkskin, for instance, feels like medium-grit sandpaper. Examined closely, the scales of sharks turn out to have ridges running atop them, and the ridges look as if they were aligned with the local direction of flow. These ridges are small, less than one-tenth of a millimeter apart and still less in height, but they appear to have evolved independently in several lineages of especially speedy sharks. Experiments with artificial versions have worked well enough to spawn a commercial coating (riblets) for use on high-performance racing yachts. But this coating reduces skin friction at most by 10 percent and usually much less, and skin friction, in any case, isn't as important as wave drag for surface ships. Moreover, whether sharks use their own ridging in the same way remains a bit uncertain.\n\nOne final note: We learn things by word of mouth more than we ordinarily admit to students. Recently word of mouth has gained a whole new dimension as we've plugged into another informal avenue of inquiry, the Internet. I explained on several Internet news groups that I was looking for successful emulations of nature. I gave the cases I already knew about and the guidelines I was following. A number of the stories here originated in the replies, and I got a fine introduction to work in progress. I also became more confident that I'd left no major stone unturned.\n\nTHE PROMISE OF CURRENT WORK\n\nNever have more people been chasing biomimetics. Moreover, we're now seeing careful and systematic investigation of living systems in concert with efforts at emulation. An increasing number of people are now familiar with both sides of the street: biomechanics and engineering. The past history of copying nature may be unportentous, but its scattershot character is no longer representative. In short, it's a cautionary tale, not a trajectory. Here, then, are a few of the endeavors to which biomimetic thinking has recently taken on relevance.\n\n**Nanotechnology**. Nature builds upward from molecules and cells, while we usually don't. Some things, though, are more easily made that way. For instance, you hook together in specific sequences the different amino acids that form your proteins as directed by your genetic code, not by brewing up a batch of identical little molecules and making them stick to each other in random order. You also make composites like bone by synthesizing and positioning the various components just where they're supposed to be, not by mixing the components and letting the product solidify. One way for human technology to build upward is to use microorganisms as host factories with DNA inserts of our choosing. We already do this when we make small amounts of human insulin and other highly valuable biological molecules. Nothing stands in the way of our making either normal or modified structural proteins\u2014nothing but horrible economics. Even with the most devoted microorganisms, the cost of making such products by the ton instead of by the gram would require that they have enormous advantages over ordinary polymers. Where might they be worthwhile? Perhaps in medical applications, where we're willing to spend extravagantly. For instance, we might want to make something that a human body, with its immune system, accepted as a normal part of itself. Bacterially synthesized human insulin has that advantage. Or imagine solid, prosthetic materials that not only would be accepted but that would join in the body's growth and replacement processes. Another way to build upward is to design large molecules that self-assemble into microscopic structures like microtubules and other cellular components.\n\n**Muscle Analogs**. Engines that work by contraction are rare in human technology. So are room-temperature engines made of soft material that can be made arbitrarily small. But nothing prohibits us from making musclelike devices that convert chemical to mechanical energy; such devices just haven't yet reached the stage of practical applications. Anything really similar to muscle, though, would need a well-developed nanotechnology for production. Just how similar to muscle we'd want our engine to be is uncertain. While muscle is fine stuff, it's an engine that can operate only when cool and wet. Except, again, for direct replacement for body parts, we don't have to be limited to low-temperature operation and shouldn't have to do everything underwater.\n\n**Composite Materials**. Bone, enamel, coral, wood\u2014nature is so good at making hierarchical and composite materials that we surely should be able to learn from her products. In fact, this area is especially active at present. Seashells seem to hold lessons for making cermets\u2014ceramic and metal composites. Beetle body wall\u2014cuticle\u2014seems to have a superior system of bonding fibers and matrix. The hard parts of sea urchins and other echinoderms are apparently single calcite crystals, but they incorporate a bit of protein that makes them interestingly fracture-resistant. And so on, from materials through large-scale structures derived from bamboo stems and molluscan teeth. Even if close emulation awaits effective nanotechnology, products that combine presynthesized components in nature's ways are clearly feasible in the short term. One wood-derived product, for instance, has been patented and can be produced with the equipment now used to make corrugated paperboard.\n\n**Smart Materials**. Muscle, bone, wood, skin, and some other natural materials adjust their composition or quantity in response to changes in load. This capacity for load-dependent reconstruction depends on sensing loads\u2014on the sensory physiology of bones, tree trunks, blood vessels, and other structures that we don't usually think of as capable of sensation. Sensory systems have classically been the province of neurobiology, but in these structural materials well-understood neural feedback loops play little or no role. Loading some living materials such as bone and wood sets up electrical changes within them. The phenomenon, called piezoelectricity, has long been known in crystals and synthetic ceramics; press on such a material, and electrical charges appear on its surface. We use piezoelectricity to convert mechanical changes to electrical signals in devices such as phonograph pickups and microphones. Thus something unusual for the biologists is standard fare for the engineers, and piezoelectric sensation should be more readily emulated than neural sensation. Still, sensation is only one element of a feedback system that must also be capable of processing and acting on information. The self-awareness of hunger is of no value without mechanisms to obtain food. The other elements\u2014how electrical charges trigger growth, for instance\u2014remain mysterious. So making a responsive material is no trivial matter. Still, the ability to put material where and only where it's needed and to compensate for wear and for changes in loading would be no small advantage.\n\n**Robotic Manipulators**. Robots, industrial robots in particular, are of special interest these days. No one outside the film industry gives serious thought to visually anthropomorphic robots, but humans do have enviable dexterity and tactile ability. One tricky task that a good robot should master is picking up and positioning delicate, nonrigid objects. Humans do this well, using jointed appendages and a combination of visual, tactile, and proprioceptive (telling where your various parts are at any instant) senses. Various multijointed handlike manipulators have been built, with nature's versions (as with aircraft, composites, and smart materials) a steady reminder of what's possible. One interesting approach uses flexible, pneumatically inflated structures rather than jointed appendages, as in Figure 13.2, copying the muscular hydrostats of tentacles, tongues, and elephant trunks in order to handle fragile objects. We mammals mainly use jointed appendages, but they have no intrinsic superiority over muscular hydrostats for biological uses, much less as models for robotic technology. Indeed, close emulation of a tentacle may be a better bet than copying a hand since the hand requires many more discrete and independently controlled elements. The tentacle, though, pulls us into the unfamiliar world of structures that lack hard parts.\n\nFIGURE 13.2. _William Kier's diagram of how a squid tentacle twists and (from U.S. Patent 4,792,173 of 1988) a diagram of one of James F. Wilson's pneumatic manipulators_.\n\n**Walking Vehicles**. Wheels are better than legs in hard, flat contexts. The messier the terrain, the better legs become. On a soft substratum\u2014say, sand\u2014that a foot can still push against effectively, a wheel must climb out of its own rut as it moves, doing something analogous to a ship sailing above hull speed. The military worry about getting people and things around without first making roads, so they're attracted to legged vehicles and have paid for building some rather fancy ones. Both the motor arrangements and the sensors and feedback systems of these are enormously complex. One six-thousand-pound walker goes only five miles per hour and carries only five hundred pounds; on the other hand, it can climb a 60 percent gradient. A strong consensus favors six-legged machines, so the walkers (such as the one in Figure 13.3) look a bit like giant insects. Balance comes harder to four-legged machines; if one leg is lifted, the thing may tip. But a hexapod can lift every other leg while retaining a stable tripedal stance, or it can lift almost any two without loss of stability, as you can demonstrate with clay (or a brownie) and toothpicks. Current work on walking vehicles pays serious attention to insect biomechanics. Nonetheless, the logic of hexapedalism doesn't mean that good walkers will look like insects; such things as the difference between muscles and motors and the difference in scale will inevitably drive divergence.\n\n**Swimming by Bending**. The fish most familiar to us swim with obvious ease and agility in a manner unlike either surface ships or submarines.\n\nFIGURE 13.3. _A hexapedal insect and a hexapedal vehicle, not at the same scale!_\n\nFIGURE 13.4. _A pair of twiddlefish invented by Stephen Wainwright and Charles Pell (courtesy of Twidco, P.O. Box 542, Durham, NC27702_ ).\n\nThese fish\u2014trout, bass, and the like\u2014accelerate impressively when they start and turn sharply at any speed. In their mode of swimming, waves of bending pass from head to tail. The waves increase in amplitude as they move aft, so the whole body is an integrated propulsive unit powered by a large mass of edible muscle. For our machines, that's an even more awkward arrangement than flapping wings. Even so, the waving motion has been simulated using a complexly interconnected set of solid segments called the robotuna. It can also be simulated\u2014and much more cheaply\u2014by a simple fish-shaped casting of soft plastic. A twiddlefish, as in Figure 13.4 is persuaded to oscillate side to side by twisting, first one way and then the other, by a vertical shaft that emerges upward just behind its head. While the twiddlefish is now sold as a toy, it's a serious proposition. A version a foot or two long can propel a small person-powered boat; a person sits on the boat and twists a shaft that goes down through the hull to the twiddlefish. Larger ones, various geometries, combinations of propulsive units, and different degrees of stiffness are currently being constructed and tested.\n\nWill such devices supplant marine propellers? Doubtful: Rotating propellers are probably more efficient than any possible twiddlefish. Really fast marine swimmers\u2014tunas and whales\u2014swim by swinging wide tails back and forth behind stiff bodies, not by passing back waves of bending. That strongly suggests (as does other evidence) that a trout, for instance, trades off propulsive efficiency for maneuverability and acceleration. But just as legged vehicles have specific uses that their intrinsic complexity and inefficiency don't rule out, so perhaps do soft, oscillating propulsive units. Imagine, for instance, a trolling motor that moves a fishing boat through a tangle of submerged vegetation. An oscillating propulsor ought to get fouled a lot less easily than a rotating propeller.\n\nQUO VADIMUS?\n\nIf you want to make very small things or to fabricate materials that are heterogeneous at a microscopic level, nature may hold both lessons and assistance. The smaller the scale, the better the prospects for emulation. We're relatively better on large scales, where our metals and wheels come into their own. This suggests that materials science is a fertile place for biomimesis, while structures and mechanical systems are less so. Since the early cases of copying were all large, we glimpse the possibility of a new path.\n\nIf you develop new materials that are more like nature's, her designs should show how to use those materials to best advantage. Using new materials is a nontrivial business. The earliest iron bridges looked like those made of wood or stone, while the earliest steel bridges looked like the bridges that had been made of iron. Many of us remember that early plastic buckets, yard carts, and such looked more like their metallic antecedents than do current designs. As composites, including ones particularly like those of nature, become more competitive in price with metals and homogeneous plastics, natural designs may take on new attractiveness for us.\n\nIf you intend to make things of pliant rather than stiff materials, recognize that nature has been there first. We need just point again to tentaclelike robotic handlers and to twiddlefish, both cases in which flexible devices similar to their natural analogs work well. Designing with pliancy in mind puts strength, not stiffness, uppermost, and that holds promise of material economy: doing more with less.\n\nIf you want to make prostheses, some advantages may come from using materials and structures as close as possible in properties and operation to nature's originals. Here one has to fit an element of one technology into the other. And to be crassly commercial, a prosthesis can command a spectacular price relative to the amount of material in it.\n\nEven though put as admonitions, each of these items points to a future considerably brighter than implied by a simple historical account. We're moving toward ever smaller components in our various contrivances, in effect getting closer to nature's miniature world; remember that an average animal is only a millimeter or so in length. We're developing a great array of flexible materials to supplement or supplant stiff metals and brittle ceramics. We're exploring the use of composite materials, composites far better than our old standby fiberglass, and thus entering a world in which nature (perhaps for lack of metals) is an experienced and versatile player. With improvements in small actuators and complex controls, devices made of muscles, tendons, bones, and nerves are increasingly attractive as models.\n\nBut once again the caveat. Nature may show what's possible, but she's a poor guide to what's worth doing. Flashy corporate advertising repeatedly pops up heralding the imminent industrial synthesis of spider silk. Spider silks (there are many variants) do have unusual properties. They're strong, extensible, and tough (although they have low stiffness and resilience). Even so, they're not, as the ads imply, leagues better than existing polymers such as Kevlar, which happens to be stronger than any known silk. Making a spider silk would be an impressive biotechnological accomplishment. The task extends well beyond getting the amino acids linked together in the right order; it has to be extruded with the right organization of crystalline and noncrystalline regions.\n\nHow badly do we want to make a spider silk? Getting manufacturing costs down far enough is hard to imagine, since almost any application would need a large amount of the stuff. For that matter, thinking of applications isn't all that easy. The properties of spider silk and indeed of structural proteins in general are extremely dependent on their water content\u2014 level of hydration, strictly\u2014and on temperature. To complicate any uses even farther, changes that happen when hydration and temperature are altered often aren't reversed when hydration and temperature come back to normal. What applications do we have that are sufficiently permissive to put up with such trouble? Yet another trouble spot is the low resilience of silk\u2014perhaps its most unusual and thus potentially desirable feature. The combination of high toughness and low resilience means that lots of energy can be absorbed in a stretch and that the energy doesn't come out again as elastic rebound. In other words, spider silk is stretchy, but it doesn't behave at all like a rubber band; it absorbs and then keeps the energy. But energy, according to the first law of thermodynamics, can't be destroyed, and the energy appears as heat. Now that may not pose a problem for a skinny thread. None of its inside is at all far from its surface, so heat loss to the surrounding air or water keeps it from getting hot. But imagine using a rope of spider silk to stop a falling body or a moving aircraft. If the rope is thick enough to do such a big job, the silk will be immediately ruined by the resulting increase in its temperature.\n\nSo having easy access to large ropes of spider silk might hold little advantage. They might be like some other biological items that are widely available but not especially useful. The big and prosperous stems (properly \"culms\") of bamboo in my yard are a good example; they produce a substantial annual harvest for which I've never found an application. What might be more useful would be to understand how spider silk comes by its curious combination of properties. That could help us devise materials that have its unusual and desirable properties without its disabilities, materials that can be made cheaply by our kind of manufacturing.\n\nPoor prospects get weeded out quickly enough either because the people doing the work get discouraged or because the sources of funding get discouraged. Even skeptic that I am, I view the present avenues being explored as highly promising. A kind of natural selection will operate among technological projects, one driven by experience, wisdom, and financial support.\n\nHistory may teach another lesson: that ignoring nature can be as much a peril as mindless copying. Recasting history with hindsight may not be the fairest of games, but consider the following. Screw propulsion for ships was invented in the first half of the nineteenth century, mainly by Francis Pettit Smith and John Ericsson. Their model was a pump long used in human technology, the Archimedean screw (Figure 13.5). Contained in a close-fitting pipe, the device will do service as a simple, if not especially efficient, pump. For propulsion of a vessel such a screw holds some advantage over a paddle wheel: It's more compact and works entirely underwater. Smith's first commercial vessel (launched in 1838) even bore the name _Archimedes_. But as a thrust producer the Archimedean screw isn't much better than it is as a pump. An accident is what established screw propulsion as the way to go. The outer half of a wooden screw broke off, and the shortened screw worked better. A set of flat blades, none extending for more than a fraction of a turn around the shaft turned out to work best of all. (Recognition of the advantage of curving\u2014cambering\u2014the blades awaited the twentieth century and the development of aircraft propellers.)\n\nSmith and Ericsson ignored a better model for an underwater propulsor. A ship's propeller employs the same fluid mechanical scheme as do the flukes of a whale or the wide tails of fish such as tuna. The only real difference is what we've repeatedly noted: rotational instead of reciprocating motion. If these developers of screw propulsion had understood that they were making rotating analogs of whale flukes or tuna tail fins, they might have done a lot better a lot sooner.\n\nFIGURE 13.5. _An Archimedean screw used as a pump and as the propeller of a ship_.\n\nIn viewing on one hand biomechanics and on the other bionics, biomimetics, and robotics, we're looking at the difference between pure science and applied science. The old Dewey decimal system for book classification makes precisely this distinction. Books on science, the 500s, are found in one part of the library; books on applied science, the 600s, are found in another. And the people who care about each are all too often in different places as well. Bringing them together has to be mutually beneficial.\nChapter 14\n\nCONTRASTS, CONVERGENCES, AND CONSEQUENCES\n\nThe more closely we look at the technologies of natural selection and of human contrivance, the less similar they appear. We might well have guessed otherwise in the light of their common situation. Life has proliferated on our planet for several billion years, and we've been making things for a million or so\u2014ample time for underlying imperatives to make themselves felt. Yet those basic differences persist:\n\n\u2022 Nature uses fewer flat and more curved surfaces than we do.\n\n\u2022 Ours is a far more rectilinear world while nature shows little bias in favor of right angles.\n\n\u2022 Corners in our technology are abrupt; nature's are more often rounded.\n\n\u2022 Numerous mechanically separate but individually homogeneous components make up our devices; nature uses fewer components whose properties vary internally.\n\n\u2022 Nature's designs take advantage of diffusion, surface tension, and laminar flow; gravity, thermal conductivity, and turbulence matter more for ours.\n\n\u2022 We most often design to a criterion of adequate stiffness, while nature seems more commonly concerned with ample strength.\n\n\u2022 Partly as a consequence, our artifacts tend to be more brittle while nature's are tougher.\n\n\u2022 As another consequence, our things move on sliding contacts between stiff objects whereas nature's objects bend, twist, or stretch at predetermined places.\n\n\u2022 As an additional result, we minimize drag with streamlined bodies of fixed shape, but nature often does so with nonrigid bodies that reconfigure in flows.\n\n\u2022 Human technology makes enormous use of metals, while metallic materials (as opposed to materials containing metal atoms) are totally absent in nature.\n\n\u2022 As a result, we use the ductility of metals to prevent crack propagation; nature does as well, but with foams and composites instead.\n\n\u2022 We more commonly load materials in compression while nature more often loads in tension.\n\n\u2022 Concomitantly, we make greater use of shear preventatives such as nails and mortar to keep stacked objects aligned.\n\n\u2022 Structures with tensile sheaths outside and pressurized fluid inside are both more common and more diverse in natural designs than in ours.\n\n\u2022 For such hydrostatic and aerostatic systems, nature's predominant fluid is water while our structures mostly contain air or some other gas.\n\n\u2022 We make profuse and diverse use of rolling devices based on the wheel and axle; but things rarely roll in nature, and only one true wheel and axle is known.\n\n\u2022 Our prime movers\u2014engines\u2014are based on rotation or expansion; most of nature's are based on sliding or contracting.\n\n\u2022 Many of our engines extract mechanical energy from temperature differences, whereas all natural engines are isothermal.\n\n\u2022 Levers in human technology most often amplify force at the expense of distance, while nature's commonest levers amplify distance at the expense of force.\n\n\u2022 Our devices store mechanical work as electrical, kinetic, gravitational, or elastic energy; nature mainly uses the last two and most often the last one.\n\n\u2022 Our fluid transport devices often interchange pressure drop and volume flow, but equivalent transformers are rare in nature.\n\n\u2022 Surface ships have long played an important role in human technology, but nature overwhelmingly prefers submarines.\n\n\u2022 Our factories dwarf the items they produce; nature's factories make products far larger than themselves.\n\n\u2022 We judge our devices best when they need only minimal maintenance, but nature's devices get continuously rebuilt.\n\n\u2022 Our technology is as dry as nature's is wet.\n\nListing differences hints at interrelationships among them. If gravity dominates, then stiff materials to resist it find special utility. Stacking becomes a reasonable way to build things, with shear preventatives like nails to prevent sliding. Permitting such sliding here and there then defines joints. And so on. Using metals makes their special properties available (for instance, high thermal and electrical conductivities) and allows using otherwise impractical devices (such as wires) and construction methods (like pressing and forging). Composites drop from crucial to simply useful. And so forth.\n\nEach domain, nature's and ours, thus develops its distinctive coherence, consistency, and rationality, each a well-integrated entity in its particular context. Might we mix and match among the features of the two technologies, generating a vast number of further ones? All but a few would surely lack that degree of coherence, consistency, and rationality; the combinations of features that mark each of our two transcend historical accident. What determines the kinds of devices that a technology finds effective? For one thing, its physical situation: the size of a technology's artifacts, whether its basic medium is air or water, whether it works at a surface or suspended in a gas or liquid, and so forth. For another, how it goes about doing things: production methods, degrees of resistance to revolutionary change, relative ease of technological diffusion, and, once again, so forth.\n\nEven social interactions matter to how a technology goes about its business. Nature faces severe limits when organizing and coordinating the efforts of individuals; one might say \"institutional limits\" to sharpen the comparison with human efforts. Casual verbiage to the contrary, organisms don't naturally work \"for the good of the species.\" Except (perhaps) for humans, neither the individual organism nor its genes know anything about its species or feels any obligation to it. Only to a limited extent do organisms work for the good of some community, ecosystem, or biosphere. In nature, coordination of effort happens with any regularity only under two specific conditions. First, an organism may do things that increase a close relative's chance of reproduction while decreasing its own. Relatives have many genes in common, so a self-sacrificing action can still enhance an individual's genetic contribution to the next generation. Second, if by helping another, an organism helps itself, then public-spirited action is acceptably selfish in evolutionary terms. These stringent conditions must preclude all kinds of cooperative activities.\n\nHuman technology, for instance (since we're now including hypothetical ones), operates in a much different social context. Our large enterprises depend on cooperation among people with no close kinship, although a paycheck does represent respectably selfish reciprocity. Governmental and religious institutions\u2014the military being the most ancient and extreme\u2014coordinate the activities of people of the most remote familial relationships located in far-distant places. Tin from mines in British Cornwall converted Mediterranean copper into bronze well before a single political entity bound the areas. Our remarkable facility for inducing people to pool their efforts permits great task specialization; think how many individuals had some hand in bringing you a car or computer. Our facility for generating transportation systems also means that we can transcend nature's need to make things out of locally available materials.\n\nSIMILARITIES\n\nA list of similarities turns out to be such a scattershot mix of major matters and minor details that we gain little from the itemization. Most similarities between the technologies emerge from inescapable physical rules and environmental circumstances, both matters we've already dwelled upon. The best gravity-resisting vertical column will be circular in cross section, whether it's evolved or manufactured, grown or cast, of wood or of concrete, of bone or of steel. Jet engines find use by either technology only when some other special advantage (such as high speed or mechanical simplicity) outweighs their inefficiency. Low-pressure pumps capitalize on fluid-dynamic phenomena while high-pressure pumps employ fluid statics. And so forth.\n\nAt this point more subtle and abstract similarities hold more interest: similarities of process and historical trajectory rather than of product, similarities for which common physical context provides no adequate explanation. Addressing them returns us to issues quiescent since the second chapter.\n\n\u2022 Major innovation is no easy thing for either technology, but for different reasons. We persistently believe that the progress of human technology depends on an adequate scientific base. Probably that's only occasionally true. George Basalla argues (and I don't disagree) that we too easily and too often exaggerate the contribution of science to technology. When the two interact, technology more often drives science than the other way around; steam engines stimulated thermodynamics, and aviation provided impetus for aerodynamics. More often, I suspect, the main difficulty of innovation in human technology comes from the intrinsic complexity of introducing something truly novel. A good idea isn't enough. Steam turbines were mentioned around 1800 by James Watt, but despite obvious advantages over piston engines, they didn't power ships for another century. Turbines made unmanageable demands on metallurgy, techniques for precision fabrication, and lubrication. A sail is a great device to spare human labor, but sailing in all but the calmest of waters requires drastic redesign of oar-driven ships. A computer as good as Babbage designed awaited electronics, a century later; doing the job mechanically cost too much to hold sufficient appeal to launch the technology. A developed technology has a great deal of momentum, more often than not barring from the market competing schemes, even intrinsically superior ones. About this last argument, more later.\n\nEvolutionary innovation faces even greater difficulty. Natural selection requires advantage all too immediately. That mandates continuity of design and must rule out lots of life-forms that might ultimately have proved superior. A system of inheritance that includes sexua! recombination and recessive genes does allow changes in several features at once. But it doesn't encourage large- scale change in any particular way. Small changes encounter different troubles. Competing with established designs must be especially hard when a new design differs only marginally. In both technologies refuges from the full burden of competition have obviously been important\u2014for instance, military programs for our products and geographical isolation for nature's.\n\n\u2022 The time course of change or progress, depending on one's outlook, contains several curious parallels. When we look at relative rather than absolute durations, both technologies seem to change slowly and steadily. Nature achieved terrestrial life long after accomplishing large-scale organization and mastered flight a long time later. Step by step, humans elaborated devices to apply human muscle in ever more diverse ways; we then added, with increasing effectiveness, the muscles of other animals; we further added, again step-wise, nonliving energy sources. The same incremental increase in potency marked food acquisition, construction of tools and dwellings, and destructive social interactions.\n\nViewed more closely, slow and steady characterizes neither. In each culture one can recognize some takeoff point that follows a very slow prepaleontology (for visibly large fossils) or prehistory (for record-keeping cultures). Cells of sorts persisted for several billion years, both singly and in small chains and aggregates, before they managed the specialization and coordination that led to large creatures. But the latter appeared suddenly\u2014over only ten or so million years\u2014and have been around for a paltry six hundred million years. Humans occupied most of the earth long before the modern era\u2014less than ten thousand years\u2014of specialized occupations and elaborate coordination of individuals. Most of human history preceded all the complex trade, transportation, and political organization that we think of as definitively human. Whether change in nature or human societies continues to accelerate beyond the period of takeoff is much less clear. The fossils from the Cambrian, from more than five hundred million years ago, are impressively complex, and a look at the artifacts, both large and small, of ancient Egypt gives the same impression for things that humans make. Has our technological progress in the twentieth century been greater than that during the nineteenth? The nineteenth saw the spread of self-powered locomotory systems, instantaneous communication with electrical devices, cheap metals, and mass production. To these the twentieth has added mainly electronics, aviation, modern medicine, and the development of polymeric materials. The culture shock of moving back a hundred years would probably be a lot less for one of us than for someone living in the 1890s.\n\n\u2022 What about changes on a finer scale, changes in specific devices and characters? In both technologies they're at least as episodic as broad organizational changes. A trigger gets the ball rolling, to mix metaphors, initiating a period of rapid change. Some critical environmental circumstance may alter: A seed lands on an island; a ship reaches a new continent. Some novel material or general component becomes available: a growing skeleton or edible grass in nature, a stronger metal or ship's propeller for us. Or some key constraint gets removed: Teeth appear that can tolerate the abrasives in grass; dynamos supplant batteries as primary electrical sources. For either, the range of possible triggers is wide.\n\nWhether evolution is predominantly steady or episodic has engendered considerable controversy, but we needn't worry here about the debate between \"gradualists\" and \"punctuationalists.\" At the molecular level, evolution proceeds gradually, with the genetic material changing at a relatively constant rate. At the level of the functioning organism, things change more erratically; a given amount of genetic change simply doesn't cause a fixed amount of organismic alteration. No paradox attaches to this difference; many complex and interactive processes intervene between a sequence of bases in DNA and a functioning, multicellular structure. At the molecular level gradualism reigns. At the organismic level a considerable degree of unsteadiness has long been at least tacitly recognized; the present debate just concerns the degree to which a punctuational model should be considered the default. Evolutionary biologists care about evolutionary change, so they're jarred a little by the idea that most species most of the time are well adjusted and do very little overt evolving.\n\nThe episodic character of change in human technology\u2014or in human institutions in general\u2014isn't often questioned. Or at least not recently, however persuasive was the steady \"onward and upward\" view of human progress a generation or two ago. \"Revolution\" may be a buzzword, with an agricultural revolution, an industrial revolution, and even a postindustrial revolution, but it's not inappropriate. Any history of technology provides lots of examples of rapid change on the heels of some key innovation, whether early bronze or cheap steel, steam engines or internal-combustion engines, or the fast electronic switches of tubes and transistors. Not that \"rapid\" means instantaneous. Applications lead to improvements in cost and efficacy of the basic innovation, which then lead to other applications, but even such a positive feedback process takes time to operate. A century elapsed between Newcomen's bulky steam-driven pump and engines sufficiently light and efficient for self-propelled land vehicles\u2014for Trevithick's steam carriage and Stephenson's locomotive. But that much delay may be unusual, the special result of engines worked by pressure differences in a technology still unable to handle large pressures. Telegraph, telephone, and electric motors followed closely on the easy availability of batteries and wire. Horse-drawn urban transport completely disappeared within a few decades of the development of practical internal-combustion engines.\n\nThe technologies share another factor that reduces the steadiness of change. Improvements in new designs come more easily than improvements in well-established designs. For nature, the chance (always low, of course) that a mutation will be favorable and ultimately fixed in the population will therefore be greater if it occurs in an organism that has recently undergone other change or recently invaded a new habitat. A larger fraction of mutations will be neutral or detrimental when they happen in creatures that have been doing the same thing in the same place for eons. In our domain, improvement moves from the province of the casual amateur to the experienced professional\u2014whether one considers farm implements, automobile engines, or computers.\n\n\u2022 If revolutions are easy to recognize, cases of stasis are no more obscure. In nature we needn't invoke famous living fossils, such as the lobe-finned coelacanth fish, the ginkgo, or the horseshoe crab. On the evidence of either very similar fossils in beds of different ages or members of stay-at-home species on different and distant islands (where accidental introductions must be rare), change must be neither continuous nor inevitable.\n\nEven amid the ostensible rush of contemporary change, many things endure. Once stripped of a lot of adventitious machinery, the basic four-cylinder engine and manual transmission of my car wouldn't much puzzle a mechanic who'd been asleep since 1930. A clothes dryer in our house replaced one that served for twenty-five years; most of its parts are interchangeable with those of its predecessor. Typewriters developed rapidly after their introduction but then changed little for the next half century. Jet aircraft have changed only slightly in the last thirty or so years. Stasis is evident in the basic types of electric motor, in almost all our pumps and industrial power transmission devices, and in the techniques of manufacturing most of our basic materials. Information handling\u2014the nervous system's analog\u2014 may have changed dramatically, but the final effectors\u2014the industrial equivalents of muscles and bones\u2014have been much more stable. Sensors, computers, and robots may replace human operators, but they mostly run the same tools for cutting, shaping, and assembly.\n\n\u2022 In both technologies a reduction in diversity can follow an episode of innovation and initial diversification. Temporarily reduced competition permits more experimentation than the norm, creating a climate amenable to creativity and proliferation. Restoration of fully competitive selection by nature or marketplace then prunes the progeny.\n\nThe first phase of the natural phenomenon is called ecological release: A species expands and diversifies to take advantage of multiple habitats. Particularly famous examples include the proliferation of cichlid fishes in the great lakes of East Africa and of finches in the Gal\u00e1pagos Islands off Peru. Cases of the second phase\u2014ecological displacement\u2014emerge when one compares the wide variability of particular kinds of organisms on islands where they face no competition with their more limited variability where they do. On a vastly larger scale, Stephen Jay Gould views the earliest macroscopic fauna, the Ediacara of the late Precambrian, something more than half a billion years ago, as a diversification of which only a small element remained as ancestors for later life. But his view of the Ediacara remains controversial. Other cases in which a few better designs displaced many less effective ones are probable but problematic. Still, while evidence of overall diversity reduction may be lacking, a decent consensus of paleontologists agrees that the past half billion years haven't seen a steady increase in the diversity of life-forms.\n\nThe consolidation more clearly characterizes human technology, with a concatenation of forces driving the shakedown. Industrywide, national, or universal standards get established, from systems of screw threads and drill gauges to computer codes. Superior supply and repair networks make some designs more attractive to consumers. The familiar design is the comfortable one\u2014our fascination with novelty can easily be exaggerated\u2014increasing the dominance of whatever version gains initial preeminence in the marketplace. And true technological superiority does certainly matter, despite all the factors that dilute its impact. So the \"mature\" technology often ends up less diverse than its \"revolutionary\" antecedent. (Sacred literature, curiously, may undergo an analogous proliferation and then standardization; the early Gospels, for instance, got pruned as they got canonized.)\n\n\u2022 Another factor homogenizes both technologies. We do the same things in the same ways over the entire earth, the result both of fad and fashion and of our long-distance transportation and communication. The same global transportation has spread many kinds of organisms beyond their original geographic ranges. Some have been spread accidentally, and some deliberately, most of the latter through movement of our domesticated plants and animals. Whatever the impetus, homogenization decreases diversity in both technologies; indigenous crafts (along with many other aspects of indigenous culture) are supplanted, and local species are driven to extinction.\n\nDRAWING ANALOGIES\n\nSimilarity of product need not imply similarity of process. I'm persuaded that comparing the products of the two technologies lends breadth to our thinking and gives insights not otherwise evident. About processes I'm more equivocal. Natural selection is a most peculiar process, and its limitations are inadequately appreciated. One often encounters analogies between the processes by which human technology changes and evolution by natural selection. I think these badly need the scrutiny of a biologist. To start with, a clear distinction ought to be made between mechanism and history\u2014the distinction we biologists make between natural selection and natural history. The more basic problem is that an analogy doesn't explain. One judges an analogy not by whether it's true, trivial, or untrue but by whether it's useful, nonuseful, or misleading.\n\nThe evolutionary analogy counteracts the personified, heroic view of technological change that afflicts our early education. With that I have no quarrel and will say little more. The analogy helps little, if at all, in understanding the role of personal creativity in technological change. Too bad\u2014the most crucial and most mysterious element of our technology is the origin and nature of human creativity, something without parallel in nonhuman affairs. Where change hinges on inheritance and the latter cares nothing about personal effort, no great inventor or political leader can play a role. Nature can only show that a system need not be creative in intent in order to be innovative in result. While the point isn't intuitively obvious, it's also not all that important. Who can doubt the central role of creativity in the advance of human technology? For our technology, increasing the role of marketplace selection relative to that of creative intention would just add irrationality, inefficiency, and danger.\n\nAn analogy or point of similarity may either provide a good goad or a poor substitute for further analysis, but in itself it's nonanalytic. For instance, Robert Heilbroner makes the statement that \"advances, particularly in retrospect, appear essentially incremental, evolutionary. If nature makes no sudden leaps, neither, it would appear, does technology.\" Nice words, but where does one goes next? Incidentally, note his use of \"advances,\" with its implication of progress. That presumes some equivalent type of progress in nature, something not as obvious as we once thought. Perhaps evolution was once progressive but long ago reached a state in which complexity and diversity change only randomly. Perhaps, by contrast, human technology has yet to reach such a plateau and remains progressive. If so, then we mislead ourselves by comparing their recent alterations.\n\nTechnological determinism is another notion for which natural selection supplies an analogy of uncertain value. Does (or, more realistically, to what extent does) technology drive history? Figures who debate the issue run the gamut from Karl Marx to recent social critics of technology, such as Lewis Mumford. Inventions suggested as historically critical include the stirrups, breast straps, horse collars, and heavy plows that allowed efficient application of the power of large animals in the Middle Ages. Equivalent determinism in natural history is so obvious that the analogy helps very little. For organisms, little matters beyond natural selection\u2014 that is to say, reproductive success. No social consciousness, political expediency, informed judgment, or mass hysteria can confuse the story.\n\nA Darwinian or selectionist analogy attracts us because natural selection is more straightforward and better understood than less dependably irrational systems; the latter resist reduction to syllogisms, such as that of Chapter 2. But no matter how attractive a selectionist model might be, it at least oversimplifies and may do even worse. For instance, humans intentionally minimize selection among competing designs by analyzing before fabricating and by field testing before marketing; we do our best to anticipate the effectiveness of our devices. As Joel Mokyr puts the crux of the difference, \"new ideas and mutations are inherently different in that mutations are copying errors, while ideas are deliberate attempts to make a change.\" Furthermore, we learn from failure, a factor well argued and illustrated in several books by my colleague Henry Petroski. In addition, we can ask, \"Wouldn't it be nice if we had something that would . . . ?\" Human technology emerges from some complex combination of the rational and the irrational, and we shouldn't let familiarity disguise its resistance to tidy analysis. At the same time we shouldn't let its analytical complexity disguise its practical effectiveness.\n\nThe selectionist model is dangerous in another way, one more of application than applicability. What's done by nature is by definition natural. But the word \"natural\" carries a strong connotation of rightness, even of sanctity. We must reject any general notion that nature's ways indicate proper procedures for people. Sometimes nature provides a model; in other instances veneration of the natural is just snake oil for our contemporary troubles. Not that we don't face unprecedented and possibly insuperable problems, and not that some of these aren't unintended consequences of human technology, but we can't indulge in the simplistic confidence that these problems will be solved by going back (whatever that may mean) to nature, to what's natural, or to natural selection.\n\nWhat nature does show is that a complex technological system can appear, function, and persist without moment-to-moment micromanagement by some prescient guiding hand. That, though, the continued existence of complex, technological, capitalistic economies demonstrates as well. Furthermore, the latter should be judged on their own merits, in particular on how they contribute to our social goals, and not on any analogy with nature. Nature may be nicer than the \"red in tooth and claw\" monster (Tennyson's phrase) of a century ago, but nothing should impel us to hold it up as model for emulation. Darwin followed Adam Smith, not the other way around.\n\nI don't know a biologist who's a nature worshiper in this quasi-theological sense. We're not more rational, merely battle-scarred by repellent social doctrines that have used natural processes for justification, doctrines perpetually reemerging with new names and new sponsorships. One is social Darwinism (mentioned in Chapter 11), the turn-of-the- century idea that since nature indulged in unfettered competition, it provided a proper operating principle for human society. Another is biological determinism, in its extreme form the denial of any possible amelioration of the deficiencies of one's heritage, whether personal or racial. But we're wandering from the present argument.\n\nNot only is natural selection attractively logical, but similarities between the histories of life and of human technologies tempt wondering about common mechanisms. One parallel is what economic historians call lock-in and some paleontologists have termed the privilege of incumbency. Each observes that an established device or life-form isn't readily displaced, even by something economically or selectively superior. In economics this strikes yet another blow to the notion of the ideally competitive market. In biology it denies full applicability of what's called the principle of competitive exclusion\u2014the idea that if two groups (at the species level or above, so they can't mix genetically) are in complete competition, one will displace the other.\n\nThe privilege of incumbency for a well-established group of organisms is the resistance to extinction conferred on it by a large geographic range, a large number of species, or a large number of individuals. Its reality rests on less than fully satisfying indirect evidence; because of the time spans necessarily involved, we see only outcomes and not competitive battles. But the privilege of incumbency rationalizes a lot of otherwise paradoxical features of the fossil record. In Chapter 6, the possibility was raised that the nonmetallic character of natural technology might be a case of incumbent privilege, but as noted then, how can we ever know for sure?\n\nFor human technology, the evidence for lock-in is better but still imperfect, even if the general idea is too logical to deny. The persistence of the QWERTY typing keyboard provides the usual example of lock-in. The QWERTY arrangement of keys was initially chosen to minimize jamming rather than to maximize typing speed. After technical improvements fixed the jamming problem, one might expect that an ergonomically superior keyboard would have replaced QWERTY. But retraining costs time and money, and facility with two keyboards may be counter-productive to performance with either. A faster keyboard, the Dvorak, has never gained acceptance. But the case may not be as good as it looks. Comparative tests of the two keyboards were badly flawed and almost certainly biased. The QWERTY arrangement turns out to be better than an alphabetical or a random one; forcing the hands to alternate to avoid jamming enhances typing speed as well.\n\nAnother flawed example is the persistence of the VHS videotape system in competition with the purportedly superior Beta system. Any slight advantage of Beta was offset by the disadvantage of a shorter recording time\u2014initially an hour, less than the normal length of a movie. The argument that the internal-combustion engine got locked in, that we'd have good electric cars if we'd standardized on them a century ago suffers from similar flaws. The argument presumes that any technology can be improved without limit given sufficient incentive or investment. But only battery weight limits electric cars, and military interest in battery weight for submarine use (before the advent of nuclear power in the 1950s) as well as similar imperatives of the space program must have put maximum muscle (and a nice competitive shelter) into the search for weight-efficient storage of electricity.\n\nNonetheless, lock-in\u2014market failure because of persistence of initial choices\u2014must be common. Is the present computer screen the best shape or merely a persistent version of a television set? Is the thirty-five-millimeter film format for still cameras, with all that space given to perforations, an accident traceable to the initial adoption of thirty-five-millimeter movie film? And lock-in may represent no strict market failure. After all, a more complex item may be cheaper to produce if it can be done in larger quantities since the cost of designing and tooling up gets spread more widely. We have to ask, though, whether an equivalent phenomenon in nature says anything about the existence and role of lock-in. Market dominance, irrational behavior of consumers, existing infrastructure to support initial choices\u2014none has a precise analog in the factors underlying nature's privilege of incumbency.\n\nCONES AND SPIRALS\u2014ONE FINAL TALE\n\nWe've seen the deep pitfalls of arguments based on similarities between the processes of natural and human technologies. Arguments based on similarities between their products incur less risk of self-deception. But the risk is reduced, not eliminated. A second look at a subject mentioned in Chapter 2 will do better than any admonition.\n\nFIGURE 14.1. _Increasing the size of a cone without changing its shape, along with a limpet. Limpets are essentially low, uncoiled snails_.\n\nFIGURE 14.2. _Common cones of human technology: (top row) conical wheel bearings and their race from an automobile, ground glass stopcock, rubber faucet washer, ground glass stopper; (middle row) threaded pipe, cork, tubing connector, the needle valve of the water supply for an ice-making refrigerator, the centering device of a metal lathe; (bottom) hammer stock with conical top_.\n\nConsider a simple cone. A cone can be characterized by two measures, its diameter and its edge to apex distance, as in Figure 14.1. Enlarging the cone by extending its lower edge changes its size but not its shape; doubling the diameter doubles the edge to apex distance. By contrast, extending the end of a cylinder makes it skinnier and skinnier.\n\nCones have another interesting property. If their inside and outside tapers are the same, cones can be nested together as tightly as one wishes and in whatever number one wishes\u2014the way we ship and store cones for ice cream and conical paper cups. Pressing them together snugs the connection. Cones of identical taper are easy to manufacture, whether by cutting on a lathe, by casting in a mold, or by any of several other techniques. Again, the contrast with cylinders is sharp. Nesting cylinders find use for such things as telescoping radio antennas. But their precise sizes fix once and for all the tightness with which they fit together. Nor will identical cylinders nest together.\n\nWhile both technologies make great use of cones, they do so for different reasons. For nature, the essential advantage must be the first one noted here, the ability to grow by adding at the edge without change of shape. That makes cones good for things like mollusk shells, where growth takes place only by such addition. Since we don't make artifacts that grow, that advantage means little to us. For us, the advantages that matter are their ability to nest and the way they can be press- fitted with controllable snugness; Figure 14.2 shows several such applications.\n\n(We're looking at severe biases, not absolute dichotomies. Some identical cones do nest in nature. Many jellyfish in their sessile stage produce a stack of what are called strobili, each of which will break off to form a recognizable swimming jellyfish. The individual muscular units of the bodies of fish form nested cones, as you can see by picking apart cooked specimens. And you make use of the way cones permit ungrowth, if not growth, without change of shape, every time you sharpen a pencil.)\n\nThe axial cutting tools on a lathe (drills, reamers, and so forth) fit into the hole in the tailstock (the opposite end from the motorized head-stock) as the male halves of a pair of nesting cones. Pressing inward, as happens when the tool is used, tightens the fit, but if the tool suddenly jams in the work, it comes loose from the tailstock and spins nondestructively. Not only are such nesting cones easy to manufacture, but the angle of taper isn't sensitive to the changes in size that accompany heating and cooling. Old-fashioned ground-glass stoppers were always conical for the same reasons: ease of achieving the necessary fit and dependable behavior when tightened or loosened. By contrast, the pistons of glass hypodermic syringes have to be individually fitted to their respective cylinders. They're often numbered, so they can be remated after communal washing or sterilization. Corks for single use, as in wine bottles, are cylindrical; corks for repetitive use (as in laboratories or in an earlier generation of Thermos bottles) are conical so they will fit a range of bores and fit as well after long use.\n\nFew of us notice how modern technology prefers cones over cylinders. The threads on the end of a metal pipe differ from the threads of ordinary screws; they're not uniformly deep grooves on a cylinder but get deeper toward the pipe's end, forming part of a long cone. As a result, pipes can be screwed to the same tightness even if their threading depth varies a bit. Automobiles have conical rather than cylindrical roller bearings within their wheels, so tightening an outer bolt to a standard torque can counter-act wear or variation in manufacture. But\u2014again\u2014the advantages of these cones differ from anything gained by the shell of a mollusk.\n\nFIGURE 14.3. _Two logarithmic spirals. On the left, each radial line is sixty degrees from the previous one and is twice as long_.\n\nNature likes not just ordinary cones but a derived kind of cone as well. Horns and tusks, clamshells and snail shells, even the tiny protozoa that formed the white cliffs of Dover in southern England\u2014all are conic derivatives. Recall how height and diameter are proportional in cones. That same relationship holds for a more general class of bodies, logarithmic or equiangular spirals; using curved instead of straight lines produces these particular spirals instead of ordinary cones. A line spirals outward from a starting point in such a way that the channel between turns gets wider in proportion to how far outward the spiral has grown. For most of us a drawing, as in Figure 14.3, works better than words. Like cones, logarithmic spirals can grow without change of shape by the simple addition of material. Moreover, they're consistent with biologically typical logarithmic growth\u2014growth in which how fast material is added is proportional to how much material is already present. In fact, what were loosely described a few paragraphs back as cones, things like limpet shells, are really logarithmic spirals of very low curvature.\n\nFIGURE 14.4. _Logarithmic spirals in nature: a pinecone, horns of a sheep, a section of a chambered nautilus, and a microscopic foraminiferan (a shelled protozoan_ ).\n\nEarly in this century three biologists became fascinated with the way these spirals appeared again and again in nature; Figure 14.4 gives a few examples. For James Bell Pettigrew, they revealed a curious bias of the Creator, the centerpiece of a huge antievolutionary tome. For D'Arcy Thompson, they provided the best example of the geometric idealism or at least the mathematical tidiness of living forms. Thompson's house at 44 South Street in St. Andrews, Scotland, now wears a commemorative plaque well adorned with logarithmic spirals. For Theodore Andrea Cook, the issue turned on aesthetics, without such cosmic overtones. We're still attracted to them, but by their informational simplicity and by their handiness for the way organisms most often grow. The same mathematics that determines the growth rate of a fresh bacterial culture (and the yield of an investment with steady and reinvested interest) generates a logarithmic spiral.\n\nShould our designs pay more attention to these logarithmic spirals because natural designs demonstrate their desirability? No. Their prevalence in nature reflects their compatibility with the way she does things. They share that compatibility with cones, in essence unturned spirals. Our interest in cones doesn't carry over to spirals; spirals don't nest. So for the way we build things, the logarithmic spiral is irrelevant.\n\nCONVERGENCES\n\nBiologists since Darwin have known that similar organisms don't always come from close common ancestors; similar structural arrangements often evolve again and again. The image-forming eye of fish or mammal bears a remarkable resemblance to that of squid or octopus. That they differ in certain fundamental but functionally irrelevant aspects confirms our conviction that no common ancestor had such an image-forming eye. We know of innumerable cases of this phenomenon (mentioned in the second chapter) of convergence\u2014that between marsupial and placental mammals, for instance. For biologists (from Darwin, incidentally), it makes trouble\u2014not for the theory of evolution, which happily accepts convergence, but for the practical business of classifying organisms. Since similarity of structure doesn't indicate relatedness, convergence makes it harder to decipher lineages. For the biologist interested in function, by contrast, convergence is a handy tool. Functional significance (plus a few other things, admittedly) ought to drive convergence as a direct consequence of natural selection: What's useful will be selected. Therefore, cases of convergence ought to tell us what's functionally significant\u2014that is, what aspects of the design of an organism matters to its reproductive success. What's selected must have been useful.\n\nIn addition, convergence ought to point to what's easy for the evolutionary process to generate. If something turns up repeatedly, it must be achievable without heroic alteration of hereditary information. Biologists who reconstruct evolutionary lineages look for continuous scenarios and descent schemes that have the fewest innovative steps. So \"easy\" isn't a trivial consideration.\n\nPerhaps the same approach might prove productive when we look at how human technology has developed. All our communicative channels deprive our contemporary cultures of the independence of nature's separate lineages. But that hasn't always been so. Humans may have originated from a small number of ancestral hominids, but we spread over the planet before we acquired much in the way of technology. Perhaps convergence signifies the same things for both technologies: that cases of convergence are fingers pointing to what matters and what's easy. The idea got proper notice from Joseph Needham in his monumental work _Science and_ _Civilisation in China,_ but Needham, probably not coincidentally, was an excellent biologist as well as a spectacular sinologist.\n\nConsider the early histories of our use of metals. Without a persuasive alternative, one should prefer the most incremental scenario, the \"easy\" scenario that requires the least genius. From evidence from the Middle East, a likely sequence runs as follows. Copper, almost alone among the mechanically useful metals, occurs naturally in metallic form. Copper ores commonly contain pieces of metallic copper. Melting copper with some associated ore (perhaps to separate the two) will yield more product than will a pure melt, so the transition from melting to smelting presents no great difficulty. Ores with certain impurities will yield better metal; antimony and arsenic bronzes find more uses than pure copper. Tin bronze, less likely to poison the artisan, is still better, but it's also less likely to be fortuitously made. In most ways iron is a still-better metal, but producing it demands higher temperatures.\n\nHow reasonable or likely is that sequence from metallic copper through smelted ore, arsenical bronze, and tin bronze to iron? We gain confidence in that reconstruction when we learn that the same sequence from copper to tin bronze occurred in South America as well as in the Middle East, if a few thousand years later in the New World. One can alternatively invoke what the anthropologists and archaeologists call diffusion as an alternative explanation, implying that the technology spread through occasional contacts between separate civilizations. But I view diffusion as (to pun slightly) a farfetched scenario for how the Americans went metallic\u2014to the limited extent that they did. (Assuming that they didn't get there on their own also happens to be insulting, patronizing, or worse.)\n\nThe development of woven textiles in the Old World and New World provides a similar story of convergence. While some elements may have crossed the Bering land bridge with early invaders of North America, much of the technology must have been developed independently. Both Old World and New World used looms, but features consistent within either but differing between them point to independent innovation. The sequence in the two hemispheres looks similar, running from untwisted to twisted cordage, from there to basketry and knotted netting, and on to weaving, with improvements in spinning technique and the labor efficiency of looms. In both instances, long fibers, such as flax and sisal, seem to have been used before short ones, such as cotton and wool; the short ones can be produced in greater quantity but are harder to make into adequately strong thread. Both cotton and wool were developed in both hemispheres, the cotton from different species of the genus _Gossypium_ and the wool from different animals\u2014sheep and goats in the Old World, llamas and alpacas in the New. A careful comparative analysis might reveal some general principles of early textile evolution.\n\nThe courses of development of both metals and textiles point to the importance of a sequence with an easy continuity, one that requires a minimum of large-scale innovation and one the evolutionary biologist would find familiar. Nor are metals and textiles the extent of possible subjects for comparisons that focus on convergence. Fired pottery was widely used, but with different techniques for shaping clay in the two hemispheres. Other candidates include techniques for trapping, fishing, plowing, seeding, tanning, and boat making, as well as weaponry for both hunting and warfare.\n\nConvergences might also serve in a way that's almost the opposite, showing not what's easy but what's hard for one or the other and forcing us to ask why something is hard. To do this, one should look for elements that are ordinary in one technology but rare or unknown in the other. Consider the use of tools. While we know many examples of minor tool use by mammals and birds, one is struck not by their existence but by their scarcity and casual character. The limited use of tools contrasts sharply with the way animals use materials from the environment to construct domiciles: caddisfly larval tubes; worm tubes; hermit crab shells; nests of fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals; beaver dams; and so forth. The limited use of tools contrasts quite as sharply with the way tools proliferate in human societies. Why the difference? My only suggestion, a casual and uninformed one, is that elaborate tool use may happen only after some critical takeoff point. That takeoff was reached only once by any animal\u2014by humans at some stage in our prehistory. Perhaps it came with the acquisition of learned, symbolic language and the fabulous improvement in cultural information transmission that such language permitted. But would one ask the question in this way except in the context of a comparison between the technologies?\n\nMESSAGES\n\nThis view of nature as a technology has provided an unusual perspective on the world around us. Recognizing that nature deals with the same variables as do human designers\u2014in the present case mostly mechanical engineers\u2014led us to compare both products and processes. But the main test of the comparison is utility. In short, what do we learn?\n\nIdentifying specific devices that we might profitably emulate constitutes the least of what we gain. What's the chance that in searching through the pieces of an electric motor you'll recognize a part that will improve the performance of an internal-combustion engine? How much more remote the chance when searching through the proteins of a muscle! By contrast, one may well expect insight on design where natural technology is preeminent, but enough noise about that has already been made. That each technology is a coherent entity, remarkably distinct from the other, can be either advantage or disadvantage. Perhaps the best encapsulation, if a trifle trite, is that nature shows what's possible.\n\nDisparaging things were said about analogies, but real utility balances the risk analogies pose of short-circuiting proper analysis and explanation. A useful tool emerges from recognition that the technologies involve analogous time courses of development and ways of operation. One can test the logic and credibility of hypotheses about how one system operates by examining what happens in the other.\n\nWe've seen places where the products of the two technologies coincided. And we've seen places where the products proved surprisingly different. Each may carry a prescient message. Coincidence between these vastly different technological contexts directs attention to constraints that neither can escape, constraints that we must try to identify. Different solutions to the same problems or different devices for the same task imply something equally interesting: the possibility of a third or fourth solution or device. Thus the comparison can suggest where major innovation might be possible and where it's unlikely. Since major innovation isn't easy, a little help might go a long way.\n\nThe histories of both science and technology are replete with cases in which someone with an unusual background or outlook\u2014an outsider\u2014 solved a long-standing problem. Can one deliberately become an outsider? Or, better, how might one get the fresh perspective of an outsider without sacrificing the insider's expertise? For the human designer, a perceptive look at nature's technology can do just that: It can provide the wide-angle view that reveals possibilities that would otherwise escape consideration.\n\nI began with statements extolling the superiority of nature. In a sense this entire book is my skeptical response. Sure, nature is wonderful. But bear in mind what we do that she doesn't: However they came about, the unique achievements of our species deserve our full appreciation. Metallic materials, ropes of short fibers, woven fabrics of crossed threads, the wheel and axle, thermal expansion engines, fast surface ships, electro-chemical energy storage, lighter-than-air aircraft\u2014humans, our engineers in particular, have made extraordinary things. How we use them is another matter altogether.\n\nIn these pages the reader has been introduced to my immediate scientific interest, biomechanics. As thoroughly comparative as any area of science, it looks at the mechanical problems of existence, in particular at how solutions to these problems vary among organisms of different sizes, different lineages, and different ways of managing growth, reproduction, and dispersal. It has always borrowed its basic concepts from engineering, and it has done so to its great advantage. We've made unfettered and hugely productive use of the existing technology of humans in our efforts to understand what nature does. Our books and articles make no attempt to disguise the process; indeed, we're continually asked by biology students encountering biomechanics, \"What is this, engineering?\" The importance to us of human technology as a critical reference is best put by reiterating the admission made at the start. We've only rarely recognized any mechanical device in an organism with which we weren't already familiar from engineering. Perhaps we're insufficiently creative and imaginative, or perhaps the engineers enjoy a long head start and numerical superiority. Or perhaps the situation indicates the value of an external reference for any attempt at understanding.\nNOTES\n\nCHAPTER l: NONCOINCIDENT WORLDS\n\n1. The real counterpart of biology isn't engineering but a tiny field concerned with the nature and history of human technology. A few recent books (to which further reference will be made) are those of Basalla (1988), Vincenti (1990), Adams (1991), Petroski (1992), and Cardwell (1995). A key journal is _Technology and Culture_ ; a central organization is the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT).\n\n2. General books on the subject are those of Wainwright et al. (1976), Alexander (1983, 1992), Vogel (1988), and Niklas (1992).\n\n3. _Nicomachean Ethics_ 1099B, 23. Quoted in Mackay (1991).\n\n4. Quoted in Schneider (1994).\n\n5. T. Ewbank (1842), p. 514. The author has a fine (and enthusiastic) appreciation of physiology and natural history.\n\n6. Papanek (1971).\n\n7. The antitechnological literature is large and diffuse. Examples are books by Ellul (1964) and Mumford (1967) and pieces by Commoner, Mumford, and Ellul in the general collection of Burke and Eakin (1979). Florman (1975) gives a good look at it as well as providing a sober rejoinder.\n\nCHAPTER 2: TWO SCHOOLS OF DESIGN\n\n1. Thus _The Evolution of Useful Things_ , _The Evolution of Technology_ , and _The Evolution of Design_ -books by Petroski (1992), Basalla (1988), and Steadman (1979). See also Mokyr (1991), Dasgupta (1996), and the final chapter here.\n\n2. This logical scheme isn't original here; its origin, though, is obscure. See, for instance, Endler (1986) or Futuyma (1986) for exposure to the full richness of the subject.\n\n3. Wainwright et al. (1976).\n\n4. Raup (1966). A good recent book on shells from an evolutionary perspective is that of Vermeij (1993). More recent computer-generated \"virtual shells\" are given by Meinhardt (1995).\n\n5. Our special attachment to soft-shell crabs is a case, perhaps trivial, of a predator's preference for a newly molted arthropod.\n\n6. Pierce (1961).\n\n7. Crane (1950).\n\n8. But evolution hasn't scorned the possibility. Having two nonidentical sets of genetic information in the cells of most organisms (diploidy) and engaging in recombination (sex) permit sheltering variation and testing it in different combinations.\n\n9. Dawkins (1986).\n\n10. These are clearly separate evolutionary developments. As a biologist would put it, the nearest common ancestor of birds and bats, for instance, lacked wings and didn't fly-according to paleontological, anatomical, and molecular evidence.\n\n11. Termites, close relatives of cockroaches, constitute the only case of hypersociality in insects outside of the Hymenoptera, the group consisting of ants, bees, and wasps. Repeated evolution of hypersociality among Hymenoptera is a consequence of a predilection peculiar to their particular (and peculiar) genetic system; some other explanation (such as infectious symbiosis) is needed for the termites. See, for instance, Wilson (1980).\n\n12. Dyer and Obar (1994) give a little further information and a useful context; the basic source is Cleveland and Grimstone (1964). One hopes not to be too familiar with spirochetes, one of which is the pathogen in syphilis.\n\n13. Tamm (1982).\n\n14. See, for instance, Thompson and Bennett (1969), for a case in which nematocysts of sufficient potency to harm human swimmers were expropriated. The basic phenomenon has been known for almost a century.\n\n15. The case is described by Fisher and Hinde (1949) and Hinde and Fisher (1951). Griffin (1984) summarizes it in prose, and Burns (1975) does the same in verse. My colleague Peter Klopfer tells me that the birds could do even better when challenged. The types of milk were distinguished only by the color of the bottle caps (presumably so returned bottles needed no sorting). Not only did the birds choose the bottles with cream beneath the caps, but they rapidly altered their color preference when caps were deliberately switched.\n\n16. Galbraith (1967).\n\n17. Eldredge and Gould (1972). What must be emphasized is that sudden bursts of change are claimed to be sudden only in a paleontological sense-that is, when one is looking over very long periods of time. No serious challenge to the underlying Darwinian model is implied, merely the recognition that the relative gain in fitness by change in form is enormously circumstance-dependent. For that matter, Darwin himself recognized (in _The Origin of Species_ ) that most species remain largely unchanged most of the time.\n\n18. Grasses and grassland are among the earth's more recent acquisitions. Grasses are especially tolerant of fire and herbivory, and many grasslands revert to forest if these factors are removed. But the nutritive value of grass is low, and it's especially mean stuff to masticate in quantity.\n\n19. The portable electric fan was in fact invented a lot earlier-by Nikola Tesla around 1890.\n\n20. See, for instance, Basalla (1988) and Cardwell (1995). The former stresses continuity while the latter has a more saltatory or heroic bent but, even so, is more incrementalist than are low-level textbooks. I take no stand on the controversy, which isn't central here anyway. But I do believe that any analogy with biological evolution is almost entirely irrelevant. Vincenti (1990) and Adams (1991) flesh out the issue with specific cases; in essence the former is about what engineers know (as in its title) while the latter is about what they do. One might also look at basic textbooks of mechanical design as used in engineering courses.\n\n21. The discovery and biology of the coelacanth are a fine story, well told by Thomson (1991).\n\n22. Houston et al. (1989). Some other flies have colonized the water- filled traps under our sinks.\n\n23. Some biologists make a distinction between \"parallelism\" and \"convergence.\" But it's a hairsplitting one (see Roth, 1996) that we'll ignore.\n\n24. See, for instance, Stanley (1987) and Raup (1992).\n\nCHAPTER 3: THE MATTER OF MAGNITUDE\n\n1. Good general accounts of the biology of size are given in several books, especially McMahon and Bonner (1983) and Schmidt- Nielsen (1984). For brief and engaging introductions, see Haldane (1928); Chapter 2 of Thompson (1942); or Went (1968).\n\n2. Bennet-Clark (1977).\n\n3. Descartes's _Principia_ quoted by Kearney (1971), p. 156. Size mattered to Horace, much earlier: \"mountains will be in labor, the birth will be a laughable mouse.\" I've thus, as James Thurber once wrote, put Descartes before Horace.\n\n4. Thompson (1942), p. 68.\n\n5. The matter is called Cope's law by evolutionary biologists, after the paleontologist E. D. Cope (1840\u20131897).\n\n6. Robinson and Frederick (1989). We've occasionally done this as a class exercise, with people tracing the feet and recording the heights of each other and of their particularly large and small acquaintances. Of course that may not be the sole reason why big people have bigger feet.\n\n7. Haldane (1928). Galileo's rule about all bodies falling at the same rate works only in the absence of air or as an approximation for large, dense bodies.\n\n8. Orwell (1937), p. 26.\n\n9. I've taken most of the material on fluid mechanics-lift, drag, gliding, types of flow, diffusion, surface tension-from my earlier book (Vogel 1994a), which contains copious references to the basic literature. Tennekes (1996) gives an admirably accessible account of size and flight.\n\n10. Cope's law is mentioned in note 5. The three lineages of extant flying animals\u2014birds, bats, and insects\u2014appear to be significant exceptions to the rule. That's probably because flapping flight evolved from gliding, and gliders work better if large. The tiniest insects, the microchiropteran bats, the hummingbirds\u2014all are members of relatively new groups within their general kinds.\n\n11. The skeptical reader will ask whence comes the power source for staying aloft with fixed wings; after all, propellers, but not wings, are attached to engines. Nothing ethereal is happening; a fixed wing incurs more drag when it's producing lift, and the propeller and engine have to work harder to offset that drag.\n\n12. These pores are in the feltwork of fibers that make up the walls of cells within leaves. They're not the stomata on the surface of leaves through which gases pass in and out, which are around a hundred times larger.\n\n13. The efficacy of diffusion depends substantially on the size of the diffusing molecules, and good perfumes are complex mixtures. Were diffusion the main agency of spread, the character of a perfume would depend on one's distance from the source! Writers of science fiction might take note. My curmudgeonish diatribe on the matter is in Vogel (1994d).\n\n14. We touch here on a general argument for why cell size is fairly constant and why organisms use a cellular scheme of organization, one elaborated in Vogel (1988, 1992).\n\n15. We do use the scheme of the maple seed occasionally. Some obscure aircraft (called autogiros, gyroplanes, or gyrocopters) use the principle, and a helicopter whose engine has quit slows its descent with the maple seed's trick. I've provided a more extensive explanation of these various ways to fall more slowly elsewhere (Vogel, 1994a). Current interest centers on using such single winged autogyrating aircraft to deliver payloads from orbit to the surface of Mars; see Stephen Morris's work at http:\/\/aero.stanford.edu\/MapleSeed.html.\n\nCHAPTER 4: SURFACES, ANGLES, AND CORNERS\n\n1. We commonly refer to the component of the load coming from the weight of the structure as dead load and that from useful activity as live load.\n\n2. 363\/303 = 1.73, a 73 percent increase. 364\/304 = 2.07, a 107 percent increase. I did a quick introduction to the relevant part of beam theory in a book called _Life's Devices._ A better source (this isn't false modesty) is Gordon (1978).\n\n3. One more consequence: If sag increased with length and decreased with thickness to the same power, then bookshelves could be built with the two in simple proportion\u2014twice as long being twice as thick. But since sag increases with length to the fourth and decreases only with thickness cubed, the longer shelf has to be disproportionately thick; twice as long needs to be four times as thick. That's a major reason why larger structures must have a disproportionate amount of supportive material, an argument made with a slightly different example in the last chapter.\n\n4. The reason why camber is aerodynamically important is fairly complex, more so than implied by the usual prevarication. I give a fairly equation-free account in _Life in Moving Fluids_ ; other accessible sources are Sutton (1949) and von K\u00e1rm\u00e1n (1954). The phenomenon will come up again in Chapter 12.\n\n5. A. Roland Ennos (1988) shows that camber and lengthwise twist were largely reversed passively\u2014that is, by aerodynamic forces\u2014rather than, as had previously been assumed, by highly coordinated muscular action.\n\n6. The rule often goes nameless; in any case it's not clear that the French mathematician Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (1749\u20131827) is its originator. (\"Laplace's equation\" is something else again.) For a cylinder the rule is similar, omitting only the one half; cylinders are curved in one dimension, spheres in two. Since the pressure is resisted by tension running in only one direction, twice as much tension is generated. A cylinder with hemispherical ends (such as a balloon or boiled sausage), pressurized until it explodes, will usually split its sides before blowing off its ends.\n\n7. Shortses are marvelously roomy by comparison with the flying cigars into which we're more often inserted. They also seem to rattle a lot. Is that real and related or just my imaginative anticipation of logical consequences?\n\n8. This was the Israel Museum in Jerusalem; it has the special virtue of dealing with an unusually long and continuous history of human occupation of a place exposed to input from diverse cultures.\n\n9. Walsby (1980).\n\n10. Put another way, is drawing graphs in Cartesian coordinates\u2014that is, with mutually orthogonal _x, y_ , and sometimes _z_ coordinates-in some sense natural for us?\n\n11. The key reference is Flannery (1972); see also Hodges (1972) and Saidel (1993).\n\n12. The original paper is by Allport and Pettigrew (1957). The illusion was reported by Ames (1951) and is described well by Hochberg (1978). The work with the Zulu is discussed by Owen (1978) along with work of Annis and Frost (1973) on Cree Indians.\n\n13. Frazzetta (1966); Gans (1974).\n\n14. Westneat and Wainwright (1989).\n\n15. Parkes (1965), for instance. Neither three- nor four-strutted devices exhaust the world of mechanisms and statically determined structures; we've the tip of an iceberg here.\n\n16. Gould (1980).\n\n17. Well-evolved walkers in fact aren't consumed by some search for static stability. After all, when running, you have no legs at all on the ground a fair fraction of the time.\n\n18. Which the U.S. military has tried, very expensively, to do for many years. One might ask about using more than six legs. Aside from the obvious increase in mechanical complexity and potential interactions and stride-length limitations, another factor enters. Recall from the last chapter that skinny columns buckle under lower loads than fat columns of the same length. The material investment in using a large number of thin columns for support turns out to be greater than using a small number of fatter columns, as nicely explained by Gordon (1988).\n\n19. Between different languages and systems of mathematical notation, it seems unlikely that knowledge of the theorem spread after some single genius discovered it. See Bose (1971), Anderson (1972), Swetz and Kao (1977), and Prakash (1987).\n\n20. Grant (1968), Buckley and Buckley (1977), and Barlow (1974), respectively.\n\n21. D'Arcy Thompson (1942), mentioned earlier in connection with size, has a nice discussion of the relevant geometry and biology. His book, still available in its entirety or in an abridgment by J. T. Bonner (Thompson, 1961), is at once unique in content, imaginative in approach, and magnificent in the elegance of its prose.\n\n22. Hulbary (1944) faces the complications of our less than ideal world.\n\n23. A splendid treatment of the phenomena associated with cracking\u2014fracture mechanics\u2014is given in any of three books written by James E. Gordon (1976, 1978, and 1988). All three are simply wonderful works in general. The 1978 one, _Structures_ , gets my vote for the best book ever written on a technical subject for a nontechnical readership.\n\n24. An engaging and accessible treatment of such aspects of the construction of trees is given by Mattheck (1991).\n\nCHAPTER 5: THE STIFF AND THE SOFT\n\n1. In part, of course, because we can measure very small changes in length. Parts per million are no trick at all for modern technology applied to very stiff samples.\n\n2. From Gordon (1978).\n\n3. Note that \"elasticity\" is being used in a most peculiar sense. First, the more easily stretched a material, the lower is its Young's modulus, and second, whether and how forcefully the material returns to its original length are immaterial.\n\n4. \"Toughness\" sometimes is used for the energy involved in the actual process of breakage as opposed to that en route to the breaking point. In breaking, new surface is created, and that takes an additional input of energy, an amount related to the resistance of the material to making surface and to the amount of surface that's made in a break. Real materials, after all, don't all break evenly across their diameters. While work of extension is an energy per unit volume because a whole specimen gets stretched, \"toughness\" in this latter sense is an energy per unit area because the energy is invested in making surface. The overall work of breakage of an object that's initially unstressed involves of course both.\n\n5. That's one of many consequences of one of the most important of all rules in science, the second law of thermodynamics. Stated anecdotally, it declares that in any real process you get out something less than you put in, with the difference appearing as heat. The comments of C. P. Snow (1959) on it are more relevant than ever as we become increasingly afflicted with people who view science strictly as social construct.\n\n6. Such as hardness, based on who scratches whom; properties such as ductility, important in manufacturing; a host of time-dependent properties relating to differences in response depending on how fast loads are applied and recovery after loading for various times; and various thermal properties.\n\n7. One might argue that rubber is (or originally was) entirely a natural product. But in the rubber tree it's a liquid, used by humans mainly as a coating for waterproofing. So rubber (like rayon) is something merely derived from a natural product; its mechanical utility began with Charles Goodyear's discovery of the vulcanization process in 1839.\n\n8. Spider silk isn't actually a single material. Different kinds of spiders produce silks of somewhat different composition and properties, and those that spin nice orbs use several kinds in a single web. Silk moth silk is still another group of related materials. On the mechanics of spider silk, see Gosline et al. (1986) and Vincent (1990).\n\n9. Harrar and Harrar (1962).\n\n10. The pejorative \"crackpot\" must be a tacit cultural recognition of the lack of toughness of ceramics.\n\n11. In particular, I like \"A Chapter of Accidents\" in Gordon (1978) and books by Levy and Salvadori (1992) and my colleague Henry Petroski (1985, 1994).\n\n12. A version of this section has been previously published as Vogel (1995).\n\n13. See Koehl et al. (1991).\n\n14. See Grace (1977) or Miller et al. (1987).\n\n15. See Vogel (1984a, 1989, 1993).\n\n16. O'Neill (1990).\n\n17. Koehl (1977). We sometimes demonstrate the relationship between the diameter of a cylinder and the ease with which it bends by using cylindrical pasta\u2014spaghetti\u2014of various diameters but of the same brand. A strand is supported between two bricks, fishing sinkers are added, and sag is measured with a ruler. Both the fourth power rule for weight versus sag and the third power rule for distance between supports versus sag emerge reasonably well, at least for small sags\u2014Vogel (1988), p. 337.\n\n18. Shadwick et al. (1990); Shadwick (1994). Squid and octopus are cephalopod mollusks. Vertebrates split from the ancestors of mollusks and arthropods (insects, spiders, crustaceans, etc.) at a simple, wormy stage of animal evolution roughly half a billion years ago.\n\n19. Alexander (1984a, 1988).\n\nCHAPTER 6: TWO ROUTES TO RIGIDITY\n\n1. Tungsten, for instance, has recently been shown (see Chan et al., 1995) to be a crucial component of certain very unusual bacteria that grow best at temperatures up to the boiling point of water. A general source on metals in organisms is Kendrick et al. (1992).\n\n2. All these data are from Schmidt-Nielsen (1990), a textbook that really explains things rather than just naming and mentioning them.\n\n3. The main source here is Vincent (1990). Lowenstam (1967) points out that the teeth of chitons contained enough magnetite so that substantial amounts of the magnetite in the sediments beneath shallow seas might be of biological origin.\n\n4. Blakemore (1975).\n\n5. Magnetite is, for the chemically minded, Fe3O4 or Fe2O3FeO, distinguished from ferrous oxide, FeO, and ferric oxide, Fe2O3. ( _Ferrum_ is the Latin word for \"iron.\") Accessible references include J. L. Gould et al. (1978) and Walcott (1979).\n\n6. Photosynthesis, in case you've forgotten, splits water as a source of hydrogen and combines the latter with carbon dioxide, liberating oxygen. Before life invented the process, the atmosphere had little or no oxygen in it; thus oxygen is the first and greatest pollutant.\n\n7. Association of exposure to aluminum with subsequent development of Alzheimer's disease looks less likely than it did a few years ago. The _Merck Manual_ (Berkow and Fletcher, eds., 1987) mentions only \"dialysis dementia,\" a side effect of administration of aluminum to counteract hyperphosphatemia in chronic renal failure. Aluminum dissolved in natural waters is distinctly bad for fish, though.\n\n8. Mainly materials such as muscle and collagen in animals, the last a major component of tendon, skin, bone, and cartilage; also, cellulose in plants, the main constituent of wood.\n\n9. See Wayman (1989a, b),Tylecote (1992), and Schmidt (1996).\n\n10. In the trade, materials that give straight plots of stress versus strain are spoken of as Hookean, after Robert Hooke (1635\u20131703) who stated what's now known as Hooke's law, that the amount of deformation follows the deforming force, that strain is proportional to stress. Calling it a law smacks of hyperbole, since it does little more than describe how some, but not all, materials behave.\n\n11. Currey (1984). This is a lovely integration of biology and mechanics, sophisticated without being formidably technical.\n\n12. It's worth reminding ourselves that what I'm calling micromaintenance is unusual even in living systems for large, stiff, structural elements. Bone is intracellular, by contrast with hair, arthropod exoskeletal material, mollusk shell, and wood. The latter are built once and for all, with only very limited reabsorption and replacement.\n\n13. Hodges (1970) has a short but insightful account of how the use of metals may have begun. A more elaborate analysis that focuses on the archaeological evidence is that of Singer et al. (1954).\n\n14. Gordon (1976).\n\n15. Note for the purists: Plexiglas is a trade name for a certain plastic mainly of polymethylmethacrylate that has no common generic name. Perspex and Lucite are the same plastic from other manufacturers. By contrast, \"fiberglass\" is a generic, with a double _s_ and no capitalization.\n\n16. Singer et al. (1954).\n\n17. I'm following the account given by Gordon (1976), who was a major player in the crack game.\n\n18. Wainwright et al. (1976). Vincent (1990) is a newer source, which, while less general, is especially good on biological foams and composites.\n\n19. \"Conductivity\" refers to a property of a material, while \"conductance\" refers to the property or behavior of a particular object.\n\n20. The advantage of metallic leaves has been inadvertently demonstrated in several studies of the thermal behavior of leaves that used models inappropriately cut from sheets of metal.\n\n21. I did some work a few years ago on thermal behavior and thermal conductivity of leaves. The upshot of a paper on convective cooling at very low wind speeds (Vogel, 1970) and another on conductivity (Vogel, 1984b) is that broad leaves either wouldn't get so hot during lulls in the wind or could be less constrained in shape and size\u2014if leaves had the thermal properties of, say, copper.\n\n22. But even that isn't instantaneous. The largest and fastest computers are arranged to minimize the lengths of wires connecting their components since conduction times constitute significant delays in their operation.\n\nCHAPTER 7: PULLING VERSUS PUSHING\n\n1. A recent book (Barber, 1994) gives a fine introduction to both the technology and the social context of spinning as well as to the etymology of the words, such as \"life-span,\" that we derive from \"spin.\"\n\n2. Salvadori (1980) makes much of this point in a most enlightening book.\n\n3. But an analog of a crack does occur in compression. Wooden beams such as diving boards accumulate compression creases on their undersides. As Vincent (1990) cautions, subjecting such creases to tensile loads is an exceedingly bad idea. Don't turn an old wooden diving board upside down to expose an unworn surface.\n\n4. Several good sources on the mechanics of cathedrals are available\u2014for instance, Mark (1978 and 1982).\n\n5. Bronowski (1973) makes quite a point of this empiricism in cathedral construction.\n\n6. The data for these comparisons are from Wainwright et al. (1976), Currey (1984), Vincent (1990), and Niklas (1992). See note 3, above.\n\n7. French (1994) has a good discussion of the matter. For considerations of size and scale, going back to the second chapter of D'Arcy Thompson's classic work (1942) is certainly worthwhile. For bridges in particular, I enthusiastically recommend Billington (1983).\n\n8. Isaacs et al. (1966) suggest the possibility.\n\n9. Niklas (1994).\n\n10. I give more data and a more detailed account in _Life's Devices_ (1988); the best source on scaling in mammals is Schmidt-Nielsen (1984). For aquatic mammals such as whales (and for fish), skeletal mass is very nearly proportional to body mass, as it ought to be where the most severe loading is provided by muscle contraction rather than gravity. If size is doubled, then both resistance to buckling and muscle cross-sectional area (which muscle force follows) increase fourfold.\n\n11. See, on brachiation, Hallgrimsson and Swartz (1995) and the references in that paper.\n\n12. Salvadori (1980) gives a good account of Brunelleschi's achievement.\n\n13. More complete accounts and further references are given by Petroski (1985, 1991, and 1995).\n\n14. Tendons usually connect muscles to bones; ligaments usually connect bones to bones.\n\n15. Laithwaite (1984) makes quite a point of nature's invention of the underslung suspension.\n\n16. The wishbone of a bird bends when the bird flaps its wings up and down, according to Jenkins et al. (1988). Springs can work by twisting as well, as in torsion bar automobile suspensions. I know of no examples in nature unless one includes such structures as the trunks and branches of trees and the wing feathers of birds that are loaded torsionally and have reasonable resilience. No relatively massive components, though, are attached to their outboard ends, so it's arguable whether they're springs in the present sense.\n\n17. Vines of course are normally loaded in tension. But trees aren't ordinarily held upright by the vines they harbor. The large but thin buttresses of many tropical trees do seem to be tensile guys; they're thus the exact opposite of the buttresses (flying and otherwise) of Gothic cathedrals. On the buttresses of trees, see Mattheck (1991) or Ennos (1993). Of course plenty of material is loaded in tension wherever a trunk forks or a branch diverges; on this matter, see Mattheck (1991).\n\n18. Bath sponges are unusual in that they lack spicules and have only the tension-resisting stuff spongin. They're not very large, and a mesh- work of spongin does have some compressive stiffness.\n\n19. See, in particular, U.S. number 3,063,521, November 13, 1962 (Fuller, R. B.; Tensile-Integrity Structures).\n\n20. The best paper I know on spicular skeletons in general is Koehl (1982). At this point good mechanical analyses of the supportive system of sponges don't seem to exist.\n\n21. Liquids care about shear, but what matters isn't how far they're sheared but how fast; they resist only the rate of shear, and the coffee adjusts its shape to fit any cup fairly quickly. The resistance of liquids to tension will come up again; it's important in getting the sap up every tall tree, but our technology finds the property impossible to employ. Another way to put the distinction, incidentally, is to recognize that solids have shape and size, liquids have only size, and gases have neither shape nor size.\n\n22. Notice how balloons keep arising here. My colleague Stephen Wainwright (with hydrostatic tongue only slightly in membranous cheek) says that if you can't demonstrate it with a balloon, it's probably not important anyway.\n\n23. French (1994) gives these examples and a short treatment of the technology involved.\n\n24. General descriptions of hydrostats in nature are given by Wainwright et al. (1976), Alexander (1983), and Vogel (1988). Bending in hydrostats is analyzed by Alexander (1988).\n\n25. See Smith and Kier (1989). Note the photograph of our late cat Fred with his tongue extended. To make Fred perform it took two Vogels, one Kier, and an entire can of tuna.\n\nCHAPTER 8: ENGINES FOR THE MECHANICAL WORLDS\n\n1. Various sources (perhaps copying one another) suggest the origin of windmills in seventh-century Persia, although Tokaty (1971) mentions earlier cases. Derry and Williams (1960) note that more than six thousand water mills for grinding grain were reported in the Domesday Book of England in 1086. As Cardwell (1995) points out, technological innovation in Europe during the Middle Ages was much more impressive than during the Roman Empire.\n\n2. The proportion is largely independent of the size of the mammal, which means that the edible fraction doesn't depend on how big an animal is. See Schmidt-Nielsen (1984).\n\n3. Data for cilia, muscle, electric motor, and automobile engine from Nicklas (1984); for motorcycle, from McMahon and Bonner (1983); for aircraft, from French (1994). The figure for the Newcomen engine is my guess based on its 5.5-horsepower output (Derry and Williams, 1960) and an assumed weight of half a ton. The output, at least, is reasonably reliable since the engine was employed lifting water\u2014in energetic terms a well-defined task.\n\n4. A very fine exhibit of working models of early steam engines may be seen at the Science Museum in South Kensington, London.\n\n5. A good source on heat engines is Atkins (1984). This limitation on efficiency emerges from what's called the second law of thermodynamics.\n\n6. 100 + 273 = 373; 1000 + 273 = 1273; 100(1 - 373\/1273) = 71.\n\n7. This isn't a straw man or rhetorical device. See, for instance, Paturi (1976).\n\n8. These are an electric catfish, the so-called electric eel, and electric rays; the trick has clearly evolved several times. Some other freshwater fish generate low-strength electric fields that serve sensory functions; see Denny (1993).\n\n9. See Basalla (1988) for a description, a figure, and a good argument for the real rarity of technological discontinuity. Laithwaite (1989) traces the development of linear electric motors.\n\n10. Datum calculated from Edsall and Wyman (1958).\n\n11. The ability to use transformers for easy and efficient conversion was the original reason for switching to alternating current (60 Hz in North America and 50 Hz in most other places) from the direct current used by Edison and others. Transformers don't work with direct current.\n\n12. Intermediate storage is one place where nature really eclipses anything in common use in our electrical technology. We use storage of a form of carbohydrate, glycogen, in the liver for short-term use (minutes to days) and storage as fat elsewhere for longer-term use. Analogous arrangements (such as roots and tubers in plants) are nearly universal. Demand for electricity and for muscle power vary similarly during the day; the power companies mainly accommodate the variation by adjusting the output level of their fossil-fueled generators. (Nuclear generators, by contrast, are more economically run at high and constant output since the plants are relatively more costly and the fuel is cheaper.) Intermediate-term storage takes such awkward devices as pumped storage plants, in which water is pumped to an uphill reservoir when power demand is low and released through generators when demand increases.\n\n13. Usher (1954) gives a good introduction to the subject. An experimental analysis from the days when waterwheels were major engines (and a paper still worth reading) is that of John Smeaton (1759).\n\n14. An exception, one using rotating cylinders and the same Magnus effect that makes spinning balls take curved paths, was built by Anton Flettner in the 1920s and is described by Tokaty (1971).\n\n15. See Tokaty (1971) for an account of various versions of Sigurd Savonius's design, along with some performance data.\n\n16. I've given proper attention to this distinction between drag-based and lift-based thrust production in connection with different modes of swimming in animals (Vogel, 1994a, pp. 154\u201355, and 283\u201387).\n\n17. I'm avoiding proper explanation of why flow over the higher opening is more rapid as well as mention of a secondary physical mechanism for driving the flow, one based on the viscous stickiness of real fluids.\n\n18. Dynamic soaring, it's called. See, for instance, Vogel (1994a).\n\n19. Quite a lot more on both mechanisms and cases can be found in Vogel (1978, 1994a). The original suggestion was made by Vogel and Bretz (1972).\n\n20. The flagella of bacteria, different things altogether, will get proper attention in the next chapter.\n\n21. A good introduction to the mechanics of motility in animals is given by Schmidt-Nielsen (1990); McMahon (1984) provides more information on muscle in particular.\n\n22. The physical scientist will quickly protest that \"lift\" by suction to greater than ten meters isn't possible since what's really doing the work is the atmosphere pushing from the bottom, and the maximum pressure difference of one atmosphere can raise water only that high. The rejoinder to this objection is that in tall plants the suction is real and that when properly contained in thin hydrophilic pipes, water can withstand enormous tension. Zimmermann (1983) has a good account of our present understanding of the process.\n\n23. Nijhout and Sheffield (1979).\n\n24. The figures come from a variety of sources. For human-built engines, I used Salisbury (1950), Croft (1981), and Atkins (1984); for muscle, Heglund and Cavagna (1985).\n\nCHAPTER 9: PUTTING ENGINES TO WORK\n\n1. I'm avoiding the conventional classification into first-, second-, and third-class levers to which the reader may have been subjected. It's a structural rather than a functional scheme and proved confusing and irrelevant to readers of the first version of this chapter. First-class levers, in case you care, have their fulcra in the middle; second and third classes have fulcra at the ends. First-class levers may be either force or distance amplifiers; second-class ones are always force amplifiers; third-class ones are always distance or speed amplifiers. A first-class lever in which effort and load are equidistant from the fulcrum is the exception; it changes only the direction of the force.\n\n2. On rare occasions a crank is geared up to spin something rapidly\u2014hand-operated centrifuges and grinding wheels, for instance. Less drastically but more commonly, bicycle tires move faster than the pedals except in the lowest gears.\n\n3. The lower end of the humerus, no joke, is the \"funny bone,\" with no etymological pun whatsoever. Distance advantages are 5.4 and 22, respectively (Currey 1984).\n\n4. Alexander (1983) does a short and effective job on jaw mechanics and the topics that immediately follow here.\n\n5. The fibers are quite as easy to see after a few minutes' immersion in boiling water to kill the creature humanely. Leave the final, clawed segment intact, and work on the penultimate one. After looking at and then consuming the muscle, you may be able to expose a pair of flat straps (properly called apodemes rather than tendons since these are arthropods). The larger (pull on it) closes the claw while the smaller opens it.\n\n6. Smith and Kier (1989).\n\n7. Vogel (1992) puts the calculation in context.\n\n8. Berg and Anderson (1973) and Berg (1974). The figures in the next paragraph are from the latter paper, to which my attention was drawn by R. Bruce Nicklas.\n\n9. Mitochondria, the main sites of aerobic energy production in most cells, and chloroplasts, the sites of the photosynthetic machinery of plant cells, appear to have originated as symbiotic bacteria. Another case, the use of bacteria as locomotory organelles, is described in Chapter 2. For both, see Margulis (1993) or Dyer and Obar (1994).\n\n10. Gould (1981). \"Wheels are not flawed as modes of transport; I'm sure that many animals would be far better with them.\"\n\n11. LaBarbera (1983) and Basalla (1988). I'm not going to sort out their separate arguments.\n\n12. Ekholm (1946). I don't take seriously suggestions that these toys must have been copies of real devices, now lost, since the wheels are on the ends of animal legs rather than on wagons.\n\n13. On this last point, see Bulliet (1975).\n\n14. These figures are all from a source I'd not be without, _Machinery's Handbook_ (Olberg et al., eds., 1984).\n\n15. On bearings in human technology, see French (1994); on those between bones, see Currey (1984).\n\n16. Watt's device incorporated an orbital gear largely as a way to evade infringing on a recent patent, so it seems to us excessively complicated.\n\n17. Sleeswyk (1981) talks about the general problem of coupling humans to machines in the context of Egyptian antiquity and is my source for guided and misguided cranks.\n\n18. A good source for this topic as well as for a lot of other matters relevant to this book is a two-volume set by Amerongen (1967).\n\n19. These transmissions use a version of a fluid coupling called a torque converter, which adds a little complexity to this basic fluid coupling to get a trade-off of speed and force. And to improve fuel economy, the input and output shafts may actually clamp together at high speeds to prevent any slip at all. In addition, gearing is provided (hydraulically shifted!) to increase the car's usable range of speeds.\n\n20. Dunwell (1991) recounts the controversy, with the appropriate maps and pictures.\n\n21. See Alexander (1984b or 1988) or (secondhand) Vogel (1988) on this topic and those that follow. If you try the calculation, remember to keep your units consistent-for instance, height in feet, acceleration in feet per second squared, and speed in feet per second.\n\n22. Sotavalta (1953).\n\nCHAPTER 10: ABOUT PUMPS, JETS, AND SHIPS\n\n1. A more elaborate version of the present section appears in Vogel (1994b).\n\n2. Miller (1945).\n\n3. But some doubt. Martin Canny (1995) has cast an informed and skeptical eye on the evidence for the extreme negative pressures in trees and suggests an alternative explanation for the rise of sap.\n\n4. Zimmermann (1983) gives a good review of the system. The record for pull, 120 atmospheres, was measured by a colleague, William Schlesinger (1982).\n\n5. For example, no less than 22.4 atmospheres are needed to offset the propensity of a one-molar solution of a nonelectrolyte to absorb pure water.\n\n6. The underlying distinction between propellers and paddles or flukes and cilia, elaborated in Vogel (1994a), is between lift-based thrust producers and drag-based thrust producers.\n\n7. LaBarbera and Vogel (1982).\n\n8. We do have an exception. A field called exobiology considers extrater-restrial life; on occasion one or another of its devotees has proudly proclaimed this distinction and the uniqueness of a field that doesn't know if it has a subject matter.\n\n9. Some of the material in this section appeared as Vogel (1994c).\n\n10. A crude steam rocket made a fine toy for bathtub or pond back when small metal containers were ubiquitous as 35 mm film canisters, tooth powder cans, and the like. One mounted a candle in the hull of an open boat, with a partly filled can of water above. A pinhole in the rearward-facing top of the can let steam escape to propel the boat forward. One shudders when thinking of its efficiency, much less of its safety. A device distantly related to Hero's engine did see service in the late nineteenth century: the De Laval steam turbine, used to run high-speed electrical generators.\n\n11. We're assuming that the working fluid of the jet is of about the same density as the surrounding fluid. A rocket in space isn't concerned about the speed at which it passes through nothing at all.\n\n12. Except, perhaps, for very tiny insects for which covering distance is more a matter of ambient wind than their own navigation.\n\n13. The life and times of both of these are the subjects of engaging popular accounts, Crouch (1989) and Grosser (1981) respectively.\n\n14. But oversimplifying is all too easy. The inboard part of a flapping wing goes up and down very little, so it does work very nearly as a fixed wing.\n\n15. The motion that matters isn't really the lateral progress of the wave\u2014very little actual wave-wise transport of water happens-but the orbital motion of the water immediately beneath the wave. See Denny (1993), Vogel (1994a), or any introduction to oceanography.\n\n16. Full support by surface tension is quite another subject from the speed limit set by waves. Whirligig beetles are supported in part by surface tension and in part by their buoyancy, while water striders are almost entirely supported by surface tension. Whirligigs are what matter here; water striders move in a specialized way, one in which surface waves are less directly involved.\n\nCHAPTER 11: MAKING WIDGETS\n\n1. See, for instance, Schopf's own contribution in Schopf (1992).\n\n2. Vincent (1990). Of course I compound the sin by repetition.\n\n3. Such multicellularity was in fact achieved in several separate lineages, and traces of these separate origins exist in the different chemical and physical devices that present multicellular lineages use to keep themselves operative.\n\n4. See Chapter 3, note 10.\n\n5. These are all cases of _negative_ feedback: Action is taken to _decrease_ the difference between the actual state and some desired state. Positive feedback has another role altogether and isn't immediately relevant to the present discussion.\n\n6. Mayr (1970). He raises such fascinating questions as why float valves were not used between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries.\n\n7. My colleague Fred Nijhout (1990) argues, in an elegant and persuasive essay, that we\u2014ve been poorly served by the metaphor of gene as unique and complete causative agent. Part of his argument is the basis of the next paragraph.\n\n8. Electronic equipment that operates with very high precision is ordinarily made from far less precise components by using a variety of self-correcting schemes, most of which fit comfortably within the present invocation of feedback.\n\n9. Morowitz (1968) gives figures for the percentage of an average protein that will spontaneously spoil (denature) per day as a function of temperature. In Celsius degrees, they are 1.1 percent at thirty-seven degrees; 4.4 percent at forty degrees; 13.8 percent at forty-three degrees; 46.2 percent at forty-six degrees; and 161 percent at forty- nine degrees. It does look as if mammals and birds, with body temperatures around thirty-seven degrees to forty degrees, hug an upper practical limit for use of ordinary protein.\n\n10. The relative diameters of all the blood vessels in a vertebrate are constructed and, when necessary, readjusted to minimize the operating cost of its circulatory system. Astonishingly, no overall coordination is required or involved; each of the cells lining the vessels needs only to respond to changes in the shear stress of the blood flowing past it. For details, see LaBarbera (1990) or Vogel (1994a).\n\n11. A reasonable introduction to a fairly diffuse literature on how trees respond to environmental forces is a recent volume edited by Coutts and Grace (1995).\n\n12. The doctrine was at its zenith in Britain around the turn of the century; it used the slogan \"survival of the fittest\" to justify all manner of social conservatism, unrestrained capitalism, class stratification, racial discrimination, and imperialism. Considerable opposition to evolution by natural selection has been generated by this combination of an inappropriate analogy and the notion that a social system based on natural selection has some natural and intrinsic merit. So in parallel with fundamentalist opposition to evolution, we have left-wing opposition based on rejection of the predestination and social Darwinism often thought to be part and parcel of the biological world view.\n\n13. The famous paper here, into which more is often read than a literal look suggests was intended, is Gould and Lewontin (1979).\n\n14. See the literature on symmorphosis, a term coined by Taylor and Weibel (1981); typical criticisms will be found in Garland and Huey (1987) and Dudley and Gans (1991).\n\n15. This isn't to deny that sometimes single substitutions make dramatic differences. The sensitivity of the product to such alterations isn't at all uniform.\n\n16. Two good references on safety factors in organisms are Alexander (1981) and Currey (1984). I sum up their arguments in Vogel (1988).\n\n17. Niklas (1992) sums up what information is available.\n\n18. As with most historical accounts, complexities lurk beneath the surface. Thus Whitney may have been one of the first with the basic idea of interchangeable parts, but full achievement was decades away (see Woodbury, 1960). Interesting general (if short) sources are Derry and Williams (1960), Boorstin (1965), and Reynolds (1991). Fridenson (1978) describes the transfer of this American system to Europe.\n\n19. During World War II Liberty ships, cheap and expendable freighters, were truly mass-produced, not just made in quantity. But the case is exceptional.\n\n20. About twenty-five years ago I took the standard tour of the local cigarette factory. The tour guide halved a cigarette and tossed it back into the machinery; a few seconds later a pack was ejected some distance away that contained 19.5 rather than 20.0 items.\n\n21. Norbert Wiener's now rather ancient book (1950) on the interrelationship between humans and feedback devices, the field he named cybernetics, is still worth reading.\n\n22. J. E. Gordon (1978) regards them as essentially factors of ignorance forming part of the theology of design.\n\nCHAPTER 12: COPYING, IN RETROSPECT\n\n1. I'm indebted to Francis Newton, a neighbor and colleague in classical studies, for bringing in Ovid. The quotations are from Book VIII, lines 183\u2013259. Note, in the first, that the wings were curved; as we'll see, the crucial role of wing camber was not otherwise appreciated until the 1880s. The ancients, especially the Greeks, took a dim view of human creativity; everything was given by the gods, stolen from the gods, or copied from nature. Thus, according to Democritus of Abdera (ca. 420 B.C.E.), \"We are pupils of the animals in the most important things: the spider for spinning and mending, the swallow for building, and the songsters, swan and nightingale, for singing, by way of imitation\" (Freeman, 1948). Poseidonius (135\u201351 B.C.E.) viewed millstones as copied from teeth (Cole, 1967).\n\n2. E. O. Wilson (1984). He defines it as \"the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes.\"\n\n3. Quoted in G\u00e9rardin (1968) and elsewhere. Other books specifically about bionics include Bernard and Kare (1962), Halacy (1965), and Marteka (1965). Winfield et al. (1991) have done an annotated bibliography covering a broad sweep of bionics and biomimetics; more recent material is available by searching under these headings in the relevant engineering and biological databases (NTIS, BIOSIS, etc.)\n\n4. \"Biomimesis\" was defined by Warren McCulloch in 1962 as all areas in which one organism copies another; thus mimicry of distasteful insects by innocuous insects would be included. But that usage seems not to have caught on.\n\n5. Several disclaimers: Potentially profitable bits of technology are rarely reported in peer-reviewed journals; more commonly they form the bases for patents, with laws and lawyers deliberately compromising any semblance of historical verisimilitude. A patent tries to impress upon the world just how original is the invention, giving as little benefit as possible to any notion of continuity; it fully intends to be heroic literature. That nature might have done the trick first is not usually something to be forthrightly admitted, and the idea that the invention just copied nature is certainly best kept private. As Basalla (1988) puts it (p. 60), \"All of patent law is based on the assumption that an invention is a discrete, novel entity that can be assigned to the individual who is determined by the courts to be its legitimate creator.\" For ancient and prehistoric possibilities, the chance of documentation is even less.\n\n6. From Smeaton's _A Narrative of the Building and a Description of the Construction of the Edystone Lighthouse with Stone_ , abridged by T. Williams (1882).\n\n7. In _Lighthouses, A Rudimentary Treatise_ , quoted by Majdalany (1960).\n\n8. A wealth of history of the tunnel is provided by two biographies of the more famous Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who as a young man supervised the work for his father. See Rolt (1959) and Vaughan (1991).\n\n9. Beamish (1862), p. 207. But the story must be older, since Ewbank (1842), p. 258, alludes to it, as he does to Smeaton's tree trunk.\n\n10. Miller (1924).\n\n11. Paxton and the Crystal Palace have not suffered obscurity; see Chadwick (1961), Beaver (1970), or Kihlstadt (1984).\n\n12. \"[A] gardener as well known as his patron, the Duke of Devonshire,\" according to Hix (1974), p. 50.\n\n13. No. 13,186, dated July 22, 1850, enrolled January 22, 1851; in \"Alphabetical Index of Patentees of Inventions; Building Materials 1850\u201351, Vol. 184.\"\n\n14. Hertel (1963), Paturi (1976), Tributsch (1982), and Laithwaite (1994) all comment on the copying.\n\n15. _Illustrated London News, Supplement 17:_ 317\u201324 (October 19, 1850).\n\n16. Forget about low-drag cars, whose shape is severely compromised by the requirement that they work near the ground and not produce lift. And as noted just ahead, forget surface ships, whose drag comes from surface waves.\n\n17. Quoted by von K\u00e1rm\u00e1n (1954), in part, and more fully by Pritchard (1961).\n\n18. Quoted by Gibbs-Smith (1962).\n\n19. Phillips (1885); also reported by Chanute (1893).\n\n20. The book was first published in 1889 as _Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst_ ; a second edition was prepared by his brother Gustav and published in 1910. That second edition was translated a year later into English, under the title in the text. A short account, translated, is given as an appendix in Chanute (1893).\n\n21. A brief account of the difficult birth of airfoil theory is given by Giacomelli and Pistolesi (1934). They also provide a glossary that's needed to read Lanchester's work; the latter coined and used a host of wonderful Greek-and Latin-based terms that never came into common usage. Von K\u00e1rm\u00e1n (1954), Sutton (1949), and Vogel (1994a) describe in nonmathematical terms how lift originates without relying on the usual polite fiction. In the latter, bits of fluid diverge in front of the wing and then rejoin at the rear; since the path across the top is longer, those half bits have to go faster; by Bernoulli (that at least is okay), faster means lower pressure, so the wing is forced upward. The trouble with the explanation is that no rule requires that the bits of fluid reassemble with their same partners at the rear, something crucial to its logic.\n\n22. At least that's my best guess as to the trouble. My first attempt to calibrate an electronic anemometer I'd built foundered on this particular rock. Von K\u00e1rm\u00e1n (1954) notes that the problem corrupted a lot of nineteenth-century data.\n\n23. Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, May 13, 1900, in McFarland (1953). The famous first powered flight came in December 1903.\n\n24. Recent biographies of the Wrights are those of Howard (1987) and Crouch (1989). See also Wright (1953).\n\n25. I'm ignoring old Chinese and Japanese paper craft as out of the historical sequence that led to present mass-production technology, whatever its intrinsic interest or claims of priority.\n\n26. Quoted in translation by Hunter (1947). Hunter is the best overall source I've seen, but Ainsworth (1959) and Schlosser (1980) are also useful. Flatow (1992) gives a quick account without documentation. About the wasps, see Hansell (1989).\n\n27. Koops (1800). I was able to examine an original of Koops's book; two centuries have treated it kindly, with no deterioration obvious to my admittedly untutored eye. The slightly yellow-beige paper has a rough surface, but the print is clear and dark, with no capillary \"wicking\" of the ink.\n\n28. Hooke (1665), with modern spelling.\n\n29. He demonstrated the process for the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at its Manchester meeting in 1842; the event is noted in the report of the meeting.\n\n30. Ozanam (1862). The occasional attribution of the invention of the spinneret to Ozanam on the basis of these few vague and hopeful words (without the name) must be taken as an exaggeration. Schwabe's claim is both earlier and better.\n\n31. Sources here are Avram (1927) and Leeming (1949). The quotation is from Chardonnet's entry in the _Dictionary of Scientific Biography._\n\n32. The _Oxford English Dictionary_ traces it back to Kirby and Spence's _Entomology_ of 1825.\n\n33. From Worden (1911).\n\n34. Schober (1930).\n\n35. From Bell's lecture of October 31, 1877, to the Society of Telegraph Engineers, in London; quoted in Prescott (1884). A good account is that of Bruce (1973); M. Gorman and W. B. Carlson, of the University of Virginia, are making available Bell's notebooks, currently as http:\/\/jefferson.village.virginia.edu\/-meg3c\/id\/AGB\/index.html. John Wourms, of Clemson University, called this case to my attention.\n\n36. No. 174,465; March 7, 1876.\n\n37. For instance, the prickly-pear cactus, a New World plant (as are almost all cacti), was imported into the Middle East for hedgerow use about three hundred years ago. It's now a nuisance.\n\n38. A very nice encapsulation of this story is given by Basalla (1988); a more elaborate recounting is that of the McCallums (1965). According to the former, in 1860 alone enough seed was sent north to produce sixty thousand miles of hedge.\n\n39. The Kelly patent is no. 74,379 (1868); the Glidden patent (commercially the most important one) is no. 157,124 (1874).\n\n40. A crosscut timber saw with well-set and sharp teeth cuts impressively. \"Cutters\" splay outward very slightly and make slits that define the outside of the kerf, while \"rakers\" work like chisels and shear off the wood between those slits. With strong and determined sawyers, each pull of the saw may deepen the kerf by more than half an inch.\n\n41. The account is mainly that of Lucia (1975 and 1981 contain essentially the same material) together with entomological information from Craighead (1915, 1923). I'm indebted to Professor George Pearsall for calling my attention to the case.\n\n42. A short history of Velcro is given by Flatow (1992) in an engaging, if poorly documented, book on inventions. See also Budde (1995).\n\n43. A good history of misguided people and misbegotten craft is that of Hart (1985).\n\n44. Maxim (1909). His huge steam-engined biplane self-destructed after an expenditure of twenty thousand pounds.\n\n45. See, on this point, J. S. Harris (1989).\n\n46. Quoted by von K\u00e1rm\u00e1n (1954).\n\n47. Maynard Smith (1952)-who did aerodynamics before being lured into biology.\n\n48. The basic account here is from Hertel (1963) and Paturi (1976), with the aerodynamics largely confirmed by Bishop (1961). The plant was known to the Etrichs as _Zanonia macrocarpa_ but is now in the genus _Alsomitra_ and hence _A. macrocarpa._ Good aerodynamic data on the fruit are now available, in Azuma and Okuno (1987). In fact, it's not an especially good wing, descending with a lift-to-drag ratio of 3.5. For comparison, the hind wing of a locust, which operates under comparable conditions, manages a ratio of 8.2.\n\n49. Bernheim (1959).\n\n50. A particularly good introduction to the history of stability in aircraft is that of Vincenti (1988). Von K\u00e1rm\u00e1n (1954) gives one a good feel for the various controls themselves.\n\n51. See Boyd (1935) and C. M. Harris (1989). One wonders why neither Rumsey nor Fitch used a paddle wheel; the device is nothing more than the then familiar undershot waterwheel used in reverse. Perhaps Watt's crankshaft for converting linear to rotary motion was insufficiently appreciated.\n\nCHAPTER 13: COPYING, PRESENT AND PROSPECTIVE\n\n1. British patent 3587\/1894. From Wilson (1975).\n\n2. The relevant references are Gray (1936), Kramer (1965), and Riley et al. (1988).\n\n3. The earliest report seems to be Toms (1948). See also Davies and Porter (1966), Wells (1969), and Bushnell and Moore (1991).\n\n4. See Reif (1985), Choi (1990), and Bushnell and Moore (1991).\n\n5. sci.aeronautics, sci.engr, sci.mech.engr, sci.engr.marine.hydrodynamics, sci.mech.fluids, and soc.history.science. I deliberately biased the selection toward news groups frequented by engineers, and I received a number of very thoughtful and interesting responses. I thank all the people who responded and hope that I managed to reply to each.\n\n6. Two general sources are Winfield et al. (1991) and Sarikaya and Aksay (1995). Quite a lot of information emerges if one searches databases such as that of the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) or Biological Abstracts (BIOSIS) using \"bionics\" or \"biomimetics\" as keywords.\n\n7. See Douglas and Clark (1990), Lombardi et al. (1990), Mann (1990, 1995), and Fournier et al. (1995).\n\n8. See De Rossi et al. (1985), Pool (1989), Caldwell and Taylor (1990), Urry (1993), and Salehpoor (1996).\n\n9. See Gunderson and Schiavone (1989), Berman (1990), Mann (1990), and Sarikaya et al. (1994). The patent (United States, 1983) is to C. R. Chaplin, J. E. Gordon, and G. Jeronimidis, no. 4,409,274, entitled \"Composite Material.\"\n\n10. This is somewhat further from practical realization, but it has been the subject of much speculation and some experimentation. See Winfield et al. (1991).\n\n11. See Mason and Salisbury (1985), Hayward (1993), Wilson et al. (1993), and Wainwright (1995).\n\n12. See Raibert and Sutherland (1983), Song and Waldron (1989), and Manko (1992).\n\n13. Stix (1994). The principals are Robert Barrett and Michael Triantafyllou. The principles are prefigured in Triantafyllou et al. (1993).\n\n14. The twiddlefish is the invention of Charles Pell and Stephen Wainwright, working at the Biodesign Studio, at Duke. See McHenry et al. (1995).\n\n15. Blake et al. (1995) have shown that tuna can't turn especially sharply and suggest that their efficiency in steady swimming involves some loss of maneuverability.\n\n16. My main sources on spider silks are Gosline et al. (1986 and 1995).\n\n17. Chatterton (1910) and Rouse and Ince (1957).\n\n18. Maybe naval design is naturally conservative. Needham (1965) notes the cambered surfaces of ancient Chinese kites. The matter is confused by the way sails automatically camber in a wind. See also Smeaton (1759).\n\nCHAPTER 14: CONTRASTS, CONVERGENCES, AND CONSEQUENCES\n\n1. It's now late enough in the game to admit something that has been kept sub rosa. Other mechanical technologies do exist-in particular those of a variety of social organisms, such as bees, ants, termites, and beaver. Each seems (adjusting for such things as scale) largely a compromise between the two main ones under scrutiny here, so they have only minimal relevance to the present discussion.\n\n2. Stable systems are more persistent than unstable systems. A system in which destructive interactions can arise is more likely to disappear than one with self-improving interactions. This argument for large- scale integration beyond what natural selection per se can produce was made by Pantin (1964). It's crucial to the Gaia hypothesis popularized by Lovelock and Margulis (1974).\n\n3. The phenomenon is most often known as kin selection. It rationalizes things ranging from parent-child altruism to the repeated evolution of complex societies in the genetically peculiar ants, bees, and wasps (Hymenoptera). See, for instance, Dawkins (1976) or H\u00f6lldobler and Wilson (1994).\n\n4. We use the term \"mutualism\" to make a needed distinction from symbioses (living together) in which mutual and reciprocal benefit is absent\u2014parasitism, for instance.\n\n5. Basalla (1988). See especially pp. 91\u201392. Derek deSolla Price has noted the same thing on various occasions.\n\n6. The classic statement of the notion of \"punctuated equilibria\" in evolution\u2014the extreme of episodic change\u2014is that of Eldredge and Gould (1972). The idea pervades many of the essays of Gould (1980, and other collections from _Natural History_ magazine). Less protagonistic statements can be found in contemporary evolution textbooks such as Futuyma (1986).\n\n7. For a more extensive but admirably accessible treatment, see Wilson (1992).\n\n8. Gould (1989). A somewhat less opinionated view of the Ediacara is given by Runnegar (1992).\n\n9. Petroski (1992) gives lots of examples involving some of the simplest of our industrial artifacts, such as paper clips, forks, and hand tools.\n\n10. See, for instance, Crosby (1986) or Vitousek et al. (1996).\n\n11. See Chapter 2, note 1.\n\n12. Dasgupta (1996) gives a lot of attention to this issue. Unless of course one includes the few odd cases of acquired tool use and other minor elements of acquired behavior in animals.\n\n13. Heilbroner (1967), an important and influential essay, reprinted in Smith and Marx (1995).\n\n14. The main reference here is White (1962).\n\n15. Dasgupta (1996) emphasizes this point.\n\n16. Gilinsky and Rambach (1987); the idea was followed up by Rosenzweig and McCord (1991).\n\n17. The usual citation for the argument is David (1985). It's put in a larger context in Rogers (1983).\n\n18. Liebowitz and Margolis (1990).\n\n19. Liebowitz and Margolis (1995).\n\n20. See, for a fuller argument, Arthur (1990). I'm not sure that his analogy of positive feedback in economics with punctuated equilibrium in evolution is close enough to be of use.\n\n21. One can get a good look at the importance of tapers\u2014that is, conical surfaces\u2014in contemporary technology by glancing at handbooks such as Oberg et al. (1984).\n\n22. A lovely recent book (Maor, 1994) puts the logarithmic spiral into both mathematical and historical context.\n\n23. See Pettigrew (1908), Cook (1914), and Thompson (1942, originally 1917). A general and realistic view of alternative geometries is given by Pearce (1978).\n\n24. Needham (1954), vol. 1, p. 229. At every possible occasion he compares Western and Chinese technological achievements.\n\n25. Tylecote (1992) is my main reference here; further information on Andean metallurgy is given by Lechtman (1988) and on the Old World by Hodges (1970). Native copper, incidentally, was mined for about five thousand years in the Lake Superior\/Isle Royale area of North America (Wayman, 1989a), and meteoritic iron was hammered out into teeth for blades by prehistoric people in the Cape York area of northern Greenland (Wayman, 1989b). Metallic technologies have arisen on quite a few occasions!\n\n26. An extreme example of diffusionist argument, one relevant to the present case, is that of Needham and Lu (1985).\n\n27. My main sources here are Bird (1979), King (1979), Anton (1984), and Barber (1994).\n\n28. The approach I'm suggesting isn't really all that different from the analysis of weapons technology by Churchill (1993) and probably other anthropological work.\n\n29. The example of Bell, Elisha Gray, and the invention of the telephone is analyzed by Hounshell (1975) and Gorman and Carlson (1990). Many other cases can be cited. 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You can use your device's search function to locate particular terms in the text.\n\nPage numbers in _italics_ refer to illustrations\n\nabductin, _28_ , 87, 89, 143, 203\n\nacceleration:\n\nand predation, 200\n\nin jumping, 32\n\nprojectiles, 204\n\nAchilles tendon, _89_ , 104\n\nadhesion, 269\n\naerodynamics. _See_ camber, drag, lift, etc.\n\naerostats, 148, 311\n\nailerons, 261, 270, 271\n\naircraft, 16, 17, 37, 43\u201348, 46, 47, 51, 57\n\nautogyrating, 53, _54_\n\ncontrol, 91, 197, 260, _261_ , 272\n\nfixed wings, 221\n\nflow around, 52\n\nhelicopters, 220\u201321\n\nhistory, 271\u201374, _273_\n\njet-powered, 219, 296\n\nlighter-than-air, 151\n\nmaintenance, 246\n\nperformance, 258\n\nproduction, 245\n\nshapes, 64\n\nwindows, 80\n\nWright Flyer, 222\n\nairfoils, _259_ , 270\n\ncamber, 61, 258, 271\n\nflapping, 272\n\npower source, 215, 221\n\nof propellers, 221\n\npropulsion efficiency, 218\n\nwindmills, 97\n\nWrights', 260\n\nalbatross, gliding, 47\n\nAlexander, R. McNeill, 104, 201\n\nalgae, 94, _95_\n\naluminum, 247\n\ncookware, 124\n\ndensity, 112\n\nin earth, 110, 112\n\noxidation, 111\n\nalveoli, 64\n\nAmes window, 66, _67_\n\naneurysms, 103, 104, 148\n\nangles. _See_ right angles\n\nanimal territories, 74\u201375\n\nanthropology, 37, 307\u20139\n\nants:\n\naggression, 52\n\nreproduction, 24\n\narchery, 37, 127, _194_ , 200\n\nArchimedean screw, 287, _288_\n\nArchimedes, 192\n\nAristotle, 19\n\narmadillos, skeleton, 28\n\narteries. _See_ blood vessels\n\narthropods. _See_ insects, spiders, etc.\n\nascidians, _107_\n\nvanadium in, 107, 110\n\natherosclerosis, 102, 103\n\nAudemars, Georges, 263\n\nautogyrating, 53, _54_\n\nautomobiles, 35, 57\n\nbearings, _303_ , 304\n\nbrakes, 195, 196, 237\n\ncarburetors, 207\n\ncontrol, 234, 235\n\nengines, 33, 158\n\nloads on, 134\n\npumps, 207\n\nshape, 62\n\nshock absorbers, 90, _90_\n\nsuspensions, 90, 91, 134, 142, _142_ , 198\n\ntransmissions, 178, 197\n\nbacteria:\n\nflagella, 186, _187_\n\nmagnetite in, 109\n\nnitrogen fixation, 109\n\nsmallest, 40\n\nspirochetes 29, 30, _30_\n\nsquare, 65\n\nballistae, 127, 200\n\nballoons, 63, 64, 102, 104, 148, 163, 220\n\nbamboo, 17, 281, 287\n\nbarbed wire, 266, _267_ , 270\n\nbarnacles, 25, 147\n\nBasalla, George, 188, 267, 293\n\nbats:\n\nflight, 27\n\nwings, 58, 104\n\nbatteries, 154, 163, 198\u2013204, 224, 290\n\nelastic, 198, 199, 200, 202, 203\n\nelectrical, 198, 200, 295, 296, 302\n\ngravitational, 198, 200\n\ninertial, 198\n\nin nature, 200, 204, 290\n\nBeadle, George, 22\n\nbeams, _130, 140, 141_ , 231\n\nbetween supports, 55\n\nbookshelves as, 60\n\nfeathers as, 61\n\nflexural stiffness, 130\n\nhead supports, 141\n\nI-beams, _100_ , 132\n\nleaves as, 60, _61_\n\nprestressed, 143\n\nroofs, 58\n\nsagging, _59_\n\nscaling, 55\n\nshapes, 68, 140\n\nstrength, 118\n\ntension, compression in, 140\n\ntorsional stiffness, 100\n\ntrees as, 253\n\nunder floors, 76\n\nbearings, 186, 187, 189\u201391, _303_ , 304\n\nbees:\n\nflying speed, 46\n\nheating hives, 43\n\nhoneycombs, 76\n\nmagnetite in, 109\n\nreproduction, 24\n\nbeetles:\n\ndung, 188\n\nfixed forewings, 215\n\nwhirligig, 51, 226, 227, _227_\n\nwoodboring, _268_ , 271\n\nBell, Alexander, 31, 37, 265\n\nBerg, Howard, 186\n\nBernheim, Molly, 274\n\nBernoulli's principle, 166, 167, 260\n\nbicycles, 17, 192\n\nchains, 88\n\ncost of transport, 188\n\ntire pump, 278\n\nwheels and pedals, 188\n\nbiomechanics, 18, 22, 41, 145, 311\n\nbiomimetics, bionics, 250\n\n_see also_ copying nature\n\nbiophilia, 18, 250\n\nbiophysics, 18\n\nbiotechnology, 18\n\nbirds:\n\nairfoils, _259_\n\nbody temperature, 43\n\ncreativity, 32\n\nfalling, 44\n\nflight, 27, 32, 220, _221_ , 222, 258, 260, 271, 272\n\ngliding, 46, 167\n\nhydroplaning, 226\n\nmagnetite in, 109\n\nsmallest, 43\n\nterritories, 76\n\nwing bones, 71\n\nwishbone springs, 143\n\n_see also_ eggs, feathers\n\nBlake, William, 257\n\nblimps, 148, 151, 220\n\nblock and tackle, 179\n\nblood:\n\nflow, 52, 125\n\npressure, 102\n\nblood vessels:\n\nshapes, 64\n\nstress-strain graph, _86_ , 103\n\nvariability, 27\n\nwalls, 28, 86,102\u20135, _103_ , 203\n\nboats, 16, 31, 41\n\nacceleration, 52\n\nanchoring, 87\n\nbuilding, 68, 309\n\nflow around, 52\n\nhulls, 94, 134, 138, 257\n\npaddle wheels, 211, 223, 275, 287\n\nportholes, 80\n\npropulsion, 186, 287, _288_\n\nspeed, and waves, 51, _225_ , _226_\n\nsteamboats, 117\n\nsurface swimming, 223\u201328, _225, 226_ , 291\n\n_see also_ submarines\n\nbone, bones, 17, 24, 70, 106, 128\n\nbird wings, 71\n\ncalcium in, 110\n\nas composites, 123, 231, _232_ , 280\n\ncracks, 116\n\ndensity, 112\n\nfracture, 55\n\ngrowth, 24, 116, 295\n\nhalf-life, 239\n\nin human technology, 127\n\njoints between, 191\n\nloads on, 135\n\nresponsive growth, 240, 241\n\nsafety factor, 244\n\nscaling, 56, 137\n\nshapes, 80\n\nstiffness, 93\n\nstress-strain graph, _114_ , 116\n\nviscoelasticity, 116\n\nbookshelves, 60, 68\n\nbow drills, 193, _194_\n\nbows, _194_ , 200\n\nbrachiating, 137\n\nbreast-reduction surgery, 23\n\nbricks, 68, 92, 128, 133, 248\n\nbridges, 41\n\narch, 134, 135, _136_\n\nmaterials, 285\n\nscaling, 56\n\nsuspension, 64, 134, 135, _136_ , 139, 144\n\nbrittle materials, 118\n\nbrittleness, 79, 290\n\nbronze, 109, 117, 292, 295, 308\n\nBrunel, Isambard, 139\n\nBrunel, Marc, 37, 245, 253\n\nbuckling, 132, 135, 144\n\nbuildings, 41\n\naerostatic, 148\n\nA-frame, 138\n\ncathedrals, 134, 137, 138\n\nframing, _69, 139_ , 144\n\ngeodesic, 77\n\nheating vs. size, 43\n\nshapes, 65\n\nsupport schemes, 138\n\nventilation, 168\n\nbuoyancy, 70\n\nBurns, John, 32\n\nburrows, burrowing, 151, _166, 211_\n\nburs, _269_\n\nbutterflies:\n\ngliding, 46, 47\n\nmetamorphosis, 25, 196\n\nbuttressing, 134, 138\n\ncables, 70\n\ncacti, 37\n\ncaddisflies, 167\n\ncalcium, 94\n\nin bones, 110\n\nin nature, 109\n\nreduction of, 111\n\nin seawater, 110\n\ncamber, 61, 258, 271\n\ncapillarity, 48\n\ncapillary waves, 51, 227, _227_\n\ncartilage, 104\n\ncasting, 80\n\ncatapults, 127, 199\n\ncaterpillars:\n\nhydroskeleton, 70\n\nleaf cutting, 270\n\ncathedrals, 134, 137, 138\n\ncats:\n\nboniness, 56, 137\n\nears, 105\n\nstalking gait, 73\n\ntongues, 108\n\nCayley, George, 257, 270\n\ncells:\n\nblood, 239\n\nclose packing, 77\n\ncoordination, 240\n\ndiffusion in, 50\n\nas factories, 230\n\nmembranes, 65\n\nnumber in organism, 25, 229\n\nas precursors, 41\n\npressures within, 210\n\nshapes, 64\n\nvariability, 243\n\ncellulose:\n\ndigestion, 29\n\nin human technology, 118\n\nin wood, 123\n\ncentipedes, 145\n\ncephalopods. _See_ octopus, squid\n\nceramics, 117\n\ncomposites, 281\n\ncookware, 125\n\nstiffness, 94\n\ncermets, 281\n\nchains, 88\n\nchain saws, _268_ , 270\n\nfrom beetle mandibles, 267\n\nradulas as, 108\n\nChanute, Octave, 273\n\nChardonnet, Hilaire de, 263\n\nchitin, 106, 123, 204\n\ncilia, _169_\n\nbending, 184\n\nas motors, 157, 169\n\npumping with, 212, _212_ , 213, 214\n\ncirculatory systems, 50, 213\n\nclams:\n\nabductin, 28\n\nmetamorphosis, 25\n\nmuscle, 29, 170\n\nsuspension feeding, 213\n\nclose-packing, 76\n\ncocklebur, 269\n\ncoelacanths, 35\n\ncoelenterates. _See_ jellyfish, sea anemones, etc.\n\ncollagen, 91\n\nin ballistae, 127\n\nin blood vessels, 103\n\nresilience, 202\n\ntriple helix, 132\n\n_see also_ tendons\n\ncolonial animals, 24\n\ncolumns, 17, 53\u201355, 132, _133_ , 292\n\ncomposite materials, 122\u201324, _122_ , _124_ , 126, 231, _232_ , 250, 280\n\ncompression:\n\nin stacks, 68\n\ntesting, 129\n\ncompression elements:\n\nexamples, 128, 132, 135\n\nfluid, 153\u201376\n\nhuman preference, 135, 290\n\nsize and shape, 136, 144\u201346\n\nvs. tensile elements, 135\u201344\n\nconcrete, 17\n\nconductivity, electrical, 126, 162\n\nconductivity, thermal, 124\u201326, 290\n\ncones, 302\u20137\n\nvs. cylinders, 303, 304\n\ngrowth, 23, 24, _302_ , 305\n\nin human technology, _303_ , 304\n\nin nature, 304\n\ncontrol, 91, 233, _234_ , _235_ , 281\n\naircraft, 274\n\nequifinality, 236\n\ngenetic information, 241\n\nindustrial, 245\n\nresponsive growth, 240\u201341\n\n_see also_ feedback\n\nconvection, 50, 125\n\nconvergence, 31, 36, 37, 43, 89, 307\u20139\n\n_see also_ evolution\n\nCook, Theodore Andrea, 306\n\ncooking, 32\n\ncontrolling, 233\n\nedible composites, 122\n\nsize vs. time, 42\n\nthermal conductivity, 124\n\nCope's rule, 245\n\ncopper, 107, 109, 308\n\ndensity, 112\n\nhuman use, 116, 292\n\nreduction of, 111\n\nin seawater, 110\n\nsources, 113\n\nthermal conductivity, 124\n\ncopying nature, 19, 80, 117, 249\u201388\n\nailerons, 260\n\nbarbed wire, 266\n\ncambered airfoils, 258, _259_\n\nchain saws, 267, 268, 270\n\ncomposite materials, 280\n\nCrystal Palace, 255\n\ndifficulties, 276, 310\n\nEddystone light, 251\n\nextruded fibers, 263\u201365\n\nflight, 271\u201374\n\nlow-drag submarines, 278\n\nmanipulators, 281\n\nmaterials, 285\n\nmuscle analogs, 280\n\nnanotechnology, 280\n\noscillatory swimming, 283, _284_\n\npapermaking, 261, 271\n\nperistaltic pumps, 277, _277_\n\npolymer drag reduction, 278\n\nrarity, 251\n\nshark scales, 279\n\nsmart materials, 281\n\nstreamlined bodies, 257\n\ntelephones, 265, _266_\n\ntunneling shield, 253, _254_\n\nVelcro, 268, _269_\n\nwalking vehicles, 283, _283_\n\nwhen likely, 270\u201371\n\ncorals, 94, 106, 128, 147, 280\n\ncorners, 78\u201381, 118, 289\n\ncorrugated structures, _17_ , 62, 281\n\nCox, Joseph, 268\n\ncrabs, blood vessels, 104\n\ncracks, cracking, 78\u201380, 93, 116, _119_ , 133\n\nenergetics, 119\n\nin metals, 115\n\npropagation, 115, 118\u201322, 290\n\nstopping, 120\u201324, _121_\n\nCrane, Horace, 25\n\ncrane flies, 145\n\ncranks, 180, 185, 186, 191, 192, _193_\n\ncrankshafts, 191\n\nCree, 68\n\ncrushing, 54, 132\n\ncrustaceans, molting, 24\n\nCrystal Palace, 255, _255_\n\ncubes, 76. _See_ packing, right angles, stacking\n\ncubists, 16, 65\n\nCurrey, John, 116\n\ncurved surfaces. _See_ surfaces\n\ncuticle, as composite, 123, 281\n\ncylinders, 57, _131_\n\nas beams, 55\n\ncans as, 64\n\nas columns, 54\n\nvs. cones, 303, 304\n\nfuselages, 64\n\ngrowth, _23_ , 24\n\nhydroskeletal, _149, 150_\n\ninflating, 102\n\nLaplace's law, 62\u201364, _63_\n\ntorsional stiffness, 98, 131\n\ndaddy longlegs, 55, 145, _145_\n\nDaedalus, 249\n\ndaffodils, stem stiffness, _101_\n\nDal\u00ed, Salvador, 16\n\ndamping, 90, 142\n\ndancing, 188\n\ndandelions, 53, _54_\n\nda Vinci, Leonardo, 19\n\nDawkins, Richard, 27\n\nde Mestral, Georges, 269\n\nDescartes, 40\n\ndevelopment of organism, 236\n\ndiffusion:\n\ncultural, 37, 308\n\nin human technology, 50, 289\n\nmolecular, 50, 56, 173, 289\n\ndinosaurs, 34, 43\n\ndispersal, 25\n\nDNA, 234, 236, 241, 280, 295\n\ndogs, 37\n\ndolphin, drag of, 278\n\n_see also_ whales\n\ndomes:\n\nby Brunelleschi, 138\n\ncurvature, 64\n\ngeodesic, 77, _78_\n\nin nature, 64, 78\n\ndomestication, 32\n\ndrag:\n\nfalling, 44\n\nflags, 95\n\nflight, 45\n\nkelp, 95\n\nleaves, 96\u201399, 253\n\nvs. lift, 46, 258\n\nmicroorganisms, 52\n\npumping by, 211\n\nvs. speed, 219, 225\n\nstreamlining, 257, _258_ , 278, 290\n\nvs. surface area, 44, 45\n\nfrom waves, 223, 224\n\ndragonfly anal jets, 210, 216, 217\n\nDrebbel, Cornelis, 233\n\nDriesch, Hans, 235\n\ndrills, 192\u201393, _194_\n\nducks, 51\n\nfeet, 58, 104, 275\n\nsurface swimming, 223, 224, 225, _226_\n\nductility, 113, 115, 120, 290\n\ndynamic state of body constituents, 237\u201339, 248\n\near, _66_\n\neardrum, 265, 271\n\nechinoderms. _See_ starfish, etc.\n\nEddystone light, 251, _252_\n\nEdison, Thomas, 31, 37, 266\n\nefficiency, 156\n\nflight, 47\n\njet propulsion, 217\u201320\n\nmotors, 161, 164, 174\u201375\n\nmuscle, 175\n\nthermal, 160\u201361\n\nvarious linkages, 189\n\negg, eggs:\n\nas domes, 64\n\ninformation content, 23\n\nshells, 17, 64, _124_\n\nelasticity. _See_ resilience, stiffness\n\nelastic limit, 85\n\nelastic proteins. _See_ abductin, elastin, resilin\n\nelastin, 28, _28_\n\nEldredge, Niles, 34\n\nelectrochemical series, 110\n\nelephants:\n\nboniness, 56, 137\n\nlegs, 55\n\ntrunks, 151, 183, 282\n\nenergy, 155\n\nto contract muscle, 29\n\nconversions, 152, 153\n\nin cracking, 115\n\nand resilience, 86, 89\n\nsources, 154, _155_ , 294\n\nstorage, 28, 104, 115, 198, _201_ 204, 286 _see also_ batteries\n\nstress-strain graph, 104\n\nof surfaces, 119\n\nwork of extension, 86\n\nengineering, 18, 19, 309, 310, 311\n\nengines. _See_ motors\n\nequifinality, 236\n\nEricsson, John, 287\n\nEtrich, Ignaz and Igo, 274\n\neuphorbs, 37\n\nevaporation, 125, 209\n\nevolution, 20\u201331, 213\n\nanalogy, 22\n\napparent altruism, 292\n\nconservative character, 33, 127\n\nconvergence, 31, 36, 89, 307\u20139\n\ndesign by, 22, 127\n\nextinction, 37\n\neyes, 37\n\nin human technology, 20, 307\u20139\n\nincremental character, 35, 299\n\nLamarckian, 240\n\nlimitations, 23\u201331, 291, 298\n\nmechanism, 21\u201322\n\nof multicellularity, 230, 233\n\nnovelties, 27, 293, 294\n\npreadaptations, 35\n\npunctuated equilibrium, 34\n\nrole of isolation, 33\n\nsize trends, 245\n\ntechnological analogies, 298\u2013302\n\ntime-course, 34, 294, 295, 296, 310\n\nof wheels, 188\n\n_see also groups of organisms_\n\nEwbank, Thomas, 19\n\nextensibility, _84_ , 85, 87\n\nof ropes, 88\n\nextinction, 37\n\neyes, 37, 234, 307\n\nfactories. _See_ manufacturing\n\nfailure:\n\ncrushing vs. buckling, 54\n\nlearning from, 300\n\nfairing corners, 79, 80, _81_\n\nfalling speeds, 44\u201345\n\nfan-folding, 62\n\nfans, 61\n\nfat, 43\n\nfeathers:\n\naerodynamics, 61\n\nas beams, 61\n\ninsulation, 43\n\ntorsional stiffness, _99_\n\nfeedback, 233\u201337, _234_ , _235_ , 241, 245, 274, 281, 295\n\n_see also_ control systems\n\nfeet, sole area, 43\n\nfiberglass, 122, 123, 231, 247\n\nfibers:\n\nin blood vessels, 103\n\nglass, strength, 118\n\nin hydroskeletons, 148, _149_ , 150\n\nnatural, 87, 131\n\nsynthetic, 31, 89, 92, 263\u201365, 269, 271\n\nfiltration, 17, 25\n\n_see also_ suspension feeding\n\nfish:\n\nconical myotomes, 304\n\ncooking, 42\n\nelectric, 162\n\ngills, _168_ , 210\n\njaws, 70, _70_\n\nmudskippers, _36_\n\nnostrils, 167\n\npropulsion efficiency, 219\n\nscales, 58\n\nslimes, 278\n\nstreamlining, 257\n\nswimming, 283\n\nterritories, 76\n\nFitch, John, 275\n\nfitness, 33, 236, 246, 247, 248\n\nflagella:\n\nbacterial, 29, 186, _187_\n\n_see also_ cilia\n\nflags, drag of, 95, 96\n\nflat surfaces. _See_ surfaces\n\nfleas, jumping, 39, 52, 204\n\nflexibility, 82, 106\n\nblood vessels, 102\n\nmodern plastics, 101\n\nin nature, 80, 93\n\nof tensegrities, 147\n\nand toughness, 94\n\nuses in nature, 94\u2013102\n\nflexural stiffness, 100\u2013102\n\nbeam, 130\n\nbending, 17, 59, 79, 115\n\ncylinders, 98\n\nflat surfaces, 60\u201362\n\ninsect wings, 62\n\nflies, gliding of, 47\n\nflight:\n\nby beating wings, 47\n\nbirds, 32, 220, _221_ , 222, 271, 272\n\ncontrol, 260, _261_\n\nby copying nature, 258\n\nefficiency, 47\n\ngliding, soaring, 46\u201347\n\nhistory, 271\u201374\n\ninsects, 28, 45, 202, 220, 221\n\nlighter-than-air, 151\n\norigin, animal, 27\n\npropellers, 47\n\nsafety factor, 244\n\nsize and scale, 45\u201348, 221\u201323\n\nspeeds, 46\n\nvs. swimming, 220\n\n_see also_ aircraft\n\nfloors:\n\nflatness, 59\n\nstiffening, 76, 93\n\nflow:\n\nforces of, 70\n\nheat convection, 125\n\nlaminar vs. turbulent, 52\u201353, 278, 290\n\nnon-Newtonian, 279\n\nviscoelasticity, 116\n\nviscosity, 46\n\n_see also_ blood: flow\n\nfluids:\n\nas compression elements, 148\n\nvs. solids, 83\n\nflying, mechanisms, 212\n\nflying squirrels, convergence, 37\n\nflywheels, 200\n\nfoams, 77, 121, _122_\n\nforaminifera, 65, 305, _306_\n\nFord, Henry, 35, 245\n\nforging, 116, 291\n\nfossils, size trends, 41\n\nFrench, Michael, 137\n\nfrogfish, 216, 217, 220\n\nfrogs, lungs of, 210\n\nfruit flies, speed of, 46\n\nFuller, R. Buckminster, 77, 146\n\nFulton, Robert, 275\n\nfur, 43\n\ngaits, switching, 201, _201_ , 202\n\nGalbraith, John Kenneth, 33\n\nGalileo, 39\n\ngears, 80, 189, _190_\n\ngeodesics, 72, 77, _78_\n\ngibbons, 137\n\ngiraffes, hearts of, 210\n\nglass:\n\ncrack propagation, 79, 120, 118\n\nin fiberglass, 122\n\nstrength, 118\n\nthermal conductivity, 124\n\nGlidden, Joseph, 267\n\ngliding, 46\u201347, 272\n\nanimals, 27, 46\u201347, 167\n\nplants, 273, 274\n\nby Wrights, 260\n\nGordon, James E., 92, 93, 117\n\nGould, Stephen Jay, 34, 72, 188, 297\n\ngovernor, 234\n\ngrasses, 34, 270\n\ngravity, 46\u201347, 56, 58, 59, 65, 93, 132, 138, 148, 151, 154, 291\n\ncenter of, 73, 91\n\nenergy storage, 198\n\npumping against, 209\n\nwaves, 225, 226, _226_\n\nGray, James, paradox of, 278\n\ngreenhouses, 255\n\nGriffiths, A. A., 118\n\ngrowth:\n\nbones, 24, 116, 295\n\ncones, shells, 23, 24, _302_ , 304, 305\n\ncylinders, 24\n\nmolting, 24\n\nvertebrates, 24, 28\n\nguns, 51\n\nHaish, Jacob, 267\n\nHaldane, J. B. S., 45\n\nHale, Melina, 99\n\nhammers, 52, 80, 93, 116, _303_\n\nharvestmen, 55, 145, _145_\n\nheart, hearts:\n\ncontrol of, 234\n\nas jet engines, 216\n\nmuscle action, 184\n\noutput, 213\n\nas pumps, 196, 203, 209, 210, _211_\n\ntransplanting, 247\n\nheat:\n\nfrom deformation, 115\n\nfrom elastic loss, 203\n\nin human technology, 43, 156, 158\u201360\n\nin natural technology, 161\n\nvs. size, 42\n\nthermal efficiency, 160\u201361\n\nHeilbroner, Robert, 299\n\nhelices, _26_ , 132\n\nof fibers, 148, 150\n\nself-assembly, 26\n\nsubcellular, 26, 231\n\nhelicopters, 220, 221\n\nhemoglobin, 107\n\nHenry, Joseph, 162\n\nherbivory, 108\n\nHero of Alexandria, 157, 217\n\nhexagons, 74, _75_\n\nhinges, 16, 105\n\nHooke, Robert, 263\n\nhorses, _89_\n\nboniness, 137\n\nfalling, 45\n\nsuspension, 142, _142_\n\nhull speed, 225\u201326, _226_\n\nhumans:\n\naggression, 52\n\nboniness, 137\n\ncreativity, 293, 298\n\nfalling, 44\n\ngrowth and size, 40, 43, _44_\n\nmagnetite in, 109\n\nnumber of cells, 230\n\nprotein half-life, 239\n\nsocial organization, 292, 294\n\nswimming, 225\n\nthermal conductivity, 125\n\ntime course of technology, 294, 295\u201397\n\nvariation, 236\n\nwalking on water, 49\n\nhummingbirds, 43, 220, _221_\n\nhydraulic ram, 214\n\nhydraulics:\n\nin human technology, 196, 282\n\nin nature, 17, 194, 196, 203\n\nprinciple, _195_\n\ntransmissions, 193\u201398, _195, 197_\n\nhydroplaning, 226\n\nhydropower, 164\n\nhydroskeletons, 70, 151, 153\u201376, _149_ , _150_ , 194, 290\n\nI-beams. _See_ beams\n\nicosahedra, _78_\n\ninertia, 51\u201353\n\ninformation:\n\nbit, defined, 25\n\nin control systems, 233, 241\n\nof egg, sperm, 25\n\nof genes, 236\n\nintra- vs. extracellular, 233\n\nlimitation, 25, 78\n\nof organisms, 25\u201327\n\nfor regeneration, 239\n\ninsects:\n\nflight, 24, 27, 45, 46, 202, 220, 221, 222\n\nflight muscles, 182\n\ngrowth, 24, 25\n\nhexapedalism, 73, 283\n\nresilin, _28_\n\nand surface tension, 48\n\nwingbeat frequencies, 28, 62, 182, 202\n\nwings, 62, 86\n\ninsulation, 43\n\ninterstitial animals, 113\n\nintestines, 277\n\niron:\n\ncookware, 124\n\ncost, 117\n\ndensity, 112\n\nin earth, 110\n\nhuman history, 308\n\nin humans, 108\n\noxidation, reduction, 111\n\nin seawater, 110\n\nuse in nature, 107, 110\n\njaws:\n\nleverage, 182\n\nmechanisms, 70, _70_\n\njellyfish:\n\nlocomotion, 209, 210, 216, 217, 219\n\nreproduction, 24\n\nstinging cells, 29, 174\n\nstrobili, 304\n\njet propulsion, 216, 228\n\nefficiency, 217\u201320\n\nengines, 158, 208, _215_ , 292\n\nhigh speed, 219\n\nin nature, 216, 219\n\npumps for, 210\n\nscallops, 89\n\nsquid, 150\n\n_see also_ motors: turbines\n\njoints, 191\n\njumping:\n\nheight, 39\n\ntake-off speeds, 52, 204\n\nkangaroos:\n\ngaits, 201, 202\n\njumping, 104, 204\n\nKelly, Michael, 266\n\nkelp, 94, _95_\n\nkeratin, 231\n\nKevlar, 286\n\nkidneys, 196, 232\n\nKitchen, John G. A., 277\n\nKoehl, Mimi, 95, 101\n\nKoops, Matthias, 262\n\nKramer, Max, 278\n\nLaBarbera, Michael, 188, 214\n\nlambs, leg tendons, 88\n\nLanchester, Frederick, 260\n\nland division, 74\u201375\n\nLaplace's law, 62\u201364, _63_ , 102, 210\n\nlathe, 36, _303_ , 304\n\nleaves:\n\nas beams, 60, _61_ drag, 96\u201399, 253\n\nflatness, 60\n\nflatness of, 58\n\nherbivory, 108\n\nreconfiguration, _96, 97, 98, 99_\n\nstems of (petioles) 99, _99, 185_\n\nthermal conductivity, 124\n\nthermal relations, 125\n\nof water lily, _255_ , 256\n\nwilting, 184, _185_\n\nlegs:\n\ngaits, 201, _201_ , 202\n\nnumber used, 73\n\nvs. wheels, 104, 200\n\nlength. _See_ size and scale\n\nlevers, 154, 178\u201382, _179_ , _181_ , 214\n\nhydraulic equivalent, 195\n\nnatural vs. human, 179, 184, 290\n\nas transmissions, 179, _180_\n\nlife histories, 25\n\nlift:\n\nvs. drag, 46, 258, 272\n\nvs. flying speed, 46, 222\n\norigin, 260\n\npower for, 221\n\nvs. surface area, 46, 221\n\nwindmill blades, 165\n\nligaments, _28_ , 70, 88, _89_ , 104\n\nlighthouses, 251, _252_\n\nLilienthal, Otto, 258, 270, 272\n\nlinkages, 70\n\nlizards, gliding, 27\n\nlobsters:\n\nblood vessels, 104\n\nclaw muscles, 183\n\nexoskeletons, 106\n\nlock-in, 301\u20132\n\nlocusts, gliding, 46\n\nmagnetite, 109\n\nmaintenance, 246, 281, 291\n\n_see also_ manufacturing\n\nmalleability, 113, 116\n\nmammals:\n\nbody temperature, 43\n\nbones, 55, 137\n\nevolution, 34, 37\n\ngrazing, 34\n\njaws, 182\n\nneck beams, _141_\n\nneck ligament, 88\n\nsize, 43, 137\n\nteeth, 34\n\nmanipulators, 281, _282_ , 285\n\nmanufacturing:\n\ncontrol systems, 245\n\nin human technology, 244\u201348, 291, 299\n\nmass production, 244\n\nin nature, 229\u201339, 291\n\nprecision, 242\u201344, 246\n\nproduct size, 243\n\nrepair, 239\n\nroutine maintenance, 237, 246, 291\n\nmass production, 244\n\nmass vs. volume, 42\n\nmaterials. _See specific ones_ , composite materials, etc.\n\nbioemulatory, 280, 281, 285\n\nmaterials science, 82\n\nMaxim, Hiram, 271\n\nmechanical advantage. _See_ levers\n\nmechanisms, 70, _71_ , 80\n\nmedicine, 32\n\nmetals, 16, 32, 106\u201317\n\nconductivity, electrical, 126, 162, 291\n\nconductivity, thermal, 124, 291\n\ncracking, 115, 118\n\ndiversity, 116\n\nfabrication, 81, 117\n\nin human technology, 117, 290\n\nmetal-containing compounds, 108\u20139\n\nnot in nature, 106\u201313, 126, 290, 310\n\norigin and history, 37, 308\n\nplastic behavior, 114\n\npressing, 62, 291\n\nproperties, chemical, 110\n\nproperties, mechanical, 113\u201317\n\nreduction of ores, 110\n\nstiffness, 85\n\nstress-strain graph, 114, 115\n\nversatility, 134, 141\n\nmetamorphosis, 25\n\nmice, 37, 45\n\nmicrofilaments, 26\n\nmicrophone, 266\n\nmicrotubules, 26, 132, _169_ , 280\n\nmilitary:\n\ndesign role, 33\n\n_see also_ weaponry\n\nmilkweeds, 53\n\nmist-netting, 17\n\nmixotrichs, 29, _30_\n\nMokyr, Joel, 299\n\nmolding, 80\n\nmoles:\n\nconvergence, 37\n\nforearms, 181\n\nmollusks, 23\n\nabductin, _28_ , 87, 89, 143, 203\n\nshells, 94, _167, 302, 306_\n\nsuspension feeding, 213\n\n_see also_ scallops, squid, etc.\n\nmortar, 68, 92, 93, 133, 290\n\nmotility:\n\ncellular, 26\n\n_see also_ cilia, muscle, etc.\n\nmotors, 153\u201376, 290\n\ncombustion, 33, 38, 158, 160, 164, 174, 311\n\ncontrol, 234\n\nefficiency, 161, 164, 174\u201375\n\nelectrical, 31, 161\u201363, 174, 186, 296, 297\n\nenergy sources, 153, 290\n\nevaporative, 172\n\nimbibitional, 172\n\nlinear vs. rotary, 162\n\nmuscle analogs, 280\n\nmuscles, cilia, etc., 168\u201372, _169_ , _170_ , 175, 186, _187_ , 232\n\nnuclear, 224\n\nosmotic, _173, 185_\n\npower output, 156, 158\n\nrotational, 184, 186, _187_\n\nspeed of operation, 184\n\nsteam, 35, 41, 139, 159, 21 _7, 218_ , 245, 295\n\ntransmissions for, 178, 191\u201393\n\nturbines, 41, 213, 215, _215_ , 219, 245, 292, 293\n\ntypes, 156\u201358\n\nwind and water powered, 36, 157, 163\u201368, _164, 165_ , 245\n\nmulticellularity:\n\ndevelopment, 235\n\nevolution, 230, 233\n\nregeneration, 239\n\nMumford, Lewis, 299\n\nmuscle, muscles, 70, 89, 128, 134, 150, 151, 154\n\nanalogs, 280\n\nantagonists, 203\n\ncontrol of, 234\n\nefficiency, 175\n\nfiber types, 171\n\nforce vs. work, 170\n\nhalf-life, 239\n\nin hydroskeletons, 148\n\nlength change, 180, 184\n\nlocking, 29, 170\n\nmechanism, _170_ , 232\n\nas motors, 157, 169, 232\n\nmuscular hydrostats, 151, 183, 282\n\nin neck truss, 141\n\npennate, 182, _183_\n\npower source for, 163\n\npower output vs. time, 171\n\nresponsive growth, 240\n\nsize range, 176\n\nsqueezing heart, 184\n\ntransmissions for, 177, 181\u201384, _182, 183_ , 191\u201393\n\nwithin exoskeletons, 145\n\nmuskrats, 51\n\nnails, 68, 93, 116, 290, 291\n\nnanotechnology, 280\n\nnatural selection. _See_ evolution\n\nnature, perfection of, 18\u201319\n\nnature, copying. _See_ copying nature\n\nnecks, 88, _89_ , 141, _141_\n\nNeedham, Joseph, 307\n\nnematocysts, 29\u201330\n\nnerves:\n\nconduction, 126, 163\n\ndiffusion between, 50\n\nNewcomen, Thomas, 159\n\nnoria, 214, _215_\n\nnuchal ligament, _89_\n\nnudibranchs, 30\n\nnylon. _See_ fibers, Velcro\n\noak tree, 251\n\noctopus:\n\narms, 151\n\nblood vessels, 103\n\neyes, 37\n\njetting, 216\n\nOldenburg, Claes, 17\n\nO'Neill, Patricia, 100\n\northotetrakaidecahedron, 77\n\nOrwell, George, 45\n\nOsage orange, 266, _267_\n\nosmosis, 173\u201374, _173_ , 209, 210\n\nOvid, 249\n\npacking, 68\n\npaddle wheels, 211, 223, 275, 287\n\npandas, 72\n\nPapanek, Victor, 19\n\npapermaking, 261, 271\n\nparachutes, 53 _, 54_\n\nPaxton, Joseph, 255\n\npendulums, 198, 201, 203\n\npenises, 64, 147, 151, 196\n\npennate muscles, 182, _183_\n\nperistalsis, 277\n\nPerspex. _See_ Plexiglas\n\npetioles, 99, _99, 185_\n\nPetroski, Henry, 300\n\nPettigrew, James Bell, 306\n\nPhillips, Horatio, 258, 270\n\nphotosynthesis, 57, 109, 126, 152, 154, 168\n\npiezoelectricity, 281\n\npigeons, gliding, 47\n\npipes:\n\nresistance, 278\n\nshapes, 64\n\n_see also_ blood vessels, pumps, tubes\n\nplants:\n\nevolution, 37\n\nherbivory, 108\n\n_see also_ leaves, trees, etc.\n\nplastics, 35\n\nfabrication, 80\n\nflexibility, 101\n\nin human technology, 117, 285\n\nPlexiglas, 118\n\npneumatics. _See_ hydraulics\n\nPortuguese man-of-war, 30, 148\n\npostural reflexes, 91\n\npotters' wheels, 200, 309\n\npottery, 309\n\npower, 155\n\nbacterial flagellum, 187\n\nfor flight, 221\n\nmotors, 156, 158\n\nmuscle, 163, 171\n\nin pumps, 206\n\nprairie dogs, 166, _166_ , 208, 209, 213\n\npreadaptations, 36\n\npreloading, 143\n\npressure:\n\naircraft fuselages, 64\n\nblood, 102\n\nwithin cells, 210\n\nvs. depth, 210\n\nevaporative pump, 172\n\nacross flat surfaces, 62\n\nLaplace's law, 62\n\nosmotic, 173\n\nin pumps, 206\u201314\n\n_see also_ hydraulics\n\nprestressing, 143\n\nprivilege of incumbency, 301\u20132\n\npropellers, 47, 186, 272, 284, 288, _288_\n\nairfoils, 221\n\nmaking thrust, 215\n\nvs. oars, 211\n\npropulsion efficiency, 218\n\nas pumps, 207\n\ntwisted blades, 99\n\npropulsion efficiency, 218\n\nprosthetic materials, 280, 285\n\nproteins:\n\nhalf-life, 238\n\ninstability of, 238\n\nsize, 230\n\nsynthesis, 233\n\ntolerable variation, 243\n\nturnover, 237\n\n_see also_ collagen, resilin, etc.\n\nprotozoa. _See_ foraminifera, mixotrichs, etc.\n\npumped storage, 199\n\npumps, 205\u201316, 228\n\nArchimedean screw, _288_\n\nevaporative, 208, 209\n\nfluid dynamic, 207, _208_ , 209, 211\u201313, _212_ , 292\n\nin nature, 208\u201316, 209, _211, 212_\n\nosmotic, 173\u201374, _173_ , 209, 210\n\nperistaltic, 211, 216, _277_\n\npositive displacement, _207_ , 208, 211\u201313, 209, _211_ , 292\n\npressure vs. flow, 207, 208, _215_\n\npulsatility, 102\n\nfor suspension feeding, 212\n\nvalve-and-chamber, 209, 210\n\npunctuated equilibrium, 34\n\npyramids, _23_ , 65\n\nPythagorean theorem, _75, 76_\n\nQWERTY, 301\n\nradula, 108, _108_\n\nrasps, 108, 254\n\nR\u00e9aumur, Ren\u00e9-Antoine, 262, 263\n\nrectangles, 71\n\n_see also_ right angles\n\nregeneration, 239\n\nresilience, 86, 87\n\nabductin, 28, 89, 203\n\ncollagen, 202\n\nelastin, 28\n\nmetals, 114\n\nrelative utility, 89\n\nresilin, 28, 203\n\nrubber, 86\n\nspider silk, 89\n\ntrees, 90\n\nresilin, 28, _28_ , 203, 204\n\nresponsive materials, 281\n\nRiblets, 279\n\nright angles, 16, 32, 62, 64\u201378, 81, 289\n\nin human technology, 64\n\nland division, 74\n\nin nature, 65\n\nsemicircular canals, 65, _66_\n\nrigidity. _See_ stiffness\n\nrobotics, 246, 250\n\nrobots, 281, 297\n\nRobotuna, 284\n\nrockets. _See_ jet propulsion\n\nrods, 17\n\nroofs, 57\n\ncorrugated, _17_\n\nCrystal Palace, 255\n\ndomed, 17\n\nflat, 58\n\npeaked, 138\n\nridge-and-valley, _17, 61, 255_\n\nvaulted, _58_ , 134\n\nrope, 87\u201388, 120, 152, 310\n\nconstruction, 131\n\nkelp as, 95\n\nnatural, 70\n\nsagging, 59\n\nstrength vs. stiffness, 87\n\nas tensile element, 128, 134\n\nrotary motion, 16, 162, 188, 192, _193_\n\n_see also_ motors, transmissions, wheels\n\nrotating trapezoidal illusion, 66, _67_\n\nRoux, Wilhelm, 236\n\nrubber:\n\nin human technology, 117\n\nresilience, 86\n\nstiffness, 84, 88\n\nstress-strain graph, 103, 104, 148\n\nas tensile element, 134\n\nRumsey, James, 275\n\nrunning:\n\nvs. cycling, 188\n\nenergy storage, 104, 200, _201_ , 202\n\nvs. walking, 201\u20132, _201_\n\nrusting, 111\n\nsafety factors, 55, 243\u201344, 247, 248\n\nsagging, _59_ , 92\n\nsailplanes, 46\n\nsails, sailing, 157, 293\n\nsamaras, _54_ , 274\n\nsand dollars, 167\n\nsap lifting, 172, 208, 210\n\nsatellites, 136\n\nsaws, 94, 108, 249, 267, _268_\n\n_see also_ chain saws\n\nscale. _See_ size and scale\n\nscallops:\n\nabductin, _28_ , 87, 89, 143, 203\n\ncorrugated shells, 1 _7_ , _17_\n\njet propulsion, 89, 216, 217\n\nswimming, 28, 203\n\nSch\u00e4ffer, Jacob Christian, 262\n\nSchoenheimer, Rudolph, 237\n\nSchwabe, Louis, 263\n\nscience in technology, 293\n\nsea anemones:\n\nflexural stiffness, 101\n\nhydroskeleton, 70\n\nreproduction, 24\n\nsea cucumbers, 147\n\nsea spiders, 145\n\nsea squirts. _See_ ascidians\n\nsea urchins, 149, 281\n\nseaweeds. _See_ kelp\n\nseeds:\n\nautogyrating, 53\n\nflinging, 90\n\nhydration, 173\n\nparachutes, 53\n\nself-loading, 60\n\nsemicircular canals, 65, _66_\n\nservice life, 246\n\nShadwick, Robert, 103\n\nsharks:\n\nhydroskeleton, 149\n\nskin scales, 279\n\nshearing, 290, 291\n\nin column, 132\n\nin ropes, 131\n\nshearing load:\n\nand flexural stiffness, 130\n\nand torsional stiffness, 131\n\nshell, shells:\n\nas composites, 123, 281\n\ndensity, 112\n\negg, _124_\n\ngrowth, 23, 24, 113, _302_ , 304, 305\n\nloads on, 135\n\nmollusk, 17, 17, 23, 94, 106, _124, 167_ , 241, 305, _306_\n\nas shipworm's rasp, 253, _254_\n\ntoughness, 118\n\n_see also_ domes, skulls, etc.\n\nSherrington, Charles, 242\n\nships. _See_ boats\n\nshipworm, 253, _254_\n\nshock absorbers, 90, _90_ , 197\n\nshrews, night torpor, 43\n\nsilk, spider, _90_ , 128, 132, 286\u201387\n\nproperties, 91, 286\n\nresilience, 89\n\nstrength, 92\n\nsilkworms, 132, 263\u201365, _264_\n\nsize and scale, _23_ , 39\u201356, 291\n\nbioemulation, 285\n\nblimps in nature, 152\n\nbookshelves, 60\n\ncells, 229\n\nand diffusion, 50\u201351\n\nfalling, 44\n\nflight, 45\u201348, 221\u201323\n\ngravity, 51\n\nheat gain and loss, 42\n\nhuman growth, 43, _44_\n\nhuman technology, 41, 56\n\ninertia, 51\u201353\n\nlength, surface area, volume, 41\u201348, _42_\n\nnanotechnology, 280\n\nsize ranges, 39, _40_\n\nstructures, 53\u201356\n\nand surface tension, 48\u201350\n\nties vs. struts, 135\u201336, 144\u201346\n\nviscous effects, 215\n\nwaves, 51, 226\n\nwheels in nature, 191\n\nskeletons:\n\narthropods, 145, _145_\n\ngrowth, 18, 24, 295\n\nhorse, _89_\n\nsponge, 72, _73_\n\nturtles, 28\n\n_see also_ bone\n\nskin, stress-strain graph, 104\n\nskulls, 17\n\n_see also_ shells\n\nsmart materials, 281\n\nSmeaton, John, 251\n\nSmith, Francis Pettit, 287\n\nSmith, John Maynard, 272\n\nsnails, radulas of, 108, _108_\n\nsnakes, jaws of, 70\n\nsoaring, 47, 167\n\nSocial Darwinism, 242, 300\n\nsolids, 83, 84\n\nSotavalta, Olavi, 202\n\nspheres:\n\nfalling speeds, 45\n\nLaplace's law, 62\u201364, 63\n\nspicules, 72, 146\n\nspider crabs, 145\n\nspiders:\n\nfeeding, 17\n\nhydraulic legs, 17, 196\n\nmolting, 24\n\nspinning, 117\n\nwebs, 17, 59, 89, _90_ , 286\n\n_see also_ silk\n\nspinneret, 264\n\nspinning, 131, 265, 308\n\nspirals, 302\u20137\n\nlogarithmic, 305\u20137, _305_ , _306_\n\nin nature, _306_\n\nspirochetes, 29, _30_\n\nsponges:\n\nfiltration by, 167, 208, _212_ , 213\n\npumping, 209, _212_\n\nskeletons, 72, 73, 146\n\nsprings, 86, 199\u2013200\n\nautomobiles, 142\u201343, _142_\n\nin nature, 142\u201343, _142_\n\nresilience, 90, 114\n\nsquare. _See_ right angles\n\nsquid:\n\nblood vessels, 103\n\ngiant, 104\n\nhydroskeleton, 149\n\njetting, 150, 210, 215, 216, 217, 219\n\ntentacles, 151, 183, _282_\n\nsquirrels, flying, 27\n\nstacking, 65, 68, 138\n\nstamping, 52, 81\n\nstarfish:\n\nregeneration, 240\n\nskeleton, 121\n\ntube feet, 149, 196\n\ntwisty arms, 100\n\nstatically determined structures, 71\n\nsteam engines. _See_ motors: steam\n\nsteel, 295\n\nproperties, 86, 92, 127\n\nstress-strain graph, 114\n\nstems, close packed cells, 77\n\nStevenson, Alan, 253\n\nstiffness, 17, _84_ , 85, 87\n\nof blood vessels, 102\n\nof compressive elements, 132\n\ncrack propagation, 79, 93\n\nvs. density, 126\n\nhoneycomb reinforcement, 76\n\nin human technology, 82, 92\u201394, 92, 290\n\nhydroskeletons, 151\n\nand material economy, 93\n\nof metals, 115\n\nin nature, 82, 92\u201394, 290\n\nnon-constancy, 85\n\nvs. other properties, 92\n\nof ropes, etc., 87\u201389\n\nof tensegrities, 147\n\nof tensile elements, 139\n\nvs. toughness, 94, 118\n\nof various materials, 92\n\n_see also_ flexural stiffness, torsional stiffness\n\nstone, stones, 133, 134, 253\n\nbrittleness, 117\n\nin human technology, 117, 247\n\nstrain, 84, 115\n\nstreamlining, 257, _258_ , 270, 271, 290\n\nstrength, _84_ , 85, 87\n\nin human technology, 92\u201394\n\nof metals, 116\n\nin nature, 92\u201394, 92\n\nvs. other properties, 92\n\nof ropes, 88\n\nstress, stresses, 83, 84, 129, _129, 130, 131_\n\nstress-strain graphs, _83_ , 84, _84_ , 85, 87\n\nbiological materials, 104\n\nblood vessels, _86_ , 103\n\nbone, _114_ , 116\n\nmetals, _114_ , 115\n\nrubber, 103, 104, 148\n\nskin, 104\n\ntendon, 86, _86_ , 104, 114\n\nstretch. _See_ strain, stiffness\n\nstruts, 70, 72\n\n_see also_ compression elements\n\nsubmarines, 210, 223\u201328, 258, 278, 283, 291, 302\n\nsurface area. _See_ size and scale\n\nsurface ships. _See_ boats\n\nsurface swimming, 223\u201328\n\nsurface tension, 48, 289\n\nand insects, 48\n\nvs. size, 48\u201350\n\nwater striders, 48, 119\n\nwaves, 51, 226\n\nsurfaces:\n\ncorrugated, _17_\n\nenergy of, 119\n\nflat vs. curved, 57\u201364,289\n\nsurveying, 74\u201375\n\nsuspension feeding, 209\n\nascidians, 107, _107_\n\nmollusks, 213\n\npumps for, 212\n\nsponges, 167, 208, _212_ , 213\n\nswimming:\n\nat surface, 223\u201328\n\nhydroplaning, 226\n\njet propulsion, 17, 219\n\nmechanisms, 212\n\nTaylor, Frederick W., 245\n\ntechnology transfer, 29\u201331\n\nteepee, 66\n\nteeth, 106\n\nas composites, 123\n\nenamel, 94, 280\n\ngears, 80\n\nof herbivores, _34_ , 108, 295\n\nmammals, 34\n\nmolluscan, 281\n\ntensile loading, 135\n\nwear, 241, 295\n\ntelephone, 31, 37, 265, _266_\n\ntemperature:\n\nbody, 43, 238\n\nand chemical reactions, 235\n\nand heat engines, 160\u201361\n\ntendon, tendons, 70, 128, 134\n\nAchilles, _89_\n\nattachments, 138\n\nenergy storage, 104, 200, 202\n\nhalf-life, 239\n\nmicrostructure, _231_\n\nproperties, 91\n\nresilience, 91\n\nsafety factor, 244\n\nstiffness, 88, 93\n\nstress-strain graph, _86_ , 104, 114\n\ntensegrity, 146, _147_\n\ntensile elements, 128, 134, 152\n\nvs. compressive elements, 135\n\nnature's preference, 135, 290\n\nsheaths as, 148\n\nsize and shape, 135, 145\n\nstiffness, 139\n\ntension:\n\nin column, _133_\n\nand corners, 79\n\nin curved surface, 62\n\nand joinery, 68\n\nin string, 63\n\ntesting, 129\n\n_Teredo_ , 253, _254_\n\ntermites:\n\nintestinal fauna, 29\n\nmound ventilation, 167\n\ntextiles. _See_ fibers, weaving\n\nthermal efficiency, 160\u201361\n\nthermodynamics:\n\nfirst law, 155, 286\n\nsecond law, 156, 160\n\nThompson, D'Arcy, 41, 137, 141, 306\n\nthorns, 266, _267_ , 271\n\nties. _See_ tensile elements\n\ntin, 107, 109, 111\n\ntits, 32\n\ntoilets, 233, _235_\n\ntongues, 151, 282\n\ntoolmaking, 32, 241, 294, 309\n\ntorsion, 36, _100_ , 261\n\ntorsional stiffness, 98, 99\u2013100, 131\n\ntoughness, _84_ , 86, 87\n\nvs. brittleness, 290\n\nmetals, 113\n\nvs. other properties, 92\n\nshell, 118\n\nvs. stiffness, 118\n\ntowers, 146, _147_\n\ntransformers:\n\nelectrical, 163, 214\n\nfluid mechanical, 214\u201316, 219, 291\n\ntransmissions, 153, 154, 177\u201386, _180, 190_\n\nhydraulic, 193\u201398, _195, 197_\n\nlevers as, 179, _181_\n\nfor muscles, 177, _182_ , _183_ , 191\u201393, _194_\n\nwheels in, 189\n\ntranspiration, 172, 208\n\ntrapezoids, 66, _67_\n\ntrees:\n\nas beams, 253\n\ndamping, 90\n\nlifting sap, 172, 208, 210\n\nresilience, 90\n\nresponsive growth, 240\n\nsafety factor, 244\n\ntrunks, 17, 65, 128, 137, 144, 145\n\n_see also_ leaves, wood, etc.\n\ntriangles:\n\nin human technology, 71\n\nin nature, 71\n\nsurveying, 74\n\ntrusses, _61_ , 71, _140_ , 141, 142\n\n_see also_ beams\n\ntubes, 17\n\n_see also_ cylinders, pipes\n\ntumbleweeds, 188\n\ntunicates. _See_ ascidians\n\ntunneling, 253, _254_ , 268\n\nturbines. _See_ motors\n\nturtles, skeleton of, 28\n\nTwiddle-fish, 284, _284_ , 285\n\ntwisting, 98, 131\n\n_see also_ torsion, torsional stiffness\n\ntypewriters, 199, 296, 301\n\nundulipodia, 29\n\nvanadium, 107, 110, 111\n\nvehicles, 16, 35\n\nlegged, 74, 250, 283, _283_\n\n_see also_ aircraft, automobiles, etc.\n\nVelcro, 268, _269_ , 270, 271\n\nvertebrates:\n\nelastin, 28\n\nevolution, 35\n\neyes, 37\n\ngrowing skeleton, 24, 28\n\nVHS videotape system, 301\n\n_Victoria amazonica_ , 255, _255_\n\nVincent, Julian, 231\n\nvirus coats, _78_\n\nviscoelasticity, 116\n\nviscosity, 46, 53\n\nand pumping, 277\n\nvs. scale, 52, 215\n\nvocal cords, 90\n\nvolume. _See_ size and scale\n\nwalking, 73\n\nvs. cycling, 188\n\nenergy storage, 200, _201_\n\nvs. running 201\u20132, _201_\n\nvehicles, 250, 283, _283_\n\non water, 48\u201349\n\nwasps, 76, 261\n\nwater:\n\ncomposition, 110\n\nfor cooling, 125\n\ndensity, 42, 112\n\nwater lily, 255, _255_\n\nwater striders, 48, _49_ , 119, 223\n\nwater wheels, 157, 163, _164_ , 245\n\n_see also_ motors\n\nWatt, James, 35, 160, 191, 234, 293\n\nwaves, surface:\n\ncapillary, 51, 227, _227_\n\ngravity, 51, 95, 224\u201327, _225_ , _226_ , 258\n\nsurface tension, 51, 227, _227_\n\nweaponry, 31, 52\n\narchery, 37, 127, _194_ , 200\n\ncatapults, ballistae, 127, 199, 200\n\nfirearms, 51\n\nlongbows, 127\n\nweaving, 37, 308, 310\n\nweight, 42, 51\n\n_see also_ gravity\n\nWeis-Fogh, Torkel, 203\n\nwhales:\n\nfeeding, 17\n\nlargest, 40\n\nstreamlining, 257, _258_\n\nswimming, 224, 284, 288\n\nWheatstone, Charles, 162\n\nwheels, 16, 162, 166, 186\u201391, 290, 311\n\nadvantages, 189, 204\n\nbacterial flagella, 186, _187_\n\ncultural factors, 189\n\ndisadvantages, 188, 189\n\nhistory, 188\n\nvs. legs, 105\n\nin machinery, 189\n\non Mesoamerican toys, 189\n\npotters', 200\n\n_see also_ bearings\n\nWhitney, Eli, 37, 245\n\nwind:\n\nover burrows and mounds, 166\n\nand flight, 46\n\non leaves, 96\n\non wings, 62\n\nwindlass, 179, _180_\n\nwindmills, 36, 157, 163, 164, _165_\n\nblades, 97\n\n_see also_ motors\n\nwindows, 67, 67, 80\n\nwindthrow, 244\n\nwings. _See_ airfoils\n\nwires, 126, 291, 296\n\nwood, 106, 253\n\napplications, 91\n\nas composite, 123, 231, _232_ , 280\n\ndigestion, 268\n\nfresh vs. dry, 92\n\ngrowth, 113\n\nin human technology, 117, 247\n\njoinery, 138\n\nloads on, 135\n\nmaking paper from, 261\n\npreloading, 144\n\nproperties, 127\n\nstiffness, 92\n\nstrength, 92, 145\n\nthermal conductivity, 124\n\nwork, 154\n\nwork of extension, _84_ , 86, 87\n\n_see also_ toughness\n\nworms:\n\nhydroskeletons, 70, 151, 196\n\nperistaltic pumping, 211, _211_\n\nshapes, 64\n\ntubes, 17\n\nWright, Wilbur and Orville, 37, 260, 270, 272\n\nYoung's modulus. _See_ stiffness\n\nYoung, Thomas, 85\n\nZulu, 66\nMore praise for _Cats' Paws and Catapults_\n\n\"[Steven Vogel] writes with unusual recognition of the needs of the inexpert reader.\"\n\n\u2014Philip Morrison, _Scientific American_\n\n\"Unceasingly, [Vogel] advocates the fun of science.\"\n\n\u2014Peter Gorner, _Chicago Tribune_\n\n\"If [D'Arcy] Thompson's work defined the classical period in the science of form, the field has just entered its renaissance. One of the leaders of the resurgence is the zoologist Steven Vogel.\"\n\n\u2014Tyler Volk, _The Sciences_\n\n\"[F]ew scientific books show; most scientific books tell, recite strange names, and wallow in complexity. But over the years I have come to expect that Steven Vogel will always show me science. . . . Any of [Vogel's] books could entertain an expert or an amateur.\"\n\n\u2014Mike May, _American Scientist_\n\n\"Who is the better technologist, Mother Nature-source of seashells, spider webs, and birds' wings\u2014or the human engineer\u2014creator of skyscrapers, nylon, and airplanes? This engrossing question lies at the heart of a fine new book by Steven Vogel, an expert in biomechanics with a flair for genial philosophizing.\"\n\n\u2014Samuel Florman, author of _The Civilized Engineer_ and _The Existential Pleasures of Engineering_\n\n\"Full of ideas and well-explained principles that will bring new understanding of everyday things to both scientists and non-scientists alike.\"\n\n\u2014R. MCNEILL ALEXANDER, _NATURE_\n\n\"This elegant comparison of human and biological technology will forever change the way you look at each.\"\n\n\u2014MICHAEL LABARBERA, _AMERICAN SCIENTIST_\n\n\"Perfect for the lay reader.... It is Vogel's particular genius to illustrate the principles of structural forces.\"\n\n\u2014M. R. MONTGOMERY, _NEW YORE TIMES BOOK REVIEW_\n_Cats' Paws and Catapults_ is about the ways living things work\u2014and walk, run, jump, fly, and grow. Inviting the reader into the surprising world of biomechanics, Steven Vogel explains how physical law, size, and historical accident work together to determine both nature's designs and the things that we make.\n\nNature and human designers share the same physical environment, yet their designs have turned out to be wildly dissimilar. Our technology, for example, goes around on wheels\u2014and on rotating pulleys, gears, shafts, and cams\u2014yet in nature only the tiny propellers of bacteria spin as true wheels. Our hinges turn because hard parts slide around each other, whereas nature's hinges (a rabbit's ear, for example) more often swing by bending flexible materials. Why did these \"technologies\" take such separate paths, and what can we learn from their differences?\nCopyright \u00a9 1998 by Steven Vogel\n\nAll rights reserved  \nFirst published as a Norton paperback 2000\n\nFor information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to  \nPermissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110.\n\nThe text and display of this book were composed in Adobe Garamond  \nDesktop composition by Tom Ernst  \nBook design by BTD\/Mary A. Wirth\n\nThe Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:  \nVogel, Steven, 1940-  \nCats' paws and catapults : mechanical worlds of nature and people  \n\/ by Steven Vogel ; illustrated by Kathryn K. Davis,  \np. cm.  \nIncludes bibliographical references and index.  \nISBN 0-393-04641-9  \n1. Biomechanics. 2. Mechanics. I. Title.  \nQH513.V64 1998\n\n571.4\u20143-dc21 97-44807\n\nCIP\n\n**ISBN 0-393-31990-3 pbk**.\n\nISBN 978-0-393-35295-5 (e-book)\n\nW. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110  \nwww.wwnorton.com\n\nW. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75\/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \n**An utterly astounding and beautiful creature who may become one of the most valuable artists of our time.**\n\n\u2014JAMES BALDWIN\n\n**Is there a more generous, compelling talent on either side of the Atlantic than Suzan-Lori Parks?** I sing her praises without apology, and gladly. Her vast and troubling talent is a wholly original force. . . . She has burst through every known convention to invent a new theatrical language, like a jive Samuel Beckett, while exploding American cultural myths and stereotypes along the way. **She's passionate and jokey, and some kind of genius.**\n\n\u2014JOHN HEILPERN, _New York Observer_ and _Vogue_\n\n**A dense yet haunting personal vision.** Surrealistic sideshow, troubled dream, poetic riff on black identity. . . . If you expect plays to deliver tidy meanings, you should probably steer clear. If, however, you like the freedom to wonder (and wander) about works of art, if the space between words intrigues you as much as the words themselves, then _The America Play_ is **definitely worthy of your concentrated attention.**\n\n\u2014DAVID RICHARDS, _New York Times_\n\n**Why all the excitement?** Because of Parks's poetic language, her stagecraft, her humor; because she's writing about American and African-American history in all its varieties of loss and survival. **Conventional theatre just covers up the sound of history. Parks lets us hear it, if we'll let ourselves hear her.**\n\n\u2014ERIKA MUNK, _Washington Post_\n\n**Suzan-Lori Parks may be the imaginative wake-up call American drama desperately needs.**\n\n\u2014BILL MARX, _Boston Phoenix_\n\n_Copyright \u00a9 1995 by Suzan-Lori Parks_\n\nImperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom _copyright \u00a9 1986, 1989 by Suzan-Lori Parks_\n\nBetting on the Dust Commander _copyright \u00a9 1987 by Suzan-Lori Parks_\n\nPickling _copyright \u00a9 1988, 1990 by Suzan-Lori Parks_\n\nThe Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World _copyright \u00a9 1989, 1992 by Suzan-Lori Parks_\n\nDevotees in the Garden of Love _copyright \u00a9 1991 by Suzan-Lori Parks_\n\n_The America Play copyright \u00a9 1992, 1994 by Suzan-Lori Parks_\n\nThe America Play and Other Works _is published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 520 Eighth Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10018-4156._\n\n_All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher._\n\n_Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that this material, being fully protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions, is subject to a royalty. All rights including, but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of these plays by educational institutions, permission for which must be secured from the author's representative: George P. Lane, Creative Artists Agency, 162 Fifth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10010; (212) 277-9000._\n\n_This publication is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency._\n\n_TCG books are exclusively distributed to the book trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, 1045 Westgate Drive, St. Paul, MN 55114._\n\n_Front and back cover: photos by Marianne Bernstein, images by Light House Design._\n\n_Back cover photo is of Reggie Montgomery: The Foundling Father, as Abraham Lincoln in_ The America Play.\n\n_Parks, Suzan-Lori._\n\n_The America play, and other works \/ Suzan-Lori Parks. \u2014 1st ed._\n\n_ISBN-13:_ 978-1-5593-6736-3\n\n_1. Afro-Americans\u2014Drama. I. Title._\n\n_PN3566.A736A8 1995 812'.54\u2014dc20 94-26687 CIP_\n\n_Design by Cynthia Krupat_\n\n_Composition by The Typeworks_\n\n_First Edition, April 1995_\n\n_Sixth Printing, May 2007_\nCONTENTS\n\n_Essays_\n\n_Possession_\n\nFROM _Elements of Style_\n\n_An Equation for Black People Onstage_\n\n_Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom_\n\nPart 1: Snails\n\nPart 2: Third Kingdom\n\nPart 3: Open House\n\nThird Kingdom (Reprise)\n\nPart 4: Greeks (or The Slugs)\n\n_Betting on the Dust Commander_\n\n_Pickling_\n\n_The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World_\n\n_Devotees in the Garden of Love_\n\n_The America Play_\n\nAct One: Lincoln Act\n\nAct Two: The Hall of Wonders\n\nA. Big Bang\n\nB. Echo\n\nC. Archeology\n\nD. Echo\n\nE. Spadework\n\nF. Echo\n\nG. The Great Beyond\nFOR MOM AND DAD\n_Essays_\n\n1994\n_Possession_\n\n**possession. 1.** the action or fact of possessing, or the condition of being possessed. **2.** the holding or having of something as one's own, or being inhabited and controlled by a demon or spirit.\n\n_the plays should have the half-life of plutonium_\n\n---\n\nOne day I was taking a nap. I woke up and stared at the wall: still sort of dreaming. Written up there between the window and the wall were the words, \"This is the death of the last negro man in the whole entire world.\" Written up there in black vapor. I said to myself, \"You should write that down,\" so I went over to my desk and wrote it down. Those words and my reaction to them became a play.\n\nWriting I dance around spinning around to \"get out of the way\" like Zen sort of, the self simultaneously disappears _his bones cannot be found_ and is revealed. The definition of possession cancels itself out. The relationship between possessor and possessed is, like ownership is, multidirectional.\n\n|\n\n_The leap demanded that I commit myself to the clear impossibility of becoming a writer, and attempting to save my family that way._\n\n\u2014 _James Baldwin_\n\n---|---\n\n_as a child I wanted to do something great like become a go-go dancer or a geologist or ascend into heaven._\n\n---\n\nWho do I write for? To answer \"myself\" begets another question; that is, \"Who am I?\" If I answered that \"I write for the audience,\" I would be lying. I write for the figures in the plays: CHONA, MONA, VERONA, MRS. SAXON, MRS. SMITH, BUFFY & MUFFY & DUFFY, KIN-SEER, SHARK-SEER, US-SEER, SOUL-SEER, OVER-SEER, DARLY & JUNIOR, LILY, ODELIA & GEORGE, LUCI & MARE, HAM, PRUNES AND PRISMS, QUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH, BLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON, BLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK, LOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK, YES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD, BEFORE COLUMBUS, VENUS, THE NEGRO RESURRECTIONIST, THE CHORUS OF THE LOVELORN THRONG, THE FOUNDLING FATHER AS ABRAHAM LINCOLN & LUCY & BRAZIL.\n\nTheatre is the place which best allows me to figure out how the world works. What's going on here. So much of the discussion today in literary criticism by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and others concerns how the African-American literary contribution should be incorporated into the canon. The history of Literature is in question. And the history of History is in question too. A play is a blueprint of an event: a way of creating and rewriting history through the medium of literature. Since history is a recorded or remembered event, theatre, for me, is the perfect place to \"make\" history\u2014that is, because so much of African-American history has been unrecorded, dismembered, washed out, one of my tasks as playwright is to\u2013through literature and the special strange relationship between theatre and real\u2013life\u2014locate the ancestral burial ground, dig for bones, find bones, hear the bones sing, write it down.\n\nThe bones tell us what was, is, will be; and because their song is a play\u2014something that through a production _actually happens_ \u2014I'm working theatre like an incubator to create \"new\" historical events. I'm re-membering and staging historical events which, through their happening on stage, are ripe for inclusion in the canon of history. Theatre is an incubator for the creation of historical events\u2014and, as in the case of artificial insemination, the baby is no less human.\n\n_memory un-remembered dis-membered re-member \"his bones cannot be found\" putting the body back together_\n\n---\n\n_A person dies and yet continues to live: he is a living-dead, and no other term can describe him better than that. . . . The living dead are bilingual . . . and speak in nasal tones. They belong to the time period of the Zamani [past] and by entering individuals in the Sasa [present] period, they become our contemporaries. The state of possession and mediumship is one of contemporarizing the past, bringing into human history the beings essentially beyond the horizon of present time._\n\n\u2014 _John S. Mbiti,_ African Religions and Philosophy\n\nThrough each line of text I'm rewriting the Time Line\u2014creating history where it is and always was but has not yet been divined.\nFROM\n\n_Elements of Style_\n\n---\n\nI'm writing this essay for 2 reasons. First: to talk about my work\u2014to give those readers, scholars, directors and performers of my plays a way in\u2014so that instead of calling me up they can, with this \"guide,\" dive into an examination with great confidence. Secondly, I want to examine what seems to me a real crisis in American dramatic literature. I'm hoping to form a sort of bulwark against an insidious, tame-looking, schmaltz-laden mode of expression that threatens to cover us all, like Vesuvius, in our sleep.\n\nAs a writer my job is to write good plays; it's also to defend dramatic literature against becoming \"Theatre of Schmaltz.\" For while there are several playwrights whose work I love love love, it also seems that in no other form of writing these days is the writing so awful\u2014so intended to produce some reaction of sorts, to discuss some issue: the play-as-wrapping-paper-version-of-hot-newspaper-headline, trying so hard to be so hip; so uninterested in the craft of writing: the simple work of putting one word next to another; so uninterested in the marvel of live bodies on stage. Theatre seems mired in the interest of stating some point, or tugging some heartstring, or landing a laugh, or making a splash, or wagging a finger. In no other artform are the intentions so slim! As a playwright I try to do many things: explore the form, ask questions, make a good show, tell a good story, ask more questions, take nothing for granted.\n\nThis essay is intended primarily for the new generation of theatre makers. For those of us who haven't yet reached the point where we can say we've spent \u00bd our lives in theatre. I've been writing plays for 11 years now; all along I've felt that the survival of this splendid artform\u2014an art that is not \"poor film\" or \"cheap TV\" but an art so specific and strange in its examination of the human condition\u2014depends not only on the older guard but also on those of us who are relative newcomers.\n\nThere are many ways to challenge ourselves as theatre artists. Here are some ideas, feelings, thoughts, takes on the world, riffs, ways of approaching the word, the page, the event, the subject, the stage, that keep me _awake._\n\n---\n\n_theatre_\n\nJesus. Right from the jump, ask yourself: \" _Why_ does this thing I'm writing _have_ to be a _play_?\" The words \"why,\" \"have\" and \"play\" are key. If you don't have an answer then get out of town. No joke. The last thing American theatre needs is another lame play.\n\n|\n\n_form and content_\n\n---|---\n\n|\n\n_Form is never more than an extension of content._\n\n\u2014 _Robert Creeley to Charles Olson_\n\n---|---\n\n_as Louis MacNeice sez: \"the shape is \u00bd the meaning.\"_\n\n---\n\nA playwright, as any other artist, should accept the bald fact that content determines form and form determines content; that form and content are interdependent. Form should not be looked at askance and held suspect\u2014form is not something that \"gets in the way of the story\" but is an integral part of the story. This understanding is important to me and my writing. This is to say that as I write along the container dictates what sort of substance will fill it and, at the same time, the substance is dictating the size and shape of the container. Also, \"form\" is not a strictly \"outside\" thing while \"content\" stays \"inside.\" It's like this: I am an African-American woman\u2014this is the form I take, my content predicates this form, and this form is inseparable from my content. No way could I be me otherwise.\n\nPlaywrights are often encouraged to write 2-act plays with traditional linear narratives. Those sorts of plays are fine, but we should understand that the form is not merely a docile passive vessel, but an active participant in the sort of play which ultimately inhabits it. Why linear narrative at all? Why choose that shape? If a playwright chooses to tell a dramatic story, and realizes that there are essential elements of that story which lead the writing outside the realm of \"linear narrative,\" then the play naturally assumes a new shape. I'm saying that the inhabitants of Mars do not look like us. Nor should they. I'm also saying that Mars is with us\u2014right on our doorstep and should be explored. Most playwrights who consider themselves avant-garde spend a lot of time badmouthing the more traditional forms. The naturalism of, say, Lorraine Hansberry is beautiful and should not be dismissed simply because it's naturalism. We should understand that realism, like other movements in other artforms, is a specific response to a certain historical climate. I don't explode the form because I find traditional plays \"boring\"\u2014I don't really. It's just that those structures never could accommodate the figures which take up residence inside me.\n\n_in X-vids the cum-shot is the money shot. Yeah but it's not a question of the way girls cum vs. the way boys cum. I'm not looking at a single sexual encounter but something larger, say, in this context, the history of all sexual encounters all over the globe, all animals included from the big word \"GO!\" until Now and through the Great Beyond. Rep & Rev are key in examining something larger than one moment. Rep & Rev create space for metaphor &c._\n\n---\n\n_repetition and revision_\n\n\"Repetition and Revision\" is a concept integral to the Jazz esthetic in which the composer or performer will write or play a musical phrase once and again and again; etc.\u2014with each revisit the phrase is slightly revised. \"Rep & Rev\" as I call it is a central element in my work; through its use I'm working to create a dramatic text that departs from the traditional linear narrative style to look and sound more like a musical score. In my first play, _The Sinners Place_ (1983), history simply repeated itself. With _Imperceptible Mutabilities_ (1986) and the others I got a little more adventurous. With each play I'm finding the only way that that particular dramatic story can be told. I'm also asking how the structure of Rep & Rev and the stories inherent in it\u2014a structure which creates a drama of accumulation\u2014can be accommodated under the rubric of Dramatic Literature where, traditionally, all elements lead the audience toward some single explosive moment.\n\nRepetition: we accept it in poetry and call it \"incremental refrain.\" For the most part, incremental refrain creates a weight and a rhythm. In dramatic writing it does the same\u2014yes; but again, what about all those words over and over? We all want to get to the CLIMAX. Where does repetition fit? First, it's not just repetition but repetition with _revision._ And in drama change, revision, is the thing. Characters refigure their words and through a refiguring of language show us that they are experiencing their situation anew. Secondly, a text based on the concept of repetition and revision is one which breaks from the text which we are told to write\u2014the text which cleanly ARCS. Thirdly, Rep & Rev texts create a real challenge for the actor and director as they create a physical life appropriate to that text. In such plays we are not moving from A \u2192 B but rather, for example, from A \u2192 A \u2192 A \u2192 B \u2192 A. Through such movement we refigure A. And if we continue to call this movement FORWARD PROGRESSION, which I think it is, then we refigure the idea of forward progression. And if we insist on calling writings structured with this in mind PLAYS, which I think they are, then we've got a different kind of dramatic literature.\n\nWhat does it mean for characters to say the same thing twice? 3 times? Over and over and over and oh-vah. Yes. How does that effect their physical life? Is this natural? Non-natural? Real? In _Betting on the Dust Commander_ (1987), the \"climax\" could be the accumulated weight of the repetition\u2014a residue that, like city dust, stays with us.\n\nAfter years of listening to Jazz, and classical music too, I'm realizing that my writing is very influenced by music; how much I employ its methods. Through reading lots I've realized how much the idea of Repetition and Revision is an integral part of the African and African-American literary and oral traditions.\n\nI am most interested in words and how they impact on actors and directors and how those folks physicalize those verbal aberrations. How does this Rep & Rev\u2014a literal incorporation of the past\u2014impact on the creation of a theatrical experience?\n\n\" _yesterday today next summer tomorrow just uh moment uhgoh in 1317 dieded thuh last black man in thuh whole entire world_.\"\n\n---\n\n_time_\n\nI walk around with my head full of lay-person ideas about the universe. Here's one of them: \"Time has a circular shape.\" Could Time be tricky like the world once was\u2014looking flat from our place on it\u2014and through looking at things beyond the world we found it round? Somehow I think Time could be like this too. Not that I'm planning to write a science book\u2014the goofy idea just helps me NOT to take established shapes for granted. Keeps me awing it. Attaches the idea of Rep & Rev to a larger shape.\n\nAlso: lookie here!:\n\n  | Standard Time Line and Standard Plot Line are in cahoots!\n\n---|---\n\n|\n\n_etymology_\n\nI spend a lot of time reading the dictionary. The word \"grammar\" is etymologically related to the word \"charm.\" Most words have fabulous etymologies. Thrilling histories. Words are very old things. Because words are so old they hold; they have a big connection with the what was. Words are spells in our mouths. My interest in the history of words\u2014where they came from, where they're going\u2014has a direct impact on my playwrighting because, for me, Language is a physical act. It's something which involves your entire body\u2014not just your head. Words are spells which an actor consumes and digests\u2014and through digesting creates a performance on stage. Each word is configured to give the actor a clue to their physical life. Look at the difference between \"the\" and \"thuh.\" The \"uh\" requires the actor to employ a different physical, emotional, vocal attack.\n\n---|---\n\n_Shrink: Do you hear voices? Playwright: Isnt that my job?_\n\n_(time) love distance (history)_\n\n---\n\n_ghost_\n\nA person from, say, time immemorial, from, say, PastLand, from somewhere back there, say, walks into my house. She or he is always alone and will almost always take up residence in a corner. Why they're alone I don't know. Perhaps they're coming missionary style\u2014there are always more to follow. Why they choose a corner to stand in I don't know either\u2014maybe because it's the intersection of 2 directions\u2014maybe because it's safe.\n\nThey are not _characters._ To call them so could be an injustice. They are _figures, figments, ghosts, roles, lovers_ maybe, _speakers_ maybe, _shadows, slips, players_ maybe, maybe _someone else's pulse._\n\n---\n\n_math_\n\nThe equations of some plays:\n\n* * *\n\nPICKLING the play iz trying to find an equation for time _saved\/saving_ time but theatre\/experience\/performing\/being\/living etc. is all about _spending_ time. No equation or. . . .?\n\n* * *\n\n---\n\n_bad math_\n\nx + y = meaning. The ability to make simple substitutions is equated with _clarity._ We are taught that plays are merely staged essays and we begin to believe that characters in plays are symbols for some obscured \"meaning\" rather than simply the thing itself. As Beckett sez: \"No symbols where none intended.\" Don't ask playwrights what their plays mean; rather, tell them what you think and have an exchange of ideas.\n\n---\n\n_the NEA hoopla_\n\nOverweight southern senators are easy targets. They too easily become focal points of all evil, allowing the arts community to WILLFULLY IGNORE our own bigotry, our own petty evils, our own intolerance which\u2014evil senators or no\u2014will be the death of the arts.\n\n---\n\n_history_\n\nHistory is time that won't quit.\n\n---\n\n_dance_\n\nIf you're one who writes sitting down, once before you die try dancing around as you write. It's the old world way of getting to the deep shit.\n\n---\n\n_humor_\n\nA playwright should pack all five, all six\u2014all 7 senses. The 6th helps you feel another's pulse at great distances; the 7th sense is the sense of humor. Playwrights can come from the most difficult circumstances, but having a sense of humor is what happens when you \"get out of the way.\" It's sorta Zen. Laughter is very powerful\u2014it's not a way of escaping anything but a way of arriving on the scene. Think about laughter and what happens to your body\u2014it's almost the same thing that happens to you when you throw up.\n\n---\n\n_action in the line_\n\nThe action goes in the line of dialogue instead of always in a pissy set of parentheses. _How_ the line should be delivered is contained in the line itself. Stage directions disappear. Dialogue becomes rich and strange. It's an old idea. The Greeks did it and Shakespeare too, all over the place. Something to try at least once before you die.\n\n---\n\n_sex_\n\nPeople have asked me why I don't put any sex in my plays. \"The Great Hole of History\"\u2014like, duh.\n\n---\n\n_a_ ( _rest_ )\n\nTake a little time, a pause, a breather; make a transition.\n\n---\n\n_a spell_\n\nAn elongated and heightened (rest). Denoted by repetition of figures' names with no dialogue. Has sort of an architectural look.\n\nLUCY | LINCOLN\n\n---|---\n\nBRAZIL | BOOTH\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER and | LINCOLN\n\nLUCY | BOOTH\n\nBRAZIL | LINCOLN\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER | BOOTH\n\n_and_\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER\n\n|\n\n---|---\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER\n\n|\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER\n\n---\n\nThis is a place where the figures experience their pure true simple state. While no \"action\" or \"stage business\" is necessary, directors should fill this moment as they best see fit.\n\nThe feeling: look at a daguerreotype; or: the planets are aligning and as they move we hear the music of their spheres. A spell is a place of great (unspoken) emotion. It's also a place for an emotional transition.\n\n---\n\n_foreign words & phrases_\n\n**_iduhnt_** \/\u00edd-  nt\/, a variant of _is not_ or _isn't._ \"We arent from these parts. . . . Daddy iduhnt either\" ( _America_ ).\n\n**_heud_** \/h\u00e9-  d\/, a variant of _he would_ or _he'd._ \"Ssonly natural that heud come out here tuh dig\" ( _America_ ).\n\n**_do in diddly dip didded thuh drop_** \/d\u00f3-in-d\u00edd-ly-d\u00edp-d\u00edd-d\u00edd-th  -dr\u00e1hp\/, meaning unclear. Perhaps an elaborated confirmation, a fancy \"yes!\" Although it could also be used as a question such as \"Yeah?\" ( _Last Black Man_ ).\n\n**_ssnuch_** \/ssn  ch!\/ (Air intake sound not through mouth or throat but in through the nose.) A fast reverse snort, a big sniff (usually accompanies crying or sneezing). \"Snnnnuch. Blowings hard. For me.\" ( _Dust Commander_ )\n\n**_thup_** \/th  p!\/, (Air intake with sound placed in mouth; liberal use of tongue.) Slurping. ( _Imperceptible Mutabilities_ )\n\n**_uh!_** or **_uuh!_** \/  h!\/ (Air intake.) Deep quick breath. Usually denotes drowning or breathlessness. \"Years uhgoh from uh boat I had been\u2014UUH! Jettisoned\" ( _Imperceptible Mutabilities_ ); \". . . in 1317 dieded thuh last black man in the whole entire world. Uh!\" ( _Last Black Man_ ).\n\n**_thuh_** \/th  h\/, variant of _the._ \"Thuh ultimate battle of love requires uh good go between\" ( _Devotees in the Garden of Love_ ).\n\n**_chuh_** \/ch  \/ The polite form of the expletive \"Shit!\" ( _Dust Commander_ )\n\n**_k_** \/kay\/, variant of _okay._ ( _America_ )\n\n**_gaw_** (This is a glottal stop. No forward tongue or lip action here. The root of the tongue snaps or clicks in the back of the throat.) Possible performance variations: a click-clock sound where the tongue tip clicks in the front of the mouth; or a strangulated articulation of the word _Gaw!_ \"gaw gaw gaw eeeee-uh\" ( _Imperceptible Mutabilities_ ).\n\n---\n\n_language is a physical act_\n\nLanguage is a physical act\u2014something that\n\ninvolves yr whole bod.\n\nWrite with yr whole bod.\n\nRead with yr whole bod.\n\nWake up.\n\n---\n\n_opening night_\n\nDon't be shy about looking gorgeous.\n\nI suggest black.\n_An Equation for Black People Onstage_\n\n---\n\nSimply this:\n\nThe bulk of relationships Black people are engaged in onstage is the relationship between the Black and the White other. This is the stuff of high drama. I wonder if a drama involving Black people can exist without the presence of the White\u2014no, not the _presence_ \u2014the presence is not the problem. As Toni Morrison writes in her essay \"Black Matters,\" the presence of the White often signifies the presence of the Black. Within the subject is its other. So the mere _presence_ of the other is not the problem. The interest in the other is. The use of the White in the dramatic equation is, I think, too often seen as the only way of exploring our Blackness; this equation reduces Blackness to merely a state of \"non-Whiteness.\" Blackness in this equation is a people whose lives consist of a series of reactions and responses to the White ruling class. We have for so long been an \"oppressed\" people, but are Black people only blue? As African-Americans we have a history, a future and a daily reality in which a confrontation with a White ruling class is a central feature. This reality makes life difficult. This reality often traps us in a singular mode of expression. There are many ways of defining Blackness and there are many ways of presenting Blackness onstage. The Klan does not always have to be outside the door for Black people to have lives worthy of dramatic literature. Saying that \"Whitey\" has to be present in Black drama because Whitey is an inextricable aspect of Black reality is like saying that every play has to have a murder in it, is like saying that every drama involving Jews must reference Treblinka.\n\nAnd what happens when we choose a concern other than the race problem to focus on? What kind of drama do we get?\n\nLet's look at the math:\n\nBLACK PEOPLE + \"WHITEY\" =\n\nSTANDARD DRAMATIC CONFLICT (STANDARD TERRITORY)\n\n_i.e._\n\n\"BLACK DRAMA\" = the presentation of the Black as oppressed\n\n_so that_\n\nWHATEVER the dramatic dynamics, they are most often READ to EQUAL an explanation or relation of Black oppression. This is not only a false equation, this is bullshit.\n\n_so that_\n\nBLACK PEOPLE + _x_ = NEW DRAMATIC CONFLICT (NEW TERRITORY)\n\n_where_ x _is the realm of situations showing African-Americans in states other than the Oppressed by\/Obsessed with \"Whitey\" state; where the White when present is not the oppressor, and where audiences are encouraged to see and understand and discuss these dramas in terms other than that same old shit._ | An old acquaintance of mine, a somewhat revered theatre scholar, once suggested that a fabulous production of _The Importance of Being Earnest_ would feature Black principals with Whites as the servants. This is NOT an interesting use of Black people. This is the thinnest sort of dramaturgy. Ideas like these\u2014equations featuring this lack of complexity\u2014are again and again held up to us as exemplar, as the ultimate possibilities for Black people onstage. Black presence on stage is more than a sign or messenger of some political point.\n\n---|---\n\n_A black man from Nigeria asked me once \"What is this interest with watermelon you Black Americans have? I do not understand.\" His not understanding does not make him non-Black\/White\/an inauthentic Black man. His not understanding simply means that he grew up Black yes! but Black somewhere else._\n\n---\n\n_4 Questions_\n\nCan a White person be present onstage and not be an oppressor? Can a Black person be onstage and be other than oppressed? For the Black writer, are there Dramas other than race dramas? Does Black life consist of issues other than race issues?\n\nAnd gee, there's another thing: There is no such thing as THE Black Experience; that is, there are many experiences of being Black which are included under the rubric. Just think of all the different kinds of African peoples.\n\nI'm continually encouraging myself to explore The-Drama-of-the-Black-Person-as-an-Integral-Facet-of-the-Universe. This exploration takes me, in a very organic way, into new territory; because, in encouraging myself to listen to the stories beyond my default stories\u2014because the story determines the shape of the play\u2014the play assumes a new structure.\n\nSo. As a Black person writing for theatre, what is theatre good for? What can theatre do for us? We can \"tell it like it is\"; \"tell it as it was\"; \"tell it as it could be.\" In my plays I do all 3; and the writing is rich because we are not an impoverished people, but a wealthy people fallen on hard times.\n\nI write plays because I love Black people. As there is no single \"Black Experience,\" there is no single \"Black Aesthetic\" and there is no one way to write or think or feel or dream or interpret or be interpreted. As African-Americans we should recognize this insidious essentialism for what it is: a fucked-up trap to reduce us to only one way of being. We should endeavor to show the world and ourselves our beautiful and powerfully infinite variety.\n_Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom_\n\n1986-1989\n**Part 1: Snails**\n\n_The Players:_\n\nMOLLY\/MONA\n\nCHARLENE\/CHONA\n\nVERONICA\/VERONA\n\nTHE NATURALIST\/DR. LUTZKY\n\nTHE ROBBER\n\n**Part 2: Third Kingdom**\n\n_The Players:_\n\nKIN-SEER\n\nUS-SEER\n\nSHARK-SEER\n\nSOUL-SEER\n\nOVER-SEER\n\n**Part 3: Open House**\n\n_The Players:_\n\nMRS. ARETHA SAXON\n\nANGLOR SAXON\n\nBLANCA SAXON\n\nCHARLES\n\nMISS FAITH\n\n**Third Kingdom (Reprise)**\n\n_The Players:_\n\nKIN-SEER\n\nUS-SEER\n\nSHARK-SEER\n\nSOUL-SEER\n\nOVER-SEER\n\n**Part 4: Greeks (or The Slugs)**\n\n_The Players:_\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH\n\nMRS. SERGEANT SMITH\n\nBUFFY SMITH\n\nMUFFY SMITH\n\nDUFFY SMITH\nPART 1: SNAILS\n\n**A.**\n\n_Slide show: Images of Molly and Charlene. Molly and Charlene speak as the stage remains semi-dark and the slides continue to flash overhead._\n\nCHARLENE: How dja get through it?\n\nMOLLY: Mm not through it.\n\nCHARLENE: Yer leg. Thuh guard. Lose weight?\n\nMOLLY: Hhh. What should I do Chona should I jump should I jump or what?\n\nCHARLENE: You want some eggs?\n\nMOLLY: Would I splat?\n\nCHARLENE: Uhuhuhnnnn. . .\n\nMOLLY: Twelve floors up. Whaduhya think?\n\nCHARLENE: Uh-uh-uhn. Like scrambled?\n\nMOLLY: Shit.\n\nCHARLENE: With cheese? Say \"with\" cause ssgoin in.\n\nMOLLY: I diduhnt quit that school. HHH. Thought: nope! Mm gonna go on\u2014go on ssif nothin ssapin yuh know? \"S-K\" is \/sk\/ as in \"ask.\" The little-lamb-follows-closely-behind-at-Marys-heels-as-Mary-boards-the-train. Shit. Failed every test he shoves in my face. He makes me recite my mind goes blank. HHH. The-little-lamb-follows-closely-behind-at-Marys-heels-as-Mary-boards-the-train. Aint never seen no woman on no train with no lamb. I tell him so. He throws me out. Stuff like this happens every day y know? This isnt uh special case mines iduhnt uh uhnnn.\n\nCHARLENE: Salami? Yarnt veg anymore.\n\nMOLLY: \"S-K\" is \/sk\/ as in \"ask.\" I lie down you lie down he she it lies down. The-little-lamb-follows-closely-behind-at-Marys-heels. . . .\n\nCHARLENE: Were you lacto-ovo or thuh whole nine yards?\n\nMOLLY: Whole idea uh talkin right now aint right no way. Aint natural. Just goes tuh go. HHH. Show. Just goes tuh show.\n\nCHARLENE: Coffee right?\n\nMOLLY: They\u2014expelled\u2014me.\n\nCHARLENE: Straight up?\n\nMOLLY: Straight up. \"Talk right or youre outta here!\" I couldnt. I walked. Nope. \"Speak correctly or you'll be dismissed!\" Yeah. Yeah. Nope. Nope. Job sends me there. Basic skills. Now Job dont want me no more. Closely-behind-at-Marys-heels. HHH. Everythin in its place.\n\nCHARLENE: Toast?\n\nMOLLY: Hate lookin for uh job. Feel real whory walkin thuh streets. Only thing worse n workin sslookin for work.\n\nCHARLENE: I'll put it on thuh table.\n\nMOLLY: You lie down you lie down but he and she and it and us well we lays down. Didnt quit. They booted me. He booted me. Couldnt see thuh sense uh words workin like he said couldnt see thuh sense uh workin where words workin like that was workin would drop my phone voice would let things slip they tell me get Basic Skills call me breaking protocol hhhhh! Think I'll splat?\n\nCHARLENE: Once there was uh robber who would come over and rob us regular. He wouldnt come through thuh window he would use thuh door. I would let him in. He would walk in n walk uhround. Then he would point tuh stuff. I'd say \"help yourself.\" We developed us uh relationship. I asked him his name. He didnt answer. I asked him where he comed from. No answer tuh that neither. He didnt have no answers cause he didnt have no speech. Verona said he had that deep jungle air uhbout im that just off thuh boat look tuh his face. Verona she named him she named him \"Mokus.\" But Mokus whuduhnt his name.\n\nMOLLY: Once there was uh me named Mona who wanted tuh jump ship but didnt. HHH. Chona? Ya got thuh Help Wanteds?\n\nCHARLENE: Flies are casin yer food Mona. Come eat.\n\nMOLLY: HELP WANTEDS. _YOU GOT EM?_\n\nCHARLENE: Wrapped thuh coffee grinds in em.\n\nMOLLY: Splat.\n\n**B.**\n\n_Lights up onstage with canned applause. At the podium stands the Naturalist._\n\nNATURALIST: As I have told my students for some blubblubblub years, a most careful preparation of one's fly is the only way by in which the naturalist can insure the capturence of his subjects in a state of nature. Now for those of you who are perhaps not familiar with the more advanced techniques of nature study let me explain the principle of one of our most useful instruments: \"the fly.\" When in Nature Studies the fly is an apparatus which by blending in with the environment under scrutiny enables the naturalist to conceal himself and observe the object of study\u2014unobserved. In our observations of the subjects subjects which for our purposes we have named _\"MOLLY\"_ and _\"CHARLENE\"_ subjects we have chosen for study in order that we may monitor their natural behavior and after monitoring perhaps\u2014modify the form of my fly was an easy choice: this cockroach modeled after the common house insect _hausus cockruckus_ fashioned entirely of corrugated cardboard offers us a place in which we may put our camera and observe our subjects\u2014unobserved\u2014. Much like the \"fly on the wall.\"\n\n**C.**\n\n_Molly and Charlene onstage._\n\nMOLLY: Once there was uh me named Mona who wondered what she'd be like if no one was watchin. You got the Help Wanteds?\n\nCHARLENE: Wrapped thuh coffee grinds in um.\u2014Mona?\n\nMOLLY: Splat. Splat. Splatsplatsplat.\n\nCHARLENE: Mm callin thuh ssterminator for tomorrow. Leave it be for now.\n\nMOLLY: Diduhnt even blink. I threatened it. Diduhnt even blink.\n\nCHARLENE: Theyre gettin brave. Big too.\n\nMOLLY: Splat!\n\nCHARLENE: Mona! Once there was uh little lamb who followed Mary good n put uh hex on Mary. When Mary dropped dead, thuh lamb was in thuh lead. You can study at home. I'll help.\n\nMOLLY: Uh-uhnn! I'm all decided. Aint gonna work. Cant. Aint honest. Anyone with any sense dont wanna work no how. Mm gonna be honest. Mm gonna be down n out. Make downin n outin my livelihood.\n\nCHARLENE: He didnt have no answers cause he didnt have no speech.\n\nMOLLY: Wonder what I'd look like if no one was lookin. I need fashions. \"S-K\" is \/sk\/ as in \"ask.\" The-little-lamb-follows-Mary-Mary-who . . .?\n\nCHARLENE: Once there was uh one Verona named \"Mokus.\" But \"Mokus\" whuduhnt his name. He had his picture on file at thuh police station. Ninety-nine different versions. None of um looked like he looked.\n\nMOLLY: Splat! Splat! Diduhnt move uh muscle even. Dont even have no muscles. Only eyes. Splat! Shit. I woulda been uhcross thuh room out thuh door n on tuh thuh next life. Diduhnt twitch none. Splat! I cant even talk. I got bug bites bug bites all over! I need new styles.\n\nCHARLENE: Once there was uh one named Lutzky. Uh exterminator professional with uh Ph.D. He wore white cause white was what thuh job required. Comes tuh take thuh roaches uhway. Knew us by names that whuduhnt ours. Could point us out from pictures that whuduhnt us. He became confused. He hosed us down. You signed thuh invoice with uh X. Exterminator professional with uh Ph.D. He can do thuh job for $99.\n\nMOLLY: Mm gonna lay down, K?\n\nCHARLENE: Youre lucky Mona.\n\nMOLLY: He thuh same bug wasin thuh kitchen?\n\nCHARLENE: Uh uhnn. We got uh infestation problem. Youre lucky.\n\nMOLLY: He's watchin us. He followed us in here n swatchin us.\n\nCHARLENE: I'll call Lutzky. Wipe-um-out-Lutzky with uh Ph.D. He's got uh squirt gun. He'll come right over. He's got thuh potions. All mixed up. Squirt in uh crack. Hose down uh crevice. We'll be through. Through with it. Free of um. Wipe-um-out-Lutzky with thuh Ph.D. He's got uh squirt gun. He'll come right over.\n\nMOLLY: Uh\u2014the-cockroach-is-watching-us,-look-Chona-look! Once there was uh me named Mona who wondered what she'd talk like if no one was listenin.\n\nCHARLENE: Close yer eyes, Mona. Close yer eyes n think on someuhn pleasant.\n\n**D.**\n\n_The Naturalist at the podium._\n\nTHE NATURALIST: Thus behave our subjects naturally. Thus behave our subjects when they believe we cannot see them when they believe us far far away when they believe our backs have turned. Now. An obvious question should arise in the mind of an inquisitive observer? Yes? HHH. How should we best accommodate the presence of such subjects in our modern world. That is to say: How. Should. We. Best. Accommodate. Our subjects. If they are all to live with us\u2014all in harmony\u2014in our modern world. Yes. Having accumulated a wealth of naturally occurring observations knowing now how our subjects occur in their own world ( _mundus primtivus_ ), the question now arises as to how we of our world ( _mundus modernus_ ) best accommodate them. I ask us to remember that it was almost twenty-five whole score ago that our founding father went forth tirelessly crossing a vast expanse of ocean in which there lived dangerous creatures of the most horrible sort tirelessly crossing that sea jungle to find this country and name it. The wilderness was vast and we who came to teach, enlighten, and tame were few in number. They were the vast, we were the few. And now. The great cake of society is crumbling. I ask us to realize that those who do not march with us do not march not because they will not but because they cannot. . . . I ask that they somehow be\u2014taken care of for there are too many of them\u2014and by \"them\" I mean of course \"them roaches.\" They need our help. They need our help. Information for the modern cannot be gleaned from the primitive, information for the modern can only be gleaned through ex-per-i-men-tation. This is the most tedious part of science yet in science there is no other way. Now. I will, if you will, journey to the jungle. _Behavioris distortionallus-via-modernus._ Watch closely:\n\n**E.**\n\n_During this part the Robber enters, steals the roach and attempts an exit._\n\nCHONA: Verona? Hey honeyumm home?\n\nVERONA: Chona Chona ChonaChonaChona. Mona here?\n\nCHONA: Laying down.\n\nVERONA: Heart broken?\n\nCHONA: Like uh broken heart. Thuh poor thing. I'll learn her her speech. Lets take her out n buy her new styles.\n\nVERONA: Sounds good.\n\nCHONA: She wants fashions.\u2014We got roaches.\n\nVERONA: Shit! Chona. Thats uh big one. I got some motels but. I got some stickys too\u2014them little trays with glue? Some spray but. Woo ya! Woo ya woo ya?! They gettin brave.\n\nCHONA: Big too. Think he came through that crack in thuh bathroom.\n\nVERONA: Wooya! Wooya! Shit. You call Lutzky? Thuh Ph.D.?\n\nCHONA: On his way. We'll pay. Be through. He's got uh squirt gun.\n\nVERONA: We'll all split thuh bill. He gonna do it for 99?\n\nCHONA: Plus costs. Mona dunht know bout thuh Plus Costs part. Okay?\n\nVERONA: \u2014K. Maybe I can catch uh few for our Lutzky shows.\n\nCHONA: Once there was uh woman who wanted tuh get uhway for uhwhile but didnt know which way tuh go tuh get gone. Once there was uh woman who just layed down.\n\nVERONA: Traps. Place um. Around thuh sink corner of thuh stove move move yer feet threshole of thuh outside door. Yeauh. Mm convinced theyre comin in from uhcross thuh hall\u2014slippin under thuh door at night but I aint no professional\u2014see?! Lookit im go\u2014movin slow-ly. He's thuh scout. For every one ya see there are thousands. Thousands thousands creepin in through thuh cracks. Waiting for their chance. Watchim go. Goinsslow. We gotta be vigilant: sit-with-thuh-lights-out-crouch-in-thuh-kitchen-holdin-hard-soled-shoes. GOTCHA! Monas got bug bites on her eyelids? Mmputtin some round her bed. Augment thuh traps with thuh spray.\n\nCHONA: Once there was uh woman was careful. Once there was uh woman on thuh lookout. Still trapped.\n\nVERONA: Vermin free by 1990! That means YOU!\n\nCHONA: _Wild Kingdoms_ on.\n\nVERONA: YER OUTTA HERE!\n\nCHONA: Yer shows on.\n\nVERONA: Great. Thanks.\n\nCHONA: Keep it low for Mona. K?\n\nVERONA: Perkins never shoulda uhlowed them tuh scratch his show. Wildlife never goes outta style. He shoulda told em that. Fuck thuh ratings. Oh, look! On thuh trail of thuh long muzzled wildebeest: mating season. Ha! This is uh good one. They got bulls n cows muzzles matin closeups\u2014make ya feel like yr really right there with em. Part of thuh action. Uh live birth towards thuh end. . . .\n\nCHONA: You want some eggs?\n\nVERONA: They got meat?\n\nCHONA: \u2014Yeauh\u2014\n\nVERONA: I'm veg. Since today. Kinder. Cheaper too. Didja know that uh veg\u2014\n\nCHONA: Eat. Here. Ssgood. Ssgood tuh eat. Eat. Please eat. Once there was uh one name Verona who bit thuh hand that feeds her. Doorbell thats Lutzky. I'll get it.\n\nVERONA: Mona! Our shinin knights here!\n\nMONA: THE-LITTLE-LAMB-FOLLOWS-MARY-CLOSELY-AT-HER-HEELS\u2014\n\nVERONA: Wipe-um-out Dr. Lutzky with uh P uh H and uh D. Baby. B. Cool.\n\nMONA: B cool.\n\nCHONA: Right this way Dr. Lutzky. Right this way Dr. Lutzky Extraordinaire Sir.\n\nLUTZKY: I came as quickly as I could\u2014I have a squirt gun, you know. Gold plated gift from the firm. They're so proud. Of me. There was a woman in Queens\u2014poor thing\u2014so distraught\u2014couldn't sign the invoice\u2014couldn't say \"bug\"\u2014for a moment I thought I had been the unwitting victim of a prank phone call\u2014 _prankus callus\u2014_ her little boy filled out the forms\u2014showed me where to squirt\u2014lucky for her the little one was there\u2014lucky for her she had the little one. Awfully noble scene, I thought. You must be Charlene.\n\nCHONA: Char-who? Uh uhn. Uh\u2014It-is-I,-Dr.-Lutzky,\u2014 _Chona._\n\nLUTZKY: Ha! You look like a Charlene you look like a Charlene you do look like a Charlene bet no one has ever told that to you, eh? Aaaaaaah, well. I hear there is one with \"bug bites all over.\" Are you the one?\n\nCHONA: I-am-Chona. Mona-is-the-one. The-one-in-the-living-room. The-one-in-the-living-room-on-the-couch.\n\nLUTZKY: What's the world coming to? \"What is the world coming to?\" I sometimes ask myself. And\u2014\n\nCHONA: Eggs, Dr. Lutzky?\n\nLUTZKY: Oh, yes please. And\u2014am I wrong in making a livelihood\u2014meager as it may be\u2014from the vermin that feed on the crumbs which fall from the table of the broken cake of civilization\u2014oh dear\u2014oh dear!\n\nCHONA: Watch out for those. We do have an infestation problem.\n\nWatch out for those.\n\nLUTZKY: Too late now\u2014oh dear it's sticky. It's stuck\u2014oh dear\u2014now the other foot. They're stuck.\n\nMONA: THE-LITTLE-LAMB\u2014\n\nVERONA: SShhh.\n\nCHONA: Make yourself at home, Dr. Lutzky. I'll bring your eggs.\n\nLUTZKY: Can't walk.\n\nCHONA: Shuffle.\n\nLUTZKY: Oh dear. Shuffleshuffleshuffle. Oh dear.\n\nVERONA: Sssshhh!\n\nLUTZKY: You watch _Wild Kingdom._ I watch _Wild Kingdom_ too. This is a good one. Oh dear!\n\nMONA: Oh dear.\n\nCHONA: Here is the Extraordinaire, Mona. Mona, the Extraordinaire is here. Fresh juice, Dr. Lutzky Extraordinaire?\n\nLUTZKY: Call me \"Wipe-em-out.\"\n\nMONA: Oh dear.\n\nVERONA: SSSSShhhhh.\n\nLUTZKY: Well. Now. Let's start off with something simple. Who's got bug bites?\n\nMONA: Once there was uh me named Mona who hated going tuh thuh doctor.\u2014I-have-bug-bites-Dr.-Lutzky-Extra-ordinaire-Sir.\n\nLUTZKY: This won't take long. Step lively, Molly. The line forms here.\n\nCHONA: I'll get the juice. We have a juice machine!\n\nLUTZKY: I have a squirt gun!\n\nVERONA: He's got uh gun\u2014Marlin Perkinssgot uh gun\u2014\n\nMONA: Oh, dear. . . .\n\nLUTZKY: You're the one, aren't you, Molly? Wouldn't want to squirt the wrong one. Stand up straight. The line forms here.\n\nCHONA: I am Chona! Monas on the line!\u2014Verona? That one is Verona.\n\nLUTZKY: ChonaMonaVerona. Well well well. Wouldn't want to squirt the wrong one.\n\nVERONA: He's got uh gun. Ssnot supposed tuh have uh gun\u2014\n\nMONA: \"S-K\" IS \/ SK \/ AS IN \"AXE.\" Oh dear. I'm Lucky, Dr. Lutzky.\n\nLUTZKY: Call me \"Wipe-em-out.\" Both of you. All of you.\n\nCHONA: Wipe-em-out. Dr. Wipe-em-out.\n\nLUTZKY: And you're \"Lucky\"?\n\nVERONA: He got uh gun!\n\nMONA: Me Mona.\n\nLUTZKY: Mona?\n\nMONA: Mona Mokus robbery.\n\nCHONA: You are confusing the doctor, Mona. Mona, the doctor is confused.\n\nVERONA: Perkins ssgot uh gun. Right there on thuh Tee V. He iduhnt spposed tuh have no gun!\n\nMONA: Robbery Mokus Mona. Robbery Mokus Mona. Everything in its place.\n\nCHONA: The robber comes later, Dr. Wipe-em-out Extraordinaire, Sir.\n\nLUTZKY: There goes my squirt gun. Did you feel it?\n\nVERONA: I seen this show before. Four times. Perkins duhnt even own no gun.\n\nCHONA: Once there was uh doctor who became confused and then hosed us down.\n\nLUTZKY: I must be confused. Must be the sun. Or the savages.\n\nMONA: Savage Mokus. Robbery, Chona.\n\nCHONA: Go on Mokus. Help yourself.\n\nLUTZKY: I need to phone for backups. May I?\n\nVERONA: He duhnt have no gun permit even. Wait. B. Cool. I seen this. Turns out alright. I think. . . .\n\nCHONA: Juice? I made it myself!\n\nMONA: I am going to lie down. I am going to lay down. Lie down? Lay down. Lay down?\n\nLUTZKY: Why don't you lie down.\n\nMONA: I am going to lie down.\n\nCHONA: She's distraught. Bug bites all over. We're infested. Help yourself.\n\nLUTZKY: You seem infested, Miss Molly. Get in line, I'll hose you down.\n\nMONA: MonaMokusRobbery.\n\nLUTZKY: Hello Sir. Parents of the Muslim faith? My fathers used to frequent the Panthers. For sport. That was before my time. Not too talkative are you. Come on. Give us a grunt. I'll give you a squirt.\n\nVERONA: Ssnot no dart gun neither\u2014. Holy. Chuh! Mmcallin thuh\u2014That is not uh dart gun, Marlin!!!\n\nMONA: Make your bed and lie in it. I'm going to lay down.\n\nCHONA: Lie down.\n\nMONA: Lay down.\n\nCHONA: LIE, Mona.\n\nMONA: Lie Mona lie Mona down.\n\nCHONA: Down, Mona down.\n\nMONA: Down, Mona, bites! Oh my eyelids! On-her-heels! Down Mona down.\n\nVERONA: Call thuh cops.\n\nLUTZKY: That will be about $99. Hello. This is Dr. Lutzky. Send ten over. Just like me. We've got a real one here. Won't even grunt. Huh! Hmmm. Phones not working. . . .\n\nVERONA: Gimmie that! Thank-you. Hello? Marlin-Perkins-has-a-gun. I-am-telling-you-Marlin-Perkins-has-a-gun! Yeah it's loaded course it's loaded! You listen tuh me! I pay yuh tuh listen tuh me! We pay our taxes, Chona?\n\nCHONA: I am going to make a peach cobbler. My mothers ma used to make cobblers. She used to gather the peaches out of her own backyard all by herself.\n\nLUTZKY: Hold still, Charlene. I'll hose you down.\n\nCHONA: Go on Mokus. Help yourself.\n\nVERONA: _HE'S SHOOTIN THUH WILD BEASTS!_\n\nMONA: Oh dear.\n\nVERONA: He-is-shooting-them-for-real! We diduhnt pay our taxes, Chona.\n\nLUTZKY: Here's my invoice. Sign here.\n\nCHONA: X, Mona. Help yourself.\n\nMONA: Splat.\n\nCHONA: Cobbler, Dr. Lutzky? Fresh out of the oven????!!!\n\nMONA: Splat.\n\nLUTZKY: Wrap it to go, Charlene.\n\nMONA: Splat.\n\nLUTZKY: What did you claim your name was dear?\n\nMONA: Splat.\n\nCHONA: I'll cut you off a big slice. Enough for your company. Youre a company man.\n\nLUTZKY: With backups, Miss Charlene. I'm a very lucky man. Molly's lucky too.\n\nMONA: Splat. Splat. Splatsplatsplat.\n\nVERONA: Cops dont care. This is uh outrage.\n\nLUTZKY: Here's my card. There's my squirt gun! Did you feel it? I need backups. May I?\n\nVERONA: Dont touch this phone. It's bugged.\n\nLUTZKY: Oh dear!\n\nCHONA: Cobbler, Verona?\n\nLUTZKY: Well, good night.\n\nVERONA: We pay our taxes, Chona?\n\nLUTZKY: Well, good night!\n\nVERONA: We pay our taxes Chona??!!!!?\n\nMONA: Tuck me in. I need somebody tuh tuck me in.\n\n**F.**\n\n_Verona speaks at the podium._\n\nVERONA: I saw my first pictures of Africa on TV: Mutual of Omahas _Wild Kingdom._ The thirty-minute filler between Walt Disneys wonderful world and the CBS Evening News. It was a wonderful world: Marlin Perkins and Jim and their African guides. I was a junior guide and had a lifesize poster of Dr. Perkins sitting on a white Land Rover surrounded by wild things. Had me an 8 \u00d7 10 glossy of him too, signed, on my nightstand. Got my nightstand from Sears cause I had to have Marlin by my bed at night. Together we learned to differentiate African from Indian elephants the importance of hyenas in the wild funny looking trees on the slant\u2014how do they stand up? Black folks with no clothes. Marlin loved and respected all the wild things. His guides took his English and turned it into the local lingo so that he could converse with the natives. Marlin even petted a rhino once. He tagged the animals and put them into zoos for their own protection. He encouraged us to be kind to animals through his shining example. Once there was uh me name Verona: I got mommy n dad tuh get me uh black dog n named it I named it \"Namib\" after thuh African sands n swore tuh be nice tuh it only Namib refused tuh be trained n crapped in corners of our basement n got up on thuh sofa when we went out n Namib wouldnt listen tuh me like Marlins helpers listened tuh him Namib wouldnt look at me when I talked tuh him n when I said someuhn like \"sit\" he wouldnt n \"come\" made im go n when I tied him up in thuh front yard so that he could bite the postman when thuh postman came like uh good dog would he wouldnt even bark just smile n wag his tail so I would kick Namib when no one could see me cause I was sure I was very very sure that Namib told lies uhbout me behind my back and Namib chewed through his rope one day n bit me n run off. I have this job. I work at a veterinarian hospital. I'm a euthanasia specialist. Someone brought a stray dog in one day and I entered \"black dog\" in the black book and let her scream and whine and wag her tail and talk about me behind my back then I offered her the humane alternative. Wiped her out! I stayed late that night so that I could cut her open because I had to see I just had to see the heart of such a disagreeable domesticated thing. But no. Nothing different. Everything in its place. Do you know what that means? Everything in its place. Thats all.\n\n( _Lights out_ )\n\nPART 2: THIRD KINGDOM\n\nKIN-SEER: Kin-Seer.\n\nUS-SEER: Us-Seer\n\nSHARK-SEER: Shark-Seer.\n\nSOUL-SEER: Soul-Seer.\n\nOVER-SEER: Over-Seer.\n\n\u2014\u2014.\n\n\u2014\u2014.\n\nKIN-SEER: Kin-Seer.\n\nUS-SEER: Us-Seer.\n\nSHARK-SEER: Shark-Seer.\n\nSOUL-SEER: Soul-Seer.\n\nOVER-SEER: Over-Seer.\n\n\u2014\u2014.\n\n\u2014\u2014.\n\n\u2014\u2014.\n\nKIN-SEER: Last night I dreamed of where I comed from. But where I comed from diduhnt look like nowhere like I been.\n\nSOUL-SEER: There were 2 cliffs?\n\nKIN-SEER: There were.\n\nUS-SEER: Uh huhn.\n\nSHARK-SEER: 2 cliffs?\n\nKIN-SEER: 2 cliffs: one on each other side thuh world.\n\nSHARK-SEER: 2 cliffs?\n\nKIN-SEER: 2 cliffs where thuh world had cleaved intuh 2.\n\nOVER-SEER: The 2nd part comes apart in 2 parts.\n\nSHARK-SEER: But we are not in uh boat!\n\nUS-SEER: But we iz.\n\nSOUL-SEER: Iz. Uh huhn. Go on\u2014\n\nKIN-SEER: I was standin with my toes stuckted in thuh dirt. Nothin in front of me but water. And I was wavin. Wavin. Wavin at my uther me who I could barely see. Over thuh water on thuh uther cliff I could see my uther me but my uther me could not see me. And I was wavin wavin wavin sayin gaw gaw gaw gaw eeeeeee-uh.\n\nOVER-SEER: The 2nd part comes apart in 2 parts.\n\nSHARK-SEER: But we are not in uh boat!\n\nUS-SEER: But we iz.\n\nSOUL-SEER: Gaw gaw gaw gaw eeeee\u2014\n\nKIN-SE ER: Ee-uh. Gaw gaw gaw gaw eeeee\u2014\n\nSOUL-SEER: Ee-uh.\n\nUS-SEER: Come home come home dont stay out too late. Bleached Bones Man may get you n take you far uhcross thuh waves, then baby, what will I do for love?\n\nOVER-SEER: The 2nd part comes apart in-to 2.\n\nSHARK-SEER: Edible fish are followin us. Our flesh is edible tuh them fish. Smile at them and they smile back. Jump overboard and they gobble you up. They smell blood. I see sharks. Ssssblak! Ssssblak! Gaw gaw gaw eee-uh. I wonder: Are you happy?\n\nALL: We are smiling!\n\nOVER-SEER: Quiet, you, or you'll be jettisoned.\n\nSOUL-SEER: Duhduhnt he duhduhnt he know my name? Ssblak ssblak ssblakallblak!\n\nOVER-SEER: Thats your _self_ youre looking at! Wonder #1 of my glass-bottomed boat.\n\nKIN-SEER: My uther me then waved back at me and then I was happy. But my uther me whuduhnt wavin at me. My uther me was wavin at my Self. My uther me was wavin at uh black black speck in thuh middle of thuh sea where years uhgoh from uh boat I had been\u2014UUH!\n\nOVER-SEER: Jettisoned.\n\nSHARK-SEER: Jettisoned?\n\nKIN-SEER: Jettisoned.\n\nUS-SEER: Uh huhn.\n\nSOUL-SEER: To-the-middle-of-the-bottom-of-the-big-black-sea.\n\nKIN-SEER: And then my Self came up between us. Rose up out of thuh water and standin on them waves my Self was standin. And I was wavin wavin wavin and my Me was wavin and wavin and my Self that rose between us went back down in-to-the-sea.\n\nKIN-SEER: FFFFFFFFF.\n\nUS-SEER: Thup.\n\nSHARK-SEER: Howwe gonna find my Me?\n\nKIN-SEER: Me wavin at Me. Me wavin at I. Me wavin at my Self.\n\nUS-SEER: FFFFFFFFF.\n\nSOUL-SEER: Thup.\n\nSHARK-SEER: I dream up uh fish thats swallowin me and I dream up uh me that is then becamin that fish and uh dream of that fish becamin uh shark and I dream of that shark becamin uhshore. UUH! And on thuh shore thuh shark is given shoes. And I whuduhnt me no more and I whuduhnt no fish. My new Self was uh third Self made by thuh space in between. And my new Self wonders: Am I happy? Is my new Self happy in my new-Self shoes?\n\nKIN-SEER: MAY WAH-VIN ET MAY. MAY WAH-VIN ET EYE. MAY WAH-VIN ET ME SOULF.\n\nOVER-SEER: Half the world had fallen away making 2 worlds and a sea between. Those 2 worlds inscribe the Third Kingdom.\n\nKIN-SEER: Me hollering uhcross thuh cliffs at my Self:\n\nUS-SEER: Come home come home dont stay out too late.\n\nSHARK-SEER: Black folks with no clothes. Then all thuh black folks clothed in smilin. In betwen thuh folks is uh distance thats uh wet space. 2 worlds: Third Kingdom.\n\nSOUL-SEER: Gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw.\n\nKIN-SEER: May wah-vin et may may wah-vin et eye may wah-vin et me sould.\n\nSHARK-SEER: How many kin kin I hold. Whole hull full.\n\nSOUL-SEER: Thuh hullholesfull of bleachin bones.\n\nUS-SEER: Bleached Bones Man may come and take you far uhcross thuh sea from me.\n\nOVER-SEER: Who're you again?\n\nKIN-SEER: I'm. Lucky.\n\nOVER-SEER: Who're you again?\n\nSOUL-SEER: Duhdduhnt-he-know-my-name?\n\nKIN-SEER: Should I jump? Shouldijumporwhut?\n\nSHARK-SEER: But we are not in uh boat!\n\nUS-SEER: But we iz. Iz iz iz uh huhn. Iz uh huhn. Uh huhn iz.\n\nSHARK-SEER: I wonder: Are we happy? Thuh looks we look look so.\n\nUS-SEER: They like smiles and we will like what they will like.\n\nSOUL-SEER: UUH!\n\nKIN-SEER: Me wavin at me me wavin at my I me wavin at my soul.\n\nSHARK-SEER: Chomp chomp chomp chomp.\n\nKIN-SEER: Fffffffffff\u2014\n\nUS-SEER: Thup.\n\nSHARK-SEER: Baby, what will I do for love?\n\nSOUL-SEER: Wave me uh wave and I'll wave one back blow me uh kiss n I'll blow you one back.\n\nOVER-SEER: Quiet, you, or you'll be jettisoned!\n\nSHARK-SEER: Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.\n\nSOUL-SEER: Wa-vin wa-vin.\n\nSHARK-SEER: Chomp chomp chomp chomp.\n\nKIN-SEER: Howwe gonna find my Me?\n\nSOUL-SEER: Rock. Thuh boat. Rock. Thuh boat. Rock. Thuh boat. Rock. Thuh boat.\n\nUS-SEER: We be walkin wiggly cause we left our bones in bed.\n\nSOUL-SEER, US-SEER, SHARK-SEER, KIN-SEER AND OVER-SEER: Gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw\u2014\n\nOVER-SEER: I'm going to yell \"Land Ho!\" in a month or so and all of this will have to stop. I'm going to yell \"Land Ho!\" in a month or so and that will be the end of this. Line up!\n\nSHARK-SEER: Where to?\n\nOVER-SEER: Ten-Shun!\n\nSOUL-SEER: How come?\n\nOVER-SEER: Move on move on move\u2014. LAND HO!\n\nKIN-SEER: You said I could wave as long as I see um. I still see um.\n\nOVER-SEER: Wave then.\n\nPART 3: OPEN HOUSE\n\n**A.**\n\n_A double-frame slide show: Slides of Aretha hugging Anglor and Blanca. Dialogue begins and continues with the slides progressing as follows: (1) they are expressionless; next (2) they smile; next (3) they smile more; next (4) even wider smiles. The enlargement of smiles continues. Actors speak as the stage remains semi-dark and the slides flash overhead._\n\nARETHA: Smile, honey, smile.\n\nANGLOR: I want my doll. Where is my doll I want my doll where is it I want it. I want it now.\n\nARETHA: Miss Blanca? Give us uh pretty smile, darlin.\n\nBLANCA: I want my doll too. Go fetch.\n\nARETHA: You got such nice white teeth, Miss Blanca. Them teeths makes uh smile tuh remember you by.\n\nANGLOR: She won't fetch the dolls. She won't fetch them because she hasn't fed them.\n\nARETHA: Show us uh smile, Mr. Anglor. Uh quick toothy show stopper.\n\nBLANCA: She won't fetch them because she hasn't changed them. They're sitting in their own filth because they haven't been changed they haven't been fed they haven't been aired they've gone without sunshine.\n\nANGLOR: Today is her last day. She's gone slack.\n\nBLANCA: Is today your last day, Aretha?\n\nANGLOR: Yes.\n\nARETHA: Smile for your daddy, honey. Mr. Charles, I cant get em tuh smile.\n\nBLANCA: Is it? Is it your last day?!\n\nANGLOR: You see her belongings in the boxcar, don't you?\n\nBLANCA: Where are you going, Aretha? You're going to get my doll!\n\nARETHA: Wish I had me some teeths like yours, Miss Blanca. So straight and cleaned. So pretty and white.\u2014Yes, Mr. Charles, I'm trying. Mr. Anglor. Smile. Smile for show.\n\nBLANCA: Youre going away, aren't you? AREN'T YOU?\n\nANGLOR: You have to answer her.\n\nBLANCA: You have to answer me.\n\nARETHA: Yes, Missy. Mm goin. Mm goin uhway.\n\nBLANCA: Where?\n\nARETHA: Uhway. Wayuhway.\n\nANGLOR: To do what?\n\nARETHA: Dunno. Goin uhway tuh\u2014tuh swallow courses uh meals n fill up my dance card! Goin uhway tuh live, I guess.\n\nBLANCA: Live? Get me my doll. My doll wants to wave goodbye. Who's going to sew up girl doll when she pops?!\n\nANGLOR: Who's going to chastise boy doll!? Boy doll has no manners.\n\nBLANCA: Who's going to plait girl doll's hair?! Her hair should be plaited just like mine should be plaited.\n\nANGLOR: Who's going to clean their commodes?! Who's going to clean our commodes?! We won't visit you because we won't be changed! We'll be sitting in our own filth because we won't have been changed we won't have been fed we won't have been aired we won't have manners we won't have plaits we'll have gone without sunshine.\n\nARETHA: Spect your motherll have to do all that.\n\nBLANCA AND ANGLOR: Who!??!\n\nARETHA: Dunno. Smile, Blanca, Anglor, huh? Lets see them pretty white teeths.\n\n( _Camera clicking noises_ )\n\n**B.**\n\n_Onstage, Mrs. Aretha Saxon._\n\nARETHA: Six seven eight nine. Thupp. Ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen. Thupp. Seventeen. Eighteen nineteen twenty twenty-one. And uh little bit. Thuuup. Thuup. Gotta know thuh size. Thup. Gotta know thuh size exact. Thup. Got people comin. Hole house full. They gonna be kin? Could be strangers. How many kin kin I hold. Whole hold full. How many strangers. Depends on thuh size. Thup. Size of thuh space. Thuup. Depends on thuh size of thuh kin. Pendin on thuh size of thuh strangers. Get more mens than womens ssgonna be one number more womens than mens ssgonna be uhnother get animals thuup get animals we kin pack em thuup. Tight. Thuuup. Thuuuup. Mmmm. Thuuup. Count back uhgain: little bit twenty-one twenty nineteen eighteen seventhuup sixteen fifteen fourteen twelve thuup eleven ten uh huh thuuup. Three two thuuup one n one. Huh. Twenty-one and one and one. And thuh little bit. Thuuup. Thup. Thirty-two and uh half.\n\nMISS FAITH: Footnote #1: The human cargo capacity of the English slaver, the _Brookes,_ was about 3,250 square feet. From James A. Rawley, _The Transatlantic Slave Trade,_ G. J. McLeod Limited, 1981, page 283.\n\nARETHA: 32\u00bd Thuuup! Howmy gonna greet em. Howmy gonna say hello. Thuup! Huh. Greet em with uh smile! Thupp. Still got uh grin. Uh little bit. Thup. Thuuup. Thirty-two and uh little bit. 32\u00bd. Better buzz Miss Faith. Miss Faith?\n\nMISS FAITH: Yeahus\u2014.\n\nARETHA: Thuup. Sss Mrs. Saxon. 2D.\n\nMISS FAITH: Yes, Mrs. Saxon. Recovering? No more bleeding, I hope.\n\nARETHA: You wanted tuh know thuh across.\n\nMISS FAITH: Holes healing I hope.\n\nARETHA: 32 and uh half.\n\nMISS FAITH: Is that a fact?\n\nARETHA: Thup. Thatsuh fact. 32 feets and uh half on the a-cross! Thats uh fact!\n\nMISS FAITH: Thank you, Maam!\n\nARETHA: You say I'm tuh have visitors, Miss Faith? You say me havin uh visitation is written in thuh book. I say in here we could fit\u2014three folks.\n\nMISS FAITH: Three. I'll note that. On with your calculations, Mrs. Saxon!\n\nARETHA: On with my calculations. Thuup.\n\nMISS FAITH: Mrs. Saxon? I calculate\u2014we'll fit six hundred people. Six hundred in a pinch. Footnote #2: 600 slaves were transported on the _Brookes,_ although it only had space for 451. _Ibid.,_ page 14.\n\nARETHA: Miss Faith, six hundred in here won't go.\n\nMISS FAITH: You give me the facts. I draw from them, Maam. I draw from them in accordance with the book. Six hundred will fit. We will have to pack them tight.\n\nARETHA: Miss Faith\u2014thuup\u2014Miss Faith\u2014\n\nMISS FAITH: Mrs. Saxon, book says you are due for an extraction Mrs. Saxon an extraction are you not. Gums should be ready. Gums should be healed. You are not cheating me out of valuable square inches, Mrs. Saxon, of course you are not. You gave me the facts of course you did. We know well that \"She who cheateth me out of some valuable square inches shall but cheat herself out of her assigned seat aside the most high.\" We are familiar with Amendment 2.1 are we not, Mrs. Saxon. Find solace in the book and\u2014bid your teeth goodbye. Buzz me not.\n\nARETHA: Thup. Thup. 2:1.\n\nMISS FAITH: Footnote #3: The average ratio of slaves per ship, male to female was 2:1.\n\nARETHA: \"Then she looketh up at the Lord and the Lord looketh down on where she knelt. She spake thusly: 'Lord, what proof canst thou give me that my place inside your kingdom hath not been by another usurpt? For there are many, many in need who seek a home in your great house, and many are those who are deserving.' \" Thuuuuup! Thuup. \"And the Lord looketh upon her with\" Thuuuup! \"And the Lord looketh upon her with kind azure eyes and on his face there lit a toothsome\u2014a toothsome smile and said, 'Fear not, Charles, for your place in my kingdom is secure.\" ' Thup. Thuuup! Charles? Miss Faith?\n\nMISS FAITH: Buzz! BUZZZ!\n\n( _Buzzer_ )\n\n**C.**\n\n_Dreamtime: Charles appears. Blanca and Anglor hum the note of the buzz._\n\nARETHA: And she looketh up at the Lord\u2014\n\nCHARLES: And the Lord looketh downeth oneth whereth sheth knelth\u2014\n\nARETHA: What proof can yuh give me, Lord? I wants uh place.\n\nCHARLES: A place you will receive. Have you got your papers?\n\nARETHA: Thuh R-S-stroke-26?\n\nCHARLES: Let us see. It says \"Charles.\" \"Charles Saxon.\"\n\nARETHA: Had me uh husband names Charles.\n\nCHARLES: Funny name for you, Mrs. Saxon. \"Charles\"?\n\nARETHA: My husbands name. We's split up now.\n\nCHARLES: Divorce?\n\nARETHA: Divorce?\n\nCHARLES: The breakup of those married as sanctioned by the book. Illegal, then. Non legal? I see. Were you legally wed, Charles? Wed by the book? Didn't\u2014\"jump the broom\" or some such nonsense, eh? Perhaps it was an estrangement. Estrangement? Was it an estrangement? Estrangement then? You will follow him, I suppose.\n\nARETHA: He's\u2014He's dead, Mister Sir.\n\nCHARLES: I'll mark \"yes,\" then. Sign here. An \"X\" will do, Charles.\n\nARETHA: I dunno.\n\nCHARLES: There is a line\u2014\n\nARETHA: Mehbe\u2014\n\nCHARLES: \u2014that has formed itself behind you\u2014\n\nARETHA: Mehbe\u2014do I gotta go\u2014mehbe\u2014maybe I could stay awhiles. Here.\n\nCHARLES: The book says you expire. No option to renew.\n\nARETHA: And my place?\n\nCHARLES: Has been secured.\n\nARETHA: Where?\n\nCHARLES: Move on.\n\nARETHA: Where to?\n\nCHARLES: Move on, move on, move on!\n\n( _Humming grows louder_ )\n\n**D.**\n\n_Humming is replaced by buzzer buzz. Miss Faith appears to extract Aretha's teeth with a large pair of pliers._\n\nARETHA: How many\u2014extractions this go, Sister Faith?\n\nMISS FAITH: Open up. ALL. Dont look upon it as punishment, Mrs. Saxon, look on it as an integral part of the great shucking off. The old must willingly shuck off for the sake of the new. Much like the snakes new skin suit, Mrs. Saxon. When your new set comes in\u2014and you will be getting a new set, that the book has promised\u2014they will have a place. We will have made them room. Where would we go if we did not extract? There are others at this very moment engaged in extracting so that for us there may be a place. Where would we go if we did not extract? Where would they go? What would happen? Who would survive to tell? The old is yankethed out and the new riseth up in its place! Besides, if we didnt pluck them we couldnt photograph them. To be entered into the book they must be photographed. Think of it as getting yourself chronicled, Mrs. Saxon. You are becoming a full part of the great chronicle! Say that, Mrs. Saxon. You dont want to be forgotten, do you?\n\nARETHA: Thuup! I was gonna greet em with uh grin.\n\nMISS FAITH: An opened jawed awe will do. Open? Yeauhs. Looks of wonder suit us best just before we're laid to rest. AAAh! Open. Hmmm. Canine next, I think. Find solace in the book. Find order in the book. Find find find the book. Where is the book. Go find it. Find it. Go on, get up.\n\nARETHA: Thuuuuup.\n\nMISS FAITH: Read from it.\n\nARETHA: Thuuuuuup?\n\nMISS FAITH: Now.\n\nARETHA: Thup. Thuuuuppp! \"The woman lay on the sickness bed her gums were moist and bleeding. The Lord appeared to her, as was his custom, by dripping himself down through the cold water faucet and walking across the puddle theremade. The Lord stood over the sickness bed toweling himself off and spake thusly: 'Charles, tell me why is it that you. . . .' \" Thuuuuuup! \"Charles\" uhgain. Thup. Wonder why he calls her \"Charles,\" Miss Faith? Now, I had me uh master named Charles wonder if it says anything uhbout Retha Saxons master Charles in thuh book. Still. Havin uh master named Charles aint no reason for her tuh be called\u2014\n\nMISS FAITH: Open! She is named what her name is. She was given that name by him. The book says your Charles is dead. Sorry. Never to return. Sorry. That is a fact. A fact to accept. The power of the book lies in its contents. Its contents are facts. Through examination of the facts therein we may see what is to come. Through the examination of what comes we may turn to our book and see from whence it came. Example: The book has let us know for quite some time that you expire 19-6-65, do you not, Mrs. Saxon. You expire. (Footnote #5: \"Juneteenth,\" June 19th in 1865, was when, a good many months after the Emancipation Proclamation, the slaves in Texas heard they were free.) You expire. Along with your lease. Expiration 19-6-65 with no option to renew.\n\nARETHA: Thuuup?\n\nMISS FAITH: You expire. Yes, Maam!\n\nARETHA: Yahs Maam.\n\nMISS FAITH: Yes, Maam. 19-6-65. Thats a fact. And now we know youre to have visitors. And now we know that those visitors are waiting on your doorstep.\n\nARETHA: Naaaa?\n\nMISS FAITH: Now. 32.5, 19-6-65? Now. Open! Now. Close!\n\nARETHA: Now. Howmy gonna greet em? Was gonna greet em with uh smile. . . . Awe jawll do. I guess.\n\nMISS FAITH: Youre expiring. It's only natural. Thats a fact. Amendment 1807, Mrs. Saxon. A fact. You sit comfortably. I'll buzz them in.\n\n( _Buzzer_ )\n\n**E.**\n\n_Dreamtime: Charles appears._\n\nCHARLES: You know what they say about the hand that rocks the cradle, don't you, Aretha?\n\nARETHA: Nope.\n\nCHARLES: Whats that?\n\nARETHA: No suh. No Mr. Charles suh. I dont.\n\nCHARLES: Well well well. \"No suh. I dont.\" Well well well well thats just as well. How about this one, eh? \"Two hands in the bush is better than one hand in\u2014\"\n\nARETHA: Sssthey feedin time, Mistuh Charles.\n\nCHARLES: \u2014Go on. Feed them. Ooooh! These will make some lovely shots\u2014give the children some wonderful memories. Memory is a very important thing, don't you know. It keeps us in line. It reminds us of who we are, memory. Without it we could be anybody. We would be running about here with no identities. You would not know that you're my\u2014help, you'd just be a regular street and alley heathen. I would not remember myself to be master. There would be chaos, chaos it would be without a knowledge from whence we came. Little Anglor and little Blanca would\u2014well, they would not even exist! And then what would Daddy do? Chaos without correct records. Chaos. Aaaah. You know what chaos is, don't you.\n\nARETHA: No suh. I dont.\n\nCHARLES: He he he! Aaaaah! Ignorance is bliss! They say ignorance is bliss\u2014only for the ignorant\u2014for those of us who must endure them we find their ignorance anything but blissful. Isn't that right.\n\nARETHA: Yes suh.\n\nCHARLES: \"Yes suh. Yes suh.\" Heh heh heh heh. Hold them up where I can see them. Thaaaat's it. You will look back on these and know what was what. Hold em up. There. Thaaaaaat's just fine. Smile. Smile! Smile? Smiiiiiile\u2014\n\n( _Clicking of camera_ )\n\n**F.**\n\n_Clicking of camera is replaced by buzzing of door._\n\nANGLOR: Very nice!\n\nBLANCA: Very nice!\n\nMISS FAITH: As the book promised: very well lit, views of the land and of the sea, a rotating northern exposure\u2014\n\nANGLOR: Very very nice!\n\nBLANCA: Oh yes very nice! Blanca Saxon\u2014\n\nANGLOR: Anglor Saxon.\n\nARETHA: I'm Mrs. Saxon.\n\nMISS FAITH: \u2014Expires 19-6-65.\n\nANGLOR: Very nice.\n\nBLANCA: We're newlyweds.\n\nARETHA: I'm Mrs. Saxon.\n\nBLANCA: Newlyweds. Newly wedded. New.\n\nANGLOR: Very new.\n\nMISS FAITH: Very nice.\n\nBLANCA: Blanca and Anglor Saxon.\n\nARETHA: Thuup! I'm\u2014\n\nMISS FAITH: Very nice. 32.5, 19-6-65. By the book. As promised.\n\nBLANCA: We read the book. The red letter edition. The red herring. Cover to cover. We read the red book.\n\nANGLOR: We're well read\n\nARETHA: You ever heard of Charles? He's in thuh book\u2014\n\nMISS FAITH: Five walk-in closets. Of course, theyre not in yet.\n\nBLANCA: Does she come with the place?\n\nMISS FAITH: She's on her way out.\n\nBLANCA: She has no teeth.\n\nANGLOR: Haven't I seen her somewhere before?\n\nBLANCA: Anglor Saxon!\u2014He's always doing that. When we met he wondered if he hadn't seen me somewhere before. And he had! We had to make an Amendment.\n\nMISS FAITH: The closets will go here here there and thar. We will yank her out to make room for them.\n\nANGLOR: Thus says the book. Amendment 2.1. Always liked that amendment. It's very open\u2014open to interpretation.\n\nMISS FAITH: We will put in some windows, of course.\n\nBLANCA: Of course.\n\nANGLOR: Yanking out the commode?\n\nMISS FAITH: Commodes just for show.\n\nARETHA: Just for show.\n\nBLANCA: We might like to have a bathroom. We're planning to have a big family.\n\nARETHA: A family. Had me uh family once. They let me go.\n\nANGLOR: Meet our children: Anglor and Blanca. They're so nice and quiet they don't speak unless they're spoken to they don't move unless we make them.\n\nMISS FAITH: This is where we plan the bathroom.\n\nANGLOR: You'll never guess where we met.\n\nBLANCA: Love at first sight.\n\nMISS FAITH: Plenty of room for a big family.\n\nANGLOR: Guess where we met!\n\nMISS FAITH: We'll rip out this kitchen if you like leave it bare youll have more space.\n\nARETHA: Charles got you tuhgether.\n\nANGLOR: Close. I told you we know her, Blanca.\n\nMISS FAITH: We'll put in the commode and rip it out then put it back again. If you so desire.\n\nBLANCA: Guess!\n\nANGLOR: We're going to need someone to mind that commode. We're going to need help.\n\nARETHA: I raised uh family once. I raised uh boy. I raised uh girl. I trained em I bathed em. I bathed uh baby once. Bathed two babies.\n\nBLANCA: We're childhood sweethearts. From childhood. We met way back. In the womb.\n\nANGLOR: We need help.\n\nBLANCA: We're twins!\n\nARETHA: That iduhnt in thuh book.\n\nANGLOR: We're related. By marriage. It's all legal. By the book.\n\nMISS FAITH: We will put the commode closer to the bath. Put the commode in the bath. Youll have more space.\n\nARETHA: We got different books.\n\nANGLOR: We have the same last name! Saxon! Blanca Saxon\u2014\n\nBLANCA: Anglor Saxon. Blanca and Anglor Saxon\u2014\n\nARETHA: I'm Mrs. Saxon. Howdeedoo.\n\nANGLOR: Mrs. Saxon, we need help.\n\nBLANCA: We're going to have children. We're going to breed. Weve bred two and we'll breed more.\n\nMISS FAITH: Its all a part of the great shucking off\u2014\n\nARETHA: You wouldnt know nothing uhbout uh Charles, wouldja? Charles was my master. Charles Saxon?\n\nMISS FAITH: The old must willingly shuck off to make way for the new. Much like the snakes new skin suit. The new come in and we gladly make them room. Where would they go if we did not extract?\n\nANGLOR: I dont suppose youve nowhere to go? We need help. You seem like a sturdy help type. I suppose you can shuffle and serve simultaneously? Wet nurse the brood weve bred? A help like you would be in accordance with the book. Make things make sense. Right along with the record. More in line with what you're used to. I would be master. Blanca: mistress. That's little master and little missy. Yes, that's it! Give us a grin!\n\nMISS FAITH: Shes on her way out.\n\nANGLOR: Give us a grin!\n\nBLANCA: Anglor, she's toothless.\n\nARETHA: Charles sscome back! I see im down there wavin\u2014no\u2014directin traffic. Left right left right left\u2014he remembers me right right he's forgiven me right left right right he wants tuh see me.\n\nMISS FAITH: Charles is dead.\n\nANGLOR: Thus says the book?\n\nARETHA: Make uh amendment. Charles ssdown thuh street. On thuh street down thuh street.\n\nMISS FAITH: Not in my book.\n\nBLANCA: We've got different books.\n\nARETHA: We got differin books. Make uh amendment. I'm packin my bags. I left him. Had to go. Two babies to care for.\n\nANGLOR: We know her from somewhere.\n\nARETHA: Had tuh go. He gived me his name. Make uh amendment.\n\nBLANCA: We've got the same name.\n\nANGLOR: WE KNOW HER FROM SOMEWHERE! Too bad she can't grin.\n\nARETHA: Had to go. Have tuh go. Make thuh amendment, Sister Faith, Charles is back.\n\nMISS FAITH: You need help. She comes with the place. She can live under the sink. Out of mind out of sight.\n\nBLANCA: She's toothless.\n\nANGLOR: Not a good example for the breed. Make the amendment.\n\nARETHA: Miss Faith? Make uh uhmendment. Charless waitin\u2014\n\nMISS FAITH: Charles is dead! Never to return. Thus says the\u2014\n\nARETHA: Buchenwald! Buchenwald!\n\nBLANCA: Stick to the facts, help! She's bad for the brood. Make that amendment.\n\nMISS FAITH: An amendment.\n\nARETHA: Nine million just disappeared  Thats uh fact!!\n\nBLANCA: Six million. Six! Miss Faith? The amendment! I would like another child. I would like to get started!\n\nARETHA: They hauled us from thuh homeland! Stoled our clothes!\n\nMISS FAITH: Amendment! Amendment XIII. You have been extracted from the record, Mrs. Saxon. You are free. You are clear. You may go.\n\nANGLOR: Free and clear to go. Go.\n\nMISS FAITH: Go.\n\nBLANCA: Go.\n\nARETHA: Oh. How should I greet him? Should greet im with uh\u2014\n\nBLANCA: GIT! Wave goodbye, children! That's it. That's it! They're so well mannered.\n\nANGLOR: Wife? Brood? Isn't this a lovely view? And the buzzer! It works!\n\n( _Buzzer_ )\n\n**G.**\n\n_Dreamtime: Charles appears._\n\nCHARLES: You let them take out the teeth you're giving up the last of the verifying evidence. All'll be obliterated. All's left will be conjecture. We won't be able to tell you apart from the others. We won't even know your name. Things will get messy. Chaos. Perverted. People will twist around the facts to suit the truth.\n\nARETHA: You know what they say bout thuh hand that rocks thuh cradle?\n\nCHARLES: I didn't rock their cradles.\n\nARETHA: You know how thuh sayin goes?\n\nCHARLES: \"Rocks the cradle\u2014rules the world,\" but I didn't rock\u2014\n\nARETHA: Dont care what you say you done, Charles. We're makin us uh histironical amendment here, K? Give us uh smile. Uh big smile for thuh book.\n\nCHARLES: Historical. An \"Historical Amendment,\" Ma'am.\n\nARETHA: Smile, Charles.\n\nCHARLES: Where are you going, Miss Aretha?\n\nARETHA: Mmm goin tuh take my place aside thuh most high.\n\nCHARLES: Up north, huh?\n\nARETHA: Up north.\n\nCHARLES: Sscold up there, you know.\n\nARETHA: Smile, Charles! Thats it!\n\nCHARLES: Chaos! You know what chaos is?! Things cease to adhere to\u2014\n\nARETHA: SMILE. Smile, Charles, Smile! Show us them pretty teeths. Good.\n\nCHARLES: I can't get the children to smile, Ma'am.\n\nARETHA: You smile.\n\nCHARLES: They're crying, Miss Aretha!\n\nARETHA: Smile! Smile! SMILE!! There. Thats nice.\n\nCHARLES: They're crying.\n\nARETHA: Dont matter none. Dont matter none at all. You say its uh cry I say it uh smile. These photographics is for my scrapbook. Scraps uh graphy for my book. Smile or no smile mm gonna remember you. Mm gonna remember you grinnin.\n\n( _Whir of camera grows louder. Lights fade to black_ )\n\nTHIRD KINGDOM (REPRISE)\n\nOVER-SEER: What are you doing?\n\nUS-SEER: Throw-ing. Up.\n\nKIN-SEER: Kin-Seersez.\n\nSHARK-SEER: Shark-Seer sez.\n\nUS-SEER: Us-Seer sez.\n\nSOUL-SEER: Soul-Seer sez.\n\nOVER-SEER: Over-Seer sez.\n\nKIN-SEER: Sez Kin-Seer sez.\n\nSHARK-SEER: Sezin Shark-Seer sez.\n\nUS-SEER: Sez Us-Seer sezin.\n\nSOUL-SEER: Sezin Soul-Seer sezin sez.\n\nOVER-SEER: Sez Over-Seer sez.\n\nKIN-SEER: Tonight I dream of where I be-camin from. And where I be-camin from duhduhnt look like nowhere like I been.\n\nSOUL-SEER: The tale of how we _were_ when we _were_ \u2014\n\nOVER-SEER: You woke up screaming.\n\nSHARK-SEER: How we _will_ be when we _will_ be\u2014\n\nOVER-SEER: You woke up screaming.\n\nUS-SEER: And how we be, now that we iz.\n\nALL: You woke up screaming out\u2014you woke me up.\n\nOVER-SEER: Put on this. Around your head and over your eyes. It will help you sleep. See? Like me. Around your head and over your eyes. It will help you see.\n\nKIN-SEER, US-SEER AND SHARK-SEER: Gaw gaw gaw gaw\u2014eeeee-uh. Gaw gaw gaw gaw eeeeeee-uh.\n\nSOUL-SEER: Howzit gonna fit? Howzitgonnafit me?!\n\nUS-SEER: Bleached Bones Man has comed and tooked you. You fall down in-to-the-sea.\n\nKIN-SEER: Should I jump? Should I jump?? Should I jump shouldijumporwhut?\n\nSHARK-SEER: I dream up uh fish thats swallowin me\u2014\n\nSHARK-SEER AND KIN-SEER: And I dream up uh me that is then be-camin that fish and I dream up that fish be-camin uh shark and I dream up that shark be-camin uhshore.\n\nALL: UUH!\n\nSOUL-SEER: And where I be-camin from duhduhnt look like nowhere I been.\n\nSHARK-SEER AND KIN-SEER: And I whuduhnt me no more and I whuduhnt no fish. My new Self was uh 3rd Self made by thuh space in between.\n\nALL: UUH!\n\nKIN-SEER: Rose up out uh thuh water and standin on them waves my Self was standin. And my Self that rose between us went back down in-to-the-sea.\n\nUS-SEER: EEEEEEEEE!\n\nSHARK-SEER: Me wavin at me me wavin at I me wavin at my Self.\n\nUS-SEER: Bleached Bones Man has comed and tooked you. You fall down in-to-the-sea. . . .\n\nKIN-SEER: Baby, what will I do for love?\n\nOVER-SEER: Around your head and over your eyes. This piece of cloth will help you see.\n\nSHARK-SEER: BLACK FOLKS WITH NO CLOTHES. . . .\n\nUS-SEER: This boat tooked us to-the-coast.\n\nSOUL-SEER: THUH SKY WAS JUST AS BLUE!\n\nKIN-SEER: Thuuuup!\n\nSHARK-SEER: Eat eat eat please eat.\n\nSOUL-SEER: THUH SKY WAS JUST AS BLUE!\n\nKIN-SEER: Thuuuup!\n\nSHARK-SEER: Eat eat eat please eat. Eat eat eat please eat.\n\nOVER-SEER: Around your head and over your eyes.\n\nUS-SEER: This boat tooked us to-the-coast.\n\nSOUL-SEER: But we are not in uh boat!\n\nUS-SEER: But we iz. Iz uh-huhn-uh-huhn-iz.\n\nOVER-SEER: There are 2 cliffs. 2 cliffs where the Word has cleaved. Half the Word has fallen away making 2 Words and a space between. Those 2 Words inscribe the third Kingdom.\n\nKIN-SEER: Should I jump shouldijumporwhut.\n\nUS-SEER: Come home come home dont stay out too late.\n\nKIN-SEER: Me hollerin uhcross thuh cliffs at my Self:\n\nSOUL-SEER: Ssblak! Ssblak! Ssblakallblak!\n\nOVER-SEER: That's your _soul_ you're looking at. Wonder #9 of my glass-bottomed boat. Swallow it, you, or you'll be jettisoned.\n\nSOUL-SEER: UUH! UUH!\n\nKIN-SEER: This boat tooked me from-my-coast.\n\nUS-SEER: Come home come home come home come home.\n\nSOUL-SEER: The tale of who we were when we were, who we will be when we will be and who we be now that we iz:\n\nUS-SEER: Iz-uhhuhn-uhhuhn-iz.\n\nKIN-SEER: You said I could wave as long as I see um. I still see um.\n\nOVER-SEER: Wave then.\n\nOVER-SEER, KIN-SEER, SOUL-SEER, SHARK-SEER AND US-SEER: Gaw gaw gaw gaw ee-uh. Gaw gaw gaw gaw ee-uh.\n\nSHARK-SEER: This is uh speech in uh language of codes. Secret signs and secret symbols.\n\nKIN-SEER: Wave wave wave wave. Wave wave wave wave.\n\nSHARK-SEER: Should I jump shouldijumporwhut? Should I jump shouldijumporwhut?\n\nKIN-SEER: | SHARK-SEER:\n\n---|---\n\nWave wave wave wave. | Should I jump shouldijumporwhut?\n\nWavin wavin | Should I jump should I jump\n\nwavin wavin | shouldijumporwhut?\n\nUS-SEER: Baby, what will I do for love?\n\nSOUL-SEER: Rock. Thuh boat. Rock. Thuh boat.\n\nKIN-SEER: | SOUL-SEER: | SHARK-SEER: | US-SEER:\n\n---|---|---|---\n\nWavin wavin | Rock.Thuh boat. | Shouldijump | Thuh Sky\n\nwavin | Rock. | shouldijump | was just\n\nwavin | Thuh boat. | or whut? | as blue!\n\n|  | |\n\nTHUP!\n\nWavin wavin | Rock.Thuh boat. | Shouldijump | Thuh Sky\n\nwavin wavin | Rock. | shouldijump | was just\n\nWavin wavin | Thuh boat. | or whut? | as blue!\n\nOVER-SEER: HO!\n\nKIN-SEER: | SOUL-SEER: | SHARK-SEER: | US-SEER:\n\n---|---|---|---\n\nWavin wavin | Rock. Thuh boat. | Shouldijump | Thuh Sky\n\nwavin | Rock. | Shouldijump | was just\n\nwavin | Thuh boat. | or whut? | as blue!\n\n|  | |\n\nTHUP!\n\nWavin wavin | Rock. Thuh Boat. | Shouldijump | Thuh sky\n\nWavin wavin | Rock. | shouldijump | was just\n\nWavin wavin | Thuh boat. | or whut? | as blue!\n\nOVER-SEER: HO!\n\nKIN-SEER, SOUL-SEER, SHARK-SEER, US-SEER AND OVER-SEER: Gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw gaw.\n\nOVER-SEER: I'm going to yell \"Land Ho!\" in a day or so and all of this will have to stop. I am going to yell \"Land Ho!\" in a day or so and that will be the end of this.\n\nKIN-SEER, SOUL-SEER, SHARK-SEER AND US-SEER: Gaw gaw gaw gaw-ee-uh. Gaw gaw gaw gaw-eeeee-uh.\n\nOVER-SEER: What are you doing? What'reya doin. What'reya-doeeeeee! WHAT ARE YOU DO-EEE-NUH???!\n\nKIN-SEER: \u2014.\u2014: Throw-ing. Kisses.\n\nPART 4: GREEKS (OR THE SLUGS)\n\n**A.**\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: I'll have four. Four shots. Four at thuh desk. Go ahead\u2014put in thuh colored film. Mmsplurgin. Splurging. Uh huh. Wants em tuh see my shoes as black. Shirt as khaki. Stripes as green. No mop n broom bucket today! I'll sit first. No. Stand. I kin feel it. In here. Mmm gettin my Distinction today. Thuh events of my destiny ssgonna fall intuh place. What events? That I dont know. But they gonna fall intuh place all right. They been all along marchin in that direction. Soon they gonna fall. Ssonly natural. Ssonly fair. They gonna fall intuh place. I kin feel it. In here. This time tomorrow mm gonna have me my Distinction. Gonna be shakin hands with thuh Commander. Gonna be salutin friendly back n forth. Gonna be rewarded uh desk cause when uh mans distinguished he's got hisself uh desk. Standin at thuh desk. My desk. Sssgonna be mines, anyhow. Fnot this un then one just like it. Hands in pockets. No\u2014out. Ready for work. Here is Sergeant Smith at his desk. Ready. Ready for work. Next, second shot: right hand on the desk. Like on the Bible. God and Country. Here is a man who loves his work. The name of this man is the name of Smith. You get the stripes in? They gonna be bars by evenin! Ha! Bars by evenin! Having a desk is distinguished. All of us have them. Because when there is danger from above, we stop. We look. We listen. Then we\u2014dive underneath our desk (being careful that we do not catch our heads on the desk lip). Dive! Dive under our desks where it is safe. Like turtles. In our shells we wait for the danger to pass.\u2014I don't wanna do uh shot uh that\u2014don't want em tuh worry. Next, third shot: Here\u2014oh. I will sit. Hands folded. Here I am\u2014no. Arms folded. Next, shot number four. Ready? Hands on books and books open. A full desk and a smiling man. Sergeant Smith has got stacks of papers, but, not to worry, he is a good worker and will do well. Wait. Uh smile. Okay. Go head. Take it. Smiling at work. They like smiles.\n\n( _Airplane sounds_ )\n\n**B.**\n\n_Mrs. Sergeant Smith and Buffy. A lovely home._\n\nBUFFY: Mommie, what should the Biloxie Twins wear today?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Sumthin nice.\n\nBUFFY: The green one with pink stripes orange and yellow fuzzy sweater sets. Blue coat dresses. Double breasted. Which one's nicest?\n\nMRS. SMITH: They all perm press? Put em in permanent press. You don't want em arrivin wrinkled. I vote for them two sharp little brown n white polka-dotted numbers. Put em both in thuh brown n white dotted swisses.\n\nBUFFY: There iduhn't any brown and white swiss.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Perm press is best. Put em in thuh swiss.\n\nBUFFY: I'll press em with my hands. My hands get as hot as uh iron sometimes, Mommie. Here they go\u2014ssss\u2014tuh! Hot enough! Press press press.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Don't press on thuh desk. Gotta keep your daddy's desk nice for im. Use starch? Starch!\n\nBUFFY: Starch\u2014starchstarch! Ooooh\u2014starch made uh tab come off.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Sssokay. It'll hold with three tabs.\n\nBUFFY: What if thuh wind blows her dress? What if three tabs won't hold? She'll be naked. Thuh wind'll steal her clothes and then she'll be naked.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Ssit pressed? Bring it here. Lemmie feel. Good, Buffeena\u2014\n\nBUFFY: But what if her dress whips off? What if she is naked? Can't be outside and naked people will see her she'll be shamed\u2014\n\nMRS. SMITH: Good tuh be pressed. Don't like crinkles\u2014\n\nBUFFY: What if thuh wind pulls like this and this and then she is naked and then\u2014\n\nMRS. SMITH: She kin hide behind her twin. They look just alike, don't they. They look just alike then Miss-Naked-Biloxie-with-thuh-three-tabs kin hide behind Miss-Fully-Clothed-Biloxie-with-thuh-four. Nobody'll notice nothin.\n\nBUFFY: Where the Biloxie Twins off to, Mommie?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Off out.\n\nBUFFY: Off out where?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Off out to thuh outside.\n\nBUFFY: Off outside when they go who're they gonna meet?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Their Maker. They're gonna meet their Maker. Huh! Sssimportant. Last furlough your daddy had, I tooked you tuh see him. Remember? Two thousand, oh hundred fifty-three stops. Three days on one bus. Was uh local. Missed thuh express. Changed in Castletin. Most folks waited in thuh depot. We waited outside. In thuh snow. Wanted tuh be thuh first tuh see thuh bus round thuh bend. That bus tooked us to thuh coast. Last tuh get on. Sat in thuh\u2014rear. More even ride in thuh rear. Tooked us to thuh coast. Saw your daddy. Remember?\n\nBUFFY: Uh huhn. The Biloxie twins are gonna\u2014\n\nMRS. SMITH: Huh! Good memory you got.\u2014That was before you was born. I tooked you to see your Maker. Put on my green n white striped for thuh busride\u2014it got so crinkled. Had tuh change intuh my brown with thuh white dots. Changed right there on thuh bus. In thuh restroom, of course. There's some womens that'll change anywheres. With anybody. Not this one. Not this Mrs. Smith. I gotta change my dress I goes to thuh restroom no matter how long thuh line. Goin in thuh mobile restroom's uh privilege, you know. They let me privy to thuh privilege cause I wanted tuh look nice for your daddy. Wanted tuh look like I hadn't traveled uh mile or sweated uh drop.\n\nBUFFY: Biloxie Twinsss gonna wear their brown and whites\u2014\n\nMRS. SMITH: Got off that bus at thuh coast. Sky was shinin. Real blue. Didn't see it. All I seen was him. Mr. Smith. Your daddy. He tooked up my whole eye. \"Mrs. Smith!\" he yelled, loud enough for everyone tuh hear, \"you ain't traveled a mile nor sweated a drop!\"\n\nBUFFY: You were just as proud.\n\nMRS. SMITH: I was just as proud.\n\nBUFFY: You were just as proud.\n\nMRS. SMITH: I was just as proud. \"Ain't traveled a mile nor sweated a drop!\"\n\nBUFFY: I'm gonna be just as proud.\n\nMRS. SMITH: As what?\n\nBUFFY: \u2014As proud\u2014.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Uh huhnn. We're gonna have us uh big family. Your father's got uh furlough comin up. How'd you like uh\u2014uh sister, Buffeena?\n\nBUFFY: The Biloxie Twins don't need uh sister cause then they wouldn't be twins.\n\nMRS. SMITH: We can put her in uh bed next tuh yours.\n\nBUFFY: Where would the Biloxie Twins sleep?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Men from thuh Effort come by?\n\nBUFFY: 0-800.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Whatja give em.\n\nBUFFY: Thuh floor lamp.\n\nMRS. SMITH: With thuh curlicues? Huh. Don't need it nohow. Whatcha need is uh\u2014uhnother girl. You and her\u2014you'll have uh\u2014uh sister. Get your twins off thuh desk, Buffy. Gotta keep it nice for your daddy. Two girls'll make things even. And thuh next time your daddy comes home we'll all do it up in brown and white.\n\n( _Airplane sounds rise up_ )\n\n**C.**\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: Here I am on a rock. As you can see, the rock is near water! We of the 20-53rd are closer to water than you can guess. We are in the water! But we are not on a boat! But, we are not on a submarine! We of the 20-53rd are on an ISLAND!! A big rock in the middle of the ocean. Next time your mother takes you to visit the ocean, Buffeena, look very far out over the water and give me a wave. I will waaaave back! You may have to put on your glasses to see me, and I expect that to you I'll look like just a little speck. But if you look very far, you'll see me and if you wave very hard, I will waaaaaaave back! Next time your mother takes you to visit the ocean, Buffeena, throw me a kiss and I will throoooow one back! Now, Buffy, to reach me at the 20-53rd you are going to have to throw me a BIG kiss. Ask your Mother to help you. She will help you just as we here at the 20-53rd help each other, working together, to get the good job done. Here at the 20-53rd different men have different jobs. Some read maps. Some fly airplanes. Some watch guard over our island home. It is my job to keep watch over this rock. The rock I'm standing on right now. Our Commander, the man in charge, likes a clean rock. See my broom? See my mop? It is my job to keep this rock clean! My rock is very clean. My rock is the cleanest of all the rocks on our island home. I make the Commander very happy because I do a good job. I help him and in turn he will help me. My Commander, when the time is right, will reward me for a good job well done. My Commander will award me soon and put me in charge of bigger and more important\u2014more important aspects of our island home. And your daddy will then have his Distinction. And your daddy will then come home. He will come home with bars instead of stripes and you and your Mommie will be just as proud! Well, it is time for work! Your daddy loves you, Buffy, and sends a big kiss and a big smile.\n\n( _Airplane sounds rise up_ )\n\n**D.**\n\n_Mrs. Smith, Buffy and Muffy. A lovely home._\n\nMUFFY: How come he didn't write tuh me?\n\nBUFFY: Say \"why is it that,\" Muffy, not \"how come.\"\n\nMUFFY: Why is that he didn't write tuh me? He didn't include me.\n\nMRS. SMITH: You got thuh ledger, Buffeena? \"Subject\": uh letter. Check thuh \"non bill\" column. \"From:\"? Write\u2014\n\nMUFFY: How come he didn't say Muffy too?\n\nBUFFY: Get out from under the desk, Muff. Mrs. Smith, write \"Sergeant Smith\"?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Right.\n\nMUFFY: Duhdun't he know my name? I'm Muffy. Duhdun't he know my name?\n\nBUFFY: \"Contents\"?\n\nMUFFY: Duddun't he know me?! I'm Muffy.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Write\u2014uh\u2014\"general news.\"\n\nBUFFY: General news.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Slash\u2014\"report of duties.\"\n\nBUFFY: Good.\n\nMUFFY: He duhdn't like me. Sergeant Smith dudhn't like me Buffy. He only likes Mrs. Smith he only likes Buffy Smith he only likes his desk. He duduhn't like Muffy. I'm Muffy. He duduhn't like me.\n\nBUFFY: He likes you.\n\nMRS. SMITH: \"Signs of Distinction\": \u2014uh\u2014uh\u2014put \"\u2014.\" What'd we put last time?\n\nMUFFY: He duhuhun't love me. HE DUDUHN'T LOVE HIS DESK!\n\nBUFFY: Helovesyouheloveshisdesk.\n\nMRS. SMITH: I hear you kickin Sergeant Smith's desk, Mufficent! I'm comin over there tuh feel for scuff marks and they're better not be uh one! Hhh. \"Signs of Distinction\"? What'd we put last time.\n\nMUFFY: Why dudn't he love me? If he really loved Muffy he'd say Muffy. If he really loved me he would I'm Muffy why dudn't\u2014\n\nBUFFY: Last letter's Signs of Distinction were \"on the horizon.\"\n\nMRS. SMITH: Before that?\n\nBUFFY: . . . \"Soon.\" Before that he reported his Distinction to be arriving quote any day now unquote.\n\nMUFFY: Mm wearin by brown and white. You said he likes his girls in their brown and whites.\n\nMRS. SMITH: On thuh horizon any day now soon. Huh. You girls know what he told me last furlough? Last furlough I got off that bus and thuh sky was just as blue\u2014wooo it was uh blue sky. I'd taken thuh bus to thuh coast. Rode in thuh front seat cause thuh ride was smoother up in thuh front. Kept my pocketbook on my lap. Was nervous. Asked thuh driver tuh name out names of towns we didn't stop at. Was uh express. Uh express bus. \"Mawhaven!\" That was one place\u2014where we passed by. Not by but through. \"Mawhaven!\" Had me uh front seat. Got to thuh coast. Wearin my brown and white. \"You ain't traveled a mile nor sweated a drop!\" That's exactly how he said it too. Voice tooked up thuh whole outside couldn't hear nothin else. We got tuh talkin. He told me that over there, where he's stationed, on his island home, over there they are uh whole day ahead of us. Their time ain't our time. Thuh sun does\u2014tricks\u2014does tricks n puts us all off schedules. When his time's his own he tries tuh think of what time it is here. For us. And what we're doin. He's in his quarters stowin away his checkers game and it's dark but you're whinin out thuh lumps in your Cream of Wheat, Buffy and Muffy, you're tearin at your plaits and it's Tuesday mornin and it's yesterday. And thuh breakfast goes cold today. I redo Miss Muff's head and fasten it with pins but it ain't today for him. Ssstomorrow. Always tomorrow. Iduhn't that somethin?\n\nBUFFY: I'll put \"expected.\" Hows that.\n\nMUFFY: I like his desk. I love his desk. I kiss it see? I hug it. Uuh! Hear me, Mommie, I'm kissing Sergeant Smith's desk. I am hugging it. Uuuhh! He likes his girls in their Swisses, right? Don't you, Sergeant Smith? I'm their Swisses! I'm their Swisses!!\n\nMRS. SMITH: \"Mention of Work\": check \"yes.\"\n\nBUFFY: Check.\n\nMUFFY: \"Mention of Family\": check NO.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Check \"yes,\" Buffeena.\n\nBUFFY: Check.\n\nMUFFY: Did not mention Muffy.\n\nBUFFY: Censors, Muff.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Scissors?\n\nBUFFY: Censors. The Censors\u2014they're uh family. Like us. They're uh family with Mr. Censor at thuh lead. Mr. Censor is a man who won't let Sergeant Smith say certain things because certain things said may put the Effort in danger. Certain things said and certain ways of saying certain things may clue-in the enemy. Certain things said may allow them to catch Sergeant Smith unawares. Sergeant Smith, Muff, deals in a language of codes\u2014secret signs and signals. Certain ways with words that are plain to us could, for Sergeant Smith, spell the ways of betrayal, right, Mrs. Smith? Notice he only says \"Commander.\" He isn't allowed to mention his Commander by name. We say \"Muffy\" every day but for Sergeant Smith saying your name would be gravely dangerous.\n\nMUFFY: Muffy's not gravely dangerous.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Muffy\u2014Muffy\u2014Muffy sounds like minefield. What's uh mine, Mufficent?\n\nMUFFY: A mine is a thing that dismembers. Too many mines lose the war.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Good girl.\n\nMUFFY: Remember the Effort.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Good girl!\n\nBUFFY: We all gotta make sacrifices, Muffy.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Wouldn't uh named you \"Muffy,\" but they hadn't invented mines when you came along.\n\nMUFFY: They named mines after me?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Go put on your Brown n White. We're goin tuh thuh beach.\n\nBUFFY: She's got it on, Mrs. Smith.\n\nMUFFY: Sergeant Smith's comin?!?\n\nMRS. SMITH: You're not wrinkled are you Mufficent? Comeer. Lemmie feel. Hmmmm. Ssall right. Wouldn't want tuh be crinkly for Sergeant Smith. Huh. I remember when he first saw you. We traveled for miles and\u2014when we walked off that bus! Brown-and-White polka dots uh swiss! Lookin like we hadn't traveled uh mile nor sweated uh drop!\n\nMUFFY: Was he just as proud?\n\nBUFFY: He was.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Your Sergeant ssgonna be furloughin soon. How'd my two girls like uh\u2014uh brother, huh? Seems like three is what this family needs. He always wanted uh\u2014boy. Boy. Men from thuh Effort come by already, huh?\n\nBUFFY: 0-800.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Whatyuh give em?\n\nBUFFY: Floor lamp.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Thuh one with thuh green brass base?\n\nBUFFY: And thuh phonograph.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Records too? HHH. Don't need em no how. What we need is uh\u2014\n\nBUFFY: Uh brother.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Uh brother! Your Sergeant Smith ssgonna be furloughin soon. Whatduhyuh say, Buffy? Muffy? Buffy? Muffy?\n\n( _Airplane sounds rise up_ )\n\n**E.**\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: I expect it's today for you by now. Last night it comed to me: there's four hours every day that I kin say \"today\" and you'll know what today I mean. We got us whatcha calls \"uh overlap.\" We got us uh overlap of four hours. Times when my day's yours\u2014and yours is mines. Them four hours happens real quick and they look just like thuh other twenty-odd so you gotta watch for em real close. That little bit uh knowledge comed tuh me last night. Along with\u2014my Distinction. Mrs. Smith, your Sergeant Smiths now\u2014distinguished. They're etchin \"Sergeant Smith\" on thuh medals right this very moment as I speak I expect. Sssmy desk. Sssmy desk, this. Hhh. I saved uh life, ya know. Not every man kin say that, Mrs. Smith. I know you're gonna be proud. Make no mistake. Just as proud. Just as proud as\u2014. Not every man saves uh life!\n\n( _Airplane sounds rise up_ )\n\n**F.**\n\n_Mrs. Smith, Buffy, Muffy and Duffy. A lovely home._\n\nMRS. SMITH: You ironed thuh Sergeant's desk today, Buffeena?\n\nBUFFY: Yes, Mrs. Smith.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Don't want it wrinkled.\n\nBUFFY: No, Mrs. Smith. We'll get him another one tomorrow, K Muff? Duff too.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Another what?\n\nDUFFY: Are turtles mammals, Mommie?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Mammals? Waas uh mammal?\n\nMUFFY: Live births. Nurse their young.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Waas today, Buffeena?\n\nBUFFY: No, Duffy, they're not mammals. Today's Friday, Mrs. Smith.\n\nMUFFY: Mind if I yo-yo, Buff?\n\nBUFFY: Be careful, K?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Be careful of thuh desk. Sergeant Smith's comin home n all we need's for it tuh be scored with your yo-yo welts, you!\n\nDUFFY: Sergeant Smith uh mammal?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Waas uh mammal?\n\nMUFFY: Live births\u2014round the world\u2014whooosh!\n\nBUFFY: Yes, Duffy.\n\nMUFFY: Nurse their young. Whoosh! Whoosh!\n\nMRS. SMITH: Today Friday?\n\nBUFFY: Yes, Mrs. Smith.\n\nDUFFY: He said he was uh turtle.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Turtle?! Today's Friday. Waas uh turtle?\n\nMUFFY: Masquerade as fish, Mrs. Smith. Round the world! Round the world!\n\nMRS. SMITH: They catch on my line when I cast it out. Today's Friday. Fish on Friday. We'll have fish.\n\nBUFFY: When Sergeant Smith said he was uh turtle that was uh figure of speech, Duffy. Sergeant Smith was figuring his speech.\n\nMRS. SMITH: We'll go out. Out. Out. Have fish. You'll wear your swiss, Duffy. Same as us.\n\nDUFFY: How do they breathe?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Same as us.\n\nDUFFY: Underwater?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Same as us. Same as us. Sergeant Smith's comin. Soon. Today. Sergeant Smith's comin soon today soon.\n\nMUFFY: Soon today today soon on the horizon today soon on the horizon today soon round the world round the world.\n\nDUFFY: All winter through gills?\n\nBUFFY: In summer they suck up lots of air. They store it. In the winter they use the stored air. Like camels use water.\n\nDUFFY: Camels breathe water? Camels have gills?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Course they got gills. You heard of thuh overlap, aintcha? Overlap's uh gap. Uh gap overlappin. Thuh missin link. Find thuh link. Put out thuh cat. Close thuh kitty cat flap mm feeling uh breeze. Seal up thuh flap mm feelin uh breeze.\n\nBUFFY: Flap is sealed.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Sscold. Mm feelin uh breeze. Mm feelin uh breeze.\n\nMUFFY: She's feeling a breeze we're all gonna freeze round the world round the world.\n\nBUFFY: Flap is sealed.\n\nMUFFY: Round the world.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Look for thuh overlap!\n\nMUFFY: Round the world.\n\nDUFFY: Overlap's uh gap!\n\nBUFFY: Isn't!\n\nDUFFY: Is!\n\nDUFFY: Round the world round the world.\n\nDUFFY: Overlap's uh gap!\n\nBUFFY: Isn't!\n\nDUFFY: Is!\n\nMUFFY: Round the world round the\u2014\n\nMRS. SMITH: FREEZE!\n\nMUFFY: \u2014world.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Sound off.\n\nBUFFY: Buff-y!\n\nMUFFY: Muff-y!\n\nDUFFY: Duff-y!\n\nMRS. SMITH: Mm feelin uh breeze. Stop that yo-in, Mufficent, or you'll have thuh Sarge tuh answer to. Still. Still thuh breeze. Anyone by at 0-800? Whatja give em? Don't need it no how. What we need is uh\u2014. There was uh light in thuh sky last night. Don't suppose no one seen it. You all'd gone out. Through thuh gap. I was waitin up. There was uh light in thuh sky. I stopped. I looked. I heard. Uh man was fallin fallin aflame. Fallin at midnight. There wasn't uh sun. He was comin from another world. I stopped. I looked. I heard but couldn't do nothin. It all happened so far away. It all happened before you was born. Go put on your Brown and White, son. The Sergeant likes his family in their Brown and Whites. Muffy. Walk thuh dog.\n\nMUFFY: Walking the dog walking the dog.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Thuh sergeant'll want to see things in order. Nothin more orderly than uh walked dog.\n\nMUFFY: Walk the dog. Walk the dog. Round the world. Walk the dog.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Stand me in my walker. Go on\u2014my walker, Private! Sarge is comin, gotta snap to attention.\n\nDUFFY: Turtles lay eggs in thuh sand at night. Then they go away. How do they know which ones are theirs? Which eggs? Thuh eggs hatch and thuh baby turtles go crawlin out into thuh sea. How do thuh parents know em? How do thuh parents know em, Buff?\n\nBUFFY: I don't think they much care.\n\nMRS. SMITH: TEN-SHUN!\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: Hello, honey. I'm home.\n\nBUFFY: Daddy is home!\n\nMUFFY: Daddy is home!\n\nDUFFY: Daddy is home!\n\nBUFFY, MUFFY AND DUFFY: Hello, Daddy!\n\nMRS. SMITH: Hello, Mr. Smith. How was your day?\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: Just fine, Mrs. Smith. Give me uh kiss. Why, Mrs. Smith, you've lost your eyes. You've lost your eyes, Mrs. Smith. When did you lose your eyes?\n\nBUFFY: What did you bring me, Daddy?\n\nMRS. SMITH: For years. I had em lost for years.\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: When?\n\nMRS. SMITH: YEARS. Years uhgo.\n\nMUFFY: What did you bring me, Daddy?\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: Shoulda wroten.\n\nDUFFY: What did you bring me, Daddy?\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: Shoulda called.\n\nBUFFY: Daddy promised me uh china doll!\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: Shoulda given me some kinda notice, Mrs. Smith. Iduhn't no everyday uh wife loses her eyes. Where did you lose them and when did they go? Why haven't we ordered replacements? I woulda liked tuh hear uhbout that.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Thought they'd come back afore you did. Shoulda informed me you was stoppin by.\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: I wrote. I called.\n\nBUFFY: I'll get thuh ledger.\n\nMRS. SMITH: What do you think of our brown and whites, Mr. Smith?\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: Who're you uhgain?\n\nDUFFY: Duffy. You promised me an airplane.\n\nMUFFY: I'm Muffy.\n\nMRS. SMITH: You are Mr. Smith. You are our Mr. Smith? What do you think of our brown and whites, our Mr. Smith?\n\nDUFFY: I'm your spittin image. Did you bring my airplane?\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: I was uh fine lookin man\u2014like you\u2014once. I got pictures. Uh whole wallet full. There. That's me.\n\nDUFFY: Nope. That's me. We look uhlike.\n\nBUFFY: They took thuh ledger. Thuh ledger was in thuh desk.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Ssstoo bad. We needs documentation. Proof.\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: I wrote! I called!\n\nMRS. SMITH: There's lots uh Smiths. Many Smiths. Smithsss common name.\n\nDUFFY: You promised me uh air-o-plane!\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: I visited. We had us a family. That's proof.\n\nMRS. SMITH: Lots uh visits. Lots uh families.\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: I got my Distinction. See? Here are my medals here is my name. They let me be uh Mister. Mr. Smith's got his bars!\n\nMRS. SMITH: Distinction? Waas uh Distinction?\n\nBUFFY: You promised me uh Chinese doll.\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: Uh Distinction's when one's set uhpart. Uh Distinction's when they give ya bars. Got my bars! See?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Lemmie feel.\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: I saved uh life! Caught uh man as he was fallin out thuh sky!\n\nMRS. SMITH: You catched uh man? Out thuh sky? I seen uh light last night. In thuh sky. From uhnother world. I don't suppose you catched it. Don't suppose you're our Distinctioned Mr. Smith?\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: Was standin on my rock. I stopped. I heard. I seen him fallin\u2014\n\nMUFFY: You stepped on a mine. I read it in the paper. A mine is a thing that remembers. Too many mines lose the war. Remember the Effort. The mine blew his legs off.\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: You one uh mines?\n\nBUFFY: He lost his legs.\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: You one uh mines?\n\nDUFFY: He lost thuh war.\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: You one uh mines?\n\nMRS. SMITH: Why, Mr. Smith, you've lost your legs, why, Mr. Smith, you've lost thuh war. When did you lose your legs, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, when did you lose thuh war? Men come by at 0-800. What do we give em? What we don't need nohow. BuffyMuffyDuffy? Your father's got hisself uh furlough comin up soon. That's just what we need. Uhnother boy. Always thought things should come in fours. Fours. Fours. All fours. I'll put it to him when he comes home. Whatduhyasay?\n\nDUFFY: Are we turtles? Are we turtles, Mr. Smith?\n\nBUFFY: Duffy\u2014\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: No. No\u2014uh\u2014boy we iduhn't turtles. We'se slugs. We'se slugs.\n\n( _Airplane noises rise up_ )\n\n**G.**\n\nMR. SERGEANT SMITH: Always wanted to do me somethin noble. Not somethin better than what I deserved\u2014just somethin noble. Uh little bit uh noble somethin. Like what they did in thuh olden days. Like in thuh olden days in olden wars. Time for noble seems past. Time for somethin noble was yesterday. There usedta be uh overlap of four hours. Hours in four when I'd say \"today\" and today it'd be. Them four hours usta happen together, now, they scatters theirselves all throughout thuh day. Usedta be uh flap tuh slip through. Flaps gone shut. I saw that boy fallin out thuh sky. On fire. Thought he was uh star. Uh star that died years uhgo but was givin us light through thuh flap. Made uh wish. Opened up my arms\u2014was wishin for my whole family. He fell on me. They say he was flying too close to thuh sun. They say I caught him but he fell. On me. They gived me uh Distinction. They set me apart. They say I caught him but he fell. He fell on me. I broked his fall. I saved his life. I ain't seen him since. No, boy\u2014Duffy\u2014uh\u2014Muffy, Buffy, no, we ain't even turtles. Huh. We'se slugs. Slugs. Slugs.\n\n( _Airplane sounds rise up_ )\n\n A common form from the Division of Housing and Community Renewal.\n\n In March of 1807, England's slave trade was abolished.\n\n Red herring. In co-op apartment sales, a preliminary booklet explaining the specifics of sale.\n\n An estimated 9 million Africans were taken from Africa into slavery (Rawley, _The Transatlantic Slave Trade_ ). An estimated 6 million Jewish people were killed in the concentration camps of WWII.\n\n Amendment XIII abolished slavery in the United States.\n_Betting on the Dust Commander_\n\n1987\n**Players**\n\nLUCIUS\n\nMARE\n_Repeating then is in every one, in every one their being and their feeling and their way of realizing everything and every one comes out of them in repeating . . ._\n\n_Slowly every one in continuous repeating, to their minutest variation, comes to be clearer to some one._\n\n\u2014GERTRUDE STEIN, _The Making of Americans_\n\n**A.**\n\n_Bird noises rise up. A double-frame slideshow: Lucius and Mare in wedding outfits. Actors' voices come through mikes offstage as slides pass overhead._\n\nLUCIUS: Make the alteration?\n\nMARE: Changed em, uh huh.\n\nLUCIUS: Good.\n\nMARE: Plastic flowers\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Sssht.\n\nMARE: Aint bad luck to tell, Lucius. Sssonly bad luck to see me.\n\nLUCIUS: Chuh.\n\nMARE: You wanted plastics\u2014I got plastics\u2014mm telling you so. Ssgood luck.\n\nLUCIUS: Chuh.\n\nMARE: They went spent money on them bouquets and arrangements\u2014flowergirls had baskets full of rose petals. Was gonna strew em.\n\nLUCIUS: Strew em?\n\nMARE: Up n down the aisle. Roundin around thuh altar.\n\nLUCIUS: Throats gettin scratchity, Mare. Throats getting scratchity-tight.\n\nMARE: I replaced em all with plastics. It costed. I got every last one.\n\nLUCIUS: Theyll notice. Theyll ask.\n\nMARE: Expensive plastics got the real look to em, Lucius. Expensive plastics got uh smell. Expensive plastics will last a lifetime but nobodyll know, Lucius. Nobody knows.\n\nLUCIUS: Flowergirlsll tell. Babble. Dont want you marrying yourself uh cripple. Tight chests worse than uh hob leg. Shore you got em all?\n\nMARE: Every single solitary, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Chests tight throat\u2014chuh chuh uhchooo! Uhchooo.\n\nMARE: Got em all, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Uh choo! Uh uh choo! Choo!\n\nMARE: Aint nothing to flare your fit\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Uhchoo. UHCHOOO! Choo. Choo. Huh. Choo. Muss\u2014muss\u2014muss\u2014uh choo! Muss be you, Mare.\n\nMARE: Me. Ewe. \u2014Use your hankie, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Bless\u2014bless me, Mare? Uhchoo choo choo! Bless me, Mare, afore\u2014afore we go? Uhchoo! Uhchoo!\n\nMARE: Bless you, Luki. Bless you.\n\n( _Bird noises rise up_ )\n\n**B.**\n\n_Onstage: Lucius and Mare._\n\nLUCIUS: Keep doing that to em theyre gonna be stuck.\n\nMARE: Theys gold on thuh undersides! Huh! Who woulda thought!?\n\nLUCIUS: Theyre gonna get stuck and you wont be able to show your face nowheres. Aint nobody out there wants to see them uh old biddy with yellow wrong-side-stuck-that-way-forever-eyes.\n\nMARE: Ssonly you, Luki\u2014youre the only one I see, youre the only one for me.\n\nLUCIUS: Mm going. Get my hat.\n\nMARE: Waaah!\n\nLUCIUS: Mm going.\n\nMARE: LUKI!\n\nLUCIUS: Fetch. Fetch my hat. Mm going mm gone.\n\nMARE: STUCK! Theyre stuck, Luki, theyre stuck, Luki, waaaaah!\n\nLUCIUS: Mm gone.\n\nMARE: Aaaanuhstick em, Luki,\u2014cant see!\n\nLUCIUS: Warned you. Shore own fault. Hand me my hat mm gone.\n\nMARE: Dont leave me wrong-side by the way side, Luki, please.\n\nLUCIUS: 3:10 race at The Churchill.\n\nMARE: Ssearly yet.\n\nLUCIUS: How I look? Sharp?\n\nMARE: Theyll run again tomorrow.\n\nLUCIUS: Sharp as uh blade da grass, right? They know me by my Bermudas they know me by my hat. They know these knees.\n\nMARE: Running every day at 3:10. Every day 3:10 same horses same track same ellipse ssame.\n\nLUCIUS: I walk in in hat and in Bermudas and I get service. They know me. They remember me. I'll have another. Of the same. No ice. Exactly right. Thank you.\n\nMARE: Never get nowheres all that running might as well be sticks in mud. WAAAH dont leave me like this Luki! Mmtelling Mama!\n\nLUCIUS: GONE. Mm gone. Mm tipping muh hat. Mm bending muh knees. Mm gone.\n\nMARE: Oh. \u2014. Gone. GAWN. Oh. AAAAH! You got thuh crop!\n\nLUCIUS: I got thuh crop.\n\nMARE: Dont crop me\u2014LUKI! WAAAAAAH!\n\nLUCIUS: You gonna get a hung cry, Mare.\n\nMARE: He huh he huh he huh he huh\u2014love me\u2014he huh he he he huh huh.\n\nLUCIUS: Mare. There there, Mare.\n\nMARE: Huh huh huh huh huh huh huh\u2014HHHhhhhhhhhhhh\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Got yourself hung, huh.\n\nMARE: Uh huhn.\n\nLUCIUS: Better?\n\nMARE: Uh huh. Huh-Huh. Uh huh. Snnnnnnnch.\n\nLUCIUS: Dont sniff, Mare. Blowings best.\n\nMARE: Hhuh\u2014huh\u2014hunkerchip?\n\nLUCIUS: Right here. Give us a blow.\n\nMARE: Blowings hard. For me.\n\nLUCIUS: Give us uh try.\n\nMARE: Snnnnnnnnnch.\n\nLUCIUS: Blow.\n\nMARE: Sssuh hood ornament, my nose.\n\nLUCIUS: Blow.\n\nMARE: Sssuh hood ornament.\n\nLUCIUS: Uh hood ornament.\n\nMARE: I won you by this nose, Luki!\n\nLUCIUS: By uh nose, thats right.\n\nMARE: You was\u2014ssnnuch\u2014you was looking for uh\u2014uh tip\u2014ssnnuch\u2014uh\u2014ssnnuch\u2014hunch\u2014ssnnuch\u2014uh clue\u2014snucch snucch\u2014I was cleaning your table\u2014snucch\u2014where you sat\u2014snucch\u2014for the first time\u2014snucch\u2014back then there was a first time\u2014snucch. You laughed at my nose. I was dusting\u2014snucch\u2014feather duster\u2014yellow feathers\u2014snucch\u2014you laughed at my nose\u2014snucch\u2014the first horse won by the nose, remember? It was dusty. You sneezed\u2014snucch\u2014your hunch was the dust. Dust Commanders running today you sniffed\u2014snucccch\u2014by the nose she'll win I said. Dusty Commander won by a nose, remember? Snucch\u2014by the nose was how she did it. I called it. By the nose was how she won\u2014snucch\u2014snnuch.\n\nLUCIUS: Blow, Mare. There you go\u2014close your mouth. Once more. Uhgain. There you go. Chuh. Cant miss my Church date.\n\nMARE: Gets easier the second time. Easier n easier till sseffortless.\n\nLUCIUS: Told you to practice on it. Youd of been practicing since we'd first met, youd uh been a pro now. Practice makes perfect.\n\nMARE: Practice makes practice makes. Didnt have no snots at first, Lucius. At first didnt have no tears.\n\nLUCIUS: You had you some droplets.\n\nMARE: You was the teary-eyed. I was dry.\n\nLUCIUS: That was my condition. Mmover that now. Got uh handle on it. Wear my bermudas all weathers. Aint had scratchity throat nor teary-eye for years now. Outgrowed it.\n\nMARE: Then we can have us a queen-size cot.\n\nLUCIUS: Sspensive.\n\nMARE: We outgrowed of our twin cots, Luki! Your feet hang off my feet hang off. Theres a sale on at the Woolworths got queen-size cots: 11.39. 11.50 last week. I had my eyes out. Theys having a sale. Save 11 cents.\n\nLUCIUS: Dont you thuh space, Mare.\n\nMARE: We could get one in yellow. You like yellow. We could\u2014wecudbetogethernights.\n\nLUCIUS: Noisy.\n\nMARE: Your winner wore yellow silks. We cud have wee ones, Luki, I'd teach em tuh speak. I'd teach em tuh say good morning I'd teach em to tell time. They learn real quick. Didnt make nothing thuh first time maybe we could try uhgain.\n\nLUCIUS: Messy.\n\nMARE: I'd clean.\n\nLUCIUS: Floor aint been wiped.\n\nMARE: Since this noon. Wiped\u2014snnuch\u2014in between my stories.\n\nLUCIUS: Again.\n\nMARE: You outgrowed\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Never know when it might rise up. Any lurking dust puppy could set it off. Then whered I be? Flat on my gut. Heaving at the O2. You: snotting by my cotside. Fine sight for your Mamma.\n\nMARE: Mammas with her Maker.\n\nLUCIUS: Dead now is she!? Wipe! Pronto!\n\nMARE: Yes, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Dont fan it! Blot! Blot! BLOT, MARE!\n\nMARE: Wee ones dont got feathers.\n\nLUCIUS: BLOT.\n\nMARE: No fur no feathers.\n\nLUCIUS: Blot.\n\nMARE: Theyd be nice. We's nice, theyd be nice\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Blot.\n\nMARE: Mmblotting, Mr. Nice Man.\n\nLUCIUS: Smearing. Youre smearing. What color these walls when we got here?\n\nMARE: Blue.\n\nLUCIUS: Blue.\n\nMARE: Sky blue, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Now?\n\nMARE: Sky grey.\n\nLUCIUS: Sky blue goned sky grey by you smearing. Aint never understood thuh little things, you aint never understood, Mare. Thuh little things done thundered you by in one big pack. All in one big smear. Dust. Dust. Dust. Dust is little bits of dirt, Mare. Little bits of dirt. Separate dirties that\u2014that\u2014fuzzicate theirselves together n make dusts. Each little bits a little bit and you smearing em into thuh paintjob. You gotta blot em out.\n\nMARE: Blot em out.\n\nLUCIUS: Blot em out.\n\nMARE: They running today.\n\nLUCIUS: Sky blue, aint it? Sky blue and theyre off! Had tuh be sky blue today:\u2014Dust Commander's running.\n\nMARE: \u2014Snnucch.\u2014The Commander. The Dust Commander.\u2014Didnt know she was still around, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Special Memorial Race. 3:10. Time dont change. Special Memorial Race starring the Dust Commander. Sssmaking uh comeback.\n\nMARE: You going? You going tuh watch her run? You go everyday I spose you be and theyre offing it today. Today especially cause Dust Commanders running. Dont wanna be late for that one. Uh regular glue factory resurrection. Better be off, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: She run she won how many years ago? Years ago. Tried retiring her to stud\u2014. Didnt work out. Alls she wanted to do was run. Papers say she paws her box when she hears the call: Da da da dadadada, dadadada, dah dah dah DUM! Even after they tooked her up north a ways. Way aways. No one cud hear thuh call but thuh Dusty Commander\u2014werent no escaping it. Still got uh followin after all this time, me, I heard folks coming from far away as\u2014\n\nMARE: The Knox?\n\nLUCIUS: Farther n that, Mare. Bought you uh gold budgie for our 110th. Cost me uh fit. You threw it out.\n\nMARE: Died.\n\nLUCIUS: Throw it out?\n\nMARE: Wanted tuh keep her. Wouldnt let me.\n\nLUCIUS: Usta fly around the house. Round n around round n around looking for the way out, remember? Chuh. Gived you uh ziplocked bag for it. Iffen you was gonna keep it under your pillow you had tuh use thuh bag.\n\nMARE: Shouldnt put no animal in plastic. Animal should breathe free. Animal should animal should\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Wernt no animal no more. Was dead. Wasnt uh animal. Was dead.\n\nMARE: Breathing in my dreams.\n\nLUCIUS: In your dreams. Whoever heard uh that. In your dreams. Was dead, Mare, dead. Chuh. Mm going\u2014\n\nMARE: Like the Dust Commander going going goned. So many Dust Commanders these days\u2014aint like when we was coming up. Seems like\u2014seems like\u2014she goned forth\u2014goned forth n multiplied. . . .\n\nLUCIUS: Gived us thuh downpayment money for our home that filly did.\n\nMARE: Sofa needs airing.\n\nLUCIUS: Bet 35 cents on her. Ssall I had\u2014\n\nMARE: Give it uh good shake. Stand it on end. Take off thuh plastic.\n\nLUCIUS: Got my picture in thuh paper. She got thuh front page: \"Dust Commander's Derby.\"\n\nMARE: Should beat it. Whip it. Crop it. Wheres your crop. Look, Luki, mm gonna crop thuh couch. Get things moving.\n\nLUCIUS: 100:1. Or somethin like that. Wreath in the winnin circle\u2014real flowers\u2014got right up close\u2014didnt fit me uh bit. $35. Bought this home. Hhh. Still carries thuh clippin. Look at her, golden silks, stretched out to win. Look at me. Grinnin.\n\nMARE: Cushions filthy. Aint been aired\u2014shake\u2014rumble\u2014crop em too!\n\nLUCIUS: Shes running today all right. Running today running today running for real. Heh. Gonna start at thuh gate over here n pant push pull come round on thuh outside n drive down the home stretch clear there. Look at her. Stretched out tuh win\u2014.\n\nMARE: Icebox! Icebox needs defrostin. All right, everybody out! Huh! Icecubes dusty. Frosty dusty\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: I'll put some money on her. Not too much now just a bit. For remembrances sake. 35 cents just like thuh first time. I put uh quarter and uh dime. No it was three dimes and uh nickel\u2014seven nickels\u2014thirty-five cents most likely\u2014\n\nMARE: Hold these iced cubes for me, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Ssscold. Stretched out tuh win. Hope they stretch me out like that. Hope they get me in thuh home stretch fore I get all stuck up: arms this way, elbows funny, knees knocking, head all wrong. Waas that word\u2014that word for the dead-stuck? Mare, the dead-stuck?\n\nMARE: Riggamartin's.\n\nLUCIUS: Riggamartin's. Yep. Hope they get me afore I go Riggamartin's. Sscold.\n\nMARE: Cant go to The Church in your bermudas today, Luki. Sscold.\n\nLUCIUS: They knows me by my bermudas.\n\nMARE: Slept in em. Lemmie iron em.\n\nLUCIUS: Theys wash n wear. Washed em in the bath. Been worn.\n\nMARE: I'll wash em proper.\n\nLUCIUS: Them pictures. Our wedding. Them pictures of our wedding. What year was that them pictures.\n\nMARE: \u2014One year\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Our weddin. Us weddin.\n\nMARE: One year long ago.\n\nLUCIUS: Which year. One year. Long ago. Which one year.\n\nMARE: Year one, Lucius, year one. Flowers still fresh. Flowersll last uh lifetime. Nobodyll know. Nobody knows. One year one.\n\nLUCIUS: There was a lady. At thuh Church. A lady like you in every respect. She sold at thuh Church things tuh eat and drink. Gived me uh tip. Gived her uh tip. Gived me uh tip on uh horse that wins. Had questions questions I wouldnt answer answer till I did: why every day she says why every day the bermudas she says matches my hat I says they matches my hat. In the cold youll catch cold she says matches my hat I says. How do you pee she says rolls up the leg I says how do you wash she says uses a sponge I says how bout them bermudas she says soaks em in the bath. They soak when I soak I says. She was like you like you in every respect. Looked like you spoked like made eyes like you coulda been you was you. I thought. I thought. She was you asking them questions every day with thuh hotdogs and the RCs: why every day she says why every day she says. Had answers. Answers I wont question till I do. Shouldnt uh answered her. She passed, you know. Shes got all the questions now.\n\nMARE: I cud unstick thuh zipper, Luki. Go tuh thuh Church in long pants. Surprise em. Sspecial Day. Give it uh quick tug. I'll put on my washing gloves and give it uh quick\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: No, Mare. Uh uhnn. Mm going. AAAAW! Stop that, Mare\u2014You keep doing that theyre gonna get stuck.\n\nMARE: Theys gold on thuh undersides! Huh! Who woulda thought!?\n\nLUCIUS: Theyre gonna get stuck and you wont be able to show your face nowheres. Aint nobody out there wants to see them uh old biddy with yellow wrong-side-stuck-that-way-forever-eyes.\n\nMARE: Ssonly you, Luki\u2014youre the only one I see, youre the only one for me.\n\nLUCIUS: Mm going. Get my hat.\n\nMARE: Waaah!\n\nLUCIUS: Mm going.\n\nMARE: LUKI!\n\nLUCIUS: Fetch. Fetch my hat. Mm going mm gone.\n\nMARE: STUCK! Theyre stuck, Luki, theyre stuck, Luki, waaaaah!\n\nLUCIUS: Mm gone.\n\nMARE: Aaaanuhstick em, Luki\u2014cant see!\n\nLUCIUS: Warned you. Shore own fault. Hand me my hat mm gone.\n\nMARE: Dont leave me wrong-side by the way side, Luki, please.\n\nLUCIUS: 3:10 race at The Churchill.\n\nMARE: Ssearly yet.\n\nLUCIUS: How I look? Sharp?\n\nMARE: Theyll run again tomorrow.\n\nLUCIUS: Sharp as uh blade da grass, right? They know me by my Bermudas they know me by my hat. They know these knees.\n\nMARE: Running every day at 3:10. Every day 3:10 same horses same track same ellipse ssame.\n\nLUCIUS: I walk in in hat and in Bermudas and I get service. They know me. They remember me. I'll have another. Of the same. No ice. Exactly right. Thank you.\n\nMARE: Never get nowheres all that running might as well be sticks in mud. WAAAH dont leave me like this Luki! Mmtelling Mama!\n\nLUCIUS: GONE. Mm gone. Mm tipping muh hat. Mm bending muh knees. Mm gone.\n\nMARE: Oh. \u2014. Gone. GAWN. Oh. AAAAH! You got thuh crop!\n\nLUCIUS: I got thuh crop.\n\nMARE: Dont crop me\u2014LUKI! WAAAAAAH!\n\nLUCIUS: You gonna get a hung cry, Mare.\n\nMARE: He huh he huh he huh he huh\u2014love me\u2014he huh he he he huh huh.\n\nLUCIUS: Mare. There there, Mare.\n\nMARE: Huh huh huh huh huh huh huh\u2014HHHhhhhhhhhhhh\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Got yourself hung, huh.\n\nMARE: Uh huhn.\n\nLUCIUS: Better?\n\nMARE: Uh huh. Huh-Huh. Uh huh. Snnnnnnch.\n\nLUCIUS: Dont sniff, Mare. Blowings best.\n\nMARE: Hhuh\u2014huh\u2014hunkerchip?\n\nLUCIUS: Right here. Give us a blow.\n\nMARE: Blowings hard. For me.\n\nLUCIUS: Give us uh try.\n\nMARE: Snnnnnnnnnch.\n\nLUCIUS: Blow.\n\nMARE: Sssuh hood ornament, my nose.\n\nLUCIUS: Blow\n\nMARE: Sssuh hood ornament.\n\nLUCIUS: Uh hood ornament.\n\nMARE: I won you by this nose, Luki!\n\nLUCIUS: By uh nose, thats right.\n\nMARE: You was\u2014ssnnuch\u2014you was looking for uh\u2014uh tip\u2014ssnnuch\u2014uh\u2014ssnnuch\u2014hunch\u2014ssnnuch\u2014uh clue\u2014snucch snucch\u2014I was cleaning your table\u2014snucch\u2014where you sat\u2014snucch\u2014for the first time\u2014snucch\u2014back then there was a first time\u2014snucch. You laughed at my nose. I was dusting\u2014snucch\u2014feather duster\u2014yellow feathers\u2014snucch\u2014you laughed at my nose\u2014snucch\u2014the first horse won by the nose, remember? It was dusty. You sneezed\u2014snucch\u2014your hunch was the dust. Dust Commanders running today you sniffed\u2014snucccch\u2014by the nose she'll win I said. Dusty Commander won by a nose, remember? Snucch\u2014by the nose was how she did it. I called it. By the nose was how she won\u2014snucch\u2014snnuch.\n\nLUCIUS: Blow, Mare. There you go\u2014close your mouth. Once more. Uhgain. There you go. Chuh. Cant miss my Church date.\n\nMARE: Gets easier the second time. Easier n easier till sseffortless.\n\nLUCIUS: Told you to practice on it. Youd of been practicing since we'd first met, youd uh been a pro now. Practice makes perfect.\n\nMARE: Practice makes practice makes. Didnt have no snots at first, Lucius. At first didnt have no tears.\n\nLUCIUS: You had you some droplets.\n\nMARE: You was the teary-eyed. I was dry.\n\nLUCIUS: That was my condition. Mmover that now. Got uh handle on it. Wear my bermudas all weathers. Aint had scratchity throat nor teary-eye for years now. Outgrowed it.\n\nMARE: Then we can have us a queen-size cot.\n\nLUCIUS: Sspensive.\n\nMARE: We outgrowed of our twin cots, Luki! Your feet hang off my feet hang off. Theres a sale on at the Woolworths got queen-size cots: 11.39. 11.50 last week. I had my eyes out. Theys having a sale. Save 11 cents.\n\nLUCIUS: Dont got thuh space, Mare.\n\nMARE: We could get one in yellow. You like yellow. We could\u2014wecudbetogethernights.\n\nLUCIUS: Noisy.\n\nMARE: Your winner wore yellow silks. We cud have wee ones, Luki, I'd teach em tuh speak. I'd teach em tuh say good morning I'd teach em to tell time. They learn real quick. Didnt making nothing thuh first time maybe we could try uhgain.\n\nLUCIUS: Messy.\n\nMARE: I'd clean.\n\nLUCIUS: Floor aint been wiped.\n\nMARE: Since this noon. Wiped\u2014snnuch\u2014in between my stories.\n\nLUCIUS: Again.\n\nMARE: You outgrowed\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Never know when it might rise up. Any lurking dust puppy could set it off. Then whered I be? Flat on my gut. Heaving at the O2. You: snotting by my cotside. Fine sight for your Mamma.\n\nMARE: Mammas with her Maker.\n\nLUCIUS: Dead now is she!? Wipe! Pronto!\n\nMARE: Yes, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Dont fan it! Blot! Blot! BLOT, MARE!\n\nMARE: Wee ones dont got feathers.\n\nLUCIUS: BLOT.\n\nMARE: No fur no feathers.\n\nLUCIUS: Blot.\n\nMARE: Theyd be nice. We's nice, theyd be nice\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Blot.\n\nMARE: Mmblotting, Mr. Nice Man.\n\nLUCIUS: Smearing. Youre smearing. What color these walls when we got here?\n\nMARE: Blue.\n\nLUCIUS: Blue.\n\nMARE: Sky blue, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Now?\n\nMARE: Sky grey.\n\nLUCIUS: Sky blue goned sky grey by you smearing. Aint never understood thuh little things, you aint never understood, Mare. Thuh little things done thundered you by in one big pack. All in one big smear. Dust. Dust. Dust. Dust is little bits of dirt, Mare. Little bits of dirt. Separate dirties that\u2014that\u2014fuzzicate theirselves together n make dusts. Each little bits a little bit and you smearing em into thuh paintjob. You gotta blot em out.\n\nMARE: Blot em out.\n\nLUCIUS: Blot em out.\n\nMARE: They running today.\n\nLUCIUS: Sky blue, aint it? Sky blue and theyre off! Had tuh be sky blue today:\u2014Dust Commanders running.\n\nMARE: \u2014Snnucch.\u2014The Commander. The Dust Commander.\u2014Didnt know she was still around, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Special Memorial Race. 3:10. Time dont change. Special Memorial Race starring the Dust Commander. Sssmaking uh comeback.\n\nMARE: You going? You going tuh watch her run? You go everyday I spose you be and theyre offing it today. Today especially cause Dust Commanders running. Dont wanna be late for that one. Uh regular glue factory resurrection. Better be off, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: She run she won how many years ago? Years ago. Tried retiring her to stud\u2014. Didnt work out. Alls she wanted to do was run. Papers say she paws her box when she hears the call: Da da da dadadada, dadadada, dah dah dah DUM! Even after they tooked her up north a ways. Way aways. No one cud hear thuh call but thuh Dusty Commander\u2014werent no escaping it. Still got uh followin after all this time, me, I heard folks coming from far away as\u2014\n\nMARE: The Knox?\n\nLUCIUS: Farther n that, Mare. Brought you uh gold budgie for our 110th. Cost me uh fit. You threw it out.\n\nMARE: Died.\n\nLUCIUS: Throw it out?\n\nMARE: Wanted tuh keep her. Wouldnt let me.\n\nLUCIUS: Usta fly around the house. Round n around round n around looking for the way out, remember? Chuh. Gived you uh ziplocked bag for it. Iffen you was gonna keep it under your pillow you had tuh use thuh bag.\n\nMARE: Shouldnt put no animal in plastic. Animal should breathe free. Animal should animal should\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Wernt no animal no more. Was dead. Wasnt uh animal. Was dead.\n\nMARE: Breathing in my dreams.\n\nLUCIUS: In your dreams. Whoever heard uh that. In your dreams. Was dead, Mare, dead. Chuh. Mm going\u2014\n\nMARE: Like the Dust Commander going going goned. So many Dust Commanders these days\u2014aint like when we was coming up. Seems like\u2014seems like\u2014she goned forth\u2014goned forth n multiplied. . . .\n\nLUCIUS: Gived us thuh downpayment money for our home that filly did.\n\nMARE: Sofa needs airing.\n\nLUCIUS: Bet 35 cents on her. Ssall I had\u2014\n\nMARE: Give it uh good shake. Stand it on end. Take off thuh plastic.\n\nLUCIUS: Got my picture in thuh paper. She got thuh front page: \"Dust Commander's Derby.\"\n\nMARE: Should beat it. Whip it. Crop it. Wheres your crop. Look, Luki, mm gonna crop thuh couch. Get things moving.\n\nMARE: 100:1. Or somethin like that. Wreath in the winnin circle\u2014real flowers\u2014got right up close\u2014didnt fit me uh bit. $35. Bought this home. Hhh. Still carried thuh clippin. Look at her, golden silks, stretched out to win. Look at me. Grinnin.\n\nMARE: Cushions filthy. Aint been aired\u2014shake\u2014rumble\u2014crop em too!\n\nLUCIUS: Shes running today all right. Running today running today running for real. Heh. Gonna start at thuh gate over here n pant push pull come round on thuh outside n drive down the home stretch clear there. Look at her. Stretched out tuh win\u2014.\n\nMARE: Icebox! Icebox needs defrostin. All right, everybody out! Huh! Icecubes dusty. Frosty dusty\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: I'll put some money on her. Not too much now just a bit. For rememberances sake. 35 cents just like thuh first time. I put uh quarter and uh dime. No it was three dimes and uh nickel\u2014seven nickels\u2014thirty-five cents most likely\u2014\n\nMARE: Hold these iced cubes for me, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Ssscold. Stretched out tuh win. Hope they stretch me out like that. Hope they get me in thuh home stretch fore I get all stuck up: arms this way, elbows funny, knees knocking, head all wrong. Waas that word\u2014that word for the dead-stuck? Mare, the dead-stuck?\n\nMARE: Riggamartin's\n\nLUCIUS: Riggamartin's. Yep. Hope they get me afore I go Riggamartin's. Sscold.\n\nMARE: Cant go to The Church in your bermudas today, Luki. Sscold.\n\nLUCIUS: They knows me by my bermudas.\n\nMARE: Slept in em. Lemmie iron em.\n\nLUCIUS: Theys wash n wear. Washed em in the bath. Been worn.\n\nMARE: I'll wash em proper.\n\nLUCIUS: Them pictures. Our wedding. Them pictures of our wedding. What year was that them pictures.\n\nMARE: \u2014One year\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Our weddin. Us weddin.\n\nMARE: One year long ago.\n\nLUCIUS: Which year. One year. Long ago. Which one year.\n\nMARE: Year one, Lucius, year one. Flowers still fresh. Flowersll last uh lifetime. Nobodyll know. Nobody knows. One year one.\n\nLUCIUS: There was a lady. At thuh Church. A lady like you in every respect. She sold at thuh Church things tuh eat and drink. Gived me uh tip. Gived her uh tip. Gived me uh tip on uh horse that wins. Had questions questions I wouldnt answer answer till I did: why every day she says why every day the bermudas she says matches my hat I says they matches my hat. In the cold youll catch cold she says matches my hat I says. How do you pee she says rolls up the leg I says how do you wash she says uses a sponge I says how bout them bermudas she says soaks em in the bath. They soak when I soak I says. She was like you like you in every respect. Looked like you spoked like made eyes like you coulda been you was you. I thought. I thought. She was you asking them questions every day with thuh hotdogs and the RCs: why every day she says why every day she says. Had answers. Answers I wont question till I do. Shouldnt uh answered her. She passed, you know. Shes got all the questions now.\n\nMARE: I cud unstick thuh zipper, Luki. Go tuh thuh Church in long pants. Surprise em. Sspecial Day. Give it uh quick tug. I'll put on my washing gloves and give it uh quick\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: No, Mare. Uh uhnn. Uhchoo! Choo. Chuooo. Uhchoo.\n\n( _Bird noises rise up_ )\n\n**C.**\n\n_A double-frame slideshow: Lucius and Mare in wedding outfits. Actors' voices come through mikes offstage as slides pass overhead._\n\nLUCIUS: Make the alteration?\n\nMARE: Changed em, uh huh.\n\nLUCIUS: Good.\n\nMARE: Plastic flowers\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Sssht.\n\nMARE: Aint bad luck to tell, Lucius. Sssonly bad luck to see me.\n\nLUCIUS: Chuh.\n\nMARE: You wanted plastics\u2014I got plastics\u2014mm telling you so. Ssgood luck.\n\nLUCIUS: Chuh.\n\nMARE: They went spent money on them bouquets and arrangements\u2014flowergirls had baskets full of rose petals. Was gonna strew em.\n\nLUCIUS: Strew em?\n\nMARE: Up n down the aisle. Roundin around thuh altar.\n\nLUCIUS: Throats gettin scratchity, Mare. Throats getting scratchity-tight.\n\nMARE: I replaced em all with plastics. It costed. I got every last one.\n\nLUCIUS: Theyll notice. Theyll ask.\n\nMARE: Expensive plastics got the real look to em, Lucius. Expensive plastics got uh smell. Expensive plastics will last a lifetime but nobodyll notice, Lucius. Nobody knows.\n\nLUCIUS: Flowergirlsll tell. Babble. Dont want you marrying yourself uh cripple. Tight chests worse than uh hob leg. Shore you got em all?\n\nMARE: Every single solitary, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Chests tight throat\u2014chuh chuh uhchooo! Uhchooo.\n\nMARE: Got em all, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Uh choo! Uh uh choo! Choo!\n\nMARE: Aint nothing to flare your fit\u2014\n\nLUCIUS: Uhchoo. UHCHOOO! Choo. Choo. Huh. Choo. Muss\u2014muss\u2014muss\u2014uh choo! Muss be you, Mare.\n\nMARE: Me. Ewe.\u2014Use your hankie, Luki.\n\nLUCIUS: Bless\u2014bless me, Mare? Uhchoo choo choo! Bless me, Mare, afore\u2014afore we go? Uhchoo! Uhchoo!\n\nMARE: Bless you, Luki. Bless you.\n\n( _Bird noises rise up. Fade to black_ )\n_Pickling_\n\n1988\n**Player**\n\nMISS MISS\nMISS MISS ( _Sung_ ):\n\n. . . I wiped his brow.\n\nI. Wiped. His. Brooooooooow.\n\nHe grabbed the frail cloth\n\nRipped it roughly in two,\n\nGave my half to me\u2014I give his half to you.\n\n\"Farewell! Farewell!\" So turns the wheel.\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014.\n\n\"Farewell! Farewell!\" So turns the wheel\u2014ah-la-la-uh-uh\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014.\n\n\"MY MUSCLES WERE LIKE STEEL.\"\n\n\"MY MUSCLES WERE LIKE STEEE-EEEL.\"\n\n( _Spoken_ ) Taut. Taut. Taut. Taut. Taut.\u2014Taut. Huh. Huh. Oh well. Thats thuh way things move, huh? From hot tuh cold? From warm tuh not\u2014warm? Ha!: To _worm._ Sssnatural progression of things: When theyre hot they make their progress from hot tuh cold. No sadness, Miss Miss, no sadness today. Ssonly nature going through thuh motions. Well. Oooh! Sscold. Ha! If I'd taken it straight from the icebox and put tonn thuh table then it would uh gone from cooold tuh\u2014warm. Rum tempachur. Now thereres something. Like flesh tone: What temperature is the room what tone is the flesh? Taut! Taut flesh.\u2014Your icebox, Miss Miss, what has happened to your lovely icebox? Ssgone. And in ssplace Ive something better, whowhowho much much better than old icebox: memory of old icebox: three nuts seven bolts and uh rung from thuh topmost tray! Right here. Right here in thuh cream-colored jar. Rattle em uhroun some. Mm huhnn. Good sounds they make. Nothing like good sounds\u2014memory of the icebox. So much better than thuh real thing mm huhn. Never had uh problem with it. Never broke down. No defrosting. Good sounds. Threenutsseven-boltsand\u2014aah\u2014uhrungfromthuhtopmosttray! Hee! Wanted tuh keep thuh door handle\u2014but no. Tuh keep thuh door handle woulda been nice tuh have tuh save but. No. Door handle was soiled! Coulda washed it. But. No. Soiled with mothers milk Miss Miss. Mothers milk never comes clean. Look what happened to\u2014wasshisname\u2014Aresting. Mr. Aresting ha he kills his mother raggedy women follow him around yelling. Mothersmilk. Uh. Nothin like heated milk gone cold to downend thuh spirits huh past cold now now\u2014colder. Colder with thuh surface tightening. Taut surface. Taut. Taut. Little-green-bacteria-family-setting-up-house-on-thuh-side-lines. Uh! Put it away Miss Miss put the milk back in the jar! All that trouble gone to all for naught. Miss Miss put thuh milk away. Pour careful thats it. Pour careful dont waste uh drop. Pour careful. Pour careful. Huh. Pour poor careful. Tighten thuh lid dont want it to go bad dont want tuh have tuh toss it out. There are people starving you know. People going without. Right next door. Dont want tuh waste. Put thuh lid on tight and it wont spoil. Put thuh lid on tight and itll keep. Then soon itll go back tuh powder. Powdermilk. Dust. Then for guests we will have to reactivate. Rise up from thuh dead. Thuh right amount of saliva. Stir. Heat. Have hot milk for thuh coffee. Put it in uh greeeaaat biiiguh cup. Cold. Well. Ssgood Ive got everythin I need right here at my fingertips never need to go out outside is overwhelming ssstoo much. Havent been out since. Synce uh comedinlass. Hee! Got it all here. Been saving. Savin it up. For guests. Its time: mmm. This is good. Good sounds. Very\u2014oh! and the applause. Yes. That was from. I had guests. In my home. In here. Home. They come for miles. To see me. I sang! Beautifully. Accompany myself with my jars. Hadnt been done before. Jar accompaniment. Was new news then. Old news now. _Pass\u00e9._ Huh. Only French you know Miss Miss. Only need one word. One word in each language: for French: _pass\u00e9_ ; German: _tschu\u00df_!\u2014the familiar form of bye bye; all African boils down to _umboogie umwoogie_ (Ha!thatswhattheysay); in English: _worm._ Only need one. One word. The rest is\u2014just\u2014lettuce. Not at all like the jars. Each jar has a distinctly different sound. Not just uh sound that differs from their shape but. Well. For example. Thuh milk jar: Mother's\u2014oh: cold. Miss Miss thuh peach cobbler ssgettin rubbery. Lets put it back. Jar-for-thuh-cobbler-where-did-you-roam-tuh-god-damn-yuh?! Cobbler goes away. Cobbler goes back. Back back uhway away. They didnt take cobbler today but they will take tuh my cobbler tuh morrow and it wont do Miss Miss not tuh have you some fresh slices listen tuh that will you? In and out of dialect. Shifty. Huh! Keep it. We will work on it. Save it Miss Miss. Yeah. Yes. And I sang. Oh. And they applauded. Clapped. Hard. Clapped vigorously. Good sounds. Huh! Mother calls it \"good clapping.\" \"I know when I do well,\" she says, \"When I do well, they give me\u2014good clapping.\" Hee! IsangIsangasongIsangasong. A prell-yude. The song was a prell-yude. One uh them pray-lude songs. Warm up to my performance. My farewell performance. First I sang. So sweetly. With\u2014passions. Not just one but several. Several passions. Simultaneously. Uh huhn. Then I am to perform. A short drama. Uh short drama in ten short pages. My farewell. Ive got it right here. On thuh top shelf. Hasnt spoiled\u2014oh no\u2014see? The lid on this one is very tight. Taut. Charles tautened thuh lid. My farewell dramatic performance. Well wrought. Lots of sighs init.\u2014NoMissMissdontopenit: airll get in and it will spoil! dont want it tuh spoil! dont want it tuh waste there are people right next door going without! put it back Miss Miss put it back! Charles tightened this lid. Such arms he had. Such bicepts. Like steel. Steal away steal away my home is\u2014. Such bicepts. He lived next door. Close. He was uh lifeguard. We met on thuh beach. \"Don't go in it's much too cold!\": Those were his words. Not mine. Saved my life. Was winter. He worked year round. I saved sand from that day. Uh whole jar full. Had tuh dig under thuh snow tuh get at it. \"Dont go in ssmuch too col!\": I. Entertain him here. He is my guest. The cup with his lips mark. Here. The sand from his bare feet. In this one. His wind: breath; gas. The prophylactic: our love object. Thuh light likes this one. Our love. Dont open it Miss Miss. People\u2014next\u2014door\u2014going without! Charles! Hee! Such bicepts. Taut. Like Steel! Such bravery. Oh. Clapping. Good Clapping! Charles is clapping good thuh loudest! Oh! We had words he and I. We had us uh x-change uh huhnn. Uhbout we spoke of. And\u2014uhbout thuh great-nigger-queen-bee-who-lives-at-thuh-center-of-Mars. He said \"center.\" I said \"Uh little off.\" We had words he and I. \"Breed with thuh queen-bee Charles!\" Those were mine. Not his. Thats why theyre checking it out you know. Mars. Always looking for some place to go no place to go but owwwwww. Tuh. Understood thuh nigger-queen but didnt understand thuh jars. Didnt get it. Them. Thuh jars. Showed him mother. What I saved. Her photograph went over well enough. Only show one side of a person the pictures do. Showed her from thuh shoulders up. She had such good collarbones. Went over well. He even laughed. Only showed one side. Thuh funny side. Couldnt see the back of her head. Or her hands. Thuh sad parts. Didnt show her middle age spread either it didn't that was our little secret she was a circle from the shoulders down. Uh greeeaaat biiiig baaaaal. Her spread she spread out went round she spread she spread. Huh. They say that \"a woman's mother is what\u2014\" thuh womanll bee. She had such loverly collerboans. Picture shows uh part. Sound shows all round he even laughed. I have his laugh. Right here: \"Oh oh ha heup: Charles.\" Uh guuud laugh uh huh: \"Oh oh ha heup.\" Always \"oh oh ha\" with thuh \"heup\" at thuh end. Then: \"Charles.\" It was just like that.\u2014Thats how I do it. He of course did it differently. The same but differently. His voice was uh little\u2014higher than mine. Said thuh inside dust clogged my pipes while thuh outside dust tightened his taut. Taut. That was Charles. Such bicepts. Steal away. Thuh laugh. Didnt find fault with her picture but did mind her parts isnt that always thuh way. Huh. Used thuh word\u2014\"VOODOO.\" Oh. \"Voodoo?\" Hhhh. Mother had red hair. She wasuh red haireduhn. In thuh blue jar. Uhp thaar. In thuh blue jar hair looks vi-o-let. I keep it away from thuh sun. She had uh dye job. Black tuh red. Several. Half her hair was roots when she left us. Half roots\u2014other half\u2014. Steal away\u2014. \"Mother, you're in for another rinse!\" Those were my words. The roots were faintly embarrassing. Always are. Huh. But no: \"I-monmuhwayow. Tuh.\" She said. On her way out no place to go but out. Well-I-dont-want-to-go-out-I-want-to-stay-in-and-see-the-sights-as-if-there-are-no-sights-to-see-in-of-doors sheeeeeehad. The most beautiful smile. Oh. \u2014. In thuh red stained jar I keep it. Kept her red gums too. Pickledem. Red gums gone uh little black now. But they were so much uh real red. Always as if they were red always red ready for something tuh bust from em. Red. Such good sounds they make. Rattlerettle and they say anything you want them to say anything you want: not like when she was around. Not at all like when thuh big ball was uhlive. Livin. In thuh flesh. \u2014. Bread-and-buttered-by-thuh-devil: VOODOO. Oh Charles. Voodoo. Damn right. Oh. What bicepts. He was uh lifeguard. A professional savior. Pulled me from the ice. I was drowning. He said drowning but we know I was sticking. You cant drown on ice. I tried. You flail around then get sweaty and stick. He pulled me out and blew\u2014his lips on my lips\u2014a professional savior. He was. I told him to do it in here. They would close the ocean down on Thursdays so that would give him one evening free: Thursday even-nings. \"Did you lock the door behind you?\" I would ask him \"Did you lock thuh door behind you and did you pocket thuh key?\" My tanned and laughing Moses. He would show me thuh key to thuh kingdum. I told him to do it in here. I didnt want to waste it. There are people\u2014people\u2014there are people going without. Something to remember you by? Oh. Such. Arms. Good arms for good clapping. And what of my performance and what of it. Its up there all written out. Cast blocked. Alls thats left is the doing of it. Thuh doinsall thats left. She was on her way out to let out the dog. Dog would go roll in thuh yard sniff grass then squat. Such uh funny face when it would squat. I would watch from here. On her way to let him out. Standing at the threshold with the doorhandle in her hand she just\u2014crumbled\u2014. Puddle of her own pickling surrounds her wig like a halo. Guess she had to go tooo my lips on her lips and blew\u2014hee! Mother: she lies there quietly there thinking about her life until she stops thinking no more life to think about no more: \u2014cold. Oh. Now begin: THE TRUTH! Musttellthuhtruthfirst. The truth: the truth Miss Miss: Ah. He loved you for your beets summers were spent with mother pickling the beets and when mother went out her roots\u2014rowtz embarrassing\u2014there were no empty jars you had your beets thats what you had and you had a full life and your beets and noempty jars but OH! He saw your jars! In rows your vows\u2014no: none: the truth! Only rows of deep red beets saw em through thuh window. Cross thuh air shaft. Spied thuh juicy. Had tuh have him some. Lived next door. Close. Steal away. Gobblin thuh beets on his Thursdays. Smackin lips wipin lips on his wrist. He was sleeveless. Muscle shirt. With arms. On thuh backs of his wrists. Eighteen Thursdays of slobbering beet juice back wrists use a napkin please he had hisself developed uh long red beet smear stain. Emptying my jars. Mines. Something tuh re-member you by. Voodoo? Damn right. Eat one beet uh day. Dont wanna waste nothing. Slip back into thuh river lingo gentle-like then from thuh river we float out tuh sea. Nothin tuh carry along. Nothing saved. No mementos. \u2014No saviors\u2014all left. Gone out. Aint nowhere else tuh go but out. Now. Begin: I told him to do it in here. Save it. Now begin: Put it in here. Now begin: Dont want tuh waste none. Now begin: People going. Without. And out. Oh. Like steeel he was. Hee! Begin: Steal uhway. Glide-it uhcross. Oh. Warm steal. Oh. Warm. Warm. Oh: To thuh worms. To thuh worms. To thuh worms\n_The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World_\n\n1989-1992\n**The Figures**\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN\n\nHAM\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS\n\nVOICE ON THUH TEE V\n\n**Time**\n\nTHE PRESENT\n_When I die,_\n\n_I won't stay_\n\n_Dead._\n\n\u2014 BOB KAUFMAN\n\nOVERTURE\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: The black man moves his hands.\n\n( _A bell sounds twice_ )\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: Lots of Grease and Lots of Pork.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Queen-then-Pharaoh Hatshepsut.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: And Bigger and Bigger and Bigger.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Prunes and Prisms.\n\nHAM: Ham.\n\nVOICE ON THUH TEE V: Voice on thuh Tee V.\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: Old Man River Jordan.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: Yes and Greens Black-Eyed Peas Cornbread.\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: Before Columbus.\n\n( _A bell sounds once_ )\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: The black man moves his hands.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Not yet. Let Queen-then-Pharaoh Hatshepsut tell you when.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: This is the death of the last black man in the whole entire world.\n\n( _A bell sounds three times_ )\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Yesterday today next summer tomorrow just uh moment uhgoh in 1317 dieded thuh last black man in thuh whole entire world. Uh! Oh. Dont be uhlarmed. Do not be afeared. It was painless. Uh painless passin. He falls twenty-three floors to his death. 23 floors from uh passin ship from space tuh splat on thuh pavement. He have uh head he been keepin under thuh Tee V. On his bottom pantry shelf. He have uh head that hurts. Dont fit right. Put it on tuh go tuh thuh store in it pinched him when he walks his thoughts dont got room. Why dieded he huh? Where he gonna go now that he done dieded? Where he gonna go tuh wash his hands?\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: You should write that down and you should hide it under a rock. This is the death of the last black man in the whole entire world.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK \/ PRUNES AND PRISMS: Not yet\u2014\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: The black man moves. His hands\u2014\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: You are too young to move. Let me move it for you.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: The black man moves his hands.\u2014He moves his hands round. Back. Back. Back tuh that.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: (Not dat.)\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: When thuh worl usta be roun. Thuh worl usta be _roun._\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Uh roun worl. Uh roun? Thuh worl? When was this.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Columbus. Before.\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: Before. Columbus.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: Before Columbus.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: HHH. HA!\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Before Columbus thuh worl usta be _roun_ they put uh \/d\/ on thuh end of roun makin roun _d_. Thusly they set in motion thuh end. Without that \/d\/ we coulda gone on spinnin forever. Thuh \/d\/ thing ended things ended.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: Before Columbus.\n\n( _A bell sounds twice_ )\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: The popular thinking of the day back in them days was that the world was flat. They thought the world was flat. Back then when they thought the world was flat they were afeared and stayed at home. They wanted to go out back then when they thought the world was flat but the water had in it dragons of which meaning these dragons they were afeared back then when they thought the world was flat. They stayed at home. Them thinking the world was flat kept it roun. Them thinking the sun revolved around the earth kept them satellite-like. They figured out the truth and scurried out. Figuring out the truth put them in their place and they scurried out to put us in ours.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: Mmmm. Yes. You should write this down. You should hide this under a rock.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK \/ PRUNES AND PRISMS: Not yet\u2014\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: The black man bursts into flames. The black man bursts into blames. Whose fault is it?\n\nALL: Aint mines.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Whose fault is it?\n\nALL: Aint mines.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: I cant remember back that far.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: And besides, I wasnt even there.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Ha ha ha. The black man laughs out loud.\n\nALL ( _Except Ham_ ): HAM-BONE-HAM-BONE-WHERE-YOU-BEEN-ROUN-THUH-WORL-N-BACK-UH- _GAIN_.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: Whatcha seen hambone girl?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Didnt see you. I saw thuh worl.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: I was there.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: Didnt see you.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: I was there.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Didnt see you. The black man moves his hands.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: We are too young to see. Let them see it for you. We are too young to rule. Let them rule it for you. We are too young to have. Let them have it for you. You are too young to write. Let them\u2014let them. Do it. Before you.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: The black man moves his hands.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: You should write it down because if you dont write it down then they will come along and tell the future that we did not exist. You should write it down and you should hide it under a rock. You should write down the past and you should write down the present and in what in the future you should write it down. It will be of us but you should mention them from time to time so that in the future when they come along and know that they exist. You should hide it all under a rock so that in the future when they come along they will say that the rock did not exist.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: We getting somewheres. We getting down. Down down down down down down down down\u2014\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: I saw Columbus comin.\/I saw Columbus comin goin over tuh visit you. \"To borrow a cup of sugar,\" so he said. I waved my hands in warnin. You waved back. I aint seen you since.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: In the future when they came along I meeting them. On thuh coast. Uh! Thuh Coast! I\u2014was\u2014so\u2014polite. But in thuh dirt, I wrote: \"Ha. Ha. Ha.\"\n\nALL: Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. HHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Thuh black man he move. He move he hans.\n\n( _A bell sounds once_ )\n\nPANEL I: THUH HOLY GHOST\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Saint mines. Saint mines. Iduhnt it. Nope: iduhnt. Saint mines cause everythin I calls mines got uh print uh me someway on it in it dont got uh print uh me someway on it so saint mines. Duhduhnt so saint: huh.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Hen.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Huh. Huh?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Hen. Hen?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Who give birth tuh this I wonder. Who gived birth tuh this. I wonder.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: You comed back. Comin backs somethin in itself. You comed back.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: This does not belong tuh me. Somebody planted this on me. On me in my hands.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Cold compress. Cold compress then some hen. Lean back. You comed back. Lean back.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Who gived birth tuh this I wonder who.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Comin for you. Came for you: that they done did. Comin for tuh take you. Told me tuh pack up your clothes. Told me tuh cut my bed in 2 from double tuh single. Cut off thuh bed-foot where your feets had rested. Told me tuh do that too. Burry your ring in his hidin spot under thuh porch! That they told me too to do. Didnt have uh ring so I didnt do diddly. They told and told and told: proper instructions for thuh burial proper attire for thuh mournin. They told and told and told: I didnt do squat. Awe on that. You comed back. You got uhway. Knew you would. Hen?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Who gived birth tuh this I wonder. Who? Not me. Saint mines.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Killed every hen on thuh block. You comed back. Knew you would. Knew you would came back. Knew you will wanted uh good big hen dinner in waitin. Every hen on the block.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Saint mines.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Strutted down on up thuh road with my axe. By-my-self-with-my-axe. Got tuh thuh street top 93 dyin hen din hand. Dropped thuh axe. Tooked tuh stranglin. 93 dyin hen din hand with no heads let em loose tuh run down tuh towards home infront of me. Flipped thuh necks of thuh next 23 more odd. Slinged um over my shoulders. Hens of thuh neighbors now in my pots. Feathers of thuh hens of thuh neighbors stucked in our mattress. They told and told and told. On me. Huh. Awe on that. Hen? You got uhway. Knew you would.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Who gived birth tuh me I wonder.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: They dont speak tuh us no more. They pass by our porch but they dont nod. You been comed back goin on 9 years not even heard from thuh neighbors uh congratulation. Uh alienationed dum. Uh guess. Huh. Hen? _WE AINT GOT NO FRIENDS_ ,\u2014sweetheart.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: _SWEET-HEART_.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Hen!!\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Aint hungry.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Hen.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Aint eaten in years.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Hen?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Last meal I had was my last-mans-meal.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: You got uhway. Knew you would.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: This thing dont look like me!\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: It dont. Do it. Should it? Hen: eat it.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: I kin tell whats mines by whats gots my looks. Ssmymethod. Try it by testin it and it turns out true. Every time. Fool proofly. Look down at my foot and wonder it its mine. Foot mine? I kin ask it and foot answers back with uh \"yes Sir\"\u2014not like you and me say \"yes Sir\" but uh \"yes Sir\" peculiar tuh thuh foot. Foot mine? I kin ask it and through uh look that looks like my looks thuh foot gives me back uh \"yes Sir.\" Ssmymethod. Try by thuh test tuh pass for true. Move on tuh thuh uther foot. Foot mine? And uh nother \"yes Sir\" so feets mine is understood. Got uh forearm thats up for question check myself out teeth by tooth. Melon mines?\u2014. Dont look like me.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Hen mine? Gobble it up and it will be. You got uhway. Fixed uh good big hen dinner for you. Get yourself uh mouthful afore it rots.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Was we green and stripedly when we first comed out?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Uh huhn. Thuh features comes later. Later comes after now.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Oh. Later comes now: melon mine?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: They comed from you and tooked you. That was yesterday. Today you sit in your chair where you sat yesterday and thuh day afore yesterday afore they comed and tooked you. Things today is just as they are yesterday cept nothin is familiar cause it was such uh long time uhgoh.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Later oughta be now by now huh?: melon mine?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Thuh chair was portable. They take it from county tuh county. Only got one. Can only eliminate one at uh time. Woulda fried you right here on thuh front porch but we dont got enough electric. No onessgot enough electric. Not on our block. Dont believe in havin enough. Put thuh Chair in thuh middle of thuh City. Outdoors. In thuh square. Folks come tuh watch with picnic baskets.\u2014Hen?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Sweetheart?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: They juiced you some, huh?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Just a squirt. Sweetheart.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Humpty Dumpty.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Melon mines?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Humpty damn Dumpty actin like thuh Holy Ghost. You got uhway. Thuh lights dimmed but you got uhway. Knew you would.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: They juiced me some.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Just a squirt.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: They had theirselves uh extender chord. Fry uh man in thuh town square needs uh extender tuh reach em thuh electric. Hook up thuh chair tuh thuh power. Extender: 49 foot in length. Closer tuh thuh power I never been. Flip on up thuh go switch. Huh! Juice begins its course.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Humpty damn Dumpty.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Thuh straps they have on me are leathern. See thuh cord waggin full with uh jump-juice try me tuh wiggle from thuh waggin but belt leathern straps: width thickly. One round each forearm. Forearm mines? 2 cross thuh chest. Chest is mines: and it explodin. One for my left hand fingers left strapted too. Right was done thuh same. Jump-juice meets memine juices I do uh slow softshoe like on water. Town crier cries uh moan. Felt my nappy head go frizzly. Town follows thuh crier in uh sorta sing-uhlong-song.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Then you got uhway. Got uhway in comed back.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Uh extender chord 49 foot in length. Turned on thuh up switch in I started runnin. First 49 foot I was runnin they was still juicin.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: And they chaseted you.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: \u2014Melon mines?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: When you broked tuh seek your freedom they followed after, huh?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Later oughta be now by now, huh?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: You comed back.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: \u2014Not exactly.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: They comed for you tuh take you. Tooked you uhway: that they done did. You got uhway. Thuh lights dimmed. Had us uh brownout. You got past that. You comed back.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Turned on thuh juice on me in me in I started runnin. First just runnin then runnin towards home. Couldnt find us. Think I got lost. Saw us on up uhhead but I flew over thuh yard. Couldnt stop. Think I overshot.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Killed every hen on thuh block. Made you uh\u2014\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Make me uh space 6 feet by 6 feet by 6. Make it big and mark it so as I wont miss it. If you would please, sweetness, uh mass grave-site. Theres company comin soonish. I would like tuh get up and go. I would like tuh move my hands.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: You comed back.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Overshot. Overshot. I would like tuh move my hands.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Cold compress?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Sweetheart.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: How uhbout uh hen leg?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Nothanks. Justate.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Just ate?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Thatsright. 6 by 6 by 6. Thatsright.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Oh. \u2014. They eat their own yuh know.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: HooDoo.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Hen do. Saw it on thuh Tee V.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Aint that nice.\n\n( _A bells sounds once_ )\n\nPANEL II: FIRST CHORUS\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: 6 by 6 by 6.\n\nALL: THATS RIGHT.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Oh. They eat their own you know.\n\nALL: HOODOO.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Hen do. Saw it on thuh Tee V.\n\nALL: Aint that nice.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: WILL SOMEBODY TAKE THESE STRAPS OFF UH ME PLEASE? I WOULD LIKE TUH MOVE MY HANDS.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Prunes and prisms will begin: prunes and prisms prunes and prisms prunes and prisms and prunes and prisms: 23.\n\nVOICE ON THUH TEE V: Good evening. I'm Broad Caster. Headlining tonight: the news: is Gamble Major, the absolutely last living Negro man in the whole entire known world\u2014is dead. Major, Gamble, born a slave, taught himself the rudiments of education to become a spearhead in the Civil Rights Movement. He was 38 years old. News of Majors death sparked controlled displays of jubilation in all corners of the world.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Oh no no: world is roun.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: WILL SOMEBODY TAKE THESE STRAPS OFF UH ME PLEASE? I WOULD LIKE TUH MOVE MY HANDS.\n\n( _A bell sounds four times_ )\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: This is the death of the last black man in the whole entire world.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Not yet\u2014\n\nVOICE ON THUH TEE V: Good evening. Broad Caster. Headline tonight: Gamble Major, the absolutely last living Negro man in the whole known entire world is dead. Gamble Major born a slave rose to become a spearhead in the Civil Rights Movement. He was 38 years old. The Civil Rights Movement. He was 38 years old.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: WILL SOME BODY TAKE THESE STRAPS OFF UH ME PLEASE? I WOULD LIKE TUH MOVE MY HANDS.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: This is the death of the last black man in the whole entire world.\n\n( _A bell sounds three times_ )\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Prunes and prisms prunes and prisms prunes and prisms prunes and prisms.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Yesterday tuhday next summer tuhmorrow just uh moment uhgoh in 1317 dieded thuh last black man in thuh whole entire world. Uh! Oh. Dont be uhlarmed. Do not be afeared. It was painless. Uh painless passin. He falls 23 floors to his death.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: No.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: 23 floors from uh passin ship from space tuh splat on thuh pavement.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: No.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: He have uh head he been keepin under thuh Tee V. On his bottom pantry shelf.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: No.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: He have uh head that hurts. Dont fit right. Put it on tuh go tuh thuh store in it pinched him when he walks his thoughts dont got room. Why dieded he huh?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: No.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Where he gonna go now that he done dieded?\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: No.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Where he gonna go tuh wash his hands?\n\nALL: You should write that down. You should write that down and you should hide it under uh rock.\n\nVOICE ON THUH TEE v: Good evening. Broad Caster. Headlinin tonight: thuh news:\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: Tell you of uh news. Last news. Last news of thuh last man. Last man had last words say hearin it. He spoked uh speech spoked hisself uh chatter-tooth babble \"ya-oh-may\/chuh-naw\" dribblin down his lips tuh puddle in his lap. Dribblin by droppletts. Drop by drop. Last news. News flashes then drops. Thuh last drop was uh all uhlone drop. Singular. Thuh last drop started it off it all. Started off with uh drop. Started off with uh jungle. Started sproutin in his spittle growin leaves off of his mines and thuh vines say drippin doin it. Last news leads tuh thuh first news. He is dead he crosses thuh river. He jumps in thuh puddle have his clothing: ON. On thuh other side thuh mountin yo he dripply wet with soppin. Do drop be dripted? I say \"yes.\"\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Dont leave me hear. Dont leave me. Hear?\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Where he gonna go tuh wash his dribblin hands?\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Where he gonna go tuh dry his dripplin clothes?\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: Did you write it down? On uh little slip uh paper stick thuh slip in thuh river afore you slip in that way you keep your clothes dry, man.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Aintcha heard uh that trick?\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: That tricks thuh method.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: They used it on uhlong uhgoh still works every time.\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: He jumped in thuh water without uh word for partin come out dripply wet with soppin. Do drop be dripted? I say \"do.\"\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: In you all theres kin. You all kin. Kin gave thuh first permission kin be givin it now still. Some things is all thuh ways gonna be uh continuin sort of uh some thing. Some things go on and on till they dont stop. I am soppin wet. I left my scent behind in uh bundle of old clothing that was not thrown out. Left thuh scent in thuh clothin in thuh clothin on uh rooftop. Dogs surround my house and laugh. They are mockin thuh scent that I left behind. I jumped in thuh water without uh word. I jumped in thuh water without uh smell. I am in thuh river and in my skin is soppin wet. I would like tuh stay afloat now. I would like tuh move my hands.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: Would Somebody take these straps off uh me please? I would like tuh move my hands.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Now kin kin I move my hands?\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: My black man my subject man my man uh all mens my my my no no not yes no not yes thuh hands. Let Queen-then-Pharaoh Hatshepsut tell you when. She is I am. An I am she passing by with her train. Pulling it behind her on uh plastic chain. Ooooh who! Oooooh who! Where you gonna go now, now that you done dieded?\n\nALL: Ha ha ha.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Say \"prunes and prisms\" 40 times each day and youll cure your big lips. Prunes and prisms prunes and prisms prunes and prisms: 19.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: An I am Sheba-like she be me am passin on by she with her train. Pullin it behind\/he on uh plastic chain. Oooh who! Oooh who! Come uhlong. Come uhlong.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Say he was waitin on thuh right time.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: Say he was waitin in thuh wrong line.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: I jumped in thuh river without uh word. My kin are soppin wet.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Come uhlong. Come uhlong.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Prunes and prisms prunes and prisms.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: This is the death of the last black man in the whole entire world.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Not yet.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: Back tuh when thuh worl usta be roun.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Come uhlong come uhlong get on board come uhlong.\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: Back tuh that. Yes.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: Back tuh when thuh worl usta be roun.\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: Uhcross thuh river in back tuh that. Yes. Do in diddly dip didded thuh drop. Out to thuh river uhlong to thuh sea. Long thuh long coast. Skirtin. Yes. Skirtin back tuh that. Come up back flip take uhway like thuh waves do. Far uhway. Uhway tuh where they dont speak thuh language and where they dont want tuh. Huh. Go on back tuh that.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: Awe on uh interior before uh demarcation made it mapped. Awe on uh interior with out uh road-word called macadam. Awe onin uh interior that was uh whole was once. Awe on uh whole roun worl uh roun worl with uh river.\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: In thuh interior was uh river. Huh. Back tuh that.\n\nALL: Thuh river was roun as thuh worl was. Roun.\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: He backs his way through thuh tall grass. Tall grass scratch. Width: thickly. Grasses thickly comin from all angles at im. He runs along thuh path worn out by uh 9 million paddin bare footed feet. Uh path overgrown cause it aint as all as happened as of yet. Tuh be extracted from thuh jungle first he gotta go in hide.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Chase-ted me outa thuh trees now they tree me. Thuh dogs come out from their hidin spots under thuh porch and give me uhway. Thuh hidin spot was under thuh porch of uh house that werent there as of yet. Thuh dogs give me uhway by uh laugh aimed at my scent.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: HA HA HA. Thats how thuh laugh sorta like be wentin.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Where he gonna go now now that he done dieded?\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Where he gonna go tuh move his hands?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: I. I. I would like tuh move my hands.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: Back tuh when thuh worl usta be roun.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: Uh roun. Thuh worl? Uh roun worl? When was this?\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: Columbus. Before.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Before Columbus?\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: Ha!\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Before Columbus thuh worl usta be roun. They put uh \/d\/ on thuh end of roun makin round. Thusly they set in motion thuh enduh. Without that \/d\/ we could uh gone on spinnin forever. Thuh \/d\/ thing endiduh things endiduh.\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: Before Columbus:\n\n( _A bell sounds once_ )\n\nThuh popular thinkin kin of thuh day back then in them days was that thuh worl was flat. They thought thuh worl was flat. Back then kin in them days when they thought thuh worl was flat they were afeared and stayed at home. They wanted tuh go out back then when they thought thuh worl was flat but thuh water had in it dragons.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: Not lurkin in thuh sea but lurkin in thuh street, see? Sir name Tom-us and Bigger be my christian name. Rise up out of uh made-up story in grown Bigger and Bigger. Too big for my own name. Nostrils: flarin. Width: thickly. Breath: fire-laden and smellin badly.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Huh. Whiffit.\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: Dragons, of which meanin these dragons they were afeared back then. When they thought thuh worl was flat. They stayed at home. Them thinking thuh worl was flat kept it roun. Them thinkin thuh sun revolved uhroun thuh earth kin kept them satellite-like. They figured out thuh truth and scurried out. Figurin out thuh truth kin put them in their place and they scurried out tuh put us in ours.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: Mmmmm. Yes. You should write that down. You should write that down and you should hide it under uh rock.\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: Thuh earthsgettin level with thuh land land HO and thuh lands gettin level with thuh sea.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Not yet\u2014\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: An I am Sheba she be me. Youll mutter thuh words and part thuh waves and come uhlong come uhlong.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: I would like tuh be fit in back in thuh storybook from which I camed.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: My text was writ in water. I would like tuh drink it down.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Down tuh float drown tuh float down. My son erased his mothers mark.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: I am grown too big for thuh word thats me.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Prunes and prisms prunes and prisms prunes and prisms: 14.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: An I am Sheba me am (She be doo be wah waaaah doo wah). Come uhlong come on uhlong on.\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: Before Columbus directs thuh traffic: left right left right.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Prunes and prisms prunes and prisms.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: I left my mark on all I made. My son erase his mothers mark.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Where you gonna go now now that you done dieded?\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: Would somebody take these straps offuh me please? Gaw. I would like tuh drink in drown\u2014\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: There is uh tiny land mass just above my reach.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: There is uh tiny land mass just outside of my vocabulary.\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: Do in dip diddly did-did thuh drop? Drop do it be dripted? Uh huh.\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: Land:\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: HO!\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: I saw Columbus comin Before Columbus comin\/goin over tuh meet you\u2014\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: Thuh first time I saw it. It was huge. Thuh green sea becomes uh hillside. Uh hillside populated with some peoples I will name. Thuh first time I saw it it was uh was-huge once one. Huh. It has been gettin smaller ever since.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Land:\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: HO!\n\n( _A bell sounds once_ )\n\nPANEL III: THUH LONESOME 3SOME\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: It must have rained. Gaw. Must-uh-rained-on-down-us-why. Aint that somethin. Must uh rained! Gaw. Our crops have prospered. Must uh rained why aint that somethin why aint that somethin-somethin gaw somethin: nice.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Funny.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Gaw. Callin on it spose we did: gaw\u2014thuh uhrainin gaw huh? Gaw gaw. Lookie look-see gaw: where there were riv-lets now there are some. Gaw. Cement tuh mudment accomplished with uh gaw uh flick of my wrist gaw. Huh. Look here now there is uh gaw uh wormlett. Came out tuhday. In my stools gaw gaw gaw gaw they all out tuhday. Come out tuh breathe gaw dontcha? Sure ya dontcha sure gaw ya dontcha sure ya dontcha do yall gaw. Gaw. Our one melon has given intuh 3. Callin what it gived birth callin it gaw. 3 August hams out uh my hands now surroundin me an is all of um mines? GAW. Uh huhn. Gaw Gaw. Cant breathe.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Funny how they break when I dropped em. Thought they was past that. Huh. 3 broke in uh row. Guess mmm on uh roll uh some sort, huh. Hell. Huh. Whiffit.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Gaw. Gaw. Cant breathe.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Some things still hold. Huh. Uh old layed eggull break after droppin most likely. Huh. 4 in uh row. Awe on that.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Gaw. Cant breathe you.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: You dont need to. No need for breathin for you no more, huh? 5. 6. Mm makin uh history. 7-hhh 8-hhh mm makin uh mess. Huh. Whiffit.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Gaw. Gaw loosen my collar. No air in here.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: 7ssgot uh red dot. Awe on that.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Sweetheart\u2014. SWEET-HEART?!\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: 9. Chuh. Funny. Funny. Somethin still holdin on. Let me loosen your collar for you you comed home after uh hard days work. Your suit: tied. Days work was runnin from them we know aint chase-ted you. You comed back home after uh hard days work such uh hard days work that now you cant breathe you. Now.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Dont take it off just loosen it. Dont move thuh tree branch let thuh tree branch be.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Your days work aint like any others day work: you bring your tree branch home. Let me loosen thuh tie let me loosen thuh neck-lace let me loosen up thuh noose that stringed him up let me leave thuh tree branch be. Let me rub your wrists.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Gaw. Gaw.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Some things still hold. Wrung thuh necks of them hens and they still give eggs. Huh: like you. Still sproutin feathers even after they fried. Huh: like you too. 10. Chuh. Eggs still break. Thuh mess makes uh stain. Thuh stain makes uh mark. Whiffit. Whiffit.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Put me on uh platform tuh wait for uh train. Uh who who uh who who uh where ya gonna go now\u2014. Platform hitched with horses\/steeds. Steeds runned off in left me there swinging. It had begun tuh rain. Hands behind my back. This time tied. I had heard of uh word called scaffold and thought that perhaps they just might build me one of um but uh uhn naw just outa my vocabulary but uh uhn naw trees come cheaply.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: 9. 10. I aint hungry. 10. 11. You dont eat. Dont need to.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Swingin from front tuh back uhgain. Back tuh\u2014back tuh that was how I be wentin. Chin on my chest hangin down in restin eyes each on eyein my 2 feets. Left on thuh right one right one on thuh left. Crossed eyin. It was difficult tuh breathe. Toes uncrossin then crossin for luck. With my eyes. Gaw. It had begun tuh rain. Oh. Gaw. Ever so lightly. Blood came on up. You know: tough. Like riggamartins-stifly only\u2014isolated. They some of em pointed they summoned uh laughed they some looked quick in an then they looked uhway. It had begun tuh rain. I hung on out tuh dry. They puttin uhway their picnic baskets. Ever so lightly gaw gaw it had begun tuh rain. They pullin out their umbrellas in hidedid up their eyes. Oh.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: I aint hungry you dont eat 12 13 and thuh floor will shine. Look: there we are. You in me. Reflectin. Hello! Dont move\u2014.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: It had begun tuh rain. Now: huh. Sky flew open and thuh light went ZAP. Tree bowed over till thuh branch said BROKE. Uhround my necklace my neck uhround my neck my tree branch. In full bloom. It had begun tuh rain. Feet hit thuh ground in I started runnin. I was wet right through intuh through. I was uh wet that dont get dry. Draggin on my tree branch on back tuh home.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: On back tuh that.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Gaw. What was that?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: \"On back tuh that?\" Huh. Somethin I figured. Huh. Chuh. Lord. Who! Whiffit.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: When I dieded they cut me down. Didnt have no need for me no more. They let me go.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Thuh lights dimmed in thats what saved you. Lightnin comed down zappin trees from thuh sky. You got uhway!\n\nALL ( _Except Black Woman_ ): Not exactly.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Oh. I see.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: They tired of me. Pulled me out of thuh trees then treed me then tired of me. Thats how it has gone. Thats how it be wentin.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Oh. I see. Youve been dismissed. But-where-to? Must be somewhere else tuh go aside from just go gone. Huh. Whiffit: huh. You smell.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Maybe I should bathe.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: I call those 3 thuh lonesome 3some. Maybe we should pray.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Thuh lonesome 3some. Spose theyll do.\n\n( _A bell sounds twice_ )\n\nPANEL IV: SECOND CHORUS\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: Come in look tuh look-see.\n\nVOICE ON THUH TEE V: Good evening this is thuh news. A small sliver of uh tree branch has been found in _The Death of the Last Black Man._ Upon careful examination thuh small sliver of thuh treed branch what was found has been found tuh be uh fossilized bone fragment. With this finding authorities claim they are hot on his tail.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Uh small sliver of uh treed branch growed from-tuh uh bone.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: WILL SOMEBODY WILL THIS ROPE FROM ROUND MY NECK GOD DAMN I WOULD LIKE TUH TAKE MY BREATH BY RIGHTS GAW GAW.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: This is the death of the last black man in the whole entire world.\n\n( _A bell sounds slowly twice_ )\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: I had heard of uh word called scaffold and had hopes they just might maybe build me one but uh uh naw gaw\u2014\n\nHAM: There was uh tree with your name on it.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Jumpin out of uh tree they chase me tree me back tuh thuh tree. Thats where I be came from. Thats where I be wentin.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: Someone ought tuh. Write that down.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: There is a page dog-eared at \"Histree\" hidin just outside my word hoard. Wheres he gonna come to now that he done gone from.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Wheres he gonna go come to now that he gonna go gone on?\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: For that you must ask Ham.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Hen?\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: HAM.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Ham.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Hmmmm.\n\n( _A bell sounds twice_ )\n\nHAM: Ham's Begotten Tree (catchin up to um _in medias res_ that is we takin off from where we stopped up last time). Huh. NOW: She goned begotten One who in turn begotten Ours. Ours laughed one day uhloud in from thuh sound hittin thuh air smakity sprung up I, you, n He, She, It. They turned in engaged in simple multiplication thus tuh spawn of theirselves one We one You and one called They (They in certain conversation known as \"Them\" and in other certain conversation a.k.a. \"Us\"). Now very simply: Wassername she finally gave intuh It and tugether they broughted forth uh wildish one called simply Yo. Yo gone be wentin much too long without hisself uh comb in from thuh frizzly that resulted comed one called You (polite form). You (polite) birthed herself Mister, Miss, Maam and Sir who in his later years with That brought forth Yuh Fathuh. Thuh fact that That was uh mother tuh Yuh Fathuh didnt stop them 2 relations from havin relations. Those strange relations between That thuh mother and Yuh Fathuh thuh son brought forth uh odd lot: called: Yes Massuh, Yes Missy, Yes Maam n Yes Suh Mistuh Suh which goes tuh show that relations with your relations produces complications. Thuh children of That and Yuh Fathuh aside from being plain peculiar was all crosseyed. This defect enhanced their multiplicative possibilities, for example. Yes Suh Mistuh Suh breeded with hisself n gived us Wassername (thuh 2nd), and Wasser-nickname (2 twins in birth joinded at thuh lip). Thuh 2 twins lived next door tuh one called Uhnother bringing forth Themuhns, She (thuh 2nd), Auntie, Cousin, and Bro who makeshifted continuous compensations for his loud and oderiferous bodily emissions by all thuh time saying excuse me n through his graciousness brought forth They (polite) who had mixed feelins with She (thuh 2nd) thus bringin forth Ussin who then went on tuh have MeMines.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: Thuh list goes on in on.\n\nHAM: MeMines gived out 2 offspring one she called Mines after herself thuh uther she called Themuhns named after all them who comed before. Themuhns married outside thuh tribe joinin herself with uh man they called WhoDat. Themuhns in WhoDat brought forth only one child called WhoDatDere. Mines joined up with Wasshisname and from that union come AllYall.\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: All us?\n\nHAM: No. AllYall.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: This list goes on in on.\n\nHAM: Ah yes: Yo suddenly if by majic again became productive in after uh lapse of some great time came back intuh circulation to wiggled uhbout with Yes Missy (one of thuh crosseyed daughters of That and Yuh Fathuh). Yo in Yes Missy begottin Thissun-RightHere, Us, ThatOne, She (thuh 3rd) and one called Uncle (who from birth was gifted with great singin and dancin capabilities which helped him make his way in life but tended tuh bring shame on his family)\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS\/BLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Shame on his family.\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK\/BLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Shame on his family.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER\/BLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Shamed on his family gaw.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: Write _that_ down.\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: (Ham seed his daddy Noah neckked. From that seed, comed Allyall.)\n\n( _A bell sounds twice_ )\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: (Will somebody please will this rope\u2014)\n\nVOICE ON THUH TEE V: Good evening. This is thuh news: Whose fault is it?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Saint mines.\n\nVOICE ON THUH TEE V: Whose fault iszit??!\n\nALL: Saint mines!\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: I cant re-member back that far. (Ham can\u2014but uh uh naw gaw\u2014Ham wuduhnt there, huh.)\n\nALL: HAM BONE HAM BONE WHERE YOU BEEN ROUN THUH WORL N BACK A-GAIN.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Whatcha seen Hambone girl?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Didnt see you. I saw thuh worl.\n\nHAM: I was there.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Didnt see you.\n\nHAM: I WAS THERE.\n\nVOICE ON THUH TEE V: Didnt see you.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON\/AND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: THUH BLACK MAN. HE MOOOVE.\n\nALL: HAM BONE HAM BONE WHATCHA DO? GOT UH CHANCE N FAIRLY FLEW.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Over thuh front yard.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Overshot.\n\nALL: 6 BY 6 BY 6.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Thats right.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: WILL SOMEBODY WILL THIS ROPE\u2014\n\nALL: Good evening. This is the news.\n\nVOICE ON THUH TEE V: Whose fault is it?\n\nALL: Saint mines!\n\nVOICE ON THUH TEE V: Whose fault iszit?!!\n\nHAM: SAINT MINES!\n\n( _A bell rings twice_ )\n\n\u2014Ham. Is. Not. Tuh. BLAME! WhoDatDere joinded with one called Sir 9th generation of thuh first Sir son of You (polite) thuh first daughter of You WhoDatDere with thuh 9th Sir begettin forth Him\u2014\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Ham?!\n\nALL: ( _Except Ham_ ): HIM!\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Sold.\n\nHAM: SOLD! allyall9 not tuh be confused w\/allus12 joined w\/allthem3 in from that union comed forth wasshisname21 SOLD wassername19 still by thuh reputation uh thistree one uh thuh 2 twins loses her sight through fiddlin n falls w\/ugly old yuh-fathuh4 given she8 SOLD whodat33 pairs w\/you23 (still polite) of which nothinmuch comes nothinmuch now nothinmuch6 pairs with yessuhmistuhsuh17 tuh drop one called yo now yo9\u20130 still who gone be wentin now w\/elle gived us el SOLD let us not forget ye1\u20132\u20135 w\/thee3 givin us thou9\u20132 who w\/thuh they who switches their designation in certain conversation yes they10 broughted forth onemore2 at thuh same time in thuh same row right next door we have datone12 w\/disone14 droppin off duhutherone2\u20132 SOLD let us not forgetyessuhmassuhsuh38 w\/thou8 who gived up memines3\u20130 SOLD we are now rollin through thuh long division gimmie uh gimmie uh gimmie uh squared-off route round it off round it off n round it out w\/sistuh4\u20133 who lives with one called saintmines9 givin forth one uh year how it got there callin it jessgrew callin it saintmines callin it whatdat whatdat whatdat SOLD\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Thuh list goes on and on. Dont it.\n\nALL: Ham Bone Ham Bone Ham Bone Ham Bone.\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: Left right left right.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: Left left left whose left . . .?\n\n( _A bell sounds twice_ )\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: This is the death of the last black man in the whole entire world.\n\nPANEL V: IN THUH GARDEN OF HOODOO IT\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Somethins turnin. Huh. Whatizit.\u2014Mercy. Mercy. Huh. Chew on this. Ssuh feather. Sswhatchashud be eatin now ya no. Ssuhfeather: stuffin. Chew on it. Huh. Feathers sprouted from thuh fried hens\u2014dont ask me how. Somethins out uh whack. Somethins out uh rights. Your arms still on your elbows. I'm still here. Whensit gonna end. Soon. Huh. Mercy. Thuh Tree. Springtime. And harvest. Huh. Somethins turnin. So many melons. Huh. From one tuh 3 tuh many. Must be nature. Gnaw on this. Gnaw on this, huh? Gnaw on this awe on that.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Aint eatable.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: I know.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Aint eatable aint it. Nope. Nope.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Somethins turnin. Huh. Whatizit.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Aint eatable so I out in out ought not aint be eatin it aint that right. Yep. Nope. Yep. Uh huhn.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Huh. Whatizit.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: I remember what I like. I remember what my likes tuh eat when I be in thuh eatin mode.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Chew on this.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: When I be in thuh eatin mode.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Swallow it down. I know. Gimme your pit. Needs bathin.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Choice between peas and corns\u2014my feets\u2014. Choice: peas. Choice between peas and greens choice: greens. Choice between greens and potatoes choice: potatoes. Yams. Boiled or mashed choice: mashed. Aaah. Mmm. My likenesses.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Mercy. Turns\u2014\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: My likenesses! My feets! Aaah! SWEET-HEART. Aaah! SPRING-TIME!\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Spring-time.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: SPRING-TIME!\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Mercy. Turns\u2014\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: I remembers what I likes. I remembers what I likes tuh eat when I bein in had been in thuh eatin mode. Bein in had been: now in then. I be eatin hen. Hen.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Huh?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: HEN!\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Hen?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Hen. Huh. My meals. Aaaah: my meals. _BRACH_ -A-LEE.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Whatizit. Huh. \u2014GNAW ON THIS! Good. Uhther pit?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: We sittin on this porch right now aint we. Uh huhn. Aaah. Yes. Sittin right here right now on it in it ainthuh first time either iduhnt it. Yep. Nope. Once we was here once wuhduhnt we. Yep. Yep. Once we being here. Uh huhn. Huh. There is uh Now and there is uh Then. Ssall there is. (I bein in uh Now: uh Now bein in uh Then: I bein, in Now in Then, in I will be. I was be too but thats uh Then thats past. That me that was-be is uh me-has-been. Thuh Then that was-be is uh has-been-Then too. Thuh me-has-been sits in thuh be-me: we sit on this porch. Same porch. Same me. Thuh Then thats been somehow sits in thuh Then that will be: same Thens. I swing from uh tree. You cut me down and bring me back. Home. Here. I fly over thuh yard. I fly over thuh yard in all over. Them thens stays fixed. Fixed Thens. Thuh Thems stays fixed too. Thuh Thems that come and take me and thuh Thems that greet me and then them Thems that send me back here. Home. Stays fixed, them do.)\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Your feets.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: I: be. You: is. It: be. He, She: thats us (thats it.) We: thats he in she: you aroun me: us be here. You: still is. They: be. Melon. Melon. Melon: mines. I remember all my lookuhlikes. You. You. Remember me.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Gnaw on this then swallow it down. Youll have your fill then we'll put you in your suit coat.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Thuh suit coat I picked out? Thuh stripely one? HA! Peas. Choice: _BRACH_ -A-LEE.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Chew and swallow please.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Thuh stripely one with thuh fancy patch pockets!\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Sweetheart.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: SPRING-TIME.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Sweetheart.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: SPRING-TIME.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: This could go on forever.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Lets. Hope. Not.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: \u2014Sweetheart.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: SPRING-TIME.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Sweetheart.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: SPRING-TIME.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: This could go on forever.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Lets. Hope. Not.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Must be somewhere else tuh go aside from just go gone.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: 6 by 6 by 6.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Thats right.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Rock reads \"HooDoo.\"\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Now you know. Know now dontcha. Somethins turnin\u2014.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Who do? Them do. Aint that nice. Huh. Miss me. Remember me. Missmemissmewhatsmyname.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Aaaaah?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Remember me. AAAH.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Thats it. Open wide. Here it comes. Stuffin.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Yeeeech.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Eat uhnother. Hear. I eat one. You eat one more.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Stuffed. Time tuh go.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Not yet!\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: I got uhway?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Huh?\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: I got uhway?\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Nope. Yep. Nope. Nope.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Miss me.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Miss me.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Re-member me.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Re-member me.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: My hands are on my wrists. Arms on elbows. Looks: old-fashioned. Nothin fancy there. Toes curl up not down. My feets-now clean. Still got all my teeth. Re-member me.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Re-member me.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Call on me sometime.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Call on me sometime. Hear? Hear? Thuh dirt itself turns itself. So many melons. From one tuh 3 tuh many. Look at um all. Ssuh garden. Awe on that. Winter pro-cessin back tuh back with spring-time. They roll on by us that way. Uh whole line gone roun. Chuh. Thuh worl be roun. Moves that way so they say. You comed back. Yep. Nope. Well. Build uh well.\n\n( _A bell sounds twice_ )\n\nFINAL CHORUS\n\nALL: \"Yes. Oh, me? Chuh, no\u2014\"\n\nVOICE ON THUH TEE V: Good morning. This is thuh news:\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Somethins turnin. Thuh page.\n\n( _A bell sounds twice_ )\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: This is the death of the last black man in the whole entire worl.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: 19.\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: Uh blank page turnin with thuh sound of it. Thuh sound of movin hands.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Yesterday today next summer tomorrow just uh moment uhgoh in 1317 dieded thuh last black man in thuh whole entire world. Uh! Oh. Dont be uhlarmed. Do not be afeared. It was painless. Uh painless passin. He falls twenty-three floors to his death.\n\nALL: Yes.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: 23 floors from uh passin ship from space tuh splat on thuh pavement.\n\nALL: Yes.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: He have uh head he been keepin under thuh Tee V.\n\nALL: Yes.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: On his bottom pantry shelf.\n\nALL: Yes.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: He have uh head that hurts. Dont fit right. Put it on tuh go tuh thuh store in it pinched him when he walks his thoughts dont got room. He diediduh he did, huh.\n\nALL: Yes.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Where he gonna go now now now now now that he done diediduh?\n\nALL: Yes.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Where he gonna go tuh. WASH.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Somethins turnin. Thuh page.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: Somethins burnin. Thuh tongue.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Thuh tongue itself burns.\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: He jumps in thuh river. These words for partin.\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: And you will write them down.\n\n( _A bell sounds three times_ )\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: All these boats passed by my coast.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Somethins turnin. Thuh page.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: I saw Columbus comin\/I saw Columbus comin goin\u2014\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT\/BEFORE COLUMBUS: Left left left whose left. . .?\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER\/BLACK MAN\n\nWITH WATERMELON: Somethins burnin. Thuh page.\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: All those boats passed by me. My coast fell in-to-the-sea. All thuh boats. They stopped for me.\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: Land: HO!\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: I waved my hands in warnin. You waved back.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Somethins burnin. Thuh page.\n\nQUEEN-THEN-PHARAOH HATSHEPSUT: I have-not seen you since.\n\nALL: Oh!\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: This is the death of the last black man in the whole entire worl.\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: Do in diddley dip die-die thuh drop. Do drop be dripted? Why, of course.\n\nAND BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER: Somethins burnin. Thuh tongue.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Thuh tongue itself burns itself.\n\nHAM: . . . And from that seed comed All Us.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Thuh page.\n\nALL: 6 BY 6 BY 6.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Thats right.\n\n( _A bell sounds twice_ )\n\nBEFORE COLUMBUS: LAND: HO!\n\nYES AND GREENS BLACK-EYED PEAS CORNBREAD: You will write it down because if you dont write it down then we will come along and tell the future that we did not exist. You will write it down and you will carve it out of a rock.\n\n( _Pause_ )\n\nYou will write down thuh past and you will write down thuh present and in what in thuh future. You will write it down.\n\n( _Pause_ )\n\nIt will be of us but you will mention them from time to time so that in the future when they come along theyll know how they exist.\n\n( _Pause_ )\n\nIt will be for us but you will mention them from time to time so that in the future when they come along theyll know why they exist.\n\n( _Pause_ )\n\nYou will carve it all out of a rock so that in the future when we come along we will know that the rock does yes exist.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Down down down down down down down down\u2014\n\nLOTS OF GREASE AND LOTS OF PORK: This is the death of the last black man in the whole entire worl.\n\nPRUNES AND PRISMS: Somethins turnin. Thuh page.\n\nOLD MAN RIVER JORDAN: Thuh last news of thuh last man:\n\nVOICE ON THUH TEE V: Good morning. This is thuh last news:\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Miss me.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Miss me.\n\nBLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: Re-member me.\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Re-member me. Call on me sometime. Call on me sometime. Hear? Hear?\n\nHAM: In thuh future when they came along I meeting them. On thuh coast. Uuuuhh! My coast! I\u2014was\u2014so\u2014po-lite! But. In thuh rock. I wrote: ha ha ha.\n\nALL: Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. HHHHHHHHHHHH. HA!\n\nBLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Thuh black man he move. He move. He hans.\n\n( _A bell sounds once_ )\n\nALL: Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it.\n_Devotees in the Garden of Love_\n\n1991\n**The Lovers**\n\nLILY\n\nGEORGE, later PATTY\n\nMADAME ODELIA PANDAHR, A PANDERER\n**A.**\n\n_A garden on a hilltop. In the middle of nowhere. Lily, a teeny tiny older woman in a wedding dress, sits in an old-time wheelchair. George, a much larger, much younger woman in a wedding dress, sits on a camp stool practicing conversation._\n\nLILY: Ooooohlukater. Huh. Thuh huzzy.\n\nGEORGE: Oooooh. _Mon nom? Ah, Monsieur, je m'appelle_ \u2014George. Jooooorrrrge.\n\nLILY: Who does she think she is. Bein down there.\n\nGEORGE: _Et vous? Comment vous appelez-vous?_\n\nLILY: Down there amongst thuh action.\n\nGEORGE: _Monsieur Amour? Oooh l\u00e0 l\u00e0, Monsieur Amour! \"Monsieur Amour\"\u2014tr\u00e8s romantique, n'est-ce pas?_\n\nLILY: Down there amongst thuh action where she do not belong.\n\nGEORGE: _L'amour est tr\u00e8s romantique. La romance est la nature de l'amour. Et vous, Monsieur Amour, vous \u00eates le roi d'amour._\n\nLILY: In my day uh woman spoke of her table. And that was all.\n\nGEORGE: _Est-ce que vous \u00eates le roi d'amour?_\n\nLILY: We did things thuh old-fashioned way. In my day. Thuh old-fashioned way was even \"old-fashioned\" back then. I go way back. Huh. Who thuh hell is she pretendin tuh be way down there in thuh thick of it.\n\nGEORGE: _Vous \u00eates le roi d'amour, et je serai votre reine._\n\nLILY: Upstart, George girl. At high noon.\n\nGEORGE: _Oooh l\u00e0 l\u00e0 Monsieur Amour! Oui oui! Oui oui!_\n\nLILY: Look at that upstart! George! Uh upstart. In white even. At high noon. Huh. Thuh huzzy. Huh. Thuh upstart.\n\nGEORGE: Starting up?! Not without my say so they dont!\n\nLILY: Huh?\n\nGEORGE: Startup?! Not without my say so!\n\nLILY: Upstart. Uh huzzy.\n\nGEORGE: Oh.\n\nLILY: See?\n\nGEORGE: _Oui oui! Oui oui!_\n\nLILY: See?!\n\nGEORGE: _Oui._ I see. In my heart. Madame Odelia Pandahr says that because all the eyes of the world are on the heart of the bride-who'll-be's heart thuh bride-who'll-be's heart thus turns inward, is given to reflection and in that way becomes an eye itself. Seeing inward to examine her most deepest thoughts and feelings and seeing outward too tuh give her form and grace thatll guide her in her most natural selection, that is, her choice of suitors.\n\nLILY: Drop that lorgnette girl and use thuh bo-nocks. See?\n\nGEORGE: _Oui!_\n\nLILY: BO\u2014NOCKS!\n\nGEORGE: Oh.\n\nLILY: HIGH NOON!\n\nGEORGE: High noon?\n\nLILY: HIGH NOON!\n\nGEORGE: High noon.\n\nLILY: Not your time! My time! High noon my time my time! George girl get over here and\u2014ooooooooooh! Thuh huzzy. Right _in_ thuh thick of it.\n\nGEORGE: Thuh woman?\n\nLILY: Thuh huzzy.\n\nGEORGE: In white?\n\nLILY: In white.\n\nGEORGE: Mama Lily?\n\nLILY: Right in thuh thick of it.\n\nGEORGE: Mama Lily thats Madame Odelia Pandahr Mama. Oooh hooo, Madame! _C'est moi!_ Jooooooooorge! Oooh hoo! Oooh hooo!\n\nLILY: Gimmieuhminute. Wheremy specs. \u2014. Huh. Huh. \u2014. Well.\n\nGEORGE: Madame Odelia Pandahr ssgonna be monitoring thuh situation play by play.\n\nLILY: Play by play.\n\nGEORGE: Madame Odelia Pandahr says that thuh ultimate battle of love requires uh good go between. In thuh old days Madame Odelia Pandahr says they had matchmakers and messengers\u2014\n\nLILY: Them old days was my days.\n\nGEORGE: Madame Odelia Pandahr says that our new days require thuh kind of reportage that shes doing. \"Reportage.\" Ha! Madame Odelia Pandahr, you know, shes French.\n\nLILY: I guess they just do things different.\n\nGEORGE: They do. _Enchant\u00e9 de faire votre connaissance, Monsieur._\n\nLILY: Look. They all lookin at us. Look.\n\nGEORGE: You think they can see us way up here?\n\nLILY: They all lookin our way.\n\nGEORGE: Oooooh! _Bonjour! Bonjour! Bonjour! Bonjour!_\n\nLILY: Honey?\n\nGEORGE: Huh?\n\nLILY: Theyre waitin for your signal.\n\nGEORGE: Thuh hankie?\n\nLILY: Thuh hankie\n\nGEORGE: _Oui oui! Oui oui!_\n\nLILY: Let it drop like we talked uhbout.\n\nGEORGE: Madame Odelia Pandahr says that uh hankie should be dropped\u2014\n\nLILY: Go on then.\n\nGEORGE: _Comme \u00e7a!_\n\n( _The battle begins_ )\n\nLILY: Thatll do. ( _Pause_ ) And it's begun. ( _Pause_ ) See? See?\n\nGEORGE: You may, now, Sir, return my handkerchief to my hand now Sir.\n\nLILY: See?\n\nGEORGE: In my heart. Madame Odelia Pandahr says that\u2014\n\nLILY: Out there. Look.\n\nGEORGE: In my heart\u2014\n\nLILY: Take uh look see through this. Go on. Lookie. Use your right eye. Put your hand over your left. Thats it. Figet thuh focus. Thats it. Now look-see. See!? See?!\n\nGEORGE: Uh\u2014\n\nLILY: Try these. Go on. Both eyes on um. I used this pair tuh watch your daddy triumph over his rival. Ah\u2014ooooooooooooooh!\n\nGEORGE: _Oooh l\u00e0 l\u00e0!_\n\nLILY: KERBLAM! Sweet Bejesus! Scuze my French! Sweet Bejesus answer my prayers looks like ThatOne done sunked ThisOnes battleship rockum sockum rockum sockum\u2014ONE OCLOCK love of uh girl! ONE OCLOCK!\n\nGEORGE: One oclock.\n\nLILY: My time!\n\nGEORGE: Your time.\n\nLILY: Off lookin at nothin at 19:45. They say love makes yuh blind. Only ever made me sweat. In my day my motherud say 16:15 and there wernt no question that it was 16:15 her time. Thuh time helpin tuh tell you where you oughta be where you oughta be lookin and whatcha oughta be lookin at. Frenchiz in uh different time zone. Seems tuh me. Must be. Huh. All that _fran\u00e7ais._ Dont belong on uh field uh battle. Tuck it outa sight. For now. We got our own lingo and what we cant say with our own\u2014hometown lingo just wont get said. For thuh time being. Go on. Tuck thuh _fran\u00e7ais_ away-WOOOOOOOOOOH! And there it all is. Raging. 2 OCLOCK LOVE OF UH GIRL! KERBLAM! See?! SEE?!\n\nGEORGE: Ooooooh\u2014\n\nLILY: Impressive. Impressed?\n\nGEORGE: Rockets red blare at 2 oclock, Mama Lily. Makes my heart sing.\n\nLILY: Thats my girl!\n\nGEORGE: Our word is \"Devotion.\" My match was made in heaven.\n\nLILY: Thats my George!\n\nGEORGE: We will hold fast unto thuh death. We will not come all asunder. We wont flinch.\n\nLILY: Thats my George! Lookie lookie lookie: bombs bursting in air at 10:25. Just like thuh ditty.\n\nGEORGE: Ooooooooooh!\n\nLILY: KERBLAM! Direct hit! Makes it all worthwhile.\n\nGEORGE: Mama?\n\nLILY: AH-AH-AH-AH-AH-AH-AH-AH. RAT-TA-TAT-TAT.\n\nGEORGE: Mama Lily? At 9 oclock? \u2014My time. I think I see an instance of uh bodily harm.\n\nLILY: You crossed your legs before you held your head up. First steps you took you took with uh board on your head balanced there as an insurance of premiere posture. Preschool charm school with all the trimmings we couldnt afford it so, thats my girl, thats my George, bless your sweet heart, sweetheart I taught you your basics. How tuh lay uh table. How tuh greet uh guest. Thuh importance of uh centerpiece. How tuh fix uh \"mess.\" Thuh difference between \"mess\" and \"messy.\"\n\nGEORGE: \"Mess\" means food and should be plentiful. \"Messy\" means sloppy and should be scarce.\n\nLILY: How, if you went tuh uh party and arrived early, how not tuh go in and catch thuh hostess unawares but tuh walk up and down thuh sidewalk until 20 minutes after thuh affair had begun.\n\nGEORGE: The importance of being fashionably late.\n\nLILY: Every affair is uh battle\u2014\n\nGEORGE AND LILY: And every battle ssgot tuh have uh battle- _plan._\n\nLILY: Even learned you uh little bit uh fan work. Then it was off tuh Madame Odelia Pandahrs. On full scholarship!\n\nGEORGE: _C'\u00e9tait magnifique!_ \u2014It was wonderful!\n\nLILY: My George finishes Madame Odelia Pandahrs Finishing Academy at thuh top of her class! Planning dinner parties for uh hundred and forty! Knowed thuh places for settings I'll never lay eyes on. Didnt have them places back then. _Au courant_ we calls her. Thats my George. Thats my girl.\n\nGEORGE: 9 oclock. Mama Lily. Looks like weve got ourselves uh premiere example of uh decapitation.\n\nLILY: So it is. So it is.\n\nGEORGE: Major dismemberment at 9:05.\n\nLILY: So it is. So it is.\n\nGEORGE: Blood. Blood. Blood. Dust. Ashes. Thick smoke.\u2014Carnage.\n\nLILY: Conclusion, Miss George?\n\nGEORGE: In conclusion, Mama Lily, I'd say that the fighting is well underway.\n\nLILY: Further?\n\nGEORGE: Further, Mama Lily? If I'd go further I'd say \"fierce.\"\n\nLILY: Prognosis, Miss George?\n\nGEORGE: Prognosis, Mama Lily? Well\u2014looks like I just may be married in thuh mornin, Mama.\n\nLILY: Makes my heart sing.\n\nGEORGE: _Mon coeur est plein d'amour!_\n\nLILY: Hold off until thuh peace talks please love of uh girl.\n\nGEORGE: They may not be peacing by morning though. My match by morning may not be made. Madame Odelia Pandahr says there arent 2 suitors alive more well matched than ThisOne and ThatOne. While any other suitor in thuh area of conflict would be smote right down for dead ThisOne has uh move which ThatOne counters and ThatOne has uh counter to which ThisOne always gives reply. From what Madame Odelia Pandahr says ThisOne and ThatOne are even steven one for one move for move uh perfect match.\n\nLILY: Keep your eyes stuckd inside them bo-nocks my sweet thing. Down theres where thuh action is.\n\nGEORGE: It could be uh protracted engagement down there. I may be sittin uhround protractedly engaged up here. \u2014. But I think thingsll wrap theirselves up nicely.\n\nLILY: And how come?\n\nGEORGE: How come cuz thuh cause of Love thats how come. L-O-V-E. ThatOne could start uh charge on ThisOne and ThisOne would rally back. Cuz thuh cause of Love. ThisOne may sever thuh arms and legs off uh all uh ThatOnes troops and those maimed and mismangled arms and legs would riiiise up uhgain and return to their trunks like uh child coming home for supper when thuh triangle bell was rung. Cuz thuh cause of Love. Guns with them knives on thuh ends may run through lines and lines of thuh faithful piercing through and through and through and fingers and toes may travel to foreign countries where we aint never been, Mama Lily, puss green-slimed bile and contagion may grow from thuh wounds of thuh wounded seep intuh thuh ground and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and thuh cannons may roar thuh wind may moan thuh sky may shake and spit fire and crack open and swallow um all up but itll all end nicely. Our word is \"devotion.\" My match was made in heaven. We will hold fast. Unto thuh death. We will not come out all asunder. We wont flinch. How come? Cuz thuh cause of Love.\n\nLILY: Seems all quiet now. Must be taking uh lunchtime. Nobody down theres movin. Huh. In my day things were just as interesting. Dont think twice uhbout that. Thuh lucky ones were pursued. Thuh unlucky ones had tuh make do. Ssallways been like that. My suitor fought for me and its only right that you oughta be so sought after. If I havent given you you nothin else at least I've made sure uh that. George? GEORGE!? Where you gone off to? Thuh gettin was just gettin good. Theys takin uh break we kin sit here in watch em lick their wounds. Shoot. Uh dogs lickin on that one. Werent no dogs uhllowed on thuh field uh battle in my day. Everythings gone tuh pot. De-volution. Huh. Where you been?\n\nGEORGE: Had tuh get my hope chest.\n\nLILY: Had tuh get your hope chest. Thats my George.\n\nGEORGE: As uh bride-who'll-be I'm waiting at thuh ready. Ready for uh inspection. As bride I expect my groomll inspect me. Maybe you could inspection my wares while theyre getting reinforcements.\n\nLILY: Could do. Go on\u2014lounge uhround like you didnt know it was coming. Lounge girl, go on. Madame Odelia Pandahr didnt cover lounging?\n\nGEORGE: Given thuh ensuing conflict she questioned its ethical nature.\n\nLILY: Huh. \u2014. Sit on thuh grass pick daisies look right on off intuh thuh 3 oclock. Smoke uh cigarette. Sing.\n\nGEORGE: Sing?\n\nLILY: La de de la de dah and et cetera.\n\nGEORGE: La de de la de dah la de de la de dah.\n\nLILY: La de de la de dah la de de la de dah ssjust uh normal day who knows what may be up next.\n\nGEORGE: La de de la de dah la de dah dah le deee\u2014\n\nLILY: SPEC-SHUN!\n\nGEORGE: YES, MAAM.\n\nLILY: Gimmie gimmie gimmie. Bring it over here lets see whatcha got. 2 tablecloths: Irish linen. 1 tablecloth: fancy lace. Napkins tuh match. Place settings for\u201440\u201442\u2014.\n\nGEORGE: Some may break.\n\nLILY: Thats my George! Thats thuh battleplan! Ah ha: uh brown sac uh peppermint candies. For fresh breath?\n\nGEORGE: For fresh breath.\n\nLILY: Reason bein?\n\nGEORGE: Reason bein cuz after battle my suitor may be uh little in need of refreshin. Madame Odelia Pandahr says that theres only one thing staler than thuh mouth of uh suitor\u2014ha\u2014and thats thuh mouth of thuh one that lost thuh fight. Ha ha ha ha. Aaah.\n\nLILY: Yummy. Dont mind if I inspect thuh taste of thuh brown sacked mints for fresh breath do you Miss George. Uh set of informal nap-pi-kans. Everyday _serviettes._ Matchin everyday tablecloth. Plenty of sheets: handsewn. Doilies hand done. Extra bedsprings for thuh\u2014wedding night. Bloomers xtra large hand sewn. Only one pair. Practicin economy. Brassieres galore tuh match. Why you got so many uh these things I will never know. You only got 2 tits girl.\n\nGEORGE: Uh war brides gotta point thuh way.\n\nLILY: Didnt we pack you uh pair of white elbow-length gloves?\n\nGEORGE: Uh huhnn. Madame Odelia Pandahr borrowed um. She said ThisOne and ThatOne needed em. You know, tuh slap each others faces with and throw down and challenge.\n\nLILY: Throwin down thuh gauntlet! Thats thuh old style! Ah! And thuh silver! 84 piece set. Stole it one by one from\u2014well they aint never gonna know now is they. They aint noticed yet and they aint never gonna know cause we aint never gonna tell. Nicely polished. Shinin like thuh lake. In my day thuh first vision uh future battle bride envisioned was her table. Her place settings was thuh place holders for her company. Who would come tuh dine throughout her generations. Seein thuh vision of her table was thuh most important thing. Guess it aint like that now. Now you got\u2014technology. Huh. Lets see now: uh few jewels for adornment. And your bridehead: intact. Intact, Miss?\n\nGEORGE: I aint touched it. Seal on thuh jar iduhnt broke izit?\n\nLILY: Hmmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmm. HMMMMMMMMMMM. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Huh. Nope. Ha! Makes my heart sing, Miss George. Love of uh girl. Ha ha ha ha ha\u2014whasszis?\n\n( _ATV!_ )\n\nGEORGE: Madame Odelia Pandahr says todays battle bride oughta be adequately accoutrementalized by thuh modern age.\n\nLILY: Thuh modern age.\n\nGEORGE: Madame Odelia Pandahr says there iduhnt nothin like watchin thuh conflict play by play like.\n\nLILY: We got thuh spy glass. We got thuh bo-nocks. I used these bonocks when I watched your Daddy triumph over his rival.\n\nGEORGE: Madame Odelia Pandahrs even featured this year. We may be sittin up here on thuh sidelines so tuh speak but Madame Odelia Pandahrs down there representing thuh modern age. Shes gonna be in charge of thuh regular broadcasts.\n\nLILY: My day we had messengers. Skinny mens and womens who earned uh cent or two by running up and down thuh hillside. In my year I had me uh particular favorite. Nothin but bones by thuh time it was all through. That messenger came rippin up here at all hours. In thuh dead uh night! In thuh crack uh dawn! Would report\u2014you know\u2014thuh important stuff. Who said what, reenact ThissuhBodys troops last gasp or show me how one uh ThatuhBodys troopers kept walkin for hours with uh flag run through their guts and how thuh run through flag had pinned uhnother tuh his back so he was walking for two\u2014with one piggy back, you know. Like uh shishkebob. That messengers speciality was thuh death throes. Kept us in stitches up here showing us who dropped dead and how. And they was droppin dead down there like flies drop so that messenger kept busy. Runned up here tuh tell me thuh news. Whuduhnt nothin but bones by battles end. Last time that messenger runned up here just his bones was doin thuh runnin and thuh stuff that holded thuh bones tugether was all used up as fuel tuh get them bones up thuh hill. We didnt bury thuh messenger. Gave him uh higher honor. My corset is from that messengers bones, you know. In my day we didnt waste.\n\nGEORGE: Madame Odelia Pandahr says that uh unit like this can do double duty: keep us up here abreast of thuh action and after thuh wedding serve as uh device for entertainment.\n\nLILY: Enter-whut?\n\nGEORGE: Entertainment. Fun.\n\nLILY: Oh. Serves uh double duty do it?\n\nGEORGE: So she claims. Just pull thuh knob. And: presto.\n\nLILY: Just pull thuh knob. Huh. Pres-to.\n\nGEORGE: And enjoy.\n\nLILY: Huh. Pres-to.\n\n**B.**\n\n_At the Front. Madame Odelia Pandahr, the panderer, in a wedding dress with microphone in hand, broadcasts live._\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Rat uh tat tat and kerblam kerblooey. As someone said long ago: \"Thems fighting words.\" That adage today has well proven true. There is only one way to describe the scene here the scene that began shortly over 5 days ago and seems well intended to last at least through the night. What began as what could be characterized as a border skirmish, a simple tribal dispute, has erupted into a battle of major consequence. High high up above me is the encampment of the bride-who'll-be who has been keeping watch on this situation. The actual area of our attention is not high high up but right down here right down here in, so to speak, \"the thick of it.\" In the area just behind me through this thick veil of deadly deadly smoke you can just make out the shapes of the 2 opposing camps and of course we are speaking of the camps of ThisOne and the camps of ThatOne. The two suitors vying for the hand of Miss George the beautiful most sought after bride-who'll-be who watches now from high above us with her mother, Ms. Mother Lily, from that far high hilltop. There is one word that, I guess you could say, sums up this brilliant display this passionate parade of severed arms and legs, genitals and fingertips, buttocks and heads, the splatterment the dismemberment, the quest for an embrace for the bride-who'll-be which has, for many, ended in an embrace of eternity, and that one word I think we could say that one word is \"Devotion.\" This is Ms. Odelia Pandahr. At the Front.\n\n**C.**\n\n_In the garden._\n\nGEORGE: Dont run from me Mama.\n\nLILY: Aint runnin.\n\nGEORGE: Dont roll from me.\n\nLILY: Mmon uh roll.\n\nGEORGE: Gimmie.\n\nLILY: Not thuh place settings George honey.\n\nGEORGE: Gimmie.\n\nLILY: I got my wheels dug in George.\n\nGEORGE: Sseither them knives and forks and spoons and butter-knives and salad tongs and pickle prongs and lobster tools sseither thems or my brassiere and they aint getting my brassiere.\n\nLILY: In my day we went without.\n\nGEORGE: She aint gettin it.\n\nLILY: In my day thuh table was of most importance.\n\nGEORGE: Uh bride like me ssgotta point thuh way and I intend tuh point thuh way so gimmie. Gimmmmmmmmmmie!\n\nLILY: You kin give her thuh model of your dream home.\n\nGEORGE: Ssalready been gived.\n\nLILY: Thuh nap-pi-kans. _Serviettes,_ love of uh girl?\n\nGEORGE: Mopped up thuh sap of thuh wounded.\n\nLILY: \u2014bloomers?\n\nGEORGE: Turned intuh flags.\n\nLILY: They had tuh know who was who huh?\n\nGEORGE: Gimmie.\n\nLILY: In my day thuh first thing thuh very first thing uh bride-tuh-be envisioned was her table. Thuh shape or size, thuh dimensions of her table were not thuh question. Uh table could be round and of uh cherry wood or square and of oak. Thuh one I always seed was oblong, I was uh little fancy for uh war bride. Oblong and of pine. But thuh materials and dimensions were not really thuh center of thuh envisioning. No. You could have uh table and uh chair\u2014traditional style\u2014or just on uh blanket on thuh ground. Outdoors. Thats uh picnic. Thuh first thing was always her table. And when she had seen it she told her mother and her dear mother tooked it as uh sign that she would be\u2014you know\u2014uh bride. Uh bride with uh groom in all. Like on thuh cake top. On her table with thuh cloth stretched out she would see places for those who would come to mess with her, you know\u2014\n\nGEORGE: Eat.\n\nLILY: In her envisioning she'd see how many there would be and where and what theyd all eat. (You could always tell thuh eats by thuh forks and knives and so on she saw laid out.) What tuh drink. If there was tuh be coffee or tea. And desserts. Thuh first vision was always thuh table. You girls dont see tables these days but I still see mines sometimes\u2014not that I actually ever had no guests like that\u2014but sometimes I still kin see it. Rows and rows of flatwear spiralin out like they was all holdin uh place for me. Hoidin my place.\n\nGEORGE: She can take thuh cake top. She can take thuh hope chest itself.\n\nLILY: How uhbout that book. Your _French Love Words and French Love Phrases?_\n\nGEORGE: Uh uhnn.\n\nLILY: Oh.\n\nGEORGE: Ssunder my gown.\n\nLILY: Oh.\n\nGEORGE: Keepin my gut in.\n\nLILY: Oh. Lets lay low. Maybe she wont want nothin.\n\n( _Enter Odelia Pandahr_ )\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Madame Mother Lily. And thuh most fought over Mademoiselle Miss George.\n\nLILY: Delighted, Maam.\n\nGEORGE: _Enchant\u00e9 de faire votre connaissance, Madame Pandahr._\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: \u2014. _Votre fille est si charmante, Madame Mama Lily._\n\nLILY: _Oui oui! Oui oui!_ Well, \u2014I dont\u2014speak thuh language\u2014.\n\nGEORGE: You think they can see me way up here?\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Of course they can, dear girl. The eyes of the heart can see across continents and through stone, Mademoiselle George! Your every breath your every whisper your every tear wink and sigh.\n\nGEORGE AND LILY: Aaaaah!\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: ThisOne thanks you for the great gift of the tatted dishtowels. They have been reshaped and put into service as shifts for the war captured. ThatOne is beholden to you for your gracious coughing up of the salad plates which have been split pie shape stood on end and now instead of serving salad serve as an impediment to the advancing shoeless enemy. You both no doubt have seen the most effective translation of the bridal bloomers? Ripped in 2 and dipped in dye theyve created _voil\u00e0_ : the bright green flag of ThatOne and at 11 oclock the dark deep green of ThisOne. It is only an extravagance of your devotion which offered up the bloomers and now allows the troops to distinguish themselves. Of your jewlery, most gracious Miss George, both ThisOne and ThatOne have made great use. Both have pinned the baubles to their respective bodies an act which literally transfixes them. Pinned by desire, they are spurred on to new deeds of devotion. Your jewels, George, also make the boys real shiny\u2014easier for my crew to track their night-time skirmish activities.\n\nGEORGE: Skirmish.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Itll be upgraded to \"conflict\" any day now.\n\nGEORGE: Skirmish.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: We wont fail you Miss George. I know youve got yourself set for the big win and we will not fail you. With but a few more of your very dear contributions, my dear Mademoiselle, I'll not only personally insure an upgrade but will promise promise promise that youll be wed. To thuh Victor. By sunset tomorrow. So gimmie.\n\nGEORGE: Uh uhnn.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Ive schooled you in all aspects of Devotion Mademoiselle George. Pouting was not one of those aspects.\n\nGEORGE: We dont got nothin else.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: And neither was hoarding. What will you be donating today, Mademoiselle?\n\nGEORGE: \u2014.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Cough up.\n\nLILY: What do they require, Maam?\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: With more ammo ThatOne claims he'll have the whole skirmish\u2014conflict\u2014wrapped up by sunrise.\n\nLILY: Ammo?\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: A melted down butterknife makes one hell of uh bullet, Mother Lily.\n\nLILY: In my day\u2014\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: All ThisOne wants is a decent silver serving spoon. The medic says itll make a nice new kneecap. If you object tuh thuh weapons question ThatOnes troops need their teeth filled.\n\nLILY: Thuh table.\n\nGEORGE: We got thuh cake top.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Useless.\n\nGEORGE: Dont suppose youd take thuh Tee Vee.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Weve got plenty.\n\nGEORGE: You kin take thuh hope chest itself.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: The morgue officerll come and pick that up this evening. Seems weve had a problem with animals exhuming and consuming the\u2014well thats not a subject for a young ladys ears. ( _Pause_ ) SILVER. Cough up.\n\nLILY: Thuh table.\n\nGEORGE: How uhbout my brassiere. My last one howboutit.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: A bride must point the way, Miss George!\n\nGEORGE: Ssall we got.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Unfortunately brassieres are not what theyre requesting right now but well but well butwell it will most likely come in handy so go ahead and take it off. Keep it in the ready and I'll keep you posted. Anything could happen at this point! You know how skirmis-flicts are. You know.\n\nGEORGE: We know.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Your generosity will not go unnoticed, Miss George. Perhaps I can even finagle a citation of some sort for you. For both of you. Would you like that? Hmmmm? What the troops need right now is something that will unquestionably smack of \"Devotion.\" Smack of Devotion clear as day. Dont you think?\n\nLILY: How uhbout my chair.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Weve got plenty.\n\nGEORGE: Im gonna look all wrong. Be pointin at down 6 oclock instead of out at 9. You say they can see me from here. How they gonna know whats what?\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Mama Lily. Surely you can help.\n\nLILY: Uh table is\u2014\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Uhround your neck.\n\nLILY: Oh.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: May I? Thanks. Their eyes have been under such a\u2014such a strain. These will do just the trick.\n\nLILY: My bo-nocks. I watched your father triumph with them bo-nocks. They still got his winnin image in um somewheres.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: I'll be on the 11 oclock update. I'm sure youll tune in.\n\nLILY: Sure.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: _Enchant\u00e9, Madame. Enchant\u00e9 Mademoiselle George._\n\nGEORGE: _Enchant\u00e9! Enchant\u00e9! Oui oui! Oui oui!_\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: _Au revoir, Mademoiselle_. ( _Exits_ )\n\nGEORGE: Oh. _Au revoir, Madame_. ( _Pause_ ) Just turn thuh knob. And enjoy.\n\n( _George turns on the TV_ )\n\nLILY: Huh. Presto.\n\n**D.**\n\n_The Front. Odelia Pandahr broadcasts live._\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: At this hour there is silence. Silence from the guns and swords which only hours ago smote with such deathly volume. Silence from brave troops who only hours ago charged out with the whoops of battle in their throats. Many of those throats are cut now. At this hour. And the cries which spurred them on just hours ago have fled out through their wounds to find refuge in the silence. What began some years ago as a skirmish, what some years ago was upgraded to a conflict now has all the trappings of war. Last week the destruction of ThisOnes troops seemed imminent as the forces of ThatOne marched on and captured the enemy command post. Reports from the field claimed that ThisOne remained defiant vowing that the body could and would continue to fight\u2014headless yes headless if necessary and that it did. What many of us believed and reported to you to be a \"headless hen\" certain to succumb with the sunset has become a very different bird altogether\u2014striking again and again with an unbelievable fierceness and very much redefining this battle. For the Victor: comfort in the lap of the bride-who'll-be, and the bride-who'll-be is of course the most beautiful and most sought after Miss George who with her mother, Mother Lily, sits high above us on the hilltop just behind me, waiting and watching, watching and waiting. So for the Victor, comfort in the lap of the beloved and for the vanquished, for those who do not triumph, there is only comfort in the lap of the earth, here in this valley. They have renamed this valley \"Miss George's Valley\" after, of course, their beloved. Several minutes from now, when the troops rise and resume their positions, the wind will awake and unfurl the flags and the echo of Love will once again resound throughout Miss George's Valley. An echo like no other an echo that will not die and fall and forget and be forgotten. An echo that can only be called\u2014\"Devotion.\" This is Ms. Odelia Pan\u2014\n\n**E.**\n\n_The Garden. Lily and George watch TV._\n\nGEORGE: Turn it off. ( _Pause_ ) Zit off?\n\nLILY: Ssoff. ( _Pause_ ) Turn thuh knob. Hhhh. Presto.\n\nGEORGE: Presto.\n\n( _Pause_ )\n\nLILY: Ssdark.\n\n( _Pause_ )\n\nGEORGE: Ssdark.\n\n( _Pause_ )\n\nLILY: Ssquiet.\n\n( _Pause_ )\n\nGEORGE: Ssquiet. ( _Pause_ ) Zit off?\n\nLILY: Ssoff. Love of uh girl.\n\nGEORGE: Guess theys all dead. Or dying.\n\nLILY: Or restin.\n\nGEORGE: Ssquiet.\n\nLILY: Uh huhnn. Ssquiet.\n\n( _Pause_ )\n\nGEORGE: How come you called me George?\n\nLILY: In my day we had rules. For thuh battle. Rule Number One: No night fightin. Maybe theys observin Rule Number One.\n\nGEORGE: How come you gived me George? As uh name?\n\nLILY: Maybe theys lickin their wounded. I kin just hear thuh sound of uh tongue on riddled flesh. Or maybe its uh dinner break. Maybe what I hear is lips slurpin soup. Whisperin over thuh broth. So quiet. So quiet.\n\nGEORGE: I'm thuh only one I know named George. Seems like thuh name went out uh fashion when you used it on me.\n\nLILY: In my day\u2014. Hhhh. Well. We iduhnt anywhere near them days nowuhdays now is we. Hhh. Clear outa sight. Un-seed. I sure do miss my bo-nocks, George.\n\nGEORGE: Call me somethin pretty. Somethin with uh lift at thuh end, K, Mama Lily? Somethin like\u2014oh Idunno\u2014. Patty? Patty got uh French ring to it dont it?\n\nLILY: George iz all we had.\n\nGEORGE: Patty. Patty. Patty-Patty.\n\nLILY: George iz all we got now, George. Huh. \"Patty?\" \"Patty?\" Huh. Idunno. Gimmieuhminute.\n\nGEORGE: Pattyssgot uh happy ending tuh it.\n\nLILY: Huh. Love of uh girl. Love of uh girl. \"Patty?\" Huh. Gimmieuhminute.\n\nGEORGE: So quiet down there. HELLO? Huh. Just thuh echo. I waved my handkerchief at um this noon. Then I dropped it. No one came runnin. My etiquettes up here goin tuh waste. _French Love Words and French Love Phrases._ Huh. ( _Pause_ ) Quiz me.\n\nLILY: Huh?\n\nGEORGE: Quiz me. Quiz me before I forget.\n\nLILY: Okay. Our lingo first. Tuh warm up. Suitor: \"My sweetest flower of the morning, when your eyes open it is the dawn and when they close the sun cannot resist and sets with you. My sweetest flower, you have dropped your handkerchief.\" Bride-who'll-be?\n\nGEORGE: \"As the sun itself returns to its house after providing light unto the entire world, so may you, kind Sir, return my scented cloth unto my scented hand.\"\n\nLILY: Uh\u2014. More like this: \"After providing light unto the entire world which wakes first for you then proceeds upon its course, so may you, kind Sir,\u2014\" and et cetera.\n\nGEORGE: Oh.\n\nLILY: Lets try uhnother, K? Suitor: \"In my hand I hold a diamond in my heart I hold your image. You are infinitely more beautiful fair and precious than this most precious stone. Oh my heart would be the most basest and plainest of rocks if ever you did not move me.\" Bride-who'll-be?\n\nGEORGE: \"The earth moves\u2014as do its consorts, the planets. Daily engaged in their revolving. By its very nature, Lover, Love itself revolves, revolves to bring you back, Lover, to me.\"\n\n( _Pause_ )\n\nLILY: Uh uhnn.\n\nGEORGE: Oh. Gimmieuhhint.\n\nLILY: \"My image\u2014\"\n\nGEORGE: Oh oh oh. \"My image\u2014which you keep with such care in your heart, my image, fair as it may be is not so nearly as fair as\u2014\"\n\nLILY: Uh uhnn. \"My image, Sir, is merely a\u2014\"\n\nGEORGE: \"My image, Sir, is merely\u2014a reflection in that safe keeping mirror of your heart.\"\n\nLILY: Good.\n\nGEORGE: \"As gardens should be judged by their caretakers so should my image be judged by your care. Base rocks are bulwarks to the great ocean but they too sand in time. And time itself is a round thing, a round thing that\u2014that\u2014that\u2014\"\n\nLILY: Thatll do. Now. \u2014. Uh\u2014 _en fran\u00e7ais?_\n\nGEORGE: _En fran\u00e7ais?_\n\nLILY: Uh huhnn. Go on.\n\nGEORGE: _Oui oui! Oui oui!_ Uh\u2014. _Monsieur._ \u2014. Uh\u2014 _Monsieur_ \u2014. Uh\u2014. Gimmieuhminute.\n\n( _Enter Odelia Pandahr_ )\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Madame Mama Lily and the most fought over Mademoiselle Miss George! I arrive today triumphant gather round gather round! I bring you: Yes! The Victor! The Victor, Miss George, the true suitor who has won through the truest test your hand! The Victor, Miss George, smiter of the victim! Stand back stand back! Now! Wait right here!\n\nLILY: \"Patty.\" \"Patty.\" We'll call ya \"Patty,\" Patty. Patty?\n\nPATTY: How I look? Wedable?\n\nLILY: Patty. Love of uh girl.\n\nPATTY: I look all right?\n\nLILY: Like uh happy ending.\n\nPATTY: Huh. Thatll do. Whats our word? Our words \"Devotion.\" We will hold fast. Unto thuh death. We will not come all asunder. We wont flinch. I'll see him and he'll see me. We will exchange words of love and fall fall fall into eachothers arms\u2014.\n\nLILY: Thats my girl. Here they come, honey. \u2014. Suck in your gut.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: May I present to you Madame Mother Lily and beautiful most fought over bride-who'll-be Mademoiselle Miss George: The Victor!\n\nPATTY: Thuh Victor!\n\nLILY: Thuh Victor!\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: _Voil\u00e0!_\n\nPATTY: _Voil\u00e0!_\n\nLILY: _Voil\u00e0!_\n\n( _Odelia Pandahr uncovers a head on a platter_ )\n\nPATTY: Oh.\n\nLILY: Presto.\n\nPATTY: Wheres thuh rest of im, Madame?\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: He's full of love for you, Mademoiselle George. His lips are pursed in a kiss. His eyes only for your fair image, Mademoiselle. I recounted to him the story of your waiting. The history of the gifts you gave. The story of the tears you shed for him. The tale of your devotion. The way you wrung your hands. There is only one word for such a show of bravest bravery,\u2014\n\nPATTY: Wheres thuh rest of im?\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: There is only one word for such a show of bravest bravery, Mademoiselle George\u2014\n\nPATTY: Patty.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Patty?\n\nLILY: Presto.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: \u2014Patty\u2014. There is just one word for such valorous valor just one word for such faithful faith just one word, Mademoiselle George for\u2014\n\nPATTY: Patty.\n\nLILY: Patty.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Patty?\n\nPATTY: Patty.\n\nLILY: Turn it off.\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Now your suitor, Mademoiselle\u2014Patty, may be just a head\u2014a head kept alive by a wealth of technology, the fruits of our modern age. Your suitor may be just a\u2014head\u2014uh head-stone of thuh former self but as we are schooled in Madame Odelia Pandahrs, the head is the place where sit thuh lofty\u2014the lofty-most thoughts. Weve, you could say, done away with thuh base. We would do away with this base but then of course your handsome and devoted suitor would have difficulty standing you understand.\n\nLILY: Turn if off. Turn it off Patty.\n\nPATTY: Patty. Pattysgot uh happy ending to it. Arent him and me supposed tuh fall into eachothers arms?\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: It is true that in the rage of battle suitors ThisOne and ThatOne were thick as tigers around an old gum tree. Even steven blow for blow a perfect match! They always did look uh bit uhlike, Mademoiselle\u2014Patty. There has been a bit of debate down in your valley as to just which one this is. Some say ThisOne some say ThatOne. There is talk of the two opposing camps taking up arms to settle the matter. But that is not our affair now is it. I myself think well I myself know this to be ThatOne. I am after all his mother.\n\nLILY: Turn it off. Turn it off. Zit off?\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: PATTY! Patty!? ThatOne looks as if he's uhbout to speak!\n\nLILY: Speak?!\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Words of love!!\n\nPATTY: Love?!!\n\nODELIA PANDAHR: Lean in close, love of uh girl. LEAN IN CLOSE. Some need a little prodding I understand. Ive seen it all. LEAN. IN. CLOSE. \u2014. See? See? Thuh lips twitch. Oh\u2014ssssssssh! Hear? Hear? \u2014. \u2014. Now hows that? Uh happy ending!\n\nPATTY: Oh. Oh. Mama? Oooh. Mama? He said: \"Be Mine.\"\n\nLILY: Oh! \"Be mine!\"\n\n**F.**\n\n_At the Front. Patty with a microphone._\n\nPATTY: Once upon uh time way up there in uh garden in thuh middle of nowhere there were 2 who got married. After thuh marriage thuh boy it seemed soon forgot his home-town lingo. To woo her he had used thuh words \"be mine.\" Now \"be mine\" is fine for uh woo but it iduhnt enough tuh build anything longlasting and stable on. Sheud ask him tuh say something. Sheud plead with him tuh say anything. He'd just say \"be mine\" and although they were in love that \"be mine\" got rather old rather quick. Soon even his \"be mine\" dried up. And she realized that he had forgotten his home-town lingo. And she realized that he couldnt pick it up again. So she did what she had to do. She left her wordless husband and went journeying. Abroad. To Gay Paree. And lived over there amongst them. For 12 long years. Full of her new words and phrases she then came home to him. Where he waited. She took off her traveling cloak and did what any anybody would do, that is, she taught him French. It was rough going at first, but he was eager. And soon they could make decent conversation. They became close. In their way. Made a go of it. Raised uh family. Thuh usual. He told his war stories _en fran\u00e7ais._ She opened up uh finishing academy and they prospered. And they lived that way. Lived happily ever after and stuff like that. Talking back and forth. This is Ms. Patty. At thuh Front.\n_The America Play_\n\n1990 - 1993\n**The Roles**\n\n**Act One:**\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER, AS ABRAHAM LINCOLN A VARIETY OF VISITORS\n\n**Act Two:**\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER, AS ABRAHAM LINCOLN 2 ACTORS\n\nThe Visitors in Act One are played by the 2 Actors who assume the roles in the passages from _Our American Cousin_ in Act Two.\n\n**Place**\n\nA great hole. In the middle of nowhere. The hole is an exact replica of The Great Hole of History.\n\n**Synopsis of Acts and Scenes**\n\n**Act One: Lincoln Act**\n\n**Act Two: The Hall of Wonders**\n\nA. Big Bang\n\nB. Echo\n\nC. Archeology\n\nD. Echo\n\nE. Spadework\n\nF. Echo\n\nG. The Great Beyond\n\nBrackets in the text indicate optional cuts for production.\n_In the beginning, all the world was_ America.\n\n\u2014 JOHN LOCKE\n\nACT ONE: LINCOLN ACT\n\n_A great hole. In the middle of nowhere. The hole is an exact replica of the Great Hole of History._\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER AS ABRAHAM LINCOLN: \"To stop too fearful and too faint to go.\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n\"He digged the hole and the whole held him.\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n\"I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed.\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n\"He went to the theatre but home went she.\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nGoatee. Goatee. What he sported when he died. Its not my favorite.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n\"He digged the hole and the whole held him.\" Huh.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nThere was once a man who was told that he bore a strong resemblance to Abraham Lincoln. He was tall and thinly built just like the Great Man. His legs were the longer part just like the Great Mans legs. His hands and feet were large as the Great Mans were large. The Lesser Known had several beards which he carried around in a box. The beards were his although he himself had not grown them on his face but since he'd secretly bought the hairs from his barber and arranged their beard shapes and since the procurement and upkeep of his beards took so much work he figured that the beards were completely his. Were as authentic as he was, so to speak. His beard box was of cherry wood and lined with purple velvet. He had the initials \"A.L.\" tooled in gold on the lid.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nWhile the Great Mans livelihood kept him in Big Town the Lesser Knowns work kept him in Small Town. The Great Man by trade was a President. The Lesser Known was a Digger by trade. From a family of Diggers. Digged graves. He was known in Small Town to dig his graves quickly and neatly. This brought him a steady business.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nA wink to Mr. Lincolns pasteboard cutout. ( _Winks at Lincoln's pasteboard cutout_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nIt would be helpful to our story if when the Great Man died in death he were to meet the Lesser Known. It would be helpful to our story if, say, the Lesser Known were summoned to Big Town by the Great Mans wife: \" _Emergency_ oh, _Emergency,_ please put the Great Man in the ground\" (they say the Great Mans wife was given to hysterics: one young son dead others sickly: even the Great Man couldnt save them: a war on then off and surrendered to: \"Play Dixie I always liked that song\": the brother against the brother: a new nation all conceived and ready to be hatched: the Great Man takes to guffawing guffawing at thin jokes in bad plays: \"You sockdologizing old man-trap!\" haw haw haw because he wants so very badly to laugh at something and one moment guffawing and the next moment the Great Man is gunned down. In his rocker. \"Useless Useless.\" And there were bills to pay.) \" _Emergency,_ oh _Emergency_ please put the Great Man in the ground.\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nIt is said that the Great Mans wife did call out and it is said that the Lesser Known would [sneak away from his digging and stand behind a tree where he couldnt be seen or get up and] leave his wife and child after the blessing had been said and [the meat carved during the distribution of the vegetables it is said that he would leave his wife and his child and] standing in the kitchen or sometimes out in the yard [between the right angles of the house] stand out there where he couldnt be seen standing with his ear cocked. \" _Emergency,_ oh _Emergency,_ please put the Great Man in the ground.\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nIt would help if she had called out and if he had been summoned been given a ticket all bought and paid for and boarded a train in his look-alike black frock coat bought on time and already exhausted. Ridiculous. If he had been summoned. [Been summoned between the meat and the vegetables and boarded a train to Big Town where he would line up and gawk at the Great Mans corpse along with the rest of them.] But none of this was meant to be.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nA nod to the bust of Mr. Lincoln. ( _Nods to the bust of Lincoln_ ) But none of this was meant to be. For the Great Man had been murdered long before the Lesser Known had been born. Howuhboutthat. [So that any calling that had been done he couldnt hear, any summoning he had hoped for he couldnt answer but somehow not even unheard and unanswered because he hadnt even been there] although you should note that he talked about the murder and the mourning that followed as if he'd been called away on business at the time and because of the business had missed it. Living regretting he hadnt arrived sooner. Being told from birth practically that he and the Great Man were dead ringers, more or less, and knowing that he, if he had been in the slightest vicinity back then, would have had at least a chance at the great honor of digging the Great Mans grave.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nThis beard I wear for the holidays. I got shoes to match. Rarely wear em together. Its a little _much._\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n[His son named in a fit of meanspirit after the bad joke about fancy nuts and old mens toes his son looked like a nobody. Not Mr. Lincoln or the father or the mother either for that matter although the father had assumed the superiority of his own blood and hadnt really expected the mother to exert any influence.]\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nSunday. Always slow on Sunday. I'll get thuh shoes. Youll see. A wink to Mr. Lincolns pasteboard cutout. ( _Winks at Lincoln's cutout_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nEveryone who has ever walked the earth has a shape around which their entire lives and their posterity shapes itself. The Great Man had his log cabin into which he was born, the distance between the cabin and Big Town multiplied by the half-life, the staying power of his words and image, being the true measurement of the Great Mans stature. The Lesser Known had a favorite hole. A chasm, really. Not a hole he had digged but one he'd visited. Long before the son was born. When he and his Lucy were newly wedded. Lucy kept secrets for the dead. And they figured what with his digging and her Confidence work they could build a mourning business. The son would be a weeper. Such a long time uhgo. So long uhgo. When he and his Lucy were newly wedded and looking for some postnuptial excitement: A Big Hole. A theme park. With historical parades. The size of the hole itself was enough to impress any Digger but it was the Historicity of the place the order and beauty of the pageants which marched by them the Greats on parade in front of them. From the sidelines he'd be calling \"Ohwayohwhyohwayoh\" and \"Hello\" and waving and saluting. The Hole and its Historicity and the part he played in it all gave a shape to the life and posterity of the Lesser Known that he could never shake.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHere they are. I wont put them on. I'll just hold them up. See. Too much. Told ya. [Much much later when the Lesser Known had made a name for himself he began to record his own movements. He hoped he'd be of interest to posterity. As in the Great Mans footsteps.]\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nTraveling home again from the honeymoon at the Big Hole riding the train with his Lucy: wife beside him the Reconstructed Historicities he has witnessed continue to march before him in his minds eye as they had at the Hole. Cannons wicks were lit and the rockets did blare and the enemy was slain and lay stretched out and smoldering for dead and rose up again to take their bows. On the way home again the histories paraded again on past him although it wasnt on past him at all it wasnt something he could expect but again like Lincolns life not \"on past\" but _past. Behind him._ Like an echo in his head.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nWhen he got home again he began to hear the summoning. At first they thought it only an echo. Memories sometimes stuck like that and he and his Lucy had both seen visions. But after a while it only called to him. And it became louder not softer but louder louder as if he were moving toward it.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nThis is my fancy beard. Yellow. Mr. Lincolns hair was dark so I dont wear it much. If you deviate too much they wont get their pleasure. Thats my experience. Some inconsistencies are perpetuatable because theyre good for business. But not the yellow beard. Its just my fancy. Ev-ery once and a while. Of course, his hair was dark.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nThe Lesser Known left his wife and child and went out West finally. [Between the meat and the vegetables. A monumentous journey. Enduring all the elements. Without a friend in the world. And the beasts of the forest took him in. He got there and he got his plot he staked his claim he tried his hand at his own Big Hole.] As it had been back East everywhere out West he went people remarked on his likeness to Lincoln. How, in a limited sort of way, taking into account of course his natural God-given limitations, how he was identical to the Great Man in gait and manner how his legs were long and torso short. The Lesser Known had by this time taken to wearing a false wart on his cheek in remembrance of the Great Mans wart. When the Westerners noted his wart they pronounced the 2 men in virtual twinship.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nGoatee. Huh. Goatee.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n\"He digged the Hole and the Whole held him.\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n\"I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed.\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nThe Lesser Known had under his belt a few of the Great Mans words and after a day of digging, in the evenings, would stand in his hole reciting. But the Lesser Known was a curiosity at best. None of those who spoke of his virtual twinship with greatness would actually pay money to watch him be that greatness. One day he tacked up posters inviting them to come and throw old food at him while he spoke. This was a moderate success. People began to save their old food \"for Mr. Lincoln\" they said. He took to traveling playing small towns. Made money. And when someone remarked that he played Lincoln so well that he ought to be shot, it was as if the Great Mans footsteps had been suddenly revealed:\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nThe Lesser Known returned to his hole and, instead of speeching, his act would now consist of a single chair, a rocker, in a dark box. The public was invited to pay a penny, choose from the selection of provided pistols, enter the darkened box and \"Shoot Mr. Lincoln.\" The Lesser Known became famous overnight.\n\n( _A Man, as John Wilkes Booth, enters. He takes a gun and \"stands in position\": at the left side of the Foundling Father, as Abraham Lincoln, pointing the gun at the Foundling Father's head_ )\n\nA MAN: Ready.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Haw Haw Haw Haw\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHAW HAW HAW HAW\n\n( _Booth shoots. Lincoln \"slumps in his chair.\" Booth jumps_ )\n\nA MAN ( _Theatrically_ ): \"Thus to the tyrants!\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHhhh. ( _Exits_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Most of them do that, thuh \"Thus to the tyrants!\"\u2014what they say the killer said. \"Thus to the tyrants!\" The killer was also heard to say \"The South is avenged!\" Sometimes they yell that.\n\n( _A Man, the same man as before, enters again, again as John Wilkes Booth. He takes a gun and \"stands in position\": at the left side of the Foundling Father, as Abraham Lincoln, pointing the gun at the Foundling Father's head_ )\n\nA MAN: Ready.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Haw Haw Haw Haw\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHAW HAW HAW HAW\n\n( _Booth shoots. Lincoln \"slumps in his chair.\" Booth jumps_ )\n\nA MAN ( _Theatrically_ ): \"The South is avenged!\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHhhh.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nThank you.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Pleasures mine.\n\nA MAN: Till next week.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Till next week.\n\n( _A Man exits_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Comes once a week that one. Always chooses the Derringer although we've got several styles he always chooses the Derringer. Always \"The tyrants\" and then \"The South avenged.\" The ones who choose the Derringer are the ones for History. He's one for History. As it Used to Be. Never wavers. No frills. By the book. Nothing excessive.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nA nod to Mr. Lincolns bust. ( _Nods to Lincoln's bust_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nI'll wear this one. He sported this style in the early war years. Years of uncertainty. When he didnt know if the war was right when it could be said he didnt always know which side he was on not because he was a stupid man but because it was sometimes not 2 different sides at all but one great side surging toward something beyond either Northern or Southern. A beard of uncertainty. The Lesser Known meanwhile living his life long after all this had happened and not knowing much about it until he was much older [(as a boy \"The Civil War\" was an afterschool game and his folks didnt mention the Great Mans murder for fear of frightening him)] knew only that he was a dead ringer in a family of Diggers and that he wanted to grow and have others think of him and remove their hats and touch their hearts and look up into the heavens and say something about the freeing of the slaves. That is, he wanted to make a great impression as he understood Mr. Lincoln to have made.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nAnd so in his youth the Lesser Known familiarized himself with all aspects of the Great Mans existence. What interested the Lesser Known most was the murder and what was most captivating about the murder was the 20 feet\u2014\n\n( _A Woman, as Booth, enters_ )\n\nA WOMAN: Excuse me.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Not at all.\n\n( _A Woman, as Booth, \"stands in position\"_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Haw Haw Haw Haw\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHAW HAW HAW HAW\n\n( _Booth shoots. Lincoln \"slumps in his chair.\" Booth jumps_ )\n\nA WOMAN: \"Strike the tent.\" ( _Exits_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: What interested the Lesser Known most about the Great Mans murder was the 20 feet which separated the presidents box from the stage. In the presidents box sat the president his wife and their 2 friends. On the stage that night was _Our American Cousin_ starring Miss Laura Keene. The plot of this play is of little consequence to our story. Suffice it to say that it was thinly comedic and somewhere in the 3rd Act a man holds a gun to his head\u2014something about despair\u2014\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nLadies and Gentlemen: _Our American Cousin\u2014_\n\n( _B Woman, as Booth, enters. She \"stands in position\"_ )\n\nB WOMAN: Go ahead.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Haw Haw Haw Haw\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHAW HAW HAW HAW\n\n( _Booth shoots. Lincoln \"slumps in his chair.\" Booth jumps_ )\n\nB WOMAN ( _Rest_ ): LIES!\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIES!\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n_LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRS!_\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nLies.\n\n( _Rest. Exits. Reenters. Steps downstage. Rest_ )\n\nLIES!\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIES!\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n_LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRS!_\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nLies.\n\n( _Rest. Exits_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER ( _Rest_ ): I think I'll wear the yellow beard. Variety. Works like uh tonic.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nSome inaccuracies are good for business. Take the stovepipe hat! Never really worn indoors but people dont like their Lincoln hatless.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nMr. Lincoln my apologies. ( _Nods to the bust and winks to the cutout_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n[Blonde. Not bad if you like a stretch. Hmmm. Let us pretend for a moment that our beloved Mr. Lincoln was a blonde. \"The sun on his fair hair looked like the sun itself.\"\u2014. Now. What interested our Mr. Lesser Known most was those feet between where the Great _Blonde_ Man sat, in his rocker, the stage, the time it took the murderer to cross that expanse, and how the murderer crossed it. He jumped. Broke his leg in the jumping. It was said that the Great Mans wife then began to scream. (She was given to hysterics several years afterward in fact declared insane did you know she ran around Big Town poor desperate for money trying to sell her clothing? On that sad night she begged her servant: \"Bring in Taddy, Father will speak to Taddy.\" But Father died instead unconscious. And she went mad from grief. Off her rocker. Mad Mary claims she hears her dead men. Summoning. The older son, Robert, he locked her up: \" _Emergency,_ oh, _Emergency_ please put the Great Man in the ground.\")\n\n( _Enter B Man, as Booth. He \"stands in position\"_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Haw Haw Haw Haw\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHAW HAW HAW HAW\n\n( _Booth shoots. Lincoln \"slumps in his chair.\" Booth jumps_ )\n\nB MAN: \"Now he belongs to the ages.\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nBlonde?\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: (I only talk with the regulars.)\n\nB MAN: He wasnt blonde. ( _Exits_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: A slight deafness in this ear other than that there are no side effects.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHhh. Clean-shaven for a while. The face needs air. Clean-shaven as in his youth. When he met his Mary. \u2014. Hhh. Blonde.\n\n(Rest)]\n\n6 feet under is a long way to go. Imagine. When the Lesser Known left to find his way out West he figured he had dug over 7 hundred and 23 graves. 7 hundred and 23. Excluding his Big Hole. Excluding the hundreds of shallow holes he later digs the hundreds of shallow holes he'll use to bury his faux-historical knickknacks when he finally quits this business. Not including those. 7 hundred and 23 graves.\n\n( _C Man and C Woman enter_ )\n\nC MAN: You allow 2 at once?\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nC WOMAN: We're just married. You know: newlyweds. We hope you dont mind. Us both at once.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nC MAN: We're just married.\n\nC WOMAN: Newlyweds.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n( _They \"stand in position.\" Both hold one gun_ )\n\nC MAN AND C WOMAN: Shoot.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Haw Haw Haw Haw\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHAW HAW HAW HAW\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHAW HAW HAW _HAW_\n\n( _They shoot. Lincoln \"slumps in his chair.\" They jump_ )\n\nC MAN: Go on.\n\nC WOMAN ( _Theatrically_ ): \"Theyve killed the president!\"\n\n( _Rest. They exit_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Theyll have children and theyll bring their children here. A slight deafness in this ear other than that there are no side effects. Little ringing in the ears. Slight deafness. I cant complain.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nThe passage of time. The crossing of space. [The Lesser Known recorded his every movement.] He'd hoped he'd be of interest in his posterity. [Once again riding in the Great Mans footsteps.] A nod to the presidents bust. ( _Nods_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nThe Great Man lived in the past that is was an inhabitant of time immemorial and the Lesser Known out West alive a resident of the present. And the Great Mans deeds had transpired during the life of the Great Man somewhere in past-land that is somewhere \"back there\" and all this while the Lesser Known digging his holes bearing the burden of his resemblance all the while trying somehow to equal the Great Man in stature, word and deed going forward with his lesser life trying somehow to follow in the Great Mans footsteps footsteps that were of course behind him. The Lesser Known trying somehow to catch up to the Great Man all this while and maybe running too fast in the wrong direction. Which is to say that maybe the Great Man had to catch him. Hhhh. Ridiculous.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nFull fringe. The way he appears on the money.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nA wink to Mr. Lincolns pasteboard cutout. A nod to Mr. Lincolns bust.\n\n( _Rest. Time passes. Rest_ )\n\nWhen someone remarked that he played Lincoln so well that he ought to be shot it was as if the Great Mans footsteps had been suddenly revealed: instead of making speeches his act would now consist of a single chair, a rocker, in a dark box. The public was cordially invited to pay a penny, choose from a selection of provided pistols enter the darkened box and \"Shoot Mr. Lincoln.\" The Lesser Known became famous overnight.\n\n( _A Man, as John Wilkes Booth, enters. He takes a gun and \"stands in position\": at the left side of the Foundling Father, as Abraham Lincoln, pointing the gun at the Foundling Father's head_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Mmm. Like clockwork.\n\nA MAN: Ready.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Haw Haw Haw Haw\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHAW HAW HAW HAW\n\n( _Booth shoots. Lincoln \"slumps in his chair.\" Booth jumps_ )\n\nA MAN ( _Theatrically_ ): \"Thus to the tyrants!\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHhhh.\n\nLINCOLN\n\nBOOTH\n\nLINCOLN\n\nBOOTH\n\nLINCOLN\n\nBOOTH\n\nLINCOLN\n\nBOOTH\n\nLINCOLN\n\n( _Booth jumps_ )\n\nA MAN ( _Theatrically_ ): \"The South is avenged!\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHhhh.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nThank you.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Pleasures mine.\n\nA MAN: Next week then. ( _Exits_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Little ringing in the ears. Slight deafness.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nLittle ringing in the ears.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nA wink to the Great Mans cutout. A nod to the Great Mans bust. Once again striding in the Great Mans footsteps. Riding on in. Riding to the rescue the way they do. They both had such long legs. Such big feet. And the Greater Man had such a lead although of course somehow still \"back there.\" If the Lesser Known had slowed down stopped moving completely gone in reverse died maybe the Greater Man could have caught up. Woulda had a chance. Woulda sneaked up behind him the Greater Man would have sneaked up behind the Lesser Known unbeknownst and wrestled him to the ground. Stabbed him in the back. In revenge. \"Thus to the tyrants!\" Shot him maybe. The Lesser Known forgets who he is and just crumples. His bones cannot be found. The Greater Man continues on.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n\" _Emergency,_ oh _Emergency,_ please put the Great Man in the ground.\"\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nOnly a little ringing in the ears. Thats all. Slight deafness.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n( _He puts on the blonde beard_ )\n\nHuh. Whatdoyou say I wear the blonde.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n( _A gunshot echoes. Softly. And echoes_ )\n\nACT TWO: THE HALL OF WONDERS\n\n_A gunshot echoes. Loudly. And echoes._\n\n_They are in a great hole. In the middle of nowhere. The hole is an exact replica of The Great Hole of History._\n\n_A gunshot echoes. Loudly. And echoes. Lucy with ear trumpet circulates. Brazil digs._\n\n**A. Big Bang**\n\nLUCY: Hear that?\n\nBRAZIL: Zit him?\n\nLUCY: No.\n\nBRAZIL: Oh.\n\n( _A gunshot echoes. Loudly. And echoes_ )\n\nLUCY: Hear?\n\nBRAZIL: Zit him?!\n\nLUCY: Nope. Ssuhecho.\n\nBRAZIL: Ssuhecho.\n\nLUCY: Uh echo uh huhn. Of gunplay. Once upon uh time somebody had uh little gunplay and now thuh gun goes on playing: _KER-BANG!_ KERBANG-Kerbang-kerbang-(kerbang)-((kerbang)).\n\nBRAZIL: Thuh echoes.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nLUCY: Youre stopped.\n\nBRAZIL: Mmlistenin.\n\nLUCY: Dig on, Brazil. Cant stop diggin till you dig up somethin. Your Daddy was uh Digger.\n\nBRAZIL: Uh huhnnn.\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\n( _A gunshot echoes. Loudly. And echoes. Rest. A gunshot echoes. Loudly. And echoes. Rest_ )\n\n[LUCY: Itssalways been important in my line to distinguish. Tuh know thuh difference. Not like your Fathuh. Your Fathuh became confused. His lonely death and lack of proper burial is our embarrassment. Go on: dig. Now me I need tuh know thuh real thing from thuh echo. Thuh truth from thuh hearsay.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nBram Price for example. His dear ones and relations told me his dying words but Bram Price hisself of course told me something quite different.\n\nBRAZIL: I wept forim.\n\nLUCY: Whispered his true secrets to me and to me uhlone.\n\nBRAZIL: Then he died.\n\nLUCY: Then he died.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nThuh things he told me I will never tell. Mr. Bram Price. Huh.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nDig on.\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY: Little Bram Price Junior.\n\nBRAZIL: Thuh fat one?\n\nLUCY: Burned my eardrums. Just like his Dad did.\n\nBRAZIL: I wailed forim.\n\nLUCY: Ten days dead wept over and buried and that boy comes back. Not him though. His echo. Sits down tuh dinner and eats up everybodys food just like he did when he was livin.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nLittle Bram Junior. Burned my eardrums. Miz Penny Price his mother. Thuh things she told me I will never tell.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nYou remember her.\n\nBRAZIL: Wore red velvet in August.\n\nLUCY: When her 2 Brams passed she sold herself, son.\n\nBRAZIL: O.\n\nLUCY: Also lost her mind. \u2014. She finally went. Like your Fathuh went, perhaps. Foul play.\n\nBRAZIL: I gnashed for her.\n\nLUCY: You did.\n\nBRAZIL: Couldnt choose between wailin or gnashin. Weepin sobbin or moanin. Went for gnashing. More to it. Gnashed for her and hers like I have never gnashed. I woulda tore at my coat but thats extra. Chipped uh tooth. One in thuh front.\n\nLUCY: You did your job son.\n\nBRAZIL: I did my job.\n\nLUCY: Confidence. Huh. Thuh things she told me I will never tell. Miz Penny Price. Miz Penny Price.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nYoure stopped.\n\nBRAZIL: Mmlistenin.\n\nLUCY: Dig on, Brazil.\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL: We arent from these parts.\n\nLUCY: No. We're not.\n\nBRAZIL: Daddy iduhnt either.\n\nLUCY: Your Daddy iduhnt either.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nDig on, son. \u2014. Cant stop diggin till you dig up somethin. You dig that something up you brush that something off you give that something uh designated place. Its own place. Along with thuh other discoveries. In thuh Hall of Wonders. Uh place in the Hall of Wonders right uhlong with thuh rest of thuh Wonders hear?\n\nBRAZIL: Uh huhn.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nLUCY: Bram Price Senior, son. Bram Price Senior was not thuh man he claimed tuh be. Huh. Nope. Was not thuh man he claimed tuh be atall. You ever see him in his stocking feet? Or barefoot? Course not. I guessed before he told me. He told me then he died. He told me and I havent told no one. I'm uh good Confidence. As Confidences go. Huh. One of thuh best. As Confidence, mmonly contracted tuh keep quiet 12 years. After 12 years nobody cares. For 19 years I have kept his secret. In my bosom.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHe wore lifts in his shoes, son.\n\nBRAZIL: Lifts?\n\nLUCY: Lifts. Made him seem taller than he was.\n\nBRAZIL: Bram Price Senior?\n\nLUCY: Bram Price Senior wore lifts in his shoes yes he did, Brazil. I tell you just as he told me with his last breaths on his dying bed: \"Lifts.\" Thats all he said. Then he died. I put thuh puzzle pieces in place. I put thuh puzzle pieces in place. Couldnt tell no one though. Not even your Pa. \"Lifts.\" I never told no one son. For 19 years I have kept Brams secret in my bosom. Youre thuh first tuh know. Hhh! Dig on. Dig on.\n\nBRAZIL: Dig on.\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\n( _A gunshot echoes. Loudly. And echoes_ )\n\nBRAZIL ( _Rest_ ): Ff Pa was here weud find his bones.\n\nLUCY: Not always.\n\nBRAZIL: Thereud be his bones and thereud be thuh Wonders surrounding his bones.\n\nLUCY: Ive heard of different.\n\nBRAZIL: Thereud be thuh Wonders surrounding his bones and thereud be his Whispers.\n\nLUCY: Maybe.\n\nBRAZIL: Ffhe sspast like they say he'd of parlayed to uh Confidence\n\nhis last words and dying wishes. His secrets and his dreams.\n\nLUCY: Thats how we pass back East. They could pass different out here.\n\nBRAZIL: We got Daddys ways Daddyssgot ours. When theres no Confidence available we just dribble thuh words out. In uh whisper.\n\nLUCY: Sometimes.\n\nBRAZIL: Thuh Confidencell gather up thuh whispers when she arrives.\n\nLUCY: Youre uh prize, Brazil. Uh prize.]\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL: You hear him then? His whispers?\n\nLUCY: Not exactly.\n\nBRAZIL: He wuduhnt here then.\n\nLUCY: He was here.\n\nBRAZIL: Ffyou dont hear his whispers he wuduhnt here.\n\nLUCY: Whispers dont always come up right away. Takes time sometimes. Whispers could travel different out West than they do back East. Maybe slower. Maybe. Whispers are secrets and often shy. We aint seen your Pa in 30 years. That could be part of it. We also could be experiencing some sort of interference. Or some sort of technical difficulty. Ssard tuh tell.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nSo much to live for.\n\nBRAZIL: So much to live for.\n\nLUCY: Look on thuh bright side.\n\nLUCY: Look on thuh bright side. Look on thuh bright side. Loook onnnnn thuhhhh briiiiiiiight siiiiiiiiide!!!!\n\nLUCY: DIIIIIIIIIIIIG!\n\nBRAZIL: Dig.\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY: Helloooo!\u2014. Hellooooo!\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL: [We're from out East. We're not from these parts.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nMy foe-father, her husband, my Daddy, her mate, her man, my Pa come out here. Out West.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nCome out here all uhlone. Cleared thuh path tamed thuh wilderness dug this whole Hole with his own 2 hands and et cetera.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nLeft his family behind. Back East. His Lucy and his child. He waved \"Goodbye.\" Left us tuh carry on. I was only 5.\n\n( _Rest_ )]\n\nMy Daddy was uh Digger. Shes whatcha call uh Confidence. I did thuh weepin and thuh moanin.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHis lonely death and lack of proper burial is our embarrassment.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nDiggin was his livelihood but fakin was his callin. Ssonly natural heud come out here and combine thuh 2. Back East he was always diggin. He was uh natural. Could dig uh hole for uh body that passed like no one else. Digged em quick and they looked good too. This Hole here\u2014this large one\u2014sshis biggest venture to date. So says hearsay.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nUh exact replica of thuh Great Hole of History!\n\nLUCY: Sshhhhhht.\n\nBRAZIL ( _Rest_ ): Thuh original ssback East. He and Lucy they honeymooned there. At thuh original Great Hole. Its uh popular spot. He and Her would sit on thuh lip and watch everybody who was ever anybody parade on by. Daily parades! Just like thuh Tee Vee. Mr. George Washington, for example, thuh Fathuh of our Country hisself, would rise up from thuh dead and walk uhround and cross thuh Delaware and say stuff!! Right before their very eyes!!!!\n\nLUCY: Son?\n\nBRAZIL: Huh?\n\nLUCY: That iduhnt how it went.\n\nBRAZIL: Oh.\n\nLUCY: Thuh Mr. Washington me and your Daddy seen was uh lookuhlike of thuh Mr. Washington of history-fame, son.\n\nBRAZIL: Oh.\n\nLUCY: Thuh original Mr. Washingtonssbeen long dead.\n\nBRAZIL: O.\n\nLUCY: That Hole back East was uh theme park son. Keep your story to scale.\n\nBRAZIL: K.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHim and Her would sit by thuh lip uhlong with thuh others all in uh row cameras clickin and theyud look down into that Hole and see\u2014ooooo\u2014you name it. Ever-y-day you could look down that Hole and see\u2014ooooo you name it. Amerigo Vespucci hisself made regular appearances. Marcus Garvey. Ferdinand and Isabella. Mary Queen of thuh Scots! Tarzan King of thuh Apes! Washington Jefferson Harding and Millard Fillmore. Mistufer Columbus even. Oh they saw all thuh greats. Parading daily in thuh Great Hole of History.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nMy Fathuh did thuh living and thuh dead. Small-town and big-time. Mr. Lincoln was of course his favorite.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nNot only Mr. Lincoln but Mr. Lincolns last show. His last deeds. His last laughs.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nBeing uh Digger of some renown Daddy comes out here tuh build uh like attraction. So says hearsay. Figures theres people out here who'll enjoy amusements such as them amusements He and Her enjoyed. We're all citizens of one country afterall.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nMmrestin.\n\n( _A gunshot echoes. Loudly. And echoes_ )\n\nBRAZIL: Woooo! ( _Drops dead_ )\n\nLUCY: Youre fakin Mr. Brazil.\n\nBRAZIL: Uh uhnnn.\n\nLUCY: Tryin tuh get you some benefits.\n\nBRAZIL: Uh uhnnnnnnnn.\n\nLUCY: I know me uh faker when I see one. Your Father was uh faker. Huh. One of thuh best. There wuduhnt nobody your Fathuh couldnt do. Did thuh living and thuh dead. Small-town and big-time. Made-up and historical. Fakin was your Daddys callin but diggin was his livelihood. Oh, back East he was always diggin. Was uh natural. Could dig uh hole for uh body that passed like no one else. Digged em quick and they looked good too. You dont remember of course you dont.\n\nBRAZIL: I was only 5.\n\nLUCY: You were only 5. When your Fathuh spoke he'd quote thuh Greats. Mister George Washington. Thuh Misters Roosevelt. Mister Millard Fillmore. Huh. All thuh greats. You dont remember of course you dont.\n\nBRAZIL: I was only 5\u2014\n\nLUCY: \u2014only 5. Mr. Lincoln was of course your Fathuhs favorite. Wuz. Huh. Wuz. Huh. Heresay says he's past. Your Daddy. Digged this hole then he died. So says hearsay.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nDig, Brazil.\n\nBRAZIL: My paw\u2014\n\nLUCY: Ssonly natural that heud come out here tuh dig out one of his own. He loved that Great Hole so. He'd stand at thuh lip of that Great Hole: \"OHWAYOHWHYOHWAYOH!\"\n\nBRAZIL: \"OHWAYOHWHYOHWAYOH!\"\n\nLUCY: \"OHWAYOHWHYOHWAYOH!\" You know: hole talk. Ohwayohwhyohwayoh, just tuh get their attention, then: \"Hellooo!\" He'd shout down to em. Theyd call back \"Hellllooooo!\" and wave. He loved that Great Hole so. Came out here. Digged this lookuhlike.\n\nBRAZIL: Then he died?\n\nLUCY: Then he died. Your Daddy died right here. Huh. Oh, he was uh faker. Uh greaaaaat biiiiig faker too. He was your Fathuh. Thats thuh connection. You take after him.\n\nBRAZIL: I do?\n\nLUCY: Sure. Put your paw back where it belongs. Go on\u2014back on its stump. \u2014. Poke it on out of your sleeve son. There you go. I'll draw uh X for you. See? Heresuh X. Huh. Dig here.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nDIG!\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY: Woah! Woah!\n\nBRAZIL: Whatchaheard?!\n\nLUCY: No tellin, son. Cant say.\n\n( _Brazil digs. Lucy circulates_ )\n\nBRAZIL ( _Rest. Rest_ ): On thuh day he claimed to be the 100th anniversary of the founding of our country the Father took the Son out into the yard. The Father threw himself down in front of the Son and bit into the dirt with his teeth. His eyes leaked. \"This is how youll make your mark, Son\" the Father said. The Son was only 2 then. \"This is the Wail,\" the Father said. \"There's money init,\" the Father said. The Son was only 2 then. Quiet. On what he claimed was the 101st anniversary the Father showed the Son \"the Weep\" \"the Sob\" and \"the Moan.\" How to stand just so what to do with the hands and feet (to capitalize on what we in the business call \"the Mourning Moment\"). Formal stances the Fatherd picked up at the History Hole. The Son studied night and day. By candlelight. No one could best him. The money came pouring in. On the 102nd anniversary the Son was 5 and the Father taught him \"the Gnash.\" The day after that the Father left for out West. To seek his fortune. In the middle of dinnertime. The Son was eating his peas.\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY Hellooooo! Hellooooo!\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL: HO! ( _Unearths something_ )\n\nLUCY: Whatcha got?\n\nBRAZIL: Uh Wonder!\n\nLUCY: Uh Wonder!\n\nBRAZIL: Uh Wonder: Ho!\n\nLUCY: Dust it off and put it over with thuh rest of thuh Wonders.\n\nBRAZIL: Uh bust.\n\nLUCY: Whose?\n\nBRAZIL: Says \"A. Lincoln.\" A. Lincolns bust. \u2014. Abraham Lincolns bust!!!\n\nLUCY: Howuhboutthat!\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nWoah! Woah!\n\nBRAZIL: Whatchaheard?\n\nLUCY: Uh\u2014. Cant say.\n\nBRAZIL: Whatchaheard?!!\n\nLUCY: SSShhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhht!\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n_dig!_\n\n**B. Echo**\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Ladies and Gentlemen: _Our American Cousin,_ Act III, scene 5:\n\nMR. TRENCHARD: Have you found it?\n\nMISS KEENE: I find no trace of it. ( _Discovering_ ) What is this?!\n\nMR. TRENCHARD: This is the place where father kept all the old deeds.\n\nMISS KEENE: Oh my poor muddled brain! What can this mean?!\n\nMR. TRENCHARD ( _With difficulty_ ): I cannot survive the downfall of my house but choose instead to end my life with a pistol to my head!\n\n( _Applause_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: OHWAYOHWHYOHWAYOH!\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHelllooooooo!\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHelllooooooo!\n\n( _Rest. Waves_ )\n\n**C. Archeology**\n\nBRAZIL: You hear im?\n\nLUCY: Echo of thuh first sort: thuh sound. (E.g. thuh gunplay.)\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nEcho of thuh 2nd sort: thuh words. Type A: thuh words from thuh dead. Category: Unrelated.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nEcho of thuh 2nd sort, Type B: words less fortunate: thuh Disembodied Voice. Also known as \"Thuh Whispers.\" Category: Related.\n\nLike your Fathuhs.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nEcho of thuh 3rd sort: thuh body itself.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nBRAZIL: You hear im.\n\nLUCY: Cant say. Cant say, son.\n\nBRAZIL: My faux-father. Thuh one who comed out here before us. Thuh one who left us behind. Tuh come out here all uhlone. Tuh do his bit. All them who comed before us\u2014my Daddy. He's one of them.\n\nLUCY\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n[BRAZIL: He's one of them. All of them who comed before us\u2014my Daddy.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nI'd say thuh creation of thuh world must uh been just like thuh clearing off of this plot. Just like him diggin his Hole. I'd say. Must uh been just as dug up. And unfair.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nPeoples (or thuh what-was), just had tuh hit thuh road. In thuh beginning there was one of those voids here and then \"bang\" and then _voil\u00e0!_ And here we is.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nBut where did those voids that was here before _we_ was here go off to? Hmmm. In thuh beginning there were some of them voids here and then: KERBANG-KERBLAMMO! And now it all belongs tuh us.\n\nLUCY\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )]\n\nBRAZIL: This Hole is our inheritance of sorts. My Daddy died and left it to me and Her. And when She goes, Shes gonna give it all to me!!\n\nLUCY: Dig, son.\n\nBRAZIL: I'd rather dust and polish. ( _Puts something on_ )\n\nLUCY: Dust and polish then. \u2014. You dont got tuh put on that tuh do it.\n\nBRAZIL: It helps. Uh Hehm. _Uh Hehm._ WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME TUH THUH HALL OF-\n\nLUCY: Sssht.\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL: (welcome welcome welcome to thuh hall. of. wonnndersss: To our right A Jewel Box made of cherry wood, lined in velvet, letters \"A. L.\" carved in gold on thuh lid: the jewels have long escaped. Over here one of Mr. Washingtons bones, right pointer so they say; here is his likeness and here: his wooden teeth. Yes, uh top and bottom pair of nibblers: nibblers, lookin for uh meal. Nibblin. I iduhnt your lunch. Quit nibblin. Quit that nibblin you. Quit that nibblin you nibblers you nibblin nibblers you.)\n\nLUCY: Keep it tuh scale.\n\nBRAZIL: (Over here our newest Wonder: uh bust of Mr. Lincoln carved of marble lookin like he looked in life. Right heress thuh bit from thuh mouth of thuh mount on which some great Someone rode tuh thuh rescue. This is all thats left. Uh glass tradin bead\u2014one of thuh first. Here are thuh lick-ed boots. Here, uh dried scrap of whales blubber. Uh petrified scrap of uh great blubberer, servin to remind us that once this land was covered with sea. And blubberers were Kings. In this area here are several documents: peace pacts, writs, bills of sale, treaties, notices, handbills and circulars, freein papers, summonses, declarations of war, addresses, title deeds, obits, long lists of dids. And thuh medals: for bravery and honesty; for trustworthiness and for standing straight; for standing tall; for standing still. For advancing and retreating. For makin do. For skills in whittlin, for skills in painting and drawing, for uh knowledge of sewin, of handicrafts and building things, for leather tannin, blacksmithery, lacemakin, horseback riding, swimmin, croquet and badminton. Community Service. For cookin and for cleanin. For bowin and scrapin. Uh medal for fakin? Huh. This could uh been his. Zsis his? This is his! This is his!!!\n\nLUCY: Keep it tuh scale, Brazil.\n\nBRAZIL: This could be his!\n\nLUCY: May well be.\n\nBRAZIL ( _Rest_ ): Whaddyahear?\n\nLUCY: Bits and pieces.\n\nBRAZIL: This could be his.\n\nLUCY: Could well be.\n\nBRAZIL ( _Rest. Rest_ ): waaaaaahhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHH! HUH HEE HUH HEE HUH HEE HUH.\n\nLUCY: There there, Brazil. Dont weep.\n\nBRAZIL: WAHHHHHHHHHH!\u2014imissim\u2014WAHHHHHHHHHHHH!\n\nLUCY: It is an honor to be of his line. He cleared this plot for us. He was uh Digger.\n\nBRAZIL: Huh huh huh. Uh Digger.\n\nLUCY: Mr. Lincoln was his favorite.\n\nBRAZIL: I was only 5.\n\nLUCY: He dug this whole Hole.\n\nBRAZIL: Sssnuch. This whole Hole.\n\nLUCY: This whole Hole.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY:\n\nI couldnt never deny him nothin.\n\nI gived intuh him on everything.\n\nThuh moon. Thuh stars.\n\nThuh bees knees. Thuh cats pyjamas.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL: Anything?\n\nLUCY: Stories too horrible tuh mention.\n\nBRAZIL: His stories?\n\nLUCY: Nope.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nBRAZIL: Mama Lucy?\n\nLUCY: Whut.\n\nBRAZIL: \u2014Imissim\u2014.\n\nLUCY: Hhh. ((dig.))\n\n**D. Echo**\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Ladies and Gentlemen: _Our American Cousin,_ Act III, scene 2:\n\nMR. TRENCHARD: You crave affection, _you_ do. Now I've no fortune, but I'm biling over with affections, which I'm ready to pour out to all of you, like apple sass over roast pork.\n\nAUGUSTA: Sir, your American talk do woo me.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER ( _As Mrs. Mount_ ): Mr. Trenchard, you will please recollect you are addressing my daughter and in my presence.\n\nMR. TRENCHARD: Yes, I'm offering her my heart and hand just as she wants them, with nothing in 'em.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER ( _As Mrs. Mount_ ): Augusta dear, to your room.\n\nAUGUSTA: Yes, Ma, the nasty beast.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER ( _As Mrs. Mount_ ): I am aware, Mr. Trenchard, that you are not used to the manners of good society, and that, alone, will excuse the impertinence of which you have been guilty.\n\nMR. TRENCHARD: Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Wal, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal\u2014you sockdologizing old man-trap.\n\n( _Laughter. Applause_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Thanks. Thanks so much. Snyder has always been a very special very favorite town uh mine. Thank you thank you so very much. Loverly loverly evening loverly tuh be here loverly tuh be here with you with all of you thank you very much.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nUh Hehm. I _only_ do thuh greats.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nA crowd pleaser: 4score and 7 years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal! ( _Applause_ )\n\nObserve!: Indiana? Indianapolis. Louisiana? Baton Rouge. Concord? New Hampshire. Pierre? South Dakota. Honolulu? Hawaii. Springfield? Illinois. Frankfort? Kentucky. Lincoln? Nebraska. Ha! Lickety split!\n\n( _Applause_ )\n\nAnd now, the centerpiece of the evening!!\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nUh Hehm. The Death of Lincoln!: \u2014. The watching of the play, the laughter, the smiles of Lincoln and Mary Todd, the slipping of Booth into the presidential box unseen, the freeing of the slaves, the pulling of the trigger, the bullets piercing above the left ear, the bullets entrance into the great head, the bullets lodging behind the great right eye, the slumping of Lincoln, the leaping onto the stage of Booth, the screaming of Todd, the screaming of Todd, the screaming of Keene, the leaping onto the stage of Booth; the screaming of Todd, the screaming of Keene, the shouting of Booth \"Thus to the tyrants!,\" the death of Lincoln!\u2014And the silence of the nation.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nYes. \u2014. The year was way back when. The place: our nations capitol. 4score, back in the olden days, and Mr. Lincolns great head. The the-a-ter was \"Fords.\" The wife \"Mary Todd.\" Thuh freeing of the slaves and thuh great black hole that thuh fatal bullet bored. And how that great head was bleedin. Thuh body stretched crossways acrosst thuh bed. Thuh last words. Thuh last breaths. And how thuh nation mourned.\n\n( _Applause_ )\n\n**E. Spadework**\n\nLUCY: Thats uh hard nut tuh crack uh hard nut tuh crack indeed.\n\nBRAZIL: Alaska\u2014?\n\nLUCY: Thats uh hard nut tuh crack. Thats uh hard nut tuh crack indeed. \u2014. Huh. Juneau.\n\nBRAZIL: Good!\n\nLUCY: Go uhgain.\n\nBRAZIL: \u2014. Texas?\n\nLUCY: \u2014. Austin. Wyoming?\n\nBRAZIL: \u2014. \u2014. Cheyenne. Florida?\n\nLUCY: Tallahassee.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nOhio.\n\nBRAZIL: Oh. Uh. Well: Columbus. Louisiana?\n\nLUCY: Baton Rouge. Arkansas.\n\nBRAZIL: Little Rock. Jackson.\n\nLUCY: Mississippi. Spell it.\n\nBRAZIL: M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i!\n\nLUCY: Huh. Youre good. Montgomery.\n\nBRAZIL Alabama.\n\nLUCY: Topeka.\n\nBRAZIL: Kansas?\n\nLUCY: Kansas.\n\nBRAZIL: Boise, Idaho?\n\nLUCY: Boise, Idaho.\n\nBRAZIL: Huh. Nebraska.\n\nLUCY: Nebraska. Lincoln.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nThuh year was way back when. Thuh place: our nations capitol.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nYour Fathuh couldnt get that story out of his head: Mr. Lincolns great head. And thuh hole thuh fatal bullet bored. How that great head was bleedin. Thuh body stretched crossways acrosst thuh bed. Thuh last words. Thuh last breaths. And how thuh nation mourned. Huh. Changed your Fathuhs life.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nCouldnt get that story out of his head. Whuduhnt my favorite page from thuh book of Mr. Lincolns life, me myself now I prefer thuh part where he gets married to Mary Todd and she begins to lose her mind (and then of course where he frees all thuh slaves) but shoot, he couldnt get that story out of his head. Hhh. Changed his life.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nBRAZIL: (wahhhhhhhh\u2014)\n\nLUCY: There there, Brazil.\n\nBRAZIL: (wahhhhhh\u2014)\n\nLUCY: Dont weep. Got somethin for ya.\n\nBRAZIL: (o)?\n\nLUCY: Spade. \u2014. Dont scrunch up your face like that, son. Go on. Take it.\n\nBRAZIL: Spade?\n\nLUCY: Spade. He woulda wanted you tuh have it.\n\nBRAZIL: Daddys diggin spade? Ssnnuch.\n\nLUCY: I swannee you look more and more and more and more like him ever-y day.\n\nBRAZIL: His chin?\n\nLUCY: You got his chin.\n\nBRAZIL: His lips?\n\nLICY: You got his lips.\n\nBRAZIL: His teeths?\n\nLUCY: Top and bottom. In his youth. He had some. Just like yours. His frock coat. Was just like that. He had hisself uh stovepipe hat which you lack. His medals\u2014yours are for weepin his of course were for diggin.\n\nBRAZIL: And I got his spade.\n\nLUCY: And now you got his spade.\n\nBRAZIL: We could say I'm his spittin image.\n\nLUCY: We could say that.\n\nBRAZIL: We could say I just may follow in thuh footsteps of my foe-father.\n\nLUCY: We could say that.\n\nBRAZIL: Look on thuh bright side!\n\nLUCY: Look on thuh bright side!\n\nBRAZIL: So much tuh live for!\n\nLUCY: So much tuh live for! Sweet land of\u2014! Sweet land of\u2014?\n\nBRAZIL: Of liberty!\n\nLUCY: Of liberty! Thats it thats it and \" _Woah!_ \" Lets say I hear his words!\n\nBRAZIL: And you could say?\n\nLUCY: And I could say.\n\nBRAZIL: Lets say you hear his words!\n\nLUCY: _Woah!_\n\nBRAZIL: Whatwouldhesay?!\n\nLUCY: He'd say: \"Hello.\" He'd say. \u2014. \"Hope you like your spade.\"\n\nBRAZIL: Tell him I do.\n\nLUCY: He'd say: \"My how youve grown!\" He'd say: \"Hows your weepin?\" He'd say: \u2014Ha! He's running through his states and capitals! Licketysplit!\n\nBRAZIL: Howuhboutthat!\n\nLUCY: He'd say: \"Uh house divided cannot stand!\" He'd say: \"4score and 7 years uhgoh.\" Say: \"Of thuh people by thuh people and for thuh people.\" Say: \"Malice toward none and charity toward all.\" Say: \"Cheat some of thuh people some of thuh time.\" He'd say: (and this is only to be spoken between you and me and him\u2014)\n\nBRAZIL: K.\n\nLUCY: Lean in. Ssfor our ears and our ears uhlone.\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nBRAZIL: O.\n\nLUCY: Howuhboutthat. And here he comes. Striding on in striding on in and he surveys thuh situation. And he nods tuh what we found cause he knows his Wonders. And he smiles. And he tells us of his doins all these years. And he does his Mr. Lincoln for us. Uh great page from thuh great mans great life! And you n me llsmile, cause then we'll know, more or less, exactly where he is.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nBRAZIL: Lucy? Where is he?\n\nLUCY: Lincoln?\n\nBRAZIL: Papa.\n\nLUCY: Close by, I guess. Huh. Dig.\n\n( _Brazil digs. Times passes_ )\n\nYoure uh Digger. Youre uh Digger. Your Daddy was uh Digger and so are you.\n\nBRAZIL: HO!\n\nLUCY: I couldnt never deny him nothin.\n\nBRAZIL: Wonder: Ho! Wonder: Ho!\n\nLUCY: I gived intuh him on everything.\n\nBRAZIL: Ssuhtrumpet.\n\nLUCY: Gived intuh him on everything.\n\nBRAZIL: Ssuhtrumpet, Lucy.\n\nLUCY: Howboutthat.\n\nBRAZIL: Try it out.\n\nLUCY: How uh-bout that.\n\nBRAZIL: Anythin?\n\nLUCY: Cant say, son. Cant say.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nI couldnt never deny him nothin.\n\nI gived intuh him on everything.\n\nThuh moon. Thuh stars.\n\nBRAZIL: HO!\n\nLUCY: Thuh bees knees. Thuh cats pyjamas.\n\nBRAZIL: Wonder: Ho! Wonder: Ho!\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHowuhboutthat: Uh bag of pennies. Money, Lucy.\n\nLUCY: Howuhboutthat.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nThuh bees knees.\n\nThuh cats pyjamas.\n\nThuh best cuts of meat.\n\nMy baby teeth.\n\nBRAZIL: Wonder: Ho! Wonder: HO!\n\nLUCY:\n\nThuh apron from uhround my waist.\n\nThuh hair from off my head.\n\nBRAZIL: Huh. Yellow fur.\n\nLUCY: My mores and my folkways.\n\nBRAZIL: Oh. Uh beard. Howuhboutthat.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nLUCY: WOAH. WOAH!\n\nBRAZIL: Whatchaheard?\n\nLUCY\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nBRAZIL: Whatchaheard?!\n\nLUCY: You dont wanna know.\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL: Wonder: Ho! Wonder: HO! WONDER: HO!\n\nLUCY:\n\nThuh apron from uhround my waist.\n\nThuh hair from off my head.\n\nBRAZIL: Huh: uh Tee-Vee.\n\nLUCY: Huh.\n\nBRAZIL: I'll hold ontooit for uh minit.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nLUCY:\n\nThuh apron from uhround my waist.\n\nThuh hair from off my head.\n\nMy mores and my folkways.\n\nMy rock and my foundation.\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY: My re-memberies\u2014you know\u2014thuh stuff out of my head.\n\n( _The TV comes on. The Foundling Father's face appears_ )\n\nBRAZIL: (ho! ho! wonder: ho!)\n\nLUCY:\n\nMy spare buttons in their envelopes.\n\nThuh leftovers from all my unmade meals.\n\nThuh letter R.\n\nThuh key of G.\n\nBRAZIL: (ho! ho! wonder: ho!)\n\nLUCY:\n\nAll my good jokes. All my jokes that fell flat.\n\nThuh way I walked, cause you liked it so much.\n\nAll my winnin dance steps.\n\nMy teeth when yours runned out.\n\nMy smile.\n\nBRAZIL: (ho! ho! wonder: ho!)\n\nLUCY: Sssssht.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nWell. Its him.\n\n**F. Echo**\n\n_A gunshot echoes. Loudly. And echoes._\n\n**G. The Great Beyond**\n\n_Lucy and Brazil watch the TV: a replay of \"The Lincoln Act.\" The Foundling Father has returned. His coffin awaits him._\n\nLUCY: Howuhboutthat!\n\nBRAZIL: They just gunned him down uhgain.\n\nLUCY: Howuhboutthat.\n\nBRAZIL: He's dead but not really.\n\nLUCY: Howuhboutthat.\n\nBRAZIL: Only fakin. Only fakin. See? Hesupuhgain.\n\nLUCY: What-izzysayin?\n\nBRAZIL: Sound duhnt work.\n\nLUCY: Zat right.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: I believe this is the place where I do the Gettysburg Address, I believe.\n\nBRAZIL\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL: Woah!\n\nLUCY: Howuhboutthat.\n\nBRAZIL: Huh. Well.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHuh. Zit him?\n\nLUCY: Its him.\n\nBRAZIL: He's dead?\n\nLUCY: He's dead.\n\nBRAZIL: Howuhboutthat.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nShit.\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL: Mail the in-vites?\n\nLUCY: I did.\n\nBRAZIL: Think theyll come?\n\nLUCY: I do. There are hundreds upon thousands who knew of your Daddy, glorified his reputation, and would like to pay their respects.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Howuhboutthat.\n\nBRAZIL: Howuhboutthat!\n\nLUCY: Turn that off, son.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nYou gonna get in yr coffin now or later?\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: I'd like tuh wait uhwhile.\n\nLUCY: Youd like tuh wait uhwhile.\n\nBRAZIL: Mmgonna gnash for you. You know: teeth in thuh dirt, hands like this, then jump up rip my clothes up, you know, you know go all out.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Howuhboutthat. Open casket or closed?\n\nLUCY: \u2014. Closed.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nTurn that off, son.\n\nBRAZIL: K.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Hug me.\n\nBRAZIL: Not yet.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: You?\n\nLUCY: Gimmieuhminute.\n\n( _A gunshot echoes. Loudly. And echoes_ )\n\nLUCY: That gunplay. Wierdiduhntit. Comes. And goze.\n\n( _They ready his coffin. He inspects it_ )\n\nAt thuh Great Hole where we honeymooned\u2014son, at thuh Original Great Hole, you could see thuh whole world without goin too far. You could look intuh that Hole and see your entire life pass before you. Not your own life but someones life from history, you know, [someone who'd done somethin of note, got theirselves known somehow, uh President or] somebody who killed somebody important, uh face on uh postal stamp, you know, someone from History. _Like_ you, but _not_ you. You know: _Known._\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: \" _Emergency,_ oh, _Emergency,_ please put the Great Man in the ground.\"\n\nLUCY: Go on. Get in. Try it out. Ssnot so bad. See? Sstight, but private. Bought on time but we'll manage. And you got enough height for your hat.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Hug me.\n\nLUCY: Not yet.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: You?\n\nBRAZIL: Gimmieuhminute.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nLUCY: He loved that Great Hole so. Came out here. Digged this lookuhlike.\n\nBRAZIL: Then he died?\n\nLUCY: Then he died.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: A monumentous occasion. I'd like to say a few words from the grave. Maybe a little conversation: Such a long story. Uhhem. I quit the business. And buried all my things. I dropped anchor: Bottomless. Your turn.\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER\n\nLUCY ( _Rest_ ): Do your Lincoln for im.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Yeah?\n\nLUCY: He was only 5.\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER: Only 5. _Uh Hehm._ So very loverly to be here so very very loverly to be here the town of \u2014Wonderville has always been a special favorite of mine always has been a very very special favorite of mine. Now, I _only_ do thuh greats. Uh hehm: I was born in a log cabin of humble parentage. But I picked up uh few things. Uh Hehm: 4score and 7 years ago our fathers\u2014ah you know thuh rest. Lets see now. Yes. Uh house divided cannot stand! You can fool some of thuh people some of thuh time! Of thuh people by thuh people and for thuh people! Malice toward none and charity toward all! Ha! The Death of Lincoln! (Highlights): Haw Haw Haw Haw\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nHAW HAW HAW HAW\n\n( _A gunshot echoes. Loudly. And echoes. The Foundling Father \"slumps in his chair\"_ )\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER\n\nLUCY\n\nBRAZIL\n\nLUCY\n\nTHE FOUNDLING FATHER\n\nBRAZIL: [Izzy dead?\n\nLUCY: Mmlistenin.\n\nBRAZIL: Anything?\n\nLUCY: Nothin.\n\nBRAZIL ( _Rest_ ): As a child it was her luck tuh be in thuh same room with her Uncle when he died. Her family wanted to know what he had said. What his last words had been. Theyre hadnt been any. Only screaming. Or, you know, breath. Didnt have uh shape to it. Her family thought she was holding on to thuh words. For safekeeping. And they proclaimed thuh girl uh Confidence. At the age of 8. Sworn tuh secrecy. She picked up thuh tricks of thuh trade as she went uhlong.]\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nShould I gnash now?\n\nLUCY: Better save it for thuh guests. I guess.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nWell. Dust and polish, son. I'll circulate.\n\nBRAZIL: Welcome Welcome Welcome to thuh hall. Of. Wonders.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nTo our right A Jewel Box of cherry wood, lined in velvet, letters \"A.L.\" carved in gold on thuh lid. Over here one of Mr. Washingtons bones and here: his wooden teeth. Over here: uh bust of Mr. Lincoln carved of marble lookin like he looked in life.\u2014More or less. And thuh medals: for bravery and honesty; for trustworthiness and for standing straight; for standing tall; for standing still. For advancing and retreating. For makin do. For skills in whittlin, for skills in painting and drawing, for uh knowledge of sewin, of handicrafts and building things, for leather tannin, blacksmithery, lacemakin, horseback riding, swimmin, croquet and badminton. Community Service. For cookin and for cleanin. For bowin and scrapin. Uh medal for fakin.\n\n( _Rest_ )\n\nTo my right: our newest Wonder: One of thuh greats Hisself! Note: thuh body sitting propped upright in our great Hole. Note the large mouth opened wide. Note the top hat and frock coat, just like the greats. Note the death wound: thuh great black hole\u2014thuh great black hole in thuh great head.\u2014And how this great head is bleedin.\u2014Note: thuh last words.\u2014And thuh last breaths.\u2014And how thuh nation mourns\u2014\n\n( _Takes his leave_ )\n\n An example of chiasmus, by Oliver Goldsmith, cited under \"chiasmus\" in _Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary_ (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 1983) p. 232. Notes 2 and 3 also refer to examples of chiasmus.\n\n _A Dictionary of Modern English Usage,_ H.W. Fowler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) p. 86.\n\n _The New American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,_ William Morris, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1981) p. 232.\n\n Possibly the words of Mary Todd Lincoln after the death of her husband.\n\n At the end of the Civil War, President Lincoln told his troops to play \"Dixie,\" the song of the South, in tribute to the Confederacy.\n\n A very funny line from the play _Our American Cousin_. As the audience roared with laughter, Booth entered Lincoln's box and shot him dead.\n\n The last words of President Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth.\n\n Or \"Sic semper tyrannis.\" Purportedly, Booth's words after he slew Lincoln and leapt from the presidential box to the stage of Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. on 14 April 1865, not only killing the President but also interrupting a performance of _Our American Cousin_ , starring Miss Laura Keene.\n\n Allegedly, Booth's words.\n\n The last words of General Robert E. Lee, Commander of the Confederate Army.\n\n From \"The Sun,\" a composition by The Foundling Father, unpublished.\n\n Mary Todd Lincoln, wanting her dying husband to speak to their son Tad, might have said this that night.\n\n The words of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, as Lincoln died.\n\n The words of Mary Todd, just after Lincoln was shot.\n\n Hearsay.\n**SUZAN-LORI PARKS**\n\nwon a 1990 Obie Award for Best New American Play. Her works have been produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville, American Repertory Theatre, Arena Stage, The Public Theater and Yale Repertory Theatre, among many others. A member of New Dramatists, she is a two-time playwriting fellow with the National Endowment for the Arts and has received grants from the Rockefeller, Ford and Whiting Foundations, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and\u2014for her newest play, _Venus_ \u2014the W. Alton Jones Foundation and the Fund for New American Plays. She wrote her first feature-length screenplay for Spike Lee and his company 40 Acres and a Mule.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \n#\n\n#  \nDEDICATION & THANKS\n\n... to my sweet mom, Pat.\n\n... to my sister, Ang, my angel.\n\n... to my three musketeers: C\u00e9cilia, Bastien, and Bianca.\n\nAnd very special thanks to the nice people at Callwey.\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nMENU 01\n\nSPRING FAMILY LUNCH\n\nMENU 02\n\nLADIES' LUNCH\n\nMENU 03\n\nLUNCH FOR TEENS\n\nMENU 04\n\nSATURDAY NIGHT DINNERS\u2014BACK FROM THE FISH MARKET\n\nMENU 05\n\nSATURDAY NIGHT DINNERS\u2014MEAT LOVERS' SPECIAL\n\nMENU 06\n\nSATURDAY NIGHT DINNERS\u2014AUTUMN HARVEST\n\nMENU 07\n\nA SWEET PRINCESS BIRTHDAY\n\nMENU 08\n\nFIRESIDE APPETIZERS\n\nMENU 09\n\nMY STAR RESTAURANT DINNERS\u2014FRESH FROM THE SEA\n\nMENU 10\n\nMY STAR RESTAURANT DINNERS\u2014MEAT\n\nMENU 11\n\nFRENCH CAPE COD\n\nMENU 12\n\nTHE FRENCH CHICKEN\n\nINDEX\n\nCOPYRIGHT\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nM y fascination with French cooking goes back many years to when I was a young girl growing up in Minnesota. At that time, fine cuisine was pretty much limited to a few fast food places and meatloaf. Thank goodness the food world has come a long way.\n\nMy favorite television program as a little girl was called The French Chef with Julia Child, the creator of the original \"cooking show.\" Watching her prepare what seemed to be such complicated, involved recipes was absolutely mesmerizing to me. She would throw in a French word here and there and so sparked my curiosity. I knew I had to learn more. During my university studies, I spent three terms in Paris. The food, the style, and the beauty of the city were pure revelation! I couldn't wait to get back, and I moved to Paris immediately upon graduation. One of my favorite treats then, and still now, was a fresh, warm baguette early in the morning. It rarely made it back to my tiny apartment, however; I'd munch it all down on the walk back. You just can't get that satisfying taste anywhere else.\n\nI haven't always been a chef. My professional life started in the public relations and communications field, but my underlying love of fantastic food had been dormant since childhood. After my third child was born, that desire became reality when I was accepted at \u00c9cole Ferrandi, a prestigious culinary school in Paris. What an incredible year that was! I was in the kitchen every day starting at 8 a.m., and my sole goal was to learn as much as possible; it was a dream come true. My new life as a professional chef started here.\n\nAfter graduating from Ferrandi, I worked in a 2-star Michelin restaurant in Paris, which was enriching and exhausting! I quickly started my own catering company and became a private chef for several years. It was at this time that I developed my own style of cooking: market fresh, seasonal, light and bright with just a bit of cream and butter! The product itself is the star on the plate\u2014no need to overwhelm with too many flavors at once. I like to keep my food clean and straightforward with the right dose of technique and a good sense of balance for seasoning and condiments.\n\nMy love of cooking naturally led itself to a love of teaching! I started my own cooking school and then had the pleasure of teaching for Chef Cyril Lignac in a beautiful Paris kitchen. I now give live online cooking lessons every evening for L'atelier des Chefs. My favorite students are the timid ones. They appear a bit overwhelmed at first, but a few hours later, when the meal is prepared and they are enjoying it at the table, that look of pride on their faces is so satisfying.\n\nThe idea for writing this book came to me nearly two years ago. My students often asked me for menu ideas and ways to get organized in the kitchen, like a restaurant chef. I was happy to give them tips here and there, but they needed a bit more. There are so many great reasons to get together around a wonderful meal and coming up with the themes for the menus was a breeze.\n\nNow all I needed was a great photographer with the same love of food as me. Kathrin, also a former Ferrandi student, was a gift from culinary heaven. The first time I saw the pictures on her blog, I literally got goosebumps. \"She's the one!\" I thought, and I contacted her immediately. Kathrin is a wonderful pastry chef and photographer. She has that whimsical eye for all that is sweet and is able to magically capture it in her images. We had a great time pulling the book together. I'd meticulously prepare my recipes in the fine French tradition, and when I had my head turned, Kathrin would poke her spoon into it before taking the picture, giving the dishes that human touch that so describes both of our styles.\n\nI cooked and cooked, Kathrin shot and shot, and my kids ate and ate! We hope you will enjoy using our book as much as we enjoyed creating it for you.\n\nMENU 01\n\n_______________\n\nSPRING FAMILY LUNCH\n\nAppetizers\n\nYoung Vegetables in Tempura\n\nGreen Asparagus with Parmesan Shavings\n\nPoached White Asparagus\n\nMain Course\n\nSlowly Roasted Veal Loin with Chanterelles and Almonds\n\nDessert\n\nThree-Berry Pavlova with Fresh Whipped Cream\n\n_______________\n\nT here's nothing better than the first signs of spring.\n\nIn France, the seasons are well defined in every way. The weather definitely tips you off, as does the general mood in the air. When spring has finally sprung, suddenly everything becomes light and airy and full of possibilities.\n\nI love going to the markets in Paris at this time of year. After a long, often gray and rainy winter, the market stalls are finally brimming with all that is green, fresh, and leafy. The baby vegetables are vibrant and tasty, the young meats so tender, and the red fruit, dazzling and sweet. Letting the seasons guide you to the freshest ingredients in France is easy, but you'll be without good strawberries in February! You have to wait until nature says it's okay, and oh, is that wait worth it!\n\nThere is a wonderful tradition in France\u2014le d\u00e9jeuner de dimanche, or Sunday lunch. It's a time when you gather family together, all generations, and share a beautifully prepared meal, with wine, of course, that usually lasts well into the afternoon. My idea behind this lunch menu is to take the very best the spring market has to offer and turn it into something simple and fabulous. You'll find lots of professional tips to ease you through this menu and treat your family and friends to a wonderful weekend lunch in the garden!\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nYOUNG VEGETABLES IN TEMPURA\n\nTempura Batter\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) all-purpose flour\n\n1 teaspoon baking soda\n\n2 tablespoons cornstarch\n\n1 egg\n\n4\/5 cup (20 cl) ice-cold water\n\n2 tablespoons poppy seeds\n\nYoung Veggies\n\nbaby turnips with part of their green tops\n\npink radishes with tips\n\nfrench green beans\n\npencil carrots\n\nmini beetroot\n\nmini zucchini flowers\n\nedible flowers: violets, pansies\n\nFor Frying\n\n\u00bd gallon (2 L) grapeseed oil\n\nfleur de sel or Maldon sea salt\n\nTEMPURA. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and cornstarch. Whisk the egg with the cold water. Mix \u2153 of the flour mixture into the egg\/water mixture using a fork. Repeat two more times until all of the flour mixture is blended. Do not overmix, or the gluten in the flour will develop and the batter will become heavy. The batter may have a few lumps, and this is fine.\n\nAdd the poppy seeds and mix lightly. For best results, use batter right after being made.\n\nYOUNG VEGGIES. Wash all of the vegetables. Spring vegetables have a very thin skin and therefore don't need peeling, except for the beetroots.\n\nFRYING. Heat the grapeseed oil in a heavy pan or deep fat fryer to 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C).\n\nWhisk the tempura batter and dip the vegetables into the batter in small quantities. Use a fork or chopsticks to take the veggies out of the batter, so that the excess batter will drip off.\n\nOnce the oil is to temperature, place the veggies delicately into the oil, about 4 to 5 at a time. Turn them around in the oil using a mesh skimmer.\n\nRemove the vegetables once they are golden brown and place on paper towel to absorb excess oil.\n\nPile up on a serving platter, sprinkle with fleur de sel or Maldon sea salt, serve immediately. Believe me\u2014these vegetables won't last long!\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 5 minutes.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nGREEN ASPARAGUS WITH PARMESAN SHAVINGS\n\n18 local green asparagus shoots\n\nsea salt\n\nfruity olive oil\n\nfresh ground pepper\n\n\u00bc cup (50 g) parmesan cheese\n\nCut off the woody end of the asparagus. Green asparagus doesn't really need to be peeled, but I like to peel them lightly with a vegetable peeler; the contrast of the light green stems and dark green tips looks nice after peeling.\n\nBoil a large quantity of water in a wide pan. The asparagus should lay flat. Once the water boils, add salt. The salt will help preserve the vivid green color.\n\nCheck the tenderness after 6 minutes by inserting the tip of a knife into one of the stems. The asparagus should be slightly firm.\n\nStrain the asparagus and place immediately into a large quantity of ice-cold water. This will fix the chlorophyll, keeping the asparagus appetizingly green.\n\nPlace the asparagus onto a large platter, and just before serving, sprinkle with some good olive oil, season with freshly ground pepper; shave fresh parmesan over the top using a vegetable peeler.\n\n\u2014\n\nAlong with white asparagus (page 19), 6 servings. Prep time: 40 minutes. Cook time: 20 minutes.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nPOACHED WHITE ASPARAGUS\n\nfrom the Landes region of France in Herbed Sauce Mousseline\n\n18 white asparagus\n\nSauce Mousseline\n\n1 egg at room temperature\n\n1 teaspoon French mustard\n\n8\u00bd fl. ounces (25 cl) grapeseed oil\n\nfleur de sel\n\n\u00bc bunch flat parsley\n\n\u00bc bunch cilantro\n\n\u00bc bunch chives\n\n\u00bc bunch tarragon\n\njuice of \u00bd lemon\n\nblack pepper\n\nchives, for garnishing\n\nASPARAGUS. Peel the asparagus with a vegetable peeler. Sometimes white asparagus can be pretty woody. Cut off the fibrous end so that all of the asparagus are the same size. Boil a large quantity of water in a wide pan. The asparagus should lay flat. Once the water boils, add sea salt.\n\nCheck the tenderness after approximately 12 minutes; the white asparagus should be cooked to more tender than the green. Plunge the asparagus into ice-cold water to stop the cooking process.\n\nStrain off water and place the asparagus onto a plate covered with paper towels to absorb excess water. Let chill in the refrigerator.\n\nSAUCE MOUSSELINE. Prepare a classic mayonnaise: all of the ingredients must be at room temperature. Separate the yolk and egg white. Keep the egg white in a clean bowl. Whisk the yolk with the mustard, pour the grapeseed oil slowly while whisking briskly. The mayonnaise should take quickly, becoming quite creamy. Add the lemon juice, season with fleur de sel, and fresh ground pepper.\n\nWhisk the egg white until it becomes frothy and creamy, but not too stiff. Wash all of the herbs and chop finely. Add the frothy egg white to the mayonnaise delicately using a spatula. Add all of the chopped herbs. Check the seasoning.\n\nServe the asparagus on a large platter with the sauce mousseline on top. Garnish with chives.\n\n\u2014\n\nAlong with green asparagus (page 16) 6 servings. Prep time: 40 minutes. Cook time: 20 minutes.\n\nMAIN COURSE\n\nSLOWLY ROASTED VEAL LOIN\n\nwith Chanterelles and Almonds\n\nVeal Loin\n\n1 (approximately 3 pounds [1.5 kg]) veal loin.*\n\n2 sweet white onions\n\n\u00bd bunch of fresh sage\n\n6 tablespoons olive oil\n\nbutter (optional)\n\n\u2154 cup (15 cl) dry white wine\n\n1 quart (1 l) veal stock\n\nsalt and pepper\n\n\u2014\n\n*Have your butcher tie the loin up like a roast. (Ask your butcher for some veal bones.)\n\nVEAL LOIN. Preheat oven to 360\u00b0F (180\u00b0C). Take the meat out of the refrigerator at least 1 hour before cooking. Peel and slice the onions, and wash and spin dry the fresh sage.\n\nHeat a cast-iron Dutch oven with 3 tablespoons of olive oil and sweat the onions along with the fresh sage leaves. The onions should not brown. Remove the onions and keep aside in a bowl.\n\nSeason the veal on all sides with fine salt. Heat 3 more tablespoons of oil in the Dutch oven and brown the loin on all sides. Add the veal bones; they should brown, as well. You can add a little fresh butter to help the browning. Spoon the melted butter over the loin roast regularly. The meat should be well browned, almost caramelized but not burned.\n\nRemove the browned meat from the Dutch oven, remove excess fat, heat the meat juices in the Dutch oven, and deglaze with the dry white wine. Let the alcohol evaporate.\n\nPut the veal loin back into the Dutch oven, add the onions and fresh sage leaves, cover in veal stock, and bring to a boil. Cover with lid and place in oven for 1 hour. Turn the roast over after 30 minutes of cooking.\n\nAfter 1 hour, remove the roast from the Dutch oven, place on a rack over a pan and cover with foil. The roast must rest at least 15 minutes before being sliced.\n\nPlace the Dutch oven on the stove and reduce the cooking juices. Strain the juices into a small saucepan and heat. If desired, add a tablespoon of sweet butter and whisk briskly to thicken the sauce and make it velvety.\n\nSlice the roast and place on a serving platter and pour some sauce over the top. Serve the rest of the sauce in a sauce dish.\n\nChanterelles with Almonds and Lemon\n\n1.75 pounds (800 g) chanterelles\n\n3 spring onions\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\nfleur de sel\n\n10 g of sweet butter\n\n1 preserved lemon (preserved in salt)\n\nlemon zest\n\n12 fresh peeled almonds\n\nfresh ground pepper\n\nCHANTERELLES. Cut off the end of the stem. Slice the larger mushrooms in two, and wash all of the mushrooms rapidly in a large bowl of water. Remove them quickly from the water and spin them dry in a salad spinner. Wash the spring onions and slice them at an angle.\n\nHeat 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy frying pan. Cook the mushrooms on high heat, salt and cook for 1 minute, until they render their natural liquid.\n\nStrain off the liquid, remove the mushrooms. Add the sweet butter, and when the butter becomes frothy, add the mushrooms and the spring onions; cook for a few more minutes to brown the mushrooms.\n\nRinse the preserved lemon and slice in a fine julienne. Zest the lemon using a microplane. Add the lemon julienne and the zest, then the almonds. Heat gently.\n\nServe the warm mushrooms with the veal loin.\n\n\u2014\n\nVeal: 6 servings. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 1 hour. Chanterelles: 6 servings. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 10 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nTHREE-BERRY PAVLOVA\n\nwith Fresh Whipped Cream\n\nMeringue\n\n6\u00be fl. ounce (200 g) egg white\n\n7 ounces (200 g) granulated sugar\n\n7 ounces (200 g) powdered sugar\n\nFresh Whipped Cream\n\nabout 1\u00bc fl. ounces (33 cl) of full fat whipping cream\n\nstrawberries\n\nraspberries\n\nblueberries\n\nTips from a Pro\n\nThe best way to bake meringue for the pavlova is in an conventional electric oven at low heat. If using a gas oven, place the baking sheets as far away as possible from the heat source, usually at the bottom of the oven. This will prevent the meringue from burning the on bottom.\n\nPreheat oven to 190\u00b0F (90\u00b0C). Prepare the meringue. Weigh all of the ingredients before starting.\n\nMERINGUE. Whip the egg whites with an electric mixer. When the egg whites become frothy, start adding the granulated sugar, little by little. This will stiffen them and make them shiny. When the egg whites are stiff, stop whipping and add the powder sugar. Mix gently with a spatula.\n\nCover a baking sheet with parchment paper. Spread the meringue evenly, creating a thick disc shape. Scoop out the center; this is where the whipped cream and fresh berries will be placed once the meringue is baked and cooled.\n\nPlace a second baking sheet under the first one. This will prevent the meringue from burning on the bottom. Place the oven rack in the middle and bake the meringue for 70 minutes.\n\nThe meringue should be very white. Once baked, remove from oven and slide the parchment paper onto a rack to cool thoroughly.\n\nWHIPPED CREAM. Place the whipping cream in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. Then, whip the cream slowly at first and then more and more rapidly until the cream thickens and becomes firm. This will take about 8 minutes.\n\nASSEMBLE THE PAVLOVA. Place the meringue on a serving platter. Fill the scooped out section with whipped cream. Add the fresh washed berries in the center and sprinkle with powdered sugar.\n\nThe pavlova may be held in the refrigerator up to an hour but should be eaten the same day.\n\n\u2014\n\n6 servings. Prep time: 25 minutes. Cook time: 70 minutes.\n\nMENU 02\n\n_______________\n\nLADIES' LUNCH\n\nAppetizers\n\nGrilled and Raw Salmon Bites in Citrus Vinaigrette with Borage Flowers\n\nSoft-Boiled Organic Eggs and Oven-Roasted Beets with Goat Cheese Emulsion\n\nMain Course\n\nFree-Range Chicken Breast Rolls Stuffed with Fresh Seasonal Herbs with French Green Beans, Sweet Peas, and White Beans in Pistachio Pesto\n\nDessert\n\nCardamom Custard and Caramel-Covered Green Grapes\n\n_______________\n\nW hat would I do without my best friends? They have followed me throughout my crazy culinary adventures, given advice, and tasted just about everything. They helped me get through the bad times and are there to celebrate the good. We have all been friends for years, our children are friends, and I think even our dogs like to hang out together! For this special lunch, I wanted to truly delight the ladies with the fresh, seasonal, light and tasty menu they deserve. It's the kind of meal where you feel as good afterwards as you did while eating it.\n\nThe cooking methods used are simple: poaching, boiling in water, and baking in a water bath. However, the sauces, condiments, and emulsions are slightly more elaborate. They add a luscious, satisfying finish to the dishes.\n\nFrom appetizer to dessert, the conversation flowed and flowed, as did the ros\u00e9, and at the end of the meal, when it was time to go home, we all promised to do lunch much more often. Then the inevitable question came up\u2014\"Whose turn is it next?\"\u2014to which I invariably answered, \"Don't worry, ladies, I'll do the cooking.\"\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nGRILLED AND RAW SALMON BITES\n\nin Citrus Vinaigrette with Borage Flowers\n\nMelba toasts\n\n1\u00be fl. ounce (50 g) clarified butter\n\n4 slices of good white bread or \"pain de mie\"\n\nSalmon\n\n1 pound (500 g) wild salmon filet\n\nzest and juice of 2 lemons\n\nzest and juice of 2 limes\n\n1 tablespoon soy sauce\n\n3 teaspoons sesame seed oil\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\nsea salt, pepper\n\nborage flowers\n\nMELBA TOASTS. Make the clarified butter by melting about 5 ounces (150 g) of butter over a water bath. Fully melt and continue heating until the butter separates and the solids fall to the bottom, leaving only the butter fat on the top. Filter through a cheesecloth to remove any traces of foam.\n\nBrush the bread with the clarified butter on both sides and place on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Cover with parchment paper, place a second baking sheet over the top, and bake at 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C) for approximately 20 minutes. The bread will become golden brown on both sides without having to turn it over. Using clarified butter will keep the butter from over-browning or burning. When cool, cut the bread into 1\u00bd inch squares.\n\nSALMON. Slice the salmon into 1-inch cubes. You will need a total of 24 cubes. Whisk together the juice of one lime and one lemon, soy sauce, and 3 teaspoons of sesame seed oil. Marinate 12 of the salmon cubes, cover with plastic wrap, and keep refrigerated. For the other 12 cubes, season with fine salt and pepper, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan, and sear the salmon cubes on both sides, approximately 3 minutes per side. Remove to absorbent paper. Whisk the remaining citrus juices together with salt, pepper, and olive oil. Add the zests.\n\nTO SERVE. Start with a golden brown melba toast, add one cube of grilled salmon, then a cube of marinated salmon. Top with a few drops of vinaigrette and finish with a borage flower, which tastes amazingly like oysters.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 15 minutes. Cooking time: 24 minutes.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nSOFT-BOILED ORGANIC EGGS AND OVEN-ROASTED BEETS\n\nwith Goat Cheese Emulsion\n\nBeets\n\n2 yellow beets\n\n1 orange beet\n\n1 red beet\n\npinch of sugar\n\npinch of salt\n\nolive oil\n\nEggs\n\n4 organic eggs\n\nGoat Cheese Emulsion\n\n6\u00be fl. ounces (200 g) whipping cream\n\nabout \u00bd cup (100 g) goat cheese\n\n1\u2154 cups (50 g) whole milk, cold\n\n30 toasted hazelnuts\n\nbeet leaves, for garnish\n\nsalt, pepper\n\nBEETS. Rinse and dry all but one yellow beet and place them on a large piece of parchment paper. Sprinkle with a pinch of sugar, a pinch of salt, and drizzle with olive oil. Fold the parchment paper at the top and on the sides, then fold under, making a tightly closed pouch. Place on a baking sheet and roast in a 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0) oven for 1 hour. Oven-roasting the beets will develop their natural sugars and make them melt-in-the-mouth delicious.\n\nThinly slice the remaining yellow beet using a mandoline. Cut the slices into prefect circles using a small round cookie cutter. Keep the beet rounds crisp by placing them in ice-cold water until ready to use.\n\nSOFT-BOILED EGGS. Boil a large pot of water, plunge the eggs carefully into the boiling water, and set a timer for 5 minutes. Prepare a bowl of ice-cold water and plunge the cooked eggs in the cold water to stop the cooking. Once the eggs are thoroughly cooled, peel them in the cold water; this makes it easier to keep the eggs perfectly round without damaging the white. Set the eggs aside on absorbent paper.\n\nGOAT CHEESE EMULSION. Melt the goat cheese into the cream in a medium saucepan on medium heat. Season with black pepper. Set aside. When the beets are fully cooked, remove from oven and let cool. Peel them using a paring knife and slice into quarters.\n\nReheat the eggs by plunging them into a pot of simmering water for 30 seconds.\n\nTO SERVE. Dress the appetizer in a soup plate: arrange a quarter of each beet, place the warm egg over the top, and cut open halfway. The yolk should be honey-colored and slowly pour out onto the beets. Heat the goat cheese emulsion to just boiling. Mix using a hand blender. Add the cold milk and mix the surface of the cream to create foam. The cold milk added to the hot emulsion will make the foam firmer.\n\nCover the egg with the frothy emulsion. Add the raw beets and the beet leaves, and sprinkle with toasted hazelnuts and sea salt.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cooking time: 1 hour 10 minutes.\n\nMAIN COURSE\n\nFREE-RANGE CHICKEN BREAST ROLLS STUFFED WITH FRESH SEASONAL HERBS\n\nwith French Green Beans, Sweet Peas, and White Beans in Pistachio Pesto\n\nChicken Jus\n\n1 pound (500 g) chicken wings\n\nolive oil\n\nsalted butter\n\n\u2154 cup (15 cl) dry white wine\n\n\u00bd carrot, diced\n\n1 white onion, diced\n\n1 quart (1 l) veal stock, room temperature\n\nGreen Vegetables\n\n1 pound (500 g) French green beans\n\n2.25 pounds (1 kg) sweet peas\n\n2.25 (1 kg) fresh white beans (cannellini, borlotti)\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n\u00bd quart (\u00bd l) chicken stock\n\n\u2014\n\nTips from a Pro\n\nWhen preparing the jus, remove the skin from the chicken wings before browning. This will make the jus richer in taste and less greasy overall.\n\nCHICKEN JUS. Brown the chicken wings in olive oil in a medium saucepan, add 1 tablespoon of salted butter and continue browning. Deglaze with the white wine, and scrape the bottom of the saucepan using a spatula to detach the caramelized brown bits. Let the alcohol evaporate, approximately 2 minutes. Add the diced carrot and onion. Add a bit more butter if necessary to brown the vegetables. Strain the meat and vegetables to remove excess fat. Put all back into the saucepan and add the veal stock. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer for 40 minutes. Skim if necessary.\n\nStrain through a fine sieve into a small saucepan and reduce to half. The jus will thicken slightly and should cover the spoon. Keep warm.\n\nGREEN VEGETABLES. Remove the ends of the green beans, and shell the peas and beans. Boil a large pot of salted water. Plunge the green beans and peas into the water. Cook for approximately 5 to 6 minutes and then plunge into ice-cold water to stop the cooking and preserve the vibrant green color. Once cooled, remove to absorbent paper.\n\nHeat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan and add the fresh white beans. Coat in olive oil and heat through. Add the chicken stock and simmer for 20 minutes until the beans are tender.\n\nSlice the cooled green beans into quarter-inch pieces. Add the peas and green beans into the pan with the white beans. Add a bit of salted butter, about a \u00bd cup of chicken stock, and heat through. The butter and chicken stock will thicken a bit and make a glaze giving the vegetables a nice sheen. Season with salt and pepper and keep warm.\n\nChicken\n\n4 free-range chicken breasts\n\n\u00bd bunch fresh cilantro, Thai basil, chives, chive flowers\n\nsalt, pepper\n\nPesto\n\nabout \u00bc cup (50 g) pistachios\n\nabout 1 cup (200 g) rocket arugula\n\n1 clove garlic\n\nabout \u00bc cup (50 g) parmesan\n\n6\u00be fl. ounces (200 ml) olive oil\n\nsea salt\n\nchives flowers, for garnishing\n\nCHICKEN. Flatten the chicken breasts and remove any excess fat using a paring knife. Wash, dry, and mince the fresh herbs. Lay out a rectangular piece of heat-resistant plastic wrap, two times longer than the chicken breast. Place the flattened chicken breast in the center of the plastic wrap toward the bottom. Season with salt and pepper; add the mixed fresh herbs by spreading them across the chicken breast in a straight line. Roll the chicken breast tightly in the plastic wrap. Take the ends of the wrap and continue rolling breast into a log shape. Tie the ends of the wrap tightly.\n\nBoil a large pot of water, add the chicken rolls, cover the pot, and remove from heat. Poach for 20 minutes. Remove from pot and let cool slightly. Remove the plastic wrap and slice in half-inch slices. Keep warm.\n\nROCKET AND PISTACHIO PESTO. Toast pistachios in a small frying pan with no added fat. Wash and spin-dry the rocket salad. Peel the garlic and remove the green germ. Grate the fresh parmesan. Add all ingredients to the food processor bowl and process to a paste texture. Add the olive oil in a steady small stream while food processor is running until all oil has been incorporated. Remove to a small serving bowl.\n\nFOR SERVING\n\nPlace a good amount of warm vegetables in the center of the plate. Top with 3 slices of the chicken roll, sprinkle with a little sea salt, and finish with chive flowers. Serve the chicken jus and the pesto on the side.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 50 minutes. Cook time: 1 hour 30 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nCARDAMOM CUSTARD\n\nand Caramel-Covered Green Grapes\n\nCustard\n\n1 vanilla bean\n\n1 pint (50 cl) whole milk\n\n1 teaspoon ground cardamom\n\n6 egg yolks\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) sugar\n\nCaramel Grapes\n\n8.8 ounces (250 g) sugar\n\n\u00bd cup (100 g) water\n\njuice of \u00bd lemon\n\n30 green grapes\n\nFor this recipe, only the yolks are required. The eggs can be stored in a clean, airtight container for up to three days in a refrigerator and used to make meringues or macarons.\n\nCUSTARD. Slice the vanilla pod in two and scrape out the seeds using the tip of a knife. Heat the milk with the vanilla to boil. Add the cardamom, remove from heat, and infuse for 20 minutes. Whisk the egg yolks and the sugar in a medium-sized mixing bowl, pour the warm milk over the eggs, and strain through a fine sieve.\n\nPreheat oven to 340\u00b0F (170\u00b0). Position 6 small cups or ramekins in a large baking dish. Fill with the milk\/egg mixture. Place baking dish in oven and fill with boiling water to half the height of the cups. Cover with foil and bake for 40 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool. Place in refrigerator until ready to serve. The custard may be prepared up to 2 days in advance and kept in the refrigerator.\n\nCARAMEL GRAPES. Mix the sugar, water, and lemon juice in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil then continue heating to 300\u00b0F (150\u00b0C). Dip the grapes into the caramel using tweezers. Place the caramel-covered grapes onto a nonstick baking mat and let cool.\n\nServe the custard chilled with the caramel grapes.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 40 minutes. Cook time: 48 minutes.\n\nMENU 03\n\n_______________\n\nLUNCH FOR TEENS\n\nMain Course\n\nFree-Range Chicken Keftas with Homemade Tartar Sauce and Toasted Pita Bread\n\nSide Dishes\n\nThick-Cut Sweet Potato Fries Tossed in Turmeric\n\nCaesar Salad with Crunchy Garlic Croutons\n\nOrganic Carrot Salad with Toasted Hazelnuts, Orange Sections, and Hazelnut Vinaigrette\n\nDessert\n\nMango Litchi Smoothie\n\nJumbo-Sized Chocolate Butter Cookies\n\n_______________\n\nM y advice for kids and food is to get them into the kitchen as young as possible and show them how to make a few simple dishes. Homemade food just always tastes better than fast food and takeaway, and they will be so proud and want to invite their friends over to enjoy the great food they've prepared themselves.\n\nYou're killing two birds with one stone here by teaching the importance of eating well and also how to be gracious hosts and hostesses.\n\nThe recipes in this chapter can fit into just about any season, but they seem to work particularly well in early autumn as a pre-back-to-school lunch gathering. The food here is so tasty without the fuss or the dishes, and the menu has a great street food feeling, with a healthy twist. I'm sure your kids will love it\u2014mine certainly did!\n\nMAIN COURSE\n\nFREE-RANGE CHICKEN KEFTAS\n\nwith Homemade Tartar Sauce and Toasted Pita Bread\n\nChicken\n\n3 free-range chicken breasts\n\n2 spring onions\n\n2 cloves garlic\n\nfresh cilantro (the leaves of 8 sprigs)\n\nfresh mint (the leaves of 4 sprigs)\n\n1 tablespoon ground turmeric\n\n1 tablespoon Moroccan spices (Ras el Hanout)\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\nsalt, pepper\n\n1 lemon\n\n2 vine ripe tomatoes\n\n4 leaves iceberg lettuce\n\n8 pita breads\n\nTangy Tartar Sauce\n\n(makes approximately 10.5 ounces\/300 g)\n\n1 organic egg yolk\n\n1 tablespoon or sweet mustard\n\n6\u00be fl. ounces (20 cl) grapeseed oil\n\njuice of \u00bd lemon\n\nsalt, pepper\n\n\u00bd white onion, finely chopped\n\n10 sprigs Italian parsley, chopped\n\nsmall handful capers\n\n10 baby pickles, chopped\n\nCHICKEN. Grind the chicken breasts in the food processor. Remove to a bowl and season with salt and pepper.\n\nFinely chop the spring onions, including the green tops. Peel the garlic, remove the germ, and chop finely. Wash, dry, and finely chop the fresh herbs.\n\nMix the turmeric and Moroccan spices and then sprinkle over the chicken. Add olive oil and mix well. Roll into 1-inch balls, and flatten them to make patties.\n\nHeat olive oil in a heavy skillet or on a grill pan and brown the keftas on both sides, approximately 6 minutes in total. Remove to absorbent paper.\n\nThinly slice the tomatoes and finely chop the lettuce. Warm the pita bread in a 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C) oven for 5 minutes.\n\nBuild your sandwich with three kefta patties, lettuce, tomatoes, and lots of tartar sauce.\n\nTANGY TARTAR SAUCE. Make sure all ingredients are room temperature before starting. Place the egg yolk in a dry bowl. Whisk in the mustard and then whisk in the oil, little by little. The mayonnaise should be light in color and very creamy. Add the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Add the chopped onion, parsley, capers, and pickles. Check seasoning. Cover and keep chilled until ready for use.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 6 minutes.\n\nSIDE DISH\n\nTHICK-CUT SWEET POTATO FRIES TOSSED IN TURMERIC\n\n3 medium-sized sweet potatoes\n\n4 tablespoons olive oil\n\n2 tablespoons turmeric\n\nsea salt\n\nblack pepper\n\nPreheat oven to 300\u00b0F (150\u00b0C).\n\nPeel the sweet potatoes. Cut them in \u00bd-inch-thick slices, turn, and slice in \u00bd-inch-thick sticks. Place the sticks in a large mixing bowl. Add the olive oil, turmeric, sea salt, and pepper and toss thoroughly. The sweet potatoes should be coated with oil and spices. You can prepare this step in advance because sweet potatoes, unlike white potatoes, will not oxidize with air contact.\n\nPlace a single layer on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Bake for approximately 15 to 20 minutes. The fries should be slightly crispy but moist inside.\n\nServe in small french fry boxes if available.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 15 minutes. Cook time: 15 to 20 minutes.\n\nSIDE DISH\n\nCAESAR SALAD\n\nwith Crunchy Garlic Croutons\n\nCroutons\n\n5 thick slices sour-dough bread\n\nolive oil\n\n2 cloves garlic\n\nsea salt, black pepper\n\nSalad\n\n1 head fresh romaine lettuce\n\nfresh parmesan\n\nCaesar Dressing\n\n1 hard-boiled egg\n\n1 egg yolk\n\n1 clove garlic\n\n4 anchovies, rinsed\n\nabout \u00bc cup (50 g) parmesan, grated\n\n8\u00bd fl. ounces (25 cl) olive oil\n\njuice of 1 lemon\n\n1 teaspoon red wine vinegar\n\nTabasco\n\nWorcestershire sauce\n\npepper\n\nCROUTONS. Cut the sourdough bread into cubes. Heat the olive oil in a heavy skillet; peel and add the garlic cloves. Toast the croutons in the oil until golden. Remove to absorbent paper and season with sea salt and black pepper.\n\nSALAD. Wash the lettuce, spin dry, and slice the leaves in 2 or 3 pieces depending on the size. Set aside.\n\nCAESAR DRESSING. Roughly chop the hard-boiled egg and place in the bowl of a food processor. Add the egg yolk, the garlic clove (degermed), the rinsed anchovies, and grated parmesan. Mix. Add oil little by little, as the sauce becomes thick and creamy. Add the lemon juice, the vinegar, Tabasco, and Worcestershire sauce to taste.\n\nSERVE. Toss the lettuce with the dressing. Lettuce should be lightly coated.\n\nServe in small salad bowls with croutons and shaved parmesan. Season with freshly ground black pepper.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 12. Prep time: 30 minutes.\n\nSIDE DISH\n\nORGANIC CARROT SALAD\n\nwith Toasted Hazelnuts, Orange Sections, and Hazelnut Vinaigrette\n\nSalad\n\n4 fresh organic carrots\n\n1\u00be cups (50 g) hazelnuts, peeled\n\n2 juicy oranges\n\nVinaigrette\n\n1 juice orange\n\n1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar\n\n1 teaspoon honey\n\nsalt, pepper\n\n2 tablespoon olive oil\n\n2 tablespoons hazelnut oil\n\nSALAD. Peel the carrots and grate finely. Place into a mixing bowl. Toast the hazelnuts in a hot frying pan without any oil. Turn the pan regularly to toast the hazelnuts on all sides. When toasted, (about 4 minutes) transfer to a cutting board and chop into small pieces using a chef's knife.\n\nPeel two of the oranges using a paring knife to be sure to remove the pith. Remove the wedges by cutting on either side of the white sections. Slice the wedges in 3 equal pieces and add to the carrots. Add the chopped hazelnuts, mix together.\n\nVINAIGRETTE. Press the juice of one orange. Add the white balsamic vinegar, whisk in the honey, sea salt, and pepper. Whisk in the two oils to make an emulsion. Check seasoning.\n\nSeason the salad and toss thoroughly. Serve in individual salad bowls.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 20 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nMANGO LITCHI SMOOTHIE\n\n1 ripe mango\n\n13\u00bd fl. ounces (400 ml can) of litchis in light syrup\n\n2 plain yogurts\n\n6\u00be fl. ounces (20 cl) fresh milk\n\nice cubes\n\nfresh mint, if desired\n\nPeel the mango, cut into thick slices. Drain the litchis, save the juice. Place fruit into blender, add the yogurt and milk. Add 5 ice cubes. Blend at high speed for several minutes. If a bit thick, add some litchi juice.\n\nPoor into chilled glasses and place in fridge until ready to serve. Garnish with mint, if desired.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 10 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nJUMBO-SIZED CHOCOLATE BUTTER COOKIES\n\nabout 6 fl. ounces (180 g) good quality sweet butter\n\n3\u00bc ounces (90 g) sugar\n\n8\u00be ounces (250 g) flour\n\n1 pinch cinnamon\n\n\u00bd ounce (15 g) cocoa powder\n\nThese butter cookies do not have any egg. When baked, they become deliciously crispy!\n\nPreheat oven to 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C).\n\nCream the butter and sugar at medium speed in a mixer. Add the flour, cinnamon, and cocoa powder. Mix well.\n\nSeparate the dough into three parts. Roll each section into a large sausage shape. Cover in plastic wrap and let chill in the refrigerator for 20 minutes. When thoroughly chilled, remove wrap and slice round cookies \u00bd-inch thick.\n\nPlace on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper and bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool on rack. Serve with the smoothie.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 8. Prep time: 15 minutes. Cook time: 15 to 20 minutes.\n\nMENU 04\n\n_______________\n\nSATURDAY NIGHT DINNERS\u2014BACK FROM THE FISH MARKET\n\nAppetizers\n\nSea Bream Tartare with Spring Onions, Wakame, and Grilled Sesame Seeds\n\nFresh Mussels Marini\u00e8re with a Handful of Fresh Herbs\n\nPrawn Ravioli with Baby Fava Beans in a Light Prawn Broth\n\nMain Course\n\nFilet of Brill \u00e0 la Dugl\u00e9r\u00e9\n\nDessert\n\nFresh Seasonal Fruit Poached in a Verbena Syrup with Salty Butter Cookies and Sweet Wine Sabayon\n\n_______________\n\nI love Saturday night dinners! Since living in France, I've really learned the importance of this particular evening.\n\nWeeknights are reserved for business entertaining, simple family dinners, or restaurant dining, but Saturday nights are different and special. It's the night you invite others into your home.\n\nThe meal is always well-planned; invitations are made sometimes weeks in advance, and you can expect your guests to dress for dinner.\n\nThe outdoor markets are often on Saturdays in France so it is easy to find the freshest ingredients for your menu. Morning is filled up with the shopping and, after a light lunch, they use the afternoon to do all of the prep work. This will assure that your dinner will be a breeze.\n\nThe next three chapters will give you a large selection of menu ideas and tips for successfully hosting your own Saturday dinners. I've also added hints that will help you be at the table with your guests and not always in the kitchen.\n\nGo ahead and set a beautiful table, light lots of candles, and just simply enjoy!\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nSEA BREAM TARTARE\n\nwith Spring Onions, Wakame, and Grilled Sesame Seeds\n\n4 sea bream filets without the skin\n\n2 spring onions with the green tips\n\nzest and juice of 2 organic lemons\n\ngrilled sesame seeds\n\ndried wakame seaweed\n\nfleur de sel\n\n3 tablespoons sesame oil\n\nMay be made in advance and chilled, but season just before serving.\n\nPrepare the sea bream filets by removing the stomach portion and all dark traces. Cut into small cubes. Wash the spring onions and dice them finely. Zest the lemons, using a microplane, and squeeze the juice.\n\nIn a small bowl, mix the cubes of sea bream, onions, lemon zest, and juice, and add the sesame seeds. Season with dried wakame seaweed, fleur de sel, and sesame oil.\n\nKeep chilled until ready to serve. Use a small rectangular mold to plate the appetizer.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 25 minutes.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nFRESH MUSSELS MARINI\u00c8RE\n\nwith a Handful of Fresh Herbs\n\n6\u00bd pounds (3 kg) fresh mussels\n\n2 large sweet white onions\n\nabout \u00bc cup (50 g) salted butter\n\nolive oil\n\nmix of fresh herbs, as desired, such as dill, cilantro, parsley, or chives\n\n2 cups (50 cl) dry white wine\n\nfresh ground black pepper\n\nClean the mussels. If they're slightly opened, tap on the shell with your fingernail. If they close up again, the mussel is alive, hence very fresh. Peel and dice the onions. Wash all of the herbs and finely chop the leaves. Save the nicer stems, such as dill flowers.\n\nPlace the butter in a large pot, heat to frothy. Add the onions and the herb stems. Add the white wine, let it reduce a bit, as the alcohol needs to evaporate. Pour in the cleaned mussels. Slightly increase the heat and cover the pan. The mussels will open from the steam. Stir to mix the mussels and onions.\n\nWhen the mussels are open, about 5 to 8 minutes, add the fresh cut herbs and mix gently. Season with fresh ground pepper but no salt\u2014mussels are salty enough. Serve the mussels hot in a small bowl per person with a ladle of the juice on top. Finish with dill flowers.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 15 minutes. Cook time: 8 minutes.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nPRAWN RAVIOLI\n\nwith Baby Fava Beans in a Light Prawn Broth\n\nRavioli\n\n1 small bunch fresh parsley (or chervil)\n\n3 spring onions\n\n12 fresh prawns\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\nSalt, pepper\n\n\u00bd cup (10 cl) dry white wine\n\nabout \u00be cup (200 g) fresh fava beans\n\nabout 1\u2154 fl. ounces (5 cl) fresh cream\n\n1 package Chinese wonton wrappers\n\n1 egg white\n\nrice flour\n\nThe ravioli may be made a few hours in advance and kept refrigerated.\n\nWash and chop the parsley and finely dice the spring onions. Peel the prawns, but keep the heads and shells. Make an incision on the back of the prawns and remove the intestine with the tip of your knife. Heat the olive oil in a heavy frying pan. Cook the prawns over high heat quickly, about 3 minutes. Remove to absorbent paper. Season with salt and pepper. Deglaze with the white wine. Let the alcohol evaporate; reduce the liquid a bit.\n\nBlanch the fava beans in boiling salted water, strain, and plunge into ice-cold water to fix the chlorophyll. Strain again and place on absorbent paper to remove excess water.\n\nMix the sliced prawns, fava beans, spring onions, and parsley plus a little fresh cream in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper.\n\nPlace a heaping teaspoon of prawn filling in the middle of the wonton wrapper. Paint the edges with egg white (the glue). Join the two diagonal angles, seal, then the two other diagonal angles, and seal well using your fingertips. The ravioli should look like a small pouch. Place the finished ravioli on a plate, sprinkle with rice flour, and keep in the refrigerator until ready to cook.\n\nBoil a large quantity of water with sea salt. Drop the ravioli in three by three. When they come up to the surface, count about 45 seconds and they'll be done. Remove quickly with a slotted spoon.\n\nPrawn Broth\n\n1 white onion\n\nparsley stems and fresh cilantro\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\nheads and shells of the prawns used for the ravioli\n\n1 cup (25 cl) dry white wine\n\n1 quart (1 l) of shellfish stock (good brand, like Ariake)\n\n1 white onion\n\nhigh-quality soy sauce\n\n\u2014\n\nTips from a Pro\n\nFrench cooking is all about taste and needs to be developed layer by layer. For this menu, make the prawn broth in advance and let it simmer gently. Warming it up the next day will give it an even richer flavor.\n\nBroth may be made three days in advance and kept in the refrigerator. It may also be frozen until ready for use.\n\nPRAWN BROTH. Dice the onions and wash the cilantro and parsley. Heat the olive oil in large pan. Brown the heads and shells of the prawns over high heat. Crush them down a bit to get as much flavor as possible. Add the diced onions and let sweat a few minutes. Deglaze with the white wine, heat to evaporate alcohol.\n\nPour in the shellfish stock, add the cooking juices from the prawns, bring to boil, then reduce heat and let simmer for 30 minutes. Filter into a clean pan and keep warm. Add a few drops of good soy sauce, check the seasoning. Add fresh cilantro leaves.\n\nSERVE. Place three ravioli per person in a warm soup bowl and pour piping hot prawn broth on top.\n\n\u2014\n\nRavioli\u2014Serves 6. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 23 minutes.\n\nBroth\u2014Serves 6. Prep time: 15 minutes. Cook time: 30 minutes.\n\nMAIN COURSE\n\nFILET OF BRILL \u00c0 LA DUGL\u00c9R\u00c9\n\n4 brill filets with skin (about 5 ounces or 150 g\/filet)\n\n2 shallots\n\n\u00bd bunch flat parsley\n\n3 fresh vine ripe tomatoes\n\n2 cups (50 cl) fish stock, room temperature\n\nabout \u2154 fl. ounces (20 g) salted butter\n\nThe sauce base and fish may be prepared in advance. Cooking the brill is quick and must be done just before serving.\n\nRemove the skin and stomach section of the brill filets and give them a nice shape. Finely dice the shallots and the flat parsley.\n\nPeel the tomatoes with a tomato peeler, or by plunging them into boiling water 30 seconds, then into ice-cold water. The skin is then easily removed. Cut into quarters, remove the pulp and seeds, and dice the flesh into perfect little squares or brunoise.\n\nBrush the bottom of a heaving frying pan with softened (not melted) butter. Cover the bottom with the shallots, parsley, and tomato brunoise.\n\nPlace the filets in the pan on top of the vegetables. Pour the fish stock over the filets. The stock should just cover them.\n\nCook on medium heat. When the stock begins to simmer, count approximately 4 minutes. Remove the filets and place on a warm serving dish.\n\nReduce the stock and vegetables in the same pan until the stock thickens slightly. Pour sauce over filets before serving.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 10 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nFRESH SEASONAL FRUIT\n\nPoached in a Verbena Syrup with Salty Butter Cookies and Sweet Wine Sabayon\n\nFruit\n\n3 pieces fresh seasonal fruit (such as pears, apples, quinces, peaches, or nectarines)\n\n7 ounces (200 g) sugar\n\n4\/5 cup (20 cl) water\n\n1 vanilla bean\n\n12 fresh verbena leaves\n\nSalted Butter Cookies\n\n(makes 12 large cookies)\n\n7\u00be ounces (220g) flour\n\n3\/8 ounces (11 g) baking powder\n\n1 vanilla bean\n\n2\u00bd ounces (70 g) granulated sugar\n\n2\u00bd ounces (70 g) cane sugar\n\n5\u00bd fl. ounces (160 g) salted butter\n\n4 egg yolks\n\n1\u00be ounces (50 g) hazelnut powder\n\nSabayon\n\n6 egg yolks\n\n4\u00bc ounces (120 g) vanilla sugar\n\n1 cup (25 cl) sweet white wine (Marsala, Sauternes, Rivesvalte, Pineau des Charentes)\n\nThe verbena syrup and fruit can be made ahead of time and kept in the refrigerator. The butter cookie dough may be made three days ahead and kept in the refrigerator. Bake the butter cookies in the morning and keep them in a closed container.\n\nFRUIT. Peel and core the fruit. Add the sugar, water, and vanilla bean (cut in two); bring to a boil. Add the verbena leaves and let simmer a few minutes until all the sugar is dissolved. The longer the vanilla and verbena infuse, the more taste the syrup will have. Add the fruit and continue cooking approximately 30 minutes until fruit is cooked through but still somewhat firm. Let the fruit cool down in the syrup.\n\nCOOKIES. Sift the flour and baking powder together and set aside. Open the vanilla bean, remove grains with the tip of a knife, and rub the vanilla beans into the sugar. Using an electric mixer, mix the sugars and salted butter; then add egg yolks and hazelnut powder and mix thoroughly. Add the flour mixture all at once and mix just enough to incorporate.\n\nFlatten out the dough into a disc shape, cover in plastic wrap, and place in refrigerator at least 30 minutes. Roll out the dough to about \u00bd-inch thick and cut out perfect circles using a cookie cutter. Bake at 320\u00b0F (160\u00b0C) about 10 to 12 minutes.\n\nSABAYON. Pour the ingredients into a round mixing bowl and place over a large pan of simmering water. Using a hand mixer, whisk the mixture briskly over the water bath for approximately 8 minutes. The sabayon should become very frothy as the egg yolks thicken. The sabayon should double in volume, and then whip another 30 seconds. Serve warm over the fruit and butter cookie.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 45 minutes. Cook time for fruit: 30 minutes. Cook time for cookies: 12 minutes. Cook time for saboyan: 5 minutes.\n\nMENU 05\n\n_______________\n\nSATURDAY NIGHT DINNERS\u2014MEAT LOVERS' SPECIAL\n\nAppetizers\n\nBeef Tenderloin with Arugula and Horseradish Cream\n\nClassic Beef Tartar with Capers, Onions, and Italian Parsley\n\nMain Course\n\nC\u00f4te de Boeuf with Roasted Red Potatoes and Beurre Ma\u00eetre d' H\u00f4tel\n\nDessert\n\nPlum and Fig Fruit Compote with Goat Milk Ice Cream and Cocoa Nib Tuiles\n\n_______________\n\nT his menu is all about red, juicy meat\u2014some raw, some roasted. For meat lovers, there's nothing more satisfying than a nice piece of aged beef, perfectly cooked and well seasoned. Mastering the cooking of meat is not all that difficult; just follow these simple steps:\n\n1. Remove meat from refrigerator 30 minutes before cooking; it should be nearly at room temperature.\n\n2. Use fine salt to season the raw meat before cooking, then season with sea salt and black pepper after roasting.\n\n3. Sear the meat first in hot oil (olive or grapeseed) on all sides, then add a nob of fresh butter and baste.\n\n4. Finish roasting in a medium oven (350\u00b0F\/180\u00b0C). For rare beef, count approximately 10 minutes per pound (500g).\n\n5. Let rest before slicing for at least half of the cooking time.\n\nYour carnivorous friends will be licking their chops!\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nBEEF TENDERLOIN\n\nwith Arugula and Horseradish Cream\n\n1 pound (500 g) beef tenderloin\n\nabout \u2153 cup (80 g) horseradish\n\n2 tablespoons (30 g) cr\u00e8me fraiche\n\nfresh arugula\n\nfleur de sel\n\nPlace the tenderloin in the freezer for approximately 15 minutes. Cut into thin slices with a sharp chef's knife. Whisk the horseradish with the cr\u00e8me fraiche. Spread a thin layer of cream over one side of the slices. Add arugula leaves and roll tightly. Sprinkle with fleur de sel and keep refrigerated until ready to serve.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 20 minutes.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nCLASSIC BEEF TARTAR\n\nwith Capers, Onions, and Italian Parsley\n\nBeef\n\n1 pound (500 g) tender beef (\"tranche grasse\")\n\n1 shallot\n\n2 spring onions\n\n1 preserved lemon\n\n\u00bd bunch Italian parsley\n\nVinaigrette\n\njuice of 1 lemon\n\nTabasco\n\nWorcestershire sauce\n\n6 tablespoons olive oil\n\n2 organic egg yolks\n\n2 tablespoons (30 g) small capers\n\nsea salt, pepper\n\nTARTAR. For this recipe, choose a tender cut of beef but not necessarily the filet. Many other tender cuts are also very flavorful. I like the tranche grasse. Ask your butcher for advice. The meat will be cut with a sharp knife and not ground; the taste will be even better this way.\n\nPlace the beef in the freezer for 15 minutes. This will make it easier to cut.\n\nSlice first in thin strips following the meat's grain and then into small cubes. Keep refrigerated.\n\nPeel and dice the shallot. Rinse and thinly slice the spring onions. Slice the preserved lemon in quarters, remove the pulp and seeds; slice rind into small cubes. Wash and mince the parsley.\n\nVINAIGRETTE. Whisk the lemon juice, a few drops of Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce, and then the olive oil. Add all condiments to the beef, mix. Add vinaigrette and mix. Crack the eggs, separate the yolks from the whites. Rinse the eggshells, dry, and fill with egg yolks.\n\nSERVE. Present the tartar on a large serving dish with egg yolks on top. Sprinkle with capers, sea salt, and fresh ground black pepper.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 20 minutes.\n\nMAIN COURSE\n\nC\u00d4TE DE BOEUF\n\nwith Roasted Red Potatoes and Beurre Ma\u00eetre d'H\u00f4tel\n\nBeurre Ma\u00eetre d'Hotel\n\n\u00bd pound (250 g) sweet butter\n\n1 clove garlic\n\n\u00bd bunch Italian parsley\n\n\u00bd bunch cilantro\n\n\u00bd bunch chives\n\nfleur de sel\n\nRed Potatoes\n\n2\u00bc pounds (1kg) small red potatoes\n\nabout \u2154 fl. ounces (20 g) salted butter\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n2 spring onions\n\nBEURRE MA\u00ceTRE D'H\u00d4TEL. Soften the butter using a spatula. Peel and mince the garlic. Wash, dry, and mince the fresh herbs. Add to butter, mixing thoroughly with the spatula. Place softened, seasoned butter onto a rectangular piece of plastic wrap. Roll butter into sausage shape with a 1-inch diameter and refrigerate until ready for use.\n\nRED POTATOES. If necessary, brush the new potatoes but do not remove skin. Heat salted butter and olive oil until frothy in a heavy casserole dish. Add the potatoes and mix gently to coat them in the frothy butter. Continue roasting on medium heat. Rinse and slice the spring onions. After approximately 10 minutes, add the spring onions, mix, and lower heat. Cover and continue roasting 10 to 15 minutes. Season with sea salt. Potatoes should be slightly caramelized on the outside and tender inside. Keep warm.\n\nC\u00f4te de Boeuf\n\n1 aged c\u00f4te de boeuf (2\u00bd pounds (1.2 kg))\n\nsea salt, pepper\n\n2 tablespoons salted butter\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\nTips from a Pro\n\nNowadays, the trend is toward eating less meat. If you are a meat lover, then you should only use the best you can get. Talk to your butcher, explain to him what you want to make, and trust him to give you worthy advice.\n\nC\u00d4TE DE BOEUF. Preheat oven to 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C). Remove the beef from the refrigerator at least 30 minutes before roasting. The meat must be nearly room temperature before cooking.\n\nHeat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in an ovenproof skillet, and season the c\u00f4te de boeuf on both sides with fine salt. Brown the beef on one side, approximately 4 to 5 minutes, turn over using tongs. Do not prick the beef with a fork, it will lose its juice.\n\nBrown the other side approximately 2 minutes, add a good tablespoon of salted butter, and when it becomes frothy, baste the beef using a spoon, and cook another 2 minutes. This will help caramelize the meat. Browning the beef before roasting in the oven will ensure that the precious, flavorful juices stay in the meat. Place the skillet in the preheated oven. Roast for 15 minutes. The c\u00f4te de boeuf should be served rare for best flavor.\n\nRemove to a wire rack, cover with aluminum foil, and let rest at least 10 minutes. Letting the meat rest before slicing will allow the juices to spread through, making the meat much more tender. Roasting the meat with the bone in will always give more flavor.\n\nRemove the bone with a sharp knife and slice the beef in 1-inch-thick slices. Serve warm.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: approximately 20 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nPLUM AND FIG FRUIT COMPOTE\n\nwith Goat Milk Ice Cream and Cocoa Nib Tuiles\n\nGoat Milk Ice Cream\n\n1 quart (1 l) goat milk\n\n2 vanilla beans\n\n10 egg yolks\n\n8.8 ounces (250 g) sugar\n\nCompote\n\n2\u00bc pounds (1 kg) red or purple plums\n\n1 pound (500 g) figs\n\n2\u00be ounces (75 g) cane sugar\n\n1 teaspoon (4 g) cinnamon\n\n1 teaspoon (4 g) ground cardamom\n\nCocoa Nib Tuiles\n\n(makes 30)\n\n2 juice oranges\n\n8.8 ounces (250 g) powdered sugar\n\n1\u00be ounces (50 g) flour\n\n3\u00bd fl. ounces (100 g) butter, melted\n\n\u00be ounces (20 g) cocoa nibs\n\n\u00be ounces (20 g) cocoa powder\n\nICE CREAM. Heat the goat milk with the seeds from the vanilla bean just to a boil in a saucepan. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar until the yolks become frothy and lighten in color. Pour the hot goat's milk over the egg yolks, whisk, and pour back into the saucepan. Heat to just before boiling; the mixture will thicken slightly and should coat the spoon. Pour into a clean mixing bowl and cool. Pour the mixture into the ice cream maker and churn until creamy. Keep in freezer until ready to serve. Homemade ice cream will always be creamier than the store-bought version.\n\nFRUIT COMPOTE. Wash the fruit. Cut the plums in half and remove the pits. Cut the figs and plums in quarters. Place all the fruit in a large saucepan. Add the sugar, cinnamon, and cardamom, mix gently, and stew at medium heat approximately 20 minutes until fruit has rendered its juice. Remove to a serving bowl and let cool.\n\nCOCOA NIB TUILES. Preheat oven to 400\u00b0F (210\u00b0C). Juice the two oranges (about \u00bd cup\/10 cl). Whisk the orange juice, powdered sugar, and flour. Mix well and then add the melted butter, the cocoa nibs, and the cocoa powder. Mix gently.\n\nCover a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Spoon out a small amount of tuile batter and spread into a small circular shape. Leave space between each tuile; they spread out when baking. Bake for 10 minutes. Let the tuiles cool before removing to a wire rack. I like to leave them in a circular shape because they look like lace. You may give them a curved shape by placing the round tuiles on a rolling pin while still warm. Let cool then remove to a rack to continue cooling.\n\n\u2014\n\nCompote and Ice Cream: Serves 4. Prep time: 40 minutes. Cook time: 27 minutes.\n\nCocoa Nib Tuiles: Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 10 minutes.\n\nMENU 06\n\n_______________\n\nSATURDAY NIGHT DINNERS\u2014AUTUMN HARVEST\n\nAppetizers\n\nCream of Rutabaga Soup with White Truffle Oil and Fresh Mushroom Crostini\n\nTwo-Texture Endive Salad with Toasted Hazelnuts and Oranges and Hazelnut Oil Vinaigrette\n\nMain Course\n\nAllspice Roasted Duck Breast with Bitter Orange Duck Jus and Potato Pur\u00e9e in Rosemary Butter\n\nDessert\n\nPecan Tartlet and Whipped Cream with Gingerbread Spices\n\nFig and Red Grape Galette\n\n_______________\n\nA utumn is one of those special culinary seasons. The end of the summer produce, still abundant and fully ripened, sits right alongside the first root vegetables, vibrant orange squash, and woody, fresh mushrooms. The fruit is a rich, deep violet in color, and figs, plums, and Muscat grapes abound. The cooler weather spikes our appetite, and this satisfying menu is sure to please the whole table.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nCREAM OF RUTABAGA SOUP\n\nwith White Truffle Oil and Fresh Mushroom Crostini\n\nSoup\n\n1\u00bc cups (300 g) rutabaga\n\n1 sweet white onion\n\nabout 4\/5 fl. ounces (25 g) salted butter\n\nsalt, pepper\n\n2 cups (50 cl) vegetable stock, warm\n\nwhite truffle oil\n\n1 good quality baguette\n\nolive oil\n\nMushrooms\n\nabout \u00be cups (200 g) wild, seasonal mushrooms (chanterelles, portobello, black trumpet)\n\n1 shallot\n\nolive oil\n\n1 teaspoon salted butter\n\nwhite truffle oil\n\n\u2014\n\nTips from a Pro\n\nMost mushrooms may be cleaned simply with a damp brush; never leave them to soak in water\u2014they are like sponges! When saut\u00e9ing mushrooms, salt after they render their natural liquids. This will keep them from becoming soggy.\n\nSOUP. Peel and slice the rutabaga and the sweet onion. Heat the butter in a large saucepan until frothy. Add the sliced onions and heat through to sweat. Season with salt and pepper. Add the sliced rutabaga and mix to slightly coat with the frothy butter. Cover with warmed vegetable stock, bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for approximately 20 minutes until rutabaga is tender. Remove the vegetables to a blender using a slotted spoon. Add a little cooking liquid and blend to a smooth, creamy texture. Add more liquid if needed. Pour into a medium saucepan, check the seasoning, and keep warm.\n\nSlice the baguette in approximately \u00bd-inch-thick slices. Brush with olive oil on both sides and toast in a 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0) oven for 10 minutes.\n\nMUSHROOMS. Fill a salad bowl with cool water and quickly submerge the chanterelles and black trumpet mushrooms. Swirl them in the water and remove immediately, using your hands to sift. Place on a clean towel and pat dry. The portobellos should be cleaned with a damp brush and not submerged in water or they will become spongy.\n\nCut all mushrooms in two or four. Peel and finely slice the shallot. Heat a little olive oil in a heavy frying pan and sweat the shallot until soft. Add the mushrooms and saut\u00e9 until they lose their natural liquid. Add 1 teaspoon of salted butter, season with salt and pepper, and let brown slightly. Remove to absorbent paper.\n\nSERVE. Spread the mushrooms on the toasted baguette. Heat the cream of rutabaga soup, add a few drops of white truffle oil, and top with mushroom crostini. Serve warm.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 15 minutes.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nTWO-TEXTURE ENDIVE SALAD\n\nwith Toasted Hazelnuts and Oranges and Hazelnut Oil Vinaigrette\n\nEndive Salad\n\n5 white endives\n\nabout \u2154 fl. ounces (20 g) sweet butter\n\nsalt, pepper\n\njuice of 1 orange\n\nabout \u00bc cup (50 g) toasted hazelnuts\n\n3 oranges\n\nhazelnut oil\n\nwhite balsamic vinegar\n\nVinaigrette\n\njuice of \u00bd orange\n\n2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar\n\nsalt, pepper\n\nsea salt or fleur de sel\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\n3 tablespoons hazelnut oil\n\nsmall head red-speckled lettuce\n\nENDIVE SALAD. Rinse the endives. Cut them in two lengthwise and remove the core. Slice three of them thinly. Set the two others aside.\n\nHeat the butter in a heavy frying pan until frothy. Add the sliced endives. Coat in the butter and heat through gently until endives have wilted. Season with salt and pepper. Add half of the fresh orange juice and continue heating until orange juice has reduced. Remove endive to absorbent paper.\n\nSlice the remaining endive in two lengthwise and remove the core. Slice them in \u00be inch slices at an angle. Keep chilled.\n\nToast the hazelnuts in a hot frying pan without any oil. Rotate the pan regularly to toast the hazelnuts on all sides. When toasted (about 4 minutes), transfer to a cutting board and chop into small pieces using a chef's knife.\n\nPeel the oranges using a paring knife to be sure to remove the pith.\n\nSupreme the oranges (remove the wedges by cutting on either side of the white sections). Slice the wedges in 2 equal pieces.\n\nVINAIGRETTE. Whisk ingredients together, finishing with the two oils.\n\nSERVE. Place a small circle of the endive compote in the center of a small salad plate. Cover with slices of fresh endive and leaves of red-speckled lettuce. Place 3 orange segments, sprinkle with toasted hazelnuts, and season well with the vinaigrette. Sprinkle the top with sea salt. Serve.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 15 minutes. Cook time: 15 minutes.\n\nMAIN COURSE\n\nALLSPICE ROASTED DUCK BREAST\n\nwith Bitter Orange Duck Jus and Potato Pur\u00e9e in Rosemary Butter\n\nDuck\n\n2 duck breasts\n\n1 heaping teaspoon (6 g) allspice\n\nsalt, pepper\n\n12 red grapes, 12 green grapes\n\nDuck Jus\n\nabout 4\/5 cups (200 g) duck meat from the thigh\n\n1 sweet onion\n\n1 carrot\n\njuice of 1 bitter orange\n\n\u00bd fl. ounce (15 g) grapeseed oil\n\nabout 4\/5 fl. ounce (25 g) sweet butter\n\n2 cups (50 cl) veal stock\n\nPotato Pur\u00e9e in Rosemary Butter\n\n1\u00bd pounds (600 g) russet potatoes or bintje\n\nabout 4\/5 cups (200 g) whole milk\n\n6\u00be fl. ounces (200 g) salted butter\n\n3 sprigs fresh rosemary\n\nsea salt, fresh pepper\n\nTips from a Pro\n\nThis is a great dish for dinner parties because you can brown the duck breasts before your guests arrive, set them aside, and then finish cooking in the oven just before going to the table.\n\nDUCK. Preheat oven to 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0). Remove the excess fat so it just covers the meat. Using a sharp paring knife, score the fat, but not the meat, in a diamond pattern. Season well on both sides with the allspice, salt, and pepper.\n\nHeat a heavy ovenproof skillet without oil or butter. Place the duck breast in the hot skillet, fat side down. Let brown thoroughly; this will take approximately 4 to 5 minutes. Remove the rendered fat, keeping 1 tablespoon, turn the duck over (fat side up), and place skillet in preheated oven for 12 minutes. The duck meat will be rare or ros\u00e9\u2014the best way to eat duck. Overcooking it will toughen the meat.\n\nRemove the breast to a rack and cover with aluminum foil for at least 5 minutes to allow the meat to rest before slicing. If you slice right out of the oven, the juices will escape! Don't let them get away; they're too delicious! Keep the meat warm by putting it back into the warm oven, but turn off the heat.\n\nIn a small frying pan, heat up the tablespoon of rendered fat and add the grapes. Let them just heat through. Keep warm.\n\nDUCK JUS. Slice the duck meat into small pieces. Peel and dice the onion; peel and dice the carrot. Juice the orange. Heat the grapeseed oil in a medium saucepan. Add the duck meat and brown for approximately 5 minutes. Add the butter and continue browning for 10 minutes.\n\nThe meat should be nearly caramelized. Add the diced vegetables and continue browning another 6 minutes. Add a bit more butter if necessary.\n\nRemove all the meat and vegetables with a slotted spoon. Deglaze the meat juices with a bit of cold water by scraping the bottom of the pan with the slotted spoon. Put meat and vegetables back into the pan, and add the bitter orange juice and the veal stock. Bring to a boil then reduce and simmer for at least 1 hour.\n\nStrain the liquid into a smaller saucepan using a fine strainer. Heat and let reduce by a third. Add a teaspoon of sweet butter and whisk briskly to finish sauce. Season with salt and pepper if needed. Keep warm.\n\nPOTATO PUREE. Peel the potatoes and place in a large pot of cold water. Bring to a boil and add sea salt. Cook until tender, about 20 minutes. Heat the milk, butter, and rosemary in a small saucepan. Let the rosemary infuse for approximately 15 minutes on low heat.\n\nStrain the potatoes. Pass through a stainless steel food mill. For perfectly smooth and light pur\u00e9e, pass through a fine sieve using a rubber scraper. Put the fine pur\u00e9e back into the pot and pour in the butter and milk mixture (without the rosemary sprig). Whip gently until all the milk has been absorbed. Add more butter if necessary. Check seasoning. Keep warm.\n\nSERVE. Slice the warm duck into \u00bd-inch slices at an angle. On a warmed plate, add a swirl of potato pur\u00e9e, place the duck seasoned with a little sea salt, and add a nice curved line of duck jus. Finish with the warm grapes and serve immediately.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 1 hour 20 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nPECAN TARTLET\n\nand Whipped Cream with Gingerbread Spices\n\nSweet Dough\n\n3\u00bc fl. ounces (95 g) sweet butter\n\n1 ounce (30) g almond powder\n\n\u00bc teaspoon (1 g) salt\n\n3\u00bc ounces (90 g) powdered sugar\n\n1\u00be ounces (50 g) potato starch (to give the dough more elasticity)\n\n6\u00be ounces (180 g) flour\n\n14\/5 fl. ounces (55 g) egg\n\nPecan Filling\n\n3 eggs\n\n4.4 ounces (125 g) sugar\n\n\u00bd teaspoon salt\n\n2\u00bd fl. ounces (75 g) melted butter\n\n4\u00bc fl. ounces (125 g) pure maple syrup\n\nabout \u00bd cup (125 g) pecans\n\nWhipped Cream\n\n17 fl. ounces (50 cl) whipping cream\n\n1\u00bc ounces (35 g) powdered sugar\n\n2 teaspoons (8 g) gingerbread spices (ginger, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg)\n\nDOUGH. Using a mixer and the paddle attachment, mix the butter until softened. Sift all of the dry ingredients except the flour together, add to butter, and mix well. Add \u2153 of the eggs and \u2153 of the flour. Mix well. Continue by thirds until all of the eggs and flour are mixed. Remove the dough, shape into a flattened disc, cover in plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.\n\nPreheat oven to 375\u00b0F (190\u00b0C). Roll out the dough to \u00bc-inch thick. Using a round cookie cutter cut out 4 discs. Butter the molds and refrigerate 10 minutes.\n\nPlace discs of dough into the round molds and affix the dough to the mold by pressing gently between thumb and fingertips. Refrigerate for 15 minutes. Place a round disc of parchment paper into each mold, fill with pie weights, and blind bake for 15 minutes. Remove to a rack to cool.\n\nFILLING. Whisk all ingredients except pecans together. Break the pecans into halves and cover the bottom of each pie crust. Place the crusts onto a baking sheet. Fill the crusts \u2154 with the pecan filling. Bake for 20 minutes, the filling should be lightly browned and firm. Remove to a rack to cool.\n\nWHIPPED CREAM. Place the cream in a mixing bowl and place it in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. Using a mixer, whip the cream slowly at first. Increase the speed little by little so that the cream emulsifies and becomes stiff. Once stiff, add the powdered sugar and whip gently. Add the spices and whip just until blended. Remove the cream to a pastry bag with a small round tip and keep refrigerated.\n\nSERVE. When pecan tartlets are fully cooled, decorate with rounds of whipped cream and a sprinkle of spices. The tartlets may be refrigerated several hours.\n\n\u2014\n\n4 individual tartlets. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 35 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nFIG AND RED GRAPE GALETTE\n\n1 circle of puff pastry, 9 inches (24 cms), pure butter\n\ncane sugar\n\n10 figs\n\n20 red grapes\n\nPreheat oven to 375\u00b0F (190\u00b0C). Place the circle of puff pastry onto a baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Roll up the edges approximately \u00be inches. Prick the bottom with a fork and sprinkle with cane sugar. Place in refrigerator for 15 minutes. Wash the figs and grapes.\n\nSlice the figs in quarters. Arrange the figs in a circular pattern skin-side down. Add the red grapes between the figs. Sprinkle with cane sugar and bake for approximately 30 minutes. Puff pastry must be well-baked. It should be golden and crunchy. Serve warm.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 15 minutes. Cook time: 30 minutes.\n\nMENU 07\n\n_______________\n\nA SWEET PRINCESS BIRTHDAY\n\nAppetizers\n\nMini Pasta Salads in Shells\n\nCroque Monsieur Finger Sandwiches with Swiss Cheese Cream\n\nSmoked Salmon and Cream Cheese California Rolls\n\nRainbow Tomatoes and Feta Cheese Skewers\n\nDessert\n\nChoux with Vanilla Pastry Cream and Sweet Fondant\n\nVanilla, Strawberry, and Rose Praline Cupcakes\n\nMini Lemon Meringue Tarts\n\n_______________\n\nI had so much fun coming up with this menu. We all know that fairy tale princesses don't really exist, nor does the charming prince, but how wonderful it is to \"make believe\" every once and awhile. It's your little girl's birthday? Let her dream a bit and make everything pink!\n\nIt's a birthday party so there will of course be lots of sweets, but try to balance the menu a bit by proposing a few yummy savory bites, as well. Nothing but easy finger food sure to please any eight-year-old!\n\nThe pastry is basically the best of both worlds, sweet American cupcakes and light and airy French pate \u00e0 chou. I've also thrown in wonderful lemon meringue tartlets, just about everyone's favorite.\n\n\"Bon anniversaire, Princesse!\"\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nMINI PASTA SALADS IN SHELLS\n\n18 pasta shells (lumaconi or conchiglie)\n\n1 zucchini\n\n1 red pepper\n\n1 yellow pepper\n\n1 orange pepper\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\nsea salt, pepper\n\n1 bunch small-leaf basil\n\nCook the pasta shells in a large quantity of boiling salted water to al dente. The shells should be firm, as they will become the pasta bowls. Drain and place on a plate, drizzle with a little olive oil, and let cool.\n\nWash all vegetables. Slice zucchini in small cubes (brunoise). Cut the peppers in two, remove the heart and seeds and dice peppers in the same size cubes as the zucchini (brunoise).\n\nHeat olive oil in a heavy skillet and saut\u00e9 the zucchini and peppers until tender. Season with sea salt and pepper. Add a few basil leaves and heat through.\n\nFill each pasta shell with a spoonful of vegetables. Add a few drops of olive oil and decorate with a leaf of fresh basil. Serve on a pretty platter.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 18 minutes.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nCROQUE MONSIEUR FINGER SANDWICHES\n\nwith Swiss Cheese Cream\n\n12 slices good bread (in France, I buy fresh pain de mie at the bakery and have it sliced)\n\n17 fl. ounces (50 cl) cr\u00e8me fraiche or heavy cream\n\nabout \u2154 cup (150 g) freshly grated Swiss cheese\n\n1 whole nutmeg, grated\n\n6 slices ham, braised\n\n6 slices Swiss cheese\n\nabout \u00bc cup (50g) freshly grated parmesan\n\nThis is the Palace hotel version of the croque monsieur. Instead of the b\u00e9chamel, I use thick Swiss cheese cream, a bit quicker but richer and so delicious!\n\nMix the cr\u00e8me fraiche with the grated Swiss cheese. Season with freshly grated nutmeg. Place the slices of fresh bread on a baking sheet. Spread both sides of the bread with the Swiss cheese cream. Add a slice of good, braised ham, a slice of Swiss cheese, and cover with the second piece of bread. Cover the top with freshly grated parmesan and bake in a 390\u00b0F (200\u00b0C) oven for approximately 8 to 10 minutes. Top should be lightly browned and bubbly.\n\nLet cool and slice into long strips.\n\nServe piled up, similar to the game Jenga. The little girls will love these finger sandwiches. Have plenty of small napkins available\u2014no forks and knives today!\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 10 minutes.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nSMOKED SALMON AND CREAM CHEESE CALIFORNIA ROLLS\n\nFilling\n\n2 cups sushi or short grain rice\n\n1\u2154 cups (40 cl) cold water, plus extra for rinsing rice\n\n2 tablespoons rice vinegar\n\n2 tablespoons sugar\n\n1 tablespoon sea salt\n\nSushi Rolls\n\n2 carrots\n\n1 small cucumber\n\n4 slices smoked salmon\n\n4 sheets nori\n\n1\u00bc cups (300 g) softened cream cheese\n\n\u00bd batch sushi rice\n\n\u2153 cup black sesame seeds, toasted\n\nWasabi, for serving\n\nSweet soy sauce, for serving\n\nFILLING: Sushi rice needs to be thoroughly rinsed. Place the rice into a mixing bowl and cover with cool water. Swirl the rice in the water, pour off, and repeat 2 to 3 times or until the water is clear.\n\nPlace the rice and measured cold water into a medium saucepan and place over high heat. Bring to a boil, uncovered. Once it begins to boil, reduce the heat to the lowest setting and cover. Cook for 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and let stand, covered, for 10 minutes.\n\nCombine the rice vinegar, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan and heat through until sugar melts. Transfer the rice into a large wooden dish with a flat bottom. The traditional dish is called a hangiri. Add the vinegar mixture to the rice, folding thoroughly to combine and coat each grain of rice with the mixture. Let cool to room temperature before using.\n\nROLLS: California rolls usually have avocado in them; I guess that's why they're called California rolls. I don't use them for the little girls\u2014avocado is not usually one of their favorites. I use carrots and cucumbers instead.\n\nPeel the carrots and cucumber. Cut cucumber in two lengthwise and remove the seeds. Slice into thin strips. Slice the carrot into the same size strips. Slice the smoked salmon into strips, as well.\n\nLay out a bamboo sushi mat. Cover it with plastic wrap. Place a nori sheet on the plastic wrap. Spread the cream cheese over the entire surface. Wet your fingers and spread a layer of sushi rice. Using the plastic wrap, turn the nori sheet over and remove the wrap. The rice side is now down on the mat.\n\nPlace strips of carrots, cucumber, and salmon along the entire width. Using mat, roll tightly. If needed, wet your fingers to prevent the rice from sticking. Roll the rice side in black sesame seeds, cover with a damp cloth, and keep in refrigerator. Keep rolling until all the rice has been used.\n\nWhen ready to serve, cut each roll into 6 pieces and serve with sweet soy sauce and a pinch of wasabi.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 25 minutes (15 cooking, 10 resting).\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nRAINBOW TOMATOES AND FETA CHEESE SKEWERS\n\n18 red cherry tomatoes\n\n18 orange cherry tomatoes\n\n18 yellow cherry tomatoes\n\nabout 4\/5 cup (200 g) Greek feta cheese\n\nChives\n\nSea salt\n\nOlive oil\n\nThis is very simple and delicious. The girls would enjoy making them themselves.\n\nRinse the tomatoes. Cut the feta into medium-sized cubes. Alternate the tomatoes on a bamboo skewer and finish with a cube of feta. Tie a chive around the skewer at the bottom. Sprinkle with sea salt and a few drops of olive oil.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 15 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nCHOUX\n\nwith Vanilla Pastry Cream and Sweet Fondant\n\nCraquelin or Crunchy Topping\n\nabout 2.5 tablespoons (40 g) soft, salted butter\n\n1\u00be ounces (50 g) brown sugar\n\n1\u00be ounces (50 g) flour\n\nP\u00e2te \u00e0 Chou\n\n\u00bd cup (125 g) whole milk\n\n\u00bd cup (125 g) water\n\n3\u00bd fl. ounces (100 g) butter\n\n2 teaspoons (8 g) sugar\n\n\u2154 teaspoon (4 g) salt\n\n\u00bd cup (125 g) flour\n\n4 whole eggs\n\nCRAQUELIN. Mix all ingredients together using a mixer with the paddle attachment. Remove dough and form into a flat disc shape. Roll out between two pieces of parchment paper. The dough should be less than \u00bc-inch thick. Using a small round cookie cutter, the size of the cream puffs, mark the dough with circles, without cutting all the way through. Place the dough on a baking sheet and place in freezer for at least 2 hours, and ideally, overnight.\n\nP\u00c2TE \u00c0 CHOU. Preheat convection oven to 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C). Heat the milk, water, butter, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan, just to boiling. Remove from heat and add the flour all at once. Mix briskly with a wooden spatula. Put the saucepan back on the heat and continue stirring briskly. At this point, there should be no more lumps, the dough should be smooth and start forming a ball. Continue heating to fully dry out the dough. The process will take approximately 5 minutes.\n\nRemove the dough to a clean mixing bowl. Break the eggs into a small bowl. Add one egg at a time to the dough mixture. Mix briskly with a wooden spatula until the entire egg is thoroughly blended. Do the same with the 3 other eggs. The dough should form soft peaks.\n\nPrepare a pastry bag with a small round tip; fill with the p\u00e2te \u00e0 chou. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper. Pipe out the dough in small, regular-sized balls, the size of small apricots.\n\nRemove the craquelin dough from freezer. Cut through the circles using the round cookie cutter. Delicately place a circle of craquelin on top of each ball of dough.\n\nBake in convection oven, no more than 2 baking sheets at a time, for 25 to 30 minutes. The chou should be golden brown and fully baked through. They will feel very light. If the chou are not baked thoroughly, the steam inside will make them fall. Remove to a rack to cool.\n\nVanilla Pastry Cream\n\n1 vanilla bean\n\n4 egg yolks\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) sugar\n\n1.4 ounces (40 g) corn-starch\n\n1 cup (25 cl) fresh whole milk\n\nabout 3\u2153 tablespoons (50 g) fresh butter\n\nSweet Fondant or Glace Royale\n\n1 egg white\n\njuice of \u00bd lemon\n\n5.3 ounces (150 g) powdered sugar\n\npink and red food coloring pigments\n\nVANILLA PASTRY CREAM. Open the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds using the tip of a knife. Place egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla into a medium mixing bowl. Whip the mixture briskly by hand. It will lighten in color. Add the cornstarch and whip briskly to thoroughly mix.\n\nHeat the milk in a medium saucepan; bring to boil and pour the hot milk onto the egg mixture. Mix and pour back into the saucepan. Mix continually using the whip until the pastry cream thickens, about 2 minutes. Bring just to a boil and pour the cream into a clean mixing bowl. Whip the fresh, softened butter briskly into the pastry cream.\n\nLet cool by placing the mixing bowl into an ice bath. Prepare a pastry bag with a small round tip. Once cooled, fill the pastry bag with the pastry cream and place in refrigerator until ready to use. Pastry cream does not freeze well and should be used very fresh.\n\nSWEET FONDANT. Place the egg white in a stainless steel mixing bowl. Add the lemon juice. This will keep the icing white and help it to dry faster. Sift the powdered sugar and add half to the egg whites. Whisk briskly and add the rest of the powdered sugar. Check the consistency. If needed, add more powdered sugar to thicken.\n\nSplit the icing into three separate bowls and, using a small spatula, color each to different hues of pink.\n\nFILLING AND ICING THE CHOUX. When fully cooled, make a small hole in the bottom of each chou using a small star tip. Place the tip of the vanilla cream pastry bag into the hole and press gently, filling the chou until the cream shows. Wipe the excess. Dip the top of the chou into the desired colored icing, wipe off excess icing. Decorate with colored sugar or candied rose petals. Filled chou may be refrigerated for a few hours but should be consumed the same day. They are so delicious when fresh, believe me, you won't want to store them for long!\n\n\u2014\n\nMakes approximately 24 small cream puffs. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 30 to 35 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nVANILLA, STRAWBERRY, AND ROSE PRALINE CUPCAKES\n\nCupcake Base\n\n3.88 ounces (110 g) sweet butter at room temperature\n\n8 ounces (225 g) cane sugar\n\n2 organic eggs\n\n9.7 ounces (275 g) flour\n\n\u2153 ounce (11 g) baking powder\n\n\u00bd cup (12 cl) fresh whole milk, room temperature\n\nVanilla Cupcakes\n\nBase +\n\n1 teaspoon good quality vanilla extract\n\nStrawberry Cupcakes\n\nBase +\n\n4 tablespoons strawberry pur\u00e9e\n\n12 fresh strawberries\n\nRose Cupcakes\n\nBase +\n\n1 tablespoon rose water\n\npink pralines, for decoration\n\nCUPCAKE BASE. (If making Strawberry Cupcakes, wash and slice strawberries lengthwise.)\n\nPlace the butter and sugar in the mixer. Using the paddle attachment, mix briskly, approximately 5 minutes. The mixture should lighten in color and become very smooth. Add the eggs one by one, mixing thoroughly. Sift the flour and baking powder together in a small mixing bowl. Mix the milk and vanilla extract (or strawberry puree, or rose water) together in a jug. Add \u2153 of the flour mixture to the egg mixture, then \u2153 of the milk. Mix well. Continue adding the flour mixture then milk mixture by thirds until well blended.\n\nPreheat oven to 320\u00b0F (160\u00b0C). Prepare muffin tins with paper cupcake liners. Fill cups \u2154 full (insert strawberry halves here if making strawberry cupcakes) and bake for 25 minutes. Remove to rack to cool.\n\nPlain Buttercream\n\n1 whole egg\n\n4.4 ounces (125 g) sugar\n\n8.8 ounces (250 g) sweet butter, room temperature\n\n1 teaspoon of desired flavor: pure vanilla extract, rose water, coffee, pistachio paste, etc.\n\npigment-based food coloring\n\nBUTTERCREAM. Add whole egg and sugar to a stainless steel mixing bowl. Place on top of a medium saucepan, \u2153 full of water to create a water bath. Water should be simmering. Whisk continually by hand or using an electric hand mixer. The mixture should lighten in color and become very frothy and light, nearly doubling in volume.\n\nWhen the mixture has reached the right consistency and has warmed, remove from water bath and continue mixing to cool. It is important that the egg mixture be cool before adding the butter.\n\nMix in the softened butter little by little. The butter mustn't separate from the egg mixture. Once all the butter is added, continue mixing at least one minute. Add the desired flavor and color at this point and whip thoroughly.\n\nRemove buttercream to a pastry bag with the desired tip (round or star). Keep refrigerated until ready for use. The buttercream may be frozen, but before use, whip briskly to lighten up.\n\n\u2014\n\nFor Cupcakes: Makes 12 large cupcakes or 24 small. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 25 minutes for large, 16 minutes for small.\n\nMakes enough buttercream for 12 cupcakes. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 10 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nMINI LEMON MERINGUE TARTS\n\nSweet Dough\n\n3\u00bc fl. ounces (95 g) sweet butter\n\n1 ounce (30 g) almond powder\n\n1\u00be ounces (50 g) potato starch (to give the dough more elasticity)\n\nsalt\n\n3.7 ounces (90 g) powdered sugar\n\n14\/5 fl. ounces (55 g) egg\n\n6.34 ounces (180 g) flour\n\nLemon Cream\n\nzest of 2 organic lemons\n\n7 ounces (200 g) sugar\n\n\u2154 cup (16 cl) lemon juice (approx. 3 lemons)\n\n4 eggs\n\n7 ounces (200 g) sweet butter, room temperature\n\nFrench Meringue\n\n5 egg whites (150 g), room temperature\n\n4.4 ounces (125 g) sugar\n\n4.4 ounces (125 g) powdered sugar\n\nedible flowers\n\n\u2014\n\nThese tarts are easy enough that the children can help with them\u2014this is what makes them so much fun. They'll certainly enjoy it more!\n\nSWEET DOUGH. Make the dough the day before; it will be so much easier to work with after a night in the refrigerator. Using a mixer and the paddle attachment, mix the butter until softened. Sift all of the dry ingredients, except the flour, together, add to butter and mix well. Add \u2153 of the eggs and \u2153 of the flour. Mix well. Continue by thirds until all the eggs and flour are mixed. Remove the dough, shape into a flattened disc, cover in plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.\n\nLEMON CREAM. Zest the 2 organic lemons using a fine grater (microplane), into the sugar. Add sugar, eggs, and lemon juice to a stainless steel mixing bowl. Place onto a medium saucepan filled \u2153 with water to make a water bath. Water should be simmering. Whisk briskly. The mix will thicken as the eggs cook through. Cook to 183\u00b0F (84\u00b0C), and check temperature using a pastry thermometer.\n\nRemove mixing bowl and let lemon cream cool down to 95\u00b0F (35\u00b0C). Mix in the softened butter using a hand blender. Remove to pastry bag with a small, round tip. Keep refrigerated until ready for use.\n\nFOR THE FRENCH MERINGUE. Whip egg whites until frothy. Add the sugar little by little and continue whipping until egg whites are firm and shiny. Add the powdered sugar all at once and whip gently to mix. Remove meringue to a pastry bag with a small round tip. Keep refrigerated until ready for use.\n\nBLIND BAKE THE SWEET DOUGH. Preheat oven to 350\u00b0F (175\u00b0C). Roll dough to a rectangular shape approximately \u00bc-inch thick. Cut out circles that match the size of your tartlet molds, using a cookie cutter. Butter the molds. Place dough circles gently into molds and press with fingertips. Prick the bottom of the dough and bake for 15 minutes. Remove sweet dough to rack to cool.\n\nFILL AND DECORATE THE TARTLETS. Fill each tartlet with lemon cream using the pastry bag. Top with meringue and color the top using a blow torch (don't let the kids do this part unless they're well supervised!). Decorate with edible flowers such as pansies.\n\n\u2014\n\nMakes 24 tartlets. Prep time: 30 minutes. Resting time: 12 hours. Cooking time: 30 minutes.\n\nLemon cream: makes enough for 24 tartlets. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 15 minutes.\n\nMENU 08\n\n_______________\n\nFIRESIDE APPETIZERS\n\nSnacks\n\nSweet Bell Pepper and Cream Cheese Religieuse\n\nParmesan Butter Biscuits and Red Radish Dip\n\nRoot Vegetable Minestrone with Parmesan Tuiles\n\nMain Courses\n\nSeared Sea Scallops with French Lentils, Parma Ham Chips, and Smoked Bacon Emulsion\n\nLightly Battered Deep-Fried Prawn with Tartar Sauce\n\nBeef Cubes Marinated in Sweet Sake and Miso with Butternut Squash Discs in Grapefruit and Orange Reduction with Ginger\n\nFree-Range Chicken Breast Bites with Coconut, Turmeric, and Kaffir Leaf Grilled on an Open Fire\n\nCheese\n\nRoquefort and Pear Puffs\n\nDessert\n\nIndividual-Sized Fresh Fruit Crumble with Toasted Walnuts\n\nExtra-Moist Chocolate Cake with a Caramel Center\n\nPraline and Chocolate Nib Financiers\n\nMini Mont Blanc Cakes\n\n_______________\n\nY ou've invited lots of friends for a light weekend dinner and you're not too sure what time the guests will arrive, nor exactly how many friends, or friends of friends, will show up. You'd also really enjoy spending some time with them all, so you don't necessarily want to be in the kitchen the whole evening.\n\nGourmet dinner appetizers are my favorite delicious approach to these types of events. When I was a private chef, I often had requests for this type of meal; it makes for a very informal and relaxed way to entertain. I don't really like the idea of a buffet, where everything is put out on the table at the same time with no rhyme or reason. This menu is designed to be a complete, balanced meal and should be served in stages.\n\nAs the guests arrive, the gourmet snacks may be served. Next comes the warm appetizer followed by four main dishes featuring scrumptious marinated beef, lightly battered prawns, seared scallops, and Thai-style chicken.\n\nIn France, the cheese course is always important. For this menu, the cheese will be served warm and in individual portions. When all of the savory bites have been eaten up, it's time to bring on the desserts\u2014a delectable selection of individual treats sure to please every sweet tooth.\n\nThe key here is to present the dishes in single serving plates or large platters, making serving and eating simpler. Ask a bartender friend to come up with amusing cocktails to accompany the dishes, make a fire in the fireplace, or light a campfire and simply enjoy!\n\nSNACK\n\nSWEET BELL PEPPER AND CREAM CHEESE RELIGIEUSE\n\nP\u00e2te \u00e0 Chou\n\n\u00bd cup (125 g) whole milk\n\n\u00bd cup (125 g) water\n\n3\u2153 fl. ounces (100 g) butter\n\n1 teaspoon (4 g) sugar\n\n\u2154 teaspoon (4 g) salt\n\n\u00bd cup (125 g) flour\n\n4 whole eggs\n\nFilling\n\n2 roasted red peppers or piquillos, sliced\n\nabout \u00be cup (200 g) softened cream cheese\n\n\u00bc cup (50 g) fresh cream\n\ndill sprigs\n\nPreheat convection oven to 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C). Heat the milk, water, butter, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan, just to boiling. Remove from heat and add the flour all at once. Mix briskly with a rubber spatula. Put the saucepan back on the heat and continue stirring briskly. At this point, there should be no more lumps, and the dough should be smooth and start forming a ball. Continue heating to fully dry out the dough. The process will take approximately 5 minutes. Remove the dough to a clean mixing bowl. Break the eggs into a small bowl. Add 1 egg at a time to the dough mixture. Mix briskly with a rubber spatula until the entire egg is thoroughly blended. Do the same with the 3 other eggs. The dough should form soft peaks.\n\nPrepare two pastry bags: one with a small round tip, the second with a medium round tip. Fill both with the pate \u00e0 chou. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper. Pipe out the dough into small, regular-sized balls. Then, using the larger tip, pipe out into a bit larger-sized balls, the size of a small apricot. You will need the same number of both sizes.\n\nBake in a convection oven, no more than 2 baking sheets at a time, for 25 to 30 minutes. The chou should be golden brown and fully baked through. They will feel very light. If the \"chou\" are not baked thoroughly, the steam inside will make them fall. Remove to a wire rack to cool.\n\nFILLING. Place the sliced roasted peppers in bowl of the food processor with the cream cheese and fresh cream. Mix to obtain a smooth, creamy texture. Remove to a pastry bag with a small round tip. Using a small star tip, poke a hole in the bottom of each of the chou. Fill with the red pepper cream. Pipe out a bit of cream on the larger chou and top with the smaller one. Pipe a dollop of cream on the top and decorate with a slice of pepper and a sprig of dill.\n\n\u2014\n\nMakes 12 cream puffs. Prep time: 40 minutes. Cook time: 35 minutes.\n\nSNACK\n\nPARMESAN BUTTER BISCUITS AND RED RADISH DIP\n\nRadish Dip\n\n1 cucumber\n\n12 red radishes\n\n1 bunch of chives\n\nabout 2\u00bc cups (500 g) fromage blanc or thick Greek yogurt\n\njuice of \u00bd lemon\n\n1 clove garlic, green germ removed and finely minced\n\nSalt, pepper\n\nBiscuits\n\n4 fl. ounces (120 g) butter\n\n6.3 ounces (180 g) flour\n\n\u00be cup (180 g) freshly grated parmesan\n\n\u00bd teaspoon fleur de sel\n\n1 egg\n\npepper\n\nRADISH DIP. Peel cucumber, slice in half lengthwise, and remove seeds using a small spoon. Dice into small squares, or brunoise. Wash and slice the red radishes. Add the vegetables to the fromage blanc, add lemon juice, garlic, and season with salt and pepper. Mix gently and keep refrigerated until serving.\n\nPARMESAN BISCUITS. Preheat oven to 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C). Using the mixer with the paddle attachment, mix the butter, flour, parmesan, and fleur de sel. Add the egg and mix until dough forms a rough ball. Remove and place on a sheet of plastic wrap. Roll the dough in the plastic wrap to form a thin log. Place in refrigerator at least 1 hour. This dough may be made ahead and frozen.\n\nRemove the dough and slice thinly. Prepare a baking tray with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Bake for 8 minutes or until just golden. Remove to a rack to cool. Serve with the radish dip.\n\n\u2014\n\nMakes approximately 30 biscuits. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 8 minutes.\n\nSNACK\n\nROOT VEGETABLE MINESTRONE WITH PARMESAN TUILES\n\nMinestrone\n\n2 orange carrots\n\n2 violet carrots\n\n3 zucchini\n\n\u00bd head purple cauliflower\n\n\u00bd head yellow cauliflower\n\n2 parsnips\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\nsea salt\n\n2 quarts (2 l) fresh chicken or vegetable stock\n\nParmesan Tuiles\n\nabout \u00be cup (200 g) freshly grated parmesan\n\nThis hearty soup may be prepared 2 days in advance and kept refrigerated.\n\nMINESTRONE. Wash all vegetables. Peel the carrots and the parsnips. Dice all into small cubes or macedoine. Separate the cauliflower into small bouquets. Heat the olive oil in a large stockpot. Sweat all of the vegetables in the oil, coating them well. After about 5 minutes, season with sea salt. Cover in chicken or vegetable stock, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 40 minutes until all of the vegetables are cooked through. They should remain slightly firm. I prefer the all-seasonal vegetable version of minestrone, but to make it heartier, you may also add potatoes or small pasta. To develop more flavor, remove from heat and let cool a bit to infuse the vegetables in the stock. Reheat before serving.\n\nPARMESAN TUILES. Place small mounds of freshly grated parmesan onto a nonstick baking mat on a baking sheet. Bake tuiles in a 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C) oven for approximately 10 to 12 minutes. They should be slightly golden. Remove to a wire rack for cooling.\n\nServe with the piping hot minestrone.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 40 minutes. Cook time: 45 minutes.\n\nMAIN COURSE\n\nSEARED SEA SCALLOPS\n\nwith French Lentils, Parma Ham Chips, and Smoked Bacon Emulsion\n\nLentils\n\n1 carrot\n\n1 sweet white onion\n\n2 stalks celery\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n1\u00bc cup (300 g) French green lentils\n\n2 quarts (2 l) cold water or vegetable stock\n\nSalt, pepper\n\nParma Ham Chips\n\n6 slices of Parma ham\n\nSmoked Bacon Emulsion\n\nabout 8\u00bd fl. ounces (250 g) heavy whipping cream\n\n1\u00be ounces (50 g) smoked bacon\n\nLENTILS. Peel carrot and onion. Dice finely. Wash the celery and dice. In a large saucepan, sweat the vegetables in 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add lentils and mix gently to coat with oil and vegetables. Cover with cold water or vegetable stock, bring to a boil, reduce heat, and let simmer for approximately 25 minutes. The lentils should be slightly firm. Do not salt during the cooking or the lentils will toughen. Strain the lentils, return to the saucepan, and season with salt and pepper.\n\nPARMA HAM CHIPS. Preheat oven to 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C). Cover a baking sheet with a nonstick baking mat or parchment paper. Lay the Parma ham slices flat, without overlapping. Cover with a second sheet of parchment paper and a second baking sheet. Bake the slices for approximately 15 minutes or until ham has become dehydrated and crispy. Remove to a rack to cool. The natural juices will evaporate, accentuating the salty taste.\n\nSMOKED BACON EMULSION. Heat the whipping cream in a medium saucepan with the smoked bacon. Remove from heat and infuse for 30 minutes. Remove the bacon and reheat before serving.\n\nSeared Sea Scallops\n\n12 sea scallops\n\nolive oil\n\nfine salt\n\n1 tablespoon salted butter\n\n\u2014\n\nYou can prepare the scallops beforehand and reheat gently before serving.\n\nSEARED SEA SCALLOPS. Rinse the scallops, if needed, and dry with paper towels. Heat the olive oil in a heavy skillet to nearly smoking. Season the scallops on both sides with fine salt and place in the hot skillet. Sear one side about 1 minute. Turn using tongs and sear 1 minute on the other side. Add the butter, lower the heat, and baste for 1 minute. Remove to absorbent paper. Keep warm in a 195\u00b0F (90\u00b0) oven.\n\nSERVE. Warm the lentils and the smoky bacon emulsion. Place some warm lentils on a small plate, top with a sea scallop. Emulsify the warm cream using a hand blender. Top the scallop with some foam and finish with a small chip of Parma ham.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 50 minutes plus 30 minutes for infusing.\n\nMAIN COURSE\n\nLIGHTLY BATTERED DEEP-FRIED PRAWNS\n\nwith Tartar Sauce\n\n18 prawns\n\nBatter\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) flour\n\n\u00bd ounce (15 g) baking powder\n\n1\u00be ounces (50 g) cornstarch\n\n1 egg\n\nabout \u2153 cup (75 g) fromage blanc, or Greek yogurt\n\n\u00bd cup (125 g) water\n\n1 quart (1 l) grapeseed, oil for frying\n\nfleur de sel\n\nTartar Sauce\n\n1 egg yolk\n\n1 tablespoon hot mustard\n\nabout 8\u00bd fl. ounces (250 g) grapeseed oil\n\n1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar\n\nfine salt, pepper\n\n\u00bc white onion, finely chopped\n\n\u00bc bunch Italian parsey, minced\n\nlarge pinch of capers\n\n3 small pickles, chopped\n\nCaper berries, for garnish\n\nPRAWNS. Remove the heads and peel the prawns. Make a small incision in the back of the prawn using a sharp knife and remove the intestines. Keep refrigerated until ready for use.\n\nLIGHT BATTER FOR DEEP-FRYING. Sift the flour, baking soda and cornstarch together into a medium-sized mixing bowl. Whisk in the egg, then the fromage blanc. The result will be a heavy paste with lots of lumps\u2014no worries. Whisk in the water little by little until the batter becomes smooth. Refrigerate until ready for use. The batter should be used within 30 minutes. It doesn't keep well due to the baking powder.\n\nHeat the grapeseed oil in a heavy saucepan to 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C). Dip the prawns into the batter; remove with a slotted spoon and place gently into hot oil, three at a time. Using a wire skimmer, turn the prawns regularly to brown on all sides and remove from oil when golden. Place on absorbent paper and sprinkle with fleur de sel.\n\nTARTAR SAUCE. Make sure all ingredients are room temperature before starting. Place the egg yolk in dry bowl. Whisk in the hot mustard and then the oil, little by little. The mayonnaise should be light in color and very creamy. Add the white balsamic vinegar, season with salt and pepper. Add the chopped onion, parsley, capers, and pickles. Check seasoning. Cover and keep chilled until ready for use.\n\nSERVE. Place the warm, golden prawns on a serving platter, place a bowl of spicy tartar sauce in the middle, and add a few caper berries. Make sure you grab one for yourself; they will disappear in a flash!\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 40 minutes. Cook time: 8 minutes.\n\nMain COURSE\n\nBEEF CUBES MARINATED IN SWEET SAKE AND MISO\n\nwith Butternut Squash Discs in Grapefruit and Orange Reduction with Ginger\n\n1 butternut squash\n\n\u2154 tablespoon (10 g) fresh ginger\n\n3 pink grapefruits\n\n2 oranges\n\n1 cup (25 cl) mirin (sweet sake for cooking)\n\n5 fl. ounces (15 cl) rice vinegar\n\n1 tablespoon dark miso paste\n\nAbout 1\u00bd pounds (600 g) beef onglet, or hangar steak\n\n2 tablespoons sesame oil\n\n1 tablespoon olive oil\n\nedible pansy flowers\n\n\u2014\n\nTips from a Pro\n\nMarinate the beef cubes overnight; the rice vinegar will slightly cook the meat and will only need to be seared before serving.\n\nSlice the ends off the butternut squash and peel using a sharp knife. Cut in thin slices. Using a round cookie cutter, cut out perfect discs.\n\nPeel and slice the ginger. Juice 2 of the grapefruits and the oranges. Pour the juices into a saut\u00e9 pan, add the sliced ginger, and place the discs of squash in the juice without overlapping. Heat the squash discs at medium heat then reduce to low until the juices have evaporated. Squash should be slightly candied and tender. If necessary, add some water to finish the cooking. Do not overcook; the discs need to be firm enough to be held in the hand. Peel the last grapefruit using a paring knife to remove the pith. Supreme the grapefruit (remove the wedges by cutting on either side of the white membrane) and hold over a small bowl to collect the juice. Pour the grapefruit juice over the cooked squash discs. Set the grapefruits sections aside.\n\nIn a small bowl, mix the mirin with the rice vinegar. Add the miso paste and whisk.\n\nCut the beef into bite-sized pieces and place into a shallow dish and pour in the marinade. Marinate for 45 minutes.\n\nHeat the two oils in a heavy frying pan. Remove beef from marinade and dry slightly on absorbent paper. No need to salt the meat before cooking; the miso paste is already quite salty. Sear the meat on both sides in the hot oil. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, lower the heat slightly, and add the marinade. Reduce to a syrup consistency. Using a pastry brush, coat the meat with the marinade.\n\nSERVE. Arrange the butternut squash discs on a serving platter. Place a piece of warm, well-coated beef in the center, add a grapefruit section, and top with an edible pansy flower.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6 (3 bites per person). Prep time: 30 minutes. Marinade: 45 minutes. Cook time: 25 minutes.\n\nMAIN COURSE\n\nFREE-RANGE CHICKEN BREAST BITES\n\nwith Coconut, Turmeric, and Kaffir Lime Grilled on an Open Fire\n\n4 free-range chicken breasts\n\n1 quart (1 l) coconut milk\n\n2 teaspoons nuoc man sauce\n\n\u00bc ounce (6 g) ground turmeric\n\nzest of 2 kaffir limes\n\n3 kaffir leaves\n\nSlice the chicken breasts in long strips. Mix the coconut milk, nuoc man, turmeric, kaffir lime zest, and lime leaves, making a very flavorful marinade. Place chicken strips in a shallow dish and cover with marinade. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 40 minutes.\n\nThread the chicken strips onto metal or bamboo skewers. Grill over an open fire for approximately 8 to 10 minutes until golden and fully cooked inside. The metal skewers can get very hot; watch out for burns. The skewers may also be grilled inside on a well-oiled grill pan for the same amount of time.\n\nSERVE. Place warm on a large platter. Season by brushing some of the marinade over the top then zest a kaffir lime using a microplane.\n\n\u2014\n\nMakes 12 skewers. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 8 minutes.\n\nCHEESE\n\nROQUEFORT AND PEAR PUFFS\n\n8.8 ounces (250 g) puff pastry\n\n\u00bd cup (120 g) Roquefort cheese\n\n3 pears\n\njuice of 1 lemon\n\nblack pepper\n\nPreheat oven to 390\u00b0F (200\u00b0C). Roll out the puff pastry. Cut out 1-inch x 3-inch (3 cm x 9 cm) rectangles. Place them on a baking sheet covered with a nonstick baking mat. Cover with a sheet of parchment paper and place another baking sheet over the top. Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown and fully cooked through. Baking the puff pastry between 2 baking sheets keeps it from rising too much, making it very light and crispy. Remove to rack to cool.\n\nCut thin slices of Roquefort and peel and slice the pears in thin quarters. Squeeze lemon juice over the pears to keep them from oxidizing.\n\nJust before serving, place a slice of Roquefort and a slice or two of pear on the puff pastry rectangles. Arrange on a baking sheet and heat in oven for 5 minutes until Roquefort is melted and slightly golden. Ground some fresh black pepper over the top. Serve warm. These, too, will disappear very quickly!\n\n\u2014\n\nMakes 12 puffs. Prep time: 25 minutes. Cook time: 35 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nINDIVIDUAL-SIZED FRESH FRUIT CRUMBLE\n\nwith Toasted Walnuts\n\nVariant 1\n\n2 pears\n\n3 red plums\n\nabout \u00be cup (200 g) red currants\n\n2 tablespoons salted butter\n\n3 tablespoons muscovado sugar\n\n12 toasted walnuts, slightly chopped\n\n2 teaspoons ground ginger\n\nVariant 2\n\n2 apples\n\n4 green plums\n\n2 tablespoon salted butter\n\n3 tablespoons muscovado sugar\n\n2 teaspoons Ceylon cinnamon\n\n12 toasted walnuts, slightly chopped\n\nCrumble\n\n7 ounces (200 g) salted butter, room temperature\n\n7 ounces (200 g) brown sugar\n\n7 ounces (200 g) flour\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) organic oatmeal flakes\n\nFRUIT. Wash, peel, and cut all fruit into small cubes. In two separate saut\u00e9 pans, melt the butter until foamy in each, and then add the sugar and caramelize for 2 minutes. Add the pears and red plums in one, and apples and green plums in the other, and walnuts and spices. Stew over medium heat just until the fruit renders its natural juice, approximately 10 to 15 minutes. Remove to separate bowls.\n\nCRUMBLE. Preheat oven to 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C). In a medium-sized mixing bowl, mix the butter with the sugar using your clean fingertips. Add the flour, continue mixing, and then add the oatmeal.\n\nCover a baking sheet with a nonstick baking mat, and form small hazelnut-sized balls of crumble batter. Place the balls of batter on the baking sheet and bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden and crunchy.\n\nFill 12 individual ramekins with the different fruit and walnut compote. Cover with the golden crumble and bake for approximately 5 minutes until just warmed. Serve.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 12. Prep time: 40 minutes. Cook time: 45 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nEXTRA-MOIST CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH A CARAMEL CENTER\n\nSalted Butter Caramel\n\n5.3 ounces (150 g) sugar\n\n5 fl. ounces (150 g) heavy whipping cream\n\n6.3 ounces (180 g) salted butter, cut in cubes\n\nCake\n\n2 eggs\n\n1\u00be ounces (50 g) sugar\n\n1 ounce (30 g) flour\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) butter\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) good dark chocolate\n\nCARAMEL. Pour half of the sugar in a medium saucepan. Heat over medium until sugar melts, add the rest of the sugar, and continue heating until fully melted and browned to a golden amber color. Do not stir the sugar while it's melting; the utensil will cool down the sugar and it will mass, making a hard block of sugar. Remove caramel from heat. Heat the whipping cream and pour onto the caramel. Careful\u2014the cream will be cooler than the caramel and it will spatter a bit. Put back onto medium heat and mix well using a spatula. The cream should be fully blended and the temperature should decrease to 226\u00b0F (108\u00b0C). Remove caramel from heat and whisk in the cubes of butter little by little. Let cool in refrigerator for 15 minutes.\n\nForm the caramel into balls by rolling in the palms of your clean hands. Set aside.\n\nCHOCOLATE CAKE. Preheat oven to 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C). In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar until frothy and lightened in color. Add the flour and whisk just to mix the flour. Melt the chocolate and butter together over a water bath. Let the chocolate cool slightly and add to the egg mixture. Whisk lightly.\n\nPour the chocolate batter into small silicone molds about \u00be of the way. Add the caramel center and refrigerate for 1 hour. The batter may be made 2 days in advance and chilled in the molds.\n\nPlace silicone molds onto a baking sheet and bake at 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C) for 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool a bit before unmolding. Arrange onto a pretty serving dish, and cut a few open in the middle to show the flowing caramel. Oh so yummy!\n\n\u2014\n\nMakes 12 small portions. Prep time: 40 minutes. Cook time: 20 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nPRALINE AND CHOCOLATE NIB FINANCIERS\n\n11\u00bd fl. ounces (340 g) butter\n\n9.2 ounces (260 g) powdered sugar\n\n2.8 ounces (80 g) almond powder\n\n5.3 ounces (150 g) hazelnut powder\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) flour\n\n8 (240 g) egg whites\n\n1\u00bd ounces (40 g) pralines, crushed\n\n1 ounce (30 g) chocolate nibs\n\nMelt the butter and continue heating until the butter becomes a hazelnut color (beurre noisette). Strain the butter through a fine sieve. In a large mixing bowl, whisk the powdered sugar, the almond and hazelnut powders, and the flour.\n\nUsing a spatula, add the egg whites and mix well. Then add the melted butter by mixing gently with the spatula. Pour the batter into a pastry bag and refrigerate for 1 hour. This batter may be made several days in advance and freezes well.\n\nPreheat oven to 390\u00b0F (200\u00b0 C). Fill silicone financiers molds using the pastry bag. Sprinkle half with crushed pralines and the other half with chocolate nibs. Bake the financiers for 6 to 8 minutes. Remove to rack to cool.\n\n\u2014\n\nMakes 40 mini financiers. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 8 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nMINI MONT BLANC CAKES\n\nCream\n\n1.4 ounces (40 g) butter, softened\n\n5.3 ounces (150 g) chestnut pur\u00e9e, room temperature\n\n1 teaspoon dark rum\n\n6\u00be fl. ounces (200 g) heavy whipping cream\n\nDough\n\n4.4 ounces (125 g) butter, room temperature\n\n1.6 ounces (45 g) powdered sugar\n\nsalt\n\n4 ounces (115 g) flour\n\nCREAM. In a mixer with the whisk attachment, whisk the soft butter until light and creamy. Add the chestnut pur\u00e9e by thirds and whisk rapidly. The chestnut pur\u00e9e must be room temperature. If cold, it will harden the butter and will not mix to a creamy texture. Add the rum and continue mixing. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a small tip.\n\nPlace the mixing bowl and the heavy whipping cream in the freezer for 15 minutes. Start whipping slowly at first, increasing the speed little by little. When the cream holds in the whisk and makes firm peaks, stop whipping. Fill a second pastry bag fitted with a small round tip and refrigerate until ready for use.\n\nDOUGH. Preheat oven to 340\u00b0F (170\u00b0C). Using a mixer with the paddle attachment, mix the soft butter with the powdered sugar to obtain a creamy the texture. Add about 1 gram of salt and continue mixing. Add the flour and mix vigorously. Roll the soft dough between two sheets of parchment paper, about \u00bc- inch thick. The amount of butter in this recipe will make the dough crunchy and delicious, however, it will also make it quite fragile. Refrigerate for 30 minutes, as the cold dough will be much easier to work with.\n\nUsing a small, square cookie cutter, cut out perfect squares and place on a baking sheet covered with a nonstick baking mat. Bake 10 to 12 minutes until slightly browned. Remove to a rack to cool.\n\nSERVE. Using the pastry bag with the whipping cream, pipe out the cream, forming a dome shape on each butter cookie. Place the cookies with the cream on a rack and partially cover with chestnut pur\u00e9e cream by using a back and forth motion. Remove to a serving platter and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Keep refrigerated until serving. The mont blanc are best when fresh. You'll need to serve and eat them right away, but believe me, that won't be tough to do!\n\n\u2014\n\nMakes 24 portions. Prep time: 40 minutes. Cook time: 12 minutes.\n\nMENU 09\n\n_______________\n\nMY STAR RESTAURANT DINNERS\u2014FRESH FROM THE SEA\n\nAppetizer\n\nWild Atlantic Mackerel in a Chardonnay-Fennel Marinade with Crispy Mackerel Skin Chips\n\nMeagre Carpaccio with Fresh Lime Vinaigrette and Salicornia Emulsion\n\nMain Course\n\nTiger Prawns from Madagascar and Roasted Squash Gnocchi with Verbena Prawn Emulsion and Roasted Shiitake\n\nDessert\n\nFrench Vanilla Ice Cream Macarons with Fresh Mangoes\n\n_______________\n\nS ometimes you just really want to make a very special meal, regardless of the time needed in preparation. Delicious, of course, but also perfectly executed. One of those dinners where you can see the \"wow\" in the eyes of each guest as you serve dish after dish. One of those meals where you get that tickle of self-satisfaction when you see what you've achieved, making it all worthwhile.\n\nMy star restaurant menus are that kind of meal. Working as a professional chef over the years has taught me endless techniques and tricks, many of which can be used right in your home kitchen. You will find several within each recipe.\n\nHow you plate your dishes will make all the difference. Your menu will go from cozy, family-style to star-restaurant appeal by designing the aesthetics of your plate. A few hints:\n\n\u2022 First, think in advance how the dish should be plated; a few sketches will help. This will prevent mishaps while your guests are patiently waiting for their gourmet meal.\n\n\u2022 Use white plates, the food is the star.\n\n\u2022 Place the main feature of the dish first, and then add the accompaniments, condiments, emulsions, and sauces. Never put the sauce directly on the main element, it should be served on the side in a small sauce dish.\n\n\u2022 Finish with beautiful, fresh herbs, sprouts, or flowers. Everything on the plate must be edible and enhance the taste of the main dish.\n\n\u2022 Plate elements in odd numbers\u20143, 5, or 7 pieces\u2014are more visually balanced then 2, 4, or 6.\n\n\u2022 Be sure to leave space on the plate. A plate that is too full may be comforting but is never very appetizing.\n\n\u2022 And lastly, prepare small pieces of paper towel to quickly wipe up drips and spills before presenting the plates.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nWILD ATLANTIC MACKEREL IN A CHARDONNAY-FENNEL MARINADE\n\nwith Crispy Mackerel Skin Chips\n\nMackerel\n\n4 very fresh wild Atlantic mackerels\n\nMarinade\n\n2 young carrots\n\n1 sweet white onion\n\n1 bulb fennel\n\n1 organic lemon\n\nabout 5 fl. ounces (150) g olive oil\n\n4 sprigs fresh thyme\n\n1 bay leaf\n\n10 black pepper corns\n\n2\u00bd fl. ounces (75 g) Xeres vinegar\n\n4\/5 cup (20 cl) chardonnay\n\n4\/5 cup (20 cl) water\n\n10 black peppercorns\n\nMACKEREL. Filet the mackerels using a sharp, thin bladed knife. Mackerels are easy to filet because the skin has no scales and the flesh is quite soft. Delicately remove the stomach portion of the filet by cutting at a slant. It's always a bit fatty and not nice on the plate. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate.\n\nMACKEREL SKIN CHIPS. Preheat oven to 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0). Remove the skin using the same sharp knife. Lay the filet before you on a cutting board skin-side down. Slide the knife between the skin and the flesh starting at the tail. Slide the knife gently back and forth, keeping the blade perfectly flat and parallel to the cutting board. Hold the skin by the tail to keep it from rolling up as you remove it.\n\nCover a baking tray with parchment paper. Lay the mackerel skin perfectly flat on the parchment paper, cover with a second sheet of parchment, and a second baking sheet. Bake for approximately 20 minutes. The natural oils in the skin will slightly fry and make it crispy. Remove to a rack to cool.\n\nMARINADE. Peel and wash the carrots, slice thinly. Peel the sweet onion and slice thinly. Cut off the tips of the fennel, slice in two lengthwise. Remove the core using a paring knife and thinly slice each fennel half. Wash the lemon and slice thinly as well.\n\nIn a large pot, heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Add the sprigs of thyme and the bay leaf, and heat gently. Add the sliced vegetables and the slices of lemon. Sweat 2 to 3 minutes, adding a bit more olive oil if necessary. Add the vinegar and chardonnay, bring to a boil, and let the alcohol evaporate. Add the rest of the olive oil, water, and the peppercorns. Simmer for 10 minutes then remove from heat.\n\nPlace the chilled mackerel filets on a cutting board and slice 1-inch pieces at an angle to form a diamond shape. Place the mackerel slices skin-side down in a shallow dish. Pour the warm marinade over the top to just cover the slices. Cover in plastic wrap and cool in refrigerator overnight. The vinegar and lemon will slightly cook the filets.\n\nThe next day, remove the filets to absorbent paper. Filter the marinade, separating the vegetables from the liquid.\n\nSERVE. On a small plate, place a nice mackerel skin chip then a piece of marinated filet. Add some fennel, onion, and lemon, then season with a spoon of marinade. Serve with dry white wine, Champagne brut, or Prosecco.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cooking time: 30 minutes.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nMEAGRE CARPACCIO\n\nwith Fresh Lime Vinaigrette and Salicornia Emulsion\n\nCarpaccio\n\n1 fresh meagre, approximately (2\u00bc pounds, 1 kg)\n\nSalicornia Emulsion\n\nabout \u2154 cup (150 g) fresh Salicornia\n\n10 fl. ounces (300 g) heavy whipping cream\n\nLime Vinaigrette\n\n2 fresh limes\n\nfleur de sel\n\nolive oil\n\nsmall leaves Thai basil\n\nMaigre, or meager in English, is often confused with sea bass. The flesh of the maigre is white and firm and very light in taste. It is a wonderful fish to use in season but could be replaced by any other white-fleshed, mild local fish.\n\nThe delicious Salicornia used in the recipe doesn't really have an accurate translation. It is a sweet and salty weed that grows near salt marches. It doesn't actually grow in the sea but needs to be near sea water.\n\nCARPACCIO. Scale and filet the fish. Remove the stomach portion. Place the filets in the freezer for 10 minutes to firm the flesh. Select the round plates you'll be using to plate the dish. Trace a perfect circle using a pencil onto a small, square sheet of parchment paper; the circle should be half the size of the plate.\n\nRemove the filets from the freezer. Using a sharp knife, cut thin strips off the filets by sliding the knife from the tail toward the head in the direction of the flesh. Turn the traced parchment paper over (you don't want the pencil marks to transfer to the fish!) and place the thin strips of meagre delicately onto the circle pattern without overlapping. Smooth out the edges of the circle using a paring knife.\n\nCover the fish with a second square of parchment paper and refrigerate until ready for use.\n\nSALICORNIA EMULSION. Rinse the Salicornia. Chop roughly and place into a medium-sized saucepan with the whipping cream. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 10 to 12 minutes. Mix well using an immersion blender. Strain through a fine sieve and pour into a clean, small saucepan.\n\nVINAIGRETTE. Zest one lime and juice two. Whisk the lime juice with the zest, fleur de sel, and then olive oil.\n\nPLATING. Remove the carpaccio from the refrigerator. Remove the top piece of parchment and turn the other sheet over onto the plate delicately. The circle should be off-center. Once placed, gently remove the last sheet of parchment.\n\nUsing a brush, lightly cover the carpaccio with the lime vinaigrette and place a few leaves of Thai basil.\n\nHeat the Salicornia emulsion and mix with an immersion blender to create a nice froth. Place 1 tablespoon of the emulsion on the plate and decorate with a sprig of Salicornia. Add some fleur de sel and freshly zested lime.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 5 minutes.\n\nMAIN COURSE\n\nTIGER PRAWNS FROM MADAGASCAR AND ROASTED SQUASH GNOCCHI\n\nwith Verbena Prawn Emulsion and Roasted Shiitake\n\nPrawns\n\n12 tiger prawns\n\nolive oil\n\nMushrooms\n\n3\u00bc pounds (1,5 kg) shiitake mushrooms\n\nsalted butter\n\nolive oil\n\nsalt, pepper\n\nGnocchi\n\n\u00bd pound (250 g) buttercup squash\n\nsea salt\n\n\u00bd pound (250 g) potatoes with starch\n\nabout 1 cup (250 g) flour\n\n1 egg\n\nsalt, pepper\n\nnutmeg\n\ncornstarch\n\nPRAWNS. Remove the heads, peel the prawns, and set aside for the sauce. Make a small incision in the back of the prawn using a sharp knife and remove the intestine.\n\nKeep refrigerated until ready for use.\n\nMUSHROOMS. Rinse rapidly in cool water and place immediately onto a clean towel to dry. Never leave the shiitake in the water; they are like mushroom sponges! Slice in two or four depending on size and set aside.\n\nGNOCCHI. Rinse the buttercup squash and slice in two. Remove the seeds using a large spoon. Slice into large quarters. Cover the bottom of a baking dish with coarse sea salt, add the quarters of squash and the potatoes (skin on), and bake in a 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C) oven for 20 to 25 minutes until flesh is tender. Baking in the oven will develop the natural sugars in both the squash and potatoes, and it will also dry out the flesh a bit, making the gnocchi dough much easier to work with.\n\nWhen finished baking, peel the potatoes and the squash and scoop out the flesh.\n\nPass the potatoes through a food mill then through a drum sieve. Mix the squash using an immersion blender, and pass through a sieve if the squash is still a bit wet. Mix the two together. Let cool before adding the next ingredients.\n\nUsing your clean hands, add the flour then the egg, salt, pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg. Divide the dough into 4 long rolls, about \u00be inches thick. Cut \u00be \u2013inch-long pieces. Using the back of a fork, roll the gnocchi along the tines, making an imprint. The grooves will catch the sauce.\n\nPlace the gnocchi on a tray and sprinkle with cornstarch to keep them from being damp. Place in refrigerator until ready to use. The gnocchi may be made the day before and kept refrigerated.\n\nPrawn Emulsion\n\n1 sweet white onion\n\n1 carrot\n\n2 tomatoes\n\n1 stalk celery\n\n4\u20135 tablespoons olive oil\n\nheads and shells of prawns\n\n8 fresh verbena leaves\n\n\u2154 cup (15 cl) dry white wine\n\n1 quart (1 l) heavy whipping cream\n\n2 tablespoons tomato concentrate\n\n1 tablespoon butter, warm\n\n4 tablespoons olive oil\n\nsalt, pepper\n\nPRAWN EMULSION. Peel and dice the sweet onion. Peel and slice the carrot. Slice tomatoes into quarters, and wash and slice the celery stalk. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the heads and shells of the prawns. Add some of the verbena leaves, and sweat over medium heat. The shells will turn red as you heat them. Add the vegetables, stir, and sweat for 5 to 6 minutes on medium heat. Increase the heat and deglaze with the white wine. Let the alcohol evaporate. Add the heavy whipping cream and the tomato concentrate. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, add the remaining verbena leaves, and simmer for 50 to 60 minutes on low heat. The cream will reduce to about half and the flavors will concentrate. Strain the emulsion through a fine sieve and keep warm in a medium saucepan.\n\nFINAL PREP. Boil a large pot with salted water. Drop in the gnocchi. When they rise to the surface, they're ready. Strain and keep warm in a nonstick pan with 1 tablespoon of frothy salted butter.\n\nHeat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a heavy skillet. Toss in the quartered mushrooms and saut\u00e9 over high heat until they lose their natural liquid. Lower heat, add a tablespoon of salted butter, and continue saut\u00e9ing until the mushrooms become slightly roasted. Season with salt and pepper.\n\nHeat 2 more tablespoons olive oil in a nonstick pan. Season the prawns with salt and pepper. Sear on both sides over medium heat approximately 3 to 4 minutes total. The prawns should not be overcooked. Remove to absorbent paper.\n\nPLATING. Line up 3 gnocchi on the left-hand side of the plate. Place a warm, roasted prawn over the top of each. Using an immersion blender, blend the hot prawn emulsion until frothy. Spoon the emulsion generously over the prawns and gnocchi. Add the warm shiitake mushrooms and finish with fresh verbena leaves. Serve warm.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 45 minutes. Cooking time: 1 hour and 40 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nFRENCH VANILLA ICE CREAM MACARONS WITH FRESH MANGOES\n\nMacaron\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) almond meal\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) powdered sugar\n\nabout 3 fl. ounces (90 g) egg white\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) sugar\n\nOrange food coloring\n\nIce Cream\n\nfor \u00be of a quart\n\n1 vanilla bean\n\n1\u00bc cups (300 g) whole milk\n\n6\u00be fl. ounces (200 g) heavy whipping cream\n\n4 egg yolks\n\n3\u00bc ounces (90 g) sugar\n\nMangoes\n\n2 ripe mangoes\n\nedible pansy flower\n\nAbout egg whites: For best results, separate the whites from the yolks 3 days in advance. Keep the whites in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Use the yolks immediately, for a pastry cream or mayonnaise, for example. If you don't use them right away, discard them. The yolks cannot be kept.\n\nMACARONS. Preheat oven to 300\u00b0F (150\u00b0C). Place the almond meal and the powdered sugar together in the food processor. Pulse several times until you obtain a well-mixed powder. Do not over pulse; you don't want the natural oil in the almond meal to come to the surface. Sift the powder through a drum sieve to make sure it is perfectly mixed. Place into a large mixing bowl.\n\nBeat the egg whites, adding the sugar little by little until you have a soft-peaked meringue. Add a few drops of food coloring to the meringue and beat gently to the desired color. The macaroon shells may be colorful, but I don't flavor them. Traditionally, they should have that wonderful almond taste.\n\nAdd a large spatula full of meringue to the powder mixture. Mix well at first. You should have a pasty texture. Add the meringue, in three parts, mixing gently each time. Use a large rubber spatula for this\u2014never a whisk. Always turn your spatula in the same direction, from bottom to top to mix; this will keep you from overmixing. The \"macaronade\" should be smooth, semi thick, and shiny. When you lift some batter up with your spatula, it should fall back into the bowl in ribbon fashion. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a small (approximately 10mm) round tip.\n\nPrepare baking sheets with parchment paper. Place a dot of batter in each of the four corners to \"glue\" the parchment paper to the baking sheet. This will keep it from blowing about in the convection oven. Pipe out even-sized dollops of batter in straight lines. Be sure to leave space between them; they will expand. Tap the baking sheet on the edge of the counter to flatten the dollops and remove any air bubbles. Let the dollops of batter air-dry for approximately 15 minutes. The surface should no longer be sticky when touched with the tip of your finger. Bake the macarons for 12 to 14 minutes. Remove from oven and slide the parchment paper to a rack to cool.\n\nICE CREAM. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla pod using the tip of a sharp knife. Heat the milk, cream, and the vanilla seeds to just before boiling in a medium saucepan. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar until the yolks become frothy and lighten in color. Pour the hot milk\/cream over the egg yolks, whisk, and pour back into the saucepan. Heat to just before boiling; the mixture will thicken slightly and should coat the spoon. Pour into a clean mixing bowl and cool. Pour the mixture into the ice cream maker and churn until creamy. Keep in freezer until ready to serve. Homemade ice cream will always be creamier than the store-bought version.\n\nArrange the macarons by pairs. Fill a piping bag with the vanilla ice cream and place a good dollop on one of the macaron shells. Cover with the second and keep in the freezer until ready to serve.\n\nMANGOES. Remove the skin from the mangoes using a sharp paring knife. Cut thick slices of one mango; slice into sticks and then into evenly sized cubes. With the second, remove the ripe flesh, cutting around the pit, and mix using an immersion blender to make a semi-thick pur\u00e9e.\n\nPLATING. Using a pastry brush dipped in the mango pur\u00e9e, paint a nice stripe of mango in the center of a round plate. Place the cold macaron in the center. Decorate with an uneven number of mango cubes and an edible pansy flower, if available.\n\n\u2014\n\nMakes 12 macaroons. Prep Time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 33 minutes.\n\nMENU 10\n\n_______________\n\nMY STAR RESTAURANT DINNERS\u2014MEAT\n\nAppetizer\n\nPortobello Mushroom Tart with Sweet Onion Compote and Pancetta\n\nSemi-Cooked Duck Foie Gras with Candied Citrus\n\nMain Course\n\nLamb Tenderloin Roasted in Salted Butter, Artichoke Pur\u00e9e and Baby Artichokes Barigoule Style, with Lamb Jus and Artichoke Reduction\n\nDessert\n\nDouble Chocolate Whipped Ganache Tart\n\n_______________\n\nI so love this menu.\n\nIt features the type of dishes that are normally ordered in only a fine, French restaurant. Actually making them in your own kitchen seems, to say the least, a bit intimidating, but not to worry! Yes, this menu does require some work, but since when does reward come without effort?\n\nMichelin star dishes like foie gras, lamb tenderloin, artichokes, lamb demi glace, and whipped ganache are included in this special meal\u2014and they are all fully achievable at home.\n\nStart by carefully reading each recipe. Make a good shopping list and take a few notes on how to get organized. Be thoughtful about your guest list as well: five gourmet friends and yourself at the table sounds like a good start to me.\n\nNext step, slip on your favorite apron and your chef shoes, and you're on your way to culinary bliss!\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nPORTOBELLO MUSHROOM TART\n\nwith Sweet Onion Compote and Pancetta\n\n1 round puff pastry, all butter\n\n3 sweet, white onions\n\n3 tablespoons salted butter\n\nsalt, pepper\n\n6 to 8 small, firm portobello mushrooms\n\n4 tablespoons duck fat\n\n6 thin slices of Italian pancetta\n\nFresh beet greens\n\nPreheat oven to 395\u00b0F (200\u00b0C). Using a 4-inch (10-cm) round cookie cutter, cut out 6 perfect circles from the puff pastry. Place on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper and chill in refrigerator.\n\nPeel and thinly slice the sweet onions. Warm the salted butter in a heavy, nonstick skillet until frothy and sweat the sweet onions on medium heat. Mix gently, lightly coating in the salted butter. Season the onions with salt and pepper and continue cooking slowly until onions have fully melted, about 15 minutes; they should remain white in color and sweet in taste. Once cooked, set aside on a plate to cool.\n\nRemove puff pastry rounds from refrigerator, cover in a second sheet of parchment paper and a second baking sheet, and bake for approximately 20 minutes until golden brown. Remove to a rack to cool.\n\nClean the stems of the portobello mushrooms using a paring knife if necessary. Brush the tops using a damp mushroom brush or simple a wet paper towel. Never plunge portobello mushrooms in water; they will absorb it all. Remove stems and save for another use. Using a sharp knife, cut the caps in thin slices.\n\nHeat 2 tablespoons of duck fat in the same skillet used for the onions. Heat the portobello mushroom cups until slightly browned on both sides, and season with salt and pepper. Remove to absorbent paper.\n\nCover each puff pastry round with a thin layer of sweet onions. Arrange the portobello slices so that they slightly overlap. Cut the pancetta slices in two, twist in a corkscrew fashion, and place on top of the tartlets. Using a brush, coat lightly with the rest of the melted duck fat and bake in oven at 350\u00b0F (180\u00b0C) until pancetta is crispy and the tartlets are heated, approximately 10 minutes. Garnish with beet greens. Serve warm.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 51 minutes.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nSEMI-COOKED DUCK FOIE GRAS\n\nwith Candied Citrus\n\nFois Gras\n\n1 raw, fatted duck liver from the Landes region of France, (1 pound, or 500 g)\n\n1 teaspoon (5 g) salt\n\n1\u00bc teaspoons (2.5 g) white pepper\n\n\u00bc teaspoon (0.5 g) allspice\n\n\u215b teaspoon (0.25 g) ground cardamom\n\n\u00bc teaspoon (1 g) sugar\n\n\u00bc cup (5 cl) white sherry\n\nfreshly ground black pepper\n\nblack Hawaiian salt\n\nCandied Citrus\n\n2 organic lemons\n\n1 organic lime\n\n\u00bd-inch piece fresh ginger\n\nabout 3\u2153 fl. ounces (100 g) cane sugar\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) rice vinegar\n\nBaguette, thinly sliced and toasted\n\nTips from a Pro\n\nWhen making foie gras, make several lobes at the same time. It is so delicious and makes for a wonderful appetizer on special occasions. I also love to package it up in a beautiful linen kitchen towel and offer it as a gift to my good friends!\n\nHow to choose a duck liver for foie gras? It should be light and evenly colored without bruises. When pressed gently, the liver should indent then come back to its original shape. You will need to prepare and poach the foie gras eight days before serving.\n\nRemove the duck liver from refrigerator 1 hour before seasoning. Gently separate the two lobes. Using a small paring knife, remove the large vein between the two lobes. Remove any other surface veins.\n\nWeigh all of the seasonings using a spice scale or spoon scale. The seasoning amounts are important and must be precise. Mix the seasoning together in a small bowl.\n\nRub the two lobes on all sides with the seasoning and place in a shallow dish. Cover with the white sherry, cover in plastic wrap, and place in refrigerator 24 hours to marinate. The next day, remove the dish from the refrigerator and leave at room temperature 30 minutes before preparing.\n\nReassemble the two lobes so that the liver takes its original shape. Prepare two overlapping sheets of heat resistant plastic wrap and place the liver in the center near the bottom. Roll into a 2\u00bc-inch-diameter log shape. Tighten the ends by tying a knot. The roll should be perfectly airtight. Cover in a piece of aluminum foil.\n\nFill a large pot with water and heat to exactly 150\u00b0F (66\u00b0C)\u2014you will need a thermometer. This temperature is important; it will ensure that the foie gras is cooked gently and fully through. You will need to maintain the water at this temperature throughout the cooking time. Place the foie gras log into the water and cover with a plate a bit smaller than the pot. The plate will keep the foie gras emerged in the water, instead of floating on the surface. For a semi-cooked foie gras or mi-cuit, count 40 minutes cooking time.\n\nPrepare a large bowl of water with ice. Plunge the cooked foie gras log into the ice water to stop the cooking. Once fully chilled, approximately 15 minutes, place log in a shallow dish and refrigerate for eight days before serving. Eight days is the ideal amount of time so that the flavors have time to develop and the liver rests. A few days less is okay, but I do not advise going beyond this time. If you want to keep your foie gras longer, it would need to be sterilized.\n\nCANDIED CITRUS. Rinse the lemons and the lime. Peel the ginger. Cut the lemon into thin slices. Zest the lime using a microplane and squeeze the juice. Place the lime juice, lime zest, sugar, ginger, and rice vinegar in a pan. Heat on medium until sugar has melted and some of the vinegar has evaporated. Place the lemon slices in the pan without overlapping. Lower the heat and cook slowly until most of the liquid evaporates and lemon slices have candied. Remove the slices and slightly reduce the leftover juice.\n\nPLATING. Remove foie gras from refrigerator 30 minutes before serving. Remove the aluminum foil and plastic wrap and gently remove the yellow duck fat that has congealed on the surface. You can save this fat\u2014it's the good one\u2014and use it to saut\u00e9 potatoes for another dish. (Yum!!)\n\nUsing a sharp, thin-bladed knife dipped in warm water, cut perfect \u00bd -inch slices of the foie gras. On a large white plate, using a pastry brush, paint a large stripe of citrus reduction and place a candied lemon slice in the center. Add one or two slices of foie gras, and season with fresh pepper and black Hawaiian salt. Serve with thinly sliced, freshly toasted baguette. Traditionally, foie gras in France is served with slightly sweet toasted brioche. I like the crunch of a wonderful baguette instead. The foie gras is so delicious, it needs no competition for taste.\n\n\u2014\n\nMakes 10 portions (1 pound of duck liver). Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 40 minutes.\n\nMAIN COURSE\n\nLAMB TENDERLOIN\n\nRoasted in Salted Butter, Artichoke Pur\u00e9e and Baby Artichokes Barigoule Style, with Lamb Jus and Artichoke Reduction\n\nArtichoke Pur\u00e9e\n\n6 large artichokes\n\njuice of 1 lemon\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\nsalt, pepper\n\n4\/5 cup (200 g) chicken or vegetable stock, warm\n\n3 tablespoons salted butter, room temperature\n\nBaby Artichokes, Barigoule style\n\n12 baby artichokes\n\njuice of 1 lemon\n\n2 shallots\n\n1 carrot\n\n2 tomatoes\n\n\u00bd bunch fresh cilantro\n\n2 lemons\n\nolive oil\n\n1 teaspoon coriander seeds\n\n1 cup (25 cl) dry white wine\n\n\u2154 cup (15 cl) vegetable stock\n\nARTICHOKE PUR\u00c9E. Break off the stem of the artichoke. Remove approximately \u00bc of the exterior leaves by hand. Peel the artichokes (turn) using a sharp paring knife. Hold the artichokes in the palm of your hand and turn the knife, held at an angle around the artichoke, removing all of the exterior leaves as you go. The term \"turn\" is used here because you want to keep the round shape of the artichoke by turning around it with your knife. Stop turning when you get to the heart. Cut off the top leaves and, using a small spoon, scoop out the choke. Prepare a small bowl of water with the juice of 1 lemon. Keep the artichokes hearts in the water until ready to cook to prevent them from oxidizing.\n\nHeat the olive oil in a heavy skillet, sweat the artichoke hearts, season with salt and pepper, and add the warm stock. Simmer until tender, approximately 15 minutes.\n\nRemove to the bowl of the food processor using a slotted spoon. Mix with the soft, salted butter to a fine pur\u00e9e texture. Check the seasoning. Keep warm in a small saucepan.\n\nBABY ARTICHOKES, BARIGOULE STYLE. Turn the baby artichokes as you did for the larger ones. The choke will be smaller and more tender but must be removed all the same. Keep hearts in lemon water.\n\nPeel and dice the shallots, and peel and dice the carrot to brunoise (small cubes). Peel the tomatoes, slice in quarters, remove the pulp and seeds, dice to brunoise. Wash and dry the cilantro. Rinse the lemons, cut in thin slices. Zest the second lemon.\n\nHeat olive oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat; add the coriander seeds and sweat the shallots. Add the artichoke hearts and brown slightly on all sides. Deglaze with the white wine and heat to evaporate the alcohol. Season with salt and pepper. Add the diced carrot and tomato, the lemon zest, the cilantro leaves plus the vegetable stock, bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer until artichokes are tender. Remove artichokes and reduce the cooking juices to half. Set the juice aside to be used for the lamb jus. Put the artichokes back into the pan and keep warm, adding a bit of salted butter.\n\nLamb Jus and Artichoke Reduction\n\nbones from the baby lamb saddle\n\n1 pound (500 g) lamb collar\n\nolive oil\n\nsalted butter\n\n\u2154 cup (15 cl) dry white wine\n\n\u00bd carrot, diced\n\n1 white onion, diced\n\n1 quart (1 l) veal stock\n\ncooking liquid from baby artichokes\n\nLamb\n\n1 young lamb tenderloin, prepared by your butcher. Ask to keep the bones from the saddle.\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\n4 tablespoons salted butter\n\n1 peeled clove of garlic\n\n2 sprigs of thyme\n\n1 bay leaf\n\nsalt, pepper\n\nLAMB JUS. Brown the lamb collar meat and the bones in olive oil in a medium saucepan, add 1 tablespoon of salted butter, and continue browning. Deglaze with the white wine, and scrape the bottom of the saucepan using a spatula to detach the juices and browned bits. Let the alcohol evaporate, approximately 2 minutes. Add the diced carrot and onion. Add a bit more butter, if necessary, to brown the vegetables. Strain the meat and vegetables to remove excess fat. Put all back into the saucepan and add the warm veal stock. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 40 minutes. Skim, if necessary.\n\nStrain through a fine sieve into a small saucepan, add the cooking liquid from the barigoule artichokes and reduce to half. The jus will thicken lightly and should coat the spoon. Keep warm.\n\nLAMB. Preheat oven to 320\u00b0F (160\u00b0 C). Remove the lamb tenderloin from the refrigerator at least 30 minutes before roasting. Season the lamb with salt on all sides. Heat the olive oil in an oven-resistant heavy skillet. Brown the lamb tenderloin on one side, turn over using tongs, add the salted butter, the clove of garlic, the thyme and bay leaf, lower the heat, and brown on the other side by basting continually with the frothy salted butter.\n\nRemove skillet from heat and place in preheated oven for 20 minutes. Remove from oven, cover in aluminum foil, and set the oven to 140\u00b0F (60\u00b0C). Open the oven door for 1 minute to cool the oven and place the lamb back in the oven to keep it warm.\n\nPLATING. Warm large white plates in the same oven as the lamb for 2 minutes. Using a simple tablespoon, scoop up a spoonful of artichoke pur\u00e9e and let the dollop fall onto the top-right section of the plate. Using the back of the spoon, trace a straight line with the pur\u00e9e. Cut the baby artichokes in two, and place them graphically along the pur\u00e9e. Place the carrot and tomato cubes around the artichokes.\n\nSlice the rested lamb tenderloin into \u00be -inch slices. With a small ladle, pour a little jus on the left side of the plate and, using the back of the ladle, spread out to a perfect circle. Place the lamb on top and season with salt and fresh ground pepper. Serve the artichoke pur\u00e9e in a dish on the side and the sauce in a sauce bowl.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 60 minutes. Cooking time: 1 hour and 35 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nDOUBLE CHOCOLATE WHIPPED GANACHE TART\n\nChocolate Tart\n\n4.4 ounces (125 g) soft butter\n\n2.6 ounces (75 g) powdered sugar\n\n0.9 ounces (25 g) hazelnut meal\n\n1 teaspoon (2.5 g) cinnamon\n\n1 egg\n\n7 ounces (200 g) flour\n\n2 teaspoons (5 g) baking powder\n\n2 teaspoons (5 g) cocoa powder\n\nDark Chocolate Whipped Ganache\n\n1\u2154 fl. ounces (50 g) heavy whipping cream\n\n\u00bc ounce (6 g) honey\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) good-quality dark chocolate\n\n5 fl. ounces (150 g) heavy whipping cream, cold\n\nWhite Chocolate Whipped Ganache\n\n1\u2154 fl. ounces (50 g) heavy whipping cream\n\n\u00bc ounce (6 g) honey\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) good-quality white chocolate\n\n5 fl. ounces (150 g) heavy whipping cream, cold\n\n2 ripe passion fruits\n\nCHOCOLATE TART. Mix the soft butter, powdered sugar, hazelnut meal, and cinnamon in the mixer using the paddle attachment. Add the egg, mix. In a separate bowl, sift the flour with the baking powder and cocoa powder. Add to the egg mixture and mix well. Place the dough onto a piece of plastic wrap and flatten into a disc shape. Cover and refrigerate overnight.\n\nPreheat oven to 320\u00b0F (160\u00b0C). The next day, roll the dough into a large rectangle, about \u00bc \u2013inch thick. Cut into 1- x 4-inch rectangles and place on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Bake at 320\u00b0F (160\u00b0C) for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove to a rack to cool.\n\nWHIPPED GANACHE. The day before, heat \u00bc cup of heavy whipping cream with the honey to boiling. Place the dark chocolate in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and let melt for a few minutes. Mix with an immersion blender to emulsion. Add the rest of the cold heavy whipping cream and blend with the immersion blender. Place in refrigerator overnight. Proceed in the same way for the white chocolate.\n\nThe next day, place the bowl of the mixer and whisks in the freezer for 15 minutes. Remove the chocolate creams from the refrigerator and whisk slowly at first, progressively increase the speed until the ganache has the texture of light whipped cream. Do not over-whip. Remove to pastry bags fitted with a small round tip for the white chocolate and a medium-sized tip for the dark chocolate.\n\nSERVE. Pipe out small dots of white chocolate ganache and large dots of dark chocolate ganache onto the chocolate tart base. Cut the passion fruit in two and scoop out the seeds using a teaspoon. Decorate the tart with seeds and a bit of juice. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 45 minutes. Cook time: 12 minutes.\n\nMENU 11\n\n_______________\n\nFRENCH CAPE COD\n\nAppetizer\n\nMini Crab Cakes\n\nClam Chowder with \u00cele de R\u00e9 New Potatoes\n\nMain Course\n\nBlue Brittany Lobster Roll with Lobster Coral Remoulade Sauce\n\nDessert\n\nCreamy Lemon Cheesecake\n\n_______________\n\nT he dishes for this menu were made with the freshest possible ingredients from sea to table, one could rightly say. I loved making all of them, especially because I was cooking in one of my favorite places ever: \u00cele de R\u00e9. Near the port city of La Rochelle, \u00cele de R\u00e9 is such a gem. The island reminds me so much of a well-known East Coast island in the United States that I had to call this menu French Cape Cod!\n\nNothing too technical here, nor too time consuming; the menu is all about finding the best produce and freshest seafood you can. This, as always, will really make the difference.\n\nWhat I love about this menu is its versatility. It would make for a wonderful sunset picnic on the beach or a super satisfying backyard feast. You could even go the fancy route and serve it all with a wonderful dry Champagne; it just depends on your mood. I know you and your guests will love this. Its crunchy, creamy, buttery, and lemony\u2014how could you not?\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nMINI CRAB CAKES\n\nMayonnaise\n\n1 egg yolk\n\n1 teaspoon strong mustard\n\n8\u00bd fl. ounces (250 g) grapeseed oil\n\njuice of 1 lemon\n\nsalt, pepper\n\nCrab\n\n1 tablespoon coarse sea salt\n\nsprigs of thyme\n\nBay leaf\n\nhandful black peppercorns\n\n1 pound (450 g) fresh crab claw meat\n\n2\u00bc (65 g) homemade mayonnaise\n\n1 egg\n\n1 tablespoon mustard\n\n1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce\n\n\u00bd teaspoon hot sauce\n\n4 spring onions\n\n20 crackers, finely crushed\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\nsalt and freshly ground black pepper\n\nlemon wedges, for serving\n\nHOMEMADE MAYONNAISE. Make sure all ingredients are room temperature before starting. Place the egg yolk in dry bowl. Whisk in the strong mustard then whisk in the oil, little by little. The mayonnaise should be light and very creamy. Add the lemon juice, season with salt and pepper. Check seasoning. Cover and keep chilled until ready for use.\n\nCRAB. Boil a large pot of water with a tablespoon of coarse sea salt, thyme, and bay leaf plus a few black peppercorns. Add the crab claws, and when water begins simmering again, count 15 minutes. Remove the claws and run them under cold water to stop the cooking. Let cool then break open using a crab cracker. Remove all of the delicious crabmeat and set aside in a medium-sized mixing bowl.\n\nIn a small bowl, whisk the homemade mayonnaise with the egg, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and hot sauce until smooth. Slice the spring onions thinly.\n\nIn another medium bowl, lightly toss the crabmeat with the spring onions and cracker crumbs. Gently fold in the mayonnaise mixture. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.\n\nCRAB CAKES. Scoop the crab mixture into small balls and press them lightly into a disc shape. In a large skillet, heat the oil until hot. Add the crab cakes and cook over moderately high heat until deeply golden and heated through, about 3 minutes per side. Transfer the crab cakes to plates and serve with lemon wedges.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 40 minutes. Cook time: 15 minutes.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nCLAM CHOWDER\n\nwith \u00cele de R\u00e9 New Potatoes\n\n24 fresh clams (palourdes in French)\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n2 cloves garlic, 1 whole, 1 minced\n\n\u2154 cup (15 cl) dry white wine\n\n4 bacon slices\n\n6 spring onions, chopped\n\n3 stalks celery, sliced\n\n1 cup (250 g) shellfish stock\n\n10 new potatoes from \u00cele de R\u00e9 or fingerlings, sliced in \u00bd-inch slices, skin on\n\n3 sprigs fresh thyme, chopped\n\n\u00bc teaspoon ground black pepper\n\n3 parsley sprigs\n\n1 bay leaf\n\n2\u00be cups (660 g) whole milk\n\n8\u00bd fl. ounces (250 g) heavy whipping cream\n\nSourdough bread, for serving\n\nFresh thyme sprigs, for garnish\n\n\u2014\n\nWhy are \u00cele de R\u00e9 potatoes so good?\n\nSomething about the soil and the sea air on this 17-mile long island give these young potatoes their unique nutty flavor. Their planting and harvesting is strictly controlled and they actually have an AOC (Appellation d'origine Control\u00e9e), much like wine. There are several varieties and sizes; I like the tiny new potatoes the best. If you can find them, they will make your chowder sweet and rich in flavor.\n\nTo open the clams: Rinse the clams rapidly in cold water. Dry with absorbent paper. Heat the olive oil in a heavy skillet over high, and add the peeled clove of garlic. Add the clams and mix to coat in olive oil. Add the white wine, let the alcohol evaporate, and cover. Continue heating over medium until the clams pop open, about 4 to 5 minutes. Remove the clams and reserve the cooking juice.\n\nCook bacon in a heavy Dutch oven over medium-high heat until crisp. Remove bacon from pan, reserving 2 teaspoons drippings in pan. Crumble bacon; set aside. Add the spring onion, celery, and minced garlic to pan; saut\u00e9 8 minutes or until tender. Add shellfish stock, sliced potatoes, thyme, pepper, parsley, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 15 minutes or until potatoes are tender.\n\nCombine milk and heavy whipping cream, add to the pan. Continue boiling to reduce the liquid slightly. Stir in the clams, reduce the heat, and cook 5 minutes. Discard bay leaf.\n\nServe piping hot, with the crumbled bacon on top and fresh sourdough bread. Garnish with thyme sprigs and freshly ground pepper.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 25 minutes.\n\nMAIN COURSE\n\nBLUE BRITTANY LOBSTER ROLL\n\nwith Lobster Coral Remoulade Sauce\n\n2 blue Brittany lobsters, about 1 pound (500 g) each\n\nRemoulade\n\n1 egg yolk\n\n1 teaspoon strong mustard\n\n1 teaspoon cooked lobster coral\n\n8\u00bd fl. ounces (250 g) grapeseed oil\n\n2 teaspoons white vinegar\n\njuice of 1 lemon\n\nsalt, pepper\n\nLobster Roll\n\n2 celery stalks, diced\n\n8 fresh red radishes, thinly sliced\n\n2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice\n\npinch of cayenne pepper\n\n4 milk bread rolls\n\n3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted\n\n\u00bd head iceberg lettuce, shredded\n\nsalt, freshly ground pepper\n\nPOACHING THE LIVE LOBSTERS. To keep the lobster tails from curling up when cooked, secure the tails by sliding a metal skewer between the meat and the shell starting at the tail. Prepare a large ice-water bath. In a very large pot of boiling salted water, cook the lobsters until they turn bright red, about 10 minutes. Using tongs, plunge the lobsters into the ice-water bath for 2 minutes, then drain.\n\nRemove the skewers. Twist off the lobster tails and claws and remove the meat. For the claws, use a cracker, and for the tail, cut open the belly using kitchen scissors. Reserve any coral; it will be bright red when cooked. Remove and discard the intestinal vein that runs the length of each lobster tail. Cut the lobster meat into small pieces and cut the claw meat in two, then transfer to a strainer set over a bowl and refrigerate until very cold, at least 1 hour.\n\nREMOULADE SAUCE. Make sure all ingredients are room temperature before starting.\n\nPlace the egg yolk in dry bowl. Whisk in the strong mustard and 1 tablespoon of lobster coral and then whisk in the oil, little by little. The mayonnaise should be light and very creamy. Add the white vinegar and lemon juice, and season with salt and pepper. Check seasoning. Cover and keep chilled until ready for use.\n\nIn a large bowl, mix only the lobster tail meat (leave the claw meat on the side), with the mayonnaise and season with salt and pepper. Fold in the diced celery, sliced radishes, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper until well blended.\n\nSERVE. Preheat oven to 360\u00b0F (180\u00b0C). Open the milk bread rolls in two and spread with melted butter. Toast in the oven until golden brown. Fill the rolls with shredded lettuce, fill up with the lobster salad, add the pieces of claw meat, sprinkle with lemon juice and freshly ground pepper. Serve immediately.\n\n\u2014\n\nMakes 4 large rolls. Prep time: 40 minutes. Cook time: 10 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nCREAMY LEMON CHEESECAKE\n\nCrust\n\nabout 1\u00bc cup (300 g) speculoos biscuits\n\nabout 4\u00bc fl. ounces (125 g) melted butter\n\n1 teaspoon butter for the mold\n\nLemon Cream\n\n4 gelatin leaves (8 g)\n\n3 eggs\n\n5.3 ounces (150 g) sugar\n\nzest and juice of 2 lemons\n\n1\u00bd cups (350 g) softened cream cheese\n\n\u2014\n\nTips from a Pro\n\nThe cheesecake may be made in advance and kept refrigerated for three days at the most for maximum freshness.\n\nCRUST. Mix the speculoos biscuits in the food processor until they are sand-like. Place an 8-inch-round pastry circle (bottomless) on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Butter the circle.\n\nMix the crushed biscuits with the melted butter and press firmly into the bottom of the pastry circle. You should have approximately a \u00be -inch-thick crust. Make sure the crust is spread evenly. Place in refrigerator to firm.\n\nLEMON CREAM. Place the gelatin in a small bowl of cold water until it softens, about 6 minutes. Separate the yolks from the whites. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until they lighten in color.\n\nZest the lemon using a microplane and squeeze the juice. Pour the juice and zest into a small saucepan. Add the yolk and sugar mixture and cook over medium heat, whisking continuously until the mixture thickens to the consistency of custard cream. It should not boil, to avoid scrambling the eggs. Squeeze the gelatin leaves to remove excess water and add to lemon cream. Whisk briskly to melt them. Let the mixture cool a bit before whisking in the cream cheese.\n\nWhip the egg whites to soft peaks. Fold the egg whites into the lemon cream mixture gently. Pour the cream onto the cold speculoos biscuit crust and spread evenly using an offset spatula. Let the cheesecake set in the refrigerator overnight. Serve topped with fresh lemon zest along with homemade lemonade.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 30 minutes. Cook time: 8 minutes.\n\nMENU 12\n\n_______________\n\nTHE FRENCH CHICKEN\n\nAppetizers\n\nCaramelized Chicken Wings with Roquefort Cream Dip\n\nFree-Range Chicken Consomm\u00e9 with Chicken Dumplings\n\nMain Course\n\nGoat Cheese, Pine Nut, and Purple Basil Stuffed Chicken Thighs with Quince and Celery Root Pur\u00e9e and Roasted Chicken Jus\n\nDessert\n\nRice Pudding with Caramelized Almonds and Hazelnuts and Ginger Caramel Sauce\n\n_______________\n\nE veryone adores chicken, especially the French.\n\nWhen I was in culinary school, a whole week's classes were dedicated to the subject. We learned how to cut up a raw chicken, debone, stuff, truss, roll, roast, saut\u00e9, and fricassee. The possibilities are endless.\n\nThis menu highlights all parts of the bird, from the wings as an appetizer to the thighs, my personal favorite. Be sure to use only free-range chickens. The taste and texture of the meat is no comparison to their poor, battery-raised cousins.\n\nThis is a great family menu; there really is something for everyone. The chicken wing appetizer will have them licking their fingers, and once they've tasted the stuffed thighs, dry chicken will forever be a thing of the past!\n\nWhen it's time for dessert, I love serving the creamy rice pudding in a big bowl in the center of the table with several spoons and letting everyone delve in!\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nCARAMELIZED CHICKEN WINGS\n\nwith Roquefort Cream Dip\n\nChicken Wings\n\n1\u00be ounces (50 g) honey\n\n\u00bc cup (50 g) good soy sauce\n\n3 tablespoons organic ketchup\n\njuice of 1 lemon\n\n8 free-range chicken wings\n\n\u00bd bunch chives\n\nCream Dip\n\nabout \u2154 cup (150 g) Roquefort cheese\n\nabout 2\u00bd fl. ounces (75 g) heavy whipping cream\n\nfreshly ground pepper\n\nPreheat oven to 395\u00b0F (200\u00b0C). Mix the honey, soy sauce, ketchup, and lemon juice in a shallow pan. Roll the chicken wings in the marinade to thoroughly coat them. Place chicken wings on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper and bake until fully caramelized, approximately 25 minutes. Turn and baste regularly during baking. Remove to a serving dish. Wrap a chive stem around each wing, for garnish.\n\nROQUEFORT DIP\n\nIn a small mixing bowl, crush the Roquefort using a fork. Whisk in the whipping cream, adding a bit more if necessary. The dip should be creamy and thick enough for dipping. Season the dip with freshly ground pepper.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 4. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 25 minutes.\n\nAPPETIZER\n\nFREE-RANGE CHICKEN CONSOMM\u00c9 WITH CHICKEN DUMPLINGS\n\nConsomm\u00e9\n\n1 free-range chicken (about 2\u00be pounds or 1.2 kg)\n\n2 carrots\n\n1 white onion\n\n1 leek\n\n1 stalk celery\n\n6 black peppercorns\n\n6 pink peppercorns\n\n6 flat parsley stems\n\n1 bay leaf\n\n4 sprigs thyme\n\n1 tablespoon coarse sea salt\n\nDumplings\n\n1 free-range chicken breast\n\nabout 3\u2153 fl. ounces (100 g) egg white\n\nabout 1\u2154 fl. ounces (50 g) heavy whipping cream\n\nsea salt\n\ncayenne pepper\n\n1 small bunch chives, finely chopped\n\n2 spring onions, finely sliced, for garnish\n\nfresh parsley, for garnish\n\nCONSOMM\u00c9. Remove the breasts from the chicken; they will be used for the dumplings. Place the rest of the whole chicken in a large stockpot and fill with cold water. Bring to a heavy boil and skim the foam that will rise to the top.\n\nDuring this time, peel the carrots and onion. Clean the leek and celery. Dice the onion and slice the carrot, celery, and leek. Add all the vegetables to the stock pot, as well as the peppers, parsley stems, bay leaf, and thyme. Add the coarse sea salt. Lower the heat to medium and simmer for 2 hours. Skim if necessary.\n\nStrain the stock through a fine sieve. Keep warm in a medium saucepan. Keep the chicken meat for another use, like a chicken pot pie.\n\nDUMPLINGS. Place the chicken breast into the bowl of a food processor. Mix well, add the egg white, and continue mixing by pulsing. This will keep the chicken from heating too much.\n\nAdd the whipping cream and mix until creamy. Season with sea salt and cayenne pepper. Add the finely chopped chives. Using two tablespoons dipped in warm water, form perfect quenelles. Keep refrigerated until ready for use.\n\nHeat some consomm\u00e9 in a wide pan. The liquid should be just simmering. Place the quenelles in the simmering consomm\u00e9; they will float on the surface. Poach one side for approximately 10 minutes and gently turn over using a small skimmer. Poach the other side for an additional 10 minutes. Remove to absorbent paper.\n\nSERVE. Heat the remaining consomm\u00e9 to just boiling. Check the seasoning. Add a quenelle to a warm soup plate and gently pour the hot consomm\u00e9 over the top. Finish with a little finely sliced spring onion and some fresh parsley.\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 8. Prep time: 40 minutes. Cook time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.\n\nMAIN COURSE\n\nGOAT CHEESE, PINE NUT, AND PURPLE BASIL STUFFED CHICKEN THIGHS\n\nwith Quince and Celery Root Pur\u00e9e and Roasted Chicken Jus\n\nChicken\n\n4 large free-range chicken thighs\n\n\u00bc cup (50 g) goat cheese\n\nabout 2\u00bd tablespoons (40 g) pine nuts\n\n1 bunch purple basil\n\nsalt, pepper\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n\u00bd ounce (15 g) salted butter, cubed\n\nChicken Jus\n\n1 pound (500 g) chicken wings\n\nolive oil\n\nsalted butter\n\n\u2154 cup (15 cl) dry white wine\n\n\u00bd carrot, diced\n\n1 white onion, diced\n\n1 quart (1 l) veal stock, warm\n\nPur\u00e9e\n\n1 bulb celeriac\n\n2 large quinces\n\n1 lemon\n\n1\u00be (50 g) salted butter\n\n1 cup (250 g) vegetable or chicken stock, warm\n\nsalt, pepper\n\nCilantro shoots, for garnish\n\nTips from a Pro\n\nThe chicken legs for the main dishes can be filled on the day before and then stored in the refrigerator. The roast chicken will absorb the flavors of goat cheese and basil and taste even more delicious.\n\nFOR THE CHICKEN\n\nPreheat oven to 390\u00b0F (200\u00b0C). Using a paring knife, remove the two bones from the thigh; be careful not to damage the chicken's skin. Remove the long white tendons near the drumstick. Place the thighs skin-side down on a plate and refrigerate until ready for use.\n\nCut the goat cheese into small cubes. Toast the pine nuts in a small frying pan without adding any oils. Remove pine nuts when golden. Wash the basil and chop finely. Mix cheese, nuts, and basil together in a small mixing bowl.\n\nSeason the meat side of each thigh with salt and pepper. Add a heaping tablespoon of stuffing to the center of each thigh and fold the skin side up around the stuffing, making a small pouch. Place into a baking dish rounded side up. The slightly open ends will weld together while baking. Drizzle with olive oil, and add the cubes of butter on top of each thigh. Season with salt. Bake for 50 minutes. Remove from oven and cover in aluminum foil.\n\nCHICKEN JUS. Brown the chicken wings in olive oil in a medium saucepan, add 1 tablespoon of salted butter, and continue browning. Deglaze with the white wine, scraping the bottom of the saucepan using a spatula to detach the juices and browned bits. Let the alcohol evaporate, approximately 2 minutes. Add the diced carrot and onion. Add a bit more butter if necessary to brown the vegetables. Strain the meat and vegetables to remove excess fat. Put all back into the saucepan and add the warm veal stock. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer for 40 minutes. Skim, if necessary.\n\nStrain through a fine sieve into a small saucepan and reduce to half. The jus will thicken slightly and should cover the spoon. Keep warm.\n\nCELERIAC AND QUINCE PUR\u00c9E. Peel the celeriac using a sharp paring knife, then peel the quince. Rub the quinces with some lemon to keep them from oxidizing.\n\nCut all onto large cubes. Heat \u00bd ounce (15 g) of salted butter until foamy in a two medium-sized saucepans. Add the celeriac cubes to one and the quince to the other. Sweat for 5 minutes, mixing gently to coat in the salted butter. Add the warm stock, bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and cook until tender, approximately 30 minutes. The flesh of quinces is very firm and takes a while to become tender. The celeriac will become soft much faster. Strain the vegetables when tender and reserve the cooking liquid. Add the rest of the salted butter and a little cooking liquid, if necessary. Mix each using an immersion blender until creamy. Check the seasoning and keep warm.\n\nPLATING. Slice the stuffed thighs into 4 pieces. Add a swoosh of celeriac pur\u00e9e on one side, the quince on the other, and some warm chicken jus. Finish with cilantro shoots.\n\n\u2014\n\n4 servings. Prep time: 45 minutes. Cook time: 2 hours and 10 minutes.\n\nDESSERT\n\nRICE PUDDING\n\nwith Caramelized Almonds and Hazelnuts and Ginger Caramel Sauce\n\nRice Pudding\n\nabout \u00be cup (180g) round rice\n\n1 quart (1 l) whole milk\n\n1 vanilla pod\n\n3\u00bd ounces (100 g) sugar\n\nGinger Caramel Sauce\n\n5.3 ounces (150 g) sugar\n\n2 teaspoons fresh ginger, chopped\n\n5 fl. ounces (150 g) heavy whipping cream\n\n6.3 ounces (180 g) butter, cut in cubes\n\nFor the Caramelized Nuts\n\n5.3 ounces (150 g) sugar\n\n3 tablespoons water\n\nabout \u00bc cup (50 g) fresh hazelnuts, peeled\n\nWhipped Cream\n\nabout 10 fl. ounces (300 g) heavy whipping cream\n\nRICE PUDDING. Bring a large saucepan of water to boil, add the round rice and blanch for 3 minutes. Strain the rice. Bring the milk to a boil with the seeds of the vanilla pod. Add the rice adjust to low heat. Simmer for 25 minutes. Add the sugar and continue cooking for 5 minutes. Remove to a dish and let cool.\n\nGINGER CARAMEL SAUCE. Pour half the sugar in a medium saucepan. Heat at medium heat until sugar melts. Add the rest of the sugar and the ginger and continue heating until fully melted and browned to a golden amber color. Do not stir the sugar while its melting; the utensil will cool the sugar and it will mass, making a hard, block of sugar. Remove caramel from heat. Heat the whipping cream and pour onto the caramel. Careful\u2014the cream will be cooler than the caramel and it will spatter it bit. Put back onto medium heat and mix well using a spatula. The cream should be fully blended and the temperature should go down to 226\u00b0F (108\u00b0). Remove caramel from heat and whisk in the cubes of butter little by little. Let cool to room temperature.\n\nCARAMELIZED NUTS. Add the sugar and water to a small saucepan. Heat to 250\u00b0F (121\u00b0C). Add the peeled hazelnuts and coat with the sugar. The sugar will crystalize and turn white. Continue heating on medium heat until sugar melts again and caramelizes. Pour the hazelnuts onto a nonstick baking mat and let cool.\n\nWHIPPED CREAM. Place the mixing bowl, the whisk, and the heavy whipping cream in the freezer for 15 minutes. Start whipping slowly at first, increasing the speed little by little. When the cream holds in the whisk and makes firm peaks, stop whipping. Fold the whipped cream gently into the cold rice pudding.\n\nSERVE. Serve with the caramelized hazelnuts and caramel sauce drizzled on top. I like to serve this dessert in a big bowl in the middle of the table with lots of spoons!\n\n\u2014\n\nServes 6. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 20 minutes.\n\nINDEX\n\nA\n\nallspice roasted duck breast, ,\n\nalmonds, ,\n\nartichokes\n\nbaby, Barigoule style,\n\npur\u00e9e,\n\nreduction,\n\narugula,\n\nasparagus\n\npoached white,\n\ngreen,\n\nB\n\nbeans, white, \u2013\n\nbeef\n\nC\u00f4te de Boeuf, \u2013\n\ncubes,\n\ntartar,\n\ntenderloin,\n\nbeets, ,\n\nBeurre Ma\u00eetre d' H\u00f4tel,\n\nbitter orange duck jus,\n\nblue Brittany lobster rolls,\n\nborage flowers, vinaigrette with,\n\nbread\n\ncroutons,\n\nmelba toasts,\n\nmushroom crostini,\n\npain de mie,\n\npita,\n\nbroth, prawn, ,\n\nbuttercream,\n\nbutternut squash discs,\n\nC\n\nCalifornia rolls, \u2013\n\ncandied citrus, ,\n\ncapers,\n\ncaramel-covered green grapes,\n\ncaramelized chicken wings,\n\ncarrots,\n\nceleriac pur\u00e9e,\n\nchanterelles, ,\n\nChardonnay-fennel marinade, \u2013\n\nchicken\n\nbreast bites,\n\nbreasts, \u2013\n\ncaramelized chicken wings,\n\nconsomm\u00e9,\n\ndumplings,\n\njus, ,\n\nkeftas,\n\nstuffed chicken thighs, \u2013\n\nchocolate\n\nbutter cookies,\n\ncake with caramel center, \u2013\n\ndouble chocolate ganache tarts,\n\npraline and chocolate nib financiers,\n\nchoux, \u2013\n\nclam chowder,\n\ncocoa nib tuiles,\n\ncoconut,\n\nC\u00f4te de Boeuf, \u2013\n\ncrab cakes,\n\ncraquelin,\n\ncream of rutabaga soup,\n\ncreamy lemon cheesecake,\n\ncroque monsieur finger sandwiches,\n\ncrostini,\n\ncroutons,\n\ncupcakes, \u2013\n\ncustard, cardamom,\n\nD\n\ndouble chocolate whipped ganache tarts,\n\ndressing\n\nCaesar,\n\nvinaigrette (See vinaigrette)\n\nduck\n\nallspice roasted duck breast, ,\n\nsemi-cooked duck foie gras, ,\n\ndumplings, chicken,\n\nE\n\neggs, soft-boiled, \u2013\n\nemulsion\n\nprawn,\n\nSalicornia,\n\nF\n\nfava beans,\n\nfeta cheese,\n\nfig and red grape galette,\n\nfilet of brill \u00e0 la Dugl\u00e9r\u00e9,\n\nfish\n\nfilet of brill \u00e0 la Dugl\u00e9r\u00e9,\n\ngrilled and raw salmon bites in citrus,\n\nsea bream tartare,\n\nsmoked salmon, \u2013\n\nwild Atlantic mackerel, \u2013\n\nfoie gras, semi-cooked duck, ,\n\nfondant,\n\nfree-range chicken. See chicken\n\nFrench green beans, \u2013\n\nFrench vanilla ice cream macarons, \u2013\n\nG\n\ngalette, fig and red grape,\n\ngingerbread spices, ,\n\nglace royale,\n\ngnocchi, roasted squash, \u2013\n\ngoat cheese\n\nemulsion, \u2013\n\nstuffed chicken thighs, \u2013\n\ngoat milk ice cream,\n\ngreen grapes, caramel-covered,\n\ngrilled and raw salmon bites in citrus,\n\nH\n\nhazelnuts,\n\ntoasted,\n\ntwo-texture endive salad,\n\nvinaigrette, ,\n\nhorseradish cream,\n\nI\n\n\u00cele de R\u00e9 potatoes,\n\nItalian parsley,\n\nJ\n\njus\n\nbitter orange duck, ,\n\nchicken, ,\n\nlamb, ,\n\nK\n\nkaffir limes,\n\nL\n\nlamb tenderloin, ,\n\nL'atelier des Chefs,\n\nle d\u00e9jeuner de dimanche (Sunday lunch),\n\nlemon, , \u2013,\n\nlentils,\n\nLignac, Cyril,\n\nlime vinaigrette, \u2013\n\nlitchis,\n\nM\n\nmacarons, \u2013\n\nmango litchi smoothies,\n\nmarinade, Chardonnay-fennel, \u2013\n\nmayonnaise, ,\n\nmeagre carpaccio, \u2013\n\nmelba toasts,\n\nmenus\n\nAutumn Harvest, \u2013\n\nBack From The Fish Market, \u2013\n\nFireside Appetizers, \u2013\n\nFrench Cape Cod, \u2013\n\nFrench Chicken, \u2013\n\nFresh from the Sea, \u2013\n\nLadies' Lunch, \u2013\n\nLunch for Teens, \u2013\n\nMeat, \u2013\n\nMeat Lovers' Special, \u2013\n\nSpring Family Lunch, \u2013\n\nSweet Princess Birthday, \u2013\n\nmeringue, , \u2013\n\nmiso,\n\nMont Blanc cakes,\n\nmousseline (sauce),\n\nmussels marini\u00e8re,\n\nO\n\nonions, ,\n\noranges\n\nbitter orange duck jus,\n\nreduction with ginger,\n\nsections,\n\ntwo-texture endive salad,\n\nP\n\npain de mie bread,\n\npancetta,\n\nparma ham chips,\n\nParmesan\n\nbutter biscuits,\n\nshavings,\n\ntuiles,\n\nparsley (Italian),\n\npasta salads in shells,\n\npastry cream,\n\nP\u00e2te \u00e0 Chou, ,\n\nPavlova, three-berry,\n\npecan tartlet, ,\n\npesto, \u2013\n\npine nuts, \u2013\n\npistachio pesto, \u2013\n\npita bread,\n\nplum and fig fruit compote,\n\npoached white asparagus,\n\nPortobello mushroom tarts,\n\npotatoes\n\n\u00cele de R\u00e9,\n\npur\u00e9e,\n\nroasted red, \u2013\n\npraline and chocolate nib financiers,\n\nprawns\n\nlightly battered deep-fried,\n\nravioli with baby fava beans, \u2013\n\npur\u00e9e\n\nartichokes,\n\nceleriac,\n\npotato,\n\nquince,\n\npurple basil, \u2013\n\nQ\n\nquince pur\u00e9e,\n\nR\n\nravioli, ,\n\nred potatoes, \u2013\n\nred radish dip,\n\nreligieuse, cream cheese,\n\nremoulade sauce,\n\nrice pudding,\n\nroot vegetable minestrone,\n\nRoquefort\n\ncream dip,\n\nand pear puffs,\n\nrosemary butter,\n\nrose praline cupcakes, \u2013\n\nS\n\nsabayon, sweet wine, \u2013\n\nsake, beef cubes,\n\nsalads\n\nCaesar salad,\n\nmini pasta salads in shells,\n\norganic carrot salad,\n\ntwo-texture endive salad,\n\nSalicornia emulsion,\n\nsalmon\n\ngrilled and raw bites,\n\nsmoked, \u2013\n\nsalted butter caramel,\n\nsalty butter cookies, \u2013\n\nsauces\n\nginger caramel,\n\nmousseline,\n\nremoulade,\n\ntartar, ,\n\nsea bream tartare,\n\nseafood. See also fish\n\nblue Brittany lobster rolls,\n\nclam chowder,\n\nfresh mussels marini\u00e8re,\n\nlightly battered deep-fried prawns,\n\nmini crab cakes,\n\nprawn ravioli with baby fava beans, \u2013\n\nseared sea scallops, \u2013\n\ntiger prawns, \u2013\n\nsemi-cooked duck foie gras, ,\n\nsesame seeds,\n\nshitake mushrooms,\n\nslowly roasted veal loin, \u2013\n\nsmoked bacon emulsion,\n\nsmoked salmon, \u2013\n\nsmoothie, mango litchi,\n\nsoft-boiled eggs, \u2013\n\nsoups\n\nclam chowder,\n\ncream of rutabaga,\n\nroot vegetable minestrone,\n\nspring onions,\n\nsquash\n\nbutternut squash discs,\n\nroasted squash gnocchi, \u2013\n\nstrawberry cupcakes, \u2013\n\nstuffed chicken thighs, \u2013\n\nsushi rolls, \u2013\n\nsweet bell peppers,\n\nsweet fondant,\n\nsweet onion compote,\n\nsweet peas, \u2013\n\nsweet potato fries,\n\nsweet wine sabayon, \u2013\n\nT\n\ntartar sauce, ,\n\ntarts\n\ndouble chocolate whipped ganache,\n\nmini lemon meringue, \u2013\n\nPortobello mushroom,\n\ntempura, young vegetables in,\n\nthree-berry pavlova,\n\ntiger prawns, \u2013\n\ntomatoes,\n\ntuiles, Parmesan,\n\nturmeric, ,\n\nV\n\nvanilla cupcakes, \u2013\n\nvanilla pastry cream,\n\nveal, \u2013\n\nvinaigrette\n\ncitrus with borage flowers,\n\nfresh lime, \u2013\n\nhazelnuts,\n\ntwo-texture endive salad,\n\nW\n\nwhipped cream, , ,\n\nwhite beans, \u2013\n\nwhite truffle oil,\n\nwild Atlantic mackerel, \u2013\n\nY\n\nyoung vegetables in tempura, \nCONVERSION CHARTS\n\nMETRIC AND IMPERIAL CONVERSIONS\n\n(These conversions are rounded for convenience)\n\nFahrenheit | Celsius | Gas Mark\n\n---|---|---\n\n225\u00b0 | 110\u00b0 | \u00bc\n\n250\u00b0 | 120\u00b0 | \u00bd\n\n275\u00b0 | 140\u00b0 | 1\n\n300\u00b0 | 150\u00b0 | 2\n\n325\u00b0 | 160\u00b0 | 3\n\n350\u00b0 | 180\u00b0 | 4\n\n375\u00b0 | 190\u00b0 | 5\n\n400\u00b0 | 200\u00b0 | 6\n\n425\u00b0 | 220\u00b0 | 7\n\n450\u00b0 | 230\u00b0 | 8\nEditorial Note: Original measurements from the first German edition appear in parentheses for all recipes. We strongly suggest readers use these measurements throughout, but we have converted many for use by home cooks who do not have access to electronic scales in their kitchens.\n\nOriginally published by 2015 Verlag Georg D.W.\n\nCallwey GmbH & Co. KG, Munchen, Germany in 2015.\n\nEnglish manuscript \u00a9 2015 by Cathleen Clarity\n\nFirst Skyhorse Publishing edition, 2017\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.\n\nSkyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com.\n\nSkyhorse\u00ae and Skyhorse Publishing\u00ae are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.\u00ae, a Delaware corporation.\n\nVisit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.\n\n10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.\n\nCover design by Amanda Jane Jones\n\nCover photo credit: Kathrin Koschitzki\n\nPrint ISBN: 978-1-5107-2113-5\n\nEbook ISBN: 978-1-5107-2117-3\n\nPrinted in China\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nBasic Buddhism\n\nExploring  \nBuddhism  \nand  \nZen\n\nNan Huai-Chin\n\nSAMUEL WEISER, INC.\n\nYork Beach, Maine\nFirst published in 1997\n\nby Samuel Weiser, Inc.\n\nP.O. Box 612\n\nYork Beach, ME 03910-0612\n\nCopyright \u00a9 1997 Nan Huai-Chin\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Samuel Weiser, Inc. Reviewers may quote brief passages. First published in Chinese in 1975.\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nNan, Huai-chin.\n\nBasic Buddhism : exploring Buddhism and Zen \/ Nan, Huai-chin.\n\np. cm.\n\nBased on \"Chung-kuo fo chiao fa chan shih,\" by Huai-chin Nan.\n\nIncludes index.\n\nISBN 1-57863-020-7 (paper : alk. paper)\n\n1. Buddhism\u2014History. 2. Buddhism\u2014China\u2014History. 3. Zen\n\nBuddhism\u2014China\u2014History. I. Nan, Huai-chin. Chung-kuo fo chiao fa chan shih. II. Title.\n\nBQ266.N36 1997\n\n294.3'0951\u2014dc21\n\n97-25613  \nCIP\n\nBP\n\nTranslated by J. C. Cleary\n\nTypeset in Galliard in 10 point\n\nPrinted in the United States of America\n\n05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97\n\n9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1\n\nThe paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.\nContents\n\n**CHAPTER 1: Buddhism and the Culture of India**\n\nThe Development of Indian Culture; The Background of Indian Culture; The Religion and Philosophy of Ancient Indian Civilization; The Rise of Various Philosophical Trends; The Six Schools of Philosophy; The Buddhism of Shakyamuni versus non-Buddhist Paths; Chapter Summary.\n\n**CHAPTER 2: Shakyamuni Buddha, the Founder of Buddhism**\n\nShakyamuni's Lineage; A Great Man Who Refused to be King; The Dates of Shakyamuni's Birth and Death; The Clan Tradition; Legends of Shakyamuni's Innate Spiritual Uniqueness; A Special Youth of Many Talents; Shakyamuni's Compassionate Temperament; Leaving Home and Awakening to the Path; The Young Prince Who Fled the World to Seek Enlightenment; Shakyamuni Studies the Various Schools for Six Years; Shakyamuni Practices Six Years of Austerities; Shakyamuni Opens through in Sudden Enlightenment and Achieves Buddhahood; The Founding of the Teaching; Shakyamuni's Teaching and His Original Disciples; Preaching the Dharma; The Compilation of the Buddhist Scriptures; Chapter Summary.\n\n**CHAPTER 3: The Transmission of Buddhism to China**\n\nThe First Period of the Transmission; Indian Buddhism in the Time of King Ashoka; The Initial Transmission of Buddhism to China in the Late Han and Three Kingdoms Periods; Buddhism in the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties; The Founding of Pure Land Buddhism; Kumarajiva and Sengzhao; Daosheng, Nirvana, and Buddha-nature; The Heyday of Chinese Buddhism; The Sui and Tang Periods; The Founding of the Tang Dynasty; The Zen School's Change of System; The Rise of Esoteric Buddhism; The Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Periods; Chapter Summary.\n\n**CHAPTER 4: Buddhism in Other Countries**\n\nBuddhism in Asia; Korea; Japan; Burma; Thailand; Vietnam; Tibet; Other regions of Southeast Asia; Buddhism in Europe and America; Britain; Germany; France; United States of America; Russia; Chapter Summary.\n\n**CHAPTER 5: Buddhism in the 20th Century**\n\nThe Decline of Chinese Buddhism Since the Qing Period; Sectarian Decline; The Change in the Character of Monks and Temples; The Buddhist Revival of the Late Qing and Early Republican Periods; The Revival of Chinese Buddhism; The Development of Chinese Buddhism; Conclusion.\n\n**APPENDIX: The Zen Monastic System and Chinese Society**\n\nThe Different Societies of Eastern and Western Civilization; The Differentiation of Patriarchal Clan Society; The Early Buddhist Monastic System; The Origin of the Zen Monastic System; The Zen Monastic System: Its Regulations and Guidelines; The Abbot; The Two Echelons of Monks; The Responsible Posts in a Zen Temple; The Chief Administrators, Visiting Monks, and the Pure Congregation; Variations in the Zen _Pure Rules_ Over Time; The Influence of the Zen Communities; Equality of Status and Collective Living; Equality of Labor and a Prosperous Economy; Equality of Faith and Discipline in Speech and Action; Equality of All Sentient Beings; The Zen Halls: Cultivation of Practice; The Scope of the Zen Hall; The Teacher in the Zen Hall; Life in the Zen Hall; Teaching Methods Inside and Outside the Zen Hall; The Transformation of the Zen Hall; The Legacy of the Zen Community _Pure Rules_; Zen Master Baizhang's Biography; Zen Master Baizhang's Enlightenment; Preface to the _Pure Rules of Baizhang_ by the Song Dynasty Literatus Yang Yi; _Twenty Essential Rules for the Zen Community_ by Zen Master Baizhang; _The Treatise of the Samadhi of the Precious King_; The Zen Community and Patriarchal Clan Society; The Zen Monastic System and Chinese Culture; The Zen Monastic System and the Secret Societies; Closing Comments.\n\nIndex\n\nAbout the Author\nCHAPTER 1\n\nBuddhism and the Culture of India\n\n**THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIAN CULTURE**\n\nThe formation and growth of any religion is sure to have a cultural background. As is common knowledge, in the present-day world, if we speak of civilizations with a long history and cultural tradition, there are only China and India in the East, and Egypt and Greece in the West. These are called the world's four great ancient civilizations.\n\nThe glorious history of Greece is already a thing of the past, but its cultural legacy has mixed with other elements and spread, contributing to the formation of the modern civilization of Europe and America. Egyptian civilization is already remote and hidden in the mists, and only some fragments of its grandeur remain. Indian civilization, especially the Buddhist civilization which has made such an impact on the world and has shone brightly from ancient to modern times, has already been completely assimilated in the territory of Chinese civilization, through a process that lasted from the end of the Han dynasty through the Song dynasty.\n\nGreek civilization represents the West. It developed first from a religion to a philosophy; from a philosophy it evolved into science, bringing about the modern Western culture. Thus one can say that it has many flourishing offshoots.\n\nIf people in today's world want to inquire into the source of the various great religious civilizations, they soon find that, ultimately, all these civilizations had their origins in the East. This is particularly true of Buddhist civilization, which long ago became interconnected with Chinese civilization to form a single whole. Its widespread influence thus goes without saying. But when we trace the source and seek the background of the sudden rise of Buddhism in India, and examine its development into a great stream radiating in all directions after its transmission to China, we are sure to uncover a definite sequence of cause and effect. Therefore, to understand the birth of Buddhist civilization and its gestation in the civilization of the preceding period, we must first have some elementary knowledge of traditional Indian civilization.\n\n**The Background of Indian Culture**\n\nHumans are born between heaven and earth, and it is unavoidable that both climate and geographical circumstances are important factors in shaping a people's civilization. India is a peninsula in southern Asia, and its geography and climate have obvious differences from lands in other regions. Southern India extends into the tropics, while northern India is next to the Himalaya Mountains and central India has a temperate climate. For the people of ancient India, the yearly cycle, in accord with the climate, was divided into three seasons of four months each. Because of India's location between the temperate and the tropical zones, the physical and mental activity of its people, and, generally speaking, their way of thinking, was very lively. This is particularly true of the southern regions, which were even richer in mystical imagination.\n\nFrom ancient times until today, the cultures and languages of India have never been unified. In ancient India, there were more than fifty or sixty writing systems. These are generally lumped together under the single term Sanskrit for all forms of Indian written language, but in reality, Sanskrit is just one of the many written languages of India. There are still several dozen languages current in India today. China was able to unify its weights and measures and its written language because of the great unification it underwent in the Qin and Han dynasties (c. **220** B.C.-A.D. 200). But such was not the case for India. Though from ancient times until now it has always been called one country, in reality, India is still divided into various ethnic groups, each occupying its own area. Hence Indian culture has never really been unified.\n\nDuring the period from the Zhou dynasty to the Qin dynasty in Chinese history (c. eleventh to third centuries B.C.), India was divided into various small states, just as China was. There were two or three hundred small principalities, each occupying its own territory and each having its own ruler. During this period, many schools of learning were established. The various schools of thought all claimed to teach the truth, although in just a single region there were more than a hundred different schools. In the cultural life of the people, there was one special characteristic: class divisions were very strict, and so noble and humble were sharply separated into castes and received very different treatment. This outlook remains deep-rooted and strong, despite all the attacks of 20th-century ideas of freedom and equality. Concerning this, we can only quote the proverbial observation: Something that has been so since ancient times will not change now.\n\nThe Indian system of four castes creates four traditional classes of people. First, the _brahmans_ were hereditary specialists in rituals and sacrifices. They were the heart of instruction in religion and culture and ranked the highest of the castes. Hence of all the castes, they merited the highest respect. They were the upper stratum, functioning as spiritual and intellectual leaders. All military and political affairs were influenced by them. Second were the _kshatriyas_ , the royal officers and warriors. They gathered together military and political power in a single lineage and became hereditary rulers. Third, came the _vaisyas_ , the class of merchants, who possessed wealth and controlled trade, while the fourth class, the _sudras_ , were a class of peasants who worked tilling and planting the land.\n\nBesides these four, there was also a class of hereditary slaves and debased people who performed lowly occupations like butchering animals and so on. Their position was the lowest of all and their lives were very difficult and full of suffering. This ancient Indian system of four castes has remained solid and unbreakable for over three thousand years. The remnants of this way of thinking have still not been totally obliterated.\n\nThe brahman class controlled cultural education and, relying on the four _Vedas_ , upheld the concepts of _Brahman_ (the absolute) and _Atman_ (the true self). This formed the Brahmanical religion that was the center of historical Indian civilization. This gradually spread out and influenced the thinking and consciousness of the three upper castes, the brahmans, kshatriyas, and vaisyas, toward the way of life of the _shramana_ who leaves home to cultivate the path to self-realization.\n\nFor them, the ideal course of a person's life was divided into four periods. The first was a period of pure conduct, a period of life devoted to a young person's education. When they reached a certain age, young people would leave home to study the _Vedas_ and other branches of learning. (For the disciples of brahmans, this was from age 8 to 16; for the disciples of kshatriyas, from 11-20; for the disciples of vaisyas, from age 12-24.) These disciples would spend a set period of time studying, for example, a term of twelve years, or twenty-four years, or thirty-six years, or forty-eight years. Only when the term was completed and their studies accomplished, could they return home to ordinary life.\n\nThe second period, the period of living as a householder, was one of maturity, when a person would marry and have children, undertaking the responsibilities of family life and fulfilling the duties of heading a household.\n\nThe third was a period of living in the forests. This was the period of middle age, when a person would live in seclusion in the forest, a period of life when the person concentrated on cultivating the path. Having already completed their obligations as householders during their mature years, from this point on people would live in seclusion to devote themselves to higher pursuits, diligently cultivate ascetic practices, and learn various methods of meditative concentration and contemplation, in order to seek the sublimation of the Atman to reach union with Brahman.\n\nFourth, came a period of withdrawal from the world. By means of cultivating practice in their middle years, when people entered their years of old age and decline, their life of cultivating practice would have reached a conclusion. Their bodies and minds would be absolutely purified, and they would have already perfected the fruits of the path. From this point on, they would seclude themselves in the forests, free from sensory entanglements and no longer participating in the affairs of the world.\n\nThis ideal human life was advocated and experienced not only by the brahmans themselves; the kshatriyas and vaisyas could also emulate it. But the sudras, the menial class, never had any way to share in it. This kind of religious life was thus fundamentally restricted. For this reason, there was a reaction among the kshatriyas, who gradually became dissatisfied with the old norms of thinking that placed the brahmans in the lead. The kshatriyas began to assert themselves and provided the impetus for new trends of thought in such fields as religion, philosophy, culture, and education. Thenceforth, they began to investigate the real truth about the world, to seek the ultimate of the Atman spirit, and to delve into the basic source of the myriad forms in the universe. Thus, as soon as the books of profound meaning called the _Upanishads_ began to appear within Indian culture, they were pitted against the traditional spirit of the brahmans. But the position of the brahmans remained as preeminent as ever. Brahmanical thought had deeply penetrated Indian culture and was hard to change.\n\nFrom the foregoing introduction, we can understand the source of the thought of the people of ancient India and their cultural background. Due to the specifics of their geographical circumstances and the natural climate, the ancient Indians liked contemplative pursuits and enjoyed setting their wills on lofty, far-reaching goals. Moreover, they already had the deeply rooted religion of Brahmanism and a pervasive system of religious thought. From the beginning of their history, the Indians tended toward the idea of leaving the world in order to seek to purify body and mind, and they considered living in retreat in the forest as the greatest enjoyment in human life. Thus their thought system was preoccupied with lofty concerns and tended toward empty imaginings. But most of all, returning from the lofty concept of Atman to ordinary human life, the intermediate level, a humanistic system of thought, was lacking. This contributed to the extremely rigid caste divisions and the extreme inequality of status between high and low. Even religious beliefs in ancient India could not arrive at concepts of equality and liberty.\n\nShakyamuni Buddha arose in response to these conditions. With his great vow of compassion, he founded the Buddhist religion, balancing out inequalities, keeping the good points from the preexisting culture and doing away with its shortcomings. He taught in response to what was good and beautiful in the human spirit, summing up a hundred generations of cultural tradition. He refuted the concept that humankind was divided into classes by nature, and pointed out how to elevate, refine, and perfect human nature.\n\n**The Religion and Philosophy of Ancient Indian Civilization**\n\nWith the particular form and the rich contents of its thought systems, Indian civilization truly occupied an extremely important and preeminent position in world cultural history for about three thousand years, from roughly 2000 B.C. to A.D. 1000.\n\nThe following were major components of the thought of the ancient civilization of India:\n\n**The _Vedas:_** Ancient Indian civilization is commonly called Vedic civilization. This was the period when the brahmanical religion was the center of culture. The education propagated by the brahmans determined the people's cultural consciousness. They relied totally on the _Vedas_ for their central ideas. Veda means \"treatise on wisdom\" or \"treatise of explanation.\" In other words, treatises which seek knowledge of the universe and of human life. They include three main sections: verses of praise and collections of mantras; books on pure conduct called _Brahmanas_ , books of the brahmans, and books of spiritual learning; and books of abstruse meaning, called _Upanishads_ , which are books of esoteric philosophy. There are four collections of verses of praise, called the four _Vedas-_ , the _Rig-Veda_ , containing elegies and chants; the _Yajur-Veda_ , describing sacrifices; the _Sama-Veda_ , containing songs; and the _AtharvaVeda_ , containing prayers.\n\nThe Vedic elegies and explanations are the fount of Indian religion and philosophy. They pay homage to a multitude of gods and spirits. They offer worship and make songs of praise to Heaven and Earth, the Sun and Moon, the wind and clouds, the thunder and rain, and myriad natural phenomena, such as mountains and rivers and animals. Hence, the early Vedic religion can be called a primitive culture's pantheism. In their religious and philosophical message, the _Vedas_ do not talk of hell and do not talk of the past. They do not contain the concept of cause and effect, nor of karmic rewards and punishments. However, they do hold that the human soul does not perish. Their idea is that, after the body dies, the soul returns to Yama's heaven. The _Vedas_ teach that, in all matters relating to sacrificing to the gods and spirits, and all prayers to avoid calamities and attract blessings, the people can get a response by chanting the verses of the _Vedas._ This is quite similar to the prayers and incantations of the religious specialists in ancient Chinese culture. It is also like the primitive religious consciousness found among all the world's ethnic groups at a certain point in their history.\n\nGradually, in order to satisfy metaphysical needs, from this primitive religious belief there eventually arose accounts of the origin of humanity. The origin of humanity was due to a chief god who created everything. He was the supreme deity, the origin of the universe and of the human race. All the shapes and forms of myriad phenomena in the universe were also his creations along with humanity.\n\nThe books of pure conduct, called the _Brahmanas_ , form the second section of the _Vedas._ As time moved forward, the philosophy of the _Vedas_ could no longer fully meet people's needs. At this point, the books of pure conduct came into existence to spur on the brahman class and form a solidly constructed brahmanical religion. Most of the books of pure conduct still had as their essential message an affirmation of the sacrifices and songs that the _Vedas_ used to offer praises to the gods and provide explanations of man and the world and formulas for praying to avert disasters and attract blessings.\n\nAs for their religious philosophy, the _Brahmanas_ transformed the Vedic philosophy of a chief god who was the creator of all things and the origin of man. They revered a god who was the lord of creation, but held that this god was not apart from our true selves. This chief god was Brahman. The name \"Brahman\" means absolutely pure and perfectly real. The _Brahmanas_ asserted that there is no duality between Atman, the true self of human beings, and the true self of Brahman. This is similar to the later Confucian idea of the unity of Heaven and mankind, and is similar to the message of other religions that God and mankind share the same essence.\n\nSubsequently, this religious consciousness of Brahman, and the philosophy that there is no duality between Brahman and Atman, the true self of humans, became deeply implanted in Indian philosophical thought. This has endured all the way to the present day. The highest goal of modern Indian religion and its yogic techniques is still to reach the realm where Brahman and Atman are united as one.\n\nStill, the brahmanical religion, based on revering and following the _Brahmanas_ , the books of pure conduct, adhered at the same time to the Vedic traditions and paid homage to the grandeur of nature. It adopted the pervasive supernatural beings worshipped by the lower orders of society, namely the asuras, the rakshas, the evil spirits, and other spirits, and honored them all.\n\nThe only special point of the _Brahmanas_ , compared to the brahmanical religion, is that they incorporated a religious philosophy of cause and effect and karmic reward and punishment. This is the theory that sentient beings revolve in the cycle of birth and death due to the force of karma. It explains that, because they planted different good and evil causal bases in their past lives, people receive different rewards of pleasure and suffering in their present lives. Based on this, there were also teachings concerning what they called \"ascending to heaven\" and \"descending to hell.\" This is the original source of the teaching of karmic reward and punishment.\n\nThe third section of the _Vedas_ , the books of abstruse meaning or the _Upanishads_ , were what came into prominence after the _Brahmanas_ , the books of pure conduct. The _Vedas_ were the source of the traditional religion and philosophy of ancient India. After a transformation, the _Brahmanas_ came into existence, vast all-inclusive collections, the holy scriptures of the primitive Indian religion, Brahmanism. After another transformation, the _Upanishads_ came into existence, and brought together the Indian religious philosophy and the widespread philosophy of the intellectuals and the common people. At the end of the period of the _Brahmanas_ , the religious and philosophical researches of people in India had already reached the stage of an enthusiastic outflow in all directions, reaching everywhere high and low. No matter whether male or female, young or old, everyone was studying issues like the liberation of the mind's spiritual awareness, the destination of the soul, and the formation of the world with all their mental strength. The Chinese transliteration of the word _Upan-ishad_ has the connotation of a teacher and disciple sitting face to face communicating secrets.\n\nThe contents of the _Upanishads_ are very rich, their thinking is profound and abstruse: the whole collection includes more than two hundred works. The German philosopher Schopenhauer was infatuated with the _Upanishads_ , and his own philosophical thinking was very much influenced by them. He praised the _Upanishads_ again and again. He said that they were filled with holiness and ardor, that every chapter could induce lofty and pure thinking, and that, of all the books in the world, it was hard to find any that could match them in excellence and profundity. He thought that these books could console him in life and give him repose in death.\n\nThe _Upanishads_ have several special characteristics. They affirm the nonduality of Brahman and Atman. They assert that both the essence of the lord of creation, who is beyond form, and the essence of humans, who are at the level of form, are fundamentally a single whole. The myriad phenomena in the world are fundamentally born of the same root as we ourselves. The philosophy of the _Brahmanas_ starts from the life of the physical body and goes on to talk of the life of the soul. But it stops there and does not explain why things are so. The _Upanishads_ , on the other hand, take the self that is hidden within our bodies and minds, and analyze it into five treasuries and four states. The four states are wakefulness, dreaming, sound sleep, and death. The five treasuries are the self produced by tasting flavors, the self produced by the breath of life, the self produced by consciousness, the self produced by knowledge, and the self produced by joy. This self produced by joy is the realm where the soul by itself reaches its supreme point and is absolutely happy.\n\nIn sum, the ultimate aim of the _Upanishads'_ philosophy of Brahman and Atman is to take the small self of the individual person, liberate it, elevate it, refine it, and return it to the great self of Brahman, like the hundred rivers returning to the sea, or a drop of water going back to its source. The whole universe and all the sentient beings in it, along with the dense array of myriad forms, are all no more than the transformations of the one great self, Brahman.\n\nAccording to the _Upanishads_ , the myriad apparent phenomena of this world, including devas, humans, animals, plants, and all living things, are all born from the transformations of Brahman. By means of the five great elements, earth, water, fire, wind, and space, Brahman gives birth by transformation to things born from eggs, things born from wombs, things born from heat, things born from moisture, horses, humans, elephants, plants and animals, and all kinds of things. Like the ocean rising up in waves, Brahman, through illusory transformations, produces the multitude of apparent phenomena. In doing this, Brahman has no particular aim, but is just playfully performing magical transformations. Therefore, all apparent phenomena are empty illusions. Only the one Atman\/Brahman really exists.\n\nThe process by which Brahman gives rise to the world's myriad phenomena can be summed up into four phases. First, from the self of name and form (which can be said to be an abstract concept of subjective functioning), Brahman develops this world. Second, Brahman also has an initial self, which gives rise to desires. From the imagination of desire flows forth water, fire, and earth, the three great original elements which form the personal self. Third, by transforming and combining with the personal self, Brahman enters into the other multitude of phenomena. Fourth, in making the world by means of selves, the sea and the wind come into existence, along with life and death. Brahman enters through the gate which living species have on the top of their heads, and makes their personal selves.\n\nThe personal self is the center of sentient beings. The term \"sentient beings\" is broadly inclusive. It includes the many kinds of devas and humans, as well as all the kinds of living things in the world. Brahman's own nature has two aspects. One aspect is the ability to maintain always the fundamental state of basic essence. Another aspect is the ability to develop into a living personal self. In other words, one aspect is the power to organize itself into the body belonging to a personal self (like a physical body), while the other aspect is the ability to transform into the life force and enter into the lives of all sentient beings (like a soul).\n\nThe physical-body part is analyzed into five kinds of winds and three qualities. The five kinds of winds are similar to what the Taoists call the energy system: exhalation, inhalation, the intermediate wind, the death wind, and the dissolving wind. The three qualities are joy, sorrow, and confusion. Atman is enclosed by the physical body and the mental consciousness and cannot go free. It is as if it is locked up in a prison. It is always within the small space at the base of the heart.\n\nThe Atman is always shut up within our relevant functions, that is, such functions as breathing, sensing, and intending. The eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin are called the organs of knowing: they are the source of knowledge. The hands, feet, tongue, excretory organs, reproductive organs, and others are called the organs, and they are the source of will. The controlling factor which links them together is intent.\n\nWhen we are awake, because of the five winds and the various organs, we are entirely active and in motion. When we are dreaming, only the five winds and the intent are active. When we are sleeping without dreams, the intent stops and only the five winds are active. The state of awakening is the realm of liberation. This is exactly Atman's state of joy where there is no joy, no sorrow, no confusion, no pain, and no happiness.\n\nThere are only two roads the fate of sentient beings with personal selves can follow: cyclical existence and liberation. One is to follow apparent phenomena in their continuing transformations: this is cyclical existence. The other is to return to the fundamental state of Brahman: this is liberation. If sentient beings do not attain liberation, then they all go around and around within the three realms of heaven, earth, and space, in the three planes of existence and the four kinds of birth. The three planes of existence are: the plane of the devas; the plane of the ancestors or the plane of human beings; and the plane of animal existence and hell. The four forms of birth are birth from wombs, birth from eggs, birth from moisture, and birth from transformation.\n\nThe ultimate goal of the _Upanishads_ is to find liberation, to get free of wrongdoings and afflictions. It is to awaken to the non-dualistic purity of Brahman with human nature. The reason that people cannot return to the purity of Brahman is the barrier of ignorance and the absence of illumination. Conversely, with illumination, we can awaken to the purity of Brahman. How can humans return to the purity of Brahman? They must cultivate meditative concentration and yoga, control the movement of feelings and superficial phenomena, and chant the mantra OM, the symbol of Brahman. If they can chant it continuously, they can gradually get control of their bodies and minds and enter the nonduality where the real Atman and Brahman join.\n\n**THE RISE OF VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL TRENDS**\n\nIn the process of change from the _Vedas_ to the _Brahmanas_ , and then to the _Upanishads_ , the manner and the method of Indian religious philosophical investigations of the universe and human life became more and more rigorous. The content was also gradually enriched and became more all-inclusive. A welter of contradictions emerged in the thought of the _Upanishads_ , however, and they still could not free themselves from the limited scope of the brahmanical religion. The spirit of seeking reality is the hidden basic nature of humanity, and at this point in Indian history this spirit asserted itself through religious philosophy.\n\n**The Six Schools of Philosophy**\n\nAround the period that Shakyamuni Buddha founded Buddhism, a profusion of various schools of philosophy, all seeking the truth for themselves, established their independence. Each had its own philosophical system and its own organized system of thought. It is customary in the study of Indian philosophy to speak of the six orthodox schools and the three heterodox schools. The six so-called orthodox schools were Samkhya, Yoga, Vaisheshika, Nyaya or Naiyayaka, Mimamsa, and Vedanta. These six schools accepted the authority of the philosophy that had come down from the _Vedas_ , and they can be called the orthodox schools of the brahmanical religion. The three so-called heterodox schools were Buddhism, Jainism, and Worldly Secularism. These three schools were anti-orthodox: they did not accept the authority of Vedic thought.\n\nThe worldview of the Samkhya school was dualistic. It maintained that at the basic source of the world there were two original principles: a material inherent identity and a spiritual self. By the development of these two original principles, there came to be egotism, the five organs of knowledge, the five organs of action, the organ of mind, the five sense objects, and the five great elements. By means of these twenty-five truths, the Samkhya School accounted for the myriad forms of the world.\n\nThe Yoga school established its own philosophy based on the thought of the Samkya school. The Vaisheshika school, based on a pluralistic theory, put forward a materialistic view of the apparent world, and explained everything in terms of six fundamental categories: substances, qualities, actions, sameness, difference, and merging. The Nyaya school, with the thought of the Vaisheshika school as its background, developed a logic of causation and explanation in order to verify the validity of knowledge. The Mimamsa school continued the ritual forms of the _Brahmanas_ , the books on pure conduct. The Vedanta school handed down and further expounded the philosophy of the _Upanishads._ In reality, all six orthodox schools were passing down the _Vedas_ , with some small emendations, and putting a new face on them.\n\n_**The Samkhya School**_ : A characteristic of all the religions of India had been that, in their investigations of philosophical wisdom, they always went beyond the subjectivity of absolute faith. The philosophy of the Samkhya school affirmed from the first that the real world is characterized by suffering and the absence of bliss, and that people must seek liberation. It taught that people must first comprehend the causes of this suffering. It recognized that such methods as being born as a deva and offering sacrifices and prayers were surely not the means to ultimate liberation. It taught that this world is hard pressed by three kinds of suffering: internal suffering, the suffering associated with sickness (paralysis, fever, congestion), and psychological suffering (being parted from loved ones, being put together with hated enemies, not getting what you seek, the suffering that comes with birth); external suffering, not being able to get free of the pressures and harm done by the material world; and natural suffering, not being able to get free of the bondage imposed by the natural world.\n\nThe Samkhya philosophers propounded the theory that the result is there in the cause. They established the doctrine of two primal factors, material inherent nature and spiritual self, as their basic principle. At the same time, they established the twenty-five essences as the real truth of the universe and human life. They put forward a theory of three kinds of awareness: experiential awareness (also called immediate awareness, resembling direct awareness and experience); comparative awareness (the usual form of knowledge, the comparative judgment where things are known by inference); and awareness of the words of the sages. To these three kinds, the Nyaya school added awareness by metaphoric comparison. On the basis of these categories of awareness, the Nyaya philosophers thought that the existence of the gods could not be proven and thus could not be known with certainty, and so they approached a kind of atheism.\n\nThe so-called twenty-five essences are shown in the following chart:\n\nNeither subject nor object of creation: the spiritual self\n\nThe creative subject: inherent nature\n\nBoth subjects and objects of creation:  \nEgotism\n\nThe five sense objects:  \nform, sound, scent, taste, touch.\n\nThe objects of creation:  \nThe five great elements:\n\nspace, wind, fire, water, earth\n\nThe five organs of knowledge:  \nears, skin, eyes, tongue, nose\n\nThe five organs of action:  \ntongue, hands, feet, sexual organs, excretory  \norgans\n\nThe organ of mind\n\nIt is obvious that the philosophical thought of the Samkhya school had emerged from the brahmanical religious consciousness, which tended toward rational investigation and research on life. It was seeking liberation from cyclical existence and realization of the fruit of the path. In the Chinese Buddhist canon among the scriptures of the Samkhya school there is the _Golden Seventy Treatise_ , translated by Paramartha, which can provide research material. But there are still many deficiencies in the Samkhya philosophical system as a whole and its theoretical structure, and it cannot make its case convincingly.\n\n_**The yoga school**_ : Basically, the philosophical thought of the Yoga school came out of the same trend as that of the Samkhya school. The difference is that, in the basic principles of the Samkhya school, there was a great tendency toward atheism whereas the Yoga school posited a transcendent god, Maheshvara Deva. \"Yoga\" means contemplative practice and accord between god and man. Thus some translate it as \"accord\" and some as \"meditation\" or \"meditative contemplation.\"\n\nThere are four types of yoga scriptures. The first type are those on _**samadhi**_ , called _**Samadhi Pada**_ , which explain the basic nature of _**samadhi.**_ The second type are those on method, called _**Sadhana Pada**_ , which explain methods to cultivate in order to enter _**samadhi.**_ The third type are those on spiritual powers, called _**Vibhuti Pada**_ , which explain the basic principles of spiritual powers and classify them into types. The fourth type are those on existing independently, called _**Kaivalya Pada**_ , which explain the highest goal, which is to reach the realm of the spiritual self which is absolutely free and without bonds.\n\nIn the main, the philosophy of the Yoga school is similar to the Samkhya school. The only difference is that it changes inherent nature to the twenty-fourth truth, the spiritual self into the twenty-fifth truth, and posits Maheshvara as the twenty-sixth essence. Maheshvara (the name means \"Great Lord\") has no sentiments, no thoughts, no karma. He is not subject to karmic reward and punishment: he is transcendent, beyond the pain and pleasure of karmic reward. He developed into a great spiritual self beyond time and space. He is the teacher of all devas and humans. His sign, his mantra, is the Sanskrit OM. By chanting that mantra, people can reach accord with Maheshvara. But the god posited by the Yoga school cannot be separated from the body and mind of the personal self. Therefore, the Yoga school's methods and principles of cultivation all proceed from the mental and the physical, and aim to cut off desires, purify the mind, and seek liberation.\n\nThe cultivation methods of the Yoga school proceed from eight methods of practice to reach the realm of spiritual powers and liberation. The so-called eight branches of practice are prohibitions against evil conduct, encouragements to good conduct, methods of sitting, tempering the breath, curbing confusion, holding steady, quieting thoughts, and equipoise. The first two branches of practice must be observed in common by everyone, whether they are cultivating the path or they are in conventional life. The remaining six branches are the special practices that must be cultivated by those who are cultivating Yoga practice.\n\n  1. **The prohibitions** are disciplinary precepts for conduct. One must observe the five precepts against killing, robbery, sexual excess, lying, and covetousness.\n  2. **The encouragements** urging pure conduct. One must do five things: be satisfied, practice austerities, learn how to chant mantras by reading and from memory, and piously serve the major gods.\n  3. **Methods of sitting:** altogether there are from eighty-four to over ninety-six methods. There is lotus sitting, lion sitting, rooster sitting, bowing and sitting, and so on. There are also many different mudras formed with the hands and fingers. These are all secret signs for attaining spiritual powers.\n  4. **Tempering the breath:** various methods for refining the breath, patterns of breathing, and methods of breath-work.\n  5. **Curbing confusion:** to control the confused feelings of the body, there are such methods as contracting like a turtle to rein in the six sense organs, which can be used to reach a state similar to that of animals when they hibernate.\n  6. **Holding steady:** to enable the mind to be unmoved, cut off all false thoughts, and fix the mind in one place.\n  7. **Quieting thoughts:** by holding the mind motionless, one can merge mind and objects, and attain meditative concentration where everything is unified.\n  8. **Equipoise** (which is _**samadhi**_ ): in the end, one causes the mind to be like empty space, like a mirror reflecting the myriad forms.\n\nThe three branches from holding steady to quieting thoughts and equipoise are the central cultivation methods of the Yoga school. By means of these, one attains inconceivable spiritual powers and wisdom. To put it another way, at last one attains the level where one's own inconceivable latent powers are unfurled. Through one's own inherent nature, one attains liberation and enters the realm of wisdom. But there are differences in the depth of _samadhi._ Generally, _samadhi_ is divided into two types: with thought (with mind) and without thought (without mind). _Samadhi_ without thought is the highest realm of concentration free from thought. If one can proceed from _samadhi_ with thought and reach the wondrous realm without mind, then one can enable the spiritual self to shine alone, transcendent. By cultivating yoga, one can achieve spiritual powers.\n\nAccording to what is recorded in the Buddhist _Treatise on the Mind of Skill in Means_ , the Yoga school has eight subtle methods of explanation. They are the four great elements (earth, water, fire, and wind) along with space, intent, illumination, and lack of illumination. The Yoga school speaks of eight forms of sovereign mastery: the ability to become small, the ability to become large, the ability to lift things easily, the ability to go far, the ability to follow what the heart desires, the ability to divide the body and appear at many places at once, the ability to be honorable and excellent, and the ability to conceal the body.\n\nWe should rather say of the Yoga school's philosophy that it is a doctrine of realization rather than a learned system of thought. Its theories are a gradual transformation of the Upanishadic teachings that have come down from antiquity, but the Yoga school puts particular emphasis on meditation and contemplative practice, on using one's body and mind to seek realization of the truths of its religious philosophy. The methods it employs are almost scientific. In terms of their methods for seeking realization, none of the Indian religions and schools of learning can be separated from the Yoga school's meditation and contemplation, and Buddhism is no exception. It is just a matter of the degree of depth of what is realized, and differences in the accuracy of the perception of truth.\n\n_**The Vaisheshika School**_ : The name of this school is rendered into Chinese in various ways. The standard term means \"school of victorious argument.\" The Sanskrit word means something like \"differentiating special characteristics.\" At first, the school was founded on the theory of six categories for analyzing all phenomena and later this was developed into ten categories. In the Chinese Buddhist canon, there is included a translation by Dharma master Fazang of a treatise on the Vaisheshika school's ten categories by the shastra master Jnanacandra. His account of the ten analytic categories is approximately as follows:\n\n  1. **Substance:** This is a translation of the Sanskrit word _**dravya.**_ This means that the intrinsic qualities of the real essence of the myriad forms of being in the universe include time and space. (In terms of Chinese philosophy, this is _**ti**_ , substance.)\n  2. **Qualities:** This is a translation of the Sanskrit word _**guna.**_ It means the phenomenal appearances of the myriad forms of being in the universe. (In terms of Chinese philosophy, this is _**xiang**_ , form.)\n  3. **Actions:** This is a translation of the Sanskrit word _**karma.**_ It means the functions and activities of the myriad forms of being. (In terms of Chinese philosophy, this is _**yung**_ , function.)\n  4. **Sameness:** This means that, amid the difference in the multitude of apparent forms of being, there are basic principles which they have in common.\n  5. **Difference:** This means that, within the sameness of the myriad forms of being, there are all kinds of different specific qualities.\n  6. **Merging:** This means that substance and qualities, subject and object, are totally connected within the parts of things.\n  7. **Capability:** This means the inherent capacities of the substance, qualities, and actions of the myriad forms of beings.\n  8. **Without capability:** This refers to one's own results being born spontaneously, without involvement in the results of others.\n  9. **Categorical consistency:** This means that those with the same essence are similar to each other, like humans and other humans, and that those with a different essence are dissimilar to each other, like humans and animals.\n  10. **Nothingness:** This means that, ultimately, the myriad forms of being and the multitude of apparent phenomena do not exist.\n\nThe guiding principle of the Vaisheshika school was to use its ten categories to make deductions and analyses. These included theoretical discussions of psychology, physiology, material things, spiritual things, time, and space. The philosophers of the Vaisheshika school thought that the material world existed objectively. At the same time, they established a very subtle doctrine analyzing matter into major types, resembling the theories of molecular and atomic physics that are current today. They thought that atoms existed eternally in infinite numbers and, due to invisible forces, assembled together and scattered apart. They pushed their analysis to the point where things could not be further divided\u2014the atomic level\u2014and declared that there was no other master of creation. They said that atoms were invisible and could not be further divided, and that they endured forever without changing and without being destroyed, without beginning and without end.\n\nThe Vaisheshika philosophers said that atoms were spherical in shape and that they were one-sixth the size of the particles of floating dust visible in sunlight. They said that the atoms of the four great elements, earth, water, fire, and wind, were all different from each other, and that they had a color, a scent, and a feel, as liquids do. The atoms congealed together and formed double atoms, called child-atoms. When three double atoms joined together, they formed triple atoms, called grandchild-atoms, which were the same size as particles of floating dust visible in sunlight. When four triple atoms joined together, they formed a quadruple atom. The process of aggregation continued like this, through many stages, eventually forming the universe and all its worlds.\n\nThe Vaisheshika atomic theory is similar to the atomic theory and materialism of early Greek philosophy, and to the _**yin-yang**_ theory of the Chinese _**Book of Changes.**_ The people of several regions reached the same conclusions by different routes, and approached the atomic theories of modern science.\n\nBut traditionally, the ultimate spiritual aim of Indian civilization was always to seek liberation from the human world. Since this Vaisheshika theory was developed in India, its ultimate aim was still to seek spiritual liberation, not to investigate and develop knowledge of the material aspects of the world. A characteristic of the Vaisheshika school was its theory that results are not present in causes, and that moving along the path of liberation meant seeking true knowledge and clear perception. This was equivalent to a theory of pure knowledge. Vaisheshika theories were very numerous, and this account will stop here after this brief provisional introduction. In our Chinese Buddhist canons, there are works, such as the _**Commentaries on the Hundred Treatises**_ and _**Accounts of Consciousness Only**_ , that you can consult as sources on the Vaisheshika school.\n\n_**The Nyaya School.**_ The Sanskrit word _**nyaya**_ has the meaning of logical inference and logical criteria. The common practice in Chinese is to translate it as \"the school of correct logic.\" This is the ancestral school of Indian logic. The aim with which the Nyaya school was founded was still to seek true knowledge and reach the stage of the liberation of wisdom. Later, it developed into a system of formal logic with five branches: propositions, causation, metaphor, concatenation, and conclusions. The later Indian systems of strict logical inference were all successors to one of the Nyaya school's methods of seeking knowledge, namely, logic, but they did not have the great purpose of the Nyaya school. Some people think that the connection between the development of logic in the West and in India gives much food for thought, but this is beside the point for our present subject, and for now we will not discuss it.\n\n_**The Mimamsa School**_ : The Sanskrit word _mimamsa_ has the meaning of pondering, investigating, or doing research. The Mimamsa school's philosophy can be described as a religious philosophy that researched the doctrines of the brahmanical religion and propagated the thought of the _Vedas._ The Mimamsa philosophers undertook to spread orthodox interpretations of the sacrifices and religious methods of the _Vedas_ , and ponder and investigate the inner meaning of the _Upanishads._\n\nIn the course of this, the Mimamsa philosophers propounded the doctrine of the eternal existence of the actual sounds of the Vedic teachings. They thought that the words of the Vedic scriptures had an intrinsic reality in addition to their meaning that endured forever, along with them, without changing. They thought that the texts of the _Vedas_ were divinely created scriptures, that they were undeniably true, and moreover, that the sounds of their words had an esoteric spiritual power. They worshipped them as the supreme principle, so the sounds of the Sanskrit words were imbued with supreme authority.\n\nThis philosophical foundation provided the basis for the later Esoteric Buddhist theory of _mantrayoga._ It was extraordinarily powerful. As for the method by which this theory was established by the Mimamsa philosophers, it was by no means blind, dogmatic superstition. They used logical methods as their basis and established a theory of awareness. They distinguished immediate awareness through experience and realization, comparative awareness involving knowing by inference, awareness on the basis of metaphoric comparisons, and awareness by criteria of meaning. In order to uphold the brahmanical thought of the ancient scriptures, they completely opposed Buddhist an ti-ritualism. But they were still not able to establish a theory that only god exists, and so Vedanta arose to repair this deficiency.\n\n_**The Vedanta School:**_ The Vedanta school arose as a continuation of the Mimamsa school. It too was a philosophy that opposed Buddhism and did its utmost to maintain the truth of the _**Vedas**_ and _**Upanishads.**_ It established a monistic concept of Brahman as the ultimate. As the name implies, Vedanta was a development of the _**Vedas.**_\n\nThough Mimamsa and Vedanta developed comparatively late, and because they were in the main line of Indian religious philosophy, their theories had a great influence on people's minds. Thus they are generally mentioned along with the four great schools discussed previously.\n\n**The Buddhism of Shakyamuni versus non-Buddhist Paths**\n\nFrom the foregoing introduction, we have already become acquainted to some small degree with the civilization and religious thought of ancient India, and the profusion of different philosophies and various schools of learning. From our historical and cultural viewpoint as Chinese, the situation in ancient India was exactly like the period at the end of the Eastern Zhou dynasty, when a multitude of philosophies contended with each other and diverse schools of thought flourished. There was ideological confusion, and the ideas in which people believed began to waver under the impact. Added to this were political factors, the economic poverty of society, and warfare between ethnic groups and rival aristocrats. As the saying goes: \"Armies bring famine.\"\n\nIn response to the needs of the time, there arose extraordinary personalities aiming to purify the world and bring relief to the people. There are only two roads which such extraordinary people can follow. One is to seek military power to resolve the situation, carrying out a unification of the country and bringing peace and security to the people. This is the road of the hero. The other is to spread a higher culture and a new way of thought, teaching by word and by example and, as a sage, causing civilizing doctrines to spread throughout the country and to be transmitted for generations to come. A hero conquers everyone and makes all the people in the country submit to him. But he cannot conquer his own afflictions and suffering, or the sorrows of life and death. A sage conquers himself and, on behalf of all people, takes on the burden of long-term affliction, with the bravery it takes to eliminate the sufferings of others.\n\nGiven contemporary circumstances in India, Shakyamuni's Buddhism arose in response to a need. Naturally, it had its background in the times and its historical causes. What were the results of Buddhist philosophy and its methods of practice? We will discuss that later. Here we will only deal with the period surrounding Shakyamuni Buddha's appearance, and with the other people who lived at the same time and carried on religious teachings opposed to his. There certainly were such people. We will cite them as illustrative examples, so we can recognize just where the true meaning and spirit of Shakyamuni's Buddhism lay.\n\n_The Worldly School_\n\nThe theory of this school was similar to modern materialism and close to modern-day existentialism. Its followers proposed the theory of depending on the world of apparent reality in all things and holding onto sentiments and thoughts, so it is called the school of following along with the world.\n\nThe Worldly school denied the authority of all religions. They thought that, apart from direct sensation, there is nothing that can be believed. Hence, they thought that the conclusions reached by logical inference were also unreliable. They thought that nothing really exists in this world except the four great material elements of earth, water, fire, and wind, which can be seen and touched. The four great elements join together to form all living things, including the bodies and lives of humans; they produce feeling and knowing just as molds form by spontaneous transformation. In turn, spiritual states are but the functioning of matter. In sum, according to the worldly school, apart from matter, no such thing as the spirit exists. Thus, people need only rely on their own sensations and desires, and hunt for happiness. While this body is in existence, people should satisfy their own desires: this is the ultimate human goal. Beyond enjoying this world, there cannot be any other ideal world.\n\nThe adherents of this Worldly school were full of romantic sentiments, and were very similar in their way of thinking to such modern day philosophies as materialism, hedonism, and passivity. They advocated the theory that everything happens spontaneously, without a cause; thus there are no causes and no effects. Their refrain was: heaven does not exist; liberation does not exist; there is no spiritual existence; there are no other worlds; thus there is no such thing as karmic reward and punishment.\n\nIn fact, this kind of thinking has existed always and everywhere in the contradictory psychology of the human race. Sentient beings are always in an eternal night of dreams, and the morning bell and the evening drum can do nothing about it! But at the time when Shakyamuni Buddha was spreading his teaching, this way of thinking was very powerful. From this, we can imagine the state of unrest in Indian society at that time, and the trend toward decline.\n\nAny society in a state of unrest, in a period of sadness and disillusionment, or when the history of its civilization is going down hill\u2014any society like this, if it does not take vigorous determined action, will move into a state of passivity and intoxication with the enjoyment of immediate reality. When that happens, even if these kinds of ideas and these kinds of proposals do not become a school of thought, they will spontaneously exist in the widespread consciousness of the people. And if people advocate them, they will be enunciated as truths and demonstrated in people's conduct. In this way, they will come to have the power of a school of thought.\n\n_Jainism_\n\nThe founding teacher of Jainism was Vardhamana Mahavira, a contemporary of Shakyamuni Buddha. He was born in a Kshatriya lineage in the region near the city of Vaishali. At the age of twenty-eight, he left home to seek the path. After cultivating practice for twelve years, he thought he had attained great penetrating enlightenment. He was called Jaina, which means \"victorious.\" In the twenty or thirty years of the latter part of his lifetime, he organized a congregation of _**shramanas**_ and wandered around teaching throughout the countries of Magadha and Vaishali. At last, he died in the village of Prava in Magadha.\n\nNot long after Mahavira's death, his disciples divided into two great sects, the white-robed sect and the naked sect (also called the natural-body sect and the empty-robe sect). In the Buddhist scriptures, the Jainas are called Nirgranthas which means \"free from all ties.\" When there was a great famine in Magadha, one group of Jaina monks moved to southern India under the leadership of the head of the group, Bhadrabahu. The group that remained in Magadha assembled a collection of holy scriptures. Later on, when the group that had gone to the south returned to Magadha, they refused to accept this collection of scriptures. In their opinion, only the southern group that advocated going naked was correct. Because of this, a movement gradually arose that split the Jainas in Magadha into a sect that wore white robes and a sect that went naked. By the first century A.D., this split was an accomplished fact. Subsequently, there were even more divisions into branch sects. Even at the present day, there are many men cultivating the path in southern India who still go naked like this.\n\nThe philosophical thought of the Jainas was similar in the main to the Samkhya doctrine that opposed mind and matter. They thought that spiritual life had a living soul and that material life did not. They were pure dualists, but they thought that spiritual life was not outside of matter. They also established a theory of seven truths: life, the nonliving, leakage, bonds, control, peaceful stillness, and liberation. When the two truths of good and evil were added to these, there were nine truths in all. From their fundamental philosophical standpoint, the Jainas were dualistic or else pluralistic, and this was always self-contradictory.\n\nThe Jainas used the two truths of life and the nonliving as the essential elements in their theory of the karmic rewards of birth and death, and liberation. The other truths were derived from these two. They thought that life is a real essence, basically inherently pure by nature. Because it is covered over by the nonliving (by material things), it loses its fundamental light. All the activities of living are karma. Karma percolates into life, and so it is called leakage. In the Jaina theory, what is called karma is a rarefied form of matter: when the body is in motion, it excretes a rarefied form of matter. Thus, this body is the karmic body. The karmic body ties down life with bonds and joins together with the nonliving to make us revolve in the planes of existence and receive pain and pleasure. To be liberated from cyclical existence, we must cultivate austerities and control the flow of karma into life: this is control. Through control, we reach the level where old karma is obliterated and new karma is not born: this is peaceful stillness. When we progress further and annihilate all karma, life separates from matter and transcends the world: this at last is liberation.\n\nThere was another aspect of Jaina theory which showed similarities to the theory of magnetic fields in modern physics. This is very interesting. Now the Jainas divided their category of life into four components: space, dharmas, nondharmas, and matter. When these four components of life were united, they called it a real entity. These four components are what constructs the whole universe. Space is the field in which myriad beings and a multitude of apparent phenomena are formed and move. This field gives all things their basic principles: space itself is a single whole, infinite, eternal, and inactive. But the Jaina theory also said that space is space at the conceptual level. Dharmas are the conditions for movement, the space in which movement is possible. Nondharmas are the conditions for stillness, the space in which stillness is possible. Both dharmas and nondharmas are eternal, single, inactive, independent entities. Matter is comprised of the gross or fine forms made up by the joining together or dissolution of color, scent, taste, touch, sound, etc. It includes the material entities of darkness, shadows, light, and heat. The fine forms of matter are atoms; the coarse forms are compounded things. Atoms are not necessarily indivisible, but they are so rarefied that they occupy a point in space, and their movements are extremely swift. They join together like dryness and moisture, and so they form compound things, and from this they construct objects.\n\nLife, dharmas, nondharmas, and matter coexist in space; they make up the apparent forms of the world. In Jaina theory, transcending this space (this material space) is what is meant by transcending the world. The Jainas thought that _**nirvana**_ was liberation from the revolving flow. As Buddhism has the three jewels of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, the Jainas also spoke of three jewels: correct faith, correct knowledge, and correct conduct. They advocated the cultivation of austerities. They accepted the caste system and some of their teachings are the same as those of the brahmanical religion. But they rejected the _**Vedas**_ , forbade sacrifices, and prohibited the killing of living beings. In these ways, their spirit was similar to that of Buddhism.\n\n_The Outside Paths of the Six Teachers and Others_\n\nNext we will discuss the outside paths of the six teachers who were contemporaries of Shakyamuni Buddha. Although these teachers all propounded different theories and disputed among themselves, they were influential at the time and later, and each possessed his own faithful followers. At various points in the Buddhist scriptures, they are mentioned and criticized. But, apart from the Jainas, whose own scriptures are still extant as testimony, the other schools of thought have left only a few fragments from which we may catch glimpses of the contents of their theories. Even though not much remains of them and the ideas they propounded tend toward the preposterous, nevertheless, if they were able to become schools of thought, they certainly must have had some reasoning that could justify their absurd claims. What follows is an approximate account of them.\n\nPurana taught that there is no good or evil in anything, that there is no karmic reward or punishment for merits or wrongdoings, and that there are no gradations of karmic power. This line of thought seems to be based on the concepts of the Worldly school of thought.\n\nMaskarin taught that there are seven components to the bodies of all sentient beings: earth, water, fire, wind, suffering, pleasure, and life. These seven components are indestructible and remain forever without moving. Thus, they can be flung on a sharp blade and still not be injured, because there is nothing that is susceptible of injury and nothing that can die. This line of thought is close to materialism, but it seems to be a development based on the atomistic concepts of the Vaisheshika school.\n\nSanjayin taught that there are two essential points. The first is to respect the power of the apparent reality of the world. The second is the concept of the survival from previous lives. His followers thought the sovereignty exercised by a monarch could be reborn after his material death and that humans could be reborn after death, just like the plants that die in Fall, remain dormant in Winter, and then return to live again in the Spring. Thus, after dying, people return to be born again in this world. Levels of suffering and pleasure do not depend on the karma people create in their present lives; they are all due to past connections. The present has no causes and the future has no results.\n\nBut Sanjayin taught his followers that, if in their present conduct people uphold discipline, practice diligently, and work hard to progress and cover over the evil results in the present life, then they can attain a level where there are no leaks and thereby exhaust the karmic power of the past. Thus they can make all suffering end. When the multitude of sufferings has ended, this is liberation. This kind of thinking seems to be based on the Samkhya theory that results are present in causes.\n\nAjita-kesakambala's teaching also took the position that there is no good or evil, no disasters or blessings, and denied the theory of cause and effect, or karmic reward and punishment. It seems to be derived from a concept of inert emptiness.\n\nKakuda-katyayana's teaching took the position that if people kill living beings and feel no remorse in their minds, then in the end they cannot fall into the evil planes of existence, since their minds would be like empty space without a speck of dust or water. If they feel regret, then they enter hell. It is like water soaking in and wetting the earth. The lives of all sentient beings were created by Ishvara. Thus there is no question of human merit or wrongdoing; human behavior is all mechanical. The master craftsman who constructed this mechanism is Ishvara. This line of thought seems to be based on the theories of the Yoga school, progressively deteriorating and becoming more and more aberrant.\n\nNirgrantha's teaching took the position that there is no such thing as giving charity, no such thing as good, no such thing as father and mother, no present and no future, no arhats, no such thing as cultivation, and no such thing as the path. All sentient beings undergo the cycle of birth and death for eighty thousand eons and then spontaneously attain liberation, no matter whether or not they have faults. It is like the four great rivers of India all entering the ocean, with no distinctions among them. Sentient beings are also like this; when they attain liberation, there are no distinctions among them.\n\nThis kind of thought was a totally nihilistic theory of onesided emptiness. Buddhism is good at speaking of emptiness, but emptiness in the Buddhist sense is not the materialistic concept of nothingness. If you study Buddhism without understanding this clearly, you will always take the emptiness of which the Buddha speaks as close to the outside paths' view of emptiness. But this is something that is not new. Go wrong by the slightest bit at the beginning, and you're off by a thousand miles at the end. In your study of cultivation, you must be alerted to this.\n\nThere is another account of the six teachers of the outside paths related in the notes to the _**Vimalakirti Sutra:**_\n\nPurana taught that nothing exists, that all phenomena are like empty space, and are neither born nor destroyed. Maskarin taught that the sins and defilements of sentient beings have no causal conditions.\n\nSanjayin taught that it is not necessary to seek the path. He taught that after a certain number of eons going through birth and death, the end of suffering is attained spontaneously. It's like winding a thread around a mountain: when the thread is used up, it stops. Ajita-kesakambala taught that if you experience suffering in this life, in future incarnations you will experience eternal happiness.\n\nKakuda-katyayana taught in terms of both existence and nonexistence, giving answers according to the questions he was asked, adopting views in response to people. If someone asked if phenomena exist, he would answer that they do exist. If someone asked if phenomena are nonexistent, he would answer that they are nonexistent.\n\nNirgrantha taught that wrongdoing and merit, suffering and happiness, are all due to past lives, that you must pay back what you owe. Even if you practice the path in this life, you cannot cut off the results of past karma.\n\nThe notes to the _**Vimalakirti Nirdesha Sutra**_ conclude that these six teachers all created misguided views. They claimed that going naked and practicing austerities constituted omniscience.\n\nThe common practice in discussing the sectarian divisions in classical Indian philosophical thought is to focus on the six major schools and the six heterodox teachers discussed above. But, according to what is recorded in the translations of the various Buddhist scriptures, there was a great profusion of separate sects which was not limited to these alone. The Buddhist sources commonly speak of more than ninety-six non-Buddhist views. The _**Toga Shastra**_ mentions sixteen opinions (sixteen theories based on subjective views), sixty-two views (sixty-two differing ideas), and so on. Other examples are the _Treatise on the Nirvana of the Outside Paths and the Lesser Vehicle_ , which lists twenty non-Buddhist sects, and the _Vairocana Sutra_ , which, in its chapter, \"The Mind Abiding in the Path,\" lists thirty non-Buddhist sects. Some taught that time is the basis for the formation of the universe and the myriad beings. Some proposed space as the principle formative factor, or the western direction, or the natural world. In voluminous writings, each school propounded its own theory.\n\nIf we want to study the world's philosophical thought and religious philosophy, Indian civilization alone already contains all the types of thinking found from ancient to modern times all over the world. We can acclaim Indian philosophy as an unsurpassed marvel.\n\nBut over the generations, those who have studied Indian philosophy have only paid attention to the different doctrines and theories of the various schools of thought. In general, they have overlooked the fact that all schools of thought in India adopted the method of seeking realization through experience. In regard to Indian philosophy, it is without doubt a great shortcoming to speak only of theories and not of practical methods. Thus, most students of the classical Indian philosophies have not viewed them in their entirety.\n\nIn sum, except for the Worldly philosophy which emphasized a doctrine of enjoying apparent reality, the main teaching of the other schools of Indian philosophy tended toward doctrines of transcending the world. All of them used yogic concentration and contemplation as the guiding principle for cultivating realization. In terms of differences in their methods of yogic concentration and contemplation, each of the various schools had its own theories and attainments. On this basis, there formed the overall Indian philosophical view of methods of cultivating realization, but this is beyond the scope of this book and, for now, we will not deal with it. Nevertheless, the Buddhist teachings and methods of seeking realization are inseparably linked to meditative contemplation and yoga, so we need to give an explanation of these things before proceeding to the main topic.\n\n**CHAPTER SUMMARY**\n\nThe foregoing discussion of Indian religion and philosophy leads us to two conclusions. First, ancient India's learned thought had developed in many different directions and showed many marvels. This is understandable since, for any people with a long history, the legacy of culture and thought that they have accumulated over time will not be simple. Unfortunately, in the case of India, the country never passed through a long period of complete unification, and so the many branches of ancient Indian culture and philosophy appear jumbled and it is hard to distinguish clearly among them.\n\nDeveloping from the _Vedas_ , the _Brahmanas_ , and the _Upanishads_ , Indian religious philosophy evolved into various schools of thought and also brought forth the theories of the six major nonBuddhist teachers contemporary with Shakyamuni Buddha. But this was the situation in the culture and thought not only of ancient India, for it has turned out that, up to the present day in Indian religion, or in the various religious sects that are freely accepted in various parts of the country, they still preserve the ideas and forms of the traditions of the past. These traditions, with their history of several thousand years, have already fused into a single whole with everyday life. In other words, these things have already become part of the popular consciousness.\n\nTherefore, if we do not arrive at a deep understanding of Indian culture, but instead just get a superficial impression and look at things on the surface, or we only study matters from a single point of view, then we may think that we have already understood the source of Buddhism. But in truth, we will have only a partial, misleading understanding. We will be like a crowd of blind men running their hands over an elephant, each of whom seizes upon one part of its body and thinks that that part typifies the whole elephant.\n\nMoreover, if we do not proceed from the preexisting culture and philosophy of India in our attempt to understand and investigate Buddhism, even if we interpret the Buddhist scriptures as Buddhists, sometimes it is still very easy to mistakenly enter into the religion of the brahmans, or the thought of the other schools of philosophy. This is even more true of the explanations given by non-Buddhists who are estranged from Buddhism. Therefore, before giving an account of Buddhism, we must first deeply plumb the sources of the religious philosophies of Indian culture. At the same time, this will make those who study Buddhism more alert, so they can avoid getting tangled up in the intricacies of Buddhist philosophy.\n\nThe second conclusion concerns the rise of Buddhism. From the viewpoint of human life, there is sure to be a sequence of cause and effect that can be traced in the development of human civilization and the evolution of thought, as well as in the appearance of great personalities whose significant achievements in world-transcendence and worldly involvement have led them to found areas of learning and schools of thought. The founders of religions and the great philosophers cannot be exceptions to this rule. First of all, we must understand the religion and philosophy of the preexisting Indian culture, and from this we can discover the motive and goal of Shakyamuni Buddha's compassion and actions on behalf of the world. We can discover where the spirit of the Buddhism he founded lay and how it inherited its legacy from the past and opened the way for the future.\n\nIf we can temporarily put aside religious allegiances and let go of our tendencies to reject those who differ from ourselves, from the scholarly viewpoint we can see that there was not such a big difference between Shakyamuni Buddha's role in the ancient history of India and the role of Confucius in China. Confucius was afraid that the Tao of True Kingship was not being manifested, that human minds were getting bogged down, and that misguided doctrines were spreading everywhere. Therefore, he edited the _Classic of Poetry_ and the _Classic of History_ , defined the proper rituals and music, and wrote the _Spring and Autumn Annals_ in order to clarify the principles of managing the world and preserve the tradition of the Tao, thereby perpetuating the spirit of civilization. In rejecting wrong paths, in expounding correct teachings, in concern for equity, in propagating civilizing teachings, in correcting thought and extending wisdom, the concern and spirit for saving the world and its people displayed by Confucius and Shakyamuni Buddha were not very far apart, though there are some slight differences between them. As for the differences in the relative profundity of the doctrines of the philosophies of Shakyamuni Buddha and Confucius, in all fairness, each has its strong points, but we should not force the comparison.\n\nShakyamuni Buddha was concerned to displace misguided doctrines and keep the true ones, and to cut away excessive complications and adhere to simplicity. But Buddhism itself, in the long run, could not take root and grow in India. As things turned out, the full glory of Buddhism had to wait until China accepted the entire legacy of its teachings and theories as a whole, and synthesized them together to establish a Chinese Buddhism whose glories have shone through ancient and modern times. This is really something inconceivable. But the same is true in the history of many of the world's great religions: in the region that produces the founder of a religion, the people are unwilling to value his contribution. They have to wait until people in other lands start to revere him, and only then can they see how precious he is. Gradually, it all flows back upstream to the source.\n\nPeople all over the world, ancient and modern, have a common psychological pattern. Generally, they value what is far away and devalue what is close at hand; they revere the ancient and despise the modern; they like what is secret and hate what is manifest; they reject what is familiar and fall in love with what is strange. The common saying has it that: \"A monk from far away chants the sutras better.\" Perhaps this is the same principle. In the future, will Chinese Buddhism have to wait for some monk from even farther away to come to chant the scriptures? This is enough to make people reflect deeply.\nCHAPTER 2\n\nShakyamuni Buddha, the Founder of Buddhism\n\nAs previously stated, the formation and growth of a religion is sure to have its cultural background. There will be an even closer connection between the personal history of the founder of a religion and the religion which he founds. So before studying a religion, we must understand the life of its founder. This is something that cannot be overlooked.\n\nIn any religion, when it comes to speaking of the founder's life, believers are all sure to add a layer of myth and mysterious legend. Otherwise, it seems, there is not enough to highlight his sublimity and his greatness. Now that the twentieth century is here and scientific knowledge has spread everywhere, all traditional ideas must be judged anew, and even sacred inviolable religions cannot avoid this tendency of the times. Accordingly, if religions are based on myths and legends, they cannot be accepted by the widespread modern consciousness. It is preferable to study the life of the founder of a religion from a humanistic standpoint and investigate how he discovered the truth about the universe and human life, how he sublimated his human qualities, transcended ordinary life, and entered sagehood. An account of a religious teacher's life from this point of view is easy for people to believe and does not detract from the standing of the religion itself. But in introducing the life of the founder of a religion in an era when the old and new ideas are just replacing each other, we cannot stick rigidly to the old accounts throughout, nor can we altogether reject the old and adhere only to the new. All we can do is make an eclectic mix of elements from both, do all we can to arrive at relatively objective facts, and await the appraisal of the knowledgeable.\n\n**SHAKYAMUNI'S LINEAGE**\n\nAs for the course of the life of Shakyamuni Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, as the whole world knows, he was born to the Indian nobility. The high standing of his family is clearly and reliably established. There was no need for Buddhist hagiographers to embellish on this any further: Shakyamuni was already born at the pinnacle of glory in the human world. His father was a king and he himself was the crown prince. This is something that everyone has known here in China in the two thousand years since Buddhism entered our country.\n\n**A Great Man Who Refused to be King**\n\nIndia, at the time when Shakyamuni was born, was quite similar to our own Spring and Autumn period. At that time in China, the 8th to 5th century B.C., the Zhou dynasty emperor held the highest position in the nation, but real power was held by the various feudal lords who had divided the country into rival territories. Furthermore, neighboring states encroached on each other. This was the period in Chinese history when the decentralized feudal system was rapidly heading for collapse. At that time, in the five regions of India, there was no central power with the strength to impose its rule and no common monarch. India was still experiencing a situation of small states led by chiefs holding local power. In fact, India as a whole was divided into two or three hundred states.\n\nAccording to the traditional Chinese historical account, Shakyamuni's father was by no means an overall monarch or emperor who united all of India. He was only the king of a small local state. By lineage, he belonged to the class of _**kshatriyas**_ who held military power and he possessed the authority of the hereditary nobility.\n\nAmong the ranks of all the founders of the world's great religion, Shakyamuni, with his royal lineage and his illustrious station, was by no means one of those who raised himself up above the dusts of conventional life because he had experienced the sadness of human life through hardships and suffering. On the contrary, he was born into circumstances of comfort, wealth, and honor. Nevertheless, he had an awakening and he vowed to seek the path of eternal liberation, not only for himself, but at the same time for all sentient beings. He boldly and decisively renounced his royal vocation and refused to be a king. With great vows of compassion to save sentient beings, with responsive teachings of enlightening practice addressed to all beings, he ended up founding the great religion of Buddhism, which represents the ultimate truth. This sagely spirit of his was really praiseworthy and deserves our acclaim and our respect.\n\n**The Dates of Shakyamuni's Birth and Death**\n\nIn studying the life history of Shakyamuni, there is one difficult issue that should be confronted at the outset, even though there is no way to resolve it. All along, the Indians have lacked a concept of historical tradition and the idea of an accurate standard of historical time. In the past, when the Indians themselves spoke of history, they relied on the mythical epics of the brahmanical religion, and these always lacked a strict division between the past and the present generation. The history that Indians learn nowadays has been determined and compiled anew based on the researches of both Easterners and Westerners since the 18th century. Moreover, the classical Indian calendrical systems used years and months of different lengths from the modern calendar. The five regions of India\u2014east, west, south, north, and center\u2014differ in their local climates and their cold and warm seasons, and so they also had slight differences in their calendrical reckonings of the days, months, years, and seasons.\n\nTherefore, ascertaining the dates of Shakyamuni's birth and death has become a disputed issue among Chinese and foreign scholars. Modern people believe in scientific methods and sometimes, when they displace old ideas with new ones, it is impossible to avoid shocking conventional opinion. When we try to ascertain anew something that took place thousands of years ago, if we cannot be careful and search for proof, bold hypotheses will always tend to be idiosyncratic or arbitrary and we can hardly accept this. Here, the best thing to do is be ready to compromise, rely on objective certainties, and thus seek a factual conclusion.\n\nFirst, let us mention our sources. Texts bearing on the date of Shakyamuni's death include _**Fa Xian Zhuan (Account of the Manifestation of the Dharma), Lidai San Bao Ji (Record of the Three Jewels Through the Generations), Po Xie Lun (Refutation of Heresies), Xiyu Ji (Record of Western Regions), Shijia Fangzhi (Gazetteer on Shakyamuni), Jiuling Shengxian Lu (Record of the Sages of Vulture Peak), Seng Shilue (Brief History of the Sangha)**_ , and _**Fanyi Mingyi Ji (Collection of Translation Terms)**_ , among others. From these records that have circulated in Tibet, Burma, Sri Lanka, and other countries, and from the works of European scholars, the theory that places the earliest date of Shakyamuni's death says that he died in 422 B.C. The latest date given is from 330-320 B.C. With these two opinions on the date of his death so far apart, this really seems to be an ancient historical fact worth investigating and unearthing.\n\nBut based on Western history and the data of world history, we can ascertain the date of the most glorious event in India at that time by the historical fact of the invasion of India by the king of Macedonia, Alexander the Great. Alexander's hitherto invincible army encountered the stubborn resistance of the soldiers of India and the arguments of the Indian philosophers. The time when Alexander the Great invaded India was precisely the time when King Ashoka, the great protector of Buddhism, had appeared in India. Now we can take as the point of reference the dates of King Ashoka, which all the world knows, and from them trace back his deeds and count back to the date when Shakyamuni Buddha died.\n\nWhen we attempt, this we discover two facts. Most of the Buddhist texts of the northern transmission say that the rise of Ashoka and the death of Shakyamuni were separated by a hundred or more years. The Buddhist texts of the southern transmission say they were two hundred and eighteen years apart. The discrepancy of more than a hundred years might be due to the variations in the calendrical reckoning of dates in southern and northern India.\n\nThe date for Shakyamuni's death given by the Buddhist texts of the southern transmission accords with the date given in \"Records of the Many Sages\" in the _**Lidai San Bao Ji**_ , written by Fei Changfang in the Eastern Han dynasty. The dates recorded in the _**Da Tang Nei Dian Lu (The Inner Record of the Great Tang)**_ , the _**Kaiyuan Shijiao Lu (The Kaiyuan Period Record of Buddhism)**_ and the _**Zhenyuan Shijiao Lu (The Zhenyuan Period Record of Buddhism)**_ are all also close to this.\n\nTracing back from these Chinese sources, one can ascertain the date of Shakyamuni's death to be the thirty-fourth year of the reign of King Jing of the Zhou dynasty (486 B.C.). Tracing back another eighty years, the date of Shakyamuni's birth becomes the seventh year of King Ling of the Zhou dynasty, that is, 565 B.C. As for the month and day of his birth, by tradition in China, it is said to have been the eighth day of the fourth month. However, this is the date according to the Chinese lunar calendar, not the contemporary Indian calendar in use in those days.\n\nIn the final analysis, it is very difficult to say to what date on the contemporary calendar or lunar calendar Shakyamuni's birthday corresponds. Nevertheless, according to traditional practice in China, it is the eighth day of the fourth lunar month. This already has a history of over two thousand years behind it, and it does not seem necessary to keep arguing about this.\n\n**The Clan Tradition**\n\nAs we have already indicated, we have determined the date of Shakyamuni Buddha's birth to have corresponded to the eighth day of the fourth month of the seventh year of the reign of King Ling of the Zhou dynasty in China (565 B.C.). Shakyamuni was born in the town of Kapilavastu in north-central India. In terms of Indian geography, this place was northeast of Benares and northwest of Patna, near Gorakhpur, on the southern border of Nepal in the valley of the Kohana River, known in ancient times as the Rohini, a branch of the Ganges. Shakyamuni Buddha's birthplace was in the Lumbini Garden to the east of Kapilavastu.\n\n\"Shakya\" was his family name. It is translated into Chinese as \"capable of true humanity.\" \"Muni\" was his sobriquet. It is translated into Chinese as \"solitary.\" In addition, he had four other clan names: Gautama, Ikshvaku, Suryavamsa, and Sakya. His was a clan that belonged to the warrior class, the _**kshatriyas.**_ According to the researches of later scholars of the humanities, this clan had originally migrated from Central Asia and had settled along the Indus River on the western side of the central plain of India. They passed their high position in the nobility down through the generations. The Shakya clan were the rulers of the Kapilavastu region: following the ancient Indian practice, they could be called kings of that country. At that time, Kapilavastu was located on the west side of the Rohini River. On the east side of the river was the town of Koli, which belonged to another _**kshatriya**_ clan. These two clans intermarried in order to maintain close bonds of consanguinity.\n\nWhen the worthy king of Kapilavastu, Suddhodana, was over fifty, Buddha's mother, Queen Maya, who was already over forty-five, became pregnant. She was fond of pure and quiet places and she liked to go for walks in the natural scenery of the gardens around the town. One day, when Spring was at an end and Summer was just beginning, on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month when the wind was mild and the Sun was shining and the birds were singing and the flowers were blooming, she was wandering in the Lumbini Garden. She saw a pure, shady Ashoka tree that was growing luxuriantly. _As_ she raised her hands to break off a branch, unexpectedly Shakyamuni spontaneously came forth from her right side and there were all sorts of auspicious signs. The whole country rejoiced. This is the famous story of Shakyamuni's birth. The story goes that, when Shakyamuni was seven days old, his mother, Queen Maya, unfortunately passed away. Shakyamuni was therefore nurtured and raised by his aunt, Queen Mahaprajapati, whose name is translated into Chinese as \"path of great love.\" He received the love and protection of his aunt, who cared for him as a mother would.\n\nIn most cases, the historical records of world-famous personages (for example, those that deal with the births of the founders of religions and the founders of empires), follow legendary accounts and are always full of supernatural omens like crimson lightning winding around a central pillar, or red lights filling a room. These kinds of things show that these are births of special consequence: their purpose is to provide the individual with a supernatural embellishment or cast them in the mold of an icon. This practice gives much food for thought.\n\nThe story of Shakyamuni's birth that we cited above surely belongs in the category of the supernatural, and strains our credulity. But in this story, there are several points worth noting. First, Suddhodana had his son late in life, and he was concerned with the continuity of his line and passing down the throne. It goes without saying that this was a fervent wish. Shakyamuni was born into a noble lineage, in opulent surroundings, but after he had grown up and become an adult, he boldly abandoned his royal position and left home to cultivate the Path. What kind of boldness of spirit was this? What kind of heart was this?\n\nIn addition, Buddha's mother gave birth to him through her side. This is indeed incredible to the ordinary person. But according to the legend that she died seven days after the birth, it is possible to imagine it as some kind of birth by Caesarean section, or perhaps some special kind of birth. This is almost beyond a doubt.\n\nFinally, Queen Mahaprajapati, who raised Shakyamuni to maturity, was another of King Suddhodana's noble consorts. Later on, she followed Shakyamuni Buddha, left home to study the Path, and became a nun. From this it is obvious that she was both a great woman whose compassion will shine forever, and a venerable protector of the Dharma who was a woman of wisdom. When we think about this, we see that this was no chance occurrence, and she deserves our respect and reverence.\n\n**Legends of Shakyamuni's Innate Spiritual Uniqueness**\n\nAccording to what Buddhism says and the words of the classic Buddhist scriptures, we know that what is called the buddha-world is not only in this world. We know that this period and the presently existing time and space was inaugurated by the hand of Shakyamuni Buddha. It is said that this world on which we depend for our existence has passed through innumerable cycles of formation, abiding, and destruction. On the smallest scale, an example is that the earth has already had several ice ages and several periods of being inundated. It is truly the case that the sea has become dry land and the dry land has become the sea many times, but the existence of the Buddha Dharma has continued forever without being cut off.\n\nAccording to Buddhist cosmology, we are now in the \"eon of worthy sages.\" This term means that, in this universe over a period of billions of years, many worthy sages will continue to be born. By cultivating the bodhisattva path of Mahayana Buddhism, they have already realized the perfect enlightenment that is the fruit of the tenth-stages bodhisattvas. When their present lives end, they are reborn among the multitude of devas as devas of the Tushita Heaven, or devas of the inner court of the Tushita Heaven. They are called \"auxiliary bodhisattvas.\" They wait until another eon arrives in this world and human history changes, and Buddhism in the world is declining toward extinction. Then these auxiliary bodhisattvas again enter into the human plane of existence to be born, leave home, and finally become buddhas. Then the Buddha Dharma flourishes greatly again and, because of them, the Buddha Dharma abides in the world. The auxiliary bodhisattva of the present is Maitreya, who is also the prospective buddha of the future.\n\nSome accounts in the Buddhist scriptures say that Shakyamuni had been dwelling in another world, and he had long since become a buddha. He was born here in our world Saha to serve in his turn as the eighth buddha in the \"eon of the worthy sages\" of this world. (Some say he was the fourth buddha.) Before this buddha, there had already been seven other buddhas who had lived in our world.\n\nThe accounts in the various Buddhist scriptures relate five or six hundred stories of Shakyamuni's past lives and his virtuous conduct and myriad merits. In general, all of these are wondrous, superlative achievements of unexcelled meritorious deeds, and there is no need to explain them in detail one by one. But to sum up his whole life in the world, we generally speak of the eight special marks shown by Shakyamuni Buddha. These express the achievements of his lifetime, which can be divided into eight phases. The inner meanings of the eight special marks are as follows:\n\n**His descent from the Tushita Heaven to be born in our world:** First Shakyamuni dwelt in the Tushita Heaven and, when he saw that the moment was ripe, he descended into the human world.\n\n**Going into his mother's womb:** Riding to Earth on a white elephant with six tusks, Shakyamuni sent his spirit into his mother's womb.\n\n**His birth:** On the eighth day of the fourth month, Shakyamuni was born from the right side of Queen Maya in the Lumbini Garden.\n\n**Leaving home:** When Shakyamuni was 19, he saw that the world is impermanent, so he left the royal palace and went into the mountains to study the Path.\n\n**The descent of Mara to torment Shakyamuni when he was on the verge of enlightenment:** After six years practicing austerities, sitting under the bodhi tree, Shakyamuni vanquished the armies of Mara, the demon of delusion.\n\n**Consummating the Path, attaining enlightenment:** On the eighth day of the twelfth month, as he saw the morning star appear, Shakyamuni emptied out and was enlightened.\n\n**Turning the Wheel of the Dharma:** After his enlightenment, Shakyamuni spent forty-nine years preaching the Dharma and saving living beings.\n\n**Entering final nirvana:** After living in the world for eighty years, Shakyamuni entered final nirvana under the twin pala trees.\n\nBesides these, the best thing to pay attention to in investigating the meaning of Buddhism and studying the biography of Shakyamuni is the following story, which is recorded in the scriptures. Soon after Shakyamuni Buddha was born, he could already walk. He took seven steps and said: \"After countless eons, this is my last birth. Among all the devas and humans, I am the most honorable and the most excellent. In this lifetime I will benefit devas and humans. I vow to bring universal salvation to all sentient beings.\" After Buddhism was transmitted to China, this statement of Shakyamuni's was expressed as the saying: \"In Heaven and on Earth, I alone am the honored one.\"\n\nStimulated by this, we must pay careful attention to investigating the following two points. First, if we look at this statement only from the religious standpoint, what Shakyamuni said at that time was meant to make people feel that this was a unique sign of possessing, to the highest degree, authority as the founder of a religion. People either feel absolute faith in this, or great repugnance.\n\nSecond, if we investigate it thoroughly, the statement \"In Heaven and on Earth, I alone am the honored one,\" is where the essential meaning of Buddhism lies, because this statement explains the true value of human life and reveals the dignity of true human nature. We must have the spirit to develop ourselves and become the best possible human beings between heaven and Earth. We must have the courage to arouse ourselves and become the best possible beings between heaven and Earth. This is the best extension of the traditional idea in Chinese culture of \"Heaven and humankind joining as one.\" Whether we proceed from being humans to being reborn as devas and becoming buddhas, thus becoming spiritual and sovereign, or whether we descend from being humans and sink down, it all depends on ourselves and our choices of good or evil. When Shakyamuni said, \"In Heaven and on Earth, I alone am the honored one,\" this \"I\" is not just the self of Shakyamuni alone. It is just like the meaning of the Confucian saying: \"What kind of a man was [the sage] Shun? What kind of a man am I?\" In other words, self and others are of one enlightened suchness. So such phrases refer to the inherently enlightened true self of human nature.\n\nShakyamuni, the founder of the religion, was able to talk at birth, developed quickly, grew up, and became a sage. But the spirit of his lifetime of teachings is all in this statement he was able to say shortly after his birth. By saying \"In Heaven and on Earth, I alone am the honored one,\" he had already revealed his message. On the other hand, if we understand this purely from an emotional viewpoint and see it as boasting, we are gravely slandering the words of the Buddha.\n\n**A Special Youth of Many Talents**\n\nAfter Shakyamuni was born, his father, the king, invited many famous brahman scholars to perform the naming ceremony. Everyone knew that his birth had been accompanied by all sorts of auspicious signs, so they named him Siddhartha. This name means \"accomplishing all truths and possessed of lucky omens.\" His special marks and adornments were particularly beautiful.\n\nAt that time, among the Indian brahmans was a wise man of the highest authority, Asita Rshi. He lived on Fragrant Mountain cultivating the Path, far removed from any attachments, always in a state of meditative concentration. Knowing that Shakyamuni had been born, he came to offer salutations. Asita Rshi said to King Suddhodana: \"I see that the prince has the thirty-two marks and the eighty good points of an enlightened sage. With these marks and good points, if he stays in worldly life, at the age of nineteen he will become a Cakravartin, a Wheel-Turning Sage King. If he leaves home, he will achieve omniscience and bring salvation on a wide scale to devas and humans. Your Majesty, I observe that your son the prince will surely study the Path, attain true enlightenment, turn the wheel of the Great Dharma, benefit devas and humans, and open the eyes of the world.\"\n\nKing Suddhodana had had his son late in life and he most earnestly hoped that his son would be able to succeed to the throne and extend the power of the country. When he heard that his son might follow the road of leaving home to study the path, he was very worried. So he became even more intent on protecting Shakyamuni and devised ways to take precautions against his son leaving home. King Suddhodana made plans to have brought to the royal compound whatever would delight the senses and hoped to keep his son lingering among the pleasures of the sounds and colors of beautiful scenery and the enjoyments of the human world. He intended to make sure the prince would not think of leaving home, thus preventing the fulfillment of Asita Rshi's prediction.\n\nWhen Shakyamuni was 7 years old, he began to receive instruction in the palace. King Suddhodana sought everywhere for noted teachers for him and ordered them to come and impart their learning to him. First, he invited a brahman named Visvamitra (the name means \"chosen friend\"), who was especially excellent in the cultivation of literary studies, to instruct Shakyamuni in literature. One day, Shakyamuni mentioned the fact that there were more than sixty-four writing systems in use in India at the time. He asked which one of them should be considered as the standard. This made Visvamitra feel extremely embarrassed. Moreover, the boy Shakyamuni was able to pick out the defective characters in books and ask his teacher about them. In the end, this made Visvamitra praise Shakyamuni and filled him with admiration. He felt ashamed of his own limited knowledge and withdrew from the position of Shakyamuni's tutor.\n\nAt the same time, King Suddhodana also invited a famous expert on the military arts from the Shakya clan called Kshantideva (the name means \"god of patience\"). He taught the boy Shakyamuni about military exercises and training and methods of using weapons, along with twenty-nine martial arts exercises. Thus by the time he was 14 or 15, Shakyamuni was able to tame a great elephant. With one hand, he could hurl an elephant over the city wall, then immediately pick the elephant up off the ground. The great elephant let him do this and did not injure him. When Shakyamuni bent his bow and shot arrows, they would pass right through a huge drum and still have enough force to penetrate the seven-layer iron boss on the target.\n\nShakyamuni started his studies when he was 7, and, over the course of the next seven years, he studied deeply and thoroughly mastered astronomy, geography, the classics, the commentaries, sacrifices, divining, philology, mathematics, music and dance, literary composition, painting, and all the contemporary arts and techniques.\n\nTo summarize, because he was the heir to a royal throne, Shakyamuni received an excellent education in the palace, and to this was added his innate intelligence and good qualities. So, by the time he was 15, he had already completed his learning in all branches of cultural and military knowledge. Thereupon, King Suddhodana set the eighth day of the second month of that year for the great ceremony anointing Shakyamuni and investing him with the position of crown prince. King Suddhodana invited the kings, great ministers, and brahmans of all the neighboring states to come view the ceremony. Shakyamuni was anointed with waters from the four seas, given the seal of office, and made heir apparent.\n\n**Shakyamuni's Compassionate Temperament**\n\nDue to his innate intelligence and his birth in a royal palace, Shakyamuni had thoroughly mastered all worldly learned knowledge and had naturally developed a level of wisdom surpassing that of ordinary people. Precisely because of this wisdom beyond that of other people, all his life he had delved into the universe and life, and he had doubts about worldly affairs and human life. Hence, in the end, there was no way he could rest content with apparent reality. Added to this, in contemporary India there was the constant fighting among rival lords and their domains and the vast inequality between the classes because of their lot in life. All these things struck his eye and agitated his mind. Because of this, with his great compassion for the uncontrollable pain of impermanence which the multitudes of the world's sentient beings always have with them, he used his compassionate heart to seek for the total release of all people from the sufferings and afflictions of the world. He wanted to enable human nature to rise to a higher level, and human life to attain liberation. For this reason, Shakyamuni was continually sunk in deep contemplation and silent concentration.\n\nOne day, while out for an excursion, he was resting beneath a large tree and saw a peasant working in the fields. The fierce Sun was beating down on the peasant, and he was covered with sweat as he struggled over his work. The plow oxen were pulling a double plow, being driven along with blows of a whip, and enduring cruel treatment. All in all, both man and beast were suffering, driven on by hunger and thirst. Shakyamuni also saw that, when the earth was turned over as the field was being plowed, the insects that lived under the ground had no way to hide. A swarm of insects crawled out, as if they already had sensed that a great disaster was imminent and were looking for someplace where they would be safe. As things turned out, a flock of birds gathered and ate them up, and Shakyamuni saw that not a single one escaped. These characteristics of worldly existence\u2014the strong eating the weak, the troubles of a multitude of sufferings, the cruelty and heartlessness\u2014all plunged Shakyamuni into even greater confusion and even deeper pain. What is human life for? Why does such a cruel world exist? What is the ultimate meaning of life in the universe? With this, Shakyamuni sat down under a tree and his mind felt an aversion to the world. He pondered the issues of worldly life and transcending the world, and again fell into a state of deep contemplation and silent concentration for a long time.\n\nThus, Shakyamuni's life in his early years was not one of joy and happiness because of the security and wealth and renown of his family. On the contrary, he was always looking for liberation from the afflictions and sufferings of the human world and passed his days in solitary contemplation. This made King Suddhodana remember Asita Rshi's prediction. He became afraid that Shakyamuni would leave home to study the Path, and he wept disconsolately.\n\nThus, when Shakyamuni was 17, King Suddhodana arranged for him to take as his consorts two beautiful girls named Yashodhara and Gopika. He also had palaces for the three seasons built for Shakyamuni. (North-central India does not get very cold, so he only built palaces for the three seasons.) This gave Shakyamuni an extremely comfortable and appropriate dwelling place for each of the three seasons, Spring, Summer, and Autumn. But Shakyamuni was not at all delighted by his beautiful consorts or the pleasures of his magnificent palaces. He did not desire these things or care about them at all. According to the accounts in the Buddhist scriptures, Shakyamuni never had conjugal relations with his two consorts, and this made them suspect that he was a man in appearance only. He understood their doubts, so one night while he was sleeping, he deliberately left his male parts showing so they could be sure that it was not that he was unable, but that it was his special excellence to refrain from sexual intercourse.\n\nIn order to resolve the question of human life and search for the ultimate truth of the universe, Shakyamuni wanted with all his heart to leave home and study the Path. This made his father, the king, and the whole royal family feel more and more burdened with sorrow, so the king ordered that Shakyamuni be prohibited from leaving the palace, lest even greater compassion for the world be aroused in him. Moreover, the king selected a famous brahmanical philosopher of deep learning named Udayin to be Shakyamuni's constant companion and become his friend, in the hope that Udayin would be able to guide and influence him to change his mind and become more interested in the world of apparent reality and mundane human life. But in the end, this too failed.\n\nShakyamuni was constantly requesting that his father let him travel outside the palace compound. He had understood that human life is impermanent and that no one can avoid the encroachments of birth, old age, sickness, and death. He understood that no one can escape from the trap of birth, old age, sickness, and death. He wondered whether or not there is an ultimate order over this impermanent life and whether or not ultimately there is a real self.\n\nShakyamuni thought along these lines: If there is no ruler, then the meaning of life is basically worthless and without a purpose. This is similar to the materialist viewpoint and later, in Buddhism, this is called the \"annihilationist view.\" It is absolutely wrong. If there is a ruler and a real self does exist, then what form do they take? If we say it transcends humanity and myriad things, but still can control them, this is just something formed by the speculations or concepts of human psychology. Moreover, if a ruler had the power to control things, then why would it have to make this world and human life in so miserable a form? Later in Buddhism, this is called the \"eternalist view.\" In reality, apart from mind, when we observe the worldly and the world-transcending, all phenomena are impermanent and there is nothing that exists eternally.\n\nThus Shakyamuni's intention to leave home and seek the Path became more and more urgent. He formally raised this request with his father, the king. King Suddhodana told him that, if Shakyamuni's consort Yashodhara were to get pregnant and bear a son, so that the royal succession would not be cut off, he would reconsider the matter. According to the account in the Buddhist scriptures, Shakyamuni then pointed to Yashodhara's belly with his right hand and caused her to feel pregnant immediately.\n\nLike the story of Shakyamuni being able to walk when he was seven days old, this incident is easy to relate, but it is the same kind of extraordinary miracle and, in the same way, it is hard for people to believe. Nevertheless, for Shakyamuni to produce a son for his father's sake before leaving home, because his father was worried about the lack of an heir was an excellent fulfillment of the filial path, and stands to reason. Moreover, because he had fulfilled his duty as a son, afterward he was single-minded in his practice of the Path that transcends the world of humans and devas. This serves to show even more how admirable and great and rare and excellent his special qualities were. So, the tales of miraculous events are just superfluous: we can keep them without discussing them.\n\n**LEAVING HOME AND AWAKENING TO THE PATH**\n\nBecause there are no credible historical accounts that we can use as evidence for the date when Shakyamuni left home, all we can do is follow the traditional account and say that he left home on the eighth day of the second lunar month of the year he turned nineteen. He judged that the circumstances were ripe, so, in the middle of the night when his wives and guards were sleeping soundly, he arose and summoned his groom, Chandaka, to saddle a swift horse, telling him that they would go together outside the city walls to drink the sweet dew and the spring water. Chandaka already knew what his intention was: he urged Shakyamuni not to go, but could not hold him back. All he could do was hold on to the horse's tail with all his might. Shakyamuni could not open the palace gate, so he boldly urged on his horse and, dragging Chandaka along with them, horse and rider leaped over the north wall and galloped off.\n\nThe way this scene unfolded was the beginning of Shakyamuni's lifetime of great courage and great compassion. We can compare this with the all-powerful commanding heroes who have gone to war a hundred times and won every battle, who have plunged ahead into the torrent. This act of Shakyamuni vaulting over the wall on his horse in order to leave home to cultivate the Path was poles apart from the spirit of the homeleavers we see before us nowadays. It is the business of heroes to conquer the world, but it is extremely hard for humans to conquer themselves. Shakyamuni alone was the exception: with his great fearless spirit, he conquered himself. He smashed the rebellious mind in formlessness and cast aside temporal power like a worn-out shoe. Thus he was able to transform the ordinary into the wise, and he was worthy to be the teacher and model for humans and devas.\n\n**The Young Prince Who Fled the World to Seek Enlightenment**\n\nOnce Shakyamuni and Chandaka had gotten past the north wall of the city, they galloped off toward the east, moving so fast they seemed to be flying. They came to the forest where the ascetic Bhargava practiced austerities. The night had already passed and the Sun was in their eyes.\n\nShakyamuni had his mind made up that he would enter Bhargava's retreat to ask about the Path, and so he ordered Chandaka to return to the palace. He took off the pearl in his topknot for Chandaka to take back to the king and removed his necklace, to offer to his aunt. As to his other ornaments, he told Chandaka to give them to Yashodhara. After he had given away all his finery, he took his sword and cut off his beard and hair. He changed his clothes and put on an ascetic's robe to show his resolve to go forward to cultivate the Path. At the same time, he took an oath: \"If I do not finish with birth and death, I will never return to the palace. If I do not consummate the Path of enlightenment, I will never return to see my father, the king. If I do not exhaust my sentimental feelings of gratitude and love, I will never return to see my aunt and my two wives.\"\n\nAll this made Chandaka distraught and he was crying with sadness, to the point that he passed out. When he revived, all he could do was return to the palace and report that the crown prince had left home. This filled the whole city with sorrow, even as they sighed in admiration for Shakyamuni's bold resolve.\n\n**Shakyamuni Studies the Various Schools for Six Years**\n\nAfter this, Shakyamuni drifted like the clouds, going everywhere to study and learn. He saw the place where Bhargava and his followers cultivated their practices. He saw many people who cultivated the Path through austerities, people who had detached from sensory experience and cut their ties with the conventional world. Some wore clothes of grass, some wore clothes of bark. They all ate wild fruits to satisfy their hunger. Some ate only a single meal a day, some a single meal every two or three days. Their plan was to complete the Path through the practice of austerities. They treated the myriad beings with respect. Some worshipped water or fire, or made offerings to the Sun and Moon. Some lay in the mire or slept in thickets of thorns. Some stayed close by fire or water for years, enduring the sufferings of being scorched or soaked.\n\nSuch things were the traditional forms of religious life and methods of cultivating the Path within Indian culture. Around the time that Shakyamuni left home, they were obviously in widespread practice in Indian religion, no matter whether it was the religion of the brahmans or among the practitioners of the arts of yoga. Such practices have been handed down with undiminished currency even to the present.\n\nAt the time Shakyamuni observed these phenomena, he exchanged views with Bhargava and conducted serious discussions. He asked what the ultimate purpose of all these kinds of austerities was. Bhargava answered that, by inflicting pain on one's body, one could thereby gain the blessings of ascending to heaven. Shakyamuni, on the other hand, thought that pain and pleasure were relative to each other, that wrongdoings and merits were interdependent, and that, by performing austerities, one would still be going around and around within the confines of cyclical existence and would never be able to be liberated from birth and death. He said that austerities can indeed cleanse the mind and will, and lead to detachment from entanglements, but that they did not necessarily lead to liberation from birth and death, or the consummation of the Supreme Path. Accordingly, Shakyamuni spent one night at Bhargava's place, then departed.\n\nSubsequently, Shakyamuni also learned the well-known contemporary Indian methods of meditative concentration and he cultivated the _**samadhi**_ without thought for more than three years. The meditation work of what is called \" _ **samadhi**_ without thought\" had as its highest method obliterating thought. In the course of three years, Shakyamuni really reached the point of having no thoughts, but finally he recognized that this too was not the true Path, so he abandoned it. He reached this conclusion because this kind of experiential realm (having no thoughts) is also a creation of one's own mind. In the end, he still did not know what to do about the basic root of the ruler of this mind.\n\nSo Shakyamuni then went to Aratakalama's place, to learn the _**samadhi**_ that is neither thought nor no thought. When it is said that this _**samadhi**_ is not thought, \"thought\" in this context means the thinking and false thoughts of ordinary mental activity. When it is said that this _**samadhi**_ is not no thought, \"no thought\" means the stage reached when, even though there is no ordinary false thought and thinking, one is still able to be aware of everything. Many people think that, when meditation work reaches this stage, this is already in the category of what is too lofty to attain, but in reality, this amounts to felling into the subtle afflictions of the confusions of perceptions and thoughts.\n\nAfter three years of this, Shakyamuni raised several questions. In this _**samadhi**_ that is neither thought nor no thought, is there a self or is there no self? If one says there is no self, it should not be called neither thought nor no thought. If one says there is a self, then it is not liberation. It is precisely because sentient beings think they have selves that all the forms of suffering arise. In the _**samadhi**_ that is neither thought nor no thought, even though one can temporarily cause the coarser forms of false thought and affliction to stop, the subtler forms of affliction are still there as before. If one cannot abandon the form of self and the concept of self, how can one reach genuine liberation? For these reasons, Shakyamuni also abandoned this practice and left.\n\n**Shakyamuni Practices Six Years of Austerities**\n\nDuring the six years' time that Shakyamuni had been cultivating practice in the mountains, he had already visited all the famous men of the Path. But he had found no genuine enlightened teacher, so he had not gotten any results. He had already cultivated and practiced all the various contemporary methods of cultivating the Path, no matter how difficult or painful they were to carry out, and he had pursued them to a high point of refinement and mastery.\n\nDuring this period, Shakyamuni's father, King Suddhodana, had made inquiries into his whereabouts and had sent his officials to urge him to return to the palace. But Shakyamuni was not moved by any of this and all the king could do was to secretly dispatch five of the sons of his high ministers to accompany the prince in his practice and try to protect him clandestinely. These five men later became, among all Shakyamuni's disciples, the famous five great disciples of the early period. Chief among them was Kaundinya.\n\nAt this time, having traveled all over calling on teachers without finding the path to ultimate liberation, Shakyamuni stopped his journeying for a while and stayed on Pandava Mountain. He often went into the nearby city of Rajagrha for the day to beg for food. The lord of the city, King Bimbisara, soon found out of his whereabouts and came in person to entreat Shakyamuni to return to worldly life. King Bimbisara even vowed to cede his own throne to Shakyamuni, but he declined politely yet firmly.\n\nFinally, all King Bimbisara could do was to make a pact with Shakyamuni: \"When you complete the Path, I hope you will come to deliver me first.\" Later on, when Shakyamuni had consummated the Path, he often stayed in Rajagrha, spreading his teaching widely there.\n\nAfter this, Shakyamuni traveled on until he was in the vicinity of the Nairanjana River. In the snowy mountains near the southern end of Gajashirsha Mountain (the name means \"Elephant Head\") was Uruvilva Forest, where there were congregations of ascetics. Shakyamuni practiced quiet sitting and contemplation and cultivated the practice of austerities. Sometimes he ate only a single sesame seed or a single grain of rice for his daily meal. Sometimes he ate only a single sesame seed or grain of rice every other day, or just once in seven days. He sat cross-legged without getting up to walk around, his eyes unblinking, his mind free of fear. After a while, he became so emaciated from his austerities that he looked like a skeleton. His hair and beard grew as tangled and matted as brush weed: birds mistook this for thickets of grass and built their nests there. The reeds grew up all around him and wound around his knees. At this time, Shakyamuni was very weak. As he sat there dignified and erect, he looked like a man so feeble that he was on the brink of death.\n\nShakyamuni cultivated this type of difficult austere practice for six years. Afterward, it suddenly occurred to him that there was no difference between this and the common way of doing things that assumed that cultivating the body through austerities was the true Path. So he abandoned this too and went off alone toward the south.\n\n**Shakyamuni Opens Through in Sudden Enlightenment and Achieves Buddhahood**\n\nFor the six years, Shakyamuni had taken great pains to practice meditation and contemplation. Without a doubt, it was because he had not had proper nutrition that he had become unbearably weak and enfeebled. Yet so adamant was his faith and so firm his spirit that even the great ministers sent by King Suddhodana to find him had been greatly moved, and all of them felt great respect for him. Thus Kaundinya and the other four grandees' sons all wished to remain there with him and accompany Shakyamuni in learning the Path and looked for places nearby to concentrate on their cultivation.\n\nAt this time, Shakyamuni was in his years of full vigor\u2014about 30 years old. After he realized that this kind of practice was not the correct path, he went off alone, leaving behind the forest where the ascetics practiced austerities. He accepted an offering of rice gruel made with milk from a herd girl named Nandapala and recovered the physical strength proper to a youthful mature man. When Kaundinya and the others saw this, they thought that Shakyamuni had been unable to sustain the test of austerities. This made their aspiration for the Path waver and they became very disconsolate. As a result, they left Shakyamuni and went off to the Deer Park in the land of Varanasi (modern Benares) to continue to practice austerities on their own.\n\nHaving already recovered his physical strength, Shakyamuni went into the Nairanjana River to bathe. After he had washed off all the grime that had accumulated in the course of his laborious austerities, his body and mind felt extraordinarily happy. He went alone to sit under a pipala tree about three miles from the Nairanjana River. (After his enlightenment, the name was changed to the bodhi tree.) He spread out a mat of lucky grass and sat down cross-legged. He took an oath, saying: \"I will not arise from this seat until I do experience bodhi.\" (The Sanskrit word _**bodhi**_ means \"inherent true enlightenment.\")\n\nBecause Shakyamuni had in the past studied all kinds of meditative concentrations, his meditative power was already profound. After sitting for forty-eight days, he entered deeply into a wondrous realm of meditative contemplation.\n\nOn the evening of the seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, as he was sitting in meditation, all sorts of demonic realms of delusion appeared before him to torment him: such things as sensory pleasures and desire for wealth, and fear of birth and death. He was not deluded by any of them. In the end, all the so-called armies of delusion, including female demons and all the rest, were vanquished by his power of concentration.\n\nIn the course of this night, Shakyamuni experienced various spiritual powers one by one: the power of the knowledge of the realm of the spirits (the power to travel anywhere instantly); the power of the knowledge of supernatural vision (the power to see things no matter how distant); the power of the knowledge of supernatural hearing (the power to hear things no matter how distant); the power of knowing the minds of others (the power to read minds); the power to know at will past abodes (the power to know past lives); and the power of stainless wisdom (the power to end all leaks and defilements). When he reached the realm of the six spiritual powers, his body and mind spontaneously emitted a great light.\n\nOn the morning of the next day, Shakyamuni suddenly saw a bright star appear. (This must have been the Sun, since the customary term in Indian astronomy for the Sun was \"the bright star.\") At this, he emptied through in great enlightenment and experienced _**anuttarasamyaksambodhi:**_ supreme, perfect, complete enlightenment. Then he joyfully exclaimed: \"How strange! All sentient beings are equipped with the characteristics of the wisdom of the tathagatas, but because of the clingings of false thought, they cannot realize them.\"1\n\nLet us retrace the circumstances of this great affair. After leaving home to study the Path at 19, Shakyamuni spent twelve years traveling all over to study and experienced an ample measure of hardships and sufferings. When he was about 30, he finally realized the realm of various spiritual powers and got a penetrating view of the incomparable wondrous function latent in the minds and bodies of human beings, and of the basis of life. At the same time, he was enlightened upon seeing a bright star and completely comprehended the real truth of the universe and of human life. He felt refreshed and at peace, realizing that it was actually like this.\n\nAt that point, Shakyamuni wanted to enter nirvana (peaceful extinction and perfect illumination) immediately. He was not inclined to preach the Dharma. This aroused the devas, who came in great numbers to entreat him to keep his physical body, remain in the world, and teach sentient beings on a wide scale. He said to the devas: \"Stop, stop. My Dharma is so wondrous it is inconceivable.\"\n\nBy saying this, Shakyamuni Buddha let us know where the mystic meaning of the Buddha Dharma is and what kind of thing it ultimately is: as he said, it is inconceivable. People generally think because of this that the Buddha Dharma cannot be learned, that it cannot be touched, that it cannot be seen. They do not realize that \"inconceivable,\" just like the statement that \"My Dharma is so wondrous it is inconceivable,\" is only a manner of speaking. This is because, according to the general custom, all religions and philosophies are approached by people using thinking and inference, or are believed in and discussed on the basis of emotional feelings. Drawing inferences by thinking is just conceptual thought, and rendering belief and holding discussion based on emotion is just opinion. If you just proceed from conceptual thought and emotional opinions to try to find the real truth about the universe and human life, that is the same as turning your back on the Path and running off in the other direction. The Path really has the sense of being so wondrous that it is inconceivable. Saying the Path is so wondrous that it is inconceivable just points out the methodological error ordinary people make. It does not mean that the Path is impossible to think about! All we have to do is put our bodies and minds to work to really experience it, not try to make inferences about it with conceptual thinking and opinions. Then we will be able to arrive at the realm of buddhahood, the realm of the true awakening with which our inherent nature is fundamentally endowed.\n\n**THE FOUNDING OF THE TEACHING**\n\nAfter his enlightenment, because he was earnestly asked to do so by the devas, Shakyamuni Buddha resolved to disseminate the teaching and bring salvation to the world. The first thing he did was go to the Deer Park, which had been a holy ground since ancient times, to find the five men who had found him in the forests of the snowy mountains in years gone by, and who were now concentrating on the practice of austerities. He preached to them the four noble truths of suffering, the formation of suffering, the extinction of suffering, and the path to the extinction of suffering. One after another, the five men understood and they began to cultivate the Path according to the Buddha's teaching. They were called _**bhikshus. (Bhikshu**_ means beggar: above they beg for the teaching from Buddha and below they beg for food from sentient beings.) This was the start of Shakyamuni Buddha's teaching activities. In Buddhist terms, it is called the initial turning of the Wheel of the Dharma. It was also the beginning of what in Buddhism are called the Three Jewels: the jewel of the Buddha, the enlightened one, the jewel of the Dharma, the enlightening teaching, and the jewel of the Sangha, the community of those seeking enlightenment.\n\n**Shakyamuni's Teaching and His Original Disciples**\n\nAt this time, in the city of Varanasi, was a man named Yashas who was the son of a prominent man. Because he felt the suffering of human life, he began to believe in the true Dharma and, hearing of Buddha's reputation, he left home, went to the Deer Park, and took refuge with him. He brought with him his companions, some fifty sons of prominent men, who all became disciples of Shakyamuni Buddha. The parents of Yashas and his wife also came along and put their faith in Buddha. They became householders who cultivated practice, called in Sanskrit _**upasakas**_ and _**upasikas.**_\n\nDuring his first stay of three months in the Deer Park, Shakyamuni Buddha had already accepted fifty-six faithful disciples. He sent them out in all directions to propagate the teaching. He himself went alone to the city of Rajagrha in the land of Magadha beside the Nairanjana River and displayed his spiritual powers in order to convert those followers of outside paths who worshipped fire. At the time, the three chief teachers of orthodox brahmanism were the three brothers Uruvilva-kashyapa, Nadi-kashyapa, and Gaya-kashyapa. They came leading their thousand disciples to sincerely take refuge with Shakyamuni Buddha and become his followers. Next, Buddha won over the scholars Shariputra and Maudgalyayana, who were famous among the brahman communities for their intelligence and wisdom. These two also brought along a hundred disciples, and all of them became followers of Buddhism.\n\nThus, while in his 30s, Shakyamuni Buddha began to assemble the twelve hundred and fifty home-leavers who were to be his basic disciples. They traveled everywhere teaching and converting people. They heard Buddha expounding the Dharma and were his constant companions. In the Buddhist scriptures that were assembled later, they often mention \"twelve hundred and fifty bhikshus.\" This refers to this group of worthy disciples of long experience and deep capacity.\n\nLater on, there was another man of outstanding intelligence, talent, and virtue named Mahakashyapa who also became a follower of Shakyamuni Buddha. He was the First Patriarch of the Zen school passed down through the subsequent generations.\n\nIn fact, at that time, Shariputra and the three Kashyapa brothers were a good deal older than Shakyamuni and, when they first went out to spread the teaching, many people who did not know them assumed at first that the relatively young Shakyamuni was one of their disciples. In the context of the contemporary Indian religious sects, it was quite astounding the way Shakyamuni Buddha had gathered over a thousand disciples as soon as he emerged from the mountains and exerted such a powerful influence.\n\nSubsequently, Shakyamuni Buddha expounded the Dharma and spread the teaching for more than forty years. Among the disciples who had taken refuge with him, both home-leavers and householders, there were people of all castes, high and low, men and women, young and old. In name and in fact, they formed the \"four congregations\" of Buddha's disciples. Male home-leavers were called _**bhikshus.**_ Female home-leavers were called _**bhikshunis.**_ Male householders were call _**upasakas.**_ Female householders were called _**upasikas.**_\n\nFrom then on, all those whose minds were set on the realm of buddhahood though their bodies might abide in the world of the dusts, those who adopted the Buddhist way of thinking and conduct in detaching from the dusts of sensory experience and the conventional world, and those who made the great vow to work endlessly for the salvation of sentient beings, unlimited by time or space\u2014no matter whether they were householders or homeleavers, no matter whether they were male or female, or young or old\u2014all such people were called Great Vehicle bodhisattvas. A bodhisattva is a person who possesses the supreme wondrous truth of enlightening oneself and enlightening others, of benefiting oneself and benefiting others.\n\nAt that time, among the bhikshus who were the disciples of Buddha there were ten great disciples, each acclaimed for his own special ability: Shariputra, foremost in knowledge; Maudgalyayana, foremost in spiritual powers; Mahakashyapa, foremost in asceticism; Aniruddha, foremost in supernatural vision; Subhuti, foremost in understanding emptiness; Purna, foremost in preaching the Dharma; Katyayana, foremost in discoursing on meanings; Upali, foremost in upholding the precepts; Rahula (Buddha's only son), foremost in esoteric practices; and Ananda (Buddha's cousin), foremost in listening and remembering. These were the ten great and outstanding disciples who had received the transmission directly from Buddha and achieved special excellence.\n\n**Preaching the Dharma**\n\nLeading a band of his disciples, followers of the newly arisen religion, Shakyamuni Buddha traveled from place to place teaching. He came by stages to Rajagrha, the royal city of King Bimbisara. Previously, when he had first abandoned his noble status and entered the mountains to cultivate the Path, Shakyamuni had made a pact with King Bimbisara that, after he consummated the Path, he would go first to save him. Thus, as he had promised, Shakyamuni Buddha came to him, and stayed in a retreat King Bimbisara had had specially constructed for him called the Venuvana Vihara, the \"Bamboo Grove Retreat.\" People of all ranks, from the king above to the common people below, all looked up to Buddha with sincere respect. This place became the first Buddhist temple in India.\n\nNot long after this, a man of wealth and renown named Sudatta, who lived under the rule of King Prasenajit in the land of Shravasti and who enjoyed doing good works and distributing charity, came to believe in Shakyamuni Buddha's teaching. Spreading the ground with gold leaf to arrive at the price, he purchased for Shakyamuni the Jetavana Grove, which had been the property of the Crown Prince Kosala. The Crown Prince was moved by this and joined in extending patronage to Shakyamuni. All the people of the land, high and low, were united in their faith in Buddha. So they built a Jetavana Garden Vihara in Rajagrha especially for Buddha; it was also called the Almsgiver's Garden. It got this name because Sudatta liked to do good works and distribute alms, to succor the widows and orphans, and help the poor and suffering. This vihara was built with twelve stupas, seventy-two lecture halls, three hundred and sixty monastic cells, and five hundred storied towers. The vihara offered support and accommodations for both monastic and lay disciples of Buddhism. This could be said to be India's first Buddhist college.\n\nFrom then on, as Shakyamuni Buddha constantly traveled back and forth, he stayed at the Venuvana Vihara in Rajagrha in the land of Magadha, or else at the Almsgiver's Jetavana Vihara in the land of Shravasti. These became two centers from which he often disseminated the teaching.\n\nIn the India of those days, the land of Magadha was a peaceful and happy country whose political order was secure and whose economy was flourishing. Thus the life of the people there was passed very comfortably. By repute, it was a country of feasting and music, where the entertainments were always happy and the revelry went on day and night. After Shakyamuni Buddha began to stay there and spread his teachings, it became silent and still day and night in the city of Rajagrha, with only the quiet sound of chanting to be heard. The people forsook their worldly pleasures and became abstemious, disciplined, and studious. They gave their allegiance to the Three Jewels and honored only Buddha. At the same time, the atmosphere in the land of Shravasti became one of devotion to good works because the people there honored and served Buddhism. The neighboring lands looked to these examples and the teaching spread gready.\n\nFrom these developments, we can see the educational power of Shakyamuni Buddha's teaching and its power to purify and transform people's lives and entire states. Its great influence and its broad effectiveness flourished mightily at that time. The fact that, by appearing in person to preach the Dharma, Shakyamuni achieved such success in a litde more than ten years is really enough to make people feel attracted to him!\n\nDuring the period from Shakyamuni's enlightenment till the time when he began to disseminate his teachings, his father, King Suddhodana, longing to see him again, had sent word asking him to return to his homeland. Shakyamuni sent one of his disciples ahead, who returned there and displayed spiritual powers. After that, Shakyamuni himself returned and expounded the Dharma for his father to enable his mind to attain realization. At the same time, he converted his aunt Mahaprajapati to whom he owed a debt of gratitude for rearing him, and his wife Yashodhara, so that later they both left home and followed his teaching. At the same time, he also converted his kinsmen Ananda, Devadatta, and Ahorudra, and also his own son, Rahula. There were also members of the sudra caste (the debased hereditary groups in the view of the Indian caste system), like Upali, who came one after another to take refuge with Buddha and leave home.\n\nWhen Shakyamuni was in his homeland, he still followed the Buddhist system: he went out personally as usual to beg for food. This made his father the king very uneasy, but in the end, Shakyamuni persuaded his father that he must still abide by the ordinary regulations for home-leavers and practice begging.\n\nLater on, probably during the five or six years when Shakyamuni first started spreading the teaching, his father became gravely ill due to old age and was on the brink of death. He very much wanted to see Shakyamuni again, so Shakyamuni led Ananda and Rahula and the others back to their homeland and personally performed the ceremonies to honor his father's passing. He was at his father's side as he was about to die and rubbed his father's heart with his hand, to enable him to depart peacefully. Following the prescribed ritual form, Shakyamuni and his kinsmen stood solemnly in proper order at the head and foot of the corpse of the king and offered their respects to his spirit. When his father was carried out in his coffin to the gravesite, Shakyamuni carried it personally to demonstrate his grief. Finally, the king was cremated in his coffin on Spirit Peak in Rajagrha, where Shakyamuni himself had lived, carrying out his pure cultivation and teaching. A stupa was built there for the ashes. Everything was done according to the prescribed ritual forms, to teach that a child must properly fulfill the path of caring for parents while they are alive and seeing them off when they die. This was a demonstration of a perfectly developed sense of propriety and duty.\n\nIn the forty-five years from Shakyamuni's enlightenment to his death, Magadha and Shravasti were always the northern and southern centers of his teaching. As the occasion arose, he also carried on his teaching in the various lands along the Ganges River. Shakyamuni Buddha made no categorical distinctions between monks and nuns and laypeople, between high-ranking and lowranking, between rich and poor, between male and female, between young and old. He explained the teaching to all alike, according to their mentalities. All who came in contact with his great, perfectly developed character and heard the lofty, profound, and subtle principles of his teaching were won over by him.\n\nThere is no way to accurately calculate how many people ultimately took refuge with him and became his followers. Through his decades of teaching, the number of people in his congregation of disciples increased. He took in and nurtured both the wise and the stupid, both the worthy and the unworthy. In the course of a lifetime of teaching and guiding people in this spirit and engaging in collective educational work, inevitably there were many things that came up concerning the relationships between individuals and the group, between the outer world and the inner circle, and within the congregation itself. Because of this development over time and the lessons of experience, and in addition to the teachings on basic moral character (the prohibitions on killing, stealing, sexual excess, and lying), there also were gradually established many rules and regulations. Later these became the Buddhist code of discipline.\n\nWhen Shakyamuni was about 80 years old, that is, forty-eight or forty-nine years after his enlightenment, on a summer day as he was passing the rainy season in the village of Beluvana near the city of Vaishali, he let it be known that he would soon enter nirvana. Then he set off toward the north on his last journey, to the city of Kushinagara. Under the twin sala trees in the sala grove where he had been born, Shakyamuni preached the Dharma to the elderly brahman Subhadra and when he had finished, he accepted him as his last disciple. Then he appeared to be sick and did not get up. He lay down on his right side and entered nirvana.\n\nThe date of Shakyamuni's death in Western terms was about 490-480 B.C. He died at midnight on the fifteenth day of the second lunar month. His disciple Mahakashyapa hastened there from Spirit Peak and took charge of the funeral rites. As Buddha lay in his golden coffin, he unexpectedly showed his spiritual powers: he extended his foot to put Mahakashyapa's mind at rest, then he entered into a profound stillness.\n\nWhen Buddha was about to die, his disciples asked him what would happen to them after his demise. He then instructed them very earnestly that, after he was gone, they should take the precepts of discipline as their teacher. This is why Buddhists ever since have looked upon the precepts of discipline with the same respect they give to the scriptural teachings that he imparted, and have followed them faithfully.\n\n**The Compilation of the Buddhist Scriptures**\n\nOnce Shakyamuni Buddha had entered nirvana, his disciples felt that their teacher and guide was gone and they felt confused because they had no one on whom to rely. They all discussed the matter and decided that the most important task facing them was to gather together Buddha's explanations of the Dharma and compile them into scriptures. Gathering together Buddha's teachings meant reciting them from memory and collecting and compiling them. At that point, under the leadership of Mahakashyapa (one of the ten great disciples), they chose people who had personally received teachings spoken by Buddha and who had genuinely realized the fruit of the Buddha Dharma's Middle Path, and had them recite the teachings they had heard Buddha impart over the many years that he was in the world. These were recorded in writing and established as the canonical scriptures. At the time there were, altogether, five hundred people who had already attained the fruit of arhatship. ( _ **Arhat**_ means \"one who has slain the robbers,\" \"one who has totally eliminated the afflictions that are the mind's robbers.\") They gathered together at a cave beneath Seven Leaf Crag outside of Rajagrha. On the second day of the second month of the first rainy season after Buddha's demise, which was the seventeenth day of the sixth lunar month, they began the work of assembling Buddha's teachings. Mahakashyapa was elected as the chief of this assembly.\n\nFirst they proceeded to put together the _**Vinaya.**_ (The word _**Vinaya**_ means \"the precepts of discipline used to subdue the afflictions of the mind and body.\") They proceeded by having Mahakashyapa bring up each item in the code of discipline and then inquiring of Upali, who was the foremost among Buddha's disciples in upholding discipline. Upali answered by proceeding one by one to recite aloud when each precept was instituted, where it was instituted, the reasons why this precept was created, the occasion for which it was prescribed (for what person or what event the precept had been defined), the precept's regulations (defining the exact rules that must be observed), the violations of the precept (defining what would be called a violation), and so on. After this, the precepts of discipline that had been recorded were read aloud. Then they were adopted by having the great assembly of five hundred bhikshus recite them together, thus defining them in perpetuity as the Buddha's regulations. Only then was the work of assembling the _Vinaya_ considered completed.\n\nAfter this, Buddha's disciple Ananda recited the _**Dharma.**_ (The word _**Dharma**_ means \"treasury of teachings.\") After he had recited this, Mahakashyapa asked him questions and Ananda answered, telling him when each teaching was given, where it was given, the reason it was given, the occasion or person to whom it was addressed, the method by which it was given, and the degree to which it was comprehended by the audience who heard it at the time. Again, this account was adopted by being recited by the whole assembly together and accepted as an error-free version of the Dharma spoken by Buddha. Only then was the assembling of the scriptural teachings considered completed.\n\nThis was the first conclave held to assemble the teachings after the Buddha's nirvana, so it is called \"the first collection of the teachings,\" or \"the collection of Rajagrha.\" The criterion for selecting the people who participated in this conclave to assemble the teachings took as the standard the five hundred arhats who had already realized the fruit of enlightenment.\n\nBut there were several hundred to a thousand of Buddha's disciples who did not participate in this conclave, so they held one of their own. With Vashpa, one of Buddha's first five disciples, presiding at a site not very far to the west of the conclave of the five hundred arhats, they made their own collection of Buddhist scriptures. Later, this was called \"the collection of the great congregation,\" or \"the collection from outside the circle of the arhats,\" or \"the Great Vehicle collection.\"\n\nThere are some who say that, in the Buddhist teachings assembled at that time, there were the _**tripitaka**_ (three baskets) of the _**sutras**_ (spoken by Buddha), the _**vinaya**_ (the code of discipline), and the _**shastras**_ (analytical commentaries). Some even add to this the miscellaneous collections and the mantras, to make five baskets in all.\n\nIn summary, in his lifetime of teaching the Dharma, Shakyamuni Buddha only taught by personal example and by the spoken word. Even though he was a master of the written language and well able to develop his teachings in that way, he never composed any written works or left anything at all in writing. He did not want to construct a monument to his mission and perpetuate his fame in later generations; that's a fact. The fact that Shakyamuni left no writings has given later people great inspiration, and is rich with the true spirit of philosophical teaching.\n\nMoreover, we can see that most of the founders of religions and wise men revered by the people of the world left no written works. In China, though the ancient sage Laozi is reputed to have written the five thousand characters of the _**Dao De Jing**_ , if we investigate how much of it came from his own writing brush, that is very difficult to determine. But has it ever been any cause for regret that he could not be moved to discard the pristine for the contrived? Confucius was a perfect sage; he edited the _**Classic of Poetry**_ and _**Classic of History**_ , and defined the proper rites and music. But he also said of himself: \"I do not compose any writings. I have faith in and fondness for the ancient ways.\" Isn't this a very good example?\n\nThe teachings spoken by Shakyamuni Buddha were subsequently made into scriptural texts. This was due to the efforts of Buddhist disciples with a high level of cultivation and virtue who were good at literary composition. They devoted themselves wholeheartedly to the work of gathering and compiling Buddha's verbal teachings. Whatever they had personally heard from him they gathered together and recorded in writing, using a rich and beautiful literary style and a consummate sense of its principles and meaning. Because of this, the propagation of Buddhism developed greatly. Of this we can say: \"He originally had no intention of becoming the founder of a religion. Who knew that the role would be pressed on him?\" Still, we feel a deep allegiance to him as our teacher and know he is worthy of respect and admiration. All we can do is lower our heads and bow in homage.\n\nThe Buddhist canon was defined by the Rajagrha collection for about a hundred years. After that, a controversy arose because some people thought that the ten rules being practiced by the Sangha (the community of Buddhist monks) in eastern India were not in accordance with the Dharma and the Vinaya. So a new conclave was convened in the city of Vaishali under the leadership of the bhikshu Yashas, who was the leading elder of the Sangha in western India. About ten thousand monks, young and old, attended this gathering, which lasted more than eight months. At the conclave, the orthodox Dharma and Vinaya were reiterated.\n\nBecause of the large number of participants, in later generations this assembly was called _**Mahasangika**_ , \"sect of the great congregation\" and its doctrine was called \"the standard teachers' doctrine\" (meaning the doctrine of the learned ones qualified to be teachers). But among the orthodox _**bhikshus**_ , the majority were leading elders who would not defer to the conclusions of this assembly. This became the source of the sectarian divisions that arose in Indian Buddhism at that time. In later generations, the orthodox congregations in the east were called _**Sthavira**_ , \"the sect of the elders,\" meaning virtuous ones.\n\nMore than a hundred years after this conclave, King Ashoka, the great protector of Buddhism and grandson of the first great unifier of India, was in power. He was a sincere believer in Buddhism. Eighteen years after coming to the throne, he chose one thousand sagacious monks noted for their learning and their virtue and put the monk Moggaliputta Tissa in charge. Another conclave was held at the imperial capital, Pataliputra, also known as Kusumapura, to recompile the Buddhist scriptures. This is recorded in the Buddhist scriptures of the southern transmission, but the scriptures themselves that this conclave defined are not extant.\n\nLater on, during the reign of King Kanishka (second century A.D.), another conclave to compile the scriptures was held. Five hundred wise monks were chosen and convened at Circle Grove Temple in Kashmir, with Vasumitra presiding. For the Buddhist scriptures they collected together, they first composed a hundred thousand verses of _**upadesha**_ to explicate the sutras. Then they composed a hundred thousand verses of _**vinaya-vibhasha**_ to explicate the vinaya, the codes of discipline. Finally, they composed a hundred thousand verses of _**abhidharma-vibhasha**_ to explicate the shastras. This work took twelve years to complete and then the conclave was finished. In the Chinese Buddhist canon, a translation of the _**Abhidharma-vibhasha shastra**_ mentioned above still survives.\n\nAccording to Tibetan Buddhist accounts, in the time of King Kanishka, five hundred arhats, five hundred bodhisattvas, and five hundred savants were called together at Jalandhara Temple in Punjab and ordered to reassemble the tripitaka (the sutras, vinaya, and shastras). Because Buddhism had divided into eighteen sects over the past hundred years, each with its own views, fierce debates continued at this conclave for sixty-three years. At this conclave, the different views of the eighteen sects were acknowledged as true Buddhism. The conclave also collected and recorded tripitaka scriptures that had never been recorded before, and re-edited those that had already been recorded.\n\nThe scriptures assembled by Buddhist disciples, the tripitaka, or three baskets, consisting of sutras, vinaya, and shastras, became the comprehensive collection and repository for the teachings of Buddhism. Besides this, the scriptures of the tripitaka in fact also include a great part of the thought system of classical Indian philosophy and learning. If we think that the Buddhist canon is made up of purely Buddhist teachings or purely Buddhist philosophy, we are inevitably taking too narrow a view.\n\nNo matter what debates there are in Buddhist history regarding the compilation of the Buddhist scriptures, we can at least be certain of the following. Beginning about a hundred years after the demise of the Buddha and continuing for four centuries, sectarian divisions gradually developed within Buddhism. These were due to differences in the doctrines held by disciples of the teachings Buddha had imparted, and differences in views they learned from their teachers. Starting with the division into _**Mahasangika**_ and _**Sthavira**_ , in an evolution lasting three or four centuries, the various Indian Buddhist sects formed. In all, these are usually classified into anywhere from eighteen to more than thirty sects. The derivation and names of the traditional eighteen sects are given on page 66.\n\nIn the Buddhist canon there is a _**Treatise on the Different Sects (Yibuzong Lun)**_ which contains a more detailed explanation of them. But the Buddhism of these sects has traditionally been designated as falling within the scope of Hinayana Buddhism. The great teacher Fazang summed them up by dividing them into six schools of thought. Later, there were sometimes more sects and sometimes fewer sects; they waxed and waned one after another. We cannot deny that the division of Chinese Buddhism into different schools was subject, whether directly or indirectly, to the influence of the doctrines of the various Indian Buddhist sects. This was inevitable.\n\n_The derivation and names of the eighteen traditional Indian Buddhist sects._\n\nBesides these divisions, Buddhist doctrine is also divided into Mahayana and Hinayana and into exoteric and esoteric. Those who advocate Hinayana consider that Mahayana is not the teaching of the Buddha. Those who champion Mahayana equate Hinayana with the outside paths. Those who honor the exoteric teachings think that the esoteric teachings are delusions. Those who emphasize the esoteric teachings say that the exoteric teachings are not the ultimate truth. In addition, the followers of Madhyamika emphasize _**prajna**_ , transcendent wisdom, while the followers of Yogacara emphasize an analysis of the characteristics of perceived phenomena.\n\nWithin Buddhism, schools of thought differ, as do lines of transmission, to the point that the situation is too complex to be clarified and disputes constantly arise. The phenomenon can be compared to sunspots: they move periodically across the Sun without damaging its original light, but in the end it comes back to the lingering regret felt when there is a flaw in an otherwise perfect thing.\n\nBuddhism arose and flourished in India, but by the middle years of the eighth century A.D., Buddhism in central India had already begun to decline. It was still being passed on only in northern and southern India. By this time, East Asian Buddhism was already flourishing in China: a firm foundation had been laid, and almost all of the Buddhist scriptures had already been translated into Chinese.\n\nThe decline of Indian Buddhism certainly gave the original brahmanical religion an opportunity to rise again. Other non-Buddhist teachings also seem to have sprouted anew. With the Muslim invasions of the 12th century A.D., many Buddhist temples and monasteries were destroyed and many followers of the religion fled to such places as southern India and Tibet. Thus Buddhism was totally cut off in its original homeland, and all that remains in India are a few scattered historical traces for later people to visit and reflect upon.\n\nAs for Indian Buddhism as it exists today, since the 18th and 19th centuries, a tiny portion of the Buddhist culture that was exported to other lands has been flowing back into India. Naturally, this is not the authentic Indian Buddhism of the old days. Moreover, this reimported Buddhism does not distinguish been Buddhism and spirit worship and is mixed with many misguided teachings. In the middle years of the 20th century, after World War I, there were Chinese monks who went to India for the purpose of establishing Buddhist temples, and this left some mark.\n\nIn its modern history before independence, the national fate of India was to meet with the aggression of the imperialist powers. This had nothing whatsoever to do with Buddhism. I only mention this incidentally, for the sake of argument. Some people attribute the imperialist conquest of India to the supposed debilitating effect of Buddhism. This is a misapprehension of history that is utterly ridiculous.\n\n**CHAPTER SUMMARY**\n\nWhen worldly people speak of religious philosophy and the history of religion, it is common knowledge that Buddhism was founded by Shakyamuni Buddha. From the religious standpoint, he was, of course, the founder of a religion. But from the viewpoint of philosophy or learning in general, many people recognize that Shakyamuni was not just the founder of a religion in the narrow sense: he was someone who came to save the world, a great philosopher, and a great educator.\n\nThe commonly held views that Buddhism is a kind of atheism or a kind of pantheism, along with various other opinions, are very interesting for the contradictions they contain. Here we need not discuss them. Based on the standpoint of Buddhism itself, the Sanskrit word _**buddha**_ means \"enlightened one.\" This word holds many meanings: someone who is himself enlightened, who has attained the self-benefiting path of great wisdom and liberation; someone who enlightens others, who brings enlightenment to the world and opens the way for people and thus benefits others; someone whose enlightening practices are complete, who has perfected the merits of saving himself and saving others. Because of this, we cannot just use a literal semantic translation and translate _**buddha**_ , as \"enlightened one.\" In order to encompass the whole meaning, we keep the original word _**buddha.**_\n\nIn the Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha has many epithets: \"World-Honored One,\" \"Tathagata,\" \"Teacher of Devas and Humans,\" \"Omniscient One,\" and so forth. Commonly, ten or even more different appellations are used. Except for \"World-Honored One,\" most of the appellations for Buddha convey his great compassion in saving the world and his dignity as a teacher and guide. Indeed, there is little of the idea that Buddha is the sole lord of myriad things.\n\nThe foregoing introduction has already conveyed some general knowledge of the Indian cultural background and the history of Shakyamuni Buddha's achievements in the world. In this chapter, I have tried to give an objective study of such matters as the circumstances of his times, his character and thought, his cultivation of the Path, and his work in spreading the teaching. Two conclusions can be drawn from the discussion.\n\nFirst, if we observe human history, we see that, whenever there are persons who possess intelligence and wisdom and a great deal of human fellow-feeling and courage, there are only two paths in life that they choose from: they either become heroes or they become sages. The heroes are the ones who achieve splendid deeds in their lives and whose fame reaches through the ages. The mission of a hero is at best to manage to restore proper order to a world in chaos, to bring the people relief, and to give human society a brief period of peace and security or raise its level of justice. Thus, a hero is one who becomes a political leader in order to bring perfect order to the contemporary world. But history has many examples in the rise and decline of societies and the succession of regimes where the so-called kingly mission has left a legacy of endless harm. This is because the transfer of power can seem like a lively opening act of a play, but can really turn out to be the last scene of a tragedy, where the ruler misleads his people and misleads himself at every turn, so that in the end not a single thing is correct.\n\nIn contrast to this, even though the sage may be in solitude throughout his life, his work can give humankind down through the ages peace and security in body and mind. Given all the intricacies and complexities of human issues, if we seek stability and order and justice only by means of political power, this is only the conventional point of view and a naive way of thinking. This is because it seems to be a rule of history that the good and evil of the human mind and the associated political flourishing and decline follow a pattern of periods of good order and periods of chaos coming one after another in a cycle: there is never an ultimate answer.\n\nBesides the level of concern reflected in the saying, \"The people and I are from the same womb,\" there is also concern for the whole universe of sentient beings reflected in the saying, \"All creatures are my companions.\" Their problems too must be totally solved.\n\nTherefore, from a philosophical standpoint, we must take upon ourselves the work of the Tathagata and seek the final destination of absolute truth in order to find a comprehensive solution to the whole issue of human life in society. We must completely comprehend the absolute truth of life in the universe. This alone is the fundamental work of bringing salvation to ten thousand generations and giving shelter to all sentient beings universally.\n\nIn India at the time of Shakyamuni, due to the confusion of culture and thought, the instability of politics and social structure, and the disturbances of war, the grief and sadness of the human world struck the eye and alarmed the heart wherever he looked. With his innate intelligence and courageous character, it would have been very possible for him to succeed to the throne, extend his realm, and become the heroic ruler of the age. But he saw clearly where the key problem of human nature was located and that to deal with it and resolve it was not a matter of relying on external accomplishments, but rather a matter of the moral work of teaching and transforming people.\n\nThus Shakyamuni boldly abandoned his royal status and left behind the conventional world of sensory pleasures. He took up the Path and sought the Real, and became the teacher of sentient beings, replete with all the glories of human existence. By renouncing the petty, private self, he perfected the greater self's spirit of saving the world and revealed himself to preach the Dharma. He loudly proclaimed that all sentient beings are equal and that we share the same suchness with the enlightened ones, thus forcefully breaking with the rigid Indian caste system and the self-centered egotistical viewpoint of humankind. What a noble intention, what a generous spirit!\n\nBut all through his lifetime of spreading the teaching and explaining the Dharma, what Shakyamuni was seeking was for sentient beings to save themselves by their own inherent nature. He was by no means fond of the role of teacher, nor did he intend to win honor for himself by founding a religion. Yet what he did not desire, other people all gave him. After his demise, his many disciples ended up honoring him as their guide and teacher and serving him as the founder of their religion. This really had nothing to do with his original selfless intent. It's a case of \"when the reality is there, the name is applied.\" The sages have no constant mind: they take the mind of the common people as their mind. Because Shakyamuni only gave and never avidly sought anything, the descendants of his life of wisdom will be there forever, for ten thousand generations, with no limits of time or space, wherever the Sun and Moon shine, endlessly paying homage to him. Given the circumstances of his birth, on the border between heroes and sages, he will always be a prophetic pioneer.\n\nIn addition, we can conclude that, taking up the duties of the teachers' path, Shakyamuni showed that all sentient beings have buddha-nature. Proceeding from the religious standpoint, the accounts in the Buddhist scriptures tell how Shakyamuni cultivated practice for countless eons and how he was adorned with myriad virtuous qualities in order to become a buddha. The scriptures are full of all sorts of miracles and wonders vividly portrayed, and there are indeed things there that are inconceivable. If we look on such miraculous elements from the viewpoint of the present or future centuries, they can only circumscribe Buddhism within the confines of religion and provide people with things to worship. They block the way for modern-day people to advance onto the great highway of Buddhism and inevitably present all sorts of obstacles.\n\nWhen we study Buddha's life, we realize he was a man, not a god. Starting as a human, he transcended ordinary humanity and became a buddha. But this was the completion of a process of education and cultivation involving a sequence of many causes and effects. It was not that he was a sage with innate knowledge who didn't have to learn in order to develop his capacities. Moreover, though he cut his ties with his loved ones and abandoned his princely rank in order to seek the Path, he did have the ordinary human experiences of getting married and having a child. Toward his parents, he carried out the path of filial duty that a child must fulfill. He considered this so important that he declared that filial service to one's parents is equal to making offerings to the buddhas. In Chinese Buddhism, even more emphasis is placed on \"repaying the four forms of benevolence,\" which means to repay the benevolence of one's parents, the benevolence of the nation, the benevolence of sentient beings (the benevolence of society as a whole), and the benevolence of the enlightened ones (one's teachers).\n\nShakyamuni took upon himself the responsibilities of the teachers' path. He taught that, to elevate human nature and transcend ordinary humanity, to enter into sagehood and become a buddha and an enlightened teacher, we must proceed from our fundamental position as human beings. If our moral character and behavior as human beings is not complete, yet we hope to be able to attain the Path and realize the fruit of enlightenment as soon as we enter the gate of the buddhas and become a teacher of devas and humans, then we are either stupid or crazy. This is definitely not the reality of Buddhism.\n\nShakyamuni taught that all sentient beings possess buddha-nature. If people are deluded, then they are ordinary humans; if they awaken, then they become sages. Sagehood depends on our own awakening: it is not attained from others. Thus it is necessary to use our completely enlightened, awakened, true nature to seek to experience the fundamental true thusness. After this, we can share in the still quiet of the source of life, the source of the universe, the source of mind and all things. When we reach this point, we can finish with birth and death; we can equalize self and others. This is the supreme, wondrous, excellent realm of the buddhas, the tathagatas, the enlightened ones who come forth from thusness.\n\n* * *\n\n1 There are slight variations in this statement made by Shakyarnuni when he was first enlightened in the various Chinese translations of the Buddhist sums. Here we are using as the standard the version that has been handed down through the generations in the Zen school. We select the version above because it is comparatively clearer and easier to understand.\nCHAPTER 3\n\nThe Transmission of Buddhism to China\n\n**THE FIRST PERIOD OF THE TRANSMISSION**\n\nWhen we put aside the purely religious accounts in the Buddhist scriptures and try to find historical answers by making logical assessments and judgments, it is very difficult to ascertain the actual situation of the spread of Buddhism and the extent of its power or what territories and how many people had been reached by Buddhist influences in the period following the founding of Buddhism by Shakyamuni. We can surmise that, probably while Shakyamuni was in the world and in the one or two centuries after his demise, the territory to which Buddhism had been disseminated probably extended from the foothills of the Himalayas in the north, regions like Nepal, to the Vindhya Range in the south, and from Mathura in the west to the land of Anga in the south. In other words, Buddhism had still not spread beyond the Ganges Valley in north-central and northeastern India. But, given that probably less than a hundred thousand people had been taught in person by Shakyamuni, given the size of the population of ancient India, it could be said that Buddhism had already acquired great momentum and was capable of making an impact on the times.\n\nBeyond the efforts of Buddha's disciples to spread the teaching, the real large-scale dissemination of Buddhism still had to depend on political power. Two centuries after the demise of Buddha, India produced a king famed in history. His heroic exploits could be matched with those of Alexander the Great. This was the world-famous King Ashoka. At the same time, he was also a fervent Buddhist, one who, in the technical language of Buddhism, is called a \"great Dharma-protector.\" Under the aegis of his formidable power, following the expansion of his military forces, the teaching of Buddhism naturally extended everywhere throughout his empire, which covered all but the southern reaches of the Indian subcontinent.\n\n**Indian Buddhism in the Time of King Ashoka**\n\nDuring the reign of King Ashoka, an assembly of a thousand bhikshus was convened at Kukkutarama Temple in Kusumapura, the imperial capital. With Moggaliputta Tissa presiding, the conclave made a new collection of the Buddhist scriptures. This was the \"Kusumapura collection,\" which is famous in the history of Buddhist culture.\n\nThe story goes that Ashoka also built many stupas to house the relics of Buddha. There are even legends saying that some of the stupas built by King Ashoka were later dismantled and sent to China and rebuilt there: for example, the great stupas in several temples in such places as Zhejiang and Sichuan. Even today, legends still adhere to these stupas, claiming that they are \"stupas of King Ashoka\" that flew here from India. This is, of course, a figment of the religious imagination, so we need not investigate it any more deeply.\n\nAs evidence of historical fact, in the text of the thirteenth of the royal edicts which King Ashoka had carved on cliff faces throughout his realm, the following is recorded: \"In the ninth year of King Ashoka's reign, he conducted a punitive expedition against the Kalingas.... After his conquest of the Kalingas, he became a sincere protector of the True Dharma, and gave his allegiance to the True Dharma, and undertook to spread the teaching of the True Dharma....\" It also says: \"The King felt pity for the barbarians who lived in the mountain forests of his territory, and his wish was that they would give their allegiance to the True Dharma...so that all sentient beings would be peaceful and happy. The supreme victory is the victory of the True Dharma. The victory of the True Dharma had already been achieved throughout the King's realm, and had extended to the neighboring countries for a distance of six hundred yojanas, into the lands of the Yavana (Hellenistic) kings Antiochos, Ptolemy, Antigonas, and Magas and Alexander.... This was all due to King Ashoka disseminating and following the True Dharma.\"\n\nAccording to what is recorded in this edict, it is obvious that Buddhism was already flourishing in the age of King Ashoka and had spread beyond India to the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Middle East. For example, the Antiochos mentioned in the text was Antiochos II (Theos), king of Syria; Ptolemy was Ptolemy II (Philadelphos), king of Egypt; Antigonas was Antigonas II (Gonatos), king of Macedonia; Magas (of Cyrene) and Alexander (of Epiros) were other Hellenistic rulers. The later part of the edict records that King Ashoka had sent out Buddhist teachers to spread the religion in Syria, Egypt, Macedonia, and Central Asia. The wide extent of his efforts to spread Buddhism are obvious from this.\n\nFurthermore, according to what is recorded in the second of Ashoka's rock edicts, the regions to which King Ashoka sent out missionaries included Kashmir and Gandhara in the northwest, the Yavana regions of the Hellenistic kingdom of Bactria (modern Afghanistan), the Himalaya region, the Aparantaka region in western Punjab, Maharashtra, Mahisamandala (the region of modern Mysore), Vanavasi in southern India, the lands of the Cholas, Pandyas, and Kerala, Suvarnabhumi (the coast of Burma and possibly Cambodia), and Lanka (modern Sri Lanka).\n\nIn the three or four centuries after King Ashoka (who reigned 264-227 B.C.), Buddhism gradually became widespread in countries like China, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka, while in India itself, its homeland, it declined little by little. In the second century B.C., the brahman general Pushamitra usurped the throne of the Maurya dynasty, of which Ashoka had been the third emperor, and launched a great persecution of Buddhism in central India, burning temples and massacring monks and nuns. The damage and destruction was considerable. But Buddhism in northern India continued to flourish as before. Before long, thanks to the efforts of the monks and nuns who had survived the persecution, Buddhism in central India revived to some extent. But there were internal divisions that produced sectarian disputes, and more than eighteen sects formed.\n\nThe development of Buddhism in Sri Lanka began in the time of King Ashoka. Subsequently, due to a succession of enlightened monarchs, it became the state religion there. King Dutta-Gamani (r. 101-77 B.C.) began to build Buddhist stupas, and King VattaGamani (r. 43-17 B.C.) erected the vihara at Anuradhapura, the capital, and also had the oral Pali canon committed to writing. The succeeding kings all performed many services for Buddhism.\n\nLong after King Ashoka, around the second century A.D., King Kanishka rose to power in India and Buddhism enjoyed another flourishing period. King Kanishka was a descendent of the Central Asian Kushans, who had gradually taken over northwestern India and parts of central India. After King Kanishka became a Buddhist, he vowed to invite the learned bodhisattvas Vasumitra, Ashvagosha, and Parshva to an assembly at the capital city, Kashimira, to assemble the Buddhist canon. This work took twelve years to complete. The sutras, vinaya, and shastras which the Tang dynasty teacher Xuanzang brought back from his study trip to India and transmitted in China belong mostly to the version of the canon compiled at this assembly.\n\nStill later, in the second or third century A.D., the bodhisattva Nagarjuna rose to prominence in southern India and spread Buddhism widely. In the fourth century, the brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu spread the learning of the bodhisattva Maitreya, and developed Yogacara philosophy. They were very famous at the time.\n\nThe Chinese monk Faxian, who had journeyed to India to study Buddhism and collect texts, also made his contributions, and he reached India in A.D. 411, long before Fazang.\n\nIn the sixth century, great shastra masters like Dinnaga, Dharmapala, and Bhavaviveka propagated Yogacara and Madhyamika Buddhist philosophy. In the early Tang period, the great teacher Fazang arrived in India. These teachers were dead, so Fazang studied with the Dharma teacher Silabhadra and his disciple Jnanaprabha, and with the Buddhist layman Prasenajit. Fazang plumbed the depths of Yogacara and Madhyamika theory.\n\nDuring the same period, many famous Indian monks like Bodhiruci, Bodhidharma, Paramartha, Dharmagupta, and the Central Asian monk known in Chinese as Xianshou Fazang all came to China to transmit Buddhism and translate the scriptures.\n\nLate in the seventh century, the Chinese Dharma master Yijing traveled to India to study and spend time in the various countries of Southeast Asia. He wrote many works on Buddhism when he returned to China.\n\nIn the eighth century, Indian Buddhism was gradually declining. In this period, Indian adepts like Shubhakarasimha, Vajramati, and Amoghavajra came to China and spread the teachings of Tantric Buddhism.\n\nIn the 12th century, after Islam entered India, many followers of Buddhism fled to places like southern Indian and Tibet. From this point on, Buddhism declined continuously in India, its original homeland.\n\n**The Initial Transmission of Buddhism to China in the Late Han and Three Kingdoms Periods**\n\nThere are already traces of interaction between the cultures of India and China as early as the Qin dynasty and the beginning of the Han dynasty (c. 220-200 B.C.). In Buddhist annals, there is a story that, in the time of Emperor Qin Shihuang, eighteen foreign **_shramanas_** were imprisoned, but in the middle of the night a sixteen-foot tall figure made of diamond smashed into the prison and set them free. After researching the evidence for this, the general opinion of scholars is that this story is unreliable. In fact, in ancient India, the term **_shramana_** was not limited to Buddhist bhikshus. It is very probable that these men could have been followers of the brahmanical religion or of yoga.\n\nIt is probable that, in the Qin and Han periods, there had already been some intercommunication between techniques of the Taoist adepts and brahmanism and yoga. Thus, we have some proof that the cultural interchange between India and China had probably commenced far earlier than the introduction of Buddhism into China. Of course, at this initial period, contact between the two cultures was extremely sparse.\n\nThe older histories all place the beginning of the transmission of Buddhism into China in the period of the Emperor Han Mingdi (r. A.D. 58-75). Due to a dream he had of a golden man, Mingdi sent eighteen emissaries, Cai Yin among them, to travel west to the Central Asian Buddhist city-states in search of Buddhist scriptures. In the land of the Yuezhi, they encountered the two Dharma teachers Kashyapa-Matanga and Dharmaraksha. The two teachers were invited back to the Han imperial capital, Luoyang, and installed in White Horse Temple there. Working together, they translated the **_Sutra in Forty-two Chapters._** This was placed in a stone chamber at Lantai. This was the start of the introduction of Buddhism into China.\n\nOn the basis of their researches into this matter, modern scholars all have their own accounts: they think that the previous story is unreliable and doubtful. The most trustworthy records and reliable historical sources come from the late Han and the Three Kingdoms periods.\n\nDuring the time of Emperor Han Huandi (r. A.D. 147-167), a Buddhist monk from Parthia named An Shigao came to China, and a Buddhist monk from the land of the Yuezhi named Zhichan came to Luoyang. Each of them translated several dozen Buddhist scriptures, amounting to one or two hundred fascicles altogether.\n\nDuring the reign of Emperor Han Lingdi (r. A.D. 168-189), an Indian monk known in China as Zhu Folang also came to Luoyang, where he did his utmost to promote Buddhism. The famous work, **_Mouzi Lihuo Lun_** , which proposes a synthesis of Buddhism and Chinese culture was written in this period.\n\nLater on, early in the third century A.D., we find the Sogdian Buddhist monk Kang Senghui and the three famous Yuezhi Buddhist laymen Zhiqian, Zhichan, and Zhiliang. All of them were very learned and honored both at court and throughout the country. They devoted themselves to spreading Buddhist doctrines. They came to live in eastern China in the kingdom of Wu, where they were honored guests of the government of Sun Quan, the founder of the kingdom of Wu. They all mastered literary Chinese and contributed as much as they could to the work of translating the Buddhist scriptures.\n\nIn the Jiaping years (249-253), in the Wei kingdom, due to the initiative of the noted Indian monks Dharmakara and Dharmagupta, a system of procedures for Chinese Buddhism was first established, including the regulations for leavers of home to receive the precepts. This at last was the beginning of the formal introduction of Buddhism into China.\n\nIn the period of the late Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms (c. A.D. 190-265), Buddhist scriptures and Buddhism in its initial phase were continuously coming into China, and there was obviously a sharp struggle with the way of thinking of the original culture of the country and the doctrines of Confucianism and Taoism. In the history of Chinese thought, this was a great uproar brought about by the encounter with the stimulus of a way of thinking coming from outside the country. Nevertheless, among the common people acting freely on their own, belief in Buddhism was constantly increasing. Over the course of almost a hundred years, the intelligentsia also gradually came to accept the Buddhist way of thinking. This led to the formation of the abstruse philosophical style of the high culture of the period of the Western and Eastern Jin dynasties ( A.D. 265-420).\n\nFor almost two centuries during the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties (A.D. 420-580), China's culture and politics went through a period of internal contradictions and fragmentation. From the point of view of historical development, the character of this period was certainly not brought about due to the influence of Buddhism on the land. In reality, the dramatic political changes, in conjunction with the influences of warfare, made Buddhism a timely gift to the people during this period.\n\nThere were two hidden major factors underlying this, both for the common people and for the intelligentsia (including the courtiers and the landed gentry). First, faith in Buddhism among the common people was the result of a prolonged period of warfare which had left the people's livelihood precarious. Human effort offered no solution to a life of starvation and misery. The Way of Heaven offered nothing on which to rely; life was insecure and filled with fear, pessimism, and world-weary feelings. At just this time, Buddhist thought surged into China. Its teachings on the force of good and evil karma bringing about karmic retribution through a process of cause and effect extending through past, present, and future lives, and its accounts of heaven and hell and cyclical existence in the six planes enabled people to be more certain that the arrangement of their fate was created by the force of karma from past lives. Thus, in a worldly situation of disorder and chaos, Buddhist concepts spread very quickly. By believing in them, people could soothe their bodies and console their minds. They took the original Buddhist concepts of buddhas and bodhisattvas and transformed them to resemble their traditional faith in spirits.\n\nAs for the allegiances of the intelligentsia, ever since the factional struggles among the Eastern Han dynasty elite starting in the second half of the second century A.D., the influence of political and social trends had made it impossible for people to be satisfied with or fully believe in the traditional doctrines of the early Han dynasty Confucians. In the Wei-Jin period (third to fourth centuries A.D.), the intellectuals among the social elite had all been searching in a variety of ways for a new direction in thought. They pursued the study of the signs of fate and delved into the area of philosophy. Very open-minded in their thinking and valuing individual freedom, they entered the realm of abstruse discourse.\n\nIt was just at this time that the thought of the so-called three mystic doctrines contained in the **_Book of Changes, Laozi_** , and **_Zhuangzi_** , encountered the imported Buddhist theories of **_prajna_** and **_shunyata_** (transcendent wisdom and inherent emptiness). From this, there was an increased tendency among the intelligentsia to combine the indigenous mystic doctrines with borrowed Buddhist ideas. This became the style, so prevalent among the landed gentry stratum and the famous scholars among the so-called intelligentsia, of fleeing from worldly life into Buddhism.\n\nBased on the two factors just mentioned, Buddhism spread throughout China and began its development there. But what really enabled Buddhism to lay a foundation in China were the efforts of many people, among them the famous monks from Kucha in Central Asia, Fotudeng, who was active in the Northern Dynasties in the time of Shi Le, barbarian emperor of the Later Zhao dynasty (r. 330-349), and Kumarajiva (d. 413), the Central Asian master translator who worked under the Later Qin dynasty ruled by the Yao family. Also playing key roles were the eminent Chinese monks Dao An (312-385) and his disciple Huiyuan (344-416), and Kumarajiva's disciple Sengzhao (374-414). Only the strength of people like these enabled Buddhism to establish a foundation in China that could not be uprooted.\n\n**Buddhism in the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties**\n\nWhen we look at the development of history, we see that, whenever there is a period of decline and the world is in disorder and people are demoralized, the result is either a turn toward immediate reality and a life of extravagant excess, or else a flight from immediate reality and the pursuit of higher realms.\n\nWhen we try to observe China in the period of the Wei and Jin dynasties and the Northern and Southern dynasties, we see that the turmoil of the political situation was bringing about certain trends in society. For example, things like the invasions of alien tribes and the subsequent transformations in ways of thinking, were everywhere stimulating people's minds and sending them on the road of either positive activity or withdrawn passivity.\n\nIn A.D. 330, the tribal chieftain Shi Le, who was bloodthirsty, avaricious, and barbaric by nature, proclaimed himself monarch in northern China. But at precisely the same time, the eminent monk, Fotudeng, from Central Asia had come to China and was spreading the compassionate teachings of Buddhism within the territory of Shi Le's Later Zhao state. Besides disseminating the principles of Buddhism, Fotudeng also demonstrated many spiritual powers. This not only made Shi Le believe in him, which reduced the barbarian monarch's ferocity, but at the same time it induced many people to have faith in Buddhism.\n\nIn addition to these activities, Fotudeng also taught Buddhist techniques for cultivating realization. He promoted the method of meditative concentration that uses counting breaths ( _anapana_ ) to focus the mind (becoming peaceful and quiet and tempering the breath, in order to focus the mind and enter a state of concentration). This enabled people not only to have faith in Buddhist theories, but also to have a genuine method of cultivating practice that they could follow. We can say that these Buddhist techniques and the Chinese Taoist techniques of nurturing life complemented each other; they accomplished the same results by different methods. Besides all its theoretical accounts of emptiness and existence, Buddhism also offered methods for genuine realization of spiritual powers and meditative concentration that could be relied on in actual fact. This is the major reason that Buddhism began to develop so vigorously in China with Fotudeng. Later on, his Chinese disciple, Dharma teacher Dao An, was also very learned and a master of worldly affairs, whose virtuous qualities impressed the scholars of the time. The founding patriarch of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, the great teacher Huiyuan, was one of Dao An's favorite disciples.\n\n**The Founding of Pure Land Buddhism**\n\nThe great teacher Huiyuan was a son of the Jia family of Yanmen in Shanxi in northern China. As a youth he studied Confucianism and accumulated a lot of book learning. He had a particularly profound understanding of the three mystic studies, the **_Book of Changes, Laozi_** , and **_Zhutmgzi_** , and he also practiced the arts of Taoism. Later, in order to avoid the political chaos, he went to southern China and became a monk and a follower of Dharma teacher Dao An.\n\nSince he was fond of the scenery on Mount Lu, Huiyuan sent out invitations to the famous scholars of the time, such as Tao Yuanming and Liu Yimin, and they formed the White Lotus Society there on the mountain. As their guiding standard, they adopted the **_Amitabha Sutra_** and the **_Sutra of Infinite Life_** from among the Buddhist scriptures. They devoted themselves to advocating the practice of invoking the buddha-name by chanting \"Hail to Amitabha Buddha,\" in order to seek rebirth in Amitabha Buddha's pure land, the land of ultimate bliss. Thus Huiyuan became the first patriarch of the later Pure Land school of Chinese Buddhism. One could say that the establishment of the Pure Land school by Huiyuan was the real beginning of Chinese Buddhism. It was also one of the most obvious aspects of the rich religious spirit of Buddhism. There were perhaps two basic causes leading to the creation of the White Lotus Society on Mount Lu and Pure Land Buddhism: the trend of the times and the choice of methods of nurturing life.\n\nNow, as to the trend of the times, the transformation of thought\u2014underway since the Wei and Jin dynasties\u2014and the rise of abstruse discourse, had already gone as far as it could, but it had left those seeking knowledge with no way to satisfy themselves. The contemporary style of free and broad-minded thought had influenced the minds of people in society, and they had gone from a dejected, demoralized state to one of complete excess and abandon. This had made politics even more chaotic and society even harder to stabilize and pacify. As a result, the intellectual trend of fleeing from the world was ever increasing. This was everywhere the case with the representatives of the intelligentsia\u2014men like Tao Yuanming and Xie Lingyun. Feeling compassion for these people, the great teacher Huiyuan invited famous contemporary literati to form the White Lotus Society.\n\nThe tendency toward eremitic retreat was also an inevitable trend of the times. An example is this sad statement from a letter by Liu Yimin in response to an invitation to come to Mount Lu: \"The Jin royal house does not have the solidity of a stone chime, the feelings of living creatures are as precarious as a pile of eggs.\" In this we can see the general state of mind of the literati of the period, and their desire to flee the world and take refuge in Buddhism.\n\nEver since the Western and Eastern Han dynasties, and through the Wei and Jin dynasties, besides the abstruse discourse at the level of philosophy, the theories of the Taoist adepts on nurturing life had also been very popular in the world. The fashion for techniques of \"refining the elixir\" in order to seek to become a spirit immortal, and live forever without growing old was already widespread throughout the country. Dharma master Huiyuan had himself studied these Taoist arts, but he finally came to feel that they were vague and unreliable and were not the ultimate method, and so it was still necessary to search within oneself and return to the One Mind to attain the Tao. Thus, he came to a deep comprehension of the Buddhist principle of perceiving inherent emptiness via cultivating transcendent wisdom.\n\nHaving received the theories and techniques that were the bequest of the illustrious adepts Fotudeng and Dao An and as their direct successor, Huiyuan had a deep knowledge of the difficulties that would confront future people in seeking genuine realization. Thus he advocated the-method of reciting the buddha-name as a way of elevating and sublimating the spirit, as a method of cultivating practice that included people of all capacities and levels of consciousness. Even if people did not finish with birth and death in this lifetime, this method could still enable their souls to reach a transcendent realm.\n\nThe founding of the Pure Land school established the religious spirit and style of Buddhism in China. In the present day, more than a thousand years later, the phrase \"Amitabha Buddha\" has become a popular expression in Chinese society. No matter whether it is recited as practice to refine the mind or uttered as a casual expression, wherever we go we can hear \"Amitabha Buddha\" being said by Chinese people.\n\n**Kumarajiva and Sengzhao**\n\nIn the period of the Later Qin dynasty in northwest China, the famous monk Kumarajiva came to China from Central Asia. His great mission was to translate the Buddhist scriptures and to disseminate the Buddhist teaching of **_prajna_** , transcendent wisdom. This was a key event in opening a channel between Chinese and Indian culture and thought, and in developing Buddhist civilization.\n\nAmong Kumarajiva's disciples were men like Sengrui and Sengzhao, who were both figures of outstanding learning and talent in contemporary China. The deep learning and dignified bearing of this teacher and his disciples deeply influenced the learned world of the Northern and Southern dynasties, and they were held in the highest esteem by their contemporaries. Especially influential was the treatise written by Sengzhao which synthesized the thought of Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Confucius with Buddhism. Sengzhao's other works, such as the treatises titled \"Transcendent Wisdom is not Ordinary Knowledge\" and \"Nirvana Has No Name,\" also proved to be famous works whose special reputation has endured through the ages in the history of Chinese philosophy and literature. The Buddhist works of Dao An and his disciple Huiyuan were also very much influenced by Kumarajiva.\n\nKumarajiva's coming to China was a special event in the history of Chinese culture. But the circumstances of his coming to China were very painful and bitter. Because he admired Kumarajiva's learning, Fu Jian, the lord of the Former Qin dynasty, did not shrink from sending to the west a great army under the leadership of his general Lu Guang to attack Kucha, a Central Asian citystate which was Kumarajiva's home. Later, Lu Guang heard the news that Fu Jian's army had been defeated and he took advantage of this temporary reverse in 386 to proclaim the state of Liang with himself as the monarch. Kumarajiva was then captured by Lu Guang. During the time of the Later Qin dynasty, ruled by the Yao family, which was founded in 394 when Yao Chang overthrew his former lord Fu Jian, Kumarajiva was brought to the great city of Chang'an in China's Central Plain after Lu Guang's son, Lu Long, surrendered to the Later Qin in 403. Yao Chang's son and heir, Yao Xing, invited Kumarajiva to live at Xiaoyao Garden in 405 and made him the National Teacher.\n\nKumarajiva and his team translated over three hundred volumes of Buddhist scriptures. About three thousand people took part in the translation work, all supported by the Yao government. Many famous monks emerged from this project, and the reputation of Buddhism grew.\n\nWe can draw four conclusions from the circumstances of Kumarajiva's coming to China to translate Buddhist texts. First, the warlords of the time were not averse to sending out armies to conquer other states and engage in repeated conflicts, all for the sake of a single scholar. This is a highly unusual event in history. Looking at the good side, it shows they held deep respect for learning and the glory of a particular teacher. From another aspect, it is also true that this only could have been done by men of a low cultural level, because this was an act of coercion through military force. Nevertheless, down through the ages, most intellectuals have tended to look down on themselves and each other. The ones that have truly honored the intellectuals and been able to appreciate their talents have been, in general, the so-called nonintellectuals. This is almost a rule of history.\n\nSecond, Kumarajiva's work of translating Buddhist scriptures was under the control of a political power and only this enabled it to have such great success. The project had a foreigner who had mastered written Chinese as its chief translator, and he worked with the help of talented Chinese scholars. Because of this, their translations of the Buddhist scriptures not only gave Chinese Buddhist texts their special characteristics, but also added another look to Chinese literary style, the look of Buddhist scriptural literature. The language of these scriptures was the vernacular language created at that time; it is only when modern-day people read it that it seems ancient.\n\nThird, before Kumarajiva, the dissemination of Buddhism had often depended on demonstrations of the teaching through the display of spiritual powers. Only when Kumarajiva came to China was Buddhist philosophy put on a par with Confucianism and Taoism. Only then did it become a major stream in Chinese culture and learning. Only after Kumarajiva did the learning of the three schools of thought, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, come to form the totality of Chinese civilization.\n\nFinally, because of the influence of Kumarajiva, the number of people leaving home to become Buddhist monks and nuns increased. They varied in quality and many were unruly. This impelled the Later Qin government to establish monk-officials to oversee the congregations of monks. Later, this was taken as a precedent for the system of monk-officials instituted by the Sui and Tang dynasties and continued down through the ages in China.\n\n**Daosheng, Nirvana, and Buddha-nature**\n\nIn this period, Buddhism had been transmitted into China from the northwest, via the Buddhist city-states of Central Asia. The center of Chinese civilization was still in the zone north and south of the Yellow River. Learning and thought in southern China still remained within the confines of Laozi and Zhuangzi, Confucius and Mencius. Moreover, all the Buddhist scriptures had still not been translated. For example, at this time, only half of the _Nirvana Sutra_ had been translated.\n\nMany contemporary Chinese adherents of Buddhism had the idea that sentient beings, with their extreme evil and serious wrongdoings, could not become buddhas. At that time the Dharma teacher Daosheng (d. 424) had studied Buddhist philosophy deeply and he thought that this idea was due to an incomplete knowledge of Buddhist principles and that it was not the complete teaching of Buddhism. He proclaimed that, even with their extremely evil and serious wrongdoings, sentient beings still possess buddha-nature and that, when they repented of their sins and renewed themselves, they could become buddhas. He was the first advocate of the idea of \"becoming a buddha through sudden enlightenment.\"\n\nBecause of these ideas, Daosheng was attacked by most of the followers of Buddhism. He could not remain in the north, so he went to southern China and lived in hiding on Huqiu Mountain, preaching the Dharma to the rocks. The expression, \"When Master Daosheng preached the Dharma, the rocks nodded their heads,\" refers to the story of Dharma teacher Daosheng explaining the sutras while alone in the mountains. Later, when a full translation of the _Nirvana Sutra_ was completed, there was at last proof that what Daosheng had said about all sentient beings having buddha-nature was not wrong.\n\nThe source of Daosheng's thought was really still inspired by the three mystic studies of the _Book of Changes, Laozi_ , and _Zhuangzi._ This also makes it obvious that, at that time, Buddhist thought and Chinese culture were drawing on each other's discoveries and that they had already reached a state of interpenetration.\n\n**THE HEYDAY OF CHINESE BUDDHISM**\n\nFrom the late Han dynasty, through the Wei and Jin dynasties, and into the Northern and Southern dynasties period, the fashion in learned thought turned away from the simplicity of the Han dynasty philosophy and everywhere tended toward metaphysical pursuits. Thus in this period, both Buddhist and Taoist religious learning developed more and more. Confucianism vacillated between Buddhist and Taoist influences. Moreover, because of the elevation of monarchical authority in the Northern and Southern dynasties and the fact that many of the rulers of those dynasties patronized Buddhism, Buddhism came to be held in high esteem both at court and throughout the countryside, a high esteem that could scarcely have been added to.\n\nNevertheless, from the time of the Western and Eastern Jin dynasties (A.D. 265-420), into the Sui and Tang period (A.D. 580-900), though Chinese Buddhism still mostly followed the patterns of Indian Buddhism, it was being subjected to the influences of Chinese civilization and was in the midst of a process of gradual transformation.\n\n**The Sui and Tang Periods**\n\nIn the time of Liang Wudi (Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty who reigned over southern China from 502 to 549), Buddhism was particularly flourishing, thanks to that monarch's religious beliefs. Liang Wudi believed in both Buddhism and Taoism, but he was particularly fond of Buddhism. These Buddhist temples and monasteries sprang up in great numbers all over southern China. Buddhist temples were built at most of the famous mountains and scenic places.\n\nThus we read, in the Tang dynasty poet Tu Mu's verse on Spring in Jiangnan, the famous lines:\n\nFour hundred and eighty temples in the South\n\nSo many towers and platforms in the mist and rain.\n\nEven so, this passage is only referring to the Buddhist temples in the region around the Yangzi River; it does not include the Buddhist buildings in the Yellow River Valley. Rather than characterize the culture and thought of the Northern and Southern dynasties period according to the usual term \"Dark Learning\" (that is, abstruse metaphysics), it would be more accurate to say that this was a period of religious culture and thought.\n\nIn the time of Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty and Emperor Xuanwu of the Northern Wei dynasty (r. 499-515), the Indian monk, Bodhidharma, arrived by sea in Guangdong. Bodhidharma was the Twenty-Eighth Patriarch of Indian Buddhism's special transmission outside the scriptural teachings: the Zen school. Having come east to China, Bodhidharma had an interview with Liang Wudi, but the two did not reach accord. So Bodhidharma crossed the Yangzi River and traveled to northern China. He lived in seclusion in Shaolin Temple on Mount Song and sat for nine years facing a wall. This was the beginning of the transmission of Zen into China.\n\nFrom the early Tang onward (seventh century A.D.), the Zen school flourished greatly, transforming Buddhism in China into a purely Chinese form of Buddhism. We can say that the great teacher Huiyuan's founding of the Pure Land school and Bodhidharma's transmitting of the Zen school were two great events in the history of Chinese Buddhism.\n\nThe interaction of political factors and their impact on learning and philosophical thought had plunged China's historical culture into an extremely confused situation during the Northern and Southern dynasties period. Against this background, Wang Tong, in his lectures in northern China, had propounded a system of thought that brought together Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism and established the basis for Tang culture from the early Tang period on.\n\nIn this same period, the great teacher Zhiyi (538-597) formally established the Tiantai school of Chinese Buddhism. He used meditative cessation and contemplation as the methods of genuine Buddhist realization. Using the systematic categories of three kinds of cessation and three kinds of contemplation, correlated with the three meditation perspectives of emptiness, provisional existence, and the mean between them, Zhiyi brought together the whole of Buddhist theory. He started the practice of categorizing and classifying the scriptural teachings and gave the first critical treatment of the Buddhist legacy of teachings. Zhiyi composed the book **_Moho Zhiguan, The Great Cessation and Contemplation._** This great work is surely the first comprehensive guide to Buddhism written in China. The second such great comprehensive guide was the **_Zong Jing Lu, The Source Mirror Record_** , written later by Zen master Yongming Yanshou (d. 975) during the Song dynasty.\n\n**The Founding of the Tang Dynasty**\n\nThe Tang dynasty was founded by the heroism and strategic brilliance of Tang Taizong, assisted by his ministers and generals at the beginning of the dynasty. Most of them were talented men of broad knowledge who had, in addition, absorbed the political experience and painful lessons of the preceding Six Dynasties period.\n\nThe attitude of the founders of the dynasty toward religion was one of uniform tolerance, no matter whether toward Buddhism, Taoism, or even Nestorian Christianity and spirit cults. They allowed everyone in the country, from high to low, freedom of religious belief. In the government's system to oversee religion, there was an officer called the **_seng-zheng_** for the Buddhist clergy and an officer called the **_dao-lu_** for the Taoist clergy. These were the Tang dynasty equivalents of the specialized oversight departments previously established for each religion.\n\nThe single greatest event in Chinese cultural history and the history of Chinese Buddhism in this period was the great teacher Xuanzang's pilgrimage to India and his return to China. Tang Taizong established a translation institute for him and gathered together several thousand learned monks and noted literati to take part in the work of translating the Buddhist texts which Xuanzang had brought back with him from India.\n\nOn one hand, Tang Taizong did his utmost to promote Taoism as a religion whose founder was a member of his own clan. (Taoists revered Laozi as the founder of their religion. Laozi's surname was Li, the same as the Tang royal family; Tang Taizong's personal name was Li Shimin.) On the other hand, Tang Taizong also had sincere faith in the message of Buddhism. He gready respected the great teacher Xuanzang and many times urged him to return to lay life so he could serve as an imperial minister, but Xuanzang always declined. The great teacher Xuanzang's work of spreading Yogacara philosophy on a wide scale caused a great dissemination of later Indian Buddhist philosophy and the Mahayana and Hinayana scriptures throughout Chinese Buddhism and Chinese culture.\n\nAt the same time, the Indian teacher known in Chinese as Xianshou Fazang reached China, and the teachings of the Huayan school were established within Chinese Buddhism and flourished greatly. Coming after the Tiantai school's categorization of the Buddhist teachings, a second classification of the totality of Buddhist principles was carried out based on the viewpoint of the Huayan school.\n\nSoon after this, Dharma teacher Daoxuan energetically promoted the Vinaya school, and this established and strengthened the foundation of the codes of discipline and the system of regulations for Chinese Buddhism.\n\nFollowing upon these developments, various Buddhist schools sprang to life, like the school based on the three Mahdyamika treatises, the school based on the _Abhidharma-kosha_ , and the school based on the _Satyasiddhi Shastra._ These all vied with each other, producing many wondrous offshoots, each giving rise to its own theoretical system. Thus the ten schools of Tang Buddhism took shape, as shown on the following list.\n\nPURE LAND SCHOOL\n\nIndian founders: The bodhisattvas Ashvagosha, Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, and others.\n\nChinese founder: Huiyuan.\n\nDate of founding: Eastern Jin period (C.A.D. 400).\n\nPrincipal scriptures: **_Infinite Life Sutra, Contemplation of Amitabha Sutra, Amitabha Sutra, Treatise on Birth in the Pure Land, Treatise on the Awakening of Faith in Mahayana._**\n\nMain teaching: Its method of cultivating realization is to focus the mind on buddha-remembrance through reciting the buddhaname, and thus be reborn in Amitabha's land of ultimate bliss in the West.\n\nVINAYA SCHOOL\n\nIndian founders: The main focus is the vinaya section of the teachings spoken by Buddha, so the first patriarch of the school is considered to be the Venerable Upali, who was the foremost of Buddha's disciples in upholding the vinaya, the precepts of discipline.\n\nTeachers in China: The start of the practice of accepting the precepts in China was when Chinese monks accepted the Dharma from the Indian monk Dharmakala (Chinese: Fashi).\n\nDate of founding: Second year of the Jiaping era of the Wei dynasty (A.D. 250).\n\nPrincipal scriptures: The _Four-part Vinaya_ , the _Five-part Vinaya_ , the _Ten Verses on the Vinaya_ , etc.\n\nMain teaching: To realize sagehood by upholding the precepts of discipline using the vinaya studies of both Hinayana and Mahayana.\n\nTIANTAI SCHOOL\n\nChinese founders: Founded by Huiwen and his disciple Zhiyi.\n\nDate of founding: The period of the Northern Qi and Sui dynasties (late sixth century A.D.).\n\nPrincipal scriptures: **_Lotus Sutra_** as the main basis, **_The Great Perfection of Wisdom Shastra_** as the guide, the **_Nirvana Sutra_** as the support, and **_The Greater Perfection of Wisdom Sutra_** for methods of contemplation.\n\nMain teaching: The One Vehicle, the vehicle of attaining buddhahood, as the main principle; the three forms of cessation and contemplation correlated with the meditation perspectives of emptiness, provisional existence, and the mean as the method of cultivating realization.\n\nSATYASIDDHI SCHOOL\n\nIndian founder: Harivarman.\n\nTeacher in China: Dharma founder Kumarajiva spread it.\n\nDate of founding: Thirteenth year of the Hongshi era of the Later Qin.\n\nPrincipal scriptures: It made use of the best of the Hinayana scriptures and the **_Satyasiddhi Shastra_** written by Harivarman.\n\nMain teaching: With the **_Satyasiddhi Shastra_** furnishing the guiding principles, it taught a progression of steps of cultivating realization through twenty-seven stations.\n\nTHREE TREATISES SCHOOL (SAN-LUN)\n\nIndian founder: The bodhisattva Nagarjuna.\n\nChinese founder: Kumarajiva.\n\nDate of founding: Later Qin period (384-417).\n\nPrincipal scriptures: **_Madhyamika Shastra, Shata Shastra_** , and **_The Dvadashanikaya Shastra_** by the bodhisattva Deva.\n\nMain teaching: Refutes clinging to the absolute and conventional truths, and reveals the truths of emptiness, existence, and non-abiding.\n\nABHIDHARMAKOSHA SCHOOL\n\nIndian founders: The bodhisattva Vasubandhu and the shastra master Sthiramati.\n\nTeachers in China: Paramartha Tripitaka and Xuanzang.\n\nDate of founding: In the fourth year of the Tianjia period of Emperor Wen of the Chen dynasty (A.D. 563) Paramartha translated the old edition of the _Abhidharmakosha_ , in the seventh year of the Zhenguan era of Emperor Taizong of the Tang dynasty (633) Xuanzang translated the new edition of the **_Abhidharmakosha._**\n\nPrincipal scriptures: The four _Agama-sutras_ as the main texts, **_The Abhidharmakosha Shastra_** as the correct basis, and in addition, such treatises as the **_Vibhasha Shastra_** , the **_Abhidharma Mind Shastra_** , the **_Abhidharma Mind Shastra with Interpolated Commentary_** , and so on.\n\nMain teaching: The main teaching was based on the **_Abhidharmakosha Shastra_** by the bodhisattva Vasubandhu, translated by Xuanzang, It posited seventy-five basic dharmas to encompass the principles of such phenomena as mind and form and so on.\n\nZEN SCHOOL\n\nIndian founders: (Buddha's disciple) the Venerable Mahakashyapa.\n\nChinese founder: Bodhidharma.\n\nDate of founding: In the period of the Liang and Sui dynasties (sixth century A.D.).\n\nPrincipal scriptures: **_Lankavatara Sutra_** , and **_Diamond Sutra._**\n\nMain teaching: The Zen teaching was a separate transmission outside the scriptural teachings that did not posit any written texts as sacred; Zen pointed directly to the human mind to enable people to see their real nature and become buddhas.\n\nHUAYAN \/ AVATAMSAKA SCHOOL\n\nChinese founders: Founded by master Dushun, it was spread by the great teacher Xianshou Fazang, so it was also called the Xianshou School.\n\nDate of founding: In the period of the Chen and Sui dynasties (second half of the sixth century A.D.).\n\nPrincipal scriptures: _Huayan \/ Avatamsaka Sutra._\n\nMain teaching: The teaching of the school was based on the four realms of reality and the ten mysterious gates set forth in the _Huayan Sutra._\n\nFAXIANG \/ YOGACARA SCHOOL\n\nIndian founders: The bodhisattvas Maitreya and Asanga.\n\nChinese founders: Dharma teacher Xuanzang caused it to flourish in China.\n\nDate of founding: In the reign of Tang Taizong (627-649).\n\nPrincipal scriptures: Its main texts were six sutras and eleven shastras. The six sutras were: the **_Avatamsaka Sutra, Sandhinirmocana Sutra, Sutra of the Tathagata's Manifestation of Meritorious Qualities and Adornments, Abhidharma Sutra, Lankavatara Sutra_** , and **_Sutra of the Pure Land of Vairocana Buddha._**\n\nMain teaching: To explain the subtle truth that all perceived phenomena are only the representations of consciousness.\n\nTANTRA \/ ESOTERIC SCHOOL\n\nIndian founder: The bodhisattva Nagarjuna.\n\nFounders in China: In the Tang period Subhakarasimha, Vajrajnana, and Amogha Tripitaka came to China to propagate it.\n\nEsoteric Buddhism is also divided into an Eastern branch transmitted to Japan from China in the Tang period, and a Tibetan branch, which was propagated by the great teacher Padmasambhava who entered Tibet from India.\n\nDate of founding: Early Tang period (seventh century A.D.).\n\nPrincipal scriptures: The basic scriptures are the **_Vairocana Sutra and Diamond Crown Sutra._**\n\nMain teaching: It is also called the True Word school (because of its use of mantras). It posits ten stations of stabilizing the mind to include its various teachings, and sets up mandalas, and the three esoteric correspondences of body, mouth, and mind (with dharmakaya buddha by means of mudras, mantras, and contemplation of truth), by which practitioners can move from the state of ordinary humans to enter sagehood.\n\nThe Zen School's Change of System\n\nDue to the breadth and vigor of culture and thought in the early Tang period, many famous monks who were Buddhist scholars appeared. They all had the talent to achieve great things, and they set to work on the task of propagating Buddhism on a wide scale. The credit for really making Chinese Buddhism develop must be given to these Tang dynasty figures. By the time of Emperor Tang Gaozong (r. 650-683) and Empress Wu Zetian (r. 684-704), just when learned Buddhist monks were reaching an impasse in their work of composing learned commentaries on the Buddhist scriptures, many noted Buddhist scholars were developing purely theoretical accounts of Buddhism and were leading each other into a labyrinth of Yogacara studies.\n\nAt that moment, the Zen school suddenly rose to prominence, taking as its standard the special transmission outside the verbal teachings, which did not establish any written texts, but instead directly pointed to the human mind to enable people to see their true nature and become buddhas. This corresponded exceedingly well to the direct simplicity of the Chinese people and to the need for genuineness and honesty in Tang dynasty thought and learning. Against a background where scholarly Buddhists were to be found everywhere, the Zen school brought forth a great adept who was an unlettered man, Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch. At Caoqi in Guangdong Province, he vigorously propagated the message of seeing true nature and becoming enlightened without setting up texts as sacred to the society of the common people.\n\nAt the same time, his fellow student Shenxiu was at Empress Wu Zetian's court, in the honored position of National Teacher, spreading the Zen school's Buddha Dharma among the social elite. Shenxiu's scholarly attainments were very good. He made gradual cultivation the main principle of his Zen teaching. Because of the high esteem he received from the Tang courtiers and grandees, the study of Zen became very widespread among the intellectuals who were part of the government.\n\nHuineng's branch of Zen took sudden enlightenment as its main principle. Because Huineng was born among the common people and did not rely on written texts, he always used common colloquial speech when he explained the Dharma. Buddhist doctrine, which is so lofty and profound and hard to understand, he stripped totally of its pedantic trappings, transforming it into a purely popular philosophy of the common people. By this means, he enabled the influence of the Zen school to spread far and wide, with the transformative power described in the Chinese saying, \"When the wind moves, the grasses bend down.\"\n\nThe influence of the two brother teachers, Shenxiu and Huineng, at the imperial court, and throughout the countryside, formed two immense criss-crossing currents running up and down China through the north and south during the early Tang period. They spontaneously gave impetus to the transformation in learned thought in their own time and achieved splendid success breaking fresh ground.\n\nThe branch of Zen that came through the great teacher Huineng later became popular throughout the whole country. We can only say emphatically, quoting the famous verse:\n\nLook at the territory of the house of Tang\n\nThe whole of it is the realm of the Zen school.\n\nIn the third generation of the transmission after Huineng, there was Zen master Mazu Daoyi and his disciple, Zen master Baizhang. These two men boldly changed the prevailing monastic system and transformed the guidelines that had been in force ever since Buddhism entered China. Thus they created a truly Chinese style monastic system. At the time, Baizhang and his disciples were reviled by other followers of Buddhism as monks who had broken the precepts of discipline, and they were bitterly slandered and criticized. Litde did their opponents know that it was because of the system devised by Baizhang that Buddhism was able to be transmitted for such a long time thereafter. This system of guidelines has been handed down through time to the present and is followed by Buddhist temples and monasteries both within China and abroad. Moreover, this system influenced later Chinese society and its political system, and played a very great role in both.\n\nThere are four special characteristics of the Zen monastic system:\n\n  1. It transformed the Buddhist sangha from a dependent community that lived by begging, to a self-sufficient economic system of collective agricultural production.\n  2. It focused on the cultivation of practice and used a system of teachers to lead and guide students so that they worked on a Buddhism of genuine realization in which knowledge and practice were unified.\n  3. It eliminated stiff and inflexible superstitious religious formalism. Its goal was a collective process of teaching and learning, using real practice with body and mind to seek realization in order to achieve the equality of mind and buddha and complete both human nature and buddha-nature.\n  4. It replaced the Indianized forms of discipline with a set of rules, the _Pure Rules of Baizhang_ , which suited Chinese culture and Chinese conditions and set moral standards for both collective and individual conduct.\n\nThus the great Song dynasty Confucian, Cheng Yi, acclaimed Baizhang's _Pure Rules_ , saying: \"The rites and music of the Three Dynasties [which Confucians consider the paradigm of correct culture] are all in this.\" The general opinion is that the rise of Huineng's school of Zen was a revolution in Buddhism. In reality, the honor of a truly revolutionary event in Buddhist history must be assigned to Zen master Baizhang's changing of the monastic system.\n\n**The Rise of Esoteric Buddhism**\n\nThe rise of the Zen school made Tang-period Buddhism become a purely rationalistic religion and changed it into a mighty current within Chinese civilization. But beyond this, in the early Tang period, Esoteric Buddhism, that is, Tantric Buddhism, was transmitted from northern India into Tibet. In the middle Tang period, Esoteric Buddhism was transmitted to China from southern and central India. This too represented a major change in Chinese Buddhist history.\n\nBased on comparatively reliable historical facts, the rise of Tantra within Indian Buddhism was really a teaching that belonged to the late period of Buddhism there. It synthesized the Madhayamika school's contemplation of the mean between emptiness and provisional existence by means of _prajna_ (transcendent wisdom), with the theories of Yogacara Buddhism, and fused this with the techniques of cultivating practice of Brahmanism and Yoga that were already present in India. The religious sect that was formed in this way, by combining ancient and modern methods of cultivating realization, was very different from the method of cultivating realization that Shakyamuni Buddha had taught when he was in the world.\n\nThe development of Tantric Buddhism is an extremely complex and intricate issue that is impossible to address fully in a few words. The development of Tantra in Tibet can be summarized as follows. In the period when Tang Taizong was founding the Tang dynasty, the king of Tibet, Srongtsen Gampo (617-698), wanted to spread civilization within his territory. Due to a momentary lapse in judgment by Tang Taizong's state minister, Fang Xuan-ling, the Tibetan king's request for instruction in Chinese culture was not granted. Other than the few Buddhist scriptures and images that the Chinese Princess Wencheng brought with her when she was sent to marry the Tibetan king, and the several Taoist priests and others who accompanied her to Tibet, the Chinese never gave the Tibetans any instructions in their civilization.\n\nA political measure is not only a \"grand strategy for a hundred years.\" Policy makers must at the same time take note of the effect their decisions will have down through the ages. Only then can they make an objective judgment of the results in terms of success or failure that historians and the readers of history in later generations will see from their policies.\n\nDue to this decision by the Tang government not to instruct Tibet in Chinese culture, Tibet turned toward India and asked the Indians to spread their civilization to Tibet. First, the Tibetan king invited several famous Indian monks to come to Tibet. They began to spread Buddhist civilization and devised a system for writing Tibetan based on Sanskrit. After this, the great Tantric teacher Pad-masambhava (eighth century) came to Tibet and propagated the teachings of Tantric Buddhism there. Thus, from the Tang period onward, Tibet became a totally Tantric Buddhist land. It also developed into a special country where politics and religion were joined together.\n\nThrough the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing periods in China (10th to 19th centuries), the transmission of Tantric Buddhism in Tibet never declined. Although in all this time, there were inevitably sectarian divisions within Tibetan Buddhism, nevertheless its wholly Tantric form was never altered very much. This high plateau north of the Himalaya Mountains thus became Buddhist civilization's Shangrila for more than fourteen hundred years. This must be considered a unique event in the history of the East.\n\nTantric Buddhism in Tibet started with the Nyingmapa, the Red Hat School. Later it split into the Kagyudpa and the Sakyapa sects. Around the turn of the 14th century, Tsongkhapa (1357-1419) appeared. He was a native of the northern area of the Tibetan world, known in Chinese as Qinghai. In his youth, he became a monk in Tibet and, after he completed his studies, he founded the Gelugpa, the Yellow Hat School. Later, his four great disciples and their reincarnated successors down through the generations were active in the various regions of Mongolia and Tibet and spread their teaching there. The Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama both became Dharma Kings, who combined both religious and political authority and guided the government in Tibet with religious teachings. In Inner and Outer Mongolia, the reincarnated lamas known as the Jangjia and the Jebtsundampa continued the same Dharma tradition through the generations by the system of succession through reincarnation. But they also received tides from the Chinese imperial house down through the generations and were honored as _khutughtu_ , which has the meaning of great teacher and living buddha.\n\nNow let us turn toward the development of Tantric Buddhism in China itself. During the time of Tang Xuanzong (r. 713-755), the Indian Tantric teachers Subhakarasimha, Vajrajnana, and Amogha Tripitaka brought the Tantric teaching to China. Through the ages, they have been called the three inahasattvas of the Kaiyuan period (Xuanzong's reign period). They all had certain spiritual powers which aided them in spreading the teaching. At that time, apart from the Zen school, esoteric Tantric Buddhism was the richest in mystical coloration and the most novel and stimulating form of the teaching. Therefore, both at the capital and in the countryside, people eagerly practiced it and, before long, it had become popular in the various regions of China.\n\nKhubilai Khan (r. 1277-1294), of the Yuan dynasty, the Mongol dynasty that ruled China, revered as the National Teacher Phagspa (1235-1280), a great Tantric Buddhist teacher of the Tibetan Sakyapa sect. At the time, Phagspa was only a youth of fifteen. Not only was he very learned, but he also worked many striking miracles. Based on the Tibetan script, he devised a writing system for the Mongolian language. When Khubilai ruled China, he made Tantric Buddhism the national religion. This went so far that all the Yuan dynasty emperors after Khubilai had to undergo a rite of being initiated by Tibetan lamas before their coronation.\n\nGiven the imperial Mongol patronage of Tibetan lamas, corrupt forms of Tantra became popular at court and among the people, and spread everywhere. Both the Zen school and the other sects of Buddhism in China were greatly influenced by this. It was for this reason that the famous Zen master of the late Song dynasty, Gaofeng Miao, publicly announced that he was going into seclusion until his death and would never set foot again outside his mountain retreat. During the Yongle period (1403-1424) at the beginning of the Ming dynasty, which had overthrown the Mongol Yuan dynasty, the Chinese government decided that esoteric Tantric Buddhism was not an orthodox path and adopted the policy of expelling all Tibetan lamas from the court.\n\nThe Tantric teaching that the three mahasattvas of the Kaiyuan period had brought to China was then spread to Japan. In China, this is usually called \"Eastern Tantra.\" The Japanese term for esoteric Buddhism is **_Mikkyo._** Because of the reform of Tibetan Tantra carried out by the great teacher Tsongkhapa, the guidelines of the Yellow Hat School were established throughout Tibet. The original form of the Tantric teaching was still widespread only in the border region between Xikang and Tibet. In China, this is usually called \"Tibetan Tantra.\"\n\n**The Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Periods**\n\nIn the period from the middle Tang to the Five Dynasties (c. 750-960), Chinese philosophical thought, literary style, arts, and Chinese life itself, were all molded by the pattern and flavor of the Zen school.\n\nAs for the Zen school itself, in the middle and late Tang and the Five Dynasties periods, the Five Houses of Zen were established, each with its own method of teaching. The Five Houses were the Linji school, the Caotong school, the Yunmen school, the Guiyang school, and the Fayan school.\n\nDuring this period, the Zen school's spirit of learning and the influence of its thought was on a par with that of the Dark Learning philosophy of the Northern and Southern Dynasties period. Many of the most talented people went into Zen and studied Buddhism. Naturally, there was a background of many political and social factors that produced this trend at that time.\n\nWhen the Song Confucian savant Ouyang Xiu was passing judgment on the Five Dynasties period (c. 900-960), his opinion was that there were no men of talent at that time. Ouyang Xiu's contemporary, the great reformer Wang Anshi, on the other hand, thought that Ouyang Xiu's viewpoint was incorrect. He said that the talented people of the Five Dynasties period had all become enmeshed in Zen. This is closer to the truth.\n\nGiven this background, during the period of the founding and consolidation of the Song dynasty late in the 10th and early 11th centuries, Confucianism underwent a major transformation. This was promoted by such figures as Zhao Kuangyin, the founder of the dynasty known to history as Song Taizu, and his state minister Zhao Pu, and later by men such as the noted scholar-official Fan Zhongyan. The 11th century witnessed the rise of such men as the five great Neo-Confucian philosophers Zhou Dunyi, Zhang Zai, Shao Yong, Cheng Hao, and Cheng Yi. All this signified the reversal of a long-standing accumulation of defects in a tradition of culture and thought.\n\n_The Confucianized Buddhism of the Song Period_\n\nThe Song dynasty Neo-Confucians had been inspired by such figures as Han Yu and Li Ao in the Tang dynasty, and been guided by Ouyang Xiu and others. They emerged suddenly, claiming to be the direct heirs of the essential teachings on mind of Confucius and Mencius after an interval of more than a thousand years. They raised their own standard apart from the Confucianism that had existed from the Han through the Tang periods. We need not hesitate to state that the Song Confucians had been subjected to the influences of the Zen school and had absorbed a portion of the thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi: only in this way could the new face of Song-dynasty Confucianism have been created.\n\nTo put the matter another way, Song-period Buddhism had already entered Confucianism via Zen. To produce Neo-Confucian-ism, known in Chinese as _Li-xue_ , \"the Study of the Inner Design,\" on the basis of Zen, was a necessary development in the history of Chinese culture and the result of the fusion between Buddhist civilization and Chinese civilization. Although Buddhism had already become Chinese Buddhism over the centuries from the late Han period, through the Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern dynasties, Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties, nevertheless, throughout this historical process, there had been ceaseless competition among Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism for position in the learned world and a continuous development of the way of thinking that recognized that all three teachings had a common source. By the late Southern Song period (13th century), the great teachers of the Zen school often discussed Confucian principles, and the signs of the Confucianization of Buddhism and the Buddhization of Confucianism were already extremely obvious. Thus we can say that the creation of Song-dynasty Neo-Confucianism had already been coming for a long time. Its inauguration by the five great Confucian philosophers of the 11th century was only its formal beginning.\n\n_Tantric Buddhism in the Yuan Dynasty_\n\nThe influence of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism was extended by the military and political power of the Yuan dynasty, and it penetrated everywhere throughout China. Possessing special powers over religion, the Tibetan lamas, patronized by the Mongol nobility, dreamed of a situation where politics and religion were merged. All the other sects of Buddhism in China were greatly demoralized by this. From this point on, the various sects of Buddhism lost much of their original energy and were almost unable to recover. Only the Zen school, under the aegis of its monastic system, was still able to keep an enfeebled version of its traditional succession going.\n\n_Buddhism in the Ming Dynasty_\n\nThe Ming dynasty inherited the remnants of the Yuan dynasty system in many areas: military, political, and religious. In the Yongle period (1403-1424), the Emperor ordered the expulsion of the Tibetan lamas and their version of Tantric Buddhism. But ever since the Song dynasty, Neo-Confucianism had entered deeply into the intellectual stratum. Moreover, the Ming dynasty political authorities promoted Confucianism and the anti-Buddhist Song Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi's commentaries on the Confucian classics, and made this the route of advancement for the gentry, via the official examinations. During the three centuries of the Ming dynasty, it was hard for the Zen school, which was the only form of Buddhism with any authority and prestige, to compete with Neo-Confucianism on even terms. The Zen school stayed complacent in its old ways and its traditions remained unbroken. In the later years of the Ming dynasty, the Wang Yangming school of Neo-Confucianism became very popular. Buddhism was weak in talented people and the Buddhist sangha was of uneven quality. Thus, it was impossible for Buddhism to regain the prestige it had had in the Tang and Song periods.\n\nThen in the Wanli years (1573-1619), four illustrious Buddhist monks appeared one after another: Hanshan, Zibo, Zhuhong, and Ouyi. In Buddhist circles, these men are known as the four great teachers of the late Ming. All of them were deeply versed in Confucian learning. The Buddhist thought that they promoted stressed the joint study of Confucianism and Buddhism as teachings that mutually reinforced each other.\n\nThe great teacher Hanshan became too eminent and got dragged into the controversy within the imperial family over the installation of the crown prince. He was defrocked and sent into exile in Chaozhou, on Hainan Island. His disciples collected what he had written over his lifetime and made an edition of his complete works, entitled **_The Dream Wanderings Collection._** In it, there are things like Buddhist commentaries on Confucian classics such as **_The Great Learning_** and **_The Doctrine of The Mean_** , and on Taoist classics like _Laozi_ and **_Zhuangzi._**\n\nThe great teachers Zhuhong and Ouyi devoted themselves to propagating Pure Land Buddhism. Among Ouyi's works, there are also Buddhist commentaries on Confucian classics like **_The Analects_** and the **_Book of Changes._** As to the monk, Zibo, he was implicated in the factional conflict that arose over the issue of installing the crown prince and died in prison.\n\nThe fate of Buddhism in the late Ming period was that of continual decline, which went along with the decline of the imperial house. In the transition between the Ming and Qing (in the mid-17th century), there was a monk named Cangxue who was a famous poet. He became a secret friend outside official circles to many of the Ming loyalists at the end of the dynasty who refused to switch allegiance to the new masters, the Manchu founders of the Qing dynasty, and secretly aided their movement to reorder and restore the Ming ruling house.\n\n_The Decline of Buddhism in the Qing Period_\n\nWhen the Manchu founders of the Qing dynasty first entered China proper, the patriarch of the Yellow Hat Sect of Tibetan Tantra, the Fifth Dalai Lama, had already made a secret pact with them. In order to immobilize the Mongols and unite the power of the Mongols with their own, the Manchus had already professed their adherence to the Jangjia Khutughtu, one of the principal leaders of Mongol Buddhism. Thus, when the Manchus came into China, from 1644 on, they enfeoffed both the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama and venerated the Fourteenth Jangjia as their National Teacher. The first two Qing dynasty emperors, the Shunzhi Emperor and the Kangxi Emperor who reigned from 1644 to 1722, both had close links with the Tantric Buddhism of Mongolia and Tibet. Though the Shunzhi Emperor also studied Zen from the National Teacher Yulin, this did not make him change his policy of maintaining close ties with the lamas and venerating Tantric Buddhism. Regardless of whether it was out of political necessity or religious conviction, the early Qing rulers were inclined toward Tantric Buddhism.\n\nWhen the third Qing emperor, the Yongzheng Emperor (r. 1723-1735), was in the border regions, before he ascended the throne, he had had contact with Zen master Jialing Xingyin and others, and he had intently studied Zen for quite a while. Thinking that he was already greatly enlightened, the future emperor decided that Xingyin's Zen was not good enough and he transferred his allegiance to the Fourteenth Jangjia, the National Teacher. He said that Jangjia was a man who had seen the Path, a man who had true wisdom and clear perception.\n\nWhen he came to the throne, the Yongzheng Emperor used his venerated status as imperial monarch to lead Buddhist monks and Taoist priests to study Zen inside the imperial palace. The Emperor gave himself the sobriquet of \"Buddhist Layman of Perfect Illumination\" and acted as the great Zen teacher of the age. Several times, he issued edicts to promote the Linji school of Zen, and he ordered the abolition of the Dharma line of Zen master Hanyue Cang, which was an offshoot of the lineage of Zen master Miyun Wu of the late Ming. The Yongzheng Emperor issued a command stating that all the Zen teachers in the empire could freely seek him out to discuss the Zen path, and that he would not rely on his imperial status in his dealings with them. At the same time, he sent down another edict stating that Buddhist monks should not study literary composition or poetry, and that their duty was to devote themselves wholeheartedly to cultivating the Path.\n\nThe story goes that it was the Yongzheng Emperor who instituted the practice by which Chinese Buddhist monks burned a scar to symbolize discipline on the top of their heads when they accepted the precepts. Because the Yongzheng Emperor believed in Buddhism, he exercised his compassion and permitted anyone in the empire, whether gentry or commoner, to leave home at will to become a monk. But he was afraid that people still loyal to the Ming dynasty would hide in the Buddhist sangha and inevitably persist in their efforts to revive the fallen Ming dynasty. So he instituted the practice of having would-be monks burn a scar on their heads, so monks could truly be recognized as such, and so to prevent people from entering the sangha under false pretenses, thus bringing confusion to the source. Whether this was deliberate or not is hard to determine at present from the textual evidence. But this lifted the strict early Qing prohibition on Buddhists leaving home to become monks, so at least it can be said that the Yongzheng Emperor was being strict with the sangha out of his love for it.\n\nIn the Qianlong period (1736-1795), continuing the traditional practice of the Qing imperial house, the Emperor sincerely believed in Buddhism and specialized in cultivating the techniques of Tantric Buddhism. When he abdicated the throne and went into retirement, his zeal for Tantra increased even more and he kept on chanting mantras right up until his death.\n\nDuring the Jiaqing period (1796-1820), with the gradual spread of European influences in East Asia, Western culture, thought, and religious groups all arrived together. Under the impact of the trends of the times, the fate of Buddhism was greatly transformed.\n\n**CHAPTER SUMMARY**\n\nThe three centuries after Buddhism entered China, from the late Han dynasty through the Wei and Jin dynasties and the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties, can be called a time when Chinese learned thought began to flow in new channels. It could also be said that this caused Chinese learned thought to undergo a rather long period of dissension and dispute. But throughout Chinese history, Buddhism never functioned as a direct influence on politics.\n\nDuring the Sui-Tang period, there were many disputes over the learned standing and dignity of Buddhist teachers. The outcome was that it was acknowledged by the imperial political authorities that Buddhist monks, by virtue of their religious status, would always be treated with the etiquette due to teachers, so that, in audiences with the emperor, they could present their salutations and carry on dialogues without kneeling and bowing down. This tradition continued until the end of the Qing dynasty in the early 20th century.\n\nIn the early period of Buddhism in China, many talented people came forth from the Buddhist ranks. This was especially true in the Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties, and Song periods, when, generation after generation, the eminent monks were all outstanding figures with broad learning and deep comprehension. At the height of the Tang dynasty, there were several times when official examinations were held on the Buddhist sutras and shastra in order to select monks. The historical records that tell how such and such a monk was ordained because of his success in examinations on the scriptures reflect this system. Thus, the Buddhist sangha was of comparatively excellent quality.\n\nBut during the time of Empress Wu Zetian (r. 684-704) and Emperor Xuanzong (r. 713-755), the imperial government resorted to the sale of ordination certificates (credentials that gave permission to become monks and nuns) to supplement its finances and meet expenses. This was like the granting of official rank in return for \"contributions\" during the late Qing dynasty.\n\nTo sum up the role of Buddhism in Chinese political history, because the eminent monks emphasized their work of religious teaching, they never meddled in politics. Thus they were always honored and respected and the government allowed the people freedom of religious belief.\n\nAlthough four brief but intense government campaigns against Buddhism occurred in Chinese Buddhist history, during the Northern and Southern dynasties and the Tang dynasty, if we carefully study their history and assess them in all fairness, these were not due to the political considerations of the monarchs who launched them, nor were they purely religious conflicts. Rather, there were indeed many problems among the Buddhists themselves at the times when these persecutions occurred. For example, the famous Tang dynasty Confucian Han Yu attacked Buddhism. But if we carefully investigate the historical facts and the thoughts expressed in the essays he left behind, rather than say that Han Yu's idea was to rigorously eliminate Buddhism, it would be better to say that his anti-Buddhist feelings had been aroused by the way in which the Buddhists themselves were acting. Of course, this misconduct by Buddhists was one of the major factors behind the political measures he advocated. But Han Yu had friendships with famous Buddhist monks like Zen master Dadian and others. This, too, is a fact. It is obvious that, in assessing events and people, it is very hard to pass judgment lightly, and we cannot be in a hurry to follow received opinions.\n\nOn the other hand, when Emperor Huizong of the Song dynasty persecuted Buddhism in 1119, this was indeed entirely due to the influence exercised over him by certain Taoists. But apart from this, throughout Chinese history, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism waxed and waned in complementary cycles, with one rising as the other two declined in vigor. Together they formed the mighty current of Chinese culture and thought, which included all three teachings.\n\nAs for Buddhist thought, it was the style of the Zen school above all that made the greatest contribution and had the greatest influence on Chinese civilization. Its achievements were too numerous to count and its beauties were utterly dazzling. In politics, in social organization, in philosophy, in literature, in architecture, in painting and sculpture, and even in the art of living of the Chinese people, the traces of Zen Buddhism are everywhere. The influence of Zen in Japan was even greater.\n\nLet us mention a few of the contributions of Buddhism to learning and literature in China:\n\nDuring the Wei dynasty, ruled by the Cao family, in the third century A.D., Cao Zijian heard the sounds of Sanskrit and this caused him to write _Yushan Fanchang_ , a work that broke fresh ground in the Chinese study of phonology and music.\n\nThe Buddhist translator Kumarajiva's Chinese disciples, early in the fifth century, created the Chinese Buddhist literary style.\n\nIn the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties (fifth and sixth centuries), eminent Buddhist monks engaged in the task of translating the Buddhist scriptures invented the _fan-qie_ method of indicating the sounds of Chinese characters by combining the initial sound of one already known character with the final sound of another already known character. This was the start of Chinese phonology, and the _fan-qie_ method continued in use for over a thousand years. The present method of phonetic transcription for Chinese developed from this.\n\nIn the Liang dynasty (early sixth century), the phonological studies prepared by Shen Yue and Liu Xie's great contributions to literary criticism and his work on literary theory, _Wenxin Diaolong_ , both had their source in Buddhist influences.\n\n_The Classic of Tea_ , by the Tang dynasty scholar Lu Yu, the great Tang dynasty teacher Yixing's _Yinyang Shushu_ , and the Song dynasty Confucian philosopher Cheng Yi's _Taiji Tu_ , all have great affinities with Buddhism.\n\nThe martial arts developed by Buddhist monks at the Shaolin Temple aided the founder of the Song dynasty, Song Taizu, in pacifying the empire. In the Yuan dynasty, the Buddhist adept and statesman Yelu Chucai contributed to medical science. Liu Bingzhong worked behind the scenes to influence the Mongol rulers to implement humane policies and avoid slaughter. In the Ming dynasty, Yao Guangxiao counseled the Yongle Emperor against tyranny. All these were historical contributions.\n\nAs for Buddhist contributions to Chinese art, to mention only the most glorious ones, there are the Yungang caves, the Dunhuang wall paintings, and so on. All these are world famous.\n\nIn sum, because of the outstanding level of learning and cultivation of its leading exponents down through the ages, Buddhist thought was able to exercise a great influence on Chinese learning and culture. If we try to observe China's literary people and scholars down through the generations, we see that there were very few indeed who had no relations with Buddhist monks, or who had not absorbed a little bit of Buddhist thought. As the Qing period poetess Cai Jiyu wrote in a famous verse:\n\nSlaying the whale barehanded, a deed that will be famous for a thousand years\n\nReturning to Buddha when old, the intent of a lifetime.\n\nThis verse reveals what the intellectuals of old China in general wanted, the most lofty orientation of their thought, and the ultimate realm of human life: naturally, it is filled with the echoes of Zen Buddhism. This is an authoritative representation of the significance of Buddhism in Chinese cultural history.\nCHAPTER 4\n\nBuddhism in Other Countries\n\n**BUDDHISM IN ASIA**\n\nLet us consider the dissemination of Buddhism through the various countries of the world. In the Western world, Buddhism in Europe and America has been indirectly influenced by Chinese Buddhism. In southern Asia, Hinayana Buddhism had already entered the territories of the modern nations of Burma and Thailand long ago, in the time of the Indian King, Ashoka. In the third century B.c. Buddhism was transmitted to the countries of East Asia, like Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam, through their connection with China.\n\nFrom an historical point of view, Korea was the earliest country Buddhism entered from China; the next was Japan. Here we will give a simple account of the sequence of events in the dissemination of Buddhism to these two countries.\n\n**Korea**\n\nModern-day Korea includes the three ancient kingdoms that were known in history as Koguryo, Silla, and Paekche. Buddhism entered these three kingdoms at different times.\n\nKoguryo, in the northern and central portions of the Korean peninsula, was the earliest of the three to receive Buddhist teachers. In the fourth century A.D., during the period of the Jin dynasty in China, Fu Jian, the barbarian monarch of the so-called Former Qin dynasty, in power in north China, dispatched the Buddhist monk Shundao to Korea along with a load of Buddhist images and scriptural texts. The king of Korguryo, Sosurim (r. 371-385), received Shundao and came to believe in Buddhism. He founded Songmun Temple, where he installed Shundao as his teacher in the Dharma. This was the first transmission of Buddhism to Koguryo and the first time a Buddhist temple was built there.\n\nTwelve years later, the Indian Buddhist monk Marananta came from China to Paekche, in the southeastern portion of the Korean peninsula, bringing Buddhism along with him. The king of Paekche, Ch'imnyu, received him with full honors and had a Buddhist temple erected. The king allowed men to be ordained as Buddhist monks and officially became a Buddhist.\n\nFifty years later, the Koguryo monk Mukhoja brought Buddhism to the kingdom of Siila, in the southwest region of the Korean peninsula, but Buddhism did not become widespread there. It was not until a century later, during the time of King Pophung (r. 514-540), that Buddhism was propagated widely in Silla. Buddhist temples were thereafter built, and Buddhism began to flourish in Silla.\n\nDuring the 660s and 670s, King Munmu of Silla defeated Koguryo and Paekche and unified the whole of Korea under the rule of Silla. During that time, eminent monks like Wonhyo (617-688) propagated the teaching of the _**Huayan Sutra**_ widely throughout the country. Famous monks of high quality appeared in great numbers and Buddhism flourished gready.\n\nEarly in the tenth century, after Silla had disintegrated and split up into three kingdoms, Wang Kon rose to power and established the new unified state called Koryo. This was the time of the Five Dynasties in China, a time of militarization and political turmoil, when Chinese Buddhism was being weakened by political influences. But in Koryo, the new regime inherited the remaining traditions of the previous dynasty and Buddhist studies were flourishing there. Many Chinese Buddhist works, for example Tiantai treatises and Huayan commentaries, which had been lost during the chaos in China, had to be reintroduced into China from Koryo, in order that these schools of Buddhism could be revived in China.\n\nIn the early years of the Song dynasty, which was founded in 960, a party of more than thirty Buddhist monks from Koryo came to Yongming Temple to study with Zen master Zhijue, from whom they received the _**Zong Jing Lu**_ , the Source Mirror Record. They brought this great encyclopedic synthesis of Zen and scriptural Buddhism back with them to Koryo and made use of it as they became teachers in various parts of Koryo. This was the beginning of the transmission of Zen to Korea.\n\nLater on, the Koryo king sent ambassadors to the Song court to get the official Song edition of the Buddhist canon. This was compared with the two previous Korean editions of the canon, and the Khitan version of the canon, to prepare a new edition of the Buddhist canon. The Khitan were a people northeast of China who were the ruling group of the Liao dynasty in the tenth to twelfth centuries. This became the famous Koryo Canon acclaimed by later generations and recognized as an excellent version of the canon for the study of the Buddhist scriptures. Korean Buddhism was at the height of its glory in this period.\n\nIn the late 14th century, Yi Song-gye put an end to the Koryo dynasty, which had continued in power as vassals of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and changed the name of the country to Chosen. During this period, Taoist thought and Neo-Confucian doctrines became very popular in Korea and Buddhism went into decline and did not again equal its early level.\n\nIn sum, Korean Buddhism was the result of the transmission of Buddhism from China and did not establish any distinctive sects of its own. The school that specialized in Huayan Buddhism was particularly prominent in Korea, as was an offshoot of the Fayan House of Zen. Apart from this, one stream of Korean Buddhism stressed gradual cultivation and advocated upholding the precepts of discipline, chanting sutras, and other practices aimed at planting a good karmic basis. This was called the school of the scriptural teachings. There was another stream of Korean Buddhism, oriented toward sudden enlightenment, that advocated single-mindedly reciting the buddha-name and rebirth in the Pure Land. This was called the school of mind. These were the two main tendencies.\n\nAround 1910, Korea fell victim to annexation by Japan and Japanese Buddhism invaded the country on the heels of Japanese political and military power. Due to this, the true Buddhist spirit of Korea went into decline. Korean Buddhism in the 20th century was substantially altered by the Japanese occupation. But now that Korea has regained its independence, many outstanding people are doing their utmost to restore and renew the original Korean Buddhism.\n\n**Japan**\n\nThe formal transmission of Buddhism into Japan took place in the middle of the sixth century A.D., during the thirteenth year of the reign of the Japanese Emperor Kimmei (A.D. 551). At that time, the king of Paekche sent an emissary to Japan with gifts of Buddhist images and scriptures. From this point on, there was a gradual tendency toward belief in Buddhism at the Japanese imperial court.\n\nSeveral decades later, in the seventh century, with the rise of Prince Shotoku, Buddhism got the chance to develop further. Prince Shotoku was both the political and religious ruler of Japan. He founded temples and spread the Dharma and did all he could to promote Buddhism. Prince Shotoku also promulgated a constitution, which became the legal charter of the Japanese imperial house down through the ages. He himself composed commentaries on the _Queen Shrimala Sutra_ , the _Vimalakirti Sutra_ , and the _Lotus Sutra_ , which became a model for later Japanese Buddhists. Because of these achievements, Prince Shotoku has always been revered as an enlightened monarch.\n\nOver the course of the next century, during the Nara period (646-794), there was a trend toward unification of politics and religion. Buddhist groups devoted to the study of the _Vimalakirti Sutra_ , the _Benevolent King Sutra_ , and the _Diamond Light Sutra_ were established, and various schools derived from the Tang dynasty schools of Buddhist philosophy arose in Japan: the Sanron (Madhyamika Three Treatises) School, the Hosso (Yogacara) School, the Kegon (Avatamsaka) School, the Ritsu (Vinaya) School, the Jojitsu (Sattyasiddi) School, and the Kosha (Abhidhar-makosha) School. These were the famous six schools of Nara period Japanese Buddhism.\n\nIn the Nara period, many eminent monks appeared in Japan and Buddhism became popular. The Three Treatises School was introduced by the Koguryo monk Huiguan. Later it split into two sects, the Genko and Dai-an. The Sattyasiddhi School in Japan was dependent on the Three Treatises School. The Yogacara School was brought to Japan from Tang China by the monk Xuanfang. Later this school split into northern and southern branches which contended for preeminence. The Abhidharmakosha School in Japan was dependent on the Yogacara School. The Vinaya teacher Daorui transmitted the Avatamsaka School to Japan, and master Jianzhen brought the Vinaya School there. All these schools had their source in the Buddhism of Tang China.\n\nMore than a century passed, the capital was relocated, and Japan entered the Heian Period (794-1185). The early Heian period witnessed the rise of Saicho (767-822), the transmitter of the Tiantai school to Japan, where it became the Tendai school, and Kukai, known as Kobo Daishi (774-835), the propagator of Tantric Buddhism, known in Japanese as Shingon.\n\nThe great teacher Saicho began propagating Buddhism at Mount Hiei and won many believers from among the royal family. Later, he went to Tang China to seek the Dharma. He returned to Japan after receiving the transmission of the Tiantai, Vinaya, Zen, and Tantric schools. On the basis of this, he gready extended his teaching activities on Mount Hiei and propounded teachings that included these four schools. He did all he could to disseminate the teachings of the Tiantai school, and he became the most famous Buddhist teacher of his time in Japan.\n\nThe great teacher Kukai came to China soon after Saicho, seeking to learn more about Buddhism. Kukai learned Tantric Buddhism from the Buddhist monk Huiguo (746-805). After Kukai returned to Japan, he established Toji Temple and worked energetically to propagate the rites associated with the Diamond and Womb mandalas. He became very famous and influential and laid the basis for the long-enduring esoteric Buddhist center on Mount Koya.\n\nBy the time Saicho and Kukai had done their work, Japanese Buddhism was dominated by the Tendai school and the Shingon school. The Tendai school, transmitted by the great teacher Saicho, contained within it elements of both exoteric and esoteric Buddhism, so it is sometimes called a blend of Tendai and Tantra. Later, his disciples Ennin (794-864) and Enchin (814-891) also went to Tang China to study Buddhism. Their school of esotericized Tendai flourished even more, and stood in opposition to the so-called esoteric teaching founded by the great teacher Kukai at Toji. Subsequently, due to disharmony among the followers, it split into two sects called Sanmon and Jimon. From this point on, sectarian differences multiplied, each with its own line of transmission.\n\nIn sum, the influence of esoteric Buddhism at that time was all-pervasive, and all the sects of Japanese Buddhism bore an esoteric coloration. The believers all put their emphasis on offering prayers and getting supernatural results. Thus, Buddhism was changed into a secret supernatural teaching of miracles and marvels, and became a major force in all strata of Japanese society. Because of this, many abuses appeared that went against the genuine original intent of Buddhism.\n\nDuring the later Heian period, Japan's political order became chaotic and insecure, and this exerted an influence on the general psychology and made people world-weary. In this era, the Buddhist teacher Kuya (903-972) worked hard to promote the Pure Land method of reciting the buddha-name (in Japanese: _nembutsu)._ The Buddhist teacher Ryonin (1072-1132) followed after him and founded the Yuzunembutsu sect, advocating the principle of reciting the buddha-name while adapting to circumstances. In Japanese history, the late 12th century was the time of the civil war between the Minamoto and Taira factions. Their deadly struggles left the people with nothing on which to depend. For this reason, the method of reciting the buddha-name and relying totally on the power of Amitabha Buddha, which was advocated by Honen and Shinran, became popular around that time.\n\nIn the Kamakura period (1185-1382), the period of the rule of the Minamoto shoguns, whose headquarters was the town of Kamakura, several sects of Buddhism rose to prominence in response to the trend of the times: Jodo (Pure Land), Shingon (Tantra), Ji (the Time sect), Zen, and the Nichiren sect. Many eminent monks appeared to make Buddhism flourish and spread its influence.\n\nThe Jodo school was started by Honen and became an independent sect. Honen (1133-1212) had originally studied on Mount Hiei. Later, because he venerated the teachings of China's great Pure Land teacher, Shandao, he advocated the Pure Land method of reciting the buddha-name. Among his direct disciples were many outstanding talents, so many later streams of Pure Land practice in Japan were handed down from him. Shinran (1173-1262) was his favorite pupil, and he inherited Honen's message. A special point of Shinran's teaching was that monks could marry and eat meat. He thought that, by developing faith and taking vows, anyone could certainly receive the protection of Amitabha's power and attain rebirth in the Western Paradise. The principles he taught were simple and easy to practice, so they exerted a deep attraction on people's minds. Shinran's teaching became a sect in its own right, called the Jodo Shinshu. Its influence extended widely and has continued undiminished up to the present day. Another example of a sect descended from the great teacher Honen's disciples is the Jishu, the Time sect, founded by Ippen (1239-1289), who traveled around holding meetings to recite the buddha-name.\n\nThe methods of the Zen school had already been transmitted to Japan earlier, but not until Eisai (1141-1215) and Dogen (1200-1253) did Zen become a distinctive school of Japanese Buddhism. Both Eisai and Dogen had been to Song China to study Buddhism. They transmitted to Japan the Linji (in Japanese: _Rinzai_ ) and Caodong (in Japanese: _Soto_ ) schools of Zen. The call of pointing directly to the human mind to enable people to see their inherent nature and become buddhas fitted very well with the needs of the people of the time, and so Zen spread all over Japan. The Zen idea of being liberated from birth and death influenced the fearless spirit of the later Japanese warriors' code of Bushido. All the Japanese arts benefited greatly from Zen: gardening, poetry, painting. The call of Zen was felt everywhere.\n\nThe famous Nichiren sect arose as a transformation of the Japanese Tendai school. It was founded by the Buddhist teacher Nichiren (1222-1282). He advocated the practice of reciting the title of the Lotus Sutra, (in Japanese, _Myohorengekyo_ ) as a way to see inherent nature and become buddha. Nichiren had a very bold and adamant personality. He used his heroic qualities to carry out compassionate Buddhist teaching activities. He was full of energy and devoted his life to the role of \"saving self and saving others,\" so his teachings became very popular. Nichiren was truly an outstanding figure in the history of Japanese monks. He had many able disciples and they expanded the sect even further.\n\nDuring the Kamakura period, new Buddhist sects rose to prominence one after another. This stimulated the older established sects dating from the Nara and Heian periods to re-energize themselves. Thus, the Kamakura period became the most flourishing period for Buddhism in Japan.\n\nLater on, during the Yoshino (1336-1392) and the Mura-machi (c. 1392-1482) periods, the Rinzai school of Zen was the most flourishing branch of Japanese Buddhism. In the area around the capital of Kyoto in the west, and in the Kanto region, the eastern plain around modern Tokyo, there was a network of major Rinzai Zen temples and affiliated branch temples called the Five Mountains (Gozan) system. The Soto Zen school barely managed to survive in the northeast. The Nichiren sect had first been propagated by Nichiren around Kyoto, but later it became popular throughout Japan and branched into many streams. Two subsects arose within the Jodo sect: the Shirahata sect and the Myoetsu sect. In the Jodo Shinshu sect, there was the revival movement of Rennyo (1415-1499).\n\nAfter this came the chaos of the Warring States period in Japan's history (1482-1558). The various sects of Buddhism were brought to the brink of ruin by the political decline of the country. The Warring States period culminated in the reunification of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate early in the 17th century. After the Tokugawa regime had unified the country, they wanted to use the power of religion to win the allegiance of the people. Thus, they did everything they could to promote Buddhism. Thus Buddhism regained its influence and authority, and various Buddhist schools and academies were started.\n\nThe transformation in Buddhist learned thought that took place in Japan in this period can be compared to what happened in the Jin dynasty with the Dark Learning philosophy and in the Tang dynasty with the proliferation of Buddhist commentaries. Let us mention a few examples. The Buddhist teacher Hodan put forth a new account of the Avatamsaka (in Japanese: _Kegon_ ) philosophy. In Rinzai Zen, there was the influential teaching of Zen master Hakuin. In the Tendai school, the Anrakuritsu code of discipline became very popular. The Shingon school put into practice its Shoboritsu code of discipline. This was the period when the East and West Honganji Temples of the Shingon school were founded. In the Nichiren sect, there were doctrinal controversies. At this time, the Chinese Zen teacher Yinyuan came to Japan and founded the Obaku sect. Soto Zen also revived in this period. With all these developments, Buddhist learning and Buddhist thought prospered in the Tokugawa period. The philosophy of the Abhidharmakosha and the Yogacara treatises became the common basis for study and cultivation. The Japanese call this Buddhism's \"age of commentaries.\"\n\nAfter 1867, with the Meiji Restoration, Japan undertook a vigorous policy that involved accepting new ideas from the West. All the Meiji trends in political thought, in learning, and in education show a great reorientation from traditional Asian influences toward new Western models. Because of this, even though Buddhism retained its old dignity as the national religion, the philosophy of the divine origin of imperial rule and the old spirit of Japanese Shinto rose to prominence.\n\nDue to these developments, Japanese Buddhism again broke fresh ground and began to evolve in two directions. First, sects proliferated throughout the country that advocated a nationalistic society where Buddhism and Shinto were not separated. These sects were closely linked to the militaristic nationalism of the warlords. Next, the Japanese intelligentsia learned Western methods and renewed the study of Buddhist thought, delving into the question of how religious belief had evolved into philosophy. They also pursued textual studies on the Buddhist scriptures with a skeptical attitude.\n\nNevertheless, in the realm of learned thought, Buddhist studies flourished in Japan because of these developments. Over the course of several decades, into the 20th century, Japanese Buddhist studies exerted a very powerful influence on Chinese Buddhist circles. As for the Japanese Buddhist monks, they too were subject to the impetus of the trend of the times, and they established various Buddhist academies and universities. They edited the Buddhist canon and worked hard at the task of spreading the Dharma throughout society and developing it further.\n\nAfter World War II, militarism in Japan went into decline and the power of the militarists in the government was eliminated. Japan repented its past mistakes and began to renew itself. Many Japanese went overseas to America and other Western countries, and they brought Buddhist culture along with them.\n\nThus Buddhism entered a new continent, North America. Nowadays in America, there are Buddhist temples and the beginnings of a Buddhist sangha. Much of this is due to the efforts of Japanese since the war. Japanese scholars who have devoted themselves to propagating Zen studies in the West, like Suzuki Daisetsu, have spread the style of Japanese Zen studies throughout the world in twenty or thirty years. Now the Japanese government has certified Dr. Suzuki as a \"National Treasure.\"\n\nThus it has come to pass that many people in these Western countries only know of Zen in Japan; they are unaware that the source of the Zen transmission was actually in China. Though the people in these countries have only been influenced slightly by Zen, many of them have begun to expound on Zen. Studying without the benefit of genuine teachers from whom to learn, relying on their own intuition, they cannot understand Zen correctly. We feel boundless regret and deep sadness over this state of affairs.\n\nIn sum, when we want to study Buddhism as a world religion, even though Japanese Buddhism was transmitted from China over the course of more than a thousand years, it has genuinely become a citadel of Buddhism that represents the religion on a world scale. Thus Japanese Buddhism has a very important position.\n\nIf we trace it back through history, Japanese Buddhist thought, although it originated with transmissions from China, has over the course of its history, gradually and in a hidden way, changed its principles. Since the Meiji Restoration and onward up through today, Japanese Buddhism changed into another distinct system of philosophy, perhaps because of its connections with national politics, and by no means retains its original aspect. It goes without saying that we must be concerned with this when we study the history of Buddhism in Japan.\n\nFor example, before the outbreak of the Second World War, when Japanese Buddhists explained Vairocana, the Great Sun Buddha, their explanations had a latent tinge of militarism, tacitly making the Great Sun Buddha a symbol for the Empire of Japan, traditionally the Land of the Rising Sun.\n\nBefore 1935, in front of the office of the Japanese charg\u00e9 d'affaires in Hangzhou in China, there was a large signboard inscribed with the words \"Great Sun Buddha.\" I witnessed this with my own eyes. This was the use to which Buddhist thought was put by the Japanese at that time.\n\nAt present, the whole world takes Japanese Buddhist studies as the standard for the field. This has gone so far that even the majority of Chinese Buddhists think this way. All I can do is quote the Buddhist term and say that this is \"inconceivable.\" As for Japanese Zen studies (whether or not this can be called Zen itself), it is even harder to pass judgment.\n\nAs for present-day Japanese Buddhism, since the Second World War, there has been a vast proliferation of sects within Japan. There are sects combining Buddhism and Shinto, sects combining Buddhism and Taoism, and even some with secret-society links. These sects have cropped up like sprouts after a spring rain: there are at least three to four hundred of them. They are constandy changing, and these are not changes in name only. An example is the rise of the Sokka Gakkai movement, affiliated with the Nichiren sect, which takes part in politics under the canopy of Buddhism. It is hard to judge whether or not Sokka Gakkai will have any other ambitions as it develops in the future.\n\nAs we look upon Japanese Buddhism as it takes shape at the close of the 20th century, all we can do is send our salutations from afar and wish it a great future. May the true Dharma and the destiny of the nation both flourish!\n\n**Burma**\n\nBuddhism entered the territory of modern Burma by direct transmission from India in the third century B.C. through the missionaries sent out by King Ashoka. In this early period, it was the Hinayana form of Buddhism that was transmitted to Burma, and this planted deep roots in the country. Later on, Mahayana thought gradually entered the country and the controversies between Mahayana and Hinayana were very sharp. In the end, the Mahayana form of Buddhist thought lost all influence in Burma and, up through the present day, it is Hinayana Buddhism that holds complete sway in the country. Moreover, Burma is a purely Buddhist country.\n\nBurma is dotted with Buddhist temples, and in their temples the Buddhist monks devote themselves to educational work. In general the people send their sons to the temples to receive a Buddhist education, and over 60 percent of the people can read and write. Usually boys over the age of seven are sent to the temples to receive a general education. Those who excel at their studies of Pali Buddhist textbooks are sent on to higher-level academies, where they receive a higher-level education and eventually become monks.\n\nIn the recent history of Buddhist studies, since Burma is one of the remaining homelands of Indian Buddhism, when Europeans first began to feel the influence of Buddhist thought, Burma was a center of its transmission. Many of the Europeans who have become Buddhist monks were ordained in Burma. They have started various English-language journals about Buddhist studies, and many noteworthy essays have appeared in these journals.\n\nNevertheless, it is a cause for worry that, in the last years of the 20th century, Burma relies totally on Hinayana thought in its politics and in its efforts to resist the mad ambitions of Communist philosophy to dominate the world. Not only is this worrisome, but it is probably something that the average person does not think about. This is something that must be criticized.\n\n**Thailand**\n\nThailand was called Siam in the past. Early on, Buddhism was brought from Cambodia to the region that is now Thailand. In those days, Buddhagosha, who was famous for spreading Buddhism, had united the Buddhism of Burma and Cambodia. He often stayed in Cambodia; thus he disseminated Buddhism into the territory that was to become Thailand. He was revered by the royal family and the common people, and thus Buddhism became the national religion. Subsequently, the year of Shakyamuni Buddha's death was made the starting point of the Thai Buddhist calendar. Thai Buddhism takes Hinayana Buddhist thought as its standard.\n\nYoung men in Thailand must enter Buddhist temples and become monks for a time. There they receive a Buddhist education. All the Thai people take Buddhist principles as their standard of self-cultivation. Whatever form of schooling they receive, when they begin school and when they graduate they must formally recite Buddhist scriptures. When they reach the legally prescribed age, young Thai men must leave home and live as monks for a period of three months or one year. During this period, they curb their desires and devote themselves to learning Buddhist forms of conduct and studying Buddhist thought. This training provides them with moral standards for dealing with the world in later life. When a new king comes to the throne in Thailand, his installation must be carried out and proclaimed according to Buddhist ritual forms.\n\nThus, from top to bottom, throughout the whole country, all Thais are Buddhists. The Buddhist monks all wear yellow robes and the whole nation could be said to be a purely Buddhist country robed in yellow. Many Buddhist monks participate directly in politics. Deeply qualified monks are given titles as monk-princes. Buddhist images and temples are everywhere throughout the country. Temple buildings occupy 40 percent of the total area of the capital, Bangkok. The famous Wat Po temple is the most splendid structure in Bangkok. Wat Mahathat is a major Buddhist center to which monks from all directions come to study. Wat Bon-chamabopit is the one of the oldest Buddhist temples. It contains many statues of Buddha in various postures, ranging in size from many tens of feet to a few inches, all rich in artistic value.\n\nThailand is an ancient Buddhist land and it preserves many of the customs of early Indian Buddhism. The Southeast Asian Buddhist countries of Thailand and Burma are both strongholds for the preservation and dissemination of Buddhism. As the great wheel of time advances on these tranquil Buddhist lands, they still remain serenely in the Buddhist realm of blue skies and lush forests. Will the changing situation of the 20th century keep Thailand as a Buddhist land, or lead the country into demonic delusion? It all depends on the leadership of an enlightened royal family and the wise choices of the Buddhist sangha.\n\n**Vietnam**\n\nVietnamese Buddhism was originally brought in from China, but later also received the influences of the Hinayana Buddhism of Burma and Thailand. Mahayana thought was unable to plant deep roots in Vietnam. As in the other Southeast Asian countries, in Vietnam, the understanding of the concepts of Mahayana Buddhism was always somewhat unclear. Buddhist temples and Buddhist monks in Vietnam did not follow the Chinese monastic system.\n\nDuring the second half of the 19th century, Vietnam was invaded and occupied by the French. From this point on, the religious situation no longer remained simple. Before Vietnam regained its independence, the ancient Buddhist faith, which had relied on the protection of the royal family, had fallen into the gap between the new and the old eras and had run its natural course. At present, Vietnamese Buddhists have declared their struggle for independence. There have been several waves of this struggle that have risen up and overthrown governments. Monks and nuns have even immolated themselves in this struggle to demonstrate their adamant resistance to anti-Buddhist measures, and this has already attracted the attention of the whole world. At present, it is very difficult to judge whether this movement will succeed or not, and we must leave this for future historical judgment.\n\n**Tibet**\n\nFrom the seventh century A.D., the region of Tibet formally accepted Buddhist civilization. Within one or two centuries, the whole area of Tibetan culture, extending from the Lhasa area to Xikang in the east and to Qinghai in the north, had become an area of Buddhist civilization. For a thousand years after this, there took place internal sectarian divisions within Tibetan Buddhism, but there was no outside interference.\n\nAll political, economic, and military power was concentrated under the control of the Buddhist lamas. Every place where the lamas had a temple was equivalent to a center of local political power. This could be compared with the situation of the Papal States in Italy, but the wealth, resources, and political authority of the lamas may have even surpassed that of the popes in the Papal States. With its mineral resources, Tibet is one of the world's famous centers of mineral wealth. At the same time, the Tibetan people voluntarily gave about two-thirds of their income to support the lamas and their temples as a way of acquiring the merit to be reborn in heaven and to attain enlightenment.\n\nThrough this period, the social structure and customs of the Tibetans remained at a fairly primitive level as one of China's border peoples. For example, their marriage practices were relatively free and allowed for polygamy and polyandry, as well as monogamy. If a family had more than two male children, one son was sure to become a lama, either for life or for a limited period, as he wished.\n\nIn the vastness of their snowy mountains and high plateaus, the Tibetans lived an idyllic life. Consequently, in the view of the Tibetans of olden times, only a Buddhist-influenced society could achieve a utopia. Down through the ages, during periods of political upheaval and change in China, the Tibetans watched which way the wind was blowing and adjusted their course accordingly. They would profess allegiance to the new dynasty, and so the Chinese emperors generally looked upon them with favor. The Chinese government would invest the lamas with official titles and employ them as its local administrators. Thus the lamas could enjoy an un-troubled existence and pay no attention to Chinese affairs. During the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (1736-1795), the Manchu Qing dynasty sent troops to Tibet, and from then on there were usually Qing troops posted in Tibet. Even then, these garrison troops were soon converted to the Buddhism of the lamas.\n\nDuring the later part of the 19th century and into the 20th century, due to the decline of the Qing dynasty and the warlordism that followed, China was afflicted by internal strife and its external problems multiplied. The British occupied India and had designs on Tibet. Many times, the British tried to provoke ethnic animosity between the Han Chinese and the Tibetans; they wanted to incite conflict between the two sides, from which they could profit. Thus there commenced in Tibet a conflict, sometimes open and sometimes hidden, between the faction that wanted to be allied to the British and the faction that wanted to be allied with China. Broadly speaking, the previous Panchen Lama was in the party that favored the Chinese and the previous Dalai Lama was in the party that favored the British.\n\nStarting in the 19th century, a considerable number of Europeans and Americans came to Tibet in order to study Buddhism, or else used this as a pretext to further their other schemes. More Tibetans came to be able to read English than were able to read Chinese. British and French missionaries, or men posing as missionaries for their own protection, entered Tibet. They penetrated as far as the upper reaches of the Yangzi River in southwest China. Their intention was to take advantage of the ignorance of the backward peoples along China's borders and roll up China's southwest frontiers. Later, the Japanese also noticed this Chinese weak point, and, under the pretext of studying Buddhism, many of their agents penetrated deeply into Tibet and the southwest border region to carry out their aggressive ambitions.\n\nAfter 1949, when the Communists came to power, the Tibetan lamas, due to their lack of political sophistication, thought that this was no more than another Chinese drama of a change of dynasties. None of them realized that, before long, there would be no room for them to preserve their traditional religious preeminence in the Tibet which they had thought of as a Buddhist pure land, and that they could scarcely dream of seeking to preserve their tradition of religious political rule.\n\nFundamentally, culture, history, and politics are three aspects of a single whole. In the spirit of reflecting on modern times in light of times past and restudying ancient times in order to gain new insight about the present, with the utmost respect I present this simple account of the experience of Tibet and offer it for the consideration of the Buddhist nations of Southeast Asia. It is up to them to ponder for themselves the sequence of cause and effect in this, and to discover the important theoretical principles.\n\nTo summarize briefly, in the 20th century, in the final analysis, it is not possible to amalgamate religion and politics into one whole.\n\n**Other Regions of Southeast Asia**\n\nAmong the other regions of Southeast Asia in the early period, Buddhism flourished the most in Sri Lanka, Java, and Sumatra. About A.D. 450, the eminent Buddhist monk Gongdekai came to Java to propagate Buddhism. From the king and queen down, all the people in the country put their faith in him and Mahayana Buddhism became very popular. Late in the seventh century, the eminent Chinese monk Yijing passed through various regions of Southeast Asia as he made his way by sea to study in India; he spread the Buddha Dharma as he went. Buddhism in Sumatra was brought there from Java during the seventh through ninth centuries, but nowadays it has already withered away.\n\nThroughout Southeast Asia, in Laos, Indonesia, Malaya, and the Philippines, wherever there are overseas Chinese, no matter how many or how few, Buddhism exists on a small but concrete scale. Some of these countries have been influenced by the Hinayana Buddhism of Burma and Thailand. Some have been influenced by the Pure Land school of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. The sound of the Pure Land invocation \"Hail to Amitabha Buddha\" ( _ **Narno Amitajo**_ ) is present everywhere, and there are Buddhist temples being built all over the area.\n\n**BUDDHISM IN EUROPE AND AMERICA**\n\nNow that the conditions of Buddhism in Korea, Japan, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Tibet, and other Asian areas have been examined, it's time to examine the conditions of Buddhism in the West.\n\n**Britain**\n\nAfter the British had taken control of all of India by 1796, they began to pay attention to Indian civilization and to study Buddhist texts. Many talented people emerged among the British researchers on Buddhism. There were two among them who were particularly outstanding: Max Muller (1823-1900) and T. W. Rhys Davids (1843-1922). Muller was a specialist in Sanskrit. Starting in 1879, he began to publish the _Sacred Books of the East_ series in forty-nine volumes. For this, he received the respect of the learned world of his time. In this collection, there were several Buddhist scriptures, such as the Hinayana code of monastic discipline, the _Larger Agama Sutra_ , the _Sutra in Praise of the Deeds of Buddha_ , the _Contemplation of Amitabha Sutra_ , the _Greater Amitabha Sutra_ , and the _Lotus Sutra_ , along with English translations of various Sanskrit texts that had been discovered. This collection aroused British interest in investigating Buddhism. In 1881, Rhys Davids founded the Pali Text Society. The Society put out translations of various Buddhist texts that were in circulation in Sri Lanka, including sutras, shastras, vinaya texts, commentaries, histories, and biographies. Having received the support of the king of Thailand, the Society published the Pali canon. This did even more to encourage the interest of Europeans in studying Buddhism.\n\nAs related above, Muller and Rhys Davids performed a major service in transmitting Buddhism to the West. Many scholars from Britain, France, and Germany took part in this process, which injected a new current into the learned world of Europe in the 18 th and 19th centuries. Lecturing on Buddhism at the major universities of Oxford and London, Max Muller and Rhys Davids had a great influence. The London Buddhist Association made Rhys Davids its president, and Mrs. Rhys Davids also translated many Buddhist texts.\n\nThe British Mahabodhi Society was founded in 1927 by the Sri Lankan Angarika Buddhapala. A considerable number of British Buddhists joined it, along with Buddhists from India and Sri Lanka. Attached to it were a research society and a lecture society. Every month it published a journal called _The British Buddhist_ , which achieved a wide circulation. In addition to this, there was the London Students' Buddhist Association, founded by Dr. A. P. DeZoysa, and the Buddhist Layman's Association, founded by Christmas Humphreys. Both were organizations devoted to promoting Buddhist learning.\n\n**Germany**\n\nAfter the British, among German scholars a new movement began to study Indian Buddhism. In 1881, Hermann Oldenberg published _The Life and Teachings of the Buddha_ , based on Pali textual sources, in which he related the immortal deeds of Shakyamuni Buddha. This book circulated very widely.\n\nA famous contemporary of the British scholar Max Muller was the German specialist on Indian studies, Richard Karl von Garbe. He was the most eminent figure in research on the Agama Sutras. His student Hermann Weiler taught in Berlin, and was renowned for his expertise in Sanskrit and Tibetan. Among the students who studied with him for many years were the Japanese Buddhist scholars Watanabe Kaikyoku and Ogihara Unrai.\n\nIn addition, there was Max Walleser, who had mastered Sanskrit and Tibetan, and who was an authority in the German scholarly world. He wrote a book called _The Question of the Self_ His works include, among others, _The Philosophical Foundations of Ancient Buddhism_ , published in 1904, and _The Sects of Ancient Buddhism_ , published in 1927. He also established a Buddhist Studies Association to encourage the study of Buddhism by European scholars and to draw together the scholars of various countries, especially those of eastern Asia, to do joint research on Buddhism. The activities of Dr. Walleser included work on translating Buddhist texts, publishing articles and a newsletter, establishing a Buddhist library, publishing study materials for university courses on Buddhism, and organizing Buddhist lectures outside the universities. The center of the Buddhist movement in Germany was the Buddhist retreat established in the suburbs of Berlin by Paul Dahlke. At present, this is one of the famous sites near Berlin, housing many original texts, Buddhist books and journals in Eastern languages, and Buddhist works of art. It is unmatched in Europe for the richness and breadth of its collection. This center also published many accounts of Buddhism. At the same time, it functioned as a retreat and as a meditation center for the real cultivation of Buddhist practice. Not only did it engage in theoretical discussion, but it put a major emphasis on practice and realization. It was truly a pioneering effort in Europe for emphasizing the cultivation of practice.\n\nThere were many other famous German Buddhist scholars besides these, such as Wilhelm Geiger, Moritz Winternitz, Ernst Windisch, Richard Pischel, Erich Frauwallner, Heinrich Zimmer, Hermann Beckh, Wilhelm Stede, and Kurt Schmidt.\n\n**France**\n\nFrench research in Buddhism and Eastern civilization was inaugurated by Eugene Burnouf, who opened up a new era in Western culture. Burnouf was born in Paris in 1801. He was an expert in the languages of the East, such as Pali, Sanskrit, Persian, ancient Babylonian cuneiform, and others. His representative work is _A Treatise on the History of Buddhism in India_ , based on over a hundred and seventy Buddhist texts in Sanskrit which had been discovered in Nepal, and which he used to write a biography of Shakyamuni Buddha and to research the principles of the Buddhist teaching. This set of texts included the flower of the Mahayana Scriptures, such as the _Prajnaparamita Sutra_ , the _Lankavatara Sutra_ , the _Avatamsaka Sutra_ , the _Suvarnaprabhasa Sutra_ , and the _Lotus Sutra._ Burnouf also translated the _Lotus Sutra_ in its entirety, making the first translation of a Buddhist Sanskrit text into a European language.\n\nAmong Burnouf's students, the most famous as Buddhist scholars were such men as Miyouluo and Emile Senart. Senart edited the texts of various scriptures and, based on Mahayana scriptural sources, wrote an essay on the biography of Buddha and other works. Fuxini, a professor at the University of Paris, wrote several works on Mahayana Buddhist art. There was also Fu-ai-ye, who edited and published the _Samyutta-nikaya_ from the four Agamas.\n\nApart from these men, the most authoritative figure in the study of Eastern learning, and especially in Buddhist studies and Indian culture, was Dr. Sylvain Levi. His books on Buddhism include a Sanskrit text and French translation of the bodhisattva Asanga's treatise on the _Mahayanasutralamkara_ published in 1911, a French translation of the first chapter of Cheng-you's explanation of the _Abhidharmakosha_ , and Sanskrit texts and French translations of Vasubandhu's _Vimshakakarika-shastra_ and _Tridashakarika-shastra_ , and Sthiramati's explanatory treatise on the _Tridashakarika-shastra_ , all published in 1926. He also compiled a French Buddhist dictionary and he was planning to compile a great collection of Buddhist music from the Asian Buddhist lands.\n\nThere is also a joint project of French and Japanese Buddhist scholars, who have formed a large-scale Japanese-French Buddhist Association, which is now flourishing and making great progress.\n\n**United States of America**\n\nAmerican Buddhist studies have really contributed greatly to Buddhist studies in Europe. In the early period of Buddhist studies in America, a significant contribution was made by Henry Warren, who put out the book _**Buddhism in Translation**_ in 1896. In 1902, A. S. Edwards wrote _**A Buddhist Bibliography**_ and translated the _**Dhammapada**_ under the title _**Hymns of the Faith**._ Professor Lamman of Harvard was the editor of the Harvard Oriental Series, which included the Agama Sutras and various other Buddhist scriptures. In addition, there were also such works as _**The Gospel of Buddha**_ , by Anderson.\n\nThe leader of the Buddhist revival movement, the Sri Lankan Angarika Buddhapala, founded the American Mahabodhi Society and established a meeting place for it in New York City. Every year, on the fourth day of the fifth lunar month, he would gather together people from the various countries of the world and hold a large commemorative ceremony.\n\nThere are two or three hundred thousand Japanese immigrants in the United States. They are engaged in various areas with their religious and community activities involving the various sects of Japanese Buddhism. Gradually, this has attracted some Americans who have come to believe in Buddhism. In recent years, some Americans have even become Buddhist monks and nuns. In Hawaii, where Japanese Americans are very numerous, there are scores of centers for the propagation of Japanese Buddhism and Buddhist temples. Among these, the most fruitful has been the outreach work of the Honganji Shingon sect.\n\nThe number of Americans who are becoming Buddhists is continually increasing, and there are also Buddhist study associations. In recent years, more and more Buddhist groups and temples have been established. Americans go to Japan to study, and more and more Americans are investigating Buddhist learning and thought. They are particularly interested in investigating Zen.\n\nIn Brazil, because of the colonies of Japanese immigrants, Buddhism is also developing more and more.\n\nThe Japanese must bear the boundless shame and inner pain of unleashing the disasters of the Second World War. But their work since the war in bringing the culture of eastern Asia to the West, and providing extra spiritual nourishment for the people of the West, mired, whether intentionally or not, in the depressing life of their materialistic culture, seems almost to have made up for this mistake and is very much to be commended. When we reflect on our own relatively meager contributions in spreading Buddhism to the West, we Chinese must indeed regret our shortcomings.\n\n**Russia**\n\nIn 1887, the Russian Buddhist scholar Minayeff published his famous treatise on Buddhism. In 1889, he also published the original text of the _Bodhi Practice Sutra._ Such was the early development of Buddhist studies in Russia. Comparable to Rhys Davids' Pali Text Society in Britain, the Mahayana Buddhist Publishing Society was attached to the Russian National Academy. In 1895, the society edited and published many Sanskrit Buddhist texts that had never before been published. Among the principal Buddhist scriptures they published were _Mahayana Treatise on the Learning of the Bodhisattvas_ , edited by Xibiante-er and published from 1897-1902, the _Sutra of the Questions of the Protector of the Nation_ , published from 1901 to 1909 by Fuyinlao, the _Selection and Assembly of the Hundred Phenomena Scripture_ , published by Stcherbatsky in 1902 (Stcherbatsky was an expert in Buddhist logic), La Vallee Poussin's translations of Nagarjuna's _Mad-hyamika-karikas_ and the appended commentaries, published in 1903, and the joint studies by Kern and Nanjo on the _Lotus Sutra_ , published from 1908 to 1916.\n\nWith the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Buddhist studies in Russia were throttled.\n\n**CHAPTER SUMMARY**\n\nIn the various countries of Asia, Buddhism still retains its traditional prestige. But the times are changing, and Buddhism is also in the midst of changes. It is difficult to anticipate what kind of religion Buddhism will become in the future. Nevertheless, from a religious standpoint, there are still many countries in Asia that are Buddhist lands. This is especially true in Southeast Asia.\n\nNevertheless, Buddhist learning in Southeast Asia is still confined within the limits of Hinayana thought. There are also religious phenomena in the Southeast Asian lands that show a mixing together of Buddhist elements with the worship of spirits. But the banner of Buddhism is still bright in these countries. There are precedents, however, that give us cause for concern: \"Where we have gone, the enemy can also go.\" When we investigate the overall trend of Buddhism in Southeast Asia, it cannot help but make us feel a secret worry.\n\nIn recent times, most of the Westerners who believe in or study Buddhism have taken the Southeast Asian version of Buddhist thought as the original form, or else they have been deeply influenced by the later manifestations of Japanese Buddhism. The Buddhism of China, the second great homeland of the religion, continues to be overlooked or deliberately slighted. I think that this is something that all intelligent Chinese Buddhists and their sympathizers must guard against!\n\nThe circumstances of the transmission of Buddhism to Europe and America have been described above. In the past half century, many Chinese have heard that Europeans and Americans are also studying Buddhism, and they have become enthusiastic about this. Thinking that Chinese Buddhism has already been propagated in the West, they take this as an honor. Some Chinese think that Westerners have brought the scientific spirit to the study of Buddhism, and that their Buddhism must be even better than Chinese Buddhism itself. They are ready to follow the Westerners gladly, and are going to Western countries to study Buddhism there. This blind mentality is really quite ridiculous.\n\nFrankly speaking, the study of Buddhism by Westerners may possibly cause Buddhist studies to become more meticulous about textual criticism, but this is a far cry from being an impetus to a revival of the Correct Dharma. Moreover, at present, Buddhism is just beginning to be disseminated in the West, and how long it may take for it to be able to flower and bear fruit there, we will have to wait until the 21st century to see.\n\nFor now, I will mention five basic causal factors which will enable us to understand the trends in world Buddhism.\n\n**1. The translation of the Buddhist scriptures:** When Buddhism was transmitted to China from India, it took four or five centuries, from the late Han period through the Sui and Tang periods, before there were genuine results. It is also necessary to be aware that Chinese civilization at that time already had its own brilliant accomplishments and was not some newly arisen upstart with shallow foundations.\n\nTherefore, for Buddhist concepts to undergo translation into Chinese and become commonly understood in China was no easy matter. This was even more true because translating Buddhist scriptures is not comparable to translating ordinary books. The first requirement is to have a high level of literary cultivation in two dissimilar languages. The second requirement is that the translator must have already had personal experience of the realms reached by cultivating the practice of the Buddha Dharma. Just to reach a high level of literary cultivation in two languages is already far from easy, and the work of genuinely cultivating true practice is even more difficult.\n\nThe famous adepts in China's past who translated the Buddhist scriptures, like the Central Asian Kumarajiva and the Chinese Dharma master Xuanzang, were at the same time both talented literary scholars and men with a high level of attainment in cultivating realization of the Buddha Dharma.\n\nEven so, they still had to rely on the support of the state, which established translation institutes staffed by several thousand people who devoted themselves to the work of translating the scriptures. Often the way a term was translated would be discussed over and over again for several months before they could decide on a translation.\n\nMoreover, after a certain period of time, if there were people who thought that the translation was not exactly right, the text would be retranslated. Thus, there are usually several different translations of each Buddhist scripture. Only after several centuries did one of these translations get to be generally acknowledged as a reliable version.\n\nWesterners use various different languages. After a few years of studying Buddhist texts, they make haste to translate and comment on Buddhist scriptures. They of course employ the customary ways of thinking of their own countries, claiming that they are being objective, but actually this amounts to subjective study. How reliable their translations ultimately are is really hard to say.\n\nEven if Chinese try to translate Buddhist texts into foreign languages, they still must meet the conditions mentioned above before they can succeed. Thus, when it comes to the popular scriptures and examples of Buddhist thought translated by modern-day Westerners, we must be very cautious and seek confirmation of their accuracy.\n\n**2. The basis in the Buddhist scriptures:** The Hinayana Buddhist thought that Europeans have taken up, and the Indian-language texts that they have discovered, usually represent texts from the late period of Indian Buddhism. There are great divergences between such texts and the texts of a thousand years earlier, from the time of Shakyamuni Buddha and King Ashoka. These texts must be compared with the various Chinese translations of the Buddhist scriptures and corrected in light of them before they can be considered comparatively reliable. But the modern-day Western translations of Buddhist scriptures have been undertaken without doing this work, and there is still a tendency not to take the Chinese versions of the Buddhist scriptures seriously. Moreover, the modern Western culture that has been formed on the basis of the Hellenic heritage has its own independent cultural tradition of several thousand years, and this must be comprehended.\n\n**3. Cultivating realization of the Buddha Dharma:** Buddhist learning is not only a system of thought. Buddhist philosophy does indeed have a resemblance to Western philosophical thought. But Buddhist methods of cultivating realization must be pursued within the person himself. They are not like the methods of physics for studying the natural world. When Buddhism first entered China, men like Fotudeng and others could make the Chinese believe in them and accept the Buddhist teaching only because they themselves could show as proof spiritual powers based on their own attainments in cultivating realization.\n\nIn modern times, if people trying to promote Buddhism in the West do not seek the proof within themselves, but instead just try to spread Buddhism based on its texts and its philosophical thought, it will naturally appear as merely a system of Eastern thought, and it will detract greatly from the Buddhist spirit of bringing salvation to the world.\n\n**4. The dissemination of Zen:** The message of the Zen school is a special transmission beyond the scriptural teachings, an approach that does not establish verbal formulations as sacred, but puts its real substantive emphasis on cultivating realization. The Dharma words, meditation cases, and pointed sayings of the Zen school that became popular in China from the Tang and Song periods on have already become indivisible from Chinese literature and Chinese common colloquial language. But when they came to Japan from the 13th century onward, they changed in character. These days, no matter whether in China or Japan, those who talk of Zen are many, but those who cultivate and realize it are few.\n\nThere are already many barriers for Chinese people to study Zen, and many points that are hard to comprehend if they are not deeply versed in the classical literary language and the various regional dialects of the Song period. Zen studies in modern-day Europe and America are in a state of flux: from a quick superficial impression, Westerners get some idea of the Zen realm of informality and humor, and then assume that Zen is just like this. If we Chinese are not able to give the countervailing evidence, and we just go along with these Western misconceptions and do nothing to correct them, then the misunderstandings will be endless.\n\n**5. The transmission of Buddhist concentration and wisdom:** Indian yogic techniques and Tibetan Tantric methods of self-cultivation are currently becoming popular in Europe and America. The average Westerner who practices these methods takes them as a kind of Eastern mystical exercise for strengthening the body, and may even confuse them with hypnotic techniques. It goes without saying that, fundamentally, the meditative techniques of the true Buddha Dharma have not been transmitted to the West. Most of the people who try to spread so-called Eastern mystical exercises in the West do not even understand them themselves. They travel to the West and teach others only as a way of seeking empty fame. Are they misleading others or misleading themselves? Are they acting on behalf of Buddhism, or are they acting for themselves? We must reflect deeply on this and offer frank criticism.\n\nFor all these reasons, I would say that, in all the countries of the West in the late 20th century, Buddhism is in the beginning stages of being disseminated and there are bound to be mistakes made.\n\nThe introductory explanations of the _**Ming Yi**_ (\"Injury to Illumination\") and _**Jia Ren**_ (\"People in the Home\") hexagrams 36 and 37 of the _Book of Changes_ say: \"When it enters, there must be injury, so it is received with injury to illumination. Injury means damage. Damage to the outside must return to the family, so it is received by people in the home.\" All of us Chinese must alert ourselves to this, for the sake of Buddhist civilization and for the sake of Chinese civilization!\nCHAPTER 5\n\nBuddhism in the 20th century\n\n**THE DECLINE OF CHINESE BUDDHISM SINCE THE QING PERIOD**\n\nThough the Chinese people still believed in and respected Buddhism during the period after the establishment of the Manchu Qing dynasty as rulers of China in the middle of the 17th century, all was not well.\n\nIn order to keep the peoples of the Mongolian and Tibetan border regions of their empire under control, the Qing rulers paid particular reverence to Tantric Buddhism. Imperial patronage of Tantric lamas for political purposes had been the pattern ever since the Yuan dynasty and had become a traditional policy of the government.\n\nAs for Buddhism within China proper, from the Yongzheng reign (1723-1735) onward, the Zen school maintained in form its traditional transmission under the protection of the Zen monastic system, but, in reality, Zen had already collapsed. Only the Pure Land school was still able to preserve the stature it had enjoyed in times gone by and was diffused universally throughout popular society. Apart from these two, the Tiantai school barely made its presence felt and was hanging by a thread. Schools of Buddhist philosophy like the Huayan school and the Yogacara school in the main no longer had any real substance and had become attached to Zen, Tiantai, or Pure Land. This was the general situation of Buddhism in China at that time.\n\n**Sectarian Decline**\n\nIn the history of Chinese learning and thought, strictiy speaking, the relative level of Buddhist learning and the position of Buddhist learning in China had already reached its zenith and begun to decline by the period of the late Ming and early Qing in the 17th century. Because of the widespread popularity among the 16th and 17th-century intelligentsia of the Neo-Confucian teachings of Wang Yangming, among the relatively small number of genuine Zen masters and Dharma teachers in the late Ming period, there were those who, although they were Buddhist monks, understood the Buddhist teachings on mind from the perspective of Wang Yangming's theories.\n\nThus we can observe two general trends over the three centuries of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). In the main, the Chinese social elite, the educated gentry, devoted their energies to the great task of rebuilding the social order and mostly focused on branches of learning connected to political administration and managing practical affairs. Moreover, the Buddhist monks who had left secular life were without any special achievements in terms of the Buddhist perceptions of truth. Thus, Buddhist learning could no longer regain the prestige among the intelligentsia it had enjoyed since the Tang and Song periods.\n\nIn addition, Buddhism itself saw a decline in the talent of its adherents and there were extremely few Buddhists in this period who could match the eloquence or the virtuous conduct of the eminent monks of the Tang and Song periods and be models for the times. From the middle years of the Qing period onward, there were many so-called Zen masters who acted for the sake of empty reputation and to secure meaningless lineage credentials. Some even became involved with opium and alcohol. To win over educated types who had failed on the official examinations, they plagiarized from the collected sayings of the previous generations of Zen masters and, behind closed doors, concocted what they called precious Zen sayings to be transmitted to their followers. They urged their disciples to struggle to have these included in Buddhist canonical collections for their own glory.\n\nAs for the relatively more learned and prominent monks, they vied with each other for positions at the capital and flocked to the gates of the powerful, congregating around the officials' offices. They were intent on currying favor with high-ranking men and hoped to obtain titles from the emperors. If they managed to obtain any sort of imperial commendation or tide, then they could pass themselves off as National Teachers and boast of their glory among the credulous common followers of Buddhism. Thus the lament of the popular saying: \"In the capital a monk, outside the capital putting on the lofty airs of an official.\"\n\nThese tendencies began in the late Ming and, by the Yongzheng era early in the 18 th century, they had already become rather serious. Thus the Yongzheng Emperor repeatedly issued edicts forcefully declaring that monks should not study poetry and literary composition and warning them against being intent on relying on their literary efforts to form relationships with rich gendemen. The Yongzheng Emperor said to them, in effect: \"Even if you write good poetry, you will never be able to match the scholars of our Hanlin Academy. Since you have left home to become monks, you must devote all your efforts to cultivating practice and realizing the fruits of enlightenment. How can you work so hard contending with literati for literary fame!\" These are indeed very true words, spoken earnesdy and sincerely. We should not neglect them because of the dubious quality of the man who said them.\n\nDuring the Qing period, there were only two well-known Buddhist centers that placed their emphasis on true study and genuine realization and took as their standard studying Zen through sitting meditation: the Jinshan Temple and the Gaomin Temple in southern China. Ranking below these were temples like Tiantong and Yuwang.\n\n**The Change in the Character of Monks and Temples**\n\nDue to the legacy of the official temple system that had come down from the Tang and Song periods, all over China there were Buddhist hermitages, halls, temples, and monasteries with varying amounts of private property, like forest lands and cultivated fields. Altogether, there was a considerable amount of such property. In the early years of the Chinese Republic, proclaimed in 1911, someone did some preliminary studies and found that the aggregate wealth of all the Buddhist temples in China was probably equal to the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church. Though this study may not have been accurate, still, it allowed us a glimpse of the incontestable fact that the Buddhist temples in China, taken altogether, possessed great wealth.\n\nBut from the late Ming through the Qing period, this originally admirable system had already developed major abuses. Throughout China, only a small number of famous large temples still retained the system of common ownership and common use of their assets and wealth and functioned as public temples. Most local temples had already been transformed into hereditary temples that were private domains. In the so-called hereditary temples, when the Dharma succession was handed down through the generations from teacher to disciple, at the same time the successor also received the authority to control the property of that temple. If a teacher had several disciples, they divided the temple property into shares, just as a family in lay life would do. Struggles over power and profit in such situations showed up everywhere. In this connection, there were many cases where monks formed ties with the local officials and set themselves up as petty tyrants in their areas.\n\nApart from the hereditary temples, the Buddhist terminology of the time also spoke of \"little temples\" which in the south were further divided into \"Zen gates\" and \"ministering gates.\" In the so-called \"Zen gates,\" the monks paid attention to practice. In the so-called \"ministering gates,\" the monks specialized in performing rituals. They chanted sutras, held rites of repentance, and even officiated at funerals: for this they earned payment and thus eked out a living. It was easy for them to attract disciples and form groups of loyal followers.\n\nIf we trace back history, we see that, in the old days, Shakyamuni Buddha, with his great vows so full of compassion, founded Buddhism to save the world. By this time, Buddhism in China had no time even to save itself, and had reached the lowest point in its decline. All religions prohibit us from going against our consciences and telling lies, so when I write of this, all I can do is tell the truth and make the general situation clear. I do this so that far-sighted Buddhists will undertake an urgent examination of the cycles of flourishing and decline and success and failure of Buddhism and carefully reflect on it.\n\n**THE BUDDHIST REVIVAL OF THE LATE QING AND EARLY REPUBLICAN PERIODS**\n\nFrom the Sui and Tang periods onward, Chinese Buddhism became one of the three great streams of Chinese civilization. Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism were like the three legs of a tripod. Over the course of China's historical development, through the succession of dynasties and the cycles of prosperity and decline, up until the last century, behind the succession of dynasties there was still a continuity of tradition which seemed to be unchanging. But in recent history, beginning with the Opium Wars between China and Britain and extending through the war between China and Japan, China was subjected to a continuous series of painful lessons: disasters and humiliations, losses of territory, and the payment of indemnities. Under the deep impact of these outside stimuli, the Chinese people, who had been content to follow in their traditional ways, woke up as if from a dream and began to pay attention to Western culture. Gradually, the Chinese transformed their ideas of Western culture and began to study it deeply.\n\nAlong with this, Western culture was continuously entering China. Christian missionaries from various countries came to China, spreading the Christian gospel on the one hand and disseminating Western learning on the other. If we investigate the background of the missionary movement, it was not without a certain coloration of so-called cultural aggression. The missionaries came to China, bringing with them the concealed power of the imperial nations. In the conditions of the time, this was an inevitable tendency. The decline of the power of the Qing dynasty was already completely exposed. At the same time, the Westerners basically did not understand what the legacy of thousands of years of Chinese civilization was, and so they looked down upon the Chinese in general as a barbarous people in a backward region.\n\nEven up to the present day, the Chinese and the Westerners have still not fully understood and totally dissolved these discriminatory, conflicting views. This has been a great barrier in the history of the interchange between Eastern and Western civilization. It is because of this barrier that Westerners have suffered many incalculable losses in their appreciation of the position of the Chinese in history. Even though at present they are researching Chinese civilization and are gradually acquiring a comparatively better understanding of it, and there are signs of a change for the better, the future success of this increased understanding still must await the test of history.\n\nWhen we have a full knowledge of cultural history as a whole, and when we give a simple treatment of 20th-century Buddhism, we will be able to give a logical account, enabling us to reflect on the past in order to better know the future. This tentative essay on Buddhism in the 20th century will be divided into three sections: the revival of Chinese Buddhism, the development of Chinese Buddhism, and trends in world Buddhism.\n\n**The Revival of Chinese Buddhism**\n\nWhen we discuss the revival of Chinese Buddhism, first we must give credit to virtuous and scholarly Buddhist laymen. At the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, the Buddhist monks whose traditional task was to uphold Buddhism, like the Qing government, did not understand the great trends in the world. In general, they were people who had shut themselves into a self-contained world and were following the old ways. The impetus for the renewal of Buddhism could only be given by the scholarly Buddhist laymen among the intelligentsia who had changed along with the trend of the times, and who were restudying the old traditions to gain better insight into the new world.\n\nAs is common knowledge, the most credit for initiating this movement of renewal must undoubtedly be given to Yang Renshan of Shidai. Master Renshan's personal name was Yang Wenhui, and he was a native of Shidai, in Anhui Province. Modern-day scholars honor him as the great teacher, Yang Renshan. His grandfather was a contemporary of the famous Qing dynasty statesman, Zeng Guofan, a leader in the victory over the Taiping rebellion in the 1850s and 1860s. When Master Renshan was in his teens, he accompanied his grandfather and met Zeng Guofan. When Zeng Guofan met him, he immediately appreciated his talents and told him to work hard to become successful. Master Renshan replied: \"I do not want to seek success under an alien dynasty.\" Zeng Guofan just laughed and let it go at that. But from then on, he bore the young man in mind and later, he instructed his son, Zeng Jize, to be sure to nurture this talented young man.\n\nWhen Zeng Jize went as an ambassador to Europe, he invited Master Renshan to assist him. Master Renshan bore the title of counselor, but he actually held major power in his own hands. During his travels in Europe, Master Renshan became very interested in science. Later, Master Renshan also went to Japan. With the help of the Japanese Buddhist scholar Nanjo Bun'o, he discovered many Buddhist texts from the Tang and Song periods that were still extant in Japan, but not in China.\n\nWhen Master Renshan returned to China, he gave up his intention of having a career as an official and resolved to devote his life to spreading Buddhist learning. Later, he donated one of the family houses to become a center for the printing of the Buddhist scriptures. With his disciple Master Ouyang Jingwu, he established in Nanking the famous Jingling Sutra Printing Agency and undertook the work of promoting Buddhist learning. The editions of the Buddhist scriptures and other essential Buddhist works that they printed were always carefully prepared and edited. These editions of the Buddhist classics became very well known at the time and influenced such men as Tan Sitong, who was one of the leading figures in the Republican revolution of 1911, and Liang Qichao, one of the pioneers of modern Chinese culture, and even Zhang Taiyan, the dean of the National Academy, to turn their efforts to Buddhist studies.\n\nIn sum, in the last years of the Qing dynasty and the early years of the Republic, Master Renshan was influential among important men in the capital and throughout the country. Throughout his life, he worked hard to promote Buddhist learning and, in his role as a Buddhist layman, he responded with appropriate teachings for sentient beings. Such men are indeed hard to find.\n\nThe man who later took up Master Renshan's mission of promoting Buddhist learning was Master Ouyang Jingwu. Master Jingwu's personal name was Ouyang Jian, and he was a native of Yihuang, in Jiangxi Province. Along with Master Li Zhenggang and others who had studied with Master Renshan, Master Jingwu could be called a giant of Buddhist studies, one of the outstanding figures of Buddhism. Scholars also honor him with the tide \"great teacher.\" Carrying out the intention of Master Renshan, he founded the Chinese Institute of Inner Studies, which specialized in propagating the Buddhist _prajna_ philosophy and the philosophy of Yogacara Buddhism. Among his students were both Dharma teachers who were monks and scholars who were laymen. Lu Qiuyi, Xiong Shili, Wang Enyang, Liang Shuming, and Huang Chanhua were all his disciples. Many of the current Chinese Buddhist scholars are second-generation descendants of his school or have received his influence indirectly. During the war against Japan, the Institute of Inner Studies was relocated to Jiangjin in Sichuan Province, and Master Jingwu himself died in Sichuan. The Buddhist scriptures and the prefaces to them published by the Institute are all outstanding works in beautiful language based on careful research. Most of these were edited by Lu Qiuyi after he had studied all the Sanskrit and Japanese editions. We can imagine how serious Master Lu's attitude was. At this time in northern China, there was also the famous Buddhist teacher Master Han Qingjing, so most scholars speak of this as the period of Ouyang Jingwu in the south and Han Qingjing in the north.\n\nThe era of Yang Renshan and Ouyang Jingwu was the beginning of the Republican period in the early part of the 20th century. Various people in the area of Nanking worked to propagate Buddhist learning under the influence of Master Renshan's school. Among them were Master Ding Fubao, who edited the _**Buddhist Studies Dictionary;**_ Master Mei Guangxi, who lectured on Yogacara philosophy; Master Nie Yuntai, whose generous patronage helped protect the Dharma; and Master Ma Yifu, who founded the Fuxing Shuyuan publishing house and harmonized the theories of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, founding a school of thought that advocated combined study of Zen principles and the Confucian classics. We can be sure that all these developments were due to the direct or indirect impetus of Master Yang Renshan.\n\nIn summary, in the first years of the Republic in the early part of the 20th century in Chinese learned circles, the tendency to undertake the study of Buddhism made an obvious break with the previous pattern of neglect and began to advance briskly. There was vigorous growth and development on all sides, and various manifestations of the new interest in Buddhist studies appeared like sprouts after a spring rain, like flowers turning toward the Sun. This tendency developed continuously for several decades, until the Communists came to power on the mainland and throtded it, anticipating that Buddhism would be totally wiped out.\n\nWhenever a trend forms in learning, it is sure to have its background in the sense of the times, its progression of cause and effect. As the saying goes, phenomena do not arise in isolation and towers cannot appear out of thin air for no reason. This will be the basis for our discussion of the 20th-century revival of Buddhist learning and the trends within 20th-century Buddhist thought. Both of these must adhere to this general principle and have their own necessary sequences of cause and effect.\n\nWhat is the explanation for the revival of Buddhist learning in China? Frankly speaking, it was a response to the stimulus of Western culture and thought. In the last years of the 19th century, the Chinese were directing their attention to Western culture and thought by studying natural science and discovering the Western social sciences and political thought. Thus, the Chinese were continuously importing various Western political theories, and new currents of thought arose in China with great vigor. To investigate Western political thought, the Chinese naturally had to trace it back to the philosophies that were guiding it and so, all kinds of Western philosophies, from the ancient Greek philosophy onward, were also imported into China. Particularly prominent in this was the newly arisen materialist philosophy, which swept in like a tidal wave, inundating everything.\n\nThe entry of this new current of thought into China forced a revolutionary change in Chinese history. Up until then, in the realm of learning and thought, the Chinese intelligentsia had been generally following along in the pattern of Song and Ming Neo-Confucianism, while others had gone along in isolation, laboring to construct philosophies from various combinations of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Unexpectedly, the Chinese intelligentsia were directly confronted with various imported Western philosophical theories. Suddenly, they had the erroneous feeling of being left behind, unable to catch up. Because of this, a force resisting the intrusion of Western ideas began to form imperceptibly in the latent consciousness of the young intelligentsia, who were rich in nationalist consciousness, comparatively conservative, and rather well trained in Chinese learning. Reflecting back on themselves, they began to think that traditional Confucian philosophy had locked China up for more than two thousand years in a cage of moralistic social ideals. They wanted a pure system of thought in order to go beyond the materialistic philosophy of the West. They felt that Confucianism had no arguments to offer against materialism, and that they must leave it behind in order to develop further and shed new light on the situation. Thus, when intellectuals of great purpose like Master Yang Renshan went to Japan and came into contact with Yogacara philosophy, they discovered that it contained within it an unsurpassed metaphysical-philosophical theory that could encompass both idealist and materialist philosophy. They saw that Yogacara, with its clear logic and its closely worked-out moral theories and principles of cultivating the body and mind, was all-inclusive. Thus they felt that this is where the true Path must lie and so, unexpectedly, they ended up dedicating themselves to the Dharma Ocean of Buddhist studies and took great compassionate vows to enlighten the world and save its people. From this point on, where the winds of their influence blew, the grasses all bent down. All Chinese of deep learning, whether they were scholars of ancient or modern things, gave them their unending respect and immediately flocked to them. Thus did Buddhist studies become popular again in China's learned circles.\n\nOn the other hand, there were many scholars who tended more toward Western culture. There were also many who advocated harmonizing Chinese and Western thought. But these developments are outside our subject here, and we need not discuss them in detail.\n\nWhat was the tendency of this revived Buddhist thought? Frankly speaking, the initial motive of the early 20th-century revivers of Buddhist studies was to use Buddhist principles to comprehend both Eastern and Western thought. But later, as they delved into Buddhism more and more deeply, without being fully aware of what was happening, they turned into sincere Buddhists. Almost imperceptibly, they entered into the religion's Dharma Gate of nonduality and naturally vowed to try to straighten out the decadent Buddhism that had come down to them from the Ming and Qing dynasties. But, since they thought that decadent Buddhism was unable to save the world or save itself, the result was that, unintentionally, they came to be at odds with the Buddhist monks, and the antagonism went so far that some monks argued that for laymen to spread the Dharma was against the Dharma. Thus, the learned laymen who acted as revivers of Buddhist studies were unable to rescue the decadent Buddhist religion. This was truly lamentable.\n\nMaster Yang Renshan and his disciple, Ouyang Jingwu, were discriminated against by many within the Buddhist religion. This caused so much trouble for them that it almost reached the state of inflicting upon them irreparable wrongs and intolerable mistreatment. Thus, in the sixth article of his discussion on refuting errors and promoting the correct Path, Master Jingwu directly dealt with whether or not monks and laymen were entitled to spread the Dharma. From this, we can see that the debate provoked by Yang Renshan and Ouyang Jingwu over whether laymen as well as monks could propagate the Dharma was very serious indeed. This issue between Buddhist monks and laymen has extended up through today and really is a major wound within Buddhism.\n\nAfter this, the style of learning of the Chinese Institute of Inner Studies started to move in a new direction. Because disciples of Master Jingwu, like Xiong Shili, did not get results in their studies of Buddhism, they began to feel again that to rely on Buddhist studies was not fully adequate for the path of enlightening the world and opening the way for its people. Thus they turned their attention back to their former learning and created a style of learning that combined and synthesized Confucian and Buddhist thought. Xiong Shili aligned the principles of the _**Book of Changes**_ with Yogacara concepts. He authored books like _A New Treatise on Yogacara_ , broke with his teacher, Master Jingwu, and started his own school. Actually, the level of Xiong Shili's attainment in studies of the _Book of Changes_ and in Yogacara theory is open to debate.\n\nAll the writings that came out of the Institute of Inner Studies after Master Jingwu were modeled in their style on Dharma master Xuanzang's translations of Yogacara texts. Because of this, they were very obscure and hard to understand. After the May 4th movement and the move toward writing in the vernacular language, when the younger intellectuals accustomed to modern writing read these works, they felt them too lofty and enigmatic to fathom.\n\nThus, after the transmission of this revival of Buddhist studies from Master Yang Renshan to Ouyang Jingwu and then to Xiong Shili, the so-called \"New Confucianism\" and \"New-Style Neo-Confucianism\" took shape and came to life. When the mainland fell to the Communists, the efforts of these gendemen over many decades were scattered like smoke and ashes.\n\n**The Development of Chinese Buddhism**\n\nFrom the foregoing account of the renewal of Chinese Buddhism, we can understand the movement of Buddhism in the early part of the 20th century, at the end of the Qing dynasty and the beginning of the Republic. Although in this period the Buddhists who were monks were feeling the pressure of the times, they continued to live their lives in their monasteries and temples, aloof from worldly events, in the spirit of the saying: \"When the Sun rises I work, and when the Sun sets I rest: What does the Emperor's power have to do with me?\" Among the monks there was no one qualified, as the Zen masters and Dharma teachers of the Tang and Song periods had been, to act as leaders of learned thought, and so the Chinese monks in this period were not only confused about the trends of the times and the transformations in world affairs, they were fundamentally uninformed or even incurious about them.\n\nIn 1911, the Qing emperor abdicated and the Chinese Republic was founded. Yuan Shikai, the general who became the first president of the Republic, harbored evil intentions to make himself emperor. The Buddhist community was reflecting on the organization of the religions being brought into China from overseas and their planned movement to spread their teachings, and at the same time the community was also feeling the influence of the new developments in political thought. At last, on the initiative of a poet-monk who was famous at the time (the \"Eight-Fingered Ascetic\"), a meeting was called of representatives of the Buddhist monastic communities from all over China. They convened in Liuyun Temple in Shanghai and founded the \"General Association of Chinese Buddhism.\" They setded on a charter for the organization and requested government sanction.\n\nBut before this approval was granted, the Yuan Shikai government had cast its eyes on the property possessed by Buddhist temples throughout the country as a means of providing funds for its plans to restore the imperial system. So in 1912, the second year of the Republic, the issue of turning over public and private temple property to the government arose and the Eight-Fingered Ascetic went to the capital to struggle against this. But his demands were not met and he died of indignation. Since such a famous poet-monk had given his life struggling against the expropriation of temple property, the level of public indignation was such that eight of his former associates, like Xiong Xiling, Yang Du, and others, got to hold closed-door talks with Yuan Shikai. Because of this, the charter of the General Association of Chinese Buddhism was approved and promulgated by the government, and thus the property of Buddhist temples became a little more secure.\n\nThe Eight-Fingered Ascetic was a native of Xiangtan, in Hunan Province. His family name was Huang, his Dharma name was Fajing, and his literary sobriquet was Jichan. As a boy, he was a poor orphan and worked for other people tending oxen. He did not get a chance to go to school and was illiterate. When he grew up, he was a friend outside official circles to many famous literati of the time, like Master Wang Xiangqi. On the basis of his austerities and his cultivation of practice, he was suddenly enlightened. When he was first enlightened, he came out with the famous line, \"The waves of Lake Dongting see the monk on his way.\" The line was so elegant, it was as if he had previously composed it. Master Xiangqi and the others greatly appreciated his poems and, from this point on, the Eight-Fingered Ascetic became known as a famous poet. Later, he served as abbot in various of the famous temples and he was held in high esteem throughout the country.\n\nThe Nationalist Revolution had still not achieved complete success. After the death of Yuan Shikai in 1916, China entered a period of fragmentation into territories of rival warlords. During the fighting, there was much devastation and the well-known Buddhist temples were invaded and plundered more and more, becoming garrison points for the warlord armies. It was a severe form of the situation described in the famous verse: \"All the famous temples under Heaven were occupied by troops.\"\n\nDuring this period, among the disciples of the Eight-Fingered Ascetic, it was Dharma teacher Taixu who was best equipped with modern knowledge and was able to continue his legacy. Over the succeeding decades, Taixu worked resolutely to protect Buddhism, not caring when he was mocked by people as a political monk. Several times he carried out reforms of the Chinese Buddhist Association. He founded schools for the education of monks and published journals like _**Haichaoyin**_ , \"The Sound of the Tide.\" Indeed, Master Taixu accomplished many things for Buddhism in the new China that were worthy of respect.\n\nDharma teacher Taixu was a native of Haining, in Zhejiang Province. His family name was Zhang. He was orphaned as a boy and, when he was 14, he became a monk. He devoted himself to cultivating practice. He was skilled in poetry and literary composition, and thus he formed friendships with various famous literati of the time.\n\nWhen he was 30, under the influence of the revolutionary monks Huashan and Qiyun, he began to take part in the work of the Nationalist Revolution in the Canton area. With the Wuchang rebellion in 1911 that sparked the downfall of the Qing dynasty, China began to recover its former glory. Dharma teacher Taixu had a personal interview with Dr. Sun Yatsen, the Father of the Republic. At Jinshan Temple, Taixu organized the Buddhist Cooperative Progress Society with the intention of creating through reforms a new Buddhism for the new China. In the Chinese Buddhist world of the time, he became famous for what he was doing at Jinshan Temple and was known as the revolutionary new monk Taixu.\n\nDuring the first year of the Republic, Taixu again immersed himself in the cultivation of practice and went into seclusion at Putuo Xilin Zen Temple. For the next thirty years, Taixu worked wholeheartedly for the movement to renew Buddhism in China. He traveled all over giving lectures and spreading the Dharma, and took charge of many projects for the education of Buddhist monks. He also initiated the World Buddhist Federation movement. In 1922 and 1923 at Lushan, he raised the standard of the World Buddhist Federation. Many eminent Buddhist monks and Buddhist scholars from Japan met with him, and Buddhists from Britain, Germany, France, Finland, and other countries also participated. Later, Taixu traveled to Japan and lectured on Buddhism at various places there. Subsequently, Taixu intended to establish a Chinese Buddhist University and a World Buddhist Institute, but, due to lack of funds, his intentions were not realized.\n\nAround the time of the Second World War, Taixu established the South Fukien Buddhist Institute in Amoy, the Wuchang Buddhist Institute, and the Hanzang Buddhist Institute to train talented monks for the new Buddhism. This did in fact result in the nurturing of many outstanding scholar-monks, like the famous monk Fafang, who spread the Dharma in China and studied in Sri Lanka, and who was one of Taixu's favorite disciples. After World War II, Taixu organized groups of Chinese Buddhists and led them on tours of the various Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia.\n\nThough Taixu's lifelong hopes of reforming and reinvigorating Buddhism were not always fulfilled everywhere, the strength of his vows and his resolve for the mission are indeed worthy of respect. In his writings and his life, both pure Buddhist conduct and errors appear together, and his thinking was very novel. He advocated \"the Pure Land of the human world\" and always used the slogan: \"Look up to Buddha, but perfect your human character. If you achieve true humanity, you achieve buddhahood: this is called true immediate reality.\" This is the spirit of renewal for the new China and the new Buddhism, replete with boldness of vision and with understanding. We must admit that this, his most famous saying, can provide a stimulus for Buddhists now and in the future. Taixu also advocated developing a movement of friendly associations among all the world's religions and personally took part in the work of making this happen. He truly had a far-seeing vision.\n\nMany people in the present-day Chinese Buddhist world and many religious personages from abroad have made oblique criticisms of Taixu, and have even claimed that he was enamored of politics or too fond of fame. But, in reality, these criticisms are ill-founded. In reality, Taixu could be called a monk who practiced austerities. What I mean by austerities is that Taixu's aspirations brought much pain. He wanted to reinvigorate Buddhism and he was an ardent Chinese patriot: both of these came forth from his true sincerity. He was born in a period where new ways of thought were replacing the old and in a new period of democratic politics. He was perhaps overzealous, and he was unable to complete all his projects. He lacked a correct political understanding of world trends. Toward Chinese Buddhism, with its deep accumulation of traditional practices, he did not follow the path of gradual change, but wanted to use revolutionary methods and force an abrupt transformation, and so his hopes went unfulfilled.\n\nThe new way of educating monks which Taixu initiated had a wide influence and, after the success of the Nationalist armies' Northern Expedition in 1928, not only were branches of the Chinese Buddhist Association established in all the provinces and county seats that came under the Nationalist regime, but Buddhist studies academies were also set up in most of the county seats. All of these, directly or indirectly, were subject to the influences of the new way of educating monks associated with Taixu's new Buddhist movement. The result of this new way of educating monks was that the Buddhist monks became relatively more aware of the common knowledge of the new era. But, with regard to the principles of Buddhism and the methods of cultivating realization of the Buddha Dharma, on the other hand, they became more and more misinformed, and they were not as knowledgeable about these things as monks had been originally, before the new way of education. This was really one of the most regrettable effects of the new system of educating monks.\n\nBoth the Eight-Fingered Ascetic and Dharma teacher Taixu adapted to the needs of the times: they were our wise predecessors who extended Buddhism's life of wisdom. In the modern history of Chinese Buddhism, they must be counted as disciples of Buddha who should be respected. In the end, their accomplishments outweighed their errors, and they were men who merit full-scale biographies.\n\nApart from these two, there were several outstanding Buddhists in those years who stuck to established practices and who were models for the period in adhering to the Buddha Dharma and cultivating its practices. Among these were Dharma teacher Yinguang of the Pure Land school, Dharma teacher Dixian of the Tiantai school, and the great teacher Hongyi of the Vinaya school. In the Zen school, there was Master Xuyun, whose prestige was enormous. There were also several others who were acclaimed at the time as preeminent figures in the Zen school: Master Chuanben of Golden Peak Temple on Mount Emei, Master Nengyuan of Bell Drum Tower in Wanxian, Master Daojian of Qionglong Mountain in Suzhou, and Master Laiguo of Gaomin Temple in Yangzhou. All these men were able to maintain the customary style of the Zen school and stand out as distinguished, independent figures, acting as mainstays of the Buddha Dharma.\n\nAmong the Buddhist teachers of the time, these adepts were representatives of virtuous qualities and profound learning. For almost half a century, from the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911 to the Communist victory in 1948-1949, they shone brilliandy, exerting a big influence on trends within Chinese Buddhism, on the intelligentsia, and on all those who studied Buddhism. To a greater or lesser degree, direcdy or indirecdy, their call was felt by men and women, by young and old, by everyone from eminent statesmen to humble peddlers. They held together the worldly path, maintained popular support for Buddhism, and silently did their part to remedy the shortcomings of the nation's political and educational situations. It can be said that their efforts were not made in vain, and that their accomplishments cannot be effaced.\n\nApart from the eminent monks mentioned above, in every province and every region of China, there were some Buddhist teachers who set an example with their virtuous conduct. In a brief account like this, it is hard to tell of them all.\n\nAmong the eminent monks previously discussed, the most famous were Yinguang, Xuyun, and Hongyi, who were the most noted monks of the time.\n\nThe great teacher Yinguang was originally a Confucian gentleman at the end of the Qing dynasty. Before he left home to become a Buddhist monk, he venerated Neo-Confucian philosophy and repudiated Buddhism. After he became a Buddhist monk, he taught people in a plain and genuine way on the basis of his life-experience. He often used the moral principles for human life taught by Confucius and Mencius as a bridge to the study of Buddhism. He considered sincere invocation of the buddha-name as the ultimate Dharma Gate. His writings, his speech, and his conduct were permeated with compassion, and various of his writings, such as _**Dharma Master Tinguang's Essays**_ were in wide circulation.\n\nMaster Xuyun was a man of great virtue who was even more universally venerated throughout China. Collections recording his words and deeds are in wide circulation within China and abroad, so there is no need to give another introduction to his teachings.\n\nBefore Dharma teacher Hongyi left home to become a Buddhist monk, he was already a noted scholar recognized for his special talents, and an artist as well. He was a master of calligraphy, painting, music, and all forms of poetry, and a man of superlative talents. Before he became a monk, his elegant verses were already quite popular in the Shanghai-Hangzhou area and in Japan. After he became a Buddhist monk, he practiced austerities and diligently cultivated the Dharma: he had only a single robe and a begging bowl, and he was very strict in maintaining the precepts of discipline. This made people admire and respect him. He spent relatively long periods in places like Fuzhou, Quanzhou, Amoy, and Wenzhou. Among his lay disciples were men like the famous painter Feng Zikai, who responded to his call and spent his whole life painting works that promoted the Buddhist ideas of compassion and nonviolence.\n\nIn addition to these men, among the noted Dharma teachers of the time in southern China, in the Yangzi Valley and the Zhejiang regions, were such figures as Yuanying, Cizhou, and Yingci. In northern China, there was Dharma teacher Tanxu. In southwest China, in the region of Sichuan and Guizhou, there were Changyuan and Jiechen. All these were eminent monks who advocated the Pure Land practice of invoking the buddha-name. Appearing somewhat later were Dharma teachers like Chisong and Chaoyi, who propagated Japanese-style Esoteric Buddhism. Dharma teachers like Nenghai and Fazun promoted Tibetan-style Esoteric Buddhism.\n\nApart from these was the figure of Su Manshu, who was given prominence by Zhang Taiyan and the poets of the Southern Society. He took the lead in the literary style of the so-called \"Lovers and Butterflies\" school, and became famous for writing such emotionally expressive novels as _**Dunn Hong Ling Hut Ji**_ [\"Broken Geese and Scattered Sparrows\"]. In his conduct, he abandoned himself to sensuality and his mind was sunk in emotional desires, so Su Manshu was definitely not a genuine monk. By temperament, he refused to be bound by formalities. In a temple in Guangzhou, he happened to obtain the ordination certificate of a deceased monk, so he changed his name and became a monk. From this point on, he moved freely in and out of literary circles and became a much talked-about figure of the time: he was really an unusual character. His followers gave him the Buddhist title of \"great teacher\" and this caused confusion about whether he was really a monk or a layman. Many people at the time mistook him for a Buddhist monk and mentioned his name alongside Dharma teachers like Taixu and Hongyi. In fact, he was an anomaly in the annals of the Buddhist monks of the Republican period. Nevertheless, Su Manshu was a man of unique temperament.\n\nThis, then, was the overall outline of Buddhist activity in the Republican period. In terms of the distinction between esoteric and exoteric Buddhism, these are all events in the exoteric Buddhism of the recent period. Esoteric Buddhism in this period had a different style and appearance, which we will now proceed to consider.\n\nDuring the founding of the Republic, people throughout the country followed the nationalistic call of Dr. Sun Yatsen, the Father of the Republic. Everyone understood that the the five major ethnic groups, the Han, the Manchus, the Mongols, the Hui (Chinese Muslims), and the Tibetans, were all one nation, were all the descendants of Yandi and Huangdi, the legendary culture heroes of Chinese civilization. From this, in response to the movement of the times, arose the fashion for opening channels between the Han and Tibetan cultures.\n\nDuring the Yuan, Ming, and Qing periods, the ruling dynasties paid their respects to the Buddhism and the great Buddhist ceremonies of the Mongol and Tibetan regions and honored its leaders with the tides of Dalai Lama, Panchen Lama, and Jangjia, following precedent in officially recognizing them as Khutughtu. For example, the President of the Republic, Jiang Kaishek, sent special emissaries to take part in the great ceremonies for the installation of the two living buddhas, the tenth Panchen Lama and the fourteenth Dalai Lama (now in India). The Republic recognized their positions, as previous Chinese governments had, and treated them with full honors. The nineteenth Jangjia, a leading incarnate lama in Mongolian Buddhism, came to Sichuan with the Nationalist government during the period of the war against Japan, and, after the Communist victory, moved again with the Nationalists to Taiwan. He adhered to the Nationalist government all along and held a succession of high positions in its administration.\n\nThe organization known as the Western Borderlands Cultural Institute was active in Beiping, the modern Beijing, in the early years of the Republic and, during the war of resistance against Japan, relocated along with the Nationalist government to Sichuan.\n\nThus, from the early years of the Republic to the fall of the mainland to the Communists in 1949, over three or four decades, eminent monks from the various schools of Tibetan esoteric Buddhism came to China proper to propagate the methods of esoteric Buddhism. During the same period, Dharma teachers and Buddhist laymen from China proper were going to Tibet to seek the Dharma there. Tibetan teachers on their way to China and Chinese Buddhists on their way to Tibet were going back and forth frequendy through Xikang and Tibet, and parties of these travelers were always on the road.\n\nAmong the Tibetan Lamas who came to China proper to spread the Dharma in this period were the representatives of all four sects of Tibetan Buddhism: Nyingmapa, Sakyapa, Kargyudpa, and Gelugpa. Among them were the lamas known to the Chinese as Baipuren, Nuona, Gonghe, Gensang, Dongben Gexi, and Awang Kanbu. None of them had previously set foot outside Tibet and Xikang, but, after the founding of the Republic, they all came in person to China proper to transmit the Dharma.\n\nFrom the Song and Yuan periods on, Chinese Buddhism had held to the idea that Tibetan esoteric Buddhism was something mysterious. Those who studied the teachings of esoteric Buddhism were mostly confined to the imperial palace, and esoteric Buddhism had very little currency among the Chinese people in general. In the Republican period, once the aura of mystery around esoteric Buddhism was lifted, the average Chinese studying Buddhism suddenly came into contact with methods of cultivating practices which they had hitherto viewed as mysterious, and there was a tendency to turn toward it in dizzy enthusiasm. Many people who were devotees of the mysterious thought that only Tibetan esoteric Buddhism was the correct way to become enlightened in this lifetime and, even though they did not dare to look down on all the other forms of Buddhism, at least they had a sense that they were not worth trying.\n\nIn fact, those who study Buddhism correctly and are the least bit concerned with later Indian Buddhist thought, and those who have had any contact with such aspects of Indian religious philosophy as Brahmanism and the techniques of yoga, can then understand the source of the so-called mysterious side of esoteric Buddhism and its philosophical foundations. But the fashion for the study of esoteric Buddhism, from the first years of the Republic up through the conclusion of World War II, grew stronger and stronger in Chinese Buddhist circles. With the Communist victory of 1949, however, all forms of Buddhism, no matter whether exoteric or esoteric, met with unprecedented ruinous misfortune, and even Tibet, which had previously been called a mystic Buddhist country, suffered the same fate. The future revival and vitality of Buddhism will depend on the spirit and the continuous hard work of the worthy people of the time and their successors.\n\n**CONCLUSION**\n\nIn more than two thousand years of continuous transmission of its teachings, Buddhism has made glorious contributions to learned thought, political life, and education in both India and China. After Buddhism came to China, over the period from the third to the ninth century, it became one of the major streams of Chinese learned thought. Buddhism led and guided learning and contributed to philosophical thought. It upheld the moral orientation of the secular world and knit together the hearts of the people, helping to make up for the shortcomings of the political order. Its achievements can never be obliterated. If we pass over without comment the errors and abuses committed by the followers of Buddhism in later generations and just take the overall view, we can without error praise Buddhism as _the_ philosophy among philosophies and _the_ religion among religions. As for the range of its abuses, in many instances they can be blamed on society. These abuses were the peripheral streams of Buddhism that resulted from an accumulation of wrongs coming to be considered as right, and they had nothing at all to do with true Buddhist principles or with the great spirit of Buddhism.\n\nNevertheless, if we observe the style of present-day Chinese Buddhism and the Buddhism of the various countries in Southeast Asia, we cannot be optimistic about the future. Rather, there is cause for worry and concern. Although all worthy people in the Buddhist world feel apprehensive about its future adaptations, it is still the case that accumulated momentum is hard to reverse, and there is no way to make a clean break with the past and start fresh. Thus I will try to make six concluding points about the present situation of Buddhism, and offer them for the consideration of present-day Buddhists. I am just jotting down this conclusion and cannot say I have anything to propose. Even less am I offering a critique: I am merely writing to ease my feelings, and no more.\n\n**Concerning the fate of Buddhism:** From the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, the founder of the religion, there has been the system of four groups of Buddhists: the male home-leavers, the monks; the female home-leavers, the nuns; and the male and female householders, the Buddhist laiety, sometimes distinguished as laymen and laywomen. Shakyamuni Buddha gave to the monks the responsibility for taking charge of the forms of Buddhism and for propagating the Buddhist teaching. The responsibility for protecting the Dharma Shakyamuni Buddha placed on the rulers, on their great ministers, on the community elders, and on the Buddhist laiety, who were to uphold and protect Buddhism. Based on this, over the generations in China, India, Japan, and other Buddhist countries, the fate of Buddhism always depended on the protection of the political authorities and the social elite.\n\nSince the end of the 19th century, the democratic political system has toppled the evil practices of several thousand years of monarchical rule and its monopoly on political power. Chinese Buddhists do not have a thorough enough knowledge of democracy and freedom and do not understand the rule of law sufficiendy. They still try in unwholesome ways to make connections among prominent people and climb the social ladder. They rely on the remnants of the old-style political powers. From the present day onward, in the new period from the 20th century into the 21st century, if Buddhists go on as they have before without changing, trying to curry favor with those in high position in order to prolong their moribund existence, and do not seek for themselves a means by which to stand on their own in the new century, I'm afraid that the fate of Buddhism will be hanging from a thread, and that the position of Buddhism will be as precarious as a pile of eggs.\n\n**Concerning the economic position of Buddhism:** For over two thousand years, no matter whether in China, India, or Japan, Buddhism has always lived on the surplus of an agricultural society by begging. It has never given careful consideration from the economic point of view to the economics of its religious communities. Moreover, because the codes of monastic discipline directly forbid concerns with economic matters, knowledgeable people within Buddhism have never dared to make proposals about this issue. Only in the case of Chinese Buddhism, after the establishment of the Zen monastic system in the Tang period, was there a somewhat systematic economic basis for Buddhist religious communities, resembling a system of collective agricultural production. Later, along with the forms and religious principles of Buddhism, this system was transmitted to Japan.\n\nBut at the present time, this kind of system, which relied totally on the form of production of the old agricultural society, is no longer viable. On one hand, in mainland China, it has met with destruction at the hands of the Chinese Communists' Cultural Revolution. On the other hand, in the capitalist parts of eastern Asia, it has been subjected to the influences of the development of capitalism, of the intense competition within industry and commerce, and the total economic and social transformation which has come about. Buddhist monastic communities can no longer survive by their own strength, and so rely on begging and collecting funds in return for ritual services. For the future, we must reflect on the fact that, if we use this type of dependent existence to maintain Buddhism, it will not take any outside forces to destroy it: fundamentally, Buddhism will have no way to keep its foothold.\n\n**Concerning the unity of Buddhists:** The teachings of all the world's religions basically advocate individual freedom and true liberty. The Western religions also have an understanding of religious administration of politics and have concrete organizational guidelines. We can say that, in Buddhism, the principle of the liberty of the individual reaches its ultimate point. This can easily be transformed into absolute egotism, at least in form. If you say that the Chinese people are all lacking in the propensity to unite, I think that the disunity of Chinese Buddhists is a prime example of this. All through the history of Chinese Buddhism, and up through the present day, we see disputes over whether monks or laymen should teach, disputes for power and profit between the followers of various teachers, sectarian disputes, disputes over prestige and status within groups of lay Buddhists, disputes over whose lineage is better or worse, and disputes over such trivial matters as how to dress and so on, to mention just a few.\n\nWhen Shakyamuni Buddha was in the world, he always taught that the Buddhist community should be united in harmony and mutual respect. With these disputes, the Chinese Buddhist community has destroyed and defeated itself, to the point where there is nothing left. If Chinese Buddhists do not reflect seriously on this and take action to remedy the situation, if we just want to walk on high beyond the world, I'm afraid that we may no longer exist after the 20th century.\n\n**The conditions of Buddhist education and learning:** In the past, when Buddhism was flourishing in China, this was entirely due to the deep learning and knowledge of the Buddhist teachers and the standards they set of moral quality and cultivation of practice. They became figures who were universally revered at all levels of society. Buddhism achieved its honored place and its greatness only because of this. But in most cases, these great teachers already had reached a high level of cultivation in general knowledge before they had left home to become monks, or in the early phase of their lives as monks. To this, they added the essential principles of Buddhist learning. Only then were they able to become teachers for their time. Moreover, they themselves were true educators.\n\nWhat is the situation today? The level of ordinary education that Buddhist monks have received is not adequate. All they have to do is put on a monk's robe and be able to explain a few lines of Buddhist theory or interpret some Buddhist terms and they immediately view themselves as teachers of devas and humans. In reality, they should hasten to reflect back on themselves, acquire some learning, and strive hard to improve and strengthen themselves. Only then will they be able to avoid being ashamed in front of the deeply learned founder of their religion.\n\nIn the past, in the later period of Indian Buddhism, it was proposed that a Great Vehicle bodhisattva must be equipped with five kinds of understanding: inner understanding (this comes from cultivating the Path and awakening to the Path); understanding causation (this means mastering logic and, in the present day, this must include mastery of the various religious philosophies and the human and natural sciences); understanding sound (this means linguistics and literature); understanding medicine (this means being an expert on medicines and healing); and understanding practical techniques (in the present day, this must include the skills associated with science and technology).\n\nNow in the later part of the 20th century, education and knowledge are becoming more and more widespread. If we Buddhists do not immediately reflect back on ourselves and rapidly make plans to solidify our own educational base, then I'm afraid that Buddhism, which has always been a model teacher of humankind, will be hard put to justify itself. Though at present there are several areas where the education of Buddhist monks is being undertaken, we must humbly recognize that education is a great long-term undertaking. If Buddhist education is managed by non-specialists who have no basic understanding of education, or who only know about religious education, I'm afraid that mistakes will be made repeatedly and may become irreparable. \"The stone of another mountain can be used to polish the jade\"\u2014we can learn by the example of others. We must accept in all humility the sincere advice of those both inside and outside of Buddhism. This is surely a course that will bring many benefits and litde harm.\n\n**Concerning the lack of cultivating realization:** Apart from the surpassing excellence of its philosophical thought, the most important thing about the principles of the Buddhist teaching is that they are not empty theoretical talk. They require each and every person really to put them into practice and test them with body and mind and to work to carry them out. Only by this kind of personal practice can one experience realization of the complete answer. Because of this, from a modern point of view, Buddhist learning itself has a very scientific spirit. It has been able to stand the test of time. Moreover, besides its philosophical thought, it also is very rich in scientific principles. Indeed, Buddhism is a rich treasury that has still not been opened up on any large scale by the world's people.\n\nIn present-day Buddhism, there are many who talk theory, but few who cultivate realization. In the 20th century, the scientific era, what proof can they show that will make people respect Buddhism? Moreover, due to the shortcomings of Buddhists in cultivating realization, even when they talk theory, they come out with many distorted theories. This is an extremely frightening, dangerous situation, which threatens Buddhism with self-destruction. We must adjust our ideas realistically and work hard on our realization and insight.\n\n**Concerning the tendency to mix in politics:** In keeping with the prevailing democratic current in the thought of the 20th century, in all the enlightened nations of the world, the freedom of religious belief and the freedom of religious groups to participate in politics legally must be beyond question. But how should the Buddhist message of great compassion be applied to the various kinds of political ideologies and political systems in the world?\n\nIf there is no concrete way to setde on a Buddhist theory of political advocacy, then I'm afraid that Buddhist leaders will almost always go wrong when they try to mount the political stage by simply relying on their zeal and their ardent desires. They attempt to show the fearless bravery of the founder of religion when they, themselves, have always been lacking the practiced habits of political cultivation. This point is worth careful consideration. We must first seek an excellent level of knowledge and also take our stand on invincible ground before we can participate in politics.\n\nLet us try to analyze the future of Buddhism. From the point of view of religious belief, it seems that the farther we follow the old road, the narrower it gets. From the point of view of learned thought, the new realm of Buddhism is getting broader and broader. This is because Buddhism has an expansive message, profound principles, a well worked-out thought system of surpassing wisdom, and a theory that is great, far-reaching, and perfecdy synthesized. What's more, Buddhism has a long history and a multitude of faithful believers. There is no lack of committed, outstanding people of vision and insight within the Buddhist communities who are ready to express their views and do all they can for Buddhism to protect the Dharma. They will base themselves on the will to act with true humanity, the stamina to endure, and the spirit to see their duty and boldly carry it out. They will take up the responsibility of the Tathagata's enterprise and reinvigorate the bold style of Buddhism in order to adapt to future currents and win glory in the future era. Indeed, the process of reinvigorating and reviving an enfeebled Buddhism begins with an act of will. This is the author's sincere hope and prayer.\nAppendix\n\nThe Zen Monastic System and Chinese Society\n\nA The term \"society\" refers to the situation in which there are established relations and a sharing of benefits among several groups; on this basis they work together to attain a set goal and organize into an integral collectivity. In common parlance, the Chinese word **_she-hui_** , \"society,\" is used as a term designating a group of people who share certain kinds of common enterprise or a certain type of similar status, like the \"Upstream Society\" or the \"Labor Society.\" It is also used for groups with a certain regional character, like the \"Shanghai Society\" or the \"Hankou Society.\"\n\nIn 1838, the French scholar Auguste Comte created the term \"sociology\" (Chinese: **_sbe-hui-xue)._** He used it to mean the branch of science that studies society. In the past, we also used the term **_qutt-xue_** for this. Ever since the British scholar Herbert Spencer followed this usage of the term \"sociology,\" it has become a term for a specialized branch of science. The specialized study of social organization is called social statics; the specialized study of the growth and development of social organizations is called social dynamics. In general, there are three objects of sociological study: the nature of society, the process of social progress and transformations, and the basic principles of social progress and transformation. Some sociologists bring in evidence from biology and some from psychology.\n\nTHE DIFFERENT SOCIETIES OF EASTERN AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION\n\nIf we delve back into the history of our Chinese culture, one hundred years ago there was basically no such term as \"sociology.\" This branch of learning had not been established. We cannot say that this was because, in the past, we were unscientific. All we can say is that, in the past history of our culture, we did not have need of this concept. This was a matter of the difference in spirit at a time when the material basis of culture was different.\n\nFrom the viewpoint of economics, China in the past was always an agrarian country. Its territory was large and materially rich and the land was not densely populated. There were ample natural resources that could be used to support a prosperous life and it was not necessary for the Chinese to go abroad and struggle for profit in order to survive. In addition to this, the traditional culture always taught the Chinese to live in peace, be happy with their occupations, and be content with their destined lot. Thus, in traditional China, people only had to give the prescribed social forms their due, obey the law, and pay their taxes to the government. In the society of the farming villages, it was very common for people of neighboring hamlets to live out their lives without ever seeing each other. The poem by Fan Chengda of the Song dynasty says:\n\nGreen fills the mountain meadow, white foamy rivers\n\nIn the cuckoo's cry, the rain is like mist\n\nIn the village in June few are idle\n\nThey're tending the silkworms and planting the fields.\n\nSuch a beautiful picture of a natural way of life! Who would prefer life in a society obsessed with industry and commerce, with its hustle and bustle and its frantic pace that makes people forget themselves? In the main, our ancestors in old China lived peaceful, harmonious, healthy, and happy lives. The exceptions were the nomadic herding peoples of the northwest and northern borderlands, who lived a harsh existence described in the verse, \"in felt tents under the moonlight, the sad sound of the flute,\" and so had to launch raids to rob and plunder.\n\nIn old Europe, things were not as in China, because it history was different from ours. They did not experience an early unification like that carried out in China by the Qin and Han dynasties. The Europeans lived in small domains under local feudal chieftains. Since they lacked broad territories, they could not base their nations on agriculture alone. Hence, in many regions, the premodern Europeans could not depend on the products of the soil for their entire livelihood. Thus, the characteristic pattern of European politics developed from a state of raiding and plundering to aggressive wars among nations. By undertaking long distance trading ventures, the Europeans in the medieval period developed organized handicraft and commercial groups, and all the societies of Europe came to need these organizations. By this means, Western society grew and developed and, in this context, such organizations very naturally became a central need of human group life. Economic needs dictated the main primary purpose of society.\n\nSociological concepts such as \"the social system\" and \"divisions within society\" all developed gradually during the 19th century as more and more problems developed within European society: other examples are \"social movement,\" \"social revolution,\" \"social policy,\" \"social psychology,\" and so on. When problems arose for 19th-century European society, their sociological theorists took this problem as their focus, analyzed it and studied it, and made it into a special branch of learning.\n\nUnder such conditions, the socialism of Marx and Engels thus could arise very naturally. If Marx and Engels had been born in China's agrarian society, it is very possible that they might have turned out like the eminent poet Du Fu, lamenting and composing verses full of pity for the human condition like this:\n\nHow heartbreaking! Spring along the river is about to end.\n\nLeaning on my staffi make my way slowly along the sandy islands overgrown with fragrant plants.\n\nCrazy willow fronds dance in the wind.\n\nDelicate peach blossoms float with the current.\n\nThe falling flowers make the stream flow red.\n\nWithout saying anything I blame the east wind.\n\nAs Western society and the Western economy advanced into modern times, Europe and America developed into societies based on scientific industry and commerce. Thus, all kinds of corporate organizations, interest groups, and trade associations developed. From economies based on exploitation and aggression, the Western countries have developed into economies oriented toward social welfare. National laws set the guidelines for organizations and the organization of society influences national legislation.\n\nIn one main variant of the Western tradition, the political ideology of liberal democracy developed as a reflection of commercial competition in the marketplace. In the other main variant, from the Western emphasis on political economics, the ideology of socialism and of communist dictatorship developed.\n\nWhen our historical Chinese culture came into the modern period, it was just at the time when these Western developments were taking place. China was thrust into these vast contradictory world currents and it was up to the Chinese, through their own efforts, to unify and synthesize them and stand up firmly in their midst.\n\nThe Differentiation of Patriarchal Clan Society\n\nTo explain the social history of our historical Chinese culture from a sociological point of view, some call it a patriarchal clan society, since, in the past, the social structure was based on clans. Stricdy speaking, this is problematic, because a society is an organization put together on the basis of common interest or a common purpose. The patriarchal society of our ancestors was just a representation and symbol tied together by the spirit of the Chinese people as an ethnic group. It did not forget the basic origin of the people, and so it transmitted and perpetuated the virtues of the ancestors and demanded that their descendants in later generations carry forward their greatness and glory.\n\nThus, traditional Chinese society was not an organization founded on collective laws, as Western society was. Nor was it an organization dedicated to some common interest, or to reaching some political or economic goals. All we can say is that the patriarchal system was the expression of the _li_ , the ritual and social norms, that were the heart of the traditional culture. This term, _li_ , has both a seemingly religious character and also a sense of human relatedness. It is a refined expression of the spirit of human civilization that gives equal weight to human nature and to ideal standards. _Li_ emphasizes human nature, and so it honors the natural and slights artificial organizations. _Li_ emphasizes ideal standards, and so it speaks of proper forms of behavior and standards of duty and justice by which to rule human nature and make it conform to the necessary norms of group life. The concept of _li_ is very different from Western society's emphasis on organization.\n\nI think that the highest form of organization in the human world is put together on the basis of the true feelings between people. This is what is called the ultimate expression of both human ideals and human sentiments. Only after this comes faith, or religious belief as an organizing principle. This produces what is called obedience based on reverence. After this come laws and regulations as the basis for organization. At an even lower level than this are groups based on considerations of gain and loss, which use power and coercion to create limits. This is like commerce in the marketplace.\n\nAny form of organization that is not closely based on natural patterns and that goes against human nature and human sentiments is bound to come to ruin. As social history shows, organization based on considerations of gain and loss may be able to endure for a time, but they can never last for an extended period. As an example of a tightly-knit organization based on considerations of gain and loss, nothing surpasses the modernday Communist Party. But if we judge them on the basis of historical patterns, we can be absolutely certain that very soon we will see the time when the Communist Party is on the verge of ruin.\n\nThe basic unit of our historical patriarchal clan society was the family lineage. The clan was made up of linked lineages. The state, with its altars and ancestral shrines, was based on the clans joined together to form the Chinese people as an ethnic group. The imperial altars and ancestral shrines were emblems of the linkage between the human realm and the heavenly spirit. The emperor, who was honored as the Son of Heaven, had to stand in awe of the Will of Heaven, and so he had to respect the altars of soil and grain, the ancestral shrines, and the spirits of the mountains and rivers. For the common people, to not pay respect to the clan and to the clan shrine would be to commit a very serious offense of disrespect, from the point of view that ritual norms were the heart of the law. From the point of view of the traditional culture's thought system, this would be an offense against heaven and an offense against the clan spirits. If this offense could not be expiated, then the offender would have nowhere to pray.\n\nAlthough this was the established rule in terms of the traditional culture's customs, governing rites, and duties, and in the eyes of the national law, this was not the same as the social organization to be found in Western culture and in modern social groups. The ancestral shrines of the period from the Han through the Tang dynasties were later called the shrine halls of the various clans. But this, too, was not a form of social organization: all we can say is that it was connected to the heart of the popular spirit. These clan shrines were close to religious in character and most of the time had no functions in social life. At harvest time, the clan elders would lead the clan members to sacrifice to the ancestor of their own clan.\n\nThough the clan elders had the highest status in the clan, this was not a product of any legal organization: this was just the natural respect rendered to him by people acting from the viewpoint of the ritual norms of the traditional culture. If it happened that any members of the clan did anything that violated the traditional ritual norms and obligations, then the clan elders would call together all the members of the clan, open the doors of the shrine hall, and pay obeisance to the clan ancestors, entreating them to pass judgment according to the clan laws and decide the innocence or guilt of the parties involved in the particular case. The judgment also had to accord with the heavenly pattern, with the national laws, and with human sentiments. This was an arrangement based on accepting and upholding the ritual norms and standards of duty: it did not have the same character as a legal code or an organized system.\n\nThe Qing dynasty followed the practice of the Tang and Song dynasties and established a local government and mutual security system by appointing village chiefs responsible to the higher authorities for the maintenance of order called **_li-zheng, bao-zheng_ , or _sbe-dong;_** these were like the modern-day village chiefs. From Song times on, there were village granaries which were local welfare projects to store up supplies and provide famine relief; later, they were also called \"righteous granaries.\" From Ming times on, there were local schools which carried out popular education in the villages.\n\nIf we trace things back before the unification of China by the Qin and Han dynasties, the relationship between society and politics was even simpler. In the culture and thought of that period, political rule and education were basically not that sharply divided. The idea was that the rulers should be at the same time lords, teachers, and parents to the common people. In spirit, they were still almost preserving the simple concepts of ancient times. These functions were three aspects of a single whole. In the tradition of ritual and social norms and standards of duty and obligation, what was influential in local society was the spontaneous respect for elders and the veneration of the worthy. The terms **_lao-he-gong_** , used in Qin and Han times, was an appellation indicating reverence and respect, not a title representing an official leadership post in society. The term **_san-lao_** , \"three elders,\" found in the ancient classic, **_Zuo Zhuan_** , according to the Fu Qian commentary meant \"the craftsmen's elder, the merchants' elder, and the farmers' elder.\" The ancient emperors treated these three elders with the etiquette due to fathers and elder brothers. In the biography of the emperor Han Gaozu, it is recorded: \"Anyone over fifty who is cultivated and who can lead the masses to do good deeds is to be appointed **_san-lao._** From among the **_san-lao_** of all the villages, one man is to be appointed chief **_san-lao.\"_** The Song dynasty scholar Song Qi said: \"The Qin system was to have a **_san-lao_** in each village to take charge of the education of the people.\" The Han dynasty followed this system.\n\nThus in our historical civilization, it is really hard to find the kind of society that resembles the social organization of the West. The first example of a thought system in China that proposed something like a model social system was the philosophy of Mo Di in the pre-Qin period. After this, the next deliberate construction of a social system was the Zen monastic system that began in the Tang dynasty. The Zen system influenced Chinese history and society during the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, and it also influenced the secret mutual-aid societies which advocated popular revolution against the imperial order. But the Zen monastic system was not the same as the religious societies of the West, nor was it the same as the theological academies in the West that had religious education as their main purpose.\n\nWhat about the organization of the Chinese secret societies? They merged the traditional spirit of righteous resistance against injustice with political activity. It would be correct to say that they were the contemporary revolutionary groups dedicated to restoring justice. If we compare them to social groups in the West, or to vagabond groups, and we trace back their original intent, naturally the Chinese secret societies were very different.\n\nIf we concentrate on sociology and study the issues of social history, there are different standpoints and different concepts. We should adopt a different kind of explanation. We can say that over the past sixty years, we have been subjected to the influence of Western culture and thought, and that this produced the concern with social issues. So the theoretical basis and the tendency in culture and thought of China and the West are quite distinct and different.\n\nBy reflecting on what is proper for the present and considering the lessons of the past, I only want to give an account of the Zen monastic system of the Tang and Song periods and how it influenced the organization of the secret societies in later generations. By doing this, I want to offer to those concerned with social issues some study materials that will let us absorb and synthesize both Eastern and Western culture and advance into the new era.\n\nTHE EARLY BUDDHIST MONASTIC SYSTEM\n\nZen is one of the schools of Buddhism: its teaching is a special transmission outside the scriptures that does not establish any verbal formulations, but rather points directly to the human mind to enable people to see their true nature and become buddhas. Because Zen did not necessarily require written texts, after it was transmitted to China, it became a form of Buddhism with a Chinese cultural style. If some say Zen was a revolutionary school of Buddhism, this is definitely not accurate because Zen did not change anything about Buddhism or introduce any innovations into it. The Zen teachings and the Zen road of cultivating practice did not alter the original face of the Buddha Dharma and were not created in China. The Zen school only took the original Buddhist monastic system transmitted from India and precisely altered it to suit the popular sentiments and customs of Chinese civilization. This initiated a new look in Chinese Buddhism and also influenced the contours of the various strata of the society in the subsequent generations. But, in keeping with the quiet approach taught by Buddha, the Zen system accomplished a great mission within Chinese society, although this took place quiedy without anyone realizing it. The system created by the Chinese Zen school indeed accomplished something extraordinary with regard to Buddhism and, at the same time, established the organizational guidelines for later generations of Chinese society and its various layers.\n\nBefore Shakyamuni left home and began his quest for enlightenment, there were many religious faiths in India already. People who left the conventional world to devote themselves to religious cultivation were all called **_shramanas._** They were like the lofty people in ancient China who shunned the world, the people we Chinese generally call \"recluses,\" or **_yin-shi._** The Chinese recluses were not necessarily free of family ties, but in India, the **_shramanas_** were all people who had left their family and fled the world.\n\nAfter Shakyamuni founded Buddhism, all those who formally left home and became disciples of the Buddha Dharma had to shave off their beards and hair and wear monastic robes; they had left conventional life behind and had no family ties. The men were called _bhikshus_ and the women were called _bhikshunis._ The term \"bhikshu\" has several connotations: for example, \"one who begs,\" \"one who strikes fear into the demons of delusion,\" or \"one who has slain the robbers of affliction.\" They were called \"beggars\" in that they begged for the Dharma from Buddha and begged for food from other people. \"Bhikshu\" also contains the meaning of one able to slay the robbers of affliction or one with the awe-inspiring virtue to make the legions of demons tremble in fear. Thus, the bhikshus who strictly observed the Buddhist regulations generally practiced austerities and resolved upon a regime of purification and diligent effort. Those among them who placed special emphasis on austerities were called _dhuta_ , which means \"ascetics.\"\n\nThe early Buddhist bhikshus followed the Buddhist codes of discipline and also had to cultivate the austere practices of ascetics. Not only did they have to follow a system of cultivating the true nature of mind and, in their conduct, observe all kinds of precepts of discipline, they also settled upon systems regulating various aspects of their individual lives, such as what they should wear, what they should eat, where they should stay, and how they should walk.\n\nAs for clothing, monks and nuns could not own more than three garments. If they had more, then they had to give them away. They were required to collect old scraps of cloth discarded by other people and patch them together into clothes to wear. These were called \"rag garments.\" After Buddhism was transmitted to China, this practice was changed and monks and nuns wore a Chinese-style long robe, patched together from scraps of cloth which the monks obtained by begging. These were called \"patchwork robes.\"\n\nAs for food, monks and nuns could only eat one meal a day or, at the most, one meal in the morning and one at noon. They could not eat after noon. This was because monks and nuns looked upon food and drink only as a way to maintain their lives, as medicine to cure the disease of starvation.\n\nAs for where they should stay, monks and nuns had to be content wherever they were. Whether under the eaves of houses, in the corridors of temples, under the trees, in the fields, or in deserted graveyards, they would spread out the mats they carried with them or a woven straw cushion, sit cross-legged, and pass the day or night there with their minds at ease.\n\nAs for how they should walk, monks and nuns had to go barefoot or wear straw sandals, and walk bareheaded in a dignified manner. In old India, they could carry an umbrella to shield them from the Sun and the rain. When Buddhism came to China, the umbrella was replaced by a straw rainhat. Thus we find the expression in Chinese literature: \"the ascetic in his straw sandals and conical hat.\" Besides this, monks and nuns carried at most a water jug to provide for drinking and washing, a begging bowl to eat from, and also possibly some sutra texts.\n\nWith this kind of austere life, dedicated to purity and diligent effort, Buddhist monks and nuns did all they could to abandon the entanglements of material desires and lived a continuation of the life of primitive mankind. They did this in order to concentrate on seeking enlightenment and to show that they were finished with this physical life and had said goodbye to worldly affairs. Although they still had the intention to benefit the world and help sentient beings, in their daily activities they kept apart from the worldly crowd. It was said that a Buddhist ascetic never spent three nights in the same place in order to avoid growing fond of any material things. In Buddhist terms, this could be called renunciation, and it also could be called inner giving. Buddhist ascetics appeared superficially to be totally selfish, in accord with the doctrine of the classical Chinese philosopher of egoism, Yang Zhu, but at the same time they had the intention of benefiting the whole world in every way they could, in keeping with the philosophy of the classical Chinese philosopher of universal love, Mo Zi.\n\nThere were also some bhikshus who lived together in groups to cultivate the work of the Path. This was called the sangha, which means a group of monks. The one in the group who was qualified to act as the teacher of the whole congregation and lead the sangha was called **_he-shang_** , which means \"master\" or \"teacher.\" In China, the general term for the bhikshus was **_seng_** , \"monk,\" and, by a confusion of terms, the term **_he-shang_** came to be applied to monks in general. Thus **_seng_** and **_he-shung_** came to have the same meaning.\n\nWhen the Buddha Dharma was first transmitted to China in the reign of Emperor Mingdi of the Han dynasty (A.D. 58-75), it was brought in by two eminent monks from India, who are known in Chinese as She-moteng and Zhu Falan. The Han court installed them in the imperial capital, Luoyang, at a place called Baima Si, \"the White Horse Office.\" So in China thereafter, Buddhist temples and monasteries were called by the Chinese terms _si_ and **_yuan._** In fact, _si_ was originally the term for government offices attached to the court, the central government. A notation to the record of Emperor Yuandi in the official History of the Han dynasty says: \"Any place where there was a government office was called a _si.\"_ Examples are such institutions of the central government as the Honglu Si and the Taichang Si.\n\nThe eminent monks from die \"western regions,\" meaning Central Asia and, by extension, India, who came to China during the Han, Wei, Western and Eastern Jin, and Northern and Southern dynasties from the first to the sixth centuries A.D. were not necessarily all ascetics who practiced austerities, but in general they were all bhikshus who adhered stricdy to the precepts of monastic discipline. Because they kept the precepts rigorously and followed the Buddhist monastic system, they lived by begging for food. They depended on the offerings of those who believed in them and accepted them as teachers. But, as the number of Buddhist monks and nuns in China kept increasing, this finally came to be a problem.\n\nIn Indian culture, people had always believed in and respected the **_shramanas._** In central and southern India, the climate was mild and there were many edible wild plants which the **_shramanas_** could gather to satisfy their hunger if their begging did not bring enough food. But in China, it was not that easy to obtain subsistence from nature.\n\nPopular sentiment and customs were far different in China than in India. Except for those who were destitute and had no recourse, and who had sunk to the level of beggars, in China even the recluses obtained their food and clothing by tilling the soil themselves. People who relied on begging to live would be considered lazy or worthless.\n\nThe view of the traditional Chinese culture was that a person's body, including the skin and hair, had been received from his or her parents, and should not be injured. When the bhikshus shaved off their hair and beards, they were committing a major sin of disrespect and a breach of filial piety. The average Chinese would look askance at Buddhist monks for this, and even more so because they begged for food. So such practices were not easy to follow in the Chinese cultural context.\n\nBecause of the reasons cited above, most of the Buddhist monks in China before the Sui-Tang period could only manage to live on the offerings they received from the social elite. At the same time, some of them also had to rely on payments they received for ritual services or other means to support themselves. There were many incidents where such behavior provoked major revulsion against the Buddhist clergy in China. Still, at that time, due to local conditions, it was already the case that Chinese Buddhist monks and nuns could not fully adhere to the original Buddhist monastic rules. Some had already built temples and gathered together to live in groups. There were only a few who concentrated on cultivating practice and wholeheartedly sought enlightenment, dwelling in solitude in wilderness retreats, and living the life of **_aranyakas_** , the Indian term for those who dwelt in pure religious retreat. The rest had to change the forms of Buddhist monastic life in order to be able to adapt to Chinese conditions.\n\nTHE ORIGIN OF THE ZEN MONASTIC SYSTEM\n\nTraditionally, the Zen school began in China when the great teacher Bodhidharma came here in the early sixth century, during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty, and transmitted the Zen Dharma Gate of the Buddha Mind-Seal.\n\nAt that time, there were not many monks who accepted Zen. According to the classic Zen biographical collection, **_Jingde Chuan Deng Lu_** , there were only three of four people who formally took Bodhidharma as their teacher and got the Dharma from him. Of them, it was Shenguang who received Bodhidharma's robe and bowl, accepted the mind-seal, and so became the Second Patriarch of Zen in China. Although the number of people who studied Zen gradually increased over the generations, there was a single line of transmission of the position of Zen patriarch. This position was eventually passed to the Sixth Patriarch, Huineng, who spread the Zen path widely from Caoqi in Guangdong Province. Students gathered there from all over.\n\nWith the Sixth Patriarch, we can say that the Zen school was like the Sun rising in the east, shining forth into the distance. The transmission of the robe and bowl stopped with the Sixth Patriarch. Many disciples received the Dharma from the Sixth Patriarch, and they spread it far and wide. Two branches of Zen developed from two of the Sixth Patriarch's leading disciples: Zen master Nanyue Huairang in Hunan Province and Zen master Qingyuan Xingsi in Jiangxi Province. The Qingyuan branch began to show signs of decline after a few generations, and the Xingsi branch carried on the lineage of the Path alone.\n\nLater, there appeared Zen master Mazu Daoyi, who propagated the Zen message on a wide scale. He was called Mazu, \"Ancestor Ma,\" because his lay surname was Ma. Mazu produced some seventy-two enlightened teachers from among his disciples who could function as Zen adepts. A few of them were truly outstanding, especially Zen master Baizhang Huaihai of Hongzhou in Jiangxi Province. It was Mazu and Baizhang, teacher and pupil, who changed the Chinese Buddhist monastic system and inaugurated the new Zen monastic system. It was particularly through the efforts of Baizhang that the guidelines for the new monastic system were formalized and passed down, so traditionally Baizhang has been called the founder of the Zen monastic system. According to what is recorded in the **_Chanmen Zhengtong:_** \"In the ninth year of the Yuanhe period [A.D. 814], Zen master Baizhang Huaihai first established rules for the Zen communities throughout China. These were called the Pure Rules.\"\n\nIn fact, Baizhang lived in the middle years of the Tang dynasty, in the eighth and ninth centuries, whereas Buddhism had formally entered China in the Han, Wei, and Jin dynasty periods, the first through the early fifth centuries, and already by Baizhang's time it had undergone four or five centuries of evolution. Buddhism had been assimilated with Chinese culture and had been influenced by Chinese popular sentiments and the customs of Chinese society. Its monastic system had gradually changed during this period, as was logical and inevitable under the circumstances. Before Baizhang, the monk Fayun, who lived in the Liang dynasty period in first half of the sixth century and dwelt at Guangxiao Temple, had already received an imperial order to establish a system of pure rules. But Fayun did not have the clear vision and daring of Baizhang to boldly and decisively change the monastic regulations and establish a new set of guidelines. And even after Baizhang, the system of monastic regulations was still not fully perfected. It was possible to overstep the limits of the Zen monastic regulations, and so, to add to the authority of the system, it was declared that it was Zen master Baizhang himself who had constructed the Zen monastic system.\n\nBefore Baizhang, the influence of the Zen school was widespread mostly in the region south of the Yangzi River. The regions where it flourished most were the provinces of Guangdong, Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Fujian, Jiangsu, and Sichuan. It had not yet been able to make its influence felt to any great extent in the Central Plain of northern China, which was at that time still the cultural and economic heart of the Chinese Empire. In the region north and south of the Yellow River, the style of Buddhism that had been transmitted to China in the early period still remained. There were still great numbers of devotees of schools of Buddhism other than Zen, as well as Dharma teachers who devoted themselves to mastering Buddhist theory and to lecturing on the sutras and shastras, who were called \"monks learned in Buddhist theory.\" Generally, the people who zealously studied the theories of the sutras and shastras were either too accommodating or too pedantic. Even if they themselves were not tumbling in the currents of the times, if anyone had publicly proposed changing the old rules, they naturally would have gotten very angry. So when Baizhang first established the new rules for the Zen communities, he was reviled as a monk who was breaking the precepts. This, too, was inevitable.\n\nZen masters like Mazu and Baizhang were all men of bold spirit and penetrating wisdom, with the outstanding brilliance necessary to take charge of the contemporary world. They took up the responsibilities of the mind-seal of instant enlightenment. When Baizhang courageously reformed the monastic regulations, this was certainly due to his surpassing perception of truth and **_samadhi_** power. It was also a proper adaptive response to the contemporary situation.\n\nAfter Baizhang, in the late Tang and Five Dynasties periods of the ninth and tenth centuries, the Five Houses of Zen were established. The system of guidelines for Zen monks in the main still followed Baizhang's **_Pure Rules_** for the Zen communities. There were some minor differences among the various Zen communities, however, in their methods of teaching and their prescribed forms of behavior due to differences in the people, the places, and the times. These cannot be counted as substantive differences: they were just different forms of behavior and teaching methods, which can be termed the family styles of the various Zen schools. Thus, in the Zen communities of later generations, each Zen temple had its own particular family style.\n\nThis was the pattern up through the late Qing and early Republican periods. Stricdy speaking, the guidelines handed down in the various Zen temples had already undergone centuries of changes and, naturally, they were not totally in accord with the old views from the time of Zen master Baizhang. Throughout the various regions of China, every temple had its own different family style and set of rules and guidelines. But if we trace back to the source of these developments, no matter how much these rules and guidelines had changed in form, when we get back to the basic source, we can reach the following conclusion:\n\nThe characteristic style of the Zen communities has its source in the development of the Zen monastic system. The Zen monastic system and its regulations are a development that sprang from the Buddhist Vinaya, the precepts of discipline. The Buddhist precepts of discipline were devised by Shakyamuni Buddha. They were established in order to regulate the collective life of Buddhist monks and nuns and enable them to cultivate and realize the essence of body and mind. The Buddhist precepts have the spirit and function of the behavioral norms found in Chinese culture in the _Book of Rites_ , of law, and of societal guidelines.\n\nTHE ZEN MONASTIC SYSTEM ITS REGULATIONS AND GUIDELINES\n\nIn Chinese Buddhism, the term _cong-lin_ was originally a special term for the communities of Zen monks, equivalent to what the Buddhist sutras call \"the congregation of those cultivating practice\" or \"the pure ocean assembly.\" _Cong-tin_ cannot mean one particular temple or the guidelines of one particular temple. _Cong-lin_ refers to Zen temples, not Buddhist temples in general. However, in the Ming and Qing periods in some areas, temples that were not necessarily Zen temples also adopted this appellation, and called themselves _cong-tin_ temples; there was no strict distinction made.\n\nThe Abbot\n\nThe abbot was in charge of all temple activities: teaching, administration, rules and discipline, and preaching to the laiety. In his power over the temple economy and the administration of its wealth, he was the equivalent to the head of state in a government, or to the leader of a society.\n\nThe abbot's dwelling place in the temple was called the _fang-zhang_ , which means \"ten foot square room.\" This is derived from the **_Vimalakirti Sutra_** , which says that though Vimalakirti's room was only ten feet square, it could hold a vast assembly of enlightened beings. Because of this, it was also common to call the abbot of the temple himself the **_fang-zhang._** The abbot was also called the **_zhu-cbi_** , which literally means \"dwelling in and upholding.\" This was based on the sutras' sense of dwelling in and upholding the true Dharma.\n\nThe **_Chanyuan Qinggui Pure Rules of the Zen Gardens_** calls the abbot \"the venerable adept who upholds [the True Dharma],\" saying: \"He takes the place of Buddha in spreading the teaching, and takes charge of making the teaching known, so this is called transmitting the Dharma. In the area where he is, he continues the Buddha's life of wisdom, and so he is called 'the one who dwells in and upholds [the True Dharma].' When [the abbot] first turns the Wheel of the Dharma [by teaching publicly], it is called 'appearing in the world.' This has a basis in what he received from his teacher, so it is called 'transmitting the lamp.'\"\n\n**_The Selection of the Abbot_**\n\nThe abbot was nominated by the congregation of monks and had to meet several conditions. First, he had to be a disciple of the Zen school who had received the Dharma from his teacher. He had to have genuine cultivation of practice and perception of truth and be qualified to be the teacher and guide of the congregation. His demeanor had be upright, correct, and without defects. Second, his virtue and his genuineness had to be recognized by the community and he had to be endorsed by the elders and abbots of other Zen communities. Third, his selection as abbot required the consent of the central or local government authorities.\n\nIf the prospective abbot met the condition of enjoying the general confidence of the community, he underwent a solemn ceremony and, only then, was elevated to the position of abbot. If his own teacher was still alive at his installation ceremony, there were various other procedures known as \"handing on the Dharma,\" \"succeeding to the Dharma,\" \"entering the temple,\" \"viewing the credentials,\" and so on, which were considered to complete the installation process. This corresponded to the modern-day transfer of the teaching, or transfer of office.\n\n**_The Retiring Former Abbot_**\n\nWhen the former abbot retired, he was known as the \"retired old master.\" He lived at leisure and was no longer consulted about affairs. Sometimes he went into seclusion to devote himself to cultivating practice. Most retired abbots were already greatly respected for their lofty accomplishments and had attained perfection in their cultivation of practice and their virtuous conduct. The retired abbot and the new abbot who was taking over the position and the teaching duties viewed each other as father and son. The new abbot was required to treat the retired abbot with the utmost respect and care for him and serve him to the best of his abilities until he died, and do all he could to support him, as would a filial son. Otherwise, the new abbot could be reproached by the elders of the other Zen communities and by his own congregation and, in extreme cases, punished for violating the **_Pure Rules._** In Tang and Song times, most retired abbots were detached and aloof from worldly concerns and would never do anything that smacked of being eager to hold on to their previous position.\n\n**_The Relationship Between the Abbot and the Government_**\n\nIn the past in Chinese politics, although there were always controversies down through the ages about the system by which to regulate Buddhist and Taoist institutions, due to the great tolerance of Chinese culture, the ultimate decision was always to treat Buddhist and Taoist monks and nuns with the courtesy due to religious teachers. When Buddhist and Taoist monks had audiences with the emperor, they did not have to kneel, but only to join their hands and salute.\n\nDuring the Eastern Han dynasty (A.D. 25-219), Buddhist monks and nuns were under the jurisdiction of the government bureau known as the Honglu Si. Between the Han and Tang periods, such short-lived regimes as the Later Qin, Qi, and Liang dynasties in the fifth and sixth centuries appointed officials known as the **_da-seng-zheng_** and **_da-seng-totig_** (roughly: \"general supervisor of monks\") to control the Buddhist clergy.\n\nThe Tang dynasty changed this and established the Bureau of Sacrifice to take charge of such matters as issuing credentials to all the Buddhist and Taoist monks and nuns in the empire. Government departments like the Bureau of Sacrifice and the Supervisor of Monks were equivalent to the modern Nationalist Chinese government's Office of Religion. In the Tang dynasty, the Bureau of Sacrifice was under the Bureau of Rites. The **_Tang Huiyao [Collection of Essential Documents of the Tang Dynasty]_** says: \"On the fifteenth day of the fifth month of the first year of the Yanzai era (A.D. 694), an imperial edict put all the Buddhist monks and nuns in the empire under the control of the Bureau of Sacrifice.\" By this, the registration of all the Buddhist monks and nuns in China was put under the control of the Bureau of Sacrifice, and special registers were established for registering monks and nuns.\n\nIn the second year of the Yuanhe period, 807, in the reign of Emperor Xianzong, the office of **_seng-lu_** , \"registrar of monks,\" was established for the left and right divisions of the imperial capital of Chang-an. This corresponded to earlier official positions established to take charge of the Buddhist clergy, such as the Later Qin dynasty's **_seng-zheng_** , \"corrector of monks,\" the Later Wei dynasty's **_shamen-tong_** , \"general controller of monks,\" and the Southern Qi dynasty's **_jingyi seng-guan_** , \"capital monk-officer.\" The Tang court filled this position by selecting an eminent monk of great virtue, learning, and cultivation, and summoning him to the capital to serve as a monk-official to take charge of supervising all the Buddhist and Taoist monks and nuns in the empire.\n\nWhen the Mongols ruled China during the Yuan dynasty (1279-1366), they established regional governments. These took charge of Chinese Buddhist clergy and laiety and also the Tibetan lamas, whom the Mongol rulers brought to China and patronized, as well as border affairs and so on.\n\nDuring the Hongwu era (1366-1398), the reign of the founder of the Ming dynasty, the government established an Office for Monks, **_seng-lu-si_** , in the capital and, subordinate to it, ** _seng-gnng-si_** , Offices for the Control of Monks in each province, as well as Offices for the Correction of Monks, **_seng-zheng-si_** , in each prefecture. These tides were continued during the Qing period.\n\nOrdination certificates, **_du-die_** , were the credentials issued by the government to Buddhist monks and nuns which officially recognized their status. They were similar to the modern-day identity documents. In the Tang dynasty, these were also called **_ci-bu-die_** , \"certificates of the Bureau of Sacrifice,\" and they were issued by that bureau. The ordination certificates for the Taoist clergy were also called **_lu._**\n\nAlthough the abbots of Zen temples were chosen by the congregation of monks, it was also necessary for the imperial court or the local government officials to concur in the appointment. If an abbot was guilty of any lapse, the government could dismiss him from office. In extreme cases, it could even revoke his ordination certificate and order that he be returned to layman's status, to be subject to the control of the government's law like any ordinary commoner.\n\nThis sort of system continued from the Tang dynasty up through the Qing dynasty, when it gradually changed its character and was no longer very strict. In spirit, the Qing dynasty, with its Manchu ruling elite, represented the rule of an alien people over China, and this slackening of regulations over Buddhism had its own political function.\n\nThough political authority in China through the ages did not have constitutional guarantees of the freedom of religious belief as in modern states, it did always tolerate freedom of religious belief. The measures the government adopted in the past toward Buddhism and Taoism certainly did not embody a policy of strict control, but only a supervision of the orderliness of Buddhist and Taoist institutions.\n\n_**The Duties Carried Out by the Abbot**_\n\nWhile the abbot occupied his position, he was the chief of the entire temple. He chose monks from among the congregation to take charge of various duties, but this was called \"inviting them to take up the post,\" not assigning them. This was as if to say the abbot was politely extending an invitation, not that he was commanding particular monks to undertake the duties of the post. Though each responsible duty-holder was appointed by the abbot, once his appointment was decided, it was up to him to carry out his responsibilities himself and manage things according to the common interest. He could not show favoritism, even to the abbot. Because these monks enjoyed the highest trust and respect of the congregation, they had to exert themselves to the limit of their abilities and do everything for the sake of the permanent endowment of the temple: only this would be meritorious conduct on their part.\n\n**_Chanjf-zhu_** , \"permanent abode,\" which in a narrow sense referred to the temple property, was a term that referred to the temple as a whole, derived from the phrase in the sutra, \"a permanent abode for the Buddha Dharma.\" In reaching a decision on any matter that pertained to the temple as a whole and its congregation, the abbot had to convene all the monks in managerial posts to pass judgment on it. The abbot could not act alone according to his own opinion. At the very least, the responsible elders of the two echelons of monks or a small number of the monks with important managerial posts had to participate in the decision for it to be valid. Thus, while in his post, the abbot was not like the chief in an autocratic government. Rather, he was like the honored teacher of the whole body of disciples in China's old-style educational institutions. Because his most important duty was to guide the cultivation of practice by the congregation of the whole temple and to supervise their character and conduct, in this area, he had supreme authority and a feeling of unlimited responsibility.\n\nThus, in the Zen monasteries of the past, there were some abbots who never asked about the mundane affairs of the institution and considered that there were already people in charge of all such supervisory responsibilities and it was not necessary to oversee them further. These abbots thought that their principal duties were to work hard at cultivating practice, to expound the Dharma as the occasion arose, to teach by personal example, and to make sure that their students did not stray from the path.\n\n_The Abbot's Appointment of Leaders for the Two Echelons of Monks_\n\nOnce the abbot assumed his post, he had to select overseer monks for the entire temple. In Baizhang's classic guidelines, these overseer monks were called **_zhi-shi_** , \"those in charge of affairs.\" The classic guidelines called the leaders of the echelons of monks **_tou-shou_** , \"head monks.\" To fill these supervisory posts, the abbot had to select from the congregation those monks whose abilities were up to the task and who were sufficiently respected and trusted by the whole congregation. When abbot was about to publish the roster of the various monks to whom responsible positions were being assigned, first he had to obtain their consent to the appointments. Then he would write their names and positions on a signboard (like a modern-day signboard for public announcements) and hang it up. Then everyone in the congregation had to follow his decisions. These signboards had to be posted every year on the fifteenth day of the first or seventh lunar month. A few days before the abbot invited monks to take up these posts, he would prepare refreshments in his quarters and order his attendant to invite the monks in question to have tea with him. After the abbot had extended the invitations to take up certain posts to them face to face and obtained their consent, he would inscribe their names and posts on the signboard and post it for the whole congregation to see.\n\nLater, on the day they were to take up their posts, the abbot's appointees were escorted first to the eating hall for the noon meal, where they took their seats and were served in their order of rank. After the meal, they circumambulated the buddha-image and were escorted to the great shrine where, arrayed according to rank, they paid homage to the Buddha and were installed in their posts. After the evening recitation, each of the newly appointed supervisory monks went to the abbot's quarters to pay homage and report for duty. The abbot gave them instructions and admonished them to devote themselves to their duties and to obey the _Pure Rules._ After withdrawing from the abbot's quarters, they went back to the rooms of the senior holders of the supervisory posts and bowed to them: this was called \"making the rounds of the rooms.\" (This term will be discussed further in the section on the code of discipline.)\n\nThis, then, was the simple procedure for inviting monks to take up supervisory posts. When the abbot invited monks to take up these posts, he would sometimes invite two monks to fill the same post so they could assist each other. Sometimes he even invited several monks to a single post. There were also cases of choosing supervisory monks by lot. Even though monks were appointed to supervisory posts by the abbot, this was not like a hierarchic bureaucratic organization. All the supervisory monks were equal in rank. We can say that there was a circular relationship among them, not relationships of superiors and inferiors, or vertical and horizontal ties of subordination. Toward the abbot they had die respect of disciples for their teacher, but not the rank-consciousness of subordinates for their superior.\n\n**_The Abbot's Post According to the Old_** Pure Rules **_Fell Subject to Six Events_**\n\n1) The Abbot's Daily Duties (which the old version of the **_Pure Rules_** called the abbot's daily functions)\n\n[Teaching and Expounding the Dharma]:\n\n**_Shang-tang_** , \"going up to the hall\" to preach to the assembled monks.\n\n**_Ye-can_** , \"evening meetings\" with select groups of students.\n\n**_Xiao-can_** , \"small gatherings\" with select groups of students.\n\n**_Gao-xiang_** , \"announcing offerings of incense.\"\n\n**_Pu-shuo_** , \"general talks\" on the Dharma, given to audiences of all comers.\n\n**_Ru-shi_** , \"entering the room,\" private lessons given to advanced students in the abbot's quarters.\n\n[Overseeing Temple Personnel]:\n\n**_Nian-jing_** , \"reciting the scriptures.\"\n\n**_Xun-liao_** , \"visiting the rooms\" of the elderly monks.\n\n**_Su-zhong_** , \"calling the congregation to order.\" Instructing the novices. Giving general talks to the temple workmen.\n\n[Other Duties of Ordinary Administration]:\n\nAccepting the Dharma Robe.\n\nAttending on the venerable ones, the elderly monks.\n\nResponding to the invitations of donors to appear at the vegetarian feasts they sponsored for the monks, and preaching the Dharma.\n\nAccepting offerings from Dharma successors.\n\nAdhering to the testament of the Dharma teacher.\n\n2) The Procedure for Inviting a New Abbot\n\nA special emissary was dispatched and the new abbot accepted the invitation. Having accepted the invitation, the new abbot went up to the teacher's seat at his former temple to announce he was leaving. The emissary presented offerings of food for him. At the temple gate, there was a reception for the new abbot and the special emissary.\n\n3) Entering the Temple and Viewing the Credentials\n\nAt the temple gate, there was a vegetarian feast for the new abbot, who formally opened the teaching hall and offered salutation to the Emperor. Tea and broth were served to the new abbot at the temple gate. The evening that he entered the temple, the new abbot held a small gathering for the leading monks. He preached to the patrons of the temple, and he also extended invitations to the two echelons of monks and gave them thanks. Items of daily use were distributed. The new abbot received meritorious offerings from the two echelons of monks.\n\n4) The Abbot's Retirement\n\n5) The Abbot's Death\n\nThe abbot's corpse was placed in a funerary urn. An overseer of the funeral and monks to take charge of the funeral arrangements were appointed. The monks put on mourning clothes. There were ceremonies to Buddha. The funerary urn was moved. The portrait of the deceased abbot was displayed and there was a wake. There was a small gathering to mourn the abbot, to chant the scriptures, and to make ritual offerings of tea and broth. The corpse was taken out, the portrait displayed, and offerings were made. The corpse was cremated and the remains were interred in a stupa.\n\nThe last testament of the deceased was read. There was a reception for the overseer of the funeral and those who had taken charge of the funeral arrangements. (Either the whole body or the relics remaining after the cremation could be interred in the stupa, according to conditions.)\n\n6) Proposals for the Selection of a New Abbot\n\nThe Two Echelons of Monks\n\nThe heads of the two echelons of monks were appointed by the abbot. The two echelons of monks were somewhat comparable to the system in the ancient imperial courts, where the officials were divided into a civil echelon and a military echelon. Thus the two groups of monks were called the two echelons.\n\nAccording to the old **_Pure Rules_** , these were the various posts that went with the two echelons of monks:\n\n**The heads of the western echelon:**\n\nThe head monk, **_shou-cuo;_**\n\nThe head of the western hall, **_xi-tang;_**\n\nThe chief of the hall, **_tang-zhu;_**\n\nThe secretary, **_shu-ji;_**\n\nThe overseer of the scriptures, **_zhi-zang;_**\n\nThe study leader, **_can-tou;_**\n\nThe attendant of the images of the Zen patriarchs, **_zu-shi;_**\n\nThe monk in charge of burning incense, **_shao-xiang;_**\n\nThe recorder, **_ji-lu;_**\n\nThe attendant of the image of Manjushri, **_sheng-seng-shi._**\n\n**The duty posts of the western echelon:**\n\nThe monk in charge of the buddha-shrine, **_dian-zhu;_**\n\nHead of the residential quarters, **_liao-yuan;_**\n\nMonk in charge of ringing the bell, **_zhong-tou;_**\n\nMonk in charge of beating the drum, **_gu-tou;_**\n\nMonk in charge of the seal room, **_yin-fang;_**\n\nNight watchman, **_ye-xun;_**\n\nMonk in charge of communal discipline, **_qing-yuan;_**\n\nMonk in charge of incense and lamps, **_xiang-deng;_**\n\nMonk in charge of water, **_si-shui;_**\n\nMonks in charge of the elderly monks, **_qi-su;_**\n\nMonk in charge of the retired monks' quarters, **_xian-zhu;_**\n\nMonk to care for the sick, **_hu-bing;_**\n\nSweepers, **_da-sao;_**\n\nWorkmen, **_hang-zhe;_**\n\nLatrine orderlies, **_jing-tou._**\n\n**The heads of the eastern echelon:**\n\nGeneral supervisor of the temple, **_du-jian-si;_**\n\nSupervisor of the halls, **_jinn-yuan;_**\n\nDuty distributor, **_wei-na;_**\n\nAssistant supervisor of the temple, **_fusi;_**\n\nHead of the storehouses, **_ku-tou;_**\n\nSupervisor of the congregation, **_zhi-zhong;_**\n\nMonk in charge of visitors, **_zbi-ke;_**\n\nVisitors' attendants, **_zhao-ke;_**\n\nThe supervisor of the congregation, **_yue-zhong;._**\n\nQuartermaster, **_dian-cuo;_**\n\nThe harvest evaluator, **_zhi-sui;_**\n\nThe overseer of the baths, **_zhi-yu;_**\n\nThe supervisor of the harvest, **_jian-shou;_**\n\nThe monk in charge of robes and bowls, **_yi-ben;_**\n\nThe monk in charge of medicine, **_yao-zhu;_**\n\nThe abbot's personal attendants, **_shi-zhe;_**\n\nThe overseer of the temple's fields, **_zhuang-zbu._**\n\n**The duty posts of the eastern echelon:**\n\nChief of teaching the laity, **_bua-zhu;_**\n\nSenior supervisor of the monks' quarters, **_liao-yuan;_**\n\nChief supervisor of the monks' quarters, **_liao-zbu_** , and his assistant, **_fu-liao;_**\n\nThe chief of the life-prolonging hall (equivalent to the modern-day nirvana hall for mortally ill monks), **_yuan-shou-tang-zhu;_**\n\nThe monk in charge of the latrines, **_jing-tou;_**\n\nThe monk in charge of rice, **_mi-tou;_**\n\nThe monk in charge of cooked food, **_fan-tou;_**\n\nThe monk in charge of tea, **_cha-tou;_**\n\nThe monk in charge of the garden, **_yuan-tou;_**\n\nThe monk in charge of the grinding mill, **_mo-tou;_**\n\nThe monk in charge of water, **_shui-tou;_**\n\nThe monk in charge of ashes, **_hui-tou;_**\n\nThe monk in charge of vegetables, **_cai-tou;_**\n\nThe monk in charge of firewood, **_chai-tou._**\n\nThe Responsible Posts in a Zen Temple\n\nThere were ten categories of responsible posts in a Zen temple: administration, economy and finances, supervisory functions, ministering and external functions, teaching functions, organizational and disciplinary functions, attendance on the abbot, general affairs, \"pure and essential\" posts, and general labor. Each had its own characteristic duties.\n\n**Temple administration:** There might be one temple supervisor, _jian-yuan_ , or several. They were in charge of administering all the internal and external affairs of the whole temple. In the old system, this post was called the temple chief, _si-zhu._ Along with the duty distributor, _wei-na_ , and the head monk, _shou-cuo_ , the temple chief held one of the three chief posts in a Zen temple, termed the _san-gang._\n\nThe colloquial term for the temple supervisor was _danjjjia-shi_ , \"the teacher in charge,\" \"the managing teacher,\" \"the boss.\" If there were two of them, they were called the inner and the outer teachers in charge. If there were three or more, they were ranked by number. They divided up the dunes of managing internal and external affairs, revenues, accounting, and so on. Most of the smaller Zen temples had only one monk in this post.\n\nThere were one or more assistant temple supervisors, or _fit-si._ They were like the assistant managers of the temple, who took part in the oversight of the temple affairs and took charge of the finances and the revenues of the temple properties. In the old system, the assistant temple supervisor had to make an account of expenditures every ten days, and record it in a ledger. This was called the _xun-dan_ , the ten day account.\n\n**Economy and finances:** There might be one or more heads of the storehouses, _ku-tou._ In the old system, this was one of the assistant administrator's tides. Another name for this post was _du-cang_ , supervisor of the storehouses. He was in charge of expenditures and revenues, and in charge of storing up all the necessary supplies and food, like a modern-day warehouse manager. Colloquially, this monk was called the \"storehouse master.\" He was responsible for maintaining everything in the temple store houses, like food and clothing and so on, in good condition and keeping them clean and dry.\n\nThe _Pure Rules_ say: \"[The abbot] must select someone with intelligence who can read and write and do arithmetic, and who is very frugal and diligent to take charge of the temple storehouses.\" It also says: \"In the old rules the assistant temple supervisor was called the storehouse head. These days the temples refer to him as the keeper of the treasure chest, and in the north this post is called [the keeper of the temple] wealth. All these are [different names for] the same post.\"\n\n**Supervisory functions:** In each temple there was a single general supervisor, _du-jian._ In the old system, this was called the _du-si_ , the general overseer of the temple, and also the _du-guan_ , the general manager. His responsibility was to oversee the temple's administration, its economic affairs, and its personnel matters. Generally, the monk who filled this post was appointed by the previous temple supervisor. In later generations, this became a kind of sinecure post that was similar to a nominal promotion but also like a demotion in the government. In the old system, this post was above the temple supervisor, and it was called general supervisor because it called for the overall supervision of the temple. Other names for this post were _du-zong_ and _du-shou._\n\n**Ministering and external functions:** Each temple had one or possibly two or three monks in charge of visitors, _zhi-ke._ In the old system, these were called by such general terms as registrar of visitors, _dian-ke_ , monk in charge of the baths, _zhi-yu_ , monk in charge of the storehouses, _zhi-ku_ , or monk in charge of the shrine, _zhi-dian._ They were in charge of receiving and entertaining outside visitors, and the duties involved in maintaining relationships with other institutions. They also undertook the functions of chanting the scriptures and performing rituals for people. If there were two monks in this position, they were called the chief _zhi-ke_ and the subordinate _zhi-ke._ Thus the monks in charge of visitors also could be the equivalent of the outside manager, or the assistant temple supervisor. Every evening, they made a general account of the day's receipts received from outside donors and turned this over to the temple storehouse. If there was an excess of funds in the temple storehouse, it was handed over to the abbot for him to take care of. These days, it would be deposited in a bank.\n\nFor these posts, it was necessary for the abbot to choose monks who were possessed of both virtue and authority. Often monks who concentrated on cultivation of practice and regulating their conduct declined these posts with their heavy involvement in financial affairs. But if it happened that there were no other suitable people from which the abbot could choose, these reluctant candidates had to resolve to take on these responsibilities, for the sake of the permanent endowment. This was like leaping into a fiery pit for the sake of the community.\n\nUnder the monk in charge of visitors, there were two or more monks to attend to visitors, _zhao-ke._ In the old system, these were called visitors' attendants. Their duty was to assist the monk in charge of visitors and obey his commands. They were chosen from among the young novices for their intelligence and quick wits.\n\n**Teaching functions:** The head monk, _shou-cuo_ , also called the _yuan-etto_ , \"first seat,\" in the old system, was the chief of the monks. He was one of the three top monks, along with the temple supervisor and the duty distributor. He assisted the abbot in preaching the Dharma. Generally this post was assigned to a monk recognized as a man of knowledge throughout the Zen communities or to a monk chosen from among the abbot's disciples for his deep learning. At the same time, he could be the abbot's designated successor. He was permitted to hold the teacher's whisk, take the abbot's place on the teacher's seat, and give instructions to the whole congregation. In the old system, five of the leading monks were considered qualified to hold the teacher's whisk, symbolic of the authority to teach: the head monk, the head monk of the front hall, the head monk of the rear hall, the keeper of the canon, and the secretary.\n\nFor the posts of chief of the hall, _tang-zhu_ , chief of the rear hall, _hou-tang_ , and chief of the west hall, _xi-tang_ , the abbot could appoint one or more monks.\n\nIn the old system, chief of the hall was a general term, and there were various monks in charge of the various halls, with corresponding titles. Though they were called _tang-zhu_ , this was not the same as the later use of the term to designate only the chief of the meditation hall. Here I am using the term only to refer to the _tang-zhu_ who was in charge of the meditation hall and the cultivation of practice that went on there. In the old system, the abbot was also sometimes called the \"master of the hall.\" The chief of the hall was the leader of the meditation hall, and took charge of the congregation's cultivation of practice. At the same time, he could also take the abbot's place in preaching the Dharma. Thus, in later generations the term \"small gathering\" was also given to occasions when the chief of the hall explained the Dharma. The monk chosen to be chief of the hall had to be someone whose cultivation of practice was genuine and who had real knowledge.\n\nIn the system in recent times, the chief of the hall would be promoted to chief of the rear hall, and the chief of the rear hall would be promoted to chief of the west hall, and the chief of the west hall would be promoted to head monk. The head monk could substitute for the abbot in such duties as presiding at the Buddha-shrine, eating in the monks' hall, and preaching the Dharma. When the chiefs of the halls got old and retired from their posts, they were no longer consulted on temple affairs.\n\nWithin the meditation hall there were several posts, like monk in charge of incense, _jian-xiang_ , the supervisor of the congregation, _yue-zhong_ , and the monk in charge of the sitting mats, known variously as _dan-tou, liao-zhang_ , or _xi-tou._\n\nEach temple had one or more secretaries, _shu-ji._ They maintained the written records of the temple and were like the secretaries in government offices. They were in charge of all the written documents related to temple affairs. In the old system, the secretaries wrote on Buddhist matters and often used the parallel line literary style. In later generations, the post of secretary became the term for the monks who wrote out the abbot's letters and made records of his Dharma talks. They were like the chroniclers in the entourage of the old Chinese emperors who recorded the words and deeds of the rulers. The temple secretary recorded the abbot's Dharma talks and wrote accounts of his sayings and doings. Thus for this post, it was necessary to choose monks who were proficient in the written word.\n\nSometimes too, the secretary's post was made an honorary one and was awarded to monks in the congregation who had practiced hard for many years so they could be given private quarters. From the post of secretary, a monk could be promoted to chief of the hall. In the old system, another term for the secretary was _ji-shi._\n\n**Organizational and disciplinary functions:** The duty distributor, _wei-na_ , was one of the three major officers of the whole temple. He was ranked as one of the top leaders, along with the temple supervisor and the head monk. These three were called the _sun-gang_ , i.e. the three _gang, gang_ has the meaning of guide and upholder. The three _gang_ were the ones who acted as guiding leaders and upholders of discipline in the temple.\n\nIn Zen temples and Vinaya temples, the duty distributor was called _wei-na_ , in temples devoted to scriptural studies, the term used was _du-wei-na._ In the old system, other terms for the same function were _ci-di_ , \"ordi-nator,\" _zhi-shi_ , \"supervisor,\" _yue-zbong_ , \"supervisor of the congregation,\" _shi-hu_ , \"temple protector,\" and so on. In fact, the term _wei-na_ comes from a term in the vinaya section of the Buddhist canon. In _The Brief History of the Sangha_ , it says: \"In the eastern and western regions, the supervisory monk is called the _karmadana._ This is translated [into Chinese] as _zhi-shi_ and also as _yue-zhong_ , meaning the one who is in charge of the affairs of the monks and keeps the congregation happy.\"\n\nIn general, whenever the monks chanted sutras or recited the vinaya or performed any rituals, they were led by the duty distributor. If the monks broke the precepts of discipline, or offended against the Zen _Pure Rules_ , these were enforced by the duty distributor by such measures as expulsion from the community. (The precepts of discipline call this being expelled; the Zen technical term is being made to move. These are both expressions for being driven out of the temple.)\n\nAnother term for duty distributor, _wei-na_ , was _tang-si_ , \"controller of hall.\" Sometimes this term, _tang-si_ , was used directly to mean the duty distributor's quarters, or his position. There was also another term for both of these meanings: _ji-wang-liao_ , \"the controller's room.\"\n\n**The abbot's attendants:** The abbot could have several attendants who stayed near him and carried out errands on which he sent them. In the old system, there were sometimes five and sometimes six attendants. When there were five attendants, there was an attendant in charge of incense, one in charge of written documents, one in charge of receiving guests, one in charge of medicines, and one in charge of robes. When there were six, there was one in charge of the towels and washbasin, one in charge of receiving guests, one in charge of written documents, one in charge of the robe and bowl, one in charge of tea and rice, and one for carrying out other specific tasks. In later generations, the attendant in charge of the abbot's robe and bowl was the general overseer of the abbot's quarters. The attendant in charge of written documents was later termed the attendant for writing down the abbot's teachings, and he was responsible for recording and collecting the abbot's words of instruction and posting them on signboards for the congregation to see.\n\nThe monks who were the abbot's attendants were like a retinue, and were usually selected from among the abbot's closest disciples. It was a very honorable post.\n\nThe Buddhist sutras say that attendants should have eight qualities: their roots of faith must be solid and strong; they must be intent on advancing in the Path; they must be free of physical illness; they must make energetic progress; they must be mindful; they must not be arrogant; they must be able to concentrate; and they must be sufficiently learned. In sum, to be worthy of the post, the abbot's attendants had to be ready to forget their bodies for the sake of the Dharma, be rigorous in both knowledge and practice, and not spurn the milk of the Dharma bestowed on them by the abbot.\n\n**General affairs:** The quartermaster, _dian-cuo_ , was in charge of daily affairs: his function was like that of a modern-day general affairs department. A note to the _Record of Zen Master Linji_ says: \"According to Baizhang's _Pure Rules_ , [a Zen temple] has a _dian-cuo_ 'quartermaster' but no _fan-tou_ 'monk in charge of food.' The _dian-cuo_ is in charge of food for the whole congregation and all offerings for their support.\" The book, _Pure Rules for the Monks' Hall_ , says: \"This office takes charge of the food for the whole congregation. Thus, if he makes sure there are frequent changes in the food, the congregation will be wonderfully content and happy.\" In later generations, in some cases, the _dian-cuo_ became the officer in charge of all internal affairs of the temple.\n\nThe \"monks serving in turn,\" _seng-zhi_ , were monks in charge of some particular duty for the term of a year. Such a post was rotated and was filled in turn by each of the monks in administrative positions.\n\nThe monk in charge of food, _fan-tou_ , was responsible for preparing meals. The _Pure Rules for the Monks' Hall_ says: \"The monk in charge of food _fan-tou_ and the quartermaster _dian-cuo_ divide the work of overseeing the food. They often work together with various others like the monk in charge of medicines and the monk in charge of grain supplies to protect and husband the temple's permanent endowment. The monk in charge of food has the same concern as the quartermaster: to see to it that there is neither too much nor too little food. The monk in charge of food should be well-versed in the book called _Precious Lessons for Quartermaster Monks.\"_\n\nZen temples often assigned certain monks to certain jobs. The monk in charge of the fire, _huo-tou_ , supervised the stoves. The monk in charge of the garden, _yuan-tou_ , supervised the planting of vegetables. The monk in charge of vegetables, _cai-tou_ , supervised the cooking of vegetables. Several chief workers, _hang-tou_ , were in charge of the workers in the vegetarian meal hall. Other monks were assigned to taking charge of firewood, _chai-tou_ , of removing ashes, _hui-tou_ , of buckets, _tong-tou_ , of milling grain, _mo-tou_ , and of cleaning pots, _huo-tou._ There were differences here over time and due to local conditions. Some temples made these job assignments and some did not: there was no uniform rule.\n\nThere was a latrine orderly, _jing-tou_ , who was responsible for the cleanliness and hygiene of the latrines. Oftentimes, the head monk and the heads of the two echelons of monks or other monks from the congregation volunteered to take on this job, considering it to be a good way to repent of their sins and accumulate merit. Another name for this job was toilet orderly, _qing-tou;_ in the old system, it was also called _dong-si_ , \"eastern orderly.\"\n\nThere might be one or more monks in charge of the temple's fields, _zhuang-zhu._ Large Zen temples with a lot of agricultural land outside established this post to take charge of the tenant farmers and collecting rents. The colloquial term for this was \"the outside manager.\" He controlled other temple officers, like the harvest supervisor.\n\nThere might be one or more monks serving as wardens, _xun-shan-liao-zhu._ They were in charge of protecting the forests owned by the temples and guarding against robbers and poachers. Major temples in the mountains always established this position, but ordinary temples might not have it. Generally, monks who were strong and skilled in the martial arts were chosen to fill this post. If there were special quarters for the holder of this post, then the monks in charge of gardens and in charge of firewood would also be assigned there.\n\nIf there were small retreats attached to a temple, then there would be monks living there in charge of them. If the temple had stupas, then there would be monks in charge of them.\n\nThe monks in charge of ringing the temple bells were called the bell-monks, _zhong-tou_ , and the monk in charge of beating the temple drum was called the drum-monk, _gu-tou._\n\n**The \"pure and essential\" posts:** A temple might have one monk in charge of the canon, called the _cang-zhu._ In the old system, the term used was _zhi-cang._ His job was to take charge of the canonical texts and the religious pictures owned by the temple library. He was like a modern-day library chief or library manager. Usually, a very learned monk was chosen to fill this post, and he might also be the temple secretary. In many large temples, there was a special building in which to store the scriptures, and so this post was very important.\n\nA temple might have a monk in charge of the buddha-shrine, _dian-zhu_ , and monks in charge of the incense and lamps. The _dian-zhu_ took charge of all the dut\u00edes connected with the shrine where the image of the Buddha was housed, and he would have a monk in charge of incense and lamps to assist him in this. The other shrines that were part of the temple would have their own monks in charge of incense and lamps, but these were not called _dian-zhu._ In the old system, all this was included in the job of the chief of the hall, the _tang-zhu._\n\nThere was also the chief of the nirvana hall (called the life-prolonging hall in the old system), which was the infirmary for mortally ill monks, and the chief of the arhats' hall. The Vinaya school temples called the nirvana hall \"the hall of impermanence.\" The Zen temples called it the nirvana hall or the life-prolonging hall. This was the place where sick monks on the brink of death were placed so they could contemplate impermanence.\n\nTemples had one or more monks in charge of teaching the laity, _hua-zhu._ Their special task was to travel outside the temple to spread the Buddhist teaching. By the donations they received from lay Buddhists who engaged them to perform rituals, they contributed to the support of the congregation of the whole temple and provided resources for the temple's permanent endowment. They turned in an account of the funds they had received by their teaching work to the monks in charge of visitors, _zhi-ke_ , or to the chief of the storehouse, _ku-tou_ , who recorded it in the temple account books and turned it over to the abbot's control. The monks in charge of teaching the laity were often traveling outside the temple all year round, and led a comparatively leisurely life.\n\n**Working monks:** Many monks took upon themselves the laborious work and the various jobs that needed to be done around the temple. Often they volunteered to do this, seeking to perform the difficult jobs in order to spur themselves on to virtuous conduct. There were many worthy monks who took on these tasks, and most of them were not seeking people's recognition.\n\nThere are many examples of famous Zen masters serving in menial posts. The **_Transmission of the Lamp_** says: \"When Guishan was in Baizhang's congregation, he acted as the quartermaster, and he ordered that the work of straining and ladling water be assigned to the quartermaster.\" The **_Five Lamps Meeting at the Source_** says: \"When Xuefeng was at Dongshan he was the monk in charge of food. Qingzhu was the monk in charge of rice at Guishan. Daokuang was the monk in charge of the buckets at Zhaoqing. Guanqi was the monk in charge of the gardens at Moshan. Shaoyuan was the monk in charge of the fields at Shimen. Zhi-tong was the harvest evaluator at Guishan. Xiaocong was the monk in charge of the lamps at Yunju. Jishan was the monk in charge of firewood at Touzi. Yihuai was the monk in charge of water at Cuifeng. Foxin was in charge of cleaning the privies at Haiyin.\"\n\nAll these are examples of eminent Zen masters taking on jobs that involved hard labor. It was even more common for monks of high attainments to serve as temple quartermasters.\n\nIn years past, when I was traveling around studying at various Buddhist centers, I wrote this poem:\n\nThe wind from Spirit Peak is high, climbing in the ancient footprints Studying Zen with the ancestral teachers of the north and south Traveling on foot in those days across rivers and lakes Visiting all the famous mountain temples, those hard-practicing monks.\n\nI wrote this to express my feelings of admiration for the virtuous conduct among the Zen monks over the generations who practiced austerities.\n\nThe Chief Administrators, Visiting Monks, and the Pure Congregation\n\nThe monks in administrative positions under the abbot generally had private quarters. If the temple did not have enough rooms to assign to them, private quarters were assigned according to the importance of the positions, and sometimes two monks would share a room. The rest of the congregation, no matter whether they lived in the Zen hall or were travelers passing through, were called the \"pure congregation,\" _qing-zhong._\n\nLater on, since Buddhism had become widespread in China, there was a need to influence the beliefs of the common people, and monks were invited to go outside the temples to chant the sutras and perform Buddhist ceremonies. At the same time, this was the way the temple as a whole and the congregation of monks earned their collective and individual incomes. Thus, there came to be a group of monks within each temple who specialized in ministering to the people by chanting sutras and conducting ceremonies. Generally, they were distinguished from the \"pure congregation,\" who devoted themselves to pure cultivation, and they were called the ministering monks, the monks who responded to the people's needs. In the late Qing and early Republican periods, in the region of Fujian and Zhejiang, the general custom was to call them \"ministering teachers.\" This may have been a corruption of the term \"ministering teaching monks.\"\n\nThe quarters of the monks who were passing through the temple on their travels were called the \"clouds and rivers rooms,\" _yun-shui-liao\\_ in the old system these were called the \"river and lake rooms,\" _jiang-hu-liao_ , and they were also called the \"group rooms,\" _zhong-liao._ This referred to the rooms set aside for monks who were staying at the temple temporarily during the course of their travels to study Zen.\n\nWhat is the derivation of the term _jiang-hu-liao_ ) In Zen tradition, _jiang-hu_ , \"river and lake,\" meant Jiangxi and Hunan provinces. In the Tang period, monks studying Zen either went to Mazu's place in Jiangxi or to Shitou's place in Hunan; many monks traveled back and forth between these two and congregated at the teaching centers of these two great teachers, and so they were called _jiang-hu_ monks. But a note to the famous literary collection, _Wen Xuan_ , also says that _jiang-hu_ means beyond the rivers and by the side of lakes, which were locations where recluses went to dwell. The _Biographies of the Eminent Worthies of the Lotus Society_ , in its section on Zhou Xuzhi, says: \"His mind was running off to the palace of Wei, but the rivers and lakes locked him in.\" A preface by Luo Binwang says: \"The temple with its verandas is aligned with the rivers and lakes.\" Fan Xi, Master Wenyan, says in his note on the sacrifice hall: \"Once the constellations had shifted, he returned to the rivers and lakes.\" All these testify to this derivation. In fact, the original meaning of _jiang-hu_ comes from _Zhuang Zi_ , where it refers to the air of a recluse. \"When the spring dries up, the fish in it are stranded on dry land, gasping for moisture, sputtering out bubbles: it's better to forget the rivers and lakes.\"\n\n**Variations in the Zen _Pure Rules_ Over Time**\n\nMore than a thousand years have passed since Baizhang instituted his _Pure Rules._ The original regulations were lost long ago, and in the various versions of _Pure Rules for Zen Monastic Communities_ that have been passed down from later generations to us today, there are many passages that do not resemble the practices of olden times. But this is nothing to be surprised at.\n\nIn 1338, under orders from Emperor Shundi of the Yuan dynasty, Zen master Dehui of Baizhang Mountain, the abode of Baizhang Huaihai, the originator of the _Pure Rules_ , prepared an edition of the _Pure Rules_ of Baizhang in eight fascicles which circulated through the empire. The emperor commanded that all Buddhist monks in his realm practice according to this version of the _Pure Rules._\n\nDuring the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) the imperial authorities repeatedly decreed that those monks who did not abide by these _Pure Rules_ were to be dealt with as lawbreakers and, in later generations, this was taken as the standard.\n\nIn 1823, under the Qing dynasty, Zen master Yuanhong wrote _Qing-gui Zhengyi_ , a ten fascicle textual criticism of the _Pure Rules_ of Baizhang that circulated widely and established the accepted text.\n\nBecause of differences in time and place, there are various differences in other versions of the _Pure Rules_ in use at various temples. In recent generations, there are versions in use that are even more different from the old system. In reality, this has been brought about by the trend of the times. There have been the difficulties of unavoidable changes. There have also been many cases where people did not know what they should base themselves on and have falsely introduced changes prompted by their own pretensions to be teachers.\n\nAs Zen master Yuanhong said: \"There are many differences in the _Pure Rules_ between older and more recent versions. For example, the older versions call the head monk _tou-shou_ , while the more recent ones use the terms _sbou-cuo_ or _cuo-yuan._ The older versions call the temple supervisor _fian-si_ , while the more recent ones use the term _jian-yuan._ The term for the temple secretary, _shu-zhuang_ has been changed to _shu-ji_ , and the term monks' hall _seng-tang_ has been changed to Zen hall _chan-tang._ In all these cases there has been a change of term but no change in meaning. There are also instances where a particular regulation is present in the older versions but absent in the more recent ones, and vice versa.\"\n\nGenerally, in the case of any kind of social organization, the earliest form is always very simple. The more time goes by, the more complicated the situation becomes, and so more and more regulations are added. Although Baizhang's original _Pure Rules_ have been lost, the preface to them by the Song dynasty writer Yang Yi is still extant. The situation he describes is naturally much simpler than that of later generations. For example, he writes: \"The assembled students, no matter how many or few, should all enter the monks' hall, with no distinctions of rank. They should be seated according to how many summers they have spent as Zen monks. They are provided with meditation benches, a rack to hang their robes, a place to hang up their bags, and sitting mats. When they recline, they must use a slanted pillow and a bed and lie on their right sides for an auspicious sleep. After they have been doing sitting meditation for a long time, they will only rest briefly.\" Yang Yi also explains the purpose of Baizhang's _Pure Rules_ as follows: \"To keep the pure congregation from defilement, and to engender respect and trust. To avoid violating the proper form for monks, and to follow the Buddha's rules. To avoid trouble with the authorities, and eliminate lawsuits. To avoid gossip outside the temple, and to preserve the guiding principles of the Zen school.\"\n\nJudging from Yang Yi's preface, and from the text of the great teacher Cijue's _Mirror and Guide_ , the focus of attention in the _Pure Rules_ was actually on what has come down to the present as the meditation hall. But in later generations, except at a small number of major Zen temples, most of the Zen temples that still use these standards to regulate the congregation instead relegate the meditation hall to a subordinate position. What a grave mistake! By doing this, they have made the decline of the Zen school inevitable. The purpose behind leaving home is to wholeheartedly seek the mind of enlightenment. How is it that the meditation hall should therefore occupy anything but the most prominent position? Those of us today who are responsible for such matters should think deeply on this.\n\nTHE INFLUENCE OF THE ZEN COMMUNITIES\n\nIn the Tang and Song periods, during the heyday of the Zen school, in general there were four types of situations in which people left home and became monks and nuns.\n\n  1. Those who studied the Buddhist sutras and shastras were called _yi-xue_ monks, monks devoted to doctrinal learning. Some of these became monks when they were granted official ordination certificates, _du-die_ , after passing the examinations conducted by the government in Buddhist scriptures.\n  2. Some developed the aspiration for enlightenment on their own. They left behind conventional society to seek the Path, and requested ordination from eminent monks of great virtue.\n  3. Sometimes the imperial court issued edicts allowing commoners throughout the empire to become monks and nuns freely as they wished. During the Tang period, the imperial government on several occasions resorted to the sale of ordination certificates to raise revenue and allowed anyone who purchased one to freely become a monk or nun.\n  4. Sometimes the old and weak, or widows and widowers with no recourse and no one to support them, became monks and nuns.\n\nIn any of these circumstances, those who wanted to leave home but had not reached adulthood, according to the Buddhist rules, had to obtain the consent of their parents and their clan before they were permitted to leave home.\n\nEquality of Status and Collective Living\n\nAfter having left home, received the precepts, and obtained an ordinadon certificate, a monk could go to a Zen temple and seek admission to become a long-term resident. In general, there were two forms of seeking admission to a temple, each with a different procedure.\n\nGenerally, staying at a temple for a few days or for a short period of time was called **_gma-da_** , \"hanging up one's bag.\" (Colloquially, this was also called **_gua-dan_** , \"hanging up one's mat.\") The monks who were staying at a temple for a short time were those who had come from afar to study there on account of their respect for the reputation of that temple's abbot, or else those who were passing through the place on their travels. In either event, the newcomer had to go first to the guest hall and follow a prescribed form to offer salutations, announce himself, and set down his traveling gear. After doing so, he was received with due courtesy by the monk in charge of guests. The monk in charge of guests would ask him, according to the Zen school's prescribed formula, about his journey. When the monk in charge of guests had found out the newcomer's intention to stay at the temple, he would escort him to the guest rooms and call for water to wash with, and food and drink.\n\nGenerally, the room where visiting monks stayed was called the **_tiao-fang._** Another term was **_yun-shui-liao._** In the Tang and Song periods, it was called by the older term, **_jiang-hu-liao._**\n\nGenerally, traveling monks who stayed for a time at a temple were entertained with three meals a day, and were made to feel at home. They were not discriminated against at all. With a monk who was traveling for his studies, some of the bigger Zen temples would give him some money for his travel expenses when he was about to depart. This was called \"money for straw sandals.\" Those visiting monks who stayed for some time at the temple would go along with the congregation to the buddha-shrine to chant sutras and would take part in the work of the temple. Even though they were staying in the guest quarters, they followed the same routine of work and rest as the other monks.\n\nIf visiting monks wanted to stay at the temple for a long time, this was called _tao-da_ , \"seeking [a place to put] the bag.\" If they wanted to live in the Zen hall and cultivate their studies there, this was called _tao-hai-da._ If they sought to live in the Zen hall, they would be counted as regular members of the temple's congregation of monks. For this, it was necessary first to follow the procedures of \"hanging up the bag\" for a short sojourn, and stay at the temple for some time and be checked out by the monk in charge of guests and the other leading monks of the temple. If they gave permission, then the newcomer could become a long-term resident. In the old system, this was called _an-da_ , \"settling the bag.\"\n\nEvery year, in the Spring and in the Fall, the congregation of monks who were long-term residents at a temple were issued a set of robes, or else money for robes so they could have robes made. In addition to donations made by the temple's patrons, every three months the permanent endowment of the temple gave out a small sum of pocket money to each monk. This was called _chen-qian_ , \"lining money.\"\n\nAmong the permanent residents of a Zen temple, everyone who had already accepted the precepts and who had an ordination certificate was completely equal in status and way of life. Status and way of life were the same for everyone, from the abbot to the monks doing manual labor. In matters of clothing, food, dwelling places, and conduct, they all had to adhere strictly to the Buddhist code of discipline and the _Pure Rules_ of the Zen monastic community. When there were violations of the code of discipline or the _Pure Rules_ , if they were minor, the punishment might be to kneel holding incense or to do hard labor. If the violations were serious, they would be punished according to the code of discipline, which might result in expulsion from the community. Colloquially, this was called \"being driven out of the temple gate.\"\n\n**_The Monks' Clothing_**\n\nMonks generally all wore the long robes that were the legacy of the Tang and Song periods. They also dressed like this when they practiced Zen and did sitting meditation. When the monks did manual labor, they wore short tunics. These are the monastic garments that have been passed down to the present. When formal courtesy requires it, monks wear long robes. Modern-day monks call this long robe _hai-qing_ , \"ocean blue.\" When they go up to the buddha-shrine to chant the sutras or pay homage to Buddha, or listen to the sutras being chanted or to a teacher expounding the Dharma, monks put on a _kashaya_ , a Buddhist monk's formal robe. The _kashaya_ worn by Chinese monks underwent changes in the Tang and Song periods and is not the same style as the original Indian version. At the present time, we can see a bit of Chinese traditional culture in the Buddhist monks' long robes and, in their air of elegance and dignity, we can catch a glimpse of the style of the elite dress of old China. There are set regulations for the way monks put on and fold their robes: they have been carefully trained in this and have had long practice at it, so that even if a thousand monks are walking along, it is hard to hear any sound of garments rustling.\n\n**_The Monks' Food_**\n\nAccording to the Buddhist code of discipline, monks can only have two meals a day, in the morning and at noon. For all sorts of good reasons, monks do not eat after noon. When they eat, they use a bowl and a spoon for their food. Buddhist monks did not eat like other Indians, scooping up the food with their hands. But this practice has already been changed since Buddhism came to China, and Chinese Buddhist monks eat with bowls and chopsticks, like ordinary Chinese. But if Chinese monks fully carry out the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, they follow a vegetarian diet consistendy throughout their lives and they never eat after noon. The only ones who may dare to eat a meal in the evening are those monks who do heavy manual labor: this is done for fear their physical strength may not be adequate, with the thought that this is like taking medicine to cure starvation.\n\nWhen the monks ate, it was always in the _zhai-tang_ , the vegetarian hall, also called the _shi-tang_ , the eating hall. This was also called the _guan-tang_ , the contemplation hall, taking from the Buddhist scriptures the idea that eating food is to be seen as a cure for a sickness, and is not to be done for the sake of indulging the desires of the mouth or the belly. The rules regarding eating had to be followed uniformly by all the monks, and no exceptions could be made, even for the abbot. If there were guests from outside, they were accompanied by the monk in charge of guests and given a meal in the guest hall. Sometimes there was no choice but for the abbot to eat along with the guests.\n\nThere were set regulations for mealtimes for the congregation. Even if there were a thousand monks or more at a temple, as soon as they heard the sound of the wooden sounding board being struck, they knew it was time to eat. All the monks would put on their long robes, arrange themselves in order, and noiselessly file into the eating hall, seating themselves in the proper sequence. There was a set procedure for the placement of the bowls and chopsticks and platters of vegetables. Everyone sat upright: no one was permitted to lean on the table. Each monk held his bowl in his left hand and his chopsticks in his right. They were not supposed to make any sounds while sipping their drinks or chewing their food. There was a set rule for putting rice and vegetables in the monks' individual bowls. The monks at work serving the meal were not allowed to talk or call to each other. At the head of the vegetarian hall was the abbot's seat. When the abbot took up his bowl and lifted his chopsticks, then the whole congregation could start to eat. When the entire group had finished the meal, they would file out together in silence to return to their quarters. If the abbot had something to say to the congregation, he would stop eating during the meal and tell them about it. This was called _biao-tang_ , \"making an annoncement in the hall.\" On the first and fifteenth of every month, extra dishes would be added to the meal of the laboring monks. When the patrons of the temple made donations to give a vegetarian feast for the monks, extra dishes would also be added to the meal.\n\n**_The Monks' Dwelling Places_**\n\nThe monks who devoted themselves to practicing Zen meditation in the Zen hall were called the \"pure congregation.\" They lived there in the Zen hall day and night. The other monks had their own rooms: sometimes a monk had his own room and sometimes several monks shared one room. In keeping with the Buddhist precepts and the Zen _Pure Rules_ , if these monks were not otherwise occupied, they sat quiedy in their rooms, except in the morning and evenings when they were in the buddha-shrine chanting sutras, doing exercises, listening to the sutras, or listening to explanations of the Dharma. They were not allowed to go from room to room to engage in idle chatter, or to wander around to various places. They were not allowed without reason to gather together to talk or to make a lot of noise. If the abbot, one of the monks holding responsible positions, or one of the senior monks happened to pass by, the monks had to get up and stand in a dignified fashion with the palms joined in salute to show their respect.\n\n**_The Monks' Way of Walking_**\n\nWhen the monks were walking, or when they lined up with the rest of the congregation, they had to adhere to the regulations in the code of discipline. They had to walk at a slow even pace in silence, with faces cast down and hands placed evenly over their breasts. They were not allowed to look to the left or to the right, or to keep their gaze high, or to take large steps. If there was some matter that required them to go outside the temple, they had to go to the guest hall and report their absence to the monk in charge of guests. When they returned to the temple, they had to go again to the guest hall and report. They were not permitted to come and go in and out of the temple as they pleased. Even the abbot and the monks with responsible positions had to inform the monk in charge of guests when they left or reentered the temple, and when they spent a few days away from the temple, they also had to announce their departure and their return in front of the image of Buddha.\n\nThere were regulations for the other activities of daily life, such as bathing and washing clothes. When monks were sick, the larger temples had their own pharmacies to prepare medicines. The sick monk would ask for leave, spend time in his room recuperating, and be excused from going along with the rest of the congregation to the buddha-shrine and the meditation hall. If a monk was gravely ill, he would stay in the _ru-yi-tang_ , the \"wish-granting hall,\" where he was cared for by monks who gladly ministered to the sick. The _ru-yi-tang_ was called the _an-le-tang_ , \"peace and happiness hall,\" under the old system. When a monk died, he was moved into the nirvana hall and subsequently cremated. Afterward, the bones and ashes were collected, and placed in the _Ung-gu-ta_ , the \"spirit bone stupa\" (colloquially called the _gu-hui-ta_ , the \"bones and ashes stupa\").\n\nIn summary, the collective life of genuine Zen communities had achieved equality in all respects, and was guided by regulations in every particular. Starting with the management of the individual's body and mind, and extending to the life of the whole community, every aspect of life was carried out according to rules and regulations. There were detailed rules for everything. Thus, when the great Song dynasty Confucian Cheng Yi observed the life of the monks in the Zen communities, he exclaimed: \"The rites and music of the Three Dynasties are all here in this.\" Confucians revered the ancient Three Dynasties as the fount of correct social and ethical norms.\n\nEquality of Labor and a Prosperous Economy\n\nWhen Baizhang established rules for the Zen monastic communities, his most crucial innovation was to change the system whereby the monks were not productive and depended on begging for their food. According to the monastic code of primitive Buddhism, the monks could not till the soil and plant crops for fear of injuring living things in the soil. This may have worked in certain regions of India, but in China, where agriculture had always been esteemed, this could not prevail. Such a system could not endure forever in China. So Baizhang boldly established a new set of monastic regulations, paying no attention to other people's rebukes. In this system, the Zen monks cleared fields in the mountain forests around their retreats and supported themselves mainly by their own farming, with the donations they got from the laiety as a subsidiary source of income. Tilling and planting and gathering the harvest, the Zen monks were like the ordinary people, and according to the government's laws and regulations, they too had to pay taxes. Thus the Zen monks in China were not a special class of people and were not outside the social order.\n\nIn their daily activities, the Zen monks were devoted to cultivating practice and seeking realization of the Buddha Dharma. But in addition to this, whenever there was agricultural work or other tasks to do, they all had to participate in manual labor according to the directives of the _seng-zhi-shi_ (the monk who issued the orders and acted as the leader), no matter whether they were of high or low standing in the community. In the technical language of the Zen communities, this sort of thing was called _cbu-po_ , \"going out to the slopes.\" In the old system it was called _pu-qtnjj_ , \"the general call to labor.\" When the monks went out to work in the fields, the abbot had to lead them in person and act as a model for the other monks.\n\nWhen Zen master Baizhang reached old age, he still did not stop working. His disciples could not bear to see this, so they surreptiously took his farming tools and hid them. Unable to find his tools, he could not go do his work that day, so he went without food for the day. Thus the Zen school traditionally extols Baizhang's lofty style with the saying: \"A day without work means a day without food.\" This saying has been used to spur on the Zen monks of later generations. From this, we can see the inspirational qualities of Baizhang's great personality. In modern times, Master Xuyun reached the age of 120, but he still personally took part in manual labor. Master Xuyun upheld this practice consistently throughout his life.\n\nIn the economic system of the Zen communities, all receipts and expenditures were made public. The technical term for this was _gong-zhong_ , \"public community.\" All the income of the temple went for the well-being of the entire congregation. If there was a surplus, it was invested in landed property in the hope that this would support a greater number of the nation's monks. Most of the monks holding administrative posts clearly distinguished between community affairs and their own private interests, and absolutely would not dare to appropriate for their own use any of the temple funds and property. This was not only because the monastic regulations prohibited this, but because the monks firmly believed in the principle of cause and effect and karmic retribution.\n\nThere was a common constantly repeated maxim: \"A single grain of rice belonging to the Buddhist community is as big as Mount Sumeru. If I do not complete the Path in this lifetime, I will come back [as an animal] wearing fur and horns.\" Thus everyone did his utmost to protect and care for the monks who were really engaged in cultivating practice in the Zen hall. They did not want to cause them any trouble or alarm. They hoped that those monks would consummate the Path, and thus repay the benevolence of the nation and society at large, and of the temple's patrons and donors.\n\nIn the past, there was a Zen master named Baoshou, who was in charge of the storehouse at Wuzu Temple. Master Jie, who was the abbot of the temple at the time, happened to take some medicine because he was sick. He needed fresh ginger, so his attendant went to the storehouse to get some. Baoshou rebuked him and sent him away. When Master Jie was informed of this, he had his attendant take some money to pay for the ginger: only then did Baoshou give it to him. Later, Dongshan Temple needed someone to serve as abbot, and the prefectural governor sent a letter asking Master Jie to find someone to be its abbot. Master Jie said, \"That guy who sold me the fresh ginger can go.\" So Baoshou went to be the abbot at Dongshan Temple. Because of this, a saying was passed down in the Zen school: \"Baoshou's fresh ginger will be pungent for ten thousand years.\"\n\nIn the 1940s, when I was in Chengdu, I met the retired abbot of Baoguang Temple in Xindu. He was as upright as an ancient pine and his visage was imbued with the Tao: he was indeed a venerable figure. He had been the abbot of a major temple for several decades. When he came there, he had only the clothes he was wearing, and when he retired, he still had the same set of worn-out robes. He had never taken a penny of the temple funds for his personal use. He said of this that if his virtuous conduct had not been worthy of inspiring the congregation, he would have been unable to bear the karmic retribution. Having a few words with him made me feel the serenity that comes from contemplating the ancient Zen masters. His was the style of a great abbot of a Zen temple.\n\nEquality of Faith and Discipline in Speech and Action\n\nThe Chinese term for the Zen communities was **_cong-lin_** , which literally means \"dense forests.\" The meaning is obvious from the term: many of the early Zen centers were located in mountain forests. In fact, the term also implies that those who understood the Path and were cultivating practice in these Zen communities were as numerous as the trees growing thick in the forests.\n\nThose who lived in the Zen communities were all people with a firm belief in the Buddha Dharma, and especially in the Zen school's method of attaining buddhahood in the mind-ground. They wanted to live in Zen communities in order to devote themselves wholeheartedly to the method of attaining enlightenment by cultivating realization of the mind-ground. Thus, besides adhering to the **_Pure Rules_** of the Zen monastic communities, in the Zen temples they also held faithfully to the Buddhist code of monastic discipline, the vinaya.\n\nThe story goes that, in the past at Guoqing Temple on Mount Tiantai, there was an eminent monk who had attained the Path and who already possessed spiritual powers. One evening he was sitting in meditation in the Zen hall. He left his seat and whispered to the monks in the other seats: \"Are you hungry?\" The other monks did not dare answer. But one monk said: \"If we are hungry, what can we do about it? The rule is that we cannot cat after noon, and who would dare break this precept? Even if we wanted to eat, there is nothing in the kitchen, so how could there be anything to eat?\" The adept said: \"Don't worry. If you want to eat, I will make something for you. There are some rice cakes in the kitchen.\" As he finished talking, he reached into his left sleeve with his right hand and brought out a big rice cake and invited the monk to eat it.\n\nThe abbot of the temple also had spiritual powers. He observed the precepts stricdy and would never casually display his spiritual powers. The next morning, the abbot made an announcement to the congregation: \"Last night in the Zen hall, there were two monks who broke the precepts. According to the code of discipline, they will be expelled from the temple.\" The monk with spiritual powers then took his robe in one hand, prostrated himself in front of the abbot, and admitted that he had violated the precepts. So (regardless of possessing super powers or not), because he had violated the precepts, he was driven out of the temple.\n\nIn the Southern Song period, before he attained the Dharma, Zen master Dahui stayed with Zen master Zhantang. One day, Zhantang looked at his fingernails and said to him: \"Didn't you recendy wash the latrine cleaners' stick?\" Dahui knew that his teacher was rebuking him for being fond of leisure and averse to hard work, so he immediately cut off his long fingernails and went to take the place of Huanglong Zhong as the latrine cleaner for nine months.\n\nFrom examples like these of the conduct of the Zen masters of old, we can see how natural and yet stricdy disciplined they were in regard to observing the rules and precepts, in their speech and their actions, and in the example they set.\n\nEquality of all Sentient Beings\n\nThe Buddhist teaching does not only regard all people as equal, it actually wants to achieve solidarity between humans and all beings. It regards all sentient beings as equal in inherent nature.\n\nThe regulations for the Zen monastic system were created in response to the times and to social conditions in China. On the surface, there seem to be differences between the Zen _Pure Rules_ and the Buddhist Vinaya. In reality, the _Pure Rules_ took the Buddhist code of monastic discipline as their basic framework. Thus, within the Zen _Pure Rules_ , strict adherence to the Vinaya was still very important. For example, when a Zen monk was walking, he would not dare to trample upon worms or ants: how could he dare to harm living creatures?\n\nBecause Buddhist belief and teaching calls for treating all things equally in the universal exercise of compassion, Zen communities adopted a style of doing things that recognized all the people in the world as members of a single family. When Zen monks were traveling on foot all over the country, no matter where they were, in major towns or country villages, as long as there was a Zen temple, and they understood the regulations, they were permitted to \"hang up their bags\" and stay there temporarily. This practice was observed throughout China, and traveling monks were permitted to stay for a time even in small temples in litde towns and in hereditary private temples. In the past, monks could travel on foot all over China without having to carry any money with them. Even if there was no temple for them to stay in, it did not matter because they could pass a day in peaceful meditation under the trees.\n\nFrom the Yuan and Ming periods on, though there seemed to be differences in religious faith between Buddhism and Taoism in certain aspects Buddhists and Taoists acted like one family. For example, if a Taoist monk arrived in a locality where there was no Taoist temple, he could go to a Buddhist temple and stay there. It was the same way for Buddhist monks: when they needed to, they could stay at Taoist temples. When the time came for the congregation to go to the shrine hall and chant the scriptures, the visitor had to accompany them there, but he was free to chant the scriptures of his own faith. As long as the visitor abided by the rules, the resident monks could not discriminate against him.\n\nIndeed, it was even possible for monks to stay at temples inhabited by nuns and vice versa. But in such cases, the rules of discipline and decorum between monks and nuns had to be observed very stricdy. For example, if a monk stayed temporarily at a temple inhabited by nuns, in temples that abided stricdy by the _Pure Rules_ , he could only stay there for one night, sitting in meditation in the great hall. At temples that were a bit more accommodating, he could spend one night in the guest quarters, but he could definitely not stay for long. It was the same way when a nun came to a temple inhabited by monks.\n\nWhen laypeople sought to spend the night at a Buddhist temple, it was not called \"hanging up the bag.\" The basis of Buddhism is compassion and sometimes, taking account of the situation, Buddhist temples would accept laypeople and allow them to stay there temporarily. In Tang and Song times, many poor and destitute students stayed in Buddhist temples while they pursued their studies. There were a considerable number of cases of this, like the famous Tang dynasty scholar Li Bi, the Duke of Nie.\n\nDuring the Tang period, Wang Bowei stayed at a temple in Yangzhou while he was a student. The chief monk treated him contemptuously. One day, the chief monk deliberately struck the bell signaling the end of the meal, so Wang did not get to eat. Wang wrote a verse about this on the wall:\n\nThe trip up to the hall is already over, and the monks are going off in different directions\n\nI'm sorry the Reverend has already struck the bell ending the meal.\n\nLater on, Wang achieved fame and was posted to Yang-zhou as the official in charge of the area. When he passed through the temple again, he saw the verse he had written there previously: the monks of the temple had covered it with blue gauze in deference to Wang's present eminence. Wang then continued the verse saying:\n\nTwenty years ago, the dust blew in my face\n\nOnly now do I get a blue gauze cover.\n\nThis event was altogether exceptional, and we cannot judge the whole situation on the basis of an unusual case and think that all Buddhist monks were snobbish.\n\nAt the very least, we can say that, after the Zen monastic system came into being, it indeed carried out on behalf of Chinese society the social-welfare work of caring for widows and orphans, supporting the young, and giving refuge to the elderly. This is an undeniable fact. When the Song emperor Renzong (r. 1023-1063) observed the life of the Zen communities, he was struck with admiration for its purity, and so he personally composed a poem in praise of the Buddhist sangha. Tradition has it that the Shunzhi Emperor (r. 1644-1661) of the Qing dynasty wanted to become a monk when he saw the standards of the Zen communities. He composed a poem in praise of the Zen monks which contained these lines:\n\nThe Zen communities throughout the empire are like a mountain of rice\n\nA bowl extending everywhere, letting good people eat\n\nI was originally a patchrobed one from the west\n\nHow did I filli into the imperial family?\n\nJust because my initial thought went astray\n\nI exchanged my monk's yellow for imperial purple.\n\nSome say this was written by the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1662-1722). It is very hard to determine the real truth about this. But from this verse, it is obvious what an atmosphere prevailed in the Zen communities.\n\nTHE ZEN HALLS: CULTIVATION OF PRACTICE\n\nWhen Baizhang established the _Pure Rules_ , his most important contribution was to set up correct guidelines for the Zen school. Due to the widespread influence of this system of monastic regulations, most Chinese Buddhist temples in later generations, no matter to what sect of Buddhism they belonged, were labeled Zen temples. Zen monks led a simple plain life, traveling on foot, carrying their meditation cushions with them, wearing straw sandals and rainhats, so they could go to any of the famous Buddhist centers throughout the country. Everyone respected their austere practice, and so Zen temples and retreats were continually being built for them by lay devotees in the mountain valleys and glens.\n\nBut the principle purpose of the true Zen communities was not just the building of Zen temples and retreats. It was to have Zen halls proper for sitting in meditation, in order to provide Buddhist monks all over China with places where they could live in peace and devote themselves to cultivating practice.\n\nThe Scope of the Zen Hall\n\nDuring the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing periods, there were Zen halls in the Zen communities that could accommodate from several hundred up to more than a thousand monks with places to sit and lie down. Every monk had a place to spread his mat, where he could sit peacefully in meditation, and where he could also lie down and rest. The places to spread the mats were arranged next to each other, so the ancients called this the _chang-litm-chuanj_ ), \"the long continuous seat.\" Each monk's name was written on his place, stuck to his mat. Usually the names of all the monks who were long-term residents of the temple were recorded in a register. The colloquial name for this register was the _cao-dan_ , the \"straw mat,\" and the technical term was the **_jie-la-bu_** , \"the register of those who have taken the precepts and stay through the year.\" It was the equivalent of a modern-day population register.\n\nThe Zen hall was bright and plain and had harmonious proportions, in accord with the simple way of living that went on there, and adapted to Zen skill in means. Buildings in the old days were built without much attention to ventilation, and were a bit deficient in air circulation.\n\nThe four sides of the Zen hall were all used for places to spread out mats. In the middle was a big empty area where the whole congregation assembled and which was used for slow walking. This slow walking is what the Buddhist scriptures say is the appropriate exercise for those who are practicing meditative concentration. The sutras call this **_jing-xing_** , \"walking along,\" but in the Zen communities, the term was changed to **_xing-xiang_** or **_pao-xiang_** , which both mean \"walking with incense.\" Thus the space in the middle of the Zen hall had to be large enough for the several hundred or more monks who lived in the hall to walk around. When the monks walked around, they walked in a circle. However, when it was necessary, the congregation would be divided up into two or three rings for this walking. Those who were old and weak were not able to walk in the outer ring: only the young and strong monks walked in the outer circle.\n\nThe Teacher in the Zen Hall\n\nSince the Zen hall was the heart of the Zen temple, in modern parlance, it was like the educational center. Thus, it would seem that it should have been the place that was richest in colorful Buddhist imagery. But in fact, this was not the case. On the contrary, the Zen hall truly displayed the genuine spirit of the Buddha Dharma. It was completely free of all mystery and superstitious belief and starkly expressed the message of the Buddha Mind-Seal transmitted by the great teacher Bodhidharma. Originally in the Zen halls the practice of making offerings to images of Buddha was absent because, according to the teaching of the Zen school, \"mind itself is buddha,\" \"there is no difference between mind, buddha, and sentient beings,\" and \"it is not mind, not buddha, and not things.\"\n\nSo what then was the Zen hall in the last analysis? We can say that it was where people were taught to understand and awaken to the essence and function of the true identity of their own bodies and minds, the so-called original face: the Tao is right before our eyes and is to be sought in daily activities, not externally.\n\nIn later generations, it gradually became the custom in the Zen hall to make offerings to images of the venerable Kashyapa or of the ancestral teacher Bodhidharma. A large seat was positioned in the place of honor in the Zen hall, facing the main door: this was the abbot's place.\n\nSometimes the abbot had to lead the congregation in their practice of sitting meditation, or else explain the Dharma in the morning or evening to give guidance to their cultivation of practice. Therefore, it was necessary to select as the abbot an enlightened teacher who had already awakened to the Path and attained the Dharma and who could really guide everyone in cultivating realization. Mind itself is buddha, and the teacher is the present buddha. Thus the abbot was the heart of the Zen community. Sometimes the abbot was called \"the teacher in the hall.\"\n\nIf the abbot was unable to come to the Zen hall to give guidance, then the head monk of the meditation hall, of the rear hall, or of the west hall (i.e., the _tang-zhu_ , the _hou-tang_ , or the _xi-tang_ ) would assist the abbot and oversee the community's practice. These monks were seated at the head of the left row near the door. Besides these monks, sometimes the monk who held the sounding board (the _jian-xiang_ ) would take on the duty of overseeing the practice. He and the monk in charge of overseeing discipline in the congregation (the _yue-zhong_ ) both had the responsibility of overseeing the congregation's cultivation of practice and meditation work.\n\nIn ancient times, the sounding board was a bamboo staff. One end was wrapped in cotton cloth. It was used to alert and spur on the meditating monks. In the old Buddhist system, it was called the \"meditation staff.\" In later generations, a wooden board was used as a sounding board made in the shape of a sword: it was called the \"fragrant board,\" _xiang-ban._\n\nThere were also several monks on duty in the Zen hall to bring tea and water to the monks. Sometimes this job was done by novice monks.\n\nLife in the Zen Hall\n\nAs the name implies, the Zen hall provided the monks a place where they could devote themselves to the practice of meditation. The aim of Zen monks was to find the highest realm where enlightenment in the mind-ground really becomes manifest. To this end, they detached from sensory experience, abandoned their desires, and decisively cut off all entanglements. They also had to take great pains to be diligent and regulate their conduct until it was as pure as ice and snow. There were many monks who buried their heads in the Zen hall their whole lives and, even if they died without achieving enlightenment, they still sacrificed themselves to the Path without regrets.\n\nAll those who lived in the Zen hall had to maintain the discipline of the _Pure Rules_ strictly in regard to food and drink and daily activities. They arose at three or four o'clock in the predawn hours and, after washing and going to the toilet, went to their seats to meditate. Because there were no mechanical clocks in olden times, each meditation session lasted as long as it took for a long stick of incense to burn down, which was about an hour and a half. Then the monks would leave their seats and walk around inside the Zen hall in a long file. Though their bodies relaxed as they walked, their minds did not. They walked like this while another stick of incense burned down, then they returned to their seats. There were uniform rules for eating and drinking, sleeping, and visiting the privies. Thus the monks were always practicing Zen, no matter what they were doing. Each day was measured out with ten or more large sticks of incense.\n\nIn winter, when the agricultural work was finished, the weather was cold, and there was no other work to do, the monks would adopt the method of setting a time limit for realization. They would adopt a sevenday period of intensive practice: this was called \"seven days of Zen,\" or \"seven days of quiet sitting.\" During this seven-day period, the monks worked harder than usual on their meditation work. Usually during such periods, they sat in meditation every day for thirteen or fourteen periods measured by the burning down of a long stick of incense. Altogether, their combined rest time and sleep time during the day and night was no more than three or four hours.\n\nThe other schools of Buddhism, reflecting on the perfection of this method of hard practice, also began to hold various kinds of seven-day sessions: seven-day buddha-name recitation sessions are one example. With this spirit of seeking the Path diligently through arduous efforts, and persisting in this over the days and months, the Zen communities were sure to produce at least one or two people of unusual abilities.\n\nWhen a Zen community undertook a period of seven days of intensive meditation, during which the abbot had to appoint someone to take the post of **_jian-xiang_** (the monk who held the sounding board and signaled the intervals in the session) in the Zen hall, he had to follow the same procedure as that for appointing monks to responsible posts in the community. After holding a meeting and discussing the appointment, the name of the candidate was posted and he was installed in his post with the same formalities as when one of the temple's administrative posts was filled. But installing him in his post was only a matter of escorting him to the **_jian-xiang's_** seat in the Zen hall, because this duty was centered on the Zen hall. Sometimes the abbot appointed seven or eight monks to take turns serving as the **_jian-xiang_** , so that it would not be too laborious for any one of them.\n\nThe Zen school emphasized the sudden method of seeing real nature, illuminating mind, and becoming enlightened then and there. It did not emphasize the method of cultivating the practices of **_samadhi_** and liberation. Nevertheless, from the time of Shakyamuni Buddha back in India long ago, up through the transmission of Zen to China, from ancient times until today, there has never been a Zen master who did not attain the fruit of enlightenment through diligent practice of **_samadhi_** and wholehearted devotion to meditation work.\n\nAt the start of Summer every year, the Zen monks settled down for three months, in accordance with the Vinaya prohibition on traveling during that period: this was called \"commencing the summer retreat,\" _jie-xia._ The summer retreat was completed three months later on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, approximately the middle of September. This was called _xia-man_ , \"the completion of the summer,\" or _jie-xia_ , \"release from the summer retreat.\" Thus in the old days, when one asked how long someone had been a monk, one asked him how many summers he had been a monk.\n\nThese guidelines established by the Zen communities for the Zen hall were exactly suited to the true correct road of the Buddha Dharma. The common saying went: \"Sit in meditation for a long time, and you are sure to have Zen,\" and this was not unreasonable. During the Song dynasty, many of the great Confucians were influenced by the guidelines and teaching methods of the Zen halls. They switched their underpinnings and changed over to what became the Neo-Confucian styles of quiet sitting, lecturing, sincere conduct, and real practice.\n\nThe door of the Zen hall was hung with curtains and the fragrant scent of burning incense gently wafted out from inside. When the congregation went to their seats to sit in meditation, it was commonly called _shou-dan_ , \"receiving the mats.\" At such times, a signboard was hung by the door saying that quiet sitting was in progress inside. People passing by outside walked quietly and no one dared to talk in a loud voice for fear of disturbing the pure practice of the monks inside the Zen hall. When it was time to rest, the sign on the door was switched to one that said there was a break in the study. Then passersby could behave more as they pleased. The common term for this was _kai-jinjj_ , \"opening up the silence.\"\n\nTeaching Methods Inside and Outside the Zen Hall\n\nSince the Zen hall was the teaching center of the Zen temple, there had to be a constant course of study going on there. Certainly, the constant course of study of the Zen monks was real study and realization, genuine cultivation of their own fundamental matter, and not a daily routine of lectures and explanations. In the Zen school, they considered lectures on the sutras and shastras to be in the province of the doctrinal studies teachers. Their own emphasis was on cultivating practice.\n\nIn the evenings when the monks were released from their studies, the abbot would go to the Zen hall and talk about methods for meditating and studying Zen. Sometimes, some of the monks would have doubts and difficulties and ask the abbot for instruction. Then the abbot would explain the Dharma and offer guidance according to the occasion. This was called _xiao-can_ , the \"small gathering.\" In later generations, as Zen declined, sometimes the abbot would be lazy and ask the chief of the hall to ascend to the teacher's seat and expound the Dharma, and this too was called _jian-xiang._\n\nFormally, there was another building apart from the Zen hall where the Dharma was expounded, which was called the Dharma hall, and to which the abbot was invited according to a fixed ceremony to ascend the seat and preach the Dharma. At such times, the bell was generally rung and the drum was beaten in a ceremonial style to inform all the monks in the entire temple that they should come to listen to the Dharma. The solemnity of this ceremony and the reverent behavior of the congregation gave this a very formal and solemn religious atmosphere. But the way that the Zen abbots expounded the Dharma was not the same as that of the Dharma teachers who lectured on the scriptures, who were sure to use Buddhist principles expressed in the technical language of the scriptures. Nor did the Zen abbots only preach in a religious style. Their guiding educational principle was to adapt to the occasion and the place, and seize opportunities as they arose, setting up teachings according to the situation without any fixed doctrine or methods. Their disciples and the temple secretary faithfully recorded what they said as they explained the Dharma. These records became the later genre of books of recorded sayings, _yu-lu._\n\nIf Dharma teachers lectured on the sutras and shastras, this had to take place in the lecture hall. Dharma teachers who specialized in explaining the sutras and shastras were called **_cuo-zhu_** , or \"lecturers.\"\n\nCertainly, the Zen hall was the center for the Zen temple's cultivation of practice and educational work. The abbot, who acted as the teacher and guide, had to monitor at all times the process and the progress of the congregation of monks who were sincerely cultivating practice. If there happened to be a certain event or a certain expression that could stimulate them to develop wisdom, the abbot had to seize the opportunity and give them the appropriate teaching.\n\nSometimes, the witty, seemingly light-hearted teaching methods used by brilliant Zen teachers achieved great results with certain people, enabling them to be transformed and realize enlightenment. Even if they could not achieve this goal, these teaching methods sometimes produced very humorous and charming episodes. Later generations recorded these events and called them \"public cases,\" _gong-an._ The Neo-Confucians took up this style and changed the term to \"study cases,\" **_xue-an._** These unusual and wondrous sayings appeared later in the recorded sayings of the Zen masters and became known as **_ji-feng_** , \"witty barbs,\" and **_zhuan-yu_** , \"turning words.\"\n\nFrom this, we can see how important were the teaching responsibilities of the teacher who served as the abbot of a Zen temple. The Buddhist scriptures say that the great teacher's duty lies precisely in taking on the responsibility of the correct Dharma of the Tathagata. Taking on this responsibility meant continuing the work of the enlightened teachers of the past and developing the enlightened teachers of the future, taking charge of the treasury of the correct Dharma eye, and perpetuating the work of the life of wisdom. In the Tang and Song periods, there were many cases of eminent monks who judged that their own merit, wisdom, and ability to teach did not qualify them to act as teachers, and so modesdy confined themselves to tending to their own development and declined the position of abbot.\n\nThe Transformation of the Zen Hall\n\nDuring the Yuan and Ming periods, the monastic system of the Zen temples gradually lost its shape. At the same time, various other sects began to create their own monastic systems, modeled on the guidelines of the Zen school. In the temples of the other sects, the Zen hall was transformed into a buddha-name recitation hall in Pure Land sects, or into a contemplation hall in Taoist temples, and so on. Genuine Zen halls and Zen teachers became few and far between. If people happened to see a real one, they would feel they were getting a remote view of some lofty style, and they could not repress their sighs.\n\nSince the Republican period, the fashion for studying Buddhist learning has arisen in response to the times, and so many Zen temples have established institutes for Buddhist studies. The Zen school has been changing and has already turned into \"Zen studies.\" Some Zen temples have tried to revive the declining system and reform its abuses, and others have invented new rules. All we can do is look up in expectation of worthy sages yet to come.\n\nTHE LEGACY OF THE ZEN COMMUNITY _PURE RULES_\n\nThe **_Pure Rules_** were established by Zen master Baizhang, to become the pure guidelines to which later Zen communities adhered. Though other Zen masters in later generations also established rules and guidelines at times, they all acknowledge the **_Pure Rules_** of Baizhang as their chief source. Moreover, the instructions to the people issued by the first emperor of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, and by the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty both drew their stylistic inspiration from the **_Chan-men Qinggui (Zen Community Pure Rules_ )** and the **_Chanlin Baoxun Precious (Lessons for the Zen Communities)._**\n\nThe original articles of Baizhang's **_Pure Rules_** were lost long ago, and the **_Pure Rules_** that are extant today are later versions such as the **_Baizhang Qinggui (Pure Rules of Baizhang_ )**, composed by imperial decree in the Yuan dynasty, the _Baizhang Qinggui Zhengyi (Textual Exegesis of the Pure Rules of Baizhang_ ), the _Chanyuan Qinggui (Pure Rules of the Zen Gardens), Ruzhong Riyong (Daily Functions of the Monastic Community), Ruzhong Xuzhi (Essential Knowledge for the Monastic Community), Huanzhu Qinggui (Pure Rules of Huanzhu), Conglin Jiaoding Qinggui Zongyao (Compendium of Essentials from Comparative Editions of the Pure Rules of the Zen Communities), Chanlin Beiyong Qinggui (Practical Pure Rules for the Zen Forests), Riyong Qinggui (Daily Use Pure Rules_ ), and _Chanlin Liangxu Xuzhi (Essential Knowledge for the Two Echelons of Zen Monks)._ Besides these, in Japan there are such books as the _Daikan Seiki (Pure Rules of Daikan), Eihei Seiki (Pure Rules of Eihei_ ), and _Ozan Seiki (Pure Rules of Ozan)._ But today, over a thousand years later, these versions we have are not in the original form from the time of Baizhang. The contents of these texts mix in elements from the Zen monastic rules of recent times and have incorporated much of the atmosphere of the period. So we will select several relevant texts to consult.\n\nZen Master Baizhang's Biography\n\nFrom the Song dynasty _Gaoseng Zhuan_ or _Biographies of Eminent Monks:_\n\nThe Buddhist monk [Baizhang] Huaihai was a native of Fujian province. In his youth he left behind the decaying house [of worldly existence] and travelled to many Zen centers. He was very spontaneous by nature, and did not follow the urgings of others. He heard that Mazu had begun to teach in Nankang, and he made up his mind to become his disciple. He went to Mazu's place empty and returned full, and indeed became a Zen adept, a craftsman of the Zen school.\n\nSubsequendy Huaihai was invited by patrons who believed in Buddhism to take up residence at Xinwujie. There was a steep mountain there some thousand feet high, and it was called Baizhang Promontory (Baizhang means \"a hundred rods,\" the equivalent of a thousand feet, since a rod was a measure of length equal to ten Chinese feet). Once Huaihai was living there, Zen travelers came there from near and far, and crowded the teaching hall.\n\nBaizhang said: \"We are practicing the Mahayana Dharma. How could it be appropriate to follow the disciplinary practices of the Hinayana scriptures?\" Someone asked him: \"There are Mahayana precepts of discipline in the _Togacarabhumi Shastra and the Scripture on the Necklace of the Fundamental Deeds of Bodhisattvas._ Why don't we follow these?\"\n\nBaizhang said: \"I have studied widely in the Hinayana and Mahayana scriptures, and combined elements from both of them to establish a set of rules and duties, and hark back to what is good in them. Thus I have decided not to follow the old system of discipline, but to set up a separate one for the Zen communities.\"\n\nEver since Bodhidharma transmitted the Dharma to China, and up through the Sixth Patriarch, those who attained the Dharma Eye were called \"elders.\" This is the same as the practice in the western regions [Central Asia and India] of calling those who who have been monks for a long time and reached a high standing in the Path a name that connotes \"elders.\" Still, many of the monks who live in Vinaya temples think that the other Buddhist temples are deviant.\n\nBaizhang also directed that no matter what their standing, all monks should enter the monks' hall. In the hall was set up a long continuous meditation bench, and wooden frames for them to hang up their bags and their bowls and robes. When they lay down they had to use a slanted pillow at the head of the bed: this was called sleeping with a sword. Those who had done sitting meditation for a long time could only rest briefly. The monks were to practice meditation in a group from morning to night, and take meals when appropriate.\n\nBaizhang taught the Zen monks discipline and frugality. He instituted the practice of the general call to labor, and taught that all monks high and low were to work on an equal footing. The elder of the community lived in a room ten feet square, like Vimalakirti's room. Zen temples were not to establish a shrine with an image of Buddha, but only a Dharma hall, to show that the Dharma went beyond verbal expressions and images. The other rules [Baizhang laid down] were twice as rigorous as those taught by the Vinaya teachers.\n\nAll the Zen communities throughout China submitted to Baizhang's _Pure Rules_ like grass bending down before the wind. The special practices of the Zen school began with Baizhang.\n\nBaizhang died in the ninth year of the Yuanhe era (A.D. 814), on the seventeenth day of the first month. He was 85 years old. He was born in the sixteenth year of the Kaiyuan era [728], In the first year of the Changqing era of Emperor Mu-zong [821], by imperial edict he was given the title \"Zen Master of Great Wisdom.\"\n\nZen Master Baizhang's Enlightenment\n\nThe Zen history called _The Record of Pointing to the Moon (Zhi Yue Lu_ ) says:\n\nZen master Huaihai of Baizhang Mountain in Hongzhou was a native of Changle in Fuzhou, a son of the Wang family.\n\nWhen he was a boy he accompanied his mother to a temple where they bowed to an image of Buddha. He pointed to the image of Buddha and asked his mother: \"Who is this?\" His mother said, \"Buddha.\" He said, \"He is not different in form than a man. Later I too will be a buddha.\"\n\nWhen Baizhang was a young man he left behind the dusts of worldly life, and practiced the three studies of discipline, concentration, and wisdom. He studied with Mazu and served as his attendant. Whenever the donors made offerings of vegetarian food, as soon as Baizhang lifted the lid of the bowl, Mazu would pick up a fried cake and show it to the assembly and say, \"What is this?\" This happened again and again.\n\nOne day as Baizhang was accompanying Mazu on a walk, they saw a flock of wild ducks flying by. Mazu said, \"What are those?\" Baizhang said, \"Wild ducks.\" Mazu said, \"Where have they gone?\" Baizhang said, \"They've flown by.\" Mazu then twisted Baizhang's nose and Baizhang groaned in pain. Mazu said, \"Do you still say it's flown away?\" At these words Baizhang had insight.\n\nBaizhang returned to the attendants' quarters, crying loudly. Another of the attendants asked him, \"Are you thinking of your parents?\" Baizhang said, \"No.\" \"Did someone scold you?\" Baizhang said, \"No.\" \"Then why are you crying?\" Baizhang said, \"My nose was twisted by our teacher and it sail hurts.\" The other attendant said, \"Was there some misunderstanding?\" Baizhang said, \"Go ask our teacher yourself.\" The attendant went and asked Mazu, \"Was there some misunderstanding with attendant Huaihai? He is back in the attendants' quarters crying. I hope you will explain this for me, Master.\" Mazu said, \"He understands this. Go ask him.\" When the other attendant got back to their quarters he said to Baizhang, \"Our master says you understand, and he told me to ask you.\" Baizhang then laughed out loud. The other attendant said, \"A little while ago you were crying, so why are you laughing now?\" Baizhang said, \"A little while ago I was crying, and now I'm laughing.\" The other attendant was at a loss.\n\nThe next day, when Mazu went up to the teacher's seat [in the Dharma hall], as soon as the congregation had gathered, Baizhang came forward and rolled up his mat. Mazu then left the seat. Immediately thereafter Baizhang came to Mazu's private quarters. Mazu said, \"Just now why did you roll up your mat before I had preached the Dharma?\" Baizhang said, \"Yesterday I got my nose twisted by you, master, and it hurt.\" Mazu said, \"Where were you keeping your mind yesterday?\" Baizhang said, \"Today my nose no longer hurts.\" Mazu said, \"You deeply understand yesterday's business.\" Baizhang bowed and withdrew.\n\nAnother time when Baizhang was standing in attendance on Mazu, Mazu's eyes fell on the whisk hanging from the corner of the meditation bench. Baizhang said, \"Do you function merged with this or detached from this?\" Mazu said, \"In the future when you open your mouth, what will you use to teach people?\" Baizhang took the whisk and held it upright. Mazu said, \"Will you function detached from this or merged with this?\" Baizhang hung the whisk back up where it had been before. Mazu gave an awesome shout, which left Baizhang deaf for three days.\n\nNot long after, when Baizhang was staying on Daxiong Mountain, his dwelling place was on a steep cliff, so it was called Baizhang. Students flocked to him from all over. One day Baizhang said to the assembly, \"The Buddha Dharma is not a small thing. In the past I was shouted at by Mazu, and I was deaf for three days.\"\n\nPreface to the _Pure Rules of Baizhang_ by the Song Dynasty Literatus Yang Yi\n\nThe Zen school began [with Bodhidharma] on Shaoshi Mountain, and was transmitted through [the Sixth Patriarch Huineng] at Caoqi. Zen master Baizhang was concerned because most Zen monks lived at Vinaya temples, and even though they established separate halls for themselves, they did not adhere to the guidelines in expounding the Dharma and directing practice. So Baizhang said, \"Hopefully the Path of the buddhas and patriarchs will continue to spread its teaching into the future and not be destroyed. How could it be appropriate for the Zen school to follow the Hinayana teachings?\" Some said, \"There are Mahayana precepts of discipline in the **_Yogacarabhumi Shastra_** and the **_Scripture on the Necklace of the Fundamental Deeds of Bodhisattvas._** Why not follow these?\" Baizhang said, \"Our school is not confined to Mahayana or Hinayana, nor is it different from them. We must take the best elements from both, and establish a system of guidelines, and follow what is appropriate in them.\" So he decided to establish a separate system for the Zen communities.\n\n[Baizhang's **_Pure Rules_** contained the following provisions.] All those whose virtue is to be honored all call elders. This is like the practice in the western regions of calling those who have been monks for a long time and have reached lofty levels in the Path such names as **_acharya._** The one who acts as the chief teacher should dwell in a room ten feet square, the same as Vimalakirti's room. This is not a private sleeping room.\n\nAt Zen temples no other shrines [besides the Dharma hall] should be established. The Dharma hall is built first, to show that the personal instruction passed from buddha to buddha and patriarch to patriarch is to be honored throughout the ages.\n\nThe congregation of monks, no matter whether many or few, are all to enter the monks' hall, with no distinctions of high or low, and be arranged according to how long they have been monks. In the hall was set up a long continuous meditation bench, and wooden frames for the monks to hang up their bags and their bowls and robes. When the monks lay down, they had to use a slanted pillow at the head of the bed. They slept auspiciously on their right sides. Those who had done sitting meditation for a long time could only rest briefly. The monks had to keep decorum whether sitting, standing, walking, or lying down. Other than when entering the abbot's room for instruction, monks who were working diligently at their studies, regardless of rank, were not kept to a constant standard.\n\nThe whole congregation gathered together for group study from morning to evening. The abbot would go up to the Dharma hall, ascend to the teacher's seat, and take charge of the congregation, who stood there in order by his side listening. There would be questions and answers between the host [abbot] and the guests [the disciples], in which he expounded the essential principles of Zen, and taught the monks how to live according to the Dharma.\n\nTwo vegetarian meals were served equally to the whole congregation as appropriate. The congregation observed restraint and frugality [in regard to food], to show that the Wheel of the Dharma and the wheel of food were both turning.\n\nZen temples carried out the practice of the general call to labor, in which all monks high and low had to take part equally in manual labor.\n\nTen duty offices were established, each with one monk in charge directing several monks in the performance of the appointed tasks.\n\nIf miscreants took refuge in Zen temples under false pretenses, and mixed in with the pure congregation [of monks devoted to practice], and caused trouble, then it was up to the duty distributor _wei-na_ to investigate and expose them and expel them from the temple, so that the pure congregation could be at peace.\n\nIf any of the monks committed infractions [against the _Pure Rules]_ , the whole congregation was assembled for a public discussion of the case. Then the offenders were beaten with the staff and driven out of the temple in disgrace. There were four regulations under this heading. First, not to defile the pure congregation, but to live with respect and faith. Second, not to betray the monk's form, but to follow the Buddha's regulations. Third, not to cause trouble with the government authorities, but to avoid lawsuits and trials. Fourth, not to spread rumors outside the temple, but to preserve the good order of the Zen school.\n\nWhole congregations live together, and no one distinguishes between the sagely and the ordinary. Even when the Tathagata was in the world, there were sectarian differences, so how could they be entirely absent nowadays, in the period of the Semblance Dharma and the period of the Dharma Ending Age? But if we see one monk at fault, and then make a fuss ridiculing all monks, without realizing it we are denigrating the sangha and damaging the Dharma, and the harm is very great. If the present day Zen school is to be preserved from harm, it should adhere to the guidelines of Baizhang's _Pure Rules_ , and decide matters accordingly to establish the Dharma and prevent treachery. We may not be worthy people, but better there should be standards and no transgressions, than transgressions and no teaching.\n\nIndeed Baizhang, the \"Zen master of Great Wisdom,\" made great contributions to protecting the Dharma. The distinctive system of the Zen monastic communities started with this. The essence of the **_Pure Rules_** is taught to all later students, so they will not forget the basis of Zen. These rules and standards have been collected in full detail. I have carried out the intent of [Hui]rui: he has edited the **_Transmission of the Lamp_** , and so I have composed this preface.\n\n[Signed by] the Hanlin scholar Yang Yi.\n\n_Twenty Essential Rules for the Zen Community_ by Zen Master Baizhang\n\nThe Zen community flourishes by having no mundane concerns. Cultivation of practice becomes solid and secure through mindfulness of Buddha.\n\nUpholding discipline is of first importance in making energetic progress. Fasting is the cure for sickness.\n\nAffliction becomes enlightenment through patient endurance of insult. Liberation comes through not separating affirmation and denial.\n\nGenuine sincerity is the real condition of community living. Doing one's utmost brings success in carrying out duties.\n\nTalk should be kept to a minimum in order to become direct. When old and young are compassionate to each other and live in harmony, then there is advance in virtue.\n\nThe entry into learning is through diligent study. Having no faults comes from clearly understanding cause and effect.\n\nOld age and death warn of impermanence and alert us. Buddhist activities become real through an impeccable pure spirit.\n\nDealing with visitors becomes an offering through true sincerity. The Zen temple is adorned by its old veterans.\n\nAll affairs should be planned for in advance so they do not become laborious. The proper etiquette for community living is humility and respect.\n\nThe power of concentration enables one to meet danger without becoming confused. Compassion is the basis for helping all beings.\n\n_The Treatise of the Samadhi of the Precious King_\n\nBy mindfulness of Buddha we do not seek to be free from sickness. If the body were without sickness, then cravings and desires would easily arise.\n\nIn dealing with the world we do not seek to have no difficulties. If the world were without difficulties, then arrogance and sloth would surely arise.\n\nIn investigating mind we do not seek to be absent of obstructions. If the mind were without obstructions, then we would overstep the proper stages in our studies.\n\nIn our conduct we do not seek to have no delusions. If our conduct were without delusion, then our vows would not be firm. In making plans for things, we do not seek easy success. If we have easy success in affairs, then the will stays slack and proud.\n\nWhen we form relationships with people, we do not seek to benefit ourselves. If we form relationships for self-aggrandizement, this damages morality.\n\nWe do not seek to have other people accommodate us. If other people accommodate us, our hearts are sure to grow complacent.\n\nWhen we practice generosity, we do not expect a reward. If we expect to be rewarded for meritorious deeds, then we have ulterior motives.\n\nWhen we see something beneficial, we do not seek to profit from it. If we seek to profit from what is beneficial, the mind of ignorance is active.\n\nWhen we are oppressed, we do not seek speedy vindication. If we seek speedy vindication, then animosity and resentment increase.\n\nThus, when the sages established their teachings, they considered sickness and suffering as medicines, troubles and difficulties as freedom and ease, obstacles and barriers as liberation, and the multitude of delusions as the companions to Reality. They considered being bogged down in difficulties as success, broken relationships as sustenance, disagreeable people as gardens and forests, and the merit of generosity as worn-out shoes. They considered keeping away from profit as riches, and suffering oppression as a method of practice.\n\nThus dwelling amidst obstacles nevertheless brings a way through them, and seeking a way through on the contrary brings obstructions. Thus the Tathagata attained the path of enlightenment amidst obstacles and obstructions. The likes of [the murderer] Angulimalya and [the renegade] Devadatta came to do him harm, but our Buddha gave them predictions of salvation, and transformed them so they became enlightened. Is it not the case that [for those who truly follow Buddha's example], when others go against us, it is really favorable to us, and that when others try to damage us, it really helps us succeed? But at the present time, if conventional worldly people studying the Path do not first dwell amidst obstacles, then when obstacles do arrive, they will not be able to push them aside. Thus the great jewel of the Dharma King will be lost. Is this not lamentable?\n\nTHE ZEN COMMUNITY AND PATRIARCHAL CLAN SOCIETY\n\n\"When a method or teaching has been around for a long time, abuses accumulate around it.\" This is a famous traditional saying in China. As it was passed down over long ages, the Zen monastic system, which was originally honored as a specially pure and noble thing, nevertheless could not escape from this rule.\n\nBecause the Zen monastic system was a system that considered the whole world as a single family, there was absolutely no room within it for selfish interests. But the result of the traditional value system, with its duties to one's sovereign, to one's teacher, and to one's kin, was often that the feeling among kinsmen outweighed the sense of duty toward sovereign and teacher, and thus self-centered egotistical views arose. Buddha prohibited clinging to the self and taught people that they must genuinely practice until they reached the realm of selflessness. The Zen monastic system forbade acting out of self-interest and considered itself to be the common possession of all sentient beings in the ten directions. Thus the Zen temples were commonly called _shi-fang cong-lin_ , \"the Zen communities of the ten directions.\" Because of this, monks in the Zen communities were not allowed to accept disciples as they pleased. Even if they made special efforts to accept disciples, this kind of relationship between teacher and disciple could only be reckoned as a kind of individual act, not as a relationship involving the whole temple.\n\nIf the abbot of a _cong-lin_ Zen temple accepted a disciple, the disciple could not automatically succeed to the abbot's position. The next abbot still had to be chosen from among the eminent monks of all the Zen communities. From a moral or legal point of view, there was nothing at all wrong with such a procedure. But people are still people, and from the standpoint of human feelings and behavior, gradually this procedure could not always work.\n\nThus, standing outside the Zen monastic community known as the _cong-lin_ , a system of hereditary temples gradually came into being, along with private hermitages, teaching halls, and small temples. In the so-called hereditary temples, teachers were succeeded by their disciples as abbots in charge of the temple, much like the practice of hereditary succession in the ordinary clan system, though not through blood ties. Since the disciple could succeed to his teacher's position, at the same time he also assumed control of the temple's property. Moreover, the property of a temple was considered to belong to that temple alone, and not be held and enjoyed in common by all the Zen communities of the ten directions. In other respects, such as the formal appointment of monks to administrative posts and the practice of giving visiting monks food and a place to stay, the hereditary temples in form were the same as the **_cong-lin_** Zen temples. But in fact, resources of the hereditary temples were subject to the limitation of private property rights and could not be entirely shared with all the monks under heaven. In the hereditary temples, if an abbot had several disciples, they were ranked in the order in which they had joined the temple. As the disciples in their turn accepted their own disciples, the temple property was further subdivided, as it would be among the various uncles and brothers in the ordinary clan system. In this way, as time went on, abuses multiplied and unworthy disciples launched struggles for power and control of property. Things went so far that the behavior of these socalled monks was the same as that of ordinary worldly people.\n\nIn the final analysis, is human civilization progressing? Or is it regressing? This is a major question in philosophy, which is very difficult to decide.\n\nFrom the social standpoint, any religion can only be considered as a particular social formation. Social formations are man-made. Can you deny that humans are not just ordinary living beings? This being so, there is nothing strange about the transformation in social forms. In the establishment of hereditary temples, private retreats, and small temples, we can see that the deep roots of China's traditional culture, with its patriarchal clan ideas and organizational forms, were still planted deeply in every kind of social formation in China.\n\nHereditary temples were the product of roughly the same time period as the **_cong-lin_** Zen monastic system created by Baizhang. Because the Zen school emphasized succession to a teacher, the establishment of various subschools was a logical result. Especially by the time of the late Tang and Five Dynasties periods, the Five Houses of Zen had become separately established and the idea of being the disciple of the teaching of a particular Zen House had already become firmly planted in people's mind. Thus each of the Five Houses\u2014Linji, Caodong, Guiyang, Yunmen, and Fayan\u2014had its own charts of its lines of succession, which were passed down through the generations. Even today, such charts are still in use. Sometimes the Zen schools finished a line of succession and began to count again from the beginning, and thus continued indefinitely. This was not the same as the clan system of the patriarchal clan society, which always emphasized generational continuity.\n\nDuring the Ming and Qing periods, most of the Zen temples in China were descended from the Linji school. The other schools of Zen had already declined to the point that they were hanging by a thread.\n\nAs the hereditary temples arose in the course of the evolution of Chinese Buddhism, they became like small family lines of monks. Apart from the fact that there were no marital bonds and that they gave their allegiance to Buddhism, in all other practices the monks in these temples were not very different from people in secular life. They were nothing more than religious groups for unmarried people. At a level below this, the rise of the family temple system in Japan, whereby the son of the abbot inherits the control of the temple, verges on a complete change in the character of Buddhism in eastern Asia. As for the pernicious influence of this on the Zen monastic system, all I can do is quote from Confucius ( _Analects_ 3.10): \"At the great sacrifice, after the libation is done, I no longer wish to look on.\"\n\nTHE ZEN MONASTIC SYSTEM AND CHINESE CULTURE\n\nObviously, the Zen monastic system was a product of Chinese culture. When Buddhism was transmitted to China, it was synthesized with Chinese culture and this produced a reformed current within Buddhism, the Zen school. This has already been discussed above and does not have to be explained again. Strictly speaking, as Buddhism passed through its interchange with Chinese culture, there were two major developments that were enough to influence the future fate of the Buddha Dharma and add to the glory of its life of wisdom.\n\nFirst, there was a reordering of Buddhist theory. The Tiantai school and the Huayan school presented an orderly critique of Buddhist doctrines. The Tiantai school encompassed the whole system of diverse Buddhist teachings in terms of the five periods of Buddha's teaching career and the eight levels of the teaching. The Xianshou school of Huayan philosophy did this in terms of five teachings and ten schools of thought. This was the famous analysis and differentiation of the teachings.\n\nThe second major development, in the area of forms of practice, was the establishment of the Zen monastic system. This synthesized Buddhism with the spirit of traditional Chinese culture, including the Confucian system with its emphasis on proper norms of behavior and adapting to the Taoist philosophy of taking joy in natural spontaneity. More than a thousand years ago, the Zen communities had already put into practice the norms of true Chinese-style democracy and liberty. The Zen system was obviously not the same as the religious despotism of the autocratic system. Indeed, it established dignified standards guided by the Buddhist Path for freedom of learning and democratic life.\n\nBeyond China, in the countries that received the southern tradition of primitive Buddhism, like Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka, and Burma, where this has been transmitted up to the present day, although there have been many changes from the ancient forms, Buddhism still more or less keeps some of its original style. But the survival of Buddhism in these countries is still dependent on the government and the remnants of popular faith. Knowledgeable people will see how unfavorably this compares to the solid basis for the genuine cultivation of the Dharma offered by the Zen monastic system without my having to say any more.\n\nIn the opposite case, the Buddhism of the northern tradition in Tibet has taken on a mystical coloration that sets off its religious aspect, and for more than a thousand years has won a privileged position in a theocratic political system. Although this is somewhat similar to the power of the Catholic Church and the pope in the West, Tibetan Buddhism differs from it in lacking an international organization on a world scale. In politics, it is not based on a comprehensive and long-established system of thought, and in terms of religion, it is still locked up within a culturally backward region.\n\nWith a deep understanding of the totality of Shakyamuni Buddha's teaching, we can see that neither the Buddhism of the southern tradition nor the northern tradition is true to his original intention. Only the Zen monastic system is really capable of not going against Shakyamuni's basic intent. Thus we can see that neither the southern tradition nor the northern tradition has achieved the great success of Buddhism in China. What is the reason for this? Even though the light of the Buddha shines everywhere, a people without its own all-encompassing age-old cultural tradition will not have the strength to make Buddhism prosper and grow great. Thus it is said that, when the great teacher Bodhidharma was in India, he saw from afar that, in China, conditions were right for Mahayana. Not shrinking from the hardships of the journey, he crossed the seas and came to the East, where he put down his robe and bowl and transmitted the mind-seal of the Buddha Dharma to China.\n\nIn a nation with an age-old culture like China, the legacy of history displayed against the backdrop of famous mountains and rivers is already enough to show the glory of the whole civilization. The monastic system established by the Zen communities has added quite a bit to the poetic and artistic feeling of China's wonderful scenery.\n\nExpressing the style of Chinese culture, the Tang dynasty poet Du Mu wrote:\n\nFour hundred and eighty Buddhist temples dot the south\n\nSo many towers and platforms in the mist and rain.\n\nHere he was only describing the achievements of Buddhism in Jiangnan in the Northern and Southern dynasties period. In the Tang dynasty and thereafter, with the rise of the Zen monastic system, it could be said that there were Buddhist temples and Buddhist communities along every river and lake and on every mountain in the whole country. Later there was the lyric: \"Buddhist monks have occupied most of the famous mountains in the country.\"\n\nThe bold spirit of the people of Tang times and the generous spirit of the people of Song times were combined and synthesized in the building style of Buddhist temples. In every part of China we can see beautiful and magnificent stupas and temples. When we read through the provincial and local gazetteers, we will find famous ancient sites and Buddhist and Taoist temples and shrines taking up half the book.\n\nAs we consider from afar the earlier sages and think back on the legacy that has come to us over two or three thousand years, it certainly makes us resent those half-educated people who falsely look down on Chinese culture. We must realize how long the experience of a deep-rooted civilization has been, and how many wise people have spent their heart's blood to create it. To make the changes needed to adapt to the trend of the times and insure China's survival takes learning and technical knowledge, and careful strategic consideration before we undertake to act. This mission cannot be accomplished by a course of action that is shallow and false and rash.\n\nTHE ZEN MONASTIC SYSTEM AND THE SECRET SOCIETIES\n\nThe Zen monastic communities were Buddhist social organizations of monks living collectively and concentrating on religious practice. In the last analysis, they were religious organizations, administered by means of a code of disciplinary precepts. If not for these, then probably it would have been even more difficult for the Zen monastic communities than for ordinary society to deal with the disputes that arise in the course of human affairs. This is the sense of the traditional saying: \"Better to bring along a thousand soldiers than a hundred monks,\" because monks are more quarrelsome even than soldiers. As for the abbots and the other monks entrusted with administrative posts in the Zen communities, for now let's not discuss their virtue and wisdom. But as for their personal experience in the world, most of them had had some worldly involvements. Thus the ancients said of Zen communities that \"Dragons and snakes were mixed together [in them] and ordinary people and sages lived together [there].\" In fact, monks with concealed worldly concerns and monks truly committed to the Dharma for its own sake were very hard to tell apart.\n\nOver the course of Chinese history, there were many cases where brave men frustrated in their worldly ambitions, loyalists of fallen dynasties, and people who had suffered things in life too painful to speak of, took refuge in Zen communities out of despair. They sought to finish the remainder of their lives seeking enlightenment in a serene environment. Indeed there were many people like this.\n\nWhen the Zen school was flourishing in the Tang and Song periods, the congregations of Zen temples often numbered over a thousand. Thus, apart from the monks who were rigorously upholding the disciplinary code of the Zen _Pure Rules_ , there were sure to be some monks who secretly devoted themselves to the martial arts and military exercises. When Li Shimin established the Tang dynasty, when Zhao Guangyin established the Song dynasty, and Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming dynasty, Buddhist monks skilled in the martial arts from such places as Shaolin Temple assisted the dynastic founders in conquering and pacifying the country. They did not accept official position as a reward for their services, but just withdrew back into the Buddhist communities. This, too, is a historical fact.\n\nTian Wen's _Record of a Journey to Shaolin Temple_ says:\n\nThe Tang period monk Tanzong lived at Shaolin Temple in Henan province. He was an expert in the martial arts. In 621, when Tang Taizong [i.e. Li Shimin] was not yet emperor, but still the Prince of Qin, he was given the mission of leading a punitive expedition against Wang Shichong (a Sui general who had usurped the throne after the assassination of Emperor Sui Yangdi). Some thirteen Shaolin monks, including Tanzong, joined the forces of Taizong. Because of their awesome ferocity and skills in combat, they defeated the enemy and achieved victory. Taizong appointed Tanzong as a general, but the other monks were not willing to serve as officials, so Tiazong awarded them each a purple robe as a mark of honor. An inscription in stone recording this event is set into a wall at Shaolin Temple.\n\nThe essay on the soldier-monks of Huguang province found in volume nine of the second part of the **_Qiao Shu_** says:\n\nIn 1553 pirates were ravaging the seacoast in the Yangzi delta area. The militia tried to ward them off, but were defeated in thirty-seven engagements. Cai Kelian, who was the official in charge of the area, recruited soldier-monks to annihilate the pirates. From then on, our forces won many victories over the pirates. The victories began when [the monk] Tianyuan and his cohorts joined the fighting...When the pirates attacked the city of Hangzhou, the local officials assembled a force of forty soldier-monks to resist them. Their commanders were Tianzhen and Tianchi. Tianchi was a Shaolin monk. When the soldier-monks joined battle with the pirates, they routed them.\n\nThe pirates fled and took refuge at Taicang in Shanghai [which was then still a small town]. Mister Cai had his headquarters in Suzhou. He sent money to Hangzhou to recruit soldier-monks, but discipline was strict [among the monks] in the Hangzhou area, and none of them agreed to join [the military force]. Luyuan, a monk, with no other way to thank Mr. Cai, sent someone to recruit Yuekong and eighteen other monks who had not previously been among the forty monks fighting against the pirates. The local officials then gave permission for this. Luyuan said to Yuekong: \"Since you are presently in charge of a temple, you should tell [Mr. Cai] that your soldier-monks have been recruited and are irresistible. If he offers you money, it would be better to decline. If he does not accept your refusal, you should recommend the Shaolin monk Tianyuan to be the commander [of the soldier-monks]. He is presently lecturing on the **_Surangama Sutra_** at Tianchi Mountain, and he has the ability to command troops.\" When Yuekong met with Mr. Cai, he tried to decline the commission, but this was not accepted. So he recommended Tianyuan [to lead the soldier-monks]. Tianyuan accepted the appointment and left Tianchi Mountain. This was the tenth day of the fifth month. Mr. Cai took up residence at Ruiguang Temple, and stayed there with Yuekong. Yuekong led a band of eighteen soldier-monks from the Hangzhou area, and Tianyuan led a band of forty-eight soldier-monks from the Suzhou area. They joined forces and attacked the pirates. There were also ten soldiers from Xuanshe Mountain who joined Yuekong's force. On the tenth day of the sixth month they sent out six groups of fighters against more than a hundred of the pirates. They attacked the pirates ferociously, and the pirates were terrified and fled. After this they fought the pirates many times and won every battle. They attacked all the coves where the pirates fled and destroyed all their encampments, until none remained. Forty of the pirates were slain or wounded by the soldier-monks.\n\nZhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming dynasty, in his youth had been a monk in Huangjue Temple, and he naturally knew the regulations of the Zen monastic communities. Thus, in the bureaucratic system he set up in the early part of his reign, some of the official titles retained the feeling of the names of the administrative posts of the Zen monastic system. The Ming bureaucratic system was derived with some changes by following the old system of the preceding Yuan dynasty, with some reference to the Tang and Song systems.\n\nThe Yuan system of official posts had been influenced by Lamaism and by the Buddhist-Confucian statesman Liu Bingzhong and, in many respects, was imbued with the flavor of the monastic community and its forms. Even for a man of great talent like Yelu Chucai, the Jin dynasty nobleman and Buddhist adept who influenced the nature of the regime set up by Mongols after their conquest of North China, it was hard to get away from this pattern.\n\nDuring the period of the Southern Song, Jin, and Yuan dynasties (12th through mid-14th centuries), the Taoist master Qiu Chuji and his disciples established the Complete Reality school of Taoism, following the example of the Zen monastic system, in order to preserve the national culture of the Chinese in the face of barbarian conquest by the Jurchen and the Mongols.\n\nWhen the Manchus entered China and founded the Qing dynasty in the 17th century, many of the leading figures of the fallen Ming dynasty, along with many of the Chinese intelligentsia, maintained their allegiance to the fallen dynasty and, out of a sense of duty, refused to submit to the Qing. Some of them wanted to overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming. Seeing how easily many of the Chinese elite had switched their allegiance to the new regime, these Ming loyalists began secretly to form networks of the brave fighters in the Yangzi Valley region. Thus the secret society organizations gradually formed among the common people. Tradition has it that leading intellectuals like Gu Yanwu, Li Erqu, Huang Zongxi, and Fu Qingzhu were the hard core who directed this movement behind the scenes. Naturally, those who joined these secret groups included many surviving officials of the Ming dynasty who had changed their names, gone into hiding, and lived under the guise of Buddhist or Taoist monks.\n\nThus, these kinds of secret society organizations had as their backbone the traditional culture's values of loyalty, filial piety, human fellow-feeling, and duty, and were dedicated to overthrowing the Qing and restoring the Ming. But apart from this, in terms of their rules and forms, they were all patterned on the forms of the Zen monastic regulations.\n\nExamples of such secret societies are the Gelao (\"Brothers and Elders\") Society of the early Qing (also called the Hong Bang), and its later offshoots, the Qing Bang (\"Green Gang\"), the Hong Bang (\"Red Gang\"), and so on. Externally, they were social organizations, but their inner objective was to plan the restoration of Chinese sovereignty on behalf of the people and the nation. Other examples are the Li Men in North China, which merged elements from Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Later it was called the Li Jiao (\"the teaching of the inner design\"). Its organization was also modeled on the Zen monastic regulations.\n\nAt a lower level were the various religious sects of the Ming and Qing periods, such as the Dadao Hui (\"the Big Knife Society\") and the Hongjiang Hui (\"the Red Spear Society\"), and the various similar sects based on Taoist techniques that resembled Taoism but were not. All of these were more or less organized according to the rules of the Zen monastic system.\n\nFrom these examples we can see that the Zen monastic system indeed had a major historical influence on all levels of Chinese society.\n\nCLOSING COMMENTS\n\nConfucianism was always the main current in traditional Chinese culture. Confucianism put forward the social aim of great harmony under heaven, and its central teachings took proper social and cultural norms as the guide for political order. Good order achieved through the proper social and cultural norms would be able to realize the objective of everyone under heaven acting for the common good enunciated in the _Book of Rites._\n\nBut the kind of social organization where everyone acts for the common good only appeared after several thousand years of transmission and practice during the Tang dynasty, in the form of the monastic system of the Zen school of Buddhism. To be sure, in form this was a community of Buddhist monks, but in spirit it was a model for the synthesis of the true meaning of the Confucian ideal of proper social norms with Buddhist precepts of discipline.\n\nConfucius said: \"When the proper norms have been lost [at the court of the ruler], seek them in the countryside.\" As for social norms that were genuinely good and fair, I'm afraid these could only be found in the Zen communities. But even so, these could not serve as a model for bringing political order to the whole country, because the task of properly managing the affairs of the whole country is many hundreds of times as difficult and complicated as the task of regulating the Zen community. Human beings are creatures of both emotion and reason, and if we lean too heavily toward either side and cannot properly balance the two, the result will be an inability to make human life peaceful and secure.\n\nThere were four reasons that the Zen monastic system was able to extend so widely and become popular. First, the Buddhist monks had left the secular world and had already resolved to abandon the emotional ties and troubles of worldly affairs and human desires. Even though life in a Zen temple was communal, it was also an absolutely free search for one's own ideal realm. Second, given the monks' religious faith and the concepts that came from a clear understanding of cause and effect, it was already unnecessary to add a controlling system of rules and regulations. Third, each monk had already resolved within himself to purify his own mind and made this his rule, so this was the highest principle by which the monks governed themselves. Fourth, the economic system of the Zen communities, which supported the monks and provided their livelihood, already met the needs of their material welfare, so all they had to attend to was their own physical and mental cultivation. They could abandon all other concerns.\n\nFor these reasons, the Zen monks could achieve the highest goal of the Confucians, which was to uphold the proper social norms, as well as the demands of the Mohists, which was to dedicate themselves fully to the welfare of all under heaven.\n\nWhat of ordinary human society? There the power of desires for sex and food and drink and material things continually expands and develops further. As human affairs proceed and worldly concerns operate, conflicts arise between people. There are many doctrines that are certainly correct in terms of theory and as educational devices, but when they encounter the demands of human emotions and human desires, they are entirely unworkable.\n\nThe Zen monastic system was perfect, but outside of teaching and offering guidance, it employed no punishments or sanctions. Without the exemplary moral conduct of the Zen monks to uphold it, it would have been absolutely impossible for it to set an example for more than a thousand years. In the Southern Song period, Zen master Dahui Zonggao of Jingshan Temple in Hangzhou and Zen master Zhu-an Dagui of Longxiang Temple in Wenzhou feared that, in the future, the Zen monastic community would go into decline, so they collaborated to put together an account of the excellent sayings and doings of the leaders of the Zen communities down through the generations. To set a standard for later generations, they wrote the book called **_Chanlin Baoxun [Precious Lessons from the Zen Communities]._** The models of lofty style, sterling discipline, honesty, and rigorous practice contained in this book have been good enough to match the study books of the Song Neo-Confucians down through the ages. If we put aside the monastic exterior of the Zen teachers whose deeds are recorded in **_Chanlin Baoxun_** , and look upon them as models of cultivating the human personality and perfecting action in the world, this book can be put to unlimited uses and can stimulate our infinite natural potential.\n\nWhen Zen master Baizhang established the Zen monastic system, his original fundamental intent was to enable Buddhist monks to be able to carry out genuine cultivation of practice, unhindered by life, without worries or cares to drag them down, and give them the peace of mind to seek the Path of enlightenment. He was not thinking of establishing any kind of social organization, nor did he have any ambition to form a religious organization. He did have the state of mind described in the Confucian maxim: \"A profound person cherishes the people by virtuous conduct.\" But he certainly had no intention of aggrandizing himself.\n\nIndeed, Baizhang had no worldly ambitions at all, and that's why all that he did was very spontaneous and natural and in perfect accord with the Confucian and Buddhist principles of compassion, human fellow-feeling, and righteousness. If Baizhang had had any worldly desires, then it would have been as the Buddhist scriptures say: \"When the causal ground is not genuine, the results obtained are twisted.\" If that had been the case, how could he have become a protean teacher for the ages?\n\nWhen Baizhang was in the world, the reason people denounced him as a monk who was breaking the precepts was because they were clinging rigidly to the code of discipline of primitive Indian Buddhism, and they thought that Buddhist monks should not engage in agriculture to earn their living. Looking back from our standpoint a thousand years later, we can see that, if Baizhang had not courageously reformed the monastic system and had allowed the Zen monks to persist in the original Indian pattern of begging for food, Buddhism in China would not have been able to preserve its standards and remain widespread up through the present day.\n\nThe Zen school emphasizes that people must have a genuine perception of reality. The Buddhist scriptures call Buddha \"the Great Hero.\" Times change and the world changes too. Over time, the world has moved from an agrarian society and way of life to the social order of the present day, which has been transformed by industry, commerce, and science. As we think back to the earlier sages, we really lament that we don't know to whom among them we can turn for guidance in this unprecedented situation.\nIndex\n\n**A**\n\nAbhidharma-kosha,\n\nAbhidharmakosha School, ,\n\nabhidharma-vibhasha,\n\nAbhidharma-vibhasha-shastra,\n\nAccounts of Consciousness Only,\n\nactions,\n\nAfghanistan,\n\nAgama Sutras,\n\nAhorudra,\n\nAjita-kesakambala,\n\nAlexander, ,\n\nAlexander the Great,\n\nAlmsgiver's Garden,\n\nAlmsgiver's Jetavana Vihara,\n\nAmerican Mahabodhi Society,\n\nAmitabha Buddha, ,\n\nAmitabha Sutra,\n\nAmogha Tripitaka,\n\nAmoghavajra,\n\nAn Shigao,\n\nAnalects,\n\nAnanda, , ,\n\nanapana,\n\nAngarika Buddhapala,\n\nAniruddha,\n\nannihilationist view,\n\nAnrakuritsu,\n\nAntigonas, ,\n\nAntiochos,\n\nAnuradhapura,\n\nanuttarasamyaksambodhi,\n\nAparantaka region,\n\nAratakalama's place,\n\nArhat,\n\nAsanga,\n\nascending to heaven,\n\nAshoka, King, , , , , ,\n\nAshvagosha,\n\nAsita Rshi, ,\n\nAtharva-Veda,\n\nAtman (the true self), ,\n\nAvatam saka\n\nphilosophy,\n\nschool,\n\nawakening to the path,\n\nAwang kanbu,\n\n**B**\n\nBactria,\n\nBaipuren,\n\nBaizhang, , , , ,\n\nenlightenment story,\n\n_**Pure Rules**_ of,\n\n_**Pure Rules**_ preface,\n\nBamboo Grove Retreat,\n\nBangkok,\n\nBeckh, Hermann,\n\nBeijing,\n\nBeiping,\n\nBeluvana,\n\nBenaras,\n\nBhadrabahu,\n\nBhargava,\n\nBhavaviveka,\n\n_bhikshunis_ ,\n\nbhikshus, , , ,\n\nBimbisara, King, ,\n\nBinwang, Luo,\n\nbirth, four forms of,\n\nbodhi,\n\ntree,\n\nBodhidharma,\n\nBodhiruci,\n\nBook of Changes, , , , ,\n\nBrahman (the absolute),\n\ntransformations of,\n\nBrahman and Atman nonduality,\n\nBrahmanas, , , , , , ,\n\nBrahmanism,\n\nbrahmans,\n\nbreath, tempering,\n\nbreathing,\n\nBritain,\n\nBuddha,\n\nBuddha Dharma,\n\ncultivating realization of,\n\nMiddle Path of,\n\nbuddha-nature, ,\n\nBuddha, three jewels of,\n\nBuddhism, , ,\n\nin Asia,\n\nChinese, ,\n\nConfiicianized,\n\nEast Asian,\n\neconomic position,\n\nEsoteric, ,\n\nin Europe and America,\n\nfounding of pure land,\n\nHinayana, , , ,\n\nHuayan,\n\nIndian, , , , ,\n\nJapanese,\n\nKorean,\n\nMahayana,\n\nrise of,\n\nschool,\n\nof Shakyamuni,\n\nSong-period,\n\nTantric, , , , , ,\n\nTibetan,\n\ntransmission to China, ,\n\nin the 20th century,\n\nin Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern dynasties,\n\nBuddhist canon, , , ,\n\nBuddhist concentration and wisdom, transmission of,\n\nBuddhist education,\n\nBuddhist Layman's Association,\n\nBuddhist monastic system,\n\nBuddhist scriptures\n\nbasis in the,\n\ncompilation of,\n\ntranslation of the,\n\nBuddhist Revival,\n\nBuddhist techniques,\n\nBuddhists, unity,\n\nBurma,\n\nBurnouf, Eugene,\n\nBushido,\n\n**C**\n\nCai Jiyu,\n\nCai Yin,\n\nCakravartin,\n\nCao Zijian,\n\nCaodong school,\n\nCaoqi,\n\nCaotong school,\n\ncapability,\n\nwithout,\n\ncategorical consistency,\n\ncatagories, six fundamental,\n\nChandaka, ,\n\nchaoyi,\n\nChaozhou,\n\nCheng Hao,\n\nCheng Yi, , ,\n\nCheng-you,\n\nCh'imnyu,\n\nChinese Buddhism\n\ndecline of,\n\ndevelopment of,\n\nheydey of,\n\nrevival of,\n\nChinese culture,\n\nChinese Taoist techniques,\n\nChisong,\n\nCholas,\n\nChristian missionaries,\n\nChuan-ben,\n\nCircle Grove Temple (Kashmir),\n\ncivilization\n\nBuddhist,\n\nChinese,\n\nGreek,\n\nCizhou,\n\nclan tradition,\n\nClassic of History, ,\n\nClassic of Poetry, ,\n\nClassic of Tea,\n\nCommentaries on the Hundred Treatises,\n\nComte, Auguste,\n\nConfucianism, , , , ,\n\nConfucius, , , , ,\n\nconfusion, curbing,\n\ncorrect conduct,\n\nCorrect Dharma,\n\ncorrect faith,\n\ncorrect knowledge,\n\ncounting breaths,\n\ncultivating practices,\n\ncultivating realization lack of,\n\ncyclical existence,\n\n**D**\n\nDadian,\n\nDahlke, Paul,\n\nDai-an,\n\nDaisetsu, Suzuki,\n\nDalai Lama, , , ,\n\nFifth,\n\nDao An, , , ,\n\nDao De Jing,\n\nDaojian,\n\ndao-lu,\n\nDaorui,\n\nDaosheng, ,\n\nDaoshun,\n\nDaoxuan,\n\nDark Learning philosophy,\n\nDeer Park, ,\n\nDehui,\n\ndescending to hell,\n\nDevadatta,\n\nDe Zoysa, Dr. A. P.,\n\nDharma, , , , ,\n\nKings,\n\npreaching of,\n\nprotector of,\n\nDharma (jewel of Buddhism),\n\nDharma master Fazang,\n\nDharmagupta, ,\n\nDharmakara,\n\nDharmapala,\n\nDharmaraksha,\n\ndharmas,\n\ndifference,\n\nDing Fubao,\n\nDinnaga,\n\nDixian,\n\nDoctrine of The Mean,\n\nDogen,\n\nDongben Gexi,\n\ndravya,\n\nDream Wanderings Collection,\n\nDunhuang wall paintings,\n\nDutta-Gamani, King,\n\nE\n\nEast Asia,\n\nEdwards, A. S.,\n\negotism,\n\nEight-Fingered Ascetic, , ,\n\nEisai,\n\nelements\n\nfive great,\n\nfour great,\n\nemptiness, inherent,\n\nempty-robe sect,\n\nEnchin,\n\nenlightened one,\n\nenlightenment, supreme, perfect, complete,\n\nEnnin,\n\nequipoise,\n\nessences, twenty-five,\n\n**F**\n\nFajing,\n\nFan Chengda,\n\nFan Xi,\n\nFan Zhongyan,\n\nFang Xuanling,\n\nfang-zhang,\n\nfan-que method,\n\nFaxian,\n\nFaxiang\/Yogacara School,\n\nFayan House of Zen,\n\nFayan school,\n\nFayun,\n\nFazang, ,\n\nFazun,\n\nFive Dynasties,\n\nperiod,\n\nFive Houses of Zen,\n\nFive Mountains system,\n\nFotu deng, , ,\n\nfounding of the teaching,\n\nFragrant Mountain,\n\nFrance,\n\nFrauwallner, Erich,\n\nFu-ai-ye,\n\nFu Jian, ,\n\nFuyinlao,\n\nFuxini,\n\n**G**\n\nGajashirsha Mountain,\n\nGandhara,\n\nGanges River,\n\nGanges Valley,\n\nGaofeng Miao,\n\nGaozong, Emperor Tang,\n\nGarbe, Richard Karl, von,\n\nGautama,\n\nGaya-Kashyapa,\n\nGeiger, Wilhelm,\n\nGelugpa sect,\n\nGenko,\n\nGensang,\n\nGermany,\n\nGolden Seventy Treatise,\n\nGongdekai,\n\nGonghe,\n\nGopika,\n\nGozan,\n\nGreat Learning,\n\nGreat Vehicle\n\nbodhisattvas,\n\ncollection,\n\n_Greater Amitabha Sutra_ ,\n\nGuangdong,\n\nGuangdong Province,\n\nGuiyang school,\n\nguna,\n\n**H**\n\nHainan Island,\n\nHaining,\n\nHakuin,\n\nHan dynasty, , , , ,\n\nConfucians,\n\nEastern,\n\nHan Qingjing,\n\nHan Yu, ,\n\nHangzhou,\n\nHanlin Academy,\n\nHanshan,\n\nHanyue, Cang,\n\nHanzang Buddist Institute,\n\nheaven and hell,\n\nHeian dynasty, ,\n\nHimalaya Mountains,\n\nHodan,\n\nholding steady,\n\nHonen,\n\nHongyi, ,\n\nHosso, school,\n\nhouseholder,\n\nHuandi, Emperor Han,\n\nHuang Chanhua,\n\nHuayan\/Avatamsaka School, ,\n\nHuayan commentaries,\n\nHuayan Sutra,\n\nHuiguan,\n\nHuiguo,\n\nHuineng,\n\nHuineng, Sixth Patriarch,\n\nHuiyuan, , , , ,\n\nHuizong, Emperor,\n\nhuman life, ideal,\n\nhumanistic system of thought,\n\nHumphreys, Christmas,\n\nHuqiu Mountain,\n\n**I**\n\nIkshvaku,\n\nIndia's first Buddhist college,\n\nIndian Buddhist sects, ,\n\nIndian Buddhist thought,\n\nIndian civilization\n\nreligion and philosophy,\n\nIndian culture\n\nbackground,\n\ndevelopment of,\n\ninherent true enlightenment,\n\nintending,\n\nIppen,\n\n**J**\n\nJiang kaishek,\n\nJainism\n\nschool, ,\n\nJalandhara Temple,\n\nJangjia, ,\n\nFourteenth,\n\nJangjia Khutughtu,\n\nJapan, ,\n\nJapanese style Esoteric Buddhism,\n\nJapanese Tendai school,\n\nJava,\n\nJebtsundampa,\n\nJetavana Garden Vihara,\n\nJetavana Grove,\n\nJi,\n\nJialing Xingyin,\n\nJianghan,\n\nJianzhen,\n\nJiaping years,\n\nJiaqing dynasty,\n\nJichan,\n\nJie, Master,\n\nJimon,\n\nJin dynasty, , , ,\n\nEastern,\n\nWestern,\n\nJing, King,\n\nJinshan Temple,\n\nJishu, the Time sect,\n\nJnanaprabha,\n\nJodo,\n\nschool,\n\nShinshu, ,\n\nJojitsu school,\n\n**K**\n\nKagyudpa,\n\nKaikyoku, Watanabe,\n\nKaivalya Pada,\n\nKaiyuan period,\n\nKakuda-Katyayana, ,\n\nKalingas,\n\nKamakura dynasty, ,\n\nKanishka, King, , , ,\n\nKanto,\n\nKarqyudpa,\n\nkarma, , , , ,\n\nkarmic power, no gradations of,\n\nkarmic retribution,\n\nkarmic reward,\n\nKashmir,\n\nKashimira,\n\nKashyapa-Matanga,\n\nKatyayana,\n\nKaundinya,\n\nKegon school,\n\nKerala,\n\nKern, H.,\n\nKhubilai Khan,\n\nkhutughtu,\n\nKimmei, Emperor,\n\nknowing the minds of others,\n\nknowledge\n\nfive organs of,\n\nsource of,\n\nKobo Daishi,\n\nKoguryo, ,\n\nKorea,\n\nKoryo,\n\nCanon,\n\nKoryo dynasty,\n\nKosala, Crown Prince,\n\nKosha school,\n\nKshantideva,\n\nkshatriyas, , ,\n\nKucha, ,\n\nKukai,\n\nKukkutarama Temple,\n\nKumarajiva, , , ,\n\nKushinagara,\n\nKusumapura, ,\n\ncollection,\n\nKuya,\n\nKyoto,\n\n**L**\n\nLaiguo,\n\nLamman, Professor,\n\nLanka,\n\nLaozi, , , , , , , , ,\n\n_Larger Agama Sutra_ ,\n\nLevi, Dr. Sylvain,\n\nLhasa,\n\nLi Ao,\n\nLi Shimin,\n\nLi Zhenggang,\n\nLiang dynasty, ,\n\nLiang Qichao,\n\nLiang Shuming,\n\nLiang Wudi,\n\nliberation, ,\n\nfrom birth and death,\n\nLing, King,\n\nLingdi, Emperor Han,\n\nLinji school, ,\n\nLiu Xie,\n\nLiu Yimin,\n\nLiuyun Temple,\n\nliving in the forests,\n\nLi-xue,\n\nlogic of causation,\n\nLondon Student's Buddhist Association,\n\nLotus Sutra, ,\n\nLu Guang,\n\nLu Long,\n\nLu Qiuyi, ,\n\nLu Yu,\n\nLuoyang,\n\n**M**\n\nMa Yifu,\n\nMadhyamika, ,\n\nschool of,\n\ntheory,\n\nMadhyamika Three Treatises school,\n\nMagadha, , , ,\n\nMagas, ,\n\nMahakashyapa, , , ,\n\nMahaprajapati, Queen, , ,\n\nMaharashtra,\n\nMahasangika, ,\n\nMahayana, ,\n\nMahayana Buddhist Publishing Society,\n\nMaheshvara Deva, ,\n\nMahisamandala,\n\nMaitreya,\n\nManchu Qing dynasty,\n\nmantrayoga,\n\nMarananta,\n\nMaskarin,\n\nmatter,\n\nMaudgalyayana, ,\n\nMaurya dynasty,\n\nMaya, Queen,\n\nMazu Daoyi, , ,\n\nMei Guangxi,\n\nMeiji Restoration, ,\n\nMencius, ,\n\nmerging,\n\nmethods of sitting,\n\nmiddle age,\n\nMimamsa\n\nschool, , ,\n\nMinamoto and Taira factions,\n\nMinayeff,\n\nmind, organ of,\n\nMing dynasty, , , ,\n\nBuddhism in,\n\nMingdi, Emperor,\n\nMingdi, Emperor Han,\n\nMiyouluo,\n\nMiyun, Wu,\n\nMo Zi,\n\nMoggaliputta Tissa, ,\n\nMoho Zhiguan,\n\nMongolia,\n\nMonks and Temples,\n\nMount Hiei, ,\n\nMount Koya,\n\nMount Lu, ,\n\nMount Song,\n\nMouzi Lihuo Lun,\n\nMukhoja,\n\nMuller, Max, ,\n\nMunmu, King,\n\nMuramachi dynasty,\n\nMuslim invasions,\n\nMyoetsu sect,\n\nMyohorengekyo,\n\nMysore,\n\n**N**\n\nNadi-Kashyapa,\n\nNagarjuna,\n\nNairanjana River, , ,\n\nNaiyayaka\n\nschool,\n\n_Namo Amitajo_ ,\n\nNandapala,\n\nNanjo Bun'o,\n\nNanjo, Bun'ya,\n\nNanyae Huairang,\n\nnatural-body sect,\n\nnembutsu,\n\nNenghai,\n\nNengyuan,\n\nNeo-Confucians,\n\nNestorian Christianity,\n\nNew Confucianism,\n\nNichiren,\n\nsect, , ,\n\nNie Yuntai,\n\nNirgranthas, , ,\n\nnirvana, , , ,\n\nNirvana Sutra,\n\nnon-Buddhist paths,\n\nNondharmas,\n\nNorthern Dynasties, , ,\n\nnothingness,\n\nNuona,\n\nNyaya\n\nschool, , ,\n\nNyingmapa, ,\n\n**O**\n\nObaku sect,\n\nOldenberg, Hermann,\n\nOmniscient One,\n\nopinions, sixteen,\n\nOpium Wars,\n\norgans,\n\nfive of action,\n\northodox schools of the brahmanical religion,\n\nOuyang Jian,\n\nOuyang Jingwu, , , ,\n\nOuyang Xiu,\n\nOuyi,\n\n**P**\n\nPadmasambhava,\n\nPaekche, , ,\n\nPali canon,\n\nPali Text Society,\n\nPanchen Lama, , , ,\n\nPandava Mountain,\n\nPandyas,\n\nParamartha, ,\n\nParshva,\n\nParthia,\n\nPataliputra,\n\nPatriarchal Clan Society,\n\npersonal self,\n\nPhagspa,\n\nPhilippines,\n\nphilosophical trends,\n\nphilosophy\n\nIndian religious,\n\nsix schools of,\n\nPischel, Richard,\n\npolitics,\n\nPophung, King,\n\nPoussin, Louis de la Vall\u00e9e,\n\npractice, eight branches of,\n\nprajna, , , ,\n\nPrasenajit, King, ,\n\nprohibitions,\n\nPtolemy,\n\nPunjab,\n\nPurana, ,\n\npure conduct, , ,\n\nPure Land,\n\nschool, , , , ,\n\nBuddhism,\n\nPurna,\n\nPushamitra,\n\nPutuo Xilin Zen Temple,\n\n**Q**\n\nQianlong dynasty,\n\nQianlong Emperor,\n\nQin dynasty, ,\n\nformer, ,\n\nlater, , ,\n\nQing dynasty, , , , , ,\n\ndecline of Buddhism,\n\nQinghai, ,\n\nQingyuan Xingsi,\n\nqualities,\n\n**R**\n\nRahula, ,\n\nRajagrha, , , , , ,\n\ncollection of, ,\n\nRed School,\n\nRennyo,\n\nRhys Davids, T. W.,\n\nRig-Veda,\n\nRinzai,\n\nZen school,\n\nZen temples,\n\nRitsu school,\n\nRussia,\n\nRyonin,\n\n**S**\n\nsacrifices,\n\nSadhana Pada,\n\nSagehood,\n\nSaicho,\n\nSakya,\n\nSakyapa sects, ,\n\nSama-Veda,\n\nsamadhi, , ,\n\nSamadhi Pada,\n\nsameness,\n\nSam Khya\n\ndoctrine,\n\nschool, ,\n\nSangha, ,\n\nSanjayin, , ,\n\nSanmon,\n\nSanron school,\n\nSanskrit,\n\nSatyasiddhi school, ,\n\nSatyasiddhi Shastra,\n\nSchmidt, Kurt,\n\nSchopenhauer,\n\nself-realization,\n\nSenart, Emile,\n\nSenghui, Kang,\n\nSengrui,\n\nSengzhao, , ,\n\nseng-zheng,\n\nsense objects, five,\n\nsensing,\n\nsentient beings,\n\nSeven Leaf Crag,\n\nShakya clan, ,\n\nShakyamuni Buddha, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nachieves Buddhahood,\n\nbirth and death of, , , ,\n\ncompassionate temperament,\n\ncompiling verbal teachings of,\n\ncousin Ananda,\n\ninnate spiritual uniqueness,\n\nleft home,\n\nlineage of,\n\nonly son Rahula,\n\npractices six years of austerities,\n\nstudies methods of various schools,\n\nteaching and original disciples,\n\nShandao,\n\nShanxi,\n\nShao Yong,\n\nShariputra, ,\n\nshastras, ,\n\n**_she-hui-xue_** ,\n\nShemoteng,\n\nShen Yue,\n\nShenxiu,\n\nShi Le, ,\n\nShihuang, Emperor Qin,\n\nShingon, ,\n\nschool,\n\nShinran,\n\nShirahata sect,\n\nShotoku, Prince,\n\nshramana, , , , ,\n\nshravasti, , ,\n\nShubhakarasimha,\n\nShundao,\n\nShundi, Emperor,\n\nShunyata,\n\nShunzhi Emperor,\n\nSichuan,\n\nSilabhadra,\n\nSilla, ,\n\nSingapore,\n\nSix Dynasties period,\n\nSixth Patriarch,\n\nsleeping without dreams,\n\nSokka Gakkai movement,\n\nSong Confucians,\n\nSong dynasty, , , , , , ,\n\nSong Taizu, ,\n\nSongmun Temple,\n\nSosurim,\n\nSoto school,\n\nSoto Zen school,\n\nSource Mirror Record,\n\nSouth Fukien Buddhist Institute,\n\nSouthern dynasty, , ,\n\nSouthern Song Dynasty,\n\nSpencer, Herbert,\n\nSpirit Peak, ,\n\nspiritual powers,\n\nSpring and Autumn Annals,\n\nSrilanka, ,\n\nSrilankan Angarika Buddhapala,\n\nSrongtsen Gampo,\n\nstainless wisdom,\n\nstate of awakening,\n\nstates, four,\n\nStcherbatsky, Theodore,\n\nStede, Wilhelm,\n\nSthavira, ,\n\nSubhadra,\n\nSubhakarasimha,\n\nSubhuti,\n\nsubstance,\n\nSuddhodana, King, , , , , , , , ,\n\nsudras, ,\n\nsuffering, three kinds,\n\nSui-Tang dynasty, ,\n\nSu Manshu,\n\nSumatra,\n\nSun Quan,\n\nSun Yatsen, Dr., ,\n\nsupernatural\n\nhearing,\n\nvision,\n\nSupreme Path\n\nconsummation of,\n\nSuryavamsa,\n\nSutra, Benevolent King,\n\nSutra, Diamond Light,\n\nSutra in Forty-two Chapters,\n\nSutra of Infinite Life,\n\nSutra, Queen Shrimala,\n\nsutras, ,\n\nSuvarnabhumi,\n\n**T**\n\nTaiji Tu,\n\nTaixu, , , ,\n\nTan Sitong,\n\nTang Buddhism,\n\nTang dynasty, , , , , , ,\n\nTang Taizong, , ,\n\nTang Xuanzong,\n\nTantra,\n\nTantra\/Esoteric School,\n\nTantric Buddhism,\n\nTanxu,\n\nTao Yuanming, ,\n\nTaoism, , , ,\n\nTathagata, ,\n\nTeacher of Devas and Humans,\n\nteachers\n\noutside paths of the six,\n\npath,\n\nTendai school, ,\n\nThailand,\n\nthoughts, quieting,\n\nThree Jewels, ,\n\nThree Kingdoms,\n\nThree Treatises School (San-Lun),\n\nTiantai school, , , , ,\n\nTiantai treatises,\n\nTibet, ,\n\nTibetan esoteric Buddhism,\n\nTibetan lamas,\n\nTibetan Sakyapa sect,\n\nTibetan Tantra,\n\nTime sect,\n\nToji Temple,\n\nTokugawa dynasty,\n\nTokugawa shogunate,\n\nTokyo,\n\ntranscendent wisdom, , , ,\n\ntransformations, illusory,\n\ntreasuries, five,\n\nTreatise on the Different Sects,\n\nTreatise on the Mind of Skill in Means,\n\nTreatise on the Nirvana of the Outside Paths and the Lesser Vehicle,\n\nTreatise of the Samadhi of the Precious King,\n\ntripitaka,\n\nscriptures,\n\ntruths, twenty-five,\n\nTsongkhapa, ,\n\nTu Mu,\n\nTushita Heaven,\n\nTwenty-Eighth Patriarch,\n\nTwenty Essential Rules for the Zen Community (Baizhang),\n\n**U**\n\nUdayin,\n\nUnited States,\n\nUnrai, Ogihara,\n\nUpadesha,\n\nUpali, , ,\n\nUpanishads, , , , , , , , ,\n\nupasakas, ,\n\nupasikas, ,\n\nUruvilva Forest,\n\nUruvilva-Kashyapa,\n\n**V**\n\nVairocana Sutra,\n\nVaishali, ,\n\nVaisheshika\n\nschool, , , ,\n\nvaisyas,\n\nVajrajnana,\n\nVajramati,\n\nVanavasi,\n\nVaranasi, ,\n\nVardhamana Mahavira,\n\nVashpa,\n\nVasubandhu, ,\n\nVasumitra, ,\n\nVatta-Gamani, King,\n\nVedanta\n\nschool, ,\n\nVedas, , , , , , , ,\n\nVedic elegies,\n\nVenuvana Vihara, ,\n\nVibhuti Pada,\n\nVietnam, ,\n\nviews, sixty-two,\n\nVimalakirti Nirdesha Sutra, ,\n\nVinaya, , , , , ,\n\nschool, , , ,\n\nvinaya-vibhasha,\n\nVisvamitra,\n\n**W**\n\nWalleser, Max,\n\nWang Anshi,\n\nWang Bowei,\n\nWang Enyang,\n\nWangKon,\n\nWang Tong,\n\nWang Yangming,\n\nWang Yangming school,\n\nWang Xiangqi,\n\nWarren, Henry,\n\nWarring States,\n\nwarrior class,\n\nWat Mahathat,\n\nWat Po temple,\n\nWei dynasty, , ,\n\nWei-Jin period,\n\nWei kingdom,\n\nWeiler, Hermann,\n\nWencheng, Princess,\n\nWenxin Diaolong,\n\nWheel of the Dharma,\n\nWheel-Turning Sage King,\n\nWhite Horse Temple,\n\nWhite Lotus Society,\n\nwill, source of,\n\nWindisch, Ernst,\n\nwinds, five,\n\nWinternitz, Moritz,\n\nwithdrawal from the world,\n\nWonhyo,\n\nWorld Buddhist Federation,\n\nWorld-Honored One,\n\nWorldly Secularism\n\nschool, ,\n\nWu,\n\nWu, Emperor, ,\n\nWuchang Buddhist Institute,\n\nWuchang rebellion,\n\n**X**\n\nXianshou Fazang, ,\n\nXiaoyao Garden,\n\nXibiante-er,\n\nXie Lingyun,\n\nXi Kang, ,\n\nXiong Shili, ,\n\nXiong Xiling,\n\nXuanfang,\n\nXuanwu, Emperor,\n\nXuanzang, ,\n\nXuanzong, Emperor,\n\nXuyun, ,\n\n**Y**\n\nYajur-Veda,\n\nYama's heaven,\n\nYang Du,\n\nYang Renshan of Shidai, , , , ,\n\nYang Wenhui,\n\nYang Yi, , ,\n\nYangzi River, , ,\n\nYanmen,\n\nYao Chang,\n\nYao family,\n\nYao Guangxiao,\n\nYao Xing,\n\nYashas, ,\n\nYashodhara, , ,\n\nYavana,\n\nregions,\n\nYellow River,\n\nValley,\n\nYellow School, ,\n\nYellow Sect of Tibetan Tantra,\n\nYelu Chucai,\n\nYi Song-gye,\n\nYibuzong Lun,\n\nYijing, ,\n\nYingei,\n\nYinguang, ,\n\n_yin-shi_ ,\n\nyin-yang,\n\nYinyang Shushu,\n\nYinyuan,\n\nYixing,\n\nYoga\n\nschool, , , ,\n\nYoga Shastra,\n\nYogacara, ,\n\nBuddhism, ,\n\nphilosophy, ,\n\nschool,\n\ntheory,\n\nYongle period,\n\nYongming Temple,\n\nYongzheng Emperor, ,\n\nYongzheng reign,\n\nYoshino,\n\nyouth of many talents,\n\nYuan dynasty, , , ,\n\nTantric Buddhism in,\n\nYuan Shikai, ,\n\nYuandi, Emperor,\n\nYuanhong,\n\nYuanying,\n\nYuezhi, ,\n\nYulin,\n\nyung,\n\nYungang caves,\n\nYunmen school,\n\nYushan Fanchang,\n\nYuzunembutsu sect,\n\n**Z**\n\nZen,\n\ndissemination of,\n\nZen monastic system, ,\n\nabbot,\n\nabbot and government,\n\nabbot's appointment of leaders,\n\nabbot's attendants,\n\nabbot's post and six events,\n\nand Chinese culture,\n\ncollective living,\n\nequality of faith,\n\nequality of sentient beings,\n\ninfluence of Zen communities,\n\nlabor and economy,\n\nmonks, two echelons,\n\nmonks, working,\n\nmonk's clothing,\n\nmonk's dwelling places,\n\nmonk's food,\n\nmonk's way of walking,\n\nPatriarchal Clan Society,\n\nregulations, guidelines,\n\nsecret societies,\n\ntemple administration,\n\nvariations to _Pure Rules_ ,\n\nZen community _Pure Rules_ ,\n\nZen hall,\n\nZen hall life,\n\nZen hall teachers,\n\nZen hall teaching methods,\n\nZen hall transformation,\n\nZen school, , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nchange of system,\n\nZen teachings,\n\nZeng Guofan,\n\nZeng Jize,\n\nZetian, Empress Wu, , ,\n\nZhang Taiyan, ,\n\nZhang Zai,\n\nZhao dynasty\n\nlater,\n\nZhao Kuangyin,\n\nZhao Pu,\n\nZhejiang,\n\nZhichan,\n\nZhijue,\n\nZhiliang,\n\nZhiqian,\n\nZhiyi,\n\nZhou Dunyi,\n\nZhou dynasty,\n\nEastern, , ,\n\nZhou Xuzhi,\n\nZhu Falan,\n\nZhu Folang,\n\nZhu Xi,\n\nZhuang Zi,\n\nZhuangzi, , , , , , ,\n\nZhuhong,\n\nZibo,\n\nZimmer, Heinrich,\n\nZong Jing Lu, ,\n\nZen Master Nan Huai-Chin a native of China is considered one of the world's foremost experts on Chinese history and culture who combines the highest level of theoretical knowledge with practical experience. Master Nan is unusual in that he is an expert on the cultivation schools of Confucianism, as well as being a tripartite Master of Zen, Taoism and Esoteric Buddhism. He resides in Hong Kong where he devotes his energies to China's economic development and to reintroducing Chinese culture, previously destroyed by the Cultural Revolution, into Mainland China.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nThe Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman\n\nALICE MATTISON\n\nDedication\n\nFor Edward always\nContents\n\nTitle Page\n\nDedication\n\nThe Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nAbout the Author\n\nPraise for The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman\n\nAlso by Alice Mattison\n\nCopyright\n\nAbout the Publisher\nThe Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman\n\nNothing distracts me for long from sex. A friendly, intelligent man makes a funny remark, almost for his private benefit. He thinks nobody hears, but I laugh. For a moment shared understanding exhilarates us both; then I go further. I feel a yen to place my hand on his bare thigh, to see what he's like with no clothes on. I was single for decades, after a brief early marriage, and there were many men like that.\n\nWhat interests me about sex is nothing dangerous, nothing life-changing. It's like the impulse that sends some women into stores that sell colored floss and kits for making stained-glass pendants\u2014and of course I know that sometimes those women can't refrain, even when pendants hang in every window, twisting together on their dirty strings, falling and breaking into the shards they once were, maybe killing the cat. Sex has mostly, for me, been less threatening than that, a reasonably healthy pastime, a form of arts and crafts that uses people instead of glass or thread.\n\nAt length, though, even so delightful a practice as sex begins to feel airlessly limited, a means of expression made clumsy by the need to include bodies as well as talk. At such times, I can be diverted by a different kind of activity: I like to put on conferences. Like patches of plain fabric in a quilt, unremarkable people look better in contact with others, and I look for chances to arrange them. In the seventies I ran something called Women's Weekend. Later I persuaded the community college where I taught to host a colloquium, What Do We Really Think About Race? Most recently, along with my mother, Roz Garber, I ran a conference on mothers and adult daughters. Along comes an idea\u2014ideas come while I'm driving\u2014that requires multitudes (at least groups) arguing and laughing. I start making calls in the car, on my cell phone, then continue at home, buoyant over subject matter, forgetting that by the time my conference takes place, I'll have to think of bodies after all, bodies with their stodgy requirements for food, bathrooms, directions, and unlocked, lighted rooms, bodies that may miss the afternoon session because they're in bed with other bodies, even mine.\n\nI am in my mid-fifties, and I have long, blond hair, possibly too long or too blond for my age. I bear the last name, Andalusia, of a man I no longer know and scarcely remember, with whom I moved to New Haven, Connecticut, thirty years ago so he could go to Yale Medical School while I supported him. When Dr. Andalusia left, I stayed. I'm not the only Yale divorc\u00e9e who has liked New Haven, to the puzzlement of a departing ex. I liked East Rock and West Rock\u2014red, striated traprock cliffs that bracket this city\u2014and I liked the dirty harbor full of oyster boats and oil tankers, and the Quinnipiac River emptying rather grandly if messily under Interstate 95 and into Long Island Sound. I liked the decorous, well-proportioned New Haven green with its three old-fashioned churches\u2014two brick, one reddish stone\u2014its bag ladies and black teenagers; and I was amused by the way each man I slept with connected to someone else I knew: he'd gone to school with the last man I slept with, or his sister cleaned my teeth. The story I'm going to write down had to happen in a small city. Here, you're never quite sure you're done with a person; you never know how many ways the two of you will touch.\n\nSomeone I stopped knowing many times was the man I eventually married, Pekko Roberts. Pekko is a New Haven native, a noticeable man in his sixties: sturdy, white-haired, with a big, white beard he brushes daily and a tidy but prominent belly. More often than not, I broke up with him when we had dated for a few months and were talking about living together. I don't know why I kept leaving him, since I claimed to be tired of being single, and pointed out to myself that a variety of partners isn't inherent to the pleasures of sex. Pekko was in love with me, which made me a little restless, but he wasn't so in love that he couldn't see my faults, about which he was frank. \"Daisy, you're not making sense,\" he'd say when I wasn't; I'd get angry. He wasn't imaginative in bed, but sex with Pekko made me happy; with him, I didn't experience what often took place after sex with other men: a half hour of dismay, even loathing, about my middle-aged body, my habits, my friends, the way I lived my life. I could talk myself out of that unexplained despair, but with Pekko it didn't come. He was moody and often silent, gruff but not unkind; he knew himself well enough not to blame others for his bad days. His caring\u2014about me, about others\u2014might be expressed in grunts, but I never doubted it. He was a lake I could swim in, in which the drop-offs and rocks were what they were, but the water was clean and not too cold, and there was intense pleasure to be found by swimming out to the center, turning on my back, and closing my eyes in the sun, whatever that means in terms of a guy.\n\nFour years ago, in 1998, Pekko and I bought a house together in Goatville, a nineteenth-century New Haven neighborhood of small houses with steep roofs and long, skinny backyards, where dogs bark through chain-link fences. (We also bought a dog, a standard poodle called Arthur: a dog should be able to pronounce his own name.) The narrow two- and three-story houses on our block look like kindergarten drawings. It's a cityscape best seen in winter twilight, when the peaked roofs of different heights are scribbled over by the bare branches of maples, oaks, and sycamores. Our house isn't covered with ugly aluminum siding, like some, and after many discussions, we had it painted light gray with dark and light blue trim. Pekko said the color scheme was fussy.\n\nSo we lived together, and even held an offhand wedding. We tried to control our exuberant young dog, and we talked about our house, Arthur, our experiment in not breaking up, more than we talked about what we each did when we weren't together. I didn't mind Pekko's moods as much as I'd expected to. Sometimes I'd suddenly feel alone again, but I'd never minded being alone; it was restful. I established moods of my own.\n\nWhat I did when we were apart was teach, with decreasing interest. Then one day, I stopped my car at a traffic light next to a red Audi driven by a young woman. The entire backseat and front passenger seat were filled with paper\u2014old newspapers and mail from the look of it\u2014all the way to the bottoms of the windows. I couldn't stop thinking about that car, and a week later, when I saw the Audi parked not far from where I live, I taped a note to the windshield. \"I'm expensive,\" I wrote, as if I'd done this before, \"but I can help.\" The clutter stopped at the windows: the owner liked light, not darkness, and was cautious and disciplined enough to observe some limits. She called me, I figured out what to do, and it worked.\n\nThis was work I couldn't stop talking about at home. I was nonthreatening, I explained to Pekko. Neither the owner of the Audi nor I had a driveway, so we moved the car to a parking lot and surrounded it with cartons. Only one was labeled \"Keep.\" Then we undertook a long process of sorting and deciding. I was so conservative, so hesitant, that after a while she became impatient\u2014and nervous because I charged by the hour\u2014and she threw away armloads.\n\n\"You like this,\" said Pekko. \"Quit your job and start a business.\"\n\n\"How will I live?\" I said, but I had stopped what I was doing\u2014glancing at the paper in our kitchen\u2014to think how much I'd like to have such a business.\n\n\"I make enough for both of us,\" he said.\n\nI was incredulous. \"If you support me, you'll start ordering me around. You'll expect me to cook.\"\n\n\"It's an investment,\" he said. \"I don't care if you cook. When you get rich, I'll do something new, and you'll support me.\" Pekko had enough money, I was pretty sure, that he could do whatever he liked, whether I was rich or not. He's had many businesses over the years. Now he buys and manages real estate in New Haven's inner city.\n\n(\"You're a slumlord?\" I had said, when we got together after one of our gaps, and he described his new work.\n\n\"Without me they'd be homeless.\")\n\nI liked teaching, but I'd had that job for decades\u2014I was tired of it. Still, I'd never considered letting a man support me. \"I'd be like a whore,\" I said.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You're offering me money for sex. You pay, I go to bed with you.\"\n\nPekko sighed. \"It's different when you're married,\" he said. Then he added, \"I won't make fun of you if you fail,\" and I understood what I'd been afraid of.\n\nTo my mother's consternation\u2014\"As a teacher, you had clean hands!\"\u2014I became someone who sorted and organized clutter. I want to manage not just people, it seems, but their belongings, and they seem to want me to do it. I've been doing it ever since\u2014two or three years.\n\nPekko cooks well, several times a week. Single for a long time, he learned to fix a few good meals to impress women. \"Chicken is the best,\" he used to say. \"Women claim to like fish, but they're easier to seduce after chicken.\" One day in February, about a year ago\u20142001\u2014Pekko broiled chicken breasts (\"You want to say 'breasts' early in the evening\") spread with Dijon and sour cream. He'd found thin asparagus and strawberries at an Italian market a few blocks away. So we ate a spring meal, but it had started to snow in the afternoon, and now it was snowing hard.\n\nSnow made us want to stay in our warm house and take each other's clothes off, and Pekko's cooking works on me. The winter strawberries weren't quite sweet, so we dipped them in sugar. After eating them, we might have licked the juice from our fingers and gone to bed, but the phone rang. My mother\u2014who moved to New Haven from New York when she retired\u2014was calling from a soup kitchen in a downtown parish house, where she helped serve supper on Thursday evenings. The volunteers had locked their coats and purses in a closet, she explained with some zest, but now the lock was broken and nobody could open the door. The only locksmith they could reach had had a minor car accident in the slippery snow and refused to come until morning. \"Pekko could fix the lock,\" she said. \"Also, I could take a cab home, but my house keys are locked in the closet.\" She no longer drives at night and had gone to the soup kitchen by taxi.\n\nI love to drive in snow, and I had a key to my mother's house. Pekko doesn't mind driving in snow, he likes my mother, and the story of the lock interested him, but by the time he'd taken off his apron\u2014Pekko cooks in an apron\u2014I was leading the way to my car, with an extra coat for Roz over my arm. I hate being a passenger in any weather. Pekko stumped along behind me in the light, gritty snow.\n\nSo I drove, and it was a little slippery. At the soup kitchen, the eaters had departed and the trays had been washed and replaced in the church kitchen. The place smelled of tomato sauce. I'd picked up or delivered my mother there a few times, and once I had stayed to serve dessert, wearing plastic gloves to offer assorted day-old pastries to men and women who thoughtfully chose a cherry Danish, an apple turnover, or an iced cruller. It's a surprisingly appealing place, whether because a significant number of the guests are experiencing chemically induced euphoria or because black, Hispanic, and white people order one another around with jocularity and no fuss.\n\nNow, the director\u2014a big, cheerful woman with a loud voice\u2014was organizing attempts to open the closet. The key went in, but the cylinder flipped over and over without resistance, without catching. So many people were sure they'd know just how to turn the key that Pekko couldn't get near the door. The soup kitchen is staffed partly by volunteers, partly by people doing community service who are sent by the courts, and partly by kids from some kind of reform school. One of those\u2014nobody was asking how he'd acquired his experience\u2014moved forward now, and we joined the group watching him.\n\n\"I never put my things in that closet!\" said a woman in a coat, with self-satisfaction. She could have left but didn't. The rest, a coatless group of four or five, stood around my mother, who looked out from under white curls like a wise woman, good-naturedly razzing the young man at the door. I joined the crowd. Pekko watched quietly while the young man worked a length of wire coat hanger into the disabled lock. He bent it so it surrounded the bolt inside and came out the bottom, but it didn't dislodge the bolt. \"This is a good lock,\" he said respectfully. The sexton arrived. He explained loudly that the door was specially braced and wouldn't come off even if the hinges were removed.\n\n\"Pekko!\" said one of the coatless women\u2014a thin white woman, maybe in her forties.\n\n\"Hey.\" Pekko shook her hand solemnly. \"How are you, Daphne?\"\n\nMy mother got interested. \"You two know each other?\"\n\n\"Do you know Gabby?\" said Daphne. For some reason they call my mother Gabby at the soup kitchen.\n\nPekko introduced me, and Daphne said to him, \"I heard you got married.\" Then to me, \"I worked for Pekko when he had the restaurant.\" That would have been twelve or fifteen years ago. When we met, he owned a frozen yogurt store.\n\nDaphne said she was working at the soup kitchen because of a traffic violation, and I wondered if that was true. I didn't think you had to do community service for a speeding ticket.\n\n\"What are you doing these days?\" Pekko said. Daphne's face was jumpy, lined by too much smoking. Light brown hair fell close to her eyes, and a skittish teenage face was visible beneath her present one.\n\n\"Waitressing, still. Whatever I can get my hands on, but that pays the best. I'm working lunches now, so I can come here in the evening.\"\n\nFinally the sexton shooed us all out. The director's car keys were in her pants pocket. Coatless, she led two people with neither coats nor keys to her car. Pekko offered Daphne a ride, and she followed us, hugging herself in the cold, while my mother came along, diminutive in my extra coat. I'm tall. Pekko hadn't had a turn at the lock.\n\nDaphne lived in Hamden, so I took Roz home first. Pekko and I sat silently in the front seat while Roz and Daphne chattered in the back like our children. Daphne talked about her kids, and Roz volunteered facts about my two older brothers and me, as if we were Daphne's kids' counterparts, and as if I wasn't there. \"Oh, Daisy had excellent teeth.\"\n\nRoz lives in a small brick house on Prospect Street. \"It's too much work for me,\" she told Daphne as we approached it. \"It's supposedly low maintenance, but it's not low enough.\" She had a contract for snow removal, but keeping up the yard was difficult. \"No help from my daughter,\" Roz said. \"She's no gardener.\"\n\n\"I like to garden,\" Daphne said, after a pause. We had reached Roz's as yet unplowed driveway, and I drove up it. I didn't get out to help her. My mother, firm on her legs, was wearing state-of-the-art boots. \"I could do your yard work,\" Daphne continued, as Roz opened her door.\n\n\"You could?\" she said, climbing out. She took my key to her house, and said, \"I'll keep this coat for a while. I like it.\" She made her way through the snow, and as she let herself in, I backed carefully down the driveway. Then I took Daphne, who became quiet, to Hamden.\n\nOn the drive home, I asked Pekko, \"What's Daphne's trouble?\"\n\n\"She's had plenty of troubles,\" he said. He reflected for a while. \"No fractures that I know of.\"\n\n\"Healthy.\"\n\n\"Well, I think she once had cancer.\"\n\n\"That's why you shook her hand that way?\"\n\n\"No, no. It was a long time ago.\"\n\n\"What else?\"\n\n\"Nothing else.\"\n\n\"Is it all right if she does yard work for my mother?\"\n\n\"I suppose. She's a nice woman.\"\n\nAt home, there was a message for me on the answering machine. The last time I'd had the urge to put together a talking event, I'd gone on the radio instead of assembling a group. I'd become interested in a small, homey radio station not far from New Haven, run mostly by volunteers. I worked in their office for a while, then persuaded someone to let me substitute on her low-key, casual show when she went on vacation. So I'd done a few shows, playing music and reading poems aloud, and apparently people liked them. The message, that February evening, asked if I'd be interested in doing five programs on \"a topic of public interest.\"\n\n\"I could talk about hunger and homelessness,\" I said to Pekko. \"Or prostitution. Do they let you talk about whores on the radio?\"\n\n\"Like daytime television?\" He was stamping snow off his shoes. \"What makes you think of that?\"\n\n\"More like oral history. Sociology. Are some of your tenants prostitutes?\" I asked.\n\nHe didn't answer. I wrote down the name and phone number of the woman who'd called. Then I started washing the dishes. As I stood at the sink, still cold from being outdoors, Pekko came and stood behind me, putting his hands on my waist, then drawing them down the sides of my hips. Then he pressed his body into my back and moved his hands to my chest. I left the broiler pan to soak and turned toward him, my breasts throbbing. I didn't reach under his clothes with my wet hands. Arthur squeezed his head between us, so Pekko put him in the yard. We went to bed at last, hurrying under the comforter once we were undressed. Pekko's solid body was confident and warm as it moved above me. We came at the same time, and lay quietly afterward. I reached to stroke the side of his body, and he took my hand, held it, then let it go.\n\nIt was early for bedtime, and I'd left the dishes in the sink, but I thought I'd get up only to brush my teeth, then read in bed before sleep. Pekko now snored lightly beside me, but when I sat up, he roused himself, slapped his bare thighs as he swung out of bed, and said, \"I'll take Arthur for a walk.\"\n\nArthur likes an evening walk, but he'd been outside for forty minutes, barking now and then at the other Goatville dogs. \"It's snowing,\" I said.\n\n\"I think it stopped.\"\n\nI wanted to stay near him. \"Shall I come?\"\n\n\"No.\" He got dressed, and after a while I heard the jingle of the choke collar, and then Pekko let himself out, locking the door behind him. In the old days, a man I'd brought home would sometimes leave after sex when I expected him to spend the night. I'd be disappointed, then relieved. Now Pekko and Arthur took a long walk. I brushed my teeth and was asleep before they returned.\n\nI like serious clutter. I'm not stimulated by messy closets but by rooms piled to the ceiling. And I do like it, though it makes me slightly ill with anxiety. I like dismantling it, but I am sad, which might be why hoarders trust me. I can find what's worth keeping: love letters from the First World War, usable furniture for the homeless shelter. I don't like garbage\u2014smelly clutter\u2014and sometimes the distinction is subtle. If everything is wet or otherwise disgusting, I call in a firm that empties and fumigates, but if possible I work myself, salvaging what I can\u2014most often ceramics and glassware, which doesn't crumble, rust, or become permanently stained or greasy. Of course the usual problem is dust. A mask offends some gatherers. I carry a small battery-powered vacuum cleaner. I don't mind bugs, but I'm afraid of snakes.\n\nThe recalcitrant hoarders I like best are the divided souls, like me, not the single-minded accumulators who've been prodded to call me by a horrified acquaintance. My favorite clients have had a partial conversion: a vision of a bare room, a vision they're resisting. One man hired me when the immense accumulation of trash in his apartment was what he called \"complete.\"\n\n\"Now,\" he said, \"it's time to go the other way.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"It's what I imagine.\" I join a client's inner life. I view and handle its embodiment. What could be better? Secrets please me\u2014learning them, telling them\u2014especially when revelation confirms separation. When I'm alone with my oldest friend, a social worker named Charlotte LoPresti, I don't tell secrets easily. \"What are you afraid of?\" Charlotte would say, if she read what I just wrote. I don't know what I'm afraid of, but I know I like the edge of secrecy, the nearly public edge.\n\nWhen I began volunteering at that local station, radio wasn't entirely new to me. Years ago, at the time of the conference on women, I was interviewed at a small radio station full of unwieldy equipment with the mechanical look of the thirties or forties: metal poles swung in our faces; nothing flickered electronically or kept discreetly to itself. As far as I remember, nobody was present except the interviewer and me, and between the contraptions holding microphones aloft, I could hardly see her. I thought nobody was listening. First we talked about standard women's issues. Soon we began telling personal stories, and I forgot the possible radio audience. It was a call-in show, but the phone didn't ring. When it did, and a listener asked me to repeat the conference schedule, I looked at the interviewer, startled. She laughed lightly, and I complied. Then we returned to our conversation. See, she seemed to say, listeners make it more private.\n\nThose more recent evenings\u2014playing Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith, reading poems\u2014felt similar. It was late at night, and I seemed to be alone. The last time I did a show, I read parts of Wallace Stevens's long, difficult poem \"An Ordinary Evening in New Haven\"\u2014because I always thought it should be heard on some ordinary New Haven evening. Like others in this town, I imagine, I'd come upon it first in a table of contents, and read a little because it seemed to promise to describe my life. It didn't. I had no idea what it was describing. It has thirty-one sections, each almost a page long. Somebody's in a hotel room, and then he's walking around among the Yale colleges and New Haven's churches. He imagines New Haven, and he tries to work out the relation between the city he sees\u2014\"the eye's plain version\" and the city he imagines, \"an impalpable town, full of impalpable bells.\" Out loud, I read,\n\nThe point of vision and desire are the same.\n\nIt is to the hero of midnight that we pray\n\nOn a hill of stones to make beau mont thereof.\n\nIf it is misery that infuriates our love,\n\nIf the black of night stands glistening on beau mont,\n\nThen, ancientest saint ablaze with ancientest truth,\n\nSay next to holiness is the will thereto,\n\nAnd next to love is the desire for love,\n\nThe desire for its celestial ease in the heart.\n\n\"Next to love is the desire for love,\" I repeated firmly\u2014talking, perhaps, to nobody. I think Pekko and I had just gotten married then, or maybe we were planning our casual little wedding. I wasn't certain I loved Pekko, but I knew I desired to love him, and I was glad when this poem I didn't understand\u2014but liked\u2014seemed to tell me that was almost as good.\n\nThen someone called the station, as someone had called that first station, all those years ago\u2014breaking into solitude, proving I wasn't alone. A man who identified himself as Isaac said, \"The poem was written in 1949, so the hotel at the beginning is the Taft. The hill of stones could be East Rock. East Rock is certainly visible from the high windows of the Taft.\"\n\nMaybe I finally married Pekko because he'd become a slumlord\u2014because in his screwy way he was demonstrating his love for the city of his birth, which is a city I've become quite fond of myself. New Haven is turbulent, multiethnic, industrial\u2014formerly specializing in the manufacture of guns\u2014and somewhat but not quite dominated by Yale. If you lingered in some literate nook here\u2014say the Foundry Bookstore\u2014and talked to the people you saw, many would report that they, or their parents or grandparents, moved here to study or teach at Yale. Not Pekko; he's a townie. His sexy name comes from an immigrant great-grandfather, but most of his people have lived in New England for generations. His grandparents moved to New Haven from Rutland, Vermont, so his grandfather could work as a police officer.\n\n\"Yale!\" Pekko says impatiently. In New Haven, Yale employs, Yale owns, Yale operates, Yale pronounces\u2014and because of Yale, crimes here are national news, so we who live here find ourselves defending the place, even defending homelessness, poverty, and criminals. Pekko says, \"Those professors think New Haven is Yale plus blight. They've never looked around.\" My mother would tell me to point out that New Haven has many thriving neighborhoods with well-kept old houses, including some big, fancy ones still inhabited by single families. Our mansions are not funeral homes.\n\n\"I'm a realist,\" Pekko says. He'd acknowledge that New Haven has plenty of blight, though much of it, these days, is being replaced with public housing developments so pretty they look like sets for Our Town. Drug dealers live in Pekko's properties. If they pay the rent, he doesn't bother them. If they don't, he says something to somebody\u2014he knows everybody\u2014and the police hold a raid. \"It's faster than eviction,\" he says.\n\nFrom the time I began talking about my radio series on prostitution, which was arranged within a few days, Pekko seemed uncomfortable. It was one thing to be a realist; another, apparently, to be a realist on the radio. I'd agreed to put together five one-hour programs, once a week, starting in a month. I was somewhat alarmed that the people in charge believed I was a radio interviewer who could lure former prostitutes and knowledgeable professionals to the station, but I seem to run my life by pretending I already am what I want to be.\n\n\"You must know prostitutes,\" I said, the day after I'd made the agreement. \"Or former prostitutes. Poor women have no choice.\" I told him about a discussion of homelessness I'd attended once at which a powerful, attractive woman looked steadily at the audience and said, \"Well, a woman can always find a place to stay.\"\n\nHe shrugged and looked at me as if to say, Of course. As if I'd said, \"You must eat fruit,\" which comes to mind because he was eating an orange. Every year he orders a box from Florida.\n\nPekko didn't want to talk about whores, but I did, and I described a fellow teacher who made extra money modeling bathing suits whenever a local manufacturer entertained out-of-town buyers\u2014and even more money going to their hotel rooms. I recounted two occasions in my twenties when I myself was approached by potential johns, both as I looked into a shop window at the wares displayed, which for all I know is a signal. I was frightened when a man outside a bakery said quietly, \"If you come home with me, I'll give you twenty dollars,\" but a few years later, when a similar man\u2014in a well-pressed, conservative raincoat\u2014lingered beside me before a display of Marimekko dresses, then said, \"Would you like one of those?\" I was not scared or angry but fascinated.\n\nI said, \"I'm waiting for my husband,\" who was Bruce Andalusia, and I was even more fascinated when the man apologized and thanked me\u2014as if I was warning him that Bruce might beat him up, though I was merely refusing his offer politely. I couldn't help imagining what might have happened, titillating or terrifying, if Bruce hadn't been on his way, and if I had said I would like one of those richly dyed dresses.\n\n\"Is prostitution always appalling?\" I asked Pekko, who had listened to what I'd said without comment. \"Is fantasizing about it inherently disrespectful\u2014like glamorizing rape?\"\n\nHe shrugged and shook his head, gathering his orange peel and emptying his hand into the garbage pail on his way out of the room.\n\nI did put on five radio programs about prostitution: they happened, people heard them\u2014or didn't\u2014they were over. They weren't important, but in one way or another, they determined the next half year. They are the beginning of the story I seem to be telling. The first show, in March, was on another night when wet snow made driving difficult. I was afraid my guest, a social worker who counseled drug-addicted women, wouldn't show up, but she did. \"Do prostitutes want our pity or our respect?\" I asked her; in a raspy voice with a Brooklyn accent she said, \"Nobody ever wants anybody's pity.\" She talked matter-of-factly about her clients' lives, how they might turn to prostitution now and then, yet insist they weren't pros, how some of them were pros. Yet again, I'd agreed to a call-in show, but this time I knew people were listening. A producer sat behind a glass partition screening calls. I was nervous that callers would condemn prostitutes, but the first person I talked to was a man who'd patronized prostitutes and had discovered how decent they were; the second was a woman whose sister, a prostitute, had been killed by a man she'd picked up. \"If prostitution is a victimless crime, I don't know what a victim is,\" she said.\n\nThe last person we had time for was Mary, who sounded just like my mother until the strange moment, thirty seconds into her contribution, when I realized Mary was my mother. \"Wait a second,\" I said, then quieted myself. Roz or Mary was saying, \"My cousin turned tricks during the Depression. She was a classy whore\u2014an escort for businessmen. A call girl. She looked as if she didn't have a brain in her head, but she was a college graduate. She'd gone to Hunter, like me, and we couldn't get jobs. Even to be a salesgirl at Macy's, you had to be Vassar or Smith. And I have to say, she was a nice person, but not that nice. Let's not start thinking these women are saints.\"\n\nI thanked my mother for her contribution\u2014wondering which of my relatives she meant\u2014and soon the show was over. As I drove home, alert for slippery spots, my hands trembled on the steering wheel. I was tired, and giddy with relief from a tension I hadn't known I felt. And happy. I parked just down the block from our house, fitted my key into the lock, and crouched to forestall Arthur's joyful leap at my chest with his front paws. He led me to Pekko, who was stretched out on our bed with The New York Times (he takes the New Haven Register at his office) and still another orange. By March he has used up the oranges from Florida and is buying them from Stop & Shop. Pekko said my mother had called to say she'd forgotten to listen until it was too late. \"Oh, sure,\" I said. \"Did you hear Mary?\"\n\n\"I forgot to listen, too,\" Pekko said.\n\n\"You did?\" It had not occurred to me that Pekko might not be listening. I wasn't sure if I minded or not.\n\nArthur sprang onto the bed and stood over Pekko, licking his lips and cheeks above the beard, celebrating my arrival with Pekko, then returning to celebrate their celebration with me. I sat down on the floor so as not to be jumped on and pinched Arthur's bony neck through his black curls. The dog settled beside me while Pekko peeled the orange with his thumb, making a yellow pile of peel on our puffy green comforter. Then he ate it, section after section. When Arthur vaulted onto the bed again, he received an orange section.\n\n\"You forgot?\" I said. I reached over and took a piece of the orange so as not to have to wonder whether I'd get any.\n\nThe penetrating smell of the orange peel narrowed my scope from the southern Connecticut listening public to the bedroom I sat in, while juice stung a paper cut on my finger. I should wear gloves to clean up trash, but I never bother. Leaning on the wall, still stroking the dog\u2014who had returned to me\u2014and looking up at Pekko, I said, \"You really don't think it's a good idea to go on the radio talking about whores.\"\n\n\"I forgot. Oh, I suppose I was afraid you'd get calls from my friends, confessing to being pimps.\"\n\n\"I used to think you might be a pimp.\"\n\n\"I've done everything,\" he said. \"But not that.\"\n\n\"I thought that after one of our breakups,\" I said. Our many separations were abrupt and surprising, each precipitated by a trivial disagreement. I'd drive away from the argument, stunned. Now my date book would be wrong and my days lopsided, skewed by absence. A few days later, I'd convince myself that the disagreement had indeed been significant; something was truly amiss. Once, I believed he despised me because he was incorruptible while I was amoral and irresponsible. Another time, I was afraid he was a crook. Sometimes a year or two passed before he called me again, or I called him, or we met by chance, falling into each other's arms as if the other had been lost all that time, beyond the reach of e-mail, regular mail, phone.\n\nThe orange was gone. I said I needed a glass of wine, because I did need it, or because I was mildly taunting Pekko, who hasn't drunk alcohol for decades, after heaven knows what before that. He doesn't do drugs, either, possibly so as to look down on people who do. I started refusing joints (I'd never had my own supply) when I decided to marry him, so I wouldn't be one of those people.\n\n\"Who's Mary?\" he said eventually.\n\n\"Am I supposed to call my mother?\"\n\n\"She said, 'Tell her don't bother.' Who's Mary?\"\n\nI fetched a glass of Merlot and sat on the edge of the bed while I told him about the show.\n\n\"I should have listened,\" he said. \"Are you sure it was Roz?\"\n\n\"She did go to Hunter. I've never heard the story of the cousin who was a call girl. Maybe she didn't want me to know.\"\n\n\"Maybe it's not true,\" said Pekko. He and Roz and I, I thought. There's not one of us you can trust. \"Maybe she was the call girl,\" Pekko said.\n\nNext day the snow was less of a presence than it might have been, but the weather was damp and cloudy, and I slipped when I ventured down the steps, in my bathrobe, for the Times. I spent the morning at home, working on my coming radio shows and printing out clients' bills. The phone rang as I left, at last, to keep an appointment with someone who didn't interest me, Ellen Arlington. Ellen's immense quantities of junk consisted not of objects she'd chosen to keep but of what had been imposed upon her: given, forcibly lent, or abandoned. Her accumulation concealed rather than revealed her, and working with her taught me nothing. I turned back to the ringing phone, hoping she was calling to cancel, but the voice was a man's.\n\n\"Daisy Andalusia,\" he said quickly. \"I'm a listener. Love that station.\" He talked fast but didn't sound peremptory or bureaucratically self-important. This speed seemed to claim, with a childlike guilelessness, that the speaker talked fast to have enough time for extra remarks, since he was unendingly fascinating. So I pictured a man in a house, a man in a tan sweater with his back to a kitchen window.\n\nHe sounded friendly, but it occurred to me for the first time that a listener could call to be rude, or to hurt. \"You didn't say your name,\" I said.\n\n\"Gordon Skeetling, the Yale Small Cities Project.\" Office after all\u2014Yale office: a large, glossy brown desk. \"You work on messes,\" he continued. \"I've meant to call you for weeks, but I didn't know if you'd do. Then, there you were on the radio. I assume you're the same Daisy Andalusia. I've got a mess.\"\n\nA client of mine had recommended me. \"I was afraid you might not be intellectually up to the job,\" he said, \"but you're smart, which is what I need: someone with brains, not just someone with a feather duster.\"\n\n\"I know people who clean to earn their living but are smart,\"   \nI said.\n\n\"Of course. I apologize. I'm a snob. Come see my mess.\" I pictured him walking back and forth, stretching the phone cord\u2014a man in his late thirties, not quite as good-looking as he wanted to be. I made an appointment to visit his office in a row house on Temple Street, a downtown street at the edge of the Yale campus.\n\nAs soon as we'd settled on a day and time, Gordon Skeetling said, \"That social worker didn't know what she was talking about,\" changing subjects so fast I had to think what social worker he could mean.\n\n\"On my program?\"\n\n\"She was advertising despair as tolerance. You don't know how to keep a girl from turning tricks, so you decide it's her right to do it. Tell me if I'm wrong.\"\n\n\"Isn't it her right?\"\n\n\"It's her right to step in front of a speeding truck, but if I see her, I'm going to grab her and pull her back,\" he said. \"Do you know about the Soul Patrol? A possibly simplistic solution to the moral problem, but intriguing, especially if you want to focus on local stuff. Which is the advantage of regional radio\u2014you can do that.\"\n\n\"What's the Soul Patrol?\"\n\n\"Back in the seventies. Probably you'd rather keep your show current. Black women mysteriously murdered\u2014quite a number of them, mostly prostitutes. In those days hookers walked on Chapel Street near Howe. You could see them there any evening.\"\n\n\"I remember.\"\n\n\"You go back, like me.\" He was older than I'd thought. \"So the brothers from Dwight decided they'd just keep the hookers company, a brother walking behind each woman. Of course business went way down. Those white guys from the suburbs figured they'd look somewhere else.\"\n\n\"Were the murders ever solved?\" I asked.\n\n\"I don't know. Maybe we could find some guy who was in the patrol, for the show.\"\n\nWe? I thought. I said, \"Are you black?\"\n\n\"White.\"\n\nI'd never asked such a question. He seemed to offer permission of one sort or another. I got off the phone and hurried to my appointment.\n\nWhen I saw Gordon Skeetling a few days later, he did not wear the sweater I'd pictured. His hair was gray, thick, and straight\u2014floppy\u2014but his face was young, with inquiring, surprised blue eyes under black eyebrows that came to points. He was fifty, I guessed, a thin, rangy guy in a striped shirt and no tie, with long arms that often stretched sideways\u2014toward a light switch, a coat hanger, a chair. He wore no wedding ring. Two desks stood in his big office\u2014the main room of an old brownstone\u2014but he was alone.\n\n\"I'm one of those Yale people who doesn't get tenure and doesn't get fired,\" he said, showing me around. \"I got a grant and talked myself into an office, more than twenty years ago, and I'm good at finding money, so I've been here ever since. They're a little ashamed of me because cities mean grubby, but they keep me because I locate my own funding. Mostly, I work on small cities, humdrum problems. I'm a researcher. I find things out for people who want to know them.\"\n\n\"New Haven?\"\n\n\"Sometimes New Haven. When Yale is accused of ignoring the inner city, they trot me out and I talk about research I did on public schools, or a study of prenatal care in low-income areas. That one, I worked with the medical school.\"\n\nI felt the sense of permission I'd had on the phone\u2014Gordon Skeetling gave it and had it\u2014which surely is the opposite of arrogance, though he'd called himself a snob. I liked the thought of this man with long arms, unintimidated by Yale, who casually grabbed money and used it for some slightly confusing purpose. Gordon Skeetling found himself funny but wasn't bitter, though he'd kept a job into middle age that probably wasn't the one he'd imagined. Enjoying the permission, I said, \"Did you think you'd do something else, twenty years ago?\"\n\n\"I don't remember!\" he said, waving his right arm, with apparent pleasure in his capacity to forget. \"I have a law degree,\" he said, \"but I never practiced.\"\n\nHe led me to his archive\u2014the mess that had brought us together\u2014which was behind French doors, in a side room that had windows, because this row house was at the end of the row. The archive had once been a dining room or library. When I saw it, I sighed happily and stretched out my own arms as if to claim it, exaggerating the gesture to show that I too could make fun of my enthusiasms, that I had enthusiasms as remarkable as his.\n\nIt was a colorful mess. Color matters. It was orderly but not too orderly. Extremely straight piles of accumulated artifacts make me uneasy, but these were rough piles in red, blue, green, yellow, and purple folders. There were heaps of folded maps, and the walls were covered with maps pasted to poster board in a nice, amateurish way: maps of Waterbury, Connecticut; Waterville, Maine; Worcester, Massachusetts; New Brunswick, New Jersey. New Haven. I said, \"I'm glad New Haven counts.\"\n\n\"New Haven counts. You like New Haven?\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"So do I,\" he said.\n\nSome maps were framed and properly hung. Others were propped against the wall, with still others behind them.\n\n\"What's in the folders?\" I said.\n\nHe shrugged. \"Clippings, pamphlets, studies, offprints. Rules and regulations. Statutes and ordinances. No person shall keep a goat in the city of . . .\"\n\nOne wall held books and shelves of black boxes. On a table I saw posters and placards that Gordon Skeetling probably stole, warnings not to park because of construction, parades, street sweeping, leaf sweeping, snow plowing. A long table was covered with stacks of newspapers. Although he now worked alone, he said, over the years he'd sometimes had interns or assistants. He'd kept anything that excited somebody, and maybe that was why the room had tautness despite the conglomeration. It didn't smell of exhaustion, like heaps and piles that have become routine.\n\n\"You just like cities?\" I said.\n\n\"That's why I'm here.\"\n\nThe man was respectable. People in expensive offices with central air-conditioning took him seriously. But he was quirky, like me and my friends. I thought people like him had to run antiques shops or used bookstores in Vermont, but he'd found a way to impress people in charge. I wanted him to be impressed with me.\n\nHe perched on the edge of a table, and I did the same. \"So,\" I said, drawing out my notebook, \"you want me to work along with you, and make decisions about what to keep?\"\n\n\"I'm too busy. Work by yourself. That's why you had to be smart.\"\n\n\"I do this with my clients,\" I said. \"Unless they're dead. Then they can't complain about what I throw away.\"\n\nGordon Skeetling shrugged. \"Pretend it's yours. Figure out what you want. If I yell, yell back.\"\n\n\"Then why?\" I said, interested but wary.\n\n\"I would like the archive to be smaller,\" he said, reaching his arms in both directions, as if to measure the room. \"But primarily I want it used. Make something.\"\n\n\"What sort of something?\"\n\n\"I don't know. We'll talk.\"\n\nI looked to see what I was sitting near. Stacks of tabloid newspapers, big old stacks of The National Enquirer, the Star. \"You like these papers?\" I said.\n\n\"Not as much as I used to, before they were all about celebrities,\" he said. \"I used to buy them for the headlines. 'Fisherman Kisses Loch Ness Monster. His Wife Divorces Him.' Wonderful headlines and then wonderful subheads.\"\n\n\"They don't particularly have to do with cities.\"\n\n\"I guess not,\" he said, unperturbed. \"Let me show you a good one.\"\n\nHe knew where it was. Others had taken this tour. The headline was maybe twenty years old. It read, TWO-HEADED WOMAN WEDS TWO MEN, and the subhead was doc says she's twins.\n\n\"I love that,\" said Gordon Skeetling, stretching his arms wide, and I loved hearing him sing the word love. \"Twins!\" This man wasn't afraid of himself.\n\nOf course I wanted a rich, glamorous call girl for my show. In my imagination, she'd come to the station in a fur coat, murmuring, \"I hated them all, but they didn't guess.\" One morning at Lulu's\u2014my neighborhood coffee shop\u2014a journalist I knew handed me a scrap of paper with a phone number on it. \"She's a psychologist in Boston,\" she said. \"She used to be a call girl. She's willing to be interviewed by phone.\"\n\n\"I liked it,\" the former call girl said, in an educated voice, on my third show. She'd been a graduate student in psychology, and she claimed that she'd practiced on the men she visited in their hotel rooms. \"I learned more than I did in the placements they made me do for school. I felt sorry for them, and I helped them\u2014for plenty of money. I lied to my friends about where I got my good clothes.\"\n\n\"You're still talking about it,\" I said. \"People might recognize your voice.\"\n\n\"Maybe I want to be found out,\" she said amiably. \"I don't think much of psychologists who don't have a little pathology of their own. How do they sympathize with the lure of the irrational?\"\n\nI too, in my youth, was bold, smart, sexy, and in need of money. \"But wasn't it humiliating?\" I said.\n\n\"Assuming it's humiliating,\" she said, \"depends on giving sex a certain weighty symbolism. You could feel that way about sharing food with someone, or shaking hands . . .\"\n\n\"Yes!\" I said.\n\nShe went on, \"It's not sex for money that makes prostitution disgusting. It's the opportunity for blackmail, for disease, for cruelty. It's dangerous because it's a secret.\"\n\n\"I guess the secrecy is inherent,\" I said. But I was mistaken. Our city held one former prostitute who cared nothing for secrecy, but I hadn't found her. She called the station. \"I have something to say about whores,\" said her message. \"My name is Muriel Peck.\"\n\nMuriel Peck worked in a health program for poor people and in her spare time was an activist for prostitutes. She was willing to come to the station and discuss her history and views, so I canceled the criminologist I'd scheduled for the last session. A dark-skinned black woman wearing blue jeans, a purple corduroy jacket with a hood, and hiking boots, Muriel Peck arrived carrying a large blue-and-green bag, which turned out to contain rag dolls about two feet tall: one pink, one brown, and one green. She propped them on chairs. They were whore dolls, she explained. She'd made them. One doll was dressed in a short, sequined skirt and a bra top, another wore overalls, and the third\u2014the green one\u2014a long, old-fashioned skirt with a bustle. There was no way to know they were prostitutes, except that they wore cardboard labels: \"Lady of the Night,\" \"Woman of Ill Repute.\" The point was that women of all sorts have become prostitutes.\n\n\"Being a whore did not make me somebody who was only fit to die,\" Muriel said confidently on the air. Her graying hair stuck out from her head a few inches in all directions, which made her head look big and led the eye to rest on her face, which was still but intense, with prominent nose and cheekbones, and hooded eyes; you looked to make sure she wasn't angry. \"That's how people thought for centuries, you know\u2014not just about whores but about any poor girl who went to bed when she wasn't married. Italian girls, Jewish girls. I am part Italian and part Jewish. Black skin is like chocolate ice cream. Any flavor the factory messes up, they add chocolate and everybody says it's chocolate. That's why you sometimes find a strawberry in chocolate ice cream.\"\n\n\"Oh, that can't be right,\" I said.\n\n\"Oh, yes. One fourth Jew and one eighth Italian. I can show you the family tree.\"\n\n\"That's not what I was doubting!\" I said. \"I'm one fourth Italian, too.\"\n\n\"There you go.\"\n\n\"Three quarters Jewish.\" We seemed to have changed the subject. Listeners probably thought they'd somehow tuned in to two ladies in a living room.\n\n\"Why did I start?\" Muriel said, though I hadn't asked. \"I was poor. Times were bad. The factories seemed worse.\"\n\n\"But wasn't it dreary, being a whore?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nShe now worked in organizations that fought to decriminalize prostitution. \"Some of us want to make it legal,\" she said. \"Some just want to take away the criminal penalties, so a girl can go to the doctor without thinking next stop is the jail.\"\n\nShe'd quit being a prostitute after two years. \"I was lucky. My pimp died.\" Eventually she'd gone to a community college, and later she'd studied nursing. She wanted to talk about the dolls, and I tried to describe them. \"All sorts of women,\" she said again. \"Shakes up your preconceptions.\"\n\n\"Even green women,\" I said.\n\n\"Even green. I make baby dolls too, for kids. Some kids love the green dolls, the lavender dolls. Some scream if you show them a green doll.\"\n\n\"The babies are not whore dolls,\" I said.\n\n\"No indeed. No baby whores. Child prostitution is one hundred percent evil. Because no child chooses that. Even if they think they choose, they don't choose.\"\n\n\"So adult prostitutes choose?\" I said.\n\n\"Some choose,\" Muriel said sadly. \"And those are the ones you're talking about on this show, am I right? The dead ones, the ones in jail, the ones somebody won't allow to talk. You don't have them on your radio show.\"\n\n\"No,\" I admitted.\n\nI liked Muriel Peck. After the show she stuffed her dolls into the blue-and-green bag, and reached to shake hands. I was sorry I wouldn't see her again. The radio series had just ended, and I drove home, pleased with myself but sad. I didn't know who'd heard me. I didn't know if Pekko had; he'd listened to one or two of the earlier shows. My mother admitted to hearing all but the first, and my friend Charlotte and her husband, Philip, had been carefully faithful, leaving enthusiastic phone or e-mail messages, but Pekko had said little, though I thought he'd heard at least one show. I wished I could gather my listeners into a room and look at them.\n\nAt home I was greeted by Arthur and poured myself a glass of wine while Pekko, who had been reading the Times, watched me from the kitchen table. \"Tired, sweetie?\" he said, and I nodded. Our kitchen is big, and at one end there's an old sofa, a faded greenish, comfortable thing, from the beach house where Pekko used to live. I sat down on it. \"I caught part of that,\" he said.\n\n\"Was it all right?\"\n\n\"I know Muriel Peck.\"\n\n\"She lives in New Haven.\"\n\n\"The crafts are a sideline,\" he said. \"She works at Hill Health. That's her real name.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"For years and years,\" Pekko said, \"New Haven had visible hookers on Chapel and Howe. I guess they all died of AIDS.\"\n\n\"I remember them.\"\n\nHe gathered the newspaper sections. \"Oh, Daisy.\"\n\n\"What? You hated the program?\" I drank all my wine in a rush and stood up to pour some more.\n\n\"I didn't hate it. It was good. You're funny on the radio. Your voice goes up and down. It's nice.\"\n\n\"But?\"\n\n\"If you were going to talk about New Haven, you couldn't find any other topic?\"\n\n\"Pekko, there's nothing wrong with talking about prostitution,\" I said.\n\nHe gestured with the newspaper sections, as if they contained relevant evidence. \"Look,\" he said. \"I'm not going to tell you this is some picture-perfect New England village where the big event of the week is the minister's wife baking cookies.\"\n\n\"Those places have prostitutes, too,\" I said. The phone rang.\n\n\"But don't you see what you're doing? So many people are already afraid of this city.\"\n\n\"It wasn't just about New Haven. Wait a second.\"\n\n\"Well\u2014\"\n\nI picked up the phone, thinking I should tell him about the Soul Patrol and Gordon Skeetling. He hadn't heard the show on which I mentioned it, and so far, I hadn't told him about my newest client. \"Hello?\" I said, my mind on Pekko, who left the room.\n\n\"I got the right number,\" said a woman. \"I recognize your voice. Muriel told me to listen, and I just heard the show. I called her and got your number.\" I put my hand over the receiver and called to Pekko, but he'd turned on the TV. The call was the third one that mattered arising from the radio show. The first was Gordon Skeetling, the second Muriel Peck, and the third was the woman on the phone. I was too unsettled and tired to take in her name that night, but I listened when she said she wanted to put on a play.\n\nHer name turned out to be Katya, and she had some sort of theater-related degree and a grant to put together community theater. Ordinary people would make up a play and produce it. \"I want you,\" she said. \"You say what you think, and you don't mumble.\" The cast was about to meet for the first time, and Muriel had already agreed to join. I wanted to see Muriel Peck again, and I was sad about an ending and looking for a beginning. So I found myself, a few days later, in a big, drafty room at a downtown parish house (not the one that housed the soup kitchen; much of New Haven's communal life takes place in parish houses) with Muriel, two other women, a man, and Katya, thinking up a play. We sat on mats on the floor, though chairs were piled in a corner, and Muriel brought one for herself, saying, \"The floor is for dogs, cats, and babies.\" Katya\u2014a big, white woman with glasses and long, light brown hair over her shoulders like a cloak\u2014began with mindless physical exercises. Then we talked briefly about who we were. After that Katya asked us to say the most outrageous, the most unspeakable things we could think of. I was unimpressed, but I joined in. Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, we began with obscenity and profanity, and worked our way backwards to phrases of some interest, remarks that we'd heard or that had been said to us, remarks we could imagine someone making at a tough moment. It was true that one of these statements might conceivably be the basis for a play, or a moment around which a play could be constructed.\n\n\"I never loved you, not even the night we robbed the bank!\" said the man, who was young and Asian\u2014Korean American, I found out later. This project had self-conscious ethnic diversity, like a photograph in a college view book. Katya and I were the only white people, and I liked that.\n\n\"Bank is predictable,\" said Katya. \"I never loved you, not even the night we robbed the natural foods store!\"\n\n\"Your ugliness is beautiful,\" Muriel said now.\n\n\"His ugliness, her ugliness . . . ,\" Katya mumbled.\n\n\"Buy me a snake, honey,\" one of the other two women said. One was black and one was Hispanic.\n\n\"Buy me a car, buy me a rake, buy me a gun, buy me a man, buy me a . . .\"\n\nI said, \"It's a headline.\" Everybody turned toward me as I sat cross-legged on my mat. They nodded, as if to say they knew what a headline was. \"Two-Headed Woman Weds Two Men,\" I said. \"Subhead: Doc Says She's Twins.\"\n\nThey laughed, beginning to be comfortable, this little group, mussed and sweaty from the exercises. I can work up a sense of competition in any situation, and my skepticism about this undertaking disappeared temporarily when they liked my suggestion. There were other ideas, but we came back to Gordon Skeetling's favorite headline. We could imagine a play about the Two-Headed Woman. We could begin to imagine her life.\n\n\"At first, she's a baby,\" Muriel said. \"I can make a two-headed doll.\"\n\n\"That sounds horrible, a two-headed baby,\" said the man.\n\n\"You want a two-headed woman,\" Muriel said slowly from her lone folding chair, turning her big head in his direction, \"you got a former two-headed baby.\"\n\nWhen my friends the LoPrestis take a trip, Philip keeps a journal that he later copies and gives to people he knows, recording not private insecurities or arguments with Charlotte but discoveries of painters and architects, praiseworthy restaurants, hotels worth the money. He must like to imagine being asked for advice; so do I. I'm no journal keeper, and I began writing this narrative without knowing why, but as I proceed, the reader I think of wants a guidebook. A voice\u2014maybe Philip's, maybe my brother Stephen's\u2014asks, \"What's it like to live the way you do?\"\n\n\"The way I do?\"\n\n\"Heedlessly. Is it a choice, or is this the best you can do? Is it worth it?\"\n\n\"Heedlessly? Is that how I live?\"\n\nThe client I described to myself as Irritating Ellen, who couldn't reject what nobody wanted, was in her late forties, with too many light brown curls on her shoulders and fluttery arms, accustomed to shrugs and hugs. Though she'd given me a key, trusting me instantly, she seemed able to leave her job at any hour to meet me. Ellen had grown up in a big house, all cupolas and porches, on East Rock Road. When her husband left her, she and her two children returned there to live with her parents. Now one parent had died and the other was in Florida, while Ellen and her kids lived on with their own possessions, her parents', and everybody else's. We had an appointment on a sunny morning in March\u2014around the time of the first meeting about the play\u2014but when I rang the doorbell, I heard no footsteps. It was the first day warm enough that waiting wasn't uncomfortable, and Ellen's old-fashioned street was pretty even in the dull season between snow and buds. Each ample, intricately trimmed house had its own variation: carved balusters, curved front steps, a widow's walk. As I stood there, my mind went not to Ellen's mess but to Gordon Skeetling's, and I tried to think where I'd sit in that side room so he couldn't see me through the wide glass doors. When Ellen still didn't come, I let myself into her crowded foyer and big, crowded, dusty living room, planning what I might do in her absence, noting that in Ellen's house windows were obscured with junk. I was about to find the kitchen and fix myself a cup of coffee when Ellen came toward me. Not every window in this house was blocked, and sun lit her solicitous face. She held something in her arms.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" she said. \"I'm here.\"\n\nI thought she carried a pile of old clothes, but it was a baby.\n\n\"You didn't let somebody give you that!\" I said. Her children were school age.\n\n\"Just for a few hours.\" The baby, a tense creature with hard fists and a swirl of light hair, was soon screaming.\n\n\"Why didn't you say no?\" I said, as if my work with Ellen entitled me to candor. I don't have children, and other people's instigate too many feelings in me: a wish both to protect them and to shake off encroaching protection, and helplessness, and also a frightening wish to hurt. Apparently I am both the one who might be harmed, rescued, or stymied by good intentions and the one who'd do the hurting, the saving, the encroaching. Soon I was carrying this girl around, my arms itchy with conflict while her fingers clutched my hair. Later, I couldn't remember why Ellen suddenly wanted to show me something she had to retrieve, kneeling, from a basket on the floor\u2014or exactly when she handed me the child. \"At least she doesn't have two heads,\" I said nervously, so then I had to explain.\n\n\"I did theater in college,\" Ellen said.\n\n\"This may not qualify as theater.\"\n\n\"Mostly I was a director,\" she said. \"Sometimes I acted. I wish I had time for it now.\"\n\nI might have said she'd have time if she didn't let other people rule her life, but the one-headed baby was making too much noise. I didn't want to prolong the conversation anyway, lest Ellen try to join our cast. If she did, I'd drop out, I thought. If Ellen was even slightly interested in our play, it must be too obliging. The baby's sobs quieted as I held her.\n\n\"We can make lists,\" I said. \"Get paper.\" I demonstrated surprising patience with other clients, watching myself in disbelief as their tedium just made me smile like a cartoon Buddha, or a stereotype of a cloistered nun. With Ellen, I was my cranky self.\n\nShe went for paper. As I waited, I noted that she or someone else had once woven baskets, or people had taken to giving her baskets. Tall hampers and wicker urns held dusty dried flowers or fabric scraps that would never make a quilt. She might have carried baskets of goodies to her grandmother through the wood: she had that look. When she returned, she stood in the dust motes under her high ceiling, holding paper and pen ready. Even scrap paper in this house had been donated: this was the stationery of an oil company.\n\nI didn't know what to say while holding a baby. When I pretended to sympathize with other clients' acquisitiveness I was not pretending\u2014though I wasn't a gatherer myself\u2014but I couldn't seem to join Ellen in her acquiescence, even temporarily. The baby wouldn't settle into my arms but stiffened and arched. She and Ellen were in cahoots, preferring discomfort. Ellen had reasons I was too bored to refute for refusing to take any single load to Goodwill. \"I thought we'd just arrange it more efficiently,\" she always said.\n\n\"Could I have a cup of coffee?\" I asked now.\n\n\"Of course!\" I followed her into the kitchen, a big room with old-fashioned appliances. I stood where the baby could see over my shoulder, out the window, and she calmed enough that I gingerly sat down. Ellen measured coffee into a coffeemaker that stood on a tiny open space at the corner of a cabinet whose surface was filled with stacks of bowls, vases, and carafes. Glass doors in cupboards revealed shelves crowded with china and glasses.\n\nEllen served me coffee in a mug in which magenta and blue glaze splashed over speckled gray horizontal ridges, and my mood shifting, I curved my fingers around it to feel the warmth. \"Hold the baby well away from the mug,\" Ellen said, and I looked at her, startled by authority in her voice. I never yearn for the objects I see when I work. I alternate between wanting my clients to keep their elaborate constructions of junk and wanting to destroy and banish their possessions any way at all, ignoring civic-minded strictures about recycling, toxic waste disposal, and charity, scoffing at the supposed obligation to avoid waste by providing simple good people in simple good places used tires to make sandals of, used paper to turn into new paper. At home, after a day of work, I consider throwing out everything I touch, and Pekko and I don't have a lot of objects. But in Ellen's kitchen, I liked the mug I drank from, and then I desired something else: a fat white pitcher, possibly Italian pottery. It was about the size of the baby, with painted yellow flowers. Next to the sink, it took up counter space. \"Let's start by getting rid of that pitcher,\" I said.\n\n\"My cousin . . . ,\" she began. \"And I think it's nice.\"\n\n\"Everything's nice, but let's decimate this collection, for a start. Let's put every tenth object in the garbage can.\"\n\n\"You said you had ideas,\" Ellen said.\n\n\"Oh, you hate everything here.\"\n\nEllen stood and stepped backwards, leaning against her sink as if to insert herself between me and everything in the room. She stretched her arms out and put a protective hand on the yellow-and-white pitcher. Then the baby wriggled, and for a second it seemed she'd fall. I started, and she did slip through my grasp, but I caught her with my other hand. In the meantime, Ellen's arms swept toward us, and the pitcher crashed to the floor as my client cried out in grief and anger. Its interior was red clay, with the potter's coils still visible. Ellen took the baby and carried her upstairs, shaking her head when I offered to clean up the shards. \"Next week,\" she said as she left the room, her coffee untouched. Not \"Never.\"\n\nThe play began with the pregnancy of the two-headed baby's mother, who didn't yet know about the two heads. The first time we tried making up a scene, I played the father. Feeling helpless, I stood in the middle of an open floor next to the young black woman, Chantal, who stared at me through rimless glasses. She had rolled up a sweater and stuffed it under her shirt. \"Are you worried about your wife?\" Katya prompted. She kept a tape recorder running.\n\nSo the father of the two-headed baby would be a worrier. \"Did you sign up for childbirth preparation classes?\" I asked my wife, remembering a friend's account of this phenomenon.\n\n\"Shut up, I'm cooking!\" she said. \"Shut up! I'm dancing!\" Chantal mimed cooking and dancing. She'd once been in an improvisation troupe. She had a quick way of moving, turning her head swiftly in response to what others said, so her glasses flashed.\n\n\"Did you ask the doctor if it's all right to dance around like that?\" I said, again after silence.\n\n\"Doctor, may I dance? May I eat? May I fool around with men?\"\n\n\"Men?\" I said. It was embarrassing. Why was I doing this?\n\nThe doctor sat on the floor, cross-legged, giggling. She was Denise, a Hispanic woman of about forty. Now she seemed to realize she had to talk. \"None of that stuff. Certainly no sex,\" she said as the doctor. \"And don't eat.\"\n\n\"But I'm hungry,\" said my wife. \"I'm horny.\"\n\nThe childbirth preparation teacher, who was Muriel Peck, organized two pregnant women and their husbands (everybody including Katya), and made the women lie on the floor and breathe deeply. After a while she stopped and said, \"This isn't a play.\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter,\" said Katya from the floor. \"We'll settle on a script later.\"\n\nI tried to be the husband. \"My wife can't lie on her back,\" I said. \"Her belly is too big.\"\n\n\"I'm fine,\" my wife contradicted me. \"Leave me alone. I want to suffer.\"\n\nThe other father\u2014the Korean American kid, David\u2014turned to me. \"Are you glad your wife is pregnant? I'm scared.\"\n\n\"I'm scared, too,\" I said. \"I'm scared the baby will die. I'm scared I'll kill the baby.\"\n\n\"How would you do that?\"\n\n\"Oh, there are plenty of ways to kill a baby.\"\n\nIn labor, Chantal kicked rapidly, then got up and ran around in circles. \"In the improv troupe,\" she said, \"we looked for the large, surprising gesture.\" Then she sat down on the floor and said, \"I don't want to be a mother! I can't get this baby out because I don't love it!\"\n\n\"Oh, you'll love it,\" said the doctor. \"But this is a difficult birth. I'd better do a cesarean.\"\n\nChantal said, as herself, \"Doctors call it a C-section.\"\n\n\"A C-section.\"\n\nKatya stepped in as a nurse. \"Here's a knife!\"\n\n\"Did you wash it?\" said the doctor. I was surprised, and I laughed. I hadn't expected Denise to surprise me.\n\nWith a swoop of the imaginary knife, the doctor slashed Chantal's belly. She reached forward. \"I know how they pull it out, because I had one,\" she said. She grunted and held up an imaginary baby.\n\n\"Oh, my God,\" the doctor shouted. \"The baby has two heads!\"\n\nAll of us except Chantal rushed around, clutching our heads. I was astonished to be doing this.\n\nChantal shouted, \"It's my fault!\" and we stopped. \"I slept with another man when I was pregnant. Each head looks like one of them.\"\n\n\"Unfaithful?\" I said. \"How could you do that to me?\"\n\n\"Well, I'm the one who slept with your wife,\" David said. \"But I didn't make her pregnant. I'm Asian, and neither of these heads looks Asian.\"\n\n\"It's too soon to tell,\" Denise the doctor said firmly. \"Stop yelling, all of you. Nobody can live with two heads. Don't look at the baby. She's going to die. She has too much brain.\"\n\nChantal had been lying on the floor, but now she sat up and said firmly, \"Let me see my baby!\" After the boisterousness, this was somewhat impressive. Obediently, as her husband I took an imaginary child from Denise and carried it toward my wife. \"I love the baby,\" she said, taking the child in her arms.\n\n\"Better not love the baby,\" said the doctor.\n\n\"But I want to love the baby!\"\n\n\"Give it a name,\" said the doctor. \"Name the baby before she dies.\"\n\n\"I'll name her TheaDora,\" said Chantal. \"That way, we don't have to decide if she's one person or two people. She's Thea and Dora, or she's TheaDora.\"\n\nKatya stopped being the nurse and withdrew to her place beside the tape recorder. \"I'm the baby,\" she said, and wailed. David joined in as the rest of the baby. This play was full of shouting.\n\nPekko's back reveals more than his face. A thick man, he experiences feeling with his shoulders. He thinks his face conceals him, and maybe it does, but his back is less circumspect. Walking into the kitchen one evening, I saw his back first as he sat at the kitchen table, talking on the phone, and I guessed we wouldn't be making love for a while. He was elsewhere and needed to be retrieved, but I don't know how to do that. I'd come home tired and was in the bathtub when I heard him come in, greet Arthur, and then answer the phone. From the rise and fall of his voice, the pauses, I knew he was talking to my mother.\n\nPekko was the landlord of several apartment houses and one of the last SROs in New Haven\u2014that's a single-room-occupancy building, in which people with meager resources have a room with a hot plate and use a bathroom in the hall. At the time I'm recalling, he was having the hallway fixed up and painted, and uncharacteristically, he'd hired a contractor who was a former drug addict and who'd put together a company of ex-users. They were competent, but they wanted to be watched and praised as they worked. \"I'm not a kindergarten teacher,\" Pekko had been saying. He hates standing around. He's incapable even of waiting while I finish playing solitaire on the computer (and he thinks playing solitaire is addictive behavior). Pekko looks like the king of spades, by the way.\n\nWalking into the kitchen behind him, I sat down, half listening and looking over the mail, assuming Pekko would soon hand me the phone, but he didn't. It had grown dark, and he hadn't bothered to stand up and turn on the light.\n\n\"You buy these things ready-made,\" Pekko was saying. \"She doesn't have to be an old world cabinetmaker.\" At last he hung up.\n\nI was too tired to talk to Roz, but I said, \"She didn't want to talk to me?\"\n\n\"She called to ask my advice.\"\n\n\"I gather, but usually that's just an excuse.\"\n\n\"Not this time.\"\n\n\"What did she want?\"\n\n\"She wants to hire Daphne to install kitchen cabinets.\"\n\n\"But she already has kitchen cabinets,\" I said. \"Not that she cooks.\"\n\n\"She doesn't like them. Daphne claims what she's really good at is carpentry. She says she took a job training course in carpentry for women.\"\n\n\"Is that true?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Your mother seems to think I'm an expert on carpentry and an expert on Daphne.\"\n\n\"She thinks you're an expert in everything, but you like that. How did they get from raking leaves to carpentry this fast?\"\n\n\"How should I know?\"\n\n\"She had her in for coffee,\" I said, picturing the two of them in the kitchen. \"She was so happy with Daphne's raking that she offered her a cup of coffee.\" This image annoyed me, as if my mother was allowed to have coffee only with me, although I didn't visit her often. \"There were the old cabinets,\" I continued. Then I said, \"I wish she wouldn't make friends with people like that.\"\n\n\"Like what? There's nothing wrong with Daphne.\"\n\n\"Pekko, you're obviously wary of Daphne. And she's doing community service. Doesn't that mean she committed a crime?\" I stood up and turned on the light.\n\n\"I don't know anything about it. We're old friends,\" said Pekko. \"I ought to fire those druggies and hire her to paint that staircase.\"\n\n\"Did you sleep with her when she worked for you?\" I said.\n\n\"I didn't even know you then.\"\n\n\"I don't care.\" But now he picked up the newspaper. So I went back to reading the catalog I'd glanced at before, and time passed, and the mood changed. I for one was too hungry to think about what my mother and Daphne did, or even what Daphne and Pekko did.\n\nI was too hungry to think and too hungry to cook, too tired even to take on the minor responsibility of suggesting dinner out. I knew Pekko wanted me to take charge, and I thought he might know I wanted him to. So we continued to sit. This sort of impasse led to bad times in our dating days. We'd finally eat at ten o'clock and be so hungry we'd quarrel. Now, Arthur pressed his head onto my lap and under my hands, making me stroke his hard, narrow skull. Then he thrust his nose into the crotch of my pants. I rose to feed him and broke the tension in the room. Pekko stood too, slapped his thighs, and watched me feed the dog. \"Basement Thai,\" he said. The Thai restaurant we like best, where there's usually room for us, is in a basement on Chapel Street.\n\n\"It's Tuesday, so I have time,\" I said.\n\n\"No radio.\"\n\n\"Radio's finished. No play.\" Both were on Wednesdays.\n\nBut that made me think about the radio series, and I wanted to ask, \"Was Daphne ever a prostitute?\" Of course I wouldn't get an actual answer.\n\n\"So what you're saying,\" said Pekko, \"is that if you had something to do, you'd skip dinner with me and do it.\"\n\n\"I'm hungry,\" I said.\n\nWhy the fascination with prostitutes?\" Gordon Skeetling asked a few days later, as we walked down Temple Street, where the sycamores weren't green yet. He'd proposed lunch so he could explain what he wanted of me. \"Not that you can't develop your own ideas.\" He had a way of whooshing aside objections that hadn't yet been made, by claiming not to disagree with them. The objections were bold, so within a sentence or two he might make fair conversational progress on my behalf. Now he added, after \"fascination with prostitutes,\" \"Not that there's anything illegitimate about the subject of prostitution.\"\n\n\"That's right, there isn't!\" I said, instead of claiming I wasn't fascinated.\n\nWe crossed a parking lot and entered Clark's Pizza\u2014which is Greek despite its name\u2014through the back door. It's an old-fashioned lunch place with red upholstered booths and a menu including gyros and moussaka. Gordon had a light, tenor voice\u2014the voice of a younger man\u2014and as we sat down in a booth near the windows, I looked around to see if anyone was listening.\n\n\"Prostitutes are just one sort of needy person,\" I continued. \"They're usually poor. They may be homeless. They may have AIDS.\"\n\nI ordered a Greek salad, and he asked for spanakopita. I didn't feel rushed with Gordon Skeetling, so after my outburst I tried to answer his question truthfully. Of course I didn't know why I'd wanted to do a series about prostitution, only that I did. \"I'm not a prostitute,\" I began again, in a different tone.\n\n\"Were you ever offered money for sex?\" he said. \"It never happened to me. I guess I'm not attractive enough.\"\n\n\"Twice,\" I said and told him the stories I couldn't get Pekko to listen to\u2014the man outside the bakery, the man outside the dress shop. I remembered another occasion I didn't mention.\n\n\"Were you tempted?\" he said quickly, sounding not as if he was trying to get personal but as if he was such a curious person he couldn't keep from asking. Then he answered his own question. \"Well, you were tempted as I would be\u2014by the chance to learn something. Not by the money or the sex itself.\"\n\nThen he added, \"What did you do, when the first man asked you?\"\n\n\"I think I pretended I hadn't heard. I hurried away. I was afraid he might follow me.\"\n\nHe nodded, and shrugged off his raincoat, and he was wearing a tan sweater, the way I'd first imagined him. He was narrower than I thought when I saw him in a jacket. He took up room when he spread his arms, and now he stretched one arm along the back of the booth. Behind us, a small child stood up and patted Gordon's arm vigorously. He ignored her.\n\n\"Yes,\" I said slowly. \"It's the idea of doing something with a stranger that you'd ordinarily do only with someone you cared about. Or at least knew.\"\n\n\"Something about eliminating distance?\"\n\n\"No. I think prostitutes and their clients must be lonely. They don't make a connection.\"\n\n\"With me they do,\" he said.\n\n\"You patronize whores?\"\n\n\"No, but I buy them drinks, or cups of coffee. I don't want to sleep with them, but I like to talk to them. Like you, but I've never gone on the radio.\"\n\nThe child in the next booth had been coaxed to sit down, but now she turned and patted Gordon's arm once more. He glanced at her as if at a woman who tapped his arm in the street. \"What you do for a living is perfectly respectable, of course,\" he said then. \"This poking in attics and cellars. But I wonder\u2014 Don't be insulted.\"\n\n\"I'm never insulted.\"\n\n\"You go to people's houses, and they take you to a private room and show you something they don't show anybody else.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"The locked door. It's true.\"\n\nOur lunches were brought. \"Maybe trash is the new genitalia,\" said Gordon.\n\nThere was one more interruption by the child, and I asked him if he had kids. \"Nieces, nephews,\" he said.\n\n\"Me too. You're married?\"\n\n\"Twice,\" he said. \"Not now. You?\" So I told him about marrying Pekko after years of being single.\n\n\"I know Pekko Roberts,\" he said. \"We were on a board together.\"\n\nHe ate spanakopita in silence, concentrating on cutting layers of phyllo dough and spinach and feta cheese, and then told me more about the Small Cities Project. He was a paid researcher; small cities paid him for studies, and in the course of his research, he often found a magazine piece he wanted to write. \"The archive is leftovers,\" he said. \"My thought is, if you show up, read, throw away the trash\u2014well, what's left will have an emphasis, just because I do, because the people who've worked with me do, maybe because you do. Maybe everything you look at will have to do with prostitution. The process could lead to something\u2014another radio series, a paper, a book. I can pay you for a while, but if you hit on something big, you'll have to find somebody to fund it.\"\n\nI considered mentioning what I'd already come up with, after my single look at his archive\u2014the play about the two-headed woman\u2014but I didn't.\n\nOn April 1, Muriel brought the two-headed doll to rehearsal. She was bigger than a baby, a tan rag doll with something inside to stiffen her a bit. Her arms were slightly bent, and her legs were straight and fat. She wore a yellow nightgown with broad shoulders and two neck openings, and out of each opening rose a head. One had a dark brown face, short, black yarn hair, and black button eyes, while the other's face was peach-colored. It had short, yellow hair and blue eyes. The doll was startling, and it silenced me; I stopped feeling, at least for now, as if I'd wandered into something beneath me. I was the first to take it from Muriel, and I held it gingerly. Both faces had appliqu\u00e9d circles of red felt for mouths. They silently screamed. \"You sewed each strand of hair, one at a time,\" I said.\n\n\"You make loops, then you cut them. It makes that cute baby fuzz.\" Muriel's placid pride did not quite acknowledge the doll's strangeness. It was numinous, and nobody ever picked it up casually.\n\nWhen we began rehearsing, David and Muriel played the baby's parents, because Katya said it was too soon to decide on roles. As the mother, Muriel stroked the baby and walked with it. Muriel's body was muscular and efficient, and she walked fast. She always wore jeans. She made dolls, but she looked as if she'd wear a hard hat and drive a bulldozer.\n\n\"There's something I have to tell you, dear,\" said her husband. \"I want a divorce.\"\n\nMuriel turned her still, intent face in his direction. \"You're going to leave me alone with TheaDora?\"\n\n\"April fool!\" said David. \"I don't want a divorce. April fool!\"\n\n\"Lover boy,\" Muriel said slowly, \"I have to tell you something.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"Our baby has two heads. Not April fool. Not April fool.\" Muriel was bigger than David, and when she stared at him, he seemed to grow smaller. He'd gone to Yale and was barely out of college. He had told us he worked with computers.\n\nWhen David and I left together after the rehearsal, I asked, \"What made you say that?\"\n\n\"The April fool joke? I felt mean. That doll is so weird.\"\n\nThe next time I saw Ellen she had no spare children in her arms, and we tried to make a plan for her kitchen. She still wanted to keep everything, just rearrange it, and I forced myself to agree. She didn't mention the broken pitcher. Sitting on the floor, we gathered pots and pans and crockery from her many pantries and cabinets and shelves, and then we grouped everything in categories: baking pans in a pile, sugar bowls in one corner, stacks of plates in another. Ellen's children came home from school, and each watched us briefly before turning away. One was a rather mature-looking girl with long hair, who looked around critically but didn't speak. The other I took to be a boy\u2014stubby, plump, with a practical look\u2014but she later turned out to be another girl. For the rest of the afternoon I heard footsteps or music, occasionally, from upstairs. The children played sad folk music, not what I'd have expected. Ellen and I had made matters worse, but as we worked she said, \"This was a good idea.\"\n\n\"What about supper?\"\n\n\"We'll order in.\"\n\n\"What about breakfast?\"\n\n\"Breakfast is easy.\"\n\nAt least she didn't have a dog running around. \"Why don't you have animals?\" I said, surprised by that thought. \"Where are everybody's unwanted cats and dogs?\"\n\n\"I got rid of them. Three cats and a dog. Justine's allergic.\"\n\n\"What did you do, kill them?\"\n\n\"No, I didn't kill them!\" She sat up. She'd been lying on her stomach, pulling dusty bowls out from a deep shelf, getting dust on her skirt. Ellen wore wide cotton skirts in pale, swirling prints. \"I bought cute things for them\u2014leashes, little beds. Then I lined them up outside a supermarket and looked pathetic until people took them.\" We stopped working and began discussing animals. Ellen had missed those pets. We had a conversation new friends have, beginning with childhood dogs, but I grew bored with her undifferentiated grief for the pets of her life. I didn't want to be her friend, but I kept listening, and narrowly missed eating Chinese takeout with her and the children. I promised to come the next day. When she was out of the room for a moment, I dealt with my feelings by pocketing a sugar bowl\u2014a rather nice one, blue ceramic\u2014and later I threw it in the garbage.\n\nAs my mother told Daphne, I am no gardener, but on a windy but sunny Saturday I raked the mucky dead leaves of the previous autumn\u2014leaves we hadn't bothered with when they fell\u2014into piles. Arthur sniffed the fecund stuff my rake was exposing and sometimes rolled in it. I was cold, but activity warmed me. Inside, the phone rang. Pekko wasn't home, but the machine would pick up the call. When Arthur barked, I followed him down the alley between houses and found my mother ringing our doorbell. She came into the yard.\n\n\"Daphne did that for me,\" she said, after watching me for a while. \"She took a long time, and she charged me by the hour.\"\n\n\"It's a big job,\" I said. I leaned the rake on a tree.\n\n\"I'm not complaining,\" my mother said. \"It's important to know how to charge. I hope you charge your customers enough.\"\n\nI offered her coffee, and as she explained that she'd come with another question for Pekko, I heard him thumping around inside. Roz isn't shy about visiting, but she doesn't want me to think she moved to New Haven to bother me, so she always gives a reason. When we came into the kitchen, he'd discovered the blinking light on the answering machine and was listening to a rapid, friendly message from Gordon Skeetling. \"Hi, Daisy, it's Gordon,\" and his 432 number\u2014which always means Yale\u2014spoken in the hasty manner of someone who knows you already have it.\n\n\"Who's that?\" he said. \"Hi, Roz.\"\n\n\"A client.\"\n\n\"Gordon who?\"\n\n\"Skeetling. The Small Cities Project. He says he knows you.\"\n\n\"You're working for him? Why didn't you tell me?\"\n\n\"Who is he?\" said Roz. \"A big shot?\"\n\n\"He says Yale barely tolerates him,\" I said to Pekko. \"He sounds like your sort\u2014inner city and all that.\"\n\n\"I don't like him,\" Pekko said.\n\n\"What's wrong with him?\" I put my jacket on a chair and took three mugs from the cupboard.\n\n\"I don't want coffee. He was on the board of the shelter with me.\"\n\n\"He said so. He seems nice. He has a room full of papers he wants me to sort out.\"\n\nPekko walked out of the room, but a minute later, as I was measuring coffee, he returned. \"A little too clearheaded,\" he said. \"Sees things just as they are.\"\n\n\"What's wrong with that?\" I said. \"You're the one who's always claiming to be a realist.\"\n\n\"If I were a realist,\" said Pekko, \"I wouldn't rent an apartment to the man I just rented an apartment to.\"\n\nHe was standing in the doorway, filling it, but now he turned away again. Roz called after him, \"Speaking of apartments, Pekko, I need a good deed.\"\n\n\"Yes?\" he said, sounding friendlier. \"How are you anyway, Roz? What are you up to now?\" My mother's conscientious vigor amuses Pekko, and he also admires it. \"We're friends,\" he says, which is also what my mother says, though she's more detailed about it: she claims they made friends because they went through the war together, meaning Vietnam. They didn't meet until years later, but she says they thought the same way about it. She marched, wrote letters to editors, and affixed bumper stickers to her car reading SUPPORT OUR BOYS: BRING THEM HOME. Pekko was drafted and spent a year in Vietnam. \"Not as bad as some people's year,\" he says, \"but bad enough.\" Discharged, he returned to New Haven and, while taking courses at Southern Connecticut, began organizing against the war.\n\nThey're a little superior about it. During the war I was busy marrying Bruce Andalusia, who had a good lottery number and wasn't drafted. I tried not to think about Vietnam. Now and then, all my life, I've imagined myself tossing something over my left shoulder with my right hand, walking on and not seeing where it falls. I tossed the war like a button I pulled off my coat and didn't keep to sew on again.\n\nNow my mother said to Pekko, \"I promised Daphne I'd ask if you have room for her anywhere.\"\n\n\"She getting evicted?\"\n\n\"Oh, no,\" said Roz, \"but her place is expensive.\"\n\n\"How old are her kids?\" Pekko said.\n\n\"I think nine and seven.\"\n\n\"I suppose she'll pay the rent if it's me.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Roz said. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"I haven't done anything yet,\" Pekko said. He climbed the stairs at his steady pace.\n\nI'd offered my mother a cup of coffee not to be hospitable but because I wanted one myself. She was too pleased to have had her leaves raked by the remarkable Daphne, and I wanted her to leave so I could call Gordon back. That impulse made me angry with myself, so I drank the coffee too fast and burned my mouth. As I drank, I formed a policy about not making client calls over the weekend.\n\nMy mother drank only a few sips of coffee but lingered, talking about my brothers. The oldest of us, Carl, is gay and lives with a man and two adopted children. Stephen is still married to his first wife, and they have a daughter. Sometimes I am sure Roz is about to blame me for being childless, but the truth is that Roz doesn't want me to be more conventional than I am. She wants to prove that she's as unconventional as I, and she wants me to delight her with stories. That day she probably hoped for confidences and intimate talk. When I was single, I often told her about my men. She didn't disapprove, nor did she grow wistful as I aged out of my fertile years, but prided herself on her appreciation of another way.\n\nMarried, though, I'd gone into our bedroom, so to speak, and closed the door. I thought my mother disapproved not of any way of life but of people who don't know how to get what they want. Possibly, these days, my silence made her think I was unhappy, but I didn't want to talk about Pekko. Now she said, \"After she finished raking, she came inside and I gave her a glass of water. Then we talked for an hour. I couldn't believe it when I saw the clock. I never do that with anybody but you. She's a lonely person. She hasn't time for boyfriends, just taking care of those kids. All of a sudden she looked at her watch and skedaddled\u2014time for school to let out. She's so skinny she looks twenty, but she's past forty. Would you have guessed that?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said.\n\n\"How well does she know Pekko?\" she asked.\n\n\"How should I know?\" Finally my mother left, and I called Gordon right away. He needed to change our next appointment. And he wanted to know if I minded that he wouldn't be in the office while I worked. He'd just let me in and leave. I said I'd be fine.\n\nKatya was tall and wide, given to exaggerated gestures and mild bullying (\"Use your body, Daisy! This isn't radio!\") but maddeningly wary of deciding anything definitely. While the rest of us\u2014except for Muriel\u2014sat on the floor, Katya would pace, looming hugely when she came near. She'd expostulate\u2014and then say, \"But what do you guys think?\"\n\nI found I looked forward to rehearsals, though after each one I promised myself I'd quit. Then I'd decide to stay in but keep silent as much as possible. Yet I always went, and talked a lot, both in character and out of it. As I'd begin to move around the area we called the stage\u2014with exaggerated gestures and speed\u2014I'd feel a familiar, anxious pleasure in my throat and at last I identified it as the sensation I'd get, in my single years, when I was about to sleep with a man I scarcely knew.\n\nDenise always had an opinion about what we were doing, and she was always wrong. She wanted the play to be innocuous, so it wouldn't upset anybody. Invariably I disagreed, and then everyone would offer a view, and we'd be back where we started. We were now a group of six actors, not counting Katya. She'd found another man, a rotund black storefront preacher with a glorious, deep voice. His name was Jonah. \"I was swallowed . . . by a whale!\" he said the first night. He had been a drug addict many years ago, he told us, so he was not shocked by swearing. We mustn't become shy, just because there was a reverend in the room.\n\nWe were not shy, and we weren't a coherent group of rational adults. David, the computer kid, had a habit of scooting his mat around the floor while people talked, like an eight-year-old. Chantal was tall and sharp-looking, with her quick glances and glittery glasses. She was bright but illogical. At least she no longer rushed around as much. Denise, the little Puerto Rican lady, used to hug her knees as we sat there, as if she was so anxious not to be in the way that she'd decided not to let herself stand up. When she talked about the play, she urged blandness, but her acting wasn't bland. Something was freed in her, and she often startled me. Muriel retained her dignity and always seemed grown-up, but even Muriel had a fault: she could be boring. Sometimes I had to remind myself that she'd been a prostitute, to make her seem slightly exotic. She looked exotic, and I couldn't keep up with her long stride as we walked to our cars after the rehearsals, but she was as likely to talk about her special red-and-green Christmas plates as anything else.\n\nThat night we decided, after some debate, that we needed a couple of kids to play the two-headed little girl if we were indeed presenting a sort of biography. I was opposed, but when I lost the argument I didn't lose my usual desire for control. Somebody said she knew a cute ten-year-old, and I thought of Ellen's not-cute Justine, with her cool, intelligent look. I didn't want Ellen involved in the play, but I often can't help trying to seem more competent than anybody else, so while the others shrugged, I scribbled her phone number on a bit of paper and handed it to Katya.\n\nThen we acted out a scene in which the mother of the two-headed baby tries nursing both heads simultaneously, one on each breast. Denise was the mother this time, and she arranged the doll on her chest. \"My kids had only one head, and still I could nurse and keep private,\" she said serenely. As friends and family members, we circled her, offering imaginary cushions and other props, as well as advice.\n\n\"Just nurse one head! Maybe the other will drop off!\" I said. Nobody noticed what I considered my funniest lines, but I hoped that Katya's tape recorder was picking them up. We had played back some of what we'd done. Parts sounded more like scuffles and panting than speech, but Katya insisted she had plenty to transcribe. She also took notes. When she wasn't pacing, she sprawled with her back against a wall, a big drawing pad in her lap, a felt-tipped marker in her hand. She said she wrote faster if the writing was big.\n\n\"May I ask a question?\" Jonah said in measured tones. The current parents had flopped onto their mats after trying a scene we all hated, in which the father (Chantal, that night) tried to persuade the mother (me) to go to bed with him, and she said, \"Yeah, and get a three-headed baby?\" while as a baby-sitter, Denise tried walking with the two-headed doll. Wiping sweat and patting our hair, we nodded and looked at Jonah, who had not participated so far. \"What is the meaning?\" he said.\n\nSomebody explained the headline. We were working up to a wedding, we said. \"We're searching for the story,\" Katya offered, easing herself to the floor. \"There will be a process of decision making later.\"\n\n\"Is it about prejudice?\" Jonah persisted. \"I think it's about prejudice.\"\n\n\"You mean race?\" said Muriel. \"I'm tired of talking about race.\"\n\n\"Her race, or maybe her handicap?\" Jonah said. \"I'm just asking.\"\n\nChantal said, \"No, no, nothing like that. I think it's about not being able to make up your mind. Some days I feel like I have two heads.\"\n\nTo my astonishment, I was suddenly angry; I felt the kind of anger that burns the veins in your arms. I almost said, \"But I brought the headline!\" as if that made me the boss. I knew the two-headed woman had nothing to do with indecision, and I thought she had nothing to do with prejudice either. I was surprised to be angry, because I didn't know I cared about the play at all. All I could say was \"That's too simple, don't you see?\" They looked at me. They did not see. \"We're talking about having two heads. Don't you see how interesting that is? Having two heads is\u2014having two heads. It's not like anything.\" To myself, I sounded childish and obvious, and everyone looked at me with careful politeness.\n\n\"Then why do it?\" Jonah said. \"Nobody really has two heads. It's about being anyone who's looked down on. We need reminders about that.\"\n\n\"I guess I think it's something like that, too,\" Katya said.\n\n\"No,\" I said from my mat, pressing my hands into my thighs. \"I have no interest in that.\"\n\n\"You don't think it's important that people are prejudiced?\" Denise said.\n\n\"Of course it's important.\" I couldn't explain further because I didn't know what I meant. All I could think of was Pekko saying that Gordon saw things as they were. I wanted to look at that two-headed person, at the two-headedness of her. \"Comparing her to anything,\" I said, struggling to control my voice, \"is disrespectful. She's not like anything.\"\n\nGordon had changed our appointment so he wouldn't be late, but he was late. I thought of Ellen as I again stood waiting on steps, but this time I had no key, and the day was colder, though it was later in the spring. At last I saw him coming quickly toward me down the other side of Temple Street, past the gray stones of the back of St. Mary's Church. He was not just hurrying but running, the bottom of his jacket flapping. He crossed with a glance at the traffic and stopped, puffing, at the foot of the stairs I stood on. \"It's worth it, because I have more time than I thought. I can stay a little.\"\n\nI didn't need him to stay. I had learned enough to get started, which probably meant sitting and reading at random. But once we were inside I began to talk about how I usually worked. I was unsure of myself, uncomfortable because I'd expected him to leave, and so I found myself talking about Ellen, the client who made me feel unsure and uncomfortable. \"I've got a client now who doesn't want to keep anything she has,\" I said. \"She just thinks she ought to. I can't deal with conscience.\"\n\n\"Conscience isn't the usual reason for clutter?\" His pointed eyebrows moved up and down, and he stroked the doorjamb.\n\n\"No, avarice,\" I said. I was trying to sound provocative; I had no idea what the usual reason for clutter is, but I wished I hadn't mentioned Ellen.\n\nHe said, \"You're thinking I'm the greedy kind, or you wouldn't talk about her.\"\n\n\"No, no.\"\n\n\"So what's she like?\" Gordon Skeetling said, resting against his raised arm. He was wearing not the tan sweater today but a similar blue one. He smiled and encouraged me to make a funny story out of Ellen, but New Haven is too small. He'd recognize her\u2014he'd turn out to be her next-door neighbor. \"Why does she do this?\"\n\n\"I have no idea,\" I said. Then, \"I took something from her.\"\n\n\"You stole it?\"\n\n\"It was worthless.\"\n\n\"To you. What did you do with it?\"\n\n\"I threw it away.\"\n\n\"Hmm.\"\n\nI could tell he was more curious than troubled, that he didn't care whether Ellen was deprived of her possession or I turned out to be a thief. Have I described his face? Bony planes, lots of forehead. The expressive black eyebrows moved one at a time, and the gray, straight hair flopped when he gestured. A face ready to listen attentively, and then laugh. Now he was getting ready to laugh not at Ellen but at me. At least I'd deflected his attention from her. Usually someone who looks about to laugh doesn't bestow permission here and there, as Gordon Skeetling did, but his wasn't mocking or condescending laughter. What amused him was apparently the oddness of human behavior. He seemed to exist, just then, in order to hear me, and so he satisfied a longing I've always had: to explain, as if something would be accomplished forever if someone would only listen until I was done. . . .\n\n\"What did you take?\" His voice rose zestfully with the question.\n\n\"A sugar bowl.\"\n\n\"Sugar bowl? Hmm, a sugar bowl!\" Was a sugar bowl a symbol of something? The womb?\n\nBut he didn't keep on listening. He looked at his watch and gathered some papers, telling me to leave the key in the mailbox. \"Take your time and don't steal anything. No, if you want to, take whatever you like.\"\n\n\"I usually steal cars.\"\n\n\"Then you're stuck, because I'm taking mine with me. But speaking of conscience, remind me to tell you about my dream. Oh, I'll tell you now and be late. I had a German shepherd\u2014a lovely dog\u2014and she grew old and died. This was a dog with a conscience. If she did something she thought she shouldn't have, she'd incarcerate herself in the bathtub, because she hated baths. So one day, after she died, I dreamed about a minister\u2014a pastor, he was called in the dream\u2014in Germany who was so conscientious, he threw himself out of his own church. Excommunicated himself. When I woke up, I remembered that pastor means \"shepherd.\" He was a German shepherd. Isn't that good? Don't I have great dreams?\"\n\nNow he hurried away, and I missed this friendly man, who I thought probably resembled his dog. He'd have a functioning conscience, not one that operated like Ellen's, without meaning, or that failed to operate, like mine. His would keep him from doing harm, and I wanted to stop stealing sugar bowls if only to please him.\n\nIn the archive I began by dusting, and then I read. I read or skimmed a stack of articles copied from magazines or torn out: an old account of an election in Albany, a recent story about the New Haven homeless shelter. I could see no unifying principle or subject. It made no sense to group them by city, except that New Haven came up often. I was interested, because around here it's a little hard not to focus on big, bold New York, which is only seventy-five miles away.\n\nI could already see that some stories could easily be discarded. I grouped the rest by subject: poverty, public transportation, crime. At the corner of the table I gathered those that piqued my interest the most. They were invariably about New Haven, I noticed. Then I noticed that they were almost all about a death, not the predictable death of an old person with a cluttered house but the shocking death of a young man or woman who hadn't had time to accumulate much\u2014the violent death of some young person, a violent death in New Haven.\n\nWhen I notice a selfish or unselfish act I've committed, I can't seem to help balancing it. Half the time, that is, I fail morally. After being friendly to Ellen about dead pets, I took a sugar bowl. I took a sugar bowl, so I told Gordon. I told Gordon, so I complained about Ellen on the phone to my friend Charlotte. \"I guess in your field there's no such thing as confidentiality,\" Charlotte said. As I add to this narrative, I'm sometimes ashamed of one detail or another, but more often I'm pleased to describe what I did, how I am, as if being an identifiable sort of person matters more than being one sort or another. Accounts like this are supposed to record a change: this is how I became different. But I didn't change. What could I be except myself?\n\nWhat I don't like is rest. Only when I have a cold do I understand the wish to snuggle and stop striving. \"I like to think of finding a place to rest here,\" Ellen said, fluttering her hand at the confusion in her living room, where extra dining room chairs in many styles were lined up along one wall, one behind another as in a train. On them, as it happened, her children were playing train, but they stopped to listen, tilting their heads: wary Justine, who gave me the same shrewd look that had caught my attention before, and the younger one, with short, blond hair, the one I kept forgetting wasn't a boy, who'd pull his or her shirt up when thinking, baring the belly.\n\n\"A nest,\" said Ellen. I dislike the word nest unless a bird is involved, and I loathe nestle. Ellen said, \"I keep imagining that if I moved things just a little, I could hide properly. Wouldn't you love a curtained bed with red velvet hangings?\"\n\n\"Dust,\" I said. \"You'd get entangled with the curtains and wouldn't be able to escape if there was a fire.\"\n\n\"Or if your lover refused to perform,\" said Ellen, now laughing at herself. Justine looked alert. She'd been asked to join our cast. I'd given Ellen's phone number to Katya without permission. Ellen was grateful. She approved of me too heartily. She wanted some connection with the play, because I was in it.\n\nThe kitchen, a week after the day we'd emptied the cabinets, was subtly altered. Ellen and the children had not cleaned up but had transformed the mess into an intricate domestic installation, half nostalgic, half critical of the trammels of household, something you might almost see in the Whitney Biennial. They'd washed everything, then arranged the objects in neater groups: platters, teapots (red, blue, patterned), bowls (handmade pottery, old china with pink flowers, Danish stoneware). Silverware, separated by function and pattern, was spread on a blanket under the table. The children fussed importantly, lending Ellen more direction as they explained that after meals they replaced the dishes on the floor. They tried to use different plates and bowls at each meal now. Walking from doorway to sink was tricky, and the smaller child\u2014Celeste, she was a girl called Celeste\u2014hopped, as if to suggest that the aisle wasn't wide enough for two feet, though it was.\n\nEllen didn't want help putting the kitchen back to rights. \"The girls and I will do it,\" she said. I knew they couldn't. They couldn't keep everything, yet everything seemed to be cherished. Ellen was transforming herself into my other sort of client, making her own the objects that had been thrust upon her. I said, \"You're appalling,\" which Ellen took with one of her accepting shrugs. The children disappeared, and Ellen led me to a spare bedroom. The closet was crammed with clothing.\n\n\"I suppose you want to do the same thing here?\" I said.\n\n\"Let's just see,\" said Ellen.\n\nShe wasn't a real gatherer, not one of my glinty-eyed, irrational but avid accumulators. Her stories were always of imposition, even about her own clothes. \"My wedding gown. I never liked it. My mother chose it.\"\n\n\"And now you're planning to force it on your daughters?\"\n\n\"Celeste might like it. Justine will marry in a black leotard.\"\n\nWe piled clothes halfheartedly on the bed and in a heap on the rug. She'd brought a garbage bag, but it remained empty. Ellen had the profound stubbornness of passivity. As before, when she was out of the room I took something, at greater risk this time. I rolled a green print cotton shirt tightly, then stuffed it into my jacket pocket. And as before, shortly after I left her house, I passed a trash basket on a corner, stopped the car, got out, and threw the shirt away.\n\nI am good half the time. From Ellen's house I went to my mother's, thinking she'd be alone and maybe lonely. Roz and I visited each other uninvited, but while she justified or explained her visits, I acted as if mine were treats. It was a hot spring day, one of those early summer days before the leaves have come out, which make me dread sweating for the next half year but please some people. Instead of moping at home, my mother might be striding briskly through the park, swinging her arms and smiling under her white curls, being the sort of older woman who heartens younger ones. Roz, however, was neither out walking nor home alone but drinking iced tea with Daphne in her little kitchen. Both were in shorts\u2014a picture of midsummer, though clouds were gathering, and we'd be back to April the next day. Daphne said, \"Hi, Daisy,\" her mouth barely opening.\n\nThe iced tea was from a mix, so with the disapproval daughters feel they may express toward their mothers' choices, I filled a glass with tap water and stood leaning on the sink\u2014the interloper\u2014while the two women sat at the table. I could hear a wind starting outside, but in the kitchen it was close.\n\n\"Daphne has a nine-year-old daughter,\" my mother said significantly, after they'd talked for a few minutes about people from the soup kitchen. I'd described the rehearsals to Roz and mentioned the quest for little girls to play the two-headed kid. \"I've been telling her about your play. Maybe Daphne's daughter could be in it.\"\n\n\"Katya is pretty much set,\" I said. \"I gave her the name of a child.\"\n\n\"But you need two children,\" my mother persisted. To Daphne she added, \"She'd play a girl with two heads.\"\n\n\"Like, two of them inside a big dress?\"\n\n\"Something like that,\" I said reluctantly.\n\n\"Oh, Cindy would love that. Does the girl die? She'd love playing a corpse.\"\n\n\"No, she doesn't die,\" I said. \"Most of the play is about when she grows up.\"\n\n\"So it's a small part? That's okay, I'll explain it to her.\"\n\nI pointed out that by now Katya had probably found many little girls. Nonetheless, I was talked into giving her number to Daphne, and before I left I also promised to remind Pekko that Daphne needed an apartment.\n\nAnd I heard the details of the plan to install kitchen cabinets. Daphne described the carpentry for women course she'd taken. \"It was supposed to be job training, but guess what.\" She had a two-dimensional look\u2014a flat face with a small nose, small breasts, no belly, no backside. Her face, with thin, shoulder-length brown hair around it, was expressionless at rest, then quickly cheerful or combative, then expressionless again. She was well-defended. I doubted that she could laugh easily, and to test her I told a joke Charlotte had told me the night before, about a cocker spaniel who rides a motorcycle and won't wear a helmet\u2014or condoms either, it develops. I like dog jokes, and my mother stared, then laughed. Daphne glanced at her, as if for permission. Then she banged her empty glass on the table, laughing and laughing. She was somebody else, as if she'd stepped through a transforming curtain, and I knew why I had a suspicion about her and Pekko in the past.\n\n\"Tell Pekko I still like roller coasters,\" she called as I left. She and my mother remained at the table, sucking half-melted ice cubes, while I let myself out. As far as I know, Pekko dislikes roller coasters. I didn't reply.\n\nOne afternoon I had an unexpected cancellation, so I went to Gordon Skeetling's office without an appointment. He let me in, surprised but apparently pleased. He led me inside, then crossed to the coffeepot and gestured, one eyebrow raised. He stepped into sunlight near the window, and his thick, gray hair seemed to lift slightly from his head, as individual strands became visible in the spring light. I wanted coffee and nodded. He paused, slightly puzzled, as if he hadn't expected me to understand, then smiled in appreciation of his own peculiarities.\n\n\"Last time I was here,\" I said, \"I kept noticing clippings about violent death.\"\n\n\"I don't remember collecting stories of violent death,\" he said.\n\n\"I'll show you.\"\n\nHe followed me into the side room, and I handed him the pile I'd made. He sat down on a tall stool, leaning forward to establish his feet far apart on the floor. I was facing his crotch, and as sometimes happens, I imagined him undressed, how his penis and balls might rest on the edge of the stool, how a hand might hold them. I sat down with my back toward him and reached for a folder, so as to fill my hand with something else.\n\n\"This is terrible,\" he said at last. \"This murder on Hillhouse Avenue. I remember it.\" His voice sounded tense with grief.\n\n\"It happened a while ago,\" I said. A Yale student had been killed in the middle of the night by New Haven kids. The case had made national headlines. According to rumor, Yale's enrollment had suffered afterward. \"Do you know why Hillhouse Avenue intersects with Sachem Street?\" I said, again changing the subject, this time because Gordon's burst of feeling made me uncomfortable. \"It's named for James Hillhouse, a nineteenth-century treasurer at Yale. He was called Chief, and that's what Sachem means.\"\n\n\"An Indian word.\"\n\n\"I think so. I can't remember who told me that,\" I said.\n\n\"I remember when that kid died,\" he said. \"Christian Prince. What a name. I read everything about it. I cried. My wife thought I had some kind of weird Freudian identity thing.\"\n\n\"You mean you thought you killed him?\"\n\n\"What a funny mind you have,\" said Gordon. \"She thought he represented the child I never had.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said, \"you're the victim. When I read about a crime, I'm the perpetrator.\"\n\n\"It was terrible,\" he said again and put down the stack of clippings. Then he returned to his desk in the other room. When I heard him on the phone, I closed the door between us; reading and sorting, I quickly forgot about him. I was interested and curious as I looked through these stacks of paper\u2014not needing to pretend to be interested and curious, as I often did, while concealing mild frustration or amusement toward a client. My pile of clippings about death\u2014local death\u2014grew. I made a few more piles. This archive also had an urban renewal motif. The unknown scissoring hands had often saved pieces about the unexpected effects, good and bad, of change. There were stories of neighborhoods fragmented by a superhighway, sustained by repair of a bridge, or changed by the placement of a bus route. I had a public transportation stack and an arts stack, but that one rapidly began to seem condescending; everything was about the making of art by people who might have been expected not to be capable of it. I remembered our play with a rush of confusion: I'd stolen the headline, in a way; Gordon Skeetling would surely scorn this unsophisticated venture; I would surely scorn it; I ought to be scorning it, and withdrawing from it. I had no business participating in art by the barely capable.\n\nThe door opened. \"More coffee?\"\n\n\"No, thanks.\"\n\n\"Then I won't make another pot.\"\n\n\"Not for me.\"\n\n\"Did I show you the headline about the woman with two heads?\"\n\n\"Don't you remember?\"\n\n\"You didn't throw it away?\" he said.\n\n\"You said I could throw away whatever I wanted to.\"\n\n\"But I said I'd yell if you did.\"\n\n\"Well, I didn't.\"\n\nHe seemed to want something, and I wondered if he hoped I'd tell him more about Ellen and my theft of her possessions. I made up my mind not to take anything else. He stood in the doorway, so I edged past him and asked the way to the bathroom. When I returned, he'd gone back to his desk, but when I sat down, he again came and stood in the doorway. \"Call me before coming in next time, all right?\" he said.\n\n\"Oh, sure,\" I said. \"Sorry.\"\n\n\"I like to know whether I'll be alone,\" he said apologetically. \"I do different work.\"\n\nGordon Skeetling seemed to bestow permission with every gesture, but now he was refusing it. \"What kind of work?\" I said.\n\n\"I'm writing.\"\n\n\"A paper for a journal?\"\n\n\"An op-ed piece. The Times has run a few I've done, over the years.\"\n\n\"What about?\"\n\n\"If I wanted company to hear about it, maybe I could write it with company around,\" he said.\n\n\"Okay,\" I said, but then he told me.\n\n\"I'm arguing in favor of decreased funding for foster care.\"\n\n\"But that's a terrible idea!\" I said.\n\n\"The state is a bad parent,\" he said. \"Do you know how many foster kids end up in the prison system?\"\n\nWe argued for an hour. Neither of us got anything done. By the end his hair was in his eyes and his shirt was hanging out because he waved his arms so much. I didn't convince him. \"You look as if I've been beating you up,\" I said at last, gathering my things. When I left, the afternoon was yellow. I drove home and took Arthur on a walk to the river, along a trail through woods near the base of East Rock. The trees hadn't leafed out yet, so I could see a distance in all directions. The forest had a roominess I'd miss when the leaves came. The air was light green and anticipatory. I began the walk angry with Gordon, but as I walked my anger was replaced by that awareness, again, of permission. He could cry over a murder by poor children and then argue for decreased help to their younger brothers, and his very refusal to see a connection\u2014though I'd pointed it out\u2014exhilarated me, it was so unapologetically outrageous. I also liked the willingness to take me on in combat, to take me seriously enough to fight, to tell me what I wasn't allowed to do. \"Arthur,\" I said, as if I had something to tell him. \"Arthur, Arthur.\"\n\nPekko and I had dinner one night in April at Basement Thai with Charlotte and Philip LoPresti. I arrived alone in my Jetta, straight from a client, and parked a block away. Approaching the restaurant in the cool twilight, I glanced through a window and saw Pekko and my friends already seated together. Pekko leaned forward over the table with his hands extended\u2014as for clapping\u2014but held steady, as if he was saying, \"This big.\" When I sat down, Charlotte was talking earnestly about a misunderstanding with her younger daughter, Olivia, her pale blue eyes holding Pekko hard, then refocusing on me, as they all smiled to be caught talking so intently so soon.\n\n\"We're discussing clarity,\" said Philip, a man who looks ascetic, like a graying priest. He did spend a couple of years in a Catholic seminary in his youth, before he changed his mind, became a teacher, and married Charlotte. \"We've ordered appetizers.\"\n\nCharlotte is a social worker, as I've said somewhere, and Philip was my colleague when I taught at the community college. I knew Philip first, then met Charlotte, years before I knew Pekko. They liked Pekko and became increasingly impatient with me when I kept breaking up with him. Once Charlotte accused me of being a less serious person than she had imagined. \"I always knew your style was not serious,\" she said, her eyes filled with tears, \"and I love that. But lately I think it's more than style.\"\n\nI cried too, though I never cry, and we were shocked into new closeness by her honesty. When I married Pekko, she and Philip were happy and went out of their way to spend time with us.\n\n\"I rented an apartment to Daphne Jenkins,\" Pekko said. Clarity, apparently, had something to do with Olivia, the daughter, and something to do with Daphne. I hadn't known Daphne's last name, but of course Pekko did. I felt at a disadvantage, as if knowing her last name was equivalent to knowing an intimate fact about her, and he probably knew some of those as well. I was also bothered because he'd made up his mind without discussing it with me, though he never talked about professional decisions. I'd promised my mother to ask him again about Daphne, but I never had. Eating a Thai dumpling, I said, \"I don't trust Daphne.\"\n\n\"She's reliable,\" he said, \"if you let her know the rules.\" Again he made the gesture I'd seen through the window\u2014hands held stiffly, facing each other\u2014and I recognized it this time as the way people signal that they will keep a difficult person within limits. Of course he'd meant Daphne that time, too, but I couldn't keep from wondering whether he had said earlier that he'd have to set limits for me.\n\nCharlotte drank some wine and said, \"I was just saying that I hadn't been clear enough with Olivia.\" Olivia has always been complicated, and I've always liked her. She went to medical school and had recently begun a residency in surgery, in which, Charlotte said, \"The final exam is cutting off your mother's head.\" Olivia claimed not to mind being insulted by her professors but was quick to leave sharply worded, offended messages on her parents' answering machine.\n\n\"What rules did you tell Daphne?\" I asked Pekko, interrupting Charlotte.\n\n\"Mostly no extensions on the rent\u2014that's the problem with friends. I'm not worried she'll trash the apartment.\"\n\nIf Daphne did fail to pay the rent, I thought, Pekko might let her get away with it. I sensed an unusual distraction in him. The very fact that he'd told Charlotte and Philip what he'd done: he was less protected than usual. I didn't trust Daphne because she penetrated barriers, and that thought reminded me of Gordon Skeetling.\n\n\"I'm working on a rubbish heap at the Yale Small Cities Project,\" I said now to Charlotte. \"I had a fight with the director.\"\n\n\"I never heard of that project.\"\n\n\"One guy in a row house on Temple Street.\"\n\n\"Yale has hundreds of tiny kingdoms,\" Charlotte said. \"Some do evil, some good.\"\n\n\"What did you fight about?\" said Philip. By now we were eating our main course. I probably had seafood curry.\n\n\"He's in favor of reducing funding for foster care.\"\n\n\"A reactionary?\" Charlotte said, the lines around her blue eyes deepening.\n\n\"He says he's a sensible lefty.\"\n\n\"He's a pile of shit,\" Pekko said. \"I was on a board with him. He's one of those people who's too damned clearheaded. No feelings.\"\n\n\"Oh, he definitely has feelings!\" I said, remembering Gordon's reaction to the clipping about the murder. I wanted to see if by chance Charlotte agreed with him about foster care\u2014I wanted to see if I'd been arguing on the wrong side\u2014and she agreed heartily that, as Gordon had said, the state is a bad parent.\n\n\"Maybe it would be better after all . . . ,\" I said.\n\n\"If kids were left with abusive parents?\"\n\n\"Or their relatives had to take them in, instead of having foster care as an option.\" I was arguing Gordon's position, I saw to my dismay. \"Terrible things do happen.\"\n\n\"But mostly not,\" Charlotte said with authority. She works with the elderly, but she knows about all parts of the system. She wanted to talk about Olivia, though. Her older daughter, Amy, is easygoing, but cranky Olivia has always been the one who can get her mother's full attention. That week she'd called late at night, exhausted from long hours at the hospital. At first Charlotte was delighted to hear from her, but she was sleepy, and Olivia got angry when Charlotte insisted on hanging up.\n\n\"I recognize her,\" I said ruefully. \"That's what I do to my mother. I need her too much, so I'm mean to her.\"\n\n\"I think Roz doesn't mind, in the last analysis,\" Charlotte said. \"I don't.\"\n\n\"She moved here, near me, not near my brothers.\" The oldest of us has lived in Chicago for a long time, but the brother I think about\u2014my younger older brother, I call him, Stephen\u2014is still in New York, where we all grew up.\n\n\"Correct,\" said Charlotte.\n\nPhilip sat back, looking at me. I've known him now for twenty-five years, and he looks his age. \"You're still a handful, Daisy,\" he said. Maybe he aged worrying about me.\n\nI've probably made mischief all my life so as to hear that loving remonstrance in people's voices. When Philip's or Charlotte's disapproval became real, I was wretched. Now I looked at Philip and felt gratitude\u2014I love his attention\u2014and a resolve not to make further mischief. And then I found myself wanting to check my date book, to see when I'd work at Gordon Skeetling's office again. We had set up a series of appointments, so I wouldn't be tempted to come at other times. Maybe I could have another fight with him, a fight that would make his shirt come partway out of his pants once more.\n\n\"He doesn't want me to come when he doesn't expect me,\" I said to my friends. \"Does that make sense?\" I told them what he'd said. I liked watching them listen.\n\nI was just wondering,\" Ellen said on the phone. \"Did you notice an ugly green print shirt? I can't find it.\"\n\n\"What do you need it for if it's ugly?\"\n\n\"I like thinking about the woman who left it here. She forgot it after she stayed overnight, and when I offered to send it, she said, 'Keep it.' It wouldn't fit me\u2014and it's ugly\u2014but I thought of her when I saw it, and I want that to happen again.\"\n\n\"I'll help you look,\" I said.\n\n\"Oh, never mind, the kids will help,\" she said. \"I just thought you might have noticed it.\"\n\nSo how much truth am I going to tell, and how far back need that truth go? And, maybe more important, to whom am I telling this truth? When I began writing this story, if it's a story, I had a half-formed idea that I would write it all down, put it away, and someday read it. I was writing for my future self, assuming I'd forget, or forget how it felt if I remembered the events. I wanted to preserve the good parts of what happened and also preserve the bad parts, and I'm still hoping to demonstrate to that future Daisy, Old Daisy, that what I felt was as good as I will claim it was, and as bad.\n\nSo will nobody but me ever read this document? Someone could break in and steal my computer. A floppy disk could fall out of my bag onto the street. Or I could change my mind. I could show what I've written to a friend, or even to a stranger.\n\nMore likely, I'm doing something I did before. I wrote and published a magazine article. It began as a hundred-page essay about something that happened to my brother Stephen, but in the telling, because I was telling it, my reactions and feelings were central. I wrote it over and over, for years, and each time it became shorter, and contained less detail about me. There's no need to say here what it was about. The point is that maybe I'm doing that again, maybe I'm writing another publishable five-page article or, more likely, a couple of thirty-page pieces about New Haven, and maybe this is how I do it. In that case I can be as revealing as I like, risk-free. The final version won't have the word I in it, or it will, but I will just gracefully personalize a serious subject. \"When I myself had the opportunity to participate in community theater . . .\"\n\nWell, if there's going to be a scrubbing of secrets before anyone reads this, I can write down something I suddenly understood some pages back. I know why I wanted to learn about prostitution. It's because there was a time that I paid for sex, or almost did. I'd begun an affair with a student twenty years younger than I was\u2014I was in my forties. He cleaned houses for a living. He'd been to prison. He was slight and dark, and he resembled Peter Pan\u2014about to slide into the air on an invisible wire. He would come to my house\u2014talking fast and cleverly and oddly\u2014we'd go to bed, I'd pay him for not cleaning. I went on the radio, talking about prostitutes, to find out if the customers are ever not pathetic. The young man, Dennis Ring, has been dead for years. He was crazy and difficult, and I still miss him.\n\nThree girls came to the next rehearsal: Justine; Daphne's daughter, Cindy; and a bustling, bossy kid named Morgana and called Mo, a black girl with a head full of barrettes. Of course Katya hadn't been able to say no to anyone who called. She thought they should watch for a week before two of them began playing the two-headed girl. \"The third one can be her friend,\" she said. Ellen also watched, sitting in a corner on a folding chair. I was constantly aware of her. I was angry with her because I'd thrown away her shirt, as if her mildness had forced me into wrongdoing.\n\nBut I liked Justine, who laughed quietly, with an adult laugh, at moments I wouldn't have thought were funny, so we became funnier. We were a series of baby-sitters and day-care workers trying to look after the two-headed baby. Then Jonah was a minister who baptized her TheaDora. He did a parody of a preacher, which seemed strange for a real preacher, but maybe he wasn't trying to be funny. When Justine laughed, I noticed, Mo kicked her, and she pushed Mo's shoulder. Then Jonah delivered a sermon. \"We must examine our thoughts about this child,\" he said. \"We must destroy any prejudice in our hearts.\"\n\nPlaying the baby's mother, I said, \"Reverend, I am not prejudiced against the baby.\"\n\n\"The one who's prejudiced,\" said Chantal, who was playing the father, \"is Uncle Fractious.\"\n\nMuriel volunteered to be Uncle Fractious, who said, \"The baby is an abomination in the sight of God. She is too much trouble. Let's sacrifice the whole child or cut off one of her heads!\" Muriel stepped forward briskly as she finished, then resumed her vigorous striding, being both Muriel herself in her men's blue jeans, with her hair sticking out in all directions, and the equally energetic Uncle Fractious.\n\nThere followed a debate by the parents, the doctor, and the director of the managed-care plan\u2014David, nodding rapidly, as was his habit in any role though not when he wasn't acting. \"The parents' insurance does not cover cutting off extra heads,\" he said.\n\n\"I love both heads!\" Chantal screamed.\n\n\"How can you leave these parents with this monster?\" said Denise, who always seemed to play the doctor, no matter how much we meant to trade roles around.\n\n\"No child is a monster,\" said Jonah, who was not in the scene and was seated cross-legged on his mat at the edge of the open area where we worked, his big knees sticking up. It didn't matter; the managed-care company was adamant.\n\nLater, Jonah played the minister again, and as the mother I found myself giving him a species of confession, explaining how hard it was to love my husband and our peculiar baby, how my husband was afraid of me now, as if I was a witch. Jonah encouraged me to pray.\n\n\"He's ashamed to be seen pushing the carriage,\" I said.\n\n\"Because of her deformity?\"\n\n\"People will think it's his fault.\"\n\n\"TheaDora may be a punishment for all our sins,\" the minister said.\n\n\"She's a sweet baby, Reverend. Both heads laugh. Thea is starting to talk. Dora has three teeth.\" Getting into the car after the rehearsal that night, I had a momentary feeling of panic: I'd left my baby behind.\n\nThe following week, when we moved ten years forward in the life of this family, different combinations of the three girls tried playing TheaDora. Muriel had made a red calico dress with two necklines, and we had two girls at a time try it on, quickly discovering that it hung correctly only when the girls were more or less the same height. Justine and Mo, then, became TheaDora, while Cindy, who was smaller, was their friend. We all laughed the first time our wide little girl, with Mo's confident black face and Justine's sly fair one sticking out of the great big dress, moved toward us, a dark brown left arm and a light-skinned right arm slapping the air as they tried to balance, while four sneakers stepped on one another. The girls stumbled and fell in a tangle but soon were rehearsing out in the corridor, coached by Ellen, while the rest of us reworked baby scenes. Intertwining their hidden arms and counting softly, they were able to walk. By the following week, Muriel had added a flounce to the dress. Their feet concealed, Mo and Justine became a two-headed girl. I watched Muriel watch them, first critically, then with a look of astonishment and pride. Cindy, who commented on everything while twisting or sucking on strands of thin, brown hair, played with TheaDora, teased her, argued with her. \"You're not my friend. I don't want a friend with two heads.\"\n\nPekko thought he might buy a pickup truck from a dealer in Watertown, and on a Saturday late that month I drove him there. Beside me on the front seat of my car, he talked in a slow, steady voice about what he could do with a pickup. At such times we might talk on and on, back and forth, making obvious remarks like a real married couple. Arthur barked too often in the backseat, and Pekko told him to be quiet. The stretch of Route 63 that was our destination was ugly, nothing but car dealerships. While Pekko examined the truck he'd seen advertised, I walked Arthur along the edge of the road. The day was sunny and warm, and we'd seen tulips in every yard. Arthur yanked on the leash, and I yanked back.\n\n\"Did you know that the first act of the first New Haven government was a trial for murder?\" I said when we drove off again together, since Pekko hadn't bought the pickup. I suppose I wanted to give him details about my work, too: an even exchange. I'd read this fact in Gordon's office. Then I interrupted myself. \"Let's take Arthur to a park.\" I remembered a nature preserve in Litchfield I'd visited with a former boyfriend, and without waiting for an answer, I made a U-turn and drove north.\n\n\"It wasn't well-maintained,\" Pekko said. \"I want a truck that belonged to someone who appreciates trucks.\"\n\n\"Right,\" I said. \"Did you know that the first act of the New Haven government, when they set it up in the sixteen hundreds, was a murder trial?\"\n\n\"And what does that mean?\" said Pekko, suddenly paying attention.\n\n\"What does it mean?\"\n\n\"What are you implying?\"\n\n\"I'm not implying anything,\" I said. Gordon had been away at a conference that week, and I'd read for hours without a plan, obeying impulse. The archive included pages photocopied from a history of New Haven. Its government, I explained to Pekko, had been modeled not on the English common law system but on one derived, somehow, from the Bible. It was based on a system that had been established for Massachusetts but never used. New Haven\u2014briefly called Quinnipiack\u2014was established while an Indian named Ne-paumuck awaited trial for murder. Once the state was set up, he was tried and decapitated.\n\n\"Why are you so interested?\" he said.\n\n\"It's a good subject,\" I said. \"I've been making a pile of material having to do with murder in New Haven. Obviously somebody who worked in that office was thinking about it, because there's a lot of stuff, and I know I could find more\u2014I mean, when you think about some of the murders that have taken place here, just in the years I've lived here. And their importance. What happened on account of them. Alex Rackley. Penney Serra. Christian Prince. Malik Jones.\"\n\n\"Malik Jones wasn't murdered.\"\n\n\"Technically, no.\"\n\n\"He wasn't murdered.\"\n\n\"I read the police report on Malik Jones the other day,\" I said.\n\n\"What are you up to?\" Pekko said tensely, turning in his seat, angrier than I'd seen him in a long time.\n\nI was interested in his anger, not afraid of it, almost amused. I don't know what I should have done, but I pretended I was alone, monologuing in the shower. \"Marie Valenti,\" I said. \"Marie Valenti. The one nobody can forget. Oh, God, and Suzanne Jovin.\"\n\nThe truth is that except for Nepaumuck's victim, nobody can forget any of the abovementioned people (and quite a few others), all murdered or at least killed in New Haven. Alex Rackley, a Black Panther, was executed by the Black Panthers in 1969. Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins were accused of conspiracy leading to the murder, and the trial, in 1970, was the occasion of rallies and riots. Penney Serra, a young New Haven woman, was murdered in a big downtown garage in the summer of 1973. Marie Valenti was eigh-teen years old, an honor student, when she was found dead on the New Haven Green in 1976. Christian Prince was the Yale student whose death Gordon remembered, killed by New Haven kids who robbed him. Malik Jones was a black New Haven boy who was shot by an East Haven cop after a car chase. Suzanne Jovin was a Yalie killed on a December evening on a residential street\u2014the street where Ellen lived\u2014in 1998. A professor was suspected of the crime, but he's never been charged.\n\nPenney Serra's death, in the garage, increased the public's loss of faith in the safety and bustle of downtown, which grew less bustly and less safe after she was killed. The murder was unsolved for decades. A Waterbury man, identified by DNA, has just been convicted of her murder\u2014in the spring of 2002, as I write this. But the murder of Marie Valenti\u2014unsolved after almost as many years\u2014might make people feel even worse. She was the granddaughter of a New Haven grocer, and hundreds of people had watched her playing with her little brother in the aisles of the Italian market. People who hadn't seen her decided after she died that maybe they had. Marie Valenti had been a student at Wilbur Cross, a reporter on the school paper\u2014and she'd just been accepted at Yale. Her body was found on the green at nine on a Tuesday evening, a couple of weeks before she'd have graduated from high school. I'd lived in town just a few years then. I hadn't seen Marie Valenti playing on the floor of the grocery store\u2014which had closed when the highway cut through its neighborhood\u2014but I remember the headlines.\n\nI said much of the above as I drove, talking more to myself than to Pekko. In my peripheral vision I saw Pekko holding himself tightly next to me, as if gathering his strength to strike\u2014or keep what he gathered. He became more solid, more compact. He didn't speak.\n\nI knew it made no sense to find him funny, yet I coaxed, as if he were four, \"What?\"\n\nHe shook his head. When I slowed, driving into the park I remembered\u2014a wooded nature preserve\u2014Arthur whined. In the parking lot, I opened the back door for Arthur, reaching past him to take hold of his leash. But Pekko had detached it when we left Watertown, so now the dog bounded out of the car and took off across a meadow.\n\nYoung and disobedient, Arthur ignored my shouts, cantering toward the nearby woods. I couldn't help delighting in his poodle, squared-off directness, his pleasure in motion. I hurried after him, and Pekko followed me at a steady pace, snapping the folded leash against his leg. Pekko is the sort of powerful man who looks more natural on a ladder than walking in a forest.\n\nA family with children and a small white dog came out of the woods, and Arthur and the dog ran off together. I called Arthur once more, but on his way to me, he veered off and put a paw on the shoulder of a little child, who fell down and began to wail. Pekko came puffing up behind me, shouting, \"You damned dog, get your ass over here!\"\n\nThe father of the child had picked him or her up\u2014it was one of those indefinite stubby children, recently a baby\u2014but didn't look concerned. I rushed to apologize, but the people were untroubled. Now Arthur let himself be put on the leash, and we walked into the woods, where the trees were evergreens but the undergrowth on either side was all but ready to leaf out. In the oxygenated quiet, I began to calm down. I'd been afraid the family would be angry, and I might have become angry myself in response, though the mishap was my fault. As I grew calmer, I remembered that Pekko had been angry with me, and I'd laughed at him. I didn't know why he was angry.\n\nIt was new for us to walk like this. Ordinarily one of us walked Arthur alone. \"So why don't you want me to be curious about murder?\" I said. \"Are you afraid I'll become a murderer?\" I felt tender toward him, ready to get along with him, to compromise, as if that relaxed family had argued his case.\n\n\"You don't know why?\" he said.\n\n\"I don't know why.\"\n\n\"New Haven,\" he said, gesturing at the woods that were not New Haven, apparently imagining New Haven superimposed on them. \"I've been there longer than you have. I was born there.\"\n\n\"That's why I married you,\" I said. \"I was bored with people who complain about New Haven.\"\n\n\"Then why spread bad news? Penney Serra. Christian Prince. Haven't we been criticized enough?\"\n\n\"By we you mean the citizens of New Haven?\"\n\n\"What else would I mean?\"\n\n\"Why would my curiosity make people criticize us?\"\n\n\"Next thing you'll be on the radio again, talking about New Haven murders.\"\n\nI hadn't had such a specific idea yet. \"It's a thought,\" I said, \"but wouldn't it be possible to present it in a such a way that\u2014\"\n\n\"No, it wouldn't. You presented prostitution with all sorts of do-gooder, scholarly fuss, and the message was, New Haven is a city of whores.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"That's how it sounded to me.\" His stubborn bulk moved beside me.\n\n\"You barely heard any of it,\" I said.\n\n\"I heard enough.\"\n\nNow I was angry. \"You're acting as if I arrived three days ago, determined to destroy the place.\"\n\n\"You and your Yale friends.\"\n\n\"Oh, come on! Yale barely tolerates Gordon, because he cares about the stuff you care about!\"\n\nTo my surprise, Pekko bent and released the snap on Arthur's leash. We hadn't seen any people or dogs for a long time. Arthur had been sniffing and peeing, behaving as politely as he ever did on a walk. Of course he bounded away again. Pekko watched with satisfaction, standing still and nodding, so his beard rose and fell. \"It's time to turn back,\" he said.\n\nAs we turned, he brushed my shoulder with his arm, a rough, apologetic gesture of amity. I turned toward him and took his white-bearded face in my hands. \"Let's not fight,\" I said. \"I won't do anything without telling you all about it.\"\n\n\"Well, there have been murders,\" he said gruffly. Then he took my shoulders in his hands and almost harshly thrust his tongue into my mouth. When he pulled away, he said, \"I can't bear it.\"\n\n\"I know,\" I said, and we set off, while Arthur followed us, running ahead, then turning to look for us, staying away from other people, behaving\u2014after all\u2014like a dog who didn't need to be restrained. The air was cooler, and the light jacket I wore was no longer enough. I zipped it and wound my arm around Pekko's, drawing warmth from his body.\n\nWe were silent a long time. Then Pekko said quietly, \"Look. I know something about Marie Valenti.\"\n\n\"About her?\"\n\n\"About how she was killed.\"\n\nI said, \"You mean New Haven killed her. Unidentified poor black kids with unstable home environments killed her. You mean that if I start talking about murder, some of the time I'm inevitably talking about poor blacks killing middle-class whites. You mean I ought to publicize something else about New Haven. Successful black middle class. Integrated neighborhoods. Falling crime rate.\"\n\nI stopped and sighed and tried to gather my thoughts. New Haven does have a successful black middle class, some integrated neighborhoods, and a falling crime rate. I had no impulse to study those subjects. Death had seized my imagination, which has always gone where it wants to go. Surely there was a way to make a public presentation on murder in New Haven\u2014whether I was talking about radio or something else\u2014that would not just encourage the city's critics. I suddenly remembered a short, obnoxious woman who thrust herself in front of me at a gathering I once attended in Philadelphia. \"How can you live in New Haven?\" she said.\n\nPekko didn't reply to my account of the causes of Marie Valenti's death, so I kept talking, trying to explain that something about murder intrigued me, and it wasn't the sensationalism. \"I wanted to think about prostitution for the same reason,\" I said. \"Honestly, it isn't just sex and violence.\" We approached the parking lot again, and I crouched to call Arthur, who thrust his hard head into my breasts as he did at home, letting me snap the leash on once more. \"I want to know,\" I said, rising and understanding myself a little better than I had\u2014entranced with what I now understood\u2014\"I want to know what it's like to be someone else. And it seems easier to find out if I can think about someone going to bed with a stranger than if I think about someone cooking a chicken.\" I asked myself what about murder interested me. Not the moment of being murdered but the moment of murdering. I thought if I could fasten on that second\u2014the second of pulling the trigger, pushing in the knife\u2014then I'd know someone. I'd know someone just when everything came apart for him, when he did something terrible, secret, and amazing.\n\nI didn't want it to sound as if murder was good. \"I'm not saying,\" I said, as I put Arthur into the car, then got into the driver's seat and waited for Pekko\u2014who hadn't spoken for a while\u2014to walk around to his side. \"I'm not saying prostitution and murder are good. I'm not saying it's fine to have them in New Haven because they're great!\" I drove out of the parking lot. Wasn't that what I was saying? Wasn't my defense that prostitution and murder were so inherently interesting that a city was all but enhanced by their existence within its borders? Well, if that was the case, I'd better deny it, I thought, turning the car toward home. Eventually I'd figure out something more plausible and less shocking. \"I'm definitely not saying that,\" I finished and was finally silenced by my inability to make sense of my feelings.\n\nWe drove without speaking for most of the hour it took us to get home. Without consulting Pekko, I stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts and brought containers of coffee to the car. He took his and drank it.\n\nAs we crossed the New Haven line, making our way through the trafficky western edge of the city, with its shopping centers and strip development, Pekko seemed to come to himself again, studying his fellow New Haveners on Whalley Avenue. He no longer seemed angry or impassive. The people on the street were indeed different from anybody we might have noticed up north in Litchfield County. It was late Saturday afternoon by now, and Orthodox Jews in black hats, leading big families, were walking near a synagogue. Two black teenage girls in shorts, intent on their conversation, waited to cross Whalley, not seeming to mind the evening chill. A small child lingered behind them, one finger in mouth, eyes on the passing cars, looking just about to figure everything out. I stopped for a red light. Pekko said, \"I know who killed Marie Valenti. I've been alone with this. I want to tell you. Can you listen? Can I trust you?\"\n\n\"Trust me?\"\n\n\"I know if I tell you something in confidence, you'll keep it a secret. I want you also to forget this plan to find out about murder   \nin New Haven. It's not a good plan. You have to trust me, and I'll trust you.\"\n\n\"Sweetie, I don't know what you're talking about, but you can trust me.\"\n\n\"Marie Valenti was not killed by a black teenager or a group of black teenagers. She was killed by a white kid she'd known in middle school. Nobody knew he was here that night. He'd moved away.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\" For a moment I thought he was just pretending to know something, something he'd somehow deduced. \"What paper do you read?\"\n\n\"I don't live like the rest of you, speculating from headlines. There are people in this town who know what's going on, and I'm one of them.\"\n\n\"But how?\"\n\n\"I knew them both. I was a sub when they were at Fair Haven Middle School. I made friends with the boy. He'd come to see me now and then when he was in high school. Two, three years after she died, he came and told me. By then he came to New Haven occasionally, to see his grandparents. Nobody thought anything.\"\n\n\"You didn't turn him in?\"\n\n\"He wasn't going to hurt anyone else,\" Pekko said, \"so there was no reason for me to ruin his life. Turning him in wouldn't bring her back.\"\n\n\"What happened to him?\"\n\n\"He went to UConn. He lives out of state.\"\n\n\"But if you'd been wrong\u2014\"\n\n\"I know, if he'd killed again. But I knew him. I was one of those teachers who have a little group of kids who stay after school and wash the blackboards. I had a long-term appointment that year. I was teaching eighth-grade English, figuring it out as I went along. I had kids keeping diaries. I never told you?\"\n\n\"You told me about the diaries,\" I said. \"You made them read The Great Gatsby.\"\n\n\"Right, The Great Gatsby.\"\n\nBy now I had reached our street and parked in front of our house, but we sat, not moving, though Arthur began to whine.\n\n\"That boy had a cute diary. Always figuring out how to please his dad. An old-fashioned Irish family. Never imagined not going to church. But passion in that kid. Anger. I once saw it come out, when another kid got nasty with him. He was little and skinny, then. Later he got bigger. He still talked about pleasing his dad, pleasing his grandfather. His grandfather was a contractor. I knew him a little.\"\n\n\"But if his temper made him kill once . . . Pekko, it's illegal not to turn in a criminal.\"\n\n\"Not if you're a priest.\"\n\n\"You're not a priest.\"\n\n\"The night he told me, I was a priest. That's how it was. He came to me late at night and talked for six hours. Then I took him out to breakfast, to the diner on Whalley. He said, 'Are you going to call the cops?' and I said I wouldn't. I told him if he wanted to turn himself in, he was free to do that. By then he was almost done with college.\"\n\n\"Why did he kill her?\"\n\n\"She wouldn't take him back. He'd been her boyfriend for a few weeks. Then he moved away. Family moved to Hartford.\"\n\n\"Wasn't he a suspect?\"\n\n\"Oh, I guess. They looked at a lot of kids. But the assumption was strangers, because she was robbed.\"\n\n\"So he deliberately made it seem as if New Haven poor people had done it.\"\n\n\"That's right.\"\n\n\"And you forgave that.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't say I forgave it. I didn't forgive it.\"\n\nWe sat in silence for a while, and I said, \"Was she in your class, too?\"\n\n\"No,\" Pekko said. \"I only knew her a little. I'd see her in the halls. I knew her name. She had a lot of dark, curly hair.\"\n\n\"But if he killed a woman just because she wouldn't be his girlfriend\u2014\"\n\n\"I know. He might do anything.\"\n\n\"You took that chance?\"\n\n\"He was beside himself over her. I didn't think it would happen again. Remember, he told me three years later. He talked more like the boy's psychiatrist than the boy. I thought he was less likely to murder than I was.\"\n\n\"He stabbed her?\"\n\n\"He talked about the feel of the knife going in, how he did it again and again.\"\n\nI thought about it. \"Do you think maybe it wasn't true?\"\n\n\"I think it was true,\" he said. Then he got out and opened the back door for Arthur, who preceded us up our front steps and wagged when we produced a key, congratulating us for remembering where we lived.\n\nThe other night I was writing this thing I write, this account of a piece of my life, more than a year later (it's the oddest thing, proceeding in time as time proceeds, but not at the same rate; I began in February, writing about the previous February, and now it's June and I'm only in April), when the doorbell rang, and in, unannounced, came my brother Stephen. Maybe Roz knew he was coming to New Haven and forgot to tell me. He'd had supper with her. Or he'd shown up there unannounced, too. He likes to do that, to prove he's still a boy. He'd taken the train from New York. I hardly ever take the train, I'm too impatient, but Stephen likes it, though he lives an hour from Grand Central, in Queens, and would get home in the middle of the night. He's married, as I've said, and has a daughter, and yet he seems alone all the time, and seems most at ease when he's put himself into a place where there's a slice of emptiness around him, like someone who lived in Montana or Alaska, someone who didn't want his neighbors near enough that he could hear their dog bark. I was alone. He came into the kitchen and sat in a corner of the old green sofa while I opened a bottle of Sam Adams for him.\n\n\"Did I interrupt something?\" he said.\n\n\"I'm writing.\" I gestured upstairs, where my computer is.\n\n\"Writing what?\"\n\n\"I'm writing about half a year in my life.\"\n\n\"Just any half year?\"\n\n\"No, February to October of 2001.\"\n\n\"Any special reason?\"\n\n\"None of your business.\"\n\n\"When can I read it?\"\n\n\"Maybe never.\"\n\n\"Then what's the point?\" said Stephen. I wonder if he dyes his hair. He still seems young, and his hair is dark brown. He carries an expensive ballpoint pen in his pocket, as if he were the writer, and he takes it out and removes the cover, as if he couldn't wait to write, then puts it back on, as if he can't think what to say after all. \"Let me see it now,\" he said. \"Is it about that guy?\"\n\n\"What guy?\" I asked, though I knew. I knew he meant Dennis Ring, my young ex-con dead lover, about whom I'd told him one teary night a couple of years ago.\n\n\"You said he drank herbal tea with you. He had complicated opinions about herbal tea, which kinds were good.\"\n\n\"He had opinions like that about everything, but that was ten years ago.\" Denny the occasional thief, drug dealer, drug user, and maker of mischief had opinions about shapes of pasta, opinions about cookies. He knew where to find European cookies made with dark chocolate in the days before you could pick them up at any convenience store. I stopped and calculated. Denny would still be under forty if he were alive. He'd been on and off drugs, and he died\u2014in Pekko's frozen yogurt store\u2014of an overdose. He'd broken into the store. He wasn't my lover then. I hadn't seen him in months. Sometimes he bored me. That was my big secret about Denny, sometimes he bored me. And sometimes he charmed me. He was my lover before he was my student. He signed up for my course as a tease, I think. We weren't planning to sleep together anymore, until he got into the cleaning business. Again I talked to Stephen about Denny. I told him Denny had nothing to do with what I was writing.\n\n\"Then do I?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, understanding that Denny and Stephen were linked in my mind, somehow\u2014because Stephen had been the kid with trouble in our household. But that's not true anymore, is it\u2014that neither Denny nor Stephen is in this book? I didn't show it to Stephen. He left late at night. I drove him to the train. Driving home, I thought it had been the first time since September 11\u2014nine months ago\u2014that Stephen and I didn't talk about it, then remembered we had. I'd rinsed his beer bottle and put it into the recycling bin, and Stephen had said, \"We don't recycle plastic anymore.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Because terrorists knocked down the World Trade Center, and now we can't afford it.\" I'd thought he meant his family by we, but he meant New York. Stephen was wearing a jacket too warm for the weather, though this is a cool June. My brother's lifelong gesture was fixed one summer afternoon when we were teenagers, when he stood up, not quite surprised, and took a step backwards but grasped a chair as if to keep himself from stepping too far back. He is always receding but never goes far.\n\nGordon called me to change some of the appointments we'd laboriously set up. \"Sometimes I want to avoid you, and sometimes I want to be there with you,\" he said in his frank way.\n\nAt least he didn't always want to avoid me. \"How do you know now that you'll feel like avoiding me two weeks from Wednesday?\" I said.\n\n\"I have a schedule. I write on Wednesdays and Fridays in alternate weeks and on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the other weeks, so sooner or later I can make appointments with people who are never free on a particular day.\" He added, \"But sometimes I have to change my schedule.\" He was odd, but I liked his willingness to answer me, to answer more fully than I expected. The trait compared well with Pekko's silences. \"If I'm not writing,\" he said, \"I like it when you're here.\"\n\nI'd shown him stacks of articles about urban renewal, community gardens, community policing. Sometimes he said he'd already worked on a topic, and I filed what I'd found, but sometimes he said he'd like to think about the subject matter, and I should find a way to keep it from disappearing. I imagined my stacks going slowly by on a circular moving sidewalk, so he could glance at them now and then.\n\nBefore we hung up he said, \"Let's schedule a lunch, too. I need to fight you some more about foster care. It clarifies my thoughts to argue.\"\n\n\"Did you tuck your shirt in?\" I said.\n\nHe didn't know what I meant. \"There wasn't any hanky-panky, was there?\"\n\n\"You mean you don't recall whether there was or not?\"\n\n\"I recall there wasn't.\"\n\n\"So do I. You waved your arms around so much, arguing with me, that your shirt came out.\"\n\n\"Oh, it's always out. Doesn't that happen to everybody?\"\n\nWas I flirting? Yes, but I always flirt. In my single days, I didn't bother to flirt, I'd just proposition a guy. I might say, \"If you're interested, by the way, so am I,\" and often he became interested whether he had been or not. I think my flirting with Gordon was a sign, given my nature, that we were going to keep the relationship businesslike, with an admixture of casual comradeship. Flirting can be a substitute for sex. I have flirted with Philip LoPresti for years but never considered sleeping with him.\n\nAnd the next two times Gordon Skeetling and I were together, nothing much happened personally. We had lunch without arguing, talking about dogs. Nobody flirted. I interrupted him a few times to show him material I'd gathered. I continued to amass a pile about murder in New Haven, though I told myself I was simply doing it out of curiosity and, in deference to Pekko, would not use it for any public purpose. I worked at Gordon's office alone a few times, too, when he was away. By now he'd given me a key. Then I saw him again on a cold day, a return to March-like weather after the warmth earlier in April. It was chilly in his office. I was sorting dusty papers from the bottom of an old pile in a corner of the floor, and I frequently went to the bathroom to wash my hands.\n\nGordon was restless, leaving his desk every few minutes to pace, look out the window, or take his own trip to the bathroom. He seemed to forget I was there. I had given up trying to stay out of his line of sight and mostly didn't close the French doors, since I could hear him on the phone whether they were closed or not. I'd look up and see him ambling back, automatically checking his fly, his eyes unfocused. I looked as I always did at his clothes. By now I associated him with tan and brown, colors I hadn't much liked before. They looked woodsy and comfortable on him.\n\n\"Did I tell you about the conference?\" he asked, on one of these walks, and I'd been so sure he'd forgotten me that I glanced to see if he was speaking on the telephone.\n\n\"Me?\"\n\n\"Who else? I didn't, did I? The project hosts a conference in October every two years. This arises out of a byzantine arrangement with two other Yale projects, but lately they've essentially dropped out. Do you want to do it? Obviously I'd pay you.\"\n\n\"Do you have a topic?\" I said.\n\n\"No, that's the carrot. You can host a conference on anything you like that's remotely connected to urban life in small cities.\"\n\n\"How about murder in New Haven?\" I said immediately.\n\n\"Whoa. I guess so. It's not our usual pedantic crap, but I suppose you could turn it into something academic enough.\"\n\n\"Sure,\" I said. As I talked with Gordon about it, I scurried around in my mind to discover why I was completely willing to oppose my husband. I decided, with the kitchen of my mind\u2014while its parlor and dining room decorously considered what Gordon was saying\u2014that I was angry with Pekko after all, because I'd felt morally bullied on the walk, shamed out of thinking about what I wanted to think about. Moral bullying seemed like a crime bad enough that I could now do whatever I liked.\n\n\"I mean,\" Gordon said now, \"could you plan this conference in additional time? I don't want you to stop the sorting-out project.\"\n\n\"I guess I'll be spending most of my life here,\" I said.\n\n\"Fine with me,\" said Gordon, \"except for those afternoons I write. Well, maybe we'll have to rethink that, if you're going to have time for this.\" Then he said, in the tone in which he might have proposed still another schedule change, \"You could also become my mistress, if you choose to.\"\n\n\"Your what?\"\n\n\"Obviously we'll continue with both projects whether you say yes or no.\"\n\n\"I didn't think you were asking for sexual favors,\" I said, \"in exchange for the right to organize your trash.\"\n\n\"Or even put on my grubby little conference, eh? Oh, I know. The word mistress.\"\n\n\"It's a rather startling term. But I suppose you required a word that could have the possessive adjective my in front of it.\" What I primarily felt, that is, in response to his suggestion, was even greater permission\u2014the right, now, to say anything whatsoever.\n\n\"Oh, I'm a possessive bastard, indeed I am. Will you go to bed with me, Daisy?\"\n\n\"Where?\" I said.\n\n\"Good question. Not here. Not in my house in Madison, which is too far.\"\n\n\"Not in my house.\"\n\n\"You don't seem like a motel girl.\"\n\n\"I know where to go,\" I said. We seemed to have skipped over the question of whether. Ellen's children were on vacation, and she'd taken them to Florida to see her mother. Or her father, whichever it was. I had a key. It was a nice house. I was going to accept mistress, apparently, and even girl. My body had just turned into an object that required touching by Gordon Skeetling. My arms and legs seemed to be located where they were only to serve as lines pointing directly or indirectly to my crotch.\n\nI'd never touched him. I wasn't in love with him. I believe in work relationships. That is, I believe passionately that people can express what is inside them by working together as authentically as by sleeping together. I don't imagine that work is a substitute for love or sex in any way. I wanted to work with Gordon Skeetling, and the fact that I'd considered him attractive from the beginning, with his dangly, mobile, bony arms and his up-and-down eyebrows, just made the work pleasanter, maybe more likely to be good work. What I'd just agreed to do\u2014though I was eager\u2014seemed as unlikely as if I'd moved comfortably through his rooms and he'd offered to lead me to the bank on the corner and arrange a mortgage so I could buy them. (Not that I was buying Gordon Skeetling. I knew from the first he was a rental.) We didn't leave immediately for Ellen's house, once I told him where I thought we could go and he'd nodded quickly.\n\n\"An hour?\" he said and went back to work. I had another appointment. I phoned and canceled. Then I went back to work, too. Sorting through piles of documents that seemed to be connected with the building of the New Haven Coliseum, throwing most of them out, was more fun with a tingling crotch. I'd made several decisions in a row, and as I write this I remember writing not many pages ago that my habit is to be good half the time. Deciding to do the conference over Pekko's objections felt good, as I made the decision, not bad. Deciding to be Gordon's lover felt good, not bad, although I was surprised to notice that. Deciding to use Ellen's house was decidedly bad and felt that way, and I also felt guilty about canceling that appointment. You could say my conscience works well about the minor issues and less well about the major ones. Or you could say I have an original notion of right and wrong. Writing this now, I am not sure I disagree with the assessment my overburdened conscience, working in a hurry, made then. During that hour I did not think for long about the right and wrong of it, although I believe I did total the thing up in a rough way, something like the way I've just described. Mostly I spent the hour doing good work, and waiting.\nI'm writing because I want to, but when I sit down to it, I don't always want to tell the story of Pekko, Gordon, and the play about the two-headed woman. Sometimes I feel like writing about the moment that changed my brother Stephen, more than thirty years ago. Stephen called me, a few nights ago. (Now it's July 2002.) \"When are you going to show me what you're writing?\"\n\nI liked his curiosity. I said, \"You didn't tell anyone, did you?\"\n\n\"No. But I want to see it.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because you're my sister. Because you didn't tell me what was going on, and now I'll find out.\"\n\n\"What was going on when?\"\n\n\"Last summer. I knew something was going on last summer. I wondered if that guy was really dead. The guy from ten years ago.\"\n\n\"How did you know something was going on?\"\n\n\"It was clear, the time you were in New York.\"\n\nThat's still to come, the time in New York. Talking to Stephen the other night, I changed the subject.\n\nI didn't invent Denny's death. He died ten years ago, two years after I met him. I met him at his grandmother's house. That wraith had a grandmother\u2014a canny woman who loved him, a schoolteacher who'd taken her small grandson for pancakes each year on the morning of his birthday, and when he was grown (and not in prison) bought him Thai dinners whenever she could invent an excuse. The grandmother had a Fourth of July party, at which I was somebody's date. Denny and I met over salad: he was tossing his grandmother's salad.\n\n\"Did you ever go to bed for money?\" he asked me, when I hardly knew him. Not that first night, and not after we slept together\u2014yet I think I remember that we slept together the second time we met. I suppose there was a time in between. When he asked the question, we were in my car. I was driving.\n\n\"Did you?\" I said.\n\n\"Sure. It's not so bad. I've done everything.\"\n\n\"Was it a woman?\" I asked.\n\n\"I wouldn't go to bed with a man for money. With a woman, I figured I was cheating her.\" Of course this was before I gave him money when we went to bed. Which I did because he needed money. I think. He persisted. \"Did you? Did you ever?\"\n\n\"Not exactly.\" I told him a story nobody else has ever heard. I was in my thirties. A blond, pudgy man in a bar took me to his sister's apartment, to which he had a key. I suppose he was married. When I walked in, I noticed the smell of gas, and I checked the stove. One of the burners was slightly on. I turned it off on my way to his sister's couch, taking my clothes off. After we were done, he handed me two fifty-dollar bills.\n\n\"What's that for?\"\n\n\"You saved my life. My sister deliberately left the stove on. She did this to asphyxiate me.\"\n\n\"That's ridiculous,\" I said. \"I'm not taking your money.\"\n\n\"You said you like to read. Buy books.\"\n\nI shrugged and took the bills. In New Haven, there are people you know whom you never run into, and others with whom you have a high coincidence rate. For years I kept noticing that man. Sometimes he smiled. After a while I knew I'd been a whore\u2014he'd wanted me to be a whore and I'd complied\u2014but when I talked to Pekko and Gordon about my interest in prostitution, I left that incident out.\n\nRight now I'm recounting, however, not Stephen's early life or what I told Denny, but the day I agreed to go to bed with Gordon Skeetling for the first time. I enjoyed the postponement and the anticipation. I felt clever, having acquired something I wanted that wouldn't become a nuisance, like a travel bag of just the right size, one that would fold up later, using little space in the corner of the closet.\n\nWe worked for an hour, then Gordon walked in and put his hand on my shoulder. I murmured, \"One second,\" and made a brief note on my pad. The room was becoming more orderly, something like Ellen's kitchen, an artistic arrangement of chaos reduced to categories, and Ellen's kitchen was where I led him first\u2014so he could see it\u2014after we'd clumsily walked out of his office (suddenly I was nervous), bumping into each other and apologizing, and had gotten into my car, almost without discussion. I drove to Ellen's house, parked boldly in front, unlocked the door, and led Gordon in.\n\nIt was several weeks since we'd dismantled the kitchen. Ellen and her daughters still ate meals in that complicated array, that statement of the value of detail for its own sake. Everything she owned could be connected to someone in her life, some painful or joyful event. When Ellen was home, memory ruled that room, but now she was not home, and the objects themselves sat there like \"the plain sense of things\" as Wallace Stevens put it. \"Look at that!\" Gordon said, bracing his long arm in the kitchen doorway and taking in the view with some amusement. \"What a conglomeration!\"\n\nHe was delighted, which delighted me. He blocked the doorway, but moving up behind him, under his arm, putting my hand on his waist as if I'd done that before, and looking into the room as if he was showing it to me instead of the other way around, I saw it his way. When Ellen was home, everything was fogged with meaning\u2014often with loss, disappointment, or betrayal. \"This was the teapot my college roommate left behind when she moved out. She liked the man I was dating, and she moved out when she couldn't bear it any longer. I hadn't even guessed.\" Ellen's memory dulled the blue glaze even for me, but when Gordon stared at the teapot, and everything else, that glaze shone bright. Each object was simply itself, and even I could see the difference, with my partial view under his elbow. \"It is as if we had come to an end of the imagination,\" Stevens wrote.\n\nI led Gordon to the spare bedroom in which Ellen and I had piled clothes. Heaps of coats, men's suits (her father's?), dresses, and blouses were still on the bed. I removed the piles carefully, lining them up on the floor so I could replace them. I felt a pang about the lost green print shirt, and even looked around for it, as if I might have incorrectly remembered my theft and disposal of it. Then, in that roomful of piled clothing\u2014which Ellen was reducing to cleaner, neater, but never smaller piles\u2014I began unbuttoning my shirt, and Gordon stepped forward and put his hands over mine. I didn't become completely passive, though I let him do it. I knew we had to keep track of our own clothes in this array of clothes, not mislaying Gordon's tan sweater or the silk scarf I wore. We made two neat piles, both moving unself-consciously, usefully, though we were becoming naked. I liked Gordon's substantial but bony torso, his rounded, surprisingly fleshy ass. Standing next to our folded clothing, Gordon put his hands on my breasts. He laughed, then kissed me, a long, good kiss that made me forget everything but the tongue in my mouth.\n\nWhen I drew back the old pink chenille bedspread, I found that the bed was made. We'd have to do something about the clean but slightly musty sheet we were about to muss and stain. I left the room, found Ellen's linen closet in the hall, and returned\u2014while Gordon looked at me with open curiosity\u2014with a towel, which I spread between the sheets, postponing the question of what I'd do with it later. If the plan I'd made was awkward, that made the enterprise better\u2014touchingly amateurish, like a homemade greeting card. We were laughing when we lay down, and I drew this new, differently shaped man to my body with nothing but pleasure in chance, pleasure in possibility, and my old, too-long-forgotten delight in the variety of captivating male bodies available to someone who kept   \nan eye open.\n\n\"I didn't know we'd do this,\" I said, marveling, after he'd entered me and we'd both come quickly, too excited to take it slow. What if we'd missed it, as people do?\n\n\"You're married.\"\n\n\"You're not, or so you said.\"\n\n\"I'm not.\"\n\n\"Well, that's good.\" He had multitudes of girlfriends, of course. All right. We hadn't used a condom. All right.\n\nWe lay companionably on the scratchy towel, and he began to talk about work, telling me with some excitement about the next article he intended to write. He was now thinking about a new way of organizing the categories in municipal budgets, and he talked fast, rising on an elbow to explain better. Like a cup of coffee, sex had awakened him.\n\nWhen I laughed, he said, \"Work is sex.\" He kissed me again, longer this time.\n\n\"I know,\" I said when we stopped. \"That's what people don't understand. Work is sex. Good work. Putting on a conference.\"\n\n\"Can you do that? Can you put on a conference?\" Another kiss.\n\n\"Oh, sure, I'm terrific,\" I said.\n\nI did not steal the towel but put it in the clothes hamper, assuming Ellen wouldn't notice an extra dirty towel. That morning, I had told Pekko I wouldn't be home for supper, because of an appointment so late it left little time before a rehearsal. I dropped Gordon off near his car, an old black Saab (he got out without kissing me, but that was only sensible) and arrived late for that last appointment. It was disconcerting to be with a different man, someone who didn't count, a man who chose not to clean up his clutter when he heard what I charge. Then I ate Chinese takeout in the car, irrationally elated by good food, and elated that my old capacity for mischief wasn't gone. I walked into the rehearsal room feeling at peace in my body, as if I'd swum a long, slow distance.\n\nWith Justine away, Cindy could have joined with Mo to play the two-headed girl, but she didn't want to. \"I don't like being squashed together with somebody,\" she said.\n\n\"You think I like it?\" Mo said.\n\n\"Could we record that?\" said Katya. \"Could you kids say that again?\"\n\nThey couldn't remember what they'd said. \"That you don't like being too close . . .\"\n\n\"I don't want you breathing on my face,\" Cindy said. \"I don't want to be in that dress with anybody.\"\n\n\"There's nothing wrong with my breath,\" Mo said and blew into Cindy's eyes, so Cindy's lank, brown hair flew up. She had a tense little face like her mother's, and she looked as if she might cry, but then I saw she was trying not to laugh.\n\nWe were different people when involved with a two-headed person. Maybe I had become different in the rest of my life as well. Gordon didn't know about the play but had been the source of the idea. Maybe I wouldn't tell him. Right then, being in the play felt like a magnificent urban act. It was art being made by the untaught but well-intentioned wit and instinct of plain people. I liked considering myself one of the plain people, though sometimes I caught myself faking it, adopting an attitude and even a vocabulary that weren't mine. That night, with Justine away, we worked on scenes in which the child TheaDora was not present: first a conversation about her between her mother (me) and a social worker who believed in mainstreaming, played by David, and then a conference with her teacher. The scene with the teacher, played by Muriel, was hard, and we did it over and over, changing it.\n\n\"Madam,\" Muriel said, \"your daughter is so busy arguing with herself she can't color. If one head says red, the other says blue. I don't know what to do with her.\"\n\n\"Don't your heads ever argue?\"\n\n\"My dear lady, I have only one head.\" The teacher turned it slowly in my direction\u2014her good, big head.\n\n\"I'm sorry to hear it, but I shouldn't hold it against you, because I too am not all there in just that department.\"\n\n\"The other day they had a fight about whether she needed to go to the bathroom, and then she wet her pants.\" The teacher had been sitting in a chair, but now she stood and paced, while I folded my arms stubbornly and twisted in my chair each time she passed me.\n\nThen she said, stopping, \"Oh, that's not the problem. I'm afraid of your daughter.\"\n\n\"What are you afraid of?\" I said, turning as she strode past.\n\n\"What am I afraid of?\" the teacher said. She stopped walking. \"I'm afraid of anger. I'm afraid of love. I'm afraid of sex. I'm afraid of white people. I'm afraid of black people.\"\n\n\"I understand why your fear of black people and white people makes you afraid of my daughter,\" I said, \"because she is both black and white, but why does your fear of sex, love, and anger make you afraid of poor TheaDora?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Muriel said, no longer sounding like the teacher.\n\n\"I know,\" I said. \"Anger comes out of the head. Love is all in the head. Maybe even sex is all in the head, I don't know.\"\n\n\"So if you have two heads . . .\"\n\n\"More anger. More love. More sex.\"\n\n\"Does she eat twice as much as other people?\" asked the teacher, resuming her role. Now she stood still in front of me.\n\n\"Maybe not twice,\" I said, \"but a lot. Both mouths are always busy. You can see she's fat.\"\n\n\"Do you like having a two-headed child?\"\n\nThe mother answered, \"I like having a child of any sort. I never thought I'd have a child.\" The mother teared up at that point. \"It's good to have somebody to love!\"\n\n\"Don't you love your husband?\" asked this nosy teacher.\n\n\"Oh, him,\" I said. The rehearsal was over, and Muriel and I grabbed each other. Hugging was big in this group.\n\nI decided I'd go to bed with Gordon five times. Once was not enough, twice would give the second occasion a dolorous weight, and three times, I thought, would have the same effect, except that both the second and the third would acquire that sentimental portentousness. I don't like the number four; I prefer odd numbers. Five beddings would constitute a short affair, not just an indiscretion, but more might cause difficulty: I'd need to tell others, or he would, or I'd get bored, or we'd become careless and someone\u2014Pekko\u2014would find out. I was more comfortable embarking on a limited series of sexual meetings, rather like my limited run on the radio, also a series of five. I considered discussing the number five with Gordon but decided not to. I did say, the next time I was in his office, \"That was lovely, the other day. I don't want to make a habit of it, but that doesn't mean I'm through already.\"\n\n\"Fair enough,\" he said. That was our only reference to what now felt, as we conferred on work issues, like a different existence that didn't overlap, as if we knew each other two ways. I was glad we didn't rush off to Ellen's house or some other place that day, but also glad when, the next time we met, he said, \"I have a towel in my car.\"\n\n\"Well, that's remarkable!\" I said.\n\n\"Is today a good day?\"\n\nEllen was back, but surely she was at work. It was eleven in the morning, and the kids would be at school. I'd ring the doorbell, and if somebody was home, I'd make up an excuse for being there. Of course, somebody could come in while we were there. That felt so scary, so exciting, that I was glad we were doing it, and glad we'd do it only five times altogether: limited suspense, like suspense near the end of a movie. Maybe we'd think of another place pretty soon. We went, we were brief\u2014Gordon understood the danger, and like me was stimulated by it, not repelled\u2014and we were back at Clark's Pizza, eating souvlaki, talking about work, before the lunch rush was over. This time, in bed, Gordon did something I particularly liked with his tongue, which was long and flexible, comparable in its way to his arms.\n\nAs April turned into May, as I bought a few flowers and tomato plants and forgot to plant them, I contentedly made lists to myself of Pekko's good qualities and Gordon's, and how the two men were different, what each would never do or never say. Pekko would never say \"Good haircut\"; Gordon would never keep silent, as Pekko did habitually. They were different about dogs. Pekko regarded Arthur as his responsibility; Gordon spoke of that German shepherd as if she'd been his drinking buddy, a coconspirator. I was fascinated by his curiosity. One afternoon in the office, he came uninvited to sit on a table in the archive. \"Tell me about your brothers,\" he said.\n\nI'd mentioned them. He even remembered their names. \"Which are you closer to, Carl or Stephen?\"\n\n\"Stephen.\"\n\n\"I don't just mean in age.\"\n\n\"Neither do I.\"\n\n\"What does he do?\"\n\nI told him Stephen worked in the shop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.\n\n\"Running away from something.\"\n\n\"What makes you say that?\"\n\n\"It's so indoors.\"\n\n\"Like a store in a mall?\"\n\n\"Further in.\"\n\n\"I need to concentrate,\" I said, \"I don't have much more time today.\" And he apologized genially and returned to his own desk.\n\nKnowing we'd have only five times together, I was glad they were spaced. \"This is the solution,\" I said to Arthur, as we walked by the river one morning, sidestepping birders with binoculars. Now the leaves were out: light green. \"I'm too old and independent to be married, unless I have a lover from time to time. Maybe every spring.\" I wondered if they'd always be so easy to come by, or so nice.\n\nI noticed that my habits changed slightly during this time. I was messier, and might leave a pile of laundry half folded to cut up vegetables, then leave them for some third task. I didn't take up a craft, though I believe crafts often arise out of sexual complexity. Two women I've known started making stained-glass hangings when their marriages were in trouble, and I think pottery has to do with sadness, if the shapes have enough space inside to contain darkness. Women knit when their lives are changing, and make patchwork when they are trying to reconcile contradictory urges.\n\nI don't know what makes people weave baskets, and I kept forgetting to ask Ellen if she'd woven some of the baskets in her house; the rough, chunky ones looked homemade. Ellen came home from vacation full of resolve to change her life (though she didn't seem to be knitting). She'd dyed her hair blond like mine, and she wanted to spend more time with me, even though she had to pay for it. I'm firm about hours, and the customers pay for talks that take place while I stand on the porch, ready to depart, as they think of one more question. I try not to prolong the conversation, and I look at my watch and write down a number when the door closes.\n\nThe first time I went to Ellen's house after being there with Gordon, I was scared. She might have known I took the sugar bowl, she probably suspected I took her green shirt, and how could I be certain Gordon and I hadn't dropped something revealing? What if she'd sniffed the towel? I scolded myself for repeatedly risking the disapproval of someone who wasn't important.\n\nEllen was glad to see me and had no accusations. I'd pictured her more determined and angry than she was likely to get. She fluttered and shrugged and led me to still another room, the dining room, which contained more baskets and several big bookcases. The baskets were filled with magazines, and additional piles lay on the floor. Beyond an elaborate mahogany table, windows overlooked Ellen's big backyard\u2014full, I was sure, of shrubs and budding stalks that had also made their way into her life unbidden. An old oval mirror hung to the left of the windows, and when I glanced into it, for a moment I thought Ellen, with her new light hair, was I.\n\n\"I met someone,\" Ellen said, and I almost said, \"So did I.\"\n\n\"It's the first time in years,\" she said. \"I met him just before I went away, but we talked twice while I was gone.\"\n\nI suddenly felt uneasy lest Ellen's new boyfriend, somehow, was Gordon, so I murmured, \"Tell me,\" but she didn't.\n\n\"I apologize for bringing this up,\" she said. \"I'm letting you know because it explains my distraction.\" I wanted to say that, though I too had met someone, I was not distracted, but I said nothing. Then she said, \"No, you're just a good person to talk to.\"\n\nThen she wanted to tell me her thoughts about the play, which were numerous. \"I shouldn't always stay,\" she said. \"Justine should have time there to herself, so it's not as if I'm a friend of the adults. She's the friend. Of course I know she's not your friend, but\u2014\"\n\n\"She's part of the troupe,\" I said impatiently.\n\n\"And I'm not,\" she said. \"I ought to find something comparable to do, but I keep wanting to help. Katya needs help.\"\n\n\"Help how?\"\n\n\"I'd direct. I'd be the assistant director.\"\n\n\"Well, ask Katya,\" I said. Katya couldn't say no to anyone.\n\n\"But then Justine wouldn't have her experience\u2014\"\n\n\"I see,\" said I. \"Maybe talk to Justine first.\"\n\n\"Maybe you would? She'd be honest with you.\"\n\n\"I guess I could do that.\" I decided I'd encourage Justine to say no.\n\nIn the meantime, we turned to the magazines. Presumably because she'd acquired most of them herself, Ellen was willing to consider disposing of them, although not without looking them over pretty carefully. For once our morning felt useful, and we produced a good bit of material to be recycled. I stayed longer than I'd meant to, and as we worked, the phone rang, and Ellen went to answer it. Alone in the dining room, I stood and stretched, staring into her yard. I could hear Ellen's voice, though not individual words, but then she must have turned as she spoke, because I did hear. \"Louie,\" she said, \"get your ass over here and fuck me.\"\n\nTwo days later, I called to Gordon from my desk to his, \"You want to do that again?\" It would be our third time, and the little affair would be more than half over. I'd be better off, I thought, moving things along.\n\n\"Mmm.\"\n\n\"When?\"\n\n\"As soon as possible.\"\n\nHe lay on top of me, an hour later (of course he liked being on top), again in Ellen's house. She had told me, when she got off the phone, that she and her lover were going to New York for the day, two days later. Gordon lay over me, and I delayed letting him go when we were done, holding his buttocks, though his weight made me breathless. Then I pushed him off and kissed him lightly, swinging my legs out of bed, reaching for my bra. I felt free as I never had with a man before, despite all my experience. I liked getting my clothes on and getting back to work, while he told me with excitement what engaged his mind that day. I liked knowing we had only two more times together, while he didn't know. Nervousness about Ellen\u2014she might have changed her plans\u2014added to my haste, but also to my pleasure.\n\n\"Help me pick out new glasses?\" he said as we got dressed.\n\n\"But you don't wear glasses.\"\n\n\"I wear contacts. Sometimes my eyes get tired, and then I wear glasses.\"\n\nIt felt disconcerting not to have known I'd been kissing eyes with little disks in them. I didn't want to do anything more with him, just get back to the office, have a cup of coffee from his pot, and resume work. I'd started planning the conference, and sex stimulated my brain, too. But I thought tenderly of Gordon with tired eyes, long, knobby, gray-haired Gordon wanting me to look at him in glasses, some of which wouldn't look good. It was a nice lovers' errand: nobody would suspect, if we met anybody at the optician's, a block from Gordon's office. We'd be a man taking advice from a woman he knew and worked with. So I accompanied him. In the car, I asked him, \"Do you imagine going to bed with me before we do it?\" For me, the imagining was particularly delectable.\n\n\"I don't imagine,\" Gordon said.\n\nComing from bed, it was hard not to walk too close, rubbing limbs. I loved helping pick out glasses, teaming up with a stylish saleswoman whose good ideas resembled mine. Together we talked Gordon into the best frames, though they cost more, and he said he hardly ever wore them except alone at home in the evening. I was pleased to hear that he spent his evenings at home, alone.\n\nWhat were you doing buying eyeglasses?\" my mother asked me on the phone. \"Do you need glasses all of a sudden?\"\n\nI've used reading glasses for a while\u2014not as long as most people my age\u2014but a pair from the drugstore seems to work. Sex with many partners kept my eyes young, I used to tell my friends. Sex lubricates the entire body.\n\n\"I saw you in Kennedy and Perkins,\" Roz continued. \"I was on my way to the ATM machine. You were with someone, or I'd have stopped to say hello.\"\n\nI told her who Gordon was, how I had met him, and how I'd helped him pick out frames. My mother, who also wears glasses only for reading, turned out to be an expert. She said, \"You have to try on glasses different ways\u2014 wearing a hat, or pretending you're angry. You have to frown at the mirror.\"\n\n\"He mostly wears contact lenses.\"\n\n\"Oh, Daphne has contact lenses,\" my mother said. \"You don't know somebody is wearing them.\"\n\n\"That's right.\"\n\n\"She took them out when she clipped the hedges. Something got in her eye. How's her daughter doing?\"\n\n\"Fine.\"\n\n\"She has those kids trained. The minute they get home from school, the phone rings. She doesn't let them play outside until she gets there.\"\n\n\"Did she move?\" I asked, remembering that Pekko had offered her an apartment.\n\n\"Oh, sure. She says she's glad to have it, even if it's not perfect.\"\n\n\"What does that mean?\" I said.\n\n\"Pekko has so many places, he can't keep them all just so,\" said Roz. \"When she has more money, she'll move again. She's installing those kitchen cabinets for me.\"\n\n\"Mm.\" I was in my kitchen, watching Arthur in the backyard as he sniffed and paced, stopped to pee, trotted to a corner of the yard, then trotted back.\n\n\"She's good at things. I don't know why you're suspicious of her,\" my mother said.\n\n\"I'm not,\" I said.\n\n\"Maybe you're jealous because I have a friend younger than you.\"\n\n\"I'm not,\" I said again. Then something made me remember and speak. \"Mom, was your cousin a call girl?\"\n\n\"Actually, she did it only once,\" said Roz, after a long pause. \"As far as I know.\"\n\n\"You weren't shocked,\" I said. \"You liked it, didn't you?\"\n\n\"I used to imagine it,\" she said. \"Stupid of me. As if it carried no risks.\"\n\nThe next time I saw Justine\u2014on her way into the building where we held rehearsals, while Ellen's car paused at the curb and took off\u2014I remembered that I'd agreed to ask if she'd mind having her mother participate. She'd missed one rehearsal because of a school project, and in the intervening time warm weather had come, or children thought it had: she was in shorts. I envied Justine's perfect skin, and said so.\n\nShe shrugged.\n\nWe were the first ones there. I had no idea what to say next, then began with \"Are you at all worried about your mother?\" As if we were both older than Ellen, or as if Ellen might be senile.\n\n\"A little. But I think she's all right. She's got a boyfriend.\"\n\n\"I think she might like to be in the play\u2014maybe to help direct,\" I said. \"But I thought I should check with you first.\"\n\n\"Fine with me,\" Justine said. I was sure it wasn't true, but I didn't know how to encourage her to say something different, and to my surprise, I didn't want to. I'd been pretending to myself that I liked Justine better than her mother, but Justine was a child, and though I wished Ellen had her daughter's restraint, I would always be more comfortable with an adult.\n\nAt that rehearsal, Jonah said, \"I don't think we should make up one more scene without deciding what the two-headed woman means. What's the point of her?\"\n\nNobody answered. Then I said, \"We won't know until she's grown up, Jonah. She'll tell us, when she's grown.\"\n\n\"But she's a made-up person.\"\n\n\"Jonah, you're playing characters too much like yourself,\" Muriel said. \"Tonight you have to be the two-headed little girl. You and Cindy. You won't know what it's like until you try it.\"\n\n\"I still don't want to be part of somebody,\" Cindy said. \"And I certainly don't want to be part of somebody with him.\"\n\nJonah was four times Cindy's size. Finally we did a scene in which she stood on a chair and Jonah sat beside her, with the dress draped like a barber's bib over their chests and shoulders.\n\n\"I hate you,\" said Cindy, as soon as they were joined.\n\n\"I hate me too,\" said Jonah. \"I hate having two heads. I don't want to be the same person as this little white girl! Nobody understands what it's like to have two heads! All of you talking about tolerance. I do not tolerate it! I will not tolerate it!\"\n\nThen he started to laugh. We all laughed. He rolled up the dress and tossed it to Katya. Then he picked up Cindy and gave her a kiss. \"Nothing personal,\" he said.\n\nCalling through the open French doors of Gordon's office one afternoon, I said, \"Did you know that the first act of the New Haven government, in 1638, was trying an Indian for murder?\"\n\n\"Who did he murder?\"\n\n\"Another Indian.\"\n\n\"White men trying nonwhites for murder. Started early.\"\n\n\"Wanna fuck?\" I called now.\n\n\"Not today, monkey face,\" he said. \"I've got my period.\"\n\n\"What's that supposed to mean?\"\n\n\"Monkey face?\"\n\n\"Period,\" I said.\n\n\"I don't know. I love going to bed with you. But today I have to get some work done.\"\n\n\"Well, so do I,\" I said, wishing I hadn't spoken. Events at the conference might be: Prosecutor speaking about murder trials in New Haven. Historian talking about history of crime in New Haven. Panel discussion: cop, social worker, head of organization of former prisoners, talking about murder and race: Are murders of white people paid more attention (surely)? Are murders by white people prosecuted as vigorously as murders by black people? Or Hispanic or other? Indian? City planner or urban anthropologist or whatever, comparing New Haven with other cities. Who will come to this conference? Academics. Public defenders? A public defender should speak. Can a poor person get a fair trial for murder in New Haven? Causes of murder, psychological and sociological. Could a psychiatrist talk about death wishes and destructive impulses?\n\nI'd been writing rapidly, getting over my chagrin at Gordon's rejection. I wanted substance, not just the mouthing of clich\u00e9s about a violent society.\n\n\"Changed my mind,\" he said.\n\n\"Work,\" I said.\n\n\"An hour?\" he said.\n\nI had an appointment in an hour and a half. I'd cancel it. \"Too late in the day for Ellen's house.\"\n\n\"Let's go to my place,\" said Gordon.\n\n\"How far is it?\"\n\n\"Not too far, and we'll have a new activity. Riding in my car. Since you don't know the way, and I won't tell you.\" I'd never been in his car.\n\nGordon was curious and clever, but he didn't imagine. He seemed to feel close to dogs, and dogs wonder, but like Gordon they perhaps don't picture scenes at which they are not present. Gordon often watched me lie to a client when I canceled an appointment, but if someone canceled an appointment with him, he didn't wonder what the real reason might be. I suppose his lack of a fantasy life made it possible to go to bed with a married woman. He neither imagined me in bed with my husband, making himself jealous, nor imagined my husband finding out, making himself nervous. Each event was what it was until it was over, and trying to put myself in his mental position, I felt as if the world had been freshly washed.\n\nSo I felt free, with Gordon, as if I stood on a windy dock, looking over water, letting my hair blow. I knew he didn't have a notion of me that I would have to work to fulfill or contradict. He wanted to know about me\u2014he asked a million questions\u2014but he hadn't speculated in advance. I wonder as I write this whether that's so unusual, and how I knew right away that Gordon looked at \"the plain sense of things,\" though I didn't understand my knowledge until he said, \"I don't imagine.\" I recall that Pekko said something about it when I first mentioned Gordon Skeetling. He'd noticed it too\u2014noticed it and disliked it. To me\u2014as we drove east on I-95, for Gordon lived on the shoreline, in Madison\u2014to me, Gordon's refusal to imagine felt roomy, like the place he took me to on that splendid May day, a middle-sized house not far from the water, with a wide screened porch. I looked in all directions, then turned and looked at Gordon watching me\u2014waiting\u2014one hand on his screen door, waiting without impatience until I followed him inside.\n\nThe porch was deep, made of new-smelling pine planks, profoundly shadowed. \"Did you build this house? Are you the first person to live here?\"\n\n\"My wife had it built, before I knew her\u2014my second wife,\" he said. \"She's an architect, and she did some of the work herself. I moved in with her, and when we divorced, she moved to Arizona and I bought the house from her.\"\n\n\"Thank you for telling me more than I asked.\"\n\n\"I have no secrets,\" Gordon said. \"That's how I got my car, too. It was hers.\" I liked his black Saab. He unlocked the front door as he spoke and turned again to watch me admire his porch. As he so often did in the office, he raised his arm and leaned against the doorjamb, his palm braced, and as in the office, he took up all the room. I stepped forward and placed my hands on the sides of his hips, below his belt on his trousers. Then I moved my right hand until it covered his fly. I felt him stir beneath my hand, but instead of unzipping him where we stood, which would have required undoing his belt buckle, I put my arms around him. I felt luckier than ever in my life, having found a man who had no secrets. But we were about to go to bed for the fourth of five occasions. We went into the house, while I marveled at myself. I thought I liked secrets.\n\nThe house was light despite the deep porch because the first floor was one big room, with windows all around. It was floored with polyurethaned wooden planks, and furnished with not much. It was cooler indoors than out, the way houses are in May in Connecticut. We moved quickly upstairs to the bedroom, where without hurry, and without having to be neat, we took off each other's clothes. Some men find this funny\u2014bra hooks and so forth\u2014and some do it sentimentally, as if undressing a bride. Others are matter-of-fact, completing a task. But the best men are aroused by it, and do it aggressively, and that's what I like, and that's what Gordon did.\n\n\"Come,\" he said and pulled me by the hand toward the bed, while with his other hand he shoved the comforter, which was white, onto the floor. I was cold and warmed myself with his body on the bare bed. He seemed like a young man\u2014like Denny\u2014as he seized me, his hands everywhere: someone who didn't plan his every move, didn't remember what he'd done last time. For the first time, I felt an exuberance in the man that had to do, it seemed, not with the fun of taking a business connection to bed but with me. And as always I felt his clarity. Making love to me, he was doing nothing but making love to me. I tried to keep myself from coming, because when I did, we'd have only one more time together. As Gordon thrust and thrust again, I thought that if I didn't come, it wouldn't count. There would still be two times to go. But he'd raised me to such a pitch that I had to let the release happen, and then we lay silently, getting colder until I snagged the comforter on my foot and sat up to pull it over the two of us. I lay down luxuriously in its warmth and Gordon's, pressing myself into his body. He put his arms around me. \"We're getting to be friends,\" he said.\n\nThere were no rugs in this house. After a while I got up to pee, finding the bathroom without directions because Gordon had fallen asleep. I tiptoed on the cold floor. Alone, I had a sudden sense of completeness, something exquisite. I'd found a man who could finish me, put his semen into me in a way that made me feel I needed nobody's semen for the rest of my life, not even his. From now on I'd make friends with women. I'd call Charlotte, whom I hadn't talked to in weeks. Maybe I wouldn't go to bed with Gordon again. Maybe I'd keep that fifth time unused, like a framed dollar bill on the wall of a restaurant. I flushed the toilet and walked out of that bathroom as if into the rest of my life, almost expecting Gordon to have vanished, his role completed, like an insect who achieves his destiny by copulating, then flies off in an iridescent flicker.\n\nBut Gordon was present, and now awake. \"I thought you had a dog,\" I said. Suddenly I remembered the way I'd imagined his house: old, old-fashioned, crammed with books, cracked leather furniture, and dusty end tables, and festooned with dog hair; I'd pictured a big, shaggy dog greeting me solemnly, swinging his tail. This place was clean.\n\n\"She died. I told you.\"\n\n\"You didn't want another dog?\"\n\n\"I wanted that dog.\"\n\nI reached for my underwear; then, chilled again from getting up, I relaxed into the empty space next to Gordon and pulled the comforter, once more, around my shoulders. \"That's how my brother lives,\" I said.\n\n\"Carl or Stephen?\"\n\nThe man's memory was uncanny. \"Stephen. He lives with empty spaces that stand for what used to be.\"\n\n\"I don't. I simply had a dog who died. When my mother died, I didn't replace her either.\"\n\n\"All right,\" I said, wondering if what I'd said was untrue of Stephen as well. He lives in a small brick house in Queens, with the usual quantity of furniture. Only one child, away at SUNY New Paltz now, but he didn't, as far as I knew, leave her place at the dinner table sentimentally clear in her absence. He and his wife had taken to letting their mail accumulate there, Stephen had said, and had to sort it when my niece came home on vacation. But what I'd said about Stephen was true, I continued to feel. I pulled the comforter more closely around me, and then Gordon stood and began to dress, and I felt a twinge of desolation, though I knew he wouldn't depart, leaving me alone in his house. \"Get up,\" he said. \"Let's go back to the office.\"\n\nI sat up, still swathed in the big, puffy comforter. \"Well, in Stephen's case, it's not a dog or a person who's gone, it's a way of thinking about himself. His life is like an exhibit in a museum\u2014it preserves an idea about himself he doesn't have any longer.\"\n\n\"When did he lose it? You said he works in a museum.\"\n\n\"Yes. He lost it at seventeen.\"\n\nAnd now I come to a difficult point, because I said early on there was no need to describe Stephen's trouble\u2014or talk about Denny\u2014in this narrative. I don't want to write about Stephen, and I don't want to write any more about Denny, and I've been avoiding this manuscript for days\u2014I stopped at \"seventeen,\" doing anything else I could think of, because I didn't want to write about either of them. I didn't talk to Gordon about Denny then, but I did later. Now, it's either write about Denny and Stephen or play computer solitaire, and I'm exhausted with playing solitaire.\n\nFor some reason, I seem to need to begin\u2014now that I'm doing it\u2014with a time Denny and I threw sticks in the river. Denny would get excited about something he did as a child. He was a juvenile delinquent and a druggie, but he'd had a normal, middle-class childhood, his respectable mother (or, more likely, that grandmother I mentioned) had read him Winnie-the-Pooh, and he liked to go to one of the bridges in East Rock Park, even when I knew him, and play pooh sticks, which if you recall is the game in which you throw sticks from a bridge into the river, upstream, rush to the downstream side, and see which stick emerges first from under the bridge. We'd do this late at night: I'd say, \"I'm starving, let's get something to eat,\" and he'd say, \"No, let's go to the river.\" You couldn't always see the sticks at all, but the river\u2014the Mill River, the same one where I walk Arthur these days\u2014was mysterious and enticing (and I'd have visions of my young lover found drowned at the edge of it). One night we'd thrown sticks, and gone and leaned over the parapet, but we began to talk and forgot to watch for the sticks. Denny told me how his younger brother had come to him recently, crying, saying, \"Man, you have to stop making Mom cry.\"\n\n\"What did you say?\" I said.\n\n\"What does anybody say to a younger brother? Or a younger sister? What did your brother say to you when you asked that?\"\n\n\"How do you know I asked that? I don't think I did,\" I said.\n\n\"Sure you did. Your brother got in trouble, didn't he?\"\n\n\"Well, yes, but I don't recall telling you about that.\"\n\n\"You once said I reminded you of him. That's the only reason I remind people of anybody.\"\n\n\"It wasn't that, it was your sense of humor.\"\n\n\"I don't have a sense of humor,\" said Denny, \"I have a sense of sadness.\"\n\n\"You make me laugh, though.\"\n\n\"That's what I said to my brother. I make people laugh, not cry. But he said, 'No, no, you make Mom cry.' See, maybe I won't do that forever, but then I wouldn't be around anymore.\"\n\n\"You mean you'd go away?\"\n\n\"Go away, die. Same difference, from your point of view.\"\n\n\"You don't seem like a potential suicide, Denny. Is that a signal for me to worry?\"\n\n\"I don't mean suicide. I'd never commit suicide. It's not my style.\"\n\nIt was winter, and I got cold, or impatient, or came back to my senses and remembered I had to work in the morning, so the evening ended. Something like that. But I did not think about this meeting with Denny on the day of the white comforter, and I don't know why I wanted to write it down now, except for the obvious connection anybody could make, when I say what I told Gordon next, which is \"When my brother was seventeen, he was questioned by the police after his girlfriend died.\"\n\n\"Did they think he killed her?\"\n\n\"In fact, apparently not,\" I said, surprised that I was about to tell Gordon a story I hardly ever told anyone, and hadn't told Denny, who found out most of what he wanted to know. I was fourteen and Stephen was seventeen. Carl wasn't home, but Stephen and I were being shown off to some cousins from the Netherlands, people my parents scarcely knew, who'd settled there after the war and had come to America on a visit. I was lusting after the son of this family\u2014a boy with a bright, friendly laugh, a look unlike the guarded looks of boys I knew\u2014when the police arrived. We three had gradually moved away from the adults, who were lingering over coffee, and we were listening to records in Stephen's room. The boy didn't have enough English to follow Tom Lehrer's satirical songs, but he liked Judy Collins. We heard the doorbell, and when the record ended, we listened\u2014some romantic, violent ballad still in our heads\u2014as my father talked with the policeman, then led him past the visitors to the room where we were.\n\nStephen's girlfriend had died a month earlier. It was a shock, but not as shocking as it might have been, because she'd been a troubled girl. My parents had been terrified of her, and that Sunday I was still angry because they refused to regard her death as a full-scale tragedy: according to them her life was doomed, one way or another. I screamed at them about that. She wasn't doomed, I insisted, though her death seemed to contradict that notion. She'd slit her wrists, yes, but that didn't have to be\u2014if she'd had a good psychiatrist she might have led a long, reasonably happy life. Now I know I was right, but at the time, as children do, I secretly thought my parents probably knew better. I thought I was making these arguments, night after night (while Stephen stayed quietly in his room) out of stubbornness. I felt guilty for shouting at my parents.\n\nThat afternoon, as a policeman entered Stephen's bedroom, my brother stood up. The visiting boy was sitting on the bed, and I was on the floor, working up my courage to rise casually and sit next to the boy. Now I went through a swift progression of thought: My brother had killed his girlfriend! I was angry at my brother for killing his girlfriend and therefore impeding my lust toward the Dutch cousin. Then I was afraid.\n\nStephen was questioned in the policeman's car and returned to the house. \"It was nothing,\" he said. The next day the policeman returned, questioned Stephen some more, and left again. My fear didn't dissipate for weeks. Months later, Stephen told me he'd been asked if he knew in advance what the girl planned to do. He'd said no. The policeman had been gentle but persistent. By then it seemed absurd to have thought my brother was a murderer.\n\nFor years, I blamed myself for my disloyalty and suspicion. The long piece I wrote was originally about Stephen and also about me: about my slow discovery that it's possible to think mixed-up thoughts and go on, essentially\u2014and therefore about how I finally came to feel that my lusting after the cousin was not proof that my brother was a murderer, that I hadn't retroactively turned Stephen into a murderer by lusting after the cousin. The early drafts contained much information about my youthful sexual life that I gradually omitted. Eventually the article, or a fragment of it, was published. It concentrated on the ordeal that began for Stephen when he made friends with this troubled girl, and went on to make an argument I'd come to understand in the course of revising it. I argued for the importance of wrong guesses. I argued that my mistake was permissible, even though it was to think my brother was a terrible criminal: I argued, that is, for the innocence of imagination. When the piece was published, Stephen told me it was good, told me he was glad I'd written it\u2014he'd read twenty drafts along the way\u2014and quietly said he hoped I never wrote about him again. I said of course I wouldn't.\n\nHalf a lifetime later, I think I'm doing something similar. Maybe eventually I will omit, again, the secrets I'd rather keep from this record\u2014and omit Stephen\u2014and publish what is left as an essay in which, once more, my life is merely illustrative. The point might be how, in a city these days, what we consider outside the line we draw around ourselves\u2014the boundary beyond which we do not go\u2014may turn out to be inside, how the boundary may need to be redrawn, and again redrawn.\n\nWe got dressed and drove back to town. Even telling Gordon about Stephen, the Dutch cousin, the dead girl, and the resulting piece of writing did not take all afternoon, yet I worked late that evening, completing what I'd hoped to complete, and didn't cook the meal I'd promised Pekko when I left that morning. I hadn't cooked for a while. It occurred to me, as I finally drove home, that if he were a roommate instead of a husband, my account of my afternoon could be my apology. Don't scold, I'll tell you a story.\n\nCall your mother,\" Pekko said when I arrived. He was cutting up onions, celery, and mushrooms for spaghetti sauce.\n\n\"Oh, did she call?\"\n\n\"I called her.\"\n\n\"Did you think I might be there?\"\n\n\"It had nothing to do with you,\" Pekko said. \"I wanted to find out if Daphne actually knows anything about carpentry.\"\n\n\"Roz claims she's installing those kitchen cabinets,\" I said. I began setting the table.\n\n\"Daphne said so. Roz says they've looked at everything in Home Depot and now Daphne is emptying the old cabinets and carrying the canned goods to the basement. I can't tell from that if she knows what's she's doing.\"\n\n\"Why did you call?\"\n\n\"She wants to work off the rent, and I need someone. The guys I used in the other building are impossible.\"\n\n\"Daphne hasn't got the rent money?\"\n\n\"Or she wants it for something else.\"\n\n\"For what?\"\n\n\"Not my business,\" said Pekko. He opened a can of tomatoes. Pekko chops vegetables well, with a cleaver, cooking deliberately, as if listening to instructions in his mind, choosing the correct tool. His back was to me as he stood at the counter, and I appreciated his vulnerable firmness even while I was still appreciating another, different man. No matter; it felt tiresome to limit myself to one man, an odd requirement, no more sensible than a rule that would have me manage with a single woman friend. With his face hidden and mine not visible to him, I asked experimentally, with a mischief maker's need to shift a pile of objects, just to see which one broke, \"When was Daphne your lover?\"\n\nPekko hardly ever answers questions directly, but this time he said, \"When she was pregnant.\"\n\n\"With Cindy?\"\n\n\"Is that the ten-year-old?\"\n\n\"Nine, I think.\"\n\n\"Nine.\"\n\nSomebody had to be careful, so I asked nothing more, but he continued to talk, without turning. \"The last time I saw her she was too pregnant for sex. She pulled up her shirt, and from across the room, I could see bulges move up and down her belly.\"\n\nI'd known Pekko for ten years\u2014with gaps. I didn't know exactly how old Cindy was. It didn't matter, yet I wondered where I was while Pekko looked at Daphne's belly, whether we were dating then.\n\n\"The baby was kicking,\" I said.\n\n\"No, I think it was a knee moving. The baby pulled her knees to her chest and then straightened them.\"\n\n\"The fetal position.\"\n\n\"I suppose. I remember the bulges moving. I never felt so sad.\"\n\n\"Was she your baby?\" I thought of putting my arm around him as he stirred the sauce, but it seemed like a sentimental idea.\n\n\"No. Daphne was married, and we started when she was pregnant. I was glad it wasn't my baby. I didn't want to marry her. I didn't want to know her after she had the baby, because I knew she'd leave her husband sooner or later, and I didn't want all that. I'd probably fall in love with the kid.\"\n\n\"She's a cute kid.\"\n\n\"I guess she's all right, even without a father.\" He swept mushroom slices off the cutting board into the pot. \"Set the table,\" he said.\n\n\"I already did.\"\n\nHe glanced over his shoulder. \"Right. Sorry.\"\n\n\"So did you tell Daphne she can do the carpentry?\" I said.\n\n\"I did. Against my better judgment. Before I called your mother. I called her to reassure myself, but of course I didn't learn anything.\" Daphne had appeared in his office to negotiate, taking notes so as to write up a contract. Her main concern was apparently that Pekko would exploit her, and she had negotiated an hourly rate, insisting on weekly paychecks once she'd earned the rent.\n\n\"She's not donating one flick of a paintbrush,\" Pekko said as we ate.\n\n\"No nostalgia for lost love?\" I said lightly.\n\n\"I'm not sure it was ever lost love.\" It was all right, I explained to myself. My afternoon was less bad if Pekko had leftover feelings for Daphne, and the feelings made him more interesting to me. We were almost done eating before I heard all of what he was thinking\u2014or another part of what he was thinking. \"If I asked you to cut her daughter out of the play, would that be possible?\"\n\n\"Of course not. Is that what you want me to do?\"\n\n\"Not so far.\"\n\n\"But ever? Pekko, you're not like that. Even if you did feel terrible when you saw Cindy's knee move before she was born.\"\n\n\"It might have been her butt. Maybe she had her back to Daphne's front, and when she flexed her legs, her butt moved.\"\n\n\"Or her butt.\" He got up and gave Arthur, who'd been attentive, his plate to lick.\n\n\"Even if her mother cheats you,\" I persisted. \"What difference does it make if Cindy's in the play?\"\n\n\"I might need a threat.\"\n\n\"If Daphne doesn't work hard enough?\"\n\n\"No. If she doesn't work hard enough, I'll be out the rent. That's happened before. But she's complaining about the building. I don't need stuff in the paper.\"\n\n\"Throw her out.\"\n\n\"Civil liberties. That's the one thing you can't do.\"\n\n\"You can blackmail her by breaking her kid's heart but you can't refuse to renew her lease?\" I said, wondering if Cindy cared about the play.\n\n\"Violates her civil liberties.\"\n\nBut now Pekko had done talking, and as I gathered the plates to wash them\u2014the cook shouldn't have to clean up\u2014he wandered out of the room. When I was done, I took Arthur for a late walk so as to think about my lover\u2014the light on the planks, which were the color of corn oil, the off-white walls and white comforter and nothing much in the room to distract me from the sensation of my vagina pulsing and rippling around him.\n\nI planted my garden toward the end of May, feeling a sudden wish for flashy annuals and something I could eat. I don't like impatiens or pansies, but I put in a lot of zinnias and tomatoes, and then watered only now and then and weeded hardly at all. June was warm but not too hot, cooler than those hot days in April, and when I was home I was often in the backyard, in sandals, throwing Arthur's ball. Sometimes I tried teaching him something, but I soon gave up and spent time reading and thinking about Gordon. Charlotte came over late one afternoon, and being together in the sunshine felt so good, for me at least, that we didn't talk for long minutes, leaning back on canvas chairs in my backyard, looking up at layered maple leaves, and drinking white wine. Then we began, sleepily, listing the epochs of our long friendship, just referring to times we were at ease and times we were not, mentioning them and not needing detail. \"The time I didn't tell you about\u2014\" she said.\n\n\"Yes. And the time you told Philip\u2014\"\n\n\"About your mother?\"\n\n\"Oh, that too. I was thinking about something else,\" I said.\n\n\"Oh. Yes. The time at the beach.\"\n\n\"Yes, the time at the beach.\" Which was the time I found out that Denny was dead. I was staying at the old beach house where Pekko was living, and Charlotte and Philip and maybe her girls\u2014yes, her girls\u2014had come over for supper, but Pekko was late, and it got later and later: a summer evening that began hot and became cool. Olivia ran around in her wet bathing suit to keep warm while we waited for Pekko before eating, then ate without him. When he arrived, it was with the news that Denny was dead. He'd broken into Pekko's frozen yogurt store and died of an overdose. Now Charlotte and I stopped hinting and told each other that story, over and over, it seemed: how I'd slept with Denny, though I was in my forties and supposedly sane, while he was twenty-three and apparently crazy, how I'd stopped, how he'd died.\n\n\"You know, he had been living in Pekko's store,\" she then said, after a long pause. \"He didn't break in just that one time.\"\n\n\"He was living there?\"\n\n\"He was homeless. He broke in every night. Lots of street people do that someplace.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"Somebody reliable told me the story, not long after.\"\n\n\"Another street person?\"\n\n\"A case manager.\"\n\n\"Did Pekko know?\"\n\n\"How could he not? Daisy, how could he not?\"\n\n\"You've been quiet about this for ten years?\" I said.\n\n\"Eight, nine maybe. I didn't hear it right away.\"\n\n\"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you get angry with Pekko for keeping quiet?\"\n\n\"Oh, Daisy, Pekko's just like that. He does what he does.\"\n\nThat's why I keep thinking about Denny, as well as about the events of last spring and summer. He was part of them, too. He gets younger in my mind, a sort of imp, laughing at us all. He did laugh at us all. He was thin, with a tough look about him that didn't seem real to me, as if he was playing bad guy, and nothing really bad could happen.\n\nThat afternoon in the backyard, I didn't tell Charlotte about Gordon, but I told her all about the play. She was enthralled. It was just her sort of thing\u2014talky, good-natured, na\u00efve.\n\nRehearsals, speaking of the play, had become three quarters discussion. Katya said that didn't matter, it was our process at that time. She was a great one for following us as we sniffed each bush, and sometimes I tried to follow Arthur on a walk the way Katya followed us. I always lost patience, but Katya, like a big, soft shadow, never did. She'd signed us up for a performance: we were to perform our play in October as part of a community arts festival at the Little Theater, a small theater that used to be an art-movie house and got rescued, renovated, and set up for plays when the movies stopped. In the old days, before the renovation, I remember watching bats flying in the light from the screen. I remember Denny and me together there, but that might be wrong.\n\nCindy had a sharp directness that made everyone wish she had a bigger part, and someone suggested that, once the two-headed girl grew up, she could have a little sister. That idea led us into a somewhat idiotic discussion about whether these parents would take a chance on another baby. I was against it and found myself ridiculously involved, arguing against Jonah, who thought they should accept the will of the Lord. Maybe I wanted Cindy's part to stay small.\n\n\"You're not thinking about whether these particular people would accept the will of the Lord,\" I said.\n\nEllen had come into the room and was watching at one side, and then Daphne came in as well, to pick up Cindy. Daphne emitted an atmosphere of disdain. Of course she wanted there to be another child, so her daughter could have a bigger part. Finally she called, \"Oh, give them a break. Give that couple something good.\"\n\nWe agreed that the play had enough sorrow in it, and Cindy was confirmed as the future sister of the two-headed girl.\n\nReading about murder, I was more interested in the killer than in the killed. When I wasn't thinking about bedding with Gordon, I'd think about the sensation of killing, the sensation of getting away with it. Many murders I read about were unsolved, or solved only provisionally. It felt strange to begin my research about murder in New Haven\u2014or small cities, we'd broadened the topic that much\u2014already knowing that Pekko had told me about the murder of Marie Valenti, knowing that, if Pekko had told the truth, someone was living his life as if it hadn't happened.\n\nNot all the murders I read about were unsolved. Sometimes crowds saw a killing. I found an amateur book in the local history room of the Main Library about the killing of cops\u2014a typed tribute, all in capital letters, to policemen who died on duty between 1855 and 1970. When cop is killed, another cop is usually around to tell about it, and sometimes there's a crowd of bystanders interested in whatever the cop was investigating. Sometimes it seemed that everybody had lied.\n\nNew Haven is composed of Yale and Not Yale, and Not Yale is composed of African Americans, Puerto Ricans, Italians, Jews, WASPs, Poles, Irish, and so on. (I suppose Yale is too, these days.) Reading about dead policemen was like watching outsiders arrive, one group followed by the next. The first cop murdered on duty, in 1855, had been born in England. Before a raffle intended to raise money for a poor widower, neighbors held an impromptu dance. According to the New Haven Register, a young girl who went to the dance was tracked down by her mother, who began beating her with a stick. The neighbors grew agitated, and when an officer tried to arrest a drunken man, they beat the policeman to death. The paper reported that everyone in the crowd was Irish.\n\nThe next police officer to be murdered, some years later, was Irish. Again the book quoted the Register: \"In consequence of the inequities practiced in the Fair Street, Italian quarter of the city, Policeman Hugh McKeon, a stalwart member of the New Haven Police . . . [was] the victim of the bullets of a dwarfed specimen of the Italian race.\" Andrea Laudano, who'd been running \"a house of ill repute,\" shot the policeman three times when the cop broke the door down to stage a raid.\n\nBy 1915 the witnesses to the murder of another police officer had Jewish names, and an officer was killed in 1935 by a burglar with a Polish name. Poles seemed to figure in the next murder as well; one of them, known as the Eel, escaped from prison. Near the end of the book, though it doesn't say so, the perpetrators are probably black\u2014to judge from the names and addresses\u2014while the police officers are Italian. And the last murder described, of an undercover agent who posed as a bookmaker, seemed pretty clearly to be the killing of a black police officer.\n\nI was asking around for the names of urban sociologists, looking for someone who'd talk about New Haven's ethnic history and how it connected to murder. I was also looking for a psychiatrist. I wanted to know about New Haven's murders, but I also wanted to know about murder: how it feels to do it, why people do it, and how they sometimes get away with it. I didn't like thinking about Marie Valenti because I didn't know what to do with my knowledge, and couldn't talk to Gordon about it, and I didn't like thinking about Pekko's disapproval. I hadn't told him about the conference. I wasn't afraid to have an argument with him, but I was afraid to think he might be right, that if anybody ever heard of my conference, it would be one more reason people I met outside New Haven might ask why on earth I lived there.\n\nUncomfortable learning about Marie Valenti, I went searching for information about the murder of Penney Serra, another young woman killed in the seventies. One day I went to the public library to read about the murder itself. I thought the newspaper article at the time of her death would have huge headlines, but sitting in the library basement, trying to work a balky microfilm viewer, I took a while to find the story. I struggled with flapping plastic tape and reels that spun too slowly or too fast, then first came upon not the news story but the death notice. \"Suddenly in this city July 16, 1973 . . .\" Shaken, I continued looking. Another rattle of the machinery and I found the story, not a big headline\u2014all the big headlines that month were about Nixon\u2014but a story in the lower left-hand corner of the first page, police seek motive in garage slaying. Penney Serra, age twenty-one, had gone downtown looking for a job. She was found dead in a stairwell on the top level of the garage, which was fairly new then\u2014one of those gray concrete, cavernous things; I remember wondering, when I first drove into it, if it could hold up so many cars. She had no reason to be at the top level. Her shoes were in the front seat of her car, and her purse was in the backseat. She'd been stabbed once in the chest, and also in the right hand: that brave child had been fighting back, and reading about that wound, I saw the girl\u2014her useless, reflexive grab at the hand with the knife.\n\nEllen, in a white T-shirt with a low neckline, walked with her usual hesitation into the bedroom, where I was sitting on the floor amid piles of clothing. She'd left me to talk on the phone; lately, that happened. For the first time, as she paused, watching me, her tentativeness pleased me. Ellen and I now worked together more easily. She still believed that objects own their present locations, or that people who had long forgotten them have a claim that they be well-treated. She argued, but now she was occasionally willing to lose. I guess she'd decided that I too had some respect for the ancient leaseholds of things. We stacked stuff in piles, room after room. Her house was turning into the worst sort of clutter museum, the organized sort.\n\nShe lowered herself to a squat beside me, lightly touching my shoulder\u2014a support\u2014on the way down. In her absence I'd continued folding and piling. We were in a back bedroom used for storage of the children's old clothes and of papers and notebooks Ellen had been accumulating all her life. She had so many bedrooms, she could do this sort of thing.\n\nThen she said, \"Daisy, are you by any chance having an affair?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, too quickly. \"Why?\"\n\n\"Nothing. Well, the man I'm seeing\u2014you know, he's another castaway. My brother made me see him. He knows my brother.\"\n\n\"Your brother left him here, and you're too nice to throw him away?\" I said, hoping to confirm this change of subject.\n\n\"He's married.\"\n\n\"Your brother made you go out with a married man?\"\n\nWe were making no pretense at working. \"He's here for a few months, installing computer software for a bank. I was supposed to help him figure out New Haven. We met for lunch, and I brought him here and fucked him.\"\n\n\"That doesn't seem like the sort of thing you'd do,\" I said.\n\n\"I never did before. I'm working on not falling in love with him. It's such a reversal for me\u2014I get handed things nobody wants, and I keep them. Now I'm trying not to want this guy, and of course his wife does want him. She'll take him back.\"\n\n\"Maybe not.\" I stood up and stretched, then flexed my feet to get the kinks out. \"These patterns hold,\" I said. \"You're the drop-off center. I don't think there's anything you can do about it.\"\n\n\"What I want to know,\" Ellen said from the floor, \"is\u2014my God, Daisy, you're using my house for something. If it's an affair, you could help me. I'll continue to pay you for your time, if that's what you want.\"\n\nThere was a chair in the room, and I stopped doing half-remembered ballet steps and sat down. \"Paid friendship?\" I said, taking things one at a time, carefully.\n\n\"Whatever you want.\"\n\n\"Do you think I'm like that?\"\n\n\"Someone who'd have an affair?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, thinking of my radio series, \"someone who takes money to listen.\"\n\n\"A therapist?\" said Ellen.\n\n\"Never mind. I'm not a therapist, and I'm not having an affair.\"\n\n\"One of my neighbors saw you bring a man here.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said. \"Gordon Skeetling. I'm organizing his papers.\" I told her quickly who he was and how I'd come to work with him. \"It's where I saw the headline about the two-headed woman,\" I finished. Then I added, \"Gordon and I were on our way to the library. I wanted to\u2014\" I hesitated, trying to think of something I'd legitimately want to do in her house, in her absence, that would justify bringing Gordon in. \"He loves old houses. I shouldn't have done it.   \nI just gave him a bit of a tour. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Oh, that's all right,\" Ellen said. \"Did he like it? What did he think of the mess?\"\n\n\"He liked the way the dining room windows look out at the backyard,\" I said.\n\n\"So you're not in love with him?\"\n\n\"I'm not in love with him.\" It wasn't a lie. I felt wonderful as I said the words, not because I was misleading Ellen, which did make me uncomfortable, but because as I spoke I felt totally at ease about Gordon. I loved being with him, I loved going to bed with him\u2014and we were going to do that only once more\u2014but I didn't love him, I wasn't going to love him, and therefore I was free and in charge. What I like is power. Who doesn't? But if it was that good\u2014if I was that free\u2014I didn't need to stop at five sexual encounters, did I? I was too wary of myself to abandon discretion entirely, but as Ellen chattered I decided I could add another five, which meant I had six more altogether. What good news.\n\nThen my discomfort about what Ellen had said made me want to appease her, so I told her about the murder conference, and how Pekko would object if he knew. At some point we calculated how much time had elapsed since we'd stopped working, and I said I'd stop charging her then. When I was finished talking, Ellen said she had something to show me, and it was several shoe boxes of clippings and flyers from 1970, from the time of the New Haven trial of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins. New Haven's most famous murder, the execution of Black Panther Alex Rackley, took place in 1969, before I came to town. Two local men did time for that murder, but Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins\u2014nationally known revolutionaries\u2014were acquitted of masterminding it. One of those convicted, imprisonment decades behind him, was now a respected counselor to former prisoners, running a New Haven program. He was on the list of speakers I planned to invite to the conference. (\"Your murderer,\" Gordon said. \"Of course you need one actual murderer.\")\n\n\"I can't tell Pekko,\" I said, as Ellen and I looked through the boxes. \"Where did you get this?\"\n\n\"I was very interested, at the time. You can borrow it. But I'd tell him, if I were you, Daisy. I couldn't think clearly about something as big as a conference unless I talked about it at home. And eventually he'll know all about it. It's open to the public, right?\"\n\nAt the time of the Bobby Seale trial, Ellen had demonstrated on the green, a young girl taking days off from college (Smith, an hour and a half away) to come home and participate in riots. She'd stayed at this house\u2014her parents' house\u2014while they argued with her. Ellen couldn't stop telling me the story, which was more about her parents than about the Black Panthers. But that was all right.\n\nI left her house, eventually, feeling that restless emotion that makes you know there's undone business. It's like sitting opposite a drawer that's slightly open, with a bra strap hanging out of it. You have to get up, stuff it in, and close the drawer\u2014but for me, the appeal is in not getting up. I don't get up for a long, long time. I like the slightly sick feeling of uneasy anticipation. I like to keep bad things from happening, while preserving the feeling. Now Pekko mustn't know about the conference or Gordon, and Ellen mustn't know what I did in her house. Yet I knew I'd keep on risking conversations with both of them, nearly telling, wondering if they'd guessed.\n\nI took Ellen's boxes, with thanks, and drove straight to Gordon's office, so I could leave them there. Gordon was on the phone. \"What was the name of that kid\u2014the girl who got killed? The famous murder?\" he called as I passed, apparently not surprised to see me, his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.\n\n\"Suzanne Jovin.\"\n\n\"No, a long time ago.\"\n\n\"Penney Serra,\" I said.\n\n\"No, the other one. The high school kid. On the green.\"\n\n\"Marie Valenti.\"\n\n\"What year?\"\n\n\"1976.\"\n\n\"Unsolved, right?\"\n\n\"Right.\" I went into the archive and waited until he got off the phone, though I could have put my boxes on a table and walked right past and out again. \"Marie Valenti,\" I heard him say. There followed half sentences and mumbles, while I looked out the window at nothing, irritated that he was taking so long but not knowing why it mattered.\n\nWhen he hung up he said, \"I did something good. That was the state forensics expert. I told him we'd do a whole morning on Marie Valenti, and he agreed to come. Maybe we'll solve it. We can put together everything anybody ever knew or said.\"\n\n\"Did he work on it?\"\n\n\"No, the original guy is dead. But he's aware of it, and he's willing to spend some time on it.\"\n\n\"Let's not,\" I said. \"I thought this was my conference.\"\n\n\"Of course we will!\" Gordon said. \"Why not? It's a great idea. Tell me if I'm wrong. He'd be a terrific speaker. I worked hard to get him interested.\"\n\n\"I think not,\" I said.\n\n\"Of course we will,\" said Gordon.\n\nI have a red, two-piece bathing suit, and I began carrying it in my purse, stuffed into a plastic bag, after Gordon and I swam off the shore near his house one day in late June. The water was cold. On some days, though I spent time in Gordon's office, I didn't have a use for the suit. Other afternoons, we might look at each other and start figuring out how long to work before leaving. Under the water, he'd work my bathing suit bottom down and, his trunks lowered, stroke me with his penis. Or I'd straddle and squeeze his bent knee. The cold water kept him from having enough of an erection to enter me then, but later we'd fuck vigorously in the still sunniness of his bedroom. I stopped counting our meetings, stopped planning to end the affair on schedule. It would be humiliating to form a resolve and abandon it; letting the future take care of itself seemed alert and mature. I was no longer some fool who thought occasions in bed should be numbered.\n\nSwimming isn't easy to keep secret. At night my bathing suit would be a sodden lump in its plastic bag. I didn't consider leaving it at Gordon's. Why not, I ask myself now, as I write. Did I fear that another woman would see it drying helplessly over the towel rod? Did I think that he'd blackmail me with it, or that I'd end the affair between visits and lose my swimsuit? If you'd asked me, I'd have said I wanted it in case I chose to swim when I wasn't with Gordon, although a woman can buy a second bathing suit. I didn't want to leave it in his power.\n\nI'd be too cheerful after swimming, cooled and refreshed within, with the tang of salt on my tongue or in my nose despite a shower. Pekko isn't a curious man, but he's sensitive, and something in my freshness would appeal to him. He'd often approach me himself the night after I'd been with Gordon. So I'd learn again why I needed both: my husband with his reliable, almost workmanlike attitude toward sex, and my lover, who fucked exuberantly and originally, talking all the time (often not about me or what we were doing), and who seemed eager not so much to please as to interest me.\n\n\"Here's this breast,\" Gordon might say. \"What shall I do with this breast? Hmm?\" He'd listen to know if I was in suspense.\n\nWe didn't go to Ellen's house now, though I sensed that she was encouraging me to use it, to leave my affair there as others left their detritus, and I understood that her role in collecting other people's leavings was not entirely passive. We didn't go to Ellen's, and of course it was better at Gordon's. We'd drive in separate cars because Gordon was generally done with work for the day. Even if he planned to return, I still took my Jetta. I'd learned the route quickly. Driving there was delicious: taking myself to my lover. And driving home was delicious, too. I liked to depart just a moment or two before he might think I would, sometimes while he was in the shower, or dressing. I'd make him kiss me good-bye shoeless, one sock on a foot, the other in his hand.\n\nOne night Pekko and I had a late supper of take-out Buffalo chicken wings and celery spears from Archie Moore's, a few blocks from our house. As we ate, a long-awaited thunderstorm began. Leaving our food on the table, we sat watching the rain and lightning from the top step of our tiny front porch, while Arthur stood behind us, nuzzling our backs and licking our ears. When the rain touched us, we moved inside, and I cleared the table in a desultory way.\n\n\"So are you still working with Skeetling?\" Pekko said, emptying bones into the garbage. \"I saw him at Clark's Pizza.\"\n\n\"Did you talk?\"\n\n\"Just waved.\"\n\n\"I'm still working with him.\"\n\n\"Just clearing his trash out? You're not doing a presentation about murder, are you?\"\n\n\"Well, I am,\" I said. I put our plates into the dishwasher, then sat down, pressing my feet into the floor. The thunder had diminished, and I could hear that the rain had increased. Nothing tentative about that rain.\n\nPekko stood in the doorway. \"You said you'd keep me informed.\"\n\n\"I couldn't think if I kept you informed,\" I said. \"Once you start giving your opinion, it's like a casual chat about sex with the Pope.\" But it was a mistake to mention sex when Gordon's name had just been spoken. \"Or a conversation with a vegetarian about how to cook steak,\" I said.\n\n\"Is it radio?\"\n\n\"A conference. At Yale. Not until October. Nobody will know about it except a bunch of desiccated academics.\"\n\n\"Not likely. What's the topic, New Haven: Murder Capital of America?\"\n\n\"No. It's about murder in small cities. New Haven is only one example.\"\n\n\"Which makes a difference?\"\n\n\"Pekko,\" I said, \"what do you want? Even the chamber of commerce doesn't advocate censorship.\"\n\n\"I'm not in favor of censorship, I'm against sensationalism,\" he said. \"This is scholarly sensationalism.\"\n\nI was angry. \"You give me no credit for sense, no credit for decency, no credit for intelligence\" was one of my comments. He sat down on the old, faded sofa and fell silent. I washed angry words over him with the speed and intensity of the rain, describing, for example, a panel discussion we planned on perceptions of murder in New Haven\u2014the difference between what happened and what people assumed happened. We'd be counteracting sensationalism,   \nI said.\n\nAfter a while, feeling safer if I mentioned Gordon impersonally, I began to complain about him. I had plenty of disagreements with him by now. I wanted to include in the conference a discussion of killings by police, including the shooting of Malik Jones, the young black man who'd been killed by an East Haven cop after a chase into New Haven. Gordon said I was losing my focus. Many people considered that killing unjustified, but it was not usually described as murder.\n\n\"It's a different topic,\" Gordon had said that morning with barely suppressed sarcasm, so his words came out as condescending baby talk. \"It's a different . . . topic.\" As I summarized the incident to Pekko, I realized I'd been accused of stupidity by each man. Pekko had become silent, sitting with his arms crossed, looking thicker in the midsection than he ordinarily does, leaning back. Sometimes when he does that it's kindness at work, an offer to take on your troubles, but at other times he's a police detective, unobtrusively running the tape recorder while you convict yourself. At last I stopped. The rain had lessened, but new weather hadn't come in. The air felt lighter but moist and warm.\n\nPekko didn't speak and didn't move, and then he did move, and made a sound\u2014the sound a child makes, breathing in so as to get enough breath to sob, the undercry before the crying. But Pekko didn't cry. He walked into the other room, and I stood and followed him. Now I stood while he sat down heavily in a lounge chair I'd bought him for his birthday the first year we lived together. He said, \"Daphne's claiming there's trash in the backyard of her building.\"\n\nI was glad to change the subject. \"Is there?\"\n\n\"Sure. I'm paying someone to take care of the place, but you only get so much.\"\n\n\"I guess she wants her kids to play outside.\"\n\n\"She says she wants to put in a garden.\"\n\n\"She has a lot of energy.\"\n\n\"Energy to leave phone messages.\"\n\nBut he wasn't changing the subject. \"When you start looking at things the way Skeetling does,\" he said, \"and I don't mean just because he's a professor\u2014when you start doing that but you can't see the whole picture, you get it wrong.\"\n\n\"Daphne gets things wrong?\"\n\n\"I have to allocate the resources I have. How does she think I charge cheap rents?\"\n\n\"Daphne's not like Gordon Skeetling.\"\n\n\"A partial view,\" he said, sitting up and clamping his hands on his knees. \"She's not like him. She just doesn't know, and she's not too bright. He's very bright.\"\n\n\"He's very intelligent. Why are you assuming this conference is Gordon's idea? Really, Pekko, it's mine. Fight with me if you want.\"\n\n\"It sounds like him. It's a way of looking at things as if they weren't attached to one another. If it's your idea, you had it in his office.\"\n\nI said, \"So he's a manipulator and you're not? You think you're aboveboard and he's sneaky? What about Denny Ring?\"\n\n\"Denny Ring?\" said Pekko. Denny had introduced me to Pekko in the first place, one summer night when Denny and I were walking and we stuck our heads into Pekko's frozen yogurt store. Pekko and I began dating, if that's what to call it, and he was enraged when he found out that I'd slept with Denny, that Denny wasn't just a young friend I counseled and helped. \"Aren't you the one who did a little manipulating in that department?\" he said now.\n\n\"I mean his death, Pekko,\" I said quietly. I hadn't mentioned what Charlotte had told me a few weeks ago. I'd been saving it. Now it would let me put together this conference in peace. Maybe. \"When he died, you told me he broke into the store.\"\n\n\"And he did.\"\n\n\"You didn't tell me he was in the habit of breaking in. That he broke in every night. That he lived there.\"\n\n\"How did you know that?\" said Pekko, rising, troubled; his face changed. How can I put it? His beard was suddenly sticking out at a different angle or something. \"How did you know that?\"\n\nHe had kept it a secret, and I knew he'd mind that I knew. He likes his secrets. \"You're not the only one in this city who hears things and knows things,\" I said. \"And I wish you'd leave me alone to act on what I know. To try and make sense of what I know.\"\n\nHe left the room. He barely spoke to me for days, but then he said nothing more about the conference.\n\nI wrote the above and then walked around the house for an hour, picking things up and putting them down, trying to remember exactly what I knew about Denny in the months before his death, years before that conversation with Pekko. Why didn't I know then that he was living in the store? If I had known, would I have considered it a problem to be solved, or just one more charming fact about that youngster, that dangerous child? I loved him for his unpredictability, his strangeness, his madness. He needed social workers and agencies, and I provided sex, talk, and an appreciation of his imagination, in his last months. Once, he rang the doorbell of my apartment at six in the morning. Pekko and I were seeing each other a few times a week then, but not living together. I'd sworn to Pekko I had nothing to do with Denny, and often I didn't. I never knew when I'd see him. That time, I was furious at being awakened, then interested in being lured out so early. He didn't want sex that day, just a walk in the dawn and breakfast out\u2014which I could pay for\u2014as soon as someplace opened. I don't remember asking where he'd spent the night. If I had, he'd have lied. But if he hadn't lied\u2014if he'd told me he spent it in the back of Pekko's store\u2014I might have thought sleeping there regularly was a good plan for this mercurial person. Maybe it was a good plan. If Denny had lived, settled down, and become, say, a drug counselor\u2014or settled down still further and finished college\u2014we'd consider the period when he lived in Pekko's store a helpful transition. Pekko would be a benefactor because he let it happen, pretending he didn't know. Which is surely what he thought at the time. The day Denny woke me at six, he wanted to look at birds: it must have been spring, when itinerant songbirds pass through East Rock Park. \"I didn't know you were a bird-watcher,\" I said.\n\n\"Birder,\" said Denny. \"Let's find the black-crowned night heron.\"\n\n\"Where is it on its way to?\"\n\n\"Oh, it lives here.\" But we couldn't find it that morning, and Denny got hungry before long.\n\nFor TheaDora's grown-up dress, Muriel and I went to Horowitz Brothers, where we first examined tall rolls of African cottons, tables of velvet and corduroy remnants, patterned upholstery fabrics rolled on long cardboard tubes. \"I have to see what's new,\" Muriel said, moving with her usual abruptness from table to table, then stopping to grasp silk in her hands\u2014briskly, as if she considered steel. Now that it was summer, Muriel's purple jacket was gone and she wore a purple tunic with her jeans. Her hair still stuck out in all directions. She had told me she worked as a crossing guard when her children were young, and that notion was so right I wondered if I'd ever driven past her corner. I could almost say I remembered a somewhat younger Muriel making the cars stop in every direction, holding them with her taut stance, her swiftly raised hands, while children scurried. Muriel and I bought eleven yards of a dark blue muted cotton print, and two yards of white piqu\u00e9 for trim. I had favored red and yellow, but Muriel talked me out of it. The dress would have long, roomy sleeves with French cuffs. Elastic at her wrists, Muriel said, would make TheaDora look like a rag doll or a child.\n\nI thought French cuffs would be too hard, but Muriel scoffed. \"Interfacing to give them shape,\" she said. She leaned on a counter near men's suitings, where it was quiet, and drew diagrams. Both of us avoided telling the salespeople what we were doing. We chose thread and zippers\u2014two neckline zippers and one huge one, intended for upholstery\u2014and half a dozen big white buttons.\n\nMuriel had come to Horowitz Brothers by bus, so I drove her home, to a small brick house in Hamden. \"Do you have time to work on it now?\" I said, when we drew up to the curb. \"Can I stay?\" It was about five.\n\n\"I figured you'd help.\"\n\nInside, we had a glass of water, standing in her kitchen\u2014which looked more conventional than I'd have expected\u2014then moved to her daughter's old bedroom, with matching maple furniture I didn't care for. In a hurry to begin, Muriel spread the fabric on the desk, then began cutting out the sleeves, measuring on her own arm, snipping and tearing the cloth. \"Sleeves are the part I've done before,\" she said. \"Sleeves are like any sleeves.\" Then she said, \"But roomier. Dolls don't have to move.\"\n\nShe made the French cuffs, and I hemmed them into place, once she'd approved of my hemming. I started moving toward the door after that was done, but Muriel said, \"You stay while I think this bodice. I have to think aloud.\" She didn't give me another job for a while, except listening. The phone rang, and she closed the bedroom door. I could hear her voice raised. She was flustered when she returned, and almost stumbled, snatching at a chair back. I went for Chinese takeout, and we ate a quick supper in her kitchen, which was full of appliance covers appliqu\u00e9d with apples. Other than that, I sat on the bed with my shoes off and watched.\n\nThe sleeves waited, draped on a chair back. Spreading the dark blue fabric on her daughter's old desk, cutting and pinning, pressing every seam on an ironing board, Muriel made two fronts with deep bust darts and sewed them together. A line of white buttons would run down the front of the bodice, but the dress would open in back, with the upholstery zipper. The waist could be nipped in a bit, even though there would be two of us, because TheaDora would have such wide shoulders. Muriel had me sew on the buttons, checking to make sure I spaced them evenly. \"Did that phone call upset you?\" I asked.\n\nShe stopped and looked at me, her glasses flashing in the light so she suddenly looked older, almost an old lady. \"Family.\"\n\nShe cut two wide pieces for the back, swiftly positioning her shears and gliding them boldly through the fabric. Then she stitched the big zipper in place. She pinned the front to the back, turned it inside out, brought a plate from her kitchen, and traced two evenly spaced necklines between the shoulders. \"Our heads have to be far enough apart so we don't get our earrings tangled,\" she said, as if she was sure she and I would wear the dress. Muriel wore big hoop earrings, and I like dangling ones. She took her big shears and cut two arcs, then slashed straight lines down the back below each neckhole. \"For the zippers.\"\n\nAt last we crowded in front of the dresser mirror and put our heads through. Muriel had placed the holes correctly, and we could turn our heads, standing side by side with our inner arms not quite touching, our earrings in no danger.\n\n\"We're the same height,\" I said. I discovered that I wanted badly to be Thea or Dora. I liked the look of Muriel and me in the mirror, our black and white faces\u2014both bossy, but each in a different way\u2014her poky, graying hair and my longer, blond hair. We backed up carefully and began to laugh at the discovery that, because the row of white buttons marked a middle, we did look like one person. We looked like a woman with two heads.\n\n\"Now I can finish alone,\" said Muriel, and for a second I felt the kind of desolation I supposed Thea or Dora would feel if the other said that. But it was close to midnight. I'd have stayed up all night to be the first to see the whole dress, but along with the rest of the cast I saw it finished a few days later, at the rehearsal. Muriel arrived slightly late, carrying a garment bag from which she drew the blue dress, holding it high and fluffing it. We laughed and cheered. She'd made two demure white collars at the necklines, she'd sewed in the neckline zippers, attached the sleeves, and sewed the side seams. The skirt was lightly gathered from a dropped waist. It fell to the floor with a deep, tightly gathered flounce to conceal four shoes.\n\nAll the adults tried the dress on\u2014all possible pairs, even men\u2014while Justine and Mo watched quietly and Cindy instructed everybody. Two by two, we carefully unzipped the big back zipper so as to climb in. We clutched each other and took care not to step on the fabric. As each pair took it off, the next two would withdraw a bit, turn aside, give each other advice, and put on the dress. Someone would run over and zip them up. Then we'd watch, and they'd walk toward us.\n\nThe men seemed tense but excited at being in the dress, and the women loved it. It was a dress out of a child's daydream, a daydream of being grown-up in a distant time, when women flounced and were glamorous. But being a two-headed person felt right, too, like something we dimly recollected from before birth. Were human beings once two-headed? Would a two-headed skeleton in a cave be the next discovery of some paleontologist?\n\nFor those not wearing the dress, perception suddenly changed, over and over. Two people were lost, laughing, in a swirl of cloth. And then a two-headed woman\u2014a great big two-headed lady, with white buttons down her front\u2014would stride across the room toward us. Over and over, we'd clutch ourselves, as if to make sure that, sitting there, we continued to retain the uncertain status we'd thought, until now, was inevitable\u2014the privilege and doom of being one.\n\nWhen my mother had a cold, around that time, she asked me to substitute for her at the soup kitchen, and there I found Daphne, who explained that she still owed some hours of community service. She happened to be standing between two fat people, behind a big vat of salad, and she looked tiny. But Daphne was tough, quick to refuse requests for extra tomatoes, shaking her head side to side so her light brown hair swung. I stood between her and a woman serving spaghetti. I handed out spoonfuls of canned peas, which many turned down. Daphne seemed just like Cindy, with Cindy's pointy roughness, like a tree that remains stubbornly twiggy and unleafed, deep into spring. I realized how intimately I'd come to know Cindy, her quick speech and hard little elbows, her body bumping into me as we all sprawled on the floor or scrambled to our feet. But I rather liked Cindy, while Daphne unnerved me. As before, her face when she wasn't speaking was defended, a little too flat. She concentrated on serving. \"You got four pieces of tomato. You have nothing to complain about, Frank.\"\n\nThe line speeded up, then slowed. I had time to look over the room, where a few dozen people, mostly men, ate their supper, some in conversation with those around them at the long tables, others looking down at their aluminum trays. As always, I noticed the incongruities\u2014the people who didn't look to me like street people\u2014and as always I sensed calm in that room, a shared noncommittal glance that did not make judgments, at least about feeling\u2014that let me, for one, feel what I liked, though I always feel what I like. What I liked feeling that day was desire for Gordon.\n\nAt Daphne's left, a tall, gray-haired black man served bread and pastries. I'd seen him each time I was there, and once he told me he was a retired school custodian and now volunteered at the soup kitchen several times a week. \"So how are you doing, Miss Daphne?\" he asked, when the line subsided.\n\n\"Can't complain,\" Daphne said, and then both said in chorus, \"But I do!\"\n\nHe laughed silently, and I wondered if the joke was his or hers or even my mother's. \"You know my mom?\" I asked him. \"Her name is Roz.\"\n\n\"Gabby,\" said Daphne.\n\n\"Oh, sure, Gabby. We call her Gabby,\" said the man. \"She claims she's older than I am.\"\n\nThere followed boring joviality about my mother's age, my age, and so on. Daphne said she was forty-four. Then she said, \"Your mom isn't the easiest lady I ever worked for.\"\n\n\"No?\" I said.\n\n\"The easiest lady I ever worked for,\" she said, \"wasn't a lady at all. She was a transvestite. I was supposed to think she was a lady. That was the only hard part.\"\n\n\"You mean a man?\" said my neighbor on the other side.\n\n\"What did you do for her?\" I said.\n\n\"I cleaned, but she didn't care, she just wanted to talk. Your mom likes to talk, too, but she's mad if I don't get anything done.\"\n\n\"What do you talk about?\"\n\n\"Regular girl stuff. Men.\"\n\n\"I didn't think my mother had much to say about men.\"\n\n\"You'd be surprised. We talk about Pekko a lot, of course. You can always talk about Pekko. She tries to figure him out. I gave up long ago.\" She seemed to think I'd take it for granted that Pekko had been her lover.\n\nI was furious. I was supposed to agree that figuring out Pekko is a challenging pastime, but I couldn't and wouldn't make friends with her, and certainly not over that. I had to say something, so I said, \"He says you're a good carpenter.\"\n\nDaphne had repaired and refinished that staircase in Pekko's single-room-occupancy building, and had now moved on to other projects there. Pekko said she was doing a decent job, and cleaning up after herself, unlike her predecessors. My mother complained that Daphne was slow.\n\n\"I'm great,\" she said. \"I know how to make joints and everything. These jobs don't use half of what I know.\"\n\n\"Why don't you work for a cabinetmaker?\"\n\n\"Cabinetmakers are particular,\" Daphne said. \"I don't do well with particular people.\"\n\nSuppertime was almost over, and soon we carried the remaining food into the kitchen. I found myself standing near Daphne again as we scrubbed a tabletop. The room had emptied. \"Pekko's hitting on me,\" she said, squeezing out a rag in a bucket of hot water. \"I thought you should know.\"\n\n\"What's that supposed to mean?\" I said.\n\n\"You know what I mean.\"\n\n\"Well, you'll have to deal with it,\" I said, moving toward the kitchen.\n\nDaphne spoke a little louder. I moved closer to her again, so she'd quiet down. \"He's trying to buy me off,\" she said. \"If I get good sex, I'm not going to mind having roaches in my kitchen and a leaky bathtub. Maybe that was me ten years ago, but now I've got kids. And I'm sorry to say this about your husband, but he's not as attractive as he once was.\"\n\n\"And I suppose you're getting prettier every year,\" I said. Yet she was ten years younger than I. I wasn't going to cry, and I wasn't so angry I'd scream, but I was hurt, hurt for my husband\u2014and for myself. I glanced at my watch, said, \"Have to leave,\" before Daphne could answer me, waved a good-bye to the people who ran the place, and left the building. In the last weeks I'd sometimes imagined Gordon, Pekko, and me as a lighthearted movie trio, an unlikely but blessed grouping that would never saunter together down a street in Paris or New York but should. But in my mind now, interesting Gordon stepped confidently on along the sidewalk, while Pekko and I remained behind\u2014old, clumsy, undignified.\n\nIt wasn't Daphne's opinion of Pekko that hurt, I understood the next afternoon. It was that she considered me so weak that she could wound me with a sentence or two. Lying in Gordon's bed, I had a sudden nostalgia for the day, not long ago, when I'd planned to sleep with him only once more, and had even thought I might stop where I was and just save that last time. If I still had that choice, I thought illogically, Daphne couldn't hurt me.\n\n\"What are you thinking, lover?\" said Gordon from his postcoital position next to me, under the thick, ivory-colored sheet. Now he propped himself up on his elbow as if to see which lover I might be, his straight, gray hair flopping down on his forehead, his blue eyes studying me.\n\n\"Do you have more than one lover?\" I said.\n\n\"Naturally,\" he said. \"I'm not going to remain faithful to my married lover, am I?\"\n\n\"Naturally not,\" I said. \"I was thinking about something that happened yesterday, at the soup kitchen.\"\n\n\"The soup kitchen? What were you doing there?\"\n\nI explained.\n\n\"Soup kitchens exist for the benefit of the beneficent,\" said Gordon, from his elbow. I reached my hand up to trace the line of his black, pointed eyebrows. Daphne would think I was powerful if she knew I was in the bed of a man with eyebrows like that, agreeing with him that he needn't be faithful.\n\n\"Hungry people do eat there,\" I said.\n\n\"People who like spooning out porridge serve it to people who like lining up for their porridge. 'Come and be humiliated!' 'Oh, thanks, I love being humiliated.' \"\n\n\"Not true.\"\n\n\"I used to date a woman who ate in a soup kitchen off and on for a year, though she had plenty of resources. She was in medical school.\"\n\n\"A doctor?\"\n\n\"Now she's a gynecologist.\"\n\nI was silent. I wondered how old she was. \"Look, that was years ago,\" he said. \"I'm dating someone else now, but I'm not thinking of her when I'm with you.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm not thinking of my husband when I'm with you,\" I said. \"I'm not quarreling with you about women. I don't understand fidelity. I never have.\"\n\nA gynecologist, I told myself, wouldn't give him AIDS. At least he was a snob. But a gynecologist who ate in soup kitchens might have been a complicated gynecologist. Dismissing the question of whether I was risking my life with Gordon, I tried to decide whether I had to defend the soup kitchen. He began kissing my neck, hard, and for a moment I was happy, because the intensity felt needy. \"Did you think I'd break up with you if you mentioned another woman?\" I said.\n\n\"No. You're not stupid\u2014and I don't think.\"\n\nBut he said it fast. Maybe we were equally needy. I took his bony head in my hands and kissed him girlishly, the way a woman in a blue print dress with long sleeves, a flounce, and white buttons down the front might kiss. Gordon pushed me aside so as to kiss my neck some more, aiming for the indentation in the front, thrusting his rough head at my throat, kissing. His hair was prickly against my skin. He kissed his way down until he was driving his head at my crotch, kissing and licking till he was breathless and I'd come recklessly, hither and thither on the bed. \"Right this second, you're the only woman in the world,\" he said, but a second doesn't last long.\n\nFor years, while Charlotte stayed faithfully married, I kept starting over with a new man. She'd had lovers before she met Philip, and hadn't forgotten the patterns of love affairs. With brief, sardonic laughter, we'd note \"the day he talks about his childhood,\" \"the day you go to the grocery store,\" or \"the day he criticizes your clothes.\" Then there was \"the day he tells you he's seeing someone else.\" I'd lived through that day several times in the long years when I had boyfriends who overlapped with others, who had girlfriends who overlapped with me. Charlotte and I distinguished between the early announcement\u2014\"Before we start this, you should know there's someone else\"\u2014and the late one, when he was seeing someone else because he'd decided you wouldn't do. \"Don't go hiking,\" Charlotte would say, when I'd begin to be tense about a man, because twice I'd heard about another woman on a hike in the woods.\n\nBut the process was surely different if you were married and he knew. I had no intention of telling Charlotte anything about sex with Gordon, but it was she I phoned\u2014when I couldn't stop thinking about Gordon's other women or woman, whether that made sense or not\u2014a few days later, in the middle of July. We met for lunch on a working day, although I'd rather see Charlotte at some other time. On weekdays she can't dismiss the inward, professional woman, and is perhaps too conscientious about looking steadily and speaking plainly. For most of the morning I'd been sorting books and papers\u2014speaking toughly, to little avail\u2014in Ellen's dining room, and I was so glad to be in the instant comfort of an air-conditioned restaurant that I almost said, \"Charlotte, I'm having an affair.\" I heard myself think it. I'd told no one about Gordon, and there was no danger. Yet Charlotte heard me, or heard something. \"Did you just sneeze?\" she said, as a waitress handed us menus. We were at Atticus, a big, brightly lit bookstore with a caf\u00e9. I'm fond of their gazpacho in summer. \"I have the feeling I was thinking so hard just now I missed something.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"God bless you, anyway,\" said Charlotte.\n\n\"Same to you,\" I said. \"What were you thinking about?\"\n\nI've always considered Charlotte beautiful. Now she's a grandmother, but I still love to look at her pale blue eyes. For a moment she stared, as if she was surprised that I'd want to hear what she was thinking, then took me at my word. She'd been thinking about scheduling a long weekend away with Philip, a topic slightly more interesting than it might have been because it concerned Olivia, who might or might not have a day off, and might or might not visit her parents if they were home. \"Boring,\" she said, stopping herself from a full analysis of this subject. \"Are you still working with the man who doesn't believe in foster care?\"\n\n\"I'm putting on a conference with him.\" That interested Charlotte, and I told her more about it.\n\n\"Is he still obnoxious?\" she said.\n\n\"He's never exactly been obnoxious. He's opinionated, certainly.\"\n\nI knew what I wanted to eat, but Charlotte had to read the menu and consider, so I had time to observe myself and know that something sad was occurring. The reasons not to tell her Gordon was my lover were clear to me, perhaps not reasonable reasons but my reasons. I said nothing more about him as we ordered and ate our lunch. But we talked about uninteresting subjects, then looked at our watches, signaled the busy waitress, and waited with too much attention, glancing over our shoulders, for the check. I took our money to the register and gave Charlotte her change, which she stuck into her skirt pocket instead of taking out her wallet. It's a habit; sometimes we've bought treats with money she finds in her pockets, as if she thinks fairies left it there. Remembering one of those times\u2014ice cream cones after Charlotte reached for a tissue and came up with a five-dollar bill\u2014I wished I had treated her to lunch. Maybe a gift would have kept her quiet. As we left the store, she turned the way I did, though her office was in a different direction, and said, scurrying slightly as if she thought I'd bolt, \"When I don't have a good time with you, I know you've got a secret. I'm tired of your secrets, Daisy.\"\n\nI stared without answering, and after a while she turned and walked the other way. At first I shrugged and walked on toward my car, parked a block farther down Chapel Street. I like what's unresolved. Trouble to be sorted out captures my attention, and in the past I've taken new interest in a diminishing friendship or love affair when I've sensed resistance. So I walked away, promising myself that Charlotte's censure would be worth it, because we'd have such a good time, not quite yet, arguing and fixing our friendship again.\n\nWaiting in the heat for a traffic light to change, eyeing the Yale summer school students in shorts; the street people, always dressed for cooler weather than we had (some were in coats and watch caps); the office workers looking uncomfortable in jackets\u2014I admitted to myself that irresolution with Charlotte was not fun. A sense of desolation claimed me, and when I got into my car, instead of driving the few blocks to Gordon's office, I drove onto the highway and all the way to Hammonasset Beach State Park on Long Island Sound, not far from where he lived in Madison. My red bathing suit was in my bag in case Gordon had wanted an afternoon together. Now, driving, I worsened my mood on purpose, imagining him on the phone\u2014since I wasn't there\u2014with a woman in another Yale office, jauntily proposing an afternoon swimming near his house, and some time in his bed. I was angry with Charlotte. What sort of friendship could exist without secrets? Had she no secrets from me? I'd be boring without secrets.\n\nThat evening I told Pekko about my afternoon at Hammonasset. \"I should do it more often,\" I said. \"It was too hot to work.\" It's a long, wild stretch of beach, with skinny, rocky peninsulas, and I told Pekko that going there had been a terrific idea. It's crowded on weekends, but on that weekday afternoon I saw mostly suburban women with kids. Pekko nodded noncommittally; he doesn't like to swim. But I was no more persuaded than he was. I had thought my afternoon at the beach would soothe and comfort me, but it didn't, and I began to feel a sense of irresolution that made it impossible   \nto sit still, or do anything useful. All I wanted to do was phone Gordon. And then I did, while Pekko walked Arthur. Gordon wasn't home, and I left a message: \"Don't call me, I just wanted to say hello.\" I regretted leaving any message as soon as I'd done it, as if I'd left something of value he might alter to his own purposes. What would prove Charlotte wrong would be a happy affair, the one I'd described to Arthur in that walk at the river. I'd stayed away from Gordon that afternoon so as to prove to myself I was free, to prove the affair was fun.\n\nThe next day I went to his office, and after I'd sat tensely for a while, trying to work as Gordon had incomprehensible phone conversations, I walked past him to the bathroom, and when I returned he followed me into the archive, talking in his light voice about the heat (\"Can't think, can't think . . .\"), then grabbing my arm, then becoming quieter and gentler, but no less insistent, as his gestures became caresses. But as I was chiding myself inwardly for my nerves\u2014and wondering what I'd do for a bathing suit, since I'd forgotten to return the red one to my bag\u2014he dropped his arms at his sides, shook his head, and said, \"Not a good plan today. Another day.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I said lightly, but I minded. As usual, his shirt\u2014short-sleeved, striped blue and white\u2014had worked its way free from his pants, and he stuffed it back where it belonged, and returned to his desk.\n\nIn some ways the weeks that followed, through July and into August, were better than the start of the affair\u2014just because I do like irresolution. Gordon made me as uncertain as an adolescent, needy for the phone or the touch of a hand. The last person who could make me wait that way was Bruce Andalusia. Gordon didn't ordinarily call me, because we couldn't talk much\u2014and anyway, he didn't see any point in discussing sex\u2014but now and then he'd have a professional question, and I anticipated those times too intently. I experienced anew the convalescent feeling (when he did want to leave the office with me, when he did phone) that makes minor illness such a pleasure for the young: pain succeeded by euphoria when pain goes. Identifying to myself what made me happy now, I recalled with pleasure even menstrual cramps, because of the moment when after hours of pain enough pills loosened the body into sleep, sleep and comfort. Postmenopausal, in July I became a connoisseur of pain that will dissipate, postponing even glasses of water in the heat, aspirin for headache, until I could no longer bear waiting for pleasure. I didn't want Gordon to swivel his chair around and start up with me at work, because I wanted to prolong hoping he would.\n\nI couldn't stop suggesting afternoon encounters, but I was no longer natural about it. I'd lost my sense of rhythm. I always wanted to do it, and twice he said no and didn't change his mind. Then one afternoon, his back to me, Gordon said from his desk, \"Can you go away for a weekend?\"\n\n\"Me?\"\n\n\"Who else?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" I said, before trying to figure out how that might be possible. Eventually I decided to tell Pekko I wanted some time alone, away. Pekko likes cool-weather vacations in cities with lots of jazz. He wouldn't want to come.\n\n\"New York?\" said Gordon.\n\n\"Not the country?\"\n\n\"I live in the country.\"\n\nNew York in summer wouldn't have been my first choice, but Gordon said, \"Hotels are air-conditioned.\" I told Pekko I wanted to sleep alone in an air-conditioned hotel for a couple of nights, visit my brother, and see a drawing show in SoHo I'd read about. My plans didn't sound quite plausible to me, but he made no objection.\n\nOur weekend took place a couple of weeks after we first discussed it. In the interval, one hot afternoon Ellen lured me into her backyard with iced tea. She talked about her married boyfriend. \"It would be simpler to have this out of my life,\" she said. \"I picture having picnics in the park with the children. Of course I could do that whether I'm seeing Lou or not\u2014I don't see him every day\u2014but I know I won't.\"\n\nI didn't say anything.\n\n\"If I go on a picnic, something terrible will happen to the children. A punishment for dating a married man. I'll take them to the top of East Rock, and they'll fall off the cliff and get killed.\"\n\n\"The monument on top of East Rock,\" I said, \"looks like an erect, circumcised penis. With a woman on top of it.\"\n\n\"That's true, it does,\" said Ellen. Then she continued, \"Remember when I told you my neighbor saw you going into my house with Gordon Skeetling, and you explained how he loves houses and wanted to see the shape of my dining room?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, startled that she'd remembered Gordon's name. I swallowed some tea. Maybe now I could get her to come inside and work.\n\n\"I didn't say so at the time,\" Ellen said, \"but she saw you go in with him twice.\"\n\nI said, \"What do you want, Ellen?\"\n\n\"You're going to tell me about it sooner or later, so why not now?\"\n\n\"I don't have time,\" I said. \"Sorry.\" I put down my glass and left by the driveway, without returning to the house.\n\nThat night or maybe the next, Daphne called when Pekko was out. \"I called to talk to him,\" she said. \"Some of the neighbors are pretty impatient. But there's something I've been meaning to tell you, too. Your mom feels bad about you. She keeps telling me she's worried because you haven't dropped in. She thinks there's something wrong that you're not telling her.\"\n\nI called my mother and yelled at her for talking to Daphne about me. \"I don't tell her any secrets,\" my mother said. \"I don't know any secrets.\"\n\nI never told my mother secrets, because I told so many people the history of my progress in and out of men's beds that secret wasn't the word, but my mother was one of the people I told. I don't think I talked about Denny to anyone but Charlotte, and I lied to her, minimizing the affair, but I talked about everyone else. As for Roz, she was never great at the comforting remark, but in my single days I did like dazzling her with a carefree tale of my recent exploits, reassuring myself as well that carefree was the right word. I'd point out to myself that if I were in love\u2014meaning needy and at risk\u2014I wouldn't talk to Roz. Now I hung up without persuading her she shouldn't have talked to Daphne. I might have been in her kitchen, bending my legs around her table leg, drinking iced tea or iced coffee (preferably iced coffee, but she didn't make it on purpose; she had it only when there was leftover morning coffee), and talking, giving myself daughter points for being there. I missed that happy woman, that me.\n\nMuriel and I got the part of TheaDora, though we were older than the other women, older than TheaDora. But we were the same height, and finally everybody thought that mattered most, as it did with the children. In the dress we looked most like one person. Cindy, now TheaDora's little sister, Hydrangea, tormented her. Cindy chanted, \"You have two he-ads, you have two he-ads.\"\n\n\"So what?\" I said. I was Dora.\n\n\"Now, Hydrangea, honey,\" said Thea, \"I want you to think about what you just said. How do you think I feel?\"\n\n\"We'll be late for work,\" Dora snapped.\n\nThea kept talking, but in practice, if I hurried, she fell into step. Dora's consciousness ruled. \"We have to go to the bathroom,\" I said once, just to see what would happen.\n\n\"You think I don't know that?\" said Thea.\n\nTheaDora worked as a carpenter. Invited by Ellen, Daphne came in from the corridor, where she lurked, to provide technical advice. Ellen was a brisk assistant director, quite different from the Ellen I knew at home. She wanted the play to be \"right,\" as she put it.\n\n\"I'm more interested in spontaneity,\" Katya said.\n\n\"Up to a point,\" said Ellen. As TheaDora staggered around the stage, enormous in her blue dress, the others tended to pair off and shout back and forth.\n\nAll but Hydrangea, a loner. \"You're always late to work. Why should today be any different?\"\n\nDaphne listed carpentry terms for us to use. \"One-by-four. Mortise and tenon.\"\n\nTheaDora was hired by Jonah, a foreman on a construction project who advocated affirmative action and was delighted to see her. \"You are not only a woman,\" he said, \"you are of mixed race!\"\n\n\"We are two women,\" I said as Dora.\n\n\"No, dear, we are a woman,\" said Thea.\n\nWe took our place in a line of people hammering. Jonah hammered, David hammered, and I hammered with my right hand while Thea held the nail with Muriel's left hand. As we hammered, Jonah said, \"Well, you certainly are a pretty girl!\" and Dora said, \"It's nice of you to notice, although we're two girls,\" but Thea didn't answer.\n\n\"What do you think, Thea?\" called Ellen.\n\n\"He's fresh,\" Thea said. Thea liked David, but Dora liked Jonah.\n\n\"We need a little more going on in this story, not just love and work,\" said Ellen, as Muriel and I climbed out of the dress at the end of rehearsal.\n\n\"TheaDora could witness a murder,\" I said, since murder was always on my mind these days. \"One head sees it, the other doesn't.\"\n\nDenise offered to murder Hydrangea.\n\n\"I don't want to be murdered. Then I can't say anything,\" said Cindy.\n\n\"You'll say plenty before you're murdered,\" Katya said.\n\n\"Can I die slowly?\"\n\n\"We'll think about it.\"\n\nWhen we went to New York, Gordon insisted on driving\u2014that is, he didn't merely insist on going to the city by car instead of by train, he insisted on taking his own car, which he'd drive. I protested, then left my car at home. It was a Friday afternoon, and I took a cab to Gordon's office. I found myself trying to decide what I'd do if he wasn't there, but Gordon was answering   \ne-mail. I waited in his extra chair rather than start up some project of my own. I hated waiting. At last he picked up a briefcase and an overnight bag. He looked different. He was wearing glasses, the glasses we'd chosen together. The frames were darker than I remembered. \"You're wearing your glasses.\"\n\n\"Sometimes the contacts bother me, so I don't use them for a few days.\"\n\n\"Are you bringing work?\" I said.\n\n\"Laptop.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Didn't you?\" he said.\n\n\"No. I thought this was a lovers' tryst, not a business meeting.\"\n\n\"Sex makes me want to work, and I expect to spend a lot of time on sex this weekend. And the hotel is expensive. If I do a little work I can take it off my taxes.\" He'd made a reservation at the SoHo Grand, after I'd mentioned the drawing show.\n\nNow we got into his Saab. Again he turned down my offer to drive. The traffic was bad all the way to New York. Gordon kept NPR on. We reached the city so late I was starving. I'd imagined falling into bed, but we checked into the hotel, washed our faces, and looked for a restaurant where we wouldn't need a reservation. We ate at a little Italian place in the West Village. Good salad. I had looked forward to unlimited conversation but\u2014oddly shy\u2014couldn't think of a subject. I talked about salad.\n\nThen he said, \"Want to see a show tomorrow night?\"\n\n\"I'd like that.\"\n\n\"Maybe we can get tickets. We should have planned.\"\n\n\"You said we'd just be going to bed and working on your laptop.\"\n\n\"Sorry, sorry. I don't like the theater,\" he said. \"Not true. I only like what's extremely good, and I don't like taking risks. Maybe that's why I didn't suggest it.\"\n\n\"You don't like the theater?\" I said, picturing our grubby troupe of amateurs, our endless conspiracy about the implications of the headline I'd first seen in Gordon's office. \"You know,\" I said, \"it's time I told you something.\"\n\n\"What's that, you're an actress?\"\n\n\"In a sense,\" I said. I ordered a second glass of Cabernet. \"You may not remember this,\" I continued. \"The day we met, you showed me your favorite headline.\"\n\n\"My favorite headline? I have a favorite headline?\" He looked at me, knife and fork poised above his plate, ready to disagree and be amused and amusing. I couldn't get used to his glasses.\n\n\"Two-Headed Woman . . .\"\n\n\"Oh, that.\"\n\nAnd so I told him about Katya, the players, and huge TheaDora in her blue dress with white buttons. When I'd told Charlotte, she'd listened with increasing glee, and I was proud of myself for getting involved in such a mess\u2014such a quintessentially New Haven mess, both na\u00efve and sophisticated. Its ethnic variety, as always in New Haven, was in part self-conscious and in part too ordinary to notice. I was proud of the play, too, as an effort of the imagination. I hadn't believed in it, but then I did. Not all the time. Sometimes I thought it was stupid.\n\nI finished my story and leaned back in my chair, reaching for my wineglass, examining Gordon's face for signs of admiration, looking into his eyes through the glasses. Just then the waiter asked if everything was all right. Was I still working on that? I was.\n\n\"Not as good as you expected?\" said Gordon.\n\n\"The play?\"\n\n\"No, the shrimp.\"\n\n\"The shrimp are all right.\"\n\n\"Oh, you want me to say something about the play. Well, better you than me.\" He smiled. Gordon had a jaunty smile, and when he'd smile at me, I'd calm down.\n\n\"You don't mind that I appropriated your headline?\" I said.\n\n\"Of course not. I don't own it. I didn't write it. Of course, there never was a two-headed woman.\"\n\n\"Did you ever read the article? Was it just a hoax?\"\n\n\"What else could it be?\" He shrugged. \"Are you done now?\" He signaled the waiter for the check.\n\nI felt buoyant from wine, but I knew we'd need to return to this conversation. Not now. Then I didn't wait. \"What's wrong with my play?\"\n\n\"Well . . . it's not really a play, is it? I mean, you're not playwrights. You don't have a dramaturge, a director . . .\"\n\n\"We have a director.\" We had two.\n\n\"Putting on a play that an audience will sit through isn't easy, even for professionals,\" said Gordon. He replaced his credit card in his wallet. \"Tell me if I'm wrong.\"\n\n\"You don't have to pay for me,\" I said belatedly. \"I know it's not good, exactly,\" I then added quickly. \"It has its own validity.\"\n\n\"I like paying for you.\" And we stepped onto the crowded Greenwich Village street on a warm but pleasant Friday evening. Gordon steered me straight back to the hotel, so I thought he was too lustful to wait, and I liked that, but once in our room, he turned on the television.\n\nPeople in the hotel and in the restaurant had assumed we were married\u2014you can tell when people don't find you worth puzzling over\u2014and like a married couple we fell asleep at different times, though we were spending the night together for the first time. I lay down on the bed in my clothes while he watched an old movie. I fell asleep, not wanting to stay up and pay attention to this weekend, this evening in a luxurious hotel room with the lights of the city outside. I awoke when I felt Gordon get into bed next to me. I rose, showered, and returned to bed, naked. Gordon was naked, too, I found, reaching for him across the unfamiliarly wide bed. He was awake\u2014or he woke up\u2014and he stroked my shoulder with his fingertips and then, shifting closer, my back. He took my face in his hands.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he said. \"It's been a difficult week. I should have told you.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"A woman I'd been seeing ended things.\"\n\nI drew in breath. We were naked, our knees drawn up, touching, our hands on each other's faces as we lay, our mouths inches apart.\n\n\"What was she like?\"\n\n\"Young.\" I watched his mouth shape the words, his teeth.\n\n\"Were you in love?\"\n\n\"This isn't fair to you, Daisy. You don't want to know.\"\n\n\"How long have you known her?\"\n\n\"Oh, a year or so. At first, we were just friends.\"\n\n\"Do you want to get up and talk about it?\" I said. \"Do you want me to put on the light?\"\n\n\"No. I want to make love to you.\"\n\nI drew him to me, feeling old\u2014not just older than a woman for whom there was only one adjective, young, but older than Gordon. I was older than Gordon, but only two and a half years. Now I felt decades older, my body supple with experience of man after man: supple but leathery, without sensation, like the skin of someone who's been out in so much wind and rain that now no weather stimulates the nerve endings. I thought of getting up and phoning Charlotte on my cell phone, in the bathroom (\"I'm going to tell you the whole story\"), but I stayed and let him suck my breasts, and then I was aroused, and came before he did.\n\nSaturday was better, at first. From the windows of our room we could see much of downtown, including the World Trade Center. Quick sex, breakfast, tenderness in the still-quiet downtown streets. Tenderness. Gordon put his arm around me as we walked and mumbled teasing compliments. \"Why, it's Daisy of New Haven, mysterious, sexy Daisy in her tight black pants with her nice little ass . . .\" He seemed glad to be where he was. We looked into store windows, walked, returned to the hotel for \"more and better sex,\" he said. We'd been hurried first thing in the morning.\n\nBut after sex that never quite concluded, he opened his laptop, still in bed with the covers over his knees. The hotel had an Internet hookup, and he checked his e-mail. Then he dressed hurriedly and left while I was in the shower. And didn't come back. When I stared out the window, the air looked hot, glittery, though the weather had been pleasant earlier. Maybe Gordon was sitting in the lobby, talking on his cell phone. I didn't want to see that, didn't want to see his intent face in those glasses. I dressed, left the hotel without looking left or right, and began walking north. I was hungry. I walked as far as Washington Square Park and sat on a bench, observing a young man managing a small crowd of retarded kids, who'd been walked here and then were walked away. Dogs made me miss Arthur. Old people on the benches talked to me. An old man claimed to remember me from years ago, and I eventually agreed that I'd been in that park before, though not often. \"You were a girl. A beautiful girl. You're still a beautiful girl.\"\n\nFinally I was too hungry to wait any longer but too upset to go someplace and buy food, no matter how many times I ordered myself to do so. I walked back to the hotel, I who rarely walk except with my dog, because walking feels less powerful than driving, and I like to think I am a powerful person. My feet hurt in sandals. My feet felt dirty. I was hot in my tight black pants.\n\nGordon was in the hotel room. \"Where were you?\"\n\n\"You left, so I left.\"\n\n\"I came back,\" he said.\n\n\"I waited a long time.\"\n\n\"I was back in twenty minutes.\"\n\nI'd been gone for an hour and a half or longer. \"I'm sorry,\" I said.\n\n\"Listen, I have to leave,\" Gordon said. \"It's not what you think. It's not the woman. Or, it is that woman, but it's something else. She and I have broken up\u2014that's clear\u2014but she needs me today, as a friend.\"\n\n\"You don't have to lie,\" I said.\n\n\"Look, I'll tell you. She had an abortion. She's at her parents' place in Westport, and she's bleeding. She doesn't want them to know, and she's scared. I'm going to drive to Westport and take her home, maybe to the hospital. She doesn't have a car\u2014she got there by train.\"\n\n\"How old is she?\"\n\n\"Oh, for heaven's sake, Daisy. I shouldn't have said she was 'young.' She's not that young, and I didn't mean it the way it came out. She's emotionally young. Not like you and me. Not able to take care of herself.\"\n\nHe had packed his things. He was checking the closet and the bathroom. Then he said, \"I wish you hadn't gone wandering around Greenwich Village like a fifties beatnik. I didn't want to leave you a note, and I've just been getting tense, waiting. The room is paid for. You can find something to do in New York, I'm sure, and go home on Metro-North. I love you, I want to be with you\u2014but I can't. It's our weekend. I know that. I should have canceled when I heard the abortion was this week, but that didn't seem right either. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Gordon, don't go,\" I said, though I don't say things like that.\n\n\"Please, Daisy.\"\n\n\"Never mind. I'm sorry. Of course, go. I'll be fine.\"\n\n\"You don't mind taking the train home, do you?\" And he kissed me and was gone.\n\nI lay on the bed with my eyes closed. Then I called room service. Then I called my brother and got his machine. I'd visit my brother. I'd go to the movies. I'd spend a night by myself in this fancy hotel. I happen to like going to the movies alone. I happen to like being alone. Gordon had said he loved me. I saw Pollock. I bought a book for the train. I ate ice cream in the New York streets. After many hours I came back to find a message from my brother, who invited me to lunch on Sunday. I called him back\u2014awakening his wife\u2014and accepted. Then I went to bed and couldn't sleep. Among other events, I remembered Gordon not believing in the play, Gordon persuasively dismissing the play from behind his glasses, as if nobody could take it seriously.\n\nWhen I called Stephen, he insisted that I take the subway to Queens but promised to meet me at the station. I felt elderly, unattractive, and not sufficiently in charge. Arriving at my brother's in a taxi might have helped, but he said, \"A taxi will cost you a million dollars, and the subway is faster. I'm leaving now for the subway station. I'll wait there all day if you don't come.\" My overnight bag bumped into me on the subway stairs. I inwardly blamed my brother but also felt obscurely and sentimentally grateful that someone else was making decisions. Gordon had said his girlfriend was emotionally young, unlike him and me, and I wanted to be emotionally young.\n\nI even had to change trains, but Stephen was right; it wasn't a bad trip. Still, as I stood in the second quiet station, waiting for the oncoming roar, I felt desolate. Pekko didn't miss me or wonder what I was doing. Charlotte was angry. Gordon was with the woman who had aborted his child. It had to be his child. He would be thinking of me as someone who cavorted around making up nonsense, who didn't know the difference between nonsense and a play. I was too selfish and trivial to grieve for the loss of his only chance, ever, to father a child. I wanted to be a triumphant woman visiting her brother, not someone who'd been left alone in a hotel by a man with more urgent plans involving worthier people. I wanted to be the one with urgent business. My brother in Queens, with his hushed museum job, is just a little bit like a loser, and I prefer seeing him at good moments in my own life.\n\nStephen was waiting just where he said he'd be, outside the turnstile, looking thin and dark, ironic, as if standing in a subway station was an inherently foolish activity. He took my bag and kissed my cheek. \"You look well, Daisy,\" he said.\n\n\"So do you.\" He looked slightly uncomfortable, but he always does.\n\nWe climbed the stairs, and he pointed to where he'd parked, at a not quite legal spot near a corner. We climbed into his Toyota. \"Marlene's having lunch with some people.\" His wife.\n\n\"What about Leah?\" His daughter.\n\n\"Away for the summer. She's working at a hotel in the Adirondacks.\"\n\n\"That sounds good.\"\n\n\"Maybe.\" There has long been something sad about Stephen. He made Leah's summer job sound as if it had just the remote possibility of tragedy, as if his only source of information about the Adirondacks was Theodore Dreiser. The terrorist attacks of September 11, a month later, didn't change Stephen, though he can't stop talking about them. For him, everything that happens successfully does so by an unlikely accident. I've fought and argued with him on that subject much of my life, but that day in August, settling into his car, for a moment I gave up trying to be the successful sister and wished I'd shared his almost Eastern European pessimism all along. I could say, \"I'm having my heart broken, but hearts are often broken.\" Instead I was Daisy Busy, with my calendar full of foolish plans and projects\u2014connections that existed, apparently, to hurt me.\n\nBut being me, I soon began, a little defensively, to tell Stephen what I'd been up to. I described working for Gordon, and the conference\u2014the aspect of Gordon that was going reasonably well. \"Off and on all summer,\" I said as we parked in his driveway and went into his little brick house with its patch of grass, \"I've been quarreling with Skeetling about Malik Jones.\" I explained who Jones was\u2014the young black man killed by an East Haven cop in a car chase. \"Skeetling says it isn't murder, but plenty of people think it's almost as bad.\" I told Stephen about the police report I'd read. There had been a report of reckless driving, and the officer had pursued two boys (both high on drugs, one out on bail) into New Haven, where he cornered them in a vacant lot. Jones backed the car toward the cop when he approached on foot. So the cop fired. All the witnesses said he had to fire\u2014once things had come to that point\u2014but nobody thought the chase made sense.\n\n\"I know it's not murder, technically,\" I said. \"I don't know why I'm so interested.\"\n\nWe went inside. I hadn't been there in years. Usually I saw Stephen in New Haven, and now and then we'd met in the city. As a clutter professional, I was struck by clutter's absence. Gray or brown chairs stood with space around them, as if they made do for larger pieces. Stephen had bought food for our lunch: Dr. Brown's black cherry soda, bagels, lox, and cream cheese. He set about feeding me.\n\n\"Usually, when there's a murder,\" I said, returning to my subject, while Stephen unwrapped lox and forked it onto a plate, \"it's all over and nobody can reconstruct it, not really, not even the killer. But Malik's death was witnessed. The death was not yet, and not yet, and not yet\u2014and then it was. Everyone had time to become afraid, but it happened anyway.\"\n\nI imagined Gordon saying, \"Fuzzy thinking,\"\n\n\"It had to happen,\" said Stephen, \"and it also couldn't happen. Most events have just one of those characteristics.\"\n\nThe phone rang, and we were distracted. Then we ate. Stephen told me a long story about the woman who supervised him at work. It took a while, because he wanted to complain but also to be scrupulously fair. I tried to care. After lunch we went out to the backyard\u2014a bit of untended grass with bushes around it\u2014and he dragged two plastic chairs into a shady corner. (If I show him what I'm writing, he'll read this. Last night he phoned and again asked to read it. But, Stephen, don't be offended, because the point is not that you were a loser but that I was. And you were brilliant. I'd forgotten about our initial conversation, but you hadn't. He hadn't.) After a pause, during which I felt sorry for myself just for being where I was instead of with Gordon, someplace else\u2014how different Queens is from Manhattan!\u2014Stephen said, \"When I cut up a bagel, I could do it or not do it. No big deal, either way. We could eat the bagel, or decide to go for dim sum instead. I considered that. There are great Chinese restaurants in Flushing. It's all Chinese now, did you know that?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Some things, the whole universe cooperates in making them happen. You visit here, you leave. I don't mean I'm eager for you to go, but your whole life prepares you to go back home, and mine prepares me to show you to the door.\"\n\n\"But?\" I said. I plucked blades of grass.\n\n\"But a killing\u2014when somebody kills someone else, or kills himself, or herself\u2014\"\n\nWhich was when I realized he was thinking of his old girlfriend, the suicide.\n\n\"Herself\u2014then everything is keeping it from happening\u2014this is not natural\u2014but also, everything has to cooperate to make it happen. It's so unnatural, how could it take place otherwise? It's a different kind of action.\"\n\n\"Is that why I want to think about murder? Explain me, Stephen. You hang around art all week. You must have learned wisdom.\"\n\n\"I hang around reproductions of art, in that store, but, yes. I think you are interested in a kind of choice, a very intense kind of choice that makes such a difference, that's so risky, that nobody could do it\u2014except people do. And when they do, they don't seem to choose at all, it seems to happen. When Michaela died\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"When Michaela died, I was positive it wasn't going to happen, because it just couldn't happen. Certain things just can't happen, or that's what I thought when I was a boy.\"\n\n\"Did you know, Stephen?\" He'd told the police, over and over, that he knew nothing.\n\n\"Oh, she'd been talking about it for weeks. I was so ashamed, when she really did it. I had no idea people could actually do such a thing.\"\n\n\"Do you mean, when I doubted you, I had guessed right?\" I wrote and rewrote that piece, again and again and again, explaining those doubts.\n\n\"I didn't kill her.\"\n\n\"I know, I know,\" I said. \"But it wasn't the way you said it was.\"\n\n\"No,\" he said. He paused. \"Michaela's been dead almost forty years,\" he said. \"I've been in therapy. I've talked about the truth, finally\u2014not much to Marlene. She's sick of it. This woman who died years before I met her, who had the same first initial. I don't blame her.\"\n\n\"Then my argument didn't make sense,\" I said.\n\n\"It made sense. It was based on a mistake, but it made sense.\"\n\nI didn't answer. Then he said, \"People who die young miss a lot of days.\"\n\n\"Maybe you'd still be together if she'd lived.\"\n\n\"Oh, probably not.\"\n\n\"It's true,\" I said then. \"Killing is so definite. Like stuffing an heirloom into a garbage can. What I do for a living.\"\n\nMarlene arrived then, as Stephen laughed, and we spoke of other subjects. Stephen hadn't asked me why I was in New York. He wanted to drive me back to the subway, but this time I insisted. I thanked him and hugged them both, then called a cab and settled into its backseat. The driver didn't speak.\n\nBy the time I paid my fare and climbed out at Grand Central Station, I was convinced that Gordon had invented the woman with the abortion, that he'd left to spend time in bed with still another woman or, likelier, simply left because he found me boring and stupid, me with my penchant for earthy community dramatics. I considered renting a car. I couldn't think of anything that might make me feel better except fast driving, but there I was at the train station, where a train was departing for New Haven in fifteen minutes.\n\nIt was starting to fill up, and I walked past one car, in which every window seat was taken. I wanted to sit alone if possible. The next car looked less crowded, so I entered and made my way down the aisle. \"What are you doing here?\" came an insistent voice, and I looked down into Muriel's still face, lit now by passing amusement at seeing me here.\n\nShe was sitting in a window seat. On one side of a Metro-North car, there are seats for two; on the other, seats for three. Muriel was sitting in a seat for two, and she had a dilapidated tote bag with red handles next to her and a purse on her lap. She was in jeans as usual, but she wore a denim blazer with a white T-shirt visible under it. She stared up at me as if I was a tourist attraction, her hair sticking out in all directions. After her initial smile vanished, she looked alert, with that look of hers that resembled anger. \"Been having a good time in the city?\"\n\n\"I went to visit my brother,\" I said evenly.\n\n\"Lucky you.\"\n\n\"What did you do?\" I said.\n\n\"I saw my mom in Brooklyn.\"\n\n\"I forgot your mother lives in Brooklyn.\" I stood in the aisle, my purse and overnight bag hanging awkwardly at my side. I wasn't sure I wanted to spend almost two hours alone with Muriel, but I couldn't endure one more dismissal. \"May I sit here?\"\n\n\"Of course.\" She pointed up, and I took the tote bag, put it on the overhead rack, put my own bag there as well, and sat down.\n\n\"I didn't know you were waiting for an engraved invitation,\" said Muriel.\n\n\"Polite people don't keep their luggage on the seat,\" I countered. We sounded like Thea and Dora, and I was tempted to tell her the story of my weekend, just to hear her defend the play.\n\nAs soon as I sat down, I was sorry. I could have greeted her cheerfully and gone to the next car, where I'd have been alone. Just to make myself feel even worse, I'd bought a novel that seemed to be about love with a bad ending, and I could have been indulging in that misery, shutting out the glaring fluorescent lights and the conductor's repetitive announcements. Now we'd have to talk for almost two hours. I was uncomfortable with Muriel's apparent bad mood. Maybe she also would rather read a book than talk. I felt what I hadn't felt before with Muriel\u2014that because she was black, I was too nervously conscious of what I was doing, and that my nervous consciousness, which made it impossible to know what might feel natural, was racist. And of course it was. Race wasn't an issue when we were inside that blue dress, but somehow on Metro-North it was.\n\nAt first, we talked about the play. \"We haven't figured out enough,\" she said.\n\n\"You want a meaning, like Jonah? I don't think that makes sense,\" I said, too quickly.\n\n\"No. It's just, how long is this play?\" she said. \"I think someone putting on a play should know how long it is. Are we at the intermission yet?\"\n\n\"You mean we don't know what we're doing,\" I said, laughing. \"Yeah, a friend of mine was pointing that out to me yesterday.\"\n\n\"A friend in the city? You didn't just see your brother.\"\n\n\"That's right.\"\n\n\"An old friend from your single days? Well, I don't have a problem with that,\" she said, and I didn't set her straight. I didn't want to ask how much of my story she'd intuited from the slope of my shoulders and the way my eyes looked, but I rested for a moment, silently, in her scrutiny.\n\n\"What's your mother like?\" I said then.\n\n\"She was never a nice lady, and she's not one now,\" said Muriel. \"But she's glad to have me come and take her out for lunch on a Sunday.\"\n\n\"Are you an only child?\"\n\n\"I have a brother. I had a sister, but she died.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"A long time ago.\" Muriel was silent for a while. \"A long time ago, but my mom's still angry that she lost her little churchgoer, and kept her little whore.\"\n\n\"Oh, is that how it goes?\" I said.\n\nHer big, serious head turned in my direction, and suddenly there came from her a laugh like a bark, startling enough that someone in the seat in front of us glanced behind him. \"I am still suffering from those early days you find so interesting,\" Muriel said, in a voice that sounded subdued, more refined than Muriel usually sounded, as if she'd picked up, that afternoon, delicacy from her churchgoing mother, who perhaps knew how to murmur. \"I am still suffering for the way I lived, and I can tell you that you may think I'm cool, making whore dolls and giving speeches, talking on the radio, but my mother and my brother do not think it's so cool.\"\n\n\"They want you to keep it a secret?\"\n\n\"They believe I should pray over my shame in private. And just now it's especially bad. And maybe I've said enough. Did you bring a book?\"\n\nSo I stood and took the novel I'd bought from my overnight case. \"Do you want anything from your bag?\" I said.\n\n\"No, thank you. I might take a nap. That might be quite welcome.\" Muriel tilted her big head against the window and slept, breathing quietly like a girl, and I tried to concentrate on my book. Eventually we arrived at Stamford, the first stop after 125th Street in New York. After that the stops come frequently, and the announcers give repetitious instructions for each station. \"Southport next. The head three cars will have to walk back. The head three cars will not platform at Southport.\"\n\nAt Bridgeport, Muriel woke up. \"My niece,\" she said then, as if there'd been no interruption. \"My niece, my brother's daughter, is an unusually beautiful and bright child, with brown eyes like candles. She is my darling, but the last time I saw her\u2014six months ago\u2014she was dead in the eyes. Do you know what I mean?\"\n\n\"How old is she?\"\n\n\"Seventeen. Honor student until a few months ago. Now they can't control her. They hear stories in the neighborhood, the teacher calls. Daisy, I spent the entire afternoon arguing with my mother and my brother\u2014he came over\u2014to let me see LaShonda, and they will not let me near her because I am not a respectable person. My brother is sorry he ever let her get near me. He blames me. She used to stay with me, sometimes. She is a bright child, a lovely child.\"\n\nAnd as I said, \"Oh, Muriel, Muriel, that's so bad,\" my friend snatched at my arm, my shoulder\u2014as if she was suddenly blinded and couldn't find them\u2014and then lowered her head and cried in-audibly, her shoulders shaking, into her own crossed arms. I couldn't move or speak, watching her cry. \"Is there anything I can do?\" I said at last.\n\n\"Like call up my brother and tell him I'm hanging around with a crazy white lady in a big blue dress? No, thank you.\"\n\n\"Is that my trouble? I'm crazy?\"\n\n\"No, you're not crazy. I'm all right.\"\n\nI offered to share a taxi when we reached New Haven, but Muriel was being picked up by her son, and she insisted they'd drop me off. We waited a few minutes outside the train station, and a big, dark car drew up. I got into the backseat while Muriel got in front and said to the driver, \"Hello from Grandma. Who wonders is she ever going to see you again.\"\n\n\"Why, she dying?\"\n\n\"No sign of that.\"\n\n\"Then I'll wait a couple of weeks,\" said the son, whom she now introduced to me. His name was Howard, and he turned and smiled at me, then reached over the backseat to shake hands. \"Your friend don't recognize me,\" he said to his mother.\n\nI couldn't see his face clearly in the dim car\u2014it was twilight\u2014but he didn't look familiar. He pulled away from the curb, and I began to tell him where I lived. \"I know where you live,\" he said, and laughed. \"Should I make you guess? I am your substitute mail carrier. Last week you told me your dog did not bite, and I told you I'd been told that before.\"\n\n\"Oh, my goodness, you're right, I'm sorry,\" I said. One more failure. I pointed out to myself that I'd seen him only once. But as far as I knew, he'd seen me only once. Now I remembered a mailman who made a joke about Arthur when I happened to come out as he sorted mail on our steps. I'd gone home in the middle of the day to get my bathing suit, just in case, though in the end I didn't need it that day. I'd had my red suit crushed in my hand, and my keys in my other hand. Embarrassed, I stuffed the bathing suit into my bag and took the mail. Arthur barked from the house.\n\n\"Thanks, Howard. I'll remember you next time,\" I said when he drew to the curb. I hoped it was true. I felt guilty and racist and silly, too self-involved to pay attention when someone spoke to me. I squeezed Muriel's shoulder as I climbed awkwardly out of the car, bumping myself with my bag. She had said nothing from the time she'd introduced me, as if that act of civility had used up the last of her will.\n\nMy house looked pretty in the summer dusk. I hoped Pekko wasn't home. I was sure he'd read the whole bad story from my face: how I'd lied to him, hurrying to New York in a na\u00efve, stupid fantasy of love, how I had not been pretty and interesting enough to keep Gordon Skeetling to myself for two days in the city, and even how I had not been able to help or comfort my friend in her trouble\u2014the size of which reminded me of the pettiness of mine, without making me feel any better. I was ashamed of my stupid grief, but no less grief-stricken. I kept reminding myself that Gordon had not broken up with me. Probably he would, any day, and I'd blame myself then for this hysteria. After all, nothing was wrong yet.\n\nI fitted my key in the lock and heard voices in the kitchen as I opened the door. Arthur came skidding and cavorting toward me, so I had to put my two bags on the floor and sink down to have my face licked, to grasp his muscular body.\n\n\"Daisy?\" came Pekko's voice. He sounded surprised. He must have assumed I'd have dinner in the city.\n\n\"I'm here,\" I said.\n\n\"Should I go?\" I heard a man say.\n\n\"Of course not.\"\n\nI picked up my possessions and walked into the kitchen, where Pekko and a man I didn't know were drinking O'Doul's from bottles. Pekko thinks nonalcoholic beer is pointless, so he must have thought well of this plump, middle-aged man if he'd picked up a six-pack. Or the man had brought it. He stood, a man in his forties, black hair slicked back, in a white shirt, open at the neck, and dark pants you'd wear to work. He had an eager look, a readiness to smile, as if he loved jokes but couldn't remember any, and depended on others to tell them. \"This is Edmund,\" said Pekko. \"My wife, Daisy.\"\n\nWe shook hands. \"I'm sorry,\" I said. \"I'm just back from New York.\" I felt unpresentable, my makeup old and my clothes wrinkled.\n\n\"How was your weekend?\" said Pekko.\n\n\"It was good,\" I said. \"I went to see Stephen. He gave me lunch.\"\n\n\"How's Stephen?\"\n\n\"He's fine. Thinking deep thoughts,\" I said.\n\n\"He does that,\" Pekko said.\n\nEdmund offered me an O'Doul's. I wanted a glass of wine. I hesitated, not sure if bringing out the bottle would be rude. Then I was too tired to look after this person of whom I knew nothing. If he was a recovering alcoholic who suffered when he saw others drink, he'd just have to suffer. I did everything wrong anyway. I might as well do that wrong too. \"What I need is Chardonnay,\" I said, \"and I think we've got some.\" I opened the refrigerator, found the bottle and a glass.\n\nThen I took my wine and said, \"I need to change my shoes.\" I thought I'd go to bed with my Chardonnay and stay until this man left, though I hated being in one more situation in which I couldn't or didn't take charge. I went upstairs, unpacked my bag, washed my face and repaired my makeup, changed my clothes. I felt unreasoning rage at Pekko for bringing home a stranger, unreasoning rage at the stranger. He looked nice, foolish and nice\u2014just the sort of boring person Gordon might expect me to hang out with.\n\nI didn't want to go to bed after all. I wanted to do something to somebody, and if nobody else was available, I could demoralize this innocent former drinker by drinking. So I went back to the kitchen. As I came down, Pekko was telling Edmund about his troubles with the former contractors.\n\n\"Edmund was my assistant, when I had the bike store,\" he said to me. That went back a long time. Edmund must have been a young assistant.\n\nI poured another glass, then sat on the faded green sofa. \"Do you still bike?\" I said. \"Pekko doesn't.\"\n\n\"Now and then,\" he said. He didn't look like an active man.\n\n\"We were thinking of going out for a pizza,\" Pekko said. \"Did you eat?\"\n\nI had had nothing since Stephen's bagel. I went along with them and drank more wine at Modern Apizza. Edmund seemed unperturbed. He discovered I had a mother who lived near me and expressed envy. His parents were in New Haven, he said, and that was why he came back here from where he lived\u2014somewhere a couple of hours away, apparently\u2014but he didn't see them often enough, and they weren't doing well.\n\n\"Did you grow up here?\" I said.\n\n\"We moved away when I was in high school, but my parents came back when they retired.\"\n\nI told him my mother had moved to be near me when she retired.\n\n\"That's great. But she must be a worry, too.\"\n\n\"My mother's just fine,\" I said truculently. \"She has more energy than I do.\"\n\n\"My mother's not too bad,\" he said, \"but my father's losing ground pretty quickly. Forgetful. I've just come from arguing with them about giving up the house.\" As we waited for our pizza, I felt sorrier and sorrier for myself, listening to this man, who had come from an intergenerational fight about whether the old people were too feeble to continue their lives and couldn't make them interesting. Charlotte would have made the story exciting. She often talked about the peculiarities and obstinacies of the old people she worked with, scrupulously omitting identifying details. But I didn't like thinking about Charlotte. When I thought of her disapproval, I imagined her laughing at me, though Charlotte isn't like that. I excused myself and left, looking for a phone. I found one, phoned Gordon, and got his machine. I didn't leave a message but returned to Pekko and Edmund, and slid into the booth next to Pekko. He patted my thigh.\n\n\"Now, how could he say he's a perfectly safe driver, after something like that?\" Edmund was asking Pekko, who shook his head solemnly. Pekko is never bored.\n\n\"What do you do for a living?\" I asked Edmund.\n\n\"I'm assistant principal of a middle school in Worcester, Massachusetts,\" Edmund said, and I almost laughed, he seemed so like the assistant principals of my youth.\n\n\"He counts paper clips,\" said Pekko.\n\n\"I once told your husband that one of my responsibilities is supplies,\" Edmund said, \"but I assure you, I spend plenty of time counting children, too. I was telling my mother,\" he continued, \"I don't have trouble with the mischief makers, but sometimes good kids need attention, too, and I'm less sure of myself with them.\"\n\n\"What do you do?\" I said. We had meatball pizza, and I'd eaten two or three slices. I wondered if I wanted another.\n\n\"I ask them to help me count paper clips!\" he said triumphantly, and as I laughed, I began to see why Pekko liked this man. \"That is, I find something useful for them to do, and I hang around and start talking about some problem of my own. That gets them started. I'm not too bright, and the smart ones see I'm not too bright, but sometimes they trust me anyway, because they need someone to trust so badly.\"\n\nHe paused, then said, \"Nobody ever has an easy time,\" in a slightly admonitory tone, as if I was a shy child in his office, too shy to be bad but in need nonetheless. I was not too shy to be bad but I was in need. \"Children's anxieties are as bad as those of adults,\" Edmund continued, \"but it's worse, because when it's the first time, they don't know it's ever happened before. No boy has ever disappointed a father before. No girl has ever lost her boyfriend.\"\n\n\"Does anybody learn that it's not the first time?\" I said, quieted. I minded Gordon's departure from New York as much as if nothing had ever happened to me.\n\n\"Maybe not,\" Edmund said, and I found myself taking unforeseen comfort from a counter of paper clips. The waitress brought our check. \"Maybe nobody ever does.\"\nCurled sycamore leaves\u2014faded green with brown edges\u2014lay at the curb on Temple Street on the Thursday after the weekend in New York. It had been hot and humid all week. Would we still be lovers in the fall? I hadn't seen Gordon since he walked out of the hotel room. I'd done little, making appointments and breaking them. I considered phoning Charlotte and didn't; I wanted to go to Gordon's office and didn't, though there was work to be done. By Thursday I'd stopped hoping he'd phone. I figured out when to arrive at his office, leaving time for work plus swimming and sex. I spotted his Saab as I hurried along the street, but when I went inside he was standing, gathering papers hastily.\n\n\"How are you?\" I said, standing in his doorway, my arms around a big, stuffed loose-leaf binder in which I carried everything   \nI needed for work on the conference. The office wasn't air-conditioned\u2014Yale took Gordon seriously, but only up to a point.\n\n\"Hi, Daisy. Awful weather. I'd have called you, but I have a feeling it isn't a good idea to call you. Tell me if I'm wrong. How was the drawing show?\"\n\n\"I went to the movies. I visited my brother.\"\n\n\"Stephen.\"\n\n\"You could have called me,\" I said. I'd waited at home all day. Pekko wasn't home during the day. \"Are you leaving?\"\n\n\"I'm meeting with that guy in city planning about the project in Schenectady.\" I couldn't remember what Gordon was doing for Schenectady. \"I said to him\u2014your place. He has air-conditioning.\"\n\nI should have continued through his office and begun work. I'd been making calls from home about printing the brochure for the conference, but now I had to call the speakers to confirm their time slots. It was almost time to mail the brochures. I'd been compiling a mailing list and making labels. The printer would do the mailing, which would arrive just after Labor Day, when with any luck the weather would be cool and people would be energetic, looking for something to do, a reason to leave home. I'd lure them to New Haven. By the end of the conference, in October, everybody else would have learned what they learned. As for me, I'd know something more about killing, how it can become the next event in a series, how an action that wasn't going to happen becomes an action that has happened.\n\nBut I stood in Gordon's office, twisting my hair like Cindy. If he didn't say something now to renew the affair, it was not quite\u2014surely not quite\u2014the same as if he'd ended it, but almost as bad, as though we were lovers day by day, like travelers in a hotel who must inform the proprietor if they wish to extend their stay. I wanted a lease. It crossed my mind that Gordon\u2014like me at the start\u2014might have decided we'd go to bed a fixed number of times. \"Thirty-two,\" I imagined him thinking, climbing out of bed at the SoHo Grand. \"That's it.\"\n\n\"Did you choose the design?\" he said. I'd had a couple of mock-ups of the brochure.\n\n\"I don't have to let them know until I give them the copy, and I can't do that until I talk to a few more people.\"\n\n\"People are away. They're hard to reach.\"\n\n\"Don't worry.\" I'd had long conversations and lively e-mail exchanges with my proposed speakers. Everyone who'd promised to speak would come to my conference.\n\n\"Gordon, let's pick a time to go to your place, okay?\" I said then. I couldn't help it. \"If not now, whenever.\"\n\n\"I'd rather keep it spontaneous,\" he said.\n\nI forced myself to pass through his office into the archive and get on the phone. Before leaving he interrupted me, coming to my doorway. \"Have you talked to the man who's going to speak about Marie Valenti?\" he said. \"When is that scheduled for?\"\n\n\"The last morning.\" I hadn't been able to think of a good enough reason to cancel that discussion. Gordon was right\u2014it was a little bit of reality inserted in a theoretical few days: Who killed Marie Valenti? I'd pretend Pekko had never spoken.\n\nAs I sat there, not turning to look at him while he stood in my doorway and asked two more quick, impersonal questions, I remembered Pekko's friend Edmund, his kind eyes ready to hear something funny. His eyes had met mine as we both reached for the same slice of pizza at the same moment. We laughed, and he pulled his hand back. I pictured that hand\u2014a little pudgy, quite pale. Now the thought of it, the hand of a man I wasn't attracted to sexually and had never touched, comforted me as Gordon also left without touching me.\n\nI worked for a while, not well, then found myself thinking of a reason to go to Ellen's house despite the heat. She'd probably be home, and wouldn't mind my coming without an appointment. She didn't want to be away from New Haven while her lover was here, and he wouldn't be here much longer. I drove to her house and rang the bell. I was businesslike, and within a few minutes, though she'd proposed drinking iced tea instead of working, we were going through a closet together. I heard the children's voices from the backyard. A heavy coat in her arms, Ellen suddenly turned and let it fall to the floor. She held out her practiced hands. \"What?\" she said. \"What?\" I pictured myself falling into her arms, but I said, \"Some of this could join the pile upstairs.\" That's how we'd taken to working at her house\u2014I colluded with her. We didn't throw anything away, but we organized everything into ever more precisely defined piles. Her children both now hopped from room to room, which wasn't strictly necessary but made the point. She and I walked demurely in narrow paths like ladies with parasols.\n\nShe shook her head and smiled. As we worked it started to thunder, and I left, so as to drive in the rain. I took a long drive, just to be driving, before I went home. My hands, aching for Gordon's body, squeezed the hard steering wheel. When I came home at last, Pekko was sitting in the living room, patting the dog and watching the storm. He seemed larger than usual. His knees were spread, and he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, listening as if to distinguish mood and tone in the thunder. He opened his left arm, and I nodded, then busied myself for a few minutes, too restless to settle. I went to the bathroom and washed my face. I drank a glass of water and stroked the dog, who had come forward, quieter than usual, when I entered, and now followed me expectantly. I looked at the mail. Then I returned to the living room and sat down, leaning back against Pekko's arm. He put his hand on my shoulder. It was five days and some hours since Gordon had touched me. I began to cry, though I never cry. I cried with the sheer exhaustion of wanting. Pekko didn't ask questions but rocked me forward and back and pulled me closer.\n\nThe storm lasted a long time. When I thought of wine and went for a glass, the air had cooled so quickly that opening the cupboard door released distinctly hot air. I brought Pekko a glass of ginger ale, and I drank some Chardonnay. Then he put his arm around me, and we walked upstairs to the bedroom, where he undressed me and we lay until we were chilly before turning to each other, thrusting our tongues into each other's mouths. I didn't care that he was he and not Gordon\u2014I'd always liked both.\n\nAs we lay naked, satisfied, in the new, cool air, I thought again of Edmund reaching for the pizza and pulling his hand back. \"Did Edmund kill Marie Valenti?\" I said. \"Is he the one?\"\n\n\"Let's not talk about that.\" Pekko climbed out of bed, and I heard him pad to the bathroom, piss, flush the toilet, and return. I wanted Pekko to get back into bed with me, and he did. We lay in silence. So Edmund, who could pull his hand back from a slice of pizza, had stabbed a woman he loved to death. Was it true? What did I learn, knowing Edmund, knowing that about him?\n\nAt length Pekko said, \"I might have been wrong about Daphne, all those years ago. I thought it didn't matter much to her.\" All right, we would change the subject.\n\n\"It mattered,\" I said.\n\n\"I'm not Cindy's father.\"\n\n\"I know that,\" I said. \"But what does she want now?\"\n\nHe sat up, turned away from me, and put his feet on the floor, so his wide hips and big thighs were what I saw, not his face. \"Just to make trouble.\"\n\n\"She says you hit on her.\"\n\n\"She can't imagine decency,\" Pekko said. \"She thought I gave her a break with the rent so she'd go to bed with me.\"\n\n\"Is that what it was like before?\"\n\n\"Oh, no,\" Pekko said. \"Nothing like that. No, it was good before. It was good but she was married. And screwed up.\"\n\nI touched the side of his hip.\n\n\"She wants different paint,\" he said, \"I buy her different paint. I don't know what I'll do with the paint I already bought. If she scraped properly, she wouldn't need different paint.\"\n\nDaphne was working in a second building now, stripping and refinishing a different staircase and stairwell. \"You think it's easy, an apartment house, somebody constantly working on the staircase?\" Daphne resisted what Pekko told her to do, claiming her instructor had taught her something else. Meanwhile she and her neighbors complained about their house. There were bugs despite fumigation. The plumbing needed work. \"Well, of course,\" Pekko said. \"You can't replace plumbing just like that.\" A tenant with small children claimed there was lead paint in her apartment. Daphne had called a newspaper reporter about that, and then called in the fire marshal, who gave Pekko a summons for a blocked hallway, just because he'd allowed tenants to leave things.\n\n\"Why didn't you tell me all this?\" I said.\n\n\"It's boring.\"\n\n\"What does she want?\" I said again.\n\n\"Oh, she's sincere. She's bringing about justice.\"\n\n\"She's not doing this because she's mad at you?\"\n\n\"I guess she was mad at me to start with. She acted friendly, but I guess she never got over all that, way back. But right now she's on a crusade. She's saving the poor by living among them.\" He had stood up, somewhere along here, and slowly begun to put on his clothes. We went to Basement Thai. I was glad Gordon lived in Madison, but people in Madison may spend an evening in New Haven. As we left the restaurant, I thought I saw his Saab pass, with two people inside. A woman in the passenger seat with long, dark hair had turned sideways. I could not see her face, which looked toward the driver.\n\nMy mother kept calling, and at last I suggested we meet for lunch downtown.\n\n\"Clark's Pizza?\" she said.\n\n\"All right.\" Gordon might come in. But surely not with a woman, unless it was a business lunch, and maybe I could stand that. I agreed because I hoped he'd come in, but he didn't.\n\n\"I know what the trouble is,\" Roz said, peering out from under her white curls as soon as we'd put down our menus. This was a Thursday, one week after the day I'd seen him. I'd been in the office several times, alone.\n\n\"What trouble?\"\n\n\"Daphne's been hinting at this all summer. I have to tell you. She's in love with Pekko.\"\n\n\"No, she's not, she's trying to ruin him.\"\n\n\"People are complicated, Daisy. But I am sure you're not going to lose him.\"\n\n\"To Daphne? Of course not.\"\n\nShe glanced in both directions, but the booths near us were empty. \"But it's been worrying you,\" she said. \"I know it's been worrying you.\"\n\n\"No, Mom, it hasn't.\"\n\n\"Then what?\" I could have insisted I was fine\u2014but I couldn't insist I was fine, so I told a truth that was less humiliating than the exact truth. \"Oh, you know me. There's someone I like. That didn't stop just because I got married.\"\n\n\"With you, I assume there's always somebody. I hope you can keep it within reasonable limits.\"\n\n\"You mean, stay out of bed?\"\n\n\"Or at least be careful.\"\n\n\"That's my mom. To tell you the truth, it happened, a little, it's over, and I'm fine.\"\n\n\"You got it out of your system.\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" I said. \"Did Daphne finish your kitchen cabinets?\"\n\n\"She never gets around to the last coat of varnish. She's one of those people who doesn't do the last thing, so you can't pay them and end things. But I don't want her to stop coming to see me.\"\n\n\"She's interesting,\" I said.\n\n\"To be fair, with the humid weather, it didn't make sense to put that coat of varnish on. But now she should do it. It's almost fall. Schools are open. It's cool today\u2014I wish I had a sweater.\" It was cool, though it was still August.\n\nI asked my mother if she'd like to help with publicity for the play, and she had a couple of ideas immediately. We had a small budget, and I gave her Katya's number. I'd eaten as much lettuce from my Greek salad as I wanted\u2014as had happened once, I thought I remembered, with Gordon\u2014and I was finishing olives and feta cheese as she enumerated all she might do, sounding like me. Cool weather had brought on list making in her, and as I listened, I began to make my own inward lists, of all I had to do for the conference. List making was a comfort. Enough lists, perhaps, and I could manage this affair.\n\n\"She's more sensible than she seems, that Daphne,\" my mother said, after a silence. \"At first I thought she had to be exaggerating, because I know Pekko is a good landlord. But now I'm not so sure. Reporters are interested\u2014newspaper and radio.\"\n\n\"She's crazy,\" I said.\n\n\"Have you ever seen the building?\"\n\n\"I don't even know the address,\" I said.\n\n\"Oh, I know the address,\" said my mother and reached into her bag. \"It's in Fair Haven. I dropped Daphne off once. It looked all right, but she says that's deceiving. Here it is.\" She handed me a piece of paper. \"What I wanted to say, honey\u2014you're going to keep him, but you'd better pay attention.\"\n\nWhen we separated, I couldn't imagine why I wanted to drive straight to Daphne's house and look it over, and then I did know why, and I did drive there. Of course, it was what Roz intended. She was saving my marriage, somehow, by making me find out about that house, what was or wasn't wrong there. My father died many years ago, but the expression I imagined on my own face now was one I'd seen on my mother's during his lifetime, a tolerant alertness for the peculiarities of men. You loved them, you trusted them, but you kept an eye on them.\n\nBut I wasn't thinking about Pekko twenty-three hours a day, I was thinking about Gordon. I had to see if Pekko's building was a wreck, because I had to know it wasn't, so Gordon wouldn't think even less of me if he ever found out\u2014wouldn't think I was married to a slumlord. I was fighting the image I'd had when Daphne was so difficult at the soup kitchen: Daisy and Pekko, a couple of old fools. I was discovering something marriage does: it defines you, in part, as the sort of person who'd marry whoever your spouse is.\n\nThe building was on a quiet street full of two- or three-family wooden houses, most covered with aluminum siding. Fair Haven is a neighborhood much like my own but older, with bigger trees, and poorer, with vacant lots and, lately, buildings here and there being briskly put to rights by some community-minded effort. Pekko's building was a rickety, red three-story frame house with two doors: two attached three-family houses. It needed painting. I didn't think all the apartments were floor-throughs, so quite a number of people lived there. I parked and went up on the porch. A wall of tidy steel mailboxes was inside a locked front door. I hurried back to my car, unsure what I'd learned, but before I could reach it, another car parked and Daphne got out, shaking her limp, tan hair from her eyes, looking like a teenager who'd borrowed her mother's car. She'd obviously seen me, but before she spoke she locked the car deliberately and deposited her keys in a tiny black purse on a long cord, which she hung from her shoulder. Then she said, \"What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"My mother gave me the address. I wanted to see if it was   \nso bad.\"\n\n\"I'll show you.\"\n\nHer apartment was not attractive\u2014a dark kitchen; ugly green appliances\u2014but I didn't see anything to interest a newspaper reporter. The bathroom was worse. Daphne invited me to press my hands on the broken tiles in the shower, and I could tell that the wall behind them was porous, crumbling. Tiles had fallen, more would fall. Some were stained from leaks. Most convincing was the smelly basement, full of junk, dangerous to children. Traps were set for rats and roaches.\n\nWe climbed the stairs. \"You see?\" she said. \"I don't know what he's trying to do. Bribe me to keep silent by being nice to me? He gives me a break with the rent, he gives me fatherly pats on the shoulder . . .\"\n\n\"You said he made a pass at you.\"\n\n\"One day it seemed like that . . .\"\n\n\"Well, which do you mean?\" I said. \"He's giving you the apartment so you'll go to bed with him, or he's offering to take you to bed to shut you up? Is bed a treat or not?\"\n\n\"How should I know?\" Daphne said. Pekko was nice to her because he's nice. He might have gone to bed if she wanted it, except that she was too unpredictable. He didn't take that kind of risk. Or maybe he believed in fidelity. I found I didn't know if he did. Maybe he did. Probably, come to think of it, he did. I thanked her for the tour and drove away, thinking of Pekko for once\u2014Pekko who had acquired too many properties and bestowed too many favors, so he couldn't care for his holdings as he should. With stubborn goodwill and stubborn cynicism, he thought it was better to house ten people under some kind of roof than five under a roof that didn't leak. Pekko didn't believe good could be done neatly. He had an instant suspicion of anything that wasn't for profit\u2014some profit to someone. I'd hoped to find out, in my tour, whose side I was on\u2014Daphne's or Pekko's. I hadn't been married to Pekko long enough to side with him without an investigation, or maybe I'm the kind who could never do that. Now I thought he was laying himself open to trouble, doing too many favors for mixed-up people who could turn on him. Certainly there was enough wrong with the place to satisfy someone who wanted trouble. What I saw made me angry with Pekko.\n\nAs I signaled to turn at the corner, a man came walking around it, and I was startled, because I knew him but couldn't place him for a second. Then I recognized him: Edmund, the man we'd had pizza with, the man who'd looked at me sadly and kindly when he sensed I was troubled\u2014the man who had probably killed Marie Valenti. He walked with his head slightly tipped back and that same eager expression on his face: as he walked down the street, even a stranger might tell him a joke. He didn't notice me as I drove around the corner.\n\nThe sight of Edmund made me remember I'm a curious person, someone who likes to know, who likes to do. I was pleased to be the kind of person who glances from her car and spots someone with an interesting secret\u2014which I knew. I still had the list-making energy I'd felt when my mother and I talked about the play, and propelled by that energy, maybe I could work at Gordon's office without feeling the risk I'd felt there lately. I walked in energetically. Gordon sat at his desk, large and floppy-haired. \"How're you doing?\" I said and walked past him, still feeling all right.\n\n\"You?\" Gordon said.\n\n\"Fine.\"\n\nI had seven phone messages. Speakers needed information. Caterers responded to my questions. We'd serve food\u2014muffins and coffee in the mornings, and lunch one day.\n\nI hung up the phone after several calls to see Gordon leaning Gordon-like in my doorway, one hand exploring the top of the frame as it had done many times, all that summer. His arm rose from the short sleeve of his shirt. His palm measured the depth of the molding in the frame, then one finger at a time stroked it, perhaps feeling the paint for tiny imperfections\u2014not as Pekko would, so as to evaluate the paint job, but as a tactile accompaniment to his thought, as if he brushed a drumstick over the surface of a drum, just barely shaping a series of notes.\n\n\"Who's going to talk about Malik Jones?\" he said.\n\n\"A retired New Haven cop and a black sociologist.\"\n\n\"Do they claim it was murder?\"\n\n\"There's some notion of wrongful death. His mother's suing for wrongful death.\"\n\n\"I still think it blurs your argument to include it. And it takes away from other topics.\"\n\n\"Like Marie Valenti.\"\n\n\"Oh, Marie Valenti. That might have been a mistake. The guy from the state bores me on the phone. These unsolved cases\u2014when you first come across them they seem exciting, but there are an awful lot of them. I think it's the exception when they do get solved, and maybe after a certain time it never happens.\"\n\nI grunted. Wanting him while talking of other things made me tired, but I was stunned with tenderness, despite myself, for the unimpeded space in Gordon's mind, the roominess of a head\u2014and he did have a large, roomy head\u2014so uncluttered with memory, association, and the workings of the imagination that thoughts could pass through it with the freedom of a hang glider leaping from a mountainside into the empty air above a treeless valley. That's how I wanted my clients to be, once I was finished with them: thinking without impediment in unblocked air, after they wrote me a check and ushered me out the door. But nobody except Gordon could think that freely. He didn't even know that he'd changed his mind. He didn't imagine my memory of the old idea.\n\n\"Let's get iced coffee,\" he said.\n\n\"Why not?\" I said, though I didn't have time.\n\nWe walked up Temple and through an alleyway, past the Bryn Mawr bookshop and onto Whitney Avenue, where we were stopped by someone I'd often seen, a woman who offered to recite Shakespeare for money. She was thin, imperious, a graduate of the Yale School of Drama who had found a way to act despite illness and trouble. Gordon looked impatient\u2014mystified\u2014but I nodded, and this time she spoke not Shakespeare but a speech from Euripides' Medea. Her voice was rich, and her black eyes moved with authority and sanity in a dark-skinned face with strong cheekbones. I teared up as I took in her pain, Medea's pain, my own. I thought Gordon would hurry away and say something disparaging, but to my surprise he handed her a dollar. Then he took my elbow and steered me down Audubon Street to Koffee? which is usually full of students staring at nothing, then typing on laptops, then staring again. Now it was almost empty, with summer school over and the fall term just beginning. We bought iced coffee and sat at a table in the back, looking at a small, grassy park, a self-conscious urban amenity but a good one. Across from us, in the back window of the Foundry Bookstore, a hand-lettered sign, which has been there for years and years, read, you could be drinking koffee? and reading now if you had bought a book here first.\n\n\"Iced coffee season's almost over,\" I said.\n\n\"I drink it year-round,\" said Gordon. In the long years of my single life, I'd sometimes seduced a man with a touch, perhaps to his hair or his wrist. Once I did it by unbuttoning a man's cuff as he sat next to me. But most often I simply asked, and either he'd been wondering or the question itself was enough to evoke desire and will. This time it was no game, and I didn't know how to make Gordon go to bed with me again, now that he seemed to have let the habit lapse: it was almost two weeks since New York. I could all but hear a woman breathing behind him, a woman with long, dark hair, for whom I couldn't design a face. As I looked past him into the Park of the Arts, filled with frisky teenagers, I thought that if he didn't invite me to his house, his white bed, that afternoon, I'd be helpless to continue moving through the complicated life I'd succeeded in arranging for myself, which I had thought was mine.\n\nI'd just given the final schedule to the printer. Gordon talked about the layout skills of the woman who'd designed the brochure, about one thing we might have done differently. \"It's fine,\" I said. \"It's clear, and it states the days of the week as well as the dates. That's all that matters.\"\n\nHe still thought he'd have done one thing differently.\n\nGordon didn't imagine, so I couldn't try to make him imagine taking me to bed. Lately, asking seemed to arouse resistance. Syllogistic reasoning did not come naturally to me. If I could stop thinking it was over, I'd be fine, but I couldn't stop thinking he wanted it to be over.\n\n\"Do you want to stop being my lover?\" I finally said, playing with my straw, regretting my words.\n\n\"No. Why, have you had enough?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"It's a busy time,\" he said.\n\n\"How's your friend? The woman who had the abortion.\"\n\n\"Fine. We're not in close touch.\"\n\n\"That must have been hard,\" I said.\n\n\"For her?\"\n\n\"And for you.\"\n\n\"Well!\" He shrugged. Then he said, \"What's excellent about you, Daisy-love, is directness,\" and I was fine for three seconds. \"You must be a nuisance in the cast of that play, though.\"\n\n\"Oh, everyone in that group is outspoken.\"\n\n\"But from the way you described the group, you're the only one who might, well, bring to it a more ambitious awareness.\"\n\n\"I'm not ambitious.\"\n\n\"Of course you are.\"\n\n\"Not about the play,\" I said.\n\n\"Ambition doesn't make distinctions. People like us\u2014we need everything we do to achieve a certain level.\"\n\n\"I suppose that's so,\" I said.\n\n\"If I did want to stop,\" he said then, \"stop our\u2014afternoons\u2014or stop for a while, would you mind?\"\n\n\"Of course I'd mind!\"\n\n\"You're not in love, surely?\" he said. \"Because I love you, but I'm not in love with you.\"\n\n\"I'm not in love,\" I lied. \"But I want to give you a present.\"\n\n\"What sort of present?\"\n\nI'd had an idea, and then I'd had a different idea. The first idea was that Gordon would think better of me if I could surprise him with some fact he'd like to know, and the fact was that I knew who murdered Marie Valenti. I could tell him what I knew, making him promise not to tell\u2014or even not making him promise. I didn't even know Edmund's last name. Nothing could come of my knowledge. I had no idea why Edmund was living in an apartment Pekko had rented him, or sometimes living there. I was powerless. Maybe that was the lesson I'd needed to learn about myself. I had thought of myself as a woman who could make events happen, but maybe I was a woman who gazed at events as they took shape before me. It would be unfair to Pekko to tell, but since it would do no harm, it would be no more wrong than the wrongs I committed against him whenever Gordon did invite me into the bed with the fluffy white comforter.\n\nThat was the first idea, and it made the second one possible. I didn't need to tell Gordon about Edmund. Knowing I could made it unnecessary. He was attracted to me. He loved being my lover. We didn't need to have this competitive conversation, hurting each other with nonsense about being in love or loving, whatever that meant. It meant nothing. Anything I did that shifted his attention even a trifle would work, I now knew. So I'd buy a book, as the sign I faced suggested. I told Gordon that I'd seen birds I couldn't identify at the shore near his house, and that I knew there was a new bird guide. \"Maybe the Foundry has it,\" I said. \"I'll buy it for you.\"\n\n\"I'd like that,\" Gordon said, and for some reason I thought of my young self turning down a Marimekko dress\u2014which I'd have loved to own and wouldn't have bought for myself.\n\nWe bused our table, as instructed by a sign on the wall, then walked around the corner and down a short flight of stairs into the bookstore, which is below ground, as if to suggest that reading is private, that reading's a secret vice. Henry, the proprietor, who's known for plaid shirts and suspenders, was in long sleeves for fall. \"Hi, Daisy,\" he said. \"Hi, Gordon. Didn't know you two knew each other.\"\n\nHenry had the book, and Gordon watched quietly while I paid for it. Outside on the sidewalk again, holding the book between us, we turned the pages, looking for shorebirds. Our hands pushed against each other as we each tried to control the book and our investigation of it. I made a joke, just because I felt so much better\u2014for no reason. Then I said I ought to get back to work. I knew he'd invite me home, and he did. We took two cars. I kept seeing his on the highway, changing lanes just ahead of me.\n\nIt was too cool to swim, and too late in the day. We hustled into the house and into bed, as we had the first time, ignoring birds. His hands were all over me. I said, \"Shall I get on top of you?\" and he murmured no and pushed my shoulders down, vaulting on top of me. Then he thrust himself into me from above. I couldn't remember why I had thought he wanted to end it, but I also imagined it might be the last time, as if affairs never persisted from summer to fall.\n\nAfter he'd withdrawn from me, Gordon put his hand on my belly, and we lay silently for a long time. His hand was warm and heavy. I wanted to get up and pee, but I had to stay and keep his hand there. \"I know who killed Marie Valenti,\" I said.\n\n\"What do you mean?\" I didn't have his full attention yet.\n\n\"A high school friend who'd moved away. He came back that night. They'd dated, but so briefly nobody thought of him. Pekko's known all along. A school administrator in Massachusetts. His name is Edmund. I've met him.\"\n\nGordon's hand stayed on my belly for a few moments longer. Then he took it away and sat up. \"No shit,\" he said.\n\nWhen I left, alone in my car, I didn't dare imagine being in bed with Gordon again. I imagined the conference, the discussion of Marie Valenti's murder\u2014boring for others, interesting for Gordon and me, who I pictured on opposite sides of the room, taking it in and saying nothing, each knowing exactly what the other was thinking.\n\nEarly in September, Katya said we'd begin rehearsing twice a week, and after discussing everyone's elaborate schedules, we held an extra rehearsal on the evening of Sunday, September 9. Ellen asked me to drive her and Justine because her car had been unreliable, but I thought she wanted the time with me, and I was glad. I had no intention of telling her about Gordon, but in my mind I told her the whole story many times: receptive Ellen, Ellen the receptacle. When I picked her up it was almost dark. Justine was waiting on their deeply shadowed porch as I drove up, and she called into the house, then climbed into the backseat of the Jetta. \"Mom's talking to the sitter.\"\n\nEllen got into the car next to me, fluttering and hesitating. \"I wanted to say,\" she said, \"the dalliance ended.\"\n\n\"I know what you mean, in case you're talking that way for my benefit\" came Justine's voice from behind us.\n\n\"If you know what I mean I don't want to know it,\" said Ellen.\n\n\"You don't seem too upset,\" I said.\n\n\"I ended it.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Scruples.\"\n\nBut when we reached the theater\u2014we were now rehearsing where we'd perform\u2014she sent Justine in, then turned and burst into tears. \"Of course I'm upset. It was the best thing in my life, other than the kids.\"\n\n\"What kind of scruples?\"\n\n\"Not scruples,\" she said. \"Fear.\"\n\n\"I know about that,\" I said.\n\n\"I figured you did.\"\n\nTheaDora went hiking in the forest in her big blue dress, accompanied by her younger sister, Hydrangea. Some discussion about the proper route. Katya offered a piece of paper they could hold and look at, and Daphne promised to provide a map. TheaDora's hands snatched the paper, one hand trying to position it so Thea could take a good look, one hand favoring Dora. They could go nowhere until both heads agreed, so it made sense to follow Hydrangea, who scampered back and forth across the stage. \"I'll make trees,\" Daphne called. \"Plywood trees.\"\n\n\"We take the left fork,\" called Thea.\n\n\"We already took the left fork,\" said Dora.\n\n\"That wasn't a fork.\"\n\n\"Of course it was.\"\n\nAt that moment a scream was heard, and Denise ran across the stage in front of us, followed by Chantal. Thea studied the map and looked to the left, ignoring Denise, but Dora looked directly at her, and Chantal raised her arm, imaginary knife in hand, and stabbed Denise, who fell dead. Dora began to scream, \"Police! Police!\"\n\n\"What happened?\" cried Hydrangea, who had run ahead and seen nothing.\n\n\"Murder! Murder!\"\n\n\"What?\" said Thea. \"What happened?\"\n\nChantal had fled through the woods. Now, after weeping over the body of this stranger, TheaDora and Hydrangea began hiking back for help\u2014crossing and recrossing the stage.\n\nChantal returned. Alone on the stage, she said, \"Killing her was easy. I brought the knife just to scare her. Then she said something bitchy. I knew it was sharp. I moved it toward a place on her arm between two freckles. They showed me a place to go. I thrust the knife between those freckles, and then she was bleeding and screaming, running away from me. She ran, I followed, and when I reached her, I pushed it as hard as I could into her body.\"\n\nJonah appeared, chased Chantal, and caught her. He led her offstage, and the next scene was the trial.\n\nDenise was the judge, Jonah was the prosecutor, and David was the defense attorney. Chantal was the defendant. TheaDora was the witness.\n\n\"Do you recognize the defendant?\" said the prosecutor.\n\n\"I do,\" said Dora.\n\n\"Well, I don't!\" said Thea.\n\n\"See,\" said Jonah. \"She does.\"\n\n\"Objection!\" called the defense attorney. \"Half of her doesn't!\"\n\n\"Where were you at the time of the murder?\" the prosecutor asked.\n\n\"I was right there,\" said Thea. \"I was looking at the map. But I'd have seen a murder. I didn't see anything.\"\n\n\"But we have the body,\" said the judge. \"The question is, Is the defendant the person who killed her?\"\n\n\"Couldn't say,\" said Thea.\n\n\"Yes!\" said Dora.\n\n\"I have a confession to make,\" said the defendant.\n\n\"So do I,\" said the judge.\n\nThe defendant confessed to the murder. She had never intended to do it, and would never get over it. She was prepared to spend her life in prison, where she would dedicate herself to the welfare of her fellow prisoners.\n\n\"Now it's my turn,\" the judge said. \"I used to be a doctor. I quit and went to law school, and later I became a judge. The reason I quit was that I was the doctor who delivered TheaDora. TheaDora, I didn't think. Later I was sorry, and I tried to find you, but your parents had moved.\"\n\n\"What are you sorry about?\" said the defense attorney.\n\n\"I said you were one baby, but I was wrong. The more I thought about it, the more I knew that two people can live in one body. Thea and Dora, you're twins!\" The judge banged her gavel on a table we'd set before her.\n\n\"In that case, we can both marry her. Marry them,\" said David. He explained that law was a second career for the prosecutor and him as well. \"We were the carpenters who fell in love with you. It was an intolerable situation. To distract us, we quit carpentry and went to law school.\"\n\nThea had been in love with David all this time, and Dora in love with Jonah.\n\n\"Doc says she's twins,\" said Hydrangea.\n\nLiving in New Haven, one is never alone\u2014though not in the way Thea and Dora were never alone. Wallace Stevens writes about the difference between \"New Haven before and after one arrives,\" and I think he means that New Haven is in your mind before you get there; when you do, there's the real New Haven and the imagined one as well. But I think \"New Haven before and after one arrives\" also means we change it by arriving, because it's just small enough that everyone matters\u2014or seems to\u2014though not as in a small town in which you can keep track. It's a city, but not an anonymous one. If you cry on a street corner, someone you know will drive by, or walk past, looking. On vacation, I like going to a place where I know nobody.\n\nDaphne had left the rehearsal early. Ellen said Cindy was sleeping over at her house and added her to our group. As we were walking to the car, a little sweaty, Ellen said quietly, \"It's all right not to tell me. I like secrets\u2014I mean, secrets I don't know. I know you have a secret, and I'll help you own it, even though you don't want to talk to me about it. You can lie to me, too, you know. I don't mind lies.\"\n\n\"My friend Charlotte can't stand it when I lie.\" I laughed and looked at her more frankly than I had in the past.\n\n\"That kind of friend is useful too,\" she said.\n\nI dropped them off and drove home. Arthur met me at the door. As I had the night I came home from New York, I heard voices, but these were the voices of a man and a woman. Daphne and Pekko were sitting in our kitchen, Daphne looking small and accused on the big sofa, clutching a glass of what looked like water, Pekko at the table with his own glass. \"I'm sorry,\" Daphne said when she saw me. \"I meant to be gone by the time you got home. How was the rest of the rehearsal?\"\n\n\"Okay, I guess.\"\n\n\"It better be okay. The performance is in a month.\"\n\n\"More than a month.\" Mid-October, after the conference.\n\nDaphne stood. \"I guess we've said all we have to say, Pekko,\" she said.\n\nPekko stood too but said nothing. I stood in the doorway, my hand playing with Arthur's curls. I took a step toward the hook where the leash hung. I'd walk him, so I wouldn't have to find out what Daphne and Pekko had been discussing, and so I could be alone for the first time in hours, persuading myself that more times with Gordon would come.\n\nSo I reached toward the leash, and Arthur was starting to wag, when Pekko said, \"Wait.\" He raised his hand and let it fall. \"Wait, Daisy.\"\n\n\"What?\" I said, and he didn't answer.\n\nDaphne said, \"I tried to be fair. But he's not listening.\" She wore a skimpy tank top that wrinkled over her flat chest, and shorts that were quite short, though the weather was cool. Daphne never wore bright colors, and her clothes often seemed chosen to match her   \nno-color hair, yet there was something appealing about her. \"I want results,\" she said. \"I want results that already happened.\"\n\n\"You want what nobody can give you, Daphne,\" Pekko said. \"Free rent\u2014\"\n\n\"I said I'd earn it.\"\n\n\"You can't earn it. You think you know what you're doing, but you don't.\"\n\n\"Look, I'm going,\" Daphne said. \"That isn't the important part, anyway. The important part is the condition of the building.\"\n\nShe walked toward the door, and neither of us followed her. Then she turned and said, \"Just so you know, Daisy. We're having a rent strike, starting tomorrow. Nobody's paid the September rent, and nobody's going to. We'll be picketing this house in the morning. The Register's covering it, and maybe the Advocate and Channel 8.\"\n\nArthur saw her to the door. She left it open, and I followed her to close it, then returned to Pekko in the kitchen. He was still sitting, drawn up to the table as if to eat a meal. As so often, I was looking at his back. \"I'm sorry,\" I said.\n\n\"I'm a slumlord. That's what they're going to say. All over the paper.\"\n\n\"You're not.\"\n\n\"Of course I'm not.\"\n\nI sat down and put my hand on his big, muscular arm with its gray hairs. \"But, Pekko,\" I said. \"What she wants\u2014 Can't you do some of what she wants?\"\n\n\"Which puts her in the driver's seat. Which lets her say I admit I'm a slumlord.\"\n\n\"Nobody will take it that seriously. There's a lot wrong with that building. You could send in a crew tomorrow. There's bad plumbing. Bugs.\"\n\n\"I'm not a slumlord, Daisy.\"\n\n\"I know what you're doing. You're stretching yourself thin so you can take care of all these people. Daphne. Edmund. Is Edmund living in that building?\"\n\n\"He just needs a base there, so he can help his parents. Please don't tell anybody. Did Daphne tell you?\"\n\n\"I happened to see him there.\"\n\n\"You were there?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"I was there. I wanted to see for myself.\"\n\nHe pushed his chair back, so he was farther away from me. \"And what did you think?\"\n\nI stood up. There were a few dishes on the drainboard, and I began putting them in the cupboard to give my hands something to do. \"I didn't like what I saw. You're not a slumlord, but you seem like one. How do you expect people to understand what you're doing? You make no effort to explain yourself. And I think you could do a little better. You don't have a lot of money, but you can fix the place up a little better than that.\"\n\nHe didn't say anything. There was a tiny nod, as if to acknowledge the answer to a question. \"She's organized my other buildings,\" he said.\n\n\"I don't even know how many buildings you own,\" I said then.\n\n\"You don't?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Well, four. You didn't know it was four?\"\n\n\"I suppose I could have figured it out.\"\n\n\"You don't seem like my wife, Daisy,\" he said. He stood up, slapped his knees, and began to leave the room.\n\nI was enraged. \"I don't seem like your wife! How can I sympathize with you? You never say anything. You are secrets piled upon secrets. You know who committed a murder twenty-five years ago, and you don't go to the cops\u2014you have no\u2014\"\n\n\"You're not going to the cops, are you?\" He turned faster than I'd have thought he could move.\n\n\"Of course not. Of course not\u2014if you don't\u2014\" I said. \"But why is it a secret he lives in your house? If he does? If nobody knows, why can't he just stay anywhere, like anybody?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" he said. \"I know it's important to him.\"\n\n\"I don't believe that's the whole story,\" I said.\n\n\"Sometimes you have to trust me. Why did you marry me,\" he said, \"if you don't trust me?\"\n\nI stopped shouting. I put the plate in my hand on the table, as if I were setting the table, and then I sat down at my place and said nothing more.\n\nNever being alone means you are part of what you didn't agree to and responsible for what you didn't do. I knew why I married Pekko. I'd always liked sex with him. I recognized his goodness. I was titillated by his mysteries. I felt huge affection for him, when I wasn't exasperated. But I didn't marry him in the way my mother married my father. I didn't open a joint account with him\u2014not at the bank, not metaphorically either. After a while I stopped sitting there and went to bed. I didn't walk Arthur, but Pekko did. He came in late, and I woke for only a moment when he got into bed.\n\nIn the morning, Pekko was not in bed. I lay listening. When I came downstairs in my robe, he was filling the coffeepot. \"Are they here?\" I said.\n\n\"They're here.\" He was dressed and had brought in the Times.\n\nI went to the window. In front of our narrow Goatville house, on our undistinguished street, three women\u2014one small white woman who, when she turned, was Daphne, two black women, one big, one small\u2014walked wearily back and forth on the sidewalk. Daphne held a poster in her hands. I couldn't make out the words.\n\n\"They look tired already,\" I said.\n\n\"They got up early.\"\n\n\"How long have they been here?\"\n\n\"Six or so.\"\n\n\"What are you going to do?\"\n\n\"There's nothing to do.\"\n\nWhile we ate breakfast, a reporter called. I answered the phone and handed it to Pekko, then listened as he refused to comment.\n\n\"I can't stand that,\" I said, as he hung up.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You want me to behave like your wife. All right. As your wife, I object to your saying nothing.\"\n\n\"If I don't want to be quoted, it's a good idea to say nothing.\"\n\n\"They'll say you refused to talk. Call her back and say something.\"\n\n\"What? What do you want me to say?\" he said, pushing away his coffee cup and standing. \"I'm going to the office.\"\n\n\"Are they picketing that, too?\"\n\n\"I suppose.\"\n\nAll I wanted then was to stop him. I put down my bagel and cup of coffee, and stood, putting my arms around him, holding him so he couldn't leave.\n\n\"What is it?\" he said.\n\n\"I love you.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Pekko. \"I love you, too. But let me do what I have to do.\"\n\n\"What do you have to do?\"\n\nHe wrested himself from my arms. \"Look. In a city like this, if all the apartments are beautiful, a lot of folks will be homeless. I do what I can.\"\n\n\"Can't you tell them that?\"\n\n\"No. I can't. Partly because I don't want anybody looking over my books\u2014and partly because I don't want anybody looking at Edmund, thinking about Edmund, noticing Edmund.\"\n\n\"But why should they?\"\n\n\"I don't know, but I'm sorry I told you about him, and I'm not going to talk to any media people and take any more chances, whether that makes sense to you or not.\"\n\nPekko drummed his knuckles on the table vigorously, and Arthur thrust his head into his lap. \"Daisy,\" he finally said, his voice sounding odd, with less resonance than usual, \"will you come with me?\"\n\nI almost said no. I had two appointments that morning, and I had hoped to get through them quickly so as to go to Gordon's office, because I had plenty to do, and because I was always hoping for more with Gordon\u2014more sex, more fighting, more disappointment, more anything. And I don't believe in agreeing to do what you don't want to do. I could make lengthy arguments having to do with the uselessness of unwilling sacrifice, even when it's small. And there's my habit of doing right every other time. Or, better, my belief that I'm half good. I thought Pekko should fix up his houses. I thought he probably should have gone to the police about Edmund, so even if it happened to be one of my good moments, I wasn't sure I should stand by his side in this instance. I didn't quite respect his decisions, even when I didn't think them morally suspect. I thought he could limit the charity and look after his image.\n\nBut sometimes one is given a little extra breath, and that time, air filled my lungs. \"Of course,\" I said, and we grabbed each other. I ran upstairs and dressed quickly. Leaving the breakfast things on the table, though I knew Arthur would nose them for crumbs, possibly until they fell and shattered, we went outside, avoiding the pickets, and got into my car (I wasn't going to be a passenger, even now) and drove\u2014mostly silently\u2014to Pekko's office on Whalley Avenue. I passed it, looking for a parking place, and saw three men walking back and forth outside, clutching hand-lettered poster board. slumlord read their placards. A few people had stopped to look at the men. We parked a block away and walked back. \"Will Henrietta be there?\" I asked. His secretary often opened the office.\n\n\"I called her last night and told her to take the day off.\"\n\nI hadn't been in Pekko's storefront realty office for a long time and noticed that it had been improved, with plants in the windows. Most of his income-producing business was in renting low- to middle-rent apartments owned and managed by others. He also managed several buildings. The ones he owned, though they seemed to receive most of his attention, didn't take up most of his time. Only now did I think about the harm Daphne and her buddies could do him. People in the neighborhood would think he was preying on the poor. Landlords would be less likely to list with him, tenants less likely to inquire. He could lose management contracts. Pekko served on the boards of a soup kitchen and a drug treatment facility. He was what Charlotte once called \"a noble businessman.\" He snarled when praised for charity of any sort, but he valued his good reputation.\n\nNow he ignored the pickets and ignored the stir that occurred when he took his keys from his pocket and picked up the newspaper. We opened the building. It was cool inside, cooler than outdoors\u2014it was one of those September days that would become warmer and warmer, until the afternoon was pretty hot. Indoors, you'd want a long-sleeved shirt all day. \"What are we going to do?\" I said.\n\n\"There's plenty. I thought maybe you'd answer the phone.\"\n\n\"So you want to act as if those people aren't there?\"\n\n\"What else could I do?\"\n\n\"We could talk to them. We could negotiate. We could call up the press and give our side. We could arrange for repairs.\"\n\n\"I've got a schedule for repairs. I get to them when I can.\"\n\n\"And if they put you out of business?\"\n\n\"There are other businesses. People who know me, know what I'm like.\"\n\n\"You're just talking tough,\" I said. \"You're not going to like what happens. You wouldn't have asked me to come if you didn't want me to make a difference. If I'm going to be here, I want work that will make some difference.\"\n\nPekko shrugged. He had sat down at his desk and was looking at a paper on it. He didn't seem to have heard me. Then he said, \"Do whatever you want.\"\n\nSo I started making phone calls, which is what I like. I called everybody I could think of. I called Gordon. \"This is Daisy.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"What would you do if you wanted a favorable newspaper story?\"\n\n\"What does this have to do with?\"\n\n\"Pekko's business.\"\n\n\"Such as it is. I'd do something that could be photographed.\" The pickets were doing that already. The buildings themselves could be photographed. I tried to stop myself from thinking about \"such as it is.\" I was glad I'd called him because what he said was smart, but I was sorry I called because it wasn't helpful, and I'd taken a risk.\n\nI called Charlotte at work. \"Are you speaking to me?\"\n\n\"Of course! Wait.\" She could be heard excusing herself. \"What is it?\"\n\nI told her the story, and she was aghast to hear of picket lines. \"He's not a slumlord. This is idiotic.\" I didn't tell her I couldn't summon quite so much loyalty as that. She'd scold again. She offered to put together a second line of positive pickets. \"Do whatever you want,\" I said, repeating Pekko's words. But she couldn't do it for a day or two.\n\nI went on calling friends and acquaintances, almost anyone at all. In between calls I watered the plants and picked off withered leaves. Then I'd think of someone else to call and do that. Everyone was interested, but nobody made an offer except Charlotte, who couldn't help right away.\n\n\"How long can you last without rent?\" I said at one point.\n\n\"I need it to pay the mortgages,\" Pekko said. \"I don't have money lying around.\"\n\nI did answer a few calls that morning, but of course I didn't know what to say, so I'd immediately put Pekko on the line. What I most wanted to do\u2014invite the pickets inside, find out exactly what they were demanding, and figure out how to do some of it\u2014was not allowed.\n\nI know what I'm like when I'm not accomplishing anything, and after an hour I began to recognize that woman\u2014Daisy Pointless, she was called. It was too early to offer to go for sandwiches. Pekko stayed on the phone, giving orders having to do with garbage pickup, somebody's check, and a maintenance man's days off. \"Pretty good,\" he said over and over\u2014his invariable answer to \"How are you?\"\n\nI couldn't think. I'd never worked in a storefront office, and I'd have felt exposed to the street even if pickets condemning my husband\u2014the same three bored-looking gentlemen\u2014had not been walking back and forth on the sidewalk. They ignored us, but passersby looked in curiously. Pekko was obviously used to scratching his nose and hitching up his pants in public.\n\nPekko's and Henrietta's desks faced the street on either side of the room, while several chairs, against each side wall, made up an informal waiting room. Behind the desks were file cabinets and odds and ends that I supposed came from houses Pekko owned or cared for: a lawn mower, a battered bank of mailboxes, several ladders and paint rollers. I'd been here, meeting Pekko or stopping with him to get something, but I'd never spent time here. I walked to the back of the building. A narrow corridor in the middle of the back wall led to a small bathroom, a closet full of leases, receipt forms, and other papers, and then a storeroom at the back. In the storeroom was some dilapidated furniture\u2014a few kitchen chairs, a TV stand\u2014and I sat down. A back window looked out on a Dumpster.\n\nI was sure I could feel Pekko's relief when I left the room. The air in the building circulated more freely. Would he be better off without me, altogether? I had continued to love and want Pekko all spring and summer\u2014I hadn't wanted to leave him\u2014and I didn't that morning either. But I thought maybe I ought to. I speculated whether this rent strike was just some large expression of sexual tension between him and Daphne, and I tried to decide whether the solution was simply for them to crawl into a bed somewhere.\n\nBut the night before, Pekko had wanted me, not Daphne, in the house and in the room with him. He had asked me not to walk Arthur, to stay. And this morning, he'd asked me to come with him. I just needed to know what I was supposed to do for him now. The room I was in had a back door as well, and I opened it and stepped outside into the warm air. There was nothing to do behind a Whalley Avenue building surrounded by similar backs of buildings. I walked back and forth, now thinking not of Pekko but of Gordon, who had sniffed at the idea that Pekko had a business at all. When I thought of Pekko again, I wondered if what I owed him was a confession, and I almost laughed at that idea. The last thing he needed was the pain of learning what I'd done and hoped to continue to do. You need to be a lot purer than I to achieve anything by confessing. I decided at last that all I could do for Pekko was to be present\u2014that was what he'd requested\u2014and it was an odd decision for me. I assume I'm useless as I am but useful for what I do. Pekko seemed to need me to be useful as I am.\n\nI returned the way I'd come, locking the door. Pekko looked up and looked down again when I came in. I began making phone calls having to do with my own work. I'd just do it there. An hour passed, a peaceful hour in its way. Then a woman came in, asking about an apartment. She didn't notice or didn't care about the pickets. Pekko wanted to take her to see the apartment, so I said, \"I'll drive you both to your car,\" and the three of us locked up the office and departed. The woman talked about her own problems as we drove. I pulled up to the curb as soon as I turned the corner onto our street. I could see the pickets in the middle of the block, but we wouldn't have to encounter them. Pekko's car was near the corner, and I parked behind it. Pekko and I kissed lightly as he and the woman got out. Then I left my keys in the ignition and ran after him. I seized him around the waist, and he turned. Then we had the longest nonsexual hug of our life together. He kissed me heartily, and I kissed him back. \"It'll work out,\" I said. What a wife would say.\n\n\"Oh, I know,\" he said and stolidly led his new tenant to his car, while I didn't immediately return to mine but walked the other way, to say, a bit hysterically, to Daphne, \"You're half right, but so what?\"\n\n\"I don't mean anything personal, Daisy,\" she called, \"especially to you.\"\n\nI got into my car and drove to Gordon's office, stopping to pick up a sandwich.\n\n\"What did you mean 'such as it is'?\" I said.\n\n\"I assume Pekko's business is not entirely legitimate,\" Gordon said.\n\n\"You think he's a crook?\"\n\n\"I've always thought Pekko Roberts was a crook.\"\n\n\"Well, he's not.\"\n\n\"I admire your loyalty.\" I sat down in the archive to figure out what to think, what to say, and the phone rang. While I spoke, he waved and left. It was all I could do not to drop the receiver and chase him. He\u2014or he and I\u2014had brought me to a sense of powerlessness such as I do not remember experiencing before in my life. \"I'm sorry, I'll call you back,\" I said to the person on the line and hung up, then sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall with my arms around my knees, the way Denise used to sit in rehearsals, when she seemed to want to keep herself quiet. I prevented myself from doing the only thing I knew how to do\u2014following Gordon, running and grabbing someone who'd prefer to be left alone. When I let myself stand up, I could no longer think of anything important to do.\n\nThe next day, September 11, terrorists flew three hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and a fourth hijacked plane crashed before reaching a target. Pekko and I found out when we turned on the news to see if he was on it. There hadn't been anything about the rent strike the night before, and now there never would be. We watched for hours, seeing repeated films of the planes striking the towers, the towers falling. Once or twice, Pekko cried.\n\nThe New Haven Register ran a short piece about the rent strike that morning (quite short, because the big news in New Haven that day was supposed to be a mayoral primary). By September 12 nobody was thinking of Pekko the alleged slumlord. The Wednesday rehearsal was canceled\u2014Katya said she couldn't do it\u2014and I assumed, in those early days in which nothing seemed to be as it had been, that we'd cancel the play. Guiltily, I felt some relief. With guilty relief as well, I discovered as this public catastrophe claimed my attention that Gordon no longer could hurt me; I didn't care whether we continued our affair.\n\nWhen the cast gathered on Sunday, everyone but me insisted the play should take place as planned. Denise said, \"The president says we should lead our regular lives.\" David said, \"We can't let those criminals stop us.\" I felt like saying, \"Better to cancel,\" but didn't. We spent more time that night discussing September 11 than the life of TheaDora. When Muriel called me the next morning, she and I discussed September 11 for another twenty minutes. Finally, Muriel asked if I had any money around that might pay for TheaDora's bridal gown. We'd gone over budget. Katya had suggested a bedsheet. \"A bedsheet will look like a bedsheet,\" Muriel said.\n\nI said I'd pay. Neither of us felt like making a wedding dress, but we agreed to meet at Horowitz Brothers a few days later. In the meantime, days were passing, and on some of them I spent time at Gordon's office\u2014more time than usual, because the conference was approaching. I had trouble believing that in a few weeks people would be thinking of murder in small cities instead of world terrorism, but I'd accepted money to put on this conference, and put it on I would. And my fall rush was delayed. When the weather turns cool, people decide it's time to straighten up, but not in the fall of 2001, or not for a few weeks. It seemed irrelevant to sit in Gordon's office, contemplating individual murders. Our criminals\u2014I now felt oddly protective, almost indulgent, of the murderers our conference would consider\u2014had believed what they did was momentous, and society had corroborated that belief.\n\nI told Gordon I was afraid of nuclear war, but he scoffed. \"You think you're the only person who doesn't want obliteration?\" he said. \"Or maybe you do want it. All this professional throwing away you do. All this snooping about killing.\"\n\nHe said that in bed. My indifference to our affair lasted less than a week. The first time I worked in his office after September 11, Gordon was absent. The next time he was there, and he was the first person I saw with whom I didn't immediately have a conversation about what had happened. He had questions about the conference, which he wanted answered as soon as he saw me. Then he came from his office into my room and put his hands on my breasts. I put mine on top of his and moved his.\n\n\"What's wrong?\"\n\nFor a moment I thought that I could end the affair or not, that I was in charge. But I wanted his hands on my breasts, I just wanted the necessary ceremonies first. With everyone else, there had been the necessary ceremonies. Living close to New York, I kept hearing stories of people who barely escaped death. \"Did anybody you know die?\" I said.\n\n\"Yes,\" Gordon said.\n\n\"Oh, my God. Who?\"\n\n\"A college classmate.\"\n\n\"How do you know he's dead?\"\n\n\"A dozen e-mails. Now may I touch your breasts?\"\n\n\"Okay.\" I felt happy and free for a few seconds, happy and free and guilty, enjoying the sensation of hands on my breasts\u2014soon, under my shirt and bra\u2014despite the death of Gordon's classmate. Then we agreed to drive in separate cars, as usual, to Gordon's house near the water, and as I drove, I began to feel bad again: incomplete, unfinished. I found myself in an imaginary conversation with Gordon, in which he made fun of Pekko the slumlord.\n\nBed was fine, but then we talked again about September 11. \"Do you constantly imagine your friend jumping from the tower?\" I said. \"I wonder if he jumped.\"\n\n\"He wasn't a friend, and you know I don't imagine.\"\n\n\"Is that actually true, Gordon, or do you just say it?\"\n\n\"It's true. My inner life is not pictorial.\"\n\n\"No wonder you don't like theater,\" I said.\n\n\"I do like theater, I just don't like bad theater, and good theater is rare. I don't have to imagine the play, however. I can see it.\"\n\n\"But you have to imagine that the stage is a living room.\"\n\n\"Oh, I can do that. I can pretend.\" He turned playful. \"I shall pretend that Lazy Daisy is my lover, and I want to kiss her in as many locations as possible.\"\n\n\"Lazy Daisy?\"\n\n\"Just a good rhyme. Although if you don't get that conference pulled together . . .\"\n\n\"I'm doing it,\" I said.\n\n\"Interrupted by theater. Sort of theater.\" It was true that we were now holding three rehearsals a week, and once I'd rushed out of Gordon's office so as not to be late. The conference would take place two weeks before the play; by the time of the performance, this job would be done.\n\n\"Moments in the play are quite interesting,\" I said, wondering if Gordon and I would still be lovers after the conference.\n\n\"No good play was ever written by committee. Tell me if I'm wrong.\" He got out of bed, and in a moment I heard him in the shower, washing me off. I was still lying under the comforter in his chilly bedroom when he returned. \"Hurry up, Lazy Daisy, I need to leave,\" he said.\n\nCharlotte and I had the requisite twenty-minute conversation about September 11. Then I said, \"One of these days, I want to tell you the whole story.\"\n\n\"I might not like the whole story.\"\n\n\"There's that risk.\"\n\n\"Are you going to tell me now?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nI wanted a wedding dress for Thea and Dora, though I had not wanted one for myself. (That's what my two weddings had in common: I wore what I had around.) I met Muriel at the fabric store and put more than a hundred dollars on my credit card for satin and netting, figuring in a discount from the store because we were a theater group and planned to donate ticket proceeds to the soup kitchen. (One of Roz's ideas. It gave us publicity. I said there would be no ticket proceeds, but she said of course there would.) It was pleasant to think about the likes of cloth and thread; had I believed that September 11 somehow destroyed everything minor? I wanted to see Muriel cut cloth recklessly again, this time with expensive satin between the blades of her shears. She hesitated when I proposed going home with her but then agreed. Again, we drank glasses of water in her kitchen with its silly appliqu\u00e9s, again I later went for Chinese takeout. The waiters wore T-shirts with American flags. At Muriel's house, we planned and cut and I followed instructions. The dress was just like the blue one, with a few improvements she'd thought up. It was easier this time, because we had the other dress to measure against. But as we worked, I was uneasy. Muriel looked angry when I happened to glance at her face in repose. I thought her talk was excessively patriotic. \"So you think the United States should just destroy something quickly, and you don't care what?\" I said.\n\n\"That's not what I think,\" said Muriel. She was in a chair at the desk, her back to me as I sat on the bed and hemmed with white thread. Muriel didn't approve of machine hemming. Now she turned her big head to look at me. \"You're pretty quick to jump to conclusions, Miss Daisy.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said. \"Tell me again.\"\n\n\"Oh, I think what everybody thinks. I think what if it was my son, sitting at his computer, and that plane coming closer and closer.\"\n\n\"I don't think that, because I don't have kids,\" I said. \"I think, What if it was me?\"\n\n\"How come you never had kids?\" Muriel said after a pause.\n\n\"It never happened.\"\n\n\"But you could have made it happen.\"\n\n\"I wanted kids,\" I said. \"But always in the future. Like wanting to live in Paris someday.\"\n\n\"Fantasy kids.\"\n\n\"How many kids do you have, Muriel?\"\n\n\"Just the two. LaShonda was almost like mine, for a while. My niece.\"\n\n\"How's that going?\"\n\n\"Nice of you to ask,\" she said, but I thought she meant I should have asked before this. \"I want my brother to bring her to the play, but he says that's just more of my craziness. He says the play will teach wildness. Even the play.\"\n\n\"The play doesn't teach wildness,\" I said.\n\n\"Of course not! We're doing it in a bunch of schools. Those schools wouldn't let us in if it taught kids bad stuff.\"\n\n\"What schools?\" I said, putting down my needle. \"I thought we were doing just the one performance.\"\n\n\"I don't know what schools. Some schools. Didn't Katya tell you?\" She'd gone back to a complicated pinning and clipping operation at the desk.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"She's going to announce it at the rehearsal. I talked to her this morning. She's getting all kinds of calls. Schools. Public access TV.\"\n\n\"But I don't want to be on TV!\" I said. I pictured Gordon flipping channels, suddenly hearing my voice shouting nonsense about two heads. \"It's not that kind of play,\" I said. \"It's fun, but we're amateurs. We don't know how to make up a play, and we don't know how to act.\"\n\n\"Oh, you're a ham,\" Muriel said, rising to find another task. \"You have a fine time acting!\" She worked faster than I did, and her hand didn't stop to gesture when she spoke. I was waving my needle in the air. \"You do just fine,\" she said.\n\nI said, \"Katya can't sign us up without consulting us.\"\n\n\"She's consulting us,\" said Muriel. \"She didn't give them definite dates.\"\n\n\"I don't want to do it.\"\n\n\"If you're so sure it's no good, how come you're buying satin? How come you're always pushing me around?\"\n\nThe play, I now understood, was stupid. Gordon was right. I'd liked the friendship that had formed among the cast, the recurring thought that we wouldn't have known one another except for this odd project, the tension and laughter at rehearsals, our arguments, our stubborn different notions about two-headedness. I liked being in a dress with Muriel, learning not to trip when we walked and learning how to gesture so we looked as if our two outer arms belonged to the same body. I was titillated by the claustrophobia I couldn't help feeling when we were in the dress, by the intimate smell of Muriel's sweat and breath, the touch of her solid body when we collided. It was like an affair in some ways, like my intimacy with Gordon, someone else whose body I knew better than his mind. As we sat there, I wanted to climb into the new dress with Muriel. But the play wasn't professional, and Daisy Andalusia did nothing in public that wasn't at a professional level. And the play had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks. It wasn't inappropriate in the way a sex farce might be, but it was beside the point. Who would care, now\u2014if anyone ever could have\u2014about the wedding of a two-headed woman?\n\n\"I don't have time for a lot of performances,\" I said.\n\n\"You already put in the time. It would be a shame to do it only once.\"\n\n\"I don't want to do it,\" I said. \"I don't want to do it.\"\n\n\"You're just a worrier. You'll be fine. It'll be fine.\"\n\n\"Muriel,\" I said, \"I might not do it at all. I just realized that.\"\n\n\"Don't be silly,\" she said. \"You're tired. I'll finish the hem. Go home.\"\n\nAnd she hustled me out of there.\n\nI didn't think about the play much in the next few days. For a while, my default mental topic had been September 11, but now, when my mind was not specifically occupied, it returned, as it had all summer, to Gordon: sometimes I remembered, sometimes I imagined good times, most often I imagined rejection or disapproval\u2014disappointment in what I'd turned out to be. In my mind, we talked back and forth. He seemed to supervise my life now, and I'd imagine him commenting as I fed Arthur or did my laundry.\n\nI hated the next rehearsal. I'd been trying to ignore uneasiness since we'd moved to the Little Theater; now I let myself feel it. Being in a real hall revealed shortcomings I hadn't noticed in the room where we'd worked before. Some of us sounded stilted, some moved sloppily. Our method of working made me frantic. By now, we had scripts in our laps (and of course some of us couldn't memorize), but many speeches were not yet fixed. Katya had explained how she worked, and her method was reasonable. She listened to the tapes, transcribing what moved the story along or struck her as worth keeping, skipping chitchat and inconclusive arguing. Then she rearranged what she had. She wasn't confident enough, though, so at every rehearsal she handed us not just the play to date but a sheaf of alternate speeches, about which we argued for too long. Jonah wanted to add abstract, preachy language. Denise tried to tone down conflict. I complained about wasting time but took up time fixing subtle grammatical errors and logical lapses that bothered nobody but me.\n\nNow we were trying to run through the whole play at each rehearsal. It was repetitious. There were too many scenes in which people chased each other around the stage, too many spats. \"Stop putting your hands on your hips,\" I said to Chantal, who played TheaDora's mother. At least we'd figured out who would play whom.\n\n\"Maybe you're not the director,\" Chantal said.\n\n\"Sorry.\" But I was angry.\n\n\"Well, Daisy's right,\" said Katya. \"But maybe everybody should leave the directing to me.\"\n\n\"Direct, then!\" I said, but so quietly that nobody heard me except Muriel. We were lying on the dirty floor, playing pregnant women at the childbirth preparation class, and she reached over and pinched my arm. I thought Katya should point out that Chantal gave all speeches the same rhythm, that Denise always looked to the right when she spoke, that David talked too fast. Sometimes Ellen might whisper to Katya, or pass her a note, and then Katya might say something.\n\n\"How do you keep from getting angry?\" I asked Ellen on our way out of the building.\n\n\"Why would I be angry?\"\n\n\"You think this is working out?\" I said.\n\n\"You don't?\"\n\n\"No, I don't.\" Of course, her child was in it. She was applying the standards of a parent. We'd reached her car, and she put her hand on the door, turning back to note Justine and Cindy approaching. \"I should get going,\" she said.\n\nI felt outnumbered as I walked alone to my car, which was parked two blocks away. It was dark and shadowy under the still, thick leaves, and Afghanistan\u2014which our country would be bombing shortly; a horrifying thought\u2014seemed extremely far away. It was raining lightly. I loved my quiet city in the rain, loved not being afraid, though some might consider it risky for a woman to walk alone in a city at night. A few months earlier, I'd have used the couple of blocks of solitude to think about Gordon as if he was a sour ball I'd unwrapped and popped into my mouth. Now I struggled not to hear him, in my mind, pointing out that Denise always looked to the right, that David talked too fast.\n\nBut have they paid the rent?\" I thought to ask Pekko. I was talking to him through the bathroom door. He'd just turned off the shower.\n\n\"Some have, some haven't.\"\n\nHe'd left the door unlocked, so I went in. He was drying his thick, compact body, jerking a towel back and forth across his behind. \"Are you going to start eviction proceedings?\" I said, closing the door behind me to keep the cooler air out. It was fall now, and chilly.\n\n\"That's not my style.\" Pekko rubbed his head and his beard.\n\n\"So your idea is that eventually they'll feel guilty and pay?\"\n\n\"I don't care if they feel guilty. Eventually they'll pay. People do. Or they don't. If I can't pay the mortgage, I lose the building. But I won't starve.\"\n\n\"We won't starve.\"\n\n\"We won't starve.\" He dropped the towel and kissed me. His body was warm and steamy as he drew me closer, and I put my hands on his backside and felt aroused. We walked to the bedroom and lay down. Being with him temporarily soothed the pain in my mind over Gordon, who hadn't touched me all week.\n\nMy mother dropped in on a Saturday, and I gave her coffee. \"The rent strike might have been my fault,\" she said, leaning forward in the empty house with conspiratorial enthusiasm. Pekko was out, finishing repairs Daphne had never completed. \"But it might have been worth it,\" she went on.\n\n\"All right, what?\" I said.\n\n\"I said to Daphne, 'You may not wreck my daughter's mar-riage.' \"\n\n\"Daphne wasn't wrecking my marriage,\" I said.\n\n\"So you tell me, but I saw how you were all summer.\"\n\n\"Mom, it was something else. I told you it was something else.\"\n\n\"Maybe it was something else, but it was also this. That girl wanted Pekko. She was going to lure him away. I talked her out of it, but of course that made her mad. She had to find a way to get back at him.\"\n\n\"Do you want a cookie?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"It was a guy bothering me.\" I put the package of cookies on the table and sat down opposite her. \"I told you.\"\n\n\"But you're married. That comes first, even if you don't want   \nit to.\"\n\n\"It was a guy.\" My mother looked up at me, cookie in hand, one bite missing. I saw her consider understanding me. Then she chose against it. \"Maybe you thought it was a guy,\" she said.\n\n\"Did you talk to the paper about the play?\" I said.\n\n\"I'm working on it. I forgot all about it, that week.\"\n\n\"Of course. Nobody did anything, that week.\" But then I continued. \"Listen, do me a favor and don't talk to the paper.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"The play's not very good,\" I said. \"If there's no audience, that might be better.\"\n\n\"If the rehearsals aren't good, the play will be great. That's a famous thing about the theater. Don't you know that?\"\n\nIn the past, when a man was upsetting me I'd tell Charlotte or my mother, and we'd have one of the two traditional talks women have: Relax, he's crazy about you, or Forget him, you're worth a dozen of him. This time I didn't tell anyone the whole story. Though every morning I read biographies in the Times of people who'd died on September 11, my selfishness thrived and I felt terrible about my own small trouble. I smoked for the first time in years, only in my car\u2014not in the clean, pleasant house I shared with Pekko and Arthur. I didn't want Arthur breathing secondhand smoke. Toward Pekko I felt a brutal recklessness, mixed with tenderness. I cherished Pekko with a new fondness, unrelated to sex. But at the same time I felt dangerous and bad, an outlaw who cared scrupulously for her buddy or her horse but put them at risk by holding up the stagecoach at gunpoint. Gordon proposed sex once or twice during those weeks, and I agreed, and it was good, but I never stopped scrutinizing him\u2014looking for evidence of another woman, other women\u2014and that hint of   \na dismissive laugh was never completely absent when he spoke   \nto me.\n\nWith the crash of the towers, New Haven murders had become quaint, the mischief of kindergartners, and at times, those weeks, the mail didn't work. I claimed nobody would come to the conference, but Gordon was confident. \"E-mail's working,\" he said.\n\n\"I might drop out,\" I said to Muriel, again, at the next rehearsal. That night I couldn't endure being enclosed in that dress with her. I wanted to burst its seams and escape. I am half good, I reminded myself. I pictured myself throwing the play\u2014a little package containing Katya, Jonah, David, Chantal, Denise, and Muriel, clutching one another in a bunch\u2014over my shoulder. Then throwing the dress. I said, \"I just don't have time.\" The clutter business had picked up again; I really didn't have time. Ellen and I had decided to draw up a written plan to deal with what she'd created, her household of frequently vacuumed artifacts, now arranged in categories her kids took pleasure in modifying and modifying again. Ellen's house was a weird but colorful museum, and mostly she and I toured it at our weekly appointments. After September 11 she created shrines all over the place\u2014drawings by the children, postcards and souvenirs from New York. We'd look and talk and write things down. Working with her wasn't time-consuming, but my jobs added up. I was loyal to the conference, and loyal to my clutter business. I wouldn't throw paid work over my shoulder because I was unhappy about a man, but I might throw the play. \"I might drop out.\"\n\n\"Daisy, this isn't you,\" said Muriel. \"Why are you telling me this?\"\n\n\"It might be what I want.\"\n\nGordon had no complaints as I worked on the conference, but I thought he forgot about me when I wasn't there. He was right that registrations happened. We'd had a good response to the brochure. People who had always been interested in crime in small cities were still thinking about the subject, or were thinking again after a few days' break, and every day more of them e-mailed, faxed, or mailed in their forms. We had room for eighty. I'd planned to feel successful when we reached sixty-five, but one day we went from sixty-three to seventy all at once.\n\nWhen we weren't making love, Gordon and I spoke as if we never did. We were generally alone but talked as if a stranger were present. Once I heard him on the phone, making a date with a woman. Maybe it was business. I blamed him for talking in my presence as if we weren't lovers, but I did it too. Within that context, he was friendly and full of warnings, advice, jokes, and the usual assurances that I needn't pay attention to his opinions.\n\n\"Six was too many for a panel discussion anyway,\" he said one morning, when I told him a speaker had canceled. \"Five is fine. Make the fifth guy the moderator, and use the moderator someplace else. Who's the moderator for that one? Oh\u2014me. Okay, put me on that afternoon session that nobody's signing up for, with the lady from Baltimore. Then you'll get her following plus my following.\"\n\n\"What will you do together?\" I said, already jealous of the lady from Baltimore.\n\n\"You'll figure something out.\"\n\nHe was standing and I was sitting, and he grinned down at me almost lewdly, as if what I'd figure out would be pornographic, and as if he was taking a liberty, acting lewd with me, someone with whom he'd never been lewd. It was almost noon. With some unexpected free time, I'd gone to his office. Gordon wasn't there when I arrived. He came in as I was reading my e-mail, and the sound of his quick feet elated and frightened me. Now he said, \"I've been thinking about Marie Valenti. That panel will be fine.\"\n\n\"I shouldn't have told you what Pekko told me.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"You don't see why not?\" I said. \"I had no right to tell you, even though I know I can trust you.\"\n\n\"Trust me to do what?\"\n\n\"To keep quiet, of course,\" I said.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" said Gordon. He walked to the window and adjusted the Venetian blind. The sun was strong. \"I'd like to kiss you,\" he said, \"but not go further.\"\n\n\"You mean ever?\"\n\n\"No, just today.\"\n\nI stood and met him at the window. Maybe that was why he'd closed the blind, though I didn't know who could see us. We kissed, and his tongue explored my mouth for a long time. I put my hand on his pants.\n\n\"I have some good ideas about what we could do now, but there isn't time,\" said Gordon. Then he said abruptly, \"Shall I come to your play, Daisy?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"If you weren't ashamed of it, you'd want me to come.\"\n\nHe seized me and kissed me even longer than before. \"Could we maybe have a quick time somewhere, after all?\" he said, looking around the office, which contained no soft furniture. \"I have a meeting at one. We can't go to my house.\"\n\nSo I took him to mine, for the first time, feeling as if I'd lost a contest. He didn't like Arthur, who barked at him. \"You're jealous,\" I said.\n\n\"Possibly.\"\n\nWe lay in the bed I shared with Pekko. I felt bad, but it was quick. We dressed, then Gordon held me tightly and I pressed my face into his chest. Hugs are metaphors for attachment, but we stepped apart, and he left me standing in the bedroom while he let himself out of the house. I was alone, at an hour I'm rarely home. I didn't feel like lunch. I checked my e-mail. I played solitaire. I had nothing to do for an hour. I left a message on Katya's answering machine, withdrawing from the cast of the play.\n\nWhat were you doing when you paid for that fabric, buying your way out?\" Muriel shouted on the phone. \"You think all we want is your money? You pay for that cloth, you can just go?\"\n\n\"No. It had nothing to do with that.\"\n\n\"Are you one of those white people who think if they just hand over some money, that's all they have to do to fix the world?\"\n\n\"That play isn't fixing the world, Muriel,\" I said. \"Did you see the schedule Katya sent? I don't have that kind of time, and I don't think the play is interesting enough to take up the time of all those audiences.\"\n\n\"So you're going to leave the rest of us to do it without you\u2014so it's even worse?\"\n\n\"It'll be fine. Ellen will play Dora.\"\n\n\"She is not you.\"\n\n\"Of course she's not me, but she has more experience acting than I do. She'll be great.\"\n\n\"She is not you. This is not right, Daisy.\"\n\n\"The play is not right,\" I said. \"We should all drop out and forget about it. It was fun rehearsing, we learned a lot, and that's enough of an accomplishment.\"\n\n\"You don't mean that, and I don't want to hear you say it,\" Muriel said. \"I'm not going to talk to you anymore. I got plenty of trouble today, and I don't need more. I called because I just didn't believe it when Katya called me.\"\n\n\"What kind of trouble?\"\n\n\"LaShonda was arrested. I got to go, Daisy.\"\n\nNo, Daisy,\" said Ellen. \"I'm not glad. I'll make an adequate Dora, but I'd prefer not to do it.\"\n\n\"Is Justine mad?\" I said.\n\n\"Of course. She says I've been conspiring to crowd her out. She says between Cindy and me, nobody notices her. It's not true, because she looks so strange, but she can't know that.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry to dump it on you, Ellen.\" I wouldn't have said Justine looked strange. Well, maybe.\n\n\"That's what people do. They dump things on me.\"\n\n\"I was supposed to help you with that problem,\" I said.\n\n\"That's right.\"\n\n\"You still want to know what's been going on with me, don't you?\"\n\n\"I think you'd do better to tell me, Daisy.\"\n\nWe were on the phone. It was late at night. She'd called me. I lay on the bed in the dark. Pekko wasn't home. I delayed and changed the subject three or four times, and then I said I was tired and hung up.\n\nI dropped out of the play,\" I said to Gordon. We were in the office.\"Then I can cross it off my calendar.\"\n\n\"You were planning to go?\"\n\n\"Only to see you.\"\n\n\"I decided you were right. It's not very good. I wish they'd just give it up.\"\n\n\"Are they angry with you for dropping out?\"\n\n\"Very angry.\"\n\nHe picked up a notebook as my phone rang. We were in the office. \"Meeting,\" he said, pointing to the door as I reached for the receiver. Hearing his quick footsteps on the stairs outside, I was angry with myself for expecting to be praised for dropping out. The person on the phone was the caterer, with a question about tables and another about muffins.\n\nBut even while being distracted by practical questions and by Gordon himself, I had not lost interest in the subject matter of the conference. I kept saying it was about small cities, but the city I cared about was New Haven, and I wanted something for me from our three days of talk. I wanted to learn that New Haven was, somehow, despite everything, all right. I wanted confirmation that I was correct when I sensed neighborliness and health, up to a point, whenever I arrived in New Haven from another place. I didn't want the conference to make fun of my faith in one small, grubby city; I didn't want it proved that I should adopt Gordon's unsurprised shrug, his cynical certainty that he wouldn't be impressed. Pekko was a complicated character, but in some ways his faith was entire and childlike. In the contest between na\u00efvet\u00e9 and knowingness, Pekko was na\u00efve, and I wanted him to win. I wanted the smart, pessimistic speakers we'd invited and the smart, pessimistic audience to conclude that we in New Haven were managing, that we weren't killing one another as often as we might have, or behaving with flagrant injustice on every occasion when a killing occurred. I wanted Pekko to hear about the conference, and to understand that I was not irresponsibly trying to bring trouble to the city in which he lived and did his work.\n\nThe conference\u2014Murder in Small Cities: Who, How, Why?\u2014was well-attended, and reporters showed up for some sessions, but we don't get the Register at home, and if Pekko read the article headlined scholars debate value of prison, which recounted a discussion about the efficacy of long prison sentences in preventing murder, he didn't mention it. I had listened, inward questions unanswered, then left the room when my cell phone vibrated.\n\nThe session on Malik Jones was impassioned. The main speaker, a black sociologist, repeated what those of us who lived in town had long known\u2014that the issue was not the shooting as much as the pointless police chase leading to it. I had expected that a Boston police detective, speaking next, would disagree, but he concurred, which made the hour satisfying in a sense but repetitious. Yet, sitting in a dark corner of the auditorium, away from the participants, who quarreled and praised and questioned their way through the days\u2014real persons in jackets and ties or jeans or pantsuits, who'd replaced the theoretical audience I'd been working with for months\u2014I felt, during the question period, something large. A remark by one of the speakers\u2014I wasn't even sure which\u2014made me imagine Malik Jones's death in a way I never had before: his young, scared, defiant vitality, and then, when the adults wouldn't give up\u2014and he couldn't\u2014his ceasing to be. I stood, trembling a bit, feeling nothing but the terrible fact that human beings die, and some too soon, that nature doesn't care\u2014there are enough left to continue to populate the earth\u2014and also that each loss is as bad as anything could be, that the death of young people is something to weep for, over and over again. Gordon waited for me in the aisle, and we walked together to the back of the auditorium, an old-fashioned, particularly Yale-like setting, with mullioned windows and scarred old furniture. I almost didn't want to be with him. I wanted to be alone, to think of what I'd just thought, to imagine murder.\n\n\"I didn't think it would fit, and it didn't,\" Gordon said.\n\nI didn't answer. Finally I said, \"It needed to be talked about.\"\n\n\"You've said that, Daisy,\" he said and briefly put his arm around my shoulders. I couldn't help but lean into him, like a child\u2014or a lover\u2014and my body flared with erotic pain. Gordon pulled me tighter yet while the participants, who'd been gathering their folders and interrupting one another's progress toward the exits, began to walk toward us. Then he dropped his arm. I stumbled and recovered. Nobody looked surprised at our awkward embrace, if anyone saw it. It was a collegial gesture, what friendly cohosts do all the time. Maybe people thought we hugged clumsily because we were so professional and shy that we'd never touched before. Someone came up to me to ask about restaurants. I didn't cry out as Gordon waved and departed before she and I had finished speaking.\n\nThat night Pekko and I went out to eat. We went to Amato's on State Street, a plain Italian restaurant where there was always a table of cops in the corner. I drank red wine and pleated my paper place mat with its map of Italy, and Pekko had two birch beers with his eggplant parmigiana. We talked about the conference. I had my cell phone, but it didn't ring. I enumerated all the calls I might get. The next morning\u2014I didn't say this\u2014we'd be holding the last session, the one on Marie Valenti's murder. I talked about our decision to serve fruit salad along with muffins and coffee, though it required plates and spoons. I talked about Gordon's quick, funny introductions of speakers.\n\nPekko was quiet for a long time, eating. Then he said, \"You think you know about murder in New Haven.\"\n\nHe hadn't criticized the conference in a long time.\n\n\"I think I know how to order fruit salad and muffins.\"\n\n\"These murders you're talking about,\" he said\u2014and I wondered if he'd somehow seen a schedule and knew we'd be discussing Marie Valenti in the morning\u2014\"these are the showcase murders, the fancy murders that get all the attention.\"\n\n\"You mean when black people murder other blacks, that doesn't get attention,\" I said. \"We had quite a discussion about that yesterday afternoon.\"\n\n\"It doesn't have to do with race. You think everything has to do with race. You don't know who gets murdered in this town, who doesn't\u2014it's not always in the paper. It happens, and nobody knows, or a few people know, but nobody says.\"\n\n\"But you know,\" I said with some irritation. I was tired.\n\n\"Sometimes I know,\" he said. \"Your little Denny Ring, the supposed druggie. He was murdered.\"\n\n\"Denny was murdered?\" I said.\n\n\"Dennis Ring was murdered. I can't prove it, but I know it. He was not taking drugs\u2014not then. He did not inject himself with an overdose. People knew he was living in the store, and he talked too much. He was a courier who knew names and talked a lot, and somebody decided to inject him with an overdose. That's how he died.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"I knew before it happened. I tried to stop it. I went to people who knew and tried to stop it.\"\n\n\"So what is your point?\" I said through sobs. \"Why are you telling me this? You know about every murder in the city of New Haven forever? You go around with all these secrets, just to make yourself feel good?\"\n\n\"Nobody could prove it. There was no reason to ruin my life, talking about it. I'm sorry I made you cry, Daisy. My point is that it's more complicated than you know\u2014more complicated than Skeetling knows.\"\n\nI pushed my plate of meatballs aside and dropped my head on my arms to cry. I'd done nothing to help Denny, all those years ago. I could do nothing for anyone. I cried for his solitude, alone with a murderer. Denny was almost always alone. That was why he was irresistible. He told me no secrets\u2014though he talked all the time\u2014and I told him none. I never had a phone number for him. He didn't even clutter my address book. \"My conference isn't bad,\" I said finally, \"even if the people talking don't know everything. Even then.\"\n\n\"Let's go home and walk Arthur,\" Pekko said. \"I'm sorry. I should have told you years ago, or kept my mouth shut.\"\n\nThe leaves were turning and falling now, and our feet crushed leaves as we walked, with Arthur pulling to the left and right, sniffing, pissing on piles of leaves. The night was breezy, and the leaves on the trees were dry enough now to rustle. I had put on a heavy sweater when we stopped at the house for Arthur, and I pulled the sleeves down over my hands. We walked through Goatville to East Rock Park, and along the path at the edge of College Woods. The moon was out, and it was easy to see. We didn't talk. I thought of Denny, times I'd been in this park with him. He liked to sit on the swings. He liked what he called \"kid things.\" When I too sat on the swings one night, Denny said, \"You're like a kid in some ways, Daisy, but not in my way.\"\n\n\"How am I like a kid?\" I said.\n\n\"You're by yourself.\"\n\n\"Kids aren't by themselves,\" I protested. \"They're surrounded. Family, teachers . . .\"\n\n\"You felt surrounded because you were all by yourself,\" Denny said as we swung\u2014sometimes parallel, sometimes one up, one down or one forward, one back. \"When I was a kid, I didn't feel surrounded. I felt with people.\"\n\n\"But now you're alone.\"\n\n\"Not the way you are.\"\n\n\"You're the most alone person I know!\" I said, all those years ago.\n\nNow Pekko and I sat down on a bench. A few years ago, workers took out trees and installed two benches at a place on the path where the river turns. The view is surprisingly grand\u2014even in the dark\u2014as the river comes toward you. We sat until I was cold. Pekko talked about a dog he'd had as a boy, who ran away. He stroked Arthur, who wouldn't have run away but was firmly attached to his leash. We stood up. \"I shouldn't have told you, lovey,\" he said.\n\n\"I'm not perfect, either,\" I said but gave no details.\n\nWhen we got home, it was too late for the news\u2014we'd have to trust that there was nothing new and big\u2014not in New York, Washington, or Afghanistan\u2014and we went to bed quickly. I fell asleep while Pekko was still brushing his teeth.\n\nSo I slept late and had to hurry in the morning, but it's only a short drive from my house to the Yale building where the conference was held. I glanced at the Times; although people were worried about anthrax cases in Florida and New York, nothing significant had happened since the day before. I heard a weather forecast and one song while driving to the conference. When I reached the lobby of the building where we'd held most of our sessions, the caterer was setting out rows of muffins on trays, and a few early participants, talking together with cups of coffee in their hands, were eyeing them. A man squatted near the wall, the Times open in front of him.\n\nI answered a question the caterer put to me. The door crashed open behind me, and I knew it was Gordon from the urgency of the sound. When I turned he was standing still, squinting in the dim light, but then he came toward me swiftly. He had a newspaper under his arm, and I could see that it was the New Haven Register, a paper he ordinarily bypassed. \"Guilty to making it happen. Not guilty to making it happen today,\" he said. He seemed excited\u2014happy\u2014but a little uncomfortable.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Haven't you seen the paper?\"\n\nI tried to remember if I'd seen a headline on my way over. I hadn't passed a box. He handed it to me. I still was more interested in the moment his hand touched mine as he thrust the newspaper at me than in what he wanted to show me. Yet I also felt a peculiar, new discomfort\u2014noting his discomfort\u2014and some fear: had something unbearable happened, too late for the Times? Then I had a sudden crazy thought that a decade late the newspaper was reporting the murder of Dennis Ring, young, white non\u2013drug user, living in a frozen yogurt store that hadn't existed for years and years.\n\nThe headline announced the arrest of a suspect\u2014Edmund Doyle, said the first sentence of the article\u2014in the ancient Marie Valenti murder case.\n\n\"I didn't make it happen this way on purpose,\" Gordon was saying. \"It's going to look like a cheap trick. Are you too busy counting muffins to talk for a minute about how we can work it in without making it seem cheap? Of course we have to include it. The worst thing\u2014do you agree? Tell me if I'm wrong\u2014would be to lead up to it and then announce it as a surprise. And I suppose it would backfire\u2014somebody would have seen the paper and would bring it up too early.\"\n\n\"You went to the police?\"\n\n\"Well, of course I did. I don't know why you didn't. I don't know why Pekko didn't, long ago. Well, I suppose there was a certain loyalty there, but he could have made it happen without doing it himself. Maybe that's why he told you. Maybe that's what he wanted to do\u2014make it happen without making it happen.\"\n\n\"No,\" I said. I don't think I've ever been less able to speak and make sense, but Gordon wasn't listening. I didn't ask myself whether somebody should have turned Edmund in. At the time all I took in was the difference I had made. What I had said\u2014what had I said?\u2014had made it possible for Edmund to be arrested.\n\n\"But I didn't know his last name,\" I said.\n\n\"Oh, that was easy. My contact said they had a list of everybody who'd been in school with her. But there was no reason to connect him, no more than any of the others. I guess there weren't many Edmunds. Finding him was easy, once they knew.\"\n\nThe arrest had been made on the basis of fingerprints, which they had kept, of course. Edmund had been fingerprinted ten years ago for a job. That was long after the active search had ended.\n\nWe'd walked through the corridor and into a stairwell. Time was passing. \"So,\" said Gordon, \"I'm sorry if this isn't what you had in mind. But I think the main thing right now is the morning session. What do you think?\"\n\n\"Did you mention Pekko?\" I said. \"Is Pekko going to be arrested?\"\n\n\"I did not mention Pekko. I said I had a friend who had a friend. I refused to give names, other than mine. Pekko won't have to be a witness\u2014unless he chooses to, of course.\"\n\nI thought of Daphne's house. If she recognized Edmund's picture, she could turn Pekko in. Pekko had been Edmund's teacher. It would be easy for the police to prove that Pekko knew Edmund, and not too hard to prove that he was sheltering Edmund. I didn't know what the penalties were for obstructing justice, but I understood at last that because of what I had done, and because of Pekko's unique notions of right and wrong, not only could Edmund go to prison but maybe Pekko could as well.\n\n\"But Edmund was doing good work. It was a single, terrible moment in his life. There was no point in ruining it now. What good will it do? Will it bring her back?\"\n\n\"Oh, Daisy, that's nonsense, of course I had to turn him in. You're proposing a totally chaotic legal system, in which everybody has his own philosophy and that's how we make decisions.\"\n\n\"But didn't you think of what it will be like for him, for his parents?\"\n\n\"I don't think that way.\" I stepped away from him, from his gray, floppy hair and his pointed, black eyebrows.\n\n\"I have to leave,\" I said.\n\n\"We're putting on an event here,\" said Gordon.\n\n\"I changed the catering order yesterday, so you'll need a new invoice from her.\" I touched Gordon's sleeve and pulled my hand away. I gathered myself, my error-prone self. It was over. It was over. How could it be over? It was over. I couldn't. I didn't have to.\n\n\"What? What?\" Gordon shouted. \"Where do you think you're going? Daisy!\"\n\n\"I'm leaving,\" I said. I did have to. I could turn around. I could walk.\n\n\"And I suppose what we've had is meaningless to you?\" he said.\n\n\"No, it's not,\" I said. I turned around and touched the tiled wall, to push myself off, the way a swimmer pushes herself off from the side of the pool. I walked through the door to the lobby, and through the lobby, pretending not to hear a question someone called to me. I watched myself to see if I'd turn again, but I didn't.\n\nWalking to my car, I was thinking of Daphne. I'd have to find Daphne and persuade her to keep her mouth shut. But Daphne was not going to be persuaded, and by talking to her I might let her know there was something to think about. I got into my car and drove through the downtown traffic, up Orange Street on that quiet morning, when nobody was out except women with strollers, old people going to the markets, and kids from Cross High School, with backpacks and baggy pants. I didn't make the turn to my own street. I kept driving. Orange Street passes the high school and goes straight into East Rock Park, straight to the base of the hill\u2014the hill of stones\u2014and if you cross the river and turn left, which I did, passing the trail where I walked with Arthur, you can drive a loopy road under trees\u2014lots of color just then\u2014through woods and around the mountain, up to the top of East Rock, where there's a parking lot, a Civil War monument, a place to look at New Haven and Long Island Sound, and meadows where families picnic on hot days. On a weekday morning in October, nobody was present. I did not jump off the cliff. I parked and sat on a bench and looked at the city below me, the lines of houses and trees, the bigger buildings downtown, the green, the water.\n\nI thought about what I'd learned at the conference. I'd learned that murder is dreadful, disgusting, and real. And appealing. I'd never murder anybody, but I did like to get rid of things, and maybe that was what had given me the nerve to get rid of my affair, which might as well have been stuffed into garbage bags and dropped off at the Salvation Army. My body seemed to have nothing inside it. I drove down the hill and stopped for coffee at Lulu's. It was warm enough to sit outside in the sun, but the morning rush was over, and nobody I knew was there.\n\nAs I write on my laptop at our kitchen table in the evening, in the hot, dry summer of 2002, Pekko walks in, coming from a meeting of a neighborhood group he belongs to. \"Last month, in this area, no crime of any type was reported,\" he says, leaning over to stroke Arthur, who has learned not to jump but is frantic with self-discipline and joy, seeing Pekko for the first time in two hours. \"This month there were three break-ins. But the murder rate is the lowest in decades.\"\n\nI drove to Ellen's house. I knew she'd be at work, but I still had a key. I wanted to be in her house, with its intricate arrangement of uselessness. I wanted to walk from room to room and touch things, look at things. Instead of a dreary, cluttered house, it was now a zany, cluttered house. I saw she'd been busy yet again. The shrines to New York were giving way to other shrines, maybe shrines to complexity. A battered end table I hadn't seen before held a collection of old kitchen utensils\u2014ladles, tongs, tea strainers, wooden spoons. A shelf in the hall held more odd pieces of china than I remembered seeing there before. The floors were still mostly impassable. Soon dust would take over. Nobody could keep things clean here.\n\nI heard a key in the lock, and Ellen came in. I stepped forward and said her name, so she wouldn't think I was a prowler. She started anyway. \"I thought you were busy all week.\"\n\n\"I walked out of the conference.\"\n\n\"You left the play and the conference? What's wrong with you?\"\n\n\"Different reasons.\"\n\n\"Did you come here today to meet Gordon Skeetling?\"\n\n\"No. That's over,\" I said.\n\nShe looked doubtful, standing in the archway between the living and dining rooms, her pocketbook over her shoulder, confronting me as if she in her jacket were the visitor and I in my shirtsleeves dwelt there. She took off the jacket and put away the purse. \"I came home for lunch, and to do a little crying,\" she said.\n\n\"Over the man?\"\n\n\"I don't know. I'm still crying about the World Trade Center. Come in the kitchen and I'll make lunch.\"\n\nEllen's complicated house now constantly shifted meanings, as she did. As she walked through the rooms, the objects complemented and enlivened her indefiniteness, so I had the sense of someone whose surroundings matched her, but in a somewhat scary way. \"Are you tired of living like this?\" I said.\n\n\"I'm tired of living,\" said Ellen.\n\n\"What should I do?\"\n\n\"Distract me with your story.\"\n\n\"Is that a suicide threat?\"\n\n\"No, I'm a mother.\"\n\n\"Some mothers do it.\"\n\n\"Not this one.\"\n\n\"Getting help?\"\n\n\"Getting help. Not to worry. Distract me, distract me,\" she said.\n\nShe'd distracted me, but now the heft of the morning's events stopped my mouth. She seemed to know my story already, so I told it to her, told her the story I've been telling here, leaving out what she already knew\u2014herself, the play\u2014but including, without details, Pekko's connection to Edmund and what had happened. This time, though I was sure that now I had before me someone I could trust, I swore her to secrecy before saying that Pekko had known all along who killed Marie Valenti. \"It's funny,\" I said. \"From the time I first met him, I knew there was a secret. Maybe that's why I married him. I knew he knew something that everyone wanted to know.\"\n\n\"I won't tell,\" she said, and as far as I know she hasn't, though if Pekko knew I'd told her, I can't imagine what he'd think. Of course, that's not all he doesn't know. Or so I believe.\n\nAs I spoke, Ellen took a container of eggs and a bunch of spinach from the refrigerator and made us an omelet, beating the eggs in a bowl she placed on the only bare spot on her counter. \"Is Gordon why you gave up the play?\" she said. \"Because he might phone when you were at a rehearsal? I used to stay home, hoping Lou would call. It's shameful.\"\n\n\"That's an old-fashioned reason. I have a cell phone.\" But Gordon never used it. He said he hated the sound of cell phones. He said there were gaps in my sentences.\n\n\"Or because he thinks the play is stupid?\"\n\n\"It is stupid.\"\n\n\"In fact, it's not,\" said Ellen. \"I wouldn't be in it if it were.\"\n\n\"You let everything happen to you,\" I said.\n\nI don't remember everything Ellen said about the play, my inextricable connection to the play. She didn't say that I'd be sorry because I'd hate my disloyalty, or that I'd be sorry because I'd miss my friends and their fun. She may have said the connection existed whether I wanted it or not. \"Thea can't leave Dora,\" she may have said. \"Dora can't leave Thea.\" After a while she became tedious. I waved her quiet, and left quickly.\n\nAs I entered my house\u2014after driving many miles up I-91, fast, into Massachusetts, then back, fretting against the traffic\u2014I didn't hear anything. I was glad Pekko wasn't there. Arthur came to greet me as usual. I scratched behind his ears and grasped his big, black feet to lower him when he placed his paws on my chest. The mail was on the table. Pekko was home, or had been home. I heard a sound and climbed the stairs. A light was on in the bathroom, but the door was ajar. \"Pekko?\" I called.\n\n\"I'm in the tub. Come in.\"\n\nThe bathtub is against the wall at a right angle to the door, so when I paused in the doorway he was looking straight at me. Uncomfortable\u2014still in a jacket in the warm bathroom\u2014I had to stop myself from reaching to outline the doorjamb with my fingers. Gordon's gesture.\n\n\"Did you turn him in, Daisy?\" Pekko said. He had filled the tub as full as possible, and his thick limbs and stubby penis shifted and wavered under the water. His beard rested on its surface.\n\nFor many miles I'd been planning this conversation. I don't remember what I'd decided, but I told the truth. \"No. Gordon Skeetling turned him in. But it was my fault. I told Gordon.\"\n\n\"I thought it was Daphne.\"\n\n\"Daphne knows?\" I said.\n\n\"I told her ten years ago. I never should have told anybody. I was sure it was Daphne when I saw the paper, but she came to the office to tell me she didn't. She knew he stayed in the house sometimes. She said, 'I know right from wrong.' \"\n\nI stood silent for a long time. \"So you figured I didn't know right from wrong.\"\n\n\"I didn't know what else to think. Nobody else knew.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry I told Gordon.\"\n\nI waited for Pekko to ask why I did it\u2014and I don't know what I'd have said\u2014but he didn't. He sat silent in the tub, his arms under the water. He had no washcloth or soap. His face looked sweaty. The water must have been quite hot.\n\nIn the car, I'd imagined putting my arms around him and saying \"I'm sorry\" into his neck, but hugging him when he was in the tub would have been ludicrous. Another woman might have knelt and put out her arms and gotten wet, but I didn't.\n\n\"Sending Edmund Doyle to prison accomplishes nothing,\" he said at last. \"It does only harm, no good.\"\n\n\"You could argue that upholding the law accomplishes something,\" I said, even though it was what Gordon would have said. \"You could argue that he did commit murder.\"\n\n\"I don't see things that way,\" Pekko said.\n\nI left Pekko in the tub and walked downstairs to feed Arthur and start supper. I wondered momentarily if Pekko would leave me. I'd done two wrongs, I thought, as I peeled an onion. I had told Gordon about Edmund, and I'd quit the play for fear of embarrassment. But I'm the woman who's good half the time. I couldn't turn into someone three quarters good. Still, I didn't want to reduce my average. That night I called Katya to ask for my part back. She was glad. Angry but glad. \"Ellen and Muriel wasn't a combination that worked,\" she said, after sounding angry for a while.\n\nWe rehearsed almost every night for the final two weeks, and at last we had a play, which most of us memorized. Denise spoke in a singsong when given a script, but Katya was able to get her to improvise over again, so what she said came out slightly different each time but sounded natural. The play was to be performed with no backdrop but with several large, colorful props made by Daphne and friends of hers\u2014cheerfully gnarled trees\u2014and objects borrowed by Ellen, who knew how to get objects. Katya recorded some songs, and the play began with music. There was music as well in between scenes, and of course at the wedding, about which we had some disagreement. Tradition won out: we had Wagner for the processional and Mendelssohn for the recessional. \"Definitely traditional,\" I had said, my first day back. I was instantly full of opinions about the play, once again. I suppose I should have been humble, but I wasn't. When I first walked in, Muriel took my head in her hands and held it so tightly it hurt, for a long time, staring at me. Then she ducked my head roughly into her chest and kissed my hair.\n\n\"It's funnier if it's traditional,\" I persisted, later that same evening.\n\n\"Is the wedding supposed to be funny?\" said Jonah.\n\nHe was upset when he realized that Thea and Dora were having secular weddings. \"It needn't be Christian, if that's a problem,\" he said to me, and I realized that he'd figured out I'm Jewish, the only Jewish cast member. \"We could have a rabbi perform the ceremony if you'd rather,\" he continued. \"But I think a religious wedding would be more seemly, don't you?\"\n\n\"In real life, I've been married twice, both by judges,\" I said, and Jonah looked disappointed, but the list of characters already included a judge (who was formerly a doctor), and we thought it would be confusing to have Denise play a minister, priest, or rabbi at that point. The cast also included a minister, Jonah, in the baptism scene, but by the time we reached the wedding, Jonah was one of the grooms\u2014mine. We did add a nondenominational prayer, to be spoken by the only adult actor who was not in the wedding, Chantal. Chantal could sing gospel, it turned out, so we added a gospel song at the end of the wedding, just before Mendelssohn. It made me choke up every time, but I didn't have to speak at that point.\n\nKatya had come up with a donation from a printer, and a friend willing to design a poster, and my mother did a good job with publicity. A week before the play, stories ran in the Register and the Advocate, and posters appeared in store windows all over town. We had eight performances altogether. I knew I wouldn't feel bad about Gordon\u2014not truly bad\u2014until they were all over. It was good to postpone that pain (which, in its time, was considerable). Now I cared only about the play. I had vowed to behave myself, returning, but from the first I was arguing my complicated positions as forcefully as ever and taking people aside to give them hints. Chantal habitually said \"flustrated\" for \"frustrated.\" She looked hurt when I mentioned it, and at the next rehearsal she still said \"flustrated.\"\n\n\"It's not important,\" whispered Muriel firmly, when I tensed up as that happened. We had just climbed into the blue dress and were pacing back and forth in the back of the theater, feeling our way into the rhythm of our double walk.\n\n\"I'm cranky,\" I said. Then, \"Pekko's mad at me.\" He was distant, not angry. Muriel and I had a little time. Now that the parts were fixed, we weren't needed much at the beginning of the play. Chantal and David played TheaDora's parents, Denise was the doctor and the teacher. Before we got dressed, Muriel and I were extra students in the childbirth preparation class, and neighbors who commented on the two-headed baby.\n\n\"What did you do?\" Muriel said.\n\n\"How do you know I did something?\"\n\n\"I thought you might have.\" Pace, pace, pace. We were in sync now, but we seemed to be marching. That evening, we were working on a stroll. Muriel took my hand, underneath the dress, and we strolled together.\n\nA two-headed person would not have told Pekko's secret, I thought. People are supposed to have two heads. I said, \"I gave away a secret. It hurt someone.\"\n\n\"That wasn't right, Daisy.\"\n\n\"No.\" Why wouldn't a two-headed person have told? Because if she simply couldn't keep quiet, she could tell the other head.\n\n\"But he'll forgive you,\" Muriel said.\n\nI tried to keep that, tried to maintain the resolve I formed just then. The rehearsal took a long time. \"Forgive,\" I said to myself, several times, and when I walked into the living room that night, I said, \"Please forgive me.\"\n\n\"Daisy,\" Pekko said, turning off the TV and dropping the remote. Then he started to cry while Arthur greeted me. \"If only I'd kept my mouth shut,\" he said. He stood and sobbed without reaching for a tissue. Finally I brought him the box.\n\n\"Maybe they won't send him to prison,\" I said.\n\n\"They'll send him to prison. Look, I have to forgive both of us.\" He blew his nose. \"My friend goes to prison, and I shed a tear and go to bed with my pretty wife,\" he said. \"It's kind of disgusting.\"\n\n\"He did commit murder,\" I said. I couldn't help it. I can learn, I can change\u2014but only so much.\n\n\"He was a boy. He didn't know what he was doing.\"\n\n\"Then it won't be first degree.\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"Pekko, do you want to stop being married?\" I said, feeling afraid.\n\nFor a long time, he didn't speak. Then he said, \"Sometimes it doesn't seem to work.\"\n\n\"So . . .\"\n\n\"Do you want to end it?\" he said.\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"No, I never wanted to end it.\"\n\n\"Then we won't,\" said Pekko.\n\nWe did go to bed. It did feel as if we'd been let off easy, though we hadn't committed murder and Edmund had. You may feel\u2014whoever you may be\u2014that I should have taken the opportunity to tell Pekko exactly why I had told Gordon. I did not tell him.\n\nAnd that's where I stopped writing, about a week ago. Then Stephen called. He called when I stood up to fix myself a cup of coffee after the words \"tell him.\" He was coming to town to see Roz the next day. I told him I'd been writing.\n\n\"Oh. That thing you're writing.\"\n\n\"That thing I'm writing.\"\n\n\"I want to see it.\"\n\nI don't know what I'll do with this thing I'm writing, but at that moment showing it to someone, someone I loved, was enticing. \"All right,\" I said, and the next day I printed out everything I had and dropped it off at Roz's. I saw Stephen for just a little while; I had dinner plans he persuaded me not to break. I think he likes being alone with my mother, whom he takes to a restaurant, lately, when he comes. Roz is a year and a half older than she was at the beginning of this narrative, half a year older than when I began writing, and like a child she is noticeably older, now, each year. It was a warm day. When I arrived, they were on their way into her house. They'd been sitting on chairs they'd carried outside. Roz walked while Stephen hovered over her, turned back to fuss with the chairs, watched to make sure Roz made it up the two steps into her front door before he turned again to retrieve them. I was impatient, and I also thought maybe he was right to watch carefully. I handed him my big package. \"What's that?\" said Roz.\n\n\"Something about that conference I did,\" I said half truthfully.\n\nAfter that I didn't add to the narrative for days, and I wondered whether I should have shown it to my brother. He called tonight. \"It's interesting,\" he said.\n\n\"I didn't mean you were a loser, Stephen.\"\n\n\"Oh, I am, in a way.\"\n\n\"You read the whole thing?\"\n\n\"Daisy,\" he said, \"I don't think you understand it. You felt powerless but you had the power, you were the one who had the power. That man wasn't breaking up with you.\"\n\n\"Didn't I say that somewhere? Don't I understand that?\"\n\n\"But that's what you did wrong,\" said my brother. \"You failed to know you could make things happen. That you could hurt.\"\n\n\"You don't mean Gordon?\"\n\n\"Edmund Doyle. What happened to Edmund Doyle?\"\n\n\"The trial hasn't happened yet,\" I said.\n\n\"Why did you tell?\" said Stephen. I didn't answer, but I thought, I told the secret to keep everyone away. I was a whore who doesn't know the name of the man in bed, a killer who turns a person to a thing.\n\nThe houselights went down to complete darkness, and the audience hushed. Piano music by Schumann: happy-sad. Stage lights.\n\n\"Did you sign up for childbirth preparation?\" said the husband of the pregnant woman.\n\n\"Shut up, I'm cooking.\"\n\nThe doctor was no help. \"May I dance? May I eat?\" said the woman.\n\n\"None of the above.\"\n\n\"Leave me alone,\" said the wife. \"I want to suffer.\"\n\n\"I'm scared I'll kill the baby,\" said the husband.\n\nThe doctor disappeared under the wife's dress and came out holding a two-headed baby. The baby's arms were slightly bent, and her legs were cutely plump. She wore a yellow nightgown. She had one dark head with black hair and staring black eyes, and one fair head with yellow hair and staring blue eyes.\n\nThe doctor said, \"She's going to die. Better not love the baby.\"\n\nA neighbor said, \"If you nurse only one head, maybe the other will drop off.\" A minister baptized the baby. \"We must examine our thoughts about this child,\" he said. \"We must destroy prejudice in our hearts.\" An uncle proposed cutting off one head. But the baby grew older and learned to talk. \"I don't like being squashed together with somebody,\" said Thea, a forceful, dark head in a red dress.\n\n\"You think I like it?\" said Dora, a cool, blond head.\n\n\"I don't want you breathing on my face.\"\n\n\"I hate you.\"\n\nThea said, \"I hate me too. I don't want to be the same person as this white girl! Nobody understands what this is like!\"\n\n\"We have to go to the bathroom,\" said Dora, now grown, in a big blue dress with Thea.\n\n\"You think I don't know that?\" Thea said.\n\nThe foreman at the construction project said, \"You are not only a woman, you are of mixed race!\"\n\n\"We are two women,\" said Dora.\n\n\"No, we are a woman,\" Thea said.\n\nAnd each fell in love, one with the foreman, one with another worker. They fought and left the job, brokenhearted. As they wandered in a forest, Dora witnessed a murder. The prosecutor and the defense attorney were their old boyfriends. The judge was the old doctor. The doctor said they were twins.\n\n\"It's not exactly a happy ending,\" said Thea, \"but at least we can marry two men.\"\n\nMusic by Wagner. A double wedding. \"Do all of you promise to live as decently as you can in an extremely tight situation?\" asked the judge.\n\n\"We do,\" said the brides and grooms.\n\n\"And how about you in the audience?\" the judge continued, stepping away from the bridal couples, because in the end, though I still wanted no moral, I was outvoted. \"You're also more closely connected than you might want to be. You also can't get away from one another. Do you also promise to live together as decently as you can?\"\n\n\"We do,\" said the audience. Mendelssohn. A recessional march, led by the brides and grooms, joined by brave or exhibitionistic members of the audience. Applause. Pekko and Roz watched from a back row, then joined the procession, she smiling, he unsmiling. Charlotte and Philip clapped, too shy to stand up and march. I clutched Muriel's hand, wondering how I'd do without her when the performances were over, fearing I wouldn't keep her. When the music stopped and the audience dispersed, Ellen came to hug us first. Maybe I'd keep Ellen, in the fast approaching future. Muriel's moist body pulsed with excitement next to me. Her hand held mine, then let it go, and in the emptying theater we stood beside each other, tired and hot inside our big, white wedding gown.\nAcknowledgments\n\nWarm thanks to Paul Beckman, April Bernard, Susan Bingham, Donald Hall, Susan Holahan, Andrew Mattison, Edward Mattison, Zoe Pagnamenta, Jennifer Pooley, Sandi Kahn Shelton, Lezley TwoBears, and Claire Wachtel. Thanks also to the MacDowell Colony.\n\nAll New Haven murder victims in this book are real except Marie Valenti. Everyone else is imaginary except the Shakespeare Lady, who is Margaret Holloway, and Henry Berliner of the unforgettable Foundry Bookstore.\n\nThe following books were helpful:\n\nAnthony Griego, Patrol Officer, Department of Police Services, City of New Haven, \". . . Above and Beyond the Call of Duty: A Brief History of Policemen Who Have Died in the Performance of Their Duties, 1855\u20131970.\" Unpublished book in Local History Room, New Haven Public Library.\n\nRollin G. Osterweis, Three Centuries of New Haven, 1638\u20131938. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953.\n\n\"Shooting Death of Malik Jones on April 14, 1997.\" Unpublished book in Local History Room, New Haven Public Library.\nAbout the Author\n\nALICE MATTISON grew up in Brooklyn, studied at Queens College and Harvard, and teaches fiction in the Bennington Writing Seminars. She is the author of three previous novels, three collections of short stories, and a volume of poetry. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, Agni, New York Stories, The Threepenny Review, and The Pushcart Prize. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.\n\nVisit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.\n[PRAISE FOR   \nThe Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman](toc01.xhtml#praise-01)\n\n\"Mattison's voice is intelligent, spare, and without pretense. She lays out Daisy's story in a way that makes it seem as if not much is happening, while quietly weaving in four or five intriguing subplots, including a murder mystery, a rent strike, and, toward the end, September 11. All these stories press in on Daisy in some meaningful way, each playing a role in her quest to come to terms with herself.\"\n\n\u2014Washington Post Book World\n\n\"[A] quietly splendid novel. . . . Alice Mattison has an instinct for the nuance of small moments between people; she captures each subtle shift in Daisy's character with quirky insight.\"\n\n\u2014New York Times Book Review\n\n\"Mattison's writing gives the humdrum an edge we didn't know it possessed.\"\n\n\u2014Los Angeles Times Book Review\n\n\"Mattison beautifully describes the arc of the affair, as Daisy slips from woman in charge to woman in need. In Daisy, she creates a complicated woman who shows us self-discovery is a never-ending journey.\"\n\n\u2014Chicago Tribune\n\n\"The confidential voice of this novel's complex main character draws readers into [her] world with an almost magnetic power.\"\n\n\u2014Boston Herald\n\nPRAISE FOR  \nThe Book Borrower\n\n\"In deceptively quiet, guileless prose, she has described the mind-numbing routine of child care and the fraught, complex relations of men and women. Only Margaret Atwood (in Cat's Eye) has written as knowingly about the friendship between women. Emotionally wrenching, beautifully realized work.\"\n\n\u2014New York Times Book Review\n\n\"This excellent novel weaves the story of a 1921 trolley strike. . . . Mattison is concerned with the small decisions and coincidences that alter the course of our lives. Are they accidents, or impulses born of something deeper? Mattison's observations are so minutely compelling that each one feels like a shiny object, once lost but found unexpectedly.\"\n\n\u2014The New Yorker\n\n\"Extraordinary.\"\n\n\u2014Washington Post Book World\n\nPRAISE FOR  \nHilda and Pearl\n\n\"Forgiving and wise, Hilda and Pearl is a memorable novel about love's resilience.\"\n\n\u2014New York Times Book Review\n\n\"Engaging . . . intuitive. . . . Mattison takes no shortcuts, but leads us down the long road her characters travel in learning to accept and endure.\"\n\n\u2014Boston Globe\n\n\"Small fireworks of surprise detonate at intervals in this compelling narrative.\"\n\n\u2014Publishers Weekly\n\nPRAISE FOR  \nMen Giving Money, Women Yelling\n\n\"Alice Mattison is a charmer. She's one of those uncommon writers who is genuinely tickled by the ids and egos they commit to paper, and her characters bask\u2014rather than squint\u2014in the sunshine of her affectionate scrutiny. Men Giving Money, Women Yelling (is there an award for book title of the season?) is Mattison's third collection of short fiction, and it's crammed with characters\u2014teachers, lawyers, social workers\u2014who pop cleanly, if a bit frantically, off the page.\"\n\n\u2014New York Times Book Review\n\n\"If Mattison's spry language and light touch belie her careful framing of events, they also blithely pave the way for her finely hewn endings, which in almost every story capture the unspoken charm and mystery of a character or a moment.\"\n\n\u2014Publishers Weekly\n\n\"Mattison treats each of her loony, alternately bored and besotted characters with tenderness.\"\n\n\u2014The New Yorker\nAlso by Alice Mattison\n\nThe Book Borrower: A Novel\n\nMen Giving Money, Women Yelling: Intersecting Stories\n\nHilda and Pearl: A Novel\n\nThe Flight of Andy Burns: Stories\n\nField of Stars: A Novel\n\nGreat Wits: Stories\n\nAnimals: Poems\nCopyright\n\nExcerpt from The Book Borrower copyright \u00a9 1999 by Alice Mattison.\n\nThis book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.\n\nA hardcover edition of this book was published in 2004 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.\n\nTHE WEDDING OF THE TWO-HEADED WOMAN. Copyright \u00a9 2004 by Alice Mattison. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.\n\nHarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.\n\n**F IRST HARPER PERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED 2005.**\n\nThe Library of Congress \u00adhas cata\u00adlogued the hardcover edition as follows:\n\nMattison, Alice.\n\nThe wedding of the two-headed woman : a novel \/ by Alice Mattison.\u20141st ed.\n\np. cm.\n\nISBN 0-06-621378-9\n\n1. Women\u2014Connecticut\u2014Fiction. 2. Community theater\u2014Fiction. 3. Middle-aged women\u2014Fiction. 4. New Haven (Conn.)\u2014Fiction. 5.  \nMurderers\u2014Fiction. I. Title.  \nPS3563.A8598W44 2004  \n813'.54\u2014dc22\n\n2003044295\n\nISBN-10: 0-06-093788-2 (pbk.)  \nISBN-13: 978-0-06-093788-1 (pbk.)\n\nEpub Edition \u00a9 AUGUST 2012 ISBN: 9780062232045\n\n05 06 07 08 09  \/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1\nAbout the Publisher\n\nAustralia\n\nHarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.\n\nLevel 13, 201 Elizabeth Street\n\nSydney, NSW 2000, Australia\n\nhttp:\/\/www.harpercollins.com.au\n\nCanada\n\nHarperCollins Canada\n\n2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor\n\nToronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada\n\n<http:\/\/www.harpercollins.ca>\n\nNew Zealand\n\nHarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited\n\nP.O. Box 1\n\nAuckland, New Zealand\n\n<http:\/\/www.harpercollins.co.nz>\n\nUnited Kingdom\n\nHarperCollins Publishers Ltd.\n\n77-85 Fulham Palace Road\n\nLondon, W6 8JB, UK\n\n<http:\/\/www.harpercollins.co.uk>\n\nUnited States\n\nHarperCollins Publishers Inc.\n\n10 East 53rd Street\n\nNew York, NY 10022\n\n<http:\/\/www.harpercollins.com>\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}