Why I think I have no "other half"

For Week of Mutuality, in support of Rachel Held Evans

Complementarianism is the view held by some Christians that the Bible requires Christian women to submit to male leadership in the home, church and (according to some) society.  For an interesting view of that movement, you might want to read Kathryn Joyce, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010).

There are many aspects of complementarianism that I find problematic.  But I want to look at and discuss just one.  It is not, I believe, essential to complementarianism.  Rather, it seems more like a corollary or implication.  I want to look at the view that we are incomplete selves and there is another self out there, our complement, who will complete us.

A clear and interesting statement of that view is expressed in one of Plato’s writings, Symposium.  In the Symposium, Plato writes about a party.  “Symposium” is a transliteration of a Greek word composed of a preposition “sum” meaning “with” and “posion” meaning “drink.”  A symposium is a drinking party.  At the party, in order to entertain each other various famous Athenians give a speech to explain what love, particularly erotic love, is.  Aristophanes, one of the characters, explains erotic love by appeal to a kind of complementarianism (see Plato, Symposium starting at 189d).

Aristophanes says that “in the beginning” humans were of three types: male, female, and male-female combination (he coins the word “androgynous”).  However, they were a bit unlike us.  They were round, had four arms and four legs, two faces on opposite sides of the sphere, and two sets of sexual organs on opposite sides of the sphere.  The male would have two sets of male sexual organs, female two sets of female sexual organs, and the male-female one set of each.  They walked upright, and when they wanted to go fast, they’d spin doing very fast cartwheels.  Because of the speed they could attain, the gods feared these first humans might ascend to heaven, attack the gods, and create havoc.  So the gods devised a plan to weaken the first humans: they’d split them in two.

The gods cut each human in two so each would have two arms, two legs, one face, and one set of sexual organs.  Where the first humans were cut in two, the skin was pulled together, the evidence of which, Plato has Aristophanes say, is our navel.  The gods then changed the direction of our face one hundred eighty degrees so each person could see the wound, recognize one had been cut in two, and thus behave better, not trying to ascend to heaven and attack the gods.  But having been split, each longed to be whole again, to find one’s other half, one’s complement.  When any two would meet, they’d grasp each other to see if this other was their complementary self.

One big problem: the sexual organs were on the outside, so when they’d grasp their complement, they’d hang on until death and no new humans were being produced.  The gods revised their design: they moved the sexual organs from what had been the outside of the original spherical humans to the inside of the split humans.  Now when they’d grasp their complement they could enjoy sexual relations and, if they were originally androgynous, could reproduce.  Those who had been spherical males or spherical females, though non-reproductive, could still enjoy love-making.  And instead of holding onto each other until death, after love-making they’d stop embracing and return to their daily tasks.  “This,” Aristophanes explains, “is the source of our desire to love each other.  Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature” (Symposium, 191d).

While contemporary complementarians might find Aristophanes explanation of erotic love as offensive, silly, even grotesque, there are many who think that a good marriage is one in which each finds one’s complement.  When we do, it contributes to healing the wound, the brokenness of human nature. Side note one: I doubt any Christian complementarians think that there could be male-male complements or female-female complements.  Side note two: Christian complementarians think that males have specific defined roles that only males have, and females have specific defined roles that only females have, which roles complement each other such that each male-female pair can be whole only if each fulfills its own roles only.

Not only do complementarians think a good marriage or otherwise intimate relationship is when each finds one’s complement.  In popular culture there is the view that a good couple is one where each complements the other.  In the film Rocky, when Rocky is asked what he sees attractive about his girlfriend says: “She fills gaps. She’s got gaps. I got gaps. Together, we fill gaps.”  She is a complement who completes him.

Again, I am not saying that it is an essential component of complementarianism that there is another self out there, our complement, who will complete us.  It is a corollary or implication of it.  Before I address what I find problematic about it, let me say some things that I think are right about the view that a good relationship involves some complementary components.

Each one of us is wounded, broken, inadequate.  We do have gaps, often big holes.  I am not very friendly to people who are not well-educated, or attractive, or at least moderately successful.  It is not that I am hostile toward them.  I just ignore them.  My wife, my daughter, and my son are friendly and kind to such people.  I learn from them, and I have gotten better about not being such a snob and elitist.  And even when I am still my old self, I often have someone next to me filling my gap by being kind to others.

If we are having friends or family over for a meal and my wife is organizing it, she likes to have everything planned and organized, down to the smallest details.  Everything is timed out.  If we are starting with a salad, half an hour before we are supposed to eat, it will be all set out, a place for everything and everything in its place.  If I am organizing the meal, I’ll have some general planning in my head, but I don’t think “exactly at 6:30 everyone will sit at the table and we’ll begin the salad.”  I’m not completely lax; I would think “around 6:30ish, depending on where the conversation is, we might begin to move toward the table.”  We learn from each other.  I become a bit more organized, less vague in my planning.  She becomes a bit more relaxed when organizing a gathering.

However, each one of us is wounded, broken, inadequate.  We do have gaps, often big holes.  And to think that all our gaps can be filled by another, that all can be completely filled by another, that we’d be fully satisfied if we just found the right person is all to set ourselves up for disappointment.  Two wounded people don’t make a good relationship; they create the need for a health care system!  If we are looking for another to complete us, we need to remind ourselves of what Augustine said at the beginning of his Confessions I.1.i: “our hearts are restless until they find rest in you Lord.”  We need to put in The Joshua Tree CD and hear U2 proclaim that wherever our search on earth takes us, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

If we think we are searching for our soulmate, the person whom we need and who needs us, I am just not sure that is love.  For me to need you and for you to need me is to put demands, obligations on each other.  And I am just not sure that is what love is.  As much as we want to be reciprocated, I fundamentally believe that love does not place demands on another person.  A few years ago, I told someone that I was looking forward to the day when our children didn’t need us, but nonetheless still wanted us.  That is the kind of love I want.  That is what I want my love relationship to be.  One where we don’t, in the grand scheme of things, need each other, but where we deeply and lastingly want each other.  To be sure, there are many times that we need each other.  Yet what sustains us and makes our relationship grow and flourish is that we continue to want each other, freely and mutually.

Good Movie: Blue Like Jazz: The Movie

Blue Like Jazz The Movie official trailer

I think I've read most of what Don Miller has published, and much that he has posted on his blog.  The first thing I read of his was Blue Like Jazz.  Then next it might have been Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (which got reissued as Through Painted Deserts).  Then Searching for God Knows What, and after that Father Fiction, and finally A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  I like Prayer, Searching, and Million Miles better than BLJ.  Yet when I heard he and Steve Taylor (and hundreds others) were working on a script to turn it into a movie, I was eager and excited.  The movie is out. I have heard that the movie is not like the book.  It has been so long since I read the book, maybe six or eight years, that I have no basis for judging.  If I were to read the book again, I am guessing I'd say I like the film better.

I had to drive 75 miles to the nearest theater that showed it.  I spend money to see films maybe once a year.  For most films, I wait until the local public library gets them on DVD and I can view them for free.  I have a hard time paying $10 to watch a film.  I feel like I don't have to be that current on pop culture.  My wife and I made the drive to attend the 11 am matinee showing (so it was only $8 per person).  We got into the dark theater, viewed all the previews at VERY LOUD VOLUMES, and when Blue Like Jazz started playing, we got almost a private viewing: only one other person was in the theater.

I liked the film much, in many ways.  After the film my wife asked me why I liked it.  I said it seemed to be real, genuine, honest about relationships.  Don, the main character, has a very hard time being real, genuine, and honest about relationships.  That struck me as true.  It is hard to open myself up to another person, for if I do I become vulnerable to be hurt.  What I find hard about relationships is just being able to be with another person.  I can do stuff with other people, be busy with them, talk, play, go for a drive, interact.  I find it hard to just be with another.  Maybe too it is a way to mask the lack of clarity about who I am, or who I want to become.  It is hard to have a good relationship.

I resonated with the Don character in other ways.  Don was raised in a fundamentalist christian environment and, for college, he goes to a very secular, very anti-christian and perhaps anti-religious (but that is debatable) place where he hides his religious commitments, and even goes beyond that to poke snarky fun at some christian beliefs.  I know exactly what that is like.  Still, some of the snarky comments are right on track.  In the end, trying to not give too much away, Don achieves a kind of reconciliation with christianity in a way that might stretch many christians' credulity (since for many christians proper creedal commitment is primary).

The real Don Miller, the author, says the film is a christian film, but not like what we've come to expect when we think of the genre of "christian film."  It is not preachy.  It raises questions.  It makes you think. Like he says, you probably haven't seen a christian film in which a lesbian pisses in a men's room urinal.

The stories of the various characters seems genuine, not contrived. They seem not like stock characters. They are at times as puzzled about themselves and their identity as Don or anyone else.  If you see the film, I think it will impact you.

Funeral Service

(I know I still have to finish the story I started in January.  But in the meantime, this).

It is odd to write the order of service for one’s own funeral.  But I want to do so.  I hope now is well before my death.  I am not doing it because I am expecting to die soon, or have reason to believe I have some terminal illness, beside the terminal illness of being mortal.  I am doing it because I hear so much from funerals, or from those close to someone who just died, with which I do not resonate.  One of the main things I hear is talk about what the deceased is now doing, as if the person is still alive, just moved to a new zip code.  It is like talking about a friend who moved out of state.  Usually, those still alive talk about the dead person moving to a location where they can and are doing all the things they most enjoyed while alive.  For example, if the person liked chocolate, they are now at the great Nestle’s factory in the sky, breathing, eating, and swimming in chocolate.  Or if the person liked Detroit Tiger’s baseball, they now have permanent first row seats behind the dugout in the great Tiger stadium in the sky.  Of, if those alive are particularly religious, they speak of the deceased as now walking and talking with Jesus, the Apostles, great heroes of ancient Israel, or at least other recently deceased close relatives, certainly in a much better place now than when they were alive on earth.  Those are certainly comforting beliefs, on the assumption that you believe that those who die go to a better place.  And on the assumption that wherever they go, they are conscious, healthy, physically much like we are now but with many fewer physical limits.

I am not so sure about any of that.  My thoughts are much closer to those of Socrates.  Near the end of Plato’s Apology where Plato represents Socrates before an Athenian jury giving his defense (the meaning of the Greek word apologia) of his life, mission, and practice, Socrates speaks about death.  He says “there is good hope that death is a blessing, for it is one of two things: either the dead are nothing and have no perception of anything, or it is, as we are told, a change and a relocating for the soul from here to another place” (Apology 40c).  It is initially a bit odd to hear Socrates say this.  Socrates is famous for claiming to know nothing of great importance, and for not claiming to know something when he didn’t in fact know it (I’ve heard many people mis-report it as Socrates being famous for claiming that he knew nothing).  Sure, he knew his name was Socrates.  He knew he lived in Athens.  He knew where the market was.  He knew his mission in life was to examine and question himself and others to see if he and others cared more for virtue and wisdom than for power, possessions, popularity and pleasure (Apology 29e-30b).  But one thing he claimed not to know, and this too in the Apology, was whether or not death was a good thing: “No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.  And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know” (Apology 29a-b).  So how can Socrates assert “there is good hope that death is a blessing”?

Look at what he says: “either the dead are nothing…or it is…a change.”  That is what is called a tautology: death is either the end, or it is not the end.  If it is the end, there is no conscious self, no person to experience anything, neither pain nor pleasure, joy nor misery.  What is there to fear?  At death, one just ceases to exist.  There is no pain, no misery, no anguish.  There is just nothing.  But if death is not the end, that could be a blessing only so long as the continued existence is a desirable one.  Socrates thinks it will be a blessing for him because he will be able to continue his mission of examining and questioning himself and others to see that he and they care more for virtue and wisdom than for power, possessions, popularity, and pleasure.

My beliefs about death are a hodge-podge blend of Socrates’ beliefs with some of Christianity’s beliefs.  At death, I expect to stop having conscious experiences.  I will be dead.  I am not sure that I will be anywhere.  If I am anywhere, I expect to not be conscious of being anywhere.  In the Christian bible, at 1 Corinthians 15.18, it speaks of those “who have fallen asleep in Christ.”  It is speaking of those who have died and (somehow) belong to Christ.  It refers to them as asleep.  Not conscious.  Not fishing the great trout stream in the sky.  Not conversing with the saints and prophets.  Asleep.  It sounds to me a lot like Socrates’ first option.

But it doesn’t end there.  The end is not the end.  It goes on to speak about a resurrection of the dead, and that “in Christ will all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15.22).  It says this will happen not at my death, or at anyone else’s death.  It will happen at the end of all things when death will be destroyed, annihilated, ended (1 Corinthians 15.24, 26).  When death is done with, there will be “the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power;  it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15.42-44).  Do I understand all that?  Do I understand any of it?  No and no.  But it sounds to me a lot like Socrates’ second option, a change to another sort of conscious existence.

Where I depart from Socrates’ conception of a change to a continued conscious existence is that I think it won’t involve continued enjoyment of the kinds of activities I enjoy now.  Here, I follow St. Thomas Aquinas.  He distinguishes two senses of the concept “happiness.”  There is first the happiness that we humans can enjoy now.  It is within our power to experience human happiness by living a virtuous life, the chief virtues being moderation, justice, courage, and wisdom (in Latin, temperantia, justia, fortitudo, sapientia).  In addition to this happiness we can achieve on our own, there is a happiness that is our supreme good (in Latin, the summum bonum).   This, thinks Aquinas, we cannot achieve solely on our own but require the infused virtues of faith, hope, and love (in Latin, fides, spes, charitas).  This happiness, the highest happiness, is experienced in the eternal life (with perhaps rare glimpses of it in this life) in the vision of God, in beholding the full presence of God.  Of that Aquinas says “happiness is the perfect good, which lulls the appetite altogether, else it would not be the last end [he means the ultimate goal of life], if something yet remained to be desired….This is to be found not in any creature, but in God alone….Wherefore God alone can satisfy the will of a human….Therefore God constitutes a human’s happiness” (Summa Theologiae I-II, 2, 8).  For me, that clearly has to come in the life to come, because I almost never experience it here.  I want God, and a good Chianti.  I want God, and a nice bike ride.  I want God, and a relaxing fishing trip.  I want God, and an invigorating conversation with a friend.  Or, more often, I want all these other things but not God.

In layman’s terms, upon the resurrection of the dead when I enter the heavenly kingdom and am in the fullness of the presence of God, “which lulls the appetite altogether,” there will be nothing I want, nothing else I want to do.  I will be worse than the cartoon version of a man encountering a beautiful woman: mouth agape, eyes fixed, drooling.  Go for a bike ride? No interest.  Go trout fishing? Are you crazy? Eat a stunningly good northern Italian meal? Not for the life of me.  My appetite is anesthetized.

When I am dead, I’ll be dead.  I am not sure I will “be” anywhere.  If I am somewhere, I won’t have any conscious experience of it, and I certainly won’t be alive.  I will be dead, awaiting the resurrection.  The resurrection will put me in the full presence of God, wanting absolutely nothing else.  For me, that is the Christian hope.  It is something I believe, but do not understand.

So I write the order of service for my funeral.  I will not deliver the funeral sermon.  I cannot be trusted to speak frankly about myself, in such a way that would be comforting for those who care deeply about me and are still alive.

A.      Responsive reading of Psalm 23:

(Leader) The LORD is my shepherd,

(Congregation) I lack nothing.
 (L) He makes me lie down in green pastures,

(C) he leads me beside quiet waters,
(L) he refreshes my soul.
(C) He guides me along the right paths  for his name’s sake.
(L) Even though I walk  through the darkest valley,
(C) I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
(L) your rod and your staff,
(C) they comfort me.

(L) You prepare a table before me
(C) in the presence of my enemies.
(L) You anoint my head with oil;
(C) my cup overflows.
(ALL) Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD  forever.

B.      Praise song: Matt Redman, “Blessed Be Your Name” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qp11X6LKYY

C.      Hymn:  “In the Garden” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzzqhaLl_8w

D.      Congregational recitation: The Apostle’s Creed

I believe in God, the Father, Almighty, 
Maker of heaven and earth. 

I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, 
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, 
born of the Virgin Mary, 
suffered under Pontius Pilate, 
was crucified, died, and was buried; 
he descended into hell. 
On the third day he rose again from the dead; 
he ascended into heaven, 
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father, Almighty, 
from thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. 

I believe in the Holy Spirit, 
the holy catholic church, 
the communion of saints, 
the forgiveness of sins, 
the resurrection of the body, 
and the life everlasting. AMEN.

E.       Praise song: David Crowder Band, “Everything Glorious” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81dK2Vu1IUs&ob=av2e

F.       Congregational recitation: The Heidelberg Catechism, question 1 and answer:

(Leader) What is your only comfort in life and death?

(All) That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.  He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil.  He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him.

G.     Hymn: Owl City, “In Christ Alone” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipl-rLRxOrs&feature=related

H.      Reading from the Epistles:  1 Corinthians 15. 20-44:

    But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.  For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.  For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.  But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.  Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.  For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.  The last enemy to be destroyed is death.  For he “has put everything under his feet.”

    But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”  How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.  When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else.  But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.  Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.  There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another.  The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

    So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power;  it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

I.        Reading from the Gospels: John 14. 1-3

Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.  My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

J.        Sermon (please, no more than 15 minutes)

K.      Song in response: The City Harmonic, “Manifesto” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_6JQDsbtlM

L.       Benediction:

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:  The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.  (Numbers 6:24-26)

Mid-Day Entertainment

[The first draft of an unfinished story; I'm trying to figure out how to finish it.  I hope to post a draft of the finishing part before the end of January]

Brad and Evan were up fly fishing on the Aspen River in late July.  Brad learned to fly fish from dry fly fishermen and fisherwomen, and he was devoted to well-tied dry flies.  Evan grew up bait fishing for panfish, bass, then trout.  When he picked up fly fishing, he fished nymphs.  He rarely fished dry flies.  They were up for a weekend with their wives, Brad’s wife Hilary and Evan’s wife Clare, staying at Hilary’s family cabin on the Aspen at Porcupine Point.  The cabin had been in Hilary’s family for over a century.  Her family had started a lucrative manufacturing business in Ft. Wayne at the beginning of the twentieth century, making a component of the ignition system for automobiles, becoming suppliers for all the automobile manufacturers.  Over the next few decades, some other companies replicated the technology, and acquired a portion of the market.  Hilary’s family was in first and in biggest.  While others joined the market, her family’s business was still the largest of them all.  With wealth, the family purchased various properties at locations prime for American leisure activities: sailing, boating, skiing, hunting, trout fishing.  In fact, Hilary’s father was one of the sixteen men that met in July 1959, incidentally the summer before Brad was born, at the home of George Griffith that led to the founding of Trout Unlimited.  The family had fished the trout around Porcupine Point for five decades, and her father wanted to help preserve quality trout fishing for as long as humanly possible.  Brad married into the family, and that is how he and Evan got access to the cabin at Porcupine Point, and more importantly to the fishing on the Aspen above and below the point.

Brad and Evan had recently become friends.  Evan was two years older, minus one day, than Brad.  They met as team mates playing in an adult soccer league.  Brad was a forward or central midfielder, Evan a defender.  Brad scored goals, Evan tried to keep opponents from scoring.  After playing together a couple of seasons, they became acquaintances.  It took a few more years of getting to know each other that they became friends.  They got to know each other by talking before or, more often, after games, about their joys and disappointments.  It seemed that the disappointments did more to develop the friendship.  Facing the crap of life makes your legs and whole being feel wobbly, and you often need someone to steady you or to fall upon.  Losing a game, even a one point loss due to an own goal, is nearly pain-free compared to the pains of job loss, or prodigal children, or other sorts of failures in our closest and most meaningful relationships.  The friendship deepened.  Evan had fished since he was too young to remember, his youngest memories of fishing coming from before he was in kindergarten.  Brad came more recently to fishing, accelerated largely due to his recent relationship with and marriage to Hilary.  Evan and Clare were married over thirty years ago.

Brad and Evan had slipped out of the cabin at daybreak, skipping coffee and breakfast except for a glass of orange juice, to head upstream over a mile to fish downstream to Porcupine Point, just downhill from the cabin.  Breakfast and coffee were skipped to allow Hilary and Clare to not be awoken by the noise in the kitchen of the grinder grinding the coffee beans and of pans banging.  They’d fish hungry, and breakfast after four hours of morning fishing.  Brad caught two puny brown trout, six and eight inches.  Evan caught one brown, ten inches.  Around Porcupine Point, it was all catch-and-release.

When they got to the put in spot, Brad entered the river and started fishing.  As they were fishing downstream, and as Brad fished dry flies, he needed undisturbed water, looking for dimples on the water of trout sucking emergers off the surface.  He would pay out line and drop his fly just upstream of the feeding trout.  Evan would follow, fifty yards behind.  Fishing nymphs, he cast across and upstream to drift the nymph into likely spots, small holes or pockets, along down longs and sweepers.

One trout Brad caught was feeding mid-stream where two tongues of water came together and there was an eddy, perhaps a foot wide and three feet long.  He laid out line and leader perfectly to float the fly into the tongue, amidst half-inch foam bubbles, when the trout sipped it below the surface.  The other trout was taken along the west shore of a section just exposed to the warming effects of the sun’s rays, setting off an early morning hatch.  Two weeks earlier at that spot, Brad landed his largest brown trout in his half dozen years of fishing the Aspen around Porcupine Point, a seventeen inch male on a #18 blue-winged olive.  Brad fished with a Winston rod and a Ross reel.  His reel, or perhaps even just his line and backing, cost more than Evan’s rod a reel, a 5 weight from Cabela’s.  Evan’s rod cast well enough for Evan to catch fish.  He tried Brad’s Winston, and it was a beautifully balanced tool for fishing tiny dry flies.  It did feel nice.  It was like the difference between hearing a symphony orchestra CD through a $300 stereo system and hearing it through a $1600 system with correspondingly high quality speakers, speakers that cost $2400 for the pair.

It took four hours to fish from the put-in just above where the tiny but named streamlet, the Esther, entered the Aspen, down to Porcupine Point.  Reaching Porcupine Point, Brad stepped out of the river, sat in the short grass, stretched his back as he waited thirteen minutes for Evan to fish the last few pockets, the last short pool on the south side, and join him.  They shared their experiences.  Neither had seen the other catch or release their fish.  The nature of serious fly fishermen is that they attend and focus.  Brad tries to telescope his vision to the drift of the quarter-inch to three-eighths inch-long dry fly, watch for a trout it sip it under the surface, and lift the rod to set the hook.  Evan attends to the end of his floating line watching for it to stop its drift momentarily signaling a trout has picked up the nymph seven feet down the leader, or more likely, where the nymph has briefly hooked a twig or the bottom of the river.  They both lean forward slightly from the waist, as if trying to get six inches closer to watching their fly and line, resulting in the need to stretch their backs after the four-hour morning fishing.  They both attend to breeze, trees and shrubs along the banks, rocks and branches in the river, the color of the water signifying depth.  Once Brad got fifty yards downstream from the put-in point and Evan entered the river to begin his fishing, Evan barely noticed Brad, except to make sure he wasn’t fishing too quickly and encroaching on Brad’s space.  Exiting the Aspen at Porcupine Point, they relaxed on the bank together and spoke their stories.

It was then that they heard the first distant boom:  a paddle held by a beginning canoer banging against the gunwales of the canoe.  A moment later it occurred to Brad to take advantage of the sharp turn in the river at Porcupine Point to see if they could get some entertainment from the amateur paddlers attempting to negotiate the sharp right turn.  The approach to the bend was a narrow slot, made narrower by a small sweeper on the upstream end of the slot, then a pile of boulders, football to basketball sized, mid-stream half-way down the slot toward the bend.  It was further made narrow by most paddlers’ recognition of the privacy—relatively speaking of course—of the cabin owners sitting, usually in lawn chairs sipping coffee or iced tea or Tom Collins or Manhattans, depending on the time of day, on the north bank of the bend in the Aspen at Porcupine Point.  They might have envied the location, or rather the owners of such a location with peaceful view—relatively speaking of course—of a wonderful stream.  Whatever it was, most paddlers tried to avoid the north, more private shore.  It provided a funnel, part natural and part cultural, into the sharp right bend in the river.

A trained paddler would read the funnel and right hand bend, make the correct decision to go wide, hug the north bank—privacy of cabin owners be damned, this is public water—follow the main flow around the bend and, most critically, avoid the big sweeper on the inside of the bend.  Jutting out from the south side of the river at Porcupine Point, just past halfway around the bend, a sweeper lay over the river, the bottom of the sweeper suspended exactly twenty-two inches above and almost perfectly parallel to the river until its formerly upper branches dipped into the water.  Inexperienced paddlers, which means most paddlers, took what they thought was the short way around the bend—on the inside.  As they began to round the bend on the inside and saw the overhanging sweeper, they’d try to paddle madly to get north around it.  But the way the water bent and eddied, it tended to push the back side of the canoe quickly east, turning the canoe sideways and pointing north.  The least experienced would do the right thing and let the back end of the canoe come around, duck into the canoe with the rear paddler going forward onto the floor of the canoe and the front paddler laying back to stare at the sky, and let the canoe float backwards under the sweeper.  Clearing the sweeper, they get upright in their seats, and work it around to point the canoe downstream again.  Those who thought they knew something, often the male in a co-ed canoe who usually sat in the rear thinking that since he did much of the steering he was captain of the vessel, would give directions to paddle backwards, which had no positive effect.  They’d continue to turn sideways.  This time they’d hit the sweeper with the front third of the canoe into the branches at what had been the top of the tree.  They’d both attempt to lay backwards in the canoe, hoping it would fit under the sweeper.  The front occupant would then grab branches thinking he (or she in the co-ed canoes) could then pull the canoe forward and get around the north end of the sweeper.  Instead, they usually came to grief, rolling the canoe and taking an involuntary swim.  The water was only waist deep.  But it was cold, spring-fed water.  People involuntarily swimming in cold water, thinking it was the captain’s incompetence that got them their baptism, often had unkind things to say to the captain.  The captain, if he was dumb enough, responded that if she had paddled harder instead of screaming and laying back in the canoe, then his plans would have succeeded.  Divorce lawyers and family therapists are known to post advertisements and 800-numbers at canoeing take-out points.

So Brad got the idea for some mid-day entertainment.  With waders on, leaving his rod and vest behind, and before the first canoes appeared, he waded to the upstream end of the funnel where it was shallow, about two feet deep.  He began to rearrange the pile of boulders mid-stream half-way down the slot toward the bend.  He stepped upstream and retrieved more boulders to add to the pile.  The aim of his engineering feat was to move the funnel a few feet north, to close off to all but the most experienced and most polite paddlers the natural wide route which would get you most safely around the bend, but also brought you within spitting distance of the privacy of the north side cabin owners.  While Brad was setting the trap, Evan would listen and watch for the front of a canoe to make its first appearance two hundred yards upstream and give a warning to Brad.  Brad would take a sabbatical from his engineering, wade over to the bank, and talk with Evan.  While seeming not to pay attention, they were eager to see the degree of success.  Each time after a small flotilla of canoes would pass, Brad would recalculate and renovate the project.

Evan had gone back to the cabin when Brad started the project.  Hilary and Clare were up, it being 10 am and all, but still in their pajamas and bath robes.  They had had breakfast, and Hilary had made good dark roast but not bitter coffee from Sumatra Mandheling beans.  Evan got travel mugs for he and Brad, filled them, and brought them down to the river.  When paddlers would come and Brad would take a break from his construction project to see what re-engineering was needed, they looked innocent enough, wader clad, earth-tone shirts, Evan with his brown felt fishing fedora, a couple of early fifty-year-old gentlemen purveyors of the fine sport of angling with a fly for trout, sipping high quality coffee.  Those in the canoes didn’t realize it was high quality coffee.  It could have been Chase and Sanborn for all they knew.  But by the lean looks of Brad and Evan, by the well-dressed pair, paddlers assumed, and assumed rightly, that they were drinking fine coffee.  They also assumed they were kind, well-intentioned gentlemen.

By 10:30, the construction project was good enough.  Besides, canoes were coming so steadily that Brad lacked time to wade out, reposition or add another boulder, and wade back.  Now it was time to hang up the waders to air out before late afternoon fishing, break the fast with toasted English muffins and eggs fried over easy, talk with Hilary and Clare about their plans for the day, and head back down to the river to be entertained by paddlers attempting to navigate the right hand bend at Porcupine Point.