Mountaintop Removal Flight

As we left the ground, I saw Ingrid gripping herself and closing her eyes. She hated to fly. On our flight down to Kentucky, we’d passed through a lightning storm. I was too busy tending to my nauseous seat mate to notice that she was having a near-death experience. But when we landed in Lexington, she was still shaking and pale.

And that was a regular commercial flight. It’s easier to pretend you’re protected from the world outside when you don’t have windows you can roll down. A week later we found ourselves in a four-seater Cessna at the Yeager Airport in Charleston, West Virginia. I’d never been in a small, private plane before. Under normal circumstances, if this were just a pleasure flight, I would have been almost as scared as Ingrid. But I had a video camera in my hand and a job to do.

As we pulled into a spot in the airport’s parking lot, Ingrid had pointed out a sign that said “Reserved for Massey”. I quickly put the car in reverse. Massey Coal was one of the companies responsible for what I’d be filming that day. The purpose of the flight was to get a firsthand view and footage of mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining sites. MTR is a practice in which mountaintops are literally blasted off to extract the coal seams underneath. This practice devastates the land and poses long-term hazards to local residents who must cope with its aftermath. Poisonous coal waste finds its way into drinking water and the depleted mountaintops make floods a common occurrence.

As the plane ascended, we could see the full, rolling hills surrounding Charleston. It was beautiful to see the city falling into a crevice between those hills. There is nothing that makes you appreciate land, its aggregate power, like seeing it from an airplane. Most structures made by man can be seen as what they are – transitory settlements, Lincoln logs. But mountaintop removal is different, it leaves a mark that is unmistakable even from a thousand miles up.

As we began to move south from Charleston, Ingrid was starting to relax and look out the window. Our pilot Tom White told us over the headset that we’d soon be over the first mountaintop removal site. I got my camera ready and he opened the window. I stuck my head into it and felt the hard waves of air bend around my face and run wild with my hair. I loved that feeling. I imagined how amazing it must have been to take off in an early airplane, no windshield, no enclosure, powering through the wind with your own stubborn head.

Soon the site appeared. The green hills were gone. In their place were miles of gutted land - beige, reddish and black from the coal seams. It was monstrous in size, filling my view all the way to the periphery. I tried to fix my camera on a truck I could make out traversing the pit, but the wind shook so hard, I couldn’t tell if I was actually getting it in the shot. Every so often, I’d take my eyes away from the camera and look at the site without it. I preferred looking through the camera though, it made what I was seeing seem less real.

We passed over five sites during our flight, some of which I could identify based on features I’d read about, an elementary school perched under a coal slurry dam, a private land trust surrounded on all sides by MTR. Our pilot talked to us about the coal companies and the novel he wrote on the subject of mountaintop removal. I was excited to have his testimony for our recording, he had a lot of good things to say. Later when I played the tape, I could see his mouth moving, but heard only the motor and the wind. It was a no-brainer, but then, this was my first such flight and I wouldn’t exactly say I had my wits about me. I was so super-charged with adrenaline, I forgot everything beyond the plane and the MTR sites below.

After about an hour, Tom announced we were heading back. I didn’t want to come back down. I wanted to keep going. To fly over more land, the whole United States. I liked the power this perspective gave me. It was impossible to not see the forest for the trees when you were a few thousand feet above it. From the ground, MTR can be ignored, imagined to be just a minor disruption of the land. From up here, it was clear to see that it was a massacre, one that marched in full force, carried out by invisible humans in monster machines.

Though I wanted to see more, I knew Ingrid was ready to touch ground again and our pilot had other things on his schedule than to fly us around for free. After an hour in the air, we began our descent into Charleston. I saw Ingrid clutch her arms tightly enough to leave a bruise. I was trying to hold onto the perspective I’d gained as long as I could. There were the soft green hills again, so close, like I could reach my arm out and skim their grasses with my fingertips.

And then…I heard the low, comforting roll of tires on pavement. I was surprised. Where was the bump? I’d braced myself for a rough landing. I know Ingrid had. But there had not been even a shake. I wondered if the others had noticed. I wanted to express my surprise but didn’t want to offend Tom by suggesting I’d expected anything different.

About 30 seconds of silence, Tom erupted, “Damn! I haven’t had a landing like that in 20 years.” I smiled, happy for Ingrid and for Tom. The grin stayed on Tom’s face all the way to the gate. As he helped us out of the plane, Ingrid’s happy relief made her talkative. From the tarmac I looked back at the little plane that had provided such an eye-opening trip. I was reluctant to leave it.

An hour later we were on the freeway back to Lexington. We passed an enormous coal burning plant puffing out massive clouds of white smoke. It didn’t look ugly. It just looked like industry. What people couldn’t see was the real dirty secret. I thought about the wounds I’d seen in the earth, red and black like the blood and scabs of human flesh. Left, after reclamation, just barely concealed with nothing more than a sparse, hard grass called lespedeza. Some of the most biodiverse land in the world reduced to a barren steppe within a year. We behave like marauding barbarians, coming, plundering and essentially abandoning. But we are not invaders from another land. This is our land. It’s all we have. There is nowhere else to go.

Spirituality in the Age of the Badass

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about badasses and how I’d like to be one. My idea of a badass is someone who can endure plenty of physical or mental strain without complaining. In fact, someone who doesn’t complain period. If you’re complaining, it means you’re doing something against your will. And if you’re doing something against your will, then you’re not a badass. Somehow I picture a badass as having a flat facial expression. Eyes like one-way mirrors and a mouth like a cement line. Instead of saying “yeah”, they nod. Instead of saying “hello”, they nod. Instead of saying “excuse me”, they simply slide by like a ninja. Certain groups of people have higher concentrations of badassness among them. Bicycle messengers in New York, for example, might not survive if they were not badasses.

Though I have sometimes longed to be a badass, I have always known I would never make it. Maybe because I am not a good liar. To be a badass, you must keep that poker face, poker hands, poker aura. I cannot do that. If I feel something strongly, I will show it.

On July 10th, around midnight, I was blessed by the Indian guru Amma. She was appearing in a two-day event at the Manhattan Center on 34^th St. A few weeks prior I’d gotten a call from an English friend who I’d not seen since 1997. We’d spent three weeks together touring around France with her parents who were family friends of my grandparents. She was the first person with whom I ever shared drunken laughing fits. She introduced me to the song “Common People” by Pulp. We’d entertained ourselves at a bizarre French theme park called Futuroscope by cruelly aping all the sad-looking que-standers. We watched a phenomenal production of Sweeney Todd performed by teenagers in Plymouth and I fell in love with the lead. When I waved goodbye to Laura and her mom at Heathrow, it was the first time I’d never wanted to go home.

So when Laura called to say she was coming to New York, I was happy. I thought we’d get coffee or lunch and catch up with a long talk. I’d hear from her what it was like to be a mother in Michigan and she’d hear from me what it was like to be too busy and barely making it in New York. But two days later, she told me she was in town for an event at the Manhattan Center. I gathered that the event was religious in nature and I knew Laura had gone to India, but I didn’t know much else. I suggested that we meet for breakfast, but she kept persevering that I meet her at the Manhattan Center. I didn’t know enough about the event to like or dislike the idea. So I left work at 9:50 a.m. and walked the mile or so to 34^th and 8^th. She was staying around the corner in the Hotel New Yorker which instantly sent my heart fluttering. I’d been studying Nikola Tesla for the play I’m writing and the Hotel New Yorker was his last residence before he died. I’d been meaning to seek it out and here I had stumbled upon it without even trying.

From behind a hot dog cart on 34th, Laura suddenly appeared, same long, wavy brown hair a-flowing, but this time with grey hairs mixed in. Next to her walked a serious, blond angel, her daughter Anathe. We hugged and took each other in then walked inside where Laura got me a “token” – a piece of paper with a letter and number. They were on F6 and I had Z5. It reminded me of that scene in Beetlejuice when they go to the afterlife and sit next to the man with the shrunken head. I only had 30 minutes before I had to get back to work, so it looked grim. We waited and chatted while Anathe filled in blank time sheets forms with x’s and lines. About noon, we realized there was no way I’d be getting anywhere near that line. Laura asked if I could come back later, that Amma would be doing blessings all night. I had to teach a class, then direct a rehearsal for my upcoming play reading, but I promised to return at 10:30 that night. Laura procured a place-holder ticket for me that would put me at the front of the line when I returned.

I don’t know why I promised this, given that seeking a blessing from Amma was not something I had even known about prior to that day. I guess it was Laura’s earnest insistence. I felt that she wanted me to do it because she cared about me and thought it was important. I considered that I may not have a chance to see Amma again, or not for a very long time. Plus, I was about to experience the culmination of a very important project that meant a lot to me. A blessing could not hurt.

So after rehearsal at Chelsea Studios on 26^th St., I walked my tired body - off which too many bags hung - up to the Manhattan Center. I called Laura and she met me outside. We were instructed to stand in a roped-off section that looked like the line for a hot nightclub. It seemed hopeless. I couldn’t stay up till 4 a.m. and I was afraid this line might not get me inside much sooner. I thought about books I’d read where someone narrates the experience of being hopeless at the prospect of meeting a certain person or getting to a certain place when - suddenly - something changes to make it possible. I wondered if that would happen here. And it did! Shortly after we got in the line, it began to move very quickly. In five minutes, we were inside and I’d traded my placeholder card for a new token – F6. They were on C4.

Laura, Anathe and I went downstairs where we paid $7.50 for a heaping plate of rice, dal, potatoes and peas, salad and yogurt sauce. Anathe was tired and contrary, lying on the ground with one hand grabbing a chair. When a lady tried to take it, she threw a fit then found a new chair upon which she curled up like a little cat. She was very tired. But Laura was committed to seeing me receive darshan – Amma’s blessing. I figured it must be something like the pleasure an old couple gets attending a wedding. It makes them remember when they were married. She wanted to see my first time to relive her own.

After dinner, we went back upstairs to check the progress of the line. They were already on H! I felt a sense of great impatience having already fallen behind. So we made our way through the floods of people to the front of the darshan line. I took a seat in one of the padded metal convention chairs. Ahead of me were many more people waiting for Amma’s embrace. As each person was hugged and sent off with a “present”, the line moved up. While we waited, screens showed Amma speaking and loudspeakers played an English translation of her words. Her messages of peace, love and gender equality infused the space. I felt a very strong energy - thick like water. Perhaps it was all the power of suggestion or perhaps Amma’s famously huge aura really was enveloping me. I began to cry for no reason in particular but that I felt opened. Many people cry, for instance, when they hear the song “Amazing Grace” or “Ave Maria”. The tune and words are like a magic key that plunges us beneath our everyday consciousness. It reunites our spirits with higher consciousness. It affirms what we know inside, that we are spiritual beings and though we may be separated in this life, we are all a part of God.

As I got to the front of the line, I felt almost like I had lost consciousness. I was simply being pulled closer and closer to the energy that now held me. I gave my bags away to a man kneeling on a little rug bedside the darshan line. But as I passed into the second to last chair, a woman asked for my token. I had let that once-precious little piece of paper drop into my large canvas bag, thinking it no longer necessary. When they asked me to go back to my bags to retrieve it, it felt like getting out of a warm pool. But I managed to find the elusive, little piece of paper and get it into the woman’s hand. I was back in line.

I watched a husband and wife clasped to Amma’s bosom. It was as though they became twins in the lap of Mama and they seemed to never want to leave. Finally, the man got reluctantly to his feet and was ushered off as I, on my knees, was pushed forward. I remember the immense warmth and softness of Amma and a kind of smiling spirit that contrasted with the tears that had flowed from me while waiting in line. She held my head in one hand and my shoulders with the other. She held her mouth close to my ear and chanted “Mi, mi, mi, mi, mi” and then, a moment, and I was lifted to my feet again, a “present” thrust into my hand and I walked off.

I wandered down the aisle on the far side of the convention center, eyes scanning for Laura. I had a feeling like I was floating and needing something to bring me back down to earth. Suddenly, I heard Laura come up behind me. I turned and hugged her like a lost 4-year-old. I cried into her hair. I felt the coarse weave of her white gowns. She looked at me with a sense of wonder. I realized my response pleased her and I wondered if I had felt pressure to be moved. But whether or not I had, it didn’t change what I felt in that moment. I was happy to feel so open.

We walked out, reunited with Anathe, and Laura handed me a sheet listing meditation centers throughout New York that practice Amma’s technique. We said goodbye in the large, marble foyer of the Manhattan Center. I thought how the whole event was free. I thought how walking into the New Yorker Hotel was free. I thought how seeing Laura was free and how Anathe was made free. I thought about how much is in the world for us that costs nothing and could not be bought even if a price were put on it. I knew that my connection to Laura would last throughout our lives, maybe for the sole reason that we were both seeking and would continue to seek. Maybe because we had been like sisters for three weeks in France. Maybe because we could span the chasm in between that time and recognize the unchanged spirit in the other that we had always known. I said goodbye without sadness.

The next day there was an article in the New York Times about Amma. It was purely informative, cool. It described the scene at the Manhattan Center and the procession of people seeking darshan. It told of Amma’s charity work. But it did not venture to speculate on her power, her spirit or the spirits of her followers. Amma was just another subject of interest, like Hannah Montana or Kenny Chesney or Ron Paul. People who have attracted people. As though each person’s “people” are some other, some interesting species to be viewed from the cool, detached eye of those so educated they are nobody’s people. Nothing touches them. They are badasses.