“Future As Memory”

Waking Point

by Helen Noakes

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.” —Howard Zinn

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—7/12/10—Several years ago, I found myself at a crossroads in my life. A deleterious way of being behind me, I looked forward to a future of my own devising, but I needed time to assess my next step, so I chose to spend a summer digging.

I love to dig, in the garden, in research, into the psyche, and on archaeological sites. So, I went to Greece and, for the first time, experienced my native land.

On that journey, I did a great number of things for the first time. I faced many fears, stood up alone in the world, and chose to follow a few dreams.

One of those dreams was to work on archaeological sites. My textbooks did not prepare me for the unique experience, which was strangely solitary and communal, disciplined and demanding.

At one point, I wondered why I had chosen this grueling work. The hours were terrible —dawn to dusk. The conditions were abominable—blazing heat above ground; humid darkness below. The work was backbreaking. Swinging a pickaxe was as unfriendly to spine and arms as hunching over a delicate find with dental tools and a brush.

Why? I asked myself, again and again, as I nursed nasty cuts, and bruises from blows delivered by the roofs of caves and jagged landscapes.

The answer was both evident and elusive. I liked being “Indiana Jones,” with a measure of Carl Jung thrown in to balance the equation. I liked following hunches to dig at small mounds or depressions. The wily earth tantalized with concave or convex clues that often led nowhere and to nothing. There were times, however, when I found an artifact, a human bone, remnants of an ancient cooking fire or, better yet, a sacred fire. And, although those times were few and far between, somehow they made the hours of drudgery and bone-shattering work well worth it. The parallels to life were not lost on me.

I delighted in the study of rituals and myths. I picked away at animal bones, at pottery simple and thick, or elegantly decorated and thin as a skull. I measured, photographed, recorded—rote, necessary work. But it was the other digging I loved the most; the digging into a fellow human’s soul to find a message there.

Which myths drove the man or woman to that exact place to make an offering to powers larger, stronger and in control of human fate? What fear or hunger, need or greed, joy or sorrow, compelled this ritual? And why—why did this person believe? Where did that hope come from?

I sifted through the remains of the past and wondered at how little we’d changed. The fire that was lit 5,000 years ago, with offerings of creatures, gold, and pottery piled around it in hopes of favor from a demanding god was not much different from my grandmother’s prayers and gifts of flowers to the Madonna.

In a dig outside of Greece, I found something that struck me dumb and immobile for a while; only my thumping heart affirming the terror I felt at the very idea of what I had uncovered. There, at an ancient altar, lay the bones of a child and an adult female, 1C and 2C respectively, sliced through with meticulous precision. Atlas and Axis—bones of the vertebrae detached with a stroke of a ritual blade. Lives snuffed out for a delusion.

Even the God of our fathers demanded a first-born son—a test of loyalty, of love, of power. He stopped the hand of Abraham at the last minute, in apparent satisfaction at his servant’s blind belief.

Did no one notice how all too human these tests were? Which god—all powerful, all knowing—required such atrocities? Why would anyone assume that God would make such clearly base demands?

And just in case I felt smugly superior to my ancient ancestors, I looked at the morning papers and saw there the sacrifices we still demand in the name of power, greed and patriotism. I saw there killing in the name of God, and felt that we had not changed.

But we have changed. Oh, yes, we have. We know that the earth shakes, hurricanes blow, droughts occur because of natural phenomenon or our all too human interference with nature. We know better, but we kill nonetheless.

Our ancestors’ killings were compelled by genuine fears; ours are compelled by an overwhelming need to dominate. We’ve changed all right, and not for the better.

I found other evidence too, evidence of tenderness and sorrow dating from Neolithic times. The carefully laid out bones of a young mother, embracing a baby, a necklace of sea shells surrounding the mother’s neck, a tiny bracelet of small shells around the baby’s wrist. Whoever placed them there sent them into the unknown world of death with love. It struck me that love, like fear, has been with us since we first walked the earth.

I looked at my journal from those digs long ago and found this entry.

“What will my counterpart find 1,000 years in the future? If humankind is still here that is. Will she sift through the rubble of wars and death camps and be as appalled as I at the clean slice through Atlas and Axis? Will she look at the way we inter our dead and find solace in the knowledge that we are still capable of love? Will she find a skull, hold it carefully in her hands, look into its gaping sockets and see herself mirrored there?”