Conversations For Transformation:
Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard
Conversations For Transformation
Essays By Laurence Platt
Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard
And More
Fugitives
Peppergrass Street, Napa, California, USA
August 13, 2016
Driving
back to the fabulous
Cowboy Cottage,
looking forward to a
quiettime
at home with
friends,
I turned the corner onto Peppergrass Street which is on my route home,
and saw police vehicles not just parked there but rather
strewn all over the place. They were scattered at all
angles: at the side of the street, in the middle of the street, some of
them with doors left wide open, some of them with doors closed, some
with engines still running, some with engines turned off, some with red
and blue roof lights flashing. Clearly whatever happened, happened
suddenly. There were armed uniformed police officers
everywhere. Something was going on. Expecting my
friends
to be arriving soon and not wanting them to be alarmed, I stopped and
texted them a warning "Police all over Peppergrass", and then
turned and
drove
up the road leading to my house
believing
I had left whatever it was, behind me - at least, that's what I
thought.
But it was not to be. Directly in front of the gate to my property,
another police vehicle was parked (or should I also say
strewn?), its doors wide open, its roof lights flashing,
blocking my access. They were at my place! Two
armed uniformed police officers were
walking
on the property, their hands on their still holstered (but for how much
longer?) weapons. "Oh boy! This is going to
be
interesting
..." I thought, parking at the side of the road, and
walking
up the driveway. "Can I help you, Officers?" I called out as cheerily
as I could muster, "I live here.". One of them responded with a terse
"Do you have any pets?". "No" I answered, "Why?". "Because we've called
for tracker dogs, and they'll rip them apart.". That's when I saw and
heard a pocketa-pocketa police helicopter swooping low
overheard above the cattle pasture. By then I could not have been any
more bolt upright, or paying any more
attention.
They said they were looking for a fugitive, a man wanted in a case of
violent assault who had eluded them. They were pursuing him when he
jumped off an overpass near Peppergrass Street into the Cayetano Creek,
the
river
running alongside the
Cowboy Cottage
property. They had given chase but had lost him, and were now searching
the neighborhood on foot door-to-door with the help of the tracker dogs
and the
eye
in the sky helicopter. The sub-text of their
conversation
was that if they found their fugitive and if he didn't
surrenderpeacefully,
and if the tracker dogs couldn't persuade him to lay down and give
himself up, then they would shoot him
dead
on the spot.
This was rapidly turning into not just another typically
quiettime
at the fabulous
Cowboy Cottage.
I asked them whether or not we (ie my neighbors and I) should be
worried
ie whether or not their fugitive had a gun, for example. They said they
didn't know. Instead they were concerned he could have already escaped
the area by calling an accomplice on a cell phone, and asking to be met
by car at a place further up the
river.
They said he was wearing blue
jeans
and a white tee-shirt which he could have disguised by muddying it on
the
river
bank, and that he had unusual tattoos on his face and neck. They asked
me to call 911 citing the "east Napa manhunt" if I saw anyone or
anything suspicious. By then, two teams of three police officers each
with tracker dogs on leashes had arrived, and were trying to locate a
scent trail in the cattle pasture and within the
Cowboy Cottage
perimeter. Somehow I knew better than to reach out to try to pat those
dogs.
Then one of the officers said "You know, this is a great place you have
here", gesturing toward the
Cowboy Cottage.
It was an unexpected ice-breaking remark, given the erstwhile
gravity
of the situation. "Would you like to see
inside?"
I offered. "Would I?" he beamed (I could tell he was
delighted). And that's how those two armed uniformed police officers
got to be standing with me
inside
the
Cowboy Cottage,
looking around its interior and out through the window at the cattle
pasture, and the tree line on the
river,
down which their fugitive had escaped. One of them got close up to look
at
a framed classic
photograph of Werner
I have hanging on my east wall. "You're very fortunate to have this
place" he told me after a moment. "I know it" I replied, realizing both
these two public servants who put their lives on the line daily for our
community, were no more than about a third of my age.
I sat alone at my
writing
table in front of the window looking out over the cattle pasture after
the police and their guns and the tracker dogs had left, and the
eye
in the sky helicopter was no longer to be seen, the pocketa
pocketa having long gone
quiet.
Even as I looked out at the trees for anything "suspicious", I
wondered
exactly what that would look like. A man in blue
jeans
and a muddied white tee-shirt with unusual tattoos on his face and
neck, smoking a cigarette? Someone furtively darting from tree to tree?
No, somehow I knew he was long gone, was no longer in the area, and no
longer posed any danger - at least not to our local neighborhood.
I continued
wondering
about him well past midnight
(Cowboy Cottage
is at its most inspiring then). Who was he? How did he get himself into
this fine mess? (and
listen:
when armed police, tracker dogs, and an
eye
in the sky pocketa-pocketa helicopter are all out looking to capture or
kill you, that's the very epitome of being in a fine mess
Stan). He was someone's
child
once. A doting
mother
once held him, breast-fed him. A
familyloved
him, a
human being
just like you, just like me, no red horns, no green saliva, no
forked tail. What he did (ie whatever he's alleged to have
done) will have consequences (ie severe consequences) for
the rest of his life. And for the rest of his life, he may or may not
be granted the
freedom
(and so not have the
time)
to pay back his substantial debt to society. In that way, his life will
be indelibly different from now on. It will never be
ordinary
again. But all that aside,
who he isis me,
who he isis you.
I found myself wishing him well, wherever he was, whatever would become
of him. That's not to say I condone what he's alleged to have done, or
turn a blind
eye
to its impact. Rather I wish he finds
peace
with himself and with whatever he's done, and can accept responsibility
for it - not in the way that takes the blame (quote
unquote) for his
actions
(that's only a minor aspect of
redemption)
but rather in a way that accepts he's
source
in whatever his experience of life is - for himself, and for the people
he's impacted by his
actions.
Whatever subsequently becomes of this fugitive from the law, accepting
responsibility for his experience and the impact it's had on people, is
a
certain
pathway to
self-rehabilitation,
fulfillment,
and
freedom,
and eventually maybe to being re-accepted by society.
The thing is (and it's so
god-damned
obvious to me) it's ... not ... just ...
him! Prior to
transformation
we're all fugitives. We're all fugitives from our own
fears.
We're all fugitives from our disappointments. We're fugitives from our
guilt and our unconfrontable sense of failure ie of having not "made
it". We're pursued by expectation and hope which we already know
will never be enough. We're pursued by the resignation that we'll never
have enough, that we'll never be good enough
(for the people we're trying to impress). We're pursued by the
debilitating fatigue which comes from trying to find
meaning
in a
world
which doesn't have any
meaning
at all. Prior to
transformation
we're all fugitives, looking back over our shoulder, frantically trying
to elude our past which is
inexorably
catching up with us.
My
friends
never did come over that evening. They called to cancel. It had
nothing
to do with my text. Something else had come up, so we rescheduled.
That's a good thing: if you're not in jail, you can always reschedule.
