Order Out of Chaos

How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the Zen Calendar (February 10, 2007).

Day 102. I may have overdone it, but I did what today called for.

My partner's friend and co-worker, Wes, lost his home in Monday's tornadoes. He and his wife and daughter live about a mile east of us off of 74th Street. He lives on a big, (formerly) wooded lot on a cul de sac at the top of a hill. His house and the neighbor's next door were demolished. The neighbor on the other side had only minor damage. The house across the street remained pristine. The wicker swing on the immaculate front porch had the audacity to continue to hang there, untouched. Tornadoes are cruelly random.

After getting cleared by the police officer guarding the entrance to the addition, my partner and I arrived at Wes's house a little after noon. As we drove up, Cheryl, another friend from their workplace, arrived with a cooler full of drinks and lunch fixings. We paused in the driveway to take in the devastation, then walked around to the back of the house, where Wes and five other guys were clearing debris. My partner introduced me, but noone really noticed because he was toting his Stihl. When the guys saw him swinging that chainsaw, they looked so happy you would have thought we just brought in a cake with a dancing girl inside. Our popularity had been established before they even knew we owned a John Deere.

Cheryl and I went to work churning out sandwiches. Nobody paused for long. At the time I couldn't identify this dynamic, but now I realize that a work ethic with a slight sense of urgency permeated the atmosphere. Despite my nearly half century in the state of Oklahoma, I have never been plunked down in the midst of the chaos of early post-destruction clean-up. Tornado damage is a peculiar mix of surreal, ironic, and ludicrous. A neighbor's grease gun ends up lodged in the insulation fluttering around your yard. The sheet metal from Tom's shed is wrapped around Wes's 100-year-old uprooted oak tree, and shingles matching a house two blocks over are intermingled with the remains of Wes's roof. My overtaxed adrenal system throbbed as I marveled at the randomness. When standing waist deep in tornado ruins, it is very important not to take anything personally.

In very little time, and hardly any conversation, eight of us on the premises quickly established a system. Chainsaw owners were indisputably at the top of the pecking order. Wes's priority today was clearing the innumerable mature trees on his property that had snapped like match sticks. The Alphas sawed; the rest of us loaded. Limbs on a trailer pulled by a four-wheeler; logs and stumps hefted into the bucket of the John Deere front loader, whose owner had been christened Master of the Universe the day before. Haul everything out to the curb, dump onto the piles already stacked ten feet high. It sounds fairly straightforward, but the task was complicated by the helter-skelter position of the trees, which were interwoven with a sensational variety of debris. My obsessive-compulsive tendencies quickly escalated into the Red Zone. I couldn't focus exclusively on tree parts. Intuitively, piles of insulation, drywall, nail-laden lumber, shingles, metal guttering and shed pieces were established. My OCD alarm quieted a few decibels.

We worked non-stop until Cheryl limped over to a front step and calmly announced, "Nails go through tennis shoes." We asked if they also had gone into her foot, and she acknowledged that there was a "small hole." I like Cheryl. Briefly forgetting the "don't take tornado aftermath personally" rule, I felt a wave of disappointment because I had worked so meticulously to pick up dozens of wood scraps with protruding nails. Guess I missed one. My partner had received a tetanus shot yesterday at the volunteer station on Anderson Road, so we left with Cheryl to show her where to go. It got so quiet when the chainsaws stopped roaring. I must confess to a brief flare of ego when I looked over my shoulder as we walked toward the cars. Wes's lot looked a whole lot better. Still looked like, well, like a tornado had torn through there, but also like a lot of people had been working really hard.

After depositing Cheryl at volunteer central, we drove a section of our favorite bike route. I was stunned. Within a two-square-mile radius of our house, it was apparent that several tornadoes had blasted through, carving gut-wrenching paths of jumbled wreckage. Over the years, I have viewed a lot of tornado destruction, including the F5 that flattened Moore. This was different. This was too close to home. These were the ancient trees lining the roads over which I've cycled the past three years, lying painfully on their sides with roots protruding from enormous clumps of the earth that used to hold them upright. These were the fields and outbuildings and gardens of familiar country homes. This had been the serene, lush, green countryside through which I pedaled and regained my center after a hectic work week. It absolutely felt personal. My arms ached from lifting stumps at Wes's house, but I couldn't suppress the urge to pull over and fire up the Stihl again. The magnitude of work that would be required to restore the area overwhelmed me. I was overcome with a feeling of grief and loss.

Then I pictured us tramping around Wes's place. The solidarity, intensity of effort, and effective teamwork. It felt a lot like the merging of selves that occurs during a hard team ride, when egos dissolve as individuals meld into the collective. People are good. We need one another. We are there for each other. Nature blows things into chaos, and humans restore order. The two are inseparable. You cannot control it, and you cannot understand it. But you can count on it. And be a part of it.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc