Searching for God (Rock)

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The last time I visited my native western Pennsylvania I went on a quest to find the “Indian God Rock.” This is a local landmark that contains a rare set of Native American petroglyphs from around 1200 C.E., and which I have never seen. Having heard of the stone since my earliest days in the local school system, I was curious to see it. The moniker “God Rock” is complete speculation, based on early assumptions that the Algonquin wouldn’t have inscribed the stone without religious motivation. Since that time, however, the site itself has been deemed a numinous place by some by dint of having authentic petroglyphs. What makes any site sacred is the experience of the visitor. I had lived in this area for the first two decades of my life and never found it. Of course, there was no Internet in those days and its location was remote. Sacred places should be difficult to reach. It was about time.

The Indian God Rock is located on a bicycle trail. For me that now translates into bicycle trial. I used to take epic bike trips with my brother, but although they say you never forget how to ride a bike I am agnostic on the point. I have ridden a bicycle a few times in the last decade or two, and always with unusual aches when it’s over. I still like to jog, but perhaps having my feet in contact with the ground is a kind of sacred behavior in itself. In any case, when I went after the God Rock, I was on foot. Although I’m motivated in a fairly serious way when I’m on a quest, I also know what it is to be outvoted (unlike some politicians). Without a map, perhaps on the wrong trail, in the rain, after a couple hours of walking, I had to bow to the wishes of the majority and give up.

On the way back to the car, I found a newt. In my younger days in this region I used to find them in our yard following a good rain. They are delicate creatures. When you pick them up, they try to scrabble out of your hands, supposing, as nature informs them, that to encounter a larger force is to risk being consumed. I think that this must be similar to human religious motivation. In the presence of something larger than ourselves, something that boggles the mind, we assume it is a god. The reality of the matter, however, is that the life within us is the closest we get to the divine. The newt in my hands is the true wonder. Somewhere not far from here is an Indian God Rock that I have never found, but right now life is in my hands. I later discovered I had been on the wrong trail all along.

Great Gaps Be

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Before hanging out on my bookshelf, and countless others like it, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker and their friends (including Harpo Marx) gathered at the Algonquin Hotel. Apparently without effort they forged a living at a trade to which I idly apply myself each day before dawn. They wrote the America of their era. There are those who say Parker haunts the Algonquin, but in truth her words, like those of her companions, are her legacy. Some of us dream of making a life out of words, but this is not much valued in our society where even concepts must have salability in order to be deemed worth the time. If it had not developed independently millennia ago, religion could never have emerged in a capitalist society. Certainly there are religions that barely qualify for the non-profit status they claim, but the founders of religions in antiquity were believers in idea, sacred words, invaluable concepts.

No society pours much money into what it truly values. Religions were never designed to be money-making ventures. Those of us who work in the book trade know that authors would write even if they never got paid a penny (and many of them don’t). Art, like religion, is an expression of the depths of human need. In a Wall Street society, however, those who don’t manufacture something, or get rich from those who do, are merely taking up space. We measure the success of a person by the chattels they own, not the linear feet of bookshelves they can fill. But when we need to find a human touch, a book is a far better companion than a checkbook.

When I walk past the fashionable Algonquin just as the sun is beginning to penetrate the dark valleys of Manhattan, I sense that two worlds are attempting to coexist here simultaneously. One is a world of separation and power. The other is a world where Harpo Marx sits at your table. F. Scott Fitzgerald gave us the Jazz Age, defining the brief interlude when the world wasn’t at war, defining with words that just about every high school kid will eventually read. Fitzgerald was never good with money, and even The Great Gatsby was not an immediate success. The walls of privilege are locked with stout doors indeed. Such a situation calls for the unparalleled wit of Dorothy Parker, but for some scenarios the last word properly belongs to Harpo Marx.