Javelinas - Noah Cicero
Joe is joined by Noah Cicero and they talk about a turning point in Noah’s writing, Buddhism, and how to live in the world.
Noah Cicero is 38-years-old, grew up in a small town near Youngstown, Ohio. He has lived in Eugene, Oregon, Grand Canyon, Arizona, Seoul, South Korea and currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. He has a movie made of his first book called The Human War which won the 2014 Beloit Film Festival award for Best Screenplay. He has books translated into Turkish, Kurdish and Spanish. His first book of poetry Bipolar Cowboy was voted one of the best books on Goodreads in 2015. He has many short stories, articles, and poems published at such places as Thought Catalog, 3AM Magazine, Wales Review, and Amphibi.us.
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Art photo by Arielle Tipa
Javelinas
I had a mission. I was going to walk into the forested part between the railroad and the West Rim road. It was probably not a good idea, no one ever did it, no one ever left the trails. But there was a part of me that didn’t care if I died. During those days, I felt like life was endless. All I could see was endless life ahead of me. There were no locations, no stopping points, there were no candles in any windows. The world had no place for me, I wasn’t even being sad, I wasn’t even having self pity, I had no interest in anyone telling me, “It is going to get better.” The banal platitudes of my country would not save me. All my friends were in Korea, or they had gone back to their homes in America, but I had no home. Where I was, I was just there, and that’s all.
On the way out the door, Dream was walking down the hall and asked me where I was going, I said to the forested part. He told me, “Man, I am scared to go there. Are you allowed to go there?”
“Hmm, I don’t think anyone will care. Do you want to come?”
He stood there thinking about it and said, “Yeah, let me get the right shoes on.”
Dream and I walked down the railroad tracks. Dream said, ‘I don’t know if my mom wants me going in here, she says there are rattlesnakes. I might run if I see a rattlesnake.”
“If there are rattlesnakes it will be okay. They won’t even notice us.”
“I don’t understand how a rattlesnake couldn’t notice us,” said Dream.
“Because they are busy. We we are afraid of snakes, we are projecting ourselves onto the snakes. We are making the snakes aware of us, but really they are snakes, and they are doing their snake thing. They have places to go and things to do, they know what they are doing, they aren’t looking for humans to bite.”
That calmed him a bit.
Right before we entered the forested part, I said, “We have to walk quietly if we are going to see something. Walk like this,” I placed my foot up and then put it down on my toes softly, and then mindfully pushed the back of my foot down. “See how quiet that is? You try.”
Dream, even though he was a big man, did the same kind of steps.
“Okay, let’s be quiet,” I said.
We slowly walked through the forested part. There were old Utah Junipers everywhere, little tiny cactus balls on the ground. I stepped on a cactus ball, I felt the spikes drive into my foot. I wanted to be angry but I didn’t care. I let it happen. Dream was like, “Oh shit, Billy, you stepped on a cactus.” I was like, “Yes.
We sat down on the ground. I took my shoe off and picked the needles out. The bottom of my foot was bleeding a little but it wasn’t bad. We stood up and walked. I realized we were lost but I didn’t tell Dream, he seemed to have full trust in me. It felt good that anyone trusted me.
As we were walking we heard noises, we both stopped. I loved hearing noises in the woods, I loved feeling the rush that something big and scary might be hiding behind a tree, ready to eat me. The desire to be eaten was overwhelming at times, but I didn’t tell anyone. Dream and I walked toward the noise. I looked back and Dream looked nervous, like he wanted to go back but he had to live up to a certain level of masculinity and keep going.
And there they were, a small family of javelinas, little pig like creatures covered in fur. There was a mom and three kids about 30 yards away. I pointed at them and Dream looked, his face lit up, our faces were full of excitement. The mom looked at us, then suddenly dashed ahead five yards toward us, stopped and made a noise. We both got scared neither of us had javelina training. We both picked trees and got up in them. We were both only four feet above the ground, but that was enough. Javelinas can’t climb trees.
The mother javelina realized we were no threat. We weren’t going to come any closer to her babies. We stood on branches in the trees, looking at the family living their lives. They were just living outside among the ran and cold and heat.