Patrice W Johnson

Occam's Razor Cuts Three Ways

2012-02-25T14:40:00.000-08:00

Tyler in Acadia National Park, Maine

August 2007, Tyler wrote, “In an open clearing ona gentle bocca near two mountain springs, we came across a father and son. Tooperfect. The kid should grow up to be a good person.”

At first I assumed Tyler was speaking to fathers in general when he wrote those words, that he was encouraging dads to help their children form connections with nature that would fortify them throughout life's inevitable hardships.

Then I wondered if he might have made that observation for Jim's and my benefit. I recalled untold trips we had taken with the kids asthey were growing up. Whether we hiked National Parks in California's Joshua Tree or Maine's Cadillac Mountain, inched onto Kentucky’s Natural Bridge or splashed in waterfalls at Pennsylvania's Ricketts Glen, we were often tromping outdoors somewhere. Maybe Tyler intended to reassure his father that hehad done a good job raising him, that his son had grown up to be a good person. We knew that he was a fine young man. Never doubted that. He must have realized that, I hoped.

It was also possible that Tyler saw himself in that child,and the scene reminded him that he, too, was still a decent, honorable person. He hadlost his identity and all his touchstones. His family and friends, universityand career, even his homeland and native language were beyond his reach. He wasa fugitive living under threat of 35 years in prison, answering to a fictitious name, always on the move, off the grid, working under-the-table jobs and homeless. Given these circumstances,who wouldn’t feel lost and appreciate a reminder that his character and goodness remained intact?

Get a grip, I thought. If Tyler were here, he’dprobably grin and explain Occam's Razor to me again. The simplest answer is the most plausible one, he’d say, unless proven otherwise. Given no evidence to the contrary, Tyler was most likely making a simple observation, suggesting none of these themes.

Then again, maybe he was putting forth all of them.

I guess we’ll never know.

Reaching through the Invisibility Cloak

2012-02-11T04:30:00.000-08:00

Two years and one month have passed since Jim and I received the phone call, the one where a voice said he was with the French Consulate, that a search party had found a body they believed was our son’s. They weren’t completely sure though. Could we fax his dental records? Since then I sometimes look back with regret at things I said, or failed to say, to Tyler when he was alive. Survivor’s guilt they call it, universal to human nature.

Last week, while editing page 231 of Tyler's journals, it occurred to me that perhaps I had played a role in his writing them. Ever since he could hold a crayon, he had a thirst for learning and creative expression. Good grades came easy for him in school, and he excelled in both the sciences and humanities. He loved to draw and take photos, to read stories and write them.

Then one evening when he was in middle school, he looked up from his homework, and his eyes carried an expression of what looked like despair or defeat. Under his graphite-smudged palm lay a red-veined essay. His middle school teacher had circled a handful of misspelled words, a comma splice and a dangling preposition. No big deals. For months she had drilled him on grammar and punctuation, tools he needed in his literary toolbox. But this time, double-sized in the margins, read ORGANIZATION!

“I’m just not a good writer,” he said.

“That’s not true,” I said. “Don’t ever think that.” I sat down to examine his work. The teacher had assigned a five-paragraph essay. She wanted an introduction with a thesis statement, I explained, then three body paragraphs with topic sentences, and a summary conclusion. “You wrote a story instead of trying to explain something,” I said. “Narratives don't always fit into expository format.”

He shrugged and nodded, eyes on paper. “Oh.”

“You know I used to teach English,” I said. “I’ve read thousands of students’ papers, and I have to tell you, you're one of the most talented young writers I've ever read. You have a gift.”

He gave me that your-my-mom eye roll. “Right.”

I pointed to a paragraph marred with red slashes. “Your sentences are complex and interesting,” I said. “You see to the heart of things and create images in your reader’s mind. Don’t let these edits discourage you.”

Tyler went on to become a promising scientist, with quantum mechanics his life’s passion. He left to begin Ph.D. work at the University of New Mexico, then early one morning in August 2003, four SUV dealerships in the Los Angeles area were vandalized, one was tagged ELF, and two vehicles burned. In the wake of 911, the FBI classified the incident as domestic terrorism. They arrested Tyler’s mentor and friend, a string theorist at Caltech. Tyler fled the country, and his future as a physicist went up in smoke. His journals refer to this stage as the "Fall.”

I once heard that people don’t actually fear death. They fear invisibility. When Tyler went underground, he disappeared under a cloak of invisibility. Isolated and outside society, he turned to his second love, math, partly to escape reality, mostly to give his life meaning. Then years of homelessness wore away hope of leaving his mark as a mathematician. “It seems silly,” he wrote in 2008, “to imagine climbing out of this, to prove my academic merits starting from the clementine orchards. Not a realistic dream.”

Tyler’s journals became his lifeline. He wrote of experiences that ranged from harrowing to uplifting, yet between the lines lay an intense struggle to cope with loss, hardship and fear. Whether accidentally killing a calf or sharing a trail with a mountain couple and their donkey and horse, he wrestled with demons. His entries showed the toll the situation took on the woman he loved and on their relationship. They chronicled his growth to acceptance and manhood.

I like to think perhaps my encouragement, and the encouragement of others, helped imbue Tyler with confidence to write his bare-chested observations. To anyone who has lost someone, I offer this consolation: Happy memories will someday take their place alongside grief, and you too will see reflections of yourself in the life of ones who passed. For if you loved them, you touched their lives.

I'm baaack

2012-02-10T06:06:00.000-08:00

My apologies to those who may have noticed I haven't posted in awhile. My reasons and excuses vary, though mainly I lost the heart to write about the experience of editing Tyler's journals. Editing them is tough, and writing about how I feel about editing them makes me feel naked. I'll try to do better. I have been working daily on Tyler's journals, and will plan to post something soon.

Turning Points

2011-05-17T18:22:00.000-07:00

Before he fled the country, Tyler wrote that there were many paths his life could travel along. He viewed the present as an axe that chopped branches, never created new ones, and carved the past into a single path. “There were times when the axe cut away significant pieces of the tree,” he wrote. “I'll call these turning points.”

Looking back, I recall one turning point and wonder. If we had taken a different branch, would the outcome have been different? The day was September 19, 1998. Through an open window an early autumn breeze filled the kitchen of our home in Pennsylvania. On the surface, it looked like a typical morning, though I knew our family would never be the same after today. From the rumblings upstairs, I suspected Tyler knew it, too. He rarely rose this early, and once awake, usually charged downstairs on one mission or another.

I stopped wiping and re-wiping the countertop and climbed the stairs to the office where husband Jim sat paying bills. “Tyler’s packing,” I whispered.

“I know,” he said with intensity that hung heavy in the air. “I hope this is the right thing to do, his going to school so far away.”

A few short months ago Tyler had applied to the California Institute of Technology on the off chance that he might gain admission. Arguably the number one research institute for theoretical physics in the country, if not the world, it accepted only 200 freshmen from applicants around the globe. Odds were slim, he had said, and then he said something that prompted me to encourage him to go for it.

“It’s his dream school,” I told Jim, repeating the phrase Tyler had used.

Jim furrowed his brows. “I know.”

As a child, Tyler had talked and walked (well, mostly run) before baby books said he would. Jim and I had assumed the authors erred on the side of caution, and we grew accustomed to his doing things early. We took it in stride when he became an avid reader before pre-school. We might even have thought it normal for our four year old to delight in solving high school algebra problems had it not been for the wide-eyed expressions of other parents. By third grade Tyler regularly beat us at the card game, Memory, and by fifth grade he had mastered all the word encryption books that he could check out of the library or we could find to buy him.

Other than his galloping mind and feet though, Tyler was a normal, happy child who loved his little sister, dog, cousins and friends. He had a knack for drawing, and in third grade a watercolor of his took Best of Show at his school. The smallest boy in his ninth grade class, he excelled as a wiry 70-pound wrestler. He ran track like the wind, and all through high school a camera dangled from his neck like a third arm. Whether swimming, shooting paintball, skateboarding, hiking, playing Chinese chess or crafting art films, he and his friends dove into each project with unbridled vigor.

We were thrilled, though not surprised, when Penn State and the Universities of Michigan and Pennsylvania offered him admission, most to their honors colleges. Then a fat letter arrived from Caltech and bowled us over. Not only did they award him an elite four-year presidential scholarship worth $60,000, but they also offered him an all-expenses-paid weekend on campus, including airfare.

We accompanied him to Pasadena and saw this school like no other. At one point, our student tour guide said, “Everyone comes here to be a theoretical physicist, but only a handful make it.” She herself had segued into molecular biology.

Tyler leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I will make it,” and from the determination in his eyes, I had no doubt that he would graduate a theoretical physicist. Shortly afterwards, he signed Caltech’s acceptance letter.

Now D-day was upon us. Tomorrow Tyler would board a plane and fly off for his first year of college. Words of the student guide weighed on my mind. “Here at Caltech,” she had giggled, “students can sleep, study or have a social life. Pick two.” She must have been kidding, I reassured myself.

“Want to help him pack?” I asked Jim. He shook his head, obviously struggling with his emotions.

I crossed the hall and tapped on Tyler’s door.

“Come in,” he said.

How I would miss that mumble, the way he folded his words together like a closing accordion. Across the bed lay an opened suitcase and a garden of half-filled cardboard boxes. The top of his dresser had been wiped bare and his bookshelf stood vacant. Three walls were peppered with empty picture hangers. Tyler stood with his back to me. Under an arm, he cradled three framed Advanced Placement certificates while he lifted the fourth off its hook. He turned and slid them into a box, grinning hello, though looking paler than normal. My knees felt shaky, so I cleared a spot and dropped down next to his pillow.

“Stop,” I said, and tears flooded my eyes. “Stop this right now.”

“What?” he asked.

I couldn’t look at him, much less answer that question. Jim must have overheard because he materialized in the doorway. I pushed past him into the hallway. Needing to go somewhere, anywhere, I headed downstairs. Once outside, I veered to fetch the mail, drawing deep breaths while the driveway’s gravel crunched underfoot. I collected the contents from the mailbox, then made my way to a spot under a pine tree where I sat and stared at the horses in the pasture. I had nearly pulled myself together when Tyler slid onto the grass beside me.

I palmed the bills and bulk mail. “We should get a wood burner to heat the house with all this junk.”

“You mad at me?” Tyler asked.

“I want you,” I breathed, “to leave your room alone.” Then my eyes welled up again.

“Okay,” he said. “It’s just that when Sam left for college, he forgot something and had to come back. He’d been gone maybe fifteen minutes, and his parents had cleared the furniture out of his room. I thought I’d make it easy for you, in case you have plans for it.”

“I do have plans,” I said, “to keep it just as it is, so it will always be there for you when you come home.”

“That’d be good,” he said softly. “I’ll be fine, you know. It’s only a plane ride away.”

“I know,” I said.

Later that night, I keyed in a letter telling him things I had been unable to express out loud: How much we loved him and were proud of him, to please not push himself so hard. I said he would undoubtedly face hard times, but he was strong and smart and armed with strong moral fiber and great sense of humor. Most of all I asked him to be gentle with himself. As he lay sleeping, I marked the letter Do not read until later and tucked it in his backpack.

A year or more after he disappeared, I mustered the strength to sort through a large yellow envelope marked First year Caltech in his scratchy hand. Among Chinese train tickets and a note a girl had slipped under his dorm room door, I found that letter.

We had traveled the trunk of his childhood and youth together. Then as nature would have it, we branched off in different directions. Tyler might have said we were fractals, separate yet self-similar, and each of us in our own way took note of that turning point.

Voice in the Dark

2011-04-27T02:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about voice lately. Wikipedia defines the word in terms of the individual writing style of an author. “As a trumpet has a different voice than a tuba or a violin has a different voice than a cello,” Wiki says, “so the words of one author have a different sound than the words of another.”

In reading Tyler’s journals, his voice seems to whisper his stories in my head. I hear his dog chortle in the valley below and feel the juice of a hand-picked Clementine trickle down my chin. Of course, I realize this isn’t my son’s actual voice. Tyler is dead and has no vocal chords. Even so, a piece of him comes alive in his writings. His words resonate.

An instructor once told me that every author must find his or her voice, and once found it will come through to the reader. Michener, De Mayo, Dickens—each has a distinct voice, and I would feel disappointed if I didn’t hear it in the pages of their books. These great authors were trained in their craft though.

Tyler was a scientist. He scored a perfect 800 in math on his SATs and again on his Graduate Record Exams. In his journal he wrote, “I am not skilled in the art of storytelling,” and by his own admission, he sometimes found it easier to communicate through math than words. Mid paragraph, he sometimes shifts tense. One sentence he'll narrate in first person, the next in third person. Apostrophes and commas? Forget them. So how is it that his voice comes across with such distinct power?

No doubt I am more tuned to my son's quirky expressions and sense of humor than a more objective reader might be. Even when his stories make me laugh, tears of grief stream down my face. Still, no reader could miss the tender authenticity of Tyler’s thoughts. Maybe it is precisely his lack of craft that gives his voice its unique qualities.

February 1, 2004, my son was 24 years old, an idealistic and naïve young Ph.D. candidate at the start of a promising career in quantum computational physics. By month’s end, he had fled the country, a fugitive from the FBI. He wrote that he hoped to disappear temporarily into the world, to make a fresh start, then return when things blew over. In the end he lost everything: his connections with family and friends, his homeland, even his lifelong dream of contributing to the world through theoretical physics. The single act of taking a new name chipped away at his identity, and as the years wore on, he experienced firsthand how temporary has a way of becoming permanent.

Tyler wrote that he began his journals to bridge the gap of his absence when he eventually reunited with his family. He spoke unfiltered from the heart of making the tormented decision to flee. He described taking up residence in Chez Dino, a Marseilles junkyard squat that he named in honor of a homeless friend who had abandoned it.

Throughout each recollection, I am struck by Tyler’s keen observations and resilient sense of humor and hope. Without pretense or self-pity, he brings to life the breath-taking beauty of Corsica’s mountains and his dream of sailing “into atolls and uninhabited islands to watch the sunset and hear the waves.” His voice transcends individual style; it plucks like Enya at a person’s heartstrings. Why?

Because he wrote not simply to share with others, but as a means of holding onto who he was. Each entry was born from the depths of struggle. Whether he realized it or not, the process of recording his experiences must have helped him cope with unfathomable loss, and to heal.

Tyler’s journals were a call in the darkness. In going underground with an assumed identity, normal avenues of dealing with grief became unavailable. He couldn’t risk talking with a counselor or even share mundane details with new friends. No way could he say, “My grandmother lives in a picture perfect Midwest village where the grass in the town square shines emerald green, and the church steeple is always freshly painted white.” But he could write it, and in composing these words, he reconnected with his past and with himself.

With the aid of his journals, Tyler managed to navigate through a labyrinth of blind alleys. In writing, he self-counseled and freed his inner voice. In the end, that was what he most needed, and all he had.

Now Tyler is gone and his journals carry his voice. They are the trail that his soul left behind. Footprints in the sand.

Tyler's Obituary

2011-04-10T03:18:00.000-07:00

http://www.mitchellfuneral.com/2010/01/obituary-tyler-j.htm

Rainy Day Fugitive

2011-04-08T05:59:00.000-07:00

I used to find the patter of rain on the roof soothing. That is still true to some extent, though my first reaction these days is to wonder whether it’s a cold or warm rain. You see, Tyler and Yuki spent months living in wilderness, avoiding human contact and coping with the weather. The element he mentioned most in his journals--the one that tested his optimism--was rain.

Oddly, he never complained about it or viewed it judgmentally. He simply took measures to deal with it the best he could. As a physicist, environmentalist and man who lived at one with nature, he appreciated the life that rainfall brought to the landscape and its creatures. After nearly succumbing to thirst himself, he grew vigilant about checking his water supply and finding sources to replenish it.

Even so, lightning bolts, high winds, and slippery rocks weren't mere inconveniences to a fugitive who lived like mouflon* high in remote Corsican mountains. They were life-threatening. When safely ensconced in his tent, rain posed a different sort of problem because Tyler was hard-wired in go mode. He read voluminously and wrote complex digital evolutionary code on his laptop when he had one, but he couldn’t tolerate to sit still for long without something to occupy his mind. A long, cold rain, when it wasn't chilling him to the bone outside, became his prison warden.

Still, Tyler and Yuki spent some of their happiest times living alone in Corsica’s Desert des Agriates and in a tree house they built in a giant oak that clung to the rocky scrags of a mountain ridge. Later they lived in the lap of luxury in a brush-hidden tent within range of a University’s wireless internet network.

I must return to editing his journals now. The spring shower will fade to white noise, as will the occasional blow of the furnace. I’ll soft hike with Tyler along the ridge Sellola, and together we’ll watch thunderheads collide over the Asco valley. I may forget for awhile that I sit safe on my sofa under a warm down comforter, or that my son is dead. When reality returns, I hope I shall never again take my shelter or the wonder of storm clouds for granted. I have Tyler to thank for this.

* Mouflon are rare Corsican mountain goat-like sheep.

Coping with the Death of a Loved One

2011-04-03T18:25:00.000-07:00

Sooner or later we all lose someone we love, and I suppose we each cope in our own way. In my case, I lost my son twice. Tyler disappeared in 2004, then six years later we were notified of his death. In between he kept journals of his life as a fugitive from the FBI, as an underground mathematician and environmentalist.

Tyler’s great hope was to reunite with his family and to spend happy hours bridging those lost years with his journals and photos. Though an avalanche ended his life before he could realize this dream, his journals survive. They are his great and final gift to his grief-stricken family.

Each day I turn to them and hear his voice. Sometimes his words reveal themselves under a magnifying glass, letter by letter in smudged notes that he scribbled on cardboard food wrappers when he was too poor to buy paper. Other times they spew like rapids because he hammered them out James-Joyce style, unimpeded with spell checks or punctuation. No matter.

With each entry we reconnect. We laugh and cry and pound our fists and take long walks together. I again see his long, slender fingers with wisps of hair above his knuckles. I smell the smoke of his rock stove high in the mountains of Corsica, and I wince as icy rain pelts his hair.

Like every mother, I am torn. My instincts tell me to protect my son and guard these private conversations. But every parent wants her child to someday fly the nest and leave his mark on the world. So too with Tyler. Though he’s no longer present in the flesh, his spirit abides in his written words and photography. His insights deserve to be shared, so others too may benefit. So here’s the plan.

I will edit Tyler’s journals into book form. I’ll add the requisite commas and periods, change his gots to haves, and stash his esoteric math and digital evolution research elsewhere, so we normal folks may follow his train of thought.

This is something I can do, perhaps must do…for him, for me, for anyone who struggles to come to grips with the death of a loved one. Regardless, this project will be rough, so I could use your support. Hence this blog. I will do my best to post diligently, and invite you to follow along and contribute as you wish.

An excerpt from Circling with Willah

2008-12-21T11:38:00.000-08:00

Going through some of Grandmother Weddon’s things, we came across an article she had written for her “Circling with Willah” column in Women’s Circle magazine. It features a camping trip that she and her grandson had recently taken. A delightfully detailed outline of the night followed, and she made sure to add in his questions:

Four-year-old Tyler’s parents planned to go on a trip; Ed and I volunteered to take him on a “campout out” for his own vacation. On our eighty-acre farm there is a private lake and campsite, equipped to set up a tent, and a little dock leading off into the water.
He examined a spider web. “Why do spiders make webs?” he asked.
“To catch bugs,” I replied.
“Why?”
“To eat.”
A blackened toad jumped out of an old bed of coals, and he asked, “Do toads like fire?”
“They must like the warmth,” I replied.
“Why?”
I had to admit that I did not know why, and it was silent for a long moment.
The next morning this curious child continued to ask questions. “Why do you put a worm on a hook? Why do fish like worms? Why do they like the taste?” It is no wonder that Tyler attends Caltech and taught himself Chinese in High School.