job, a beloved dog, have your kids leave home, and not entertain thoughts of surrender. The pain was very real. But on some buried level of my consciousness I knew that giving up solved nothing. I had been wallowing in self-pity, and self-pity always feeds its hosts a diet of sour syrup then leaves them hungry and bitter.
And yetâisnât this how the mind works?âeven knowing all that, even realizing, in some abstract, intellectual way, what a stroke of good fortune it was for me to have Rinpoche in my life, even feeling the interior change heâd begun to effect in me, there was a stubborn little part that resisted, that holed up in its cold cavern, hugging itself and muttering complaints. This part of me had its own distinctive voice; I could, at moments, hear it clearly.
Rinpoche burped, smiled, gazed out at the bleak landscape, which was dry and nut-brown and spotted here and there with scrub brush and sage.
âPapi, say âexcuse me,â â came the gentle order from the back seat.
â âScuse me.â
I wanted to tell him about the Chinese visitor, and I would, of course I would. But I didnât want to be mocked for worrying needlessly. So I worried, needlessly, that Iâd be mocked.
Well beyond Big Nasty Creek, beyond Custer National Forest, and Buffalo, South Dakota, beyond Redig and Castle Rock Butte I saw a sign that read, CENTER OF THE NATION, and, without really knowing what it meant, I made a sharp right turn onto a gravel road. From my very first driving trip with Rinpoche Iâd taken onto my shoulders the responsibility for educating him about America. I donât have any idea why I felt such a need. Heâd never asked me to do that; Seese had never asked me. This education wasnât exactly the kind of thing a Ph.D. advisor would approve: Iâd taken him to a Hersheyâs factory to see how the Kisses were made, to a Chicago Cubs game; Iâd shown him the Coulee Dam and Yellowstone, the burnt-out iron cities of Ohio, and the elegant farms of Amish country; let him listen to talk radio for a few minutes at a time, occasionally dipped into politics and history. He seemed interested, sometimes fascinated. Maybe it was just that, since he was giving me so much in the way of spiritual teaching, I felt I owed him something in return. And America was a subject I knew. Raised on a high-plains farm, seasoned in Manhattan, denizen of the well-off suburbs, Iâd seen a good part of the American spectrum, and I paid attention to the rest. I cared about my country, maybe more than I should have. I followed the newsâon my computer, on TV, radio, in newspapers and magazines. When the national mood turned sharply in some new and bizarre direction, when our leaders failed us, I took it personally. I wept when the kids were killed in Connecticut; I laughed when
Saturday Night Live
mimicked Bush, Obama, or Schwarzenegger. I cringed at Katrina. Cheered for the Yanks. It would be foolish to say I was a perfect representative of an American citizenâI was a white, upper-middle-class man, educated, financially secureâbut, at the same time, I took a back seat to no one in my American-ness, my pride in historyâs greatest experiment in democracy, my shame at its failings.
So when I saw the sign for CENTER OF THE NATION on the side of Route 85, there was no chance of
not
checking it out.
âWhatâs here?â Seese asked from the back seat.
âDirt,â Shelsa said, and we laughed.
Down the long gravel road we went, empty grazing land right and left. Ten minutes of it and we saw the Stars and Stripes flapping on the other side of a barbed wire fence, a pile of stones there, a two-car turnout, a smaller sign. I parked and we all got out. Happy to be free, Shelsa trotted up the road in the sunlight, black hair bouncing. âI think,â I said, âthis must be the point that marks the geographical center of the United States if