On Charity

Life isn’t simple by any means. Where you stand observing an event can color all that you see in a way that separates you from every other observer of the same incident. No two eye witnesses ever see the same thing despite our belief in an objective reality of the moment. Clearly these differences in perception can cause problems.

The actions we take in life, those choices we carry out in our living in this material world, each has a reaction. The immutable laws of physics pretty much demand this. Speaking words out loud in a one on one conversation or even setting them down without speaking on paper or a web page are actions. Every single word we communicate can have impacts and repercussions that last far beyond the moment. The ramifications of words spoken can last long after the air carrying the vibrations from larynx to the bones of the middle ear has ceased its moving.

Today these fingers with which I now type seem to have set in motion ripples that have become much bigger waves, much uglier waves at least on an interpersonal level than I ever anticipated. Consequences will follow and I will live with those consequences; there really isn’t any other choice. I am neither happy nor sad with this state of events. What I am is disquieted and disappointed that the people I spoke to didn’t understand and still don’t seem to understand their actions didn’t pass the smell test.

In so many meetings that I attend the phrase “see the big picture” is used. It is trite jargon. Usually the speakers declare the term is shorthand for progressive thinking or for having a focus on organizational good. But what does seeing the big picture really mean? Literally it means to perceive the broadest perspective of an issue or a situation.

When big picture talk is used in a meeting it is usually part of a persuasive syllogism, one asserting that taking a particular course of action is for the greatest good. Having the skill or foresight to really do big picture thinking accurately would be admirable. Goodness knows I wish at times I truly could move beyond my focus on the acute demands of right here, right now.

Too often the real meaning of “seeing the big picture” is more insidious than those four words would seem to convey. More often than not claims of seeing the big picture are merely a way of rationalizing the abuse of some class of persons for the sake of expediency. Actions that would never be taken if you were face to face with all the involved impacted parties, because these schemes don’t pass the smell test, get pushed through with the bigger picture being the banner followed. Poor choices or bad choices get adopted because a persuasive speaker claims “greater good” of “the big picture” demands it. Simply said jargon overrides reality.

You know the smell test mentioned above is really rather simple. As they taught us in legal ethics (yes it is an oxymoron) if it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. Versions have been codified by any number of faiths and philosophies; do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Christianity laid it out in the New Testament with, “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12. Jumping back to ethics class the instructor circled around to the crux of the application of the smell test for new lawyers, “If it is not your money don’t take it.”

Charitable giving is defined as the kind and generous giving of money or other help to those in need. I spent a good time looking up the components of this phrase recently and nowhere did I find a reference that implied it was still charitable giving if you required others to give. This week I called some people out on an attempt to institute mandatory charitable giving. They backed off. However as a result I have been told pretty much point blank that I have hurt children in a material way and that I am selfish and mean-spirited person. Some of the comments hurt me quite a bit.

I am not ashamed of what I have done. In these rough economic times when our region’s unemployment rate is well into double digits and virtually everyone is facing the risk of job loss, or the loss or reduction of job benefits or of a salary reduction, acting to impose a mandatory charitable gift is indefensible. To begin with the demand for payment negates the “charitable” component. Demanding such a payment, no matter what size or how noble the purpose, was wrong.

Those making the decision should have been taking into consideration the bigger picture of the status of the economy as a whole. Clearly they should have at least thought about the timing of their claim for payment in the midst of the holiday season. Right now is a period when large demands are made on all family coffers. This decision truly needed to be based on the broadest perspective of the situation. Big picture thinking it wasn’t.

Do I have regrets in this situation, absolutely. Do I wish this could have been resolved in another manner, again the answer is absolutely. Do I think it was my actions that brought us to this place of conflict? Absolutely not.

I hope that over time the people who are calling me out right now realize that there were two equally valid viewpoints on what happened here. While helping those in need is a noble cause, you can’t do it by executive fiat. Everyone in this economy is hurting; the demands on family budgets are great. To those that came up with this strategy I say this, next time when you consider sticking your hand into someone’s pocket in a tough economic times ask yourself one question. Would I want someone to treat me this way? Next time I think your choice will be different.

To Windsor and Beyond!

From Ambassador Bridge (Michigan): Huron Church Rd. south approx. 4 km to E.C. Row Expressway. Proceed east on E.C. Row Expressway approx. 12 km to Lauzon Pkwy. (North) exit. Proceed north on Lauzon Pkwy. approx. 4 km to Lauzon Line/McHugh Street. Turn right on Lauzon Line/McHugh St. and proceed east approx. 0.75 km to arena on the right.

From Windsor/Detroit Tunnel: Tunnel exits onto Park Street. Turn left on Park St. South and proceed to Ouellette Ave. (1st traffic light). Turn left on Ouellette Ave. and proceed south approx. 5 km to E.C. Row Expressway. Proceed east on E.C. Row Expressway approx. 9 km to Lauzon Pkwy. (North) exit. Proceed north on Lauzon Pkwy. approx. 4 km to Lauzon Line/McHugh Street. Turn right on Lauzon Line/McHugh St. and proceed east approx. 0.75 km to arena on the right.


Important Notes: There are two games. The times are:
• Game 1 – 3:55 pm and
• Game-2 - 8:50pm.
Between games there will be some time for socializing. A hockey pizza party will occur at the Pennacle, 4789 Riverside Dr E Windsor, ON, Use the back entrance of condo building to access the party room.

Crossing the border is always an interesting proposition. It is possible you will be waived through easily, but this is not assured. Build in extra time for delays.

The blog author notes that Saturday is Dim Sum day at Wah Court. The address of this Windsor restaurant and an explanation of Dim Sum can be found at http://www.wahcourtrestaurant.com/.
If you clear the border by 1 p.m. you would still have plenty of time for this delicious midday meal and there would be time for the food to settle before the game.

If you are more of a carnivore, there is always TBQ http://tunnelbarbq.com/

Turkey Tournament Time

We have the potential for tournament play over the Thanksgiving weekend. Two locations stand out as potential sites, Mt. Pleasant and Jackson. An e-mail was sent out by our team manager, Jean Martin. It reads in part:

I need to know from each family if they would be interested in doing a tournament over Thanksgiving? We would do one close to home. I am looking at Jackson and if they are full possibly Mt Pleasant. Both are easy drives and could be fun to test our skills. If you could let me know as soon as possible that would be great.

I looked up the Jackson tournament online. It appears the window to sign up for this closes in the next two or three days. If you have not responded to Jean’s e-mail with a yeah or nay on participation please do so now. In previous years the Jackson tournament was a three games guaranteed event. The blog thinks this could be a great deal of fun. Hey if nothing else this would be a great way for the team to work off some turkey bloat.

I Didn't Remember Dorm Food Tasting this Good.

Afternoon hours are fading into sunset and I am lost in the familiar. Where have I been?

Obviously it is late spring. Green growth is everywhere. Paintings by Howard Pyle sometimes contain a visual hint of the luxuriant foliage that now surrounds me. Maybe there are knights-errant in the wood. Oh that is so stupid it is 1976 and I am on campus. Focus. Focus. Take a breath, focus. Where am I?

Suddenly it is so late and the light is fading, Oh, wait I have already said that. Am I talking too fast? Am I talking too slow? Am I talking too much? What do I sound like? Do you think they can tell? Aw man am I up so totally up shit creek? Breathe.

I am lost. Oh wait I have already said that too. Let’s see its Friday. I know that because I just left a TGIFer on Terrace 1 West Shaw Hall. I was just hanging out with a Steve from my Com major and well we were doing the Friday thing.

Anyway I had been at this TGIF thing and someone was showing me where the floor's Resident Assistant's door had been replaced. Apparently one night some drunk-ass stoner had taken a bowling ball and decided to bowl straight down the hall of the dorm floor. The only problem was there were no bowling pins and the RA's door was where the end of the lane should have been. Apparently the door just kind of exploded when the bowling ball hit it. Bam, crash, boom, rattle, rattle. The way the guys on the floor were telling it, I could see the balloons with these words in them, like on Batman. I mean I could really see this, really.

According to those in the know the room itself was a bit internally trashed from the ricocheting action of the ball. Well anyway it seemed real funny when they were telling it and we looked at the door real hard. The faux wood grain no longer matched any other door on the whole floor and maybe in the whole dorm. Wow was that fucked up. Again according to those in the know the kid who did is out of the dorm and on academic probation. Fuck man we were giggling. Giggling and giggling. Fuck no; we were on the floor rolling in stitches almost unable to catch our breaths from laughing so hard. What the fuck was in that brownie and what the fuck are we doing?

Suddenly people were talking about getting a couple of girls to top off a nude pyramid after dark out by the Red Cedar. More giggling and then we were drinking some brews and honest to God I figured if I didn't head back to the dorm now before dark I would never make it. Hell, I was probably going to miss dinner. Damn am I hungry, I need something sweet. I AM REALLY HUNGRY.

The light was golden as I began this walk along the river. The air was perfectly still. Somewhere somebody had a window open and the starting strains of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells were rolling out into the evening air. Then it was gone and I was humming something else. All evening I have been humming Joni’s Shades of Scarlett Conquering. It came out about a week ago. Man is she going into some different directions with this jazz stuff. I don’t know if all the moon eyed long straight brown haired girls who love that love shit on me stuff she has being doing recently will follow her but I think its great. Focus, where am I?

And the air was cool and wonderful and it was like swimming in a refreshing cold water pond on a hot summer day. As I walk along the river and the light is gentle and retreating and tinting into the most beautiful shades. Night awaits, but not quite yet.

I came into the garden, the garden by the big library, the garden filled with vibrant colors. I came into the garden and the smells were smells of joy and they sent my senses cart wheeling. And I stopped and looked at the flowers and the vines and the light straining itself through the tight spaces between the trees as it tried to find a few last leaves to give life to, to fill with energy. Good energy man that is what it is all about. Sometimes like right now my senses and my mind are blown away by the beauty of this world and there is no other choice for me than to sit down and take it all in. And the night is coming on and the light is receding and somehow though I know I am almost home although I had no idea where home is right now.

Lost I sit on these smooth comforting steps. I am not afraid because I am warm and I am filled with wonder. In the garden, I am a child in wonder. In this garden I sit waiting for the dew to arrive. Be cool. Time will pass and I will get focused. But how much time is enough time? Time will pass and I will know the way. But how much time is enough time?

Sitting here I am part of a greater universe that I have ever been part of, part of a universe greater than I have ever imagined.

Sitting here I am suddenly comforted by a couple of voices I know. It is Wendy and Peggy. And know they are saying stuff like “Are you alright?” It is hard to speak so I shake my head up and down to communicate an emphatic (I hope) yes. What was in that brownie god dammit. Oh they should really get to know how alright I am. They are putting their arms around me and getting me up and helping down this flight up steps. These are really nice steps. And then they help me up the flight of steps on the other side of the garden and then I can see the dorm. It was there all the time. Shit that was easy.

In a couple of minutes we are in the cafeteria catching the end of dinner. Coffee smells so good. It is Friday night so there is some pie left. Right now I want pie. Luckily for me most of the dorm rats are out at Dooley’s still sucking down dime beers. I eat a whole bunch of pie and Wendy and Peggy stay there to make sure I am okay and boy am I ever okay.

On the radio this morning in 2009 I heard that there were some findings that were being made about the kids who grew up at the end of the sixties and the seventies. You know who I am talking about just us kids sitting in the park. Well that growing up thing and the taking responsible jobs thing, those both happened. But the stopping the bad behavior of smoking the dread weed, well apparently it didn't happen.

The part of the story that I didn't get the full details of, my attention span and memories are shot, implied that stoners from the sixties and seventies and still sneaking a great number of tokes and not just now and then. Well surprise, not. Me it has been a couple of decades since I travelled that route. Do I remember it, yes. Do I anecdotally have confirmation of the study, oh yeah. What to do, I am not sure? What to be done? I don’t know. I do know one thing, we have got to keep ‘em off the road when they are stoned.

Another Lie, but this one is piscatorial

A fish flashing silver hangs improbably in midair, at least momentarily. What?

Two days on the train from Wilmington, Delaware have left me dog tired. I am beyond dog tired. My mind is at that point where while I am still on the mental rails I can see not far off to the side the space that lies between sanity and a mental breakdown.

Laying out on the bow of this boat is just the ticket. Face up toward the sky I want nothing more than to be empty, to sleep the deep sleep of justification. The sun is warm on my skin when we pass from beneath the large over hanging trees into sunlight.

My wife to be and one of her soon to be bride’s maids picked me up at the Amtrak Depot in Swampville Florida about an hour and a half ago. From there we drove down to the boat slip on the river.

Did I mention I hate being confined in an airplane so whenever I can I take a train? My train’s arrival was seven almost eight hours after its listed and posted ETA. Scotch whiskey is a good adjunct to an American rail trip to ease the uncertainties of such travel but my bottle ran out about four hours before we actually got in. The ride on the Palmetto was rough and only conversation with my fellow neurotic travelers made it bearable.

Moving slow so as not to hit any manatees this beautiful boat has been working its way up the St. John’s River. I have wanted nothing more than to just pass out here on the warm deck of the bow. Laying here on the skin of this piece of consumer excess touched by the sun’s warmth I could easily be gone into a sleepy reverie.

Everyone else on the boat is in a celebratory mood. My wedding is four days away and the good times have begun. Lonesome George Thoregood is blasting out and vodka and tonic glasses are tinkling from the ice. I am ready for the fermented potato bliss to kick me off into la-la land.

Suddenly and clearly unexpectedly a fish is passing above me. It is a good ten feet out of the water. Dorsal fins, shimmering scales, flat eyes, the whole works; it rockets above me. Am I hallucinating from sleep deprivation, I mean that was just vodka and tonic wasn’t it? Just as quick as it has appeared it is gone from my vision. Fuck it; either it was or it wasn’t real but that doesn’t matter much now at this stage of my descent into the total oblivion of exhaustion.

There are screams.

There is a commotion.

There is a man’s hearty almost wild laughter. The chiropractor who is living with the bride’s maid and who owns this beauty of a boat is almost convulsing with howls of laughter as he looks over his shoulder while steering the boat.. I roll my head from its previously fixed skyward stare and look into the back of the boat. What I see is a spectacle unfolding. One twelve inch long fish is flopping wildly about. Also flopping, and about as wildly, are four naked breasts. Two breasts belong to each of the two women who had brought me to this boat and who are now just commencing to scream like little girls.

The fish was clearly and evidently real. So were the breasts. Apparently after we had commenced our journey, both my wife to be and her friend had decided to sun bath on the back of the boat. Lying on towels they had unhooked the tops of their bikinis. The fish for whatever reason had decided to jump and become airborne just as our boat approached. Clearing me, clearing the windscreen and the fore cabin the critter had slapped its slimy carcass down directly onto my wife’s back. Realizing it was not in Kansas anymore the fish lurched and jumped again landed on the back of the bride’s maid slithering this way and that. Not knowing what the fuck was going on and somewhat shocked the ladies committed to a course of jumping up in semi-undress and engaging in what approximated total pandemonium.

It will be five minutes before they are dressed and calmed down again. Thank God the fish continued its path over the back of the boat and back into the water or the males on board would have had to bludgeon it to death.

It isn’t the breasts that make this scene a classic memory. By this point in life I can draw my wife’s breasts on a sheet of paper from memory. As to the maid of honor, one more vodka and tonic and an encounter at her boyfriend’s hot tub and I probably would have gotten a shot of much more that her firm large boobies. It wasn’t the fish either. What made the scene memorable was that while I was in the fog of sleep deprivations I observed the impact of the absurd on people far more solidly grounded in the real world than I was at the time. I was barely hanging on to consciousness and they were dancing a mad dance of piscatorial origin. Life comes at you that way sometimes.

Awkward in America

Life has been busy. I have been tired. Really I have been working on a couple of pieces. I will post soon. In the meantime a dear friend has presented me with a clipping from the Wall Street Journal. I reprint it here. As most of you know one of my offspring is diagnosed with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). This article is an interesting take on what is occurring in popular culture relative to ASD. My child’s behaviors are not as extreme as Sheldon’s in The Big Bang Theory, but it is the subtle things we all learn without verbally being taught them that bedevil him. A comment like “Maybe I will see you sometime” doesn’t clue him in that it is really a long term good-bye. Enjoy this article and hopefully I will put something of my own up today.


Lifestyles of the Honest and Awkward Article

By CHRISTINE ROSEN
In a new movie, "Adam," the title character, a quirky loner played by the reliably adorable actor Hugh Dancy, turns his living room into an impromptu planetarium to entertain his attractive but romantically wary neighbor, Beth. Soon he is taking her to Central Park to witness raccoons frolicking in the moonlight, and we are comfortably launched on that predictable cinematic journey wherein the charming oddball woos the beautiful girl.

Predictable, that is, until a few scenes later, when Adam inappropriately announces his own sexual arousal and then confesses to Beth that he suffers from Asperger's Syndrome. Very quickly, our geek ceases to be the typical hero-in-hiding and instead becomes the embodiment of a syndrome only recently recognized by the American Psychiatric Association.

Asperger's is characterized, among other things, by awkwardness in social situations and an inability to read others' body language and social cues. And yet, in "Adam," much of the leading man's appeal comes from his refreshing, albeit sometimes brutal, honesty. For Beth, whose experience with men has thus far been negative, the contrast between the awkward, earnest Adam and her suave but dishonest ex-boyfriend turns Adam's supposed deficiencies into strengths, at least for a time. Despite a compellingly sympathetic portrayal by Mr. Dancy, the movie eventually adopts a heavily didactic tone, launching Adam into the more banal role of the misfit who teaches "normal" people something about life.

Whatever the deficiencies of the film, its release cements a new awareness of Asperger's Syndrome in popular culture. This year the Sundance Film Festival featured an animated movie, "Mary and Max," about an Australian girl and her New York pen pal, who happens to have Asperger's, and HBO is scheduled to release a film next year about Temple Grandin, the animal behaviorist who has written about her experience of Asperger's. In recent years, several memoirs, such as John Robison's "Look Me in the Eye" and Tim Page's "Parallel Play," have explored life with Asperger's. "My pervasive childhood memory is an excruciating awareness of my own strangeness," Mr. Page wrote in an essay in The New Yorker. His is an emotionally poignant assessment of the condition: "After fifty-two years, I am left with the melancholy sensation that my life has been spent in a perpetual state of parallel play alongside, but distinctly apart from, the rest of humanity."

Although the CBS television show "Big Bang Theory," a situation comedy that follows the travails of four brilliant, geeky young scientists, isn't explicitly about Asperger's Syndrome, several of its characters act like "Aspies," as those diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome often refer to themselves. Sheldon, a germaphobe who spends his leisure time playing Klingon Boggle and who maintains a strict daily routine, is the most likely (Aspie and not unlike his hero, Spock, from "Star Trek"). The show follows the men's efforts to navigate the treacherous world of normal social interaction, pertly embodied by Penny, the bottle-blond waitress who lives across the hall. She finds this passel of uber-nerds alternatively charming and exasperating. The conceit of the show is that neither Sheldon nor his friends see themselves as especially strange. On the contrary, in a geek-heavy community of physicists, the show suggests, many brilliant people hover on this end of the social spectrum. The comedy comes not from their realization of this fact, but from their strenuous refusal to recognize it and become "normal."

This approach is less forgiving for women. Simon Baron-Cohen, who directs the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, argues that autism-spectrum disorders such as Asperger's are expressions of the "extreme male brain." Indeed, four times as many men as woman are diagnosed with the condition.

The mother of one of the characters on "Big Bang Theory," a brilliant neuroscientist and Aspie-like woman played by Christine Baranski, is, like the empathy-challenged men, the source of many jokes. But whereas their foibles are also ostensibly part of their charms, her lack of maternal feeling casts her as unfeminine and thus far more freakish, like scientist Harry Harlow's classic wire monkey experiment come to life.

Why are we seeing more portrayals of Asperger's Syndrome in popular culture? Increased awareness and diagnosis of conditions along the autism spectrum is one reason. But we are also in the early stages of a debate about whether autism-spectrum conditions are disorders to be medicalized (and, presumably, cured) or merely more extreme expressions of normal behavior that we should treat with greater tolerance. Economist Tyler Cowen argues that this awareness is also because our culture needs people with Aspie-like talents, such as better memorization and calculation skills and a keen desire to assemble and order information, even as it continues to stereotype them for their social deficiencies. In a recent essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mr. Cowen chastised his academic colleagues for promoting negative views of people with autism-spectrum conditions, particularly the notion that these conditions should be treated as a disease that exacts high social costs.

On the contrary, Mr. Cowen calls people along the autism spectrum the "'infovores' of modern society" and argues, "along many dimensions we as a society are working hard to mimic their abilities at ordering and processing information." In a world awash in distracted people desperately (and unsuccessfully) trying to multitask, Mr. Cowen says, Aspies' ability to focus on detail is a profound advantage. This is particularly true in academia, he argues, where "autism is often a competitive advantage rather than a problem to be solved."

Mr. Cowen's relentlessly optimistic view glosses over some of the serious personal and professional challenges that people who have autism-spectrum conditions face. Still, like the films and books that have emerged in recent years, Mr. Cowen's call for us to embrace a more liberal notion of achievement by recognizing in conditions like Asperger's a kind of "neurodiversity" rather than merely a disorder is compelling.

Our interest in Asperger's and the challenges it poses to our notions of normal behavior comes at a peculiar cultural moment. As traditional social norms and old-fashioned rules of etiquette erode, we are all more likely to face the challenge that regularly confronts people with Asperger's: What rules apply in this social situation? In a world where people routinely post in excruciating detail their sexual preferences on their Facebook pages, is it really so shocking to have someone note his own sexual arousal in idle conversation? Unlike Facebook oversharers, Aspies are not intentionally flouting social conventions. Quite the opposite. In "Adam," Mr. Dancy's character must relentlessly practice in order to master the mundane social interactions of a standard job interview. Tim Page notes that it was his chance discovery of Emily Post's etiquette book that revealed the rudiments of social behavior that had previously eluded him.

Also, our interest in Asperger's comes at a time when we are enthusiastically hunting for the genetic basis of what makes us biologically different from each other—why some of us are more prone to certain physical ailments and others are gifted in music, for example. And yet, our search for the source of difference will, in many cases, end in an effort to eradicate that very difference, particularly if it causes obesity, depression or violent tendencies. Will a society that accepts Asperger's now be as tolerant of it in a future where we might have the power to eliminate it? Let's hope so. As these movies and books suggest, we are all searching for the same ineffable thing: connection to another human being who accepts our quirks, diagnosed or not, and loves us all the more for them.

—Ms. Rosen is senior editor of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society.

Simplicity in All Things

Sometimes as I work my way back through A Year with Thomas Merton for the umpteenth time a passage strikes me as new, as fresh. A prime example follows. “No matter how simple discourse may be, it is never simple enough. No matter how simple thought may be, it is never simple enough. No matter how simple love may be, it is never simple enough. The only thing left is the simplicity of the soul in God or, better, the simplicity of God”.

I try and write every day. Part of the function of my writing is to focus my mind for the tasks the day ahead will require. The other part of the function is work through my hopes, my petty frustrations, my memories and my loves, putting some part of them into a verbal box. To write well is for me a struggle. There are plenty of people out there who have advice. Some people demand you pay for their advice and some are willing to tell you their opinion gratis. I tend to gravitate toward the free stuff.

All that I read about the craft of writing that has meaning comes down to several short declarative sentences. The first among these the urging that you chose words wisely. That adage is buttressed by these two; use simple words and use words that fit. I think Merton’s sentences are the ultimate distillation of those maxims. What I and what everyone who writes is trying to do is to capture God, or some part of the eternal on paper. It is only in simplicity we come close. Well, we come as close as we ever will. However when I think on Merton I wonder if maybe, I should remain silent and just experience the presence of the divine.

Love and the Act of Folding a Load of Laundry

Work, when those routine tasks the day to day stuff don’t get done, life just isn't the same. But what do the cycles, the endless repetition mean? Each task is different but the unerring and seemingly unending recurrence unifies them. Looking at cooking and you see the importance of this work. Without food we die. With bad food we are unhappy. Preparing a meal can be an act of art, or a manifestation of love, or it can just be drudgery.

Making a bed can be an act of thanks. Crisp corners and smoothed out covers can show a centered self offering up a melody in linen that which at the right moment just soars. A vacuumed floor can be the soft coda played by piano at the end a solid and pleasant pop song.

Some people just throw their cleaned underwear in the drawer. Me, I fold everything. I know it isn't the kind of fold that you would receive from a laundry or one you would find on the shelves of an old time high end department store. But look in the dresser of anyone in my home and everything is folded. Sometimes it seems pointless this act. For me the choice to impose this odd kind of order is an "up yours" to the universe's inevitable path to disarray and random distribution of all things.
Do these endeavors I carry out mean anything in the long run? Will my choices to clean and wash and try and maintain order focus my children's minds? No I don't think so.

As I move from bedroom to bathroom and then to office I pick up the remnants of life lived and no longer wanted. One waste basket empties into another and then down the steps I will walk. Outside I will go and then the aggregate will be emptied into the big city issued rolling trash bin. On Tuesday one son will draw the green wheeled cube to the curb. On Wednesday another will pull the bin back to the edge of the house. The only meaning they are taking from these acts right now is that I am a mean old man.

Long ago these tasks were all done for me. I never thought of what the doing of such work required of the person who held the obligation for this habitual labor before me. In retrospect I realize there was love in the doing of these things. It may of course be that the love was something deeper than I can comprehend. The tasks that were carried out by my mother were tinged with a harder view of life than I have, she being one who grew up in the depression. I wonder if I had paid more attention whether I would have gained greater knowledge of what matters in life?

As I go about my tasks I wonder if my children are picking up anything about what it means to live from me? Putting away t-shirts collected at camps and hockey tournaments I am unsure what values are being imparted to them and from whom.

Do we learn by watching, really? I am not sure on this one either. I didn't learn from my mother so many things that would have helped. I can't cook well. Really I am only marginal at making an edible meal. I ran away when my aunts and uncles were working the quilting frame in my grandmother’s living room. When it came to my father the learning issue was a two way street. He was tired and I was a mutant. Some basic things like a certain level of stoicism came from simply being near him. But simple skills like wielding a hammer or using a torch, these were not transferred. As a result my house is falling down around me in disrepair.

A time will come when I tire of the day to day work of my home. It is late August on the calendar and also on the calendar of my life. I carry out the tasks that must be done before summer ends in addition to the day to day work that is required. In a month I think I will still occupy this house. In a year I will probably still live here in this city and state. But with each day my body wears down just a little bit more. My spirit also seems to be a little less certain.

Will my children tire of me by the time my December sun is setting? Or, will they have come to the understanding that a job well done is an expression of love, of faith and a rejection of nihilism?

Taking care of the mundane stuff, doing the tasks that go unseen is an act of thanks. By quietly performing these things you are expressing gratitude for life if nothing else. By doing these acts with focus and care you are expressing appreciation for the opportunity to be connected with those around you.

Before the day is done I will have washed several loads of laundry. The trash will be taken out. My bedroom will be cleaned and organized. The bed will be made. Most likely if I remember where I stashed it I will spray the place with Caldrea's Lavender Pine Linen spray. Hopefully I will have sorted my desk and my checkbook will be updated. Will my work leave a trace? No. My efforts will never produce something with artistic weight of Thomas Wolfe's Of Time and the River. But my acts will make at least three other people's lives a little bit easier. By doing what I do I will give them a bit of my love, a bit of my thanks for making my life all the better for their mere presence in it.

If you ever get a chance listen to a song by Iris Dement called My Life. Her words capture all of what I have been trying to say in a much more beautiful way. If I could sing I would sing it as I work my way through these tasks. When I lay down this night it will be okay.

I Wish I Was On the Bus...

A crazy man ranting came appearing out of nowhere. With corn row hair and riding a mountain bike he circled us twice or maybe three times as we waited for the # 2 bus to downtown.

Dragging his feet he stopped. Heels dug in and balancing atop his seat he remained at a distance for awhile. Pulling closer he began to speak. First he apologized. Looking at me and then at the woman next to me he very careful recited that he understood this isn't the way that normal people begin conversations but we seemed like upright (or maybe it was alright) people. "I mean that it doesn't matter that you are white and I am a black man."

He was right that wasn't what mattered. What mattered is that he had chosen to instigate a conversation with two complete strangers, people who one glance would have shown were not just strangers to him but to each other.

Talking in a rapid style with a limited vocabulary and using words like Yuse he told a story. It was both an odd story and an odd telling of the story. Initially it seemed like he spoke just a couple of sentences repeatedly. But the narrative grew each time. As he repeated the initial sentences he refined the narrative and then he moved on to the next paragraph. Starting again he worked his way up to a third paragraph and then he cycled back again.

I was almost alone at the stop only a semi-mute older woman shared the shade of the shelter with me. Trust me she was perfectly willing to stare at her shoes as this conversation is evolving. Bottom line on my fellow traveler was that she would have been staring at her shoes anyway. I have met her on the buses before and that is what she does. My guess is that she is one of God’s special people.
The bus stop where I was waiting is near a community mental health center. I have been inside this place before with someone who was losing it, really losing it. Funny this should be occurring so close to the scene of that train coming off the tracks moment.

Back then I was locked in a little room a man who picked up the phone, listened for a time and then offered it to me. He had declared as he held the phone out, “It is God and the Devil fighting over my soul." The scary thing then was I knew he meant it. But that was different experience for the room back then was being monitored and the man had been searched and the risk level was low, or as low as it can be when the person you are with is breaking from reality in a major way, say like a Greyhound Bus breaking from a hairpin turn in the mountains and heading into thin air.

But today it was different. I was not in a confined room. I didn’t know anything about the man or what was in his pockets. Still, he truly seemed to just be trying to work his story up to a question. Finally he moved on to the crux of the story. The gist of it was this.

He had lived in Flint and Flint was a city without hope. Talking in a deeper voice he said “You know the stories of Flint” With that he put one hand on the handle bar and another on his hip and began shaking his head as a gesture of negative exclamation. (Flint has its stories for sure like tales of suburban kids beat to death and sexually assaulted as they wandered in the wrong part of town.) Continuing on he tells me, “Well I just got up and left and I came to Lansing and I was living at the VOA. Right away I met this white cat from Nebraska and we hit it off and we moved in together with this guy’s girlfriend”

Eventually the reason he gives me for repeating this story in this building looping style is kind of the reason he could actually move. My bike riding new friend gets disability money from when he got beaten in the head with a hammer back in Flint. And anyway he really isn't any problem to anyone because he mostly stays in his bedroom and plays the Game cube. He emphasizes he does like the cable TV but that is not working.

The woman keeps looking down. Oh once in a while she will glance over at me, but her eyes never even move toward the man as he keeps going back to the start of the story again and again.

Why am I listening? Well, I am a trained listener and I use all the tricks I have picked up over the years. There is the occasional head nod, the tilt of the head to the side and the interjection of a "Yes?" or "Okay" as needed. At no point has his voice ever raised or grown aggressive. Staying polite in his fashion his tone has always seemed expository or inquisitive.

And finally the tale comes to the core question. There is a bill that came yesterday that the bike rider had opened and it shows that the cable bill stands at $800 and that is the reason the service is now cut off. Apparently there is no hope of it being turned back on. Our/my new best friend has called the cable company and partial payments are not an option. With the cable off he tells me he won't be able to watch The Closer. He poses his dilemma, "So I get all up in his face ‘cause this isn't the only lie man. He told me his mother was dead and honest to God man she called the other day. And then his brother showed up and kind of told me that my roommate wasn't all there."

What was going through my mind at this point, I am sure you want to know. I was wondering where the hell the bus was; it had been due 20 minutes earlier. What was also crossing my mind was why do nut jobs always seem to find me? My thought for some time has been is because of my myopia. Being nearsighted to the extreme my gaze does not fix in the right space for most people to read my intentions correctly they assume I am intently interested in them. If I could look like my gaze was focused a little more in the distance I might be okay.

The story commenced again only this time it was beginning in the middle and the fact that his roommate’s father had suffered a stroke and that was the reason for the call from the "dead" Mom is being interjected as a new story element. Right then I saw the bus coming. The woman at the stop bolted for the curb because she was getting the hell out of there no matter what.

Looking my question filled acquaintance in the eyes I said that I was going to have to leave. But I offered that it was my opinion that getting up in someone's face and calling them a liar almost never ended well. My suggestion was that he should try a tact perhaps offering the implication to his roommate he opened the cable bill in error. He could then see if his roommate wanted help in sorting it out. I urged him not to use the word liar because it was a very powerful word that pisses just about everyone off. I wished him good luck just as the bus door closed. A little acceleration up Washington Avenue and he was gone.

Having just left my cardiologist’s office, it seemed only appropriate I got a real world stress test.

Awash In The Gold

 

Some days you find the gold in life where you least expect it. In this case it was three doors down and on the berm between the sidewalk and the street.

In Fading Light the Breeze Rustles the Leaves

Quiet moments that refresh your soul in life do come, but not often. Savor those ones that do arrive. Hold on to them. Memorialize them in your journal. In written form your pen strokes create something akin to a glass vial containing the last remnants of a beloved fragrance. With the vial you can just barely crack it open and take a whiff, with a journal you can read just a few lines and then you remember. In either case you can be transported back to that special place for an instant, for a moment. Sometimes an instant of joy will fend off a very, very rough day.

Recently I had a period when the bustle of life slowed for just a second. The catalyst was an invite to a concert while the boys were away from home and safely lodged at music camp. Up North, way up north Francie and I wended our way last Thursday afternoon. We were off to catch up with dear friends and to see a concert. The ostensible reason for the journey was that we had been offered an opportunity of tickets to see Joan Baez at Interlochen.

Now my taste for Joan Baez has waxed and waned over the years but it had been a long time since I really had an opinion about her either way. A concert seemed a wonderful reason to get together with these good hearted and smartly funny people.

All agreed that due to our schedules we would meet not at our friends’ homes but at a restaurant near the venue. The meal at the restaurant was okay. I ordered a meatball sandwich, nothing transcendent there but that was my fault now wasn’t it? If you are looking for something special you order something special not a pedestrian sandwich.

The concert on the other hand was more that I expected; it was wonderful. Going into I was mulling a question that was probably articulated best as at forty years after Woodstock, how much could I expect? But from the very start it was clear it was a special night.

Arriving at the venue I saw that the hall is what is known in the trade as a barn, a large open air mostly covered glorified band shell. Sitting in the amphitheater we were facing in the direction of a lake. Warm but not hot it was a perfect summer evening. On either side of the stage you could see through the trees and look out over that calm water.

We were about one row in front of the board and dead center. We sat in the in the softly changing glow of the soundboard’s electronics. The lights of the mixing board wavered changing in intensity. The aqua green and pale blues with small red dots and faint numerical readouts were ever morphing. Being in the forward shadow of that glow assured us that the aural mix was a good as it was anywhere in the house.

The audience was older. Sitting there in those narrow seats (specked out in the days before the obesity crisis in the boomers became self evident) were people like me. Many of those people (shifting from one cheek of their ass to the other to keep blood flowing) I am sure heard Joan Baez, really heard her for the first time as she sang I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night. Back in 1970 we had all been transported by our one friend who had enough cash to take us to the Woodstock festival via the overpriced 3 LP set on Cotillion records. A few people here maybe picked up on her music earlier but looking around I am of the opinion that if that were the case they were precocious and the exposure was from an older sister or brother playing the music on their parent’s console stereo.

The lights on stage rose just a little bit and suddenly there she was. With a tight bluegrass/newgrass band she worked her way through the cannon of folk songs that have traveled with me from college and onward. She sang murder ballads. She sang songs of the lass disguised as a man to save her lover now gone a sea. She sang Dylan and she sang of Dylan. And finally she sang of the South last days and from the south closing with pure bluegrass stained glass acapella gospel of Angel Band.

Her voice was still there mostly. She hit the high notes but sliding down the scales was not an option. She reworked a few songs but there were still her songs, she owned them from start to finish always the consummate artist in her presentation. The sun’s light was slow in fading over the lake that lay behind the amphitheater. But this is the North Country in summer you know. The light in its slow flight remained lingering so as to outline the trees between my seat and the water. There was a dim glow until very late in the concert. Forty years almost to the day from when she belted many of these songs on Yasgur’s farm, the night was still charged, her music remains a touchstone that matters.

And then it was over. We headed off to take up our hosts on their offer of hospitality at there lakeside home in the woods. Using social media I documented the physical environment of the place but not the feeling. Pictures were posted on Facebook that showed a gorgeous waterfront and the verdant canopy that lies between the house and the water. An image of a magnificent and sensual whitefish dinner with baked veggies and really fresh corn got popped up as an upload a little while later. None of those images captured the smells of the forest mixing with the smell of fresh cooked sweet summer corn. How could grainy pixels captured by a telephone camera ever convey any sense of the light hearted and warm conversation that follows a good meal and a few ounces of India Pale Ale?

We talked late into the night for the two nights we stayed there. We walked the beach. A bonfire was built and sitting quietly we experienced a lakeside sunset. Of course the conversation turned to the green flash and then to the northern lights. What wonderful topics as the sounds of the trees moving gently in the breeze provided a background sonata.

Sometimes it is just words spoken in conversation, the tones and the timbre that make all the difference. Being engaged in an oral history, or dissecting a personal issue may not really matter as much as the flow of the words, the continuing nature of the conversation. Sincerity and warmth often trump “getting to the crux” of whatever life is presenting to us right now. The tone and timbre of the conversation was wonderful.

Yeah, take time and savor the moments when warming by a fire you feel a northern summer night come to full.

As Good As I Needed

In the waning hours, the time right before bed I look around me. One cat black and sleek sits on the cushion of a disheveled couch. Children play havoc with any concept of order now don’t they? Another feline sits staring into the next room. She is always waiting for the next mouse. Perhaps the next fly might be her ticket to entertainment. She, no matter what the prey might be, is always waiting. In the center of the room lays a kitschy faux bear skin rug. It is not some much an approximation of a bear skin rug as it is a template for a faux bear costume for some masquerade. Still, it was a gift and I love it. Disheveled, rumpled and filled with odd creatures this warm and wonderful place is home. The room and I share a moment of silence interrupted only by soft purring.

Audible machines begin to hum, both the AC outside and the kitchen refrigeration unit kick in. Over by the baseboard I hear the fan begin its task of blowing the cold air about. Well at least the ceiling fans are not moving now although they might be sufficient to cool the room if I were to turn the air conditioning off. No, I will leave the fans off for their electric motors grind and there housings shake and make discordant sounds I would rather avoid. How mundane these sounds are compared to those encountered on my recent vacation down the Jersey shore.

Being on the beach is a wonderful thing. To people that have never spent any appreciable time by the ocean’s shore you just can’t explain it. The experience from the feel of hot sand on your bare feet, to the small bits of bubbled dark green seaweed in the water to the sinus assuaging salt smell of the air to the feel of a wave crashing against your torso, that experience is not something you can really convey in a couple of sentences. People who have never really lived near the ocean hear phrases like I went to the shore and they nod, but they don’t get it.

Getting into the rhythm of beach and its particular style of living takes time. You can’t just plop yourself in a rental for a week and understand the cycle of life at the water’s edge. When you are there a month you think you have it, but you don’t. When you spend a season there you think you have it, but you don’t. If you were to be at the shore each day for 365 days for five years you might get a glimpse of life at the edge of the water but you still would have only limited insight into the cycles, the variations, the nuances of life next to salt sea. It is sort of like the experience Annie Dillard wrote about in a book a few years ago about living by a creek for a year. In the end you may be there, but not be of the place.

My week by the water was wonderful. I saw old friends. I saw old places. I ran into the water again and again. The sun beat down and the sky stayed clear. Each day was a moment of clearing for my soul. Sitting on the beach the sun reflected up and tanned me even through the SPF Bear Fat Level 1000 sunscreen. I buried my head in a book of philosophy and was lost to the din of our electronic world. The night was just as wonderful being filled with vicarious joys. My kids rode the coasters and the log plumes and played games at the boardwalk arcades. Geeked to the maximum they giggled and howled and begged and pled for more. And finally there was the full moon rising over the sea. Yellow-orange and huge in the warm night it brought back every memory I had of being 19 and out at night on the beach.

It was a good time.

Motes

Shinning bits, tiny and fragmented. Like dust motes floating in late afternoon sun. Bits suspended, supported by nothing but that invisible mass known as air. Some bits are moving and some seem still, just stuck in space.

This array of bits is memory, well more specifically my memory. How my mind stores its past isn't rational or hierarchical. My memory is a thousand planets spewing out across a universe the center of which is me.

Every passing moment either gravity or another force of nature moves a piece of my memory. Some flickers of the past are heading toward the black holes of my personal universe. Some are drawn into the fire of my conscious focused mind for a brief few moments. But like matter twisted by gravity and the other immutable rules of physics so are these little motes are always being modified simply by being part of the stream of my existence.

Maybe it is gravity in every sense of the word that keeps in my mind zipping back to age two. Gasping I am stuck inside a heavy quilted plastic garment bag on a late summer afternoon. My body is sweating profusely and I remember stale plastic smelling air. Somehow I have managed to zipper it closed from the inside. Most likely my breath was getting low but somehow my brother comes upon me and pulls me out before it is too late. And then there was the "scary" lecture from Mom and Dad about death and suffocation and the appropriate places where good little boys should play. Thank God there was no internet or someone, one of my brothers most likely, would have pulled off pictures of purple swollen dead people who had suffocated and shown them to me as an object lesson. If that had happened then I would never have stored my clothes again, ever.

But what are these memories that pop up? In writing a story recently about an incident at the swimming pool of my childhood I remembered perhaps a more telling story of that place and of my relationship with my middle brother. I was maybe in kindergarten. Maybe it happened when I was in first grade, I dunno which but I was young and I listened to my brother back then. My older brother suggested that when Joe the lifeguard was leaning over the pool I rush up behind the big man and give a push. I did, reaction followed action and Joe went ass over head into the water. Me, well I was thrown out of the pool for the day. A large number of people laughed. My brother got thrown out for the day too and my Mom was really pissed. Cue up the disgraced our family lecture. One soaking wet man in his wayfarers yelling at me hangs there in my memory. I laugh a little bit and squirm a little bit when this pops into my rearview mirror. Those two minutes captured in a loop that repeats on certain days, say when I watch my kids at the community pool, says tons about my brother and his toxic influence (at times) on with me. It says quite a bit about my gullibility. But what could I expect of myself, I was six or seven tops and my brother was 14 or 15. He should have known better. Was it the complete impact on my senses of the consequences that followed this action that made it memorable I don't know?

Or the moment when I was sixteen and cruising through the Soo boat locks with my Dad one chilly August afternoon. Wearing windbreakers we about froze to death sitting on the boat’s deck, but I remember the flag on the bow of the boat. The pennant was whipping, whipping in the breeze. Watching that flag I was thinking this would be the only time I was ever going to be here and God what a forsaken place this is The flag which was read and white and I think was the logo of the boat line but it mesmerized me. Life has deposited me much closer to the Soo that I ever thought would happen, but I didn't know that would happen then. Even before I came here I knew the memory of that that pennant whipping wildly above that cold water would pop up again and again in my life.

Or, what is it that takes me back to the lady drowning her child with the ice cream cone? Really why does that bit come back again and again? I mean it was her own fault especially since I had told her not to hold the mountainous twin peaked cone of chocolaty goodness over his face. This happened when I was working at the soft serve place on the boardwalk. It was hot and humid and I told her not to buy the big cone because I knew she would have a mess on her hands. I mean this literally because it was inevitable that the pile of swirled goo would fall off the cone. I mean it was nearing 100% humidity and those soft serve machines don’t really chill stuff when there is such a level of moisture in the air. But the little squalling brat wanted the big one and then didn't want it and it was because of the dynamic of that dispute that she held the wad of dissolving delight over his face and it fell off the contents of the cone filling his eyes, nose and mouth causing him to almost drown on the boardwalk more that 300 yards from the ocean on a dry if very humid night.

Or finally why is it I go back to the time the guy in the infield of the Kentucky Derby was so drunk that he almost drowned on dry land in 90 degree heat? I mean he was so high he fell back against his Styrofoam cooler and it broke forming a collar that fit pretty tight around his neck. This dude was so drunk the cold water didn't wake him up and his head slowly began to tip downward. The man’s skull was at the point where his open mouth and flaring nostrils were about to go under when we pulled him out and let his friends know his was too fucked up for his own good. Maybe alcohol poisoning got him. But that isn’t the memory I hold on to. What I see again and again is the slow motion slide, the tilt into the 1 foot by 2 foot Styrofoam sea.

Maybe as I catch these specks in the light and tie them up and bind them to paper I can let them go. It may be a Buddhist kind of thing the equivalent of putting my wishes or regrets down on paper and then vanishing them. Perhaps I do this by setting this metaphorical paper afire, or by walking away from them after tying them to a tree one to which I will not return. Either way I have unburdened myself.

Any given set of words will never capture a memory; they are just an outline of some limited sense of the objective in a specific recollection. My memories aren't special; they just are my little fragments of a past I can’t go back to.

The reason I write is because the desire to do so is something that has always been inside of me. Deep down there is an urge to create a diagram of these dust motes that make up my life. With words I try and craft a kind of star map of the attic that is my mind. One word and then another must fall onto the electronic paper. One past moment captured and a new space for experience opened up. I doubt I will do enough in these remaining years to make anywhere near enough memories to fill the space I am emptying, but I gotta clear some room out just in case I do.

Motes in golden sunlight twinkling spin on for now, but not forever.

Tech Notes

A note to my readers about some changes on the blog. One person that has tried to peruse my site had indicated that the black on white was hard on the eyes. As an attempt to refine and improve A Space True I took the comment to heart. Looking amongst the various templates this seemed to be the easiest I could find on my decrepit eyes. How is it working for the rest of you? Besides looking like it should offer links to medical offices and explain gently horrible medical conditions in a calm and reasoned way I think the visual effect is an improvement. Let me know if I made a wrong choice here. Also changed was a deletion of the YouTube search feature. Now that I have figured out how to imbed links it was redundant.

I promise I won't make this a habit-A musical interlude

One of my favorite films of recent years was some called Les Choristes. My French is not so good and the spelling is thus apt to be off. The subtitled English version is called the Chorus. He is a bit of the why of my high regard for this film. The music is wonderful and the actors involved have such feeling for their roles.

Everything I Ever Say is a Lie and So is This

Early in my youth my family belonged to a swim club, it wasn’t fancy but it was private. New Jersey in the summer gets hot. Having a water hole built of concrete and filled with filtered cold clear water was wonderful. The place’s mere existence was thoroughly consistent with the progress focused American Dream of the sixties. It was onward and upward for us there in P-City.

In retrospect the private club part may have existed for more than just sharing the cost of a common water playground. Being private our man made cement pond was exclusionary for people like us and only like us. The 1960s a decade of change was not at all an enlightened period in small rural towns. The pool was clearly a segregated gathering spot, at least initially. At that time I was too young to catch on to such hidden agendas. To my young eyes that pool was a glistening blue oasis. I simply didn’t realize there weren’t any black people there, or why not.

Describing the physical place is simple; describing the social place is much harder. As to what one would see with the eye there was a chain link fence surrounded the whole place keeping non members out. A little compound, it had concrete block changing rooms for both men and women. These rooms were housed in a long rectangular box that stretched in a line across the western edge of the site. Access to the pumps and other guts of the pool’s actual operation was obtained through the men’s dressing room, as rightly it should have been back then. I mean men were still men and they worked with wrenches, gaskets, filters and the like. The pool even had a snack bar. Everything about the place smacked of progress. Our pool represented upward mobility in a solidly middle class way.

The pool itself was thoroughly modern. It had a shallow end and a deep end with a diving board. Again as it is in all my tales my memory is not reliable as it once was but I think the board was used mostly for cannonballs and belly flops. When used it produced a distinctive sound, a sproing-oing-oing as the fiberglass plank oscillated to a stop. But the board was not the only sound you would here when someone made a dive. When the Moose hit the water you could hear the smack of that massive torso and feel his wake at the other end of the pool. There was a separate kiddie pool. Being up to date in all things and given the time’s focus on education during the first few weeks of each summer Red Cross sponsored swim courses were given. I know I got up to junior lifesaver before I quit taking lessons.

From my house in the heart of our little farm town it seems like it was about a four minute drive out to the pool; maybe a mile. In the early years of our membership before I hit what is now considered middle school age my mother would load me, my older brother and some folding aluminum chairs into the big old Ford on most hot summer afternoons. Once in the car Mom’s eyes focused straight ahead and we barreled down that old county road, made a right just past the Deaton’s place and kicked up dirt on the unpaved road for about an eighth of a mile until we parked by the pool. What a way to spend sunny summer afternoons. At seven years old it was heaven. My fingers and toes were raisins each day as I came out of the cold, cooling water. At thirteen or maybe fourteen my time at the pool became something else much more interesting.

No matter what age I was I really don’t remember using much in the way of suntan lotion back then. Besides with my buck teeth I really wasn’t at risk for sunburn except for the top of my shaved head. The increased risk of my head for sunburn, the rest of my body being shaded by my buck teeth in case you missed the joke, was because I like every other male child in that part of the world got a shaved head the week school ended as his summer haircut. Our hair would not be addressed again in a barber’s chair until the week before school resumed in September. School started the day after Labor Day as God intended and never before.

Okay let us take in the visual image now of my naked, but for an ugly bathing suit, self. There I was under the burning sun, a myopic fat kid with big ears and a shaved head with either a pasty white or blistered red skin tone. Oh yeah I had black horn rimmed glasses held together with electrical tape at the broken bridge too. It is an absolute wonder nobody drowned me for the betterment of society in an act of vigilante eugenic purging.

While I don’t remember much about some areas of the pool I do remember that the sunbathing areas were uncomfortable. Instead of sand the areas where you would lay out on a towel were covered with small white stones. The net result was that that the surfaces were you could lie out were both hot and uncomfortable. Little sand burrs grew up between the stones waiting to attack a less than watchful patron with a naked foot as he or she padded to a sunning spot.. Adding to the pleasure of this space was the issue that back then I only got a small towel from home to lie upon. My legs below my knee would hang out across the rocks. My lower calf would sizzle and drip sweat on those white and hot rocks. The effect was kind of like a steak dripping juices on a gas grill’s lava rocks.

Did I mention this place was heaven to me? No I mean it; the pool really was something special.

As I grew older I would ride my W.T. Grant’s blue/purple banana seat butterfly stingray bike out to the swimming pool. That’s right with my plump legs pumping, my fat ass was hanging out sorting sucking the whole of my banana seat into invisibility. It was about a 10 or 15 minute ride down an asphalt road that was more a memory of a paved road that a real road. There were patches upon patches of macadam of different shades some oozing as the weather got good and warm, some just breaking up in dry brittle clumps.

On my way to the pool I would head down Front Street past the town school. It housed all eight grades and has been in use since about 1914. I haven’t been back home in a long time but I believe it is still in use today. Winding its way out of town to the east the road became empty of houses. There were two exceptions, a farm house and a migrant shack across the street from it. Sometime I would see the Puerto Rican men in their straw hats heading into different parts of the fields.

Curving slightly just beyond those houses the road would pass over a short causeway over a creek. In Mom’s car you didn’t even notice the causeway or the creek they were hidden in some deep foliage. But to a 14 year kid it was a mandatory stop. Might be turtles out there either swimming or sunning themselves. Of course you didn’t stop if the old black people were there fishing. I never stopped long anyway for this was brackish water and there was a plant we called skunk cabbage that grew out there. It stank something really awful, if not with the exact aroma then with at least the same intensity as skunk spray.

After the causeway I went up the hill past the big old frame house on the right and turned on that dirt road to the pool. At the start of the road it was sandy and hard to pedal. On a summer day this was the part of the ride that made you sweat. Combining a stiff jaunt up a pretty steep grade (for New Jersey normally about the flattest place in the universe) with pushing a bike through loose sand and I would be working up a real sweat.

With the pool in sight your legs pumped the hardest they would on the whole ride. I would be straining on the pedals of that bike, a machine that was a couple of years too small but which was still my ride. But I pumped hard, real hard so that when I got to the hard packed sand of the pool parking lot I could lock up those coaster brakes and kick that dusty dirt into the air. Cool is very relative to a way too immature 13 (or 14) year old.

I have been thinking about the pool because of Facebook. Insidious thing this social utility (and what does social utility mean anyway). Recently I got a friend request from one of the people who, in my mind at least, is tied to my memory of the pool for ever and ever. I have not seen or talked to this person to the best of my recall since 1975. It was a hoot seeing her image. She looks good, older but good. But my memory of her will always be atop someone’s shoulders in a two piece yellow bathing suit chicken fighting in the shallow end of that pool on a summer day.

I have struggled as to how and frame this story, should it be about the pool or the people? If it was about the people I should mention the lifeguards. I remember a couple of the lifeguards in particular. Actually I knew at least one lifeguard pretty well. Her name was Liz and she went to the University of Michigan. She was fairly intellectual and a bit of a wild child. Sitting on her elevated chair on a sparsely attended July afternoon she was desperate for conversation with anyone and there I was. She talked to me about things that were interesting like Camus’ The Fall and The Stranger and about Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. We talked about music. All the while I was sitting at the foot of her life guard stand like an acolyte to a elevated female Buddha.

Liz had been a mutant child herself, a little too academically smart for her own good and thus somewhat mistreated in school. Me, the year she was our lifeguard, I was fat and somewhat academically talented, you do the math on the peer torture equation. Plus I was the last child and my parents were tired of raising kids and dealing with adolescent angst and trauma. What I got was not the most hands on parenting advice. My Dad’s response when I got bullied was to tell me, hit ‘em back. That stratagem never worked out for me, ever.

Liz would always tell me to get out, to go away to college. She swore to me that once you got away from your hometown choices opened up in terms of socializing. She was right and I thank her for that.

There were other people there too. Some of them I regularly correspond with now thanks to Facebook and e-mail and the like. Some I don’t. The people that are key to this story are Mary Beth, May, Ben and John. Somewhere floating at the edge of this was one of my now dearest friends, but I don’t remember her being involved in the sort of social scene that the above four were. Because I was at the pool on a daily basis I was kind of a voyeur on these folks adolescent social development. The girls were growing breasts finally that were bigger than mine. I did mention I was fat didn’t I? That one change seemed to stir all sorts of stuff up.

So very much of what we learn about life comes in places outside of schools. Sometimes the education is subtle like watching the kind gesture of someone sharing food with a friend. Sometimes that education is pretty brutal like seeing a beat down start at a bar and then watching a couple of bouncers get even more brutal to break it up. At the pool that summer the education came by watching what happened when hormones, pheromones and water combined.

As I was saying when you are hanging around the swimming pool midday in the summer as an early teen, a very fundamental education in life just happens. If you are fat and ugly you aren’t a real participant but you get to watch bug lust on display. As you get to the pool most days there are the guys who clearly are going to play football in high school sunning themselves on the white rocks. They are already conditioning themselves and their bellies and upper torso are taut.

Nearby are the girls. They would lie upon their towels and would rub suntan oil on each other. They wore bikinis. If they had been at the beach they would have unhooked their bra straps for a better tan as thy lay face down. But this was a small town and that was just too risky.

They would banter back and forth. They would talk about what would happen next year. They would talk about who had been seeing whom at the end of the last school year. They would count up their change and go by a soda at the snack bar and maybe a frozen Zero bar. They made small talk that wasn’t about the topic at hand as much as it was about learning to talk to someone of the other sex. Me I lay there and read Shakespeare.

Eventually they would go into the pool the heat of the rocks having gotten to be too much. The guys would try and do some dives woofing on each other for various perceived short comings. The girls would sit at the edge of the pool and drop their legs into the shallow end slowly. After a minute or two of swirling their legs about they would drop down into the water and shiver and giggle. They were indeed such girls. In memory they were very beautiful.

Once Mary Beth and May had entered the shallow end the diving would soon stop. The girls would work on their stroke. Ben and John would work their way down to the shallow end diving under the buoyed rope separating the two parts of the pool. At first they would rest their elbows on the edge of the pool and pretend to be talking about something, maybe a summer job at the vegetable packing house. Maybe not. Eventually the girls would stop and would come over and start some conversation. Maybe a small rubber football would be thrown around, maybe not. But most days it the end it ended up in a…..

Chicken fight!

A chicken fight works best if certain rules are observed. The lower part to the two person team should be the stouter, stockier of the duo. This is why mixed doubles are the rule in really good recreational pool chicken fights. The upper part of the team should be agile and sinewy. With her fingers locked in her opponent’s fingers forearm strength and general flexibility are definite pluses. Twisting, torquing and wrenching all at once the goal is to knock part or all of the other team back into the water without going down yourself, or at least being the last to fall and submerge.

There isn’t anymore hormonally charged but theoretically more wholesome activity for two 14 year old boys and two 15 year old girls than water bound chicken fighting. Think about it; is there anything more sexual you can do while still being in open public in broad daylight than thrashing about the water in such embrace? Freud just kind of oozes from the imagery of these erect young figures writhing about in so much moisture, it was a teenage boy’s dream come true.

A willowy and breast endowed teenage girl would sit elevated above the water. Her smooth legs wrapped around a beefy teenage boy’s neck, her foot heels pressed into the top of his ribcage in the shallow water. Okay maybe it would have been the teenage boy’s dream if he was facing the other direction but still it wasn’t bad. Hey the water was warm and splashing was involved.

As I mentioned I was the fat kid standing off to the side, on the concrete sidewalk that surrounded the pool merely watching. Myopic but focused on the events transpiring I would just never be part of the action. I was fat not strong. Like the character in Portnoy’s Complaint I stayed on the sidelines and just watched.

Back and forth they went, twisting and turning, splashing and laughing. Mary Beth and Ben tipped back from a sudden drop followed by an upward push from John and May. Ben then crouched in a near squat planting his feet and steadied himself. On that rigid human oil derrick Mary Beth pushed May with more strength than I though she could have mustered. May leaned back at about a 70 degree angle to the water’s surface; it was almost the tipping point.

With a flex of her right shoulder and a push forward Mary Beth pushed forward sending May ass over head into the water. Lunging forward to complete this motion it happened. With that right arm extended almost straight out and now part of a 45 degree second side of a parallelogram with May’s falling body, Mary Beth’s left cup of her bikini bra fell open and there it was, her nipple.

It was wonderful. Assuredly it was the first non familiar nipple I had ever seen that wasn’t covered with a glossy coating incorporated into a body segmented by a tri-fold with staples in her abdomen located in the center of a magazine. As nipple’s go for me it was Plato’s concept of the ideal lying in a world somewhere beyond that tainted realm that our five sense bound selves inhabit. That wet perky puppy was perfection and beauty. It was the standard against which all nipples would be judged for years to come.

If this sounds like arrested development, it probably is, I am after all a man and nothing more. However I am not a pervert, well not unless it suits my purpose and everyone else involved is okay with it. But that wardrobe malfunction was magic and did something to me. (No I am not talking about that obvious thing that you are most likely thinking happened to me although that probably did also occur). That areola with it tiny little pill box center was a key to my future of sorts.

A quick glimpse pretty much confirmed to me I was heterosexual and that I wanted to see more nipples. All the key clues were there, a quick pumping pulse, my heart rate was surging. I had a slack jaw and was overcome by a transient catatonic state. I think I kept staring at the same spot although the water fight was over for a good minute afterwards completely lost in a place that you visit only once in a lifetime.

That flash motivated me. If I was going to see another nipple I would have to lose weight. And lose weight I did. I think by the end of that summer I had dropped about 35, maybe 40 pounds. Hey it was a fair tradeoff for the hairy palms. My mind understood its biological drive was to see more of those puppies and that looking like the fat kid from a Gary Larson cartoon wasn’t going to get me there. That little pencil eraser shaped piece of flesh surrounded as it was by goose bumps would never been seen by me again without change. Okay while I never saw that particular breast again the changes I made did eventually work out. I mean I am married and have kids that are putatively mine.

As this “damn short movie” has sped by, that day and in fact most of the experiences I have recounted here had slipped from my mind. But having found out thanks to Facebook that Mary Beth is still alive and kicking I have been reminded of that place, and of the hormones that rage through the bodies of young teens. What a charge to remember that time and the absolute energy tied into the building sexual tension of my then young body. The flash that day was a pebble that started a cascade that became a landslide.

In closing I guess three things come to mind. First I am despite my comments to the contrary an oversexed pervert, prostate or not. However, I am simply going to put that conclusion in a mental box and shove it onto a mental shelf if the back of my mind’s garage with a post it that says look at this later. Second, it makes me think that some much of lives are determined by chance occurrences, insignificant things that are catalysts for major change and shifts in life’s direction. Had I not seen that nipple on that day at that moment I might not have been so electrified by hormones sufficient to motivate weight loss. Of course there were other factors but what was the tipping point? Finally I am certain that much more of our lives are hard wired by the structure and sequencing of guanine and the other elements of the genetic code that we are willing to acknowledge. Hormones and hard wired instincts are the drivers of our live to a far greater extent that our intellect will allow us to believe.

In closing I offer a simple thanks to Mary Beth and to Mary Beth’s nipple for that one flash that helped changed my life.