Looking Westward

In 1978 there were these two people who on the whim threw a penny on a map and decided to drive to where the coin landed. Based on that coin toss this 22 year old male and his 21 year old female companion headed out in a $50 dollar car named Thunder Road for the west coast.

Ill prepared for the road and for each other they drove west. In order to prep for that trip they bought a Coleman stove (which they still use today). They bought a cheap 2 person tent from Woolco. While they still have it they no longer use this tent. Hell I don’t think they would fit in it. There combined weight at the time is less than his is now. They bought a cassette deck which got mounted under the dash of his 1972 Chevrolet Impala. Finally they grabbed the five cassette tapes they had between them and they headed out.

Taking old U.S. 2 as their route they traveled first across the northern tier of the United States. The U.P., Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and onward they rolled. They made a short side trip into Alberta and another one into Vancouver. Eventually they ended up in Otter Rock, Oregon. It was underwhelming but the seafood at the docks was beyond belief.

Traversing the country they killed two cars. On a side trip to L.A. they saw the Rolling Stones with 103,000 of their closest friends. Then they rode through the desert in the rain. (The trip back involved 3 days non stop on a Greyhound and a case of temporary psychosis.)

One constant marked the trip, the sunsets. Almost every night as they drove that car west as far as they could there were beautiful sunsets. One night the sunset exploded as they pulled into a county fair in North Dakota. Another day the sunset was a wash of color as they wandered about seeking a campsite somewhere near a river in Wyoming. Next morning they woke up and found they had camped right on the edge of a beautiful cold-coursing flow.

Such a journey is a rite of passage for our nations young. It ought to be mandatory. On such a trip you find out who you are and who we are as a people. America to my mind always looks west. We want to see that glorious end of the day as we finish our labors. We want to chase the last remaining light in the hope of greater things. Ours is a painted sky, painted with dreams and hopes of a better future.

Comfort

Now on the street tonight the lights grow dim

The walls of my room are closing in
There's a war outside still raging
You say it ain't ours anymore to win
I want to sleep beneath
Peaceful skies in my lover's bed
With a wide open country in my eyes
And these romantic dreams in my head

Bruce Springsteen, No Surrender

Riding into work the past few mornings we have had a disc in the CD player that is labeled “Hockey”. I burned it a few years back to motivate Primus when he was heading to away games. Got to get that energy up, gotta get those juices flowing. The songs are his favorites and include Warren Zevon singing Hit Somebody, the Faces singing Street Fighting Man, Tom Waits singing The Earth Died Screaming and the Talking Heads singing Psycho Killer and Life during Wartime.

Over the years we developed an odd little tic of fast forwarding/skipping the track when we heard the opening chords of Psycho Killer. Invariably when it played all the way through Primus would pull a 10 minute major or a game misconduct. It just seemed to happen that whenever he heard that song, the events on the ice got ugly, U.G.L.Y.

Now that the season is over it has been deemed safe to play the WHOLE disc in the car on the way to school. At the end of the disc are a couple of less aggressive songs. One is Steve Forbert singing You Cannot Win If You Do Not Play (good hockey theme, eh…goes well with that hockey maxim “100% of shots not on goal, don’t go in.”). Another is Bruce Springsteen’s No Surrender.


I pulled the Springsteen song off my iTunes library. Thing is I have about 20 copies of the song from different venues. What I ended up with instead of the pounding version on Born in the USA is an acoustic ballad. (A hockey prep disc should not let up, eh?) Each day as we take the kids to schools if No Surrender comes on both Primus and Secundus sing along with passion. The part of the song that they both emphasize is the line “I learned more from a three minute record than I ever learned in school”.

Me I am drawn the phrase in the opening quote above, “I want to sleep beneath peaceful skies in my lover's bed with a wide open country in my eyes and these romantic dreams in my head.” It is without any doubt I say that when I was their age I would have been singing right along with them about the three minute record. Life flows on like a river. Knowing that I am sure when they get to my age the lyric that matters most to them will be different too.

When I was their age I noticed not one damn thing about the seasons, about flowers, well about anything except what was in my own little world. In reality I haven’t really matured all that much but I am noticing the seasons. There is beauty in a simple lamb’s ear plant that transcends so much angst and rage. Romantic dreams, peaceful sleep, lamb’s ears some day they will want these things too.

White and Crisp

The delicate moments of life should be appreciated.  As I walked out last night I found one of the bushes that dot the edge of my property line in full bloom.  For a time I stood looking at the bush in its spring glory. In sunlight that was rapidly fading I turned and gazed at some iris blooms that had just too come out.  The last thing I looked at was my Japanese maple with its bright red leaves standing in such contrast to the verdant world, the green world around it.  After having enjoyed this wealth of beauty that neither I nor any being deserve but which we ware offered by grace alone I walked back to the bush where I had started.  Looking deeply into the blooms captured this image and manipulated it. 

http://youtu.be/f8TayMIEUaM

Ablutions

Every person will come to a time where they need a refuge. Issues big and small confront us day in and day out. Life lived in the modern world can wear upon our very souls. We all need some moment in some defined place that gives us peace.

Many people seek balm sitting in churches, mosques and temples. Many people seek comfort in buildings that are adorned with neon lights and mirrors covered with beer logos. Me I have two places outside of those realms to go to.

The first is a small mat that resides next to my desk. When I can I roll it out and sit for a time in a lotus like position for about 7 – 10 minutes. I turn off the lights in my office and the music that I play. Sometimes I will leave some Gregorian chants going. No method, no guru, no teacher just quiet introspection and release.

My second and perhaps longest established place of refuge is the bath. My home has a garden tub. A garden tub is basically a six foot ceramic square with a tub cut on the diagonal between two of its four corners. This design leaves a seat on either side of the tub. You can put you soap here, your magazine here but most importantly your body wash.

Lying in my tub toes elevated I just love to feel really hot water soaking the skin around my shoulders. It carries so much negative energy away. I pour my bath very, very hot. The heat relaxes my body and restores my spark. Spark is not a great word but neither is vigor or vitality. Those particular concepts have been long gone from my life and I don’t think the slow moving train they are on is ever coming back.

But it is the smell of the body wash that I have pumped into the bath that makes the experience complete. Me, I think the one I use smells like sandalwood or some similar dense forest like incense. With my body relaxing and my eyes closed in a quiet room the only sense left to assuage is that of smell. The body wash in warm water releases a blanket of pleasant aroma that moves me away from the day to day into a few brief moments of respite. The experience is almost meditative

A simple bath makes a difference.

Saying Good-Byes to Things that have Mattered

If you are a Facebook friend I apologize for the redundancy.  There are a number of readers who are not in that circle.  This post was always meant for the blog but after I drafted it it was so easy just to past it on FB that I did that first.


At a time not so long ago if you had asked me what I would be doing when I had just turned 57 what I would have told you would have been the same stuff most lawyer’s do. My guess back at age forty was that I would be in private practice so...mewhere and have my name on some letterhead on Crane’s paper. Perhaps I would be on my second marriage (to a secretary no doubt-how cliché). I would probably still live in a modest house but I would have a great cottage up in Canada. (The alternate universe theory is that I would have been working in Toronto and living in the Annex area slipping out for coffee and eggs at St. Lawrence Market on Saturday mornings).



In so many ways you simply have to accept what comes in this life. Dreaming and planning or simply guessing, don’t make anything true. I do not live in the Annex. I am still quite happily married. I am not in private practice. Truth be told, I am a family man.


Last night I went to Primus’s last concert performance with the East Lansing High School Orchestra. This is another in the series of last events that commenced with his clearing out his hockey locker at the end of March. Primus’s classes will be over next Friday and he will graduate on Sunday June 2nd. For Moose, or Primus or John Lee if you need his real name high school will be done.

Personally I have loved the boy’s orchestra concerts over the years. Each year the group that the lad has moved up with has just gotten better and better. Last night was no exception, the music was moving and crowd was appreciative. Because it was “senior night” Primus got to wear something other than a monkey suit. His attire was elegant in a sort of late 1950s jazz style. Grey shirt, black tie, black tasseled shoes and a hat that in combination looked absolutely hipster hung so tres cool on his bulky frame. If ever a person had the physique to be a bass player it is Primus.

In January 1995 Francie and I lived 9 houses and two blocks from where we live now. In January 1995 Francie and I lived in a world where we knew how to perfectly raise perfect children. At that time she was suffering from stomach distress. Oh what distress it would become. But back then our world was "our" world. It was a world of loss and hurt at the time. We had lost her father, my mother and our nephew in eight months. Still our future was something that belonged to us. On August 26, 1995 our world no longer was our own. Hell, now I am not sure I could raise an invasive plant correctly.

The second song last night was the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana by Mascagni. As Primus commenced to play he leaned into the piece. His long fingers arched up and down on the neck of the bass. In time with the music he bopped, his frame moved with intensity and power and he swung his head back and forth. At times his eyes clenched shut and his brow furrowed. As God is my witness I believe I saw more emotion on that child’s face as he played that one piece than I have seen in the last ten years of his life in other environments. And the Intermezzo was beautiful and moving. Primus seemed part of the music last night and that unity between the player and the song brought tears to my eyes.

Since 1995 the lives of my wife and I has not been our own, nor will they ever be again. From the lows to the highs first Primus and then Secundus have demanded by their mere existence that I be more than just me. They and the cosmos have mandated that I be a part of an us, part of a family. I have been called upon to be a better being and maybe some of the time I have achieved that calling. Being part of a family even a lunatic one is where I was supposed to be.

On June 2nd I will be on stage at the Wharton Center in East Lansing, Michigan in my role as a school board member. Come that day God willing I will get to shake my son’s hand as he walks across that stage to pick up his diploma. I am sure my eyes will fill again with tears.See More

The Breeze Blew By and Left Life Behind

Monday, May 13, 2013

Although the upcoming day has it challenges, bills, work that I am behind on and correspondence to take care of my gloom was dispelled by my wife. On the way in I verbalized how I was so concerned about what my children were doing in their lives. She pointed on the youngest had been stellar at his choir concert on Friday. The refrain, “It is all fun and games being a pirate, until somebody loses an eye,” was ringing around the house all weekend. The oldest was a physics Olympiad team. While his device did not work the team still won the Olympiad for the second year in a row. More importantly he was clearly “part of the team,” while we were there.

After she said these words I left the car and entered my office. I am first in today and my coffee tastes good as I sit in the silence getting ready to face the day. As I contemplate my strategy it is clear to me that I must be open to what will come. Nothing may work out or maybe everything will. I guess that is what the whole Buddhist approach to life is. Take it as it is and accept it as it is without illusion of joy or pain.

Roses Lead My Way Into Reality

Each and every morning in my life has some rituals that go unchanged. Whether my day starts in the dark of winter or is bathed in the soft glow of summer sunrise I invariably am the first to rise in my home.

Getting up out of bed I touch my arms and legs to make sure they are still attached to my body and more or less function. Recently I have been checking the arch of my left foot to make sure the incision is healing where I had the cyst removed. Assured I am intact and still moving with the slow pace of a 50 something man I shower first in my household. Hot water is God’s gift to use all. A hot shower seems to wash away all the indefinites of life.

After my ablution I dress and then wake up my second child and tell him to shower and dress. Secundus or Squirrel boy’s (as he is affectionately known) role is to shower and then wake up/tell his mom to shower.

Me, after I am dressed I head down the hall to the circular stairwell that leads downstairs. On the right side of my hall I open the door to my first child’s room, turn off his ceiling fan and turn on the lights in the room. Loudly but not too loudly I tell him to wake up and get dressed. A grunt from Moose means things are progressing in due course.

Down I go to the kitchen and start making breakfast. Two bowls of oatmeal come first, 1 part Quaker Oats, 2 equal parts water and give them 3 minutes in the microwave. There are specific bowls I use. They were bought off the clearance table at Pottery Barn and they are the best bowls ever.

As the first bowl of this heart healthy grain is cooking I grind the coffee. My son with Aspergers has decided only Kenyan roast from Starbucks will do. Back when I still drank coffee I too had come to like this variety. I cannot drink coffee anymore but I brew some for Moose and his mother. After the beans are ground and placed in the filter and after the water is placed in the coffeemaker I hit the on switch and then turn back to start another 3 minute cycle of oatmeal cooking. This bowl is for my wife. I can only insure one healthy meal for her per day. No matter where I am in the kitchen that smell of brewing coffee is sense filling and wonderful. If only sex felt as good and was as consistently satisfying as coffee smells.


Now this is the tricky part. What to make Moose and Squirrel for their morning meal? I can get away every 2nd or third day with a cheese, mushroom and shallot omelet for Moose. Squirrel is harder to cook for. Some days I say screw the health consequences and they get cinnamon rolls ala Pillsbury. I buy the reduced fat ones but I am not kidding myself that they are healthy. Cinnamon buns green label or not are not healthy, they are just easy. Sometimes a basted egg with a leftover piece of pork chop will do to satisfy Squirrel’s palette. Well, that is what he got this morning. Sometimes his morning mealtime spread consists of biscuits and gravy. Make sure everyone has water or milk and then sit down to eat my cooling (if not cold) oatmeal.

Today however had a different Zen moment. The past weekend my wife and I celebrated our twenty eighth wedding anniversary. As part of the celebration a dozen roses were bought and were put in a vase that now sits on the dinning room table. After two days these flowers are in full blossom. Decay is at most a few hours away but right then as I sat down with my glass of ice water and tepid oatmeal that were at the height of beauty. As I ate my meal I was staring into a dozen blossoms, the epitome of nature’s celebration of life. For that moment I was there present with life’s glory. My health issues didn’t matter. The angst my wife is enduring due to the theft yesterday of her wallet was set aside mentally for me. I was just there immersed in the golden beauty of some roses. I was in that moment fully.

How often do we get that sense of being present in our life? At best it is a few times only. The scent and image of those roses may this day matter in my existence.