Dark winter and the soul

In a season of grey, quiet fires burn in black iron woodstoves. Outside cold white ground awaits several more inches of similar cover.  The bitter air will not leave the teens today and such harsh winter temperatures breed isolation. 

 

Winter’s solitude can be either a thing of beauty or a prison.  Chilly isolation can be freeing allowing one the time and opportunity to winnow out the impractical, the unneeded, the unnecessary and the wrong. It can allow us to be fully responsible and free in the world and before the divine.

 

When the slightest wind blows these low temperatures cut into our flesh and sinew shaking our bones.  The slightest walk now requires a calculation of the means and the ends.  How much clothing shall I put on to take the refuse to the curb?  Can it wait until the morning?

 

These weather conditions can be the bars to an arctic prison.  If we are so agitated and so conflicted when winter sets in that we cannot address the things in motion in our soul its mandated stillness is nothing more than solitary in the darkest prison ever.

 

In almost an inverse relationship to the liberating quality of isolation some feel others will find only anger, frustration, depression or rage. Why?  Maybe it is that we have never learned to accept being alone. Maybe it is because we don’t like to think about whom we are and what we are made of.

 

As I stood in line for coffee this morning about six people were in the queue before me.  In wool and fleece, in boots and gloves with scarves wrapped tight not a single face cracked the merest hint of a smile.  The baristas tried to joke and cajole warmth and humanity from this lot but they were not having it.

 

When I looked at a couple of people they gave me that glance back that implied they wanted nothing to do with human contact.  Dour and dark with creased foreheads these men and woman shuffled forward.  Winter’s prison has already begun to gather its inmate population.

 

 

 

The Glow of a Cigarette

 

There is something that my children will never know that I knew all too well. It was a portent of ill. It was sign of turmoil in wait. It was the sighting of a lighthouse at a place where it meant you were already upon the shoals. If was the red glow of the old man’s cigarette as he sat on the back steps waiting as I tried to sneak into the house. 
 
My brothers, my sister and then ultimately me we all had boundaries and curfews. There were places we were not to go. There were times when we had to be in. Beyond this we had a fair amount of freedom. But those limits, they were not negotiable things with permeable boundaries. Rules were rules. We were allowed out, we weren’t followed, we weren’t told exactly where we had to be or who we had to be with like the current generation. We just had to be back by a set time and we were not to be seen in certain places. 
 
Do kids these days even understand that concept of freedom? I am not sure because their lives are so penciled in and booked and their lives are so arranged. I just don’t know if they understand the concept of freedom to screw around.
 
But as I always I digress. If you missed the time line by a few minutes there would be a short conversation when you came into the house. If you missed the mark by a great deal Mom would go to bed but Dad would wait. This was especially true if the car you were driving was seen in a place you were not to have been. This was also true if he heard from a friend (and the old man had lots of friends) that you might have been up to something less than good.
 
You would try to avoid the confrontation by sneaking into the house. I know my one brother would climb up the roof and come in a second story window. I was not that agile.
 
For me to get into my yard I had to come through a gate. Each gate had its own nuances. You had to lift that horseshoe shaped latch just right so it wouldn’t scrape or screech metal on metal. You then had to inch in so as not to make any other noise and then you had to replace the latch, quietly, really quietly. You also had to have your key out because jangling keys by the side door, our entrance would alert someone you were sneaking in. You had to get you night vision acclimated because mom would have pulled out different chairs around the dining room table and you dare not flip on the light switch. That mere click would wake them. The chair thing was a form of sobriety test really. Nothing quite like whacking your shin and causing the chair to scretch alerting everyone in the house to the exact hour you were returning.
 
But hell you didn’t get this far if trouble was in the wind. Coming around the back of the house you knew you had better have your story straight if you smelled even the hint of tobacco in the air. Sometimes the wind brought that warning to you before you saw the red glowing end of the cigarette. It gave you a chance to firm up your story with details to make whatever lie you were going to spin more plausible. But you should have been working on that before you got to the steps. When you saw that light you knew judgment was come to be visited upon you.
 
I don’t remember any screaming or yelling but I remember a commanding bass voice that would start out a question “Boy, where have…what have…” you get the gist of the questions. He cigarette held down now he would be smelling for the scent of alcohol. He would be gauging your reaction. I don’t think he yelled because he wasn’t supposed to smoke and if Mom came down he would have to explain that. But you knew there would be consequences.
 
I always thought I was alone in facing this situation until one night in 1975 or 76 I went to see Bruce Springsteen at the MSU Auditorium. He did a cover of “It’s My Life” that began with a long rap about meeting his old man in the darkened kitchen with the glow of the cigarette. Yeah my kids will never know that.

This Be My Verse (Expanded and Updated for My Life)(With Apologies to Larkin)

They fuck you up, your mum and especially your dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they (and let me repeat the “they” here means especially dad) do^[1].   

They fill you with the faults they (well at least the ones DAD) had

    And add some extra (usually concocted by DAD), just for you^[2].

But they were fucked up in their turn^[3]

    By fools in old-style hats and coats^[4],   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man^[5].

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself^[6].

---

^[1] Well maybe Dad did subconsciously mean it. He as you know has anger issues and abandonment issues.  Perhaps it is repressed anger at his father disaffected parenting style and shit like that. Perhaps it is just that misanthropic streak he has.

^[2] Especially that unwarranted and unfounded fear of wolves in the neighborhood often used by him to hurry you along on your dawdling walks home.  And those genetic mutations that lead to your ADHD and your ASD well those are the result of Dad’s old and chemically altered (by his dabbling in amateur pharmacology experiments at university) genes.  It is his entire fault, really so direct all your anger and frustration and emotional conflict at him.  Mom had nothing to do with this. Blame Dad!!!!

^[3] Mom of course persevered through challenges and hardships.  Despite having to walk uphill to school both ways she really isn’t damaged. Dad on the other hand despite a traditional two parent home is nothing short of an emotional hot mess and has nothing of meaning to offer that can sooth or balm a troubled teenage soul.  His advice is tainted by his luck as a teenager where under no circumstances should have prospered but he did.  He is an unreliable outlier and out right liar. Don’t dare seek dating advice or relationship advice from him for we live in a society that no longer use clubs and dragging by the hair as part of the dating ritual as was the norm in his day.

^[4] Just look at Dad, he looks like they did.  They dressed him funny and he never learned to be fashionable.  If you use Dad's fashion sense for any purpose let it stand as a dire warning of what not to do.

^[5] See Larkin got it.  It is the masculine identifier here.  Dads are the people who screw up there kids, never Moms.  It is only on TV that Moms do the damage. 

^[6] Sigh.

How Did I Get Here

Some of this stuff starts out first on Facebook.  Some of it starts as a note when I am doing a writing exercise.  This one I am not sure if it got up on Facebook but I know it didn't get posted here.  I will thus post it here.  If you want to follow me on Facebook I am Rufus.Butterworth.9 Just send me a friend request. 

Crafting this note of thanks requires a little bit of thought.  It sounds weird saying that I am thankful for mistakes but I am.  The artful way to phrase this feeling is to so I am thankful for serendipitous events.  Serendipity = mistakes that end well.

In the God’s honest truth I NEVER, NEVER meant to end up a Michigander.  But I am here now and I hold this place dear as if it were where I was born. It is a beautiful place and the people are caring and kind, (well except for the state legislature which is populated by self-centered Neanderthals-but that is true in every state isn’t it?)

I filled out the application for Michigan State never planning to go here.  It was free because I was a National Merit letter of commendation recipient and they promised a response in two weeks.  I filled it out as practice for the other applications I would be filling out, and for no other real reason.  Funny thing I got accepted. Funny thing I ended up going here.

My life plan had been to go to Rutgers and chase girls that I had known in high school.  (Nope didn’t have a career plan in mind, just wanted some uh company of the female persuasion) Rutgers (bag of pricks that their admission staff were) didn’t accept me until after the April deadline for notification.  Apparently my limited intellectual capacity just didn’t fit their mold.  But then again Mr. Robinson my guidance counsellor might have told a contact up there about that whole being found naked in the hallway at school thing.

Being pissed off at Rutgers I decided that going six hundred miles from home wasn’t a bad thing.  Obviously my parents wouldn’t drive six hundred miles without calling first.  Thus I stood no chance of being found asleep with a bottle of Jack Daniels in my armpit on the couch like my middle brother had been.  

The decision to send the application was a goof, a test to see what happened.  What happened introduced me to the place and people that have made me the adult (quit snickering) I am.

Oh yeah and there was that other mistake, my wife’s ulcer that wasn’t. And then there that second upset stomach that wasn’t.  Serendipity changed me.  Mistakes made me.

Mistakes, serendipity, misreading maps all have brought me great joy in this life.  I am thankful for the universe’s backhanded way of creating my wonderful life.