Michigan's Cathedrals

At the day’s end here in Michigan I find myself looking at the light in the trees. We have big evergreens here. In this part of Michigan due to the presence of a premier horticultural college and faculty who might take a few seeds home with them we have an amazing variety of pines, spruces and a range of other evergreens. And in the fading light of a summer evening each of these sylvan giants at their center under green draping boughs becomes a cathedral. At the day’s end here in Michigan I find myself looking at the light in the trees. We have big evergreens here. In this part of Michigan due to the presence of a premier horticultural college and faculty who might take a few seeds home with them we have an amazing variety of pines, spruces and a range of other evergreens. And in the fading light of a summer evening each of these sylvan giants at their center under green draping boughs becomes a cathedral.

At the day’s end here in Michigan I find myself looking at the light in the trees. We have big evergreens here. In this part of Michigan due to the presence of a premier horticultural college and faculty who might take a few seeds home with them we have an amazing variety of pines, spruces and a range of other evergreens. And in the fading light of a summer evening each of these sylvan giants at their center under green draping boughs becomes a cathedral.

The shadows grow long and the space beneath the branches grows dense and thick. But the way the limbs hang it is almost like you are looking through a cathedral window. As I look at the green boughs hanging down the pointy drooping needles follow erratic but contemplated patterns like green lead in a stained glass window. The colors of the panes are all various shades of green but they paint a picture of a verdant God, a God of nature. Peering deep into towards the center where the trunk is you seen the wind bring motion to the supple trees forms and it is as if the Holy Ghost was inhabiting this place.

When I was child I dreaded the fading rays of light. In summer it meant it was nearly 9 p.m. and all play would have to end and I would have to slow my frenetic motions. (Truth be told if I view life as a day I dread what comes next because my clock is well past 8 p.m.) Here on the western edge of the time zone I appreciate the hours I am given. I get home from work at 6 p m. Dinner is prepped, eaten and the residue and pans are dispatched to their appointed place by 7:30 or 7:45. And then the time is mine.

In those two hours of light I am free to walk, to write, to talk, to melt and to be me. Often I find myself watching trashy TV but when that happens I grow angry with myself because it is a theft of good light. If I walk away from the glowing plasma I am walking toward green cathedrals. If I leave a teleplay in mid telling I am joining the real unending world. Two hours for a few months a year are refuge and church. Two hours a day from mid-May through late July are a psalm book of life’s value, or of our interconnectedness with nature.

As I lay me down to sleep I will think of the green cathedrals that I peered into several hours before. As I lay me down to sleep I will sing the hymns I have treasured in this world.

The Need for White Noise in Absolution

Outside the doors of all the psychologist and therapist offices there are small circular devices. In all the times I have wandered near these I did not give them a thought. Well I didn’t until tonight. This evening as I looked down I guessed these were some kind of air purifier. As I stood there just trying to sort it out I realized that they were white noise generators. Screwed up hearing may have played a part in me not noticing the tones they generate, that you very much Johnny Winter at Jenison Field House.

When we spill our secrets to God, to our lawyers, to our doctors there is a wall that is supposed to exist between what we are unburdening ourselves of and the rest of the world. There are things we have done that rally require a wall between the truth and the outside world. Acts we might be unburdening our souls of could include murder, it might be an impure sexual desire or it might be that cookie we stole at age 7 that started the huge fight between father and big brother that they never quite reconciled over. Our soul’s secrets need to be offloaded. We need to get this stuff out. To heal we need to air it to someone or something but it is not for public display.

Walls these days in modern buildings tend to be cheap and thin. Ceilings have no batting to muffle the sound. And if your voice falls within a certain range, a certain wave length it might be heard as clear as a bell in a next room or God forbid the waiting area. These noise machines are a good idea.

I think that we all do need to confess at some point or another. We need someone to lay out the details of our imperfection to. We need someone to offer us guidance and correction. We need someone to offer us acceptance in our imperfection. We need someone to offer us absolution so our perceived misdeeds do not haunt us through the years of our life. Without help we can steer in an emotional and moral circle for days, years well ultimately the whole of our lives.

Still when we offer up our issues to amateurs we risk so much. Loose lips ruin lives. We need both trustworthy confidants and white noise between our conversations and that world which is always looking for weakness, our weakness. We have to talk to someone. In a movie I saw once Woody Allen talked about bottling up his emotions. He said that for each anxiety he grew a new tumor. I so totally get that.

Normally I would rail about white noise and how it keeps us from getting down to the truth, from drilling down to the heart of the matter. But in this case I think the concept of a barrier between certain kinds of truths liberates those who need to be free of the troubling secrets of their lives. It allows the rest of us not to give into our baser instincts to overhear, to catalog and to gossip for our own advantage or for the injury of others.

Be Careful Who You Pretend to Be.

Last night I watched a movie. Normal pastime really. The film was about a man who tried to become the “perfect man” for a woman he had met in a coffee shop and wanted to woo. Stealth was involved. By reading her Facebook info as to favorite books, movies, activities and the like the male lead tried to craft a set of skills that mirrored almost perfectly the love interest’s areas of fascination. Sam Rockwell had a great small part in the movie. He was a guitar teacher for the male “love” interest. When the protagonist approached Rockwell’s character for guitar lessons the question so that he could cover Joan Baez songs Rockwell asked. “Why are you doing this man? Is it for money, pussy or fame? It has to be one of those three things.” The lead squirmed and eventually mentioned it was to impress a woman. Rockwell shouted, “Pussy, I knew it man. You are doing it for pussy”

Funny and understated the movie had two or three parts that I squirmed at. But it kind of reminded me that Facebook has brought nothing new to what we try to do in seeking relational engagement. Back in the days before the interwebs and Facebook you would do the same stuff by human networking. What you would do is ask somebody who knew somebody who knew the girl in question to find out what music she liked and what her favorite drink was. You would then pick up some LPs of the relevant artists and listen to them a few times. You wanted to know the tunes well enough to be a non-neophyte. You might search the rock rags like Rolling Stone or Crawdaddy to pick up nuggets about the performer. You would lay in some of the preferred alcohol.

You might do some observational recon also. Who did she hang out with? What did she and her friends do on the weekends? Movies, skiing, travelling home for the weekend. Did she wear sweatpants? Did she wear hiking gear? You looked and looked again to see what clues might be there. It wasn’t done with the ease that Facebook now lets people construct an understanding of their object of desire but it was done with the same intent and with just good old fashioned deductive and inductive reasoning. But just as Facebook can convey a false image communicating only what a person wants to be and not who they are the artifacts present back then could be misleading. An aunt could have given her the hiking shoes and she just wore them because that is what she had. Some schulb might have given her the Hall and Oats records, but what she really liked was AC/DC and shots of Southern Comfort were tastier to her than all the white wine in the world.

I understood the pain of the movie’s main character wanting to be someone that was desired. If you even stood on the side of the line between attractive and average that has a v as its second letter you get it too. We try to remake ourselves to move us up that one notch toward a better calling card of attractive. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH TWEAKING YOUR PERSONA. There is, as the hero of the story learned, something wrong in trying to recreate yourself into an image that someone else might love that contains nothing of the real you.

I have heard psychologists talk about the underlying theme. I have read noted authors ruminate about it. Be careful who you pretend to be for that is who you become. Kurt Vonnegut in Mother Night drove that home with emphasis. Hell I believe the Christian Bible contains the admonition to know yourself. It seems almost intuitive to me in my old age that there is an acceptable continuum of behavior that polishes up your images or adds a few flourishes so as to make you marketable to a romantic partner. The continuum goes from playing the game to creepy and delusional.

My wife and several ex-girlfriends used to give me endless shit about the boxes of my life. They would get pissed off because if I was around one group of friends I would behave one way and when I was around another I would be completely different. Yes I knew some campus crusaders and when I was around them I was respectful. I didn’t say shit or fuck. But that is not in my opinion being devious as much as it is respectful. The fact that I didn’t emphasize my fornicating, weed smoking and profanity laden side was a choice, and not in my mind an act of deception.

I must admit that as the years have gone on I have grown less cautious in this regard. I am respectful and will ask if whoever it is I am with whether they are a person of faith. If they are I tell them outright I will curb my language and will stay away from the sacred and also the profane as conversational topics. Maybe it is because I am not in the hunt for sexual gratification. Perhaps it is that I am just more comfortable in my own skin. So it goes.

Step With Care

I have a glow today. Really.

Right this moment I am radioactive. Seriously. A few minutes ago I was ushered into a room by a tech. The young woman opened a lead lined pill vial and took out a radioactive capsule. Dressed in her loose fitting blue uniform the tech asked me if tap water was okay. I responded, “You are asking me to take a pill that has to be maintained in a lead lined vial and you think tap water is going to scare me or somehow make this worse? I don’t think so.” She laughed. “Some people are very, very particular about the water they drink. You wouldn’t believe it,” she responded. I laughed. Given all the poking and prodding I have had over the years and all the shall we say rough and questionable nights I brought on myself tap water and some radioactive iodine are the least of my worries.

The day today is grey. I am awaiting a cab to take me back to my office. As I engage in this forced meditation on patience I sit under an awning with the word “Patient Entrance” emblazoned on it. Grass is greening up quite nicely around the campus. This is a joy. The green has only arrived in the past few weeks after the damn hard and truly brutal winter we had in the period December 2013-May 2014. Very nice to see signs of nature’s will to life. I wish I could bottle the will to live the grass is showing and push it out to everyone I know. God I have spent so much time with people in the doldrums that I just wish I could sprinkle some will to live into each of their hearts. Over the weekend I went to a wedding. It was a joy. The bride was a dear friend and a long suffering friend who deserves all the joy and happiness she can get.

Originally I was a friend of the bride’s first husband. He and I met at college when he found me drunk and more or less passed out at the feet of our university’s icon, Sparty. This was way back in 1977. After that night of rescue he and I socialized for years. We went to hockey games. We went to the Kentucky Derby. He alone offered me an introduction into things that became part of the some of the most important moments in my life. Thanks to him hockey has been with me for 30 years plus. While I don’t go to the Derby anymore the stories from my attendance at that event can fill up entry after entry of this blog.

Things happen and for the relationship between me and the bride’s first husband bipolar happened. Sometime in the early 1990s my friend, hell he was more than just my friend he was in my wedding went into a manic phase. He had been hospitalized years before for something like this but he had never disclosed it to any of those of us who knew him or to his wife. As the manic phase began to surge he started doing things like talking about buying a chain of fast food restaurants. Then he pitched us on buying a horse farm. He wasn’t a farmer he was from metropolitan Detroit. Then came the 90 mph drives down a 30 mph road. Eventually intervention had to happen and he ended up hospitalized. I played a role in this and he has never forgiven me.

Up to this point I had always though his wife disliked me. Whenever we talked or got together she seemed a little bit distant. The husband had always suggested she didn’t like our drinking and dope smoking ways. But when push came to shove and we stood up to get him some help she started talking to us. Turns out that over the years she had been told repeatedly that we did not like her. Or that we were not her kind of people. The gulf that existed had been made by neither the bride nor us but rather by her husband’s painting divisive images of one to the other.

After his stint for re-grooving in a rural psych ward things were different. The bride and I became friends. When our little coterie did things conversations flowed amongst the whole of our circle and her husband no longer acted as the gatekeeper. Joint holidays were more fun. Annual traditions were more communal and not such a mine field. I actually ended up the Godfather of their daughter in this whole process. Time passed. But then he came off the rails again.

When this happened for the second time things were different. At the first go round we were able to get her husband to actually voluntary engage the commitment process for himself. On the second go round he didn’t want to go. This time testimony was required in open court. I had to take an oath as did another friend to talk about the aberrant behaviors we had observed. We had to show the Court events were concerning. My now former friend fought this one but the probate judge commenced the involuntary commitment. After that my friendship with her husband was done. Since that date we have spoken only once. When we talked all he did was rail at me one time about missing his daughter while he was hospitalized. But that ended it. He doesn’t acknowledge to this day that he knows me.

About the time this second visit for psychiatric rehabilitation occurred my friend’s wife decided it was time to end their marriage. She had taken the quirks and the grand slides toward the great out there for long enough. It was tough but for her own mental health she had to walk away. As the years passed what lay between was never easy. My former friend found meddling and troubling ways to intrude into his ex-wife’s life. Some have been benign and annoying. Some have been a little bit closer to criminal at least on the misdemeanor end of the spectrum.

Still she soldiered on in a way that was almost saintly. The two of them had a daughter. My goddaughter is bright, vivacious and a high achiever. She has played varsity basketball. She went to the University of Michigan. She has travelled the world doing internships and taking adventures. Her father always wanted to limit the risk of the world but her mother offered the guidance needed to make wise choices, to aim for growth and personal expansion.

The battles over vacations and parenting time seemed from the place where I stood like the things most divorces generate but with an added oomph of weird. The stories go on and on about odd and odder demands. But in the end Mom stood her ground year after year until the education process was ended.

The now bride and I would from time to time get together for lunch. When we did she would talk about the harsh world of dating in your late forties and fifties especially with the wild card of you bipolar ex floating around in the background. She struggled and it was not fair. She deserved better. You could see in her eyes she needed to meet someone, somebody who cared, somebody that appreciate who she was and what she had been through.

It appears the man she has met fits that bill. He seems to have lived a life that has had its own challenges. He seems to be quiet, soft spoken and genial. This is so much in keeping with the bride’s needs that all of us who knew her could only smile.

So on a Saturday afternoon on the front lawn of a rural farm in West Michigan a group of friends, a number of whom had come to be friends from the bride’s ex-husband sat and celebrated as a quiet dignified wedding of quiet dignified people occurred. There were clouds but there was no rain. There was instead dancing and dining and the things that one does when life is given its due and savored and honored.

I have a glow. A little of it is from a radioactive isotope. A larger portion of the glow comes from the celebrity of life, of unity. There should be joy when a life’s challenges are given balm. There should be happiness when two souls find the healing nature of love.

In the Evening

I wrote this for a specific audience. I thus posted it there first. The audience was the people from my hometown. Here is the link. http://pedricktown.blogspot.com/2014/06/in-evening.html

Always the Traveller

Dreams don’t let go of us easily.

Nestled under comforters and old lovingly stitched quilts our minds usually want to keep roaming. In worlds constructed by neurons, fleshy fibers and engrams our perfectly formed bodies ache to continue chasing the impossibly shaped and colored butterflies. Oh to go into the farthest reaches of the impossibly green and perfectly manicured fields of night’s phantom worlds. Don’t you sometimes wonder whether a person in a coma is mentally living in a fantastically constructed world similar to ours but unlike ours that just keeps rolling on and on?

Bladders, full to the brim and aching are the most common terminator of dreams. Alarm clocks are a close second. And then there are the snorers of you out there, or the curtain raising misanthropes among you who just have to let the damnable bright sunshine in and finally those who just can’t see a lay about lying about.

When you eyes open at first your night’s path and passages remain all so real that you know, you are sure that later in the day you will be able to write a short novel from the stuff that crossed you mind while you played about in REM sleep. But by the time a human bladder is voided and you are starring down the disheveled stranger in that bathroom mirror, the angels and archangels and the wide expanses of golden worlds are already fading.

For me the main cause of my dreams departure over the last thirty years has been feline. Soon after I was married my wife and I adopted a pair of cats. Being contrarians we named them Spot and Rover. (When we told people we had two pets, Spot and Rover, there was usually a surprised look as two grey and white cats sauntered out to greet the visitors inflicting gray and white hair shed upon them).

The apartment in the 1500 block of North Van Buren Street was the ground floor of an old pre-civil war townhouse. Our flat had exposed brick walls, a cool cooking island, polished wood floors and doors than did not approach anywhere near to flush with the floor. Just for kitten funsies Spot and Rover would run the length of the long hallway that ran the length of the apartment and then slide bouncing into the bathroom door. As kittens these two had several other games, like turning on the TV by stepping on the remote control and the most irritating being called the let us in and/or feed us game.

At six a.m., more than an hour before I needed to be up first one paw would enter under the bedroom door. The door was off of the long hall to the bathroom at the back of the house. The paw small but sinewy would start to rattle that foam cored room separator. We kept the door closed for without it Spot would invariably snuggled into my armpit in the middle of the dark hours while I was chasing the elysian images of my nights mind. There is nothing like a cats’ moist and whiskered nose in your armpit to end a dream.

Clawless paw would begin to pound on the door causing it to rattle loudly. Soon a second paw would join up with that first paw as both brothers began to whack and rattle the door. It was unnerving, it was unceasing and many was the time I was brought back from a trip to an ethereal Sherwood Forest by the furry ferocious, whack, whack, whack, thumpa, thumpa, rattlings that went on and on and on until I cleared my mind opened the door and went down the hall. After I took my morning pee I would feed them. Then back to bed to wait for the alarm.

Dreams don’t die easy but cats do not readily take no for an answer.

Rain Comes, Rain Goes

The past days have felt like a roller coaster of emotion. Over 12 hours on Saturday I worked my ass off around the house. The interior of the four walls I call home really needed help. After a trip away to the east coast for my brother’s interment at Arlington and four days of a butt kicking cold I had to face up to my evil nemesis entropy’s doings. The interior of my home was splattered and disarrayed spin art at its best.

Groaning the dinning room table held bills and notes a foot deep. Deep as it was my sink stood filled with dishes. The laundry was 2-3 feet in depth in two separate piles, delicates and the rest of it. Vigorously I rolled up my sleeves and set about righting the disaster as my wife went out first with one child accompanying her and then with the other in tow to shop at various locales. Six loads of a standard sized washer, washed folded and put away.

The dishes got done and the papers got shoved aside. I started the grill for lunch. I boiled the eggs for the potato salad. I unloaded the car when each shopping trip ended. Stuff got done.

In a rare change of pace both Primus and Secundus committed to the effort. One cleaned bathrooms, the other vacuumed floors. It isn’t the land of Martha Freakin’ Stewart but it is a far sight better than it used to be.

Accepting about an hour’s grace between tasks and the long awaited nightlife we had booked I spent an hour soaking in the tub. Warm water pulled away the aches in the space between the house work and the theatre.

We went to see the Book of Mormon. Filthy. Rude. It was SO FAR OVER THE TOP that I laughed until I cried. The Spooky Mormon Hell Dream has a very close analog to the Baptist Spooky Hell Dream. The latter is one I am all so familiar with. Remember the part that burns most in hell is the part you sin with. And then that day was done.

A fun quirk to the day was that I decided to document the day from start to finish on Facebook. I left out the morning ablutions together with any bathroom breaks and the darkness at days end when I lay waiting for sleep. Posting images of the flaming grill and of the dishes in the sink got people talking and quipping. It made the hours of work pass faster. The resignation at labor is close to universal.

And then came Father’s Day. Breakfast was delivered in bed. There was an omelet. There were juice and coffee. There were chocolate dipped strawberries. A day that starts with coffee and chocolate dipped strawberries can’t be all bad can it?

We trekked out and went to Ann Arbor for a day trip. We sought out used record stores. We grabbed coffees and teas. Ice cream was had. And then home we went. In the evening I talked with friends about life while one recovers from hip surgery. I am not expecting any soon but the husband had undergone the procedure. He stated he feels much better and that when his muscles heal his ability to move about will be vastly increased.

But always in the background hangs darkness. I am not depressed but others I know are facing great and grave challenges. The darkness is something that is palpable, something that is almost immutable. There is only so much I can do. But I will try and break the cycle of darkness.

When you are up on the highs of accomplishment and honor, a clean house and Father’s Day honor it is a wonderful thing. When you are down on the swirling eddies of depression and broader life challenges it is not so wonderful.

Acceptance and awareness, enlightenment don’t know what it is.