Lions at the Door

When I was younger I was extremely gregarious. I think it came from the years of my growing up when I was overweight, had horned rim glasses (wire rims were the rage), wore my brother’s hand me down clothing and had the twin curses of acne and braces. Being outgoing was a way I overcame years of isolation.  With grand gestures I tried to reach out from my isolation.

 

Now I am a little more reserved.  Trust me I have not gone into a shell or anything but I have backed away from the “Hey everybody” and the outrageous speech and acts to draw others in.  Maybe it is maturity.  Maybe it is aging.

 

These days I find myself drawn more and more to things than to people.  I am not talking about toys like sport cars and Apple watches. I am drawn more to things we imperfect beings craft artfully into images of beauty.  Topiary, formal gardens, the odd piece of sculpture in a yard, these are the things I am finding my gaze resting on.  This lust for beauty might be the reason I am so attached to my iPhone.  By taking pictures and manipulating images I am letting an artistic stream follow a path. 

 

It is not an hourglass where the pursuit of beauty steals sand from my personality.  It is more a shifting of the shoreline on a beach somewhere.

Moon In the Dew

Sometimes out of the corner of your eye you catch something real. What hits the back of your eyeball setting off the rods and cones may be so small as to seem insignificant. However as people in dry and arid places know a drop of moisture in the early morning hours reflects life back into the world. The moon can exist in a dewdrop as Master Dogen said.

Remember Me

Two real reasons exist why footprints like these are left imprinted in a sidewalk.  The first is that someone did not notice or was not aware of the recent pour.  Perhaps the day was rain soaked and they did not want to walk in the water filled gutter or on the tired macadam surface next to the sidewalk.  It happens. 

The other reason is that because perhaps jokingly or even unthinking the trespasser stepping into the unset surface wanted to be remembered.  Instead of carving a name and a year this trekker made a bold statement one that says I was dominant here remember me.  Those tennis shoeprints say things like “think about me and the reasons why I did this”. 

For a time the unknown strider will have a little piece of immortality.  His time will be short.  His permanence is fleeting.  Unless some Midwestern volcano erupts preserving the sidewalk in ash to be discovered in another 2000 years by those following us, that aggregate will succumb to water and wind in less than 100 years.  More likely it will succumb to a site plan revision in less than 20 cycles around the sun.

If the creator of those footprints wasn’t just in a hurry on a rainy day oblivious to the plastic sheeting on this route, he would have been better served by writing a poem.  Mr. Neruda will probably still be studied in a 100 years.  The sidewalk will be crushed up and perhaps used again.  Words win out over all but a few of the plastic arts. Yes this is a nod to the cave of Altamira.

 

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Into the Woods with Robin - The Joy of a Damn Good Book

Often I tend to assume everyone had similar experiences to me growing up.  Intellectually I know that is not true.  However I am sure there are some commonalities of the lives lived among the people I have as my friendship circle.

One experience that seems to me would have to be a shared one is that moment when you discovered you loved reading.  Lawyers, advertising gurus, bureaucrats, political operatives, college instructors these are all callings, these are all professions that require you read capably. You only come to capable reading by doing copious amounts of it.  And you only get the skills to read like that was because once a singular book caught your attention. The words within that leather or cloth bound binding sucked you into the joys of discovering a good story.

When I was looking for illustrations for my last post I came upon an image from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.  Immediately as I looked at it I was transported back to the third grade. There I was at that exact moment when Miss Gleason had allowed me to take a copy of that old chestnut home with me. Once opened the book the words and graphics transported me to a different place and time.  The people around me ceased to be.  Suddenly by following those black lines strung together into words and sentences I was in medieval England just after the Norman Conquest.  Lush and verdant was the hardwood forest known as Sherwood.

Scenes from that book have stayed with me, like Littlejohn and Robin Hood fighting with staffs on the log.  And then there was Robin being carried across the river on Friar Tuck’s back. These were just delightful scenes to me. What images I have come from my imagination and not the Errol Flynn movie.  Having read the Merry Adventures the movie felt flat for me.  It was not the story my imagination had told me as I read the book.

Working my way through the book I would linger on the illustrations.  I would add so much into the story from what I imagined had been said and done in the moments before and after the one captured in the illustration.  The images I found online today sparked my imagination and threw me back into that book.

When I reached the end of the book I was crestfallen.  As Robin betrayed and beaten pulls on his bow to send his arrow into the wood to mark his burial place I was as sad as a third grader could be. But the book was a whole, it was a joyful narrative. My sadness to not stop me from going back to read it again and again.  One book sent me on the search for more books that would feel like that, complete and whole. 

Many books try to tell a complete story.  Few do it well.  The Sound of Waves by Mishima is one.  The Demon in the Freezer is another.  Good Bye Mr. Chips is a third.  But this is not what matters, what matters is that we all opened a book at some point in our lives and were entranced, enthralled and taken. 

In recent weeks I have been making it a point to get at least a book a week from the library.  I have been reading fantasy novels, contemporary novels and tales of social injustice.  Some of the reads have been fluffy and quick and some it has pained me to think about what would be on the next page.  But I will not stop reading again because there is a joy in the words.

When I look at the illustration above I see the loss and melancholy of a hero.  Without books so much of human experience would not be within my imagination.

Before You Whine at me About the Actual Syle of the House Please Note I am not a Scholar of Housing Syles

Someone was trying to make a proclamation with this roof. For my money the statement was made. Me, I can’t tell who decided to make the statement or why they made the statement but clearly this is not a form follows function situation.

I am assuming this house was constructed at least sixty years ago. Given the neo-Tudor elements someone, be it the architect or the owner, was taken with the images of Elizabethan England. Did it come from a NC Wyeth illustration of a book like Robin Hood or Men of Iron? Or perhaps given the nature of the neighborhood the original owner had travelled to England as a professor and was taken by the eye catching nature of the style.

On the other hand the owner may have not be the person with the inspiration. Maybe this came from the builder having seen this as a developing trend. There are other Tudor or neo-Tudor residences in the community. Perhaps the builder or architect pitched this place and its unique roof as a statement home. I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. I just know that when you get out of a car and walk through a neighborhood you sense a great deal more about the place.

A Walk into the Meaning of Flowers

Walking has always been a love of mine. My love affair with walking started when I was a kid. At about the age of eight I began to walk the big block in my hometown. The “big block” walk was a probably 35 to 40 minute walk out of town on a road leading south to a farm road which then led west to another farm road which meandered north and finally onto the main drag. When I hit this last stretch I walked past my church and then my grandmother’s home heading east to the center of town where I lived. Circling that block seemed like circumnavigating the globe when I was two foot shorter. On that walk was discovery of odd bits of things on the roadside. On that walk there was danger in barking dogs and garter snakes (hey, I was little). On that walk I was in my imagination a soldier, a pilot, a college professor and a stud.

Over the years when I have lived in suburbs or small cities I have always worked up a circuit to walk. Out I go most evenings clear, warm, cold raining, or snowing to stride for what is usually about 15 to 20 duration and passing by a number of houses of people I know and small parks. Out and about I greet my neighbors and I watch how nature pulls and tears at the artifices of mankind. The rusty Stop sign, the tilting telephone pole, the sinkhole in the road, these are all things that say humankind you really don’t matter. Crumbling and tilting our engineering marvels say that nature in the end will win out.

The imagination part has fallen by the wayside. I don’t think I have that much imagination left in me. What I have now are reflections and lists. Yep I carry and pen and paper and when I remember something I have to take care of I write it down. As I look at the houses I think about stories I have of the life I have lived. Sometimes I jot a line or two down and eventually it becomes a blog post. Occasionally I will imagine a place I would love to travel to and streets I would want to wander down much as I am wandering around these few blocks that surround my home.

Most every house I pass has some little detail that the owner (or some previous owner) installed to say something about themselves. It could be the interlacing of different colored bricks leading up to the front door. It might be lawn gnomes or a small statue of Buddha off to the side. Even in my neighborhood there is a bath tub Madonna. You know what that is right? A bathtub Madonna is a statue of the virgin set into a vertically buried bathtub that serves as a grotto for her.

Some folks put in water features. These are glorified kiddie pools that are black that have a stack of rocks nearby over which a pump from the black kiddie pool pumps water to trickle over the rocks simulate water coming down the face of a mountain. The one particular house I am seeing in my mind’s eye is smack dab in the middle of the flat Midwest. Hey if it gives the owner some peace and comfort I am all for it. I love this kind of stuff although it does strike me as kind of absurd.

And there are gardens. The flowers move me the most. Transient but colorful beyond what an old hippie on acid could muster up in his mind’s eye they unify humanity and nature. We plant them and nourish them but we do not own or build them. Flowers will be here when all the Taco Bells are gone. A stone Buddha will fall to the wind and rain becoming merely sand, such is impermanence. But a flower will cycle and its seeds will cycle and it is an affirmation of something most holy.