On Writing the Perfect Paragraph

A single perfect paragraph, this is what I long to create.  Imagine an hour (or three) spent at the keyboard crafting the exquisite first seven lines of a short story.  My verb tenses will all be right.  I want the various plurals to be proper.  In essence what I want is to create something which is without glaring error. When I am done, I will have left words and punctuation so precise the reader is completely drawn in and captured by the narrative. I want the words in that first paragraph to be so good that any reader would know what follows will just blow them away. 

But.  

 

But I will never write such a paragraph.  Why?  Because I was a fuck up in grade school and high school.  Sometimes I can mine a vein of memory or experience to open up a quite interesting premise, but the mechanics of my writing just drives readers away. Probably the only grammar that has stuck with me is what I learned in my 3 years of high school Latin.  I remember the nominative and the ablative, I remember the pluperfect. So what? If I had have paid more attention to my seventh and eight grade English instructors I would be a writing threat. Sadly,  the style and structure with which the ancient Romans captured their thoughts do not translate well to the modern rules of writing.

 

Note well I have read perfect paragraphs and pages of perfect paragraphs strung together.  Ken Kesey’s first page or two of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, just perfect.  The last paragraph of The Remains of the Dayis so unbelievable in perfection.  I think the latter is in many ways more perfect for it pulls together a hundred threads of thought and feeling that were loose throughout the narrative and ties them all up with a big bright bow of crisp carefully selected words.

 

Yeah, I want to write a perfect paragraph.

Here is what I believe is an example of several perfect paragraphs strung together.  These are the first three paragraphs of James Hiltion's Goodbye Mr. Chips.

When you are getting on in years (but not ill, of course), you get very sleepy at times, and the hours seem to pass like lazy cattle moving across a landscape. It was like that for Chips as the autumn term progressed and the days shortened till it was actually dark enough to light the gas before call-over. For Chips, like some old sea captain, still measured time by the signals of the past; and well he might, for he lived at Mrs. Wickett's, just across the road from the School. He had been there more than a decade, ever since he finally gave up his mastership; and it was Brookfield far more than Greenwich time that both he and his landlady kept. "Mrs. Wickett," Chips would sing out, in that jerky, high-pitched voice that had still a good deal of sprightliness in it, "you might bring me a cup of tea before prep, will you?"

When you are getting on in years it is nice to sit by the fire and drink a cup of tea and listen to the school bell sounding dinner, call-over, prep, and lights-out. Chips always wound up the clock after that last bell; then he put the wire guard in front of the fire, turned out the gas, and carried a detective novel to bed. Rarely did he read more than a page of it before sleep came swiftly and peacefully, more like a mystic intensifying of perception than any changeful entrance into another world. For his days and nights were equally full of dreaming.

He was getting on in years (but not ill, of course); indeed, as Doctor Merivale said, there was really nothing the matter with him. "My dear fellow, you're fitter than I am," Merivale would say, sipping a glass of sherry when he called every fortnight or so. "You're past the age when people get these horrible diseases; you're one of the few lucky ones who're going to die a really natural death. That is, of course, if you die at all. You're such a remarkable old boy that one never knows." But when Chips had a cold or when east winds roared over the fenlands, Merivale would sometimes take Mrs. Wickett aside in the lobby and whisper: "Look after him, you know. His chest... it puts a strain on his heart. Nothing really wrong with him— only anno domini, but that's the most fatal complaint of all, in the end."

On Reading Porn in Public (A Diversion for Pandemic Burdened Minds)

18 November 2020

When I attended the Michigan State Universe in the mid-1970s the world was a different place.  We still had hope in the future.  We still held the notion dear that we as a people were evolving toward a nation where gender and race would no longer be limiting conditions.  We fully believed that literature’s best moments were still ahead. Clearly this was evidenced by the high quality shown by the writers of letters to Penthousemagazine. 

 

On one occasion several of my fellow MSU students and I pursued a public reading of one of these great works of art.  We did this on a warm and sunny fall afternoon in the public lounge area of our dormitory.  Our simple goal was to promote this uniquely evolving form of great literature.  We just didn’t understand how the Pulitzer literary prize committee failed to acknowledge the talent of these great writers year after year.

 

On one sunny Saturday afternoon we picked a story at random from the September 1976 issue of Penthouse magazine. The particular topic involved was stacks assignation.  Penthouse letters had a number of recurring themes, trysts with a friend’s fiancée’ (or mother), couplings in elevators, and finally encounters with persons with differing personal attributes.

 

Letters on library stacks assignations were particularly interesting to us because we undergraduates were for the most part were barred from the research stacks.  At the Michigan State Universe undergraduates were expressly forbidden to be in the ‘research stacks’, the place where scholarly journals and quarterly publications were all neatly arranged in university bound color coded volumes.  Titles like The University of Alberta Journal of Hydrological Data Assessment were arranged neatly in row after row floor after floor.  Only serious scholars were allowed to wander there among that mixture of thickly bound material and dust, each title having its own unique smell.  

 

Because of the serious reverence for the knowledge in these books very few undergraduate students got there.  (There was a back way in but that is for a different story).  Master and doctoral degree candidates were allowed to roam these oft vacant realms. Decrepit professors could cruise up and down these aisles.  Their numbers were sparse and the stacks remained very quiet day after day, week after week.  A pencil left on the floor in an aisle separating journals could remain there untouched for days. 

 

It was the near vacant nature of the storage space for these learned treatises that gave rise to the stack assignation stories.  These stories followed a pattern.  First, the narrator would specify why they would be in the stacks, always stated to be a deep and scholarly interest.  Next the teller of the tale (always a male) would find out that someone else was in the nearly deserted area. Given it was Penthouse the writer would find a comely member of the opposite sex lingering between the rows of books.  Of course, the person discovered would be observed doing something suggestive. I won’t dwell on the wild variations of the suggestive activities but assume it something like leaning over a sorting cart in a short skirt exposing lace fringed silk undergarments.  Invariably this would lead to a discussion of gymnastic sex worthy of the pliable nature of Olga Korbut’s limbs.

 

Well, there we were in our mixed gender, mixed race group, sitting around the western lounge of Mayo Hall. As I have said we decided to promote public awareness of this great literary form through a public reading. We would accomplish this by handing around an open Penthouse neatly concealed in another mass market publication like Time. Each of the 12 or so of us would read a single paragraph out loud continuing to hand the magazine to the person to our right until the letter concluded.  

 

The first people to read got off relatively unscathed in the endeavor. The first two or three paragraph of these letters, and they were long missives, were ones describing the writer’s work assignment, the locale of the action within the rows of dusty cobweb covered books, and the pink silk underwear of the soon to be member of Olympic fornication squad.  

 

Readers four through ten got the yeoman’s task of reading the descriptions of the sexual athleticism of the writer and his brave cohort. Readers four through ten also got to use the wild and varied adjectives and adverbs contained in the tale.  Moist, sweaty and wildly are about the safest of those words to recount here.  These determined orators also got to use the action verbs like thrust, and all its variants, voicing them in stage voices that would have made Sir John Gielgud proud.  Hand gestures would accompany the narration, mostly staging directions (although sometimes they would be graphic representations of particularly difficult to understand maneuvers outlined in the text of the letter). 

 

I did mention that this was a public reading.  I did mention this was in a ground floor lounge of a dormitory.  What I did not mention was that this ground floor’s suites of rooms had been occupied that year by a bunch of clean-shaven, short haired young men whose purpose, at that moment in their collective lives, was to proselytize to the world at large what they believed was the proper route to salvation.  To those who went to university in the 1970s these were the gents who stood out on the corners in center campus handing out small green copies of their sacred religious texts one day a term.  These were folks who did not drink, dance or smoke.  They also did not believe in having sex standing up because it could lead to dancing.

 

Now as reader seven was in a grave and serious tone describing a sexual maneuver that had about the same difficulty as a gymnast performing a double salto tucked with two full twists, a stranger approached the circle unnoticed by most. The listeners were really engaged in listening to the reading, enrapt perhaps.  The telling had captured their late teen/early twenties minds.  Their heart rates were elevated and there may have been stirrings in their loins.  The listeners were hanging on every word that was spoken with faster and shorter breaths.

 

At this moment, when the narrator was describing two people hanging nude from what must have been an industrial grade light fixture, a young clean-cut gentleman continued his approach from the monasterial region of the dormitory.  The reader having seen the approaching stranger stopped his reading midsentence and closed the Time magazine thus hiding the Penthouse and its racy cover.  The excited listeners looked confused but then they saw the approaching stranger too.

 

Coming to a halt dead center in the half circle of literary enthusiasts, this gentleman (let us call him Barry) produced a religious text from under his arm.  Barry opened his sacred book and asked if the listeners if they would mind if he read what he believed were the holy words related directly to what he saw as a universal plan of salvation.  All twelve pairs of eyes focused on the floor.  Indistinct mummers were heard but there was no overt or unambiguous refusal to Barry’s proposal.  Taking this as acquiescence, Barry spoke with passion. As he spoke the blood that had been pooling in specific places among the twelve listeners dissipated.  Pulses slowed and breathing returned to regular rates. Barry’s stump speech was short and sweet, maybe 3 minutes maximum.  At the end he gently closed his book, thanked the listeners and walked off with a strong steady stride away heading for the lounge of the east side.

 

When Barry was gone the then reader, who had quietly closed the Time/Penthouse combination left the magazines closed.  Giggles came gently at first.  Then came sheepish and guilty laughter.  Then people began falling out of their chairs with guttural laughter and flushed red faces.  I think Barry’s departing comment that the part that burns most in hell is the part that you sin with struck a chord with us.  

 

We did not return to our public promotion of literary talent on this particular day.  Maybe it was shame, maybe it was guilt, but we just didn't pick up where we left off. Instead, we wandered on to other activities like campus movies and cruising through the local downtown looking for posters to decorate our rooms.  Some people might have picked up incense or market spice tea.  Others wandered down to the river to feed the ducks. 

 

Penthouse’s letters never received the literary plaudits we felt they truly deserved.  I think we can only blame ourselves for not further promoting public awareness through additional public readings.

Cold Late Fall Night

 

17 November 2020

 

Out walking on a dark cloud filled night. ‘Tis a dark evening where the human made lights play against the sky’s innate blackness.  Electricity, burning tungsten and neon gift wildly generated auras and stray light beams to these post twilight hours.  Distant glows of yellows and oranges create a colorful edging to this November night’s inkiness.  Up close these colors hawk gas at $1.85 a gallon and 32-ounce fountain drinks for 99 cents. Here a mile distant from the source of these bright beacons there can be seen a colorful filigree at the edge of night’s blanket. 

 

Cold air tonight is chilled by the moisture that wants to find its way to earth.  No rain or snow yet. Still, the sky is pregnant with the threat of one or the other or maybe a mixture of both.  Snow does not draw the heat away from a walking body as fast as a cold rain does. Snow would be preferable to a pedestrian like myself, but to root for snow is to give winter an early and unnecessary acceptance.

 

Looking up at the twisted branches of trees an eye can capture the oddest of images.  Bare trees reveal oddities that when leaves are bushed out are impossible to discern.  On one tree I saw tonight a branch held the shape of a capital U.  The branch several inches thick and ran parallel to the ground. The tree limb dropped down two feet traveled two feet and then rose two feet. A perfect U. No clue as to the why of such a thing, but it stood out against the sky washed pale by the streetlamps of my neighborhood.

 

Sometimes there is no why.  Sometimes there is just the experience. Life might have no why if you take the most nihilistic stance, but there are experiences aplenty for each of us. 

Bedford Evening Winter 1985

February is relentlessly dark in this northern town.  Grey skies intermittently spit snow. Arctic cold fronts spew horribly strong winds with bitterly numbing temperatures. In this cold city you need to know where the warm places are. This taproom was one of the warmest and most welcoming.

Situated in a middle of the block, on a thoroughfare not yet totally gentrified, stands the Bedford Arms Ballroom. “Ballroom” is a misnomer, the place was a tavern of the highest order plain and simple. Three stories tall the first two floors of this public house are spacious.  The Ballroom was often so crowded with bodies one would never notice the cold once inside.

Interlaced bricks precisely aligned face forward. The façade is elegant. Traditional Ontario yellow bricks line up row upon row. Even viewed from across the busy thoroughfare which abuts the Bedford, you can clearly see the tap was constructed in the mid-1800s. An elegant dowager the Bedford is a clear presence on a street that had grown to become one of the city’s main thoroughfares. 

Dark grey smoked windows face the street bearing the stylized name, “Bedford Arms.” Emblazoned on the glass and writ large each letter of the name is crafted with all the curlicues and extra strokes needed to show a real connection to the gilded age.  Smell of beer poured, stored and soaked from spills into the oak floors mingle with the scents of stews and curries. The place carries itself with a frayed elegance and joie de vivre. 

The Bedford stays busy.  14 taps of microbrews bring in the crowds.  10 pool tables, up a half flight of stairs behind the bar in a space edged with an ornate wood railing, also help.  But maybe it is the plentiful co-eds from the university across the avenue who act as honey for the prowling men beasts that keep the place so lively.  Maybe all of the above coupled with the pub’s good and fairly priced food is why the public rooms are most always packed.  Two dollars and some change still buy a cup of decent meaty chili here.

Wearing their workday suits, ties loosed, the duo had talked out all their business and most of their small talk at the bar. Feet on the rail among the bustle and boisterousness of a Thursday night student bar night, their conversation had gone one for better than an hour.  Around them and appreciated by them as eye candy, groups of twenty-somethings women from the university hung in the front rooms. This place is nothing if not a meat market.  In fashions de jour with au courant styled coifs the youth quipped and parried. These sexually charged bar denizens ran their well-polished lines and stratagems on members of the opposite sex (mostly).  Each and every one of them was doing their best to not be alone in the sheets of a frigid student flat come morning light.

Watching the goings on, and occasionally affixing a label to one of the cons being played out by some studly young man on some buxom lass, the pair had talked through all their business.  Settling up for their bar tab, they had consumed a couple flights of microbrews and some bruschetta, the two ordered some very old scotch neat and carried it back to a very small room. 

Having been around so long the taproom had been tweaked many times over the years.  In the back a warren of small rooms had been added to allow for small groups to conduct their private business in a quieter environment. They picked one of the smallest rooms probably because the chairs were soft and were almost certainly calling their names. A small gas fireplace was in the center of the room.  The fire within was warm and welcoming.

Tonight’s evening was clearly near an end.  They sat in those overstuffed chairs and enjoyed their drinks. Last call was imminent but probably didn’t matter. Contrary to a student’s routine of drinking the good booze first and then shifting to the cheap shit (when taste wasn’t important but the buzz was), these two old friends were drinking the superior stuff at the end. Good scotch was their dessert.  

The room in which they found themselves had flocked dark wallpaper; it was a small cozy space.  You could barely hear the clack of pool balls from the adjoining suite. Sipping Lagavulin and savoring the smoky peat taste of the Islay they both seemed to be looking away from the current moment into a point miles beyond.  He had always loved these moments spent at the end of a day with a dear friend. It was one of the true joys of growing older.

All night despite the jokes and jibes the older man had sensed an undercurrent of discomfort in his friend and colleague.  The older man had tried to fathom out what was the concern hidden in the background.  Years before when he had first started out in the trade his boss had offered a maxim about what caused things to get troubled, to go sideways as it were.  “Booze, babes or bets, these cause all our troubles.”  The older man had adapted his old Cro-Magnon’s master’s sexist term “babes” into a gender-neutral noun. Still, the adage seemed to hold true even in this much changed world. Looking at his younger friend he sensed one of these might be in play. Troubling him was the absence of clues from which to make a guess as to which one exactly.  In the public room the conversation was strictly tied to the business at hand.  Maybe now that they were out of the public eye, something would shake loose.

When the liquor was seeping into their systems the darkened room’s flickering fireplace light had the effect he had hoped for.  His younger friend had finally let go. The younger man had held his turmoil tight within a gripped hand.  How did the phrase float out?  “Have you ever been tempted?” or was it “You have been married for a long time was there ever a time you felt that it wasn’t enough.”  Both meant the same thing. 

Right now, the person sitting in the other chair was on a boundary line. He was trying to decide if putting a pinky, a mere pinky, on the “other” side of the border was going to be a problem.  Was it going to be the marital equivalent of the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand or was it somehow permissible by the unwritten rules of social convention? To the entire outside world, the younger man and his wife had a most stable loving relationship.

Hearing his younger friend’s query, the older man clearly understood what was in play.  His friend was conducting a risk assessment. The experienced mentor knew that for some that stroll outside the garden wall was a one way walk into a completely different world.  Consequences could follow that would be really, really quite serious.  Some poor souls merely opened the gate and the whole shebang just came tumbling down. On the other hand, some people just floated over the fence and back keeping their mouths shut and never being discovered.  

The older man had been to that border himself but he didn’t talk about it much.  He knew both the costs and the reasons for being there at the edge.  Sometimes salt loses its flavor.  Sometimes the light dims in the world two people occupy.  Sometimes the joint ride that is marriage becomes so repetitive that your soul seems to be weighed down.  Some have described the emotional state they moved you to the edge as drowning. 

He knew well other things can turn a head.  Sometimes it is just that sparks fly when you move into the orbit of a firebrand. Sometimes it is just fucking bug lust when both of you know it is wrong. Hell, maybe that other person will know a new trick that when executed will cross your eyes and cause the beads of perspiration to roll.  A well-placed tongue has been known to make that solid edge of accepted life downright porous. 

To craft a response to his friend wasn’t easy.  No two cases are alike.  Each dalliance carries the promise of joy, but all carry with them the seeds of potential destruction.

He looked at the face in the chair beside him, “You know these lives we live are built on sand nothing more and nothing less.  Our worlds are quite fragile things really.  Our day to day life is gossamer illusion.  From the day they teach us to keep score we build worlds that we share with others stacking expected experiences on each other brick upon brick. We move forward checking the “to dos” off a master list, job, marriage, car, kids, vacation home and so on.” 

“Still those who share our path, be it spouse or a child, they are never really part of us.  While not us they are woven into our lives like part of a fine silk brocade.  But pierce that fine illusion with a harsh action or pull on a silk thread with some jagged reality and it all falls apart. What remains is not very pretty. In that we are dealing with human beings there isn’t physical wreckage on the ground, instead there is pain, deep dark pain.”

He continued, “Somewhere long ago you realized that you had a soul.  You became aware that you wanted to craft something out of the time you have between the forceps and the stone.  Maybe the path was easy for you at first, or so it seemed.  But one day you opened your eyes and you realized that some part of your soul had been caged.  And suddenly you also realized that the time flying by was no longer your friend.  Right then you knew something had to change and mentally you began to walk to the edge of your known world.  Suddenly there is danger.  Suddenly there is passion.  Suddenly everything is hard to understand or contain. Scary isn’t it?”

Stopping he sipped the old ancient scotch whiskey.  He needed to decide where to take this next.  What words would be the right words in this situation? His experience wouldn’t be everyone’s experience.  His choices would not be the right choices for two out of three people. Looking into the fire through the amber whisky in his glass he knew why this place would always be part of his memories.  It gave you space to think.  

Resting the whisky on the chairs arm he began to speak again.  “I have reached that point in my life where stoicism makes sense to me.  Trust me I still would love to have the taste of new pussy on my tongue.  Hell, I am sure there is someone out there that could fuck these old bones in a way that would send shivers to places I have forgotten I have.  Also, I have heard there is no longer hair down there. But to what end?  Life is very short all in all and the choices we make don’t make a bit of difference in the grand cosmic scheme of things.  I am almost certain that humanity will die out and we will leave this third rock from the sun quite barren, perhaps sooner than later.”

“What I am saying is that all we have is our actions to measure our worth against. It might not mean much in the end but it is something.  Who we have treated ill means something to our souls.  What goals we have chased also means something in the end. I guess what I am saying is that you have to look inside and see who you really are. You then got to consider the cost of your next step to your soul.”’

His friend looked at him in a questioning manner.  The question even in this dark light was clear, what have you done in this situation? Again, the old man’s answer had to be carefully crafted and offered.

A little more whiskey would be needed before he spoke.  Had it been any other friend he might have lied.  But they had seen too much together.  They had worked hard together. They had cried together.  They had opened their souls to each other.  This one required truth but a careful truth.

“Did you ever listen to Dylan while you were at university?” He posed the question without making eye contact.  “Bobby Dylan was a whole bunch of things to a whole bunch of people but at the very minimum he was an amazing poet.  So many of his words are like little totally on-point haiku.  If you listen carefully you can work ‘em around in your mind.  One lyric that always has stayed with me was from his song Dirge.  The words go, ‘I went out on Lower Broadway and I felt that place within, that hollow place where martyrs weep and angels play with sin.’  Having an affair is something that.  An affair can leave ashes and carnage all over the place.  The aftermath can be a hollow place of weeping when the sin of the angel is discovered”

Stroking his near empty glass, he continued, “But oh there are times when our bodies and minds ache for something.  Even if everything in our lives seems fine things just happen. From out of nowhere unexpected and unanticipated sparks arise.  Suddenly there comes electricity, compulsion, desire, passion and those most basic urges. In fever heat these drive us to moments where despite our logical brain screaming “no, no, no,” we cross the line.  Our better angels are almost inexorably drawn to “play with sin”. It can come on like a gale from out of nowhere washing over us causing turmoil and danger only to be gone a few moments later.  On the other hand, it can be a sustained blow that we cannot resist or avoid.”

The gas fireplace’s glow gave him focus.  The warmth was comforting. He mused a bit and then realized that his glass was empty.  He spied a side table and he walked over to it and put the glass down.  Returning to his chair he rested on the arm and looked at his friend.  His friend’s head was pointed down gazing into the fire.  The light in the room flickered golden.

Quietly he spoke, “No matter what you do here you are not the first to travel this path.  But please know there are consequences.  If you are discovered you marriage, your life, your finances and the lives of you children and spouse will be about as upset as any apple cart can be.  You, if found out, will never be able to put the world you live in now back together.”

 He gazed at his friend. Well he actually gazed at his friend’s hairline because that head had remained fixed forward looking far and away into the light. It had barely moved the entire time he was speaking. The older man straightened up a bit and let a little air escape over his lips.  He in the softest of tones proceeded, “But even if you are not discovered and you do everything right in carrying on this assignation there are consequences. I mean even assuming there are no stray scents or hairs to give you away you will be changed.  Even if there are no photos ever taken your personality will be amended.  One can only hope you will never run into mutual friends of your spouse leaving the place of your tryst.  But even if the affair is short lived and never discovered there will be a change in you, in your soul or heart.”

“Keith Richard has the lyric for this one, ‘faith has been broken; it is a dull aching pain’.  His friend shifted in the chair but the speaker did not dare make eye contact because he did not want to chance that his friend might be able to see what was churning in his own soul right now.  “You will be different when it is done.  You may have longing and loss.  The flame that you fanned may leave an empty space in your soul that will forever change your relationship with those around you. Melancholy is close but it is not the right word.”

He looked down and then said, “You may feel dirty afterward, like you have gotten away with something and it may nag at you for years.  But then again, maybe not. For some people a clandestine coupling is a release, a satisfaction of a need or a culmination that acts a reaffirmation of who they are.  If both parties know the rules this is possible. Hell, maybe you will even find your true soul mate although I doubt that. I am not sure there are any real soul mates.”

Having looked over at his empty glass and feeling the glow of the scotch fading he contemplated one more drink and then decided against it.  “My friend the path you are travelling is well worn ground.  Think about what you get out of this carefully. Weigh the risks.  The path you take is yours alone.”  With that he grew quiet and his mind wandered to a place where the scent of Opium perfume mixed with the aroma one smells in passionate moments.  In his mind’s eye the autumn light threw a warm glow on the naked full form of a beautiful woman not his wife.  There in that image she was clutching a sheet so as to cover most of her form save her right breast. Catching his gaze, she smiled at him. And just as quickly the image was gone.

His friend never returned to the subject that night or at any point after.  As that evening wound down there were no follow up questions. Instead they talked a little bit more about banal things such as the likelihood of getting a cab at this hour and whether the snow might have stopped.  But no real conversation followed his soliloquy.  And with that last call having now passed the lights came up and they shuffled to the entranceway and departed. 

 On the ride home that night he would return to the image of the woman in the sheets more than once.  And when the melancholy began to fill his heart, he would look out the cab window and let the street scenes distract him.

North Dakota 1978

Old and rough looking, his car sat in parking lot. In the middle of nowhere, in the heart of God’s land the rusting behemoth rested a couple of hundred yards from his campsite.  Out here miles from anywhere, the car sat cooling in the moonless night. The old beast’s windows were wet with dew.   On a North Dakota night, very few cars sat here in the lot. Early summer and the camping season was off to a slow start. When you are parked at the National Park in Medora, North Dakota, you are a long way from anywhere and a stone’s throw from eternity.

In the darkness of this night it was hard to see on first glance the car’s caved in left rear door. Injured from a prior owner’s failure to observe and react to changing conditions on the road, the metal was twisted and bent in a concave shape with ragged edges and asymmetrical peaks and valleys.  Fixed by the accident in a permanently closed status, the door’s mangled metal had been shoddily painted over with a ruddy colored rust inhibiting spray paint. What a classic low rent paint job. The large blotch of color looked just like dried blood.

Having started its life as a white four door family sedan with a huge old V-8, the car had taken one too many wrong turns.  Instead of being a comforting vessel to carry a nuclear family to church on Sunday, to carry that same four-person unit out for a Friday night all you could eat buffet and to transport Dad to work Monday through Friday, the big hulking sedan had become a vehicle that epitomized the crazed moments that were passing in America. Everyone it seemed was on the road. Young men and women were out to find themselves and America.

In the daylight the car’s true craziness was clearly evident to even a casual observer. Down the right side, across the front fender, the two doors and the rear fender, almost from headlight to taillight written in black spray paint was the phrase, “Into the Unknown”. Across the behemoth’s trunk were so many bumper stickers. The quilt of crazy colored messages made it hard for those following the car not to be distracted. 

One sticker was green and white and said Equal Pay for Equal Work. Another was a skull wearing a rose garland, the telltale sign of a cult affirmation, the occupants were clearly Deadheads. A third had a diving flag and the question Gone Down Lately? Tucked into the crazy quilt of political and music stickers was the one that was sure to get the vehicle stopped, again and again, I Brake for Hallucinations.

As he stood outside the little two-person tent the vehicle’s owner sucked on a Marlboro.  The night was growing cold as nights are wont to do out here on the great plains even in summer. Time now was pushing on 10 PM. Darkness ruled in every direction.  The warmth of the smoke and the calming effect of the nicotine were comforting. He snugged up his old field jacket as he crushed the glowing ember of his spent butt beneath his shoe.

Most people, just like the driver, had cooked their meals hours ago.  Hot dogs and canned baked beans had been cooked on his Coleman white gas stove. A simple meal, it was good enough for this night. All the pans and tin dishes together with the silverware had been washed at the communal campground pump and then stashed back in the car. Belly full, sleep would soon follow.

Silent and still the night wrapped itself around the young man as tight as any quilt he had every clutched on a cold winter’s eve.  He could not see very well his camp fire having long gone out. Shuffling carefully over to the picnic table set there on the campsite, he poured his self some water from the old aluminum water jug. The jug was an ancient relic but it was free.  Thus, he was using it on this spur of the moment trip across the north country. His shin having found the table the young man turned and sat on its bench. He threw his head back and looked up.

And then he looked up. He looked up expecting darkness. He looked up and saw so much more than he ever expected. He looked up and he realized how lost he was.

The lid of the water jug was quietly set upon the table. He closed his eyes and blinked several times.  Then he worked to focus his eyes. Still, he could not comprehend what he was seeing.  Spread out across the sky for horizon to horizon were thousands, millions, billions maybe of stars. Dim and bright, pulsing and fixed in intensity, the stars he saw were arrayed in steams of light. Weaving twinkling patterns spread out in so many directions.  

The depth of the star field on this black moonless night filled his senses. When was a kid he used to look at star charts, but when he went outside at night his sky was never so densely populated and those charts illustrated.  But this, well the mass of stars lighting up his field of vision tonight was denser and more expansive that any color plate those magazines and encyclopedias ever showed. 

With a slowing in his breathing, he sat as still has he possible could. With his irises as wide as they could be, he drank it all in.  No, despite those preteen forays into astronomical readings, he could not name the constellations.  Neither could he name specific stars save the north star, Polaris. What he could do now was let the light of a universe wash over him.  What he could do now was experience night on the great plains as people a hundred or a thousand years before had.  What he could do now was be humbled by the night sky he had never had the chance to look up and see before.

He sat there for almost an hour barely moving, barely breathing.  Finally filled with the wonder of the night he crawled off and into his sleeping bag.  He would never again have that total and complete sense of wonder at the night. This moment on this road trip would be a touchpoint of his life.

July has Come

1 July 2020

The month has turned.  The weather is warm and dry. There is a breeze.

In order to type this up I had to clean off the table where I am sitting.  The table is a tile and metal combination with an umbrella out the center.  When I tried to move my mouse, it seemed that what I thought was marbling on the tile was actually dust turned to goo from the winter. My mouse struggled.  I took this as a sign to get out a shop cloth and some soapy water and address the grimy goo on the table’s surface.  A couple of hard swirls with the cloth and a bright shining surface reappeared. With the temperature near ninety, the table dried very quickly.

Lots of stuff is happening in the world.  Most of the world seems to have come to a detente with the pandemic. Europe is reopening for tourists.  Cities there are struggling the most. But this is true throughout the world.  Still, EU governments seem to have handled the majority of problems with strict diligence.  In America we have not done so well.  Experts are saying we in the US are reaching a tipping point where the virus will be uncontrollable. It is clear some feel this is what should happen, the whole herd immunity thing. However, given my age and health I am not on board with this.

I will not delve into the political issues that are roiling right now like who knew the Russians had a bounty on the lives of US soldiers in Afghanistan.  Another day perhaps.  Every day will have its breath-taking political issues. I don’t want to deal with that today. 

I subscribe to several library services online.  Hoopla is a favorite.  I have tried to read fiction a couple of times recently but for some reason with one or two exceptions I haven’t been able to stick with the books.  Yesterday I downloaded Will Durant’s Caesar and Christ.  I know it is an ancient tome having been written in 1942 but Mr. Durant has a way with words.  I have listened to two out of thirty-two hours so far.  God, my days in Latin I, II and III have come rushing back to me.  There are also little bon mots about what made the republic last for so many centuries that would apply to the disfunction of our political life today.  The uncoupling of the individual from the need to promote the common good mashed up with the unbridled avarice of those long in power seem so on point.

A glass of iced tea, a portable computer and a space comfortable and quiet save for the many, many birds singing both near and far offer me a perfect place to write.  While my hope is that Americans will come to their senses and realize addressing the virus is a marathon, not a sprint, I am not counting on it.  People believe in individual liberty, but they don’t want to bear the burden of social responsibility.  All freedom and no burden is a ugly look on a citizen.  Still, as long as I have this little space to work from, I will be free from isolation.  As long as the sun is shining, (okay as long as it is not raining or snowing, this is Michigan) I will be able to find a reason to smile. 

Very Bad

30 June 2020

From the Washington Post, “Anthony S. Fauci issued a dire warning at a Senate hearing Tuesday about the rate of the coronavirus pandemic’s spread amid a spike in new cases, noting that new cases may reach 100,000 per day if the United States continues on its current trajectory.”  From CNBC, “The coronavirus is spreading too rapidly and too broadly for the U.S. to bring it under control, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday.”

I have been living in isolation, virtual house arrest since mid-March.  I am antsy to be doing things.  The one thing I miss the most is sitting in an air-conditioned theater watching a two-hour drama.  But I also miss coffee shops and lunch out. But I have listened to, and will continue to listen to, the experts who have said stay home, wear a mask, social distance.  I have not listened to politicians like Rand Paul (could he be more of a flat earther?) who has opined, “We shouldn’t presume that a group of experts somehow knows what’s best for everyone.” 

We have come to the point where we must decide our own paths, I guess.  Do we follow the doctors’ advice and opinions?  Or, do we follow the opinions and feelings of people who at best are social Darwinists, but who are more likely just egotistical blow hard talking heads, who are only in this for their personal gain? I have made my choice.  I am sticking with science.  But I don’t know if I am in the majority on this or even a plurality. 

The situation is grave, and will most likely get grimmer. My prayers for you all.

28 June 2020

Be Thankful for it All

Around the 15^th of July our household will hit the point of four months isolated.  We have had a couple of socially distanced, social interactions but for the most part we are isolated totally, completely.  Depending on the moment it is either easy or very hard to be alone here in the Spaceship Todd.

We have settled into a very predictable set routine.  The centering points of our activities are the meals my wife has been preparing.  A great deal of love has been involved in the baking and grilling and planning. With nowhere to go really, smoking a chunk of meat for 8 hours is a whole lot more doable than it used to be.

Now there is time for mowing and weeding and cleaning and sorting and all the other tasks that were not appropriate when work demanded so much from us. Now there is even time to listen to new music, or at least music that is new to me.  Truly I have been down various rabbit holes of song. All those things that were just a few minutes too long to be worked into my schedule are now penciled in.

The one thing I have not been doing that at the start of the pandemic isolation I thought would become a matter of course, is reading novels.  I read a great deal.  I read newspaper articles.  I read magazine articles.  I read essays.  There was a David Foster Wallace story of a high dive experience merged with becoming an adolescent that was a great read. But novels have not been holding my attention. A friend suggested one author, an Irish writer, and I did follow up on that.  The novel was odd but well worth the read.

During my time within these four walls, I have been working very hard on keeping my level of blasphemy and profanity to a minimum when I am reading the news. During this period of isolation, it has not been an easy task. So many dunderheaded moves by so many folks that seem to be trying out for Luddite the Movement.

Oh well that is it for this Sunday.

The Ride of a Broken Heart

Red poppies and purple phlox, this weary world is awash in late spring color. Today these colors are muted. No sun this afternoon, it has hidden itself away today. Soft grey clouds provide the normally angry red orb some needed cover. Hidden or not, the old sol’s heat is clearly still reaching this world.   The temperature is quite warm for late spring. A rain threatens, but probably it will not come. Whether you call it sweat or perspiration, just a few paces outside in the warm humid air will bring moisture to your skin. Nora has always loved this weather. She was one of those who sleep nude with just a sheet over her. She comes alive with the spring. Chris on the other hand does not. He wanted a comforter over him year-round.  

Currently Chris and Nora stand on a worn sidewalk. This sidewalk is a winding snake of discolored rectangles crumbling at the corners. This particular path continues for a quarter mile until a weed choked lot swallows the route.  Behind the couple is a barn shaped house with a big bay window. A casual glance shows the premises to be quite dark inside even now in midafternoon. As the awkward couple continue to stand there her hand in his, the air conditioner kicks on.  With the place so dark and with the air conditioner cranking, the house will be as chill as one might ever need it to be.

With a face totally empty of emotion Nora looks at Chris. She wonders why they are still here; she wonders why are they holding hands?  To Nora’s mind Chris needs to be gone now. Her mind is nothing short of troubled.  Two years ago, she had enough energy inside her to say might as well when she met the glib talking, big smiled Chris at Sara’s party.  But what the fuck and why not fade. Time has a way of wearing down giddy unrealistic possibilities and of highlighting the harsh compromises one has been forced to make to keep a relationship alive. Knowing someone has a problem keeping his dick in his pants accelerates the reality awareness process. Nora waits for Chris to start talking his shit.  If he speaks there will be is no novelty to what he will say. Surprisingly the trite words she is expecting to fall from his mouth do not come.

Chris shakes the hair out of his eyes and looks at Nora. Standing there on the walk outside her home he is seeing her through eyes as clear as he ever has had since he was eighteen.  By all accounts any connection between the two of them should have been completely and totally over six months ago when Nora found out about Kelli.  Chris’s first lesson learned here? Don’t give out you Gmail password to your girlfriend for any reason. Girlfriends are crafty and they will snoop through and scour your e-mail. Nora had quickly pulled away from the relationship after she figured out his betrayal. Nothing Chris did seemed to salve her hurt.  As he left Nora his parting words were, “Call me when you can.  I am so sorry.  Tell me what to do.  We can figure it out.” As the old song said, “If the phone don’t ring, it’s her.”

Was she only another woman Chris could simply abuse?  Was he ever in love with her, whatever the fuck love meant to him?  Was she just a new and novel bit of flesh for him? These and fifteen other thoughts ran through Nora’s mind as she looked at Chris.  Nora remembered Chris with drooping shoulders and hands at his side claiming he was sorry when she confronted him about the e-mails. Nora ran through it and Chris’s appeals seemed too practiced, too pat. She had to go and she did. 

Why the hell hadn’t she just batted his hand away when he offered it to her as he opened her car door? Now it was just awkward, too damned awkward.  “God I am hoping he doesn’t think this means anything,” was running repeatedly through her mind. This thought, in that quick time that exists only in your brain, was instantly becoming Nora’s mantra. But pulling away right now might trigger something worse, like tears and blubbering. The last go around had just been so totally emotionally wrenching.

Chris hadn’t dated, and more importantly, he hadn’t slept with anyone since they had parted.  Kelli was done before Nora had surveilled his e-mail. More importantly, he hadn’t had a drink in three months.  Drinking and weed made Chris stupid, real stupid, fucking Kelli stupid. Since Nora and Chris had separated, Chris had at most three beers.  And those were within a month of the breakup. Within a week of Nora’s throwing the last of Chris’s clothes out on the porch, he had set his one hitter aside.  Chris hadn’t been sober for this long in a decade. As his mind cleared from the long-term use of intoxicants, he realized that in the breakup with Nora he had lost something special, maybe real love. 

Chris tried to call Nora a couple of times in the last six months but the conversations in the few she answered died quickly. She hung up on all of them without a good-bye.  Nora never did call Chris, save the one she placed last week. Chris knew he must have hurt her really bad. Must have left her adrift in an ocean of broken dreams.

Right now, there on the sidewalk Nora wondered again why she had called Chris for a ride.  She had been spending time in Europe watching the waves in a rustic seaside village for about three weeks.  Nora had accepted an offer for free room from an old college friend who had an Air B&B right by the Atlantic. The bargain was Nora would have to buy the alcohol and one good meal a week in exchange for a space to be temporary free spirit in a foreign land. Drinking house wines and eating seafood on stone patios, Nora’s evenings would end with star gazing.  From time to time as she sat out on the sand she would think of Chris.  Fuck, she didn’t want to, she just did. 

When the holiday ended, Nora flew back alone.  Although she had tried before she left with numerous phone calls, and tried while on holiday using e-mails and texts, she could not come up with someone to drive the two hours to the airport to get her. Her housemate for a small fee was able to take her to the airport. Chris would, if she really needed it, pick her up.  She knew was a sure thing, as sure as any natural phenomena like sunrises or sunsets. Chris was Nora’s last, last, last ditch fallback. Nora knew in her heart Chris would even take time off if he was working. In the end she made her distasteful request and Chris accepted.

When Chris got Nora’s call for a ride he immediately said yes.  Chris knew that Inside over the six months since the breakup he had become a little more resigned to what they had being over. Chris thought he could handle a giving Nora a ride as a friend.

Chris had suspected the ride from the airport would be awkward.  His intuition was right.  Nora was jet lagged, a regular transcontinental burnt-out rolling stone. The grind of seventeen hours either in the air, or waiting bored as hell in two different airports, had sapped her humanity. To ensure the ride didn’t back to Nora’s place get too weird Chris did not turn on any of “their” playlists. He tried to ask about the trip but Nora was really too tired.  He got three-word answers wrapped in sentences that then faded to silence. Chris knew from experience when she was tired, Nora would get short and cross. He quit talking. She nodded off once the car’s cabin was silent. For most of the ride she slept head against the passenger window softly snoring.

Nora awoke with a start as Chris leaned in her door offering his hand to help her exit the vehicle.  She could see he had popped the hatch and had taken her carry on and under seat bags up to the house. Nora was still out of it when she took Chris’s hand to exit the vehicle. His hand did help her get out, but then he kept holding her hand as they stood beside the car on the sidewalk. Seconds passed by and she had already stuttered out her thank you and still he was holding her hand. 

Cheating on Nora had been the biggest mistake of Chris’s life.  In other relationships Chris just sucked it up when he was caught straying and moved on.  Each relationship had its different levels of comfort, and the emotional costs of going varied. But even when Chris was the person dumped, on those rare occasions when he had done nothing wrong, he had never doubted another relationship was waiting not too far down the line. He sucked it up and moved on.  But this was different. 

Kelli was a dead end and a mistake.  Chris didn’t know why his relationship with Nora really mattered to him, but it did.  His feelings for Nora were visceral. As he held Nora’s hand as she exited the vehicle, he tried to convey his most sincere apology and his most wounded and injured self ever without words.  His pain was in his eyes. His loss was visible in how he held his body. He stilled his tongue showing total contrition.  Chris was as broken and begging of forgiveness in his looks as a medieval priest whipped and lying before a cross in an old mountain monastery.

Nora sensed these things.  She also sensed when Chris’s hand seemed to lose its tension.  With his grasp weakening Nora pulled her hand away and she thanked him again. She would not give him a good bye kiss.  She would not promise a call in the future.  She put the key in her door and waved him a short waist kind of flapping hand thank you and go away gesture. Nora looked at Chris just a second too long as she entered her house and they both felt it.  Nora clearly saw the pain and she felt the broken pride-less spirit in Chris’s demeanor.  But would it last?  But did his now open, wounded and raw heart balance the scales between what he had done to her and what it seemed to be costing him?  Nora pushed her luggage to the side and sat on the couch.  Quickly, very quickly in that cool, cool living room she fell into a deep, deep sleep. 

Prayer or Meditation

Sometimes I wish I had an ancient stone chapel somewhere near my house. This small prayer chapel would have a well-worn threshold made of granite with grooves worn in it from passionate penitent pilgrims’ knees. The ceiling would be dark with the soot of a thousand years of candles and oil lamps.  The air inside with be cool and protected from the heat of day by the stone edifice surrounding it.  The acoustics would be crisp and ringing so that a Gregorian chant would fill the hall with a rich full sound of Latin words sung acapella. 

This is just a dream for you don’t need a place like this to be close to the divine.  You simply have to have a silent moment when you heart can be heard.  You need a silent moment when you can hear the small still voice of the holy, when you can experience the precious flash of song or light, or where a calming moment of inspiration can fill your empty mind. Still, sometimes a holy space like an ancient chapel will provide you an opening in the veil that you would not find otherwise.

In many senses the hour of golden light combined with the music of Stile Antico’s Music for Compline is my stone chapel.  On an evening of a once humid day now filled will cooling air, the sound of these voices as I sit on an old dining room chair at an old dining room table now cast out upon the back porch, the holy is within my grasp. I guess in the end, there is my prayer chapel.

I offer the translation of the piece offered below:

If I give slumber to my eyes


and to my eyelids drowsiness,

I shall sleep and rest.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son,
 and to the Holy Spirit.

There is a very esoteric and mystical reading on this text that can be found here. https://saintpaulsanglicancatholic.net/the-psalms

Before Time Controlled Me

Before Time Controlled Me

At evening

In the passing of a clear day

With sunlight, now sunset, now twilight fading

The birds provide one last chorus to their long song

A song hardwired over millennia and more

Twee, twee, twee.

The old table made of oak with varnish fading

Set out upon a dispirited porch 

Offers up a fine place to watch the gold and the reds

Of day’s end sky

A leather jacket feels comforting

A coffee is soothing.

A scent of a fire lingers on eastbound air

Someone is sitting on this nearly still night

Perhaps circled with those well-loved, loved well

Around flames and warmth

Facing west with collars upturned

They release the day to the care of others westward.

Inhaling the faint fragrance of smoke

I rock back in my chair

My mind is blank

As the scented air flows in through my nose

And out over my lips

I am free in this moment from all cares.

Music of the Spheres

23 April 2020

Living in isolation is tough.  Today I decided all this repetition needed a soundtrack.  Truth be told I started my “Deep Within the Bunker” playlist yesterday.  Apple Music has helped with to create a 35+ song playlist.  In the application’s four suggested playlists (generated anew each week) from New Music to the Get Up I have found some great songs.  

The music I’ve picked is a weird blend.  A number of recently released songs are heavily loaded on the first half of the playlist.  Most of these artists I had never heard of before I put the Apple playlist created on. The last bit is a collection of acoustic renderings performed mostly by the artists who had hits with the songs, think Jane Says by Jane’s Addiction and The Freshmen by the Verve Pipe. Tis’ a funny thing for most of the music on the front end can be traced to the stylings of the artists at the tail end.

Music makes me feel good.  Feeling good is extremely important in getting through this period of nationwide house arrest. Music, reading, binge watching TV and walking, these are my personal coping tools.  My wife has turned to cooking. We had excellent homemade shish kofta, tabouli and pita bread last night.  Today we had very tasty and delectable pizza. My youngest has been playing online games and doing his study by computer college courses.  My oldest son is working.  The recently refurbished basement is his.

Something lightens up inside me when I hear instruments like six string Martin and Gibson guitars matched with mandolins and joined with strong voices.  My musical tastes are not everybody else’s.  Bliss can come from various directions.  I know some people that will find happiness working their way through a catalogue of death metal. The times are such that we are isolated and facing great challenges mental, physical and financial. Whatever lifts us up, we need to embrace it now.

I know there will be huge changes in this world by the time the pandemic passes. Life will no longer be as we knew it in the years before March 2020. With changes that have come and those that will come, we will need things to lighten life up life for us.  I offer music as one excellent tool for this.  Peace out my friends