Day 6 of 365 (Act of Kindness)

Garrison Keillor back in the day was not the parody of himself that he has become. I used to listen to a Prairie Home Companion almost religiously. In the old days when he did not interject his voice into almost every song by every guest artist and when he danced deftly around the libidinous issues of the Lutherans of Lake Woebegon Mr. Keillor would often tell stories about life in the cold back before cellphone and the internet. 

 Those tales he told focused on how things would happen that would move the initial contact between two parts of a couple together. The scene would be a big snow storm. The lads would of the town have shoveled off the pond over at the Gunderson’s farm. A large fire would be built and some crates would have been set down at the ice’s edge for seating. Invariably a teen girl and teen boy would be sitting at either end of a row of crates and as the evening would pass they would share a blanket for warmth and eventually they would be holding hands. Forty years would pass and they would still be married. 

 Mr. Keillor would also talk about storm homes. These were places that when the weather got too rough on the way home from grade school you could go to seek shelter. He would talk about what his mental image of a storm home would be and all the things that would be there making the place welcoming and safe. He would say that in the world we live in sometimes he wished he still had a storm home. 

 One recurring theme would be that the cold harsh winters of Minnesota made people take responsibility for their neighbors. Michigan is not as harsh as Minnesota but we do have a similar code here. If you are in trouble there may come only one person who has a chance to help you. 

 Last night we had a big storm, 14 inches of snow. Today it got cold. It is about 0 F out there and the wind is kicking up. My office closed, my wife’s office closed and all the schools in the area closed. I am not in a shape that I could have shoveled all the snow that fell on my drive this morning, not safely, and not sanely.

 Luckily the university was also closed and I kept the Moose home. My plan was that given the 30- wind chills I would put him in a mask, gloves and send him out for 10 minute stretches all day until we got the drive clear. We had gone through four cycles of this and Moose had gotten about a quarter of the work done. 

 I was just getting ready to go get him for another round (you don’t think he was doing this voluntarily did you) I heard a humming/ buzzing sound out front. My neighbor Patrick was out in front of my house with his snow blower just firing away at the sidewalk and drive. I didn’t ask him. He just did it. I went out and thanked him. He just kind of shrugged it off. There will be a pecan rum cake in that man’s future. It was a kindness. It was part of the code.

 

At times my thoughts about what humanity is coming to turn dark. On those days I am left to wonder what has become of the spirit of selflessness, of care and of concern for those around us. All it takes is one small act and that belief that there is hope comes back.

Day 5 of 365 (The Spark)

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There is a book I highly recommend.  It is called Orbiting the Giant Hairball.  The author used to manage the creative staff at Hallmark Cards.  He oversaw the transition into thngs like Contemporary Cards and Shoebox Greetings.

 

One day he was on a plane waiting to take off.  He was waiting and waiting and he started thinking about the things he watched track through the edge of his visual field.

 

In talking about those squiggly things that bounce about in our eyes something he described as “Those lacy phantoms that glide to and fro,” Gordon Mackenzie began to analogize.  Viterous floaters disappear when you stare at them, this was a comment he got from a physician when he brought up the topic.  Mackenzie then thought to himself and ultimately wrote down in his book, “Creativity [like those floaters] will not be looked at. As soon as you look at creativity-as soon as you become conscious of it (or self conscious of it) - it simply vanishes.” 

 

Mackenzie’s ultimate conclusion was that only the renegades who are willing to look away from it, who don’t try and codify and quantify it will be rewarded with a true creative vision. Gordon Mackenzie was a smart man.

Day 4 of 365 (What Keeps Life Worth Living)

Life is tenuous. Too hot of an environment and all the moisture flees from the body and we die from dehydration. Too cold a place and all the cell function slows and we freeze to death. If we are lucky sixty to eighty years elapse in a moderate zone and then the organs give out. 

Life, as noted, is tenuous. In each act we take we expose ourselves to risks, potentially lethal risks. A ride in a car can result in a car accident. A walk beneath a tree could end rapidly and tragically if a branch we to give out. Sitting still, a choice that can be made, might light to an embolism. 

 Still we long to live. Funny thing is that we learn, we grow, we find greater connection with the passing of each day. Eventually we have a web about us that is constructed of knowledge and concern and love and awareness. It is the existence of that web that makes the tenuous nature of life so hard to bear. It is also what makes small acts of kindness so meaningful. 

 Over the holidays some very nice friends provided us warmth and celebration that matched the season’s nature. They were joyful folks and they treated us in a way far better than there was a need too. We as it were had no electrical power and thus no means to celebrate as we usually would. There gracious choice was one of those moments that provide life its glow, its radiance. 

 This morning another old friend posted to me a note about a book he had read. It had been a long time since I have read a novel that was not pure fantasy. The fact that even thought he lives on another continent he thought of me made me smile. Connections, these are the things that matter.

Day 3 of 365 (On Reading Poetry in the Winter)

Sometimes a single line of a poem can send you off in a reverie of delight. In searching for inspiration this morning I was looking for a poem called Ceremonial Song XIII by Pablo Neruda. I could find it but what I did find was a poem called In My Sky At Twilight. The opening line is, “In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud and your form and color are the way I love them.”

 Sometimes even in translation the words of this poet just touch my soul. The passion that he conveys in simple words, simple phrasings explains why he was a Nobel laureate. When I think of him sitting staring as a long fading sunset over some port in some city in one of the many places he travelled it makes me envious. To have been filled with such creativity and to have struck out into the world with such an open eye it is just moving. 

 I note that this morning when I was dressing in the dark at 7:20 a.m. the air temperature was seven degrees below zero. The contrast between this and the world the poet depicts also makes that cloud (and longing) at what I am assuming was a warm tropical twilight even more subject to my envy. Don’t take my word for it, go and read the poem, http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-my-sky-at-twilight

Day 2 of 365 (Cold Snow on a Day Following the New Year)

Last night the Michigan State Spartan Football team won the Rose Bowl. It is something the entire community appears to have rallied around. The Spartans are a brutal old style football team coming from a school whose students have traditionally been blue collar middle class offspring. I salute the Spartans and their coach. 

 After a year where the home city of Michigan State University lost power for almost the entire Christmas season it is a joy to have something to celebrate. It is wonderful to pound one fist against my chest and say I am a Spartan, Class of ’78. 

 Obviously I personally had nothing to do with the victory. It is simple a moment when the colors that I have draped around my education, green and white, have a little more national resonance. It was a day to forget all the other stuff in life for once and just enjoy the bread and circuses.

Day 1 of 365

Looking at the world in this a new year the landscape is covered in white.  About two centimeters of fresh powder snow fell (or wafted from the sky or whatever other term you would like to describe the various flake’s descent-oh any you could say an inch also if that would make you feel more comfortable).  

As I am working the keys of the computer I am sitting at a marble table in the kitchen’s nook. My writing station has become this space.  Perching here provides me an unfettered view of the world outside.  Having my back to the stove and the sink this seat on the other hand does not allow me much in the way of privacy in my thought. The lack of solitude is disturbing.  The troubling part is not so much that I need privacy as that I don’t want people reviewing what I write before I am done.

Outside the window in the early morning cold sits the blue family car.  I have already gone outside and broomed light snow off of it. Beyond the car sits the rough and raw wood pile of tree pieces. Over several days I pulled these from out of my drive onto the berm.  These limbs and branches, some quite substantial, fell during the ice storm. To the right is my view is my neighbor’s wood pile that lies across the snow covered street.    The wood that sits there exceeds my pile by a factor of three.  My neighbor straight across has no pile for she had an arborist come cut and grind the large number of trees that fell in her yard.  If she had done as we have done her pile of now dead wood would have been far larger than our conjoined piles.

I have already brushed some of last night’s snowfall away.  The cold white lying upon my drive and sidewalks is light and shoveling is not required.  I had to make a way to get out to the garbage can the receptacle here in the kitchen being full.

All in all this looks lovely.  It looks as a photograph of a clean, safe winter should look.  In small stints I will most likely finish removing at least my portion of the snow sitting at the front of my home.  Later I will have to cut a path to the compost in the back yard.  Also I agreed to have my son clear my neighbor’s property.  He has not proved effective at that task. Sigh.

Last night 2013 ended with a whimper.  The ball dropped on Times Square and I stayed up to watch that minute of television.  For the rest of the time I was texting and posting on social media. Funny thing I was posting links about moving away from social media. 

The only real gripe I had with the article I posted's key points is that it implied people don’t want to know what we are doing every minute, we just aren’t that interesting. While I agree with the basic sentiment I think it misses the point.  We aren’t so much looking at the individual events that our friends are engaging in as it is the arc of their life we are monitoring.  

I don’t read the items in the stream of postings of an old high school friend because I want to know where he or she had coffee.  I am more interested in are their kids getting married? Do they have grandchildren? Have things befallen them like the loss of a spouse and how have they reacted?  It is interesting to see if people I knew way back when are made of the stuff I thought they were.  For the most part I smile gently because the people who interested me way back when are showing themselves to be of good solid stock.

I took a break here to sweep some more snow.

The sidewalks are clear now on this old grey day.  It is the start of another cycle, the start of another month, the start of another week and the start of another day. No real resolutions for me, just a hope I can get to this keyboard a little more often.  I will celebrate the day, watch a football game and then it is back to work tomorrow.  My best to all of you.

Dark winter and the soul

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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