Sometimes as I work my way back through A Year with Thomas Merton for the umpteenth time a passage strikes me as new, as fresh. A prime example follows. “No matter how simple discourse may be, it is never simple enough. No matter how simple thought may be, it is never simple enough. No matter how simple love may be, it is never simple enough. The only thing left is the simplicity of the soul in God or, better, the simplicity of God”.
I try and write every day. Part of the function of my writing is to focus my mind for the tasks the day ahead will require. The other part of the function is work through my hopes, my petty frustrations, my memories and my loves, putting some part of them into a verbal box. To write well is for me a struggle. There are plenty of people out there who have advice. Some people demand you pay for their advice and some are willing to tell you their opinion gratis. I tend to gravitate toward the free stuff.
All that I read about the craft of writing that has meaning comes down to several short declarative sentences. The first among these the urging that you chose words wisely. That adage is buttressed by these two; use simple words and use words that fit. I think Merton’s sentences are the ultimate distillation of those maxims. What I and what everyone who writes is trying to do is to capture God, or some part of the eternal on paper. It is only in simplicity we come close. Well, we come as close as we ever will. However when I think on Merton I wonder if maybe, I should remain silent and just experience the presence of the divine.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Love and the Act of Folding a Load of Laundry
Work, when those routine tasks the day to day stuff don’t get done, life just isn't the same. But what do the cycles, the endless repetition mean? Each task is different but the unerring and seemingly unending recurrence unifies them. Looking at cooking and you see the importance of this work. Without food we die. With bad food we are unhappy. Preparing a meal can be an act of art, or a manifestation of love, or it can just be drudgery.
Making a bed can be an act of thanks. Crisp corners and smoothed out covers can show a centered self offering up a melody in linen that which at the right moment just soars. A vacuumed floor can be the soft coda played by piano at the end a solid and pleasant pop song.
Some people just throw their cleaned underwear in the drawer. Me, I fold everything. I know it isn't the kind of fold that you would receive from a laundry or one you would find on the shelves of an old time high end department store. But look in the dresser of anyone in my home and everything is folded. Sometimes it seems pointless this act. For me the choice to impose this odd kind of order is an "up yours" to the universe's inevitable path to disarray and random distribution of all things.
Do these endeavors I carry out mean anything in the long run? Will my choices to clean and wash and try and maintain order focus my children's minds? No I don't think so.
As I move from bedroom to bathroom and then to office I pick up the remnants of life lived and no longer wanted. One waste basket empties into another and then down the steps I will walk. Outside I will go and then the aggregate will be emptied into the big city issued rolling trash bin. On Tuesday one son will draw the green wheeled cube to the curb. On Wednesday another will pull the bin back to the edge of the house. The only meaning they are taking from these acts right now is that I am a mean old man.
Long ago these tasks were all done for me. I never thought of what the doing of such work required of the person who held the obligation for this habitual labor before me. In retrospect I realize there was love in the doing of these things. It may of course be that the love was something deeper than I can comprehend. The tasks that were carried out by my mother were tinged with a harder view of life than I have, she being one who grew up in the depression. I wonder if I had paid more attention whether I would have gained greater knowledge of what matters in life?
As I go about my tasks I wonder if my children are picking up anything about what it means to live from me? Putting away t-shirts collected at camps and hockey tournaments I am unsure what values are being imparted to them and from whom.
Do we learn by watching, really? I am not sure on this one either. I didn't learn from my mother so many things that would have helped. I can't cook well. Really I am only marginal at making an edible meal. I ran away when my aunts and uncles were working the quilting frame in my grandmother’s living room. When it came to my father the learning issue was a two way street. He was tired and I was a mutant. Some basic things like a certain level of stoicism came from simply being near him. But simple skills like wielding a hammer or using a torch, these were not transferred. As a result my house is falling down around me in disrepair.
A time will come when I tire of the day to day work of my home. It is late August on the calendar and also on the calendar of my life. I carry out the tasks that must be done before summer ends in addition to the day to day work that is required. In a month I think I will still occupy this house. In a year I will probably still live here in this city and state. But with each day my body wears down just a little bit more. My spirit also seems to be a little less certain.
Will my children tire of me by the time my December sun is setting? Or, will they have come to the understanding that a job well done is an expression of love, of faith and a rejection of nihilism?
Taking care of the mundane stuff, doing the tasks that go unseen is an act of thanks. By quietly performing these things you are expressing gratitude for life if nothing else. By doing these acts with focus and care you are expressing appreciation for the opportunity to be connected with those around you.
Before the day is done I will have washed several loads of laundry. The trash will be taken out. My bedroom will be cleaned and organized. The bed will be made. Most likely if I remember where I stashed it I will spray the place with Caldrea's Lavender Pine Linen spray. Hopefully I will have sorted my desk and my checkbook will be updated. Will my work leave a trace? No. My efforts will never produce something with artistic weight of Thomas Wolfe's Of Time and the River. But my acts will make at least three other people's lives a little bit easier. By doing what I do I will give them a bit of my love, a bit of my thanks for making my life all the better for their mere presence in it.
If you ever get a chance listen to a song by Iris Dement called My Life. Her words capture all of what I have been trying to say in a much more beautiful way. If I could sing I would sing it as I work my way through these tasks. When I lay down this night it will be okay.
Making a bed can be an act of thanks. Crisp corners and smoothed out covers can show a centered self offering up a melody in linen that which at the right moment just soars. A vacuumed floor can be the soft coda played by piano at the end a solid and pleasant pop song.
Some people just throw their cleaned underwear in the drawer. Me, I fold everything. I know it isn't the kind of fold that you would receive from a laundry or one you would find on the shelves of an old time high end department store. But look in the dresser of anyone in my home and everything is folded. Sometimes it seems pointless this act. For me the choice to impose this odd kind of order is an "up yours" to the universe's inevitable path to disarray and random distribution of all things.
Do these endeavors I carry out mean anything in the long run? Will my choices to clean and wash and try and maintain order focus my children's minds? No I don't think so.
As I move from bedroom to bathroom and then to office I pick up the remnants of life lived and no longer wanted. One waste basket empties into another and then down the steps I will walk. Outside I will go and then the aggregate will be emptied into the big city issued rolling trash bin. On Tuesday one son will draw the green wheeled cube to the curb. On Wednesday another will pull the bin back to the edge of the house. The only meaning they are taking from these acts right now is that I am a mean old man.
Long ago these tasks were all done for me. I never thought of what the doing of such work required of the person who held the obligation for this habitual labor before me. In retrospect I realize there was love in the doing of these things. It may of course be that the love was something deeper than I can comprehend. The tasks that were carried out by my mother were tinged with a harder view of life than I have, she being one who grew up in the depression. I wonder if I had paid more attention whether I would have gained greater knowledge of what matters in life?
As I go about my tasks I wonder if my children are picking up anything about what it means to live from me? Putting away t-shirts collected at camps and hockey tournaments I am unsure what values are being imparted to them and from whom.
Do we learn by watching, really? I am not sure on this one either. I didn't learn from my mother so many things that would have helped. I can't cook well. Really I am only marginal at making an edible meal. I ran away when my aunts and uncles were working the quilting frame in my grandmother’s living room. When it came to my father the learning issue was a two way street. He was tired and I was a mutant. Some basic things like a certain level of stoicism came from simply being near him. But simple skills like wielding a hammer or using a torch, these were not transferred. As a result my house is falling down around me in disrepair.
A time will come when I tire of the day to day work of my home. It is late August on the calendar and also on the calendar of my life. I carry out the tasks that must be done before summer ends in addition to the day to day work that is required. In a month I think I will still occupy this house. In a year I will probably still live here in this city and state. But with each day my body wears down just a little bit more. My spirit also seems to be a little less certain.
Will my children tire of me by the time my December sun is setting? Or, will they have come to the understanding that a job well done is an expression of love, of faith and a rejection of nihilism?
Taking care of the mundane stuff, doing the tasks that go unseen is an act of thanks. By quietly performing these things you are expressing gratitude for life if nothing else. By doing these acts with focus and care you are expressing appreciation for the opportunity to be connected with those around you.
Before the day is done I will have washed several loads of laundry. The trash will be taken out. My bedroom will be cleaned and organized. The bed will be made. Most likely if I remember where I stashed it I will spray the place with Caldrea's Lavender Pine Linen spray. Hopefully I will have sorted my desk and my checkbook will be updated. Will my work leave a trace? No. My efforts will never produce something with artistic weight of Thomas Wolfe's Of Time and the River. But my acts will make at least three other people's lives a little bit easier. By doing what I do I will give them a bit of my love, a bit of my thanks for making my life all the better for their mere presence in it.
If you ever get a chance listen to a song by Iris Dement called My Life. Her words capture all of what I have been trying to say in a much more beautiful way. If I could sing I would sing it as I work my way through these tasks. When I lay down this night it will be okay.
Friday, August 14, 2009
I Wish I Was On the Bus...
A crazy man ranting came appearing out of nowhere. With corn row hair and riding a mountain bike he circled us twice or maybe three times as we waited for the # 2 bus to downtown.
Dragging his feet he stopped. Heels dug in and balancing atop his seat he remained at a distance for awhile. Pulling closer he began to speak. First he apologized. Looking at me and then at the woman next to me he very careful recited that he understood this isn't the way that normal people begin conversations but we seemed like upright (or maybe it was alright) people. "I mean that it doesn't matter that you are white and I am a black man."
He was right that wasn't what mattered. What mattered is that he had chosen to instigate a conversation with two complete strangers, people who one glance would have shown were not just strangers to him but to each other.
Talking in a rapid style with a limited vocabulary and using words like Yuse he told a story. It was both an odd story and an odd telling of the story. Initially it seemed like he spoke just a couple of sentences repeatedly. But the narrative grew each time. As he repeated the initial sentences he refined the narrative and then he moved on to the next paragraph. Starting again he worked his way up to a third paragraph and then he cycled back again.
I was almost alone at the stop only a semi-mute older woman shared the shade of the shelter with me. Trust me she was perfectly willing to stare at her shoes as this conversation is evolving. Bottom line on my fellow traveler was that she would have been staring at her shoes anyway. I have met her on the buses before and that is what she does. My guess is that she is one of God’s special people.
The bus stop where I was waiting is near a community mental health center. I have been inside this place before with someone who was losing it, really losing it. Funny this should be occurring so close to the scene of that train coming off the tracks moment.
Back then I was locked in a little room a man who picked up the phone, listened for a time and then offered it to me. He had declared as he held the phone out, “It is God and the Devil fighting over my soul." The scary thing then was I knew he meant it. But that was different experience for the room back then was being monitored and the man had been searched and the risk level was low, or as low as it can be when the person you are with is breaking from reality in a major way, say like a Greyhound Bus breaking from a hairpin turn in the mountains and heading into thin air.
But today it was different. I was not in a confined room. I didn’t know anything about the man or what was in his pockets. Still, he truly seemed to just be trying to work his story up to a question. Finally he moved on to the crux of the story. The gist of it was this.
He had lived in Flint and Flint was a city without hope. Talking in a deeper voice he said “You know the stories of Flint” With that he put one hand on the handle bar and another on his hip and began shaking his head as a gesture of negative exclamation. (Flint has its stories for sure like tales of suburban kids beat to death and sexually assaulted as they wandered in the wrong part of town.) Continuing on he tells me, “Well I just got up and left and I came to Lansing and I was living at the VOA. Right away I met this white cat from Nebraska and we hit it off and we moved in together with this guy’s girlfriend”
Eventually the reason he gives me for repeating this story in this building looping style is kind of the reason he could actually move. My bike riding new friend gets disability money from when he got beaten in the head with a hammer back in Flint. And anyway he really isn't any problem to anyone because he mostly stays in his bedroom and plays the Game cube. He emphasizes he does like the cable TV but that is not working.
The woman keeps looking down. Oh once in a while she will glance over at me, but her eyes never even move toward the man as he keeps going back to the start of the story again and again.
Why am I listening? Well, I am a trained listener and I use all the tricks I have picked up over the years. There is the occasional head nod, the tilt of the head to the side and the interjection of a "Yes?" or "Okay" as needed. At no point has his voice ever raised or grown aggressive. Staying polite in his fashion his tone has always seemed expository or inquisitive.
And finally the tale comes to the core question. There is a bill that came yesterday that the bike rider had opened and it shows that the cable bill stands at $800 and that is the reason the service is now cut off. Apparently there is no hope of it being turned back on. Our/my new best friend has called the cable company and partial payments are not an option. With the cable off he tells me he won't be able to watch The Closer. He poses his dilemma, "So I get all up in his face ‘cause this isn't the only lie man. He told me his mother was dead and honest to God man she called the other day. And then his brother showed up and kind of told me that my roommate wasn't all there."
What was going through my mind at this point, I am sure you want to know. I was wondering where the hell the bus was; it had been due 20 minutes earlier. What was also crossing my mind was why do nut jobs always seem to find me? My thought for some time has been is because of my myopia. Being nearsighted to the extreme my gaze does not fix in the right space for most people to read my intentions correctly they assume I am intently interested in them. If I could look like my gaze was focused a little more in the distance I might be okay.
The story commenced again only this time it was beginning in the middle and the fact that his roommate’s father had suffered a stroke and that was the reason for the call from the "dead" Mom is being interjected as a new story element. Right then I saw the bus coming. The woman at the stop bolted for the curb because she was getting the hell out of there no matter what.
Looking my question filled acquaintance in the eyes I said that I was going to have to leave. But I offered that it was my opinion that getting up in someone's face and calling them a liar almost never ended well. My suggestion was that he should try a tact perhaps offering the implication to his roommate he opened the cable bill in error. He could then see if his roommate wanted help in sorting it out. I urged him not to use the word liar because it was a very powerful word that pisses just about everyone off. I wished him good luck just as the bus door closed. A little acceleration up Washington Avenue and he was gone.
Having just left my cardiologist’s office, it seemed only appropriate I got a real world stress test.
Dragging his feet he stopped. Heels dug in and balancing atop his seat he remained at a distance for awhile. Pulling closer he began to speak. First he apologized. Looking at me and then at the woman next to me he very careful recited that he understood this isn't the way that normal people begin conversations but we seemed like upright (or maybe it was alright) people. "I mean that it doesn't matter that you are white and I am a black man."
He was right that wasn't what mattered. What mattered is that he had chosen to instigate a conversation with two complete strangers, people who one glance would have shown were not just strangers to him but to each other.
Talking in a rapid style with a limited vocabulary and using words like Yuse he told a story. It was both an odd story and an odd telling of the story. Initially it seemed like he spoke just a couple of sentences repeatedly. But the narrative grew each time. As he repeated the initial sentences he refined the narrative and then he moved on to the next paragraph. Starting again he worked his way up to a third paragraph and then he cycled back again.
I was almost alone at the stop only a semi-mute older woman shared the shade of the shelter with me. Trust me she was perfectly willing to stare at her shoes as this conversation is evolving. Bottom line on my fellow traveler was that she would have been staring at her shoes anyway. I have met her on the buses before and that is what she does. My guess is that she is one of God’s special people.
The bus stop where I was waiting is near a community mental health center. I have been inside this place before with someone who was losing it, really losing it. Funny this should be occurring so close to the scene of that train coming off the tracks moment.
Back then I was locked in a little room a man who picked up the phone, listened for a time and then offered it to me. He had declared as he held the phone out, “It is God and the Devil fighting over my soul." The scary thing then was I knew he meant it. But that was different experience for the room back then was being monitored and the man had been searched and the risk level was low, or as low as it can be when the person you are with is breaking from reality in a major way, say like a Greyhound Bus breaking from a hairpin turn in the mountains and heading into thin air.
But today it was different. I was not in a confined room. I didn’t know anything about the man or what was in his pockets. Still, he truly seemed to just be trying to work his story up to a question. Finally he moved on to the crux of the story. The gist of it was this.
He had lived in Flint and Flint was a city without hope. Talking in a deeper voice he said “You know the stories of Flint” With that he put one hand on the handle bar and another on his hip and began shaking his head as a gesture of negative exclamation. (Flint has its stories for sure like tales of suburban kids beat to death and sexually assaulted as they wandered in the wrong part of town.) Continuing on he tells me, “Well I just got up and left and I came to Lansing and I was living at the VOA. Right away I met this white cat from Nebraska and we hit it off and we moved in together with this guy’s girlfriend”
Eventually the reason he gives me for repeating this story in this building looping style is kind of the reason he could actually move. My bike riding new friend gets disability money from when he got beaten in the head with a hammer back in Flint. And anyway he really isn't any problem to anyone because he mostly stays in his bedroom and plays the Game cube. He emphasizes he does like the cable TV but that is not working.
The woman keeps looking down. Oh once in a while she will glance over at me, but her eyes never even move toward the man as he keeps going back to the start of the story again and again.
Why am I listening? Well, I am a trained listener and I use all the tricks I have picked up over the years. There is the occasional head nod, the tilt of the head to the side and the interjection of a "Yes?" or "Okay" as needed. At no point has his voice ever raised or grown aggressive. Staying polite in his fashion his tone has always seemed expository or inquisitive.
And finally the tale comes to the core question. There is a bill that came yesterday that the bike rider had opened and it shows that the cable bill stands at $800 and that is the reason the service is now cut off. Apparently there is no hope of it being turned back on. Our/my new best friend has called the cable company and partial payments are not an option. With the cable off he tells me he won't be able to watch The Closer. He poses his dilemma, "So I get all up in his face ‘cause this isn't the only lie man. He told me his mother was dead and honest to God man she called the other day. And then his brother showed up and kind of told me that my roommate wasn't all there."
What was going through my mind at this point, I am sure you want to know. I was wondering where the hell the bus was; it had been due 20 minutes earlier. What was also crossing my mind was why do nut jobs always seem to find me? My thought for some time has been is because of my myopia. Being nearsighted to the extreme my gaze does not fix in the right space for most people to read my intentions correctly they assume I am intently interested in them. If I could look like my gaze was focused a little more in the distance I might be okay.
The story commenced again only this time it was beginning in the middle and the fact that his roommate’s father had suffered a stroke and that was the reason for the call from the "dead" Mom is being interjected as a new story element. Right then I saw the bus coming. The woman at the stop bolted for the curb because she was getting the hell out of there no matter what.
Looking my question filled acquaintance in the eyes I said that I was going to have to leave. But I offered that it was my opinion that getting up in someone's face and calling them a liar almost never ended well. My suggestion was that he should try a tact perhaps offering the implication to his roommate he opened the cable bill in error. He could then see if his roommate wanted help in sorting it out. I urged him not to use the word liar because it was a very powerful word that pisses just about everyone off. I wished him good luck just as the bus door closed. A little acceleration up Washington Avenue and he was gone.
Having just left my cardiologist’s office, it seemed only appropriate I got a real world stress test.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Awash In The Gold
Some days you find the gold in life where you least expect it. In this case it was three doors down and on the berm between the sidewalk and the street.
In Fading Light the Breeze Rustles the Leaves *
Quiet moments that refresh your soul in life do come, but not often. Savor those ones that do arrive. Hold on to them. Memorialize them in your journal. In written form your pen strokes create something akin to a glass vial containing the last remnants of a beloved fragrance. With the vial you can just barely crack it open and take a whiff, with a journal you can read just a few lines and then you remember. In either case you can be transported back to that special place for an instant, for a moment. Sometimes an instant of joy will fend off a very, very rough day.
Recently I had a period when the bustle of life slowed for just a second. The catalyst was an invite to a concert while the boys were away from home and safely lodged at music camp. Up North, way up north Francie and I wended our way last Thursday afternoon. We were off to catch up with dear friends and to see a concert. The ostensible reason for the journey was that we had been offered an opportunity of tickets to see Joan Baez at Interlochen.
Now my taste for Joan Baez has waxed and waned over the years but it had been a long time since I really had an opinion about her either way. A concert seemed a wonderful reason to get together with these good hearted and smartly funny people.
All agreed that due to our schedules we would meet not at our friends’ homes but at a restaurant near the venue. The meal at the restaurant was okay. I ordered a meatball sandwich, nothing transcendent there but that was my fault now wasn’t it? If you are looking for something special you order something special not a pedestrian sandwich.
The concert on the other hand was more that I expected; it was wonderful. Going into I was mulling a question that was probably articulated best as at forty years after Woodstock, how much could I expect? But from the very start it was clear it was a special night.
Arriving at the venue I saw that the hall is what is known in the trade as a barn, a large open air mostly covered glorified band shell. Sitting in the amphitheater we were facing in the direction of a lake. Warm but not hot it was a perfect summer evening. On either side of the stage you could see through the trees and look out over that calm water.
We were about one row in front of the board and dead center. We sat in the in the softly changing glow of the soundboard’s electronics. The lights of the mixing board wavered changing in intensity. The aqua green and pale blues with small red dots and faint numerical readouts were ever morphing. Being in the forward shadow of that glow assured us that the aural mix was a good as it was anywhere in the house.
The audience was older. Sitting there in those narrow seats (specked out in the days before the obesity crisis in the boomers became self evident) were people like me. Many of those people (shifting from one cheek of their ass to the other to keep blood flowing) I am sure heard Joan Baez, really heard her for the first time as she sang I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night. Back in 1970 we had all been transported by our one friend who had enough cash to take us to the Woodstock festival via the overpriced 3 LP set on Cotillion records. A few people here maybe picked up on her music earlier but looking around I am of the opinion that if that were the case they were precocious and the exposure was from an older sister or brother playing the music on their parent’s console stereo.
The lights on stage rose just a little bit and suddenly there she was. With a tight bluegrass/newgrass band she worked her way through the cannon of folk songs that have traveled with me from college and onward. She sang murder ballads. She sang songs of the lass disguised as a man to save her lover now gone a sea. She sang Dylan and she sang of Dylan. And finally she sang of the South last days and from the south closing with pure bluegrass stained glass acapella gospel of Angel Band.
Her voice was still there mostly. She hit the high notes but sliding down the scales was not an option. She reworked a few songs but there were still her songs, she owned them from start to finish always the consummate artist in her presentation. The sun’s light was slow in fading over the lake that lay behind the amphitheater. But this is the North Country in summer you know. The light in its slow flight remained lingering so as to outline the trees between my seat and the water. There was a dim glow until very late in the concert. Forty years almost to the day from when she belted many of these songs on Yasgur’s farm, the night was still charged, her music remains a touchstone that matters.
And then it was over. We headed off to take up our hosts on their offer of hospitality at there lakeside home in the woods. Using social media I documented the physical environment of the place but not the feeling. Pictures were posted on Facebook that showed a gorgeous waterfront and the verdant canopy that lies between the house and the water. An image of a magnificent and sensual whitefish dinner with baked veggies and really fresh corn got popped up as an upload a little while later. None of those images captured the smells of the forest mixing with the smell of fresh cooked sweet summer corn. How could grainy pixels captured by a telephone camera ever convey any sense of the light hearted and warm conversation that follows a good meal and a few ounces of India Pale Ale?
We talked late into the night for the two nights we stayed there. We walked the beach. A bonfire was built and sitting quietly we experienced a lakeside sunset. Of course the conversation turned to the green flash and then to the northern lights. What wonderful topics as the sounds of the trees moving gently in the breeze provided a background sonata.
Sometimes it is just words spoken in conversation, the tones and the timbre that make all the difference. Being engaged in an oral history, or dissecting a personal issue may not really matter as much as the flow of the words, the continuing nature of the conversation. Sincerity and warmth often trump “getting to the crux” of whatever life is presenting to us right now. The tone and timbre of the conversation was wonderful.
Yeah, take time and savor the moments when warming by a fire you feel a northern summer night come to full.
Recently I had a period when the bustle of life slowed for just a second. The catalyst was an invite to a concert while the boys were away from home and safely lodged at music camp. Up North, way up north Francie and I wended our way last Thursday afternoon. We were off to catch up with dear friends and to see a concert. The ostensible reason for the journey was that we had been offered an opportunity of tickets to see Joan Baez at Interlochen.
Now my taste for Joan Baez has waxed and waned over the years but it had been a long time since I really had an opinion about her either way. A concert seemed a wonderful reason to get together with these good hearted and smartly funny people.
All agreed that due to our schedules we would meet not at our friends’ homes but at a restaurant near the venue. The meal at the restaurant was okay. I ordered a meatball sandwich, nothing transcendent there but that was my fault now wasn’t it? If you are looking for something special you order something special not a pedestrian sandwich.
The concert on the other hand was more that I expected; it was wonderful. Going into I was mulling a question that was probably articulated best as at forty years after Woodstock, how much could I expect? But from the very start it was clear it was a special night.
Arriving at the venue I saw that the hall is what is known in the trade as a barn, a large open air mostly covered glorified band shell. Sitting in the amphitheater we were facing in the direction of a lake. Warm but not hot it was a perfect summer evening. On either side of the stage you could see through the trees and look out over that calm water.
We were about one row in front of the board and dead center. We sat in the in the softly changing glow of the soundboard’s electronics. The lights of the mixing board wavered changing in intensity. The aqua green and pale blues with small red dots and faint numerical readouts were ever morphing. Being in the forward shadow of that glow assured us that the aural mix was a good as it was anywhere in the house.
The audience was older. Sitting there in those narrow seats (specked out in the days before the obesity crisis in the boomers became self evident) were people like me. Many of those people (shifting from one cheek of their ass to the other to keep blood flowing) I am sure heard Joan Baez, really heard her for the first time as she sang I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night. Back in 1970 we had all been transported by our one friend who had enough cash to take us to the Woodstock festival via the overpriced 3 LP set on Cotillion records. A few people here maybe picked up on her music earlier but looking around I am of the opinion that if that were the case they were precocious and the exposure was from an older sister or brother playing the music on their parent’s console stereo.
The lights on stage rose just a little bit and suddenly there she was. With a tight bluegrass/newgrass band she worked her way through the cannon of folk songs that have traveled with me from college and onward. She sang murder ballads. She sang songs of the lass disguised as a man to save her lover now gone a sea. She sang Dylan and she sang of Dylan. And finally she sang of the South last days and from the south closing with pure bluegrass stained glass acapella gospel of Angel Band.
Her voice was still there mostly. She hit the high notes but sliding down the scales was not an option. She reworked a few songs but there were still her songs, she owned them from start to finish always the consummate artist in her presentation. The sun’s light was slow in fading over the lake that lay behind the amphitheater. But this is the North Country in summer you know. The light in its slow flight remained lingering so as to outline the trees between my seat and the water. There was a dim glow until very late in the concert. Forty years almost to the day from when she belted many of these songs on Yasgur’s farm, the night was still charged, her music remains a touchstone that matters.
And then it was over. We headed off to take up our hosts on their offer of hospitality at there lakeside home in the woods. Using social media I documented the physical environment of the place but not the feeling. Pictures were posted on Facebook that showed a gorgeous waterfront and the verdant canopy that lies between the house and the water. An image of a magnificent and sensual whitefish dinner with baked veggies and really fresh corn got popped up as an upload a little while later. None of those images captured the smells of the forest mixing with the smell of fresh cooked sweet summer corn. How could grainy pixels captured by a telephone camera ever convey any sense of the light hearted and warm conversation that follows a good meal and a few ounces of India Pale Ale?
We talked late into the night for the two nights we stayed there. We walked the beach. A bonfire was built and sitting quietly we experienced a lakeside sunset. Of course the conversation turned to the green flash and then to the northern lights. What wonderful topics as the sounds of the trees moving gently in the breeze provided a background sonata.
Sometimes it is just words spoken in conversation, the tones and the timbre that make all the difference. Being engaged in an oral history, or dissecting a personal issue may not really matter as much as the flow of the words, the continuing nature of the conversation. Sincerity and warmth often trump “getting to the crux” of whatever life is presenting to us right now. The tone and timbre of the conversation was wonderful.
Yeah, take time and savor the moments when warming by a fire you feel a northern summer night come to full.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
As Good As I Needed
In the waning hours, the time right before bed I look around me. One cat black and sleek sits on the cushion of a disheveled couch. Children play havoc with any concept of order now don’t they? Another feline sits staring into the next room. She is always waiting for the next mouse. Perhaps the next fly might be her ticket to entertainment. She, no matter what the prey might be, is always waiting. In the center of the room lays a kitschy faux bear skin rug. It is not some much an approximation of a bear skin rug as it is a template for a faux bear costume for some masquerade. Still, it was a gift and I love it. Disheveled, rumpled and filled with odd creatures this warm and wonderful place is home. The room and I share a moment of silence interrupted only by soft purring.
Audible machines begin to hum, both the AC outside and the kitchen refrigeration unit kick in. Over by the baseboard I hear the fan begin its task of blowing the cold air about. Well at least the ceiling fans are not moving now although they might be sufficient to cool the room if I were to turn the air conditioning off. No, I will leave the fans off for their electric motors grind and there housings shake and make discordant sounds I would rather avoid. How mundane these sounds are compared to those encountered on my recent vacation down the Jersey shore.
Being on the beach is a wonderful thing. To people that have never spent any appreciable time by the ocean’s shore you just can’t explain it. The experience from the feel of hot sand on your bare feet, to the small bits of bubbled dark green seaweed in the water to the sinus assuaging salt smell of the air to the feel of a wave crashing against your torso, that experience is not something you can really convey in a couple of sentences. People who have never really lived near the ocean hear phrases like I went to the shore and they nod, but they don’t get it.
Getting into the rhythm of beach and its particular style of living takes time. You can’t just plop yourself in a rental for a week and understand the cycle of life at the water’s edge. When you are there a month you think you have it, but you don’t. When you spend a season there you think you have it, but you don’t. If you were to be at the shore each day for 365 days for five years you might get a glimpse of life at the edge of the water but you still would have only limited insight into the cycles, the variations, the nuances of life next to salt sea. It is sort of like the experience Annie Dillard wrote about in a book a few years ago about living by a creek for a year. In the end you may be there, but not be of the place.
My week by the water was wonderful. I saw old friends. I saw old places. I ran into the water again and again. The sun beat down and the sky stayed clear. Each day was a moment of clearing for my soul. Sitting on the beach the sun reflected up and tanned me even through the SPF Bear Fat Level 1000 sunscreen. I buried my head in a book of philosophy and was lost to the din of our electronic world. The night was just as wonderful being filled with vicarious joys. My kids rode the coasters and the log plumes and played games at the boardwalk arcades. Geeked to the maximum they giggled and howled and begged and pled for more. And finally there was the full moon rising over the sea. Yellow-orange and huge in the warm night it brought back every memory I had of being 19 and out at night on the beach.
It was a good time.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Motes
Shinning bits, tiny and fragmented. Like dust motes floating in late afternoon sun. Bits suspended, supported by nothing but that invisible mass known as air. Some bits are moving and some seem still, just stuck in space.
This array of bits is memory, well more specifically my memory. How my mind stores its past isn't rational or hierarchical. My memory is a thousand planets spewing out across a universe the center of which is me.
Every passing moment either gravity or another force of nature moves a piece of my memory. Some flickers of the past are heading toward the black holes of my personal universe. Some are drawn into the fire of my conscious focused mind for a brief few moments. But like matter twisted by gravity and the other immutable rules of physics so are these little motes are always being modified simply by being part of the stream of my existence.
Maybe it is gravity in every sense of the word that keeps in my mind zipping back to age two. Gasping I am stuck inside a heavy quilted plastic garment bag on a late summer afternoon. My body is sweating profusely and I remember stale plastic smelling air. Somehow I have managed to zipper it closed from the inside. Most likely my breath was getting low but somehow my brother comes upon me and pulls me out before it is too late. And then there was the "scary" lecture from Mom and Dad about death and suffocation and the appropriate places where good little boys should play. Thank God there was no internet or someone, one of my brothers most likely, would have pulled off pictures of purple swollen dead people who had suffocated and shown them to me as an object lesson. If that had happened then I would never have stored my clothes again, ever.
But what are these memories that pop up? In writing a story recently about an incident at the swimming pool of my childhood I remembered perhaps a more telling story of that place and of my relationship with my middle brother. I was maybe in kindergarten. Maybe it happened when I was in first grade, I dunno which but I was young and I listened to my brother back then. My older brother suggested that when Joe the lifeguard was leaning over the pool I rush up behind the big man and give a push. I did, reaction followed action and Joe went ass over head into the water. Me, well I was thrown out of the pool for the day. A large number of people laughed. My brother got thrown out for the day too and my Mom was really pissed. Cue up the disgraced our family lecture. One soaking wet man in his wayfarers yelling at me hangs there in my memory. I laugh a little bit and squirm a little bit when this pops into my rearview mirror. Those two minutes captured in a loop that repeats on certain days, say when I watch my kids at the community pool, says tons about my brother and his toxic influence (at times) on with me. It says quite a bit about my gullibility. But what could I expect of myself, I was six or seven tops and my brother was 14 or 15. He should have known better. Was it the complete impact on my senses of the consequences that followed this action that made it memorable I don't know?
Or the moment when I was sixteen and cruising through the Soo boat locks with my Dad one chilly August afternoon. Wearing windbreakers we about froze to death sitting on the boat’s deck, but I remember the flag on the bow of the boat. The pennant was whipping, whipping in the breeze. Watching that flag I was thinking this would be the only time I was ever going to be here and God what a forsaken place this is The flag which was read and white and I think was the logo of the boat line but it mesmerized me. Life has deposited me much closer to the Soo that I ever thought would happen, but I didn't know that would happen then. Even before I came here I knew the memory of that that pennant whipping wildly above that cold water would pop up again and again in my life.
Or, what is it that takes me back to the lady drowning her child with the ice cream cone? Really why does that bit come back again and again? I mean it was her own fault especially since I had told her not to hold the mountainous twin peaked cone of chocolaty goodness over his face. This happened when I was working at the soft serve place on the boardwalk. It was hot and humid and I told her not to buy the big cone because I knew she would have a mess on her hands. I mean this literally because it was inevitable that the pile of swirled goo would fall off the cone. I mean it was nearing 100% humidity and those soft serve machines don’t really chill stuff when there is such a level of moisture in the air. But the little squalling brat wanted the big one and then didn't want it and it was because of the dynamic of that dispute that she held the wad of dissolving delight over his face and it fell off the contents of the cone filling his eyes, nose and mouth causing him to almost drown on the boardwalk more that 300 yards from the ocean on a dry if very humid night.
Or finally why is it I go back to the time the guy in the infield of the Kentucky Derby was so drunk that he almost drowned on dry land in 90 degree heat? I mean he was so high he fell back against his Styrofoam cooler and it broke forming a collar that fit pretty tight around his neck. This dude was so drunk the cold water didn't wake him up and his head slowly began to tip downward. The man’s skull was at the point where his open mouth and flaring nostrils were about to go under when we pulled him out and let his friends know his was too fucked up for his own good. Maybe alcohol poisoning got him. But that isn’t the memory I hold on to. What I see again and again is the slow motion slide, the tilt into the 1 foot by 2 foot Styrofoam sea.
Maybe as I catch these specks in the light and tie them up and bind them to paper I can let them go. It may be a Buddhist kind of thing the equivalent of putting my wishes or regrets down on paper and then vanishing them. Perhaps I do this by setting this metaphorical paper afire, or by walking away from them after tying them to a tree one to which I will not return. Either way I have unburdened myself.
Any given set of words will never capture a memory; they are just an outline of some limited sense of the objective in a specific recollection. My memories aren't special; they just are my little fragments of a past I can’t go back to.
The reason I write is because the desire to do so is something that has always been inside of me. Deep down there is an urge to create a diagram of these dust motes that make up my life. With words I try and craft a kind of star map of the attic that is my mind. One word and then another must fall onto the electronic paper. One past moment captured and a new space for experience opened up. I doubt I will do enough in these remaining years to make anywhere near enough memories to fill the space I am emptying, but I gotta clear some room out just in case I do.
Motes in golden sunlight twinkling spin on for now, but not forever.
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