I have friends who grow olives and then create award-winning olive oil, and I have heard that this year's harvest has begun or will soon begin. As with grapes, there is science involved in knowing when to harvest olives, though I refuse to discuss what I think I understand because I am nothing if not scientifically challenged. I can only hope that the crop is good and that the oil wins more awards.
This year, our home-garden consisted of tomatoes, bell peppers and hot peppers, honeydew melons, cantaloupe, and yellow cucumbers. The big tomatoes were moderately successful, while the cherry tomatoes were prolific and even now the plants are producing though the quality has dropped. The bell peppers started, stopped, and when they became shaded by the expanding cherry tomato plants, became robust (ah--is that science?). The peppers are supposed to be yellow and red, however, and I do not think there is enough growing-season left for them to be anything but green. We got 2 honeydew melons and one cantaloupe, and no cucumbers or hot peppers. This year was an experiment in unscientific gardening, which probably contributed to the sparse results. I'm hopeful that next year's garden will be a bit better. (Probably no melons. Fewer cherry tomatoes.)
As usual, however, this post is not really about the title. Rather, because I have been asked to take part in a poetry reading in February, I am already anxious not just about standing up in front of a room full of strangers, but about what the hell I am going to read. I have done this only once before, and I have required the years since to recover my bearings. The good thing about next year's event will be that I will be reading with the same 2 people who invited me before, and this should provide some comfort. The only bad thing about that previous event? The organizers passed a literal hat for the audience to contribute money that would be divided among the 3 readers, but that money never made it into those readers' hands. I do not care about that, but I do care that people gave willingly and some shithead kept the cash. . . .
Because I am neither a fast nor a prolific writer, I do not have much to draw from when it comes to new poetry. I don't want to simply read all of the poems I read before (though a few will sneak in because I like them), so I've got to come up with new material. Looking through what I've got, I see that many of the poems I've written over the last couple years concern being outside; specifically, they concern gardening, a pseudo-hobby I have acquired. This habit might have been born out of the pure fun of playing in the dirt. In fact, I doubt there is anything more profound there. So, already I am figuring how how many of these garden-poems I can get away with reading before people start thinking, "Enough already!"
In the end, however, I guess I've got to get reading and writing, since I'll be teaming up with a couple of people who are very, very good.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Fire, Fire
In my previous post I mentioned a memory of watching from my bedroom window as a house down the highway burned. I don't remember how old I was then, but I walked or rode my bike by that house countless times since it was where I would turn east if I were headed to my friend Jeff's house, and to my right if I were walking north to where my barber had his shop alongside his house. The barber himself was a big, heavy man, and he would eventually have a heart attack that forced me to find a new barber while he took some time off. For many years my haircut was easy: as short a crew cut as a person could get. I must have been an easy 15 minutes' work for him. There were two good things about those haircuts: the hot lather on the back of my neck that was removed by a straight razor, and the post-haircut scalp massage. He recovered from his little heart-thing and resumed cutting hair about the time I started letting my hair grow out a bit (I must have been in 7th grade), and the day I went back to him he must not have noticed that my looks had changed, for he pretty much scalped me. "You want to cry?" my mother asked when I got home and showed her what had happened. "Yeah," I said, but since I was in 7th grade I knew I couldn't cry. "I don't blame you," she said.
But, the fire.
I watched the house burn from a mile or so away, and I recall smoke and fire trucks. Oddly enough, I also remember seeing someone walking away from the house, though I'm not sure how accurate this memory is given the distance between us. Nevertheless, I've kept that memory for decades, and many years ago came up with a poem that was based in part on that memory. It's not an especially good poem, but I'm putting it up here nonetheless.
First Fire
I was eight years old when the first fingers
of white smoke reached up from the farmhouse
roof. An old woman walked through the yard,
stopping at the highway before turning to see
a birth of yellow heat.
The house burned for two hours.
The woman never moved--just watched,
just let the commotion of people
sing around her.
I wondered why she had carried
nothing out, and I made a list
of my own treasures to save:
for fire: success, anger, love.
The old woman must have known too,
must have seen the same things
and more
in the years it took her to walk
from that house to that highway.
In this poem, there are only a couple elements of fact: I owned a never-completed model of the USS Missouri, and the fire itself. I was never a toy-truck person, so I never owned a Tonka truck; I would've killed for an Ernie Banks baseball card, but I never had one--though was was an fan of the Chicago Cubs, the team on which Banks played.
I watched the house burn from a mile or so away, and I recall smoke and fire trucks. Oddly enough, I also remember seeing someone walking away from the house, though I'm not sure how accurate this memory is given the distance between us. Nevertheless, I've kept that memory for decades, and many years ago came up with a poem that was based in part on that memory. It's not an especially good poem, but I'm putting it up here nonetheless.
First Fire
I was eight years old when the first fingers
of white smoke reached up from the farmhouse
roof. An old woman walked through the yard,
stopping at the highway before turning to see
a birth of yellow heat.
The house burned for two hours.
The woman never moved--just watched,
just let the commotion of people
sing around her.
I wondered why she had carried
nothing out, and I made a list
of my own treasures to save:
the Tonka truck;Thirty years later I know other reasons
Ernie Banks’ baseball card;
a model of the USS Missouri.
for fire: success, anger, love.
The old woman must have known too,
must have seen the same things
and more
in the years it took her to walk
from that house to that highway.
So why look back?I imagine her saying.
Everything burns.
What rises out of those ashes
will rise.
In this poem, there are only a couple elements of fact: I owned a never-completed model of the USS Missouri, and the fire itself. I was never a toy-truck person, so I never owned a Tonka truck; I would've killed for an Ernie Banks baseball card, but I never had one--though was was an fan of the Chicago Cubs, the team on which Banks played.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
A Walk Down Melody Lane
It's a virtual homecoming, for crying out loud, thanks to Google Earth.
I love maps. I love staring at maps and tracing my finger along roads and highways I both have and never will travel. It's a sickness, I think, this willingness to look at one-dimensional depictions of the world.
Now, though, I can move to virtual 3 dimensions, as though I can shrink myself, step into the map, and see things. Sicker still, I always start or end up at the same place: Woodstock, Illinois, where all things must have started for me, and where I'd probably be happy when things end. With Google Earth, I have found this--my boyhood home (at least, if my boyhood is bracketed by age 5 on one end and 13 on the other).
My bedroom was on the second floor, the second window from the right. Kinda spooky, looking at it now I hope whatever who kids spent time in that room have enjoyed it as much as I did.
What I remember...
I love maps. I love staring at maps and tracing my finger along roads and highways I both have and never will travel. It's a sickness, I think, this willingness to look at one-dimensional depictions of the world.
Now, though, I can move to virtual 3 dimensions, as though I can shrink myself, step into the map, and see things. Sicker still, I always start or end up at the same place: Woodstock, Illinois, where all things must have started for me, and where I'd probably be happy when things end. With Google Earth, I have found this--my boyhood home (at least, if my boyhood is bracketed by age 5 on one end and 13 on the other).
My bedroom was on the second floor, the second window from the right. Kinda spooky, looking at it now I hope whatever who kids spent time in that room have enjoyed it as much as I did.
What I remember...
- The garage being added.
- Before the garage was added, happening upon my mother and a neighbor kid's mom sitting on the side of the house. My mom smoked a cigarette as the other woman cried and I quickly changed direction.
- Shoveling snow off the sidewalk and driveway.
- The metal milk-box on the porch, and how in winter sometimes the milk would freeze in the glass one-gallon bottles. (I fell down the steps leading to the basement once while carrying one of those bottles, and the broken glass sliced my elbow and left a scar I still carry.)
- Watching a barn along the highway burn, and watching a house north on the highway burn.
- Dashing through the front door when I came home from school with my new trumpet, and being chastised for not using the back door. Having the trumpet saved me.
- Getting the crap beat out of me in the back yard by a couple of neighborhood bullies (probably deserved it).
- Watching through the bedroom window at the storms rolling in.
- Opening the window at night so our dog and I could fill our respective noses with cool air. This was probably when insomnia started.
- Looking out that bedroom window on a winter morning and finding that a foot of snow had fallen announced.
- Helping my father take down/put up storm windows.
- Sharing a room with my youngest sister when she was first born. She turned out to be a wonderful human being and sister, probably because my parents got her out of there as soon as they could.
- The last morning I lived there--a cold, overcast January day.
- Summer nights running barefoot around the neighborhood, and fireflies.
- Sleeping in a canvas tent in the backyard.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The Words in My Head Go 'Round and 'Round
When I was a kid, I would wake up in the morning while talking in my sleep. Or, at least, I would be talking in my sleep and then wake up, still talking. Once, another time when I was a kid, I apparently took the dog for a walk up and down the hallway that ran outside my bedroom. Not such a big deal, I guess, if you didn't know that I did this half-naked. My parents thought it was funny. I just woke up wondering where my pants were.
Anyway, back to talking in my sleep.
I never finished whatever I was writing (speaking?), but I remember I was writing novels, at least what my kid's brain thought were novels. I read a lot, so there's a chance I was only re-telling what I'd read, but I prefer to think not. Ever since then (and there has been a lot of since, since then), I have been perplexed, even frightened, by the creative process: where do these words come from? Where do these ideas come from? My pals Kominski and Shawn see the world in much larger terms than I do, and they can conceptualize grand epics and schemes that I can't fathom. I work, I think, more locally: starting small. Often, I start a poem mentally before putting pen to paper, sometimes months before. A word or two, or maybe a phrase, will appear in my head and stick there: go 'round and 'round. What's funny, at least to me, is that they are visible, not conceptual, not a bunch of letters. I see these words, and sometimes they are not even in logical order, or they appear and disappear.
This is how my most current poem created itself: a couple of words that bounced about until one day, while stuck in traffic on the way home, those words were joined by other words, and they together formed an idea of some sort. Waiting for the traffic to move, I frantically searched my car for a notebook and a pen so I could snag those words before they disappeared. I also came up with the title: "Disclosures." Then, as I started driving again, the form of the poem appeared, and I could not wait to get home to type the thing up.
So far, the poem has gone through three or four revisions, and I hope to get some feedback from some writer friends next month. I still do not know for sure what the poem is about, but it is a work of fiction. Here it is, for good or bad. Note, also, that the title is now "Disclosure"--singular.
Disclosure
There are things to be discussed:
I have not yet determined if more is needed, if the pacing is right or if the ending happens too quickly. And, though it is fiction overall, there are elements of actual occurrences there. And this, too, amazes me about writing: how a mind can carry details, those facts and occurrences we often dismiss as trivial, until they are reborn, disclosed.
Anyway, back to talking in my sleep.
I never finished whatever I was writing (speaking?), but I remember I was writing novels, at least what my kid's brain thought were novels. I read a lot, so there's a chance I was only re-telling what I'd read, but I prefer to think not. Ever since then (and there has been a lot of since, since then), I have been perplexed, even frightened, by the creative process: where do these words come from? Where do these ideas come from? My pals Kominski and Shawn see the world in much larger terms than I do, and they can conceptualize grand epics and schemes that I can't fathom. I work, I think, more locally: starting small. Often, I start a poem mentally before putting pen to paper, sometimes months before. A word or two, or maybe a phrase, will appear in my head and stick there: go 'round and 'round. What's funny, at least to me, is that they are visible, not conceptual, not a bunch of letters. I see these words, and sometimes they are not even in logical order, or they appear and disappear.
This is how my most current poem created itself: a couple of words that bounced about until one day, while stuck in traffic on the way home, those words were joined by other words, and they together formed an idea of some sort. Waiting for the traffic to move, I frantically searched my car for a notebook and a pen so I could snag those words before they disappeared. I also came up with the title: "Disclosures." Then, as I started driving again, the form of the poem appeared, and I could not wait to get home to type the thing up.
So far, the poem has gone through three or four revisions, and I hope to get some feedback from some writer friends next month. I still do not know for sure what the poem is about, but it is a work of fiction. Here it is, for good or bad. Note, also, that the title is now "Disclosure"--singular.
Disclosure
There are things to be discussed:
How the girl who broke my high-school heart never
quite faded even decades after her cheerleader’s dress
pushed once against my hand, and how from that night on
love for anyone was defined unfairly.
For years I remained overly soft in the face of danger,
unable to choose between flight and the possibility
of cotton pleats pressed between my thumb and forefinger,
pom-poms brushing my thighs, the taste of athletic
salt on my upper lip.
Such do we carry—definitions birthed of suggestions
that covered the football field, that burdened not just the loving
but the eventually loved. But now, as I feel the curve of
your lower back in my hands, I am grateful: for that one
moment, for the burden, for this.
I have not yet determined if more is needed, if the pacing is right or if the ending happens too quickly. And, though it is fiction overall, there are elements of actual occurrences there. And this, too, amazes me about writing: how a mind can carry details, those facts and occurrences we often dismiss as trivial, until they are reborn, disclosed.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Life at the Beach
Earlier this year I recounted visit to my sister, my niece, and Maya the Amazing Basset, and I've recently been provided with photographic proof that someone was actually somewhere with someone and something else. The photograph has been altered to protect the guilty.
What impressed me--and what I remember--about the beach was its proximity to hills and mountains. The mountains are not visible here, but the peaks I recall had snow on them. Impressive. I will, someday, return to explore the towns and beaches. Oh, yes, I am like MacArthur.
What impressed me--and what I remember--about the beach was its proximity to hills and mountains. The mountains are not visible here, but the peaks I recall had snow on them. Impressive. I will, someday, return to explore the towns and beaches. Oh, yes, I am like MacArthur.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
It's Good to Get Away, Even When You Can't
Part 1: Leaving Town and Ending Up Somewhere Else
It’s good to get away even when you can’t do it. Or, when the people who employ you suggest without saying as much that you should postpone your 4-day vacation because who’s going to get the documentation done if you leave? The project has been a mess since its inception, but somehow a dozen pages of paper are crucial.
All right, all right—forget the lazy second-person references. I need to start taking ownership for these types of things. I could have said “so long” and delegated the task to someone else, but overall I want to be loved and who loves a boss who delegates things so he can go on vacation? So, because the person letting me stay in his house on the north coast is generous (yeah, he’s out of town, too, but what does that matter?), I’m able to reschedule the trip to start on what would have been my father’s 75th birthday. It is a good day to start something.
Entering the pre-dawn, frenetic commute, though I am not a commuter today, I head north then west then northwest then north, leaving behind the office (though 90 minutes later I will call my boss to tell her something I should’ve told her yesterday), my family, and a potential visit to a friend who says he could use some free analysis of his psyche. I know what he needs, I think, but I also know I’m not in the right state of mind to provide anything related to anyone else’s mental state considering that my own is fragile enough these days. I promise myself to get back to him, though, as the car radio sucks in my new Zoe Keating CD the same way the road sucks me in.
And the farther I get from the office, the phone call to my boss, the classes I’m teaching, and the puppy that eats my shoes, the more relaxed I become. Stopping at a wonderful bakery in Freestone, I am disappointed to find that there is no bread today, or at least not until later though I don’t bother to check when the place is actually open. Later, at Sea Ranch, I take a chance and turn east off the highway toward the Twofish Baking Company where I buy a large cookie for the road and a loaf of freshly baked wheat bread for lunches over the next few days. I open the car window to the scents of green, of decay, of air fresher than what the Valley has fed us for so many months. In the grocery store in Gualala, I pick up more comestibles: fixings to go on the bread; bananas; a six pack of India Pale Ale from the Anderson Valley Brewing Company. I am drinking a bottle of that Pale Ale now.
Finally at the house, I toss my duffle bag to the floor, enjoy some very good bread, and watch part of my favorite movie, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Have to love westerns, especially when the story is about old men who are not only butting up against a changing society, but who are recognizing their mortality. The line I notice most today is, “There’s an age in a man’s life when he don’t want to spend time figuring what comes next.”
As I eat the sandwich and watch the movie, I am pleasantly surprised to realize I made the 4-hour drive without having to consume even one 800mg Ibuprofen. (And this is good, for I have been hording my last 4 remaining tablets for weeks now.) While I can probably attribute this to a different automobile for this trip, I would like to think that the 3 massages I have had over the last 2 months have played a part. Julie, a woman with small hands but incredibly precise and persistent elbows, has been working diligently on my back. My doctor assures me that such treatment will be of great benefit to me, and since I have yet to find a reason to mistrust him, I will continue to follow his recommendation. The first massage was, to say the least, not an avenue to relaxation. I have not been naked in the presence of that many women, and even covered by a sheet and a blanket I was somewhat uncomfortable. “Relax,” Julie kept saying. “I’ve never learned to relax,” I told her. I think that was when she first forced her elbow into my arthritic shoulder blade just to show me who was in charge.
After sitting through most of Pat Garrett, I get back into the car and drive to Schooner Gulch for a short hike. But finding access to the beach forbidden and a park worker nearby to enforce the ban, I drive farther north to Moat Creek where I spend some good time on the bluffs above the Pacific Ocean, and during the walk I find a tree of ripe, green apples, one of which I pick and eat. I also spend a half hour at water level where I gather some shells and a couple of large rocks for the garden at home. The tide seems to be coming in, and I know a mild storm is working its way inland, so I keep a green eye on the water. Finding what I gather to be some sort of mollusk, I prod the thing with a stick, push on it with my fingers, and forget the water long enough to be caught stupid as the ocean—a mini rogue wave—pushes over my shoes and up my shins. The water is cold, and the mollusk is swept back into the small lagoon in front of me.
But, getting wet like this is good, because I know that for at least a few minutes I am able to forget everything I had hoped to put aside for a couple of days. I find a log to sit on as my pants dry, as I roll a purplish seashell I will take home to put into a bowl of collected shells and pebbles I have gathered since I first began coming here. The bowl has traditionally sat on the patio table, but one day recently it was knocked to the ground, and I have yet to gather the pieces together. My son’s puppy seems to like this arrangement, for occasionally she will carry a shell into the house and leave it for someone to find. Sitting on the log, I remember again that it is my father’s birthday, that his ashes were scattered into this same ocean; I wish him a happy birthday and return to the car, then head back to the house and this bottle of India Pale Ale. From the assortment of books I have brought with me, I find Stephen Dunn’s Different Hours and turn to this poem:
Part 2: Lurking in Somewhere Else
Over-fed and under-slept, I get back on the road early enough and head more north than I already am, steering the car through a light mist until I stop in Mendocino where the mist has turned to rain. In my bright-yellow rain coat and my Akubra kangaroo-felt hat, I commence to stroll through town in search of something different. For 90 minutes I step wetly into the shops and galleries, the Vibram soles of my shoes squeaking on wooden floors. In the bookstore I am intrigued by the good selection, but I remember the stack of bought and borrowed books at the side of my bed at home and decide to spend no more money. Because my government will never have an interest in bailing me out of whatever financial crisis I encounter, I also figure it best to embrace monk-like frugality for a few days just to be careful.
In a small café I stop for hot tea and a cookie, and I sit to let myself dry out a bit. (Spending time drying out can become a habit.) Perhaps because this is Mendocino, there are good vibes here, the ’60-ish kind you may have heard of: wonderful odors, organic drinks and food, organic people who seem peaceful and happy. The more time I spend in places like this, the more aware I am of a common restlessness people my age often have in our familiar cubicle environment. I cannot speak for those people, but there is a good chance that I am ready to surrender cubicles and money for… for what? Something different to do, perhaps—like looking for something different. Starting next July, I will begin earning 5 weeks of vacation per year. That seems like a lot, certainly, but that I have 8 weeks on the books now and have not taken an extended vacation this year makes the accumulation of additional time off rather pointless. While in the navy many years ago, I took 30 days of leave—flew home from Japan. For a good part of a week my high school friend Gary and I drove around Southern California, visiting Huntington Beach and Disneyland. I’d never done drugs in high school, but for nearly that entire month Gary and I and others I’d known in high school consumed no small amount of marijuana. It was a very stupid thing to do on many levels, not the least of which was the random drug tests the navy liked to spring on us. I was one urine sample away from the brig. Still, a month like that was a good thing, and I have come to envy those people who frequently enjoy such a luxury—the Puritan idea that we exist to work is, frankly, stupid.
Sipping my tea in the café, I watch a young couple step in out of the rain. At the counter they ask the same tall, bald man who helped me about the various pastries and breads displayed, and he joyfully provides details. The couple orders 2 cappuccinos and as many pastries, and they both seem happy. They sit near the window, leaning into each other as young people will do when they are in love. He touches her leg, and she brushes pastry from the side of his mouth. They finish before my tea is gone; I watch them leave, and he pulls a hotel key out of his coat pocket. They look good together: comfortable, relaxed, unhurried. When they are gone I don my hat, slip my arms into the raincoat, and step into the rain, heading toward my car. The sky and ocean match shades of gray, and the drive to my own lodging is just long enough. Then, inside my friend’s house again, I leaf through Ted Kooser’s Delights and Shadows, coming to this.
Part 3: Home—Home Again
After several days of mist and rain, hiking, sitting, reading, writing and grading, I am home again in the land of TV and Internet and dogs and conversation. The respite was good. I spent several hours walking through one rain shower or another, and my shoes are still damp though damp in a good way. The climate I enjoyed for those days made me want to return to Oregon again, and if I can somehow manipulate someone into offering me a free room for a night or two, perhaps I will head there in the next month or so.
Of course, there is the 3-game sweep the Dodgers managed over the Chicago Cubs to come home to, yet another predictable ending to a fine season of hope and promise. I was fortunate, even glad, to not have witnessed an embarrassing sweep, but I cannot say I am not surprised. The Cubs are certainly not the only team to have let their fans down over the years (100 for the Cubs, actually), but, geez--it's like courting a woman for a lifetime but never getting beyond second base (sorry--weak writing, poor metaphor...). I am especially sad for my 95-year-old grandmother, who more than likely cannot wait another century for the Cubs to win a World Series.
The dogs are marginally pleased to see me. Most of my students have not submitted the papers they promised to get to me several days ago. Tomorrow is another workday, and already I am plotting ways to escape.
It’s good to get away even when you can’t do it. Or, when the people who employ you suggest without saying as much that you should postpone your 4-day vacation because who’s going to get the documentation done if you leave? The project has been a mess since its inception, but somehow a dozen pages of paper are crucial.
All right, all right—forget the lazy second-person references. I need to start taking ownership for these types of things. I could have said “so long” and delegated the task to someone else, but overall I want to be loved and who loves a boss who delegates things so he can go on vacation? So, because the person letting me stay in his house on the north coast is generous (yeah, he’s out of town, too, but what does that matter?), I’m able to reschedule the trip to start on what would have been my father’s 75th birthday. It is a good day to start something.
Entering the pre-dawn, frenetic commute, though I am not a commuter today, I head north then west then northwest then north, leaving behind the office (though 90 minutes later I will call my boss to tell her something I should’ve told her yesterday), my family, and a potential visit to a friend who says he could use some free analysis of his psyche. I know what he needs, I think, but I also know I’m not in the right state of mind to provide anything related to anyone else’s mental state considering that my own is fragile enough these days. I promise myself to get back to him, though, as the car radio sucks in my new Zoe Keating CD the same way the road sucks me in.
And the farther I get from the office, the phone call to my boss, the classes I’m teaching, and the puppy that eats my shoes, the more relaxed I become. Stopping at a wonderful bakery in Freestone, I am disappointed to find that there is no bread today, or at least not until later though I don’t bother to check when the place is actually open. Later, at Sea Ranch, I take a chance and turn east off the highway toward the Twofish Baking Company where I buy a large cookie for the road and a loaf of freshly baked wheat bread for lunches over the next few days. I open the car window to the scents of green, of decay, of air fresher than what the Valley has fed us for so many months. In the grocery store in Gualala, I pick up more comestibles: fixings to go on the bread; bananas; a six pack of India Pale Ale from the Anderson Valley Brewing Company. I am drinking a bottle of that Pale Ale now.
Finally at the house, I toss my duffle bag to the floor, enjoy some very good bread, and watch part of my favorite movie, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Have to love westerns, especially when the story is about old men who are not only butting up against a changing society, but who are recognizing their mortality. The line I notice most today is, “There’s an age in a man’s life when he don’t want to spend time figuring what comes next.”
As I eat the sandwich and watch the movie, I am pleasantly surprised to realize I made the 4-hour drive without having to consume even one 800mg Ibuprofen. (And this is good, for I have been hording my last 4 remaining tablets for weeks now.) While I can probably attribute this to a different automobile for this trip, I would like to think that the 3 massages I have had over the last 2 months have played a part. Julie, a woman with small hands but incredibly precise and persistent elbows, has been working diligently on my back. My doctor assures me that such treatment will be of great benefit to me, and since I have yet to find a reason to mistrust him, I will continue to follow his recommendation. The first massage was, to say the least, not an avenue to relaxation. I have not been naked in the presence of that many women, and even covered by a sheet and a blanket I was somewhat uncomfortable. “Relax,” Julie kept saying. “I’ve never learned to relax,” I told her. I think that was when she first forced her elbow into my arthritic shoulder blade just to show me who was in charge.
After sitting through most of Pat Garrett, I get back into the car and drive to Schooner Gulch for a short hike. But finding access to the beach forbidden and a park worker nearby to enforce the ban, I drive farther north to Moat Creek where I spend some good time on the bluffs above the Pacific Ocean, and during the walk I find a tree of ripe, green apples, one of which I pick and eat. I also spend a half hour at water level where I gather some shells and a couple of large rocks for the garden at home. The tide seems to be coming in, and I know a mild storm is working its way inland, so I keep a green eye on the water. Finding what I gather to be some sort of mollusk, I prod the thing with a stick, push on it with my fingers, and forget the water long enough to be caught stupid as the ocean—a mini rogue wave—pushes over my shoes and up my shins. The water is cold, and the mollusk is swept back into the small lagoon in front of me.
But, getting wet like this is good, because I know that for at least a few minutes I am able to forget everything I had hoped to put aside for a couple of days. I find a log to sit on as my pants dry, as I roll a purplish seashell I will take home to put into a bowl of collected shells and pebbles I have gathered since I first began coming here. The bowl has traditionally sat on the patio table, but one day recently it was knocked to the ground, and I have yet to gather the pieces together. My son’s puppy seems to like this arrangement, for occasionally she will carry a shell into the house and leave it for someone to find. Sitting on the log, I remember again that it is my father’s birthday, that his ashes were scattered into this same ocean; I wish him a happy birthday and return to the car, then head back to the house and this bottle of India Pale Ale. From the assortment of books I have brought with me, I find Stephen Dunn’s Different Hours and turn to this poem:
Before the Sky Darkens
Sunsets, incipient storms, the tableaus
of melancholy—maybe these are
the Saturday night-events
to take your best girl to. At least then
there might be moments of vanishing beauty
before the sky darkens,
and the expectations of happiness
would hardly exist
and therefore might be possible.
More and more you learn to live
with the unacceptable.
You sense the ever-hidden God
retreating even farther,
terrified or embarrassed.
You might as well be a clown,
big silly clothes, no evidence of desire.
That’s how you feel, say, on a Tuesday.
Then out of the daily wreckage
comes an invitation
with your name on it. Or more likely,
that best girl of yours offers you,
once again, a local kindness.
You open your windows to good air
blowing in from who knows where,
which you gulp and deeply inhale
as if you have a death sentence. You have.
All your life, it seems, you’ve been appealing it.
Night sweats and useless stratagems. Reprieves.
Part 2: Lurking in Somewhere Else
Over-fed and under-slept, I get back on the road early enough and head more north than I already am, steering the car through a light mist until I stop in Mendocino where the mist has turned to rain. In my bright-yellow rain coat and my Akubra kangaroo-felt hat, I commence to stroll through town in search of something different. For 90 minutes I step wetly into the shops and galleries, the Vibram soles of my shoes squeaking on wooden floors. In the bookstore I am intrigued by the good selection, but I remember the stack of bought and borrowed books at the side of my bed at home and decide to spend no more money. Because my government will never have an interest in bailing me out of whatever financial crisis I encounter, I also figure it best to embrace monk-like frugality for a few days just to be careful.
In a small café I stop for hot tea and a cookie, and I sit to let myself dry out a bit. (Spending time drying out can become a habit.) Perhaps because this is Mendocino, there are good vibes here, the ’60-ish kind you may have heard of: wonderful odors, organic drinks and food, organic people who seem peaceful and happy. The more time I spend in places like this, the more aware I am of a common restlessness people my age often have in our familiar cubicle environment. I cannot speak for those people, but there is a good chance that I am ready to surrender cubicles and money for… for what? Something different to do, perhaps—like looking for something different. Starting next July, I will begin earning 5 weeks of vacation per year. That seems like a lot, certainly, but that I have 8 weeks on the books now and have not taken an extended vacation this year makes the accumulation of additional time off rather pointless. While in the navy many years ago, I took 30 days of leave—flew home from Japan. For a good part of a week my high school friend Gary and I drove around Southern California, visiting Huntington Beach and Disneyland. I’d never done drugs in high school, but for nearly that entire month Gary and I and others I’d known in high school consumed no small amount of marijuana. It was a very stupid thing to do on many levels, not the least of which was the random drug tests the navy liked to spring on us. I was one urine sample away from the brig. Still, a month like that was a good thing, and I have come to envy those people who frequently enjoy such a luxury—the Puritan idea that we exist to work is, frankly, stupid.
Sipping my tea in the café, I watch a young couple step in out of the rain. At the counter they ask the same tall, bald man who helped me about the various pastries and breads displayed, and he joyfully provides details. The couple orders 2 cappuccinos and as many pastries, and they both seem happy. They sit near the window, leaning into each other as young people will do when they are in love. He touches her leg, and she brushes pastry from the side of his mouth. They finish before my tea is gone; I watch them leave, and he pulls a hotel key out of his coat pocket. They look good together: comfortable, relaxed, unhurried. When they are gone I don my hat, slip my arms into the raincoat, and step into the rain, heading toward my car. The sky and ocean match shades of gray, and the drive to my own lodging is just long enough. Then, inside my friend’s house again, I leaf through Ted Kooser’s Delights and Shadows, coming to this.
Walking on Tiptoe
Long ago we quit lifting our heels
like the others—horse, dog, and tiger—
though we thrill to their speed
as they flee. Even the mouse
bearing the great weight of a nugget
of dog food is enviably graceful.
There is little spring to our walk,
we are so burdened with responsibilities,
all of the disciplinary actions
that have fallen to use, the punishments,
the killings, and all with our feet
bound stiff in the skins of the conquered.
But sometimes, in the early hours,
we can feel what it must have been like
to be one of them, up on our toes,
stealing past doors where others are sleeping,
and suddenly able to see in the dark.
Part 3: Home—Home Again
After several days of mist and rain, hiking, sitting, reading, writing and grading, I am home again in the land of TV and Internet and dogs and conversation. The respite was good. I spent several hours walking through one rain shower or another, and my shoes are still damp though damp in a good way. The climate I enjoyed for those days made me want to return to Oregon again, and if I can somehow manipulate someone into offering me a free room for a night or two, perhaps I will head there in the next month or so.
Of course, there is the 3-game sweep the Dodgers managed over the Chicago Cubs to come home to, yet another predictable ending to a fine season of hope and promise. I was fortunate, even glad, to not have witnessed an embarrassing sweep, but I cannot say I am not surprised. The Cubs are certainly not the only team to have let their fans down over the years (100 for the Cubs, actually), but, geez--it's like courting a woman for a lifetime but never getting beyond second base (sorry--weak writing, poor metaphor...). I am especially sad for my 95-year-old grandmother, who more than likely cannot wait another century for the Cubs to win a World Series.
The dogs are marginally pleased to see me. Most of my students have not submitted the papers they promised to get to me several days ago. Tomorrow is another workday, and already I am plotting ways to escape.
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