Afterthoughts

Though I did not read especially well, I was comforted by fine food and company beforehand, and then accompanied by a good reader throughout. A couple of the poems I made it through were roughly unscathed, while others were simply roughed up. Still, welcomed by good, friendly people and surrounded by various and interesting books, I muddled and mumbled my way through 18 minutes of poetry. It was good practice, and should I do something similar again, I will perhaps feel less uncomfortable.

For those who showed up to listen and might drop by here to read, my thanks; for those who invited, fed, and joined me, my appreciation; for those who applauded, my amazement.

The Words Come In, the Words Go Out

In just a few days I'll be sharing the stage with Shawn, an accomplished poet and up-and-coming Dancing Wu Li Master, for a night of poetry. This will be my second time on such a stage, and I can't honestly say that I will be comfortable. I don't socialize well (genetic, I'm sure), and being the object of attention even for 15 minutes is not something I look forward to. Or, for you sticklers, is not something to which I look forward.

But, things are as they are....

So, I've been spending some time going through my meager collection of poems and have found that, really, I have written one, maybe 2 poems in the last 5 years. No, really--from words to phrases to themes, not much has changed over the years. Overall, the themes seem to be growing old, family, and gardening, with a bit of insomnia thrown in; the main landscapes seem to be my backyard and the ocean, though the mountains do make a couple of appearances. My favorite of the lot is "Going Crazy," which was written many years ago and which is the only poem for which I've actually earned money--enough to pay for my final semester of graduate school. I do not think, though, that it will make the playlist this time, for it is not an especially happy poem, and now seems a bit dated. "First Poem for my Father," one, for several reasons, I find difficult to read all these years later, will also be left at home, though I think I'll regret this choice. I did share it the last time I read, and I sweated through the entire thing.

I am still not sure which poems will make the playlist, but I'll have a better idea tomorrow after Shawn steers me one way or another with some of them. Here's a rather insignificant one that was, literally, inspired by a Krispy Kreme doughnut. This might be the first one I read, just to start with something short.

Summary

Could you in seven lines summarize your life?
Not the given, crusted ends, but the soft
and creamy center that was a brush of long
grass against your young legs, or drifting alone
to Manila, or the first time a woman
said she loved you, and you believed it?
What could you tell us?

Of course it might be pulled from the starting lineup at the last minute....

Joel, Finally

Last weekend included an annual winter camping trip to Yosemite with Friend 1 and Friend 2 (Friend 3's car broke down before he got far from home), though this year involved little snow in Camp 4. One highlight of the trip include a coyote that stopped just yards from our tents the first night and howled as loudly as I've heard a coyote howl. One of its friends, somewhere distant, answered, then both went silent and we heard nothing more of them for the rest of the stay. A second highlight was the annual beer-tasting that involved several different kinds of brew before dinner. I have come to like this tradition.

And one hike took us to Columbia Rock, a nice overlook part way up the trail to Yosemite Falls. We saw this, Half Dome in the distance:


That same day included a 2-hour cross country ski at Badger Pass--hiking and skiing the same day.

On the long drive home, as I sit in the truck and left the driving to someone else, I remembered back a few years when Friend 1 and Friend 2 took me to Southern California for a backpacking trip that would take us over Bishop Pass, a pass that is just inches below Mt. Everest and where oxygen is a rare element.

The hike over the pass was long and difficult--my pack and I were both too heavy for such a thing. Friend 1 was always far ahead (and above) me as I tried my best to keep up; Friend 2 was hot on my heels, probably just to make sure I did not reverse direction and head back downhill. At some point I was hiking alone, which was fine, and when I reached the pass (see the picture at the top of the page), my companions were sitting on some rocks, resting and eating a snack. Friend 1 pointed out how pounds of salt seemed to have solidified on my shirt. This is something that has caused him no small amount of glee in the years since, and I am glad to have made someone so happy for so long.

The next day, still full of wimpfullness and fatigue, I opted to stay behind for a night while Friend 1 and Friend 2 dropped themselves into a canyon many, many, many thousands of feet below where I would be sleeping. "Have fun," I thought, "leave me here to die."

The morning they left, I was comfortable beside a small stream, reading a book after returning from a short hike to a nearby lake. As I read, a man younger than I strolled into camp--with big, down slippers on his feet. I have slippers like these, and they are very, very warm in winter. This, I learned was Joel, and he had come here to backpack with some of his friends, all of whom had left because he was too tired to walk on and had blisters the size of New Hampshire on his heels. He said that had not made clear to him how difficult the hike would be, and I sensed a bit of sadness. I told him I empathized with both the fatigue and the blisters. On one trip to the Hoover Wilderness many years ago, I got my feet wet in a creek even before we reached the trailhead. And, rather than stop and put on dry socks, I let my heavy, leather Vasque Sundowners wear literal bloody divets in my heels. I spent 5 days hiking with those damned sore spots, and when I eventually got home, I told my wife that I would never go backpacking again.

But, Joel... We spent quite awhile talking, and he told me how he was once in good shape and could do these trips with no problem. He did not seem especially peeved that his friends had either dragged him along or had deserted him, and soon he ambled out of my camp and disappeared.

And then appeared again the day Friends 1 and 2 and I ascended the opposite slope of the pass on our way out of the wilderness. We encountered Joel standing in the shade of a small tree, where he had stopped to rest. His friends were already at the top of the pass and were communicating with him via hand-held radio. I gave him the last of my Tang, which he appreciated because he had no water, and my friends and I talked with him awhile to make sure he was okay. I believe we even offered to help carry his pack so that he could climb the pass. But, as we got ready to move on, he got a call from a companion saying that a horse packer had offered to ride down the trail and retrieve the poor guy. There was probably a financial cost for this, but I'm sure Joel would gladly have paid. We left him there, crossed over the pass, and soon thereafter found a suitable place to spend the night.

Over the years I have thought of Joel, of how he felt during out encounters. I have 2 images of him in memory: walking around with those big down slippers, and standing in the shade of that tree while drinking my Tang. I have always hoped that he made it out of there okay, and that he didn't feel as though he had burdened his friends.

I learned some things on that trip: how to eliminate weight from my pack before leaving home, and how to wear lightweight shoes. I don't know if Joel had any regrets, but I do know that I never have. It ended up being a great trip--and I'd do it again given the chance.

Losing Las Vegas

Las Vegas is SOMETHING ELSE. Big casinos and hotels. Sidewalks full of people who, from the looks of things and like me, are from SOMEWHERE ELSE.

Our plane touched down just a bit over an hour after rising up, and 30 minutes later we were situated in the MGM. We'd arrived there by shuttle bus, the driver of which I irked as we asked how much the fare would be. "You give me six dollars each, I'll get the tokens from the machine over there." In all innocence I asked if I could get the tokens for free--I thought he wanted six dollars for himself to buy the tokens. He accused me of calling him a liar. Worse, he accused me of being from New York.

"You from New York?" he in fact asked.

"No," I said. "I just didn't know what you meant."

"He's from New York and thinks I'm lying to him," he said to SOMEONE ELSE, someone who told me how the whole token-thing worked. "You're from New York, aren't you," he continued.

"I'm not," I said.

"Where are you from?"

"SOMEPLACE ELSE," I said as my wife handed him the $12 and he took our one piece of luggage. "I'm not from New York."

When we got off the shuttle at the hotel, he asked if we had any bags--I was glad to see that he'd forgotten us.

So, Vegas is big. I've been to Reno, which is not so big and where the hotels-casino combinations do not take up many, many city blocks. I've been to South Lake Tahoe, which is beautiful and refined and touristy. I've lost money in all these places, though these days I'm too frugal to lose too much.

The streets are filled with people--young, mostly, with enough inebriation to last a lot of people a long while. And lots of Marines, it seems: you spend enough time in the Navy, you learn to spot Marines. Enough said. The casinos are full of young, middle, and old, with me being in that final group. The weather is wonderful--warm, sunny days, cool nights. Disneyland for grown-ups--thematic casinos that, really, are illusions that cover their central casino cores: you get into New York and Paris and Disneyland, and you find are identical beeps and whistles. There is a new part of town and an old part, and the old part seems more genuine, if older and more impregnated with cigarette smoke that has gestated for decades.

We spend much of our time exploring the standard Strip highlights, not venturing onto the sidestreets that a friend warned me were not the best places to be. But I don't know: there is enough salacious material ("Girls direct to you" boasts one mobile billboard) on the Strip that I can only imagine what lies to the sides. We visit a mall for some quick shopping and a cold beverage, and we encounter a woman selling shoes who lost her Florida home to one hurricane or another and is glad to be someplace warm, someplace where there is no threat of natural disasters, in a state where there are view of those "social programs" that bothered her and her husband. I want to tell her that, I believe, earthquakes are always a possibility. She will soon be old enough to retire, and I also want to ask her if she will collect Social Security, which some people might consider a "social program." Her eybrows are drawn onto her face, whoever drew them was no artist--except perhaps in a Picasso sense.

As we walk around town, I remember Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which I have not read in decades, as well as the movie Leaving Las Vegas, a fantastic but damned depressing flick.

Departing on a Saturday night, I think of the poem "Flying Over Sonny Liston," which was written by the poet Gary Short, someone I knew a long time ago but who has gone on to wonderful things. Perhaps not coincidentally, just 3 days after I leave Las Vegas, Short appears for a poetry reading at the college where I teach. He makes reading poems as easy as it seems he writes them, and I enjoy listening to him. At the reading I run into Shawn, another fine poet and someone with whom I am scheduled to read in just a few weeks. "No need to be apprehensive, you'll be among friends," one of the hosts told me when I announced my nervousness. I think, though, that a firing squad might be friendly too.

We are glad to be home, and we talk about how we might do things differently now that we have seem certain things. I would like, next time, to extend the trip and venture beyond the city, perhaps visit Hoover Dam, perhaps explore the desert that makes up so much of Nevada.