Diving into the Wreck

With nothing new or original to say, I am taking the coward's way out and stealing from someone else--in this case, someone famous and, as of a couple days ago, dead: the poet Adrienne Rich.

I first came across Rich's poems as a just-out-of-the-navy college student who felt more comfortable reading books than speaking to people. She isn't my favorite female poet (Lucille Clifton and Marge Piercy rank above her), but her poem "Diving into the Wreck" did become a favorite: It's a great example of a poem that not only describes, but also leads.

Here's a passage:

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.

Read the entire poem.

Thanks, Dave

In a part of town that allowed for such a thing, I dropped into first one music store and then another, letting my fingers and hands fondle and caress the smooth wood of new guitars. In the second store, which I have come to consider a playground of sorts, I once again strummed and picked at musical instruments far beyond my ability as a musician.

I am proud, however, that the weekly guitar lessons and the hours of practicing have left the fingertips on my left hand calloused. Now, if I could just get my stiff and perhaps arthritic left wrist flexible again, I would be even more proud.

The "good" acoustic guitars at his store are housed, like good wine, in a climate-controlled room. In that room I have become enamored of the figure and feel of a particular Martin guitar. On this day as I touched this instrument and that, a man obviously (but not much) younger than myself came into the room carrying his own guitar. Dressed nicely and with a bandanna wrapped around his head, and with a hat (not a cap) fitted over both head and bandanna, he sat on one of the chairs and strummed his guitar. Just as I started out the door, he spoke. Of course he did.

"Do you play?" he asked.

"I'm learning," I said.

"Here. Why don't you take my four-thousand-dollar guitar that I got in Ireland, and play for me so I can hear what it sounds like compared to some of these other guitars."

Because to refuse would have been rude, I sat across from him, held his guitar, and played some stuff--because "stuff" is all I know how to play. I still have yet to memorize an entire song, which is my goal for this year. Oh, that guitar was nice! We talked about its construction--how the neck was built just one-sixteenth of an inch wider than most guitars. In fact, to prove as much, he pulled a tape measure out of his pocket and measured the neck on one of the Martins.

"Play the low strings hard," he said, so I did. He picked up a few guitars and kind of plucked at them, but he didn't really seem interested in comparing the sound of his guitar to anything at all.

I told him that I am too old to learn how to play well, and he said that, in his experience, he rarely sees adults over the age of 35 actually stick with the guitar after picking it up. "I use guitars in the mental health field," he said. And he told me that he uses music to help his patients get up on the stage and play music, recite poetry, act.

"It's music therapy," I said, and he said that, yes, that's exactly what it is.

"I've been in the mental health field for a long time," he said. "First as a patient. For a long time. The first thing I do with my students is ask them two things: If they have their own guitar, and are they willing to practice. What's your name?"

I told him my name, and he told me his: Dave. We shook hands.

So, once again in my life, I wondered why someone was sharing something like this with me. If I were to, say, go into or come out of therapy (and don't think I don't need it), the last thing I would do is admit it to a complete stranger. Maybe he's the stronger man because of it.

"Do you come here a lot?" I asked.

"Often," he said. "I just broke up with my girlfriend, the fifth time in a year, and there's a lot of shit happening right now."

"This is your therapy, then," I said.

"It definitely is! I want to get back with her, but she's got a lot of baggage."

We talked a bit more about guitars: the different sounds each brand has, which wood is used, the quality of tone between old strings and new. Then, it was time for me to leave. We shook hands again; we said goodbye. I wandered around the rest of the store for awhile before heading out into the rain and the drive home. And later, holding my entry level guitar in my lap, I missed Dave's guitar. I even missed Dave, and I thought to how he'd mentioned his "students"--and whether I should've asked him if he gives lessons. I should've asked.

Those Hands

You compare your soft, untested hands to your father's as you
reach into the closet and retrieve the narrow box that holds
a warehouseman's simple economy: pay stubs and tax returns
as products of swollen knuckles, of callouses that pulled lint
from denim pockets.

Each year you would see him sitting at the maplewood table,
a puzzle of receipts and forms arranged and ordered,
the typed solemnity of their officiousness waiting for summations
carried over from bits of scrap paper.

Those hands: hungry for work as they pressed ink into the very
paper you now touch as you weigh the profit and loss
of letting the box fall into the same bin as this week's empty milk
cartons and newsprint.