Dispatch: Portland, Oregon

On a year-end journey north, I find the air a bit colder than I'd expected. Arrived at PDX yesterday morning, took the light rail train into the city, dropped my bag off at the hotel, then wandered around the city for nearly six hours before I could check into my room. Time well spent, of course--urban hiking on par with Chicago and, almost, London. Oddly enough, I think I know my way around London more than I do Portland, which I've visited more times. Or, maybe not.

Oh: the "cold" thing. I own everything I need for such weather, and most of it is still at home. Maybe it's a sign that I have too much stuff, that when preparing my mental packing list for the trip I simply didn't dig deeply enough. That lightweight down coat would've fit the bill yesterday as the the wind found its way through my heavy sweater and two underwear shirts of different weights. The layering system works well as long as there's something to keep the wind out.

I know I've said it more than once in this long-running and long-winded blog, but I woke up to a light snow after my first night at a terrible B&B in London. I'd spent hours the day before walking from Victoria Station, across Hyde Park, and then into the Paddington area in search of that B&B. It was one of the best days of my life now that I think about it, but I remember being sleep deprived, frustrated, hungry, and even somewhat regretful about going there in the first place. But the snow that morning? I was more prepared for it than I am for a little wind and cold only a 90-minute plane ride from home.

***

Today is the last day of the year, one that saw a wonderful trip to Ireland (of which I've written nothing about), no backpacking, and very little writing. These last four months have been especially void of anything other than working during the day, teaching at night, and grading papers over the weekend. Writing creatively seems like something I did a long time ago, and all of those characters and conversations in my head haven't had a way out. Bully for them that they stick around, patient and hopeful.

Next year, things will be different on a variety of fronts. Teaching only one course at night will be a nice change: four hours a week in the classroom rather than eight, 30 students to work with rather than 60. Even the daytime job might see some changes as new avenues are explored and new opportunities embraced.

What Kills You Today Might Not Be What Kills You Tomorrow

Several years ago I found a new doctor, someone recommended by a a couple of former co-workers. I'd returned the favor and recommended a massage therapist, who was originally recommended to me by my sister. My sister no longer visits the massage therapist, and my co-worker no longer visits the doctor. The massage therapists has some heavy duty personal stuff going on now, so she isn't working much. I don't know if I'll see her again for a long time. 

But all of that is history. I want to talk about my doctor who, for the most part, isn't too bad. He seems to care. When we first met, I told him all I know about my family's medical history, and he took lots of notes, which he still has because his office hasn't gone digital so everything about me is in a folder that grows large each year. I told him that I was worried that one day I'd wake up and have what eventually killed my mother, but he said not to worry because odds are that what killed my father and grandfather would probably be what killed me. They spent less time dying than my mother did, an approach that has good on one hand and not so good on the other.

But back to the doctor. Not long ago I got to enjoy a somewhat lengthy diagnostic procedure that led to the discovery of one thing but no evidence of another, previously suspected thing. Not long after that during a follow-up visit with my doctor, I told him of the procedure's results (different doctor), and he became suddenly concerned. "Did your mother have this or this?" he asked. I told him that I have no way of knowing, that I don't come from a family in which people share such things but also don't think my mother had what he wanted to know if she had. "Well, there's some evidence of a link between what your diagnoses is and what your mother did have, what she died of." So, there's that. "I thought you said that I don't have to worry about that, that I'll probably die the way my dad did," I said.

He didn't seem interested in that statement. Instead, he pulled out a form and asked me to fill it out, to gather as much medical history of my family that I can. "What about such-and-such tests to see if I'm likely to have what my dad had," I ask. "Those tests might miss something," he said. "They're not 100% accurate."  Okay, well, I knew that; it's the nature of nearly all such tests. But, apparently, there's no test to check if I have (or will have) what killed Mom.

I know the guy is trying to be thorough an honest, even proactive. I appreciate that. As I said, he seems to care. Now, though, he's got me at least a little concerned about things maybe I shouldn't worry about. As of yet, I've not completed the form he gave me, and in fact I found it on the workbench in my garage just the other day. He also points out on every visit that I am, to pull no punches, too fat--as though I need him to tell me that. When I see him again next spring, I'm sure he'll have a few things to discuss. Maybe there'll be something new to worry about then, something else that might kill me.

SWA from SMF to PDX

I had just taken a break from grading papers--an in-flight ritual, it seems--when she begins talking. And smiling. She is a pleasant woman, a bit heavy, glasses, reading a book titled Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes. I'd noticed the book's title, I imagine, about the same time she'd noticed me with my papers. I'm not a fan of self-help books, though I suppose I haven't read enough of them. But if anyone needs help, I'm the guy, I think.

"I didn't want to disturb you," Kimberly says. "I waited until it looked like you were taking a break." I assure her it's no problem, that I need to be disturbed when I'm grading papers. "Are you a teacher?" I tell her I am, at least part-time. "I'm Kimberly," she says as she reaches her thick hand across the empty middle seat. I tell her my name. "Nice to meet you," she says. "I always loved school, but I didn't start college until late in life. I tell her that I think it's wonderful that she started at all. "I participate in this health-thing at work," she says. "I get an email every morning that gives me a goal for the day. Today's goal was to introduce myself to someone I do not know." I smile. "I guess I'm that someone!" We talk some more about where she works, what she does. I don't remember now if I told her what I do, where I work. Maybe she thinks I'm a full-time teacher. "Oh," she says. "I've already forgotten your name." I laugh, and I tell her my name again. "I should remember that," she says. "That was my husband's name."

Uh-oh.

The flight is short, but I learn a lot from her. She tells me she loves college, and she has 5 associate degrees. She has two daughters. One daughter went to college, graduated, and got a job in the travel industry; she has traveled all over the world. Kimberly and her daughter go on cruises together because they can get such great deals. Her other daughter has some type of unspecified (to me) learning disability but is a wonderful photographer. Kimberly has two dogs. She met the man would be her husband online. "He knew he was dying when we met," Kimberly says. "I didn't care. It gave him a certain presence." 

Kimberly is on her way to Eugene, Oregon, to spend a few days with some of her husband's friends. "I still feel so comfortable with them," she says, and she starts to tear up. "How long has it been since he died?" I ask. She says that it has been a couple of years. "You miss him," I say, because I am an expert at nothing if not the obvious. "Yeah," she says, "I do." And she says they used to go on grand hikes together until he could no longer walk. She mentions a couple more times that she is really looking forward to seeing her husband's friends. I'm reminded of on a flight home from England, the woman next to me told me how her daughter had died just a year earlier. She said she still didn't know how to respond when people asked her how many children she has. I wrote about that experience somewhere in this blog. I liked writing it. There was a cat and a snake in that story if I remember correctly.

Kimberly says that when her dead husband died, she and all of their friends wrote messages on the man's skin, just as people might sign a plaster cast that hold someone's bones in place. "The hospice nurse said she'd never seen anything like that."

Kimberly looks out the window, and I put the students' papers in a folder. The plan will be landing soon, and I want to be ready. As we leave the plane, I tell Kimberly that I hope she has a wonderful time, that I hope she thinks about her husband the entire time. She says she will, and she says she is glad to have spoken with me.

Then, I'm out of the plane and walking through PDX, wondering if the extra weight I feel is weight that Kimberly didn't need.

The Change

I stopped being able to write decent poetry a long time ago. Something happened, I guess. Perhaps I did not feed the Muse, did not make it known that I was available. Some people lose other things in the same way: love, opportunities, careers. I've lost some of those too. But the ability to write decent poetry hurts the most.

But, that's the time of day and the glass of wine talking. The poem here is almost decent, I think--simple in language and theme, a bit too similar of things I've written before. But it's nice to have written something, isn't it? Anyway, this one floated around my brain for several weeks before, once again, a writer-friend gave me the little push I needed to put it down somewhere. "Change" works on a couple of levels here, and it's the idea that I started with. In fact, the last line is how the whole poem began. The idea of having a sister in the poem appeared early on, too, as did Coltrane.
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The Change

During our summer walks my sister and I learned

to whisper the names of landmarks so that when

the day came we could find our own way home.

Our father, always several paces ahead of us, knew

each alleyway, knew who was on the other side of

each closed apartment  door and each opened window.

We learned the names, too: Johnson, Kominski, at least

three Smiths. During one summer’s evening humidity

the old man stopped, so we stopped. He tilted his head

upwind toward something new. “He’s trying to play Coltrane,”

our father said. “Listen.” So we listened: not the Top 40 we

spun in the basement after school while the humidifier worked,

but to indefinable rhythms we could not yet catch. “He needs

a new reed,” our father said. “But he’s getting it. Hear that? 

Hear how he held that note for almost long enough?”

My sister and I shifted our stance, ready to move on as he

tapped  his foot just enough so that a passerby might notice.  

The sun was nearly gone, and its light revealed the hidden

grayness deep in our father’s hair. He looked down at us,  

gauged that light against our bedtime. “Another minute,”  

he said. “A few more  measures. Just give me those and we’ll

all go home.” He turned his good ear back toward  the window

and the failing reed. “Get ready,” he said. “Listen for the change.”

The People We Bury

Perhaps you have seen someone who is dead, someone who lies contained and peaceful and is there for the viewing. And perhaps you have been in a place, say a small hospital room, where you have watched somebody die. Not seen them being simply dead, but watching for 12 or so hours as morphine dosed high enough to remedy nearly anything drips over the course of a night and into early morning, long enough for the heart and lungs to finally surrender.  I have seen only a few dead people, and, until very recently, had not actually been in that room when someone went from dying to dead, someone I have known for a very long time. And now, yet another person in my family could be dead before tomorrow or before autumn. As his daughter says, "It's up to him now."
***
Somewhere in this blog I wrote about Jeff, I think, a childhood friend who died several years ago. We were, in fact, great friends, though he was much more prone to trouble than I was as a boy, something he never grew out of. He was shot at least once that I know of, and he spent time in many jails. He was a good person, I think, and I've always thought that if I hadn't moved to California when I was in eighth grade, I could have kept Jeff on a more straight and forward path. I often think of him, and I miss him.

A couple of weeks ago I read that Jeff's father, Maury, had died at the age of 92. Not a bad age. I hadn't not seen Maury in many years, not since one or another visit to my small hometown in Illinois, a place I often return to in one way or another. I once dragged my wife and sons to see him during a family vacation, and he was a wonderful host and seemed quite pleased to see us. Maury and my father worked together for many years until my father was transferred to California, which is how I ended up here. I remember things about Maury: that he had been a pilot in WW2, that he made wine in the basement, that he was a Catholic. I also remember a Little League game in which, at 8 years old, I was playing shortstop. The batter hit a nice ground ball to me, and stood right where I was and  watched it roll by me. I did not move. Moments later my coaches yelled and hollered, and they pulled me from the game. Sitting alone on the bench, I cried. And I'm not sure of why, buy Maury was soon sitting next to me, his arm on my shoulder as he tried to cheer me up. To this day I do not remember why he was there, why my parents were not. Perhaps Jeff and I were playing at the same time on different teams, and Maury was watching over us that night. Then again, it's quite possible that the memory is incorrect as memories often are.

The person I recently watch die was buried just a few days ago, and the small ceremony was quite nice. Maury was buried in a cemetery in my home town; I do not know where Jeff is buried. Maury's obituary mentioned those family member who had preceded him into wherever they went: a couple of brothers, a sister, a wife. Oddly, though, it did not mention Jeff, and I do not know if the omission was his intent or his daughter's, who I can only suppose wrote the thing. I hope that Jeff was not simply forgotten or brushed away.

Three Random Thoughts

The semester ended a couple of weeks ago, and now I have an extra night free each week. Of course, I also have free throughout the week since I've got no papers to grade and nothing to prepare for. Somewhat addicted to work, however, I did start a 5-week course at another school, though it's just one night a week. A co-worker asked a good question: "Why do you keep doing it?" I didn't have a good answer.

Travels are on the horizon, and this time we're be visiting someplace new to us. I'm excited. This will be my first extended vacation (2 weeks) in a very long time. I'm hopeful that I'll learn something along the way.

My guitar, try as I might, is still getting the best of me. I seem to be learning and growing more comfortable, but progress is slow. Do I want to learn theory? Should I practice scales for an hour each day? Do I simply want to play pop songs? Good questions. And, again, I don't have a good answer.

Insomnia

Pretty much the basics of being awake too much at night.



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Insomnia

Sunlight’s refraction through the cracked

kitchen window  this morning;

the water needs of rye and fescue weighed

against a possibility of drought;

that my hip now aches no matter the weather,

and sometimes my heart skips beats;

my wife’s nighttime sighs and her breath

on my bare shoulder;

my youngest son shifting in his bed

as his brother turns the front lock,

and the dog trotting down the hallway

when the door is pulled softly shut;

that my father would have been seventy-two

this year, my mother, seventy-one;

the moon's deliberate arc across our skylight

on this, the first night of autumn.

Surprise

Might have stolen a line from someone when I wrote this one many years ago.

Surprise

A trained eye can isolate

stars even during such in-between

phases, separate them from

a schooner’s mast spiked

into uncommitted dusk.

But someone should have mentioned

how dusk might linger like this,

how daylight and a diminished

horizon might refuse one another

as easily as they refuse the half-moon.

Even the ocean seems unsure: five-hundred

feet below, a slack tide barely pulses

toward the line of seaweed strands,

distressed driftwood, diminished legs of crabs.

From this bluff, from this bed of clump

grass, only that single light

on the schooner’s mast has purpose,

an unnatural beacon any eye would find

until finally even it is directed

away, perhaps into the surprise

of strong water, into what becomes

of dusk.

Lost

Yet another old one. Because, really, all of them are old.


Lost

Shadows cut imprecisely into

the riverbank.  Rain

like fingers reaches beneath

the current and pulls different

water to the surface.  Somewhere

in this river’s mud are footprints—

only hours old but a path

back to familiar topography. 

Waiting beneath conifers

that betray a cloudburst’s

passing, I try to predict an age

at which men understand how thunder

begins as silence, how foolishness

is wisdom’s sly twin.

 

Catch and Release

Knee deep in a flush of late spring snowmelt, you slide

the barbless hook out of the trout’s translucent lip then cradle

its body at a forearm’s length in water cold enough

to pull breath from your fingertips. Early season trout

are greedy, and the first time we fished together

you worked a gullet-snag for ten minutes, all the while

cursing the fish’s lack of discipline. But this fish, its flesh

cleanly pierced, earns whispers of praise—

coos of love you speak into a new year of catch

and release. 

Pennies

Another old one.

 

Pennies

Of the many things I had to explain was lying

motionless, pennies balanced on my closed eyes. 

My mother voiced annoyance as my father stroked

his chin and asked about this fascination with death.

His shirt smelled of butane—a working man’s cachet.

I said I was fascinated with nothing but thought

we should rehearse being still and learn the weight

of those coins, that if I died before he did I wanted

to have practiced everything.  His lips opened and closed. 

My mother gasped and left the room.  I inhaled

butane as my father stared into me, his fear so strong

that Death itself would have paused mid-grasp.

This is an old one--written in graduate school and submitted to the "Room of One's Own" poetry contents. There's more to the story, of course, but we'll just keep that a little secret.

Going Crazy

1.

I leave to escape fragments

of previous conversations

I cannot swear to ever having.

It is the warm gin that affects me,

I tell myself, or too much poetry

or aftershocks from a single

mescaline overdose. Nothing more.

At the water’s edge I strip

and float into the cold,

fogged-over Pacific, wondering

if a man could drift to the

Cape of Good Hope with nothing

but skin and survive.

2.

Once I looked up from the Equator

and wondered why the sun seemed

no different, why I could not feel

a shift in polar influence.

But I can tell you water dripped

from a faucet, though it spins

with time when it reaches the sink,

vanishes just the same.

3.

What are the visible signs

of going crazy? I have asked

the round-faced postman,

who listens, and, once,

the milkman, who does not.

Tell me, what will I lose

first: my gait? bowel-control?

the simple ability to hold my hand

steady, like this? I think of my

three children, sweat beaded

on their cheeks, watching

my firm grasp loosen digit by

digit until they slip away and fade

into the common American blizzard

of apologies for drunk fathers.

  

4.

I know a man can stay afloat

a lifetime through only occasional,

fluid sweeps of one arm, forcing

the head back and trying

to remember to breathe. So little

is required: it is instinct;

it is years of lessons and learning

to find a way up through clear

water to sunlight. Yet,

I drift in the moonless

tide. This is fine, I say,

and dream of the breathless

life beneath the surface rising

with open mouths to consume

me, to drink from even

the first star.

When Things Close In

I am not especially claustrophobic, though if I were to try spelunking I might find otherwise. Being in cramped elevators or train cars does not bother me, nor does spending hours in an airplane. On my ship in the navy, by bed was a thin mattress laid out in an area only slightly larger than what I imagine a coffin must be, though perhaps a little wider and taller. The bottom of the bed above me was less than an arm's reach away. I learned to "sleep small," I think, and even now in a queen-sized bed I don't wander far from my assigned place. My backpacking barely accommodates my length and girth, but it is a fine place to spend a night or two. A couple of years ago I lay in that tent during a loud and wonderful thunderstorm in the mountains of southern Yosemite, and I was quite warm and cozy.

In a less literal sense, however, my feeling of claustrophobia runs deep. I have known this for a very long time, but in the last few weeks I have come to know it better. My work life is, for the most part, devoid of stress, something I sincerely appreciate as I grow older. Many years ago, in a job that I truly hated, things were otherwise. The woman who was my boss was also the only person I can say that I truly hated. I have disliked people, but never hated. It is a waste of time and energy to hate people, isn't it? But, even as my current work life does not keep me awake at night or cause me much anxiety, it is still somewhat confining. Nobody, however, is to blame for that confinement. The situation is just what it is, and nothing more. Were I more energetic and more career-driven, I could probably shake my life up with great effect. I have also quite efficiently and systematically subdued any creative bent I might have once had.

The classroom I teach in two nights a week is stuffy and hot, truly confining in a physical sense. The class runs for two hours each night, and when I walk out the door to come home, I am exhausted. This probably means I am doing too much of the work, but that's a different story. One night not long ago I walked out of the classroom and out of the building after class, and the cold, fresh air on my skin and in my lungs was something I wanted to never go away. I felt as though I'd crawled out of my sleeping bag and into a morning breeze high in the mountains. Every night since, I have looked forward to those few minutes between the building and my car.

Yesterday I drove to the mountains and spent nearly three hours cross-country skiing. It was my first trip in about two years, and for at least an hour my skis and my feet were not working well together. Every stride seemed unnatural and uncomfortable for quite some time. Then, things changed: I was no longer thinking about what I was doing, I found myself relaxed, and I simply skied. And when the snow started, I stopped in a large, open meadow and relished the cold air.

It was good to be outside.

Nicki

For the last year or so I have dedicated many hours to learning how to play a couple of guitars: an electric Fender Stratocaster, and an acoustic Martin D-15. Each is a very nice instrument, though neither was expensive. And neither, when all is said and done, sounds especially good when I try to play.

In a college course on playwriting, we often discussed what makes a play "good." The answer is certainly subjective. One day we also discussed the question of what happens when writers finally realize that they are not especially good at their craft? At what point, exactly, should they give up and find a corporate job?

It happens. Or, maybe it should happen. I don't know.

In a more recent college course at a local junior college, a course in which we got to play our guitars and even learn some things, I met a woman who caught the short end of many sticks physically. Her teeth were bad, almost deformed somehow; she was large without trying to be. She had assorted ailments that required medication, and she once told me she suffered from some kind of learning difficulties that qualified her for disability. In the time I knew her, she broke one ankle and wrenched a knee. On several nights after class I helped her carry her assorted bags--she always had at least one bag plus a backpack--and guitars across campus as she limped to the light-rail station. She didn't have a car. She told me many things: problems with people she lived with, problems with her family, how she had to use a credit card to pay for her mother's funeral because nobody else would pay and was still trying to pay things off.  I often wonder why people--often people I barely know--share such things with me.

This woman...wait: her name is Nicki. Let's call her that. Nicki was majoring in music, and she knew the chords and the theory and the techniques quite well. She would try to help me figure things out, if I asked, which I thought was nice. She had plans of getting her B.A. in music, and then teaching. She loved jazz, and she knew the jazz chords. To get into the music program at the university she wanted to attend, she had to audition. The week before her audition, I wished her luck. Our class was at night, and her audition was during the same day. As we sat in the hallway before class started, waiting for the instructor to unlock the door, Nicki was on the phone. She didn't seem happy. When she hung up, I asked her how her days had gone. And, because I'd asked, she told me that she'd blown the audition, that she'd been told, basically, that maybe she could try again in a year or so. She was 35 at the time.

What do you say to someone whose singular dream is liquified in the span of a 20-minute audition? Nicki had worked and worked to get to that spot, and I didn't have anything especially wise to tell her. I considered her large body, the poor teeth, the unseen other ailments, and everything that must have burdened her as much as the bags and guitars she schlepped on buses and light-rail trains as she worked her way from her apartment and to 2 junior colleges. I wanted to tell her that things would work out, but that kind of advice has no value so close to a time when things did not work out.

Tonight, trying to work the Martin through what I'm sure is an easy 36-bar song, I thought of Nicki, wondered what she's up to. And I wonder if writers who never sell anything and musicians who never pass auditions every really give up. I know that when I write--when I really sit down and write something born from imagination and not something corporate--I am quite happy.  The characters' voices are always there, and we can have grand conversations. And, to a lesser extent, when I sit down with the Fender or the Martin, the IV chord is always there, just where it is supposed to be no matter the baggage I've carried throughout the day.