Equinox

Ninety-six years ago today, on Easter Sunday, my grandmother decided to be born. It must have been a good day for many people, and I have enjoyed her company for many decades now. Our family got together to celebrate with her yesterday, and though she is somewhat frail, she remains lucid and funny. Good for her. From her I have learned tolerance and patience, though perhaps not as well as she expected. If I live to be 96, maybe I will better understand both tolerance and patience.

Sixteen years and 3 days ago, on the first day of spring, my mother decided she did not want to live anymore, so she left. It was a rough few months back then--because of this and other things. My mother liked parties, and she would have enjoyed seeing her own mother turn 96. She would have had cake. She was also only 7 years older than I am now, which is a scary fact.

Twenty-six years and 4 days ago, my oldest son decided to be born. It was a wonderful day. We had a party for him this year, too, which was nice. I look at him and wonder if there is anything I have taught him--certainly not patience or tolerance, for I don't have enough of either to spare. He is much smarter than I in many ways, and I think he probably knows that.

Probably for No Good Reason

In just over a week I'll be on my way to London, England. Crossing the Pond. Yup.

So now you know. And you know something else? I'm not sure why I'm going--probably for no good reason. This will be my second trip to England (the first journey is was chronicled a couple years ago: here, e.g.). The first trip was fun, a true adventure to places I've never been. This time I'll be visiting someplace I have been, but I'm throwing in a thematic variation: visiting Brussels, too, for a couple of days. That should be fun, but I wish I knew some French or Dutch or Flemish. I'm hopeful that the people I encounter there will forgive my lack of linguistic abilities. I'll get to ride the Eurostar for a couple of hours, something that will take me beneath the English Channel.

I'll also not only be spending my birthday alone this year, I'll spend it in 2 countries: waking up in England and going to sleep in Belgium. I've not been away from my family on my birthday for several decades, so I figure I'll award myself an extra beer--Belgian--just for living this long and to pretend I'm with someone. I was confused and disoriented for several hours after arriving in England the last time I was there, and I predict I'll be doubly so when I emerge from the train station in Brussels and have to find my way to my hotel.

I do feel guilty about traveling alone yet again, and I'm hopeful that the parallel schedules my wife and I live by will one day go perpendicular and intersect. Then, we'll find someplace new--Italy, maybe.

Random Tracks

...where we search for something to write about but can only revisit old material.

I have an odd obsession with good pens and nice notebooks. I once spent $65 for a handmade wood pen in Newport, Rhode Island. It's heavy, fits nicely in the cradle between my right thumb and forefinger, and glides across whatever paper it is pressed against.

I generally carry some type of notebook in my car or on my person. My favorite notebooks, as I've alluded to before, are Moleskine. My friend Tom gave me my first one one in 2002, and the first entry is from March of that year, from Complete Sea Kayak Touring (Jonathan Hanson):

With other humans near, you draw a circle around yourself and your companions--a small human universe that you must deal with on many social levels.... Alone, there are no circles. The world around you is your only universe, and you must either embrace it or live in terror of it.

I re-read this entry as I was looking through various notebooks to see which would accompany to Europe at the end of this month, and digging through the top drawer of my dresser, I found several old notebooks, out of which I've collected various entries. They are here in no particular order but roughly arranged by notebook and some dates. Some locations are indicated by brackets, as are some notes. Some notebooks have been used in more than one year.

Dates Unknown

• After a few hours on the information highway, I felt like the human equivalent of roadkill
• Illinois Tourist Information Center (312-744-2400?): DISCONNECTED
• Hertz: $40 per day + tax
• Chicago-Northwestern trains stop at Jefferson Park, which is within walking distance of the O'Hare/Congress line to O'Hare.
• U.S. Scientists say that most moon rocks are igneous.

1998

• I had to stop. But it wasn't the five hours of highway, and it wasn't the desert heat that made me exit. For lack of a better word, it was homesickness: a literal gut-felt pull that had me crossing the Salt Flats, the Rockies, and finally the Great Plains until I crossed the Mississippi before finally stopping.
• The hypnotic effects of driving do not manifest themselves immediately. For this trip, I was nearly into Nevada.
  

2000

• [Reno] Access to the river is actually pretty easy, especially from the park.
• There are now geese in the park, no ducks.
• Java Jungle is on the north side of the river, across from the park.
• [Carson City] Could see the cemetery from the Bucket of Blood Saloon.
• Filson canvas bags.

2002 (the first batch all apparently from Chicago/Illinois trips)

• Walked up Michigan Ave., prowled around N. Rush St., Visited Northwestern Campus. Overcast and drizzly, but less wind than previous days--staying away from the water helps.
• Lots of black outfits in the city now.
• The music in O'Neil's: Velvet Underground, double live CD; blue w/Banannas?
• Lunch at Gino's on Rush: slow service, great pizza--deep dish cheese and garlic.
• Cold, rainy weather all but the first day. Had to dress like a backpacker: polypro, flannel, Gore-Tex. Hiking shoes were a good choice, both for walking long distances on concrete and for keeping the feet dry. As in Portland, no one stops just because of the weather. They just adjust to it.
• Don't do Thrifty rentals!
• In town with Kominski for a few days. Congress hotel--old, needs work, good enough to sleep in.
• El rides to Henry's house.
• A trip to Harvard [Illinois]--such a dismal place!
  
• @ the old apartment building: tried to remember the way we watched an ambulance respond to an accident. I seem to remember the ambulance itself taking the corner on 2 wheels though it doesn't look like there is enough room @ the intersection for any visible to turn so quickly and sharply. I remember a woman crying as she was being tended to; she was sitting against a tree, which is still there.
• Wookstock [Illinois]: What was Ward's is now Woodstock Mall.
• There's a line on the court house: 373 feet above sea level.

2002 (more)

• From a church marquee: "Should God bless the USA?"
• In Elko, the train stops across from Paradise Lanes bowling alley & arcade.
• [Viewed from Amtrak train window]: 40 telephone poles per mile. Pole 10 has one reflective strip, pole 20 has two strips, pole 30 has three. Pole 1/40: mile marker, four strips.
• A Piggly Wiggly in Helper, Utah.
• Carbon County, radio KOAl.
• Drank wine out of paper cups at the Day's Inn--Palmer House Hilton has wine glasses in the room.
• Streets with presidents' names run east-west.
• On the train to Chicago, riding along expressway: lighted sign over the road reads "congestion continues thru Sacramento."
• Van Gogh's The Poet's Garden; George Seaurat A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.
  

2004

• Hotel 71 [Chicago] w/Kominski. Much better than Congress.
• Red Line to Division and Milwaukie: Polish food.
• BofA ATM near Hotel 71: near Post Office & Red Lobster.
• Thoreau: Nature/Walking; Heinrich: The Trees in the Forest.
  

2005

• Accident in parking lot--one woman cries @ the damage to her new truck, the one who hit her cried only after the police report was done and the other woman drove away. Cop leaves w/the comment, "You have a good afternoon."
• "Buckle Bunny" slang for a femail rodeo groupie.
• "Technical animal fat not intended for human food."
  

2006

• [Boundary Waters, northern Minnesota] Paddled the Moose River to Big Moose Lake. Lots of lily pads along the narrow river. Stayed the night in Ely in the Paddle Inn.
• A couple of short paddles and one very long portage today. Yesterday were helped by some "old" men who carried our canoes; they were dressed in jeans and rubber boots, and probably laughed at our style of dress.
• Much paddling and a few short portages. Slowly learning how to control the canoe. The weather has been very good thus far, which helps make the experience more pleasant.
• I find myself imaging Grandpa up here, sitting on a rock and staring out over the water. I am also gradually forgetting about the "outside" world, since right now this world is good enough.
• [Chicago] Friday night after a week of Illinois--ends with a wonderful rain storm through which I decided to walk. Wet feet, wet blujeans--but not a moment of regret. Got to watch a bit of lightning while up on N. Michigan Ave, and I stood beneath a canvas awning and listened to the thunder roll between the buildings.
• "At least you didn't lose your boyfriend to your dad."

Date Unknown

• For "The Somnombalist": I once found myself in the Amtrak station in Helper, Utah, the August sunrise bright and hot, the Wasatch Mountains an immune wall to the east. My luggage, a simple small suitcase, was suspended from my hand, the handle cutting into the soft flesh of my palm."
  

The Rest of the Story

Many decades ago when I was a church-and-Sunday-school goer, my father would drop my sisters and me off in front of the First Presbyterian Church, and then he would return an hour or so later to retrieve his flock. Looking back, I think it was a way for my parents to get the brood out of the house and have some time alone, but that's beside the point: we dressed up and sat in our seats and sang songs just as we were told to.

In addition to wishing I were outside when I wasn't, I remember the ride home in one or another Ford station wagons, listening to the radio from the backseat, listening to Paul Harvey and his bits and pieces of news. I used to like how he read his stories, and his tag-line of "And now you know the rest of the story." This was AM radio, mind you, the band of frequencies that held WGN for the Chicago Cubs, and WCFL and WLS for music; and this was many years before I discovered FM radio and its anything-but-Top 40 format of repetition.

Radio would play a small part in my life in college when I talked my way into a news-writing internship at a station in Sacramento, where I learned to write quickly and succinctly though not necessarily well. Talk radio has certainly come a long way since Paul Harvey--it seems to be much more coarse and loud, less thoughtful, but I am more prone to tune into NPR anyway regardless that there is no small amount of pontification there. Even this habit, though, has weakened along with the worldwide economy--why listen every day to bad news, is what I ask. When I was in college and working many nights at a pizza parlor, I would drive home at night and listen to some guy named Rush Limbaugh, a highly successful self-promoted type of guy who has, unfortunately, come to believe that he is a sort of republican messiah. I once worked in a place where Limbaugh's show was played through the warehouse loudspeakers every day, and that was a test of patience if nothing else. The man does bloviate quite well, and there is no denying his disciples of ditto-heads.

I have not listened to Paul Harvey for many years, but I am neverthless saddened to read that he died--read it in a newspaper, if you remember what that is. Oddly enough, I wonder if he now has the true "rest of the story."

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.

All Those Faces

In Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunryu Suzuki wrote that "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few." As with the start of every new semester, my mind tends toward the beginner, the person who is optimistic and energetic, the teacher who hopes to transmit at least a bit of helpful knowledge to those who seek it. I see similar minds in many of my students, as well--a willingness to attend class, to complete assignments. More than a few of these students, certainly, are there because the course is required by one entity or another, and that is fine. I have, though, violated many possible rules by telling students that if they are there because their parents told them they had to be, they should go home. Stupid, yes.

I sinned early this semester by allowing too many people into my course, so many that a few must sit on the floor in a room that is cramped and stuffy. I am not sure why I made the choice I did--and it certainly was a choice--but the first day of class I looked out over the crowd of students and felt a certain sense of compassion (something that people who know me might say is an anomaly): so many funding cuts, so few classes open or available, so many students needing "just this class" to move on to somewhere else.

A price will be paid later in the semester, of course. By me, mostly: all those essays and exams to grade. During those nights I an staring at a stack of 4-page papers, I will think, "That beginner's mind needs help."

Paperwork

Too far behind in nearly everything but being behind, I called in busy to my monthly meeting of writers yesterday because my syllabus for one college's new semester and my preparations for workshop 3 of a 5-workshop course at another college are, respectively, not where they should be. This is the drudgery of teaching, even worse than grading papers. Trying to imagine ahead 16 weeks for a full-semester course is painful, and I am hopeful that I can fake it for a week until I get my feet under me.

Dumped into the mix of things is anticipation for a 2-day trip to Las Vegas at the end of the month, a 3-day camping trip in Yosemite the week after Vegas, then in March/April a 9-day trip to England on top of which is tacked a 2-day stay in Chicago as a stopover point to get my feet again used to United States soil. To make everything worse, I'm trying to figure out how to squeeze in yet another trek to Portland, a summer vacation to Colorado, and perhaps a trip to San Diego to show either my wife or one son or another the USS Midway, a ship on which I lived for over 2 years and is now a museum. I'd also like to persuade a friend that I could use the solitude of his cabin for a few days, but when the heck would I fit that in?

No wonder I don't get any writing done or why I don't fix things around the house. I keep telling myself that I've got to quit a job or 2 because I'd much rather have time than money at this point in my life. But not especially confident that the economy will keep its grubby claws off my main employment, I figure I need to keep the secondary and tertiary jobs for a little while longer.

Finding lodging in London and Chicago is a pressing concern given that I leave 10 weeks from today. I believe I have narrowed my preferences to just a couple of establishments, something that will be very nice: staying in 7 different places the last time I was visited Great Britain created too many packings and unpackings of baggage. More pressing, though, are the half-completed syllabus for one school, the class notes for the other school.

Oh--and I won't mention my thoughts about a career change....

Stopping by Snowy Woods

An afternoon and evening in San Francisco with Kominski included Green Apple Books and City Lights Books, and I came away with books of poems by Lyn Lifshin (Before It's Light) and Stephen Dunn (New And Selected Poems 1974-1994 and What Goes On, Selected and New Poems 1995-2009), a pint of beer at Vesuvio, dinner at Cafe Coppola (a glass of good Pinot Noir with Spaghetti alla Puttanesca), and a house special at Tosca. The day involved a good amount of walking, which was fine because the San Francisco weather was pretty much ideal. The streets themselves seemed rather quiet, reminding me of a similar trip shortly after 9/11 when a bar waitress told us that tourists were not touring. That same bar was quite active this night, however, and that was good. Years ago we would make these trips and drink more beer and more coffee, and we would stay until close to midnight when most places shut down. Just as I drink less of both beverages these days, I also buy fewer books seeing that my shelves are full and I've no more room in the house for additional shelves. Kominski has been through a lot of changes the last year or so, but he seems no worse for wear and appears to be as sane as he has ever been.

"What are you writing?" he asked.
"Nothing," I said.

We both figured we should leave things at that--how much shame can a man take, after all?

* * *

Early the next morning I was on the road again, this time with two companions who joined me for another day of backcountry skiing. Good company overcame poor snow and the excursion into the Sierra semi-high country turned out to be quite enjoyable, if also quite exhausting. A week earlier the snow was a powdery welcome mat, but in 8 days' time it had transformed into a crusty, unforgiving floor that seemed part linoleum, part glass. Still, we managed to work our way uphill to find how little snow there is--lots of rocks. One highlight was our discovery of mountain lion tracks in the snow. I have not seen such things before, so it was exciting for me. As I thought about things later, though, I pondered how often I have traveled through the area on either foot or skis with that kitty cat watching me. I have resolved to leave my supply of catnip at home from now on.

The journey down the hills and through the trees was a challenge given that I am not either skilled or coordinated when I put my skis on; I fell twice when I was simply standing and admiring the scenery. The only bad part was when, about 200 yards from the parking lot and car, just as I was about to speed down a sort of bunny hill, I noticed that one of my bindings had detached nearly completely from my left ski. Not a good thing, but I was glad that it had not happened a couple hours earlier, or when I was traversing a slope. If it had, I would still be walking.

Together, the 2 days paired nicely, and both served to erase some of the general malaise and cynicism I'd let built up and then written about in a couple posts. Here's one of my companions as we ate lunch:




And here's me--photographed by a brand-new iPhone.

Trickle Down: Thinking of Pogo

While I know that the bearers of bad news are simply reading the scripts before them, I stopped listening to or watching the news except for the weather which really doesn't vary much around here. I do still read the newspaper, a lifelong habit that I believe will be with me for the rest of my life.

I know the economy is bad, and I don't need anyone telling me as much several times a day. I no longer monitor my 401k or my IRA for fear that I'll have confront the truth that people of my generation or those that follow will be able to think of "retirement" only when it is teamed with "home." I picture myself joining my peers as a Wal-Mart greeter, the old stooped-over man who bares his remaining teeth in some kind of demented smile and talks about what used to be.

There are, I believe, many people responsible for the mess we're in. Ourselves, of course, for our greed and materialism, and for our ability to permit politicians to work for the benefit of corporations, and for corporations to work for the benefit of their shareholders. And when someone suggest that perhaps workers and citizens deserve some consideration, that someone is labeled as anti-freedom or socialist. People who remember Ronald Reagan--a man who was senile well before he left office--remember that he and his ilk worshiped the idea that money given to the wealthy would trickle down to the middle-class worker. Maybe there's some truth to the concept, but George Bush the Elder had it right when he used "voodoo economics" to describe Reagan's ideas about the economy. George Bush the Junior thought Reagan's ideas were the ones to emulate, and though President Clinton is a smart man his interjection between Bush 1 and Bush 2 didn't matter much.

I have one brother-in-law who has lost a job because of this economic slide, and I would not be surprised if in the very near future I join him on the unemployment roll. I've been there before and though it was not pleasant I did survive, and I figure that as long as I can make my house payment, everything will be fine. An article in today's newspaper, though, described the sometimes days-long process of simply filing for unemployment in California, the governor of which has mandated that state workers take 2 days off unpaid to help the state heal its budget sores. This will make simple acts such as registering a car with the DMV--already a tar pit of government bureaucracy--even more aggravating. Our state legislature cannot even pass a budget but has yet to volunteer to also take 2 unpaid days a month.

So many decisions are being made by people for whom we have voted, and I cannot help but think that when we look at them, we are looking at ourselves. We do not seem to hold our elected officials accountable for much unless they sit with wide stances in the bathroom of the Minneapolis airport, and in such cases they refuse to hold themselves accountable. These are people we choose to trust, and in that trust is the hope that they will use their nearly unlimited access to "experts" wisely so that their decisions are based on facts and not their beliefs or simplistic ideas.

Though I have worked hard at being optimistic about most of life, that hard work does not seem to be paying off. We have chosen to allow our "leaders" to lead us astray, and as we look at our reflections in them, we have met the enemy.

Over Here, Over There

Last week I made my first trek of the winter into the Sierra Mountains, chugging my fat butt and belly through wet, heavy snow that put as much drag on my skis as my weight did downward pressure. I had both friction and gravity working against me and the sight was not pretty. Headed toward a favorite lake, I gave up within 100 yards of my goal, wheezed a bit, then turned around trudged back to the car. I felt old and surely looked it. With a fresh few inches of powder, I tried again this morning and found that the skis glided with little effort on my part. When I left the car the outside temperature was 18 degrees, but with no wind the weather and the snow alike were perfect. I made it to the lake and had half of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, enjoyed the snow and sunshine, then wended my way back to where I'd begun, finding many wonderful diversions into meadows of unbroken snow.

By early afternoon I was seated on the rear bumper of my car and enjoying the second half of my sandwich. A couple hours later I was at my sister's house for a small going away party for my nephew, who is in the Air Force and who will soon deploy to Iraq, where another nephew has been for a couple of months. Enjoying my first beer of 2009 I sat and watched my nephew and his siblings, my sons, and several friends of the family play volleyball, and I could not help but contrast their fun with the certain realities my nephew will face as he joins others in the lie that was a search for weapons of mass destruction but transformed into ridding the world of an evil dictator and transformed again into the establishment of a democratic government, and what may or may not be part of the Global War on Terror.

As I grow older I wonder more at the ease with which some people send other people into harm's way as part of some "noble" cause or because we certainly must fight "them" there so we do not have to fight them here. I watched my nephew dig and set and spike the volleyball, and I thought back to when he was small and pudgy, when he worried about nothing more important than what to put on his hamburger. Last week when I played volleyball with him I listened to him talk, and I could hear the Air Force speaking with him just as the Navy must have spoken through me decades ago when I was just as gullible and pliable.

I could think of nothing profound to tell him as I left for home, so I told him to take care of himself, and to stay in touch with his parents. At some level, I think, he is aware of certain dangers that await him, but he betrayed neither fear nor worry. The first half of the day was good, but so frivolous compared to the second half. My brother-in-law told me that he and his son are planning things for when my nephew returns as scheduled in October, but I think both of us were wishing that he wasn't going at all.

Resolution #9

I seldom make resolutions at the start of a new year, preferring instead to attempt course corrections whenever I need them. I'm too old to remake myself, and most of my habits are such deep grooves in my brain-matter that no amount of Bondo could fill them. I have been trying to be less grumpy, but that's proving to be less easy than quitting coffee was a year ago.

There are, though, a few things I'm looking forward to or would like to accomplish this year, some that are perhaps birthed of resolutions I made in, say, October.

1. Writing at least one good poem. This isn't easy, considering that I write maybe half a dozen a year to begin with. I think I'm still on for a poetry reading next month, so I'd like to have something new by then.
   
   
2. Getting beyond the first chapter of a new novel (writing, not reading). Beginnings are always easy and fun, whether it's a love affair or a book; the real work shows up when we can't get the characters to do what we want them to do.
   
   
3. With my wife, making a semi-spontaneous trip to Las Vegas at the end of this month. Never been there.
   
   
4. Spending a couple days snow camping in Yosemite some time in the next couple of months.
   
   
5. Enjoying a journey to England in March. More days in London this time.
   
   
6. Finding others to occasionally contribute to this blog. Really. Anyone? Anyone? Ferris?
   
   
7. Adjusting to a world with no George Bush. Good God it has been a long 8 years.
   
   
8. Planning a vacation to Colorado and at least one long weekend in Portland. Ain't it great having family who will let you sleep in the spare bedroom for free?
   
   
9. Getting permission to set up writing-shop in a small house on the North Coast for several consecutive days (see #1 & #2) this spring. This one might cost me a couple of lunches.
   
   

All of these are contingent on many factors, of course: watching less television; keeping my job (i.e., funding); finding the energy for teaching (which pays for assorted excursions); finding other writers with whom to socialize (I'm pretty much a leech, especially where Shawn and Kominski are concerned) to keep the creative side alive; being nice to family and friends who have homes in places I want to visit. Well, maybe that last part is a bit selfish: I mean, there are other reasons to be nice to these people....

Bits and Bytes

Yesterday's important is today's meaningless. At work a couple days ago I found myself digging into network drives and folders in a quest to reduce the number of stored files as part of a larger corporate quest to free up storage space for new and improved important stuff. Years ago we did as much with paper files: periodically purged cabinets of 20-pound copy paper, of manila folders, of 3-ringed binders. Most of the ones and zeroes I disposed of this week were years old, artifacts of then-crucial projects meant to improve the company's bottom line as it had never been improved before. We worked hard, and we worked happily. We arrived early; we skipped lunch; we stayed late; we worked the occasional weekend not just because we were asked to, but because we had some pride in what we were doing.

I, of course, was much younger then, more enthused about giving my all to keep the company's shareholders happy. The technology enthused me, and I was glad to be working with people bent toward creativity and doing things differently. Some of these people I have known for over a decade in a couple places of employment, and some of these people still work with me. And some of these people were part of one or another layoffs and have moved on to other places. Some of these former coworkers were represented in those files I deleted from the network drives, and I found myself opening each folder, scrolling through each file, trying to recall by the files' dates just who was working on what and when. Some of these coworkers I have not seen in a long time, and a couple I still communicate with and see regularly. A couple I even conisder friends.

Remarking on the disposability of corporate souls is not new, but in today's social and economic climate the risk of being disposed of is only a single executive decision away. Where I work, we have been advised that there will be no training budget, no "non-essential" travel, and no raises next year. In their benevolence, though, our 2 top executives are taking a cut in pay, and they have told us that the company will continue to contribute to our 401k plan. I should feel lucky, I suppose, that I still have a job, for I know there are many others across the country who do not (my brother-in-law, for one). I do not fear losing my job, for I have been through the process before and I came out of it fairly well.

When all of the files were deleted, I continued with a couple of my current projects, making sure I backed them up to the drives on which I had freed so much virtual space. I felt as though it was my duty to leave traces of myself there--the folders and files so crucial to the company's business.

War of the Words

This previous Saturday morning found me seated comfortably around a table with a group of writers whom I have associated with for the last couple of years. These writers--poets, really--have more writing and reading experience than I can ever hope to acquire, and I felt humbled to be among them as each of us read and critiqued poems and poets. I was openly proud at having brought for discussion a new poem for 2 consecutive meetings though neither poem has been especially refined or long.

After our meeting I stopped at home for a couple of hours then left for yet another meeting with a writer, this rendezvousing with Kominski who took time away from his own literary endeavors to meet me almost halfway between our respective abodes. And this time I was blessed with gifts: music, movie, literature hand-crafted by Kominski himself. I offered nothing and even let him buy me a beer. We wandered past forlornly empty and abandoned independent bookstores, but found some joy in the more corporate type. Topics of discussion included children, wives, baseball, writing, reading, Chicago, mothers and fathers, dogs, girlfriends, places of employment, music.... Part of the discussion included even the notebooks we favor, which may make us seem as a couple of old men with little more to discuss but truly does not. Writers--real and faux--dwell on these things, the tools of the trade. I have come to enjoy fine pens, as well, and own 3 nicely balanced wooden ones including a beauty purchased several years ago in Newport, Rhode Island. Regular pens are adequate when nothing else is around, but for serious work a good pen goes a long way. If they made me a better writer I would be doubly blessed.

After dinner and reluctant to stand outside in a cold wind that chilled us both Kominksi headed west and I headed east. I put the new music, The Who in concert, into my car's CD player and turned onto the freeway toward a moon full but for a slice of shadow at its top. In no hurry to get home I stayed in the right-most lane so that non-Who listeners could lead the way toward Sacramento, the buildings of which were illuminated brightly.

On the seat beside me were the movie and Kominski's literature, as well as a new Rhodia notebook that now begs for ink from one of my wooden pens. As if I need more notebooks, more empty pages, since most of my writing is accomplished on one of these infernal computers. Overall, however, the day's company of writers must have left an impression of some sort, for the next morning after a good bike ride I managed to sit down and type about 700 words of a novel I have been considering. This is part of the first chapter. And if you've ever tried writing a novel, you probably know that first chapters are a piece of cake because they require so little thought, so little plot. The real work comes later.

On a Whim and a Prayer

Back from yet another short and loosely planned trip to the PNW and feeling as rested as 2.5 days away can make a person feel. The trip included things domestic (appliances), things festive (Christmas), and things social (yep--with real people), all highlights in their own way.

Of note, however, was an introduction (probably a re-introduction, really) to the McMenamins concept: transform old buildings into unique destination spots where grub and grog are readily available. On this trip my hosts to me to Edgefield, where the company, the dining, and the glass of Pinot Grigio were quite nice in the cool Oregon air. My host's friend and I exchanged war stories. My host was hostful. I watched a couple of women transform molten glass into wonderful works of art (one of these women would also gladly exchange some of that art for some of my money.) Drinks were served in the Little Red Shed. Dinner was served in the Power Station Theater & Pub.

I am already plotting my return to Edgefield, perhaps accompanied by my spouse who might enjoy a visit to the onsite spa while I hide out in Jerry's Ice House, an extremely small shack with an extremely good sound system and television through which nothing but Grateful Dead music and videos play. Though I am not a Deadhead by any means (spent too many hours listening to Paul Simon, for Chrissake), the Ice House was cozy and welcoming enough that I pictured myself with my notebook and/or laptop and some good beer, all the while trying to conjure up one Muse or another. Kominski, he of great Grateful Dead knowledge and affection, is probably more suited to the Ice House than am I, and he would be good to have along to provide insight into the Dead mystique. (If you encourage him, perhaps he'll share some of his Dead experiences.) There is, also, a short golf course if you are maschocistic or even if you simply enjoy the game.

One unexpected gift from the trip was the first paragraph of what I think could be a fun novel to write. Okay, one stinking paragraph doesn't mean much, and I have no clue what the second paragraph will be, but I had fun sitting in PDX and scribbling lines onto a piece of scrap paper I found in my pocket. Now, that second paragraph.....

What a Long, Strange Trip

With a bit over a week to go in the semester, I am ready for and looking forward to an extended break. My students, too, are ready, and I do not hold this against them. They have suffered through 240 minutes a week of my standing in front of the classroom ostensibly there to enlighten them about the secret to good writing. Fat chance. Instead I have told them that the secret to good writing is spending a lot of time practicing it--like meditating or playing shortstop.

Several--always the same ones--of these young people have tried my patience for 16 weeks. One young man, who has made no secret of his somewhat violent youth and who now trains as a boxer and a extreme fighter, last night objected to my request that he remove his headphones as he completed the course final. "It's not bothering nobody," he said, even though I told him that because this was a departmental requirement, it was also mine. He stared at me in a way that let me know he wanted to (and most assuredly could) pummel me into submission. I pictured myself rolling on the floor with my lips split open, my teeth shattered. But, like a dog, I stared back just because... why? Who knows. He ended up putting his precious iPod away, finishing the exam, and leaving without measuring his knuckles against the width of my cheekbones.

Others in the class have challenged me in similar ways, speaking aloud against required assignments, at due dates, at work they see as frivolous and meaningless. Two of these darlings come 15 minutes late (together) to most classes, often not bringing their textbooks, usually shaking their respective heads at what they are asked to do.

Many nights I have come home discouraged--with the students, with this avocation, with my sometimes obvious inability to articulate why I ask them to do something. I want to say there is rhyme to my reason, that I am hopeful they will someday need to be able to write and will do so effectively. Each night I must weigh this discouragement against the small sparks of progress I see in some of the students' writing, against those students who seem to take the classwork seriously and who are considerate of others in the classroom.

This semester there is Josh, who has written about his troublesome childhood and stints of homelessness as his mother was drunk. He has also given me some of his creative writing to read, and I have said that I will do so though at times this semester he has tested my patience with his childish remarks and behavior. There is Karen, who left an abusive, alcoholic husband and is now trying to get her daughter into rehab of some sort. There are Tiffany and Janice, who rarely speak but who check and recheck their in-class work and who use every possible minute of allotted time for in-class tests. And there is Will, who is quiet and intelligent and who talks football and soccer and baseball with me, and who is majoring in Liberal Arts with a goal of teaching elementary school. And there are others who have alluded to abuse of one kind or another, to broken families, to dreams they have for their futures.

And there are several who have already registered for the course I will teach next semester, a course I have promised will be more difficult not because of its content requirements, but because I will know what they have studied this semester.

At the start of the next semester, I hope to have forgotten my discouragements, just as I hope to have learned from my own mistakes.

Fogged

Driving south on Highway 99 last night, heading home from class, the thousands of us were moving at 65 miles an hour through a nice blanket of fog. In California, this is what we do: maintain or increase our driving speed as the conditions worsen. I stayed in the right-hand lane so the less timid could get to where they were going faster. Ninety minutes earlier one of my students had commented on how much he hates the fog, and he didn't understand why some of us actually like it. "It's easier to hide in," I said, but I suppose he's young enough that he doesn't yet need places to hide.

The local Classic Rock radio station is doing an A-Z countdown, and as I merged onto the freeway Jimi Hendrix's "Are You Experienced" began, and the song fit the environment quite well. I seldom listen to this station (how many times can we re-listen to music that's 30 or 40 years old, for crying out loud!), so I was glad to have tuned in when I did. Hemmed in by a rather tall concrete median strip (meant to discourage rubber-neckers) on one side and an even taller concrete sound-deflection wall on the other, I felt comfortably hemmed in by walls and fog. The fog seemed to reduce all things visible to bits and pieces of light: headlights and taillights; dashboard lights; exit-ramp lights. Quite enjoyable. Even the green exit signs over the freeway, with their white and occasionally yellow lettering, seemed bright.

As I drove, I remembered other times I'd been in literal fogs. Once, my wife and I drove to Phoenix (partially on Highway 99) in March, leaving town at 3 in the morning. Fifty miles after we started we hit a layer of fog that lasted until Bakersfield in Southern California. She slept most of the way, and in my little Honda Civic I drove the speed limit and tried keep the red taillights of the cars and trucks within sight. If she'd been awake, she (being the smart one) would've told me to slow down, that god knows how quickly things can happen when you can't see. Another drive was on what must have been our first Thanksgiving with our first son. Driving home through California's delta region, I could not see beyond the hood of our Datsun pick-up truck. She was awake, the son was asleep, and I kept my speed down to--what...10 miles an hour? I remember having to use the centerline on the road as a guide. A third experience involved no cars at all, just an excursion to the banks of the American River after some friends and I chewed mushrooms (my only time) and thought it would be a good idea to wander through the woods along the river. Everything that night seemed overly bright, even in the fog. I think I could have walked there forever. We returned to the party a few hours later no worse for wear, and hunkered down to listen to Led Zepplin's album Physical Graffiti, one of the finest rock albums ever. Don, one of my friends at the time, seemed especially pleased with the music, and he vowed then to buy a copy of the album.

Around 4 this morning, I climbed out of the warm bed, dressed in my running garments, and went outside to find that the fog I'd hoped for hadn't lingered. Still, the dark was enough to hide in, and "Are You Experienced" kept rolling through my head, especially the final 3 lines:

Have you ever been experienced?
Not necessarily stoned, but
beautiful.

Not sure exactly why I remembered those lines, but they seemed a good way to end a relatively pointless entry here....

Animal Tales

Several years ago during a lunchtime walk at work I came within one step of a large rattlesnake that was polite enough to rattle and hiss to let me know I was too close. The path I'd been walking was covered with instep-high wildflowers that were both nice scenery for me and nice cover for the snake. The rattle and hiss were nearly simultaneous, and before I could think about what the sound was, I knew--propelled upward by some deeply rooted genetic sense of danger that I much appreciated. A couple of men were driving by in a pickup and they stopped first to laugh at my contortions, second to see if they could find the snake that one of them wanted to take home for his small collection. Together we watched the think slither calmly into deeper grass, and I estimated it at about 3 feet long and as thick of my forearm. Then the snake was gone, the men were gone, and I went back to my cubicle where I sat down and thought, That was fun.

At work this morning we received an email letting us know that the security people had noticed a mountain lion and its cub wandering not far from where I'd seen the rattler, and we are advised to not walk or jog or ride our mountain bikes in that area. We were told that Fish and Game was notified. In all my hiking through valleys and foothills and mountains, that was my first snake-encounter, and I have yet to see a mountain lion though I concede that one may have seen me. I'd love to see one, preferably one that is not hungry and not after it has latched onto my neck. Indeed, my encounters with large creatures in the wild outdoors have been few: seen only one bear, that in Kings Canyon in Southern California as my friends and I were, perhaps ironically, returning to camp from hanging our foodbags in trees so bears would not get our victuals. One of my companions had left a loaf of french bread in his backpack, and perhaps there is more irony in that he was the most experienced of us and knew well enough that he'd messed up.

Riding my bike today along the American River, I startled a coyote off the path and watched it trot away. I slowed my bike and looked at it looking back at me before I put my head down, shifted gears, and continued on my way. This last summer I startled another coyote in the same area as it stalked a squirrel. When I got close the squirrel scampered up a tree, depriving the coyote of its immediate meal. Sometimes the coyotes along the river are considered "nuisances" and must be killed because they harass hikers or hikers' dogs. I often see large, wild turkeys on my rides, and the other day I saw a deer.

And this afternoon a little mouse got squished in our dishwasher, this after we trapped 2 yesterday and another a couple days ago. I saw 2 others today, a grown-up and a baby, so I figure our traps will be active the next few days, though maybe some of the critters will linger until after our Thanksgiving feast. I find mice harmless and less annoying than the ants that sometimes invade the house at different times of the year. If I were a coyote (and maybe a mountain lion) I would find mice perfectly fine fodder for an evening's ingestion. The dogs that wander freely throughout my house seemed mildly interested after I got them to sniff around the dishwasher. The older dog has some experience with rodents: many years ago a family of rats found shelter in our garage, and would actually carry dog food into the engine compartment of my car, where they also chewed through some things that I assume were there so the car could keep running. We also had another dog then, and the 2 of them got lucky a couple of times and took care of the rats.

I spent many summer days as a kid chasing gophers, creatures more photogenic than rats though often just as bothersome. In the schoolyard near our house, a schoolyard that then was surrounded by cornfields, my friends and I would go to the nearby creek, fill up buckets with water, and pour water into a gopher hole. My childhood dog greatly enjoyed this, and she would paw at the water and when a gopher stuck its head up for a breath of air, the dog would grab hold and shake. I'm not sure if this was cruel on our part, but I think we thought we were doing the school a service by ridding the playground of gophers. If we'd had snake (gopher snake, of course), we could have simply fed one to another.

In a different school a few years later, I was sitting in Mrs. Barrett's seventh-grade class, looking out the window when I should have been paying attention. (This continues to be a habit, and if I am in a meeting in a conference room that happens to have windows, I am lost.) The school itself was bi-level, and our class room was on the second floor from where we could look out over a wooded portion of the schoolyard. From my seat near the window I watched a raptor of some type dive into the trees, its wings back like an angry dog's ears. I had never seen anything like it, and all these years later I remember (or think I remember) that bird. The event itself would eventually work its way into an essay in graduate school, oddly enough.

And, though I cannot see exactly how, these events are somehow connected today, perhaps only as tidbits of memory that have congealed into something that must congeal.

Prodigal Sons

Three months after graduating from high school I was marching around navy boot camp in San Diego as PSA airplanes flew overhead. Two nights before heading to the recruiter's office and the van that would take me to the Oakland airport for the late flight to San Diego, my girlfriend, my then-best friend and his girlfriend, and I drank too much but nevertheless survived. I had told my parents that my girlfriend would be taking me to the recruiter's office, and when she showed up to do so I hugged my parents as we congregated in the kitchen, probably said goodbye to whichever sisters were there, then got into my girlfriend's car for the short ride to the awaiting van. We sat in the car for many minutes before I got out, and that was the first time I had a woman cry on my shoulder. Christ, that was painful, and all I could think of as I walked up the sidewalk away from the car was her sitting there crying.

Nine weeks later I was home again, my hair shorter and my posture straighter, where I would stay for 2 weeks before saying goodbye to everyone again and heading to Pensacola, Florida, for my technical school. The plane was full, but as we lifted and into the darkness, I felt more alone than I ever had. I remember writing lyrics to a Rod Stewart tune as I sat there, lyrics that I hoped someday to give to my girlfriend but never did. Then, somewhere in those 4 months in Pensacola, I found reason to believe that my girlfriend and I should break up, so I took the coward's way out and said as much in a letter. She called at some point and I stood in the phonebooth on our barracks and listened callously as she cried. I was heartless but it took me many years to know it.

After another short visit home that included a visit to a party that did not end well, I was off to Japan where I would stay for over 2 years. When my tour was over, I returned home to a minimum-wage job delivering furniture that I quit when I started college. I was glad to be home, glad to not have someone telling me what to do all the time, where to stand, when to eat, what to where--that necessary stuff that goes along with the military. I bought a car with money I'd saved, and I reaquainted myself with my neighborhood, the city, and old friends, some of whom behaved as though they were still in high school but nevertheless were good to be around. Only after graduating from college and finally getting a "real" job in San Francisco did I move away again, this time with a wife and son. Always, though, even for brief visits, I was glad to step back into my parents' house; I sometimes felt that I'd never really been gone.

All of this comes to mind because my sons are coming home for Thanksgiving, though for how long we don't know. One says things will be temporary, another will be returning to college, and yet another is noncommital. None of them has been gone either as long or as far as I was, but they have nonetheless been away on their own, each finding his own true path or at least an indication of one. I never asked my parents how they felt about my leaving, for neither was prone to self-disclosure or outward expression of emotion. That day I left them in the kitchen and walked out the door with my girlfriend, what did they think? Were they glad for me and sad for themselves? Did they know (as I have learned) that one way or another sons come home?

The Words We Write When We Can't Write Anything Else

Writing--like smoking, drinking, and wild sex--is habitual. Or, at least, it should be habitual where perhaps the other 3 should not be. Sometimes, though, you reach into the bag and wrestle with whichever you grab first. And, since I don't smoke, seldom drink, and am not exactly sure what wild sex should be, I'm left with writing...something. Though the 3 novels I've written have been written slowly, each was finished only when it was habit--maybe like flossing rather than smoking, drinking, and wild sex. Habit as in if not actually sitting my ample rear-end down in a chair and typing something, but at least thinking of something: what a character might do; how the plot might unfold; whether the setting is just right.

Distractions--the true, the invented, the imagined--are everywhere, and I am so easily distracted. Teaching as seldom as I do these days is even a distraction, and I find the characters I think about are my students, the plot is my lesson plan, and the setting is always the classroom. I wish I could add watching television to this list of distractions, but I watch only a few hours a week. I also have exercised much less than I did over the summer, but I do not seem to have gained any free time. Work, certainly, gets in the way of anything else I'd rather be doing, but it takes up only about 10 hours a day counting my commute and if I actually take a lunch break. Where do the other hours go?

Shawn, I think, is still working on a manuscript in his cabin hideaway, which is a good gig if you can get it. There are certainly dangers in isolation, but in the days I have spent at my friend's house on the North Coast, I've found that in such isolation the brain tends to work through things--the characters, the plot, the setting. In that house I have sat in a chair and stared out a window for an hour straight, something that has made me even more firmly believe the axiom that a writer sometimes does his or her best work while looking out a window. Visiting my friend Kominski's apartment several months ago, I voted to put his writing desk in front of a window not because it would be best for him and his writing, but because that's where I'd work best. I'm not sure where that desk ended up, just as I don't know if Shawn even has a writing desk in his cabin. These guys, though, can write anywhere, and I don't think either needs the same type of mental and physical setup that I do.

My view now is this: my laptop screen on my kitchen table, my hands resting on the keyboard as I type; my feet up on the chair across from me; my lifeless stereo system across the room; a bit of dark creeping in through the patio door; family photos on the bookshelf to my right; a glass of pinot grigio just to the left of my laptop. You would think that there would be stories and poems in these artifacts, and perhaps there are....

For the last week or so, I have revisited my novel This Far West and my story "The Map-Reader," revisiting the characters to see if there is any life left in either them or their lives. Ruby, one of the characters from This Far West, has remained surprisingly strong, and the more I think about this book, the more I'm convinced that the entire story should be Ruby's, that Jerry, the other main character, doesn't deserve the space he takes up. This is something I'll have to ponder. In "The Map-Reader," I've discovered a couple of flaws that weaken the entire work, so I'm going to see if I can fix things there. In fact, for This Far West, I'd like to find an impartial reader who would say, if it is true, "This is a piece of crap." That would be fine, for then I could go about fixing the damned thing. Or, maybe, put it to rest once and for all. I'd also like to revisit my latest novel, The Golfer's Wife, because it was a lot of fun to write and because I'd like to reacquaint myself with a couple of charcters who are loosely based on actual people (though I would deny such a thing were I taken to court).

All I need to do is eliminate a few more distractions.

History Lessons

The day started well, got bad quickly, turned interesting, and then got better.

Though I would rather have slept, I nonethless dragged my soft belly and large behind out of bed, loaded my bike into my car, and headed out for a ride in the cool, overcast morning. Five miles into the ride, however, first the bike's front wheel and then the rear wheel hit something on the trail, and within minutes I feel that the back tire is going flat. Not wanting to change to my spare tube, I pump up the tire as best as I can, then pedal quickly hoping to get to back to my car. I have tried this same tactic before, and it has never worked well. Same luck today. So, I drag my bike to the side of the trail and start to change the tire, when an older gentleman on an old bike stops. "Flat tire?" he asks. "Yep," I say. "You ride off the trail, or something?" I tell him that, no, I had not, that I had just hit something. As I work, he tells me stories of seeing and hearing coyotes along the trail, how they sometimes catch pet cats from their yards and drag them into the bushes. Once, he watched a coyote eat half a cat in just seconds, then bury the other half. He tells me of the various fires along the trail this previous summer, how most of them are started by the homeless who camp along the river and who seem to enjoy fire. He tells me of what he

Something, though, doesn't work right: I either pinch the new tube, or there is something sharp inside the tire itself, for when I try to pump it up, little happens. Wonderful. I put the wheel back in place anyway, figure that I'll keep adding air whenever I need to rather than walk to the car, and the man then seems to lose interest in me and rides away, saying something about "Checking the job site." So, every 100 yards or so I stop pedaling, put air into the tube, and repeat.

This, of course, means that I must venture into the retail world to purchase some new tubes, and I tell my wife that as long as I am out, I will visit my grandmother, which is something I had planned to do tomorrow.

Always at least outwardly pleased to have someone drop in on her in the modest mobile home she has lived in since my grandfather died and she moved from Illinois to California, she did not mind that I interrupted her progress on the day's crossword puzzle (though she says she can no longer do the NYT puzzle). For several hours I sat in a soft chair across from her and, for the most part, let her talk. At 95 she looks quite well, with the only obvious weakness being her lower back, something a doctor tried to fix several years ago but who apparently only made things worse. She doesn't ask about my back and I don't bring it up, and I lie outright when she asks about what looks like a scratch on the side of my face.

I am amazed at her lucidity, her still-strong ability to analyze the world as it is today and compare it to the various worlds she has experienced in her near-century of existence. Most of her monologues seemed to be stream-of-consciousness data dumps, and she ranged from the state of politics to the Chicago Cubs to our shared familial experiences to what happened before I arrived in her life, then what she thought when I did arrive: "I mostly remember you because you were my first grandson," she said. "And you were so darned cute!" (Gotta love Grandma!) We talked about my mother, my aunts, my grandfather, my cousins and their families; we discussed the Depression and the economic situation today; we ventured into politics. We talked about gardening--how my tomatoes did okay this year, and how she grew tomatoes in a Victory Garden. She and my grandfather spent years fishing in Ontario, Canada, and they once took me with them, so we talked about fishing and the wonderful taste of fresh walleye. My grandfather was a man's man, something you might understand if you are a man: no bullshit, smart, strong, gifted with his hands, intuitive about other people and their assorted motivations--fill in the blanks with some of your own ideas and you'll know what I mean. He was strictly blue collar (as was my father and his father), and perhaps that is why I often feel out of place in a white-collar occupation: there is an earthy, even coarse honesty in blue-collared worlds. A guy doesn't like you, you know about it. (I suggest many of Phil Levine's poetry for ideas about work and the people who do it.)

At a couple points during the visit I was distracted by hunger, impatient because of errands to accomplish. But, the longer I sat and the longer we talked, both hunger and impatience faded, and I was quite glad to be there soaking in what I could. Finally, when I saw how uncomfortable she was getting in her chair, I said I had to leave, and I did. Driving home, I took the long way home through parts of the neighborhood where I grew up and where my grandparents would park their Volkswagon bus on the side of our house and spend time with us after my grandfather retired. I kept thinking about one question my grandmother asked during our visit: "Do you have any good friends?" I tell her I have a few what I consider to be good friends, though I cannot speak for them. "That's good," she says. And on the drive home, I pass by the neighborhood where Kominski spent some time (merely miles from where I lived, we would learn a decade later when we finally met). And at one point I considered stopping by where one of my best friends from high school grew up, for I have heard that he still lives there with his mother and sister. We played football together, worked together after my stint in the navy, and even lived in the same house for a couple of months before I learned that after sharing a room with 40 men on a ship I did not want to live with anyone for awhile. I was also at least partially to blame for his getting kicked off the high school baseball team, and some day I will have to own up to that and offer him my apologies.

But I do not stop at his house, though I think I should have. Perhaps the problem with having new friends is that it is often hard to speak to old ones. Instead, I continue driving home, where I tell my family of the visit and feel that I have just enjoyed 3 of the most wonderful hours a person could have on what has been a very nice day.

Harvests

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.

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:

the Tonka truck;
Ernie Banks’ baseball card;
a model of the USS Missouri.

Thirty years later I know other reasons
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.

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...

• 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.
  

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:

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.

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.