Where I Was

A year ago today I landed at London's Heathrow airport, rode the train to Earl's Court Station, and checked into the Earl's Court Easy Hotel where I stayed for 3 days before venturing to Amsterdam. Every day, it seems, I enjoy thoughts of returning to return to England, a place that after a trio of visits I've grown quite fond of. Looking through my Moleskine, I read now that I enjoyed a couple of beers at a pub called the Prince of Teck, and I remember leaving a bit lightheaded as I made my way back to my hotel. As I leaf through the Moleskine, I see names of other pubs: Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in London (where, apparently, Dickens liked to drink); The World's End (Camden Town); The Temple Bar Irish Pub (Amsterdam); The Four Candles Free House (London); The Essex Serpent (London, near Covent Garden).

The thing about wanderlust, I think, is that it's never truly assuaged. A recent 6-day backpacking adventure didn't help much, and an upcoming 4-day trip to Chicago will probably only whet my appetite for something grand. If it isn't an illness, it certainly is a selfish thing: heading out alone and leaving others behind.

A few photos.

The Tower Bridge and the Thames from inside the Tower of London.

Within Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.

 Oxford.
 

Amsterdam.

The Daily Photo: Snow-swirl

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#13)

She was a harpist, and she wore a harpist's clothes. At least, she wore them for her "appointments," as she called them. Not "gigs" or "performances," but appointments. "I have an appointment this Friday," she might say. When it was time to go she'd put on her long black dress and the delicate pearl necklace and earrings. She was gifted, but one poor performance kept her out of Juilliard when she was still in high school. She never let me touch the harp itself. "It's all I've got, really," she once said in a way I knew she didn't mean.

-----

We doted on her and grew to enjoy her music. We even added a room so she could practice. She hardly came out of that room during high school. Frank, her father but no longer my husband, said she was the best he'd ever heard. I told him, If your kid's the only one in the neighborhood who plays, she's bound to be the best. We were happy when she got married, but we worried, too: She loves that instrument more than anything. I still go watch her when I can, but Billy, her husband, never seems to show up.

The Daily Photo: Driving at Night

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#12)

When our daughter was born, I moved my office paraphernalia from her room to the master bedroom. At night, the Moloch of a computer taunted me. When my husband and I made time for sex, if I wasn't distracted by the thought of our daughter waking up, I was distracted by the computer, by the fact that I should be sitting in front of it, writing every night. When I should've been thinking about sex, I thought about writing. Worse, when I did manage to write, I thought about sex. I finally reached a point where I did neither well.

----

She's been distracted for years, and I've always felt that only part of her was with me. "I'm a writer," she explained. "I pay attention to everything. And at some point I'll use it. I remember women's shoes and the color of their toenails, and I notice how people move during their conversations. I can't help it. Everything's fair game." Often, I know she isn't really with me--she's using whatever we're doing for a plot line or a segment of dialog. To her, everyone and everything are pretend. I'd complain, but who wants to read that in a novel?

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#11)

"What is it you want?" she asked in her best monotone. It wasn't a new question. I'd come home from work, dropped my computer bag to the floor, and gone straight to the patio. I hadn't meant to ignore her as I passed through the living room, but what I'd meant to do didn't matter. She stood in the doorway when she asked, and I didn't look back toward her when I answered. "I'm not sure," I said. "I've got nothing to do at work, and that usually means they'll be getting rid of me soon." "Then quit," she said.

----

Every few months it happens: He comes home, sits morosely on the patio, starts to complain but then stops. I can see his father in him when he's like that, how his parents danced the same way sometimes. The old man, when he came home sometimes, stopped himself whenever my mother-in-law sighed at his complaints. I think it must be a German thing, that tendency to dwell silently in those little pools of self-pity but then refuse help or advice from anyone. I was serious the other night when I told him to quit. Christ, one of us has to.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#10)

It was the first night of autumn. I was half-way home when I finally understood that my marriage had gone from failing to failed. I'd been told that things were over, but like learning about a fatal illness, I'd denied it. At a rest stop, I parked among the diesel rigs. There, I sat and sifted through the cabinets full of stored petty annoyances, frustrating habits, unintentional slights. When they were separated into piles, I tried to assign ownership, but the piles kept falling into each other, and I knew then that there would never be enough highway or darkness.

----

I'm not one for quantification. What's the point? Sometimes--and I said this often--things simply just are. I see everything as organic; everything lives and dies. Frankly, I don't blame either of us--first one stopped trying, then the other one followed suit. And, yes, there's too much blood and time between us to make this easy. When I found the car gone yesterday, I thought things were finished, especially after what I'd said. But after the phone call, I'm not sure of what will happen next. I just sit  watching TV, listening for the garage door to open.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#9)

It's all about synergy, about realigning our priorities to movements in the marketplace, about adapting as quickly as we can. Now that the teams have merged, we can reassess our respective strengths and find ways to bring them together. Leadership knows that this is a difficult time, but we have to re-focus ourselves and to align our core values--as a corporation, as a team, as individual contributors--and embrace the future. We can't afford to wait, to let the competition pass us. We want to set the trends, not follow them. The next fiscal quarter is crucial to everyone.

-----

We read the memo. Well, we don't get memos anymore; we read the communication. I'm 62. Except for Marie, the people on our team are young, in their 20s and 30s. Marie and I skipped a required meeting and went for drinks that afternoon. We compared our corporate lives, and Marie quoted Neil Diamond: "Except for the names and a few other changes, the story's the same one." We want to tell the kids that they shouldn't be afraid, that no fiscal quarter is more crucial than any other. But we know our fiscal future, so we drank a lot.

The Last Ride

You've observed the decline: diminished eyesight, worse hearing, occasional stumble. Then, in just a couple days' time, obvious decline turns to apparent demise as the back legs pretty much stop functioning so that even a stumble is out of the question. He can do little more than lie down, so you move his bed closer to the patio door where he can feel the night air. You help him to the water dish and support him so he can stand and take water in, then carry him outside and support him there so he can let that same water out. Sometimes you let him lie in the grass beneath a warm sun before bringing him back inside and holding food to his mouth.

Too soon, though, he doesn't eat, doesn't even lift his head, doesn't recognize anything but the loudest of voices. There are a few moans, you think, but no signs of pain, and you are thankful for that. Everyone decides on what to do, and you volunteer to call the animal hospital and then, surprisingly, find your voice barely confident as you ask for advice about how to handle things. The woman is helpful, even says that you can give her a credit card number over the phone so you can leave the hospital quickly. That makes you think back to when you, your sister, and your father were at the funeral home arranging for what to do with your mother, and the funeral director had your father sign a paper acknowledging that, before anything else, his fees must be settled.

Your wife carries his bed to your car, and you carry him. You and your wife compare notes, and you realize you both awoke the previous night and thought you heard him in your room, that he'd somehow gotten better and could walk again. Then, you lay him down as gently as you can and shut the door, hopeful that he will be okay in the August heatwave. The drive is short, and somewhere along the way you think of Old Yeller and The Call of the Wild and Travels with Charley; you even think of Marley and Me, though it's a bit too sappy for your taste. And you remember winter nights when you had a paper route, how after school or after football practice you would take your dog and and head into the dark and the cold to deliver papers or collect money from your customers. You'd stop in the field between your house and your route, and you'd lie in the snow and stare up at the stars or let the snow fall against your face, your dog's front paws on your chest as she, too, enjoyed the night. It has been a long time since you've thought of that.

At one point during the ride you hear him moan, so you turn the air conditioner higher to, you think, cool the car further, though there's a part of you that hopes the increased noise will cover the sound of any moaning. At the animal hospital, you park your car and open the rear hatch. He hasn't moved; he shows no recognition of anything, of you. He has, though, vomited, and you clean his face and snout.  Later you will laugh when your wife reminds you that he vomited in the car on the day he was brought home, too.

Two technicians come out to greet you, bringing with them a small stretcher not unlike the kind you were trained to use in the navy. You lift him onto the stretcher, and the technicians strap him in and take him inside. Everything afterward is quick, and you head to the lobby to write a check because you did not opt to provide a credit card number over the phone. Then, you are back in the sunshine and on your way to the gym where exercise helps you work your way back into the day.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#8)

He said, "I'm a writer." So, because I'd never met a writer, I married him. "You've done some dumb things," my mother said when I called her that night. "You said that when I got a tattoo, Mom. You and Dad made me feel like I'd committed a mortal sin. When I don't do what you and Dad did when you were young, you make me feel terrible." Steve, the man I'd married, was in the other room calling his own parents. I wondered what they were saying. "Has he published?" my mother sighed. "He's working on that," I said.

-----

My wife and I run a small wedding chapel in Las Vegas. We've seen drunks, old people, and high school kids. We don't judge them. People leave here married, but there are no guarantees. Some come back years later to renew their vows.  It's romantic. Steve and Marie were young and had to rent a witness. "Can I make a call?" Marie asked. I let her use my phone. She seemed so happy. She and Steve ran out, though, and Marie hadn't hung up the phone. On the other end I heard a man and woman yelling at each other.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#7)

She didn't know because she'd never asked. At least, not until she found me in the garage. "What are you doing, Steve?" she said. She was dressed for bed; the strap of her nightgown hung down over her left shoulder. She looked nice with her eyes sleepy like that. "Is that your dad's gun?" I looked at her. "Yes," I said. She frowned. "The same one?" We both knew the answer to that. "What are you doing with it, Steve?" I wanted to be silent, noncommittal. "Why would you, Steve?" I looked at her. "I'm not my father!" I yelled.

_____

I shut the door and ran into the bedroom and picked up the phone. I wasn't sure of who to call, though. Nothing had happened, and he doesn't have any family. I got my bathrobe and went outside so I could look through the garage window. He just sat there, his back against the car. I still had the phone. Then he got up, put the gun away, and started back into the house. I ran inside and climbed into bed. "You're wearing your robe," he said when he lay next to me. I clutched the phone and stayed silent.

Slice and Dice

Out riding my bike fairly recently, I let the gears and chain make noise, and I let my mind wander. It's funny how that wandering can go in so many directions from one gear change to another. Click-click and there's a change. This time I wandered into writing; specifically, I wandered into a novel I've been looking on for much too long (writing, not reading). 

There's a certain segment early on that has always troubled me because it takes too long getting to where it needs to go. I've tinkered with it a bit, and then the night of the ride I found the answer: cut it out like some benign tumor. So, I did: I sliced just over a one-thousand words, stitched some things back together, and sent the book into recovery. It was a good thing.

Then, over this last weekend while far from home and without external distractions, I started again, this time cutting more bits out, fixing many typos, making some things make sense. I've not had such an extended time for such stuff in a long time, and I felt fortunate. I've looked at this book many times, and I'm still amazed (and frustrated) at how many things need to get fixed. And this time, I even realized I need to add a new, minor character to take some burden off another, less-minor character. It's like an implant, and augmentation, which isn't a bad thing. 

I hope to finish this final revision sometime soon, but then I have to decide on what to do with it. The tome isn't necessarily literature, but it's as good as some of the pop fiction I've read. What the book and I need is someone to take a look at it--someone who's not a good friend or a family member; someone who'll notice the the flaws and tell me about them. But, that's not likely to happen. Rather, it'll go back under the floorboards again, its heart beating while I try to sleep.

Skipping Out and Skipping Town

With my grandmother returned to ashes and dust, and boxed up and sent home with my aunt, I escape the local geography of grief and head west, then north. There are things to do at work, things to do at home--but it can all wait. Earlier this year while in Yosemite, I wandered into the chapel there one day when nobody else was present and walked up to the pulpit, where the bible was opened to "Song of Solomon" and I read (and wrote in my notebook) this verse: "they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept." That's it, I thought as I drove--I've got a biblical reason to leave.


There's something about getting--and being--on the road that settles things down a bit. If you do it right, you stay in the right lane and let the commotion worry about getting ahead. You packed a bit of food, you put the beer in an ice chest, you loaded the thick biography of Charles Dickens into you bag, and you left home.


It has been awhile since I made this trip. Two years, actually. The drive takes longer than expected, but it ends just about the time my no-longer-medicated lower back and right shoulder start to complain loudly. "It hurts," I say to nobody, but then I think of my grandmother and know that things could be worse. When I stop at the borrowed house it's still an hour before sunset, so I move my things inside, open one of my six beers, and sit in a chair in the meadow. The air is clean here and, as my yoga instructor always reminds her students, I let myself breathe.


The next morning I awake early glad to not be driving to the office. I have worked in much worse places much farther from home, but I am happy I won't be in the staff meeting even though the topics are important for a new project. By 9:00 I have read part of my book, drunk my tea, and walked for a good 3 miles. I think of Kominski and what is basically his recent retirement, how he says that "Monday lasts a week"--the idea that, without commuting and deadlines and days full of obligations, time takes on a different tone. Have you ever felt that? I have, especially during long vacations when there are no commitments to anyone or anything. Two of my brothers-in-law, both of whom retired in the last few years, say that "every day is Saturday." I'm doubtful that I'll ever experience that, but it's a nice thought.


I choose not to drive anywhere this first day just to let my back and shoulder rest. So, I read some more, I walk some more, I watch a movie, I try once again to sketch something all the while thinking of the artists I've known to could draw and paint and design. Bereft of all artistic talent, those artists--and the singers and musicians and dancers--are the ones I've always admired. I eat when I want to, I drink a beer in the middle of the day, and I do very little else.


The second day I'm on the road again, heading farther north to Fort Bragg. I wander around a bit, I buy some beer at the local brewery, I stop in the art-supply store and, for no good reason, buy a new sketchbook and 2 new pencils. It is hopeless, I tell myself--nothing worthwhile will ever be drawn by these hands. But I've always been a sucker for good paper and good writing instruments, and I figure there are worse things I could spend money on. I also stop at the Mendocino Cookie Company and buy 2 "backpacker" cookies, both of which I enjoy. Headed south again, I stop for awhile in Mendocino, where I stop in the bookstore (but don't buy anything), and drop into the wine shop where I talk to a fairly surly man who seems less than interested in talking to me about the wine itself. I find three inexpensive bottles to take home,


Farther south, I detour toward the Point Arena Lighthouse for some coastal photography, and the wind is so strong I can barely hold the camera steady. As with other things artistic, I'm not a good photographer, either, but at least I have a chance of getting one good photograph out of hundreds. Here's the lighthouse:

Then, after driving awhile longer, I stop at the Evergreen Cemetery, which I just happen to see to the east side of the highway. Cemeteries can tell us a lot about places and people, I've always felt. This cemetery needs some work: overgrown with weeds, neglected. Still, I find probably the best grave marker I've ever seen, one that tells us about life rather than death--bicycle rim on a post. It looks like this:

If my grandmother were to be buried, I wonder what she would choose as a marker. Golf clubs and a bowling ball from her younger years, maybe, or fishing poles and tackle from her days in Michigan and Canada. 

Almost back to the house, I stop again at nearby beach for some general hiking. The wildflowers, like this one, are wonderful (not easy without a macro lens):

The wind is still strong over me and the water:

Finally back at the house, I relax again in the meadow. The wind is chilly, but being outside is nice nevertheless. I let the stars come out, and I let myself sit deep into the chair. I think of my grandmother, of course, and all that she has left me, how my cousins and I both complain and laugh about family traits we've all inherited: don't be a complainer; don't be a braggart; don't be a show-off; don't be fool. And, except for the last one, at least for tonight I can let the other ones go. In couple of days I'll be home again, and I can become the others once again.

Time to Send Her up

Many years ago my grandmother called me and asked the definition of "recidivism." She said she thought that I would know that definition, but I'm not sure she wasn't surprised that I actually did know. Around the same time she gave me her Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, which has 4,798 pages of words and pictures and was published in 1957. She said that, of all her grandchildren, she thought I would appreciate it. She was right, of course, and it's the type of book I would've spent hours with as a kid (I've always dealt better with books than I have with people). Fairly recently, though, I thought it was time for the book to go, and as I flipped through the pages on my way to the trash bin, a pressed flower corsage fell out. I can guess that the corsage is older than the book, and it must have been my mother's or one of my aunt's. I held it in my hands and wondered about it, about its occasion, about who wore it. The book, of course, remains with me, its corsage safely pressed. She also gave me a box full of memorabilia from her 2-week trip to Europe in the early 1980s, after my grandfather had died. In the box are postcards, a journal, even her plane tickets. The first sentence in the journal is this: "Betty and I barely slept all night because we were 'ready to go!'" As with the dictionary, she thought that I would appreciate what is in the box.

When my grandmother died very early this morning and after I'd called my sisters, I thought of how glad I am to have seen her just a few days ago. She was lucid enough for 99 years old, and she was witty (and perceptive) enough to call me fat. I thought of playing golf with her, of how she would visit us when we were kids and bring us Hostess cupcakes, of fishing with her and my grandfather in Ontario, Canada, when I was twelve.

There's a certain routine you go through with home hospice care: you die; the hospice people come over to make sure you're dead; someone calls your relatives; someone else calls the funeral home to take you to whatever you've arranged for. Then, whoever is left at home tries to watch the TV shows they always watch on that day, or they answer the phone a lot to talk to people who weren't called earlier. If you're lucky, you've got a large family that, for at least awhile, is collectively thinking of only you. 

The thing is, my grandmother's hospice care started only a couple of days ago, so nobody was quite prepared for the speed of things. Even the inevitable can surprise us. When I spoke with my cousin this afternoon, she gave me the specifics, and she told me how my aunt seemed to be putting off calling the funeral home. I can understand that. Hospice workers and funeral home people are nothing if not efficient and methodical, and watching them work can be difficult. In fact, my own father couldn't watch as a hospice nurse smoothed the sheets around my mother before the gurney was taken through the front door. A few months later--19 years ago this week--my father, too, would die, so I got to watch him carried away. 

As my cousin said she told my aunt, though, "It's time to send her up."And I can think of my mother's sisters, the dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the in-laws--all thinking of my grandmother tonight.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#6)

Marla was easy to look at but hard to work for. She was in charge, and she knew it. William (never "Bill"), her husband, was a doctor who operated on old people. Marla had won an Emmy producing local news years earlier. Once, after a few beers, Wayne, from the mail-room, told her that everyone in local news wins an Emmy at some point. Wayne was the only one who didn't know Marla slept with the company's CEO. He was fired two weeks later. And Marla? She was the only one who didn't know her husband slept with his nurses.

---

I delivered the mail. I pushed a cart and dropped things off in people's offices. I made two runs a day: in the morning, then again early in the evening. The morning run took longer because I'd talk to people. I got to know them as they told me about their lives. Marla, our communications director, never talked, and I knew she thought I wasn't worthy of conversation. I learned about her anyway because I'd see her stay late and slink into the CEO's office where the two of them would laugh. My job was menial, but I knew things.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#5)

"I can't get sick," he said. "Not now, at least." He stood at the desk, chatted with me and Mary, the roving nurse. He wrote in the notebook he always carried. Then he went back to the waiting room, and he and the other man watched fish swim around the tank. "Fish can have a calming effect," he said aloud, but I knew he didn't need a response. He always seemed calm enough; we liked him because he paid his bill on time and brought us cookies at Christmas. He'd been our patient for years, just as his wife had.

---

I'm not calm when I visit my doctor because, given my family history, we both know that eventually he'll find something wrong. The man beside me had yellowish skin. He commented on the fish. He went in first, then I was taken to an examination room. "Is Doc telling him today?" the woman at the desk said to someone as Mary closed the door and weighed me. Then Mary said the doctor might be later than usual because he had to give someone some bad news. When Mary left, I looked out the window. The rain was soft and gentle.

The Woman in Black

With the Muse apparently on vacation once again, I've been searching in corners and closets for things to write about. It seems, though, that the only things in those places are flecks of dust and old shoes. This usually means that a change in both place and pace is in order--different corners and closets, and such.

After class tonight, as I stood at a campus kiosk and searched a map for a building in which a guitar course is supposed to be taking place. I wanted to speak to the instructor about the course itself and whether I'd be a good fit for it next semester. Or, if the course would be a good fit to me. As I stood there, I watched as a young woman walked toward me: black hair, black clothes, smoking a cigarette. Tattoos. "You looking for a particular building?" she hollered. (Yep--hollered.)

I told her I was, but that I couldn't find it on the map. "The music building," I said. "Like, the chorus?" she asked. "My cousin sings in the chorus." I told her that, in fact, I was looking for whatever building I could find where guitar classes are taught.  She pointed this way and that. "How about if I just walk you over there?" she said when we both realized I had no idea of to where she was directing me.

So, we walked. "I've been on this campus a long time," she said. "Well, not a long time, but three years." She told me she had a test tonight, a final, but it was on report writing and the test shouldn't be too hard. I guessed correctly that her major is criminal justice. I asked if she was going on to get her B.A., and she said she'd already been accepted at the local university. That's good, I said. She said this is her last semester, that she didn't declare a major until after her first year in school. Then she said this: "I was kind of distracted that year because my brother was murdered."

Well, of course he was.

She went on: "There's so much stuff you have to deal with: lawyers and police and the trial. When someone in your family is murdered, everything gets harder."

I told her that, yes, all of that stuff is much more important than school, at least at some level.

"And then you have to look at the body," she said, "and that's not easy."

We reached the building I was looking for, and she gave me a high-five. We parted ways. I looked through the building and found the classroom I was looking for, but the doors were locked and nobody was there. Tough luck, I guess. 

In the end, I'm not sure if the Muse will be happy with this, but the encounter itself was interesting. Sometimes things simply have to start somewhere.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#3)

First, they exchanged glances, then, after a polite enough amount of time, smiles. She was sitting alone in the booth, a glass of white wine, a Kindle, and an iPhone on the table in front of her. He liked how her dark hair spread over her shoulders; it made her seem composed and confident. In the room to the side of them both was a bachelorette party--subdued giggling, some hand-clapping, chocolate penises occasionally raised over young heads. He sat alone, too, and she watched him scribble things in a notebook, his left ring finger as encumbered as her own.

---

The night of the party, I worked because Maggie was sick. The party turned out to be smaller than  expected, so I spent most of the evening watching the man at the table and the woman in the booth. They never said a word but kept looking at each other, smiling when the party girls got loud or said something racy. I gave them both a free glass of wine so they'd stay longer because I hoped they'd get closer, maybe start speaking. They seemed meant for each other. I was sadder than they were when they each left alone.

Swan

I saw many things while in Amsterdam last year, including this swan in a canal in the Red Light district one night. I like how the orange color in the swan's beak comes close (to my eye) to matching light reflected in the water.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#2)

Larry Hamlin walked like a duck, and was fat. At least, he was fat when he arrived in California from Texas and an apparent shopping trip to Sears. Larry was crude in a down-home sort of way, a characteristic he never lost even after learning to dress as sharply as the rest of the executive staff, who helped him lose weight. But he brought with him professional connections to an entire grid of electric utilities, a collection of clients the firm would provide consulting services to for many years. And, in the pejorative sense, Larry Hamlin was also a prick.

----

I met Hamlin in Austin. The consulting firm I'd started was growing, and he knew the electric utility business in the South and Southwest as well as anyone. And though he sweated a lot and dressed like an idiot, I hired him anyway. I learned later that he'd walk around the office every afternoon to see who'd left early, and he'd berate his underlings in ways even I hadn't thought of. The engineers who reported to him were unhappy because they worked sixty hours a week, but I didn't care. Hamlin brought in the business, and that's all that mattered.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#1)

When she was asleep, he would stare at the soft spot just above her left clavicle and watch the pulse. Now and then he would touch the soft skin there and let his forefinger rise and fall with her skin. One night she sat up and turned toward him, but he lay there motionless. "You must have had a bad dream," he said the next morning when she told him she'd looked down at him and for a moment he was someone else. "Someone else?" he asked. "What does that mean?" He could not say anything for hours after that.

----

The apartment had been his before it became theirs, and even after six months she still was not used to the sounds. She was not sure why she woke up that night. There was something there--not quite a dream, not quite a memory. She'd looked at him, how the alarm clock's glow made him appear different. When she told him about it the next morning, she found something else she was not used to: silence. She had always told him everything she felt and thought, but this time she knew that, somehow, she would have to be more careful.

Diving into the Wreck

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

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

Here's a passage:

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

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

Read the entire poem.

Thanks, Dave

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

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

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

"Do you play?" he asked.

"I'm learning," I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those Hands

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

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

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

Sharps and Flats

My first guitar was a plastic thing I got for Christmas when I was really young. I was joyful even though I had no idea of what I was doing with the thing. A couple of years later, Steve, a neighbor who was my older sister's age, offered to sell me his white electric guitar for $100, but for some reason I chickened out. I regret not buying that guitar, and thought it's a different story, there are things I regret about Steve, too.

I don't have good fingers or hands for a guitar: too fat and uncoordinated, and somewhat hindered now by arm surgery I had about 10 years ago. I had good fingers for the coronet when I played in the school band a long time ago, but I had to use only fingers. That made things easier, though I never could get my lips to hit that high C with any consistency. I probably should have gone with the tuba.

One morning I got out of bed and put my foot right through that plastic guitar, and that was the end of things until I bought a classical guitar in Pensacola, Florida. I had to walk from the navy base to the music store, then had to dash back to my room when the rain started, carrying that new guitar the entire way. I still have this guitar though I don't play it because a few years ago I ponied up some cash and got a regular acoustic guitar, a Seagull, which sounds really nice when other people play it. Last year I got an electric guitar, a nice Fender Stratocaster, something that my fingers don't work well on but that does make a lot of nice noise.

Recently, in an attempt to re-make certain parts of me, I signed up for a beginning guitar class through the local school district's adult education program. Though I spend time with the Seagull and the Stratocaster each day, I thought I might as well learn a little--maybe even learn an entire song. We met for the first time last Saturday, and when I walked into the room, most of the students were already there, guitars out and gabbing with the instructor. I sat in one of the few available chairs, next to a woman who seemed even less comfortable than I was. "Can you play?" she asked me, and I assured her that I could not.

Some of the students had nice guitars (the woman across from me had a Taylor, which I coveted for 2 full hours), while others had guitars that weren't so nice. Not long after the starting time, I started wondering just what we were in for. The teacher never introduced himself, never asked people their names or what guitar experience they had, and didn't seem organized at all. (Yes, I know--I need to leave my teacher side at home.) He showed his own guitar skills a few times, and at one point the woman next to me whispered, "Oh, look at me!" Ha ha ha.

After a few exercises, the teacher went through the strings, and I was happy when nobody laughed when he said "put your finger on the G-string." Because, well, there was so much temptation for us to laugh at what the perpetual adolescents among us were thinking. He quickly began showing us basic chords (G, C, D). "Make sure you don't put your fingers right on the frets," he said once, which was lost on the woman beside me because nobody had told her what a fret is. Later, the teacher assured us that we were "an advanced class" because we'd learned to play 3 chords in just 2 hours, which is pretty much a bunch of hooey. He'd walk around the room and listen to us, but he wouldn't spend any time with the people who were struggling with theory and/or mechanics. So, while he walked and talked, I concentrated on helping the woman next to me, showing her where to put her fingers, how to bend her wrist, and how to strum the chords. She was frustrated. I was frustrated. At one point the teacher stopped in front of her to see how she was doing, and I told him that she was still trying to figure out the fingering and the frets. He then just moved on (without checking on me), which didn't make the woman too happy. "Oh, just walk away," she muttered.

I wanted to tell the guy: "How can you teach a class if you don't know anything about the students? How can you tell us a note is sharp or flat if we don't know what those terms mean? How can you tell us how to use the guitar if we don't even know all of the guitar's parts?"

Whew. That was fun.

In the end, the woman was vocally thankful that I'd spent some time with her, but I wasn't necessarily happy that I'd helped her, which sounds terrible. Actually, I wasn't happy with the instructor, who before we left admonished us to tune our guitars before our next meeting, to do our homework exercises, and to come to class prepared. This week I'll have to make a decision: do I sit beside the same woman so I can help her, or do I sit somewhere else and concentrate on the lesson itself so I can learn something more than I already know?

I had plans on taking an advanced class, but, apparently, I won't have to.

Ryan and Tony

During 2-day trip to Yosemite that ended today, I happened across a memorial service for Ryan Hiller, who was killed not long ago when a tree fell on the tent cabin in which Hiller was sleeping. I caught just the last portion of the service, and I sat on a nearby bench for awhile to watch the proceedings. I was somewhat perplexed about why one of the rangers was videotaping the event, more perplexed when, when things were ending, there was great commotion as the man who seemed to be in charge positioned everyone for the group photos. Perhaps these would be good mementos for Hiller's family. I don't know. Getting "everyone in uniform" at the front of the crowd seemed a bit much, but then again, I wasn't part of the ceremony and certainly didn't know Hiller.

I have been backpacking many times, both alone and with others, and I long ago learned the term "widow-makers": those trees and heavy branches that sometimes fall onto who lies beneath them. More than once I have pitched my tent beneath a tree and looked up to see which falling object would damage me the least.

I was, though, touched to see that Hiller was remembered so formally and so well, and I was glad that I lingered for a bit. But, I might not have lingered at all if it weren't for Tony Magdaleno, who might have been the first Mexican I ever met. Tony was on my Little League team, and he had trouble throwing a baseball because of a bad elbow. I remember asking how he'd hurt it, and he said that he'd somehow caught his arm in a washing machine. We were good friends while we played together, and I seem to remember his home as being a run down apartment building of some sort, probably the kind of place farm workers lived in my hometown. I'm sketchy on the details of such things, though, for it has been a long time. Not long after we moved to California, I heard that Tony had been a car accident of some sort, and he'd come out the other end with a broken neck and paralyzed legs.

Tony died earlier just a couple of weeks ago, though I didn't read about it until 2 days before heading to Yosemite. In fact, I read his obituary in the online edition of my hometown newspaper, which not too long ago let me know that one of my best boyhood friends had died. I need to stop reading that newspaper, I think. In Tony's obituary, which is short, I read that "He was an accomplished athlete and a true champion. He was a cross-country runner in Illinois before his car accident and is in the Woodstock High School Hall of Fame. He was an inspiration to many." Think of that: a cross-country runner before his car accident. I remember him as tall and thin, someone who was probably physically perfect for long-distance running. He never could throw a baseball very far, but I can imagine he could run.

I suppose I was thinking about Tony 2 weeks ago when a woman with the last name of "Magdaleno" showed up on the roster for a course I started teaching. Last Thursday after class (and the day before I read Tony's obituary), the woman signed the role sheet in the wrong spot because she hadn't seen her name. "You're on the roster," I told her, and I showed her where.

There is, though, no good ending to all of this, at least not one that I've been able to write. I've looked at these paragraphs several times, and I think any attempt at connecting things would probably be futile. Maybe I just miss Tony, or maybe I wish I'd met Ryan Hiller.

Reading, Writing, and a Little Arithmetic

Many times in this so-called blog I have discussed or alluded to teaching, an avocation that is showing signs of having run its course. I am old, and old people need their rest. Neither wise as a man nor gifted as a teacher, I sometimes now stand in front of my students and think that they would be better off elsewhere. Regardless, I continue to sign up for the teaching gigs, so I've got nobody to blame but myself. If my students want to blame someone, they can talk to the academic adviser who stuck them with me.

Most of my teaching has taken place at a large, privately owned university that, at its inception, was geared toward professional adults who quite often needed a college degree to move up the corporate ladder. The students had to be at least 23 years old. They had to be employed. They were expected to behave professionally in the classroom. As an instructor, these 3 requirements made my life easier, for the students were dedicated to their educations and didn't complain when they had a lot of schoolwork to complete.

But, when the university ran out of this type of student, they lowered the age requirement to 21, and the students no longer had to be employed. Not long afterward, I suppose when all the 21-year-old customers were gone, the age got lowered to 18. Today, much of the student population is, it seems to me, rather unmotivated. Of course, we always remember the outliers, the worst examples and the best. Students at this university take only one course at a time, and the course itself lasts just 5 weeks. Still, I hear many complaints about how difficult it is to write, I don't know, a 1,200-word essay while at the same time doing the required reading. Years ago I would show my empathy and say, "Yes, I understand how busy your lives are, but I think you can do it." Now, I'm more apt to say, "Imagine that--college is difficult."

I am old, and I am cranky.

In a couple of days I begin teaching a literature course for this university, which is a nice change from the composition courses I have worked through lately. Most of the students' material at this school is provided online, but a physical textbook is required for this course. So, being diligent, a couple of weeks ago I sent an email to the students to remind them to buy the book, that they will not succeed in the course

Pins and Needles: Part 2

Well, well, well. With admirable expediency, my insurance company has informed me that, though my general physician referred me to an acupuncturist, my health plan does not cover acupuncture for me since I am not being treated for "pain and nausea as a result of chemotherapy, early pregnancy or post-operative procedures." Basically, Tina, the person who apparently replied to my query, simply quoted back what I'd written, though her use of punctuation is somewhat bothersome. I'm happy, though, because Tina closed her message with "Please be sure to take care!"

Fine.

Looking through my health benefits documents, though, I do find some possible alternatives. For example, as part of my mental health coverage (which might be of more value than acupuncture), I could get "electro-convulsive treatment" on either an in-patient or an outpatient basis. I could also enjoy fairly generous treatment for substance abuse. But, since I'm in denial of my abuse of any substance, I'll have to ignore that one. Then, should I lose an arm, leg, ear, or other body part, or if I ever need an artificial face, replacement parts would be covered; I can even rent a prosthesis, if I need to, and then get reimbursed!

When I go back to see my doctor in a couple of months, I'm not sure of how I'll break the news to him, how I'll tell him that his referral is much too expensive for me. Perhaps he and I will figure something out--maybe narcotics, which seem much easier to obtain than actual treatment.

Pins and Needles: Part 1

There's an old joke.

A man says to his doctor, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this."
The doctor looks at the man and says, "Don't do that anymore. Pay the receptionist on the way out."

Except for it being a joke, my doctor and I had a similar conversation a couple weeks ago. I like my doctor; I even trust him. He's the kind of guy who, if he had to tell me I was dying, would do a good job of it. He knows not just my medical history, but other things I've not told anyone else. In our most recent visit, he said he would refer me to an acupuncturist, the same one he has seen. I'm not convinced that acupuncture is a valid treatment for the body, but if it deceives the body by working on the mind, I'd be happy.

So, today, I tried to find out if acupuncture is covered by my insurance plan, and I finally found it mentioned in the "Special Services" document. The insurance company itself is quite large and apparently negotiates quite well with the blood lab I frequent and the doctor I visit. The lab and the doctor will charge, oh, $150 for one thing or another, but the insurance company works that down by at least half, pays a portion of it, and leaves the remainder to me so that I can meet my deductible. Anyway. Reading what I could find about what my insurance plan does and does not covered, I found mention of acupuncture in a document titled "Special Services," but that it's a covered treatment if 2 things are true: the provider is licensed (I like that one), and the second...well, that's where I'm flummoxed. If I am reading the document correctly, the second "truth" is that I have to be treated for "chronic pain and nausea as a result of one of the following: chemotherapy, early pregnancy, and post-operative procedures."

In an attempt to find more, I sent an email to the contact listed on the insurance company's website, and I received a prompt acknowledgement of that email, but I may not receive an actual answer for up to 3 business days. If I get the answer my doctor and I both want, I'll then contact the licensed acupuncturist to see about seeing him. If I do not get the correct answer, I suppose I'll have to do nothing.

It's kind of a funny thing, this health insurance stuff. This "Special Services" document doesn't make clear what is or is not covered with acupuncture, but it is quite clear about hospice care's being covered at "90% of eligible expenses after satisfying the deductible." That's the kind of plain talk I can appreciate.

Always Scribble, Scribble, eh?

Many, many years ago, I was 3 days away from starting my first professional gig, out of college for a year and fleeing the Round Table Pizza nest. I was, in fact, leaving sedate and predictable Sacramento for energetic and dynamic San Francisco, where I would work for just over 4 years before (now regretfully) returning to that same city of sedation and predictability. It was the best job I ever quit, and I have to count it as among my major mistakes. As someone whose mistakes continue to accrue and are seldom minor, this says much.

I spent the first year in San Francisco trying to figure out what, exactly, a corporate technical writer was supposed to do. One of the first things I learned was that such a writer had to learn to endure with corporate reorganizations, one of which took me away from the woman who'd hired me and into a group of people who knew less about what to do with me than I did. The second year, though--things changed! I applied for a job with a different group, got hired, and ended up working with some excellent people and writers. My new boss turned into a wonderful mentor, the boss after him is still one of my best friends, and I learned more about writing in the following 3 years than I think I've learned since. It was an exciting time, and we were enthused about what we did. Perhaps I was just less cynical and jaded then, but I like to think that we were a group of people who thought we could write anything. I wish I had that same confidence today as I now work with writers who make me look anything but professional.

I left San Francisco for a job as a writer in a small consulting firm, and about the same time started graduate school. The job itself turned out to be terrible (or, at least, I was a terrible fit). But, one of my coworkers there turned out to be a very good friend, and he gets extra points for introducing me to the Yosemite Valley. I made other friends there, but I pretty much let them slip away. Getting laid-off from that job is one of the best things that could have happened to me for a number of reasons. Oh, it wasn't an easy time when I lost that job: My mother had been sick for awhile and would die just 5 months later, and my father would die only 3 months after that. Damn--what a year that was! The next job was at a distant Air Force base, and I stayed there longer than I should have. There was no stress at that job, but after awhile a 100-mile-per-day commute gets tiring and expensive. The next company was young and vibrant and growing, but it was soon purchased by an old, stodgy, static financial institution. And the next company after that was another fun place--lots of energy, wonderful co-workers, a dot.com enthusiasm that, unfortunately, was squelched when the company was bought by another boring, conservative corporation.

Now, for just over 2 years, I've been employed by a company that was once small but has also been bought by a larger entity. There's always a bigger fish, I guess, but I am happy now because I work with people who challenge me professionally and aren't afraid to tell me when I'm not doing something right. Actually, it's their job to tell me such things, and they are good at their jobs.

So, where does all of this come from? Partially, I suppose, it comes from thinking back to those feelings of excitement and fear that followed me on the train into San Francisco that first day so long ago. The title here was, from what I remember, spoken to Edward Gibbon after (or maybe before) he wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I'm not thinking of Gibbon's work, however. Rather, the title itself is included in a collection of sayings and quotations gathered by the writers I worked with when I started my second year in the city. (I'll have to check with Kominski, but I believe we then sold that collection, entitled Almost Human, to raise money for one thing or another.

Finally, I am not much on New Year resolutions; I'm more the type to make adjustments as I move along. But, as I remember when I first ventured into San Francisco, I also now sense impending changes in many areas of life, though for the life of me I can't imagine what they'll be.

Winter Solstice 2011

Not much cohesion here, but who'll notice?

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time learning how to be alone. And I have to say that I got pretty good at it. When I was in the navy, it became a great skill in an environment where privacy, if you were lucky, was a few moments alone in the latrine. I think about this--being alone--now because we are finally in winter, which is arguably my favorite season. Winter seems to be a time when expectations and requirements are few, though that might be a self-imposed illusion.

Also when I was a kid, I had a small-town paper route that required me to physically collect money from each of my customers so that I could, just as physically, pay my bill to the paper's publisher. It was when I learned how to deal with money: The publisher gave me a bill every week, and I was responsible for getting the money. I had to pay the bill on Saturday morning, so I would go out on Friday night and gather coins from the subscribers. Winter nights in the Midwest can be quite cold and snowy, but I would simply dress for the occasion and trudge through snow and darkness. It was great fun, really. Between my house and the streets that made up my route was an open field in which I spent many, many hours, and on those winter nights I would often perch myself on a large granite boulder and stare up at the stars. Or, I'd sit there as the snow fell and simply enjoy the silence.

The boulder itself was, in fact, always a mystery, and as I look back I wonder if it was an erratic left behind by one glacier another. In subsequent visits to my hometown, I believe I have found that boulder near the Little League fields I played on. Now that I think about it, the boulder also plays a role in my first novel, a terrible piece of work that starts with the line "Neil Armstrong broke my heart in 1969."

Where I live now there is no snow, and I must travel into the Sierra backwoods to experience such a thing. My favorite days there include not cold so much as gray skies and falling snow--a diminishing of sight and sound. There are few experiences as nice as this. For the last several years I've spent a couple of January nights snow-camping with friends in Yosemite Valley, and a couple of those times we've lucked into fairly heavy snowfalls. Those days and nights are wonderful.

After today, the days get longer in small increments; life tends to speed up, and soon enough I'll think about getting the spring garden ready for planting.

Words Like Love

Something old until something new comes along (fiction)

After six hours of what started out to be aimless driving, I ended up in Bridgeport in front of a combination café and bar called Little Clancey’s, though I was probably headed there the moment I left home. The “Little” on the hand-painted sign had faded, but “Clancey’s” in red letters was bright in a sunrise diffused by thin clouds. I’d traveled through California’s dry central valley, then turned east through Yosemite and finally north on Highway 395, just like we sometimes do when we visit our daughter Becky and her husband Ron in Carson City. By the time I reached Mono Lake, the eastern sky was crimson and I knew that Bridgeport was just north and would be the place to stop.

All four windows of the Impala were open when I rolled onto the gravel in front of Clancy’s, and a cool breeze brushed gently against my bare arms. I used to drink a lot, and when I did every window in the house or car would be shut tightly. The voices, the ceaseless wind, the smells—everything used to bother me. Now, though, working my way through sobriety, I welcome the fresh air and keep at least one window open wherever I happen to be.

“You’ll catch cold,” Nora, my wife of twenty-five years, says when I keep both bedroom windows open all night even in winter.

“Viruses cause colds,” I say as she pulls the heavy quilt closer to her wide chin, “not open windows or even getting your feet wet.” But after awhile she gets up and shuts the windows, caught up in one of my old habits.

I sat in the Impala and thought that Nora would be wondering where I had gone. She’d given up actually worrying years earlier, when I was drunk most of the time and hardly found my way home anyway.

“You could call me if you’re not coming home,” she would plead. “A little respect is all I ask. Just the smallest bit of consideration. Is that too much?”

It was too much, as far as I was concerned at that point in my life, in our marriage. “I’m an adult,” I’d tell her. “I don’t have to check in with you.”

We went on like that until one day Nora quit asking questions. But she would always wonder, even when I left the house last night with her yelling at me. We’d been watching television and a beer commercial came on. I told her that a beer would taste good, a nice cold beer in chilled mug, just like on television.

“A what?” Nora said very quietly. “God damn you, Brian. You go this long without a drink and after all that’s happened and you can still say it so easily, as if it meant nothing to either one of us?”

“I didn’t say I wanted one,” I said loudly. “I just said it would taste good.” I looked down at the worn carpeting in front of the couch, where our feet spend so much time.

And then she yelled about how my father had been drunk for so long that nearly his whole liver was eaten away by the time he died. About how close my drinking had come to killing both her and me, that if she hadn’t been in the car on my last birthday I surely would have died. She stopped yelling when she ran out of breath. Her chest was heaving beneath her lightweight pink blouse. Nora’s eyes were dark with disappointment like they were after Sam Tinker threw me the surprise birthday party, when she came to see me at the hospital. It was two days after I’d lost control of the Ford wagon we owned and Nora and I went bouncing into a large stand of aspens.

“Jesus Christ,” Nora had said after pulling me from the car and cradling my face in her hands. She got only a few scratches across her chin, but I caught the steering wheel with my sternum and then the dashboard with my forehead. For months afterward it hurt even to breathe.

Lying on the grass, I’d looked up at her, feeling her kiss my mouth time after time. Everything was confused, but I didn’t know if it was because of the accident or the pitcher of martinis I’d helped Sam drink earlier that night. It was raining, and drops of cool water were falling from Nora’s hair onto my face. Then everything turned a dark purple and I shut my eyes as Nora’s voice disappeared.

After Nora finally got her breath back last night, she stood from the couch and started in on me again, using words like responsibility and trust and love. So I took my keys from their hook beneath the phone in the kitchen, and I walked out the front door, letting her yell from the front porch as I started the car and left. At the Shell station I filled the Impala and got a cup of coffee, then drove away.

When I stepped into Clancey’s, Maureen was doing the beer orders for the week; I was the only one in the place. I’d met her years earlier, one of the times I’d driven alone to see Becky. Nora travels on her job selling pharmaceuticals to hospitals, so sometimes when she is away I wander. This morning I asked Maureen if she remembered me, but when she said she wasn’t sure, I told her that it made no difference.

Maureen had dark, curly hair and the smooth facial features—thick cheekbones and a mouth burned down at the edges—that I’d found myself falling love with for as long as I could remember. She reminded me of a waitress, a good dancer, that I’d known when I was in the Navy. But then, it seems every woman I’ve either had or desired has reminded me of someone else or the lover before.

“Why’d you come back?” Maureen asked when she filled our mugs with coffee. One coffee pot had DECAFFEINATED stenciled on it in bright orange letters. Some of the letters were partially scratched away, as if the pot had been in use for a long time.

“Restlessness,” I said, wondering if I should say that maybe it was because of her that I’d stopped there.

“How does your wife feel about that?” She gestured with her mug toward my ring finger.

“She understands.” I looked at the ring and tried to think of the last time I’d taken it off.

“You mean, she puts up with it.” She looked at me as if she’d heard lies from men for a long time.

I left the bar after two mugs of coffee, after Maureen got busy with other customers. Wandering around town until lunchtime, I finally stopped at Cleo’s Drive-In, where I ate a chicken-breast sandwich at one of the redwood picnic tables. I watched Maureen come out of the bar across the street, walking toward Cleo’s. She smiled when she noticed me.

“Still restless?” She said after ordering at the walk-up window. Her hair was neat and her legs thin, and I knew that she was the type of woman who took care of herself.

“Yeah,” I said. The Sawtooth Ridge was visible over her shoulder.

“At least you’re eating,” Maureen said. “I haven’t had a customer so early on a Saturday for quite some time.”

“I like coffee after a long drive,” I told her.

She took a bag from the girl at the window just as I finished my sandwich. “You feel better, now that you’ve eaten?”

“I feel good,” I said. “I feel almost....” I paused and looked up at the gray, ragged Sawtooth, trying to think of the right word, the right feeling.

“Almost what?”

“Almost human,” is what I told her. It was the most fitting word I could think of.

She nodded slowly, then followed my gaze up to the Sawtooth. “It’s going to rain. Come over later and I’ll buy you a beer.”

“Thanks,” I said, again thinking that a beer would taste good.

Maureen smiled as she turned and walked back to Clancey’s. I sat at the table and stared at the mountains. The ridge was high, nearly eleven-thousand feet, and I had spent a lot of time hiking in the area when I was younger. Below the ridge itself was Matterhorn Canyon, where a combination of ignorance and exhaustion almost killed me and Sam Tinker both. Just as after the car wreck, it was an experience that left me changed, though it changed me into someone who drank heavily. Though I never figured out why, it was after that when I started believing that nothing I did in life mattered. Most people would have reacted differently, but I just stopped caring about a lot of things.

After Maureen left, I decided to drive to Carson City after all. Becky always appreciates it when her mom and I visit, since she’s so far away from us. She and Ron have a small hardware store, and more than once I’ve helped them stock conduit or boxes and bins of nails.

“Oh, Daddy,” Becky said when I called her from a payphone at Cleo’s. “We’re just on our way out. We need some stuff from a warehouse in Reno, so we’re making a long weekend of it.”

“That’s fine, Becky,” I said, and it really was. “Enjoy the weekend. Maybe Mom and I will drive up next month.” If I had told her how far I had driven that morning, she might have changed her mind.

“Give her my love,” Becky said, and I told her I would.

I hung up the phone and looked at clouds covering the Sawtooth and thought back to when Sam and I got caught in the autumn snowstorm and nearly didn’t make it out. We were carrying neither a tent nor warm clothing, and for a full day we huddled around a small fire and waited for the storm to pass. We never told anyone about it, either, because we knew we’d been fools for being so unprepared. But several times in the years that followed, when Nora and I weren’t even talking to each other, I thought that the mountains might have been the place to die when I had
the chance.

The wind had grown colder, and the clouds had dropped over Bridgeport. I smelled rain as I pulled my windbreaker from the Impala’s trunk. When I got back to Clancey’s for the last mug of coffee, Maureen wasn’t surprised when I said I was leaving.

“I had a feeling you would be,” she said. Her hands were wet from washing glasses in the small sink behind the bar. “I could still buy you a beer.”

“I have a long drive,” I told her. “But I might be back, if you want to save it for me.”

She smiled, showing teeth that were white and straight. “You’ll be back,” she said, though I wasn’t sure how she meant it. I stared at her, but she turned away before I could tell her that she probably was right.

I got home late that night after driving slowly through rain most of the way. The weather didn’t break until I stopped at a mini-mart to buy cherry Lifesavers. Outside the store I saw stars winking through small gaps between clouds sliding across the sky. As I parked the Chevy in the driveway, I slipped a Lifesaver beneath my tongue. Candy had once been a way to hide the smell of what I’d been drinking, but now it just tasted good. When I stepped quietly into the house, I let the last sliver of a Lifesaver drop down my throat. Nora was watching television, and I smelled her lilac perfume, my favorite, as soon as I shut the door behind me.

“You came home.” She didn’t look up. Her feet were propped up on the large footstool we’d bought just a week earlier.

“Yeah. I had some things to work out.” I took off my shoes and wiggled my toes on the carpet.

“We were supposed to go to dinner,” she said, and I noticed then how she was dressed up, still expecting to go out. That was why she was wearing perfume. “We were supposed to eat at someplace nice, and that’s all I’ve been waiting for. I thought you’d be home, so I never cancelled the reservation.”

I didn’t remember anything about dinner, but I didn’t doubt her. “Tomorrow,” I told her. “I forgot. I’m sorry. We’ll do it tomorrow and make it special.”

“Have you been drinking? You’re eating candy.” It was the first time she looked at me since I’d come into the house, and her stare was cold.

“I’ve been driving,” I said, fingering the single remaining Lifesaver in my pocket, wondering how she had noticed the candy from twelve feet away. I thought that even after twenty-five years of marriage it would be nice to have at least one secret, to have something that Nora did not know.

“Nice way for you to show your love for me,” she said plainly. “Skipping dinner for getting drunk. You could have called and then at least I could have eaten here. I could have fixed something instead of sitting here and waiting.”

“I do love you,” I told her. “And I’m not drunk.” But she’d been drinking—a half-full bottle of gin and a glass with ice were on the floor beside the couch. I wondered about the Sawthooth, about whether the ridge was now covered with snow. And I wondered about Maureen and her beer orders, even about what she’d bought for lunch at Cleo’s.

Nora had tried to hide the gin, and I wanted to say that it didn’t matter to me what she did or whether she believed that I was sober. I didn’t care if she was drunk then or drunk for the rest of her life.

“You do love me?” she asked. “You do?” She wasn’t convinced. But she was drunk and nothing would matter by morning. Her perfume was strong, and I wanted it to be stronger yet, to envelope me and the house and all that I knew in its silky embrace.

“I do,” I said, “I really do. You’re a princess.” I thought then that one day soon I would tell her about nearly being frozen in the mountains, about what that experience had done to me.

“Yeah?” She came over to me and took my hand, holding it to the side of her face.

“Yeah,” I said, and I sat down beside her to watch television.

Endings

As I try to dedicate some time to this blog-stuff at least every other day (recently motivated in part by woman I knew in graduate school and who has become quite successful), I intended tonight to sit down and continue writing about my latest trip to Europe. But, after several false and boring starts, I'm moving on to something else.

For the 2 novels I've written over the previous half a decade or so, I've discovered their respective endings relatively soon in the writing process. For This Far West, I had the final scene visualized after only about 50 pages were done, and I was able to write to it. For The Golfer's Wife (the opening paragraph of which is embedded here), I needed a bit longer to figure things out. When I was able to write short fiction many years ago while working in San Francisco, a line--often a phrase but sometimes the title--would pop into my head and then, WHAM!...the story would get done.

Now, much less creative and prolific, finding even a germ of an idea is difficult. Personally, I think too many years in corporate cubicles and sterile suburbs have played a role, and more than ever I think I should live in either a large, vibrant city or an isolated, quiet forest. Suburbia is to life as agnosticism is to religion.

But, to the point. I can generally tell when something I've written is done or not. Example: The screenplay that's stuck inside this computer is not done, but while I know most of the ending, I can't seem to figure out how to get those final 15 pages written. It may never be finished in a literary sense, though it might someday have a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion.

Things We Couldn't Say Yesterday, which ended here, was fun. In the world I gave them, though, the characters had done as much as they could; actually sitting down and planning their lives and the storyline might have helped things move on further.

So, what do do next? Void of fresh ideas, doing some rewriting might be a viable outlet. Take the screenplay: Actually printing it out and then working with the characters and plot might help me figure out how to both get to the ending and then create it. The novels, too, need some attention and, I'm sure, feel neglected. The Golfer's Wife especially requires work since it never got developed much beyond a complete first draft.

Perhaps I should see if I can find a printer tomorrow.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #13

In the end, not everything stops

He thought Brussels would be a good place to start--a city more ambiguous than London, not a place where people hide. Years ago in New York City Chris had met Sharon, a Canadian who worked her way through and around Europe sometimes as a waitress but usually as a busker who specialized in juggling and magic. "You learn to work the crowds in one place, you can do it anywhere," she had said. She had told him that the trick was to get the crowd involved physically and engaged mentally. "You get a couple of men in the show," she'd said. "You have them hold something or help in a magic trick. Sometimes I do some stand on their shoulders and juggle, and I try to get them to look up at me. The smart ones, they noticed that I'm wearing a short skirt, and if they look up, they might see something. Sometimes the husbands and fathers look up and I can tell by how they suddenly drop their eyes and look into the audience that they think they'll be in trouble with their girlfriends or wives later, just because they looked. Once when I was drunk during a show--I was a lot younger then--I wasn't wearing anything. It was a stupid thing to do. I'm not afraid to show a little tit now just to keep the guys looking, but I'm not over the top about it. I mean, I am Canadian."

Everything was packed again, though this time he would be putting the boxes and furniture into a storage unit. When he'd given his notice at work and told everyone how the divorce had shown him how he hadn't been happy in his job for a long time, most people walked away as though he'd said he hadn't been happy with them. Rebecca, who was in the initial throes of divorce herself, said that she didn't blame him at all, that if she wasn't taking care of her invalid mother, she'd join him.

Phillip had seemed exasperated about the whole thing. "This doesn't make a bunch of sense, Chris. Europe? Christ, you're not a kid, you know. You're supposed to be mature, contributing to society. That stuff. What the hell will you do in Europe?"

"I really don't know," Chris had told him. "People have been venturing away from home for a long time, haven't they?"

"What about Cindy--you told her?"

"Yeah."

"What'd she say?"

"She said that I should have fun. She said that in the end, not everything stops."

Phillip at looked at him. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know. But it's all she was going to say, and I really don't need her permission."

Phillip knew that Sharon spent part of the summer in Brussels and France, but he didn't think the odds were good at finding her. "Buskers are like gypsies, but we earn a pretty good living," Sharon had said. "We all stay with friends when we can. When I'm in London, I stay with Mike and Tracy. They're great jugglers, and they do tightrope tricks, too. We all go from festival to festival. Mike's the one who taught me about getting the crowd to get as close to us as possible, so we can see their faces. When everything's over and we ask for money, we want them to feel like they know us. Or, maybe that they owe us."

Chris figured that with his savings and the vacation and sick time he'd cashed in at work--not to mention what he'd gotten for selling Cindy's wedding ring--he could travel for at least a year before having to find real work. If he avoided the expensive cities, a year might even be conservative. Now, he looked at the boxes that held his possessions and wasn't sure if he should feel proud or sad at how little he'd accumulated over his lifetime. He had not yet given up the idea of leaving behind some type of legacy, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out what one might be.

"You hate flying, Chris, and you're headed to Europe," Cindy had said during their last phone conversation. "You hate living without a schedule, and you're doing this."

"I'll be okay, I think," he'd told her. "I really do."

Phillip would be taking the boxes to the storage unit, and he already had a key to the apartment. When the airport shuttle arrived and Chris climbed into the blue van, he tried to imagine what would happen next. The driver had his window cracked open, and the warm July air flowed through the van. He thought about what Cindy had told him, that in the end, not everything stops. He missed her, and he often thought that he still loved her. But as the van passed the park where they'd exchanged wedding rings, he barely noticed. He pulled the small Dutch dictionary out of his rucksack, and he leafed through the pages until he found the instructions for saying "good morning."

Carmelita and Bert

Having navigated my way via tram and train to Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, I spent my last remaining Euros on a small snack and sat down to wait until my plane back to London was available for boarding. I was eager to get back to somewhat familiar surroundings, but I was also regretful of not having spent more time in Amsterdam. But, things were as they were, and I had a bed in another Easy Hotel waiting for me in London.

Not long after finding what I thought would be a seat in which I could sit alone for awhile, a large black woman approached, said something in what I assumed to be Dutch, then sat beside me. Not long afterward I dug my Flip video camera out of my pocket and tried to get a few shots of the airport's interior. The woman said something else, and I said, "It's a camera." I showed her how it worked, and she seemed quite happy. In a matter of minutes we exchanged names (hers is Carmelita) and talked a bit about ourselves: She is Dutch; she was born in Suriname; she has 2 daughters; and so on. We talked about many things: her life in Amsterdam, the history of Suriname, where she lives, how we both like to read, what we do for a living, the history of white people enslaving black people. Soon, she told me that the next time I am in Amsterdam, I (and my wife) should visit her, and she took my pen and notebook from my hand and wrote down her phone number and address.

When we said our goodbyes, I thought it would've been nice to talk with Carmelita a bit longer, but my boarding time was near and I had, it would turn out, a very long walk to the gate.

In the evening of my last day in Amsterdam, I walked by a street artist and bought 2 postcard-sized watercolors showing different views of Amsterdam's architecture and canals. When I removed the watercolors from my backpack not long after liftoff, the man next to me pointed to one and said "I used to live right there." This was Bert, and he described the building beneath his fingertip as a place he'd spent nearly a year. He explained that the artist had taken certain liberties with the painting, but none that detracted from the work's quality. A Canadian, Bert told me that he had lived in Amsterdam for 2 years, and I learned that he is a civil engineer by education and is now involved with the oil and gas industry though he has also started several companies, 2 of which had failed. He was flying to Houston, a city that he said he enjoyed. I have been to Houston, and I suppose I missed the enjoyable parts. I did almost have fun there one night, but that's not something I talk about.

But Bert, he loved the place, and he told me that the best sushi bar and steakhouse there are in nondescript strip malls. For most of our journey together we talked--about politics, about Canadians and Americans, about the Olympics, about the world economy, about global warming, about living in Europe. Once again I enjoyed the perspective of someone who is not from the United States, and as with Carmelita, I learned some things simply--and mostly, actually--from letting him talk.

At Heathrow, we went our separate ways--he had to catch a connection to Houston, I had to find the fast train to Paddington Station and then to my next hotel room. I already missed Amsterdam, but I was also glad to be back on somewhat familiar ground. I had 3 more days to fill, and I needed to find something to do.