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.