Surprise

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

Surprise

A trained eye can isolate

stars even during such in-between

phases, separate them from

a schooner’s mast spiked

into uncommitted dusk.

But someone should have mentioned

how dusk might linger like this,

how daylight and a diminished

horizon might refuse one another

as easily as they refuse the half-moon.

Even the ocean seems unsure: five-hundred

feet below, a slack tide barely pulses

toward the line of seaweed strands,

distressed driftwood, diminished legs of crabs.

From this bluff, from this bed of clump

grass, only that single light

on the schooner’s mast has purpose,

an unnatural beacon any eye would find

until finally even it is directed

away, perhaps into the surprise

of strong water, into what becomes

of dusk.

Lost

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


Lost

Shadows cut imprecisely into

the riverbank.  Rain

like fingers reaches beneath

the current and pulls different

water to the surface.  Somewhere

in this river’s mud are footprints—

only hours old but a path

back to familiar topography. 

Waiting beneath conifers

that betray a cloudburst’s

passing, I try to predict an age

at which men understand how thunder

begins as silence, how foolishness

is wisdom’s sly twin.

 

Catch and Release

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

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

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

to pull breath from your fingertips. Early season trout

are greedy, and the first time we fished together

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

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

cleanly pierced, earns whispers of praise—

coos of love you speak into a new year of catch

and release. 

Pennies

Another old one.

 

Pennies

Of the many things I had to explain was lying

motionless, pennies balanced on my closed eyes. 

My mother voiced annoyance as my father stroked

his chin and asked about this fascination with death.

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

I said I was fascinated with nothing but thought

we should rehearse being still and learn the weight

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

to have practiced everything.  His lips opened and closed. 

My mother gasped and left the room.  I inhaled

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

that Death itself would have paused mid-grasp.

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

Going Crazy

1.

I leave to escape fragments

of previous conversations

I cannot swear to ever having.

It is the warm gin that affects me,

I tell myself, or too much poetry

or aftershocks from a single

mescaline overdose. Nothing more.

At the water’s edge I strip

and float into the cold,

fogged-over Pacific, wondering

if a man could drift to the

Cape of Good Hope with nothing

but skin and survive.

2.

Once I looked up from the Equator

and wondered why the sun seemed

no different, why I could not feel

a shift in polar influence.

But I can tell you water dripped

from a faucet, though it spins

with time when it reaches the sink,

vanishes just the same.

3.

What are the visible signs

of going crazy? I have asked

the round-faced postman,

who listens, and, once,

the milkman, who does not.

Tell me, what will I lose

first: my gait? bowel-control?

the simple ability to hold my hand

steady, like this? I think of my

three children, sweat beaded

on their cheeks, watching

my firm grasp loosen digit by

digit until they slip away and fade

into the common American blizzard

of apologies for drunk fathers.

  

4.

I know a man can stay afloat

a lifetime through only occasional,

fluid sweeps of one arm, forcing

the head back and trying

to remember to breathe. So little

is required: it is instinct;

it is years of lessons and learning

to find a way up through clear

water to sunlight. Yet,

I drift in the moonless

tide. This is fine, I say,

and dream of the breathless

life beneath the surface rising

with open mouths to consume

me, to drink from even

the first star.

When Things Close In

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

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

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

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

It was good to be outside.

Nicki

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Views of Half Dome

Just photographs of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park.

The Day Before

Many years and much of a lifetime ago on this day, the day before Thanksgiving, I graduated from boot camp. A couple of weeks later I was off to Pensacola, Florida, for a few months of schooling. After that I went overseas and spent almost 3 years on a ship.

The night before I left for boot camp, I hit and killed a dog while driving my girlfriend and my best friend and his girlfriend back to my house. Later that same night, my girlfriend spent a couple of hours throwing up. I don't remember where we obtained the liquor that made her do that.

In Pusan, South Korea, my friend Kent and I found a bakery between wherever we'd been and our hotel. This was the day before we had to return to the ship and head back to Japan. Kent was from Indiana. He was older than I was, and he was a happy, if unstable drunk. I've never been especially stable sober, but that night he had to hold onto my arm as I led him back to the hotel. We'd bought a chocolate cake and 2 bottles of Pepsi in the bakery, but we didn't have forks or a bottle opener. So, we ate the cake with our dogtags, and used a notch in the showerhead to open the Pepsi. Then, a storm came in and we couldn't get back to the ship. We had to spend the next night at an Army base, sitting in plastic chairs in the cafeteria.

We often had a lot of free time in the Philippines. We had a lot of fun, too. I could tell your stories! Once, the day before I had to work, I got lost while making my way from Subic City and Olongapo. Olongapo was the town just outside the gates that separated the Navy from the natives. The country was under Marshall Law back then, and everyone had to be inside after midnight. Even after sunset the air was hot and humid. I remember thinking I was headed toward the main gate, that if I kept working my way through the crowd of people and jitneys, I'd easily get back to the base before curfew. I walked and walked. Finally, after what seemed to be far too long, I broke down and paid for a taxi. Thirty minutes and many miles later the driver dropped me off at the main gate. I showed the Marine my I.D. and got onto the base with minutes to spare. I learned then that sometimes a man has to break down a bit if things are going to be set right.

What Happened Here?

My father coughs and opens his eyes. “How do you want to remember me?” he asks. He has a tube in vein in his neck, a tube in his nose. These are just the tubes I can see. Others are hidden by the bed sheet. The last few strands of what he once called his Donny Osmond hair fall over his forehead, and I move them away from his eyes.

“How do I want to remember you?” 

“Yeah. Do you want to remember the jerk, or the days when I was a decent man?”

“Dad,” I say. But I can tell from his breathing that he has drifted off.

Later, at home, my wife Cindy asks how things went at the hospital. “He seemed to be comfortable,” I told her. She hugs me, and pressure of her hands on my back feels nice.

We sit down for supper, and Cindy hands me a plate. “Could he talk?”

“A little,” I tell her. I compare the hot roast beef on my plate to the sandwich I’d had at the hospital cafeteria that afternoon, when I’d left my father’s room when my father’s bed and dressings were being changed. “He asked me how I want to remember him.”

“I think that’s sweet,” Cindy says. 

“I didn’t know how to answer.” The kitchen and the food are warm.

“Did he want an answer?” Cindy passes the salt for my green beans.

“He fell asleep before I could say anything,” I tell her. “He was still sleeping when Phil showed up.” Phil is my older brother.

“How nice of him to visit,” Cindy says.

“He’s been pretty good, Cindy.”

“And he makes sure that everyone knows he’s going out of his way to go see his own father,” Cindy says.

“Well,” I say. Phil has never been reliable, but has been trying lately—trying to stay sober, trying to do what he can. My family story is that our men cannot hold their liquor. My father and I learned that early in life, but Phil seems to be more like our grandfathers and uncles, men who drank and didn’t care. They are legendary for how effectively and efficiently they abused anyone who crossed them. Phil and I got lucky in one way because by the time we got to junior high our father had gone sober. Some of our cousins, though, didn’t fare as well.

“When are you going back?” Cindy asks.

“Tomorrow, I think. After work. Phil told me that he’d go again in the morning.”

“You sure he’ll be there?”

“I have to be sure, don’t I? Don’t beat Phil up too much. He’s trying.” I know that Cindy never really liked Phil, and there are good reasons for that. Still, there were a lot of times when I could count on him when I couldn’t count on my father.

“So, what did you tell him?” Cindy asks.

“Phil?”

“Your father. How would you answer?”

“I don’t know,” I told her.

At work the morning Susan, my boss, calls me into her office. “How are you doing with all of this, with your father?”

“Pretty well. I’m headed back to the hospital after work.”

“You can leave early if you need to.”

Years earlier, when Susan was going through a divorce and Cindy and I were having a rough time, we’d gone to the brink of an affair. One day we were in her office, and we decided that we couldn’t go any further. We stepped back from that brink and felt good about it afterward. Susan had let her hair grow out since then, and now was letting it go gray as if challenging the aging process to take its best shot. I liked her confidence.

“Phil should be there now,” I tell her.

“Okay,” Susan says. “I just thought I’d check in with you. I know this is hard. How’s your wife?” Susan had never been able to say “Cindy,” even when their paths crossed.

“She’s fine,” I say. “Helping me get through this.”

Traffic is heavy on the way to the hospital after I leave work, and the fifteen-minute drive turns into thirty. I walk through the lobby and take the elevator to the third floor. I sign in at the counter and get a visitor’s badge. I don’t recognize the young man—maybe a nurse—behind the counter. Over the last few weeks I’ve grown accustomed to the same faces, mostly young women.

The man checks to see whom I’m visiting. “Oh,” he says, looking at me.

I can’t tell if he wants to say anything more, so I walk to my father’s room. Phil’s there, sitting in the vinyl chair that is set too close to the ground. Something’s different in the room.

“Stan,” Phil says, and he stands up and hugs me. He has always been taller.

When Phil lets go, I look at the bed. My father’s eyes are closed, but his mouth is opened slightly. The tubes are gone from his face. “Dad?” I say.

“It happened before I got here today,” Phil says. “Just a little while ago. I told the nurses you were on your way, so they said they’d be back in just a bit.”

“What happened, Phil? What happened here?” I edge by Phil and get closer to the bed so I can touch my father’s face. It is barely warm.

“Look, Stan…”

“Phil? What happened?”

“He did it himself. Pulled the tubes out right before I got here.”

What? Why didn’t somebody stop him?”

Phil points to the sign above the bed. “DNR. You knew about that. And the advance directive. Nobody was supposed to stop him.” Phil had inherited my father’s hair, and he used both hands to pull it away from his face.

I sit in one chair, and Phil sits in the other. I want to cry, but I can’t.

“He was always tough,” Phil says. “I couldn’t do that—take those tubes out of myself.” He sighs. “I wished he’d talked to me, you know? Every day I’ve been here for the past week, he hasn’t said a word.”

I can’t think of a thing to say to Phil. I slide back in the chair and stare at the bed and think about my father’s last question.

Phil sighs again. “He was tough when we were kids, too. Remember the time when we were kids, before junior high, when he chased us out of the house and told us never to come back? He was drunk and pissed.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” I say.

“What? How can you not remember that? It was winter, and we were running away. Dad had a baseball bat, or something, and Mom was yelling at him from the front door. We didn’t even have boots on, and my feet were freezing in the snow. You were bawling and wouldn’t stop.”

I look at my father’s body, at its diminished form. I look at Phil, at how unkempt his hair is. “I have to say that I don’t remember anything like that,” I tell him.

Phil looks at me and seems like he wants to ask me a question.

That Creative Feeling

Years ago some words would appear in my head, and quite often I'd imagine an entire short story: beginning, middle, and end. It was a great experience, and I'd do what I could to write everything down as soon as I could. It happened again yesterday--and it's been a long time. I was in my car listening to a couple of sportswriters reading essays on NPR, and as soon as one of the men stopped, I had an idea for a story I wanted to write. Fifteen minutes later, when I stopped my car and started to ride my bike, I had the entire story: beginning scene, middle events, characters, and final scene.

I wrote the story this morning in an hour. It's not great, maybe not good. It works around trite and over-used  plot and theme, but the first draft is done. As soon as I get it formatted for HTML, I'll put it here.

Thanks, Muse.

Notes from the Peaceful Side

I once worked with a man who often would stop by my cubicle to discuss things of a military nature. He had never actually been in the military, but he was well read on the machinery and implements of war. In several of our conversations I remarked that I am always amazed at how humans are so good at inventing ways to kill each other. He never responded or reacted to such comments.

Several of my high school classmates joined the military. One became a well-decorated marine, and another became a Navy SEAL. Both of them were--and probably still are--quite knowledgeable of how to kill people. Some people might consider these men warriors. I was in the military, too, but on the peaceful side of things. I never learned how to kill people, though I came to understand that the aircraft carrier I was on and the ships we traveled with carried enough weaponry to effectively destroy great swaths of land, large numbers of people.

I have watched the TV news and read newspapers for as long as I can remember. When we lived in Illinois, I watched Walter Kronkite, and I read the Chicago Daily News. I remember the TV news broadcasts during the Vietnam War, how the newscasters would each day announce the number of US military personnel killed in that war. When we moved to California, I probably watched different newscasters, and I read the Sacramento Bee (fairly liberal) and the Sacramento Union (very conservative). The Bee is still around, but the Union stopped publishing years ago.

I am not sure of why I went into the navy. I suppose I had nothing else to do after high school, and perhaps I'd forgotten the significance of how many people were killed in Vietnam. I had a great time while in the military, really; I got to travel a bit, to meet some good people, to develop a certain confidence when confronted by new situations that involved a certain amount of stress. Once, a photographer I knew on the ship had just returned from a helicopter ride from where he took a picture of our carrier group cruising smartly through a calm sea. He showed me the photo and said, "Makes you want to go kick some ass, doesn't it?" It did. Maybe that's how young men think.

During and for some time after the Vietnam War, people who were or had been in the military were often ridiculed. I think this was more of a reaction to the War itself and not to the people. Those men and women simply had the misfortune of being the most visible targets. Things are different now. The wars we have started and fought in the last couple of decades have, for a large portion of the population, been quite popular. So, we both literally and figuratively applaud "those who serve" in one remote region or another. Everyone in the military--the clerk and the sniper alike--is now a hero. We are encouraged to "Support the Troops,",to embrace those who "fight the enemy there so we don't have to fight them here." Some people call this "patriotism."

War, of course, has been profitable for a long time. Until relatively recently, much of California's economy flourished because of the defense industry that developed here after World War II. There is good money in new weaponry. My brother-in-law asserts that the defense industry and certain people in the government, and companies such as Haliburton, are actively finding ways to create more conflicts or at least to keep the current ones going, though I am less cynical. Or, perhaps I am still somewhat hopeful and optimistic.

I still watch the TV news, and I still read newspapers. I also read a lot of things on the Internet, and I listen to news on the radio while in my car. This means that I see and read and hear a lot about war, about various groups of people wanting to kill other groups for one reason or another. The drumbeats of war seem to be everywhere, part of our normal human existence. And I find this cacophony nearly overwhelming these days. I'm torn between staying informed about what's going on in the world and dropping into blissful ignorance.

I don't think that going into the military is necessarily a bad thing, and I don't believe that there are not times when military action is called for. But I also don't believe that going to war should be easy. As a nation, we are now considering killing people in Syria because, as some believe, the Syrian government killed some people there with chemical weapons, weapons that President Obama and others have labeled as weapons of mass destruction. Obama has made his case to Congress, which apparently has told the President that a limited use of military force is okay. The international community, however, has resisted, and I do not think this is a bad thing. The decision to kill people should be difficult, and it can be just as patriotic to say "no" as it is to say "yes."

When President George Bush and his administration wanted to beat up on Saddam Hussein in Iraq, more people should have said "no" or at least been more loud about asking "why." We went there, apparently, because Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed an immediate threat to the world at large. Hanz Blix, a UN weapons inspector, said there were no weapons of mass destruction there, but this apparently didn't matter. Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush's Secretary of Defense, was adamant that those WMDs were there, though. And photographs of Rumsfeld being chummy with Hussein during President Reagan's tenure are not evidence that the two men were actual friends, of course. This was at a time when Iraq and Iran were engaged in fisticuffs, when Hussein was apparently using chemical weapons in the conflict. The US did not like Iran then, just as later the US wouldn't like Iraq.

As I have gotten older, in many ways I have become less conservative and less afraid. I have also become more of a pacifist, more reluctant to support this or that military conflict. And this has not been an easy transformation, for I am not so ignorant to believe there are not truly evil people in the world, and that some of these people have no qualms about ending this or that life. Those who truly support a war should be first in line to fight it, to encourage their sons and daughters to fight. The 1960s band Country Joe and the Fish sang, "be the first one on the block to have your boy come home in a box." It's a great line. Then again, maybe we should all read or re-read Johnny Got His Gun and Slaughterhouse Five and To the White Sea. Throw the bible in there, too.

All in all, I remain somewhat hopeful that things will be resolved in a way that does not involve cruise missiles and blowing people up. How hopeful? Maybe 40 percent, though that number might edge downward in the near future.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#19)

The week had been long; he'd been despondent and silent again. Maybe it was the humid weather. When he finally emerged from the basement, he was dressed in nothing but skivvies, and he had the hunting knife. I found him in the kitchen just sitting in a folding chair and holding the knife. "Brian," I said. He whispered: "Dare me." I grabbed my cellphone and called 911 from the damp front lawn. They didn't even let him put pants on, and he looked thin and sad when they came outside. "I'm not suicidal," he called. They took him away anyway. 

----

The wet grass felt good on my bare feet. The neighbors were watching, and if my hands had been free I would've waved. I told everyone that I wasn't going to kill myself. "I'm just despondent," I said to the woman who took my knife and put the handcuffs on me. "We're all despondent, sometimes," she said, but I think she was confusing despondence with despair. I've felt deep despair before, and I do know the difference. Despair is when everything--everything-- seems black and cold. This time, I just needed to be alone. The knife was only a prop.

Random Thoughts in a Not-So-Random Location

It's early in the morning, and I am in Starbucks. I am, ostensibly, working, but because the walls here are mostly windows, I am also distracted. This has been my curse for as long as I can remember. Once, in seventh grade, I was staring out a window and saw a hawk dive into the trees that lined the creek running by our school. I have not stopped looking out windows since.

The company I work for has, for the most part, been a good one to work for over the last 4 years. I have worked in worse places, and I have worked in better. I have not quite fit in here as I would have liked, but I could say that about anything, I suppose. In a month, I might not be working at all. The severance package for those who are severed will be generous, we have been told. For the good of the company (and shareholders, of course), 4,000 people, like gangrenous arms will be severed. We have been advised that, as professionals, we should "just keep doing your work as you usually do." I have convinced myself that I will be among those 4-thousand people, and I certainly don't feel like doing my work as I usually do. Of course, I am also a professional.

A man walks into this Starbucks, gets a couple of beverages, and returns to his car. He sits behind the steering wheel and drinks from one of the cups, and 10 minutes comes back inside, uses the restroom, and leaves again. A young woman with very short shorts walks in, and she has the most well-defined thighs I have seen in quite awhile. I am envious of those thighs and wish I had nice legs. Another young woman, dressed in a tank-top and yoga pants, comes in; she has a beautiful, colorful tattoo of flowers on her left shoulder. I do not wish I had that tattoo. I should have started this paragraph with something like "Two nuns walk into a bar." That would've been the start to a joke, though, and I do not tell jokes well. I am not a funny person.

The sign on the wall just outside the window I am sitting next to reads "NO Skateboarding or Rollerblading. Violators Will Be Prosecuted." We seem to be a nation in which prosecuting nearly everyone has become part of our culture. Or, maybe it's "persecuting."

Seemingly only minutes ago I could look out the window and see the full moon just above the trees in the parking lot. Now, that moon is gone, overwhelmed, perhaps, but the sun, or maybe just blocked by those same trees. 

Next week, I begin teaching a night course at a local junior college. I am not prepared. I have not finished reading the texts, and my syllabus is not complete. I will also be a student again, taking an electric guitar course at the same college.

I am enjoying the guitar lessons (acoustic) that I have one night a week. The teacher is the same person who runs the electric guitar class. I will be playing a lot of guitar. I might also sign up for a guitar course at the nearby adult education center. I will never be a good guitar player, but I will be happily out of tune and clumsy. I have been playing so much, the fingers on my left hand are calloused. I often have trouble typing because I cannot feel the keyboard very well with those fingers.

And now, I have work to do, assignments to complete, analysis to perform. No longer ostensibly, I am working.

Photo of the Day

My campsite at Crater Lake, Oregon, last month. Really, how much more does a fellow need?

Something Different

With very little true creativity left in my these days, I was surprised to come up with this poem during a couple of bike rides. The idea originated somewhere in the first ride, and then lines and images were added in a second ride. What was then typed up a week or so later is only a bit different than what's below. This one is a little tighter and succinct than the first draft. My friend Shawn gave me a suggestion for the first draft, but my stubbornness has, so far, resisted his input.

Drawing My Father

On a March evening I asked my father
how he would like to be defined, how
one day he would want his grandchildren
to know him. I sat with my sketchbook
and drew his face for my fourth-grade project
on Family. He set the Tribune on his lap.
Beneath the blue coveralls his belly rose
and fell so that the newspaper
rustled against the fabric.
I charcoaled his eyebrows and the creases
above them. When I glanced up for reference,
my father was looking at me. He raised the corner
of his mouth as if he were Elvis, and I was not sure
then if his eyes should be drawn as pained or proud.

What Being on the Road Can Teach You #3

Driving through rain most of the way from Portland, I arrive at Crater Lake late in the afternoon. There is little to see but clouds and mist as I approach the crater from the north, and after a couple of brief stops I descend to the campground on the south side, figure out how I go about getting a campsite, and then hike a bit. At one point I find what a sign says is a loop trail, but I lose the loop and backtrack to my small tent. After dinner at the cafe most of the clouds vanish and I drive back up to the crater for some early evening tourism.

There is no phone reception, so I do not know if the cubicle has called.

At dusk I get into my tent to escape the mosquitoes, and at 6 the next morning I pack, brew tea, and drive to the rim again to see if things are different at this time of day. I take some more pictures and then  drive to the south entrance and out of the park. After a short drive I think that, for the direction I think I'm headed and the time of day, the sun is not where it should be in relation to my car. I find a wide spot in the road, pull out the maps, and find that, in fact, I must have missed a turn or mis-read a sign. I'm not lost, really, I'm just not where I'm supposed to be. Thankful that I can actually read a map, though, I decide to keep going since I'll eventually get to the road home. My route takes me through some beautiful country.

A couple hours later I'm on Interstate 5 again and pointed south. At a few points I check my phone for messages, but there are none. I consider the cubicle and wonder what it's thinking. But, still, there are no messages, and I keep driving and driving.

---

At home, I talk to one of my friends. "What did the two of you decide?" he asked.
"We haven't decided anything, really. At least, nothing final. Let's just say that we have an uneasy truce."
"A truce is good," my friend said.
"But there is something," I said.
"Yeah? What's that?"
"We've agreed to start seeing other people. At least, we're talking to other people. We're exploring options, I guess, trying to find out if we're even right for each other. We've actually been having problems for quite some time--longer than we let others know about."
My friend looked hopeful. "This doesn't mean it won't work out, you know. I've seen others go through a lot worse."
"Maybe," I said. "It's not that we've given up hope."

---

That many hours on the road can be good. But, like I've said, you have to be ready to listen to those voices even when you might not want to.

What Being on the Road Can Teach You #2

The first afternoon on the road takes me north on Interstate 5 to a small campground that is scenic enough though within earshot of the Interstate's traffic. But it's far enough away and pitch my tent within spitting distance of a bush of poison oak. My head aches and the glands in my throat seem to be the size of plums, but the gin and tonic tastes good nonetheless.

Toward dusk, as I brush away families of mosquitoes, something happens: the cubicle calls. I try to ignore the phone, but it keeps ringing and ringing. "We're not supposed to talk," I said. We've recently started counseling, and we were counseled to take a break from one another so that we could work on what we need to work on, alone.

"I just wanted to talk," the cubicle said in that husky voice it sometimes uses to get its way.

"About what?"

"Us. Things. Whatever comes up."

"I don't know if I have anything to say at the moment," I said.

"Well, I've been thinking of things," it said. "I really want this to work."

I sipped the gin and tonic. "I know you do," I said.

"Part of the problem, I think, is that we spend so little time together. You're seldom here, and even when you are, you're looking out the window, or something."

"I don't have to be there to be there, you know."

"That doesn't make sense."

The cubicle was right--it didn't make sense.

There was a few moments of silence. "Is there someone else?"

"No, " I said. "There's nobody else."

"Were you like this with the others? I mean, did you lose interest after a certain amount of time?"

I thought about that. "I'm not sure how to answer," I said.

"I know I'm not your first, and we always feel something special about the first one.  But I've seen how you stare at others. I know I'm older and less attractive than I once was."

"You're beautiful," I said. "This has nothing to do with how you look. And I don't stare at others."

"I just wish you would tell me what you want," the cubicle said. "You have to be open about things, you know?"

I finished the drink. Above me, the sky through the pines was nearly completely dark. "I need to go," I said.

"Okay," the cubicle said. 

"Okay," I said.

Later, I wondered if I'd lied during the conversation. There certainly was not someone else, at least not formally. Had I been looking at others? This was more difficult to answer precisely, but I know there had been glances if not looks. That night I slept well. 

What Being on the Road Can Teach You

Maybe you spend a lot of your time in a cubicle, something that is a choice too many of you make. Think of something: What could--would--you do if the majority of your workday were spent somewhere else?

Perhaps, like me, you might have been in many cubicles over the years, a denizen in your little den of supposed privacy. I once worked in a cubicle down in a row of many cubicles in a building full of cubicles. Because of the room's acoustics, I could hear conversations of everyone who was in the same row. Funny thing: I could hear one woman's whisper as she spoke in a whisper into her phone, as she spoke to her boyfriend of certain sexual promises. In other cubicles in other buildings I have heard people fighting with their spouses and children, arguing with bank representatives, discussing their parents' health issues. If I have learned nothing else, I have learned to be quick to fill my ears with music whenever these conversations begin.

But that's not what I want you to think about. I really want you to think of my question: What would you do if you spent your workday somewhere other than a cubicle? Would you write? or travel? or play the drums? or simply sit outside and feel the warm and wind on your skin?

Well, hell. It's a choice, really; we're not shackled to our cubicle walls. Not literally, that is. But healthcare, paid vacation and sick time, retirement plans and the such keep us chained nonetheless.

But this is more about getting on the road, something I've touched on somewhere in the bowels of this blog-type thing. And what we find out there is a bit of perspective--or maybe a retrospective of where we spend so much time. My favorite time to head out is well before dawn when the traffic is light and the sky isn't. Wind through the window seems more forgiving then, and the music sounds especially good. If you're not afraid of what's in your head, it's an excellent time. If you are afraid, well, you'll confront some interesting things. And sometimes, what you what you thought you were comfortable with will show its darker face and leave you with questions you might have trouble answering.

Tomorrow I start a road trip, the first extended time away from work since the start of the year. It should be a good journey, one with a destination toward the beginning and then some improvisation at the end. If nothing else, a trial separation from my cubicle will let us both re-evaluate some things (not the least of which is if we should continue our relationship).

I'll see what I find in the next few days, and then I'll report.

Little Bits of Things

This has been a year of almost nothing creative, with nearly all of my energy dedicated to the classroom. And the daytime job demands too much....what? I don't know: effort. Not to do the work, but to care about it. I'm older and crankier every day, more prone to missing things, more prone to both causing no small amount of frustration and tolerating less foolishness.

I'm hopeful, however, that things will change over the summer.  The collected "Call and Response" segments are gathering themselves into a small printed booklet. But, just as I miss things at work, I misplaced much of Kominski's sage advice and direction about how to do things. I'm on my own.

This, though, came to me during a bike ride a few days ago. It might not be the start of something, but at least it's not the end.

You want to think there is something afterward,
that the conversation will continue after the last
word you speak.

And you have started not just to remember
things but to replay them as though somehow
you will find different meaning in that afternoon

your father tried to teach you how to fight
and later your mother whispered to choose
your moments.