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As I was driving to work before sunrise this morning, after spending the better part of 5 days working with wood and dirt in my back yard, I turned off National Public Radio and opened the car window so that premature bits of sunlight could come in. I was not especially happy to return to the office, but it was today's responsibility. I was trying to think of what to write here (or whether to write anything at all), and here's the first sentence that came to me:
One of the college courses I sometimes teach is centered around literature of and about the workplace--you know, where you spend so much time often wishing you were someplace else.
Knowing, of course, that I could not stop with a single sentence, I sat down tonight and belched some more. They go like this.
If, like me, you spend many hours in a corporate cubicle, maybe you decorate your walls. I have a picture of my wife pinned to one wall, and I have two buttons; one button reads "Another Writer for Peace," and the other button reads "Another Veteran for Peace." On the door to my filing cabinet, I have photographs of Yosemite, snow camping, backpacking, back-country skiing, and Martha's Vineyard. I don't have any poetry, though I do use some words from one version or another of Magnetic Poetry to keep my photographs in place.
In the class I teach, we examine not just poetry but also short stories and essays that, thematically, relate to the workplace. Some of the poems are written by people you might have heard of: Marge Piercy ("To Be of Use"), Carl Sandburg ("The Dynamiter"), and Theodore Roethke ("Old Florist"). But, frankly, the textbook I have to use is lousy--thin on content, short on relevance to the students.... So, sometimes, I sneak other works into the course. For example, Phillip Levine. He is not only one of my favorite contemporary poets, he's actually written entire books that contain nothing but work-related poetry--such as What Work Is. Most of Levine's poems are, however, a bit too long for me to type accurately, so I'll provide just a few stanzas from his work.
You Can Have It
My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.
The moonlight streams in the window
and his unshaven face is whitened
like the face of the moon. He will sleep
long after noon and waken to find me gone.
Thirty years will pass before I remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each man
has one brother who dies when he sleeps
and sleeps when he rises to face this life,
and that together they are only one man
sharing a heart that always labors, hands
yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?
. . . . . .
Growth
In the soap factory where I worked
when I was fourteen, I spoke to
no one and only one man spoke
to me and then to command me
to wheel the little cars of damp chips
into the ovens. While the chips dried
I made more racks, nailing together
wood lath and ordinary screen
you'd use to keep flies out, racks
and more racks each long afternoon,
for this was a growing business
in a year of growth....
. . . . . .
What Work Is
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another....
I also bring in something different, a Sandburg poem that is not in our authorized text. I'm not a big fan of Sandburg, but, like Levine, he uses a language common to most of us. Here's one of his complete poems (from Chicago Poems).
Working Girls
The working girls in the morning are going to work--long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms.
Each morning as I move through this river of young-woman life I feel a wonder about where it is all going, so many with a peach bloom of young years on them and laughter of red lips and memories in their eyes of dances the night before and plays and walks.
Green and gray streams run side by side in a river and so here are always the others, those who have been over the way, the women who know each one the end of life's gamble for her, the meaning and the clew, the how and the why of the dances and the arms that passed around their waists and the fingers that played in their hair.
Faces go by written over: "I know it all, I know where the bloom and the laughter go and I have memories," and the feet of these move slower and they have wisdom where the others have beauty.
So the green and the gray move in the early morning on the
downtown streets.
There is, of course, always something more to say. Perhaps tomorrow.
When you know you need to say something but do not quite know how to say it, you get this....
The first long car ride I remember is a night-time trip from northern Illinois to western Kentucky, from our home to my great-uncle's farm. It is the first family vacation I recall. Of course, it might have been a daytime ride that has simply grown darker over the ensuing decades. I was probably 6 or 7...maybe 8 or 9. Maybe 4 or 5. My great-uncle had tractors and pigs. I have 8mm movies of me sitting on the tractor and of pigs sticking their snouts through the fence. We made that trip once more when I was a kid, and on one trip or another my oldest sister got one of my younger sisters to close her eyes and open her mouth, and then my oldest sister put a frog in that open mouth. Ha ha ha. You have to love oldest sisters. I also remember looking for Boonesborough, something that certainly betrays my age. (Sing along: "From the coonskin cap on the top of old Dan to the heel of his rawhide shoe....")
But Kentucky is not what I want to discuss....
The second long car trip I remember was from that same spot in northern Illinois to Ohio, though I don't remember exactly where. We where there for a family reunion, but there were no tractors or pigs. Decades later I would return to Kentucky for a family reunion, and someone from Illinois would show up. But, again, that's not what I want to discuss.
A third trip involved driving all night with my grandparents to Lake of the Woods in Ontario, Canada, for a wonderful fishing trip. We drove through International Falls, the first place I encountered the odor of a paper mill. Later in life I would encounter that same odor in Pensacola, Florida, and Antioch, California. Once you've smelled it, you always will.
There were other car trips somewhere in there--shorter trips to Michigan and Wisconsin and Missouri. On the way to Missouri for summer vacation, the car somehow ran off the road and we bounded through a field until the front wheels dropped into a ditched and everything stopped moving. That was fun.
For all of these trips, I was in the back seat. My first trip in the front seat was when my father and I left that place in northern Illinois for a new place in northern California. We headed south on Route 47, turned right on Interstate 80, and then didn't stop for several days. In the car with us were a dog and a hamster, both of which were on their first long car trip. If you want to make a 13-year-old boy miserable, put him in a blue Ford station wagon, and send him cross-country with a silent father and no radio.
There were few car trips for several years afterward. Then, during another batch of several years, most of my miles were nautical. When I finally got back on land and bought my first car (a Honda Civic), I discovered that I had learned something from even my limited number of trips: I like long car trips. I even started calling them "road trips" because it sounds more romantic in a Kerouac sort of way.
And believe it or not, everything that comes before this is a waste of time--merely a setup for the main point. Of anyplace I've driven, Nevada's Basin and Range has become my favorite. Interstates by design and nature are not especially attractive, but Interstate 80 from one side of Nevada to another is a good thing. I don't remember making the trip with my father, our dog, and our hamster, but I remember the first time I did it alone: leaving Sacramento about 3 a.m., getting to Park City, Utah, about 12 hours later. I was in a 1984 Ford Tempo, and I lost radio reception so was alone with my thoughts for a long, long time. I realized on that trip that my father must have felt the same thing when he was driving us west and I was looking out the window on the north side of the car: nobody to talk to.
I have since made the west-east-west trip* many times--alone, with my wife and sons, with my friend, with my friend and his wife--Reno-Sparks-Lovelock-Winnemucca-Battle Mountain-Elko-West Wendover... Last year while driving alone from my home town in Illinois to St. Louis, following part of the same route my father and I took, I found that flat Illinois prairie is certainly nice, but it is not...expansive. Perhaps other places, provide what Nevada does--northwestern Oregon is certainly wide open, and what I've seen of Arizona might be the next best thing.
But cruise control and good music an hour before sunrise in Nevada, either alone or with someone sitting quietly in the seat next to you, is treasure.
* Kominski has experienced this place, so perhaps he'll chime in.... Anyone, of course, may comment.
Portland, OR
The Southwest 737 lifts off from SMF and heads northwest, and just as we reach 10,000 feet the sun rises between twin Sierra peaks. I think of Icarus--not because my wings are melting but because like most sons I never spent enough time listening to my father. About 90 minutes later we descend into cold and sunny PDX, where I am embraced by family who after a couple stops transport us and an energetic basset hound toward the Oregon coast. How green are the valleys and hills, a nice change from the great central valley of northern California that is already acquiring its normal shade of summer brown. The sun is full, and Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens are bold against the blue sky. It is Chamber of Commerce weather.
We pass through Tillamook but do not stop for cheese. I was last in Tillamook 2 years ago when one of these same family members attended a memorial service for a friend but left me to wander rainy streets and to sit comfortably in Muddy Waters Coffee and Tea Company. During that same trip we buried the cat Phoenix in the back yard, so that trip was nothing if not unique. On this visit, after Tillamook we proceed north to Manzanita Beach for a run across the sand, a nice respite for a chronically painful lower back that a day's worth of 800 mg. ibuprofen has done very little to help. I've been eating the pills like candy for the last week. On the sand, I run with Maya the Amazing Basset and am happy there is one creature that has legs shorter than my own. It's not Chariots of Fire by any means, but I'm proud that I can still out-run a hound dog, at least until it gets bored with me.
Farther north is Cannon Beach where we romp some more and search for shells of the nautical variety. Kids fly kites. Humans let their dogs run free on the beach. Seagulls--rats with beaks-- glide above us; dead ones decompose in feathery clumps at our feet. Several hours later we are in Tualatin, a place I have grown quite fond of even if I do sometimes have to bury cats.
The next day we visit Powell's Books, a place you could get lost in and not complain. I pick up a new soft-cover Moleskine notebook, Edward Hirsch's Special Orders (new/poetry); Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth (used/fiction); and Tim Cahill's Lost in My Own Backyard (used/nonfiction). I would buy more, but I am limited to carry-on luggage, which is probably a good limitation. There are volumes of Emerson and Thoreau I caress but finally reject, and an apparently newly published collection of Vonnegut essays that will have to wait until I get home and can use my Border's gift card, a gift from a son who understands this book-thing. Some people might find this bookstore overwhelming, nearly unbrowsable because of the sheer number of possibilities. This is a bookstore that offers a color-coded map, it is so large. There is a coffee shop.
Another Southwest flight takes me southwest. The plane is full and the man in the middle seat next to me takes possession of my shoulder space and our shared armrest so that I spend the entire flight listing to starboard. He pulls one cell phone out of his pocket and one from his little cell-phone holder, and he shuts them both off. I read the current edition of Harper's Magazine and finish right before touchdown--nearing depression because of how bleak articles in the magazine make the economy out to be. The man in the middle seat turns his cellphones back on as soon as he receives permission, and I think again: what would happen if we had phones but nobody called? Hell, nobody calls mine. Outside the airport the air is too warm for early April, but it will have to do.
Gualala, CANotes not from the underground but from California's Mendocino Coast... Kominksi recently described a diagonal descent to the southeast, and you should know that you can slice a different diagonal to the northwest and get just as far. My diagonal cuts out of the Valley and onto the coast--no hawks on signs but cows mingling precariously across Highway 1. Somewhere on the rocks below there must be a hefty bull carcass sustaining a Jonathan Livingston Seagull and his family.
I leave home planning to listen to my iPod's current audiobook selection History of Hitler's Empire (download for about $19 from The Teaching Company). But, when the iPod goes missing, I fall back to a CD of Paul Zarzyski, whom I have heard read thrice at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. When Zarzyski is done I start on the first of 4 Led Zeppelin CDs. Nearly 4 hours after leaving home, I'm greeted by a friend and a couple of borderline Border Collies, one of which is blind in its left eye like Jim Harrison, who writes wonderful novels and novellas, as well as essays about road-trips, cooking, and drinking. (I recommend the lengthy novel Dalva as a starting point, then work backward from there.) The dogs will come to tolerate me after a few hours; my friend has come to tolerate me over the span of nearly 20 years.
It is 2 days of, for me, basically nothing but watching someone else work. I prepare some classnotes in preparation of my next meeting with a classroom full of obnoxious, demanding, petulant, and angry students I have inherited and will spend 12 hours with over the next 3 Mondays. They might not know yet that I, too, lean toward obnoxious, demanding, petulant, and angry. A trip into town produces chicken and wine for dinner; a brief conversation and an exchange of money with one of the owner's of Noma, where I habitually buy artistic works and trinkets; and, from Four-Eyed Frog Books, Cormac McArthy's Child of God, the first sentence of which is about 70 words in length. Whoo-hoo: we got us a string of words here! After an afternoon hike, we drive to Pt. Arena for a bit of grub, and I'm shown where the town's working pier is--someplace where commercial fisherman still work. We don't linger in the cold wind, but I tell myself to return one day to see the fishermen in action.
The TV is not turned on the entire time. In fact, it's not even close to being excited. After evenings that include good food and samplings of whiskey, wine, and beer, we sleep in our respective tents each night, unmolested by skunks, raccoons, bats, coyotes, mountain lions, deer, bears, or ticks, all of which are known to pass through. I listen to the not-so-distant ocean, and I think of the nights I stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier listening to the radar antennae spinning and the ship's bow cutting through water.
I arrived on my birthday, and I left 2 days later. At home, I learn that my dog spent an unsupervised evening feasting on garbage and then depositing it on the carpet. He doesn't seem especially pleased to see me, perhaps because he knows he can no longer sleep in my bedroom: Alpha male displaces animal. It is the start of a new week--4 days of corporate work, 3 nights of teaching at 2 different colleges, then off to Portland for yet another 3-day misadventure.
There's a Thomas Boswell book with the title Why Time Begins on Opening Day. Get it on Amazon. 43 used & new available from $0.01. Penny for his thoughts in paperback. So you'll know why my vacation pilgrimage to the annual Fresno State Pepsi Johnny Quik Tournament means business. Drive the Big Valley from Bay to Basin. San Joaquin Valley where Lake Tulare once took first place in lakes West of the Rockies. Valley of flowers as described by Thomas Jefferson Mayfield in the book Indian Summer: Traditional Life among the Choinumne Indians of California's San Joaquin Valley. 17 Used & new from $7.45. 125 pages. 8 ounces.
"Indian Summer is a fascinating record of the beauty and biological diversity that the San Joaquin Valley has lost and the equally tragic loss of most of its indigenous people."—Wilderness Record
Drive pickup rather than fly SFO or OAK to FAT. 580. I5. 152. Highway 99. Denny's Endless Pancakes and Coffee $4.99 @ Badger Flat Road. Poverty Flat Undercrossing. Highway 233 and the Palms of Robertson Boulevard. Anderson Pump Company. Road 15 3/4 Ave. 20 1/2 Exit 147 1 1/2 miles. Fractional destinations border The California Aqueduct. Rivers dry. Canals bring water. Trucks bring bees. Commerce in Pollen Nation. Managed nature. In Los Banos, Marx sells Cadillacs. Hawks on the signs. Bugs on the windshield. Signs of times: "Food grows where water flows.", "We farm. You Eat.", "Amazing companies doing amazing things for amazing people." On Almond Avenue, trees in bloom purple and white, dropping petals like a snow day. Blossom Banks in the Irrigation Culverts. Only spray paint dustings of flowers yellow and purple on deep green hills. Flora Digs Fauna. Up in the heavens, clouds give shade and hold water. Energies hold vapors, shaping themselves in the wind. Puffy spirit manifestations: faces, dogs, birds. When bodies die, spirits rise to be clouds. Energies attract the vapors. We remake ourselves in the atmosphere or spinoff to the stars in space to live on Asimov Place. Terrestrial life separated into seasons of games with innings. Top and bottom. No clock. Joy when you come home. Make your pitch. Play the hits.
Johnny be nimble,
Johnny be quick.
Catch the ball,
Swing your stick.
Between games, the F-no Malls are F-yes! Urban Outfitters and Ed Hardy Obey Laws of Fashion Island with Bebe. Swing it at the Mall. Eat like kings at Plaza Ventana, Royal Orchid Thai, and Sam's Italian. Week of games. Hosted by Fresno Bulldogs with Charlie at the gate where Augie coached before fame. Foul ball off Steve's bat for Keven's daughter Mila. Nick hits one off the wall at 380 for a double.
Baseball gods are good to Utes. Humans not so good to each other. Ask the Choinumne. Ask the Earth Mother. Return trip In Rainbows with alternating sun and clouds. Hot sun. Thunderhead shade. Majestic thunderstorms driving the wind farms of Altamont. Back to Mom. You can work with her. You can take her out for a meal. You can give her presents of symbolic significance. But after dinner before the check she leaves and screams, "You'll pay for that!" That's Mother Nature for you.
"Is it hot in here? Or is it just me?"
Kansas City, MO
This is a city of meat. "Have a steak," I'm told whenever I come here; "Have a steak?" I'm asked whenever I get home. And jazz: the city is famous for its jazz, something I once referred to as "the tofu of music." The last time I was here, some coworkers and I dined at The Majestic, which apparently has both good steak and good jazz, and we were seated at the table closest to the stage. My coworkers ate steak, and I ate chicken. A pianist and a stand-up-bass player entertained us with jazz. I had chicken again this trip, but not at The Majestic. Nothing bovine-like for me, even in this trip when we have lunch in a place adjacent to what were once expansive stockyards from which the occasional steer was culled and then served at the very table we gathered around for an hour or so. Fresh meat everywhere.
Enough of what I ate. Who cares, really? I don't even care.
Trains, jazz, mutual funds, meat, the Missouri River, the Hall (as in Hallmark) family.... St. Patrick's day, rainy and cold: the Power and Light District was full of drunk young people, and I felt both old and boring as I worked my way through the rain and the drunks. I stayed in the downtown Marriott, which, as in my previous visits, was filled with young military recruits destined for one service or another. A couple of years ago as I was pedaling hamster-like on one of the stationary bikes in the hotel's gym, one young army recruit asked me if I was headed into the service, as well. I told him I'd done my time decades earlier.
"Why'd you sign up?" I asked.
"The education," he said.
I said, "There are other ways to get an education." But I thought this: You are young and stupid. There is no sane reason for you to go into the army, no sane reason for your probable deployment to Iraq.
On this trip, I encounter a group of drunk and soon-to-be-drunker navy boys who are lugging several full ice chests into the elevator I had, for a few moments, treated as my own. I know they are navy because they have "U.S. Navy" on their shirts. I watch them an think: Fresh meat everywhere.
"I'm not drunk, but he is," one says to me while pointing to his friend.
His friend says, "I think it's safe to say that we're all drunk."
When we reach the lobby, they lug their ice chests out. "You should get some marines to carry those," I say, but they either don't think it's funny, or they don't get my point. Pick one....
I am on the 18th floor. Many years ago Kominski and I spent a quartet of nights in Chicago's Hotel 71, and we were treated to a corner room that had many windows. Our room overlooked the Chicago River and Marina City. The rock band Wilco's CD Yankee Hotel Foxtrot * had just been released. We kept the drapes open all night, something I've pretty much always done when staying in hotel rooms where nobody can walk by and peek into my room. In Kansas City during this stay, I do the same thing; red from Crown Plaza, blue and white from AT & T, green from Holiday Inn fill the room all night.
That's all--the tofu of writing.
* Yankee, Hotel, Foxtrot: If you were talking over a radio on the military, those are the words you would use for Y-H-F.
A couple times a year, if I play my cards right, I'm fortunate enough to spend some time on the Mendocino Coast in northern California. At different times of the year, I'm less fortunate and spend a few hours in my dentist's office where the woman who cleans my teeth not only tells me to floss regularly, she tells me of how her marriage is going and how her husband still hasn't found work. She asks me about my sons and wife, though I usually answer with only minimal detail. She has been cleaning my teeth for 13 years. At some point during my last visit she mentioned something about telling her husband that she thinks of some of her patients as second husbands, and that I was one of the good second husbands.
Before I saw her last week, though, when I walked into the small waiting room, I saw that there was a new photograph on the wall, a photograph of Balling Ball Beach on the aforementioned Mendocino Coast. I've been to that beach, where at low tide boulders shaped like, well, balling balls are visible. Seeing that photograph made me remember my last visit there, during high tide, unfortunately, and my encounter with Ann, an encounter noted in my trusty Moleskine. Here's what I wrote.Walking on the beach, I encounter Ann, a woman whose first words to me are, "Do you have something on your mind, or are you just walking?" She is, she says, here with her husband, and they plan to move to the area from Southern California. He is an oceanographer who wants to buy a boat and is somewhere looking for one; she is a writer who dreams of writing the next Disney blockbuster.... She comments on my wedding ring and does not seem surprised that I am allowed to "wander," and she says that her husband does not mind if she wanders now and then. She seems to be about 60, though she says her husband just turned 50, the age at which she "met her true love."
There was more to the encounter, certainly. She had been walking her 2 dogs and approached me as I stood looking across an ocean; I am not sure of why she bothered to speak to me. Somewhere in our conversation we spoke about the difficulties of trying to write, so I must have mentioned that I've had some experience with both difficulties and writing. We shook hands early on, probably when we shared names. I doubt I shared any information about my wife.
And, yes, I know that is not much of a story. I probably did have something on my mind that day, maybe memories about looking out over that same ocean from the opposite direction. I do hope her husband found a good boat, and I hope Ann writers her blockbuster. I also hope that my dental hygienist's husband finds a good job sometime in the next six months.
There are little things that happen to you here and there now and then. They define your future and refine your personality through experience. Momentous in retrospect, they linger then rise to loom like mountain peaks in the ridge of memory, defining your line of sight, brought forward through the prism of a personal seismic semifictional alignment. Where is this going? I’ll tell you where. You never know. And that’s the point here. These are all big philosophical ways of saying you never know what things or which people will shape the paths in your life. Because little things point to bigger ways.
This is one of those moments that happened way before the Zapple Records Grateful Dead vinyl conversations. Before the late night calls of “NARR! EPPIE CAH!” meaning drives to West Sacramento over the Foggy Yoyo Causeway for a Cup of Joe. Before the legendary pickup slow motion rolling crash in a Winters farmer’s field. Before the first 80 degree day of the Davis spring where all who knew arrived unspoken for six packs of Tecate. Before the Beer and Loafing story of rafting in the long river afternoon. Before the ball playing quacking antics of the Ducks tossing and whacking softballs. Before the all-night parties hosted by the Flying Andersons. Previous to the obvious.
To quote the Great Gelfond: “This is my theory, which is mine.” So let’s get on with it. Let’s start with another complicated yet simple definition of a way. Let’s get tribal. Back in the day when the Grateful Dead were a band, there were people who followed them to attend concerts. Even though the band made records, it was the feeling that many people got at their live concert shows that set the stage for a lifetime appreciation. This feeling was a collective experience, a vibe that connected the audience to the performers and back again, where everyone became a part of a bigger thing in the moment. Some pictured this effect as a flying dragon biting its tail to form a circle.
[Here I digress into symbolism. That topic is better covered in a turn of the century French Literature class at Sproul Hall at UC Davis. Let’s not do it here. My apologies.]
Those who went to the shows regularly to participate in this tribal ceremony were called Deadheads. Because of his apparent tribal affiliation expressed in dress and music, some people affectionately labeled Young Eddy Weber as Deadhead Ed. Like other nicknames bestowed on other luminaries such as Johnny Mike, Hippie, and Woo Woo Woo, the name stuck. I think we all have enough information at this point to proceed with the story. No more butt cheese. We have no time for that now.
Ever notice how some important events tend to coincide? Ever wonder why when it rains, cows don’t go inside? Outside the Barns of Tercero in late spring or early summer, a number of us decided to honor the three night annual appearance of the Grateful Dead at Winterland with a commitment to drive back and forth seeing all the shows during Academic Finals Week. Various sacred roots and chemicals were consumed.
In this state, I entered Winterland, an ice rink converted to a celebrated concert venue. This was our temple for all things Grateful Dead. On this night, Bill Graham provided pre-show entertainment in the form of a volleyball court in the middle of the floor. The winning team would play the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic for a donation money prize from the concert promoter if the health provider’s team won the championship. Rival teams were formed randomly on the spot and announced under banners of geography: East Bay, Marin, Peninsula, SF…and DAVIS!
From my seat in the balcony, I ran down to the floor heavily blazing in my mind to find most of the people representing Davis already on the court. Organizing the team was Deadhead Ed. As my wild-eyed self ran up, he was already staring into my wobbly eyes with their unreliably dilated pupils. His trademark wide smile invited me onto the space of the court anyway. Play began against Marin.
The first ball I touched went flying into the crowd. The announcer said, “We’ve got some toasted flakes here tonight.” I was a little nervous out there on the big stage. Ed looked at me with that look where his head tilted to the side, eyebrows raised, and mouth corner smirked. I took that as a friendly reminder to get my shit together. The rest of the game, we played in tune with synchronized setting, spiking, and serving. High fives all around. Ed’s big smile shined liked a quarter moon even in defeat. Fighting hard, we lost 19–17 to Marin who went on to beat the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic.
This should be the end of the story. But the vibe was wrong. The songs went slow and low. The crowd was bumming. Concern was in the air. The band and the crowd sensed that the Free Clinic should get the money anyway. So after the first set, Bill Graham came out and said they would get the donation. The second set took off and blew the roof off the house. And out on the floor, a girl popped and dropped her contact lens in the middle of a song. Standing there with a smiling Ed, I saw the flickering path of the spinning lens tracing down to the floor. Reaching down, I picked it up and handed it back to the girl. Ed smiled and we all danced the night away even though I don’t dance.
But since then, when I feel something strongly in the moment, I do know how to smile while I look someone in the eye. I also know that when I focus on anything in any condition, I can create the confidence to get it done. Thanks, Deadhead Ed. Thanks for teaching me to feel the joyous grace of the moment. Even though you're gone, you'll not be forgotten. The night we met to celebrate your life, there was a huge quarter moon smile in the sky. They say your heart was too big for this world. "NARR!"
As someone who is awkwardly bent toward nostalgia, I often delve into the Twilight Zone-ish idea that my 12-year-old self still delivers papers after school. Okay, that's not simply bending, and it certainly isn't simple nostalgia--it might be a problem. But, since I can't afford a shrink, you'll have to ask yours what he or she thinks.
Wait--I've digressed somewhat. Consider this: Have you ever wondered if people you think about occasionally think of you? For example, think of someone from high school, someone you spent a lot of time with and thought of as a good friend. Imagine you still think fondly of this person, though you have not heard from him or her in a long time, and then weigh the odds that this person is sitting in front a computer right now and thinking of you. Or, maybe not thinking of you, maybe thinking of a good recipe for salmon, one that can be used for next Saturday's gourmet club.
Which, naturally, leads me to Classmates.com, a website devoted to nostalgia if ever one existed. You can do some things for free on this website. For example, you can set up a profile that someone, maybe that old friend who isn't thinking of a good recipe for salmon, can read. When you log into this website, you can see how many people have viewed your profile, and how many have left you messages.
Now for the sad part. I set up a profile several years ago, but seldom do I actually log in. Recently, however, I did, and I found this: 16 people have viewed my profile, and 2 have signed my guestbook, whatever that is. Yeah, that's it: 16 + 2.... The 16 viewers are anonymous, and I am not interested in them. I am, though, somewhat interested in who signed my guestbook, for these people made an effort to let me know they're out there somewhere. One signed in the summer of 2007, and one signed just a couple of months ago. The thing is, the only way I can learn who these people are is by giving Classmates.com some money, which I've almost done a few times but, those same few times, have balked just short of entering my credit card number. (And if you're thinking that maybe it's not 2 people but the same person, I've admitted that as well. Just let me have my fantasy, okay?)
I would like to ask those 2 people some questions: who? what? where? why? when?
Being a cheapskate is not always such a good thing.
Kominski introduced me to Raymond Carver's writing sometime around 1985 or 1986 when we worked together on micro-documents to support a major banking institution's software products. Kominski would later become my boss, but that's not part of this story. We had a co-worker named Jim, an old guy who liked to drink his lunch more often than not. Jim's not part of this story, either, though I think I'll write about him at some point. Some other people, writers we worked with but who are not part of this story, are Ken, who was my boss before Kominski; Richard, who had a great sense of humor; Steve, who was an obnoxious twit with some bad habits; Suzie, who is probably instrumental in that banking institution's success; and Cliff, who must have attended the same Twit School that Steve did. Ken and Jim and Richard are dead, and I'm sad about that. There was a Deirdre, too, an Englishwoman who is now probably married to a Baron.
Raymond Carver, who also is dead, wrote wonderfully polished short stories and, to a lesser extent, poems. In fact, I sometimes use his poems when I teach a literature class, something we can't discuss because I'm really not supposed to use those poems in that class. I read pretty much every Carver story I could find, and then I read them again and again. When I was a college undergraduate, one of the professors who taught poetry writing classes I took had been great friends with Carver when Carver was in Sacramento, but I would not learn this until graduate school where I took poetry writing classes from that same professor. I don't know where I learned this.
Some of Carver's stories are the basis for the movie Short Cuts, which is one of my favorite movies. Some of Carver's life is allegedly documented in the book The Honeymooners, which is one of my favorite books.
I left that banking institution much too soon; it was the best job I've ever quit. I left for various reasons, all of which seemed sound at the time. One of the reasons was to go "home," though I've never really felt at home here. I did go to graduate school, which was a good reason, and if I had not come back, I would not have met some wonderful people. The job I left that banking institution for was the worst job (okay, only) job I've ever been fired from. I had left my wife and sons behind while we waited for our little tract home to be built, and I ended up working at a place that made me miserable.
So, I spent a lot of time alone. I went to class at night, and I drove home on weekends. One night when I was not in school, I wandered into Tower Books, picked up a copy of The North American Review, and saw inside that magazine a small note that Raymond Carver had died. I put the magazine back on the rack, left the store, and thought, "well, that sucks." I didn't have many literary heroes, and one of them had died. This was in 1988, and he had died, apparently, on my wedding anniversary.
Raymond Carver is buried in a scenic cemetery in Port Angeles, Washington, where you can catch a ferry to Victoria, Canada. From the grave you can look out over the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which just so happens is mentioned in the book I'm reading, Passage to Juneau: A Sea and its Meanings. Several years ago our family went to Port Angeles as part of a vacation, and we took that ferry to Victoria, which is a nice city I'd like to visit again. We also went bowling, and that was fun too. One morning when everyone was sleeping, I started the rented van and drove to the cemetery; I then walked around until I found Carver's grave, which is marked by an impressive piece of granite. Tess Gallagher, Carver's wife when he died, has a grave ready for herself, too. There's a small bench next to the graves, and there was a metal box that contained a notebook for people to record their thoughts.
I felt a bit odd standing there, as though visiting graves was not a normal thing to do. (And maybe it isn't--I mean, it's not like I really knew the guy.) One of his poems, and one of my favorites, is etched onto his gravestone. It is entitled "Gravy," and I think you should look it up.
I actually wanted to use an adjective a bit more harsh than "recalcitrant," but I'm trying to pretend that I am cultured and have reached a point in my life where I can be forgiving, diplomatic, and kind.
None of those adjectives is accurate, certainly, but if I'm being kind to the Muse, I might as well be kind to myself.
I tried last night to draw the Muse cloak-like around me, conjuring the best I could with a bottle of Liquid Sunshine Blond Ale brewed by the Hoppy Brewing Company. The Muse, though, was happy to let me drink alone. And, having spent about 4 hours back-country skiing yesterday, I was sound asleep not long after the bottle was empty. I was, frankly, exhausted, which I gladly enjoyed if only because exhaustion for once trumped insomnia.
Early this morning, then, after an invigorating (if brief) bike ride, I sat on the sofa with a cup of tea, perused the Sunday paper, and began leafing through various volumes of poetry. I am reading Passage to Juneau and Ansel Adam's autobiography now, neither of which inspires much creativity. I was hopeful that my thin books of poems would hold something for me, for in addition to needing something creative to work on for personal reasons, I am also supposed to present a poem at next week's meeting of my writers group.
Hope, though, doesn't always float. I found some wonderful works from my favorite poets: Raymond Carver; Phil Levine; Stanley Kunitz. These guys!
And then I found this, a poem I first read (and memorized) maybe 25 years ago, written by William Stafford. [Note: you'll find much better discussion of poetry at "The Great American Pinup," which is linked from this site.]
Ask Me
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt--ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
I am not exactly sure of why I settled on Stafford's work, but I think it might be because I keep thinking about people--some who have "come in their slow way into my life"--I have known for a long time. Recently, for example, I made contact with someone I knew in high school. The contact was actually accidental, but I then bungled a reciprocal connection. I also recently dreamed of a friend, also from high school, who was the best man in my wedding, a man I have not spoken to in many (too many) years. And, finally, I have been thinking about another visit to my hometown in the Midwest, which I know is something I should not either consider or do.
As I read, as I looked for something to write about for this blog, I discovered a couple of things that might serve as material for the next couple of posts. We'll see.
Nearly a year has passed since I left for and returned from England, and I continually think about a few people I encountered: the angel at the palace in Edinburgh; the Swede in the bar in Edinburgh; the woman from Arkansas. Somehow, I guess, I will always think about them, just as I think about people I have not seen in decades: a few friends from boyhood; people I must have slighted; people who do not know their continued influence on me.
But, perhaps it's just plain sentimentality, and who needs that?
Where our intrepid traveler prepares to leave, then does
My last day in London, I start the day with coffee and croissant at Caffe' Nero not far from my B & B in Paddington. One more subway ride today, once more to Victoria Station from where I'll catch a train to Gatwick, and from there take a cab to my final (the seventh) hotel of my journey....
Then, at Starbucks in Victoria Station, I linger for awhile before boarding the train, not in a rush to leave but not reluctant to do so. I think that everyone should do something like this: a couple weeks alone and unencumbered save for the annoyance of a backpack... In 2 weeks I have had a substantial conversation with, what, one person?
Arrived in the small town of Horley without incident, and it is here I will spend my final night in England. I find my way to the center of the town after depositing my luggage at the B & B, and once again find a coffee shop from which I can look through the large windows and watch people come and go. Walking again, I buy a sandwich at a grocery store and sit on a park bench near the middle of town, and I am comfortable with ending the trip like this: quiet, relaxed, unhurried. On the way back to the hotel later, I turn left and turn right and generally circle about the town before finding a secluded pathway that cuts from one neighborhood to another and ends a few hundred hards from the B & B. It is nice to find such pathways and to bet that they will end in good places....
Successful take-offs are always good, and I leave England behind on April 3, 2007, one day before my birthday, one day before the start of another decade. Approaching Dallas, where I will wait for 3 hours before catching the flight home, we fly through and then descend into beautiful thunderheads. The weather closes in not long after we land, and I can see the clouds and rain push into the airport. The monitors show the story: nothing's landing, nothing's taking off. I call home to let my wife know I will be delayed, and then I sit and think of the woman who sat next to me from Gatwick to Dallas.
She was returning from the Isle of Man and visiting her daughter, son-in-law, and grandson. She is returning to Ft. Smith, Arkansas, where she lives with her husband, her dog, and her cat. She and her husband both are retired military; she tells me of her cat, which, among other things, has carried into the house a bat and a baby copperhead. The dog and the cat explore together, she says.
Funny how you know things, though, maybe more funny how you know them too late. After she tells me about her pets, I ask her how many children she has. I regret it instantly. "I have two," she says, "but until recently I had three."
Yes, of course. I somehow knew this, and it was not funny.
She says that she has only now arrived at a point where she can say this without crying, and I do not know what to say. I tell her of a friend of mine, an artist, whose son was killed in a car wreck near Elko, Nevada, on a trip home to see her. Now, she has only one son. I tell the woman from Arkansas that my friend, too, finally reached a point where when people asked her how many children she has, she says "I have one son."
I don't, though, think my seatmate was comforted....
My wait is brief compared to other people who wait for the storm to move through, and at least my plane did not originate somewhere else. I keep checking the monitors, and my 90-minute delay is a third of what others face. I also check the flight scheduled to leave for Ft. Smith, Arkansas right before I board my plane: the woman's flight will be 4 hours late leaving Dallas. As we take off, I think of her and if she is not just alone but lonely now, that loneliness deepened by the exhaustion from the flight and the frustration from the delay. I find I wish I had said something more to her, found a way to help her feel better. And I think of her cat bringing her gifts, as poisonous as they might be.
The almost-final day
This has got to end: travelogues are not my genre (yes, I know: what is?), and I am eager to move on, to find a way to better follow Kominski's insight....
My final day in London, and I am off to a slow start: checking out of one hotel and into another. As I pack, I wonder about the things I've missed these last 2 weeks, but I am also content with what I have seen. I have, in fact, been astonishingly astonished every day.... Took the train to Victoria Station and walked to Buckingham Palace--what a bizarre sight! Hundreds of people were pushed against the Palace fence, all of them apparently hoping to catch a glimpse of something or someone. I am reminded of how people at zoos stare at the large cats and then collectively ooh and ahh when a tiger, say, licks its paw.
I wonder what the Queen thinks when she stares out a window. And the guards: do they stare back at everyone and wonder just what we're doing? Here are some of the people, some of the time: at the gates, away from the gates.
Still on foot, I try to navigate to Harrod's, though I find some difficulty in tracing my way across the map. Harrod's is, simply, a hoot: crowded and intense. Those people who are not at the Palace must be here. I do not know the official name of the area, but the architecture in this neighborhood differs greatly from Paddington--much more stone here.
I also visit a couple of museums, including the Albert and Victoria, which has some wonderful sculpture. Returning to my room by train, I rest for awhile in the advent of a slight head cold. Then, I make my way back to Hyde Park to enjoy a leisurely hike through the crowds. I walk by Kennsington Palace and discover Albert Hall (below)not long before I begin to feel somewhat feverish. I cannot, however, stop, for this is London, and London is in England, and I have not been here. I walk counter-clockwise back to where I entered the park on my first day.
By the time I return to my room, my feet and legs are very tired, and I am very tired. After cleaning up a bit, I walk to a small cafe', one with metal tables and plastic chairs, and a couple of guys working a grill, and I eat a greasy bacon burger and some fries--the type of food I have avoided for decades but which now is the best I have ever eaten. I trudge back to my room with the burger in my gut, and I watch the alley outside my room grow darker.
We begin to wind down.
Leaving Dover, and the sun has finally come out, which is a nice change after being drizzled on for most of the day yesterday. I leave with an odd sense of sadness, something I also experienced when leaving both York and Edinburgh.
Then again, I have always felt sad about leaving places, even when I left the ship in Yokosuka, Japan, after being on board for over 2 years: I sat on the pier waiting for a bus to take me to Tokyo and the flight home, and I felt as lonely as I did the day I first arrived.
On the train to London, I think that I am not sure of what I'll do for the next 2 days: Westminster Cathedral is still on my list. I do hope for warm weather, for I'm sick and tired of wearing long sleeves and jackets... Victoria Station is extremely crowded when I disembark on this Saturday afternoon; people are going everywhere they can. I am quite pleased that I can get to my hotel via the Underground and do not have to walk across Hyde Park again.
My room at the Dylan is not bad, as it shouldn't be for the price of 65 pounds, the most expensive room of the trip, double what I paid in Dover and York. After unpacking yet again, I head to Covent Garden once more. Walking without design, I come upon Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, which I visit for awhile. Trafalgar Square looks like this:
Then, seeing Big Ben in the distance, I head toward it and discover for Parliament and Westminster Cathedral. I am too late to enter the Cathedral, however, so it will have to wait until I return. I do get to hear Big Ben chime about 5 minutes after this picture is taken, which is a nice treat:
I had purchased an "Irish"-style cap in Covent Garden, and as I was walking along near Big Bend, a gust of wind took possession of the cap and dropped it behind a stone wall in front of an official-looking building. Surveying the number of surveillance cameras around me, I decide not to simply scale the wall but to ask a guard at the building parking lot if I'll get shot if I retrieve my cap. He tells me to go ahead, and I feel like the stupid tourist that I am. He watched me closely, of course.
Behind the Cathedral I find the Thames, and I am treated to this somewhat absurd view:
I don't know--I just don't see how something so Disneylandesque should be there. Especially when there is something like this nearby (Westminster):
Or like this (Parliament):
Returning to Trafalgar Square, I am stopped by a French couple and their map, and they ask me if I can help them read their map and get oriented--I don't know if I help much, but they pretend that I have. Back at Covent Garden, I eat a hot pasty for dinner, then ride the train back to Paddington, picking up a bottle of Pinot Grigio before returning to my room.
I am tired and fall asleep while watching one of the 4 television channels. Tomorrow is my final day in London.
On the road to Canterbury
The train ride from Dover to Canterbury is direct and quick, but when I get to Canterbury itself, I have no idea of where to go. But, just as in Dover when I'd headed in the direction of what I assumed was a castle, I walk toward where I think I have seen a cathedral's spires. I find that my path is along the old city wall, which brings memories of York. Again, I walk through mist and am glad for my raincoat.
The cathedral is well worth the price of admission, and I further recognize how stupid I was to skip the cathedral in York because of the cost. Perhaps my scant knowledge of Canterbury's history is what sways me. Thomas Beckett was slain here, and the spot is marked with an understated subtleness that fits a cathedral. The Black Prince is entombed here, as are assorted archbishops. A distraction here is the large group of school kids--maybe the same French kids I saw in the Dickens museum--taking pictures with their cell phones as they chatter and squeal. If they would look down, they would see how gray stone has been worn smooth by pilgrims and supplicants.
Amazing: stone this hard worn smooth by countless people moving on soft feet or even their knees.
I spend a good amount of time in the cathedral, and I pause at a small shrine to martyrs--a touching display surrounded by small candles that visitors have ignited. I also walk around the cathedral grounds, which are extensive and include the ruins of an ancient church, then head toward the city center that reminds me of York in its layout. During a lunch of fish & chips and beer, I ponder my travels so far and think that if I return, I would like to return to Canterbury. Dover? I probably would not go there again--other than castle there, I did not see much of interest.
I am eager for London again, and I am perhaps a bit trip-weary. I have moved in one way or another for over a week, and I think I need a rest.
For Alice: January 14, 1934 - March 20, 1993
Last week, I heard a commenter on National Public Radio note the number of blogs created each day, that the only people who read most blogs are the writers and their mothers.
Happy birthday, Mom.
We change places yet again.
Now on my way to Dover aboard a train that splits--half goes one way at some point, half goes another. With five nights remaining before I head home, I am even more weary of this damn luggage, of filling it up and emptying it out.... For the most part, from what I've seen from trains, the majority of people here reside in row houses, not detached homes. But, perhaps it is no different here than in areas near American cities. The landscape along this route is green hills; the trees are leafless, and true spring appears to be a few weeks away. In Edinburgh, people commented on the blooming daffodils, and the owner of the B & B said that the climate has changed so much over the years, she can no longer predict when the weather will be "good."
Though the Dover train station is small, I was a bit lost, or at least disoriented, when I got off the train. I also found that I did not have a map of the city, so after checking things outside, I sat down in the station's cafe' and soothed myself with a cup of coffee. Later, after a few wrong turns and working from a mental map created from countless glances of maps of Dover available on the Internet, I made the correct turn and found the B & B. And, as I had gathered from looking at those same maps, it is on one of the busiest streets in the city. Still, the price is right and the room is nice enough: a bed, a sink, and extra chair, a window that opens. The bathroom and shower are down the hall.
Though the day was gray, I decided to hike to where, from near the train station, I thought I had seen the outline of a castle high above the city. Unencumbered by my heavy pack, walking is much easier, and I finally work my way through town, find signs that point toward the castle, and ascend a couple of steep streets and a very long sidewalk. Wet from sweat and mist, I located the ticket booth where a very nice woman gave me a discount on my admission because of the late hour. The castle itself impressed me more than the one in Edinburgh had: less touristy, less commercial, someone more "genuine." Much of my stroll around the castle grounds was in the rain, but that was truly just fine. The sun emerged just as I left the castle and headed back toward town. I stopped at one point to look out over the English Channel, and I thought of the history there, the invasions and assaults that started across the water. From what I have read, Dover itself was nearly flattened during German bombings in WWII.
I have considered crossing the channel tomorrow to visit Calais, France, but instead decide to head toward Canterbury to see how much more wet I can get in the rain that is forecast for the region.
Minding the gap again.
Perhaps because I am only now beginning to feel somewhat comfortable in Edinburgh, I am sad that this is my last day here. But, I am also eager for London, where I will stay for one night before dropping down to Dover for 2 nights.
On the train from Edinburgh.... The previous 4 days have passed quickly, and I am trying hard to not regret doing one thing or another. If I return, I would like to travel north just to see more of the country, or perhaps make a trip to Glasgow.... The train's route follows part of the coast, which reminds me of the California coastline north of Bodega Bay: this is a place where a man could stop to rest and never start again. Each day of travel has helped my confidence as far as getting from one place to another, and I hope the entire journey will help me become less fearful of the world beyond. If nothing else, I have become proficient at packing my bags and moving from one place to another. Partway into the ride my watch stops working, and I am left to rely on my iPod for the correct time. At some point, however, the digital Timex is reborn. I can't help wondering if I've missed something....
Then, in London that day.... After arriving at Kings Cross station, I walk to the Fairway Inn, and I am instantly glad I will spend only a single night here. The neighborhood--and the people sitting on a doorstep across the street--could be improved. I return to the Paddington area to ferret out rooms for the 2 nights I'll be in London after returning from Dover, but I find that rooms are scarce for one of those nights, which will be a Saturday. Fortunately (or not, perhaps) I find a room for one night in the Glendale Hyde Park, where I spent my first 2 nights in London. The woman working the counter remembers me, and she says that while she has no rooms for my second night, she can recommend somplace down the street: The Dylan House.
"The what?" I say.
"The Dylan."
Of course.
At the Dylan House, Tony, an old, heavyset man, manages The Dylan. When I tell him I am spending that night near Kings Cross, he provides some history. "It's not as bad as it used to be. People don't get stuck with a knife as often now."
Oh.
Tony has more: "Most of those B & Bs should have red lights outside."
Thanks, Tony.
I return to a restaurant I visited on the second night of my trip to enjoy dinner and once again have a glass of Pinot Grigio, a wine I discovered during my first dinner here. I think that while I don't feel I've seen much of London, I am quite comfortable in the Paddington area.... Tomorrow, though, I will catch a 10:30 train to Dover, which means I have to get to Victoria Station early enough to figure out just how to find the Dover train....The next morning I am served a bland breakfast by a woman who is as uninterested in my American accent as I am in her Eastern European voice. The day is overcast and rainy, and the train to Victoria Station is extremely crowded, reminding me of the trains in Japan. I am wearing my fleece jacket and am hot from carrying my luggage to train. The man who stands beside me is wearing a nice suit, oblivious to 2 beads of sweat that drip off my wrist and onto his shoulder. In Victoria Station, I rest at a table outside a coffee shop. I drink coffee and watch the people and pigeons, and every now and then I check the overhead display to see on which track my train will stop.
I have figured out how to get to Dover, and I am waiting to go there.
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