When they hear the cries, Mark and Juan come to the rail. Mark then goes to the phone, while Juan turns toward the old man. “Weren’t you going to do anything?”
The old man walks over to his table and picks up his iced coffee. “Things happen, nothing can be done about that.”
When the old man returns to the rail, he sees that the drifting boy has managed to latch onto a warning buoy. The boy hugs it while the water rushes over his shoulders and head. He pulls himself high enough for air, but the old man knows the patient current can endure whatever strength the boy possesses. “The current’s too strong.” The old man sips his drink. By the old man’s feet, Juan spits on the floor. “You’re a cold man. That boy’s likely to die.” The old man looks out over the river. “People die for no reason.” He sets his glass on top of the rail and adjusts his cap. “Why don’t you jump off and save him?” Oppositionally, disdainfully, Juan turns silent.
The boy is maintaining his hold, but he has slid lower on the buoy. Mark returns. “There’s people coming.” Juan covers his eyes. “I can’t watch this.” The old man gazes on.
The boy’s grip gives way, and he again begins downstream. When he doesn’t fight, the current is strong enough to hold him up, but when he tries to break free, he is hurled under water and spat farther out toward the middle.
“He’s not going to make it.” Juan twitches. Mark places a hand on his friend’s back.
Bow-high in the air, a motor boat is now soaring down river. The old man sees the boat power down and circle the boy. From the boat, a man tosses a white float into the water several yards ahead of the boy, but the boy cannot reach it. The man pulls it in and tosses it out again, this time nearly hitting the boy’s head. The boy grabs the float. The driver of the boat, to keep it from turning and spinning, maneuvers the small craft. Toward the side of the boat, the other man pulls the boy and, after considerable effort, hoists him aboard.
The short teen sits in the open bow with a blue towel wrapped around him as the driver negotiates against the current to where the boy’s two friends are standing ankle-deep in the river. As the boat approaches, the old man sees the teen shivering under the towel. “He got lucky.”
On a white sleeve, Juan wipes tears. “You’re a pig.” The old man hands Juan his empty glass and places both hands on the rail. “Life and death are matters of pure chance.” The waiter throws the glass over the rail, then points his finger at the old man’s face. He trembles and sputters noises which resemble grunts more than language. The old man looks out over the river. “One man is not enough to save anyone.” Before walking away, Juan scrutinizes the old man as if he were examining evil itself. A few other customers who have drifted into the cafe during the incident are also in need of service. Mark leaves the rail and waits on them.
The old man stands alone. He can hear the driver of the boat yelling at the boy’s friends, cautioning them about swimming in the river, telling what could have been. The old man watches the two boys climb onto the shore. Into the shallow water, the driver steers the boat. The other man tilts the motor, then throws an orange nylon rope. The old man watches the two boys pull in the boat. It runs aground a few feet from shore, and the short teen climbs out. He gathers the rope, hands it to the driver, and pushes the boat back off the bottom and out into deeper water. When the boat drifts far enough, the motor is manually tilted back into place. Before firing it, the driver yells back. “Go on, get on out of here before someone gets killed next time.” The old man sees one of the boys yell but cannot make out what is said. The driver starts the engine, shakes his head, and navigates the boat out into the current. The boat grows smaller and smaller until it is no longer distinguishable.
Juan returns with a glass of iced coffee. The old man takes it from him. “I guess this’ll make the paper. I won’t read the story though; I hate reading stories about heroes.” Juan walks away. The old man carries the drink back to his seat.
In the breeze, his newspaper has blown onto the floor. He sets the glass on the table and then gathers together the paper. The old man sits and looks again at the Cubs box score. The dirge of the flowing water, the compassion of the waiter, the omnipotency of the teens, the afternoon sun, and the box score jumble in his mind, and now, more than forty years too late, the old man remembers the sublimity of that warm August afternoon, before all the fights, before all the hurt, before all the loneliness, before the decades of human error, when his son sat beside him, the two of them eating hotdogs covered in stadium mustard, at Wrigley Field.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Watching The River Flow: Part I
Drinking iced coffee from a pilsner glass, the old man sits. Unsteady are his mottled hands. Deeply fallen eyes, kindled by the dim afterglow of too many years of drunkenness, focus on newsprint. A moist breeze blows in and up off the river; the old man’s newspaper bends against it. The sun is bright, but the day is tolerable. The old man is not at this cafe to be fashionable. He sits here because he likes the sounds of a river.
From Juan, the old man does not expect much. Afternoon customers, the old man knows, are in the way. He has heard the waiters talking about the nuisance of the slothful patrons––sitting all afternoon in the sun, preventing the waiters from setting up for the dinner crowd. The old man has never tipped. If he is a sloth, he does not care. It is the cafe, absent costumers, that the river can permeate; empty, sounds of riffles pour onto the patio.
“Another,” the old man says to Juan. Juan takes the empty glass and soon returns with a full one. On the table, Juan places it. “Will that be all?” The old man takes a sip. “This is good.”
“Will that be all?”
At the folded newspaper in his left hand, the old man points. “I used to read every word of the paper, even the obituaries, but now I only read the box scores.” Juan pulls a pencil from behind his ear and writes out the check. As a weight, Juan places the salt shaker on top of the bill. The old man looks at Juan. “How old are you? I’ll bet you’re twenty-three.” Juan turns and walks away. Removing his cap, the old man wipes his forehead with a white handkerchief and resets the cap down lower on his brow.
Unfolding the newspaper, the old man deciphers the box score of the previous afternoon’s Cubs game. A left-hander for the Cubs had thrown a no-hitter through seven and a third before allowing a utility outfielder to reach base on a single. So as to tell him about the game, the old man lowers the paper and looks for Juan, but the waiter is not at his station. Juan is standing with Mark, by the patio rail, smoking cigarettes and looking down at the river. Mark is wearing an cheap black tuxedo jacket and pointing: Juan is grinning. The old man turns his chair, but he can not see anything unusual until he walks to the rail.
The cafe patio is a deck protruding twenty feet over the river and standing thirty feet high. The rocky shore climbs steeply from the water up to the main section of the cafe which is set as close to the edge as possible. From the patio rail, the old man sees that Juan and Mark are looking at three teenagers who have climbed down the rocks and are wading into the muddy water a few hundred yards upriver. The old man watches as the shortest of the three takes off his jeans and walks out into the river until he stands thigh-deep. The boy turns and looks at his friends. The other two follow his lead. When all three stand thigh-deep in the river, the shortest boy walks farther out until his waist is submerged. Again he turns and motions his friends to join him. As one of the boys stumbles and falls, the two waiters laugh. The boy’s white T-shirt turns muddy gray from the water and clings to his frail frame. Then all three boys stand chest-deep in the river. As they venture farther from shore and their voices carry across the water, the old man hears them gibing one another. The boys begin to wrestle and horseplay and shout profanities.
Finished with their cigarettes, Mark and Juan return to their duties. Alone at the rail, the old man stands. He yells down, “How’s the water?” The boys look, and the shortest one raises his right fist, extends his middle finger, and yells something that the old man cannot make out. The other boys laugh. The shortest kid then climbs onto the back of one of his friends and twists around him until he forces his friend’s head under. The other boy pulls the shortest one off and catches him in a full nelson. He dunks the shortest boy several times before releasing him. Their play carries them out farther into the current. When he reaches for one of his friends, the shortest teen is well over his head. The friend pushes the short one farther out into the current that catches him and drags him along with it. The old man watches. The two taller boys call for their friend to stop kidding around and then realizing, begin yelling for help. As they yell, they look at the old man who stares back motionlessly.
From Juan, the old man does not expect much. Afternoon customers, the old man knows, are in the way. He has heard the waiters talking about the nuisance of the slothful patrons––sitting all afternoon in the sun, preventing the waiters from setting up for the dinner crowd. The old man has never tipped. If he is a sloth, he does not care. It is the cafe, absent costumers, that the river can permeate; empty, sounds of riffles pour onto the patio.
“Another,” the old man says to Juan. Juan takes the empty glass and soon returns with a full one. On the table, Juan places it. “Will that be all?” The old man takes a sip. “This is good.”
“Will that be all?”
At the folded newspaper in his left hand, the old man points. “I used to read every word of the paper, even the obituaries, but now I only read the box scores.” Juan pulls a pencil from behind his ear and writes out the check. As a weight, Juan places the salt shaker on top of the bill. The old man looks at Juan. “How old are you? I’ll bet you’re twenty-three.” Juan turns and walks away. Removing his cap, the old man wipes his forehead with a white handkerchief and resets the cap down lower on his brow.
Unfolding the newspaper, the old man deciphers the box score of the previous afternoon’s Cubs game. A left-hander for the Cubs had thrown a no-hitter through seven and a third before allowing a utility outfielder to reach base on a single. So as to tell him about the game, the old man lowers the paper and looks for Juan, but the waiter is not at his station. Juan is standing with Mark, by the patio rail, smoking cigarettes and looking down at the river. Mark is wearing an cheap black tuxedo jacket and pointing: Juan is grinning. The old man turns his chair, but he can not see anything unusual until he walks to the rail.
The cafe patio is a deck protruding twenty feet over the river and standing thirty feet high. The rocky shore climbs steeply from the water up to the main section of the cafe which is set as close to the edge as possible. From the patio rail, the old man sees that Juan and Mark are looking at three teenagers who have climbed down the rocks and are wading into the muddy water a few hundred yards upriver. The old man watches as the shortest of the three takes off his jeans and walks out into the river until he stands thigh-deep. The boy turns and looks at his friends. The other two follow his lead. When all three stand thigh-deep in the river, the shortest boy walks farther out until his waist is submerged. Again he turns and motions his friends to join him. As one of the boys stumbles and falls, the two waiters laugh. The boy’s white T-shirt turns muddy gray from the water and clings to his frail frame. Then all three boys stand chest-deep in the river. As they venture farther from shore and their voices carry across the water, the old man hears them gibing one another. The boys begin to wrestle and horseplay and shout profanities.
Finished with their cigarettes, Mark and Juan return to their duties. Alone at the rail, the old man stands. He yells down, “How’s the water?” The boys look, and the shortest one raises his right fist, extends his middle finger, and yells something that the old man cannot make out. The other boys laugh. The shortest kid then climbs onto the back of one of his friends and twists around him until he forces his friend’s head under. The other boy pulls the shortest one off and catches him in a full nelson. He dunks the shortest boy several times before releasing him. Their play carries them out farther into the current. When he reaches for one of his friends, the shortest teen is well over his head. The friend pushes the short one farther out into the current that catches him and drags him along with it. The old man watches. The two taller boys call for their friend to stop kidding around and then realizing, begin yelling for help. As they yell, they look at the old man who stares back motionlessly.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Even after I die, it's still my stuff
Recently I sat down with my wife and a lawyer to do something that we should have done a long time ago. We drafted a will. And yes, it was incredibly irresponsible to not have done this earlier in our lives, but it just never came up or when it did, we always put it on the back burner as something we would get to at some point in the near future. Needless-to-say, that near future took almost seventeen years. But writing a will is not really the topic of today’s blog, instead I want to discuss the odd and somewhat objectionable notion of a will in general.
Now I know things are much more complicated than this. A will is often just a part of a trust which is in some respects a way to keep your stuff in your family and assure that the youth of the family are not ruined by some lump sum of money when they are unable to make good decisions about how to respond to that lump sum of money. Yet this in itself seems a bit arrogant, but it also seems wise. Most eighteen year olds would not handle a million dollar
To write a will is both to legally admit that you will die someday and perhaps contradictorily to admit that you want to have a say in what happens to your stuff when you are gone. Of course it’s all about stuff—material, transient—stuff. The lawyer
assured me that I could not designate who I would leave whatever sense of happiness I have at the end to my son, nor am I allowed to leave a passion for literature to my daughter. I am only legally allowed to say who gets my stuff. Yet we eventually learn that stuff does not make us happy. Many wealthy people are incredibly unhappy and some poor people actually laugh every once in a while. Indeed, happiness comes from within. We bring it to stuff, stuff does not bring it to us. Yet, a will is a document that is designed to make me feel as if I will be offering my children and perhaps grandchildren, a sense of happiness by designating who gets my stuff.
Now I know things are much more complicated than this. A will is often just a part of a trust which is in some respects a way to keep your stuff in your family and assure that the youth of the family are not ruined by some lump sum of money when they are unable to make good decisions about how to respond to that lump sum of money. Yet this in itself seems a bit arrogant, but it also seems wise. Most eighteen year olds would not handle a million dollar
inheritance the way most thirty year olds would. From the older generation’s perspective, the eighteen year old is likely to blow it, lose the money, and ruin himself. So a trust allows the dead person to say you can have my stuff, but only a little at a time and only at certain times in your life. Although all this is very logical and rational, something about it bugs me. Maybe it’s the certainty of it all. The arrogant assurance that I know better than you. And perhaps the deceased do know better, perhaps living eighty or ninety or a hundred years teaches us some valuable lessons or at least some perspective. I mean right now my twelve year old son would probably give most of an inheritance for some cool Legos and
the assurance that he will make the middle school soccer team. Most fifty year olds have the perspective to recognize that toys usually are not a source of lasting happiness and that making the middle school sports team is rather inconsequential in the scope of things.
So maybe today’s blog is just a rambling commentary about the whole idea that I need to draft a legal document to control what happens to my stuff and that that bugs me a bit.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Me and Ayn Rand
I finally finished reading Atlas Shrugged. I have had a strange relationship with its author, Ayn Rand. I stumbled upon her book
Anthem back in high school and pretty much liked it. What I remember about it was that it was a short dystopic novel in which the characters were forbidden from using the first person singular. Of course, the heroes break out of the society and proclaim their rights as individuals. Back then I thought that was pretty cool. I mean in high school it seems that most of us are searching for the “I” that could actually represent us as individual autonomous people. I think I went on to read another of her shorter works called We The Living. If, by chance there is a reader of this blog who remembers this novel, it is possible that what I remember as the plot of Anthem is really the plot of We The Living, but regardless, I don’t seem to remember much about this second novel.
Ayn Rand seems to promote the abolishment of government, or at least of all forms of government that serve social service roles. She further seems to believe totally in survival of the fittest. She does not see any reason why we should not each be entirely proud of who we are, and she rejects any notion of pity for those who have not accomplished what the successful have accomplished. She believes in sink or swim. Of course her big flaw is that we are not all given the same opportunity to learn how to swim. Sure it is tempting to say that I made it on my own, that I did all this without any help, but it is also not true. No one is self-made. We all get help. We all have breaks along the way. This is why Truman Capote was so enamored with writing In Cold Blood. He realized that he could have just as easily been
one of the misguided killers. He grew up in similar circumstances, but as he is quoted in the film, Capote, he happened to walk out the front door instead of the back. I think I did too. But, it takes time to realize this.
Somewhere along the way, life is humbling. Somewhere anyone with a bit of insight realizes that some of us were lucky. I'm not denying the value of hard work and all that, but still, hard work only takes most people so far. Sure exceptions can be listed, but mostly we are either lucky or unlucky. To realize this is to begin to understand compassion. I am reminded of my old friend who often quipped, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." He, and I are non-believers, yet the passage will remain a mantra for me.
I read Anthem, I’m sure, because it was short and I needed an independent reading novel to fulfill some requirement of a high school English class. On a side note, I firmly believe that your immortality as a novelist will be assured if you can write a reasonably good 120 page novel. Every teenager who needs to get a book report done, and who is actually honest
enough to read the book, will flock to it. A few of these books are Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Hemingway’s Old Man and The Sea, Jack London’s Call of The Wild, Voltaire’s Candide and even Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Not that these works are of no value, but they would mostly be unread by the casual reader if it were not for the fact that they are short. But I digress.
At some point in college I started The Fountainhead, but never finished it. It was also about this time that I caught wind of the general unpopularity of Ayn Rand. I had no idea why she was so unpopular, but I began to think that she was one of those people that I should avoid reading if I wanted to be taken seriously as a reader.
Avoiding Ayn Rand novels is not hard. In fact thousands of novels are out there that are much better than even her best work, but I was not avoiding her because I really believed this. I was avoiding her because she was not fashionable. To voluntarily read Ayn Rand and to even suggest that she is a good writer is in fact a great way to lose a lot of credibility in the small circle of serious readers. So for years, I wrote her off as a second tier novelist who deserved to be ignored.
This feeling was enforced when I became an English teacher and learned about the annual Ayn Rand essay contests sponsored by some strange group of Ayn Rand followers. I even heard something about an Ayn Rand Institute
somewhere in California. Things started to seem a bit cult-like all of the sudden. These Ayn Rand supporters, on the surface, were encouraging reading and writing and paying big money for the winning essays, but secretly were encouraging thousands of teens to read Ayn Rand books. In fact, the group would even happily supply copies of the books to teachers for free. Now I’m thinking L. Ron Hubbard and Dianetics. I mean I had heard a story that Dianetics was such a strong seller because
members of Scientology made it a point to buy up all the books, return them to the supplier who would sell them back to the bookstore where the Scientologists would buy them again. The cycle would continue and the book could be listed as a million seller or something like that. So I filed Ayn Rand in this category, and even though I was fond of saying that books are not dangerous in and of themselves, I quietly thought reading Rand might just be dangerous.
She remained on my radar however, and finally last year I read The Fountainhead. And, yes, it actually was pretty interesting. At least interesting enough to get me to actually learn for myself who Ayn Rand was and why she was so strangely blackballed.
Now I like all things Russian, and I learned that Ayn Rand is a Russian who defected to
America in the 1920s. I’m not even sure that at that time her move to Chicago would have been considered defection, but she came here and learned English and made something of herself. I like this part of her story. I barely know English and I was born in the US. She comes here in her mid-twenties and not just learns the language, she becomes a rather widely known writer. Admirable.
So I moved on to watch her on youtube, to learn about her philosophy which is basically an extreme form of anti-socialism libertarianism, and to read her thousand page manifesto called
Atlas Shrugged. Now I am not a conservative nor a Tea Party guy but I discovered, somewhat by accident, that Atlas Shrugged has become somewhat of required reading for the Tea Party promoters and I now know why.
This feeling was enforced when I became an English teacher and learned about the annual Ayn Rand essay contests sponsored by some strange group of Ayn Rand followers. I even heard something about an Ayn Rand Institute
She remained on my radar however, and finally last year I read The Fountainhead. And, yes, it actually was pretty interesting. At least interesting enough to get me to actually learn for myself who Ayn Rand was and why she was so strangely blackballed.
Now I like all things Russian, and I learned that Ayn Rand is a Russian who defected to
So I moved on to watch her on youtube, to learn about her philosophy which is basically an extreme form of anti-socialism libertarianism, and to read her thousand page manifesto called
Ayn Rand seems to promote the abolishment of government, or at least of all forms of government that serve social service roles. She further seems to believe totally in survival of the fittest. She does not see any reason why we should not each be entirely proud of who we are, and she rejects any notion of pity for those who have not accomplished what the successful have accomplished. She believes in sink or swim. Of course her big flaw is that we are not all given the same opportunity to learn how to swim. Sure it is tempting to say that I made it on my own, that I did all this without any help, but it is also not true. No one is self-made. We all get help. We all have breaks along the way. This is why Truman Capote was so enamored with writing In Cold Blood. He realized that he could have just as easily been
Somewhere along the way, life is humbling. Somewhere anyone with a bit of insight realizes that some of us were lucky. I'm not denying the value of hard work and all that, but still, hard work only takes most people so far. Sure exceptions can be listed, but mostly we are either lucky or unlucky. To realize this is to begin to understand compassion. I am reminded of my old friend who often quipped, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." He, and I are non-believers, yet the passage will remain a mantra for me.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
I can't get Frost out of my head
Even though I have written about Frost before, this poem was on my mind today and I decided to feature it on my blog.
Moon Compass
by Robert Frost
I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause
Between two downpours to see what there was.
And a masked moon had spread down compass rays
To a cone mountain in the midnight haze,
As if the final estimate were hers;
And as it measured in her calipers,
The mountain stood exalted in its place.
So love will take between the hands a face...
Cool words in this poem:
"dimly" (How does one move dimly?)
"dripping" (Alliterated with dimly, but also
"dripping" (Alliterated with dimly, but also
strangely modifying "pauses.")
"masked" (Is the moon a bandit or a superhero?
"masked" (Is the moon a bandit or a superhero?
Why is it masked? But further
alliteration.)
"hers" (personifying the moon)
"stood exalted" (Even though it is the moon
"hers" (personifying the moon)
"stood exalted" (Even though it is the moon
which is exalting, "the
mountain stood" seems to
suggest a proud child.)
love (Personification)
Frost is awesome. Vivid imagery and a wonderful wisdom statement at the end. Frost poetry often features a person who interacts with nature. I like the person in this poem. I like the way he sheepishly sneaks out between the storms to see what’s going on.
love (Personification)
Frost is awesome. Vivid imagery and a wonderful wisdom statement at the end. Frost poetry often features a person who interacts with nature. I like the person in this poem. I like the way he sheepishly sneaks out between the storms to see what’s going on.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Remote Blogging
So here I am in Delaware, Ohio where my son is attending a soccer camp at Ohio Wesleyan University. The camp is about twenty-five miles from my home and so I have been wayfaring and loitering and drifting around this town for the last three days. Every once in a while in my
Now here's the trick for a good day of hanging out, switch up your environments every two hours or so and switch up your activities a bit as well, and definitely limit your driving. If possible, park on a shaded side street, lock up the vehicle, and go on foot for the day.
Now it's about one o'clock, and it's time to think about lunch. Usually this means a burger and a beer for me. This all-American lunch is great for a day like this. Almost every place serves it, so I can walk around and explore and find a place that feels right.
I smoke cigars on occasion and there happens to be a cigar lounge here in the downtown. For me, this is a perfect after-lunch stop. I can buy an interesting cigar, perhaps a Kristoff Criollo Lancero, and settle into a long smoke
So now I walk off the cigar buzz and get some air as I take the long way to my vehicle. I get to camp and watch the last twenty minutes of the final soccer scrimmage. The drive home offers a good chance to talk with my son.
life, I have stumbled upon this opportunity which I realize some of you might not consider much of an opportunity. Sure, the day is long enough for me to drive back home and be practical and responsible––mow and weed and clean and repair and remodel and in general do work--and then drive back to Delaware and pick up the boy, but Delaware is just far enough to justify hanging out while I wait for the end of the camp day.
What does one do when hanging out all day. Well, I suppose I could go running or biking or something athletic like that, but I do that stuff at home and this is suppose to be a break from the routine. Thus today's blog is about how to spend a good day away.
It starts with finding a good coffee shop for the morning session. Each person looks for different things in a coffee shop. For me, I
It starts with finding a good coffee shop for the morning session. Each person looks for different things in a coffee shop. For me, I
look for palatable ice coffee, free wifi, comfortable seating, relative noise control, good niches, and ambiance. I find a decent place for this in a little off-the-main-street joint. The piped-in music is quietly tuned to pop radio station that I could live without, but the rest is acceptable. So I order an ice coffee (It is always best to drink ice coffee when it's hot out. I get the coffee I want and the cooling effect of the ice.) I select a niche table--you know one of those off-to-the-side with decent lighting for reading and somewhat removed from the in and out traffic. I settle in, open the iPad, set the phone to vibrate, and read a recent edition of Esquire. I read Esquire because a coffee shop can be a difficult environment for serious sustained reading. I have time for that later. After paging through the magazine, I write my blog entry and check a few emails.
Now here's the trick for a good day of hanging out, switch up your environments every two hours or so and switch up your activities a bit as well, and definitely limit your driving. If possible, park on a shaded side street, lock up the vehicle, and go on foot for the day.
So my next stop is the public library. This is a decent walk which gets me outside and moving. I like the public library as a change from the coffee shop because I can find a good quiet niche there where I can do some serious reading. Today, having just finished Atlas Shrugged, I am eager to jump into one of the two novels I have pulled from my reading stack. One is the Gertrude Stein classic The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and the other
is a newer novel called St. Famous. I will spend some time with both of them over the next two or so hours and decide which one is right for my mood today. I might also serf the web a bit and maybe even watch an episode of "Arrested Development" on my Netflix account.
Now it's about one o'clock, and it's time to think about lunch. Usually this means a burger and a beer for me. This all-American lunch is great for a day like this. Almost every place serves it, so I can walk around and explore and find a place that feels right.
I smoke cigars on occasion and there happens to be a cigar lounge here in the downtown. For me, this is a perfect after-lunch stop. I can buy an interesting cigar, perhaps a Kristoff Criollo Lancero, and settle into a long smoke
and more reading. Now cigar lounges are like coffee shops in that each one has a certain feel, an atmosphere that either works for you or does not work for you. This particular shop, like many, features lots of leather chairs and a big television. A DVD of one of the Batman movies is blasting. So this is when I put in the earbuds and listen to jazz on the iPod and do some more reading. I have decided on St. Famous, but after 65 pages I'm worried that it might be a poor choice.
So now I walk off the cigar buzz and get some air as I take the long way to my vehicle. I get to camp and watch the last twenty minutes of the final soccer scrimmage. The drive home offers a good chance to talk with my son.
So goes a day of hanging out Dunbar style.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
A small sort of poem
Here's something, amongst all the words that I bang out and all the diatribes I spew and all the narratives I piece together and all the rambles I jumble together, that just kind of appeared. Oh, and I liked it,
Last December when I was happy millions of tumbling drops of rain simultaneously froze in the sky and I scaled all the way up to that cloud where I curled up like a big old dog and settled into timeless sleep.
Last December when I was happy millions of tumbling drops of rain simultaneously froze in the sky and I scaled all the way up to that cloud where I curled up like a big old dog and settled into timeless sleep.
Monday, July 25, 2011
A Wilderness Site: Part VII The End
There was a big elm tree not too far into the grove that I walked behind, placing its large trunk between me and Marty. I remember the tree because it had a lover’s heart carved into it. The carving was almost grown out, and I really couldn’t read the initials inside anymore, but I could tell that way back when, some guy had brought a girl out here, and afterwards had taken out his knife and, while she watched, he carved the heart in the tree’s trunk. They probably figured it meant something special, and at the time it probably did. I started to wonder what had happened to them, the two lovers whose names where in the tree. Did they begin a new life out here by this tree, did they form some sort of union? That seemed somehow strange to think about, like suddenly I was standing in a church or on sacred ground. I guess in my mind I still believe those two people whose initials are carved in that tree are together and happy and that their children are happy, and I guess in my mind I still believe there exists a place where people are all happy and where fathers read stories to their children before tucking them into bed.
Regardless, I was happy to be looking at that heart instead of at Marty. I didn’t know why he wanted to delve so empathetically into the topic of our father, but I definitely wasn’t interested in defending against this new maneuver. I much preferred standing by that tree trying to read the initials and the date inside the carved heart.
When I walked back to the campsite, Marty was shirtless and barefoot. His tattoo and his fatigues were the only unnatural things on his body. “I’m going down to the lake. There’s some beer in the cooler and food in the trunk.” I did not recognize the message behind Marty’s words; I only heard what I wanted to hear, and so often in my life I have come to think back on that nurturing comment as the beginning of Marty’s final monologue––as Marty’s way of tying up the loose ends. For Marty, I am convinced, truly believed what he was going to do was the best solution, that his disappearing would save everybody from suffering. His look right then before he left––he had a cigarette in his mouth and he looked real solemn––was unusual, barely contained, like his whole persona could collapse at any minute and like he might actually cry. I averted my eyes and looked back at the trees. “Hey, Henry...” I did not look at him. “People do stuff that doesn’t make sense sometimes to anybody but themselves. Eventually you got to forgive them for it.”
I did not know until about six months later what had really happened with Marty and the army and that married girl in New Mexico, but when the ranger woke me up and started asking questions about Marty and a missing boat, I somehow already knew––just like I knew Marty had been trying to tell me things, important things, before he disappeared over the water, and just like I knew Marty was just like our father, and just like I knew I was too.
I saw my father years later at Mom’s funeral. Somehow he had found out about it and showed up out of the blue. Marty was wrong about him though. He never did have a new wife and more kids or anything. He showed up old and alone and looked kind of sad and awkward, and, as a favor to Marty, I put my arm around my father’s shoulder and told him it was all all right.
Regardless, I was happy to be looking at that heart instead of at Marty. I didn’t know why he wanted to delve so empathetically into the topic of our father, but I definitely wasn’t interested in defending against this new maneuver. I much preferred standing by that tree trying to read the initials and the date inside the carved heart.
When I walked back to the campsite, Marty was shirtless and barefoot. His tattoo and his fatigues were the only unnatural things on his body. “I’m going down to the lake. There’s some beer in the cooler and food in the trunk.” I did not recognize the message behind Marty’s words; I only heard what I wanted to hear, and so often in my life I have come to think back on that nurturing comment as the beginning of Marty’s final monologue––as Marty’s way of tying up the loose ends. For Marty, I am convinced, truly believed what he was going to do was the best solution, that his disappearing would save everybody from suffering. His look right then before he left––he had a cigarette in his mouth and he looked real solemn––was unusual, barely contained, like his whole persona could collapse at any minute and like he might actually cry. I averted my eyes and looked back at the trees. “Hey, Henry...” I did not look at him. “People do stuff that doesn’t make sense sometimes to anybody but themselves. Eventually you got to forgive them for it.”
I did not know until about six months later what had really happened with Marty and the army and that married girl in New Mexico, but when the ranger woke me up and started asking questions about Marty and a missing boat, I somehow already knew––just like I knew Marty had been trying to tell me things, important things, before he disappeared over the water, and just like I knew Marty was just like our father, and just like I knew I was too.
I saw my father years later at Mom’s funeral. Somehow he had found out about it and showed up out of the blue. Marty was wrong about him though. He never did have a new wife and more kids or anything. He showed up old and alone and looked kind of sad and awkward, and, as a favor to Marty, I put my arm around my father’s shoulder and told him it was all all right.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
A Wilderness Site: Part VI
At our camp, I ate a powdered donut, and Marty poured me another cup of coffee. I was still a little disoriented from everything, but I could feel myself pulling it together and re-establishing my identity. Marty must have sensed this also, because he stood in front of me at the picnic table and said that he wanted to talk. I didn’t really want to talk right then, but I was reluctant to further an image of my incompetence by looking like a pouting kid.
Marty wanted to talk about our father. Neither of us had seen nor heard from him in twelve years, and whenever someone asked about him, I became somewhat unnerved. I really did not like talking about him. I guess back then I felt rather conflicted about my father. I knew I wanted him around, yet I also knew I hated him for leaving us. So I learned how not to think about it, and like most people I became reasonably good at repression. Marty had the same feelings that I did, only he liked to talk about them, and he never let me get away with remaining silent about the subject. Like two familiar opponents, the strategic dynamics of our conversation was almost intuitively present. Marty, the aggressor, would push: I, the defender, knowing silence to be ineffective in equalizing the onslaught, would say only enough to pacify Marty, to allow him to realize that my defenses were too strong for his attack. The game had been played enough times between us that I knew what I couldn’t get away with, so when he would push me to talk about our father, I would express some smart-ass comment about how the man was a no good son-of-a-bitch or something. And Marty, being as familiar with the dance as I, expected my derogatory comments and usually let it stop there. But this time something was different––Marty’s attack seemed more abstract, more conflicted. “Yeah, I guess he is an asshole. You know though, sometimes I think I can understand what he did. I mean, he was only fifteen when I was born and nineteen when you came. Hell, I couldn’t’ve done it either. I couldn’t even be nobody’s father now. Look at me.” Using the table top as a seat and resting his feet on the seat board, Marty was sitting beside me now. We both looked out into the grove of trees which separated us from the cold water of the lake. The tops of the poplars waved in the breeze from off the water, and the blue sky of the open space over the lake peeked between the boughs and the thin upper branches. Ever since that day, I have always preferred looking at trees when I talk about something important. There is something soothing and safe in sitting beside someone and not looking at them when you talk. Marty wanted to look at me though. I could feel his eyes gazing at me. And even though I know now how desperately he must have wanted me to look at him, I continued looking at the trees. “I mean a guy wants to be somebody or to do something with his life before he gets saddled with kids. We all got to look out for ourselves, don’t we? When a man gets himself stuck, he either has got to find a way out, or he’s as good as dead.”
“I hope the bastard is dead.”
“But maybe he’s got a good family now. Maybe he’s got more kids now, and he really loves them. Maybe he goes to their little baseball games and coaches their mini-basketball teams. Maybe he reads them stories at night and tells them he loves them, and maybe he really does. Maybe he really did want to come back and be with us some day, but as time went on and things happened, it just got to be too big to patch up. You know, at first he probably just couldn’t take it and he took off, but in his mind he always thought he would come back when the time seemed right, only the time never seemed right.”
“The times been right for a long time.”
“But people got to do stuff sometimes. I mean sometimes when your life just ain’t right, and you know it, you got to do something about it or you just collapse.”
I stood up, tossed the dregs from the bottom of my cup onto the smoldering embers of the fire and walked away from Marty and a little ways into the woods. I knew I was conceding defeat, that this desertion was another sign of my immaturity, that I was not ready to be Marty’s fellow man, and even though I wanted none of that to be exposed, I could not remain sitting there listening to Marty’s compassionate lines about a person whom I hated and longed for with such equal passion. Maybe maturity is sitting through things like that. I guess that that was the line drawn between Marty and me.
Marty wanted to talk about our father. Neither of us had seen nor heard from him in twelve years, and whenever someone asked about him, I became somewhat unnerved. I really did not like talking about him. I guess back then I felt rather conflicted about my father. I knew I wanted him around, yet I also knew I hated him for leaving us. So I learned how not to think about it, and like most people I became reasonably good at repression. Marty had the same feelings that I did, only he liked to talk about them, and he never let me get away with remaining silent about the subject. Like two familiar opponents, the strategic dynamics of our conversation was almost intuitively present. Marty, the aggressor, would push: I, the defender, knowing silence to be ineffective in equalizing the onslaught, would say only enough to pacify Marty, to allow him to realize that my defenses were too strong for his attack. The game had been played enough times between us that I knew what I couldn’t get away with, so when he would push me to talk about our father, I would express some smart-ass comment about how the man was a no good son-of-a-bitch or something. And Marty, being as familiar with the dance as I, expected my derogatory comments and usually let it stop there. But this time something was different––Marty’s attack seemed more abstract, more conflicted. “Yeah, I guess he is an asshole. You know though, sometimes I think I can understand what he did. I mean, he was only fifteen when I was born and nineteen when you came. Hell, I couldn’t’ve done it either. I couldn’t even be nobody’s father now. Look at me.” Using the table top as a seat and resting his feet on the seat board, Marty was sitting beside me now. We both looked out into the grove of trees which separated us from the cold water of the lake. The tops of the poplars waved in the breeze from off the water, and the blue sky of the open space over the lake peeked between the boughs and the thin upper branches. Ever since that day, I have always preferred looking at trees when I talk about something important. There is something soothing and safe in sitting beside someone and not looking at them when you talk. Marty wanted to look at me though. I could feel his eyes gazing at me. And even though I know now how desperately he must have wanted me to look at him, I continued looking at the trees. “I mean a guy wants to be somebody or to do something with his life before he gets saddled with kids. We all got to look out for ourselves, don’t we? When a man gets himself stuck, he either has got to find a way out, or he’s as good as dead.”
“I hope the bastard is dead.”
“But maybe he’s got a good family now. Maybe he’s got more kids now, and he really loves them. Maybe he goes to their little baseball games and coaches their mini-basketball teams. Maybe he reads them stories at night and tells them he loves them, and maybe he really does. Maybe he really did want to come back and be with us some day, but as time went on and things happened, it just got to be too big to patch up. You know, at first he probably just couldn’t take it and he took off, but in his mind he always thought he would come back when the time seemed right, only the time never seemed right.”
“The times been right for a long time.”
“But people got to do stuff sometimes. I mean sometimes when your life just ain’t right, and you know it, you got to do something about it or you just collapse.”
I stood up, tossed the dregs from the bottom of my cup onto the smoldering embers of the fire and walked away from Marty and a little ways into the woods. I knew I was conceding defeat, that this desertion was another sign of my immaturity, that I was not ready to be Marty’s fellow man, and even though I wanted none of that to be exposed, I could not remain sitting there listening to Marty’s compassionate lines about a person whom I hated and longed for with such equal passion. Maybe maturity is sitting through things like that. I guess that that was the line drawn between Marty and me.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
A Wilderness Site: Part V
I woke up on top of the picnic table where Marty had laid me out like a corpse. I looked straight up into an endless azure uninterrupted by clouds or sun, and for a few moments I just gazed and enjoyed the freedom from focusing, the sight of nothingness. I could smell algae from the lake water in my hair and on my clothes and that drew my vision down to the objects around me. The sun was warming the sky, and Marty had stoked the fire and brought some flames back to help chase the autumn chill away. As my senses began to return, I recognized that I was freezing and that my throat was raw from the pot and the lake water and sleeping out like that. Marty, however, looked cool and was drinking coffee that he somehow knew how to make over an open fire. I remember thinking as I lay there looking like a bum on a park bench, that the remarkable thing about Marty was that he never seemed scruffy or slovenly. It could be five in the morning and he could have been up all night chain-smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, and yet he could remain as articulate and balanced, as cool and smooth, as if he’d just stepped out of a shower and was ready to go for the day. Even his disheveled appearance seemed somehow always right and almost intended. He was as natural as the sky or the flames in the fire. Life and Marty were blended to such an extent that living, experiencing, was all Marty was. I envied that about him. To be in life was what I desired, instead, lying there on top of that picnic table, I felt the first pangs of my lot.
Marty walked over to me and held out a tin cup of black coffee. I sat up, hung my legs off the end of the table, and carefully took the cup. I sipped the coffee and worked some of the sleep out of my head. On top of the picnic table, Marty sat down beside me. He lit a cigarette and looked at me. I felt ashamed sitting there beside him like that after what had happened the night before. I almost felt like I should thank Marty or something for pulling me out of the water. But instead of gratitude, the fact that I felt obliged to Marty irked me. I had wanted to prove Marty’s equal, his peer, instead I proved to be nothing but a struggling kid. The feelings of obligatory appreciation and of disappointment coupled with sleeping in wet clothes in the cold air urged me away from Marty at that moment. Marty had control, he was directing the script, and it occurred to me that as long as I was with Marty, it would be this way. Marty needed it thus. I stood up, set my cup on the table, retrieved my bag from the car, and started the long walk to the regular camp sites where there was a shower house.
It felt good to get away from Marty then, to regroup under a hot shower. I had no idea what time it was, but the shower house was empty. I could tell by the musky stale air that others had already been and gone. A bar of soap had been left in the shower stall by some camper, and I used it. I lathered my body and face while standing with my back to the water. I wanted to be covered in the suds before rinsing them off. I have always done this, I don’t know why, but there is something I like about being under the soap lather, the cleanness of it all. When I left the shower house I felt better. The sun was out in full and the dry air was quickly warming up. I still wasn’t ready to face Marty though, so I walked around the regular camp grounds for a bit. There were not many campers there at that time of year, and the few who were set up were mostly senior citizens on permanent lots, or guys in tents who had risen much earlier and were already out on their fishing boats. A few people still sat around morning campfires sipping coffee or reading papers that they had bought at the ranger station. The only people from that morning walk that I can remember in detail are a group who were camping in tents around a trailer. There were ten or twelve people in all, including the children, and I remember thinking that they looked happy. The couple, who I imagined to be the grandparents, seemed to own the trailer, and the tents seemed to belong to the grown children and their children. I have no basis for these assumptions, perhaps the people were not even related, but all in some kind of church group or something; yet, I like to think they were a big family. Scattered throughout the treed site were coolers and vinyl clothing bags and cooking equipment. There were four bikes, all laying on their sides, haphazardly dropped wherever the last rider’s attention shifted to something else. Between two trees, a clothesline hung and towels and shirts and shorts and rags of all sizes were pinned to it. I carried my dingy cloths under my arm in a ball, their dampness soaking into the side of my t-shirt. For a moment I thought maybe I could just walk over and hang my stuff on their line and sit down around their fire and just slip into their history, like I had always been there, like I was part of them. They all stopped talking for a moment as they noticed me no longer walking but just standing there in front of their site, just standing there with wet stringy hair and dirty laundry under my arm, and they looked at me with wonderment. I didn’t say anything, I just stood there and peered in for another moment, then I lowered my eyes, turned, and walked back to the wilderness sites.
Marty walked over to me and held out a tin cup of black coffee. I sat up, hung my legs off the end of the table, and carefully took the cup. I sipped the coffee and worked some of the sleep out of my head. On top of the picnic table, Marty sat down beside me. He lit a cigarette and looked at me. I felt ashamed sitting there beside him like that after what had happened the night before. I almost felt like I should thank Marty or something for pulling me out of the water. But instead of gratitude, the fact that I felt obliged to Marty irked me. I had wanted to prove Marty’s equal, his peer, instead I proved to be nothing but a struggling kid. The feelings of obligatory appreciation and of disappointment coupled with sleeping in wet clothes in the cold air urged me away from Marty at that moment. Marty had control, he was directing the script, and it occurred to me that as long as I was with Marty, it would be this way. Marty needed it thus. I stood up, set my cup on the table, retrieved my bag from the car, and started the long walk to the regular camp sites where there was a shower house.
It felt good to get away from Marty then, to regroup under a hot shower. I had no idea what time it was, but the shower house was empty. I could tell by the musky stale air that others had already been and gone. A bar of soap had been left in the shower stall by some camper, and I used it. I lathered my body and face while standing with my back to the water. I wanted to be covered in the suds before rinsing them off. I have always done this, I don’t know why, but there is something I like about being under the soap lather, the cleanness of it all. When I left the shower house I felt better. The sun was out in full and the dry air was quickly warming up. I still wasn’t ready to face Marty though, so I walked around the regular camp grounds for a bit. There were not many campers there at that time of year, and the few who were set up were mostly senior citizens on permanent lots, or guys in tents who had risen much earlier and were already out on their fishing boats. A few people still sat around morning campfires sipping coffee or reading papers that they had bought at the ranger station. The only people from that morning walk that I can remember in detail are a group who were camping in tents around a trailer. There were ten or twelve people in all, including the children, and I remember thinking that they looked happy. The couple, who I imagined to be the grandparents, seemed to own the trailer, and the tents seemed to belong to the grown children and their children. I have no basis for these assumptions, perhaps the people were not even related, but all in some kind of church group or something; yet, I like to think they were a big family. Scattered throughout the treed site were coolers and vinyl clothing bags and cooking equipment. There were four bikes, all laying on their sides, haphazardly dropped wherever the last rider’s attention shifted to something else. Between two trees, a clothesline hung and towels and shirts and shorts and rags of all sizes were pinned to it. I carried my dingy cloths under my arm in a ball, their dampness soaking into the side of my t-shirt. For a moment I thought maybe I could just walk over and hang my stuff on their line and sit down around their fire and just slip into their history, like I had always been there, like I was part of them. They all stopped talking for a moment as they noticed me no longer walking but just standing there in front of their site, just standing there with wet stringy hair and dirty laundry under my arm, and they looked at me with wonderment. I didn’t say anything, I just stood there and peered in for another moment, then I lowered my eyes, turned, and walked back to the wilderness sites.
Friday, July 22, 2011
A Wilderness Site: Part IV
Eventually the fire burned down to mostly the hot red glow of coals and the meteor shower subsided, and I decided to go find Marty. I wasn’t sure exactly where on the shore he would be, but I figured since the park was mostly empty that I’d probably see his lantern. I carried a small flashlight to light the trail from the site to the shore, but once I made it out of the woods, the waxing moon, which was now lighting the sky and reflecting off the water, made seeing relatively easy. The lake was calm and glassy and along the shore I could see five or six lantern lights spaced intermittently. The closest one was Marty’s, and I approached it without difficulty.
Marty hadn’t caught any fish worth keeping, yet he seemed uninterested in returning to the camp. He said that he too had seen the meteors, but that he was glad they were over. He said that they were bad for fishing, that the streaking lights had strange effects on the fish and kept them away from the surface. He said now that the moon was full, the fish would stay down even lower. Fishermen always seem to know weird stuff like that. After several more casts, Marty put his rod down and lay back on the big rock on which he was sitting. He had a couple cans of beer soaking in the water to make them cold, and he told me to reach in and grab two. I did and Marty sat back up and took one. I opened the other can and took a sip. “I got some pot if you want some.” I had been carrying it with me for several days with the hope of impressing Marty. I really never smoked much pot, but I knew Marty did, and so I figured he would be impressed that I had some for us. But as soon the words left my mouth, I knew it wasn’t the way I had wanted to tell him. I had wanted to be smooth about it, like pull a joint out of my pocket and hit him with some awesome line, but instead, I sounded like a kid, and he smirked. He set down his beer and reached his hand toward me. I pulled the plastic bag out of my pocket and handed it to him. He held it close to the lantern, opened the bag and sniffed it. Then he smirked again. “Hell, this is Mexican shit. I hope you didn’t give noth’n’ but pesos for it. It ain’t even all pot.” He reached into his tackle box and lifted out a bag. “Now look at this. This stuff’s for real.” He grinned and opened his bag. Fast and skillfully, he rolled a joint. I wanted to ask him to show me how he did it, but I was already embarrassed, and I figured I’d better wait a bit before asking a question like that.
He was right though, about my pot being weak, because when I took a few hits of his joint, everything started spinning, and I wasn’t exactly sure where I was, I mean I was not used to being around Marty, and the camp was new to me too. Still, I knew I was really high, and I knew I didn’t want Marty to think I couldn’t handle it, so I focused all my concentration on thinking about the fire and the stars and the meteors, but the more I focused my attention, the more I forgot to focus my attention: the more I tried not to be disoriented, the more disoriented I became. And the cycle spiraled down with the pot holding me tight, and I began to imagine that I could not breath, that a clamp was around my chest and that with my every breath, it tightened, and that all I could do was suck in tiny amounts of air and pant. I even forgot about looking cool and started a paranoid struggle for survival. I must have hyperventilated at that point because my panting became so bad that I eventually couldn’t breath at all, and Marty had to cup his hands around my mouth and talk me down. I don’t know how long that lasted, but eventually I blacked out, and the next thing I knew, Marty was standing knee-deep in the water pulling me to the shore, and I was coughing and all mixed-up. I think Marty probably threw me in the water to revive me, but I never had a chance to ask him.
Marty hadn’t caught any fish worth keeping, yet he seemed uninterested in returning to the camp. He said that he too had seen the meteors, but that he was glad they were over. He said that they were bad for fishing, that the streaking lights had strange effects on the fish and kept them away from the surface. He said now that the moon was full, the fish would stay down even lower. Fishermen always seem to know weird stuff like that. After several more casts, Marty put his rod down and lay back on the big rock on which he was sitting. He had a couple cans of beer soaking in the water to make them cold, and he told me to reach in and grab two. I did and Marty sat back up and took one. I opened the other can and took a sip. “I got some pot if you want some.” I had been carrying it with me for several days with the hope of impressing Marty. I really never smoked much pot, but I knew Marty did, and so I figured he would be impressed that I had some for us. But as soon the words left my mouth, I knew it wasn’t the way I had wanted to tell him. I had wanted to be smooth about it, like pull a joint out of my pocket and hit him with some awesome line, but instead, I sounded like a kid, and he smirked. He set down his beer and reached his hand toward me. I pulled the plastic bag out of my pocket and handed it to him. He held it close to the lantern, opened the bag and sniffed it. Then he smirked again. “Hell, this is Mexican shit. I hope you didn’t give noth’n’ but pesos for it. It ain’t even all pot.” He reached into his tackle box and lifted out a bag. “Now look at this. This stuff’s for real.” He grinned and opened his bag. Fast and skillfully, he rolled a joint. I wanted to ask him to show me how he did it, but I was already embarrassed, and I figured I’d better wait a bit before asking a question like that.
He was right though, about my pot being weak, because when I took a few hits of his joint, everything started spinning, and I wasn’t exactly sure where I was, I mean I was not used to being around Marty, and the camp was new to me too. Still, I knew I was really high, and I knew I didn’t want Marty to think I couldn’t handle it, so I focused all my concentration on thinking about the fire and the stars and the meteors, but the more I focused my attention, the more I forgot to focus my attention: the more I tried not to be disoriented, the more disoriented I became. And the cycle spiraled down with the pot holding me tight, and I began to imagine that I could not breath, that a clamp was around my chest and that with my every breath, it tightened, and that all I could do was suck in tiny amounts of air and pant. I even forgot about looking cool and started a paranoid struggle for survival. I must have hyperventilated at that point because my panting became so bad that I eventually couldn’t breath at all, and Marty had to cup his hands around my mouth and talk me down. I don’t know how long that lasted, but eventually I blacked out, and the next thing I knew, Marty was standing knee-deep in the water pulling me to the shore, and I was coughing and all mixed-up. I think Marty probably threw me in the water to revive me, but I never had a chance to ask him.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
A Wilderness Site: Part III
We had borrowed a two-person tent from Aunt Janice, and while Marty set that up, I rummaged through the single bag of food we had brought with us. Marty drew his hunting knife from a leather scabbard hooked to his belt, cut open the bag of ice, and dumped it in the cooler over the cans of beer. I remember thinking that Marty loved to use that knife. He always wore it on his belt. It had a six-inch blade which was hooked on the end and a row of jagged saw teeth on the top side. The blade was flat black and the handle was oak with ivory inlays and grooves for easy handling. When unfolded and locked into position, the knife simply looked dangerous. I had no idea what a person would do with the hook and saw features, but Marty was adept at handling the tool and used it whenever he could.
I ate a powdered donut and then went looking for some kindling with which to start a fire while Marty finished arranging everything. When I got back to the site with an armload of twigs and small branches, Marty and his fishing gear were gone. On the face of the hatchet, Marty had left some stick matches with which to start the fire. The day was growing dark and cooling off, and I arranged the kindling over some newspaper and lit the paper with one of the matches. We had stopped outside the park and picked up a bundle of firewood from someone who had had it stacked in parcels in his front yard beside a little box in which to deposit money. I remember thinking about that box of money sitting there unattended and wondering why no one took it. I would have taken it myself, but something about the set-up prevented me from doing it, almost like instead of just stealing a few dollars from an unattended till, taking this money would be dishonorable, almost shameful. If the honor is in the hunt, this system, by eliminating the hunt, eliminated the honor. It even created the opposite effect. Instead of stealing the money, it felt good to do the right thing and pay for the bundle. I remember liking the fact that whoever had stacked that wood was trusting me.
It was good dry wood we had purchased, and I started a decent fire without much trouble. To build a fire like that felt good, like I was a pioneer living off the land or something. The flames warmed the air around the fire, and the heat brushed against the skin of my face. I sat on the ground and looked at the fire for a long time. The orange and red flames danced around the crackling wood and every so often a small ember would shoot out of the rusty metal ring like the last act of an old circus performer, its red tail quickly evaporating behind its arced path, its intensity quickly fading into darkness. I sat there and watched that fire for a long time, and when I eventually looked up at the sky, I saw the millions of stars which only seem to shine way out away from the city, away from the houses, and like the embers which popped and arched out of the fire on that night, I watched a meteor shower with hundreds of streaking particles burning blue into the atmosphere.
The memory of that fire, those stars, and the meteors seems strangely magnetic to me now, and, on cool fall nights, I often long to go back to that site and light another fire and look at those same stars, and watch the particles of dust and rock incinerate as they try to break into our sky, but I know I will never go back. Perfect moments can not be fabricated––they just appear and then they are gone. The real trick is to recognize them when they are happening, and what I most regret is that back then, I hadn’t, and that now I long for that moment that has grown to become better than I knew it to be.
I ate a powdered donut and then went looking for some kindling with which to start a fire while Marty finished arranging everything. When I got back to the site with an armload of twigs and small branches, Marty and his fishing gear were gone. On the face of the hatchet, Marty had left some stick matches with which to start the fire. The day was growing dark and cooling off, and I arranged the kindling over some newspaper and lit the paper with one of the matches. We had stopped outside the park and picked up a bundle of firewood from someone who had had it stacked in parcels in his front yard beside a little box in which to deposit money. I remember thinking about that box of money sitting there unattended and wondering why no one took it. I would have taken it myself, but something about the set-up prevented me from doing it, almost like instead of just stealing a few dollars from an unattended till, taking this money would be dishonorable, almost shameful. If the honor is in the hunt, this system, by eliminating the hunt, eliminated the honor. It even created the opposite effect. Instead of stealing the money, it felt good to do the right thing and pay for the bundle. I remember liking the fact that whoever had stacked that wood was trusting me.
It was good dry wood we had purchased, and I started a decent fire without much trouble. To build a fire like that felt good, like I was a pioneer living off the land or something. The flames warmed the air around the fire, and the heat brushed against the skin of my face. I sat on the ground and looked at the fire for a long time. The orange and red flames danced around the crackling wood and every so often a small ember would shoot out of the rusty metal ring like the last act of an old circus performer, its red tail quickly evaporating behind its arced path, its intensity quickly fading into darkness. I sat there and watched that fire for a long time, and when I eventually looked up at the sky, I saw the millions of stars which only seem to shine way out away from the city, away from the houses, and like the embers which popped and arched out of the fire on that night, I watched a meteor shower with hundreds of streaking particles burning blue into the atmosphere.
The memory of that fire, those stars, and the meteors seems strangely magnetic to me now, and, on cool fall nights, I often long to go back to that site and light another fire and look at those same stars, and watch the particles of dust and rock incinerate as they try to break into our sky, but I know I will never go back. Perfect moments can not be fabricated––they just appear and then they are gone. The real trick is to recognize them when they are happening, and what I most regret is that back then, I hadn’t, and that now I long for that moment that has grown to become better than I knew it to be.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
A Wilderness Site: Part II
It was twelve hours northwest to the lake, and the afternoon sun sat in our laps most of the way. Sitting behind sunglasses and the car’s visors, we really didn’t say much to each other as we sped across the northern landscape. The foliage beside the empty road where Marty pulled off to take a rest from driving was in full splendor––purple, maroon, orange, red, and yellow. The wind was blowing strong enough to keep the boughs gently rocking and the leaves mixing together like the tumbling hues in a kaleidoscope.
Whenever we stopped to get gas, I jumped out and checked the air in the tires so people would see us together––the cool kid with long hair and the disheveled guy with a tattoo of a whale on his arm. At the time I thought whoever saw us must have thought we were real serious men who knew the meaning of cool, who really had their stuff together. Yesterday I saw two guys at the gas station looking like a modern version of how I imagined Marty and I looked. One of them was leaning against the car waiting for the pump to finish while the other one, sitting in the front passenger seat, was rocking his head to the loud bass of their music. Something inside me wanted to go up to them and reassure them that everything was all right, but that would not have done any good, I know; besides, there was also something about looking at those guys that made me feel embarrassed, like looking at myself in a home movie.
Back in the car, in between cassette tapes of old rock songs, I asked some questions about Europe, but Marty was not interesting in telling stories. He just wanted to listen to the loud music, drink beer and drive. At the first gas station, he had picked up two twelve-packs of beer and was already on his third can before I even got through half of my first. Back then I pretended to like beer, but truthfully it tasted sour to me. I never told people that though, and usually I could drink as much as anyone I knew. But Marty had acquired the taste for beer and drank it like water. In the car, aside from the heavy drinking, Marty also smoked continuously. He went through cigarettes one right after another and would have never thought to vent the smoke out the window if I hadn’t had opened mine. He smoked American cigarettes and told me that European cigarettes tasted like crap and that Mexican cigarettes were made out of donkey dung. I remember thinking how cool it was to be in a car with someone who knew that, that I wanted desperately to know that too, that I urgently wanted to use that line on someone. That was about all he really said for the whole twelve hours. He would not let me drive, though.
When we arrived at the lake it was growing dark and what little warmth the autumn sun had provided that day was quickly changing into the cool dry air of a late fall night. The ranger station was closed already, and Marty self-registered us on a wilderness site. He took a bag of ice from the unlocked freezer beside the station, and we drove back to select a lot. There were no water spigots or electrical outlets on the wilderness sites, but Marty said nobody hassled you there so it was worth the trade-off. I was glad he had chosen a secluded site. The few times I had gone camping with Mom and Aunt Janice, it had always seemed bizarre to me to drive hundreds of miles from home to sleep in a tent twenty feet from other people who were doing the same thing you were, only usually with better equipment. Back then, we mostly tended to stake our tents next to big trailers and motor-homes and lie in our nylon shells listening to air-conditioners and watching the soft blue glow of portable televisions illuminating the trailer windows as we walked to the toilets. When we set up beside someone like that, with the whole outfit, I always felt like I was a refugee in someone’s back yard. At least the wilderness site moved us away from all that.
Whenever we stopped to get gas, I jumped out and checked the air in the tires so people would see us together––the cool kid with long hair and the disheveled guy with a tattoo of a whale on his arm. At the time I thought whoever saw us must have thought we were real serious men who knew the meaning of cool, who really had their stuff together. Yesterday I saw two guys at the gas station looking like a modern version of how I imagined Marty and I looked. One of them was leaning against the car waiting for the pump to finish while the other one, sitting in the front passenger seat, was rocking his head to the loud bass of their music. Something inside me wanted to go up to them and reassure them that everything was all right, but that would not have done any good, I know; besides, there was also something about looking at those guys that made me feel embarrassed, like looking at myself in a home movie.
Back in the car, in between cassette tapes of old rock songs, I asked some questions about Europe, but Marty was not interesting in telling stories. He just wanted to listen to the loud music, drink beer and drive. At the first gas station, he had picked up two twelve-packs of beer and was already on his third can before I even got through half of my first. Back then I pretended to like beer, but truthfully it tasted sour to me. I never told people that though, and usually I could drink as much as anyone I knew. But Marty had acquired the taste for beer and drank it like water. In the car, aside from the heavy drinking, Marty also smoked continuously. He went through cigarettes one right after another and would have never thought to vent the smoke out the window if I hadn’t had opened mine. He smoked American cigarettes and told me that European cigarettes tasted like crap and that Mexican cigarettes were made out of donkey dung. I remember thinking how cool it was to be in a car with someone who knew that, that I wanted desperately to know that too, that I urgently wanted to use that line on someone. That was about all he really said for the whole twelve hours. He would not let me drive, though.
When we arrived at the lake it was growing dark and what little warmth the autumn sun had provided that day was quickly changing into the cool dry air of a late fall night. The ranger station was closed already, and Marty self-registered us on a wilderness site. He took a bag of ice from the unlocked freezer beside the station, and we drove back to select a lot. There were no water spigots or electrical outlets on the wilderness sites, but Marty said nobody hassled you there so it was worth the trade-off. I was glad he had chosen a secluded site. The few times I had gone camping with Mom and Aunt Janice, it had always seemed bizarre to me to drive hundreds of miles from home to sleep in a tent twenty feet from other people who were doing the same thing you were, only usually with better equipment. Back then, we mostly tended to stake our tents next to big trailers and motor-homes and lie in our nylon shells listening to air-conditioners and watching the soft blue glow of portable televisions illuminating the trailer windows as we walked to the toilets. When we set up beside someone like that, with the whole outfit, I always felt like I was a refugee in someone’s back yard. At least the wilderness site moved us away from all that.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
A Wilderness Site: Part I
I’ve never really liked camping, but Marty was home from the army, and I had grown tired of school after the first week, so, Mom wrote the school a note, and I agreed to go.
Marty had been away for almost three years, stationed for two years in Germany and then for a year in Texas where he met and became involved with this married woman. When that fell through, he jumped on the bus and came home to Indiana for a few weeks. At the time, I didn’t know if he was supposed to be home or if he had just left for a while, but either way, it was good to see him. I was only thirteen when he left, and when he came back I wanted him to know that I was no longer a kid. I had not had my first beer until he had been gone for almost a year, and I wanted Marty to know that now I was like him, that I was someone with whom he could be frank, someone with whom he could be real––that I was a man. And in some ways I was, only it was Marty who would force me to accept adulthood on a level I had not known I was ready for; it was Marty who ultimately knew from way before the moment he stepped out of Aunt Janice’s car, wrapped his hand around mine, and pulled me in toward him, that I was going to have to grow up over the next couple of days, that I was going to be stretched, and that he was going to be the reason. I remember that embrace, and I remember Marty then hugging Mom for a long time––his face buried in her shoulder, his limbs, too long for her small body, reached completely around her back, his hands touching the outsides of her arms. That that impoverished greeting on that cool October eve was significant only became apparent to me afterwards. At the time, I was so eager for Marty to see who I had become that I could not see Marty, I could not realize that maybe there was more to his sudden return than the opportunity for me to demonstrate my manhood, that maybe everything was not all right with him.
I looked rough in those days––the way I thought I was supposed to look. I had long stringy hair that I wore in a ponytail and a black leather biker jacket that Mom had bought me at a pawn shop for my birthday. Usually I wore old jeans and black t-shirts and my jacket. That was my standard look––a style that gave me an identity at a time when I believed that a person’s style defined who he was. Maybe that’s why I never figured Marty was not all right, because, like most people, he had mastered the facade of cool stoicism, a facade behind which lurked a hundred emotions which would never be allowed to surface. He had all his gear packed in a duffel bag, and he was wearing a blue canvas jacket with the sleeves cut off and these beat-up boots that he bought back in Germany. His hair was military length but still somewhat unkempt and wild like he washed it but never combed it. It sort of made him look like a rock singer, a look furthered by his disdainful expression and his pale face. He smoked cigarettes mostly with no hands, the thin cylinder riding between his lips as he exhaled out of the corner of his mouth. Often the ash, perilously long, would simply break off and fall into his lap or down his shirt front. When he noticed, he’d casually brush the ash off his clothing as if the action were a tedious necessity. Marty had begun lifting weights in the military, and besides developing a muscular upper body, the exercise had caused his muscles to tense and the veins on his forearms to pop up and run over them like buried pipes forced up and out of frozen ground. Partly hidden by the sleeve of his t-shirt was a black and red tattoo of a killer whale and the words Moby Dick written in ornate letters. Neither of us had ever read the book, but Marty knew this guy in Germany who was always comparing life situations with scenes from the novel. One night, on a whim, the two got the tattoos, and Marty swore he would read the book to authenticate the art, but as far as I knew, he never did.
Marty had been away for almost three years, stationed for two years in Germany and then for a year in Texas where he met and became involved with this married woman. When that fell through, he jumped on the bus and came home to Indiana for a few weeks. At the time, I didn’t know if he was supposed to be home or if he had just left for a while, but either way, it was good to see him. I was only thirteen when he left, and when he came back I wanted him to know that I was no longer a kid. I had not had my first beer until he had been gone for almost a year, and I wanted Marty to know that now I was like him, that I was someone with whom he could be frank, someone with whom he could be real––that I was a man. And in some ways I was, only it was Marty who would force me to accept adulthood on a level I had not known I was ready for; it was Marty who ultimately knew from way before the moment he stepped out of Aunt Janice’s car, wrapped his hand around mine, and pulled me in toward him, that I was going to have to grow up over the next couple of days, that I was going to be stretched, and that he was going to be the reason. I remember that embrace, and I remember Marty then hugging Mom for a long time––his face buried in her shoulder, his limbs, too long for her small body, reached completely around her back, his hands touching the outsides of her arms. That that impoverished greeting on that cool October eve was significant only became apparent to me afterwards. At the time, I was so eager for Marty to see who I had become that I could not see Marty, I could not realize that maybe there was more to his sudden return than the opportunity for me to demonstrate my manhood, that maybe everything was not all right with him.
I looked rough in those days––the way I thought I was supposed to look. I had long stringy hair that I wore in a ponytail and a black leather biker jacket that Mom had bought me at a pawn shop for my birthday. Usually I wore old jeans and black t-shirts and my jacket. That was my standard look––a style that gave me an identity at a time when I believed that a person’s style defined who he was. Maybe that’s why I never figured Marty was not all right, because, like most people, he had mastered the facade of cool stoicism, a facade behind which lurked a hundred emotions which would never be allowed to surface. He had all his gear packed in a duffel bag, and he was wearing a blue canvas jacket with the sleeves cut off and these beat-up boots that he bought back in Germany. His hair was military length but still somewhat unkempt and wild like he washed it but never combed it. It sort of made him look like a rock singer, a look furthered by his disdainful expression and his pale face. He smoked cigarettes mostly with no hands, the thin cylinder riding between his lips as he exhaled out of the corner of his mouth. Often the ash, perilously long, would simply break off and fall into his lap or down his shirt front. When he noticed, he’d casually brush the ash off his clothing as if the action were a tedious necessity. Marty had begun lifting weights in the military, and besides developing a muscular upper body, the exercise had caused his muscles to tense and the veins on his forearms to pop up and run over them like buried pipes forced up and out of frozen ground. Partly hidden by the sleeve of his t-shirt was a black and red tattoo of a killer whale and the words Moby Dick written in ornate letters. Neither of us had ever read the book, but Marty knew this guy in Germany who was always comparing life situations with scenes from the novel. One night, on a whim, the two got the tattoos, and Marty swore he would read the book to authenticate the art, but as far as I knew, he never did.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Where are we going? Where have we been?
It has yet to be proved that our enormous investment in computer technology in recent years has resulted in increased productivity, or that the ability to “process” hundreds of images and millions of bits of information has anything to do with thinking––with constructing an argument, with making good decisions––much less knowledge in the strong sense. 
–Kingwell
So I think of Mark Twain. Even though Ken Burns does not dwell on this fact in his four hour documentary on the guy generally considered the first American writer, Twain spent considerable time wondering whether we, through technology, were personally improving or personally moving further away from perfection. It’s a good question. A fringe group of people out there, some of whom are pretty smart and reasonable, advocate a back-to-nature type of living. Leave the grid. Don’t
burn fossil fuels. Reject electronics. Unify and coexist with Nature. And all this seems well and good. Aren't we at some sort of spiritual peace when we move away from technology, when we get out of town and retreat to the hiking path. Twain liked this idea too, but he also liked inventions and technology. In fact, he lost most of his fortune investing in a type-setting machine. We seem to be comfortable existing in a world of simultaneous yet contradictory messages. I want the newest smart device, a fast internet connection, and HDTV, but I also want a quiet peaceful moment in nature. I want the convenience of the grocery store stocked with prepared foods and canned goods, but I also want fresh produce from the organic local farmer.
To be hip and current, is to drive a hybrid. What a wonderful example of this strange irony. By owning a car, I am willing to tacitly support interstate systems and dwelling miles and miles away from where I work. Yet, by purchasing an energy-efficient car, I am also preserving the environment and shrinking my footprint. What the hybrid really suggests is a commitment to technology; a basic view of I can, through technology, find a way to live the way I want and simultaneously not hurt my environment. Thus, the hybrid owner seems to be on the side of those who believe that we are, by embracing technology, moving toward completion or perfection or self-actualization, not away from it.
Of course my electronic blog could not exist without technology. By using this blog to grapple with the issue of the benefits of technology, I too seem to be saying that I support the idea of technological growth as the path to greater fulfillment. Yet, I hear the nagging voice of good old Thoreau and I wonder. What if I lived in a primitive cabin? Would I achieve greater inner-peace? I mean isn’t inner-peace, contentment, happiness, what it is ultimately about? So either technology increases this, or it decreases it. But now the real issue pops up: fighting against technology is futile.
Even if I were certain that computers were not helping us and in fact were hurting us, society as a whole is so invested in the continuous development of technology, that my voice would be a whisper at best. Most likely, opposing technology, refusing to use email, to text, to even have a cell phone, is simply to become irrelevant and ignored. Only a cranky dinosaur refuses to embrace the newest advancement.
What an interesting word, “advancement.” We do not call new devices technological entrapments. No, they are "advancements." We get excited about the newest app, 3D TV, and touch screen. To reject TV, cell phones, and the web is not only archaic, it’s foolish, especially if I buy into the idea that being connected to the world is a way to increase my happiness.
Montaigne is credited with creating the form now known as the essay. His idea was that writing in this manner is a type of rambling contemplation leading to self-discovery. Today, my blog seems to be following this direction. So what am I discovering? Well, I am thinking about what choices I want to make in my life. I am trying to increase my active participation in the direction my life takes. I am reminding myself that I live in a world that clearly is moving toward and invested in further “advancement.” I am consciously listening to the collective voice of society sending the message that happiness is increased through further development. Yet, I am also reminding myself that this message might be flawed.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
On James Wright
James Wright (December 13, 1927 – March 25, 1980) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet who happens to have been born and raised in Martins Ferry, Ohio. Back then, Matins Ferry was one of the many steel-producing towns along the heavily industrialized Upper Ohio River Valley. The town borders West Virginina. Today, Martins Ferry is a dilapidated forlorn town struggling to survive.
About fifteen years ago I discovered James Wright and have been a fan ever since. Here are two of his best known poems.
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm
in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
So back in 1997 after I had just finished studying Wright’s collected poems, I wrote the following tribute poem. It was actually published, but the publisher wanted me to annotate it so the annotations are included.
In Ohio
Yesterday, I sat alone
Affronting a candled cake,
Knowing that
Extinguishing the flames
Was saying good-bye to you,
James Wright.
One titanic year,
Your collection I lugged
In my bag
In my ghost:
Three pills a day
for a toothless addict. *1
Three tiny teals
under a poplar tree,
Resurrecting anew with the sun.
I broke their necks with my paws
Swallowing nearly all,
Raw and naked. *2
under a poplar tree,
Resurrecting anew with the sun.
I broke their necks with my paws
Swallowing nearly all,
Raw and naked. *2
Neglecting horses
and envying drunks,
I secretly watched little innocent girls
Lick the dew off the Ohio River jungle weed
and cried. *3
The industrial soot
of old Youngstown
Now displays my
tennis shoe print
And I am ashamed.
It doesn’t belong there,
Beside my father’s worn boot.
I did not burn rods
in that filthy shop
forty-seven years.
Still, I am too little
Still, I am too little
for his singed flannel,
To see through the black glass
To see through the black glass
of his hood. *4
James, you have become my horse,
Cantering ankle deep through
The muddy Ohio river towns.
They are too in me.
They are the branch
which will not break. *5
Staring at my disheveled
James, you have become my horse,
Cantering ankle deep through
The muddy Ohio river towns.
They are too in me.
They are the branch
which will not break. *5
Staring at my disheveled
freshmen English class
from the lectern,
from the lectern,
I stand alone.
While deep in the Ohio River
flows old Youngstown,
And my father
And my father
leisurely walks
on her clouded surface
Leading a haltered horse
to Kentucky.
And I know,
I, too,
have wasted my life. *6
*1 I was introduced to James Wright by poet, Terry Hermsen who spent a week working with my students on the writing of poetry. I picked up Wright's Collected Poems and spent the following year reading and studying three a day. Thus the birthday symbolically ends a year with Wright poetry. Toothless addict refers to
Wright's interest in the beat people of the streets. The speaker is alone because Wright loves to use this type of line to begins his poems. He will typically begin with a solitary speaker, move to imagery, and then return to the speaker's response to the imagery.
*2 A teal is a small duck. The word is used by Wright in one of his later poems, "Blue Teal's Mother." Poplar tree is a favorite nature image for Wright. There are three teals a day for I studies three poems a day. Raw and naked refers to Wright himself and his style which is both raw and naked.
*3 Wright loves horses and horse imagery in his poetry. The reference to drunks refers to Wright's alcoholism which he often refers to in his poetry. Watching little girls by the Ohio River is a typical Wright scenario. He likes to set up his poems with isolated speakers sadly
watching and being moved. Wright was from the river town of Martin's Ferry thus the reference to the river.
*4 Here the poem turns personal. Wright wrote much about family. Especially fathers. Thus here is the speaker's home town, the father, the metal-worker, and the speaker's awkward fit into the picture.
*5 As stated Wright is from an Ohio river town and he loved horse imagery. Canter is used by Wright in his poem "Mary Bly" which is about the birth of Robert Bly's daughter. Wright and Bly were great friends. The speaker has also lived near South-Eastern Ohio river towns. The Branch Will Not Break is the title of one of
Wright's poetry collections and the last line in his poem, "Two Hangovers."
*6 Here is the return to the solitary speaker and the speaker's response. Wright and the father are leaving the speaker, Ohio, and are both walking on the river which is the basis of both their lives. The halter is symbolic of
the speaker realizing that by understanding his own father, he will also better understand Wright. The last line is Wright's most famous line. It ends his well-known poem, "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota."
Leading a haltered horse
to Kentucky.
And I know,
I, too,
have wasted my life. *6
*1 I was introduced to James Wright by poet, Terry Hermsen who spent a week working with my students on the writing of poetry. I picked up Wright's Collected Poems and spent the following year reading and studying three a day. Thus the birthday symbolically ends a year with Wright poetry. Toothless addict refers to
Wright's interest in the beat people of the streets. The speaker is alone because Wright loves to use this type of line to begins his poems. He will typically begin with a solitary speaker, move to imagery, and then return to the speaker's response to the imagery.
*2 A teal is a small duck. The word is used by Wright in one of his later poems, "Blue Teal's Mother." Poplar tree is a favorite nature image for Wright. There are three teals a day for I studies three poems a day. Raw and naked refers to Wright himself and his style which is both raw and naked.
*3 Wright loves horses and horse imagery in his poetry. The reference to drunks refers to Wright's alcoholism which he often refers to in his poetry. Watching little girls by the Ohio River is a typical Wright scenario. He likes to set up his poems with isolated speakers sadly
watching and being moved. Wright was from the river town of Martin's Ferry thus the reference to the river.
*4 Here the poem turns personal. Wright wrote much about family. Especially fathers. Thus here is the speaker's home town, the father, the metal-worker, and the speaker's awkward fit into the picture.
*5 As stated Wright is from an Ohio river town and he loved horse imagery. Canter is used by Wright in his poem "Mary Bly" which is about the birth of Robert Bly's daughter. Wright and Bly were great friends. The speaker has also lived near South-Eastern Ohio river towns. The Branch Will Not Break is the title of one of
Wright's poetry collections and the last line in his poem, "Two Hangovers."
*6 Here is the return to the solitary speaker and the speaker's response. Wright and the father are leaving the speaker, Ohio, and are both walking on the river which is the basis of both their lives. The halter is symbolic of
the speaker realizing that by understanding his own father, he will also better understand Wright. The last line is Wright's most famous line. It ends his well-known poem, "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota."
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