Mother and The Lama: Part III

On July sixteenths, Mary and I drive Sonny to the cemetery and leave flowers for his wife and beside her, for his mother. I am embarrassed that Drummer is gone, it makes me too much older than Sonny. Yet it is inevitable. I will no longer go with them to

see George, the realities are too naked. George understands this I am sure. Mary and Sonny do not. They call me selfish. I allow it, I accept it, I know the truth. Protestation is irrelevant, lessons are only learned through death. But with Mary away, with Jason away, I remember loneliness, for even on the top rung, there is loneliness. 

I have a boil on my chin which I refuse to have removed. It could be easily done, but secretly I want Mary to touch it first. She pretends she does not care about it, yet, even in intimacy, she subtly, delicately, beautifully, avoids it––moving fingers, lips, arms, gently around it, tracing my face with fingertips of purity. She climbs trees and avoids the poison oak, she picks wild roses without danger, she dances around cobras leaving them senseless and alone, this, she has learned.

George has several growths on his body. A goiter I call the Buddha belly falls over his collar, its manifestation is undisguisable. Before I stopped visiting, I stroked the flesh of the belly to drive away the loneliness it caused. I know George appreciated the gesture, yet Mary tells me he has yet to opt to have it removed. This I do not understand, but I am not George yet: I give him the benefit of the doubt.

Mary and I often go to the theater and listen to the symphony. This habit we developed after Jason left. It fills the spaces, somewhat. Once we attended a 

performance of Mahler’s 8th,The Symphony of a Thousand. Mary was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the production, by the brass behind us, by the four woodwinds far to our left, by the violins in the balcony, by the children’s voices. I was caught in the Faust, in the end of knowledge, the end of music. Leonard Bernstein said that Mahler’s symphonies lose popularity not because of their difficult scores, nor their lengths, but because, their agonizing message is simply too true, telling something too dreadful to hear. Watching the conductor turn to us, the audience, for the purpose of cuing the various musicians spread among us, I understood the loneliness of community, I understood what music could not do.

Mother and The Lama: Part II

Hopelessness arises from the soul like the balloon slipped from the child’s hand. Only a second, less than a second, and it floats away, beyond potential retrieval, for to be hopeless

is to be without even the hope of recovering it. The lonely are this way. Beth and Drummer were this way at the end, I see that know. 

Loneliness is for the albino squirrel and the seagull, but for each it is different, opposite. The squirrel loses hope of acceptance, of ever being enough, but the seagull loses hope of accepting, of others ever being worthy. Both the same, yet one producing the fertilizer of the earth and the other, the Buddha. Beth and Drummer are fertilizer. I, I do not yet know, yet I suspect I am both.

Without parents one moves up the ladder, becomes one generation older. Eventually we all know this too, excepting the tragic, they morn their children, they are the loneliest of all. Drummer mourned his father in fifty-eight, and lost Sayer, my brother, in sixty-four. Drummer was a strong climber, but when he had to look down from his great height and see Sayer no longer ascending, he froze. The secret is to not look down, do not allow yourself to know how much you stand to lose. I was not on Sayer’s rung; I was not high enough to be hurt in the fall.. 

I can remember all those dates, the years I moved on the ladder, but now, on the top rung, it is all irrelevant. The view from here is beyond comprehension. From here, I can see even why I could not see then, why they still can not see. 

The Buddha taught compassion in the world yet knew its worthlessness in the invisible realm. I can see that too from where I stand. The tallest buildings truly own the city. The mightiest trees own the forest. The highest mountains own the Earth. Tibet, the Himalayas, Mount Everest, they are supreme. I know this, yet I have not been there, and now I know I will never go.

Beth left me antiques and heirlooms that I mostly sold at auction. The money surprised me. Chairs that I used to climb to the upper cabinets when I was a boy were gobbled up by collectors. Books that propped open doors and leveled tables were deemed important for other uses. I was glad to see this re-creation, to learn that everything changes, that everything, even the lonely, has value.

Marriage is lonely. Mary does not stand on the ladder with me. George is one-hundred-six. Sonny is eighty-one. Beth and Drummer would still be here in their objects, is the view from the lower rung. Only George understands me, but he is too high to communicate. He only looks. I envy George, yet I am half his age. I could never tell Mary this, she would laugh and call me silly.

George reminds me of Jason’s infancy, cooing, looking, unaware of self. Mary enjoyed playing with the toddler, I loved the infant. Now, though, Jason is away, George has never known him, Sonny used to buy him toy cars for his birthdays.

Mary does not miss Jason. She is happy he is happy. I have surpassed happiness. I miss Jason.

Mother and The Lama: Part I

Loneliness is a location beside life. It is a flower of the sewer. All efforts are exhausted to avoid the arrival, yet everyone enters. So many live there, yet barrenness abounds, the phone’s ringer lacks a striker, the pipeline is burst. In this crowded void, knives develop new purposes, perspectives fall away like windswept snow squalls blown directionless yet correct. No one likes the lonely, it is true. We are afraid of contagious diseases. Like fear, we forget loneliness, pretending instead not to recognize the signs. We are good forgetters. In the haphazardness of life, we sometimes even envy the lonely, but this is a mistake. We do not envy leprosy. Yet, as the other side is not our side, we well know that green is green. Strange that clichés are remarkably unable to teach. Loneliness is a cliché. No one wants it around, it is old and worn like the old man who sits at the shopping mall in front of Sears and

watches the children’s attention to trends and facades. He is their foreshadow, their future, but clichés cannot teach, and children can not understand. 

Loneliness, like heart disease, liver failure, and hip replacement is aged territory, a disease of adulthood. Its symptoms are as numerous as the butterflies, yet as transparent as windows in a senior home, windows from which a woman is protected from the elements, or from which the elements are protected from her. Yet she has a telephone and a name, and it is loneliness which causes her to sit beside the phone from morning till night and speak to children who call her Mother. She does not always speak, mostly she only listens. Teens typically call. Finding her number in high 

school hallways and stapled to telephone polls here and there. Her message, Mother is always home. They tell her about their friends, their parents, their lives, and she tells them that all will pass, that life is up and down, that people change, that love is hard, that the world is not hopeless, that she is there, and they go away then, feeling better, but 

not knowing exactly why. Mother’s symptoms are quite, her loneliness is sublimated, and, like the landfill, if she leaves soon enough, they will never to be excavated. 

Life in a cabin is lonely. Nature is not enough. Nothing is real which is not perceived. With only his eyes, Drummer has no perspective. Heat comes from wood and flame. Food can be hauled in a car and stored. Water is sucked from the ground. People are not so easy to access. There are no phone lines to Drummer’s cabin, as if the lines themselves would ease the angst through the potential. He could move into town, or drink at the tavern, or even smoke cigarettes on a park bench, but that would not provide difference. Had he a phone, maybe he would call Mother, but she most likely would refuse to talk to a lonely old man. Such is not her affair.

Alexander Graham Bell, you know not what you have done, yet, strangely, I do not hold you accountable. You too were lonely. 

Time is irrelevant to the lonely. Past, present and future jumble together like ingredients for breads, after kneaded and molded, are inseparable. Beth clutched the handset and counted the rings. When she reached fifteen, she replaced the handset on the base and waited one half hour before re-dialing. She wanted to talk to Drummer, but Drummer had passed in sixty-eight and before that he lived four years without a phone.

Love precedes loneliness. The unconnected are not lonely. They are the solitary trees in overgrown fields. Only the trees of the forest understand loneliness as they drop leaves onto the small flowers that are too naive to comprehend how the sun deceives. I have had leaves fall on me; I know.

Suicide is for the lonely, it is for those who lack hope, who despair. Mother could have despaired, but she found a straw and clutched to it. Drummer died naturally. Passive suicide. 

He felt the wind and knew no blanket was enough, he saw the storm and knew the cabin would fall, he understood the force of Nature. He must have. One does not live that long and not know things. Beth passed in seventy-six, the bicentennial, and left me here.

On Reading

Reading will gain us nothing but enchantment of the heart … as we grow accustomed to receiving books in stillness and attentiveness, so we can grow to receive the world, also possessed temporally temporarily … Reading gives context for experience, a myriad of contexts. Not that we know any better what to do when the time comes, but we will not be taken unaware or in a void. 

          Ruined By Reading: A Life in Books 

              -Lynne Sharon Schwartz 

I read quite a bit. What I mean by this is that I read quite a bit of fiction, poetry and literary things. I hardly ever read a newspaper. I’m interested in reading the newspaper, but it almost always comes down to consciously choosing between reading The Columbus Dispatch or the novel I’m halfway through, and I almost always decide to devote my reading time to the novel. Only occasionally do I attack the stack of magazines that gradually build-up on my desk, although, since I subscribe to them and thus directly ask the distributors to send them to me, tossing them unread onto the recycle heap evokes a conflicting sense of liberation and failure. Even though I write this blog and am flattered when someone other than me takes a look at it, I often find it laborious to browse blogs, and I truly only follow two other blogs. The reason? Well, it is the same as why I’m not reading The Columbus Dispatch: when I make time to read, I almost always want to read a book. (Yes, this book is sometimes non-fiction, but it is still a book.) 

To make time to read is an interesting phrase. I have heard many many people say that they would love to read but just do not have the time. I cringe just a bit inside when I hear this. I cringe because even though our culture has told us that reading books is really important, many don’t find it all that much

fun. So this “nice” line has evolved to allow a non-reader both to respect the value of reading and yet excuse him from participating. Strangely, I don’t judge non-readers as bad people. Many, if not most, productive and happy people do not read very much. Even as an English teacher, I try not to sing the song of how reading books is vital. After twenty years in the classroom, reality hits you in the face, and the evidence of successful and brilliant students who do not like to read books is a bit staggering. 

Of course knowing how actually to decipher symbols and create meaning is reading, and this skill is truly vital. Reading poetry and fiction, however, might just be too individual a choice to be lumped in the vital category. Yet, it still bothers me when a person says, “I’d love to read more, but I just do not have the time.” I want us to be honest. I can make time for what I really want to do, can’t I? 

Making this time is something we do constantly. We make time to watch our favorite shows, to follow our favorite sports team, to mow the lawn, to ride our bikes, to seek romance and entertainment, and to work. Sure, occasionally we have an over-committed few weeks and really don’t have time to do what we want, but when we do have time, we do what brings us the most pleasure. For me, that is reading; for many, it is something else. 

But this is not what I set out to write about. I set out to explore why I am so willing to devote hours a day of my precious and short life to sitting alone in a quiet well-lit corner climbing inside a book. Schwartz helps me understand this. By the way, I also am somewhat fanatical about reading books about reading. One of these books is from where the following passage is lifted. This always affirms my choice.

Indeed, what reading teaches, first and foremost, is how to sit still for long periods and confront time head-on. 

I am very good at sitting still for long periods of time and thinking about Time. In fact, I’m going to go do this right now.

Buzz Saws and Robert Frost

When I was younger I somehow knew that Robert Frost was an important American poet, that he wrote a poem about two paths diverging in the road, and that the speaker of that poem chose the path less traveled by and that that had made all the difference. Like most Americans, I liked this notion of marching to the beat of my own drummer, of striking out on my own, of being different. And, as years went on, I would hear this Frost poem every once in a while on the radio, or in a lecture, or cited in conversation and so as far as I was concerned, this one poem was what made Robert Frost this great American poet. But, as often happens with me, eventually I grew curious. To satisfy this curiosity, I decided to read Frost’s collected poems and essays. I discovered an amazing body

of dark, disturbing, and resonating verse and prose that, as Kafka says, was an ice-axe that broke the seas frozen inside my soul. 

I mention all this because today I woke up with Frost’s poem “Out, Out” on my mind. Here’s the poem and some of my thoughts inserted. If you have never seen the poem before, read it first skipping over my insertions.

Out, Out 

Robert Frost 

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
 

Frost is great at establishing a grounded location for his poems. I always think of the old TV show the Waltons as I imagine this backyard lumber mill in the woods of Vermont. Everything seems so peaceful, pure, and innocent. A natural setting and good honest work prevail. 

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done. 

So cool. Nothing happened. It is just the end of another day. Sure the saw rattling and snarling is a bit ominous and harsh, but it is surrounded by such serenity that it does not seem threatening at all. This is Frost. Let’s 

disguise the raw horror of existence behind a serene curtain. Let’s forget about the agony of life for a while and just live in the false safety of the world. 

Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.

Oh do I remember how I loathed chores as a kid. That free half-hour was so precious. I had nothing to do of course, but give me my free half hour!

His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling.

So Frost surprises us. Sure he sort of set us up for this, but still, the boy severely cuts his hand! What?! Life strikes a blow. This is the dark and disturbing stuff that I did not know Frost, the gentle nature poet, wrote about. 

Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!" 

Oh how we plead for a do-over. Of course we cannot have it, but yet we plead. I love the line “Since he was old enough to know, big boy.” It reminds me of those adolescent years when I was both old enough and not old enough at the same time. When I was a cool and tough dude with my buds, but a wimpy kid who sought nurturing at home.

So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.

He dies! Really?! Weren’t we just hanging out on Walton Mountain? Weren’t we just talking about that free half-hour of childhood bliss. Supper and sunsets and summer evenings. But no, Frost will not allow it. He will remind us that reality is always lurking, ready to strike.

No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs. 

So cold, Mr. Frost. So dispassionate, but so true. How many calling hours and funerals have I been to where mundane conversation and witty banter is tossed around well within view of the body in the open casket. But what else can we do? We are helpless to change things. We just go on and try not to think about that buzz saw that will someday, out of the blue, cut into each of us.

Strangely, although my insertions seem rather harsh, I love this poem and actually enjoy reading it and thinking about it.