Debutantes

I thought: By the time I get home, they will have bloomed. The poppies will have split apart their bristly clam-shell calyxes and unfurled their extraordinarily vivid orange-red flowers. The peonies next to the porch will have opened their tiny fist-tight buds, sticky with sap and crawling with ants, and let layer upon layer of frilly pink petals spill out, as well as that dense, heady fragrance. And the dense blue shaft-like flowers  of the irises will have pushed up and out of notches in the tall, slender green-mist stems.

In the morning I could glimpse some of  the colors to come peeking out of some of the buds. We're close, I thought, so close; but, getting home: I saw: tomorrow maybe, but not today.

I had thought this post would be about the flowers, something about their shape, color, odor, elegance on full display, but instead it's about waiting.

My washing machine makes me wait; the bus makes me wait; this recent on-shore wind with its white skies makes me wait for clear blue warmth. When I was a freelancer, my contractors made me wait (all the while knowing the check wasn't in the mail). There's payday to wait for.

This waiting is different; it's luxurious.These beauties know what is left to be done, and I submit to their judgment. My desire to feast on the spectacle of their charms must discipline itself to piquant patience: When I'm ready, each says, and not before. Meanwhile, in my imagination, spaces are being prepared to receive what will be revealed when the final thrust occurs, the coverings fall away or are left behind, and, in modest assurance, these flowers present themselves.

It's like my grandson waiting for my hands to fall from my face and hear 'peek-a-boo'. Now? Now?  Or those last two notes of Sibelius' Fifth that always, without fail, catch me flat-footed. Da, da, da, da...now!...no?...da dum, there.

Take your sweet time, my lovelies. You know what I don't about what it is to be you. I submit to your lesson. When the drop hanging from the lip is full, it will fall.

Ranters

A grey hoodie over a blue, blue-and-white checkered keffiyeh around his neck and down his front like a prayer shawl, shopping cart with bulging white bag stuffed inside beside his legs, the ranter occupied his morning position near the door of the Orange line train from Forest Hills this morning. Looking down at the floor but not mumbling, he expressed his in-the-know convictions about....ethnic groups, nationalities, the quality of products made here vs there, what really happened, who's really in charge, on and on. Every now and again he looked up and around with puffy turtle eyes in the middle of a red face. He shut up as the train filled up. Ah, silence.

Is this blog a rant like the old guy's on the train? That guy wasn't stupid; at least he kept up with the news. I might say the same about myself. What's the diff?

Posting something every day has given my time a tautness that's like preparing for a new class in a new subject: today was okay but what am I going to do tomorrow? Some days I know in advance what I'll write about; other days I'm just juggling bubbles until I sit down to write. There was more anxiety early on but now it seems as routine as lacing up my running shoes and heading out into City Hall Plaza for my run. The post that took longest to write (and I was least satisfied with) was one in which I was defending against possible accusations of misrepresentation. Needn't have worried. Nobody said (or says) anything.

The pleasure is not like that of reading or watching a movie or listening to music in Jordan Hall. Each post grows under my hand as if by magic, at the end it flies off like a dove, each unique and lovely. There's the admiration of its plumage and its parabola... Then normal life is taken up, the idea-watch begins, and I feel an anticipation. What will emerge, what will I discover when I sit down this evening at the computer (or morning when out in Michigan)? I sometime try to store up posts in draft form but they quickly get stale and uninteresting.

How long I will continue or be able to continue is an open question, but already there's a repository, the stories of nearly a hundred encounters, each a chunk of life in itself, and all available for future further consideration. Are these posts evidence (convincing to me at least) that encounters are the significant units of a God-in-love premised life? Do they exemplify the principles of 2nd person friendship, hospitality, exploration at the heart of such a life? Is it a life worth living?

So far, the results have been positive. I haven't done much risking, and I haven't been deeply challenged, as by the death of a loved one (sure to come). I haven't found myself on the horns of some terrible dilemma, or having to cope with loss of limb or sense. I haven't looked up in daylight at an asteroid aimed at humanity's obliteration, though global warming promises its own share of nasty surprises. So I can't say yet God-in-love is a tough enough concept to remain relevant under those circumstances.

What does anyone else think?  Specifically, do these posts and the theory behind them mutually endorse each other? Does one illustrate the other, and the other explain the first? Any critical thought to this point would be very useful.

I propose to continue the experiment and expect new discoveries. More to the point, I think I have the germ of an idea for tomorrow's post and I look forward to mulling it over during the day.

Who knows, maybe even the Orange line ranter will discover something new to say.

Play station

Always so serious, especially after an extra long day at work, even more after reviewing the dispiriting news of the day, but is that any reason for me not to be playful?

Just as I got off the 32 bus after riding to the end of Mt. Hope sitting next to a older woman (she struck me as sour-looking, but then I always look dour), I wondered: Do I have to be who I am?  Do I have to talk the way I talk? Must I be this teacher coming home at the end of the day? Why not play? Why not an alternate self, an alternate world operating according to other rules? Why aren't I making more nonsense. Do I have to be so prosaic?

What I mean is a jokiness, a extravagant rhetoric, an adoption of attitudes, a proliferation of similes, wacky associations, make-believe formalities, inventions, fictions a la Baron Munchausen, yes, and lots of what ifs, and let's pretends, more poetry of the rollicking kind, more doggerel, more verbal chasing of one another, silly songs galore, more strange voices, twisted faces, broad gestures and weird walks, more absurdity, some hyperbolic exaggeration, frivolity, oh yes, much more frivolity.

I don't mean sports (far too down to earth), and maybe not fantasy (if it means living a role vs playing one). Irony is  not at home in this kind of play which is no less sincere than my down-to-earth, work-a-day way of being Peter. The playful Peter is light and limber, quick and creative, expressive without being emotional, a card but not a cad. I encounter this side of myself when I'm with some people, in certain settings. In the classroom, I feel it coming on sometimes and have to hold it back.

I can be playful alone but I need playmates. Perhaps we all do, maybe even the woman on the bus. How can we make this happen? Even this post is far too solemn. I'm not succeeding. Help.

Keep on

My friend tells me he and his young daughter have taken up running.  I can hear in his voice an excitement about that fact and what it means. Three times around the Chestnut Hill reservoir and another quarter way and back add up to 5 km. The girl took the challenge of running first and now her father, to support her and to challenge himself, has joined in. Once, part way around, she pleaded to be allowed to stop, but he  urged her to keep on: 'If you stop now, you might not start again.'

This last weekend, climbing in the White Mountains--hours trudging and scrambling up and down rocky trails (I know the Whites)--his daughter was the youngster who complained the least.

Embodied cognition is a flourishing philosophic field that explores not just how we enlist the body in the mind's projects but also, among other things, how the very ways we think and feel are derived from our physical experiences with the world.

This dynamic integration however has its obstacles: mind says 'yes' and the body, stiff, slow, pained, resistant, says 'no.' The daughter's first joggings resulted in breathless panting and sore muscles, the body expressing a strong reluctance to extending its range. Who's in charge here?

The body as a donkey digging in its heels is an old analogy, often ending in the story of some kind of animal abuse. Indeed I have at times shown disdain for this body of mine, and abused it. It has sometimes trotted forward and come to enjoy the collaboration; at other times, its compliance has led to painful slow-healing damage. When it stubbornly refuses to take another step, I have sometimes berated it as traitor, malingering servant, pitiable weakling, and I've sneered and railed when it takes its time recovering. But the body remains here, though perhaps dismayed.

I know my ambitions. What are my body's?  New sensations, pleasant sensations, the harmony of all the parts, rhythmic repetition, the alternation of exertion and rest, good fatigue? I know my body loves to lope, to stamp, to dance. It has its own memories of flinches and flutters, though we share a nervous system. It has its own expressive configurations or postures, which affect my attitudes. Perhaps it is eager to further my intentions; perhaps it has its own I'm not listening for.

But like an old marriage, my body and I have delighted and disappointed each other too often to mention. Our fates are tied together inextricably, though it may be that one will abandon its aspirations before the other.

Perhaps the moment on the path when my friend's daughter wanted to stop, when the protest of the body was heard but overridden, was just one more episode in the complex life-long encounter my friend's daughter has, has had, will have with her somatic self.

In the meantime, father and daughter are in training together for a race somewhere soon on the North Shore. Keep on.

Below the surface

Preparing my garden for planting, working with a fork in the soft soil, I learn that every kind of weed has already taken up residence, has in fact rooted.

Roots: so many different kinds--long naked tap roots, string- like hairy roots, smooth horizontal roots, clumpy roots, roots spurting in every direction from the root plate, thick meaty taproots, red wet roots, white dry roots, brown and dusty roots, roots that pull out with a satisfying tearing pop, shallow roots and deep, wispy roots like netting--and these just the weeds. What about the roots burrowing in from the nearby grape vine or maple tree. Stems crawling on the ground become furry at the joints with root fuzz.  Even tiny fragments as pale as dead men's fingers sprout hopeful shoots. If the shoot is pulled off, it doesn't matter. The root survives, sends up another.

There's a world of roots just in my garden plot and I've picked it over year after year, pulling out and tossing what I could and there's still a root riot going on. (shades of Theodore Roethke's Root Cellar : 'Nothing would give up life:/Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.') What about under the rest of the yard? The soil must be as busy as down below a Manhattan street, except that roots don't excavate hollow spaces but rather insinuate and extrude into the interstices.

I usually think of roots as the back office for the real work of stems, leaves and fruit (and by the way, my gnawed-to-the-bone pear is starting, tentatively it seems, to bud again) but what if roots are as much in the action as the part of the plant head-banging in the wind. Perhaps the fox was right in conversation with the Little Prince: what is essential is invisible to the eyes.

We talk about our roots, meaning our heritage, what makes us strong in who we are. But what if we don't just come from roots but put down roots, elbow into new situations and make ourselves at home. What if our roots are for barrier piercing (I just pulled up a weed that had grown through a buried glove) and cement buckling (they just finished replacing the sidewalk along Memorial Drive because the trees next to the river had kneed up the slabs)?

Nothing speaks to me more clearly of the (manic?) vitality of life than roots. The analogous phenomenon, in human beings might be curiosity, or perhaps mankind as a whole in the soil of realizable possibility; indeed, why only mankind?

Now the soil seems to be reasonably clean and my lettuce, peppers, tomatoes are in their rows. Order reigns--for the moment. Let the jungle-ing begin.

Place of names

Memorial Day--a time to visit graves: the graves of servicemen in uniform arrays, each with small flag flapping; the graves of family members--siblings, parents, grandparents. This person and that left our afternoon cookout pleading an obligation to stop by the cemetery. There, the stones with names of those who fought; there, the stones with names of those dear to us. Names, a place of names, so many names, sometimes eroded and hard to read but of those who were before us or once with us.

As I sit writing this in my house, I can see the Mt Hope cemetery across the road and through the trees, the new section opened not so long ago but now full. My friends abutting would watch long corteges of dark vehicles, crowds of people, loud singing and mourning, colorful bouquets and other displays left behind--sometimes too painful to endure.

Usually the cemetery is empty and quiet. The dog walkers stay near the open field where are the unmarked graves of the poor. I like to walk past the rocky outcrop, the assortment of obelisks, the crypts and mausoleums, the family plots with tiny stairs up to a tall, ornate stone on which the names and dates of father, wife, children who died young are carved, with other stones with other childrens' names flanking left and right. I admire the statuary, mostly of women looking forward sadly but bravely. The lawns, the groves of trees: it's like my backyard.

Cars go by in the distance, but inside there is stillness, especially at night and in the moonlight. Watching my moonshadow stretch before me down the road between the lines of monuments, I feel kinship with those who once walked between henge stones, up to barrow entrances, into the place of the old ones.

I think of the names on the plaques in Harvard's Memorial Hall, two wars worth of names in gold leaf on the wall under the Great Dome at MIT, the names inscribed on polished granite on the Commonwealth Mall of the firemen who died in the Hotel Vendome fire, the names on the facade of the Public Library of scholars and inventors...so many, once here, no longer.

It's easy to privilege this moment, but really this is only the current now; former nows, nows yet to come, have equal weight if we consult those who did vote or will vote in their nows to start families, go to war, perhaps both. Perhaps that's the hardest thing of all, to remind ourselves of the urgency that drove the lives who receive quiet mention in this timeless place.

Our stories this afternoon were funny, touching, startling, interesting; the food good; the company pleasant. The dead had  gatherings as nice in their time. Just to say.

NIMBY, maybe yours

 Sitting on the porth this afternoon, my friend Yori is exercised about recent talk in community meetings about moving the MBTA bus depot from its current location at Forest Hills to a piece of land in our section of Roslindale. 'I get it that the place is an eyesore and I understand that some people want to use it to build housing next to the train station, but we're not Jamaica Plain's dumping ground.'

The forces are massing on the JP side, he says, and only he and his wife with their 'Ask Roslindale' pins seems to be questioning the idea. He says, 'We're a small city and every part has to accept something that it doesn't especially want. We're clearly the fast food zone.'

'Nobody is being intentionally mean but this is how all the things that nobody wants end up in the less trendy neighborhoods. They just don't seem to get it: they may be just cleaning up their neighborhood but we don't want the depot either.'

Earlier in the day, Yori had been photographing examples of doubled-up utility poles on our street: quick fixes which hadn't then been replaced by more aesthetic single poles. 'I found eight just down the hill, and that means there are many more.' He takes it as sign we as a neighborhood are getting subtly shafted.

None of this disturbs me as much as it does him. He doesn't feel persecuted and angry, but he is alert, sensitive and protective of his locality. I'm more accepting of everything, so my feelings are less intense;a pattern true of me in all sorts of situations. Still I'm happy to stand with Yori in his concern and promise to support him at the next meeting on the subject. Why? Personal solidarity, parochial loyalty, or a sense that I, and we all, need to give ear to and honor those take on the task of lonely defender.

I did  my own battle yesterday with what does disturb me: poison ivy. Penetrating at great risk into the thicket on the property next to mine, I got to the tree up which a hairy poison ivy vine climbs sprouting long flexible fronds of terrible shiny leaves waving in space like snakes on the head of Medusa, and I snipped out a section of vine, dooming it. I may pay a price in itchy rashes in the next few days, but it'll be worth it. That Yggdrasil of evil intent will be gone.

Our conversation turned to larger issues, nuclear energy among them. I suggested disposal of nuclear waste by loading it into devices which 'gnaw' their way down through the crust into the mantle, and Yori laughed, "And the trogs will probably growl, 'You may be just cleaning up your neighborhood...'"

Importuned

Not the ancient mariner but the bearded man did catch my eye and my sleeve as I walked briskly down the street. 'Thank you for stopping' he said. 'What have you got,' I asked impatiently, not beating my breast or hearing the 'loud bassoon', but still with an errand to do.

What I got was a quick summary of the woes of the world, of the programs of a particular charity (unfamiliar to me) to deal with these, of the many good things its money does (and even more money could do more) to make a difference, how giving monthly pledges helps organizations optimize their budgeting, and what would I feel comfortable giving?

Who exactly were those in need,were the people to be helped? His account swarmed with references to which I couldn't attach any image, not to mention a compelling one. It was confusing.

And then, I'm not known for monetary generosity largely because I don't feel in control of my finances due to 1. a reluctance to really consider them, and 2. the complexities of negotiating the management of it. So the prospect of having to come up with money month after month rather frightens me. I've failed before and don't want to despise myself by failing again.

After saying something on these lines, I learned much more about the 'mariner': his children, his profession, his prospects, his disabilities, the company he worked for to raise money for the charity, the way he gets paid. I was being pulled into hsi private life.

Yet, there is need in the world that can be ameliorated somewhat by my money. Also, I should resolve my fiscal confusion in order to be able to make decisions to contribute if and when I want to. If I give, I give; if I don't, not, and be able to stand self-justified on my decisions. What I shouldn't be is afraid of importunity.

He let me go after apologizing for long-windedness. Canvassing is hard, and I wish him well, though I don't see how his torrent of words would win him success. But, this episode aside, the ball is in my court. Shouldn't I be ready to be generous with my money (however much I'm capable of) as well as with physical help and other such support? Shouldn't I put my financial house in order so as to know what exactly that capability is?  Laziness mixed with cowardice: a disappointing combination. Released, I went about my business 'like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man,' at least a little.
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Third hand

First there was the confrontation in the train station. I guess it went: 'That's the one, Dad, the one who robbed me.' Then an argument between a big man and a skinny boy, the boy's production of a knife, the man's removal of coat and bag. Threats, warnings, the exit of the boy. Then, as I understand it, there was the arrest of the kid, the transfer of his case from one police force to another, and finally the trial for assault with a deadly weapon.

The details are sketchy because my neighbor, having just spent two days on the jury for the trial, was bursting yesterday evening with her impressions: the slouchy way one (or both?) of the boys sat in the witness chair and the slapdash way he answered questions; the suspicion of lying ('I think they really knew each other before'); the way the prosecution edited the surveillance tapes.

Then there were the deliberations, the reluctance of some to convict vs my neighbor's insistence that the evidence make the determination; the request of one jury member to review the tapes again: 'It's his right,' my neighbor argued.

But it all became vivid when she, a large, voluble woman, played the role of the skinny, scared kid: 'He held the knife and went backwards, see,' invisible knife up at her shoulder stepping away from me, 'not forward. He went backward, he didn't advance,so it wasn't an assault but self-defence, do you see?'  On the basis of that vivid demonstration, yes, I could see. 'So we had to find him not guilty,' she said.

So events become stories, and encounters breed encounters on and on. I wasn't in angry confrontation; I didn't have the responsibility to determining the truth; I only had the passion of my neighbor to appreciate, her outburst a release of her experience of violent emotions depicted in the context of cool legal judgment. Stories aren't simply repeated, but they're embedded in the circumstances of their telling, and so less in some ways, more in others, than the original. Each teller, each listener re-encounters the original in new guise.

Here's another aspect of story-telling. I was looking out my office window today as sea mist rolled in visibly from the harbor in the east between the tall downtown buildings and blotted out the view of the river to the west. Suddenly though, for a moment, the patchy fog lifted, a few shafts of watery sunlight plunged through and the river became clearly visible, and I was put in mind of the clouds depicted on Chinese scrolls to separate the episodes of long stories which pull back to reveal now an army massed, now a royal pleasure garden, now a mystic and his mountain.

Unexpected stories, surprise encounters: how alive the world is with them.

Rarest and purest

Out of the thrilling morning light into the the gloom of the tunnel under the Longfellow Bridge, Back Bay distantly visible through the limbs overhanging the egress. Shiny new replacement steel beams in place above. Two men on step ladders working to the right. Whoops! A hand saw?  Yes, for cutting a piece of closed cell foam insulation to size. 'On a job this big, a saw?' "It's the only thing for this kind of work."

Simone Weil once wrote, 'Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,' attention, that is, to those who suffer.She called such attention 'almost a miracle; it is a miracle.' She meant, I think, a unflinching, undaunted, yet compassionate presence in the presence of pain.

Let me lower the bar, generalize the bare assertion, and ask: Was my notice of the workmen a generous attention?

First of all, it was mere noticing, not gazing; second, the encounter was momentary, not extended; third, no moral challenge was involved. Certainly, no miracle; likely not rare or pure; maybe not even generous.

Yet, I saw what I saw, and the men knew they'd been seen: the loop of encounter was complete. However small the occasion, the encounter was launched, a mote had been kicked up by my on-the-go attention to be carried wherever.

But what if what we both experienced, what I saw and they saw, God-in-love also had as experience, and treasured it? What if that moment is one of many orbiting the caritas-o-sphere, fuller and denser all the time? What if any such encounter has a partner and perceptor of grand scale and long ambition.?

Weil's extraordinary empathy is missing from these musings, but workmen know that any acknowledgement of their labor is no small blessing. We can't always be like Meja turning around to make sure we, his audience, see what he is doing. Indeed branches leaf, the Charles rivers, squirrels spiral up and down tree trunks just being themselves, activities often unnoticed and unappreciated. Well, here's to you all. Carry on.

Apprehended by ear

What is the best way to listen so as to understand?

To the eye, on the page, English may be open and obvious (ignoring the oddities of orthography), but to the ear, in the air, it may be an stream of fragments of sense separated by sections of unintelligible sound, clearly a medium of communication but only generally, and often mistakenly, understood.

A key to developing better listening, to winning access, may be in attention to details such as individual contractions and liaisons, and painstakingly mapping every word in a transcript to some sound in the audio stream.

Not easy work. We, baffled student and I, wrestled yesterday, for instance, with whether a particular word was 'is' or 'was', a small but crucial distinction. One way to test the alternatives was by how they felt to lips, tongue, breath when said. It may be that muscle mimicry may teach the ear to hear more precisely.

On the other hand, there's a value in listening for larger units. Robert Frost in a letter to John Bartlett in 1913, wrote, "A sentence is a sound in itself on which other sounds called words may be strung. You may string words together without a sentence-sound to string them on just as you may tie clothes together by the sleeves and stretch them without a clothes line between two tree, but--it is bad for the clothes."

In my recent teaching, I've also been focussing on speech units just a few words long each which can be readily grasped as the natural modules of thought, sound and structure we construct our sentences with to present our messages.

Frost seems to be directing my attention to something larger: "the sentence is a sound in itself."  At that point in his life, this was one of the key principles on which he based his approach to poetry. He continued, "The sentence-sounds are very definite entities...They are as definite as words. It is not impossible that they could be collected in a book...They are apprehended by the ear...The most original writer only catches them fresh from talk, where they grow spontaneously."  What can I do with this intriguing idea? Is this something actors perceive and work with?

All this makes language seem a natural phenomenon to be learned in the same way we learn about nature itself; as, for instance, I would like to learn the message in the bird song I heard yesterday: three low notes, then two high, repeated over and over from somewhere overhead but near.

Munching, morphing, mating

The leaves on my oak are tattered and full of holes. A brief examination of a low-hanging branch reveals worms curled up on the undersides of the tender (when else are oak leaves ever tender?) leaves, ready to chew. My pear has already been ravaged and my plum is under assault. My neighbor down the street is appalled by the many large hairy caterpillars in his yard (though not the same kind as on my trees, I think.)

The strategy is brilliant: eggs hatch as the buds open, the harvest and the harvester appear simultaneously. The neonate eats the nascent. Those green and striped oakworm caterpillars that survive will change in a few weeks into brown moths which will lay more eggs (a process I've never seen). Oakworms and oaks: how long has this been going on?  The oak's environment is the sky, albeit its lower reaches; the oakworm's, just the rough bark and spiky twigs of this black oak, munching, morphing, mating, a life of what I might call limited aspiration.

At least compared to mine, which is to add something to humanity's conversation on the meaning of life, and incidentally to live a life I can recommend to others; to teach (what else, oh pedagogue) many; to be part of a community inspired by God-in-love principles; to travel, debate, write brilliant things, even poetry;  to experience, as my grandson does when I toss him around, things in their depth and breadth, and help others experience life similarly.

Except that sometimes I feel the intensity of this aspiration wane, its clarity go out of focus. Why am I writing this blog? What's the point? Am I really seeing  things differently?  Acting differently? Is God-in-love becoming for me 'overwhelming real, shatteringly present' as Abraham Heschel says Yahweh was to the Hebrew prophets. Am I, in the words of Robert Frost, really one of those people 'who see life large'?

I met recently a person who, with his family, has spent years caring for a disabled child, now a grown person who is affectionate, capable of gesture, appreciative of the outdoors, yet with limited ability to communicate and requiring constant attention. What's the aspiration implicit in this commitment? There's necessarily regularity and repetition in such a life, limitation in fact, yet it implies vastnesses. Love here is perhaps a sufficient framework for an account of the meaning of life. What need of philosophy, much less revelations and epiphanies?

I have much to learn from those who labor in love, from God-struck prophets, perhaps even from the oakworm. To feel uncomfortable and antsy is not necessarily to be off-track. Let me think.

Greatest invention

'What is the greatest American invention of the last century, two centuries?' the engineer I sat next to asked me in the midst of our conversation on my flight from Baltimore (having barely caught the plane, deep thanks to the skycap who ran down long corridors with Dulu in wheelchair to the boarding gate).

I asked for a moment to think and came up with--the telephone. Not bad, he conceded, but had something else in mind:  'AA,' Alcoholics Anonymous, he answered. All necessary technology will eventually be developed  by somebody, but only in America would someone start to tackle such a difficult social problem as alcoholism. His answer took me by surprise. I had expected something technological.

All this time, my hearing muffled as my ears popped and fizzed. Am I speaking too loud?

Later on, after discussing the Manhattan Project, I asked him what, given the money and the talent, he would tackle. Mental illness was his reply. Again, huh?

He expressed his commitment to technical rigor in admiration for the life-or-death challenge of engineering projects (that bridge had better not fall), and yet was most interested in what had been done, what could be done to help those helpless to control their thoughts and cravings.

Perhaps he thought: engineers delight in swarming a problem, reducing it from mystery to solution, in pointed contrast to those with cognitive or emotional challenges who feel rather their ideas and intentions swarmed upon and confused.

He went on to say he felt the big obstacle to solution of the problem of mental illness is our ambivalence about the actually succeeding. Technical challenges are straightforward if we have the will, he said, but we're conflicted about even wanting to deal with mental illness, perhaps not willing to forgo the gratifications of judgment and blame.

I think, yes, we do sincerely wish relief for those who suffer, and for ourselves from their (not to be minimized) importunities. At the same time, and I can see it in myself, moral judgment regularly wells up and roils in us (perhaps a response to fear) which causes us to create boundaries beyond which we see such sufferers (and often they see themselves) as Others, not with that free, autonomous and bracing otherness which can be transformative when encountered, but with an otherness we think of as derivative, diminished, fragmented, pitiable when not exasperating, impotent to provoke change or be changed.

He told me a story about a problem he had had with his tennis serve. He consulted his opponent who made a suggestion. Tested, the idea didn't quite work. His opposite tweaked the idea, and the serve became 'ten times better.' Later on, after losing a few matches, his opponent laughed, 'I've created a monster.'

I thought: these two were the kind of Other each needed. If we do make progress toward treating mental illness, this will be option for more of us.

The plane waggled over the lights of the home and we landed with a bump.

The presence of absence

Strolling around the yard after my return last night from a week in Michigan, I see the forsythia flowers are gone, the tulips are stripped to stalks, the grass clumps are reaching for the sky. The dandelions have taken the opportunity of my absence to produce puffballs, weeds are making free my garden plots, and....my pear, my tender little pear tree, is defoliated, stripped, denuded by caterpillars. Eggs laid in the fall (probably) hatched into this plague of toothpaste green greedy leaf and bud grinders. The twig ends are blunt or have a few leaf spines protruding. It's painful to compare these bare branches with the billowing buds of a week ago.

My absence was not noted but can be seen now. I'm sure I would have seen the depredations, the first gnawed leaf edges, the holes, and would have removed the worms and given the tiny nascent leaves a chance to unfurl and expand. I could have been protector of my slight, young, vulnerable tree. (Actually, I should have inspected the trunk for egg masses last fall, but...)

Then there's grandson Meja in Michigan, smiling now at whomever has come into take him from his crib, perhaps after some time of quietly talking himself. I will be absent as he is wriggling on the changing table, as he is picking up blueberries from the tray in his high chair, as he runs prancing from room to room, his little elbows tight against his side. Maybe he'll note my (our) absence later in the day as a kind of thinning out of his audience of adoration, but maybe not.

His absence is acute. I couldn't live continually with the red-zone intensity of this visit (we did nothing but make much of him) but the drop to zero feels abrupt and jarring, like an engine seizure in the middle of an auto race.

He will still be taken out for walks and put down for naps; he'll perfect his climbing and descending of stairs; he'll get to work on his fricatives; he'll learn that all birds in picture books aren't 'duck'. I'll go back to English word order, the banter of my colleagues, the Orange line, the latest neighborhood controversy brewing (they want to relocate the bus maintenance facility where?) and all the rest. What will be obviously missing from my life will be that little spark. We'll see him on Skype, but nothing is like the heft of him, the smell of him, the writhe of him. My arms miss him.

Absences, the negative spaces, are factors in all encounters, but sometimes so palpable as to be encounters in their own right. Yet the passage of time and the incessant flow of life progressively estrange us from what is distant and out of touch. The edges of the holes of absence crumble; the holes themselves fill in and smooth over like the surf sand. Absence quickly becomes new norm, not longer other, even noticeable.

If I can't have that boy's presence, I want at least the pang of his absence.

Sobremesa

This week the talk began long before the meals were served. As we mixed, diced, fried, boiled, among the questions about where pots were kept, what spices were available, how much more time was needed, we discussed the books we were reading, what we'd done with (grand) child that day, job offers, plans for future visits...

Then the bowls and platters were arranged on the lazy-Susan, the group summoned, the beers opened, wine poured, and the deep conversation began which lasted until long after the crockery had been emptied and cleaned.

Politics, of course, but also child-rearing, family histories (Do you remember the time we...?), stories we'd heard on the radio, news about relatives, the story from the Bible of Abraham entertaining God, was God patronizing?, recent Supreme Court decisions, how much leeway local communities should have to make their own rules, how men and women are different, how each of us are different (and special), how we're not so very different, global warming and what's that about Antarctica?, medical problems: new knees and the amazing things that can be done with them, funny things the kid had done that day and how brilliant they meant he was, how to fix the voting system, how to win in November, how it feels being our age, how it feels living in the country today, who should be responsible for...

The conversations this week among  the four of us, or the five or the six of us, were sometimes boisterous, often passionate, sincere; there was respectful attention and disrespectful interruption, overtalking, circling back, dicting and contradicting, jokey insults, bad puns, exasperation, affection.

Conversation, this airing of our minds and souls in free talk, this confection, delights God-in-love, I feel sure, as an expression of the rich dynamic complexity of the beloved Other, who is all of us. The tradition of sobremesa, after dinner conversation, through all ages of the past, around tables in every corner of the world, on and on into the future as far as we can see, is, has been, will be sponsored by that love affair. The exuberance of it, the memorability of it, all seem wonderful in process and in retrospect...and also in prospect, for we will be together again, new developments will have occurred, our thoughts will have matured, there will be important or funny things to say, we will need to eat and drink and talk some more...

Little lion

The short wirey 20-month-year-old fair-haired lad is a lion for learning. Doing until mastering is his modus.

For instance, at a play place a few days ago, he must have practiced going in and out of a plastic car twenty times, opening the door and stepping in, closing the door, opening it again and stepping out, until he felt satisfied that he could make that little swivel of the hips the move requires. Only then did he practice sitting in it and actually pushing himself somewhere with his feet.

Or, the day before yesterday, at a nature center, on a bridge over a small stream, he was introduced to the pleasures of tossing sticks into flowing water. Not one stick, not even a dozen, and each thrown sometimes out, sometimes up, and followed in the water by leaning over the rail and hard gazing. Oh, that one's in the current lazily floating, that other one's on the sandy bank.

Or, there's the game he invented yesterday of hide and seek involving a picture book we got from the library and an old cell phone. Lifting the cover the book, placing the phone carefully in the center, dropping the cover, turning to us with hands out-turned and a querulous tone implying "Where's the phone?"  Maybe a quick run into his bedroom to suggest that's the place to look. Then back to the book: "Here it is" his tone of voice tells us.

These games or activities are very kinetic, very physical, though the last depended on our collaboration for the fun. But other objects, other activities intrigue him in a different way. The cell phone, for instance.  He loves to handle it: the right size and shape and heft. He holds it to his ear and says something like Hello. He holds it in front of his eyes like a camera. He presses the buttons, and because there's a little battery life left and the image of a circle sometimes appears, he remarks on this. He has seen his adults use phones and he is mimicking us, thinking that there must be something, some power, in this object that causes the grown-ups to use it over and over, and I want to use it too.

Yesterday, in the children's section of the library, a refuge from the cold wind and sharp rain, he was fascinated by computer keyboards, sitting on a chair, and lifting both hands to shoulder level, to press and play on the keys, as well as move the mouse. Nothing happened on the screen because we hadn't logged in but nonetheless he had seen his father and mother do it, and wanted to do the same. The link between actions and screen wasn't interesting, hardly acknowledged. Perhaps he enjoyed the sheer sensation of keys rattling under his fingers, but it's also that he understands something attractive is accessible on the computer through finger activities that is worth wanting.

Into and out of a vehicle, sticks in the river, a game with regular applause and approbation, these activities have overt rewards--kinesthetic, visible, social. The rewards of the cell phone or computer are implied by the involvement of the adults around him, and though second-hand, he's wants to be involved as well. He must be aware not just of what interests him but that he is interested, because he infers that interest in others.

This strikes me as a subtle, though normal, realization. We adults inhabit a world invisible to Meja but he is exploring it through what attracts our attention and provokes action. This is a deep motivational mimicry of the same order as the detective's question 'Cui bono?' and the investigative reporter's 'Follow the money.'

One day, not too soon I hope, the phone and computer will be interesting for the sake of their content but right now the conversation in Meja's mind is about conversation itself. The world of adult motivations is what he is eager to map, using electronics as his landmarks.

I sometime feel the same about pieces of art or music or anything designed or created. The very existence of some object, a product of someone's time and effort, may be reason enough to look again, perhaps event to try to do the same. Meja, maybe I should follow your lead.

Super power

Running this afternoon in light rain through the serried ranks of a pine plantation on a springy bed of needles, I wondered at the contrast to the shell cratered, barded wire-littered, mud clogged landscape of Flanders in the First World War, as described in Emily Mayhew's Wounded, which I've been reading with awed emotions.

In this book, devoted to the subject of the medical treatment of British casualties, there's early on a chapter devoted to the stretcher bearers who headed out in teams into No Man's Land  armed with nothing but panniers of medical supplies to treat the wounded and carry them back to aid stations. She writes: In deep mud after heavy rain one of the team had to lead the way so that they wouldn't fall or become trapped. Some shell holes were big enough to bury a bus in and, when they got wet, their edges could easily subside. If one of the bearers slipped and fell, he could drag everyone down to the bottom. Then they had to gather themselves, disentangle the stretcher straps, reload the patient and crawl out again. And this at night, often under fire, in terrain without landmarks, over and over.

By contrast, my passage through the woods was light and prancy, a romp.

Later on, at the gym associated with the hotel, I was astonished by the number of weight machines specially configured to exercise particular muscles. A huge room was full of buff (or buffish) men and women devoted to the improvement of  particular parts of the anatomy, as if a body were a engine, already running well, that could be disassembled, polished piece by piece, and reassembled into something capable of better performance, clearer definition.

By contrast, I get the image from Mayhew's book of the Western Front as a kind of blender turning men and mud into a kind of homogenous slurry of man-mush. Some wounded were so covered with mud as to be almost indistinguishable as humans; unremoved, the mud could harden into a crusty shell that had to be chipped off to deal with the disruption of bones, flesh, skin, teeth and organs within.

The most powerful impact of the book comes from the stories of individual men and women of  the (in this case) British medical service--the bearers, the nurses, the surgeons, the medical officers, the orderlies, the chaplains, the ambulance drivers--as well as the wounded themselves, not complicit in the creation of carnage, but coping with it. Overwhelming numbers, hellish chaos alternating in with horrible hard work: these 'ordinary' people managed this for weeks, months, and more, while retaining their dignity, their compassion, their resourcefulness.

If I do a fraction of what they did, I'm tired. My resilience would be used up in just the first hours of experience like theirs. As for the ability to care about others: I would become self-centered after the first few days, not to mention the longer term.

And yet, who knows? What actually am I capable of, or any of us? These main characters in these stories of generosity, constancy, courage are actual people without any mythological back story of divine birth or selection. Comic book characters have super powers; these had just the power of persistence in well-doing.

Talk about God in the context of that war (any war) is a cruel joke, yet I think if ever a god worth existing were to be manifest, it would be in hands and hearts of such as these.






 

Hands in the middle

An old movie theater converted into a venue for live music. Open mike, 15 minutes to sing your piece. A line of cinema seats at the edge of a dance floor and tables behind with people sitting in darkness drinking cheap beer, vaping, talking, listening.

Most of the music rough sounding guitars, lyrics intermittently intelligible, but anyway loud. The audience in their twenties, thirties.

Then the program moved off the stage and onto the dance floor with a couple of electronic music sets on keyboard and computer, with bright squares of  throbbing strobe lights and deep throbbing beat that resonated with my chest cavity. I felt my lungs flapping to and fro.

I was down in front of the singer listening to the repetitive lyrics of alternate pleading and wild protest, and (restrainedly for me) dancing. Around me, not so much stamping or stepping as rhythmic spasming, along with phone photos.

It was easy to get caught up in the moment, so when the performer asked the group of dancers to gather in a circle, crouch and stack right hands in the center as he sang 'higher and higher' and we stood and lifted our arms up and up, all side by side, I felt a flash of exaltation.

So what is it about music that makes us (okay, me) susceptible? The deep need for repetitive movement, the close proximity of others, the obliteration of nuance in the noise and the red and green strobes: all of these take us toward a place where we let go, meld, merge, are magnified.

The experience didn't last long. The effects of the brew concocted by the singer soon wore off.  It wasn't mystic but with some elements of what mystics have reported. What kind of encounter was this? Perhaps we seek to meet an alternative to the mundane, to ordinary Tuesday-ness, and sensory overload is a way to do so. Perhaps the experience was less encounter than escape.

In any case, I was impressed with what the singer could do to pump up that passive crowd, me included.

Critters

Ducks, a donkey, roosters in full regalia, an angora buck with wide twisted horns, a tray full of soft, fist-sized chicks, young goats and old with their sinister eyes, matted sheep, a walk-in henhouse, a pot-bellied pig which made satisfying grunts, leggy calves, a room full of lounging cats on shelves, wary horses: this was the petting zoo we took Mejo to yesterday. Of course, there were smells, wonderful barnyard smells, and often sawdust underfoot. We were in and out of dark complicated sheds, leaning on fences, peering, and the case of goats, being nuzzled.

Meja, 20 months, was interested in everything but not the animals more than the soft sawdust in the horse paddock (gingerly stamped on), the chain hanging from the gate (clinking and shaking), the low fences (pushing and pulling), the many young girls in red Tshirts volunteering (for expostulating to), long narrow passageways between fences (good for running up and down in), the metal poles (swinging round and round)

He pointed to the animals but the kinetic possibilities of the place really intrigued him. I can imagine he has not yet distinguished animals from other objects in his environment. He bumps into dogs as he would furniture. He strokes fur as he would a concrete wall. His sensorium doesn't privilege living things--as far as I can tell. He does gaze at other kids and recognizes with delight his uncle, his Mere-mere and me. His lode-stars are his dad and mum; his terror is their absence.

The whole concept of otherness and the Other that I've thought fundamental to encounters and encountering may not be apply to Meja. He may not distinguish himself from what is around him. There may be only those things which he controls (increasingly his hands) and those which he manipulates.

But wait, he does distinguish between that which is inert or recalcitrant and those who refuse to give him what he wants or ask him to do what he doesn't. Special tools are required here: a dismissive wave of the hand, a 'no', a wriggle escape, a full-face wail.

Last night, around the table, after crosswords, we talked about the shocking revelation that comes to all of us at some time that our parents have inner lives. Maybe the essence of otherness is the idea of the alternative, not just the different. Maybe the schedules and the strictures of his parents, before he accepts them as given, are teaching him what otherness is, a characteristic of Others with the same claim to regard that he asserts

We got him some fat sticks of sidewalk chalk which he took no interest in until I started drawing spirals on the cement. Then he picked a piece and drew a few wandering, somewhat parallel lines. Is imitation a door to otherness?

Scripts: on, off, un

At a liturgical church yesterday. The necessary assertions and petitions made at the appropriate places. A world view affirmed. Responsibilities assigned.

My ESL classes recently: explorations (still just beginning) of how to mark-up interview transcripts for expressive recitation to overcome shyness, practice fluency.

Merhy's job training those who take claims at an insurance company, who talk to people in trouble about what actually happened and what should be, can be done. Key facts confirmed, conveyed.

Scripts, prescribed words, dialogue trees, 'if A, then either C or D', tamed talk. No unfamiliar outcomes. Never lost if you don't go off. Goals attained.

Then there's grandson playing with water out on the porch in the morning sunlight. Bowls, forks, wide-mouth plastic bottles, soap, a few other odd things. Pouring out, splashing, tipping, filling up, stirring, pouring out

again, filling again, oops!, wild splashing, grinning, dancing little jigs, sunlight dancing on the inside of shiny metal bowls through agitated water, more half in, half out filling, more glug-glug pouring, fork clanking, water

puddling on porch floor. Try this, Meja?  No? Bubbles frothing, iridescences morphing, shifting, water bottle being waved, confident hands gripping, tipping, prancing in to share the fun with mom, light long hair

flying, running back out to Dulu leaning in, quietly suggesting, one fork in bottle rattling, two forks...

No script; improv, play

On parade

Is a parade a way we present who we are to ourselves with pride? Well, here's what was in the 85th annual Tulip Time parade through Holland, Michigan, yesterday.

The heart of the parade was school bands, lots of them, high school and middle, public and Christian, from nearby and far away, each with a different color scheme. Often there would be a color guard of girls in flowing costumes swirling colorful banner down and up and around in synchrony. These would be followed a high booted, high-stepping band leader with a super-tall shako. Then ranks of brass, trumpets, trombones, tubas with coverings on the bells that spelled out the name of the school. Then drums, snares, basses (no glockenspiels), then flutes and clarinets. These bands were huge with 50 or 60 kids, all elaborately uniformed, all stepping along in time, even when not playing  but only swinging their instruments. The youngsters all looked hot and uncomfortable but very, very serious. Adults ran up and down the formation with bottles of water for he kids to sip on as they moved down the tulip-lined, spectator-lined street.

So many kids: predominately white but also dark-skinned Mexicans, Filipinos, some few African-Americans and Asians. Tall and short, they trudged, shuffled, helmets perched high on head or low over ears, really playing or not, whispering to each other out of the sides of their mouths.

Dutch-ness. This town is called Holland for a reason. Dutch (peasant) costumes, black flower-embroidered dresses and winged lace caps on the women, baggy pants and black caps on the men along with tightly buttoned tunics and red neckerchiefs...and clogs (wooden or plastic).  Dance teams clopped down the road, state representatives (in Dutch gear) went by waving, whole bands wore clogs which made their marching sound like the something from a forties war movie: "They're on the march." Children, adults, maybe everyone has a Dutch costume in the closet for such occasions. One city counselor dropped out of line for a moment to talk to a tall older fellow near me about an incident with a runaway car earlier on, and to complain about his feet.

There were beauty queens galore, with their courts: Miss Asparagus, Junior Miss Asparagus, and so on, garish Philadelphia Mummers, a team of frock-coated Town Criers with the aplomb that white bearded, portly, Hemingway-esque men have, commercial floats with mascots with big plastic heads ("We knock out mosquitoes (and fleas) for good"), civic and philanthropic organizations, a few military color guards with older men and women. There were few American flags, and no national defiant assertiveness.

What I didn't see were lots of kids on banana bikes racing up and down, weaving in and out. Nor did I see the vendors of balloons, noise-makers, banners who appear at every Massachusetts parade. A couple of policemen in day-glow yellow vests stood around. A team of Red Cross emergency people sauntered up and down the route, constantly speaking on walkie-talkies. There were lots of people sitting or sprawling on blue tarps spread out on the grass between the sidewalk and the low palisade of bright yellow tulips verging the street. They clapped, they waved, they took pictures of their kids in the bands, but it was not a loud crowd by my standards.

One baby girl in Dutch costume kept struggling up from her blanket to escape her parents. Another, maybe 10, stood and spontaneously danced by herself with a wonderful loose-limbed rhythm.

The finale of the 2+ hour parade was a two-level float with more than a dozen steel drums and long blond-haired rapper gesticulating in front. That got the crowd to its feet.

The sun was bright and Dulu got a red nose (which she forgot to avoid). It was privilege to be guest at this 'the Holland community family on display'-kind of celebration. I love it when people show what they are most pleased in about themselves.

Wrenched from my routine

Waking up in the darkness to catch our flight; where is the beautiful light that welcomes me to morning? Who are these people wearing tank tops in the check-in line? I don't meet anyone like this on the 32 bus.

Not below the drizzling clouds at the bottom of the air ocean, but in the mid-space with clouds below and above. Landing not at a hectic urban airport but uncrowded leisurely Gerald Ford International in the midst of fields.

Full range response to daughter and son-in-law in the flesh; not just a screen in my room at home.

The city of Holland in the midst of its annual tulip festival; masses of different colors, monochrome, striped. Where are the tall buildings I should among now; where is the Boston assertiveness?

Grandson not observed  remotely but interacted with: able to be held, hugged, read to, chased, picked up, tiipped upside down, tickled, made to laugh, sung to: 'The wheels on the bus go round & round', put to bed, kissed.

Lght leaving later because we're at the western edge of the time zone. People strolling in the park in the sunset, a kind of La Grand Jatte. Small children in Dutch costumes and wooden shoes cajoled into poses.

Passionate conversation at dinner; not "how was your day?" but politics, theology...

What's making this annoying noise beside my bed ; how do I turn off this persistent alarm?

Where the cool mental compartmentalization I use me to prepare this blog: broken open and scattered. Where are my many rooms to roam in, rather than this compressed hotel room.

Routine, meet these new circumstance. Normal Peter, meet who you will be here.

On topmost twig

Full in the dawn light, with a short trill and then three long clear notes repeated every six or so seconds, the small bird announced this morning its presence to the world.

Pure, raw

Mojo said, 'Try this, I love it, I'm addicted to it', so I did: 100% Raw Coconut Water.

When I tipped up the bottle to drink, I picked up a whiff of something like popcorn or cooked rice; the taste was sweet and something like card stock (I chew movie tickets) or perhaps almond butter, and it lingered.  'Something like' means I'm reaching for words to describe the strong olfactory and gustatory experience of drinking raw coconut water for the first time. Other flavors, other scents are subtle; this is a knockout, completely unexpected.

I can't say I like it--though I'm going to see how I feel about it if I drink more. It's a little sicky sweet to me--almost. I love coconut in chocolate bars, ice creams and sprinkled on banana cream pies, but this drink is of the essence of the fruit: Mr Coconut, Sir!

Hours after, I still have mouth memories.

How many things do we nibble at, or sip, and enjoy in small quantities, that have strong polarizing identity when in pure and concentrated form?  How many places? How many people?

Caretaker conversation

Who is this person whose life dramas have become the script of my life?

I've been listening to a lot about this in the last few days: the maddening perplexities of caregiving. I don't mean what's provided by the professionals who go on and off clock, though God knows what they do is difficult enough. I'm thinking about family members in interminable situations who do care (because they do love), but don't want to (because it's toxic); who can't care (because they're exasperated) but must (who else?).

The cared-for experience many of the same terrible feelings of impotence, being imposed on and imposing. They are not in an enviable position (though caretakers may sometimes wish they were given even a fraction of the solicitude were directed to the cared-for).  Still it is their condition and its developments that fundamentally set the agenda for the care-givers. There is plenty of room for tender affection and gratitude flowing both ways, but also for resentment, rage, self-reproach, sorrow, exhaustion, despair.

Can't leave, can't stay. Only death or recovery (or some kind of professionalization) offer any prospects of resolution, and even these are fraught.

Some encounters in everyone's life are like this. Occasion after occasion is a new test of one's willingness to be involved or withdrawn. Our awareness of this is part of what keeps us smarting whatever we do

The big issues of justice and injustice, right and wrong are difficult for any framework for the meaning of life to address, but caretaker situations are as challenging not just because these ethical categories are only incidentally relevant, but because these situations, by their persistence and pervasiveness, don't just shape our life experiences, but use up the very hours, days, months, years of our term of life. If not our lives directly, then the lives of those who are near us, and there are sure to be many such.

Such experiences can sometimes be redemptive, and perhaps in the long term, after reflection, often are, but not always.  What I keep coming back to is the possibility that each such encounter has a place in the complex interaction of God-in-love and the beloved Other. It may be that giving and receiving care is implicit in the back-and-forth flow of that passionate relationship. It may be that whatever desirings we have, any deeds we do, of friendship, hospitality and exploration in any occasion, have real lastingness--whatever we, in travail, may do the next.

I feel impertinent talking about any of this, but I need some ways of managing my thoughts about this when I listen, as I do, to caregivers opening their hearts. I remember the God-in-love prayer: you are present whenever I or any open to your potentiality, energy, power.

It think that my wife and I are terrified of having each other as caregiver. Perhaps this is why I wrestle with this matter.

Strange weather

Sun, hail, spotty rain, more warm sun, more sprinkly rain, sudden bursts of wind, temps up and down: what a wacky, wonderful day it's been. Three new trees have come to visit us and I've accommodated them in the front and side yard, but I wonder if the weather has made them feel welcome. "What a weird place we've come to," the peach might say to the apple. "Is it always like this?" the second pear might query the first.

At the end of the day, a low orange sun puts a glow on the westward-looking slender faces of every tree trunk as if together each were witnessing glory.

I've sawn a couple of limbs off a burly old maple that has been pressing its body through my chain-link fence. The wire grid is embedded in the hard bark as it might press on my soft palm if I pushed hard against it.

In the vacant lot next door, a python-like vine has twined around and strangled a young sapling before lassoing the branches of taller trees. The victim tree bulges between the relentless spirals of the dark, rough-barked predator vine. It's uncanny the ways hard wood can slowly, over years, simulate damage done to tender flesh.

I observe these days in my kitchen situated in the north corner of my house that, sitting at the table I can feel the morning sun on the back of my neck through the east window and feel on my face the evening sun through the west window.

This room seems like the prow of a great ship, and I on the bridge. Or to think of it another way, the whole house is strangely like a ball rolling backward so that the morning and evening sunlight can cross paths right where I drink my coffee.

Be careful, Peter, not spill as the earth tips you topsy-turvy.

Once students

The relationship between teachers and their former students is, I find, an awkward one. The student moves on to use what the teacher imparted, the teacher stays behind to share with new students. What happened between them was important when it happened but impossible to recreate.

It's possible for teachers and students to become genuine friends, even lovers, but  I don't see exactly how. We wish each other well, of course, but there's a fundamental asymmetry in the relationship that must be put deliberately aside for any other relationship to grow.

Yet what can and often does happen in a classroom is as close to magic as anything we can experience, and both parties know it (then or later) and stand in awe of the memory of it. This may be why when I meet former students, we're both a bit embarrassed--I've had many students since, they've have other teachers--but there was that time...

It may be that my focus on encounters in the God-in-love framework is grounded in such powerful classroom moments. There have been times after class when I have marveled at what ignited among us. I can remembered feeling afterward as if I'd been a bonfire, and this not just a private impression, judging by the words and the faces of the students leaving. These special moments pass as all moments do, but nothing is more real than these were.

A former students sent me a book recently about her country; today, I'm planning to try something similar with a once-student who works nearby. I've been wanting to encourage him with a book, but I've not known what exactly to give him or quite how. He told me Friday about his children; perhaps I can give them something to read, and he can dig into the books along with his kids.  A little history, a little science, a little biography (with pictures), a young adult story of a girl in England: let's see if this selection is 1. effective in helping, or at least 2., not lame.

Community muckraking

Neighborhood clean up day. City provides rakes and bags and we do the rest. The sky sunny and overcast, not hot, a slight breeze; a great day for handling mounds of sodden leaves raked from the road verge. There's some trash and some concrete debris but less than in past years; the litterers and dumpers have failed behind.

Out of their houses on Manning, Mt Hope, Canterbury come the crew, some neighbors I know, others new. How long have you been here? Really that long? What about you? That long? Young couples, mothers and daughters, mothers with babies in carriages, ready-to-help kids, Italian people, Jamaican, Haitian, and old guys like me. As we moved from one 'hot spot' to another, the ranks swelled and shrank and swelled again with new folk, so that a full 4 hours of hard work was done and our little island neighborhood made spiffy edge to edge.

There were lots of 'in the old days' stories ('My wife live there before we got married.'), and new ideas for rebranding the area ('Lost Roslindale' or 'The Agricultural District'). There were shocked encounters with snails and centipedes and plump opalescent worms snoozing in the leaf litter. There were reminiscences of hard physical work done earlier and elsewhere. There was a lot of raking and dragging and bending and shoveling over and over again. At the end, my hands, shins, scalp were scratched, my palms were filthy (I hate gloves) and my legs in need of soaping down to get rid of poison ivy juice.

We live close by each other but we're not a close neighborhood, except on these occasions, and then we see who turns up (Why wasn't Jimmy here this year?). It's an unpretentious place, nobody is bossy. Why we all turn ou,t I don't know. Why we were so intent on finishing that even the city workers picking up trash bags pitched in, I don't know. We may not see each other till next year. How it all works is mysterious (though my friend Yori's knocking on doors may be part of the answer), but it does year after year.

I got a fresh white and blue Boston Shines teeshirt (newly-designed; new mayor) out of it, and just in time because last year's is getting discolored because I wear it every day running. Tomorrow I'll be out on the road in my new shirt--Boston pride.

If you've had encounters like any I talk about here (or different ones), I invite you to share.

Songbirds

With extra time in my schedule and blue sky outside, I went out to the harbor  near Long Wharf.  People in twos and threes sauntered by, gazed out at the ferry boat traffic, sat, talked on their phones, in one case stretched out and napped, wandered on. Planes ascended from Logan. Gulls cradled on the breeze. The water sparkled. I sat with my notebook open trying to sketch people in motion-- frustrating endeavor.

Suddenly a flock of third graders ran, hopped, swarmed into the area, full of energy, shouting to each other to look--at what everyone was looking at, announcing to each other that they were going to do--what everyone was doing. Lining up to look through the pay-for-view binoculars, jumping down steps, clustering around the teachers and chaperones, chasing each other, chattering, the children, especially the girls in pinks and lavenders and sky blue and yellows, were an aviary, wonderful to watch, impossible to sketch.

As I was trying to outline a teacher heading the expedition, one of the girls came up and said, "I like your drawing." It was, in fact, an awful sketch, but that compliment was a wonderful gift.  She went back to the others and I thought: This has made my day. I'm old, male, alone: an object of aversion, if not suspicion. But a youngster has spoken to me spontaneously, and remarked on what I am doing.

But there was more.

The girl came back with a friend to show her my (embarrassingly bad) picture, then there were three, then five. There were little girls in front of my bench, beside and behind, all telling about their recent art project when they made Mona Lisa contemporary and gave her a job, and about visiting the Paul Revere house and the roles they each played in a drama they enacted there. "It was so dark and the floors creaked (wonderful word) when the people on the top floor walked."

Slim and open-faced as the daffodils in the planters distributed around the wharf, they were individually unique and, en masse, beautiful.

We talked about Paul Revere's 16 children, and about the 10 O'Neill sisters who used to march down Commonwealth Ave every Easter, side by side in matching outfits, tallest to shortest. There was a swirl of telling like the chirping of birds. One of the chaperones, a mother I think, came over to check on who I was, decided I was harmless, and remarked how lucky that the day was bright and sunny after the rain of the week.

In the end, after I had mentioned how hard it was to draw moving people, three girls, arms over each other's shoulders, no, four girls, one kneeling, posed in front of me while I very quickly caught their rough outline. Much laughing, much admiration (they were too happy/excited to be critical), and then I said I had to go. In fact, I was afraid I couldn't sustain my part in the encounter much longer. While it went on, it felt like headlong downhill skiing.

That these twittering charming girls welcomed me, a stranger on a bench, touched me very much. It was a moment of being caught up in the clouds. The obvious evanescence need not be mentioned; indeed, so what? The meeting happened and it was glorious.

Mirror image

The Today show these last few mornings have focussed on selfies, which has got me thinking...

The little box at the corner of the Skype screen offers me an on-going presentation of myself in action, but when I steal a glance, it's already lapsed into the standard inert face with Fu-manchu mouth corners, hooded eyes, uptilted chin, slack throat.

In a mirror, I go gimlet, conducting a minute examination of the topography of the face: the bumps and abysses, the clumps and colors of what covers the bones of the front of my head. I feel affection for the scenery, but it doesn't feel like me.

There's no life in these images. If I mug, it's just posing. Even naked before a shower, it's still putting on a show. At photograph time, my grin improves the picture but feels like a deliberate gesture. Maybe models and movies stars feel an organic connection between image and identity, but I don't find it intuitive.

It's hard to reconcile these representations with what I see my students and colleagues respond to. I know there's a liveliness in my expression, perhaps eyes, possibly mouth, maybe brow, that catches their attention, even provokes and encourages them. It pleases me too, though I only see it second-hand. My face is more interesting to me as instrument than as image.

Here are some other things I've noticed:

If I let my face slump into a studied impassivity when response is not needed or required, it feels encrusted with a mask-like shell.

Likewise, I recognize the life in my body better when I'm dancing or running or working in the garden, say, than when contemplating the expanse of exposed skin manifested in the looking glass.

My recorded voice, which I hear often, seems likewise uninteresting to me, though I enjoy playing with my voice when practicing whistling or declamation.

Clothes, especially shirts, are a pleasure but mostly as I see or feel them on me. Certain linens or silks are delightful to carry and see on the sleeve.

Does this mean that I really only know myself either from the inside as embodied experience or indirectly as a presence for others, people and things? I know my face by rubbing it with my hands, or as a reflection on the face opposite me. Where I don't seem to know or care to know myself is in the mirror and even photographs seem interesting only as historical artifacts: "Look at the head of hair on that guy."

We see images everywhere. Certain ones are very compelling but the ones of myself not; they seem other to me. I hope I'm being honest here; it's not easy to be sure. In any case, I'm happy to meet myself up close or out far, rather than in the middle distance a screens-length away.

Busy hands

The coons have been at my trash looking for the bag of chicken bones I tossed in there. When I came home from dancing, the trash can had been relocated, still upright, to the center of the grass, and part of a white plastic bag from inside had been tugged out through a small crack, and then shredded.

It's easy to forget that other creatures are unimpressed by my ownership of this property generally or the trash barrel in particular. I've seen a big mother coon with a string of kits behind saunter by me without concern or interest. They were taken however by the smells coming from the crack at the bottom of the trash can.

I can imagine those slender, agile hands reaching in delicately into the slot, poking around exploratorily, hooking the plastic and dragging it carefully out past the edges of the plastic. Perhaps those bandit eyes were looking off in the distance as this operation was being conducted. Once the bag was like an inside out pocket, the animal slashed in and got those wonderful bones (I think), all the while not tipping the barrel but instead swivel-shimmying it onto the grass.

The coon is a sometimes dangerous animal that has survivor written all over it. Its thick fur encases a large and persistent animal that doesn't give humans the respect of fear. They've sometimes snarled at me when I've surprised them at night near my garden--my? garden. Don't try to grow corn, friends say. Just when the ears are ready to harvest, the coons will do the job themselves.

The name means "the one who rubs, scrubs and scratches with its hands." These paws or hands are remarkably sensitive, prehensile and dextrous; they must have been to do the fine surgical work they did out in my garden. We'll encounter each other more and more over the warm months, I'm sure. If we coexist, fine; if we compete, the coon very well might win. What is this smart creature doing here so close and so far away?

In that same category, I suppose I should include skunks, ants, grackles and a host of other animals, and I'm not leaving out fungi, mosses, mosses!, my spreading prickly black oak and weeds galore. In my world, I can persuade myself that I'm king, but I'm not.