You. Item. Do I need you? Can I keep you? Toss you? Not imagine ever doing without you?
Every time we move, we have this conversation with our things, especially with those things we have once loved, or started to or hope to, a one day maybe relationship, a wistful once connection or one on pause.
Helping some people move this weekend was for me carrying, packing, driving, unpacking: boxes, slippery garments, bags. But for those who moved, it was a time for heart hardening: 'Don't open it, just get rid of it; they don't fit anymore anyway; too old and beat up; there'll be no space'; and for sudden sentiment: 'This was my mother's; I've been saving these for...; this reminds of the time...; I don't know if I'll ever...but I had hoped to...; you can never have too many...; I can't decide between...'
In each move, each object asks, 'How much do you care about me?' and the question put that way, we find ourselves on the spot: 'I think we've got a future together' or 'It's over; shove off.'
It's not so much that our goods define us as that we define ourselves against the things we have, things acquired deliberately or invested from the beginning with significance, or things that collect on us like barnacles on a ship's hull, detritus, or most often, things that we've hoped to start something with but haven't.
Each box I lifted today was not just Daja's or my son's but, in a way, mine also, and in a strange fashion, each spoke to me: 'You have as much and more, Peter, which will have to dealt with. Each box represents hard choices, Peter. Have you made yours? Not moving books today, Peter, but think about your heavy laden shelves.'
But, not moving soon, I can quell the voices, but one day, move I must, and then...? If not me doing the choosing, and boxing and lifting and disposing, who?
Meanwhile, here you all are around me: books I remember from the fly leaf or first page; the tools I'm really going to fix that door with; the shirt (sure, it's frayed at the collar) that has the nice stripe, the hose nozzle I'm sure to use as long as I have a garden, pen collection. Who's the king of things? I am, of course; and we're all happy, aren't we? Sure, we are.
I just bought a Bluetooth speaker that sits in my hand like a silver egg and produces surprisingly round sound. There may be use for it in my evening classes and evenings out on my porch. And it's got that nice heft. You, speaker, I think I'm a little in love with you. One day, though, I have to warn you, you may be superseded as my cassette players have been.
But wait, I still use those players. Has nothing gone? Are all of you still here, still loyal to what was once alive between us? No wonder moving feels less like winnowing, a blithe tossing in the air with the wind making the pick, and more like culling, a pointing to the abject objects which are to be taken at knife point to the pit.
Eventually, of course, fatigue at the sheer quantity and bulk of what has to be moved makes it all stuff puree that we can eventually readily pour away half of, and coldly wish we could flush the rest. Ah, a life of just a few, very few, very portable things. But wouldn't we then start again to fall in love, our hearts being empty and flappy. I would: "Hey, you, let me look closer at you. You're quite attractive and you make me think of something. I've got room in my pocket. Climb in.'
Monday, June 30, 2014
Sunday, June 29, 2014
'I'm going to getcha...'
'One way or another, I'm going to getcha, getcha, getcha'--the key line from the Blondie cover that blasted down in the locker room of the gym across the street from my office as I put on my running gear. A compelling beat. An assertive male voice. A love threat, maybe a betrayed love threat, anyway just the thing to launch me as I sprint away from the gym entrance.
That kind of popular and propulsive love or hookup song is the staple of the gym, often with accompanying MTV performers strutting or swinging on the screen all the aerobic workout machines are. Some songs are invitations to some other to make this night special; some claim the other is one waited for for a lifetime. One: a boy kissing a girlfirend and watched tearfully by the singer. How left out and overlooked you make me feel!
These songs are all 2nd person encounters, sometimes a dialogue, usually a monologue, but directed at someone who should notice, should care, should comply, or will passionately participate. It's you, always and only you, at this high point in our lives when go for broke could take us over the top into ecstasy.
The song mix at the gym is vintage (as are a good number of the bodies down there) but I am struck by the fact that the most prominent public 2nd person expressions in our culture are in songs about love--one way or another. And usually to a driving beat: now, now, NOW!
These songs represent one pole on a spectrum of 2nd person conversations, urgent, vulnerable, intense and almost palpably vivid. The implicit driver is, of course, sexual desire and why not: it's a powerful energy capable of reorientating the world to enhance the object of its focus, You. In the hands of a poet like Dante, such a reconfiguration produced an epic of lasting significance.
The other encounter pole may be cool, cordial, alert, respectful, polite (in a sincere way), perhaps the way we deal with people at the bank. We share each other's space but don't constitute each other's space. When we're tired of detachment and impartiality, the promise 'One week, maybe next week, I'm going to meetya...,' provides the strong light that throws the shadows that lend texture and vector the world, as I think does the ardor with which God-in-love sings to the beloved Other.
Song follows song, the premise of passion gets lost in repetition. The devolvement of face-to-face anguished pleading to absent-minded head-nodding that to helps pass the time doesn't invalid the power of this kind of encounter. Certainly not for me.
That kind of popular and propulsive love or hookup song is the staple of the gym, often with accompanying MTV performers strutting or swinging on the screen all the aerobic workout machines are. Some songs are invitations to some other to make this night special; some claim the other is one waited for for a lifetime. One: a boy kissing a girlfirend and watched tearfully by the singer. How left out and overlooked you make me feel!
These songs are all 2nd person encounters, sometimes a dialogue, usually a monologue, but directed at someone who should notice, should care, should comply, or will passionately participate. It's you, always and only you, at this high point in our lives when go for broke could take us over the top into ecstasy.
The song mix at the gym is vintage (as are a good number of the bodies down there) but I am struck by the fact that the most prominent public 2nd person expressions in our culture are in songs about love--one way or another. And usually to a driving beat: now, now, NOW!
These songs represent one pole on a spectrum of 2nd person conversations, urgent, vulnerable, intense and almost palpably vivid. The implicit driver is, of course, sexual desire and why not: it's a powerful energy capable of reorientating the world to enhance the object of its focus, You. In the hands of a poet like Dante, such a reconfiguration produced an epic of lasting significance.
The other encounter pole may be cool, cordial, alert, respectful, polite (in a sincere way), perhaps the way we deal with people at the bank. We share each other's space but don't constitute each other's space. When we're tired of detachment and impartiality, the promise 'One week, maybe next week, I'm going to meetya...,' provides the strong light that throws the shadows that lend texture and vector the world, as I think does the ardor with which God-in-love sings to the beloved Other.
Song follows song, the premise of passion gets lost in repetition. The devolvement of face-to-face anguished pleading to absent-minded head-nodding that to helps pass the time doesn't invalid the power of this kind of encounter. Certainly not for me.
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Would have been shot already
An angry, barefoot, white guy was berating a black guy about some infraction, theft of cigarettes, perhaps, relentless, bearing down on his target, and the genteel lady who had sat down next to me said, 'I guess they have their crazies here too.'
I asked where she and her husband were from and she said, 'In Atlanta, somebody would have pulled a gun already and shot him.'
The other couple of the foursome had sat across from me and we began to chat about the city and the surprisingly number of people they'd see walking everywhere. 'How many of them are tourists,' they asked. 'Mostly tourists', I guessed, figuring the locals were back in the office or already on their way to the Cape. The women remarked that they felt safe in Boston, in marked contrast to Atlanta, a ghost town at the end of the day. 'I don't like to go there', one said, 'You don't know what can happen.'
Our conversation was about history, Boston so full of it, and the landmarks they'd seen from the tour bus and trips they'd taken to other important sites across the country. I told them of some places they might not know to go to. Boston accents were laughable, but with an assurance that the Yankees they know down there, such as the one teaching water aerobics, were really nice.
Genealogy came up extending back as far as the Civil War battlefield monument where a great great uncle's brother had his .name inscribed
It was clear our worlds were very different. Quickly, if we'd wanted to, we could have found areas of profound disagreement. I might have said, 'If you want a city like Boston, start with gun laws like Boston, but but the vibrancy of this city is its own best argument. Welcome.
Genealogy came up extending back as far as the Civil War battlefield monument where a great great uncle's brother had his .name inscribed
It was clear our worlds were very different. Quickly, if we'd wanted to, we could have found areas of profound disagreement. I might have said, 'If you want a city like Boston, start with gun laws like Boston, but but the vibrancy of this city is its own best argument. Welcome.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Intimate aggression
A business woman talked to me recently about how some people know just how to bring women to tears, how precisely to plant doubts in women about their competence, how to let women know unmistakably they don't belong, and this in face-to-face conversations, each party addressing the other in the 2nd person. It's a form of manipulation, but done with a smile, or an expression of concern.
I was a bit shocked at the shock I felt; after all, we all know about close-quarters verbal battle. I'm not unpracticed myself. But how far short of the freedom and generosity and mutuality that good 2nd person interactions offer. Instead, too often, we engage in something like the guts-spilling assassination of Abner by Joab while leaning head together together as if to confer.
In human affairs, motives like the desire for revenge or the assertion of superiority can and do taint our 2nd person encounters with exploitation, but in such situations, I think 'you' has functionally fallen away into 'I versus it.'
Of course, our interactions are vastly more complicated, full of genuine interest, appreciation and trust as at the same time there are dagger thrusts below the fifth rib. And either party can weaponize an encounter.
Still, what is this use of God-in-love's 2nd person mode of interaction to continue the disempowerment, the discouragement, the insidious self-suspicion that plays on the vulnerabilities of people, all the while wearing a face of responsible sincerity. Betrayal.
I was a bit shocked at the shock I felt; after all, we all know about close-quarters verbal battle. I'm not unpracticed myself. But how far short of the freedom and generosity and mutuality that good 2nd person interactions offer. Instead, too often, we engage in something like the guts-spilling assassination of Abner by Joab while leaning head together together as if to confer.
In human affairs, motives like the desire for revenge or the assertion of superiority can and do taint our 2nd person encounters with exploitation, but in such situations, I think 'you' has functionally fallen away into 'I versus it.'
Of course, our interactions are vastly more complicated, full of genuine interest, appreciation and trust as at the same time there are dagger thrusts below the fifth rib. And either party can weaponize an encounter.
Still, what is this use of God-in-love's 2nd person mode of interaction to continue the disempowerment, the discouragement, the insidious self-suspicion that plays on the vulnerabilities of people, all the while wearing a face of responsible sincerity. Betrayal.
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Good fences
My neighbor has replaced the old and broken stockade fence which had less and less well hid his backyard from full-frontal view from the street with a new pine plank fence that really blocks.
Except that it doesn't really, because walking up the street, I can see around it and chat with him and his friends taking their ease in the cool of the evening. This leads me to wonder about privacy and how we shape it for ourselves: this revealed, that concealed. He is saying to me: I don't care for you looking at me directly, but I don't mind a little obliqueness if it means you have to lean on the chain link fence from the front yard and trade a few remarks, like about why the street side stain is a different color from that on the inside.
Sitting out in the evening, ah. Like this evening on Yori's front porch behind his thickly planted front year at the dead end of Mt Hope Street (literally, a ceremonial entrance to the cemetery) when suddenly people with kids and balls in plastic wagons came up the road to go into the open space, and other groups came strolling out of it, and Yori and I got up and walked out and there were introductions, conversations about local politics, a bit of playing with deflated soccer balls with the year and half year old, and tours of Yori's back yard and... Well, sorry I have to leave, people, but I need to get supper. We'll be in touch.
Robert Frost, one well-acquainted with irony, had fun with the line 'Good fences make good neighbors' in his Mending Wall, and asked Before I built a wall I'd ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out, / And to whom I was like to give offence.
I remember once coming down from Mt Monadnock with a friend along a line of stone wall such as networks our forests, and he reciting Frost from memory. That wall, now a line of untended rubble, marks a neighborhood past and gone.
Well, neighbor, I take no umbrage at what you've put up: the first new wall since before you moved in, since the little girl who lived there before was my little girl's best friend. Sometimes we need to deflect the direct, penetrating gaze, but accept the more chatty looks coming catty-corner. Sometimes privacy is like a few artfully draped scarves, from which we can emerge, or into which we can retreat. It's the game. I'm ready to poke my head around the corner of your fence and play.
Except that it doesn't really, because walking up the street, I can see around it and chat with him and his friends taking their ease in the cool of the evening. This leads me to wonder about privacy and how we shape it for ourselves: this revealed, that concealed. He is saying to me: I don't care for you looking at me directly, but I don't mind a little obliqueness if it means you have to lean on the chain link fence from the front yard and trade a few remarks, like about why the street side stain is a different color from that on the inside.
Sitting out in the evening, ah. Like this evening on Yori's front porch behind his thickly planted front year at the dead end of Mt Hope Street (literally, a ceremonial entrance to the cemetery) when suddenly people with kids and balls in plastic wagons came up the road to go into the open space, and other groups came strolling out of it, and Yori and I got up and walked out and there were introductions, conversations about local politics, a bit of playing with deflated soccer balls with the year and half year old, and tours of Yori's back yard and... Well, sorry I have to leave, people, but I need to get supper. We'll be in touch.
Robert Frost, one well-acquainted with irony, had fun with the line 'Good fences make good neighbors' in his Mending Wall, and asked Before I built a wall I'd ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out, / And to whom I was like to give offence.
I remember once coming down from Mt Monadnock with a friend along a line of stone wall such as networks our forests, and he reciting Frost from memory. That wall, now a line of untended rubble, marks a neighborhood past and gone.
Well, neighbor, I take no umbrage at what you've put up: the first new wall since before you moved in, since the little girl who lived there before was my little girl's best friend. Sometimes we need to deflect the direct, penetrating gaze, but accept the more chatty looks coming catty-corner. Sometimes privacy is like a few artfully draped scarves, from which we can emerge, or into which we can retreat. It's the game. I'm ready to poke my head around the corner of your fence and play.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Try it yourself
This blog is about 2nd person encounters: me and some Other addressable directly or implicitly as You. That means it's not just about what I think or feel, nor about some it not me, but about us. If I write about my grandson and water, it's in part about us and the liquid. If I write about a convention, it's in part about me and the self-governing people of this commonwealth. If I write about ants, it's in part about we humans and you insects.
The French philosopher and writer Alain, teacher of some of the greatest names in French literature and thought, Sartre, Weil, Malraux, favored a improvisational kind of essay called a propos, a conversation, a talk. I intend these remarks to reflect something of that discursiveness, density, freedom of association, expressiveness of voice.
Except that sooner or later I come back to something addressable in 2nd person, whether it be that exquisite dogwood on the first Esplanade island down from the Mass Ave bridge, the one covered completely in massed star-shaped flowers slowly turning from white to light pink, or the Juneberries in front of the Charles/MGH T station that are so disappointingly mealy this year, or my student back from a week out sick and still looking awful, or friends moving and in need of help. Because these, you, constitute my world, encounters with you create webs of mutuality that are in substance, the fabric of lasting value.
So let me address you who from time to time have perused this blog, and invite you to reflect (in written words if no other way) on your 2nd person encounters.
I think you'll find, as I have, this gives you a very particular perspective on your life. You won't feel pompous or fraudulent (and who cares how you seem to outsiders) because it's about you and an other in each other's presence, your livingness and that of the other engaged. It may not be a sweet thing, but it is nourishing.
My propos are some longer or shorter, some philosphical or experiential, but each one has been an occasion of discovery for me. If it isn't interesting, I know I haven't opened myself up to the encounter. I don't propose to address marital or political encounters in these propos since those conversations have their special venues, but everything else in my experience is fair game. If these tips are useful, take them.
Reflecting on encounters, their immediacy or resonance, is one part. Then there's risking hospitality, friendship and exploration, acted on in whatever ways they may suggest or present themselves to you, thus putting your encounters in the context of the transcendent. This is not talk, but it can be talked about.
These propos are really only a trail of crumbs left behind me; I really don't know more than where I've come from and that there's further yet, and I'm going there. What I need to know of my soul and the cosmos I'll surely find in the intersection of me and the Other, and that what you may find will be equally meaningful to you.
If you feel like like sharing, I'd love to listen in on your account of your encounters.
The French philosopher and writer Alain, teacher of some of the greatest names in French literature and thought, Sartre, Weil, Malraux, favored a improvisational kind of essay called a propos, a conversation, a talk. I intend these remarks to reflect something of that discursiveness, density, freedom of association, expressiveness of voice.
Except that sooner or later I come back to something addressable in 2nd person, whether it be that exquisite dogwood on the first Esplanade island down from the Mass Ave bridge, the one covered completely in massed star-shaped flowers slowly turning from white to light pink, or the Juneberries in front of the Charles/MGH T station that are so disappointingly mealy this year, or my student back from a week out sick and still looking awful, or friends moving and in need of help. Because these, you, constitute my world, encounters with you create webs of mutuality that are in substance, the fabric of lasting value.
So let me address you who from time to time have perused this blog, and invite you to reflect (in written words if no other way) on your 2nd person encounters.
I think you'll find, as I have, this gives you a very particular perspective on your life. You won't feel pompous or fraudulent (and who cares how you seem to outsiders) because it's about you and an other in each other's presence, your livingness and that of the other engaged. It may not be a sweet thing, but it is nourishing.
My propos are some longer or shorter, some philosphical or experiential, but each one has been an occasion of discovery for me. If it isn't interesting, I know I haven't opened myself up to the encounter. I don't propose to address marital or political encounters in these propos since those conversations have their special venues, but everything else in my experience is fair game. If these tips are useful, take them.
Reflecting on encounters, their immediacy or resonance, is one part. Then there's risking hospitality, friendship and exploration, acted on in whatever ways they may suggest or present themselves to you, thus putting your encounters in the context of the transcendent. This is not talk, but it can be talked about.
These propos are really only a trail of crumbs left behind me; I really don't know more than where I've come from and that there's further yet, and I'm going there. What I need to know of my soul and the cosmos I'll surely find in the intersection of me and the Other, and that what you may find will be equally meaningful to you.
If you feel like like sharing, I'd love to listen in on your account of your encounters.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Rendering
Pencil and brush both ask me the same questions: of all the representable things in the world, which do I want to render, and next, of the things I put on paper--lines, shadings, colors--what do I take most pleasure in?
It may be that natural artists don't ask these questions. They just sketch or paint obsessively. Notebook in hand, pencil at ready, sheet after sheet of paper fills with images. There's David Hockney with his daily ipad pictures.
Here's what I know about my drawing: it's easier to sketch statues or photographs. You, eye and hand, love to do this: clearly discern the lines and copy them, keeping the proportions right, the angles true and everything fit into the space.
It's much harder is to deal live people or locales. Things that seem worth putting pencil to paper for are faces (especially likenesses), poses, gestures, hands or feet (I saw one girl's foot today on the train half in, half out of her shoe, and bent downward like a ballerina's toe so the foot bones showed clear. I wish I had had time to make more than the rough sketch I did).
Places that have angles and shadows and over-lappings are great places to draw. Buildings are great as well as fences, towers, rooflines. Lines, modeled masses, tinted surfaces: these elements work in such pictures. The rose garden in the Fenway on Sunday was not great to draw. No lines, only masses.
What I find hardest is perspective, convincingly representing objects at different distances. Then there's the picture plane: very hard to see; I keep looking through it and getting fuddled. And my position--head on, from above or below--I can't seem to be consistent. Wide open spaces: I don't know where I am. But, landscapes, cityscapes, interiors, I want to capture the livingness of these too.
Color, as in watercolors, is a whole learning project. I love the feel of the brush, however, and the shape of what a brush-in-hand gesture produces. And then there's cool elegance of Singer Sargent watercolors with white paper showing through. At the MFA recently, his Carrara quarries with intricate shading, delicate colors: a lavage for the eyes. Enough. My own watercolor attempts are a mess, perfectly horrible.
So I have bought a book, to add to the other books I have on subject and technique. All very good. If I do the exercises, I learn a lot, but instead I spend time watching couples play volleyball and trying to capture some of their bends, dives, reaches. Of course I can't do more than grab a few lines representing pose or movement, but some them are lithe and expressive.
I think what I'm after are not so much dramas, or designs, or symbols, as objects or scenes making a kind of visual music with line, colors, shapes expressing the harmonic relationships within. Hmmm. The musical analogy is intriguing. Perhaps, at this stage, I'm trying to find things upon which I'd like to meditate on with my hands and eye, things which are uniquely themselves but resonant.
Why? It's unclear, perhaps related to this writing project which has surprised me about myself and the world. Perhaps hand and eye are also agents of reflecting, and risking. Well, of the risks, I already know how to laugh at myself.
It may be that natural artists don't ask these questions. They just sketch or paint obsessively. Notebook in hand, pencil at ready, sheet after sheet of paper fills with images. There's David Hockney with his daily ipad pictures.
Here's what I know about my drawing: it's easier to sketch statues or photographs. You, eye and hand, love to do this: clearly discern the lines and copy them, keeping the proportions right, the angles true and everything fit into the space.
It's much harder is to deal live people or locales. Things that seem worth putting pencil to paper for are faces (especially likenesses), poses, gestures, hands or feet (I saw one girl's foot today on the train half in, half out of her shoe, and bent downward like a ballerina's toe so the foot bones showed clear. I wish I had had time to make more than the rough sketch I did).
Places that have angles and shadows and over-lappings are great places to draw. Buildings are great as well as fences, towers, rooflines. Lines, modeled masses, tinted surfaces: these elements work in such pictures. The rose garden in the Fenway on Sunday was not great to draw. No lines, only masses.
What I find hardest is perspective, convincingly representing objects at different distances. Then there's the picture plane: very hard to see; I keep looking through it and getting fuddled. And my position--head on, from above or below--I can't seem to be consistent. Wide open spaces: I don't know where I am. But, landscapes, cityscapes, interiors, I want to capture the livingness of these too.
Color, as in watercolors, is a whole learning project. I love the feel of the brush, however, and the shape of what a brush-in-hand gesture produces. And then there's cool elegance of Singer Sargent watercolors with white paper showing through. At the MFA recently, his Carrara quarries with intricate shading, delicate colors: a lavage for the eyes. Enough. My own watercolor attempts are a mess, perfectly horrible.
So I have bought a book, to add to the other books I have on subject and technique. All very good. If I do the exercises, I learn a lot, but instead I spend time watching couples play volleyball and trying to capture some of their bends, dives, reaches. Of course I can't do more than grab a few lines representing pose or movement, but some them are lithe and expressive.
I think what I'm after are not so much dramas, or designs, or symbols, as objects or scenes making a kind of visual music with line, colors, shapes expressing the harmonic relationships within. Hmmm. The musical analogy is intriguing. Perhaps, at this stage, I'm trying to find things upon which I'd like to meditate on with my hands and eye, things which are uniquely themselves but resonant.
Why? It's unclear, perhaps related to this writing project which has surprised me about myself and the world. Perhaps hand and eye are also agents of reflecting, and risking. Well, of the risks, I already know how to laugh at myself.
Monday, June 23, 2014
Aborted
Encounters I just walk away from or can't bear to continue: in what ways do these define which Others I am ready to engage with?
Walking away: I've not been able to finish War and Peace. In the middle of the book, I find myself disappointed with Natasha after having been so taken with her in the first pages. Is she going to become ordinary? Of course, the mid-section of a novel, especially one of this scope, is a challenge for any novelist--and I should trust Tolstoy to keep his characters from becoming terminally neurotic and dispirited. Perhaps he's got redemption through war sacrifice up his sleeve.
Then there's the Wilkie Collins novel No Name that I can't get through because morally corrosive desperation of the characters.
Lots of TV shows, especially the quick quip, fast paced variety that produces a crisis or two every week, have narrative drive but don't compel me. Some of it seems extremely well contrived, but over and over the contrivance become more evident. A murder a week detective, for instance: how could such a person bear to live? Isn't that the real mystery to be solved? Happy-ever-afterings--after a while they're just too ridiculous.
Couldn't bear to finish Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps with Michael Douglas. The set up for betrayal of disciple and daughter by dad made my stomach churn. I understand there is a happy ending but the cruel insincerity of Gordon Gekko's expression looking into the face of one he had corrupted just stopped me dead.
The low budget movie Frozen about three arrogant kids abandoned on a ski chair lost me after the first broken legs.
Horror movies, dismemberments, decapitations, enviscerations, hopeless wailing cornered terror: I will have nothing to do with them.
What I learn from these is that I'm squeamish, impatient, afraid, snobbish, mistrustful of authors and creators who have no trouble creating trouble for their characters. Perhaps certain situations--progressive entrapment and futile flailing against inexorable destruction--access my nightmares, so, no, I refuse to go there.
I can see pusillanimity and pettiness in my decisions to bail out of certain encounters. That which exhibits relentless remorseless mercilessness or persistent evasive non-seriousness is easy not to like but I can let myself disengage too soon. Something may be learned. I can address these Others as 'you' no matter how they appear to me in my impatience and panic. I can learn to trust Tolstoy better, and finish War and Peace.
Walking away: I've not been able to finish War and Peace. In the middle of the book, I find myself disappointed with Natasha after having been so taken with her in the first pages. Is she going to become ordinary? Of course, the mid-section of a novel, especially one of this scope, is a challenge for any novelist--and I should trust Tolstoy to keep his characters from becoming terminally neurotic and dispirited. Perhaps he's got redemption through war sacrifice up his sleeve.
Then there's the Wilkie Collins novel No Name that I can't get through because morally corrosive desperation of the characters.
Lots of TV shows, especially the quick quip, fast paced variety that produces a crisis or two every week, have narrative drive but don't compel me. Some of it seems extremely well contrived, but over and over the contrivance become more evident. A murder a week detective, for instance: how could such a person bear to live? Isn't that the real mystery to be solved? Happy-ever-afterings--after a while they're just too ridiculous.
Couldn't bear to finish Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps with Michael Douglas. The set up for betrayal of disciple and daughter by dad made my stomach churn. I understand there is a happy ending but the cruel insincerity of Gordon Gekko's expression looking into the face of one he had corrupted just stopped me dead.
The low budget movie Frozen about three arrogant kids abandoned on a ski chair lost me after the first broken legs.
Horror movies, dismemberments, decapitations, enviscerations, hopeless wailing cornered terror: I will have nothing to do with them.
What I learn from these is that I'm squeamish, impatient, afraid, snobbish, mistrustful of authors and creators who have no trouble creating trouble for their characters. Perhaps certain situations--progressive entrapment and futile flailing against inexorable destruction--access my nightmares, so, no, I refuse to go there.
I can see pusillanimity and pettiness in my decisions to bail out of certain encounters. That which exhibits relentless remorseless mercilessness or persistent evasive non-seriousness is easy not to like but I can let myself disengage too soon. Something may be learned. I can address these Others as 'you' no matter how they appear to me in my impatience and panic. I can learn to trust Tolstoy better, and finish War and Peace.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Tree ambitions
This evening there's an empty socket, like a place of a pulled tooth, in the wall of foliage that begins with the chain link fence between my yard and the wild vine-twined jungle beyond. Indeed, a big section of the fence is gone since the maple tree that filled the now open space grew up in and through the fence, it's ever larger trunk swelling and swallowing the metal loops.
Like many things in my backyard, I hadn't noticed it until it was big. One day, this half-in, half-out tree leaning over toward my roof was a distinct presence. An ugly tree (though in summer it blocked the street lights from sleepers upstairs), it spraddled the space, a branch snaking away here, another in that direction, heavy tufts of foliage at the ends of the boughs. Little branches with leaves sprouted from random locations on the trunk, like hair on an old man's body. I'd cut a few branches but the tree seemed to redouble the vigor of its remaining limbs. Time to go.
Step one was climbing a ladder, hoisting myself onto the branches, getting as far aloft as I could (or dared) and, swaying the breeze of the beautiful day, sawing away at the thinner, wrist-sized branches with my bucksaw. Crack, snap, and the end-laden branches swagged and swung down to the lawn far below-- usually. Some branches dangled though unattached, suspended by a thick fibrous mass of hairy vines pebbled with tiny green proto-grapes. To get them to drop meant tugging on a tangle as densely matted as dreadlocks. My hands were shaking when finally the tree stood stripped and naked, like a caryatid in a ruined temple.
Step two began when I could hear my friend across the street Kejo start testing his chain saw to complete the project. Meanwhile, heaps of tangled branches scattered across the lawn had to be piled up, cut up, bundled up and put aside for city garden waste day a month hence. Such a mountain of sticky green debris. The spirit quailed before the task. Bales tied with twine, each the size of rolled carpet, were, one by one, made and stacked elsewhere. with of course the standard blood drawn by the stabbing twigs. (Thanks, Duster, for the help.)
Men with chainsaws, men on ladders with chainsaws, old men on ladders...this is when you proceed carefully. I climbed one more time to tie a rope to the top, the cuts were planned and discussed--You back there pulling. go farther, you don't want it to fall on you--the tightening of the saw chain, the lashing of the ladder to the trunk so it wouldn't wobble, the first cut, adjustments to the machine, the notch cut--Look out back there, it'll come quickly--and it did, twisting and crashing down on the top bar of the fence. In surprise, Kejo jumped from the ladder, but no injury.
Then the middle section down to the fence top, and finally the section embedded in the fence. The trunk looked marshmallowy, the fence had sunk its diamonds so deep into it. But there was nothing to do but snip the links of the fence with bolt cutters and take out trunk and fence together, inseparable, which Kejo did masterfully--while taking breaks to entertain me with passages of his poetry.
Now several thick logs litter my lawn, looking like fallen columns from classical ruins. I don't know what to do with these trunk segments which represent the ambition of the tree, its striving for life, its filling out a space for itself to be--where now is absence, and a raw white stump. The vines and small trees are waiting to pounce on the volume newly vacated. Soon the signs of the maple trees having been at all will be overwritten. Let this then be the epitaph: This was an opportunity-taker that almost got to 'too big to cut'. Taking it down was complicated and exhausting. Not an easy life, not an easy death. Acknowledged.
Like many things in my backyard, I hadn't noticed it until it was big. One day, this half-in, half-out tree leaning over toward my roof was a distinct presence. An ugly tree (though in summer it blocked the street lights from sleepers upstairs), it spraddled the space, a branch snaking away here, another in that direction, heavy tufts of foliage at the ends of the boughs. Little branches with leaves sprouted from random locations on the trunk, like hair on an old man's body. I'd cut a few branches but the tree seemed to redouble the vigor of its remaining limbs. Time to go.
Step one was climbing a ladder, hoisting myself onto the branches, getting as far aloft as I could (or dared) and, swaying the breeze of the beautiful day, sawing away at the thinner, wrist-sized branches with my bucksaw. Crack, snap, and the end-laden branches swagged and swung down to the lawn far below-- usually. Some branches dangled though unattached, suspended by a thick fibrous mass of hairy vines pebbled with tiny green proto-grapes. To get them to drop meant tugging on a tangle as densely matted as dreadlocks. My hands were shaking when finally the tree stood stripped and naked, like a caryatid in a ruined temple.
Step two began when I could hear my friend across the street Kejo start testing his chain saw to complete the project. Meanwhile, heaps of tangled branches scattered across the lawn had to be piled up, cut up, bundled up and put aside for city garden waste day a month hence. Such a mountain of sticky green debris. The spirit quailed before the task. Bales tied with twine, each the size of rolled carpet, were, one by one, made and stacked elsewhere. with of course the standard blood drawn by the stabbing twigs. (Thanks, Duster, for the help.)
Men with chainsaws, men on ladders with chainsaws, old men on ladders...this is when you proceed carefully. I climbed one more time to tie a rope to the top, the cuts were planned and discussed--You back there pulling. go farther, you don't want it to fall on you--the tightening of the saw chain, the lashing of the ladder to the trunk so it wouldn't wobble, the first cut, adjustments to the machine, the notch cut--Look out back there, it'll come quickly--and it did, twisting and crashing down on the top bar of the fence. In surprise, Kejo jumped from the ladder, but no injury.
Then the middle section down to the fence top, and finally the section embedded in the fence. The trunk looked marshmallowy, the fence had sunk its diamonds so deep into it. But there was nothing to do but snip the links of the fence with bolt cutters and take out trunk and fence together, inseparable, which Kejo did masterfully--while taking breaks to entertain me with passages of his poetry.
Now several thick logs litter my lawn, looking like fallen columns from classical ruins. I don't know what to do with these trunk segments which represent the ambition of the tree, its striving for life, its filling out a space for itself to be--where now is absence, and a raw white stump. The vines and small trees are waiting to pounce on the volume newly vacated. Soon the signs of the maple trees having been at all will be overwritten. Let this then be the epitaph: This was an opportunity-taker that almost got to 'too big to cut'. Taking it down was complicated and exhausting. Not an easy life, not an easy death. Acknowledged.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Impressions
'Oh, teacher, do you remember me?' asked the young Chinese woman running upstairs as I was thumping down. We'd been together in class about a year ago--let's see, lives in Dorchester, no, near where I live; has a young daughter, no, a son, about 18 months. Don't you remember? she asked.
What class are you taking? I asked. ESL level 3? Excellent. What are you reading? Stories? No, only newspapers? Why not the young adult books in the library? Haven't taken books out? But the librarians are excellent, they'll help you find something exciting, but not too hard or long.
Yes, I have a grandson, I said. Let me show you a video. No, only one, for now. How about you? So your mother-in-law thinks one child is enough. Why? She thinks that Americans are so individualistic that family doesn't matter to them anyway.
America is a huge, diverse and evolving nation with many social patterns. Perhaps we aren't loyal to lines of succession or clan networks as others are, but what she said sounded like a mis-characterization. Perhaps TV shows featuring young people who don't refer to parents, siblings or the extended family create the impression in the mind of newcomers of an atomized society. But consider Rozzie Square on a Saturday morning. It's a carnival of families, a conversation with anyone will quickly elicit references to children away at school, siblings in the next town or on the other side of the country. Family unimportant? Doesn't seem so in our neighborhood.
I know how easy it is to have firm but false impressions. Language may be one contributor; limited news sources another; there may be too few contacts or a label confirmation bias; a first impression may be more compelling than anything subsequent, but the result is that we are blind to what's there or going on, and don't even adopt a 'let's look' attitude. I've been embarrassed (oh, my days in the Peace Corps) by my misreadings of situations after people say 'Well, didn't you know...?' No; in fact, I had no idea.
Still, we can improve our sense of what's going on. I knew the young guys on the street loudly vociferating on the street last night weren't arguing but instead admiring someone's car. People used to warn me against this place where I live, calling it dangerous. Of course, things happen, and I don't know everything, but this little geographical (but not ethnic) enclave is safe and neighborly, something easy to ignore or disbelieve if all that's known about it is the address.
Whatever may be the reasons behind the arguments prevalent in my student's family, this place, any place has a depth and richness that transcends caricature, even the most meticulous description. What is alive always rewards looking, thinking, linking.
What class are you taking? I asked. ESL level 3? Excellent. What are you reading? Stories? No, only newspapers? Why not the young adult books in the library? Haven't taken books out? But the librarians are excellent, they'll help you find something exciting, but not too hard or long.
Yes, I have a grandson, I said. Let me show you a video. No, only one, for now. How about you? So your mother-in-law thinks one child is enough. Why? She thinks that Americans are so individualistic that family doesn't matter to them anyway.
America is a huge, diverse and evolving nation with many social patterns. Perhaps we aren't loyal to lines of succession or clan networks as others are, but what she said sounded like a mis-characterization. Perhaps TV shows featuring young people who don't refer to parents, siblings or the extended family create the impression in the mind of newcomers of an atomized society. But consider Rozzie Square on a Saturday morning. It's a carnival of families, a conversation with anyone will quickly elicit references to children away at school, siblings in the next town or on the other side of the country. Family unimportant? Doesn't seem so in our neighborhood.
I know how easy it is to have firm but false impressions. Language may be one contributor; limited news sources another; there may be too few contacts or a label confirmation bias; a first impression may be more compelling than anything subsequent, but the result is that we are blind to what's there or going on, and don't even adopt a 'let's look' attitude. I've been embarrassed (oh, my days in the Peace Corps) by my misreadings of situations after people say 'Well, didn't you know...?' No; in fact, I had no idea.
Still, we can improve our sense of what's going on. I knew the young guys on the street loudly vociferating on the street last night weren't arguing but instead admiring someone's car. People used to warn me against this place where I live, calling it dangerous. Of course, things happen, and I don't know everything, but this little geographical (but not ethnic) enclave is safe and neighborly, something easy to ignore or disbelieve if all that's known about it is the address.
Whatever may be the reasons behind the arguments prevalent in my student's family, this place, any place has a depth and richness that transcends caricature, even the most meticulous description. What is alive always rewards looking, thinking, linking.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Playmate
How water loves to play. Grandson Myja is just learning how delightfully frolicsome it can be. Whether generating patterns of flashing water by splish-splashing in the sandy shallows of the beach, or submitting to a drenching under a sprinkler, or trying to capture the fat drops arching up and over in a parabola from a water jet, Myja is learning an important lesson: whatever he does to it, water is already ready to have it done again.
What a delight to watch him on video chortling at this wonderful liquid between his feet, over his head, in his face, or between his hands, and see him, slicked and glistening, running from fountain to shower in a rapture of pleasure.
I want to tell him that this simple, wonderful stuff will never disappoint, will always offer new expressions of its willingness to cavort with us: giant surfing waves, waterfalls, rapids, gurgling forest streams, deep still lakes, frog ponds; then there's atmospheric and celestial phenomena like rainfalls (even floods when too rambunctious), storms of all kinds, and tides; and what about ice and snow and its ability to transform whole mountains into giant playgrounds?
'Dear water, clear water, playful in all your streams, / As you dash or loiter through life who does not love / to sit beside you, to hear you and see you, / Pure being, perfect in music and movement.' sang Auden in Bucolics, and how right. Water, my dear boy, will be your inspiration and nemesis while you live on this blessed planet and inhabit that special little body of yours.
We've not finished discovering the games water is willing to play with us. It's good you're starting early cultivating this good friend of ours.
What a delight to watch him on video chortling at this wonderful liquid between his feet, over his head, in his face, or between his hands, and see him, slicked and glistening, running from fountain to shower in a rapture of pleasure.
I want to tell him that this simple, wonderful stuff will never disappoint, will always offer new expressions of its willingness to cavort with us: giant surfing waves, waterfalls, rapids, gurgling forest streams, deep still lakes, frog ponds; then there's atmospheric and celestial phenomena like rainfalls (even floods when too rambunctious), storms of all kinds, and tides; and what about ice and snow and its ability to transform whole mountains into giant playgrounds?
'Dear water, clear water, playful in all your streams, / As you dash or loiter through life who does not love / to sit beside you, to hear you and see you, / Pure being, perfect in music and movement.' sang Auden in Bucolics, and how right. Water, my dear boy, will be your inspiration and nemesis while you live on this blessed planet and inhabit that special little body of yours.
We've not finished discovering the games water is willing to play with us. It's good you're starting early cultivating this good friend of ours.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
There was a voice
The space was small so the formation was tight: a dozen or fifteen construction-type men with signs marching in a small circle and chanting: What do we want? When do we want it? There was big poster with something like 'D Cammi', whatever that meant; a labor action in front of the state office building on Beacon Hill. The sidewalk was busy with people showing up for work. The buildings all around were tall and quiet.
Who was protesting and what? I don't know. There's construction nearby; maybe it was related to that. If it was a conversation, who was listening?
I reflected, as I zoomed by, on how the average worker in America has only their own individual voice, one that makes little headway against the massed blasts from the enterprise of which the worker is a part. The small voice of one person might as well be silence, except for its effect on the speaker to relieve or frustrate.
How can conversation happen in these circumstances? There are channels, there are lines of authority, blare the trumpets of the top; that's where conversation is allowed to happen: up to us, down to you, inside the system.
But these men, about whose cause I know nothing, were speaking with a voice of multiplied power, and not from the bottom of the dumb-waiter shaft.
I couldn't find any information online, but I was witness. There was a voice; let it be heard.
Who was protesting and what? I don't know. There's construction nearby; maybe it was related to that. If it was a conversation, who was listening?
I reflected, as I zoomed by, on how the average worker in America has only their own individual voice, one that makes little headway against the massed blasts from the enterprise of which the worker is a part. The small voice of one person might as well be silence, except for its effect on the speaker to relieve or frustrate.
How can conversation happen in these circumstances? There are channels, there are lines of authority, blare the trumpets of the top; that's where conversation is allowed to happen: up to us, down to you, inside the system.
But these men, about whose cause I know nothing, were speaking with a voice of multiplied power, and not from the bottom of the dumb-waiter shaft.
I couldn't find any information online, but I was witness. There was a voice; let it be heard.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
The lost
Clearly a visitor, the runner in the red Tshirt had the name of a place at his disposal: Do you know where....is? I was on my way over the North Washington St bridge and missed his reference: something about a corporate name and a basketball court. Whatever. Clearly the guy just needed a place to run. It was a beautiful morning. The harbor was smooth as glass. I told him about running beside the river and waved in the general direction. Then I took off.
He caught up with me and my directions became more explicit (though the route was complex): across the road, down the stairs into a park, under the highway and over the bridge over the railroad tracks into the next park and...suddenly, I had to tie my shoes. Catching up with him, he was heading in the wrong way---to the Navy Yard, and I redirected him across the highway: there, there's the entrance.
I hope he made it to the river or at least had a good run. How easy it is to get lost. This city in particular is full of cul-de-sacs, complex intersections, offsets and loops, not to mention detours. You think you can get there; in fact, you can almost see it; but it's always a longer way than you'd counted on.
Still, I know this place: I've seen the landmarks, have a mental image of the area, can link the sun's direction to the principal features. After all, there's always the river; in Boston, there's always the Hancock. Out in Watertown, I can get turned but when do I go there?
Being lost is fun and frustrating. I can revel in it...until I have an appointment. There's a special conversation that goes on between the lost and the locale. On the part of the lost, a struggle to create a map, intially of cocktail napkin quality, to pin down the key reference points so as to simply determine one's current location. The locale is stubbornly itself, refusing to produce the expected recognizable landmark where it should be.The lost are full of query and the locale unconcerned. The lost dizzy with turning around; the locale rock solid and complacent. 'Haven't I been here before? rages the lost. 'Once, twice, a hundred times, what do I care? yawns the locale.
Reading Earl Thollander's Back Roads of California mostly for the splendid watercolors and sketches but incidentally for the narrative, I think: maybe the question should be not, 'Where am I?' but 'What a road!' and 'Let's stop to look.' Each place then starts to be itself under our gaze, presenting itself shyly beautiful. Columbus Park, North Point park, the view from the pedestrian bridge between, will now fill out where they are, and the once-lost will have glowing memories of mysteriously beautiful green jewels somewhere in Boston or Cambridge. magical places that, with luck, he'll encounter again.
He caught up with me and my directions became more explicit (though the route was complex): across the road, down the stairs into a park, under the highway and over the bridge over the railroad tracks into the next park and...suddenly, I had to tie my shoes. Catching up with him, he was heading in the wrong way---to the Navy Yard, and I redirected him across the highway: there, there's the entrance.
I hope he made it to the river or at least had a good run. How easy it is to get lost. This city in particular is full of cul-de-sacs, complex intersections, offsets and loops, not to mention detours. You think you can get there; in fact, you can almost see it; but it's always a longer way than you'd counted on.
Still, I know this place: I've seen the landmarks, have a mental image of the area, can link the sun's direction to the principal features. After all, there's always the river; in Boston, there's always the Hancock. Out in Watertown, I can get turned but when do I go there?
Being lost is fun and frustrating. I can revel in it...until I have an appointment. There's a special conversation that goes on between the lost and the locale. On the part of the lost, a struggle to create a map, intially of cocktail napkin quality, to pin down the key reference points so as to simply determine one's current location. The locale is stubbornly itself, refusing to produce the expected recognizable landmark where it should be.The lost are full of query and the locale unconcerned. The lost dizzy with turning around; the locale rock solid and complacent. 'Haven't I been here before? rages the lost. 'Once, twice, a hundred times, what do I care? yawns the locale.
Reading Earl Thollander's Back Roads of California mostly for the splendid watercolors and sketches but incidentally for the narrative, I think: maybe the question should be not, 'Where am I?' but 'What a road!' and 'Let's stop to look.' Each place then starts to be itself under our gaze, presenting itself shyly beautiful. Columbus Park, North Point park, the view from the pedestrian bridge between, will now fill out where they are, and the once-lost will have glowing memories of mysteriously beautiful green jewels somewhere in Boston or Cambridge. magical places that, with luck, he'll encounter again.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Devotees
Music, concerts, two loves of my life. My work is about listening to and producing speech. I thought I knew some things, had some basic ideas, but reading Music, The Brain, and Ecstacy: How Music Captures Our Imagination by Robert Jourdain astounds me with interesting, illuminating information, and incidentally shows me how very much an untrained amateur I am.
Did I know, really know, the many ways good concert venues like my beloved Jordan Hall perform their miracles? Had I really considered the way our outer ears don't just funnel sound but enrich it? What about the organ of Corti, so astonishingly small, intricate and crucial. How had I missed the air reed of the flute? Was it clear to me how musical tones represent a complexification of a simplification, as simple scientific principles represented in mathematical formulae can serve build an endless variety of structures. No. And why?
Simple, I'm not an engineer, nor a musician, but information like this is what furnishes the worlds of both. These facts, and many others, are the relevant considerations of their work. This is why its so interesting to hear these people talking shop: one feels privileged to peek into their world of fascinating and significant details and unsuspected principles. The facts are intriguing enough, but so are those who are so aware to them that they can put them to use in creative ways.
By contrast, I feel like a child who sits on the ground with a block with pegs in holes between my splayed legs, me whacking away with a wooden hammer. The designers and artists, by contrast, are faceting diamonds with precise strokes and using them to make glorious etchings.
Still, I have much more of the book to read, and for every page which I have already savored for its information, there is another yet to come. I love this subject; know how ignorant I am; and welcome being guided. To complete the loop, I should see (hear) for myself, and pass on what I learn. The interesting intricacy of the world needs to be turned inside out and its jewels put on display. We on our part, I speak to myself here, must find some kind of magic to do with what comes to light.
Listening to Nielsen's Inextinguishable symphony as I write this: Good Lord, what a world, what a journey, what a glory.
Did I know, really know, the many ways good concert venues like my beloved Jordan Hall perform their miracles? Had I really considered the way our outer ears don't just funnel sound but enrich it? What about the organ of Corti, so astonishingly small, intricate and crucial. How had I missed the air reed of the flute? Was it clear to me how musical tones represent a complexification of a simplification, as simple scientific principles represented in mathematical formulae can serve build an endless variety of structures. No. And why?
Simple, I'm not an engineer, nor a musician, but information like this is what furnishes the worlds of both. These facts, and many others, are the relevant considerations of their work. This is why its so interesting to hear these people talking shop: one feels privileged to peek into their world of fascinating and significant details and unsuspected principles. The facts are intriguing enough, but so are those who are so aware to them that they can put them to use in creative ways.
By contrast, I feel like a child who sits on the ground with a block with pegs in holes between my splayed legs, me whacking away with a wooden hammer. The designers and artists, by contrast, are faceting diamonds with precise strokes and using them to make glorious etchings.
Still, I have much more of the book to read, and for every page which I have already savored for its information, there is another yet to come. I love this subject; know how ignorant I am; and welcome being guided. To complete the loop, I should see (hear) for myself, and pass on what I learn. The interesting intricacy of the world needs to be turned inside out and its jewels put on display. We on our part, I speak to myself here, must find some kind of magic to do with what comes to light.
Listening to Nielsen's Inextinguishable symphony as I write this: Good Lord, what a world, what a journey, what a glory.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Peers
I don't miss him; I don't even think of him more than, say, once a month. He died some years ago, me dead to him. He was about my age now, more or less. I remember playing with him, being taught by him, consoled and encouraged by him. Likewise, I remember his viciousness, his disdain, his duplicity, especially toward the end of his life. He was a brilliant engineer, a charmer, handsome, poised; a favorite in his nursing home, for instance. He had ambition, and rage and a susceptibility to drink. I know where I put his ashes.
Father's Day always makes me feel a bit like a fraud (after all, I was always just doing the next thing) or a monster (after all, what kind of son has this little affect) but one thing strikes me about the day: it reminds us that we're all on the journey of life, passing on to the generations behind us what we've picked up, looking to the generations ahead of us for what they are learning. I think I'm finally starting to get this life business, but there's still plenty of time for everything to be turned on its head: certainty become doubt, the serious become the ridiculous, what's meaningful turn out to be absurd, hope become disillusion.
My dad saw everything turn against him, not the least himself. It was very sad. But my question is: How can I skirt the dangers and win through to that thing I see ahead which is worth wanting? He was a human being, flawed, fatally flawed it turns out, but in his life so many deeds of friendship, exploration and hospitality forgotten, overshadowed or undercut, too small or quick to notice, or too grand to realize. Where did gestures go that won him his wife, my mother? What about the rowing races on the Thames, and the after-race drinking with his friends afterwards, did those moments go 'poof'? What about bringing me to America and sending me to college? What about that night when he struggled to teach me the concept of percent? Did it go into the abyss? When he held me when I cried after the death of our bassett Beau. Emptiness? What about the tender gratitude he showed to the anonymous correspondent who sent him letters in his last days (my wife, whom he despised)? Was it nothing?
I don't believe so. Deeds of generosity, constancy, courage, the things we do in authentic 2nd interactions, are part of something larger and lasting. His life was full of these. The everything else: ' blip.'
He would have thought these ideas were foolish, weak, marks of a loser. Whatever, Living out the implications of God-in-love is my experiment in going all the way to the best that is there for us. This blog is part of that project; these posts are blazes on the trail. There are collaborations to share in. There are many, many things that people know to listen to and find out about. Fatherhood seems just a part of it.
Even regarding my father and our relationship, there's more to learn, I'm sure. What is it, I'll wait to find out.
Father's Day always makes me feel a bit like a fraud (after all, I was always just doing the next thing) or a monster (after all, what kind of son has this little affect) but one thing strikes me about the day: it reminds us that we're all on the journey of life, passing on to the generations behind us what we've picked up, looking to the generations ahead of us for what they are learning. I think I'm finally starting to get this life business, but there's still plenty of time for everything to be turned on its head: certainty become doubt, the serious become the ridiculous, what's meaningful turn out to be absurd, hope become disillusion.
My dad saw everything turn against him, not the least himself. It was very sad. But my question is: How can I skirt the dangers and win through to that thing I see ahead which is worth wanting? He was a human being, flawed, fatally flawed it turns out, but in his life so many deeds of friendship, exploration and hospitality forgotten, overshadowed or undercut, too small or quick to notice, or too grand to realize. Where did gestures go that won him his wife, my mother? What about the rowing races on the Thames, and the after-race drinking with his friends afterwards, did those moments go 'poof'? What about bringing me to America and sending me to college? What about that night when he struggled to teach me the concept of percent? Did it go into the abyss? When he held me when I cried after the death of our bassett Beau. Emptiness? What about the tender gratitude he showed to the anonymous correspondent who sent him letters in his last days (my wife, whom he despised)? Was it nothing?
I don't believe so. Deeds of generosity, constancy, courage, the things we do in authentic 2nd interactions, are part of something larger and lasting. His life was full of these. The everything else: ' blip.'
He would have thought these ideas were foolish, weak, marks of a loser. Whatever, Living out the implications of God-in-love is my experiment in going all the way to the best that is there for us. This blog is part of that project; these posts are blazes on the trail. There are collaborations to share in. There are many, many things that people know to listen to and find out about. Fatherhood seems just a part of it.
Even regarding my father and our relationship, there's more to learn, I'm sure. What is it, I'll wait to find out.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Swarm
From our section up on the third level, the DCU center was buzzing like a hive.The gaps in the diversity spectrum I'd noted last night were filled. The whole hall was filled. Supporters of different candidates had different Tshirts--light green, blue, red, orange, dark green--which gave the crowd the appearance of a garden seen from a distance. The day was a drama in three acts.
The first task was checking in the delegates, which was at first a chaotic process. A persistent but overwhelmed black lady had the task of calling out all the names of the delegates and ascertaining their presence. A roll call. Simple. No, not simple. First, her voice was weak. Second, loud percussion driven music was coming from the stage. Result: nobody heard anything. An impromptu call transmission system was set up: the initial 'Pe...Du...ney', followed by a big black guy calling for 'Pat Need', then someone bawling for 'Pete Doon' and so on, until I realized it was me. So it went all through ward 18 delegate name list.. By the time, they got to ward 20, the music had stopped, but it still, it took an age, and the final books for all the sections in the hall were turned into the sergeant at arms and finalized about two hours behind schedule. Still, for all the absurdity of the situation, people were relatively relaxed. Once officially signed in, I took a tour around the concession zone that ringed the actual arena where business was busy.
Then the speeches. Four contested positions, 14 candidates, 10 minutes per candidate. It was a bit like the play marathon I usually attend in May (but missed this year) when 10 hours evaporate in a blur of bit-sized dramas (Bet you can't watch just one.) except that this is where I had to work, to really listen and watch videos and speeches so as to pick one of three, or two, or five. They all sounded so good, and, in fact, I'm sure we were lucky to have so many very able, very passionate people trying to get these jobs. I remember the last shot of Maura's video, her intent gaze at the camera, with a basketball spinning on her finger at arms length; the fly-away smiling fury of Juliette's eyes (others said she was nervous and spoke too high; but I fell in love with those eyes) as she pronounced, 'Bold today, better tomorrow'; the naked, aching sincerity of Don; the persistent ploddingness of Steve; the studied clicheity of Martha. As they spoke crowds of colorful supporters stood in front of the stage and waved placards. For she with the flashing eyes, I did too.
Many promises: many pugnacious (guns on the street, I'm coming to get you; poverty, just you wait; Charlie Baker, be afraid...) , many improbable, but all based on a conviction that something can be done to ameliorate and advance the situation of this commonwealth, that what it's like where we live can be affected for the better by the ideas and efforts of the people who will hold these offices, and the activists inspired by them. Repeated words like 'fairness', 'equality', 'community' drew their power from that fundamental conviction. Politics matters, was the implicit message. I took it like blows to a boxer's jaw. I started reeling.
It was when a candidate for lieutenant governor, Leland (Chinese last name), spoke that I had the moment of enlightenment I had been waiting for (since last night). This former Cambridge city counselor, after telling about the immigrant background of his parents, spoke of visiting cousins in Beijing and thinking: 'I could participate, participate, in a system that made a positive difference for everyone, and they could not.'
I understood: freshly that our common space is not for anyone to give us; it is for us to shape ourselves. We do it well, we do it badly, but the job ours to do. To be allowed to do something for ourselves in the common space, but to not be allowed to take responsibility for that space (but rather encouraged to ignore any responsibility) is to make us children, simple and shallow. ( I resonated, by the way, with his mission to advance and distribute high-tech innovation throughout the state.)
The last act of the drama was something new for me. The teller again, but this time with an older man at her elbow with a stentorian voice, the pair surrounded by a team of tabulators, polled the delegates one by one about their choices for each of the four positions. Each delegate in turn was asked to give four answers. There we were, ward 18, me and my neighbors, up at the top of the nose-bleed section, teller and team on the stairs, delegates all around leaning in, paying attention, the trumpet-voice calling out our names, and we publicly announcing the decisions that we'd reached after listening to all the presentations. No secret ballots, no (or only a little) coyness. We were all in the same scrum, being honest about and registering our opinions as decisive votes, and so winnowing the field for the September primary. At that point, there was no maneuvering or gaming. We did our job. It felt like kitchen table democracy writ large.
On the way home, we got a tweet: our favorite had not made the cut.
The first task was checking in the delegates, which was at first a chaotic process. A persistent but overwhelmed black lady had the task of calling out all the names of the delegates and ascertaining their presence. A roll call. Simple. No, not simple. First, her voice was weak. Second, loud percussion driven music was coming from the stage. Result: nobody heard anything. An impromptu call transmission system was set up: the initial 'Pe...Du...ney', followed by a big black guy calling for 'Pat Need', then someone bawling for 'Pete Doon' and so on, until I realized it was me. So it went all through ward 18 delegate name list.. By the time, they got to ward 20, the music had stopped, but it still, it took an age, and the final books for all the sections in the hall were turned into the sergeant at arms and finalized about two hours behind schedule. Still, for all the absurdity of the situation, people were relatively relaxed. Once officially signed in, I took a tour around the concession zone that ringed the actual arena where business was busy.
Then the speeches. Four contested positions, 14 candidates, 10 minutes per candidate. It was a bit like the play marathon I usually attend in May (but missed this year) when 10 hours evaporate in a blur of bit-sized dramas (Bet you can't watch just one.) except that this is where I had to work, to really listen and watch videos and speeches so as to pick one of three, or two, or five. They all sounded so good, and, in fact, I'm sure we were lucky to have so many very able, very passionate people trying to get these jobs. I remember the last shot of Maura's video, her intent gaze at the camera, with a basketball spinning on her finger at arms length; the fly-away smiling fury of Juliette's eyes (others said she was nervous and spoke too high; but I fell in love with those eyes) as she pronounced, 'Bold today, better tomorrow'; the naked, aching sincerity of Don; the persistent ploddingness of Steve; the studied clicheity of Martha. As they spoke crowds of colorful supporters stood in front of the stage and waved placards. For she with the flashing eyes, I did too.
Many promises: many pugnacious (guns on the street, I'm coming to get you; poverty, just you wait; Charlie Baker, be afraid...) , many improbable, but all based on a conviction that something can be done to ameliorate and advance the situation of this commonwealth, that what it's like where we live can be affected for the better by the ideas and efforts of the people who will hold these offices, and the activists inspired by them. Repeated words like 'fairness', 'equality', 'community' drew their power from that fundamental conviction. Politics matters, was the implicit message. I took it like blows to a boxer's jaw. I started reeling.
It was when a candidate for lieutenant governor, Leland (Chinese last name), spoke that I had the moment of enlightenment I had been waiting for (since last night). This former Cambridge city counselor, after telling about the immigrant background of his parents, spoke of visiting cousins in Beijing and thinking: 'I could participate, participate, in a system that made a positive difference for everyone, and they could not.'
I understood: freshly that our common space is not for anyone to give us; it is for us to shape ourselves. We do it well, we do it badly, but the job ours to do. To be allowed to do something for ourselves in the common space, but to not be allowed to take responsibility for that space (but rather encouraged to ignore any responsibility) is to make us children, simple and shallow. ( I resonated, by the way, with his mission to advance and distribute high-tech innovation throughout the state.)
The last act of the drama was something new for me. The teller again, but this time with an older man at her elbow with a stentorian voice, the pair surrounded by a team of tabulators, polled the delegates one by one about their choices for each of the four positions. Each delegate in turn was asked to give four answers. There we were, ward 18, me and my neighbors, up at the top of the nose-bleed section, teller and team on the stairs, delegates all around leaning in, paying attention, the trumpet-voice calling out our names, and we publicly announcing the decisions that we'd reached after listening to all the presentations. No secret ballots, no (or only a little) coyness. We were all in the same scrum, being honest about and registering our opinions as decisive votes, and so winnowing the field for the September primary. At that point, there was no maneuvering or gaming. We did our job. It felt like kitchen table democracy writ large.
On the way home, we got a tweet: our favorite had not made the cut.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Insider
Listening to the pundits on the Friday afternoon talk show, I discovered who I was. As delegate to the Democratic convention, I am automatically an apparatchik, a hack, an insider, someone who's been wooed and won, not in the least representative of voters, who are not anything like me, who are people for whom politics is just the product to be stamped with approval.
They'll be four of us going tomorrow, and I bet none of us, not one, smoke cigars. Oh, I'm playing with cliche's here but sometimes the lofty disinterest of the opineophiles, their weakness for lapsing into disdain for the hugger-mugger of politics, exasperates me. I'm not a campaign manager, a deal maker, a strategist, just a foot soldier (of sorts) who thinks politicians and policy need advocates among the public--and I intend to one such.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just home from the Friday session opening the convention, having missed the formal presentations (mostly kudos for the governor) but not the groups of delegates milling around the convention center and making their way gradually to the various candidate sponsored parties in nearby eateries and hotels. Just looking at the delegate mix, there seemed to be substantial ethnic and gender diversity, that is, African-American people and women, and particularly black women. As to age, there seemed to be grey-heads and youngsters (late teens and twenties) and not much in between. There were the standard operative types who were trading information and shmoozing.
But mostly the crowd was people in twos and threes excited about meeting each other again. Even at the parties, it was more like old home week than delegate button-holing. Perhaps that's tomorrow. 'I wandered lonely as a cloud,' pretty standard for me, stopping to just look, or most often, let a stream of delegate traffic one day abate enough to allow me to go the other. A young girl addressed me, and I queried her about the reasons for her support for her candidate, but to her relief, somebody turned on the mic and said something, and the conversation ceased.
Tomorrow, I will have made decisions that will affected the futures of several of these candidates, but I'm committed to only one. What about the rest? Yori's been assembling info and maybe we'll talk in the car. And there will be speeches, 10 minutes per candidate.
On the way home, I began listening to an audio lecture series on modern China which over and over pointed to the paradox of free economic activity and tight political control in that country. The average level of hope in the future in China, the lecturer said, is higher than in the United States. What we're doing tomorrow out in Worcester is exactly what doesn't happen in Beijing. If this is 'democracy church', will the''glory fill the temple'? More to the point, will we govern ourselves well?
They'll be four of us going tomorrow, and I bet none of us, not one, smoke cigars. Oh, I'm playing with cliche's here but sometimes the lofty disinterest of the opineophiles, their weakness for lapsing into disdain for the hugger-mugger of politics, exasperates me. I'm not a campaign manager, a deal maker, a strategist, just a foot soldier (of sorts) who thinks politicians and policy need advocates among the public--and I intend to one such.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just home from the Friday session opening the convention, having missed the formal presentations (mostly kudos for the governor) but not the groups of delegates milling around the convention center and making their way gradually to the various candidate sponsored parties in nearby eateries and hotels. Just looking at the delegate mix, there seemed to be substantial ethnic and gender diversity, that is, African-American people and women, and particularly black women. As to age, there seemed to be grey-heads and youngsters (late teens and twenties) and not much in between. There were the standard operative types who were trading information and shmoozing.
But mostly the crowd was people in twos and threes excited about meeting each other again. Even at the parties, it was more like old home week than delegate button-holing. Perhaps that's tomorrow. 'I wandered lonely as a cloud,' pretty standard for me, stopping to just look, or most often, let a stream of delegate traffic one day abate enough to allow me to go the other. A young girl addressed me, and I queried her about the reasons for her support for her candidate, but to her relief, somebody turned on the mic and said something, and the conversation ceased.
Tomorrow, I will have made decisions that will affected the futures of several of these candidates, but I'm committed to only one. What about the rest? Yori's been assembling info and maybe we'll talk in the car. And there will be speeches, 10 minutes per candidate.
On the way home, I began listening to an audio lecture series on modern China which over and over pointed to the paradox of free economic activity and tight political control in that country. The average level of hope in the future in China, the lecturer said, is higher than in the United States. What we're doing tomorrow out in Worcester is exactly what doesn't happen in Beijing. If this is 'democracy church', will the''glory fill the temple'? More to the point, will we govern ourselves well?
Friday, June 13, 2014
Need to hear
'Did you know,' asked Dulu this morning, 'beavers can fell trees of up to six inches in diameter in half-an-hour?' 'No, I didn't but, wow, that's fast.' 'Yes, sometimes they'll cut it all the way around, sometimes in one side and then the other, but they stop every few minutes to listen for the creaks and groans as the tree is ready to fall.' 'That's important.' 'In fact, sometimes beavers are killed by crashing trees.'
I imagined a burly brown beaver propped up on its flat, scaly tail listening intently, perhaps cocking its head a little to the side to hear better. This is serious stuff. I have a tree to take down in the next few weeks and I'm respectful of the risks.
I'm reminded that we listen for what we need to hear, that our sensitivity to sound is based in part on how much we believe in and value the information we can get from it. Of course, we need the physical ability to discriminate inputs, and often teachers to point again and again at differences until they become obvious, but there's a sense in which what we hear is related to what we need to know.
The world is full, full of sounds, but most are irrelevant. The way I heard my eye movement and blinks during this recent seige of fevers was symptomatic, I suppose, but other things going on were more telling. The doctor picked up lung and heart sounds through his stethoscope but no news was good news.
The relevant sounds can relate to our social relationships, our quality of life, our very existence. The information is out there; we just have to sift it for patterns that matter, and there are an infinity of patterns, patterns of patterns, patterns about patterns. Each language is a dynamic complex of such patterns. No wonder my students struggle (often with substantial success) to master the pattern play of the English language. Learning their languages I would first have to go through a zone of (seeming) meaninglessness but links, sequences, significant simultaneities emerge.
We really are pattern producing and appreciating creatures, but this proclivity is not just for its own sake but for what is to be discovered. We are listening not just for what we already know but for indications that information is available in the welter of sound suggesting the presence of important things that we don't know yet. Recent discoveries about the cosmic microwave background represent marvels of listening, though the results were confirmed hypotheses.
Individual instances, for instance, are beyond hypothesis; someone yes, this one, no. Likewise, new emerging orders of complexity. The patterns that indicate presence of things like these must be at least in part beyond expectation. They'll be 'aah' moments. Henceforward, our world will have expanded.
One day, out of the ambient information, my search may pick up a pattern that speaks compellingly about an individual speaking. One day, I may address God-in-love as 'you' in a way other than and more than hitherto. The fundamental significance of friendship, hospitality and exploration I take as self-evident. The existence of God-in-love and the beloved Other is a premise. So far it has been for me a working model, but revelation can happen, and I'm longing for it.
I imagined a burly brown beaver propped up on its flat, scaly tail listening intently, perhaps cocking its head a little to the side to hear better. This is serious stuff. I have a tree to take down in the next few weeks and I'm respectful of the risks.
I'm reminded that we listen for what we need to hear, that our sensitivity to sound is based in part on how much we believe in and value the information we can get from it. Of course, we need the physical ability to discriminate inputs, and often teachers to point again and again at differences until they become obvious, but there's a sense in which what we hear is related to what we need to know.
The world is full, full of sounds, but most are irrelevant. The way I heard my eye movement and blinks during this recent seige of fevers was symptomatic, I suppose, but other things going on were more telling. The doctor picked up lung and heart sounds through his stethoscope but no news was good news.
The relevant sounds can relate to our social relationships, our quality of life, our very existence. The information is out there; we just have to sift it for patterns that matter, and there are an infinity of patterns, patterns of patterns, patterns about patterns. Each language is a dynamic complex of such patterns. No wonder my students struggle (often with substantial success) to master the pattern play of the English language. Learning their languages I would first have to go through a zone of (seeming) meaninglessness but links, sequences, significant simultaneities emerge.
We really are pattern producing and appreciating creatures, but this proclivity is not just for its own sake but for what is to be discovered. We are listening not just for what we already know but for indications that information is available in the welter of sound suggesting the presence of important things that we don't know yet. Recent discoveries about the cosmic microwave background represent marvels of listening, though the results were confirmed hypotheses.
Individual instances, for instance, are beyond hypothesis; someone yes, this one, no. Likewise, new emerging orders of complexity. The patterns that indicate presence of things like these must be at least in part beyond expectation. They'll be 'aah' moments. Henceforward, our world will have expanded.
One day, out of the ambient information, my search may pick up a pattern that speaks compellingly about an individual speaking. One day, I may address God-in-love as 'you' in a way other than and more than hitherto. The fundamental significance of friendship, hospitality and exploration I take as self-evident. The existence of God-in-love and the beloved Other is a premise. So far it has been for me a working model, but revelation can happen, and I'm longing for it.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
No dawdling
I crawled into bed, reached back to turn off the lights, and there were the ants. Black and fast, they covered the top of the dresser, the back of which serves as headboard. They rushed about horizontally, vertically (no difference to them) in every direction. They weren't on the bed (more than one or two) but how could I sleep with masses of manic machines moving about just inches from my pillow.
The reason for their sudden interest in my bedroom was clear: an open and unfinished can of ginger ale was on the dresser. The random walks of the ants sort of averaged out to a line from a place under the baseboard, across a bit of floor, up the piece of furniture, across the top, to the mother lode, sweet gold. Perhaps all the rest of the activity was a concomitant strategy to locate other similar troves nearby. Normally silent, the ants made small noises inside the can, scratchings as of climbing and falling, climbing and falling.
How the ants proposed to exploit this treasure I don't know. I've seen them carry food in their jaws but what could they do with liquid? Drink it and regurgitate it in the nest? Drink it and enjoy individually? That doesn't seem the ant-like way.
How did they find this single potent carelessness, the open soda can? My house, especially that north side, must be regularly reconnoitered by ants. I find the odd ant here or there in my kitchen, and kill it. The bedroom is above the kitchen, so I imagine a solitary scout went up the inside wall, entered the bedroom, began randomly visiting all the places in the room, found the soda, returned to the nest leaving a trail and invited his friends and his friend's friends too to come and partake.
I took the can of soda to the sink, slunged it of ants, and threw it away. Thereafter, the activity of the black, glossy all-terrain vehicles diminished, and I went to sleep.
The next day, I located where, I think, they'd been entering the house and sprayed insecticide. There seem to be few ants now than before, but I'll have to keep watch longer to make sure. I'm full of doubts. These ants are not monsters; they have their own strategy for survival in the world. They are, however, good at hiding, incessant in activity and numerous. When my structures and their drives collide, it isn't good.
There's a wood lot next door. Stay there; live, love and prosper in that place. I won't disturb you, promise. Turn about is fair play, however. Don't come into my house, much less my bedroom.
A message falling on deaf ears (if ants even have ears). Can I address these creatures as 'you' in any meaningful sense? Perhaps an attributed 'you' based on respect, attention, and (is it possible, E. O. Wilson?) love.
Just don't mess with my house.
The reason for their sudden interest in my bedroom was clear: an open and unfinished can of ginger ale was on the dresser. The random walks of the ants sort of averaged out to a line from a place under the baseboard, across a bit of floor, up the piece of furniture, across the top, to the mother lode, sweet gold. Perhaps all the rest of the activity was a concomitant strategy to locate other similar troves nearby. Normally silent, the ants made small noises inside the can, scratchings as of climbing and falling, climbing and falling.
How the ants proposed to exploit this treasure I don't know. I've seen them carry food in their jaws but what could they do with liquid? Drink it and regurgitate it in the nest? Drink it and enjoy individually? That doesn't seem the ant-like way.
How did they find this single potent carelessness, the open soda can? My house, especially that north side, must be regularly reconnoitered by ants. I find the odd ant here or there in my kitchen, and kill it. The bedroom is above the kitchen, so I imagine a solitary scout went up the inside wall, entered the bedroom, began randomly visiting all the places in the room, found the soda, returned to the nest leaving a trail and invited his friends and his friend's friends too to come and partake.
I took the can of soda to the sink, slunged it of ants, and threw it away. Thereafter, the activity of the black, glossy all-terrain vehicles diminished, and I went to sleep.
The next day, I located where, I think, they'd been entering the house and sprayed insecticide. There seem to be few ants now than before, but I'll have to keep watch longer to make sure. I'm full of doubts. These ants are not monsters; they have their own strategy for survival in the world. They are, however, good at hiding, incessant in activity and numerous. When my structures and their drives collide, it isn't good.
There's a wood lot next door. Stay there; live, love and prosper in that place. I won't disturb you, promise. Turn about is fair play, however. Don't come into my house, much less my bedroom.
A message falling on deaf ears (if ants even have ears). Can I address these creatures as 'you' in any meaningful sense? Perhaps an attributed 'you' based on respect, attention, and (is it possible, E. O. Wilson?) love.
Just don't mess with my house.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Root hairs
I know the room, way down at the end of the building and up at the top of the stairs, and how hot it can be on summer evenings. I know the material: writing and reading skills with grammar, vocabulary and so on thrown in. I know my own style, the way I speak carefully and with enough volume to be heard, the way I repeat things, the way I explain, my lame jokes. I even know the students: from Brazil, Central and Latin America, Morocco, China, Vietnam, mostly young people, divided between raw newcomers and longer term residents.
But each class needs to be, and is new. Each one of the students has their own story--and I know this because I've been moved when in the course of the course, they have occasion to speak from the heart. Each of the students has a style that jazzes us up in a certain way. Each of them will grown in a discernible way. Each, or most. In any case, who exactly and in what way will become clear over the course of the nine weeks. We'll grow together as a community of learning.
Also, I'm trying a few new things, I want to realign the backbone syllabus. There's work on speech units I want to try teaching. I want to try more poetry, though I'm not sure how. I've got some ideas for sentence building exercises--and this before I've even seen any of their writing. Even the old stuff I know I can teach better.
These students aren't in my class for fun. Some of them drive long distances. Many are squeezed hard for time. There are child-care issues. However, they are determined to learn English. My job is to help them go beyond that to actually loving the language.
Some will drop out and some go the distance. This class that I regularly dread in prospect (the time, the committment), I'll come to find comfortable, even inspiring, something sad to see end.
First class over. I know the names and I've seen the faces. I can already start to feel in me the sprouting of the root hairs of relationship. Let's see where it goes.
But each class needs to be, and is new. Each one of the students has their own story--and I know this because I've been moved when in the course of the course, they have occasion to speak from the heart. Each of the students has a style that jazzes us up in a certain way. Each of them will grown in a discernible way. Each, or most. In any case, who exactly and in what way will become clear over the course of the nine weeks. We'll grow together as a community of learning.
Also, I'm trying a few new things, I want to realign the backbone syllabus. There's work on speech units I want to try teaching. I want to try more poetry, though I'm not sure how. I've got some ideas for sentence building exercises--and this before I've even seen any of their writing. Even the old stuff I know I can teach better.
These students aren't in my class for fun. Some of them drive long distances. Many are squeezed hard for time. There are child-care issues. However, they are determined to learn English. My job is to help them go beyond that to actually loving the language.
Some will drop out and some go the distance. This class that I regularly dread in prospect (the time, the committment), I'll come to find comfortable, even inspiring, something sad to see end.
First class over. I know the names and I've seen the faces. I can already start to feel in me the sprouting of the root hairs of relationship. Let's see where it goes.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Friend in need
What a surprise! Chills and unquenchable thirst yesterday, muscles operating with brakes on as I made my way home, squinting at the light, hearing in my head my eyes move, deep sleep till nine and more deep sleep till this morning, recurrent dreams of a group of helpful (ironic?) young people who insisted my name was Eddie. This morning, the internal thermostat has stabilized but I'm moving slow.
What hit me? A 24 hour flu? but I had no respiratory problems or headache. A recurrence of an old malaria attack? (When I started work as a reporter for The Newtown Bee years ago, I used to get the shakes every second evening, often right in the middle of Conservation Commission meetings.) Did I mishandle some ant-killing pesticide Sunday?
Whatever the reason, it's clear this body has its own independent agenda and concerns. Women must experience this all the time. I remember the time of hot flashes in our house: sudden metabolic overdrive, for no particular reason and often at the most inconvenient moment.
What are we to do with this body that delights, enables, disappoints and provokes us? What I do know is that yesterday it led me to what it needed most: bed and long sleep. Not much else I could have done, but glad to be of service.
What hit me? A 24 hour flu? but I had no respiratory problems or headache. A recurrence of an old malaria attack? (When I started work as a reporter for The Newtown Bee years ago, I used to get the shakes every second evening, often right in the middle of Conservation Commission meetings.) Did I mishandle some ant-killing pesticide Sunday?
Whatever the reason, it's clear this body has its own independent agenda and concerns. Women must experience this all the time. I remember the time of hot flashes in our house: sudden metabolic overdrive, for no particular reason and often at the most inconvenient moment.
What are we to do with this body that delights, enables, disappoints and provokes us? What I do know is that yesterday it led me to what it needed most: bed and long sleep. Not much else I could have done, but glad to be of service.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Real pushing
When I went to see a roller derby meet held at a local skating rink, I expected something with the lurid glamor of, say, pro-wrestling. What I found was a sport of fast pace and physical contact, of honest athleticism unbelied by the punny-iness of the monikers (Come on: Estrogeena Davis? Vixen Tahitya? Hayley Contagious?).
The skates were heavy four wheel roller skates. The helmets were clunky. In between the women were lithe and leggy, with bulky pads on elbows and knees, because this is sport where people are pushed and tumble.
Lots of officials and referees, almost more than the Ohio Gang Green which was taking on the Boston B Party. After a player by player inspection to see no concealed weapons were in the joint pads, the teams each slow-rolled in a crouch around the track, an oval 60 feet long end to end, as each player stood up and waved as her name was called.
Then the jam. Two minutes max. Four blockers and one jammer from each team on the track--blockers to obstruct the opposing jammers and assist their own, jammers to win points by getting through or around obstacles by brute force or exploitation of gaps. Blockers used hips, rear or shoulders, but couldn't link or use hands or trip. So the rhythm was alternately fast skating by breakaway jammers and setting up by blockers in a slow-rolling pack, then collision of jammers and blockers in general melee.
Pushing and shoving, bodies knocked over and off the track (if pushed out of bounds, jammers had to start again behind the furthest back opposing blocker), altogether an exhausting, physical game that rewarded fast thinking and fast feet. One jam over, the next one set up immediately with a new jammer. The pace was relentless and exhausting.
Most of the people in the rink were young, perhaps curious, like me, about this reviving sport which had in recent years almost gone extinct. There is a men's roller derby, but the appeal of the sport is mainly to young women who want to be physical without being brutal. A junior roller derby is based on the idea that this is just the kind of physical outlet and attitude that girls 7-17 like. Speed and physical contact, what a winning combination for a sport--the thrill of the body in top moving form and the excitement of impact.
Good arguments are sometimes like that--the swift flight of ideas and walls of opposition. The adroit turn of a logical relationship and pivot through a hole in the rebuttal. A quick restatement by the objection that closes the hole. The theme-shift end run. The refutation squeeze. The chain of inference breakaway.After a debate like this, intense but not personal, I feel a mental glow similar to what my muscles feel after a workout.and I'm grateful for the match. In fact, I need it if my ideas are not to be too flabby and vapid. Often the service of a good friend is to agree on the issues but reach alternative conclusions.
There are injuries in roller derby and some of my ideas have been severely bruised in debate. So be it.
The skates were heavy four wheel roller skates. The helmets were clunky. In between the women were lithe and leggy, with bulky pads on elbows and knees, because this is sport where people are pushed and tumble.
Lots of officials and referees, almost more than the Ohio Gang Green which was taking on the Boston B Party. After a player by player inspection to see no concealed weapons were in the joint pads, the teams each slow-rolled in a crouch around the track, an oval 60 feet long end to end, as each player stood up and waved as her name was called.
Then the jam. Two minutes max. Four blockers and one jammer from each team on the track--blockers to obstruct the opposing jammers and assist their own, jammers to win points by getting through or around obstacles by brute force or exploitation of gaps. Blockers used hips, rear or shoulders, but couldn't link or use hands or trip. So the rhythm was alternately fast skating by breakaway jammers and setting up by blockers in a slow-rolling pack, then collision of jammers and blockers in general melee.
Pushing and shoving, bodies knocked over and off the track (if pushed out of bounds, jammers had to start again behind the furthest back opposing blocker), altogether an exhausting, physical game that rewarded fast thinking and fast feet. One jam over, the next one set up immediately with a new jammer. The pace was relentless and exhausting.
Most of the people in the rink were young, perhaps curious, like me, about this reviving sport which had in recent years almost gone extinct. There is a men's roller derby, but the appeal of the sport is mainly to young women who want to be physical without being brutal. A junior roller derby is based on the idea that this is just the kind of physical outlet and attitude that girls 7-17 like. Speed and physical contact, what a winning combination for a sport--the thrill of the body in top moving form and the excitement of impact.
Good arguments are sometimes like that--the swift flight of ideas and walls of opposition. The adroit turn of a logical relationship and pivot through a hole in the rebuttal. A quick restatement by the objection that closes the hole. The theme-shift end run. The refutation squeeze. The chain of inference breakaway.After a debate like this, intense but not personal, I feel a mental glow similar to what my muscles feel after a workout.and I'm grateful for the match. In fact, I need it if my ideas are not to be too flabby and vapid. Often the service of a good friend is to agree on the issues but reach alternative conclusions.
There are injuries in roller derby and some of my ideas have been severely bruised in debate. So be it.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Ready or not
At 8 am, I saw line of people along Memorial Drive moving slowly past watchful policemen through the portal tent into Killian Court, where, a few days before, I and a group of students I'd taken on a tour of the campus had seen hundreds of white folding chairs in tight rows. We'd seen screens to left and right, and as I ran by Friday morning, I heard a girl thanking the school with a PA voice and guessed that her face was on the screens as people made their way to their seats.
Swinging south over the Mass Ave bridge, I saw groups of parent-looking people in solemn in suits and dresses moving with all due haste to the Cambridge side take their place in the ceremony.
It's a celebration of the hard-earned state of preparedness of these studentsThey know much, are ready to do much. The efforts (hope, money, hard work) of parents, school and the young people themselves bring these graduates, equipped and poised, to the brink of...
Many already know, but really nobody knows. My own children have been taken by surprise, for good and ill, by what they've encountered in adulthood compared to all that led up to their own graduations. Me too. Perhaps everyone.
I wish I could have done more or better, but the future is a country that has to be entered to be encountered, and it's changing all the time. The guidebooks and the pictures offer itineraries and popular attractions, sometimes out of date, but we're not tourists in our own lives. Everybody we meet is a first-timer too. There are bridges and abysses, certain New England spring days (such as commencement day) and violent storms, edens and expulsions. It's adventure over and over.
Minus the mortar boards, each day is a graduation. The what now? question needs answering again. Am I prepared for what is coming next? What I'm convinced is this: always waiting to meet us as, diplomas in hand, we march down the aisle and out of the portal tent to the applause of our well-wishers, are opportunities for lastingness in deeds of friendship, exploration and hospitality. So help me God-in-love, here I come.
Many already know, but really nobody knows. My own children have been taken by surprise, for good and ill, by what they've encountered in adulthood compared to all that led up to their own graduations. Me too. Perhaps everyone.
I wish I could have done more or better, but the future is a country that has to be entered to be encountered, and it's changing all the time. The guidebooks and the pictures offer itineraries and popular attractions, sometimes out of date, but we're not tourists in our own lives. Everybody we meet is a first-timer too. There are bridges and abysses, certain New England spring days (such as commencement day) and violent storms, edens and expulsions. It's adventure over and over.
Minus the mortar boards, each day is a graduation. The what now? question needs answering again. Am I prepared for what is coming next? What I'm convinced is this: always waiting to meet us as, diplomas in hand, we march down the aisle and out of the portal tent to the applause of our well-wishers, are opportunities for lastingness in deeds of friendship, exploration and hospitality. So help me God-in-love, here I come.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
To the stars
Perched on a low stool next to the sailboat in front of Community Boating on the Esplanade, the old guy (my age perhaps) was carefully peeling off the backing of stenciled letters applied to the hull to advertise the programs.
'See,' he pointed out, 'how bubbly the paper is? It's because the surface is curved in two directions, but what matters is that the letters lie flat, and they do.'
The font was big and relaxed: LEARN.... followed by (hard to read) 'to sail' and phone numbers. Fourth best community program in the country according to Yacht magazine, he said with pride. Judging by the number of boats I see out in the river on summer evenings, I'm moved to agree.
In the mornings, when I run by, I see the kids sitting outside, waiting for the doors to open, I remarked. The kids program has already started, he told me; they're taking classes now and soon everyone will be out on the water..
It's been going since the forties, he said. Leonard Nimoy of StarTrek grew up in the West End over there and used to sail here all the time. 'From the sea to the stars,' with a big smile and an upward sweep of his hand, that accidentally flipped off his hat.
The mission of this community organization: to bring people into encounter with the wind. Who's to say where that ends.
'See,' he pointed out, 'how bubbly the paper is? It's because the surface is curved in two directions, but what matters is that the letters lie flat, and they do.'
The font was big and relaxed: LEARN.... followed by (hard to read) 'to sail' and phone numbers. Fourth best community program in the country according to Yacht magazine, he said with pride. Judging by the number of boats I see out in the river on summer evenings, I'm moved to agree.
In the mornings, when I run by, I see the kids sitting outside, waiting for the doors to open, I remarked. The kids program has already started, he told me; they're taking classes now and soon everyone will be out on the water..
It's been going since the forties, he said. Leonard Nimoy of StarTrek grew up in the West End over there and used to sail here all the time. 'From the sea to the stars,' with a big smile and an upward sweep of his hand, that accidentally flipped off his hat.
The mission of this community organization: to bring people into encounter with the wind. Who's to say where that ends.
Friday, June 6, 2014
Unshuttered
There was a noisy ruckus down at the end of the subway car: a brassy-voiced high school boy was making an attention-getting fuss about something with two female companions. As I watched the lady across from me, a handsome, middle-aged, dark-skinned woman, upright and self-contained, her expression changed, listening to the performance.
A lifting of her eyebrows, a sidewards motion of the eyes, a slight smile with pursed lips--suddenly her composed public face expressed an amused familiarity and suddenly her face became beautifully alive. A window into life-experience normally closed was momentarily thrown open, and a human history hinted at.
It only lasted a moment, and soon we were at Back Bay where she disembarked. That spontaneous look of pleasure and complicity has stayed with me.
A lifting of her eyebrows, a sidewards motion of the eyes, a slight smile with pursed lips--suddenly her composed public face expressed an amused familiarity and suddenly her face became beautifully alive. A window into life-experience normally closed was momentarily thrown open, and a human history hinted at.
It only lasted a moment, and soon we were at Back Bay where she disembarked. That spontaneous look of pleasure and complicity has stayed with me.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Knit but not for naught
First, I noticed seven knitted and crocheted squares against the inside of the eastern vertical railings of the Mass Ave bridge, each of a different color(s) and with a letter of another color in the middle: T, O, T, A, L, L, Y.
Huh? I'm usually pressed for time when I cross the bridge, so I didn't stop running long to look closely, but it seemed the work of a group I'd heard of called Guerrilla Knitters, mostly young, mostly women. I'd seen their work elsewhere, sleeves around trunks and branches of trees for instance, and, in photographs, on statues.
A few steps on, and the horizontal railing carried more handwork. Orange twine, blue capes, ponchos and potholders, the horizontal metal handrail sleeved with shawls of solid red, lavender, green, and an antler-like branch laced with yellow ribbon. Worked into one piece, the name of the group that had put all this up: The Joining Project. In another Boston Strong, and in another Close-knit Boston. One piece had the name of the founder of the group.
I imagine a crack team of picked knitters in dark clothes, smudged faces, creeping out on the bridge in the dead of night, the product of weeks of work divided between them. Whispered: This over here, that there. Freeze; faces to the river till the car goes by. Okay, let's get a move on, girls, and get out of here.
What was joined or to be joined? The installation seemed a bit motley. But it was there for early passersby to ponder: what moved these young women to engage in radical domestication of the steel bridge? Is the message the potential (metaphoric) of marriage between handwork and hardware. Maybe they were just also having a good laugh. The crocheted squares stretched over the railings seemed like porous sails propelling the bridge downstream to the the city.
More than a joke, less than a manifesto, it was totally (as in truly, not just completely) intriguing to encounter this manifestation of the wide-spread passionate imagination that continually nucleates, swells, ascends, and makes this living city what it is.
Huh? I'm usually pressed for time when I cross the bridge, so I didn't stop running long to look closely, but it seemed the work of a group I'd heard of called Guerrilla Knitters, mostly young, mostly women. I'd seen their work elsewhere, sleeves around trunks and branches of trees for instance, and, in photographs, on statues.
A few steps on, and the horizontal railing carried more handwork. Orange twine, blue capes, ponchos and potholders, the horizontal metal handrail sleeved with shawls of solid red, lavender, green, and an antler-like branch laced with yellow ribbon. Worked into one piece, the name of the group that had put all this up: The Joining Project. In another Boston Strong, and in another Close-knit Boston. One piece had the name of the founder of the group.
I imagine a crack team of picked knitters in dark clothes, smudged faces, creeping out on the bridge in the dead of night, the product of weeks of work divided between them. Whispered: This over here, that there. Freeze; faces to the river till the car goes by. Okay, let's get a move on, girls, and get out of here.
What was joined or to be joined? The installation seemed a bit motley. But it was there for early passersby to ponder: what moved these young women to engage in radical domestication of the steel bridge? Is the message the potential (metaphoric) of marriage between handwork and hardware. Maybe they were just also having a good laugh. The crocheted squares stretched over the railings seemed like porous sails propelling the bridge downstream to the the city.
More than a joke, less than a manifesto, it was totally (as in truly, not just completely) intriguing to encounter this manifestation of the wide-spread passionate imagination that continually nucleates, swells, ascends, and makes this living city what it is.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Public's opinion
Inside the store, a enticing cornucopia of fresh, brightly colored fresh foods. I felt the come-hither of everything, but my job was not to satisfy eye-greed but to collect signatures for a petition to put casinos in Massachusetts on the ballot for November.
Yori and I got permission from the store manager who gave us an hour, and only away from the entrance. Outside we divided, he to the left, I to the right to a place just beyond the potted vegetables and flowers.
'Do you care to sign a petition against casinos?' was the question I put to people walking under the overhang to the store door. When there was nobody but the innumerable teenage employees moving shopping carts around, I stood with the clipboard against my chest and sign on the back clearly displayed: 'Repeal the casino deal.' First on one foot, then the other, whistling, watching people go into the store empty handed and come out laden.
Lots of different reactions. 'Dumbest decision the governor ever made.' 'I like gambling, gamble three times a week...though my luck hasn't been too good lately.' 'Yes, I'm happy to sign. Gambling is no good for Massachusetts.' 'Don't have time; wife is waiting.' 'Gambling is great. You should try it,' in reply to which, 'I don't want to take your luck away from you.' Others: 'I don't have an opinion.'
One woman asked, 'Okay, what are the cons of casinos?' and after hearing three, said, 'All right, I'll sign. No, wait, I want to think about it some more,' and walked off.
Some people thanked me; nobody argued with me. At the end of an hour and a half, more than 20 signatures and Yori got a few more. This encounter with Public Opinion felt refreshing. People were free to sign or not, to ignore me or not. There were lots of opinions and reasons for and against and reasons for not having opinions. But the people were asked, and I did the asking.
I felt we were all attesting that we were a decision-making community in response to my simply being there with my 'Do you care to sign...' Good for us, I think.
Yori and I got permission from the store manager who gave us an hour, and only away from the entrance. Outside we divided, he to the left, I to the right to a place just beyond the potted vegetables and flowers.
'Do you care to sign a petition against casinos?' was the question I put to people walking under the overhang to the store door. When there was nobody but the innumerable teenage employees moving shopping carts around, I stood with the clipboard against my chest and sign on the back clearly displayed: 'Repeal the casino deal.' First on one foot, then the other, whistling, watching people go into the store empty handed and come out laden.
Lots of different reactions. 'Dumbest decision the governor ever made.' 'I like gambling, gamble three times a week...though my luck hasn't been too good lately.' 'Yes, I'm happy to sign. Gambling is no good for Massachusetts.' 'Don't have time; wife is waiting.' 'Gambling is great. You should try it,' in reply to which, 'I don't want to take your luck away from you.' Others: 'I don't have an opinion.'
One woman asked, 'Okay, what are the cons of casinos?' and after hearing three, said, 'All right, I'll sign. No, wait, I want to think about it some more,' and walked off.
Some people thanked me; nobody argued with me. At the end of an hour and a half, more than 20 signatures and Yori got a few more. This encounter with Public Opinion felt refreshing. People were free to sign or not, to ignore me or not. There were lots of opinions and reasons for and against and reasons for not having opinions. But the people were asked, and I did the asking.
I felt we were all attesting that we were a decision-making community in response to my simply being there with my 'Do you care to sign...' Good for us, I think.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Down and out
I planted zinnias, cosmos, asters, petunias and a bunch of other seeds this afternoon. First the soil dug up, roots and stones removed, shallow trench shaped, seeds dropped in. I pour them into my dirty fist first, then brush them a few at a time into the hollow in the ground. Then I brush the soil over them and consign them to darkness, as I used to turn off the light so my children would sleep.
They are different sizes and shapes: Cosmos are flake-shaped. Marigolds are white and black. Asters are tiny and brown like the smallest grains of sand. They don't look like much in my hand and even less impressive against the dark soil.
Nighty-night. The dirt is black as outer space and these seeds are blasting off into it, heading down and out for a distant planet, which will be...the light-lush sky where it touches down to earth. There the seedlings will grow tall and ramify, produce vivid, intricate flowers, wrestle with the wind and the rain, and dazzle me.
All that future tucked inside these seeds. It needn't be that the world is as amazing as it is. Tucking these seeds into the ground, I seem to hear Saint-Exupery's Little Prince saying, 'whenever you look up (or down in this case), you now know there's something there to care about.'
Bon voyage, little ones.
They are different sizes and shapes: Cosmos are flake-shaped. Marigolds are white and black. Asters are tiny and brown like the smallest grains of sand. They don't look like much in my hand and even less impressive against the dark soil.
Nighty-night. The dirt is black as outer space and these seeds are blasting off into it, heading down and out for a distant planet, which will be...the light-lush sky where it touches down to earth. There the seedlings will grow tall and ramify, produce vivid, intricate flowers, wrestle with the wind and the rain, and dazzle me.
All that future tucked inside these seeds. It needn't be that the world is as amazing as it is. Tucking these seeds into the ground, I seem to hear Saint-Exupery's Little Prince saying, 'whenever you look up (or down in this case), you now know there's something there to care about.'
Bon voyage, little ones.
Monday, June 2, 2014
No reply
The Hemenway woods of Blue Hills were limpid, the spaces between the slender trees honey-combed with green-gold light; just what I needed. This place was about its own business--birds whistling and calling, tiny stream purling, woodpecker knocking. People walked, ran or biked through, planes flew overhead, traffic whizzed by, but the woods was a place of unconcern; it had other things on its mind.
Its mind, as if it had one, but there was one mind scrabbling around Wildcat Notch (so-called)--mine and it was aware of my body sliding on the slippery leaf layers covering the slopes, walking over gullies on trees fallen across them, snagging on sticks and stumps, clutching at corners of crags, sinking into spongy moss, looking up through the canopy. I felt like a mite cavorting on the back of an elephant. The woods let me use it like a gymnasium, but took not the slightest notice; made not the smallest reply. Even as I lay on the ground, to the flies, I was just a place to land. I was not even anonymous; just a feature.
What a relief from the expectations that fill everywhere else. Perhaps that is why we go to such places, and in fact, the parking lots were full of empty cars.
Its mind, as if it had one, but there was one mind scrabbling around Wildcat Notch (so-called)--mine and it was aware of my body sliding on the slippery leaf layers covering the slopes, walking over gullies on trees fallen across them, snagging on sticks and stumps, clutching at corners of crags, sinking into spongy moss, looking up through the canopy. I felt like a mite cavorting on the back of an elephant. The woods let me use it like a gymnasium, but took not the slightest notice; made not the smallest reply. Even as I lay on the ground, to the flies, I was just a place to land. I was not even anonymous; just a feature.
What a relief from the expectations that fill everywhere else. Perhaps that is why we go to such places, and in fact, the parking lots were full of empty cars.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Dream walking
Distant, disinterested, that was my stance when some in-laws came to dinner last night--not uncordial, not impolite, not uncommunicative but internally disengaged.
The siblings were busy talking about the meal, each other, plans for the summer, family news, pending issues, and, in fact, doing something they haven't done in a while, being all together.
What made me so boring to myself? It had been a whole day of good but unmemorable, unchallenging tasks, I had finished an intriguing book: A Philosophy of Walking by Frederic Gros, and, pondering it, I was already in cruise mode when the sisters arrived and the processes of hospitality got underway: where shall we eat? do you like parsnips? can I get some....?
So many of these things I'd heard before. Yay! there's progress on certain intractable problems, but... I'm not directly involved in them. Some standard role-playing. Family sagas, a tedious genre. Babies, visits, new apartments. missed birthdays. Nutrition talk again? Anybody interested in my concerns? No, but then I'm not much either. Consideration of larger issues political, moral, philosophical: absent. Already predisposed to inattention, nothing roused me.
Gros writes: 'The repetitiveness of walking eliminates boredom...In a state of boredom, one is always seeking something to do, despite the obvious futility of any activity. When walking, there is always something to do: walk.'
Walking, long-distance walking, landscape-lavish walking: maybe that was the pedal note running through my deep musing mind. Tight little schedules, minutiae of care-giving, precision of protocols, ugh! Rather, open road, fresh encounter, uncluttered agenda.
I'm in the process of buying some ultralight camping equipment for what I hope will be extended walking tours. I'm dreaming of Corsica and GR 20, the Pennine Way, across this so ample country...something immersive and engrossing.
Enough. I'm off. At least the Blue Hills.
The siblings were busy talking about the meal, each other, plans for the summer, family news, pending issues, and, in fact, doing something they haven't done in a while, being all together.
What made me so boring to myself? It had been a whole day of good but unmemorable, unchallenging tasks, I had finished an intriguing book: A Philosophy of Walking by Frederic Gros, and, pondering it, I was already in cruise mode when the sisters arrived and the processes of hospitality got underway: where shall we eat? do you like parsnips? can I get some....?
So many of these things I'd heard before. Yay! there's progress on certain intractable problems, but... I'm not directly involved in them. Some standard role-playing. Family sagas, a tedious genre. Babies, visits, new apartments. missed birthdays. Nutrition talk again? Anybody interested in my concerns? No, but then I'm not much either. Consideration of larger issues political, moral, philosophical: absent. Already predisposed to inattention, nothing roused me.
Gros writes: 'The repetitiveness of walking eliminates boredom...In a state of boredom, one is always seeking something to do, despite the obvious futility of any activity. When walking, there is always something to do: walk.'
Walking, long-distance walking, landscape-lavish walking: maybe that was the pedal note running through my deep musing mind. Tight little schedules, minutiae of care-giving, precision of protocols, ugh! Rather, open road, fresh encounter, uncluttered agenda.
I'm in the process of buying some ultralight camping equipment for what I hope will be extended walking tours. I'm dreaming of Corsica and GR 20, the Pennine Way, across this so ample country...something immersive and engrossing.
Enough. I'm off. At least the Blue Hills.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)