River, memory

I thought: on a beautiful day like this not a mountain excursion but a river. Yes, a river and me in my inflatable kayak. The Back River in Weymouth? Too close. The Charles? Too familiar. The Concord? Too classic. How about the Ware in Barre northwest of Worcester?

The marshy flood plain was wide, but the river itself was thirty or so feet wide and usually only three to four feet deep, sinuous, looping left and right among the grassy hummocks and berms or around the base of steep hemlock-covered slopes. The slow current could only be determined by the direction of the underwater plants but on this warm sun-in and sun-out day there was a strong upstream wind that riffled the surface. I got help going down and coming back.

The tea colored water let me see down to the gravely bottom, unless it was a zone of weedy patches with thin string-like leaves that caught my paddle blade and shaft. I began to appreciate the way the water surface indicated what was below, and the way that what was under the water affected how the surface responded to the wind. A few angular snags and branches protruded from the water like rampant serpents, a few alders and silver maples rose among the shrubs on the banks. The forest line was always in the distance as I turned corner after corner with no new revelation. I got tired, and little bored. As far down as I went, that far back I would have to paddle back.

Clearly this is a river that has its lovers. Bostonkayaker.com calls its banks 'pristine and undeveloped' and a number of kayakers and canoeists, older people and kids, were out dipping the water, one couple very interested what they saw on the banks. I put in at the end of a dirt road beyond a cemetery, out on a promontory. The obligatory campfire and debris from nighttime revels spoke about how this river provides a certain valuable solitude. A gimpy legged old man in overalls pulled up behind me and we chatted about the fish 12 inches and longer that he'd pulled from it 'because not too many people fish here...I love this place; it's so peaceful.'

Chief among those that love this river are beavers. Their dams, complex layerings of gnawed branches, held back water six inches or more when intact. Where I put in was at the confluence of the Ware and the Burnshirt rivers and passage upstream was blocked by functioning dams (which I could have pullled my craft over if  I'd been energetic enough). Downstream there were other dams, including some, very ambitious, which had been breached. On the promontory where I parked thick trees had been gnawed almost through and abandoned (dangerously) by these intent animals.

Calling you to mind, River Ware, now that I'm home; reviewing my quiet progression through your slightly different but generally similar scenes, you full of yourself in the bright, windy afternoon, I don't apologize for my impatience but can't fault you for your calm incessance. In the visual scene of browns, greens and grays, how striking the bright red cardinal flowers scattered here and there along your banks. How impetuous the swallows who erupted into the evening sky over your quiet backwaters for their acrobatics. And as I delayed getting out of the water, you agreed to slowly swirl me under an overhanging branch until, looking up through to the sky, I felt quite disoriented.

In the flow, but not of the flow--at that moment. Now, strangely, the encounter hangs in my mind. My act of memory, or something inherently, if not obviously, memorable in you?

Pep 101

A certain course is missing from our curricula: PEP 101--the study of potentialities (or latent actualities) to be exploited (or turned to practical account), energies to be expended and powers to be exercised as they are inherent in things, and especially in 2nd person encounters. Such a course would ideally teach us to discern these possibilities in our various spheres of life, show us how they operate and what modifies them, to the end that we can improve our practical mastery. It's not that we don't know about or use these things, but that we don't teach them comprehensively across multiple realms.

Grand idea, but before getting grandiose, terms need to be defined more clearly and illustrative examples given. And hadn't they better be down to earth and common? So how about if we think of potentiality as what can change, of energy as what can do work, of power as what can make things happen? Simple, crude characterizations, but I'm feeling my way forward here. And if it's hard to think forward, how about finding instances in the recent past?

A quick list of expressions of potentiality: my workplace (new boss), my classroom (new way to teach question formation), my street (new surface just the other day), my garden (the passing of the gladioli), the calendar (Labor Day already?).  Changes can be, of course, cyclical or repetitive, but some represent unexpected novelties: arisings or arrivings or deviatings that in some way augment, spoil, or join things.

Of expressions of energy: my mind that thinks, my school that teaches, my car, the solar cells on my roof that power my appliances, the constant flow of news and ideas on the Internet that stimulates discussion, the food that nourishes me, etc.

Of expressions of power: the traffic laws (making it safe to cross the street), the motor on my refrigerator (making things cool), a hammer (for breaking up ginger snaps to make my pear dessert), my promise to myself (keeping me writing this blog), etc.

This exercise convinces me (did I need convincing?) that these terms are not abstract but in fact easy to discover on the same scale where I have 2nd person encounters. Indeed, what makes such encounters vivid, potent, urgent or suspenseful are just those potentialities, energies or powers of the participants.

As I round the 1st semester corner of this blog, and look forward to 365, teaching my eyes and equipping my lexicon for talking better about 2nd person encounters could be useful. Let's see.

Grudgingly,

I remember, I did finally go--after casting about for excuses not to, but finding none: it wasn’t really that cold, nor was it really raining and, though only one person wanted to go, no minimum number of people for such an excursion had been specified, so, not jolly, nor loquacious, I exited with him into the misty wind and headed to the famous university.

He didn’t get the standard passionate lyricism, nor the obligatory funny stories that humanize the red brick dreamscape. I am a little ashamed that I gave less than my best; my only excuse is that, all the way, I was straining to rouse my own supine interest. Yet, he was fascinated, full of alert questions, exuding a desperate longing to be one with the glamour of the place. I found myself at once admiring and resenting him. 

Your unquenchable enthusiasm for exploring what you had dreamed about grated on the callus of my weary familiarity with the topic. You gave no sign of noticing my lack of enthusiasm; you intended to enjoy the experience and did. 

Why not? Here we are. The world awaits. Let the grumpy be as they are, and not allow them to curb our enthusiasm. Let's consult instead the freshness and delicacy of our own responses to whatever we encounter.  

Clean up

Poisons in the soil, air or water: chemicals like arsenic or methanol, heavy metals like cadmium or lead, radioactive substances like uranium or radon; infestations like red algae or worms, causing death, disability, stunted growth and birth defects: these poisons can have baleful effects generation after generation.

This line of thought began after hearing an MIT professor speak of the First World War as poisoning the twentieth century, producing the Russian Revolution and Fascism and other doleful consequences. Other events and former institutions have also had long term poisonous efffect. Slavery also still exerts its negative influence, as does the Great Depression and 9-11...so many other instances.

It's not just that certain good consequences have been foreclosed, or that negative ones have been made possible--that and its opposite true at any moment of history--but that the very social fabric is like a brown field, riddled with toxic attitudes and responses which affect all decisions and plans, weighing them down with distrust, rancor, and fear.

Antidote treatments, chelation therapies, sequestrations and so on are strategies for dealing with environmental poisons, and they  have their limits of effectiveness. But what about social poisons?  I can deal with my own thoughts and try to clean up my immediate social surroundings, but what about the society in general? Negative attitudes and influences remain all around, reinfecting or invisibly influencing us, our actions, our policies, our institutions.

At the heart of any social detoxification must be the regular practice of sincere apology and forgiveness, based on a willingness to be vulnerable, to recognize our need and ask for the companionship and cooperation and consolation of others. Vulnerability lays us open to rejection, censure, exploitation, scorn, but it is the risk that must be taken if these chunks and crumbs of rage, resentment, self-justification, often not based on personal experience but absorbed unthinkingly from around us, concentrated, replicated and expelled to affect another generation, if these poisons are to be denatured, rendered harmless, recovered from.

What has happened cannot be changed but it is worthwhile wondering at each point what poisons are being, have been, could be generated and disseminated by our actions, and how to deal with them as soon as possible. With regard to our legacy of poisoned relationships, the slow, arduous, courageous work of owning up and letting go until the water of interaction comes up clean and pure, safely drinkable, sweet.

This is good but interminable work of a lasting significance justifying its risks, I believe, given that mutual vulnerability is the basic premise of the relationship of God-in-love and the Beloved.

The man

is a woman--my friend Beli, who's head of an education not-for-profit here in Boston. She opened her heart last night about what it's like to be boss.

Since I teach in a business-oriented school, I'm familiar with the leader vs manager literature but these have multiple dimensions: as teacher once herself, she knows first hand the issues her staff has to deal with in the classroom and in life. As office manager, she's made herself familiar, even facile (a point of pride) with the way money fuels the metabolism of her organization. As tenant, she's negotiated with administrators. As director, she's dealt with scheduling issues, staffing problems, and morale. As grant-writer, she's looked into the hearts of giving organization and sought to determine what they want that she can get her group to provide, her eye all the while on the long term survival of the program and the jobs of those working in it (herself included). As a community activist and idealist, she also does this so a group of people who need help can, in fact, get it.

I heard her address her staff 'I know you look at me as the man'; her benefactors,'You want personal development and measurable outcomes; you want it all'; her former self, 'I didn't think it was in me to do this' and me, apologetically, 'You see why I'm always so busy and tired--but I feel like the whole program depends on me.'

Leaders deals with change and the future, according to one thinker, and managerswith complexity and day to day functioning. The word that occurs to me as I think about what you do, Beli, is hospitality: maintaining an accessible place where people are welcome. Sustaining the integrity, the very existence of the space, is your Sisyphean labor but the end of it is a uninterrupted generosity toward prosperity for your neighbors. Though hard and often thankless, it's the kind of work that gives 'good' a good name.

The cool dusk darkened into night as the four of us chatted until someone driving by stopped to tell us she'd just seen a skunk down the road. Time to get home, go in, we agreed. Not bosses, not staff, just friends, we bade each other goodnight.

All's well

After an intense few days of reading philosophy (Justus Buchler, The Main of Light), my mind has requested a change of fare, so I'm reading an action mystery (Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island). What a relief to sink into a world of dialogues and lies. The cool altitude of the Buchler's treatment of poetry is followed by the steaming swamps of Lehane's imagination.

What I've only today begun to realize is that for the last several months with increasing intensity I've seen the standard elements of mystery fiction play out with regard to my solar energy credit sale travail: five distinct characters with obscure relationships and responsibilities, missing messages, denials of involvement, doubtful assurances, fog and obfuscation regarding time lines and processes, confusion! frustration! a corpse, despair! a stab in the dark, a smoking gun, off-stage accusations, an ultimatum, confessions, oops! an unsuspected stash of cash, repentance and restitution, the body back in business and quite well, as are all things that end well.

The straightforward  face-to-face of encounter becomes a maze when so many are linked regulatorily or contractually. Where is the 2nd person You in this tangle, this knot? Even companies and bureaus have their human faces, but what about the corporate entities. Can these be addressed? Buchler calls these 'natural complexes' and the employee or workers therein, the traits of those complexes--considered from a certain perspective. From a different point of view, the people are the complexes, each existing in the larger order of the solar energy field. Should I direct blame or commendation to individuals or institutions, or both? Maybe this problem entailing a matrix of multiple interactions is more characteristic of encounters today than, say, man and snake such as written about yesterday.

Can institutions as such practice hospitality, friendship and exploration? The idea is not, prima facie, absurd. Is it genuine hospitality, friendship or exploration if done by someone at the behest of and rewarded by an institution? I'm inclined to attribute to institutions something which can be construed as like 'character,' in their policies, missions, styles--Doctors without Borders, for example, vs ISIS.

In any case, the case is almost closed. I have been taught a  lot, and have several notes of thanks to write, especially to she whose work and words made my face suddenly luminous with surprised joy.

Marsh life

An late afternoon excursion to an Audubon sanctuary in Natick. "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,' said Wordsworth about just such a day. A marshy pond was the middle of the sanctuary, shallow, weedy, green with pondweed; it looked natural--but life-less.

What a surprise then when first...

Looking from a boardwalk, I noticed a swirling motion in the green 'skin' of the water. It tore open and under the surface I saw a large paw with large yellow claws, stroking through the water : a snapping turtle, I'm sure. Obscured by the dark color of the water, it seemed huge and mysterious.

And then later...

Sitting next to the water to sketch and paint the scene, suddenly as snake, brown and striped like a garter, swam sinuously by, its body rippling like the waves it created. It headed into a reed bed and wove itself around the stalks before disappearing.

And finally...

A small commotion far out on an open patch of water, a splash, a shaking of vegetation. Nothing visible but something present. I turned back to my brush-wielding but the splashings continued and closer. Finally, I could see in the distance something protruding from the water. How I wished I'd had my binoculars. A few minutes and surface ripples indicated something swimming toward me. I reached for my phone to take a picture. Everything stopped. Silence, stillness.

Back to the painting when suddenly--and I had my phone ready--I saw the head of a beaver swimming generally toward me, but veering into a bank of vegetation which I saw shake as it passed through.

A snapper, a snake and a beaver. The pond was much more alive than I had expected. As a place of residence, I don't find it attractive but then, I'm not a swimmer and don't fancy what there is to eat in such a place.

No drama here, except that of revelation. How much more clearly can it be presented that each place is filled with creatures trying not to be noticed but actively going about their business nonetheless. Ecology explores the ways you three animals are related, benefiting each other and the marsh. It tells how you and countless other organisms, smaller and larger, are knit together in systems of long-term stability. But glimpsing you three on your errands much as I saw folks heading to the Farmers Market yesterday, and expect to see my fellow teachers off to the copy machine tomorrow, gives me a sense of kinship that's not wholly unwarranted.

Spectacle

The candidate was tireless, running zig-zag back and forth across the street to shake the hands of this man behind the barrier here, that group of ladies there. She wore flats and a fuschia dress but ran like a basketball player moving the ball upcourt. Behind her an phalanx of sign-wielders and banner carriers periodically chanting her name. Campaign buttons were distributed, lollipops flung. Bystanders were confused, amused. It was Caribbean parade day on Blue Hill Avenue and everyone was ready for entertainment.

We marched beyond the end of the parade route but there was no turning back, so photographs were taken and the company dispersed---some of them to join the gathering crowd and wait for the main attraction--which came long after the political business was over

Eventually, on its own schedule and pace, the real parade hove into view. Huge flatbeds with huge generator on board and banks of loudspeakers slowly rolled by, the bass making everything in the thoractic cavity ring like a bell. Then, each in their own club with its own theme, ranks of young dark-skinned women (mostly) in coordinated fantasy costumes: huge feathered headdresses, sequined bikinis, bright mixed colors. They danced forward a few steps, stopped, fanned themselves, drank water, were repositioned by many busy men and women wearing STAFF teeshirts, chatted with each other and bystander friends, then, at a signal, moved slowly on.

As if navigating ships, standing in harness but with arms resting on cockpit seat arms, young muscular women and men pulled and spun huge, multi-wheeled peacock fan constructions behind them along the route. From a boss behind the great fans soared flags and banners that put me in mind of the gliders at Kitty Hawk. One club, Zulu Nation, had a leopard spot design on everything, as well as large masks. These spectacular piece of apparatus were clearly heavy; after one of the innumerable stops, it was hard work lunging forward into motion.

Our political sign waving was mostly just spectacle to the gradually assembling crowds along the route. So, for me at least standing in the now crowded sidelines, was the dancing. Yet both were serious enterprises, prepared for long in advance to communicate something. What?  The candidate was driven by an ambitious energy, grasping hands, looking in faces, seeking primary election votes. I get that. But what was motivating the burdened young people tugging their gigantic draught-person powered 'floats' along the road or, naked but fo r their costumes, the dancers inching their way between ranks of spectators along the route? This, I don't understand.

Public rituals are easy to watch and video but what inspires the work that goes into these performances?  In the case of the politics, something about the relationship between power and the people. In the case of the dancing, perhaps an affirmation of identity, of aspiration. We were each others audiences, but did we really appreciate what the other was doing or why?

However, the afternoon was warm and sunny. Everyone was cheerful. There was an incessant traffic of pods of chatty young people up and down the sidelines. There was brisk commerce in fragrant Jamaican meat pies and Bob Marley teeshirts on the grassy verge. Yes, shared public space, public time; but, though I appreciated being among you my neighbors, mysteries remain. 

Flapping in the wind

There you are, just where I left you--on the steps of city hall.  Pulled out of my pocket as I sat on the steps to eat lunch, you, my notebook, were put down, and then forgotten in the conversation that sprang up with colleagues who had joined me.

Later, where are you?  Among these papers? in my pocket? in a corner of my bag? still not in my pocket?  Did I throw you away inadvertently when I finished lunch? Are you outside in a trash container? I rushed down to the street, reached in and rooted around till I found my debris: nothing. Then at the corner of my eye, there on the steps, something white and flapping like a little banner...

You're not a journal; no publishable secrets; an absence of gossip. Simply a place I keep thoughts and work through arguments, copy interesting passages from my reading, sketch things that seem interesting, paste in pictures or poems: a gallimaufry. Each notebook is dated and its pages numbered. By the end of the three or four weeks it takes me to fill one I grow quite attached, not so much to the book as to what has collected in it: a month's worth of mental life. But then, replaced, it joins the dozens of other such once treasured ones, each of which I would have gone through garbage to rescue.

You're just paper, of course, but handled as much as you are in the month of our collaboration, you become like a secretary taking the minutes of my mind. In the notebooks of yore, these minutes seem like the deliberations of diplomats concerning wars long ago fought and finished. But each one of the now dusty 6x4 inch pocket-sized notebooks was the fire line where I was struggling urgently to make grasp something slippery--even though the victories have since been superseded.

The current now is so compelling. Yet former nows were just as much once, and when this notebook is used up, the ones which will capture nows yet to come will be no less significant, though for reasons I can't predict. Maybe these notebooks, past and future, slim and empty at the beginning of their month, thick and crumpled and marked up at the end, are in a way the standard under which my querying moves forward. This is a flag I'm happy, indeed proud, to march under.

Poetry

What is the power that poetry has on us?  Even in a second language, even though studded with strange words, unfamiliar images, obscure metaphors, even without a deep sense of the sounds patterns or the rhythmic cadences, even when dealing with special topics and peculiar conditions, poetry can pierce us intolerably, make us writhe, and puncture the sacs of feeling we keep secure behind our ribs.

I saw poetry overcome all these barriers recently, and work its magic on a student. It may be that what comes through from poetry read on the page, or recited, communicates, at minimum, the conviction that words have a throw weight beyond their bare informational content. As exposition or story or reflection, a poem seems to link certain disparate satisfactions and patterns of significance into a meaningful complex in a way no other form of utterance does, a way that speaks to and of the livingness of our lives.

We read the old Scottish ballad Sir Patrick Spens:

The king sits in Dumferlin town / Drinking the blood-red wine: / Oh where will I get a good sailor / To sail this ship of mine?

We moved on to Lisel Mueller's The Possessive Case:

Your father's mustache / My brother's keeper / La plume de ma tante / Le monocle de mon oncle 

Thereafter, Sharon Olds' I Go Back to May, 1937:

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges. / I see my father strolling out / under the ochre sandstone arch, the / red tiles glinting like bent / plates of blood behind his head. I /...

Next in the anthology we were perusing, the classic Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden:

...What did I know, what did I know / Of love's austere and lonely offices?

We parted after sharing Kate Ryan's Masterworks of Ming, with its wonderful turn:

 ...so nice / adjunct / to dinner // or washing / a daughter...

Each one had for each of us a special delight, compounded by the pleasure the other was taking in these word structures.

Yesterday, the power poem was Ted Hughes' The Thought Fox with its climactic

...Till with the sudden hot stink of fox, / It enters the dark hole of the head. / The window is starless still, / The clock ticks, the page is printed.

This all began two days ago when I illustrated the use of past participles as adjectives with

The window, broken in pieces, offered no obstacle to the cold wind.

Inadvertently, there was live poetry in that throw-away lesson example. I should be more careful.

We talked about pleasures of reading poems, of being read to, of reading aloud, of repeating in entirety or by special line, of talking about the poems with someone else, of savoring images and turns of phrase, of enjoying the peculiar feeling that each poem evokes, of feeling touched in some tender place by a poem, of being transported beyond oneself for some short period of time.

We did more in our classes than this, of course, but poetry, too little appreciated, too seldom shared, made our encounter special. That you were moved by these word--in English--affirms for me not just the power of the art form but also your unusual receptivity. I too am moved.

Diarist

Reading selections from a diary is a strange kind of encounter. It's as if someone were talking to a two-way mirror. The writer is not addressing us or anyone else, at least not directly; indeed the audience (ourselves if we are readers) must don the diarist's face to receive these confidences.

Still, there is something intriguing about the chance to visit another person's soul, to look around, peer over the shoulder, listen to the musings, the rantings, the assemblings of the courage necessary to write the next entry. I may want to comfort or advise, but I am like a ghost, able to haunt but not to help.

If the diary is published (and not posthumously), we are in a no less strange position, performed for by someone performing and not performing at the same time. The diarist knows the mirror is half-silvered.

I've just been perusing part of the diary of the Englishman Bruce Cummings who published 'The Journal of a Disappointed Man' under the name W.N.P. Barbellion just after the Armistice of the First World War, and died soon after at 30 from multiple sclerosis. He writes at different places:

I toss these pages in the faces of timid, furtive, respectable people and say: “There! that’s me! You may like it or lump it, but it’s true. And I challenge you to follow suit, to flash the searchlight of your self-consciousness into every remotest corner of your life and invite everybody’s inspection. Be candid, be honest, break down the partitions of your cubicle, come out of your burrow, little worm.” As we are all such worms we should at least be honest worms.

My confessions are shameless. I confess, but do not repent. The fact is, my confessions are prompted, not by ethical motives, but intellectual. The confessions are to me the interesting records of a self-investigator.

Verily I lead a curious double existence: among most people, I pass for a complaisant, amiable, mealy-mouthed, furry if conceited creature. Here I stand revealed as a contemptuous, arrogant malcontent.

But these rather bombastic bits are less interesting than the intimate confidences which come across like boys saying to each other: I've shown you mine, what about yours? Only it's oblique, implied. Here's my inner life...

I have already enjoyed some acquaintance with this man, and look forward to further. But I do want to reach inside the entries and shake him, respond to his provocations and pleadings, be a friend. That option is not available. 

He wrote, just before he died:

And at the end of my little excursion into memory I cam e upon the morning when I put some sanded, opaque bits of jelly, lying on the rim of the seas into a glass collecting jar, and to my amazement and delight they turned to Ctenophors--alive, swimming, and iridescent! You must imagine a tiny soap bubble about the size of a filbert with four series of plates or combs arranged regularly on the soap bubble from its north to its south pole, and flashing spasmodically in unison as they beat the water.

I'm reminded of my first amazing excursions through the microscope into the world of pond water. I hear you.

Dying, not resting

Nestled in the crown of the zinnia, wedged between the ray flowers and the receptacle holding the disc flowers, the bee lay on its side. When I touched it, its legs, carrying no pollen, moved feebly; the black furry body panted. Bees work hard, work themselves to death. I can imagine this one landing on the zinnia fresh from the hive, and just tipping over. A soft bier for the bee.

Looking around the garden, I see the roses bleaching, the final gladioli flowers at the very tip of the stems opening up, and the ones toward the base withering. Gardens have their arc- as do seasons, as do people--at the peak of which are displayed the qualities we admire or select for. When that moment passes, we may think: 'Good as gone.'

Wait, that's only partially true. Some things are gone because some things have changed. But new actualities mean new possibilities, new prospects. I was thinking of this eating lunch today with a workmate who wasn't in the mood for much talk. So silence was our mode of encounter, and it was rich.

Each Other I encounter is not just what, or who, I see at this moment, but a locus of myriad possibility traits, some of which may be actualized, with new ones arising as a result. Instead of the notion of an Other as a fixed thing of unchanging essence--the bee in its busyness as the archetype of bee-ness--we can entertain the awareness that change means there still remain familiar or may arise fresh potentialities to be exploited, energies to be expended and powers to be exercised.

What about any encounter would be fun without the conviction that each participant in itself, each in the encounter, and the encounter itself, had prospects, however 'past peak'?

Indeed, whole blocks of cosmos have yet to bloom; there's a bank of plants in the corner which looks like its building up to something (who knows what?); and the geraniums in the back yard, barren lumps for the last few weeks have decided to flower in red, pink and white.

What school?

A student interrupted me in class today to ask: 'What is your background?'  When I inquired, he explained that on one of my tours, he had been impressed by the novelty of the perspective I had presented, and that, that morning in the class, he was again. But his question was really, I guess, about where I had gone to school, that is, what was my source of originality. Who did I get it from?

Schools don't give you new ideas but thinking does. Of course, there are many books with original and well-articulated ideas. As I read, I absorb the perspectives of the authors (and hope always to properly attribute them). Often I find the really interesting points of view require my close attention in long study over the course of which I find myself responding to the author's views even as I assimilate them. The key element is the thoughtfulness of the author.

Lively conversation wrestling with issues, the give and take of idea presentation and criticism, the extension of extrapolation and focus of interpolation, does with a dynamic immediacy what reading does calmly over time: generate new ideas, new ways of thinking about something. The key factors are the quickness of mind of the participants.

What connects both of these is my thinking mind, mine, trying to make sense of what I've just read or just heard vis-a'-vis what I've been thinking up till now and what I can't ignore around me. Rather than encounter originality already baked, as it were, in a book or sizzling from the wok of conversation, my thinker comes up with fresh ideas as if it tickles trout: mysteriously, after long quietness, but with an indisputably cookable fish at the end.

My thinker is a mysterious beast. I feed it with impressions and projects, give it permission to play, pull it when it falls asleep, push it back on track when after it's wandering off, yet it's is not always Platero plodding, sometimes it's Pegasus soaring.

Sometimes I can feel it scrambling to keep its footing; other times it trots along. Sometimes it's biddable; other times, it answers my entreaties with silence. Sometimes, it coughs up sharply articulated phrases and concepts; other times, only promising cloud-like notions that require patient poking to find what's solid inside. Never dispassionate even in its neutrality, it's dry and witty or louche, aloof or ravished. It can't always be trusted or relied on, but when I give my thinker his head (mine), I am sure (indeed, expect) to be intrigued and impressed and delighted.

So, my student, the answer to your implied question is this: my school consists of books, talk (not enough), but mostly the solid activity of my thinker thinking. Even as it write this, I've been feeling my thinker's contribution, for which I feel hearty gratitude, and even more: deep affection.

To each, I say, enjoy the friendship of your thinker.

You or me

Weed maple tree, how many times have I snipped you and sawn you in order to reopen the sky you want to barricade from me. Today, once more, I've ascended through the foliage to where leafy spears thrust upward like palisades, and Ive sliced them all, plus the limbs they sprouted from. Single-minded they were, without branches or forks. Up, up, up. The topmost leaves on a pedestal ever extending vertically are still juvenile red; the petioles of those leaves also red; the stems growing up as fast as leaping.

I observe up there the marks of my previous violence against you, bark grown around the barkless, cracked stumps of my prior hewings. A sort of madness now seems to have overtaken you. Let the dignified traditional patterns of growth go hang, you have decided, in favor of a concerted rush to the heights.

You're in too difficult a spot for me to cut down. so I have to pollard you periodically. I would rather you simply subside but you've too much vitality for that. Someday I'm going to kill you since you're not going to leave my sky alone. I respect your will to live but I going to have to break it, unless--up in the tree, a branch snaps, a limb butt jumps--and you break mine.

Pass it on

Farmers Market in the train station parking lot, a beautiful Saturday morning, lots of people, single people, couples, groups, families, kids in strollers, on bikes, young and very old, locals and a surprising number of out-of-staters, many carrying bags to be filled with local produce, heading up the stairs or into the tunnel under the tracks.

I'm passing out leaflets for one of the candidates in the Democratic primary: 'Registered voter? Don't forget to vote in the primary on the ninth. It's coming right up. I'm supporting...'  The primary is news to many: 'Haven't we just voted?'

In fact, I was not really supporting either of the candidates for the AG job, or rather both of them, because each was impressive at the convention.'Why not? Either would be good, and a choice has to be made.' So when Krsa emailed an invitation to join her to work for one of them, I went.

One middle-aged man went by me saying, 'I don't need a leaflet. I know the person. We were at law school together.'

'Really? Do you know any stories?'

A moment's thought, 'Yes, I do. I graduated two classes ahead and...'  The story was short, clear, memorable. Clearly, he was impressed. That moment had made up his mind.

'Thanks so much,' I said. 'That's something I'm glad to know.'

Later on, in a busy moment of people arriving and leaving, a woman with her daughter said to me, 'I don't know either of them. What makes this one,' waving the leaflet, 'special?'

'Well,' I said, 'I met a guy this morning who told me a story about the candidate. Let me tell you...'

When she left, it was as if she had taken something substantial with her, not just campaign blah-de-blah but a story containing an insight. She was impressed.

What is it that makes stories so powerful, and such stories a currency for conviction? Why do we value so the unstudied and unpremeditated? Why do we privilege so the eyewitness report? From the one who actually saw and heard what happened (I trust) to me to the woman: a transmission of a kind of warrant, good enough at least for the kinds of decisions we're making in this case.

Much of our interaction is on this level. It has immediacy, it has authenticity, and it is a gift, not for everyone but for you, the one I'm addressing now. There are pernicious forms of this: cruel gossip and rumor-mongering, and maybe, in fact, this story is not to be believed. But some stories are, and the passing of them on is a thread that links us. When I sit at the table and tell my wife what I've seen and heard in the day, I feel few more stitches are pressed through and pulled tight, sewing us together.

Does this also pertain to the conversation of God-in-love and the Beloved, who includes us?

Even the best

Through the window of his office, across a small courtyard, a crane was lifting building materials up to where workmen were busy building. As I watched, the counter-weighted turret turned on its long stem, over a hundred feet tall, but also, judging against the verticals of his window blinds, the whole support was swaying and torquing. If such a crane were to fall... 'Do you ever think about that?' I asked. 'I try not to.'

The young man with a European name was helping me clarify what had gone wrong and what could be done with regard to a stream of money I had been looking forward to, but now think I've lost. Attentive to my story, solicitous to my concerns, he helped me better understand the complexities of my situation...and the challenges I faced. I sweat buckets but left energized.

Entering the state office building, I passed through airport type security, which always gets my hackles up. In the reception area, I was greeted by someone who wished me luck. Yet when someone came to get me, I found myself confronting an old stereotype: the self-absorbed, dismissive government official. He didn't make me feel like the fool I have often felt myself  (quite appropriately) in this whole business.  Who's to blame? There are many candidates, and I am one. 'I could have..., I should have..., oh, that I had...'  Regret is a long-toothed animal gnawing in our gut. Still, let's see what can be done.

This young man--quiet, friendly, competent--would never make the mistakes I have. He wouldn't ever be found sitting on my side of the desk explaining things as I had. Of course, I'm mistaken. We all have lapses and limitations we learn to live with. Even the best can make mistakes, a thought that surely occurs to him as sometimes he turns his head and looks out his window.

Richness

Time for reflection. A tool for doing just that. Let's see if it produces discoveries.

'Call to mind some 2nd person encounter (of one or several occasions); identify the Other(s); consider the arisings, arrivings, or deviatings that made it possible; appreciate its history of richness: how vivid the recognitions (otherness!), how potent the acknowledgements (this Other!), how urgent the addressings (You!), how suspenseful the anticipations (We!), as well as how intriguing (what is yet to be encountered, exposed, examined), how impressive (that the encounter was--what it was--for us).' (from the God-in-love framework)

'Call to mind...'   Easily enough done. I'm fair tuckered out by this whole week with Meja.

'Identify the Other(s)...'  Meja of course, but then my daughter, my wife, relatives, friends, strangers... But, for the sake of this analysis, the grandson.

'Consider the arisings, arrivings, or deviatings...'  the alescences (vs prevalences) in the philosophy of Justus Buchler. The question is about what special factor made this encounter special, out of the ordinary, new: the occasion of a baby shower for one of my daughter's friends.

'Appreciate its history...' Episodes of  significant intensity because consisting of short compressed visits.

'How vivid...'   two year old-ness, the overtness of all gestures, the visual images: small boy in a big place focused on something tiny at his feet. His compactness, his expressiveness, his fascination with puddles...

'How potent...'  this particular tow-headed child (what is it about blonde that provokes remark?) taking overr my home. The one who lives and grows out in Michigan, the one who is inimitable, this one who has unique power over me..  I know I'll see him again. I make plans for his education. What can I teach him?

'How urgent...'  You, Meja, waking from a nap, calling to be let out of the crib. He has needs and he has wants, the two hardly distinguished, except wants can be distracted. When he calls, I answer; if, sleeping, he coughs, I wait in suspense.

'How suspenseful...'  On the verge of...sentences, stories, formal games, deliberate intentions. In the layover airport asking about Grandmere and Granpi, so relationship are being cemented and poised to develop.

'How intriguing...'  the sources and structures of his spontaneity, his will to learn, his patterns of fears and insecurities, what he sees in Michigan that is expressed in Massachusetts.

'How impressive...'  our home with your presence, the focus of this week, our whole-hearted response, the sheer boyishness of him.

All in all, the tool is a distraction from describing the encounter and waiting for discoveries. This checklist of aspects of significance seems more like rummaging through a drawer to find a match for a sock than say walking through a landscape watching as on the left hills hove into view, on the right streams begin to burble. An encounter is a living occasion. On the dissection table, the parts seem like so many saggy lumps, not contributors to active life. What, then, is the value then of this set of questions, or any such..on any project?

Step back, Peter. What we're talking about are episodes in a 2nd person encounters, not Grey's Anatomy. These are prompts for reflection toward discoveries, not algorithms for generating them automatically.

Perhaps prompts are like the 'schemata' Paul Klee develops in his pedagogical notebooks: a vocabulary of forms combining the observable and the symbolic that can serve as soil for inspiration. Urgent, suspenseful, potent, vivid, intriguing, impressive: these are words we can be aware of feeling and either know why, or find out why, and in any case, savor.

Missing

'Onto the mouse, the field hawk drops./ But here where the lesson begins,/ The lesson stops.'

This from Mark Van Doren's We Come Too Late, puts me in mind of the many times in my teaching career, I've encountered inattentive students. Van Doren in this poem reverses the situation: we, mankind, are alert and ready to learn from the universe, but find the teacher indifferent and undirected.

                                                                 ------||||------

What a hectic week for grandson Meja: Sturbridge Village and his great grandmother and great aunts;Great Island, Portsmouth (cold but refreshing water), and another great aunt; City Hall Plaza to see his grandfather's workmates; the cemetery next door in the rain just to get out for walks; and today, the zoo with its phalanxes of kids and parents wheeling around aloof and undemonstrative animals. And evenings, my son and my sister-in-law. He's been a trouper; given rest and food, he's in good spirits and interactive as person after person has sought from him the benison of a smile, a kiss, a hug, some endearing spontaneity. He's delivered joy over and over, without duty, without compulsion, simply out of the upwelling of longing-to-learn life that lifts two year olds aloft each of their waking minutes. Ah, that ever-open face of yours, my boy.

My urgency is to grab each moment before he takes his livingness to a new venue. As each situation brings out in him some new response, he brings out in me, and his MerMer, and in each of the rest of his admirers new aspects of ourselves. For instance, he got an Oscar quality Maori war dance performance out of my son as he generated distractions while teeth were being brushed.

Not a perfect child, of course, nor I a perfect grandfather (I get tired, and tired of playing in the same key), but without resort to comparison, there he is, here I am, and our encounter as it turns out to be. The interactions are simple but intense as a palate of dayglo paints. My retinas are throbbing, but I'm ready to risk blindness, because soon enough you'll leave us behind, not without our lives, but without yours.

Reflection is what mostly I miss when I'm with you, Meja: the mental space that allows the bubbling up of unexpected personal associations and opinions and ideas that make me interesting to myself. It's how I know who I am; indeed who that guy is who hams it up for you. This is not something you know about now, or need to, but it's surely part of your life's activity. All that I've discovered I'll make available to you, but you'll want your own (and rightfully).Indeed, I may need what you learn, as I already have begun to do.

Energy of inquiry

'Isn't anyone playing with us?' A plaintive query hear at the Christopher Columbus play yard by grandson Meja standing stock still watching the big kids play. The game was some variant of the old standby Emergency! that involved much scrambling up and down the apparatus, crawling through storm drain sized pipes, making loud pronouncements into speaking tubes, as well as, inexplicably, scooping and sifting sand.

Meja watched dispassionately as someone might watch, say, rainwater bouncing off a floppy flower, then moved on to what he knew something about, a slope to be run down, a wheel to be turned. He seems to know that what he needs to know next is what intrigues him, be it a pocket, a stick, a curb, a noise-making machine.

He has no stories (but loves drama), no awareness of landscape or architectural space (that I know of) but he can imitate his dad on the play guitar. Most of his experiments are cause and effect investigations with variations: can I do it on one foot? can I do it one more time? can I do it if I take this or that away? There's a drive in him to come to terms with the physical world, perhaps as a basis for more complex learnings later on. Water, for instance, is never-endingly fascinating: poured, splashed, sprayed, felt falling. On a rainy day like today, puddles: into them, stamping, out of them, then turn around to go back in.

He's a prime candidate for games; his grandmother is a master at leading him on. She has a strong developmental sense, a feel for where he is in a child's natural progression of ever richer learning encounters with the world. Beyond this, perhaps just as important, she exhibits a child-like joy interacting with him. I love to watch her work. She feeds him, as if a bird, with morsels--tools, materials, containers--which spur his interest.

The day is coming, of course, when you, Meja, will be among such kids as you watched at the park. You'll understand Emergency! and lots of other narrative forms. You'll understand why the big kids were rushing about and nobody after them. At the same time, your love of cause and effect may have (I hope) evolved into genuine scientific inquiry. Later on, you'll see science and stories interwoven forming the warp and woof of your life. Then, you may also ask, as I do, as many do: 'Isn't anyone playing with us?' Your lifetime of questions is already well begun.

Under, behind, within

The inner workings of the refrigerator one day started to clatter and bang in the back where the motor was, then ceased cooling the lower box. Clunk on, clunk off has been the routine: nothing to notice, until it stops: 'Why is everything going bad?' we ask each other.

Preparing  the refrigerator for replacement reveals with what has been present but not acknowledged. It 's dark, dusty, crusty, greasy, discolored, scurfy, gritty behind and beneath. There are dust balls, food splashes, sand swept under from outdoor shoes coming in the nearby back door, spider webs, bacteria, I'm sure, galore: a agricultural site, busy and productive. We do wash the floor but...there are these places we miss.

Emptying out the appliance, we have had to finally to look at the jars of unidentifiable frozen juices and sauces, the plastic contains of forgotten stews and soups, the odd things that cling so tightly to their paper that they can't be separated much less identified. That's up above; down below--whew! It

You dark places at the edges of where we walk and work, you places of where flotsam and jetsam accumulate and fecundate, you places progressively coming loose or beginning to break, you places where detritus collects as if in windrows, or ambivalences are stored until time takes over the decision-making, you places just on the outskirts of our daily traffic, you ring our well-lit spaces, unobtrusive, quietly active.

Disgusting, disappointing, distressing, okay, but not ultimately alien; there's nothing here that hasn't our impress. But our attention is elsewhere. Very likely my mind has these dark grotty rims or wrinkles I'm not called to consider for months at a time, not to mention my relationships.

Scrubbing out, emptying out, airing out used to be the theme of the old books of domestic 'science'. Today teaches me how much I have to practice 'good housewifery.'

Game boy

Fascinating new toys: a jack in the box: press a knob, push a lever, twist a key and lids flip open and faces pop out; or a cash register:  put coins in a slot, push a lever and they drop into a shelf from which, another lever pushed, they roll down to a tray; or a rainstick: beads rushing down through holes in a series of internal baffles to reservoir at the bottom, all the while making that delicious noise of multiple collisions; or rubber ducks: squish, squish, squeak, squeak; and as many more as a doting grandmother could collect over the weeks of looking forward to Meja's visit.

The coup? A electric guitar toy with flashing lights, spinning glitter discs, note keys, strum bar playing different tune fragments, wang bar, the works. He holds it like a rocker, down low, and waggles his knees and butt, his guitar playing father more than hinted at by this vigorous, ever-active two year old.

Then, afternoon winding down, he stands naked beside a plastic pool filled with water, delicately dipping and pours out into bucket, truck bed, water-wheel toy, or standing next to grandfather, spraying a long jet of water at the tomatoes (little hand gripping hard the spray nozzle handle), and, oops, Grandpere himself.

You, my beamish boy, are a spectacle of incessant engagement, alternating distraction and repetitious fascination, bare feet thumping back and forth tirelessly to practice what you've just learned: 'Turn it on', 'Now turn it off', 'Now turn it off,' only the quietest, compliant 'Yes' each time signaling your complete endorsement of the exercise--until something on the way catches your eye.

Are all these words just alternative attempts to say how much you entrance me? Your wide smiles, your flaxen hair, your tough, tight little body, your verbalizations and words, your eagerness to interact with everything to hand, all combine to tell me I'm in the presence of a primal force. Why didn't the Greeks declare some special deity the embodiment of this drive to know, to do, to know how to do. The cherubic Cupid explains inexplicable adult love, but Meja isn't about us, except as he plays with us, needs something from us, snuggles (for the briefest moment) in our arms.

When, at the airport, you recognized me with a smile, said your uncle's name, took readily to MerMer's arms, we were so pleased to know we each had a permanent address in your ever-expanding city of important things. Your address? Etched deep, every day deeper, in the craton of things we love.

Serendipitious

Wow! A real flower garden. I had no real idea what I was doing. I put this here, that there, bulbs, annuals, some rhodies, some roses, a few dehydrated zinnias from the local supermarket, and to my surprise, it has all come together: there's a foreground of carmine blocky flowers, a white lacy middle ground, and in the back, like the brass in the finale of Janacek's Sinfonietta, a bank of sword-blade gladioli. It's undesigned but eye-satisfying. Best of all, daughter (with grandson) is coming today, and it can be for you, my dear (as well as the bees).

Bad tidings

Bad news, not urgent, not looming, not inconvenient, but I know myself this evening to be a lot poorer this evening than I thought this morning. My mind casts about for good things to see or dwell on for comfort but keeps snagging on this ugly news which tears the fabric of whatever equanimity I attain. There are plenty of good reasons for fury as well as self-recrimination. This news hurts and talk doesn't take the pain away. I think: what can I do to make up the loss, but my head feels inflamed and I can't think.

Walking down Washington Street, I saw a man sitting on the sidewalk with a cup outstretched: 'Do you think you're the only one with problems?' I thought to myself, incensed. But, of course, his issues are vastly more pressing and debilitating than mine. That objectivity provides no relief, however.

The world news doesn't help. The midsummer doldrums have been replaced by thinly disguised proto-panic regarding new crises erupting like bubbles in a volcanic fumerole not to mention the chronic naggers.

The narratives I've been constructing to link the future and the present have taken a hit, and my head is ringing, the hands of my heart wringing as well. And all around me structures of assumption about what's possible, what's priority, where I stand are under bombardment. Of course, this is what life does even to the best laid plans, and mine hardly fall in that category. I should expect to be knocked off balance, spun around, left in the lurch--at least sometimes. And the horrible heart-panting for what's lost should not be complete surprise. Granted, but none of these reflections assuage this anguish I'm experiencing now.

A night's sleep, a bright morning, I know enough of myself to expect relief from these, some blunting of the most acute symptoms. But my issues are small-bore. What about those who have to find courage day after day to confront really dire news, whether on the scale of the body physical or  politic, and the inevitable foreboding and dread. How, knowing that the worst may in fact be yet to come, do we cope with squirming, ready-to-hatch despair in our chests, and still carry on? (That helps a little. Hyberbolize)

Thumbing through a review in Harper's I picked up as I looked in a few minutes ago on the cat of a friend away on a trip, I came across a quote by Rebecca Solnit in her book The Faraway Nearby, who writes (with regard to memory), 'We never tell the story whole because life isn't a story. It's a Milky Way of events and we are forever picking out constellations from it to fit who and where we are.' .

'...isn't a story,' but has stories, or at least episodes which can be narrated, and within which and between which meaningful connections can be made or discovered. Any encounter consists of vastly more than can be done justice by the 'and then' event-sequences we love to structure our experiences in, even if there are clear denouements. My news? Maybe there'll be a happy ending but probably not, but why depend on the outcomes of stories to provide significance in the form of resolution. Indeed, what conceivable narrative arc can give import to the almost infinite number of encounters we have in our lives, considered start to finish.

No, no. I propose to trust the intrinsic livingness of deeds of hospitality, friendship and exploration to be what's meaningful in my encounters, minute by minute, day by day, year by year, the various narratives of my life resolving as they may. Success or failure just changes the context within which we dare to encounter each other.

Sounds good, Peter, but a little like a loser's sour grapes. Maybe so, but I need to stay in touch, as queasy or blown out as I may feel, with what still matters, what will always matter. At least at this moment, at this point, they can be the next things to do.

Glad

We've laughed, played games, taken pictures, lots of them, sampled different styles of music, eaten every kind of food from every corner of the world, and best of all, we've danced at the parties we always have the last day of my ESL courses at the local community college.

Oh, the dancing. I remember one young woman from Nepal, dancing as if in a trance, her arms and hands crossing and recrossing in front of her, a young man from Ethiopia stepping  forward while shaking his shoulders, and an older Eritrean woman matching him. I remember Middle Eastern women belly dancing and Latinas dancing salsa, forro, bachata, meringue. Many East Asians, demurring that they had no tradition of dancing, had to be cajoled to get up from the desks pushed back against the wall to join the circle in the middle of the room. There were impromptu lessons. We followed the best dancers to pick up their moves. Some dancers were awkward;  others smooth as silk, the middle-aged men and women often in that latter category.

Sometimes the party would be slow starting but we always ended up sweating profusely as we listened to each other's music. We formed conga lines, circles, lines, couples, or were just single people jumping, jiggling, stepping, shaking, turning, twisting. As if we were at concerts, we lifted our arms, cheered and stamped our feet

Each party has been different because each class is a unique mix of personalities and ethnic characteristics. Some of the quietest in class have been majestic on the dance floor. The confident in class have sometimes been retiring and resisted the tuggings of their classmates. The pressure is off; the certificates passed out. The nine or sixteen weeks of lessons are drawn to a close, as well as that special camaraderie that knits a group together; everyone is dancing the Last Dance, before the final pictures, exchanges of numbers and addresses, more pictures, the clean-up and divvy up of the remaining abundance of food, hugs, and final goodbyes.

Over time, the course-end parties have gotten more and more sedate. So last night, though there was music, and I made a bit of a spectacle of myself moving to it, we mostly spent our time eating tacos and sushi and Greek pizza while talking about life and death and quinceanera. I learned for instance, to my surprise, how almost everyone around the table--from Brazil, Guatemala, Thailand, El Salvador, Myanmar--had fond memories of farm life in their youth.

We still took a lot of pictures on each person's cellphone. Many looked forward to being together in the next class, and expressed sadness that I wouldn't there too. We wished each other well with hugs and handshakes, depending on tradition, and waved goodbye.

You, my many, many students in my many, many classes, each of you special, all of us intimate with each other for a period of time in the travail of learning English, episode after episode of encounter after encounter, how acutely now, and often, have I felt that we were enacting and embodying something beyond us, something that, though the classes are over, long over, continues to shine somewhere (perhaps between and within God-in-love and the Beloved), something that lifts my heart even as I write, something that makes me glad for my life.

Launcher

While we were working together, I looked up: my friend had his camera trained on me. The photographs he generally takes are hauntingly, evocative  and hang in the mind's eye, but that of me is very precise, very clear: extended forehead, black brows, wire-rimmed glasses, one eye showing open, a cryptic expression around the mouth, a smile?, mostly white beard, red striped shirt.

The picture is definitely of me seen at a particular moment from a particular angle.  I recognize you. I've seen  those features in the various mirrors use: the one in the bathroom at home where I examine you closely for overgrown patches, swellings and discolorations, hairs in wrong places, and the one in the men's room at work where I inspect you for presentability, and sometimes mug to shake off professional seriousness for a moment.

I don't see in the mirror, however, who I see in the photo. You in the photo are maybe smiling, maybe not, arch or perhaps sly, somber or possibly puckish. You're lifting your head, or letting it down. You're about to say something or you're deep in your own thoughts. You've made contact with the camera lens or are looking past it. All this ambiguity.

When I look in the mirror, I know what I'm doing and why. I'm confronting myself forthrightly. I understand my motives, my next move. I perform for myself.

At the other extreme, in class there are moments when, observing the faces of students, I realize that a suite of intriguing (to them) micro-expressions has swept across my face. What they are and how to reproduce them, I don't care to know, though this is part of the self-knowledge of professional actors.

Between the self-conscious and the unself-conscious is you in the photo, not one who responds or is responded to, but an image of someone caught in the act. I confess I didn't like you at first but, looking at you longer, you grow on me. You're up to something. What is it?

Perhaps there's a lesson here on how to look at portraits generally: seeing those visages as the meeting places of myriad sets of options. Perhaps this is what I love about people watching generally: the sense that what I see in a glance has an ambiguity that suggests life behind.

The most expressive square inches in the world? Able to put topless towers to the torch? Maybe faces are all this. Your face, my hearty, gets its power from being on the verge, rather like a particle confronted with the physicist's double slits. Which will it choose? My workaday persona resolves these questions over and over, but, hopefully, not too definitively.

Paradox

How can it happen that each of us was better than the other?

In bright running togs, we leapt down the stairs from City Hall to Faneuil Hall, past the striding statue of Mayor Kevin White, and off to the Greenway, thence to Charlestown and Bunker Hill. We didn't have much to say to each other, apart from my commentary on the route. From the beginning I could feel I was exerting more than usual. He was audibly breathing, perhaps also stretching. Apart from the traffic and the general hubbub of the city on its way to work on a bright summer weekday, I could hear the slap of soles on surface.

We made it through the troublesome intersections, stopped at fountains to take on water, commented a little on the dead trees by the river and the crochet installation on the Mass Ave bridge. Basically, though, we were pushing each other the whole way: he made me run faster than I normally do; I made him run farther than he usually does. It wasn't competition, neither aimed at victory, but I didn't want to fall behind and he didn't want to drop out, so each kept inviting the other to match his strengths.

I hadn't expected this; this is a new (for me) way of thinking about people working together: each showing the others what it does best, and the others striving to match those capabilities. Running is just one kind of activity that may work this way; others come to mind.

This is all probably common knowledge, but it does resolve the paradox I felt when we split just beyond Community Boating. You're not a talkative guy, partner--at least I haven't been able to get that engine to turn over--but your example was eloquent today. I was impressed by your speed and your stamina, as well as what that taught me. Thanks.

Sidekick

A running date. Now that I have a new pair of shoes with lots of tread, why not? It'll be my normal route, I guess, so there'll be no surprises, still the whole idea disquiets me. What if?  What if what? You're just running with another guy, Peter.

I realize just how much I am in myself as I run. I can encounter people on the way, as I did a former student last week, but then I move on. Running with someone else means being paced, having to talk, even just to give directions, seeing someone out of the corner of my eye. All this makes me realize how much of a loner I am.

I invited the guy into my running space. This isn't the first time. Usually we only do it once, for whatever reason.  I'm reassured by this. I can have an 'yes, let's go' and still be confident that no one will take me up on it as a regular thing. A beautiful policy that probably won't challenge me to change.

What would it be like to have a regular partner in some activity or project? I would probably feel myself dominating or acceding to the other; it's hard for me to imagine real partnership. Yet I started a business once with someone I respected and we spent many, many hours working together. It was an association that ended without turning into a lasting friendship. We were clearly feeling different urgencies. It's hard for me to imagine any such close association not foundering on the rocks of incompatible visions.

Perhaps there's a mode of partnership exemplified by pilgrims sharing the road and bread with each other. This sounds more like reciprocal hospitality than friendship. Am I back to that provoking question? I think a project of mine has been to make myself into the friend I would like to have. What does that mean?

What am I rambling on about? Seven-thirty am: we meet, we run. What's to think about? Let's do it and see.

Cup of water

A hundred years ago to this very day, Britain declared war on Germany and so stepped into the fire rapidly spreading across Europe. All the other great powers were already engaged: 'join us in hell'.

Both my grandfathers were in the war in East Africa, one of them, the pacifist, an ambulance driver. They gave me the medals and pins they were given after the war.

We're a century on, but looking at footage of the crowds on the streets of the cities of the time, I see familiar kinds of faces and expressions. The clothes of the civilians are a bit different, especially the fabrics, but not really very much. There are more trolleys on the streets (think Green line through Brookline), but no cars. No one is getting their  information standing alone looking at a smartphone; instead, crowds of hundreds are learning what's going on from people speaking in front of them. Otherwise, they could be people I've met. Knowing what we know, and they don't, the jerky movies footage is unspeakably poignant.

Every army went to war with the blessings of its nation's clergy. Enough time has passed for us to see that deity had no favorites in the struggle. One wonders then what God-in-love was doing throughout. Grieving, I think, in advance of the great grief that, even now, has not ceased to wrack, if not our hearts, at least our minds. The hospitality into government, for instance, that Austria-Hungary could have offered its various nationalities; the explorations Franz Joseph could have made into progressive rather than reactionary politics; the friendship that could have characterized the relationships of the various leaders (three of the monarchs in the same extended family), all might have prevented the disaster. Instead we have films of soldiers standing around their 'taught them a lesson' achievements.

Those people who made the war happen were not more blind or venal than we are, nor were those who thronged and cheered the soldiers marching to war. I've seen more times than I'm happy to remember the way war arouses something like a patriotic unanimity. War is where 2nd person practices are treated as civilians so often are--carelessly and scornfully. The humankind within which God-in-love seeks the arising of the beloved Other turns its mind to self-destruction, instead.

Yet there are instances of friendship, exploration, hospitality, even in the midst of horrors--not redeeming the suffering but reaffirming the project of God-in-love: inspiring individuals and groups to dare 2nd person encounters requiring and eliciting generosity, inquiry, and constancy. In those situations, even the gift of a cup of water is to get its reward.

Night watch

Sudden yowls, shufflings, pungent sulfurous smells, the lid of the bin of grass seed dislodged again, tomatoes toothed and tossed: the night creatures are around, cats, skunks, coons. Mice I'm sure are busy and perhaps owls too but it's that trio of prowlers that takes over the yards in my neighborhood, looking, in the case of coons and skunks for what we've left out, in the case of cats for rodents.

You have your routes and rounds. You take note what is almost ripe and make sure that you're the ones to get the enjoyment of it. You sniff, peer, finger. You pounce.

Last night, talking about the movies we'd just watched, we caught strong whiffs of skunk (it wasn't us threatening you) that let us know that while Damon's Tom Ripley was contiving on screen, you, Mr Skunk, were testing the lids of things outside.

We humans have a tendency to occupy everything: the sea as well as the land, the sky as well as the land, and the dark as well as the light. I'm glad that when we're done with cultivating, controlling or exploiting for the day, and withdraw to our castles, you, unperturbed, though often touchy, move in. You can be pestilential (but so can we) but I say, have the zone of obscurity, occupy the darkness.

Not yet this year but soon I plan to go tenting. The wild things are more numerous and bigger out there in the forest, on the mountain, and there'll be just fabric between us. I can hear rustlings and squeaking then that I miss in my solid dwelling, other forms and styles of life going on. It's nice to know ours is not the only busyness going on.

Risk

Adventure: an enterprise involving risk. Yesterday's post met that description. The night before, Thursday, when I sat down after coming home from my evening class and having had something to eat, I found I had nothing to say, or rather some big, ungainly themes without concrete handles.

The risk began earlier when I blithely contemplated the evening's posting task with a complacent 'something will turn up.' No ideas, no problem. Actually, not no ideas, but none that said 'Me, I'm what you want to explore.' Even as the class was going on and people were working in groups that functioned on their own, and I cast my mind briefly to the evening, I wasn't concerned. Just relax, I said to myself, and open up. After all, the premise of this blog is that life is prolific in encounters which can be reflected on.

Given my self-imposed commitment to post something every day, and the fact that there would be no time the next day to really work on anything, I had put myself into a do-or-die deadline situation. I kind of like the risk.

In front of the white screen, with an white screen mental equivalent, I felt only the smallest tickle of panic. My readings in a book on philosophy and religion must offer something to. The theme of adventure has some energy. The thing is though is that, as such, they are not encounters, there's no time or place, no experience, no I/you. The best that can happen is an argument.

Ah, a tomato. So early in the season! and so welcome! At last, a stirring within not just my mind. The way garden tomatoes surprise me anew every year with their deliciousness. Two surprises, not unprecedented but not inauthentic either. So as to my encounter with God-in-love as informed by the discussion in the philosophy book, I felt that, as far as I had read, the author had made point after point that pertained. But had I reached a key point in the argument, a no-farther-forward conclusion, or a turning point, a no-longer-in-this-direction shift?  Or was I at the point where, like a climber on a rock face, the author had to shift his weight and stretch a little past balance to grasp the rocky knob that would be his next grip.

As I tried to stitch these pieces into a intelligible-enough quilt to serve as a post, I found myself in a maze of questions about what exactly in what'd written was what I really wanted to say. I questioned what the connection was in terms of real experience between a tomato and God-in-love. Part of the adventure was coping with the waves of the sense of absurdity that swept over me. Yet I felt something was there to be expressed, however awkwardly.

Risks are not all corporeal, financial, existential. Failure to fulfill is the one I played with Thursday night and, even with tweaks Friday between classes, it's one I 'm not sure I've in fact avoided. The topic of Experience and God is something I want to revisit because it's at the heart of the adventure I'm on trying to live the God-in-love presence/adventure/lastingness way of life.

Last night at the Vokes Theater, we watched Mark Twain's farce 'Is He Dead?' which like all such is about absurd risks and improbably escapes--hilarious! Part of what makes it fun is our recognition of risk of farcicality in our lives and most serious enterprises. Well, it's worth taking.

Revelation

Ahh, the first ripe tomatoes. These, more than the herbs, the lettuces, the peppers, represent to me the rewards of putting in gardens. These alone make the work worth it. Every year the remarkable flavor, aroma, texture of these brilliantly scarlet globes or oblongs is a new revelation. Perhaps it's the 'wild summer spirit' (whatever that may mean) infusing these one-a-year fruit, reminding me afresh of special qualities I've been missing all year, qualities that were certainly in abundance in the fruit I collected  this evening. I hadn't expected the tomatoes as soon--most are still green--but hidden among the leaves: delectable surprise.

Reading J.E. Smith's Experience and God, I come across the topic of revelation. Smith makes the point that we must 'wait upon the special occasions of disclosure (to discover the nature of God)', those moments when ordinary things and activities take on heightened significance regarding the mystery and purpose of life. He emphasizes the historicity of these events--this, here, now--not everywhere or always. So I invite you, God-in-love, from time to time, with no warning, and as you wish, to disclose yourself in this or that person or event, presenting yourself for direct, if not immediate (as in mystical experience) apprehension. Suddenly, or more often in the reflective savoring of memory, these occasions show the richness of the world of which the ordinary is just the skin, and bring me into encounter with you, yourself.

I know that as summer progresses, the farmer's market will become burdened with tomatoes. My vines will produce prodigiously. I may become sated eventually. But last night gathering by flashlight and tasting, I was encountering what tomatoes hitherto have only pretended to be. I think, however, I'll never have enough of meeting you.