The Green Mosque

It's been eight years since my deployment to Iraq and I've been revisiting some of the "letters home" I sent at that time.  They are all quite melancholy and have an undercurrent of homesickness.  They, along with my photos, were a lifeline for me and a connection to the wider world.  The thought occurred to me that I should start posting some of them on my blog as a kind of historical record.

***

At the northern end of FOB Diamondback in Mosul where three roads intersect one can find "The Green Mosque".  It was the airport mosque here in Mosul prior to the Army taking control of this area and separating it from the rest of the city almost four years ago now.  It has not functioned as a mosque since that time.

It is a melancholy place.  The grounds are surrounded by a short wall with a spacious courtyard in front full of various kinds of trees, shrubs, and bushes that have grown out of control.  Lamp posts dot the area inside the walls, rusty, glassless, with light bulbs that lean at odd angles and no longer function.  The only visitors these days are the birds that like to perch on its ledges and in the trees.

I imagine one day when we are gone it will once again become a place of worship.  But for now it sits isolated inside its walls with paint peeling and the greenery growing unchecked.  I think it will be better when we are not here.  This is not our home.

February 14th, 2007

***

Masterpiece

My love for art began as a kid in a small Midwestern town.  It was the 1970's when there was no such thing as an internet opening a window on the wider world.   Experiences followed a narrow groove worn smooth by a bicycle tire and a boy's imagination.  Museums were far away in big cities that we never visited and the best we could muster on our walls were Home Interior pieces of plastic and colored glass bought at house parties.

The library was a potential stepping off point for this kind of exploration, but it was a bifurcated building with the kid's section flowing to the left and the adult section flowing to the right.  The librarian's desk sat midstream as a kind of command and control center and resembled a judge's bench.  I remember on at least one occasion wandering over to the right side and having the librarian suddenly materialize beside me, asking what I was looking for.  There was something in the way she asked that insinuated that I might be doing something wrong and should skitter back over to the kid's section if I knew what was good for me.  My exposure to great art was not going to come from that direction, though we did have a set of Childcraft books at home that had some illustrations that tickled my fancy.

***

The beachhead to this unexplored world of fine art came in the form of a board game, "Masterpiece."  My parents would have friends over to our house from church to play games around the dining room table in the evening hours.  My first memory of Masterpiece was when I was six or seven and the adults were playing it while the kids played elsewhere.  I can clearly see myself standing next to my Dad's chair and watching them play with a peculiar energy.  I loved to see them so animated and hear their laughter.  I picked up some of the painting reproductions my Dad had acquired and looked at the value cards clipped to the back which told you how much the painting was worth and was known only to the person who owned it.  The strategy is to cash in the most expensive ones when the opportunity arises and try to auction off the cheaper ones at prices that exceed their value.  One of the value cards wasn't a number, but a word that I did not know, *forgery*.  "Hey Dad, what is a for-gary?" I asked, and everyone burst out laughing as my Dad snatched the painting back from me.

A few years later I was able to play the game with the neighborhood kids at the dining room table in the light of day, either on a lazy summer afternoon or a bleak winter weekend.  I learned the artists' names and their distinctive styles by playing this game.  By the time I reached High School I had stopped playing it for the most part, but I purchased my first oil painting from an artist from the Smoky Mountains at our local festival when I was a freshman.  It was an exhilarating idea that was made possible when the artist recognized my interest in a particular framed canvas and offered to let me pay him bit by bit on the honor system.  I made a passionate plea to my Mom to let me do it and convinced her that a fifteen year old could and should acquire a largish framed oil painting.  I gave him twenty dollars cash for a negotiated price of two hundred and fifty dollars and floated home with it on a cloud of wondrous disbelief.  I faithfully mailed him money every few months over a two year period until it was paid off.

***

Over the years I've had opportunities to visit some of the great art museums of the world in cities like London, Paris, Amsterdam, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Mexico City, Seoul, New York, Washington DC, and San Francisco.  I was able to see many of those paintings I'd loved as a kid, firsthand in all of their full-sized glory.  And beyond that I found new favorites: the elongated form of John the Baptist wrapped in a blue sky by El Greco in the Pushkin Museum of Moscow, the terrible melancholy of "Wheatfield with Crows" thought to be Vincent's last painting at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the massive canvas of Ilya Repin's "Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks" from the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, and Frida Kahlo's surreal self portraits in Mexico City.  Now, at forty five years of age, my prized possession is an oil painting lovingly dappled with brilliant colors of a scene at Winslow Farms in Fairmount, Indiana by Kevin McCarty, a dearly departed friend and my godson in the Orthodox Faith.  I first laid eyes on it at the Indiana State Museum as part of the 2000 Hoosier Salon and now it hangs over my fireplace in a place of honor and remembrance.

***

The impetus for this reflection on my love of art over the years came from an unexpected find a year ago and then a rediscovery this past weekend.  One year ago I was with my son at a local Catholic Church festival and while he ran off with his friends to play the games, I wondered into a tent full of garage sale items to putter around.  My gaze wandered over an old board game that turned out to be the original edition of Masterpiece.  I didn't recognize it at first because it was the 1970 edition and my parents had the 1976 edition with a different box cover.  When I realized what lay before me I could hardly contain myself.  I snatched it up and went through its contents with a huge grin on my face, finding it mostly intact.  I paid the preposterously low price of two dollars and carried it around the festival under my arm, protecting it like it was a newborn baby (an internet search from yesterday revealed that it is selling for 100+ dollars these days).

It has sat on a basement shelf with other games since that time, untouched until just a few days ago when it piqued my son's curiosity.  We pulled it out and I explained the rules to him as well as shared some stories of playing it with friends when I was his age.  The next day he got his Mom and Sister to join us in playing it.  As the game progressed, old friends found their way to the top of the stack to include the one that intrigued me the most as a kid, Grant Wood's "American Gothic."  Elias mentioned that he wanted to show it to his neighborhood friends and I had the queer feeling that time was somehow resetting itself.


Master Dice Roller


1970 Edition


***

Circus in the Sky

***
The sky was immense,
a massive canvas
unfurled across my windshield
on my morning commute.
It was nearly impossible
to concentrate on
the broken line of cars
flitting in the darkened
lower margins of this
magnificent spectacle.
I felt like a circus spectator,
plopped in a bleacher
for the greatest show on earth.
Wisps of a burning tiger
leaping over a blood red sun
sitting heavy on the horizon.
My exit arrived and the scene
scrolled off the screen
as my car headed
in a different direction.
***

You are a Person

***

You are not an individual,
rugged or otherwise.
You are a person
connected to people,
living or dead,
it does not matter.
Love is everywhere
and fills all things.
Of this, and only this
can you be certain.
Set it as a judge
over your thoughts
and actions.  Do they
pass the test of love?

***

Empty Shelves

***
The shelves of his mind
had been emptied of memories
and no amount of rummaging
could change that.
All that was left
was the action itself,
pacing those empty rows,
rubbing his hands
over the dust that was left.
He heard voices,
warm tones meant to reassure him.
"Remember me?  It's so and so,"
cruel in their strange familiarity.
Where is this place?
Who are these people?
The shelves lie bare,
leaving him scared and alone.
***

The Prodigal

When I'm lost
I don't always
know that I'm lost

but sometimes I do

like a butterfly
hovering overhead
self-seeing
feeling pity for
my waywardness
memories fluttering
to moments of a
peace-filled existence
that was lost
due to lack of diligence
a waning watchfulness
supplanted by a
pride-filled nothingness

but even so

when I'm lost
it is a grace
to know that
I am lost
and gain hope
in the waiting
for myself
to come home.

***

The Last Book

Life is Beautiful

***
Life is beautiful
always and ever,
though poorly perceived
through the dirty lens
that overlies the
eye of my soul.
A pure heart
apprehends it fully,
which means it is
something I must
simply accept on faith,
catching glimpses
through my children
who have yet to
become so sullied
by the demands
of a life-defying
culture that fosters
self-centered insatiety
as an ill-conceived norm.
I see myself as
someone who makes
capricious attempts
at capturing
it through art
and creativity,
but above all
through love,
however feeble.
***

The Doctor

They rolled her into the emergency room looking like Sleeping Beauty-on-a-stretcher, her long blond hair framing a pale face, unmoving, unresponsive, signs of trauma conspicuously missing.   She appeared to be in her mid-teens, eyes closed, and wearing a light blue dress which in and of itself was an unusual sight in the ER.  Maybe the EMT’s had been reluctant to remove it and somehow mar her innocent loveliness.  A physical exam, labs and imaging of her head had turned up nothing.  

The ER doctor on duty appreciated the challenge of a good medical mystery, but he also knew when his job was done and a more extensive workup was needed.  This zebra hunt would have to happen up on the medical floor.  He took a moment to appreciate the oddness of this particular presentation, run through a differential in his head one last time, and then sign the order to have the patient transferred to the medical service.  She was wheeled out of the ER as serenely as she had entered.

***

The hospitalist who had accepted the patient stared at the computer screen, frustrated that there were no red flags flying in the margins to alert him to what was wrong.  The physical exam had been equally unhelpful.  He scratched his head and fiddled with his coffee cup that sported the message "crazy days and Mondays always get me down" which got him humming.  The lush alto of Karen Carpenter began singing in his head and proved to be a helpful trigger; his subconscious mind doing its quiet work.  Thoughts of anorexia and then mental illness in general entered his conscious awareness and led to the conclusion that this was a job for a psychiatrist.

He grabbed her chart and wrote an order for a Behavioral Health consult, "Rule out catatonia."  The consult was marked "urgent," but that was a bit of a cheat.  She was breathing normally and her vitals were stable.  It was urgent in the sense that doctors fear the unknown and the consequences that can come from missing something.   It should have been obvious from the get-go, but psychiatric problems are not something that generalists like himself are necessarily comfortable with or consider except as a last resort.  And this is how it should be, he thought.  A medical reason that could put the patient's life at risk if not identified had to be pursued and ruled out first and foremost.  

He placed the chart in the New Orders slot for the unit clerk to enter into the computer and did so with a sense of relief that other minds would be brought to bear on the problem.  This also allowed him to move on to see other patients who were starting to accumulate on his rounding list.  The clerk snatched up the new orders and entered them into the computer.  Her typed words were transformed into 1's and 0's and sent along strands of copper wire insulated by rubber tubing.  In a quirk of cosmic necessity a 1 and a 0 traded places, diverting the request down an unknown pathway.

Within seconds of the clerk hitting the enter key, the elevator doors slid open and out stepped a peculiar fellow.  No one paid particular attention to him as he made his way to the patient's room.  The clerk assumed it was the consultant and was too busy to realize that the timing was not only not right, but impossible.  

***

Alone with the patient, the doctor placed his hand gently on her forehead as if feeling for a fever.  He looked out through the window and over the city, losing himself in an approaching bank of dark clouds.  A jagged line of lightning flickered, mirroring the line of his brow.  He drew in a deep breath and released it slowly as thunder rolled into and around the hospital.  

He exited the room and headed down the hall, looking for a particular door.  He found it due to its out-of-place appearance.  It was too old, too narrow, and with an outdated vent in the bottom.  The door and what lay behind it had somehow been overlooked in all of the updates that had modernized the hospital's interior.  In a word, it had been forgotten.  It was a bathroom and the interior was not much bigger than a closet.  Pink tiles covered the walls up to about chest height and the floor was covered with smaller tiles of pink shadings.

He stood there for a moment staring at the wall, the side of his pant leg touching the lip of the commode.  He traced patterns in the air without touching the tiles until he appeared satisfied.  A sequence of squares were then tapped in quick succession, the hidden pattern made visible by the faint glow of each tile touched.  As he made contact with the last one the entire sequence flashed simultaneously and the room appeared to rotate out of itself taking the doctor along with it.  He found himself on the opposite side of the wall in a mirror image of the old bathroom.  The colors and quality of light were different, but not in a way that he could have explained to anyone not on that side. 

He exited the bathroom and immediately perceived what appeared to be a translucent tube coming from his chest and terminating in a nurse standing nearby.  As she turned and acknowledged him a flicker of colored light traversed the tube towards him.  The doctor was pleased that he'd found the proper place to do his work and set off to return to the patient's room.  He had to remember to turn left when before it was right and vice versa.  Further complicating matters was a webwork of crisscrossing tubes that ran between people, lights pulsing and shifting through them like a neuronal matrix.  This resulted in having to backtrack a time or two, but eventually he found the patient's room and shut the door behind him.

***

The tube connecting them was inert.  He watched the rise and fall of her chest, bringing his own breathing into sync with hers.  A pattering of rain drops hit the window.  With each exhalation he sent a faint pink pulse through the tube towards the patient.  This went on for several minutes without change until he noticed a hitch in the patient's breathing.  Discordant pulses began to slowly course in the opposite direction of the pink ones.  The tube thickened to accommodate the two way traffic.  

The doctor began to sweat profusely as images and sensations began to come into his awareness.  She was no longer in the hospital room.  A trusted presence was standing too close to her and breathing too hard.  Out of respect she had not moved away, pretending not to notice that something very dark was trying to envelop her mind even as her body desperately wanted to run and hide.  She sensed the desire extending towards her like a ravenous beast that would destroy her for its own pleasure.  She heard the familiar voice trying to soothe her, "It's OK.  Don't be afraid."  The doctor stood as an unseen witness to what was unfolding between this young girl and a much older man.  When the man's hand made contact with her an internal switch was thrown, a fail-safe, and she crumpled to the floor.

The doctor stood with her in this dark place where she had sequestered herself.  There was only blackness in all directions.  He extended his hand in a pointing gesture and a spot  appeared at his finger tip as his arm reached its full extension.  It was a small point of light that continued to shine even as he lowered his arm back to his side.  A twitch of her eyes under closed lids betrayed the fact she sensed the change.  Her head slowly rotated towards the light and her limbs began to find themselves.  In wobbly fits and starts she pulled herself up into a standing position and then began to sleep walk towards the light with her eyes still closed.  It grew larger as she approached it.  She was oblivious to the doctor's presence beside her.  He did not interfere, but encouraged her nonetheless in ways that were available to him.  When the circle of light had grown to a stable size she stepped through it with a slight duck of her head.

***

Her eyes opened and she peered at the ceiling of her hospital room.  She felt the warmth of the sun coming in through the window and she turned to see a blue sky with patchy clouds breaking up in the wind.  The room was empty and she wondered how it was that she'd gotten here.  Outside the room the clerk glanced up from her keyboard in time to see the elevator doors gliding shut on the doctor.    

Floating Over a Dark Place

She is three years old,
a warm ball of roundness
sleeping on our morning bed
in an expectant state of un-
wakeful perceptiveness.

I can't resist to kiss her shoulder.
She rolls over and fixes me
with dreamy eyes and a lost smile.
"That's how you float over
a dark place," she confides.

Was it the kiss as protective talisman
or something deeper in her burgeoning
experience of the world, where the
realness of a thing is not so concrete
as matter and linearity, cause or effect?

***

After Midnight

***

Where does one walk
after midnight
on the bad side of town?
A chain-link fence to the left,
street curb to the right,
being funneled to
who knows where
to do who knows what.
A boarded up church sits
alone and abandoned
on a street corner.
You try the doors,
but they are locked so
you sit on the wide
concrete steps feeling
the cold through your pants.
You ponder your existence,
feeling rudderless and lost,
but free to roam the night
and think your thoughts
which can be summed up by
"why the hell am I here?"
***

Ancient Swag

We (and by "we" I mean "Anya") lost our remote control a few months ago and we have only had access to one channel until just this past week. To make matters worse, the one channel that was on when the remote was lost was the Disney Channel which made it the only game in town.  On the up side, the kids have watched less TV and we've been able to delve into some pretty cool movies that I've accumulated for them over the years, most notably animated films by Hayao Miyazaki.

Last week we decided to move our computer and modem out of the guest room to start transforming that space into Anya's room.  The cable guys came out to help make the transfer and while they were here, they provided us with a new remote control and we got back the multitude of cable channels.  After the kids went to bed I clicked through a channel at a time to manually block each one that looked to be iffy or outright inappropriate.  I judged this by my own reactions ranging from "ewww!" (ego dystonic)  to "ohhh!" (ego syntonic).

When I'd reached the upper limits of the channels I started finding some that I'd not seen before or even knew existed.  One in particular caught my attention as I recognized the person of Jimmy Swaggart, the famous pentecostal preacher and televangelist.  It most have been recorded some time in the 80's as he looked quite young with his big glasses and shiny forehead.  He was trimmer and fitter looking than I'd remembered him, but with the same habit of pacing the platform and using nonstop hand gesturing to tell his stories.

What caught and held my attention was what he was describing.  He was describing the ancient worship of the Jewish people in very reverent and awed tones.  His hands outlined the angels overlooking the ark/altar.  He described the priestly duties and the prescribed timing of particular actions during the year.  He picked up an imaginary coal from the fire and said in a hushed voice, "And the smoke from the incense filled the temple for worship of the most high God."

As I listened to his captivating description I found myself swept up in visions of the Divine Liturgy and it occurred to me that if he had stepped foot into an Orthodox Church at that time, far from extolling its fidelity in maintaining this ancient pattern of worship, he would have likely condemned it as "dead ritual" and idolatry.  I would not have understood the irony as a teen in the 80's, but it strikes me now that he was trying to put on some "ancient swag."

The Lion Weeps Tonight

I had been a member of the local Lion's Club chapter for just over a year when I knew it was time to make a play for being the lion.  The Memorial Day parade was coming up and they asked for a volunteer to wear the lion costume to walk the one and a half mile route.  I felt I had the required skill set to bring it to life and was excited for the opportunity.  It was quite a handsome outfit that completely covered the wearer from head to toe for the full immersive experience.  The tail was long and thick with a tuft of hair on the end that could easily be snatched up and used as a humorous prop.  The head itself was large and impressive, sporting a regal yet bemused expression, or so I imagined it.

I tried it on at one of my fellow Lion's house with my six year old son in tow as a trial audience.  She had worn it last at an indoor event and the suit was folded up inside the lion's head in the corner of her living room.  The head was so large that it needed suspender-like straps looped under the armpits to hold it in place.  With the head firmly attached, they helped me pull on the body of the suit and zip it up the back.  The gloves came on last and there I stood like a claustrophobic astronaut preparing for a moon walk.  I bent forward at the waist to line up the eye mesh so that I could see my son.  He had a great goofy grin on his face, but then I stepped back, grabbed the tail, and began twirling it while doing a little jig.  He immediately burst into laughter.

***

The decision to join the Lion's Club was inspired by my friendship with Kevin McCarty.  He was born with retinoblastoma, a cancer whose treatment left him with just one eye of limited vision.  Despite this obvious limitation, he made the unobvious choice of developing his talent as a visual artist.   By the time I'd met him in college he was in his late twenties and had become a fine oil painter with an impressionistic style that was unique in its vibrant use of color and texture.  Our friendship grew over several years to include at least two opportunities to sit as a model for him.  These were marathon sessions that lasted through the day and night in his small studio apartment.  The place was cluttered with large canvasses at various states of completion, some hanging and others leaning against the walls.  The hardwood floor was speckled with dried paint drops and the air smelled of pipe smoke and paint thinner.  Many of the human figures in these paintings lacked faces. He was fiercely proud of his work, but he admitted to me that he struggled with painting faces.  I imagine that faces over stressed his ability to discern details due to his extremely poor vision.

The one thing hanging from his walls that was not a painting or sketch was a large poster from the TV series "Beauty and the Beast", a show that ran in the late 80's for a few years.  The show's star was named Vincent and his face resembled a lion which was further enhanced by a full head of hair resembling a mane.  He lived in subterranean passages and mostly limited his contact with the wider world to the "Beauty" of the title.  The radiation treatments Kevin had received as a child had malformed his skull in such a way that he bore some resemblance to Vincent with his deep set eyes.  He felt a kinship with this character whose situation and appearance imposed a barrier of sorts between him and those around him.  It was the romantic archetype of the misunderstood loner.

***

As a point of curiosity, the Lion's Club is the world's largest philanthropic organization and very early on in its existence it took a special interest in helping those with blindness and/or visual impairment.  This came about after Hellen Keller addressed their international convention at Cedar Point, Ohio in 1925 and left a powerful impression on the attendees.  In early 2010 I read about a new chapter being started in my town in our local newspaper and I immediately thought about Kevin who had died the year previous due to a recurrence of cancer related to the radiation treatments he'd received as a child.  It was a terrible several year ordeal that involved him progressively losing bones in his head to surgery and culminating in the loss of his one functioning eye so that when death finally caught up with him he was completely blind.

The meetings were at noon on Mondays twice a month and I was able to attend by driving up from the hospital on my lunch break.  Having been a perpetual student for so many years through medical school, residency, and then a three year stent in the Army I felt like this was my first bona fide extracurricular adult-type activity, and at forty one year's of age I was one of the youngest in attendance.  We met at the  Holiday Inn near my house which had several smallish conference rooms that we rotated through.  The other members were heavily weighted towards people from the local business community with a police officer and a fireman or two sprinkled in.  There was also a small group of women who were staff members from our local library who had aggressively recruited their colleagues for membership.  The Memorial Day parade would be an opportunity to advertise our presence in the community and continue the process of growing the membership of this fledgling group.

***

The day arrived and it was the hottest Memorial Day in recent memory with temperatures in the nineties.  My wife tried to talk me out of walking the full route in the lion suit, but I was determined to accept the challenge.  It was so hot that she opted to keep our children at home.  I rendezvoused with the other members at the parade staging area near the end of the line with the lion suit folded into a large plastic Ikea bag on my shoulder.  I had spent much of the morning hydrating regularly, but taking care not to over do it as I would not be able to take a potty break once things got started.  My other strategy included wearing a thin loose fitting muscle t-shirt with baggy shorts and Birkenstock sandals.  While waiting for the parade to start there was a lot of joking around about my unenviable task, but also assurances that everyone would be looking out for me due to the heat and lack of visibility once I donned the head piece.

As the last few minutes ticked down to start the parade, they helped me get the suit on and talked me into riding in the convertible instead of walking.  I sat on the back of the car with my feet resting on the back seat and was handed a large umbrella to keep the sun off of me.  The parade began to creep forward towards the starting point and I closed my eyes and bowed my head in a kind of meditative state to conserve my energy, not knowing what to expect or how well I'd tolerate the whole ordeal.  It was a moment to appreciate the surrealness of being inside the cavernous lion's head with sound muffled, hearing my own breathing,  and feeling the glide of the vehicle underneath me.  The driver looked back at me and tapped my leg, "How are you doing in there?"  I gave him a thumb's up and looked around to see that we were beginning to hit the area where people had begun to line the parade route.

I started waving and caught glimpses of small children looking directly at me with huge smiles on their faces, waving frantically.  I felt a kind of adrenaline rush and collapsed the umbrella to throw it onto the floorboard while swinging my legs over the door to catapult myself out and away from the car to clear my tail.  I ran to the edge of the street to high five the children and look into their laughing eyes at close range.  I walked, danced, and stutter-stepped the rest of the way in a kind of half-blind euphoria, trying to run back and forth to either side of the street to catch as many kids as I possibly could while the parade moved inexorably on.

At about the halfway point of the parade I became acutely aware of the reality that I was wearing a furry costume with gloves and an overly large hairy helmet while running around in the direct sun of a blistering hot day while on pavement.  I couldn't quite believe that I felt so comfortable and that the time was going by so fast.  The street had broadened and I was weaving in and out of the other Lion's Club members to get from one side of the street to the other.  Their smiles were as infectious as the kids lining the parade route and I could only imagine what I must have looked like in my playful lion personae.  I could tell they appreciated what I was doing for the club by drawing attention to the signs and banners which trumpeted our various philanthropic activities.  A friend of ours from the community who had three boys at street side later told me the lion was their favorite part of the parade.

***

Towards the end I began to feel some of the fatigue catching up with me and the wetness that had soaked into my clothes.  The hot air sitting inside the lion's head was stale and musty.  I saw one more family sitting in lawn chairs on a street corner with a small boy in their lap and I trotted over to give him a high five.  Walking back onto the street I found myself looking at a sculpture from our local Arts Center which had been in front of us throughout the parade route.  It was now even with me and the driver was outside of his car securing the sculpture to its trailer with straps.  I thought this was odd and so I rotated my head to look to the front of his car only to find a mostly empty street with a few vehicles from the parade dispersing in the distance.  I turned to look the opposite direction to find my group and there was no one there.  No one.  Nothing.  The parade had ended at least a block back from where I stood and as the Arts Center guy pulled away I was left totally alone on the street.

I was at a complete loss.  There was no more parade and I was standing on the street almost two miles from where I'd parked my car in a lion costume in ninety degree heat.  I wandered over to the sidewalk and looked around some more in a state of bewilderment and indecision.  I didn't want to peal off my suit right there where some kids might see.  Somehow I had the idea that the illusion of the lion must be maintained until I could go somewhere out of sight and take it off.  A small cinder block funeral home was the nearest building to me and it had a few trees beside it.  I absent-mindedly noted from the sign that it specialized in cremation services.  As if in a daze I made my way back to stand under the shade of a tree and began the process of taking off the lion costume.  I stuffed the body of it into the lion's head and headed back the direction the parade had come from to find my car.

While walking back I glanced up a side street and recognized the convertible sitting in a church parking lot with some of the Lion's Club members milling about, drinking ice water, and packing up to get ready to leave.  I walked up to join them and no one seemed to notice that I'd been gone.  It crossed my mind that I could have collapsed from heat stroke and no one would have been the wiser.  I had to ask if someone could give me a ride back to my car and it was quickly arranged.  On the way back the driver (who later went on to become club president) attempted to make some small talk, but I was still in a kind of existential shock.  I may have told him that we were new to the community and that I was originally from Indiana, but I don't remember anything much beyond that.  What I do remember is the feeling of being utterly alone and disconnected from the world.

***

In the coming weeks and months my work at the hospital grew to the point that I was only able to attend Monday meetings sporadically until I finally had to notify the president that I could no longer maintain my membership in the club.  He was very gracious and said that I was welcome to come back at any time or participate in any of their activities as I was able.  Somewhere deep down I felt like I'd let Kevin down and in my mind's eye I pictured him as that sad lion standing in the middle of an empty street on a hot day, half-blind and alone.

Never Judge a Book...

I'm not sure why it bugs me so much, but I really dislike when a classic of Science Fiction or Fantasy is made into a movie and then the book is re-released with a scene from the movie as the book cover.  I like to think of a book as a unified piece of art much like record albums used to be.  This mish-mash of book and movie seems to violate that idea/ideal.  Instead, I really enjoy when classics get re-released with cover art that is conceptualized in a new and creative way.  The books that come most readily to mind are those of Ray Bradbury which have had several re-imaginings over the years by a variety of artistic talents, many of whom have left some stamp of the times on them which I find fascinating.

This whole line of thought was sparked by finding a paperback copy of The Postman by David Brin yesterday at Half Price Books.  They were having a 20% off sale and when I saw the book's spine I knew that this was the one for me, a classic that had evaded me since it's debut in 1985.  My excitement quickly turned to disappointment  when I pulled the book off the shelf and found myself staring at Kevin Costner.  Reading the back cover I learned that "For the first time since Dances with Wolves, this Fall's blockbuster motion picture will be directed by and star Kevin Costner."  Egads.  I have no recollection of any such movie which is probably a good thing.

I'm seriously considering using a Sharpie to re-imagine the cover, as well as blacking out any reference to Kevin Costner.  This would not be much of a stretch for me as in the past few years I've started a new hobby of creating book covers from photos that remind me of particular books.  I'm repeatedly surprised by how much excitement this generates in my humdrum existence when the idea takes hold and I'm looking to find time to photoshop it into reality.  I've even created the cover for a novel that has not yet been written, but is biding its time in my subconscious, as well as for a poem. I imagine these creations are Walter Mitty-like moments for me, letting me pretend I am a person of some renown in the publishing world.

Epic is the new Awesome

It's an epic tale that I'm telling,
full of epic adventures
with epic peoples.
Peoples who are like us,
but unlike us in epic ways;
taller, shorter, faster, slower,
fatter, thinner, smarter, dumber,
and all with some slightly
distorted physiognomy,
like pointy ears, ie, epic.
And the epicness does not
stop with the peoples, but
encompasses their journeys
as well, to the highest peaks
and to the lowest caverns
that reek with evil putrescence,
lacking in the most basic of
pulchritudinousness,  a word
that can only be described as... epic.
They cover epic distances
and meet epic villains
who are really really ugly
and may even smell bad,
but are epically brilliant
in the devious kind of way
that trips them up in the end,
climaxing in a climactic ending
that can only be described as... epic.

When We were Holy

When we were holy
I was just a kid.

The preacher pranced
on the camp meeting stage
in a building so large it
resembled Noah's Ark
left upside down to dry.
Emotions came in waves,
washing over us as we
sat passively on long
benches of wooden slats,
like a multitude of life boats
bobbing on a troubled sea.
His voice rose and fell,
whispers and shouts,
a Bible flopped open
in his raised palm
like a dead bird.

When we were holy
a young man ran the aisles
leaping and whooping with abandon.
An old man shuffled along
shaking a hanky over his head,
his eyes closed and tears
streaming down his cheeks.
The women in long dresses,
hair up in buns or beehives,
fanned themselves furiously
in the late summer heat
while kids looked to escape
into the sticky night air
and make mischief among
a maze of one-roomed cottages,
their laughter stifled in the dark.

When we were holy
the power to see other's sins
was granted to us,
tell-tale signs to distinguish
sinner from saved.
We were not like them,
the Bible told us so.
We who with one prayer
had been magically transformed,
traveling to church
three times a week
secure in the knowledge
of our personal salvation,
even as our hearts
withered in our homes
hidden behind drapes of denial.

When we were holy
I was just a kid.



***

Voices

***
The wind brings children's voices
caught in the filter of leaves and
dropped into my lap under this tree,
like bruised and over ripe fruit.

They rot in a melancholic disposition,
remembering the powerlessness
of being small and frail amongst
a host of unscrupulous giants.

Vienna After Hours

It was supposed to be a day trip into Vienna from Bratislava by train, but it didn't quite work out that way.

I'd taken a bus from Paris to Bratislava the week previous to visit my best friend from college, Shane, who had moved there after graduation the year before.  He had hooked up with some other idealists from our school and was providing educational resources (read: English lessons) for local college-aged kids out of a couple of rooms at the YMCA (or "em-ka" as it was called locally).  I'd spent a week or so in London, then the same amount of time in Paris before realizing my limited money supply was dwindling at an alarming rate.  It was the summer of 1994 and Eastern Europe was only recently out from under Communism making it very much on the affordable side of things.  My plan was to flee there and regroup for a few weeks before any further travel plans were to be made.

My arrival at the Bratislava bus station was made memorable by an elderly babushka I passed on my way into the men's restroom.  As I stood using a urinal I  heard her enter the room and start rummaging in a closet about ten feet behind me.  This made me uncomfortable and so I finished my business quickly and headed for the exit.  I was immediately cut off from leaving by the babushka who now had a broomstick in one hand and the other extended towards me, palm facing upward.  She was saying something to me and I just looked at her in dumb surprise.  Thinking she might be mentally ill, I attempted to go around her.  She immediately cut me off from the exit and started yelling while poking her hand at me.  It dawned on me that she was very likely the janitor and that this is how she got paid, so I fished some coins out of my pocket and placed them in her hand one at a time until she was satisfied and let me pass.

So, the day trip.  Shane and I swept into Vienna on the early train planning to wander the city all day and catch the last train back in the evening.  The wandering part went according to plan.  I remember visiting St. Stephen's Cathedral, promenading through spacious parks , and posing with an imposing statue of Goethe out of feelings of guilt that "Faust" was the only assigned work in my college World Literature class that I had not read to the end.  I seem to recollect the devil was involved in a wager of some sort and a cat figured into it, but I'm not wholly sure about the cat part.  I may be conflating it with Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita."  I remember the buildings being old and tall, but not too tall, with carved stone facades.  I couldn't afford the pastries that Vienna is famous for and may have even found a McDonalds to eat at for lunch, fer shame.

So, the day progressed and the evening arrived with us making our way back to the train station only to find we'd missed the last train to Bratislava.  No subsequent accommodations were found to soften the blow.  Having been in similar circumstances on previous misadventures, I was a little miffed at Shane but not wholly undone.  I knew it was going to be a very long night with a fair bit of unpleasantness due to a chill in the air and no sleeping bags.  Not to mention the fact we'd spent the entire day walking through the city and now were sore and tired.

There were some other young international traveler-types milling about the station for a time and we took advantage of the opportunity to talk with them, sitting indian-style in a loose circle, bumming cigarettes from one another to pass the time.  The number of people and passer-throughs began to thin and eventually we were forced out of the station by security.  We found some benches in the back where the buses pull up and tried to get some sleep.  There were a few others with the same idea who appeared to be of the local homeless variety.  Just as I was starting to drift off I was tapped on the shoe by a baton.  Two uniformed men were waking everyone up and asking for tickets.  No ticket, no bench.  Shane and I gathered our things and slunk away, tired and dejected.

This was "wandering the city", part two.   By this time it was well past midnight and I had caught a second wind.  I told Shane to sleep and I would keep watch.  He found a patch of grass by some bushes beside the wrought iron fence of a large park and settled in to sleep.  I sat on a low stone wall that lined the sidewalk about twenty feet from Shane's prostrate form and pulled out a paperback to pass the time.  In those days I had a book as an almost constant companion.  These days I typically whip out the smart phone when I have unoccupied time.  Back then it was a book in a cargo pocket.  That night was almost twenty years ago to the day, but I'm nearly certain it was Dostoevsky's "The House of the Dead."  I guess reading about the privations of a Siberian prison gave me some perspective as I sat there shivering.

I don't know how long I was there reading under the street light before I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.  I glanced up and saw a dark figure coming down the sidewalk a good way's off and  headed my direction.  I chose to be nonchalant about it and just pretend to read until the person passed me by.  As he came closer I could tell he was moving at quite a clip and what appeared to be a black overcoat was flapping around him.  As he approached where I was sitting I could hear him muttering to himself.

He stopped directly in front of me and I found myself looking at his  black boots over the top of the book that lay open in my lap.  I looked up not knowing what to expect and saw a weathered man likely in his upper forties with a large scraggly looking beard.  He said something to me in German and I just gazed into his face, uncomprehending.  I then noticed the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.  I instinctively reached into my pocket, pulled out some matches, and struck one.  He cupped the flame with his large hands and lit his cigarette.  He said, "Danke" and then headed off once again into the night, leaving me with doubts that the incident had even occurred.    

When the horizon finally began to glow a pale pink, Shane and I headed back to the train station and he bought tickets for the next train to Bratislava which was not to arrive for another few hours.  Exhausted, we made our way back to the benches we'd been evicted from earlier and laid down to sleep.  I was once again awakened by a uniformed man tapping my foot with his baton.  I was so tired I didn't even open my eyes, but pointed in Shane's direction and said loudly, "Shane!  Show him our tickets!" and rolled back over and fell asleep.

The Divine Liturgy

"Blessed is the Kingdom..."
and the ship that is the
ark of salvation slips its
lines and embarks on a
timeless journey through
storm-tossed seas
of deep mystery and
translucent creatures
whose luminous eyes
frame mouths full of silence.
Incense rolls out over
the water and envelops
the candle-lit vessel
pulsing and floating
like a numinous cloud
on the eternal now.
Angels, winged and
terrible in their beauty,
circle the ship crying,
"Holy, holy, holy,
Lord of Sabaoth.
Heaven and earth
are full of Thy glory."
The Father's protection
and the Mother's embrace
are made palpably present
through the five senses,
a gentle jostling of living icons
in line for bread and wine.
The ship returns to the
shores of time and
the passengers disembark
wide-eyed and blinking,
cup of coffee soon in hand.

De Profundis

Floating on the surface,
surrounded by the detritus
of unbridled passions
and quiet indifference,
burned by sun and
buffeted by waves.

Even so,

there are moments
of moonlit uncertainty
when I feel the
call of the deep.

Breathing slows
and deepens in
anticipation of the
rare dive,
fear and awe,
a beckoning from
what lies below.

A kick splash
signals the descent
into utter darkness,
enveloped by the
stillness of the
mother's womb,
hearing the heartbeat
of the world,
feeling the brush
of impossible creatures
traversing unknowable spaces.

Until,

a bone-crushing
melancholy wells up,
my weakness
drawing me back
to the surface,
where I once more
find myself bobbing
amongst the litter of my life.

***

"Rainball" - a photo essay

The Heart's Eye

Beauty blooms 

full for 

the heart's eye* 

to see.

* ὁ νοῦς

A Gift from Dad

I'm driving home from work listening to Terry Gross interview singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier on the radio.  She sings "Another Train" while playing her guitar and as the chorus glides in on a wave of melancholy, something magical happens in my car on this lonely Ohio road. 

I'm surprised to hear my voice join in with a piercing tenor line that cuts through my heart like a honey-dipped knife.  It's like some kind of spiritual harmonic has welded our voices together, resonating inwardly and outwardly, bigger and fuller than it should be considering I'm using a falsetto voice to catch those high notes. 

It was my Dad who taught me this little bit of magic, the ability to hear the harmony lines to a song and add my voice to the weave.  It started with him inviting me to sing with him in the church choir in my early teens, standing beside him as he pointed out the tenor line and I tried to follow his lead until I could do it on my own. 

The other harmonic lines soon followed and I have added my voice to the likes of James Taylor, Neil Young, and Natalie Merchant, sometimes while washing the dishes and other times while driving my car.  I can think of few things more precious that my Dad could have given me in this short life, certainly not monetary wealth or other coarse offerings, but the gift of joy in the making of music.

"Another Train" by Mary Gauthier

My Son's Closet

My son's closet is as big as it needs to be,
full of books, toys and misplaced articles of clothing.
If one were to clear a space to sit and ponder,
closing the door with an expectant push,
it would expand to encompass
all that is worthwhile in this short life.
The darkness, a comforting presence,
surrounded by familiar objects infused with joy and laughter.
Time would skip along the surface of fond memories,
then sink into something deeper still.

Listening to Arvo Pärt's "Kanon Pokajanen"

***

When I pass,
time will no longer
have a hold on me.
My spirit will
find this place,
this circle of voices,
inhabit it 
and be transported
to where 
love is all in all.

***

Times Square

It's the antithesis of a monastery,
assaulting the eyes and ears,
trying to draw me out, but instead
forcing me to retreat into myself.

The music pumping out of the
sunglasses store is so deafening that
customers must yell to be heard.

Adults are wearing mismatched
superhero costumes that a precocious
three year old could see through
while tourists and ticket sellers
pair off in a sidewalk pas de deux.

Broadway billboards boast of
being the best in some particularity:
longest running, newest, a Tony
for this and a Tony for that with
hyperbole from the New York Post.

The smell of honey-roasted nuts
mix with cigarette smoke and
the grilled meat of street vendors.

It’s overwhelming and underwhelming

all at the same time.

Rust in Peace

***

Sometimes I tire
of driving this tank
peering out of
the periscope's
finite field of vision
turning this torso
lifting these limbs
these lead pipe legs
trudging through
too many muddy ruts
seeking solid ground
to gain traction
to move forward
through life's battles
hoping to find
a flowering field
to rust in peace.

***

Irish Pub

He sits with his back to me,
blue jacketed and tieless,
likely in his mid to upper fifties.
I see his face because of the
mirror at the back of the bar.
I can't help but notice how
slowly and deliberately he
reaches for his glass of beer,
as if he could miss it if he
is not careful and reach
past to where it is not. He
stares too long in the mirror.
He closes his eyes but a
slight wobble pops them open.
It's afternoon at an Irish Pub
in Midtown Manhattan.

Ghost Train

The F train wasn't running
due to a malfunction
and New Yorkers knew to
find a different mode
of transportation this
particular Sunday morning.
I am not a New Yorker
and the F train was my
only route to Liturgy on
the Lower East Side.
I stood by the tracks
at the 42nd street station
oblivious of my ignorance.
After 10 minutes the train
arrived and I boarded
without qualm or incident.
Emerging at 2nd Avenue
a man quickly bore down
on me to ask if the F train
was, in fact, running now.
I assured him that it carried
me to where we now stood.
After Liturgy the priest said
that many were missing
because the F train did not
get running until after 10am.
Having arrived at 8:45am
I couldn't help but think,
"What the F?"

Inviting Vikings

The Vikings came, but by invitation.  The peoples of what is now Northern Russian needed assistance to bring order from chaos and turned to their Nordic neighbors for help.  The ancient crumbling fortress of Izborsk stands as testament to that dark time.  It sits on a flat hilltop overlooking a long valley that runs into a lake fed by twelve springs that pour out of the side of a hill like mortal wounds. 

My time at Izborsk was part of a day trip from the Pskov Caves Holy Dormition Monastery where I'd been staying with my three traveling companions.  We had arrived by bus over roads that nearly jarred the teeth out of my head: three Russian seminarians, a monk novice, and me, a lost American.  Just inside the gaping hole that used to be the main gate sat a small Orthodox church with a graveyard.  The tombstones had distinctive Scandinavian  shapes, darkened and  worn by centuries of weather.  A nun carrying a basket of blackberries greeted us with a lovely smile, her face peeking through the opening of a once black head covering that had faded to gray. 

We dropped our backpacks in a simple one room house that she made available to us.  A thick blackberry preserve was offered and shared amongst us five weary pilgrims.  The sweet sticky mash renewed our vigor and brightened our spirits.  In the midst of our simple feast, one of our company suddenly jumped back in surprise and pointed at his backpack lying on the floor.  It was moving!  He poked at it with a stick as we all held our breath waiting to see what would happen next.  A curious kitten stuck its head out of the open flap and laughter poured out of us like soda from a shaken bottle.   

We then took a long hike down to the lake to see the "Spring of the Twelve Apostles" and passed through a large forested cemetery outside of the fortress walls.  At the entrance was a large flat-topped boulder with three concentric squares chiseled into its top.  I was following the lines and intersections with my finger while sitting on the boulder when an epiphany struck.  I knew what this strange configuration was!  I called my Russian friends over to see what I'd discovered.

I explained to them that it was an ancient Viking game known in England as "Nine Men's Morris", a game mentioned in one of Shakespeare's plays.  They were dully impressed. I knew of it from a program I had on my computer called "Games of the World" that included the Chinese game Go and the African game Mancala along with Nine Men's Morris.  Each game was prefaced by a multimedia history lesson that explained the game's origins.  I remembered it showing a photo of an excavated Viking ship that had been found with a Nine Men's Morris board carved into its deck.  And here in Northern Russia I'd found one on the top of a rock.

We continued on through the countryside until stopping at a spring bubbling up into a small pool under a tree.  We knelt and drank some of the water, water that was so cold it was like a slap in the face.  My seminarian friend informed me that this was a blessed spring, famous for curing those with maladies of the eye.  I immediately thought of my friend back home, Kevin, who suffered from poor vision due to having had retina blastoma as a child.  I felt compelled to get some of this water to him but was unsure of how to do it.  I asked the others if they had water bottles, but no one did.  They found a nearby farmer's house and explained the situation to the man living there.  He disappeared into his house and came out a few minutes later with a glass bottle and a cork.

The day was spent like that, exploring this obscure part of Russia with deep roots and great beauty.  The memories are only fragments now as they happened fifteen years ago over a twelve hour period and I am only just now writing them down.

                                

                                 

Being Kurt Vonnegut

I don't know doodley squat and here is the proof.  We have been staying at the Resident's Inn on the canal in Indianapolis at least once a year for the past several years when we are in town.  We were there just last week for part of Elias's Spring Break, as a matter of fact.  On our first full day there we visited the zoo, took in the dolphin show, and drove around to other familiar places from when we used to live there before kids.  Upon our return to the hotel we swung into the back parking lot entrance off of Senate Avenue, but not before Jennifer said rather nonchalantly, "Hey, there's the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library."

"What did you say?" I asked, trying to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

"The window of the building we just passed read: Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library."

It seemed too good to be true.  Really?  Something like that right under our noses and I never knew it was there?  I quickly parked and Elias and I ran across the parking lot, skipping around the corner acting silly.  And there it was!  I was positively giddy.  It seemed too much to hope that it would be open on a Saturday, but the door was unlocked and we stepped in expecting the unexpected, though in retrospect I do not know how unexpected it could have been considering the name of the place was pretty much self-explanatory.

An exceedingly pleasant lady greeted us and a quick glance around revealed we were the only ones there.  She explained what the museum was all about and showed us around the smallish interior that included multimedia presentations, artwork by Kurt, his typewriter that he used in the 70's (under glass), a life-sized replica of his writing study, and other paraphernalia associated with his life.  I shared with her that I was currently reading Breakfast of Champions which I thought was queer considering it had been many years since I'd last picked up any Vonnegut, though I had read a memoir by his son, Mark Vonnegut, a few years back.  His son is a pediatrician and suffers from Bipolar Disorder.  The book is "Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So", probably the most brilliant title I've ever come across, but I digress.

She shared about her connection to Kurt Vonnegut which was through her uncle who was Kurt's best friend and best man at his wedding.  I shared about my recent efforts at writing with an eventual goal of banging out a novel (likely after the kids have left home and arthritis has set in).  She persuaded me to sit in Kurt's chair in his replica room and I persuaded her to capture the moment with my phone.  I was hoping that his writerly blessing might fall on me in that moment as my posterior touched the padded vinyl seat and I leaned forward to place my fingers on the typewriter keys.

The next day we had some more downtime and Elias asked to return to the museum.  It was once again open and a younger man was now running the place.  He explained to us that the typewriter I'd posed with the day before was not only functional, but had paper in it for people to type whatever they'd like which would then be tweeted on their twitter, and so on and so forth.  I pulled up a Vonnegut-pertinent Facebook status on my phone that I'd posted only a week or two prior and clacked it onto the white paper, "Kurt Vonnegut has just revealed to me that I am an unwavering band of light and for that I am grateful."  It was a reference to something I'd read in Breakfast of Champions.  Elias was fascinated by the whole typewriter *clack-clack-clack-zing* thing.

Before we left the museum that final time I visited the small gift shop.  I wanted to purchase everything available to include a Kurt Vonnegut doll, but I didn't want to offend Kurt's spirit which had so sardonically skewered American consumerism, so I settled for a black baseball cap with the museum's logo on it.