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.

I am writing now

For twenty seven years, since the age of eighteen, I have been walking along, not looking back, in order to deal with a certain amount of instability, knowing I will not be staying put for long.  I have now been living in one place for five years this Spring, which is the longest I've lived anywhere since I left home for college.

I am writing now and it is as if I've finally found the courage to look back, from a more stable place, a slightly higher place, that allows me to see much of what has come before.  It is a wildly varied terrain with little continuity, though I believe there is a unifying force holding it together, maybe the sky above or some deep underground river.

It seems that I have lived long enough to finally be able to see these things and how they relate to who I am.  My traveling companion of fifteen years has been an invaluable part of this process.  Like a powerful magnifying lens, she has helped bring difficult things into focus.  Some glimpses give weight to wonder while others fill me with a kind of dismal despair.

But if I can begin to try and make sense of it all, maybe I can change the terrain that is to come, making it something better, something higher, something deeper, something richer and more full of life as a lead-in to the world to come.

The Curve

It's a white balloon that floats from place to place through time and space.  The string remains firmly tied to my corporeal self, but my memory goes where it will, buoyed by the lightness of immaterial thoughts.  At present there is a name scrawled in blue marker on the balloon, "Angela."  She is my older sister by two years, two years that might as well have been twenty years in terms of maturity when we were growing up.  The balloon with her name on it descends on a hospital in Southern Indiana and winds its way through well lit corridors to find a particular exam room.  A doctor is entering that room and the balloon bobs down under the door frame brushing his crew cut as he shuts the door behind him.

She is twelve, maybe thirteen, wearing pants and a hospital gown partially open in the back.  I am ten, maybe eleven, and I am there with her and my mother listening to the doctor explain what concerns him.  He has my sister bend over while standing so that her arms dangle below her.  The gown is tied at the bottom and her bare back rounds up out of it like a smooth-shelled sea turtle.  It makes me a little uncomfortable, but things like this are possible in a doctor's office where body parts take on a peculiar significance.

He uncaps a blue ink pen and does something remarkable. Starting at her neck he draws a line on her skin straight down her spine, only it doesn't quite work out that way.  Somewhere around the top of her shoulder blades the pen travels out and away from the center a good little ways before eventually making its way back to center, crossing the line again slightly, and then back to the middle.  It is a visible gesture so that even I understand that something is not as it should be.  As it soaks in, the friction that exists between the siblings doesn't seem quite so tangible as it did just a moment ago.  The balloon floats out through an open window and heads South, forward into the future a bit, drawn on by a stream of thoughts and emotions.  

She has moved on to Louisville, an hour or two from home, to stay at Kosair Children's hospital, by herself, off and on for weeks at a time, for an entire year.  It is an old and sprawling building, built at a time when some thought was given to aesthetics and not just pure practicality.  From a ten year old's perspective it appears to be a giant castle with wide verandas,  stonework, wooden beams, and sharply angled eaves.  As an adult I would recognize it as resembling a very large Swiss chalet.  The front grounds are expanses of grass dotted with towering trees.  I flew a kite on those lawns, played tag, and even set off fireworks with a cousin who came along with us on the Fourth of July that year.  I see myself crawl under a pine tree and hide on a soft bed of needles.

The balloon floats through the front doors and bounces along the high ceilings.  Below are children wearing contraptions on their arms, legs, or torsos, some shuffling along with the help of crutches and others in wheelchairs.  It is a place unto itself, where things have gone terribly wrong and need to be made right. The balloon finds my sister lying in a hospital bed rigged up to what appears to be some kind of medieval torture device. Surrounding her ankles are leather straps connected to a pulley at the foot of the bed off of which hang weights dangling in space.  Around her head and under her chin are more leather straps connected to more weights hanging off the back of the bed.  She is being stretched, a week at a time, and body-casted intermittently throughout the course of a year.

When she is able to be free of these constraints she joins us on a second story veranda where I see myself running with a large soap-saturated ring making elongated bubbles.  The balloon enters the ring and makes its way down the bubble's interior.  Floating down this thin walled tube it passes my father, my mother, my four year old sister, and Angela, all comically distorted through the warped surface.  I feel it pop and watch tiny droplets spatter over my freckled face.

She has a roommate named Wendy, like in Peter Pan.  They pass the time sharing stories while staring at the ceiling, strapped as they are, only able to see the other through the corner of the eye.  Their chins are always chafed and red from the pressure of the straps.  These markings leave my young self with a sense of disquiet tinged with awe.  It is a concrete sign of what my immature brain cannot really even imagine and makes me shudder even now thinking about it.  The balloon hovers over Wendy's bed as she is telling a story, a story of when Baryshnikov was in Louisville for a performance and she acquired a beer bottle that he'd drunk from, fished from a trashcan if I remember correctly.  She treasured it as a sacred souvenir, having touched the lips of one of the greatest ballet dancers of all time.  She herself went on to become one of the greats in dance, this preadolescent girl who is better known today as the recently retired Wendy Whelan.

The balloon floats forward in time to a scene in my early married years as a Medical Student before kids have come into the picture.  My young wife and I are watching a program on PBS.  I am intrigued because it includes jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis in the process of creating music in collaboration with a choreographer. I am a lover of jazz music; my Father and I both played trumpet.  My wife is intrigued with the dancer because she had danced when she was younger and knew this particular ballerina from the dance magazines she had consumed as a teenager.  The dancer on the TV screen with Wynton Marsalis is Wendy, though I don't make the connection until some time later.

Time flashes forward again and now I see myself as a young psychiatrist at a conference in downtown Louisville.  Nearby is Kosair Children's Hospital and out of curiosity I wander down the street and into the front lobby.  It has long since moved out of its old building on the outskirts of town and instead inhabits this glass and steel structure amongst other glass and steel structures.  Inside there are brightly colored banners and large stuffed animals to make it more child friendly.  The balloon fits right in, but there is not a single blade of grass or even a solitary tree here. Practicality has won out.  This is a place to fix the human machine, a realization that makes me feel blue.

The balloon labeled "Angela" finds its way back to me sitting here at the dining room table typing these words, back curved over the keyboard, touched by what I've seen, finding it hard to believe I was ever the age my son is now or that my sister had to go through such a thing as a young girl.  Life threw her a curve, as it were.  I should call her.