The Star Wars Nutcracker

I am at the Ohio Theatre in downtown Columbus
with wife and kids in tow to see the Nutcracker.
The lights fall and the curtain lifts to reveal a party.
I feel the warmth of my sweater weighing me down
as Herr Drosselmeyer makes a one-eyed introduction
and casts a hypnotic spell over my weary bones.
I feel Clara's tug into the dark world of dreams and
as the triangular tree grows to gargantuan size it
transforms into a Star Destroyer cruising overhead.
Mice in white helmets scurry from the fireplace which
has transformed into the ramp of a troop transporter.
Jedi Nutcrackers meet them in choreographed lines,
drawing swords that glow and crackle with a blue fire,
their brown hooded robes flitting and fluttering like fairies.
A rhonchus rat twice the size of the others and fully
shrouded in black descends the ramp ominously and...
"Dad!  Wake up, you're missing the Sugar Plum Fairy!"
It is my daughter in the seat next to mine, her eyes
narrowed and accusing, but I am just a tired old man.


***

One Thing Needful

Seeking the solid ground
of my own understanding,
only to find it is illusory,
that it shifts and shakes,
an earthquake of seen
and unseen realities interacting
in ways beyond my experience
or poor comprehension.

It forces into my awareness
that I am weak and ignorant,
often seeking the wrong things
in the guise of good intents,
which I can either accept
with humility or bitter denial,
the one thing needful embraced
or left woefully unattended.


***

The Cell

The cell was almost cozy,
the bed narrow, but soft.
He had made a bookshelf
of the high window ledge and
learned to read by the
light of a bare yellow bulb.
It was quiet here, noiseless
except for the drip of water
from a battered corner sink.
He slept during the day to
avoid the slanting sunlight
that reminded him of the
time he walked among men,
making decisions, supporting
various dependencies, and
reaping consequences like
the whirlwind in his Book.
It was the song of a bird
that disrupted his solitude,
fluttering at his barred window,
coming and going as it pleased.
It visited him in his dreams
and its sweet song echoed in
the empty chambers of his heart.
At the point it became unbearable
he grasped the bars of his door
and gave a tug, finding
that it offered no resistance.

***

Painting Christmas Ornaments

The tree is up and we have completely covered it in ornaments with no room for garland or tinsel.  Each ornament brings with it a strong flow of memories: a time, a place, a feeling.  It tells the story of my little family and provides a framework for those memories.

***

My wife introduced me to the tradition of painting Christmas ornaments early in our marriage.  It is something her mother did when Jennifer was a kid.  After Thanksgiving we would head over to Michaels or Hobby Lobby to acquire that year's supply of unpainted ornaments and new brushes/paint.  In Indianapolis she used the dining room table to set up shop and even got me to paint my first ornament which was a lighthouse.  I concentrated all of my creative energies into that one ornament night after night while Jennifer worked through several others of differing complexity.  It was great stress relief from the pressures of Medical School and gave us time to talk in our cozy apartment while Christmas music played in the background.

In Washington DC, our rental house had a knotty pine basement with a matching bar that became our Christmas ornament painting headquarters.  Once again, I worked on my one ornament while Jennifer cranked out several others.  That year I painted a train in memory of my Grandpa who we called "Poppy."  He absolutely loved trains and had rode the rails as a young man during the Great Depression.  He had several large picture books of trains, record albums of train sounds, framed pictures of trains, and for a time he had a large train set that spanned his living room.  I signed that ornament "Ol' Roy" which was his given name.

These days Jennifer has quite the ornament painting operation going.  There are now special craft bags to hold and organize all of the paints and supplies as well as clear plastic containers with dividers to hold the unpainted ornaments she has accumulated.  My participation stalled five years ago, the Christmas prior to Anya's birth.  The last ornament I painted was a collaborative effort that Elias and I worked on when he was five.  It was an airplane.  He painted each body section a different color which I cleaned up and added to.  The past two years it has been mostly a mother-daughter thing with Jennifer and Anya, but the tradition continues and I imagine Elias and I will be sucked back into it in future Christmases.



***

The Stubborn Astronaught

When the earth opened up 

to swallow him whole

he refused to fall,

a stubborn astronaught 

floating over the abyss

yawning below his feet.

He spun once, then twice,

head over heels

in determined defiance

unsure of how long

he could keep it up,

not caring, yet not wanting

to give into despair

hanging in the air

for a moment that might 

just last a lifetime.

***

Prayer Contra Nightmares

Demon King of the Dog Clowns
do not visit us in our bed

Necromancer of Nightmare Towns
do not visit us, dead or undead

Deep Dreamer of Hell Hounds
visit those who annoy us instead

instead, instead, instead, amen

***

Hiding from the War

I hid from the war
behind the walls
of an Army compound
in Northern Iraq,
hearing occasional gunfire,
explosions, and
the constant drone
of gas-powered generators.

I hid from the war
in our clinic compound
shooting hoops in the
shrapnel-scarred courtyard
or throwing the football
with a volunteered
soldier who had
better things to do.

I hid from the war
in my sand-bagged cell,
lost in my laptop
photoshopping images
and writing poems
to feel connected
to my son turning two
six thousand miles away.

I hid from the war
singing karaoke on a couch
in the Commander's office
laughing as a car bomb
detonated in the distance
and the black hawks
lifted from the tarmac
to retrieve what was left.

I hid from the war
until called to see a detainee
standing in his underwear
on an ice-cold concrete slab,
crying and shivering,
while I stood before him
in insulated boots and
wrapped in layers of warmth

and I could no longer hide.


***

When the Storm Comes

When the storm comes,
the head becomes a cave
in which to hide from danger.

When the storm comes,
the world closes off and
we feed ourselves on anger.

When the storm comes,
love grows cold and
all becomes a stranger.

When the storm comes,
Wisdom is a homeless child
who cries and we harangue her.



***

The Murderer

He was a murderer from the beginning, 

and he will kill your body and soul if he can.  

Do not partner with him or those with him.

Resist in whatever way you can: with humility, 

with patience, and most importantly with love.

A selfless love achieved only through action,

not always feeling it, but always doing it.

Your strength will grow, become death-defying, 

thoroughly destroying the work of him who 

was a murderer from the beginning.

***

baby ate him like a man

We visited our optometrist's office this weekend where there is a children's nook full of books and toys.  Anya and Elias decided to occupy themselves with building a castle out of blocks, working from opposite sides.  This kind of sibling simpatico is more rare than I'd like it to be, but an absolute joy to my heart when it occurs.

While they placed block on block I squeezed past them and into the nook.  I discovered a bookshelf that was hidden around the corner that is not visible from the waiting room proper.  On a middle shelf was an old weathered set of Childcraft books with an "annual" from 1973.  This placed the collection squarely in my early childhood and as I read the titles I felt the surreal sensation of time bending in my brain.

I pulled out a volume or two and flipped through the pages.  The images were vaguely familiar, but did not elicit any strong feelings.  Then I spied the volume "Poems & Rhymes" and I felt my heart skip a beat.  Every image on every page brought on a torrent of memories.  This was the volume that I'd spent the most time going through as a rambunctious boy.  It had held my attention and taught me the traditional poems and rhymes of youth.

One picture in particular has remained crystal clear in my memory since that time in the early seventies.  It was the Fishy-Fishy in the Brook poem.  It fascinated me because it was a real picture taken with a camera, not a flat illustration.  I wasn't sure how it had been made which was part of the fascination.  It had reminded me  of claymation films, like "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" that was on TV every winter.

In the late eighties I was a student at Indiana Wesleyan University and took a World Literature class with Mary Brown.  I was an avid reader and this class felt more like a fun college interlude than a course requirement.  Some of my classmates would brag about how little they'd read of the assigned literature which for me was like having a gourmet meal set before you and
thinking it was cool that you'd only eaten a few peas from the plate.

That first day of class Prof Brown had a handful of cutout goldfish that she was giving out as rewards for students being able to finish a poem/rhyme/lyric that was on the theme of "fish."  I secured my first fish by finishing a line from Dan Fogelberg's song "Longer."  A few fish awards later she recited the first half of Fishy-Fishy in the Brook.  I think mine was the only hand to go up for this one and that image from the Childcraft book came vividly to mind as I finished the line  "...Mommy fried him in a pan, and baby ate him like a man."

***

The Autumn Years

In the Autumn years

full of hopes and fears

when the heart grows bold

with the ease of tears.

The Tower

Solar Sam beamed in the full length mirror, turning left then right to capture his appearance from different angles.  He was wearing a linen suit and panama hat found in the empty clothing store in which he stood.  His long unkempt beard was gone, replaced by a goatee and mustache framed by smooth cheeks.  His hair flowed over his shoulders, clean and wavy.

It had been at least a few weeks since the tower had appeared and the city had emptied of its inhabitants.  He had hidden himself away in a cardboard recycling bin until the need for food and water forced him to return to the streets he knew so well, streets which now felt alien to him in their near absolute silence.

He had set himself up in a nice high-rise apartment with a view of the city that had not been available to him before.  A bird's eye view required money, to live high or fly.  The water and electricity still worked, though he was not sure how much longer that would be the case.  The first thing he'd done was eat his fill from the refrigerator, then take a shower and shave.  He could not remember the last time he'd been able to do these things in his own space without other people around.  A keen sense of wariness borne of equal parts street smarts and paranoia had assured that he remain unshowered and unshaved for long periods of time.

The tower sat not far off with its bulbous head visible from nearly every room, craning its neck to peek through his windows.  He avoided those rooms as best he could.

Back at the apartment in his new duds he popped a cork from a wine bottle and took a swig.  A voice addressed him, "You are welcome."  He recognized the voice and did not bother to look around.  When the tower had appeared he'd headed for the bin without returning to the homeless shelter where all his worldly possessions resided in a canvas bag.  His medications had been in that bag and after a two-week lull the voices had returned right on cue.

***

The elevator waited patiently for Solar Sam.  It had no one to call it elsewhere and so, like an obedient dog, it opened to him immediately when he pushed the button.  As the doors slid open he heard music, "Blinded by the light, revved up like a Deuce, another runner in the night..."  He knew it was not his voices because those confounded things never sang to him.  It was a catchy tune and he found himself smiling for the first time in forever.  It reminded him of his childhood before mental illness had insinuated itself into his life.

He was well liked and well known in the homeless community of this city, but he never felt comfortable with this kind of familiarity if not pseudo-fame.  Keeping a positive outlook was a constant struggle, but it was an effort he felt kept him from the precipice of self-destructive thoughts.  He'd lost too many friends on the street to overdoses, some intentional and some not.   His struggle to connect and ease the suffering of others when he could was a rare attribute among those who tended to be self-consumed and self-medicated in their misery.  He suspected this was not a problem confined to street people.

The elevator door opened to reveal a woman facing him just a few feet away.  She was wearing clothing that was multicolored, layered and raggedy, her hair long and tangled.  Her bony fingers were covered with gaudy rings which she waved from her elbow like a metronome, her cracked face drawn up in a smile.

"Hey Solar Sam, you're lookin' mighty spiffy."

***

"Oh, hey Mary."  He looked around to see if there might be others, suddenly feeling silly in his clothes.  He took off his hat and fiddled with the brim, clearing his throat, "How have you been?"

"Oh, you know, wandering the streets and lookin' for trouble."

"That's good.  You always know how to find trouble, Mary."  He forced a smile.

It was a bit shocking to see another human being.  If he were honest with himself, he had grown to enjoy his solitude and Mary's appearance was a bit of an irritant.

"How you been holding up?" he asked.  He knew this would open the door for her to bury him in an avalanche of words, but he could not do otherwise.

"Have you visited the tower, Sam?"  She paused long enough to take in a quick breath and as he started to answer, she started talking again before a sound could escape his mouth.

"Mercy me, Sam.  That thing is huge.  Where did it come from?  I was in the park feeding my squirrels when it felt like a wall of wind hit me and there it was!  Next thing I know, the squirrels are gone, the people are gone, and I'm left alone starin' up at this thing and gettin' a crick in my neck."

Sam remembered where he'd been when the tower appeared.  He'd been on the third floor of an abandoned warehouse polishing off a fifth of gin in front of a window of mostly broken panes reaching almost from floor to ceiling.  He'd crumpled a large cardboard box to function as his recliner with a view of the city's skyline.  The skyscrapers formed a dark and jagged line as the sun rose behind them, painting lovely shades of pink over scattered clouds.

And then, there it was, a black spike dominating the scene.  It was half again as tall as the tallest building.  He remembered rubbing his eyes vigorously, sure that it was just an artifact of bleariness and alcohol.  It did not go away.  He stumbled up off of the crumpled box and staggered to the window where he stood swaying.  He felt his insides quivering as tears began streaming from his eyes and a pool of urine formed around his feet...

"Where'd you go Sam?  I lost you there for a second."

"I'm sorry Mary, but I need to be alone."  He walked past her and exited the building without looking back.  On the street, he tried to avoid looking in the direction of the tower but then the voice came again, "You are welcome."

***

His dad had been a tall beanpole-of-a-man with a bulbous nose that was too red and too puffy from too much alcohol.  It was rare for his dad to be at home when Sam was awake, but when he was he sat alone in the basement watching a small TV set attached to a wire that snaked up out of the window well, climbed the side of the chimney, and terminated in the base of a TV antenna on the roof tottering in its loose bracket.  His mom warned him not to go down there when his dad had been drinking, which was most of the time.  He typically heeded her warning but that particular night he had heard him laugh.  He imagined the sound was a sign of good will if not a good mood.  His dad was happy about something and he wanted to share in that.

He quietly made his way down the stairs and stopped halfway, peering into the flickering darkness.  "Dad?"

"Yeah, wadya want?" came a voice like a surly dog snapping at his heals.

He was afraid he'd missed his moment.  "Uh, how was your day?"

The vertical hold became unstuck and the picture on the TV began to cycle upwards.  He saw his Dad lean forward to whack the side of the TV and nearly fall out of his chair, "Goddammit!"  The enraged man who had been laughing only minutes before tromped up the stairs holding onto the handrail and passed over the boy as if he were not there.  He jumped up and followed the swearing and swaying man outside and watched him sit a ladder against the side of the house and make his way up to the antenna.

He was afraid his dad would fall and turned to go get his mom.  As he rounded the corner of the house, he heard one final loud curse, a moment of stillness, and then a sick thud.  He ran back around the corner and saw his dad lying on the ground, head tilted at an odd angle.  Above him the antenna dangled from the side of the house as a soft rain began to fall.  The frightened boy did something that he'd never done before.  He grabbed his Dad and rolled him over into an awkward embrace.  The body offered no resistance.

***

He felt a sort of emotional imperative compelling him to walk in the direction of the tower.  He responded by taking a wide circular route several blocks away,  moving in one block at a time with each completion of a circle.  In this way, he spiraled in little by little over the course of the day until, exhausted and foot sore, he stood at the base of the tower.

He faced a side of the tower that had not been visible from his apartment.  Its immensity could hardly be taken in at this close range.  A square opening the size of a garage door revealed a dark hollow interior.  Above it a translucent strip the width of the door ran up the side of the tower, terminating in the rounded structure near the top.  It was the golden hour and the light from the sinking sun shimmered up and down its length giving the appearance of a living thing.

Solar Sam approached the door and stood just outside its frame.  From this closer vantage point, he could see that the scintillating strip was actually three dimensional with only one side visible to the outside.  The bottom side formed the ceiling of the room.  It too was translucent and the experience was like peering up from the depths of the ocean to the sparkling sun somewhere above.  He suddenly felt overwhelmed with it all and dropped his eyes to watch the rainbow of refracted light play on the grass at his feet, unsure of what to do next.  The voice came again, this time warmer and more resonant, echoing in the cube-shaped room, "You are welcome."

He stepped into the room and the world became fire.

***

Mary was watching Sam's progress from a distance, a little hurt that he'd blown her off.  It was unlike him to be so abrupt.  With so few people around she'd even entertained fantasies that they would shack up like Adam and Eve in the Garden, granted that they avoided the Tree of Knowledge that had been planted so unceremoniously in the middle of their city.  She hadn't figured on him entering the tower as part of the plan.  These thoughts evaporated when she witnessed him step inside the large opening.

His linen suit immediately began to glow and flutter, his hair flying up about his head.  Tendrils of light began to peel off of him and rise into the column above.  Mary saw them ascend in a playful dance, like leaves blown up a tree trunk by a burst of wind.  Sam appeared to be unraveling and within seconds, he was no longer standing in the space under the tower.  The leaves of light swirled their way to the top of the tower and when the last one had disappeared the strip went dark and opaque.


***

Solar Sam had either lost consciousness or gained too much of it to make sense of the ascent.  He found himself standing in a room with a high domed ceiling encircled by windows looking out over the city far below.  He was naked but not naked.  A tall man also naked but not naked was waiting for him.  The man stepped forward and Sam wondered at how impossibly tall he was.  He felt small, like a child again.  The man leaned down and pulled him into an embrace which he did not resist.

"I've missed you, Sam."

"I've missed you too, Dad."

***

The jagged green line spiked and then flattened out on the ICU monitor setting off a melancholy drone.  The man with the unkempt beard and sunburned face had been brought to the ER of this inner city hospital two weeks ago, but the damage done by the fall had proven irreparable.  Mary had been his only visitor and she was there when they pulled the life support.

She pulled her shawl up over her head and held it in place under her chin, stroking his matted hair and beard with her free hand.  "Such a lovely, lonely soul," she whispered.  "Go on home, my friend.  Go on home."

The Mermaid

I hear a mermaid and
a mermaid hears me.
She tells me her secrets
of the deep blue sea.
I tell her of my life with
a brother and a dog.
My Daddy takes a picture
and puts it on his blog.


***

to live is to love

An illusion
of endless
time in the
corporal self.

A delusion of
disconnection
from those with
you in hell.

Such a grace
for the body
to weaken
and crumble.

To know that
to live is
to love and
be humble.


***

I'm Just a Poor Boy

I remember him as an awkward elementary school kid with buggy eyes and a slack face that quickly corrected when he smiled.  It was 1980 and I was a sixth grader helping the younger kids as a "Reading Buddy."  He struck me as a person moving in slow motion, encased in a kind of physical and mental molasses.  I felt something akin to pity, seeing his vulnerability and the reluctance of others to engage him.  He lived on 2nd Street which ran North-South for the entire length of our small town of two thousand people.  My neighborhood was at the Southern most end and the High School was at the Northern most end.  It was the perfect conduit for my bicycle explorations, running parallel to Highway 37 which cut the town in half as it connected us to towns above and below in the Southern half of Indiana.

I would pass his house on the way to Park's Grocery where I'd exchange an empty pop bottle or two for dimes to buy a sour sucker or multicolored Sprees sealed in a small paper packet.  These were Sprees the size of peas, before they made them larger and packed them in paper tubes.  He and his sister would be playing in their yard, dirty, dog-like, smudged and subservient.  His face would light up when I passed by and he'd wave enthusiastically with a wide goofy grin.  I even stopped once out of curiosity and made the connection that he'd been my Reading Buddy once, in case he'd forgotten.  His Mom must have offered me a drink because I remember stepping into their house and wondering at its disarray, its smell of smoke and sour body odor, incredulous that people lived this way.

Before we moved away from that small town my family attended some kind of community service at one of the local churches.  It was part of our local festival that was going on at the time.  His family was there, to include his Dad whom I'd seldom seen.  He was wearing a set of ill-fitting Army Greens with a few ribbons on the chest that must have been a left over from military service, hair slicked over and shiny.  I recognized that it was likely the only suit that he owned and was brought out for these kinds of occasions, when he needed to present himself with a bit of dignity.  His son was there with his lazy smile and lanky limbs now that a few years had passed.  They were a mystery to me, poor in a way that my young mind could not quite grasp or understand.

Punctured

So much beauty fills the earth
but all of it tinged by sadness
as if it needs to puncture the
heart to let out all the badness.


***

two hats

I wear two hats,
no, really
I wear two hats.
They are both
in my work bag,
one grey and
one olive drab.
They're the poofy
kind with a bill,
maybe Scottish
in origin and design,
acquired at a hat shop
in Annapolis, Maryland,
one for me and
one for my son.
He no longer
wears his hat,
so I stole it.
The colors match
every piece of clothing
in my wardrobe.
I've always loved
hats, but even moreso
now that my hair
is on the way out.
They make me
feel older, adult-like,
covering up the
vulnerabilities of
childhood buried
deep inside.



***

No Matter What

How many times has he tried to annoy me,

a poke, a punch, a negative answer to a 

positive question.  He needs to know I love

him no matter what, even after all the yelling

and threatening that ends in the ill advised

epithet.  Gawd, why am I such an idiot?  I 

can't help but think that he deserves better,

some ideal parent somewhere who sees

him more clearly, who loves him more

dearly, this boy of ten for whom I would

suffer any insult, any degradation, any 

slight to see him fly higher, freer, stronger.  

***

The Eye of Jupiter

Who could find fault with their mission
aboard The Beam, lights playing off the
surface of its long cylindrical shape, as
it approached the swirling eye of Jupiter?
From orbit they launched a small probe
known as "The Mote" to scan for a
suitable landing site in which The Beam
could be safely lodged, not realizing
that it was all simply part of an elaborate
biblical allusion they had been judged
worthy to act out on a cosmic scale,
puppets of a pseudo-delusional poet.


***

The Long Bike Ride

This was cut out of "Sleepless in Seoul" because it did not involve insomnia or being homeless in the city.  It is simply a memory that fell out while writing about my time there.

***

Probably the craziest thing I did during this time of transition between tours in Korea was to decide I wanted to ride my bicycle from the small town of Dongducheon to Seoul.  It was a nutty idea.  I didn't even know how to get there other than to take the main road south and hope that I eventually ran into Seoul.  I had no idea how long it would take so I started early on a Saturday morning to give me as much time as possible.  These were pre-Google days where you either had a paper map or you had nothing.  I had nothing but a bike and my (dim) wits.

I alternated between riding on the road and riding on a sidewalk, if one was available.  I got more than a few angry honks and almost clipped someone stepping off of a bus at some point.  Probably the scariest moment was when I was getting closer to the city, after having peddled hard for at least two hours, and a bus had stopped in front of me to let people off.  Because of the near-clipping incident I decided to go around it on the traffic side.  As I started to pass it, it began moving again and accelerating.  At the same time another bus rolled up along side it so that I was sandwiched between the two.  It was like navigating a narrow gap between two sheer rock faces, but with the rock walls moving!  My heart was pounding and I felt the adrenalin begin to flow, supercharging my legs.  I stood up on the pedals and began pumping for all I was worth, gaining enough speed to pop out from between them and continuing to accelerate until I was clear to get back to the side of the road and then up onto the sidewalk.

I eventually made it deep into what I recognized as a very large city and my suspicions that I'd found Seoul were confirmed when I spotted the Seoul Tower perched on top of Namsan (South Mountain).  This mountain sits at the heart of Seoul and the main American Army base in Korea (Yongsan) is just south of it.  Now I had to figure out how to get around it so I could secure my bike at the Army base and navigate on to a friend's house using the subway.  I saw a Korean man standing on the corner with a shopping bag in his hand and so I stopped to ask directions.  He looked at me with a somewhat bewildered expression before saying anything.  I assumed my Korean was very poor and that he had no idea what I'd just asked.  Then, with absolutely no accent, he said, "I don't know.  I'm from California."  Twelve million Koreans to ask and I picked the one from California.

Now I had to decide which side of the mountain I would try and go around to get to Yongsan.  I followed a major road straight towards the mountain and ended up going through a very long tunnel that actually went under the mountain.  At one point there was a long straight stretch that must have been tilted downward, but with no visual reference point it simply looked flat.  There were no cars and I let go of my handlebars, sat up straight on my seat, and stretched my arms out to my side with eyes closed.  I was flying along without peddling, seemingly propelled by mysterious forces in the belly of the mountain.

***

I eventually met my friend at his apartment.  He was an engineer that had visited Shalom House on occasion to practice his English, though he lived with his wife and two kids in Seoul.  When I arrived I was soaked through with sweat and smelled strongly of body odor.  I explained to him that I'd biked from Dongducheon which he couldn't quite get his head around.  He wanted to take me and the kids to Lotte World for the afternoon which is a gargantuan amusement park housed inside a massive building in the southern part of Seoul.  We decided I should take a shower first and he loaned me a t-shirt and shorts.

Lotte World is hard to describe in its immensity.  It bills itself as the world's largest indoor theme park which has the stamp of approval of the Guinness Book of World Records.  On the bottom floor is an oval ice skating rink that is open to the glass roof that spans nearly the entire length and width of the roof about one hundred feet above it.  The third floor includes the theme park which surrounds the rink and looks down into it.  Off and on throughout the day a full on parade makes its away around a wide oval track.  There are floats, people dressed as Korean cartoon characters, and a marching band made up of prancing young ladies in brightly colored band uniforms.

At some point we were standing in line for a particular ride and a small group of non-Korean men were talking boisterously amongst themselves twenty feet or so further up the line.  They stood out because it is rare to see foreigners in this part of the city.  There is also the reality that Koreans never talk that loud in public or draw attention to themselves in that way.  I don't doubt this group of men had been drinking and one of them caught sight of me.  He may have called out "Hey mate!" or used some other outlandish greeting in an accent that I couldn't quite place, though I thought it might be Australian.  As it turns out, they were New Zealanders on a business trip.

We engaged in some loud and light hearted banter as if the people standing between us did not exist.  My Korean friend was amused by the whole thing, partly because he could not understand a single word they were saying.  He prided himself in speaking English very well and assumed they were speaking another language altogether.  He asked me where they were from and had a hard time believing they were speaking a language that he felt himself proficient in.  I found myself in the peculiar position of being a translator for him.

The day ended with him inviting over some of his male friends for a feast of a dinner followed by liberal amounts of alcohol.  His wife prepared the sumptuous banquet and set it out, then retired to the kitchen with a female friend where they talked quietly until called by the men.  There's a saying in Korea, "There are three equals: the king, the father, and the teacher."

The next day I returned to Yongsan and opted to take a bus, stowing my bike underneath for the long trip back up north.  A one way bike trip like that had been quite enough, thank you very much.

This Hoosier Heart

The  patter of rain
synchronizes with

the staccato sound
of a bouncing ball

the occasional swish
of a well placed shot

(rimless descent)
finding this Hoosier heart

in the sweet spot
of a simple joy.


***

Sleepless in Seoul

It was another weekend in Seoul with only a vague idea about how I would spend it.  It had become a routine of sorts to break up the monotony of Army life and escape the crushing stupidity of spending the weekends bar hopping with fellow infantrymen drinking, smoking, and flirting with the bar girls whose ingratiations were calculated to stroke the ego and empty the GI's wallet.  It did not start out this way.  I started out as green as anyone with the newby designation of "turtle" given me and those like me who were new to the Army and in Korea for the first time.

I initially had no frame of reference or contacts beyond my fellow soldiers who were young, immature, and far from home.  To see the world outside our gates meant tagging along with others in my platoon, something our Commander called "the buddy system."  These kinds of excursions lasted for no more than a month or two before I began to buck the system and venture out on my own.  This was helped along greatly after learning about a place that sat apart from the bars and shops that were crowded around the entrance to our base.  That place was called Shalom House.

This "House of Peace," as it were, provided an opportunity for me to meet "real" Koreans by volunteering to teach English there in the evenings.  It was a two story building situated about a half mile from the front gates of our base in the town of Dongducheon at the end of an alley off of the main street.  During the day it was an elementary school for the children of soldiers who had brought their families on their own dime to live with them off base.  A tour in Korea was only one year and considered a "hardship" assignment due to the fact they did not pay for family members to accompany the soldiers and you could not bring over your vehicle.  There were also strict movement restrictions that forbade leaving a two kilometer radius of your base unless you had a special pass.

I made friends with the Korean students who came to Shalom House for the inexpensive English lessons informally given by us soldiers.  It was something that brought me a good deal of joy and light in the otherwise dark existence of a US Army soldier in South Korea.  It had a pool table and a ping pong table that we made use of between classes.  Pool was not my forte, but I could hold my own in ping pong, honing skills that I'd first picked up as a child on the ping pong table in our garage playing with my Dad.  He had been an avid player when I was a kid and I remember watching what seemed to be epic battles between him and our pastor in the parsonage basement after church.  After class, as often as not, a portion of the students would take me to a coffee shop so we could continue to talk and share our opinions, life experiences, and tell funny stories; an added bonus being that they could practice their English and I could practice being not-lonely.

***

Some time between my first and second year (or "tour" as it's called in the Army) in Korea I transitioned to spending my weekends in Seoul instead of Dongducheon which had become too small and predictable in my mind.  I had learned the Korean alphabet and enough words and phrases to open up the possibility of traveling outside of the town.  This transition began with Korean friends taking me down to Seoul on what I would consider to be field trips.  These trips included visits to museums and popular hang out spots, like Daehangno, which was a sort of Arts district where you could catch broadway shows and musical performances.  The streets there were lined with restaurants, bars, and open areas where young people went to see and be seen while buskers provided background music.

The places we did not go and that I avoided like the plague were international areas where there would be a concentration of non-Koreans and soldiers whose idea of a good time did not include immersing themselves in the local culture.  The main area for this kind of wallow in western pop culture was Itaewon.  It was a full frontal assault on the senses, too bright, too loud,  too familiar in the worse possible way.

It was near there that I ran into a sweet elderly Korean man in a suit and overcoat one evening on a lonely street corner.  He approached me and apologized for the intrusion, but he needed to ask for my help.  He told me that he'd been in a taxi and inadvertently left his briefcase behind when he got out.  He had been on his way to the bus station to see his acutely ill brother in Pusan and now could not continue his trip or even get home himself because his money had been in the briefcase.  He asked if I could help him out with a little money.  I gave him twenty dollars, wished him well, and watched him toddle off.

One year later I happened to be walking through that general area once again and the same man approached me with the same story.  This kind of scam was possible because there was a frequent turnover of Army personnel in Korea and the likelihood of running into the same person twice was, well, not likely.  People like me who had volunteered to stay for more than a year in Korea were very rare.  My initial reaction was to be angry and waive him off rudely, which is what I did, but in retrospect I wish I'd engaged him and invited him to a cafe for some conversation instead.  He had such a sweet and kind face that was so very uncriminal-like.  There must have been an interesting story there.

***

Eventually, the trips to Seoul became the thing I did every weekend that we weren't required to be in the field or hanging around the base for extra duty.  As I made more friends my trips expanded to more parts of a city that numbered twelve million people.  The planned trips for meet ups were likely the best in terms of content, but the aimless wandering also had its charm.  It was during the unplanned trips that I felt my loneliness and isolation most keenly, most fully aware that by joining the Army for two years I'd simply postponed the inevitable question of "what are you going to do with your life?"  Unlike Twisted Sister, I couldn't simply yell "I wanna Rock!"

***

Traveling to Seoul in the winter was rough.  My coat was constructed of an olive drab canvas material with a thinly quilted interior and a corduroy collar that I'd bought at a shop near the entrance to my base.  It was relatively rugged and looked cool, but it was not the warmest choice for Korean winters.  A scarf and gloves made it bearable, though the longer stretches of time spent out in the open would let the cold creep down too near my core.  I discovered a way to make those times stretch by having a pouch full of coins while walking the streets of Seoul.  In most sections of town there were vending machines that dispensed a hot coffee-like liquid into a small paper cup, heavy on the cream and sugar.  They were good for an hour or two of buzz until heat could be found in a restaurant, cafe, or subway car.

One particular night I ended up staying with a Korean friend who was single and lived in the area of Seoul south of the Han River.  We got back to his apartment late and I looked forward to being able to fall asleep in a warm abode.  His apartment was dark, cold, and extremely small.  Soon after we arrived he got out two mats and two blankets to lay on the floor and he talked about his plans for the future.  These included moving to Pusan for a job in a few months.  I kept expecting him to turn a dial or flip a switch to get some heat going.  At the very least I thought he might burn a large charcoal cylinder to heat water in pipes under the floors like is done in many Korean homes.  These pipes were typically below floors covered only with vinyl and if you stepped in the wrong place without shoes (which you never wore inside) you could get a not-so-pleasant surprise from a hot spot.

So, the "beds" were ready and I laid down on the mat which was pretty much like lying on the bare concrete floor.  The blanket barely covered my feet and I thought that this was going to be a very long night indeed.  My friend mentioned that there were health benefits to breathing in cold air while sleeping and I watched with consternation as he got back up and pushed out on his main window so that the room was open to the night air.  Did I mention he was on the chubby side?  For all intents and purposes, we were sleeping outside on a winter night.  I ended up putting my coat back on my skinny frame after he'd fallen asleep and kept my arms pinned to my side to avoid any unnecessary heat loss.  I don't think I slept for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time throughout the entire night.

***

Well, if I thought that had been the worst of it, I was wrong.  Many of my trips were fueled by foolhardiness, taken on without thought of what I would do or where I would stay.  And further complicating things was the habit of carrying very little money on my person.  I trusted that if worse came to worse and I missed the last bus from Suwu in northern Seoul to Dongducheon, I would simply spend a miserable night as a homeless foreigner and make the morning trip back up to my base to regroup until the next opportunity to escape.

If I were lucky enough to have ten to twenty dollars worth of Korean currency on me after a particular rendezvous had fallen through, I would stay in a yogwan.  These were like small hotels with single six foot by six foot rooms you could stay in with a communal bathroom.  They hearkened back to the days when farmers used to come into the city with their crops to sell and then need a cheap place to crash for the night.  In modern Seoul they were more often than not used to sleep off hangovers from a long night of drinking before going home to the family.

***

A few months after the incident of sleeping in my friend's icebox-of-an-apartment, I ran into this very predicament.  It was getting late and I'd spent too much time hanging out with a friend south of the Han River.  There was no way I'd be able to get to the bus station on time and there were no yogwans in this part of the city.  I caught the last subway train of the evening over to the friend's apartment that I'd stayed with earlier in the winter hoping to at least have a roof over my head.  I knocked on the door and a man I did not know answered the door.  I asked if my friend was there and he mentioned the word "Pusan".  This triggered the memory that he'd told me he was moving soon.  I apologized and left.

This was a part of Seoul that I did not know well and it appeared I'd exhausted my options to have a place to stay for the night.  The subway was no longer running, so I was stuck there.  It was so cold that I had to keep moving for heat's sake and to try and look for an option that hadn't yet occurred to me.  I walked past a construction site near the subway station where a building was being erected.  It was just steel girders and looked to be three or four stories high.  A very large wooden box sat in front of it near the sidewalk which caught my attention.  I was trying to think outside the box, but the inside of a box suddenly seemed relatively inviting compared to either walking all night or sleeping on the ground.  It was near midnight and no one was around to see me sneak into the construction zone.  The box was about four or five feet square and had a lid.  I removed the lid and peered into its interior.  It was half full of styrofoam peanuts, but otherwise empty.  It seemed the best I could do under the circumstances.

With some grunting and heaving I was able to get the lid back up on the box after I had dropped down into the peanuts.  I sat down and pulled them in all around me to try and insulate myself from the cold.  The box was roomy, but not big enough to stretch out my legs.  I had my knees pulled up to my chest in order to keep my legs inside my coat and just when I thought I'd gotten comfortable enough to fall asleep the need to stretch would become overwhelming.  Stretching my legs released the little heat I'd managed to conserve.  It was a catch-22.

I had a lot of time to think in that box.

Some time in the early hours of the morning I noticed some light starting to come in around the edges of the lid.  It was like that horror film "The Ring", though it would be several more years before that particular film would be made.   The sound of an approaching truck awakened me further and I heard it stop on the street near where the box sat.  The next noise was some voices that seemed to be getting louder as I laid there buried in the styrofoam peanuts.  All of a sudden, the lid was lifted off and the top half of a face appeared.  It quickly disappeared as I heard the man let out the Korean equivalent of OMG, "I Gu!"

Voices could be heard questioning the man who'd peered into the box.  I figured this was my cue to exit and so I tossed out my backpack, jumped up onto the lip of the box, and leapt to the ground like a chimp escaping from his cage.  The five men just stood there looking at me and then at each other with a "do you see what I'm seeing?" expression on their faces.  I greeted them in the polite Korean manner and headed towards the subway entrance just down the block.  When I reached the stairs I looked back to see them loading the box onto their truck, shaking their heads and laughing, then driving away with my temporary shelter.

The thought of a warm subway car drew me down to the platform in an almost delirious state of near hypothermia.  When I boarded the northbound car I immediately laid down on the bench with my head against one end using my backpack as a pillow.  The ride to the northernmost station of that line took about an hour and I slept the entire way, rocking in and out of dreams.  I then got out and went over to the southbound platform, boarded, and laid back down to sleep all of the way back down to where I'd started.  It is what I had to do to reenergize for yet another day of exploring the city.

***

As I write down some of these memories of sleeplessness, another one has just knocked itself loose.  They are actually two memories, but both involve churches.  As previously mentioned, it was not uncommon to find myself roaming the streets late at night on a Saturday with nowhere to go or stay.  At these moments I was only limited by my imagination, ie, I was cold, tired, hungry and imagined I really needed to find a place to sleep!

It was another winter night, but this time I'd really done myself in and despite wandering for two to three hours I had still not found a place to sleep.  I saw that a small one room grocery was open and so I popped in to see if I could buy some food with my meager resources.  The owner was an elderly Korean man sitting on a mat in front of a small TV.  The glow of the screen reflected in his glasses as he looked up to see who was entering his store so late.   It was probably one or two in the morning, but there he was open for business.  Like many ma & pa stores of this nature, he lived in a small apartment in the rear of the store accessed through a door covered with hanging beads.  If he was awake, the store was open.  I bought some Funyon-like chips and a miniature can of Coke.

While sipping on the Coke I scanned the skyline for clues of a potential abode.  I spied a several story building with a large round window just under the peak of the roof.  I figured out it was a church and the thought occurred to me that some churches will leave their doors open for people to come in and pray, even when there are no services going on.  I approached the building from the side and found an open door off of the parking lot.  I could not see anyone around, so I entered the building and began to look around for a place to sleep.  There were wide intersecting hallways and as I tried to open a door, I heard someone enter the building.  I stepped into the recessed doorway and watched a middle-aged woman come down a side hallway and turn the corner.  I hid myself because I did not want to alarm her.  I quietly made my way to the point she'd turned the corner and peered around it.

A room with a large glass window in the door was spilling light into the hallway.  I crept close enough to be able to peer into the room.  There were elderly women kneeling on the floor and they appeared to be praying.  For a split second I thought about joining them, but the idea of scaring grandmas half to death held me back.  I left them to pray in peace and continued on my search through the dark to find an open door with a warm place to sleep.

A door eventually opened to me and I found stairs.  I made my way to the top, stopping at each level to try the doors which were either locked or classrooms with tables and chairs.  The final door at the top of the stairs opened into an attic area under a sloping roof.  I entered and let the door shut behind me which closed with a loud clicking noise.  Light was coming in through a large round window that overlooked the city.  As I looked down on the surrounding neighborhoods I realized that this was the window I'd seen while standing in front of the grocery store.  The room was full of odds and ends, but no bed, mat, or cot.  I allowed myself some time for reverie, looking down on this city I'd come to love, but eventually I made my way back to the closed door and reached for the knob.

But there was no knob.  There was nothing but a hole where the knob should be.  I felt a kind of panic start to well up, but quickly pushed it back down.  It was Saturday night and if worse came to worse I could just yell when/if people started coming up the stairs Sunday morning for Sunday School.  If the police were called, I'd have some serious explaining to do and have to present my Armed Forces Agreement card to identify myself as a member of the US Army in Korea.  These thoughts had me pacing the room to come up with a solution.  It never occurred to me to break it down, but who knew what would happen if I got desperate enough.  I put my finger in the hole and jiggled the mechanism to try and figure out how it worked.  Through trial and error that may or may not have included a nail (my memory is foggy on this point) I was able to get the bolt to pull back and release the door.

I descended the stairs and returned to the side entrance which was a large glass wall with doors opening to the church parking lot.  There were pews lining the walls on either side and I decided that this was likely the best I could do.  I looped the backpack strap around my leg and laid down to go to sleep.  When morning arrived I hadn't been sleeping much and when the heat kicked on I was reluctant to move.  I heard a person or two arrive to church through the doors so I rolled to face the wall trying to catch a few Z's and soak up some more heat before leaving.  When more people started to arrive and I figured it was time to go.  I sat up, rubbed my eyes vigorously, stretched, secured my backpack and headed out the door nodding to those coming in.

***

The second church incident likely flowed from the first.  Not that I tried to make myself homeless again, but that I just had no regard for time when hanging out with Korean friends.  I would simply stay until the last goodbye and then walk away as if I had somewhere to go.  If it was early enough in the evening to catch the subway I was golden.  If not, it was not so golden.

This second church was significantly smaller and did not appear to even have a second floor.  When I entered through the glass front doors there was a small foyer and then double wooden doors to enter the church proper with its pews and pulpit.  The previous church had been so huge that I had never actually found the worship area, though my initial plan had been to try and find a padded pew there.  These wooden doors were locked and my hopes for a soft pew were frustrated, but I did not give up hope.  To my left and right were stairs descending into almost complete darkness.  The only source of light was that coming in through the glass door from the street lights.  I decided to take the stairs on the left and slowly made my way down into the darkness, allowing my eyes time to adjust.

I found a short hallway at the bottom that led through doors and into a large open space whose dimensions could be judged by the echoing of my shoes hitting the hard tile floor.  Once again I waited for my eyes to adjust.  In retrospect, I could have probably found a light switch but it did not occur to me to do so at the time.  I was a stranger here, a ghost if you will, and it was not my place to disturb the darkness.  It was a little disconcerting that I could not see the extent of the room I'd found and I did not know what it was used for.

On the back wall beside the entrance I discovered a piano and beside the piano I found several stacks of square seat cushions in a corner.  I determined that this would be my bedding down spot for the night and so I  began arranging the cushions all around me to provide some comfort and insulation until thoroughly buried.  Like the box filled with styrofoam peanuts, I discovered that despite my most ardent wishes, heat was not going to come from the insulation.  It would be another night of fitful sleep due to the cold.

Some time in the early morning hours I heard someone enter the church and come down the steps.  I buried myself a little deeper into my cushion cave when I realized the person was coming towards my room.  The door opened and some light angled in.  The footsteps headed straight for me as I lay perfectly still.  It was like they knew exactly where I was.  The person stopped within a foot or two and grabbed a cushion, then walked a short distance away.  I was able to peek through a space in the cushion piles and saw a woman kneeling on the cushion while facing the interior of the room.  Her spot was at the edge of the light coming in, but I could now just make out that the room extended another fifty feet or so.

This was not my time to exit as I can only imagine what her response would be to have a man (a boy, really) suddenly arise from the cushions in the darkened room.  I bided my time and slowly but surely other people began to trickle in.  When I determined the time was right to leave, the heating system suddenly kicked on and a vent above me began blowing warm air directly at me.  The lights were still off and this unexpected turn sapped my will to move.  I pulled some more cushions over myself for concealment and felt the possibility of actual sleep start to overcome me.  This was eventually interrupted by the lights coming on and the room beginning to fill up with people who were whittling away at my hiding place as each new person grabbed a cushion from the pile.

At this point it was just a matter of standing up and exiting the room.  The final impetus came when someone began to speak into a microphone to address the gathering.  I sat up enough to see a man standing at a podium on the opposite end of the room.  I stood and walked behind the last row of people sitting on the ground and made my way up the stairs and out of the building without making eye contact with anyone.

***

So, it was another weekend in Seoul with only a vague idea about how I would spend it.  My time in Korea would soon run out, but at the time it felt like I would be there for the rest of my days and there was no hurry to move beyond the weekend to weekend existence that I considered a bulwark against despair.  I found myself people watching in Lotte World's main shopping area with only a few weeks left before my departure from Korea.  Willy Nelson was singing "Always on My Mind" over hidden speakers when I suddenly realized I was utterly bereft of the connections that I thought I'd been building up over the past two years.  So many Korean friends had come and gone.  The transition from hanging out in Dongducheon to hanging out in Seoul at the midway point of my two year sojourn had left many friends behind.  I now was looking at a return to the States and resuming college where my closest friends had already graduated and moved on with their lives.  Willy's voice was like a soft rope tightening around my neck, making it harder and harder to breathe.

***

I sometimes refer to those two years in Korea as "the lost years," like they were cut out and pasted over my early twenties with no connection to what went before and little to no connection to what followed.  It amazes me that I had so little concept of the linear movement of time in those younger years.  My time there was ticking away, irretrievably disappearing into the past, and is now maintained only in memories that become more and more patchy with time.







***

I Will Write a Novel Today

I will write a novel today
or at least a few short stories
in an electronic record for
future physicians to see.
I hear stories of suffering
and translate them into a
narrative that is concise
but hopefully captures the
singular struggle of a
mind, body, and spirit.
Proscriptions and prescriptions
flow from that, informed by
years of schooling and a
lifetime of being human.
The healing process is
a two way street, echoing
the stories of holy writ,
"Rabbi, who sinned,
this man or his parents,
that he would be born blind?"


***

A Creative Spark

Elias built a house on Minecraft this past week and his excitement about it was uncharacteristically intense.  When he brought me into his room and showed it to me, I was floored.  We've been doing Minecraft off and on since he was six years old and he has consistently made houses of a type that are pretty basic and with only minor variations.  This was something altogether different.

I thoroughly interrogated him as to whether or not he'd seen a friend do this or if he'd seen a video about how to build it.  He assured me that he had come up with the idea all on his own because he was "bored" of how he had been doing it before.  And, as if to assure me it wasn't a one-off, I watched him work on another one that was even more complex and beautiful.

I wish it could be seen from all angles, to include the interior, because there are skylights and a swimming pool integrated into the rear of the house.  It's hard to explain what something like this means to me.  The creative spark and what comes from it gives me an inordinate amount of joy and seeing it manifest in my ten year old son makes it that much more special.


***

A Soldier of Moral Certitude

It is not my fault,
the multitude of evils
that beset this planet.

I am a static being,
untouching and untouchable,
without malice in my heart,
a blameless individual
who can only shake my
head at the foolishness
that surrounds me.

I am a man of hard-earned
wisdom and common sense.
I do not waste my time
on other people's problems.

I will serve my time here as
a soldier of moral certitude,
confident in my personal
salvation, having done my duty
to walk the line and
to set others straight.

And when I've reached the end,
I will march through those
pearly gates, nod at St. Peter,
and claim what is rightfully mine.


***

Thunder Road

When they came through the Rift, the rains came with them.

Marko wasn't even close to the freak happening, but saw it on an internet newsreel that he initially mistook for a Japanese monster movie clip.   He'd been working on his '40 Ford Coupe Rum Runner when his nephew had come bursting into his workshop, cell phone in hand.

The picture quality was poor due to the torrential downpours they inhabited and the boy's shaking hand.  The small screen showed massive lightning strikes illuminating the insides of roiling clouds, revealing the outlines of what could have been mistaken for large electrical towers lumbering over the wetscape.  They belched waves of electromagnetism that fried electronics in a radius of hundreds of miles.

The image on the screen flickered out, like the hopes and dreams of those whose lives were built on convenience and unrestricted access.  The world of smart phones and computers was soon to be a thing of the past, like rotary dials and sunny days.  Marko immediately recognized the new import of his green-flamed coupe, a machine of power and grace built in a time before dependent complexities and complicated gadgetry.

The battle for Thunder Road was soon to begin.


***

A Simple Prayer

A simple prayer 
was offered up
from a pure heart
and the earth
was changed
as assuredly
as if a hurricane 
had swept a wide 
path of construction.


***