The Therapist's Timepiece

He saw her outline through an open fogged-over glass door in the frozen foods section of the grocery store.  Like a restless ghost she rummaged through pizzas and hot pockets mumbling to herself while her two small children stood guard at the cart.  Hidden within layers of winter clothes they waited for their mother to finish adding to the pile of processed foods as quiet counterpoints to her frenetic energy.

The little girl grasped the lip of the cart to steady it while the smaller boy stuck his finger through the metal lattice to touch the cold boxes and scrape off some frost with his fingernail.  The door to the freezer slammed shut causing the boy to jump and pull his finger back quickly.

Locks of bleached blonde hair dangled from under a hand-knit cap framing a face that had once been quite beautiful before time and the cares of the world had taken their toll.  He could read in her careworn features that she was alone and that the father of her children had decided he wasn't ready to grow up and assume the responsibilities he'd created. 

He looked down at an ornate pocket watch that he had produced from his vest pocket and watched the second hand tick along its circular path.  The hour hand stood at three and the minute hand was just a sliver shy of twelve.  When the thread-thin piece of metal aligned with the minute hand he pulled the crown.  A popping sensation jarred the scene like an earthquake lasting only a millisecond and the little girl froze mid-sneeze.  

The outline of his form untethered from his corporal self which remained perfectly still in the aisle. 

He stepped forward, his ethereal self now separated from his motionless and more cumbersome twin, and made his way over to the three.  The little girl's eyes were tightly shut and tiny droplets suspended in space formed a funnel from her pursed lips.  The boy was flinching as if expecting a blow.  The mother's eyes were focussed far away from where they stood.

It was the mother he'd come to see.  The point of interest for him was the contours of her forehead.  A V-shape was seemingly chiseled there in her brow.  It had deepened over time and become an intrinsic feature of her face.  He took it in from different angles, judging its depth and intensity.  Its point was sharp and pricked him hard when he touched it with his finger.  It would not come out easily.

He brought the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand together placing the point on her forehead, then belly, right shoulder, then left shoulder to loosen it.  Pincher-like his fingers snatched hold of the V-thing and pulled out and away from her head.  It pierced his fingers with a terrible ferocity but he continued to pull slow and steady.  This measured application of force allowed the tendrils deeply anchored within her to unwind without breaking off to regrow anew.  A lifetime of disappointments and poor choices came flowing out of her in damp and dripping threads.  The slowness of the process protracted his pain, filling him with a cold and desolate fire.

Time passed without time passing, an eternal nowness that had him feeling a little disoriented.  When he felt he could take no more, it pulled free and her features visibly relaxed.  It was astounding how much younger she looked and he quickly forgot the pain that had just been threatening to overwhelm him.  The troublesome creature pricked at him and fought to free itself, but he held firm.

A few aisles over he found a large jug of bleach that he opened and forced the prickly thing into it, sealing it up with a turn of the cap.  He shook the jug until there was no further movement coming from it, placed it back on the shelf, and returned to where his body stood.  The split selves reunited and he found himself once more looking down at his pocket watch frozen at three.  With a push of the crown, time resumed once again without a hitch.

The mother's focus retracted and fell to her daughter who was just finishing her sneeze.  She knelt down and cleared a strand of hair from the small face.  "Are you OK, sweetie?"  The girl, unaccustomed to such attention, simply nodded her head "yes."  The mother then turned her face to her son, "How are you, little man?"  His lower lip began to quiver as his emotions found release in her sudden kindness.  She pulled him into a hug as the therapist shut the cover of his watch, tucked it back into his pocket, and left the store.  

***

shadows & sighs

Shooting hoops with my son as
the sun sets on our cul-de-sac

suddenly realizing that even
before I can pivot and shoot

not even his shadow will remain
and I will be left alone in the street

with the basketball on my hip
wondering where the time has

gone.


***

The Last Goodbye

It truly was a miracle, because love is a miracle.  I have no other way of explaining or understanding it.  Kevin had been struggling with bone cancer for eight years, a growing mass that had infiltrated his nasal cavities and persisted despite the repeated removal of bones in his head.  It was a process that eventually claimed his one eye that had been salvaged from the retinoblastoma he'd been born with, leaving him in total darkness for the first time in his forty some odd years.

***

I was there at the beginning when he was visiting Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.  The medical school where I was a student was just a few blocks away.  We rendezvoused at an appointment he had with his surgeon, Dr. Haymaker, and Kevin was his typical animated self, talking a mile a minute as if he understood the number of words he could share with the world were limited and he wanted to get them all out.  The smell coming from his mouth was like a dead animal and overpowering.  I had to force myself to not step away from him.  The tumor was growing so fast that parts of it had died and Kevin had no sense of smell due to its location and infiltration. 

When Dr. Haymaker came out Kevin introduced me and told him I was a medical student.  The good doctor took me back into the work area, leaving Kevin in the waiting room.  He put up a transverse plane view of Kevin's head on the light board and showed me the gray mass filling his nasal cavities.  It was like a chubby rat had taken up residence in his attic space with its tail dangling down in the rear, just above his throat.  I knew from my textbooks that this was a relatively common occurrence in those born with retinoblastoma, ie, the development of a sarcoma (bone cancer) at the site of radiation received as a child.

***

And so began the long slog for Kevin with the slow attrition of losing bones in his head and culminating in the loss of his one eye over an eight year period.  He likened it to John the Baptist losing his head, but one piece at a time instead of all at once.  

After medical school I left for Washington DC to do a four year psychiatry residency and only made occasional contact with Kevin to include seeing him when we returned to Indy to baptize my son.  My training consumed my time and attention as did this first child.  We then moved to Tennessee where I was to serve out my three year commitment to the Army.  When we arrived my unit was already in Iraq and I joined them soon thereafter.

As often happens in life, time and the cares of the world separate us from those we've known and loved, the heyday of our adventures receding steadily into the past.  I heard from a mutual friend that he had moved out to Colorado to attend a training school for the blind after the loss of his eye.  At some point, after moving to Tennessee, I'd received a call from him and he'd left a message, though it was hard to understand his words.  He was missing so many bones in his head that he had to wear a plate in his mouth to form a space from which to speak.  I called him back a few times and left messages, but I did not hear back from him.

***

More time passed and in 2008, two years into my three year commitment to the Army, I began to wonder again what he was up to and how he was doing.  It was the second week of April and I was on Facebook, which was still relatively new to me, and I saw one of those "friends of a friend" postings.  The young man pictured was listed as a student at Indiana Wesleyan University which is my alma mater.  Not only that, he was listed as being "Eastern Orthodox" which seriously piqued my curiosity.  I was brought into the Orthodox Church in 1996 and my experience was that people who had attended IWU and were Orthodox were as rare as turtle teeth.  I immediately messaged this mysterious fellow traveler named "Brian" and asked him to friend me on FB.  Due to the miracle of technology I was able to track down that initial contact on my phone:

________

Brian: 

Hi Aaron.

Kevin wanted me to get in touch with you.

He didn't know if you were aware of everything that has been going on.

Please feel free to give me a call at 574-***-****, or write me back on facebook.

Hope Lent is going well for you.

Aaron:

Thanks Brian.  I e-mailed Fr. Phillip from St. Thomas a few months ago to try and get an update on Kevin, but he didn't have much info other than Kevin was in Colorado.  I've called Kevin's cell phone off and on w/o a reply and left a few messages.  I'd appreciate any info you might have.  Take care.

Brian:

Well, Aaron, there is a lot I need to fill you in, since a lot has happened in the time since you were last in touch with him.  I think it would be better for you to give me a call (anytime really), or give me your number and I'll call you.

Talk to you soon.

[a phone call occurs at this point and Brian updates me]

Aaron:

Hey Brian, it was good to talk with ya.  I talked with Kevin's Dad and found out Kevin is still at Methodist.  I plan on driving to Indy early Saturday morning, attending Liturgy at Ss. Constantine and Elena, visiting with Kevin a bit (Bob recommended not more than 30 minutes with him due to him having so little energy), and then returning Saturday evening.  Take care.

________

It turns out that Brian was Kevin's godson in the Orthodox Faith.  What he had to fill me in on was that Kevin was doing very poorly.  This happened a week prior to Lazarus Saturday which leads into Holy Week and I quickly made plans to drive up to Indianapolis that next Saturday by myself to spend some time with him at Methodist Hospital.  I contacted another mutual friend who lives in Indianapolis who did not think the situation was particularly dire. 

 I spent that last week of Lent with Kevin heavy on my heart, trying to unite myself with him in prayer, not knowing exactly what was going on in that hospital room in Indianapolis.  A key element of our relationship is that he is my godson and I stood with him in the ceremony to bring him into the Orthodox Church as he had stood with Brian in the more recent past.  I was (and am) bound by love and tradition to support him in whatever ways I can in the Faith. 

***

In the wee hours of Lazarus Saturday I set off on the long drive up to Indianapolis, my mind kind of replaying our "greatest hits" going back to 1990 when I'd first met him at IWU.  As mentioned in my text to Brian, I attended the Saturday morning liturgy at Saints Constantine & Elena and then headed over to Methodist Hospital.  As soon as I saw Kevin I knew he was not long for this world.  He was emaciated and sitting up cross-legged in a hospital bed with a gown on.  Despite him being immunocompromised there were no restrictions of any kind in place and I quickly realized from my experience in hospitals that this was a hospice-like situation where comfort care was paramount.  We hugged and I told him that I'd gotten his message and called back to leave messages but did not hear back.  He was visibly frustrated and said that "next time" I needed to say what my number is in the message.  He repeated that plea at least two or three more times in the few hours we had together as a kind of refrain.  It was like he felt that communication between us had broken down when he'd needed it most.

Within minutes of my arrival, Brian walked into the room.  He'd decided to drive down from Northern Indiana to spend some time with Kevin and it was our first and only meeting.  He came bearing an icon of St. Kevin of Glendalough that he'd painted so Kevin could have the tangible presence of his patron saint with him.  It was a surreal few hours and I frequently fell into trying to make humorous comments that did not wholly feel like they fit the situation.  I really didn't know exactly what to do or say with my friend and godson hanging so precariously close to the edge of life and death.  When I finally said I had to leave and drive back to Tennessee, he requested we say the Lord's Prayer together.  I felt like I should stay longer, but it was not possible and those precious few hours seemed so inadequate to sum up our life together.

I walked down the hospital hallway talking with his mom a bit and then gave her a hug and got into the elevator.  As it descended, my heart and my body dropped with it.  He died three days later on the morning of Great and Holy Tuesday after jumping up out of bed and excitedly trying to tell his mom something before collapsing to the floor.  His funeral was a week later on Bright Tuesday to shouts of "Christ is Risen!"

***

So, it was a miracle, right?  The fact that Kevin was reaching out to find me in whatever way he could as his body was shutting down.  That he'd put his godson in charge of the search, a person I'd never met or even knew existed.  That I, in fact, found his godson instead, on a fluke, with no time to spare, allowing me the briefest of opportunities to see Kevin just a few days before he passes from this life.  Love made it possible and love is a miracle, right?  Of that I have absolutely no doubt.

Fairies that Rock

I did not have to work this year on the 4th of July which provided for some nice unstructured time with Anya and we took advantage of it.  The morning included some vigorous dancing in the sunken living room and in the afternoon she headed out into the backyard.  I resorted to reading a book after lunch, but would peek out the windows from time to time to see what she was up to or sit out under the gazebo on an adirondack chair.

She gathered lettuce leaves from our garden for her giraffe "Gigi" and swung from the old mulberry tree swing by pushing off with her feet.  When I got to the end of a chapter, I joined her under the tree where she was gathering flowers she'd plucked from the trumpet vine and other flowering plants in the backyard.

She pointed up to a part of the mulberry tree where a large section had broken free in the past and been removed, leaving a scarred and empty space.  "Hey Daddy, that looks like where the fairies rock out."  This is the fairy tree with a small door in its base to prove it.  I looked up to the familiar scar and saw her point.  the indentation left was like the curved roof of an outdoor amphitheater and the base of it was flat where someone had used a chain saw to free the large broken branch.

I got the idea that we should further develop the stage for the fairies to "rock out" on and sent Anya to gather small sticks.  After a few collapses of the miniature structure we succeeded in creating a stage partition and decorated it with flowers.  When we were finished she excitedly pointed out that the leaves growing from its base were the seats that the fairies sat on to watch the performances.  

These are the types of projects that I used to enjoy doing with Elias when he was younger.  Now that he has turned into a surly pre-teen, Anya has stepped up as my new creative partner.

***

Run!

Elias had a strange energy at bedtime last night, uncharacteristically so.  He did not lie down as he usually does, but stood at the foot of the bed looking at me with a peculiar smile.  "Hey Dad, if you were in a store and someone pulled a gun on someone, what would you do?"

The look in his eyes threw me off a bit.  It was intense but playful at the same time.  He seemed to be really interested in how I would answer this question.  "Well, I would just let him have the money out of the cash register so he would leave."

"But what if he put the gun to that person's head?"

"I would ask what he wants and see if I could get that for him."

"So, what if he shot that person?"  I could tell he was waiting for my answer with baited breath.  I told him I would probably rush the shooter to try and keep him from hurting anyone else.  Apparently this was what he was waiting for.  He threw his hands up in the air and then clamped them down on his head, "No!  No!  You would run away, OK?  You would run away!"  Then he jumped onto the bed and hugged me.

The big reveal was that he'd had a dream where I ran at the person with the gun and ended up getting shot and killed.  "So if that ever happens, Dad, run away, OK?"


***

DOD

The Department of Dance:  a satirical look at war

Enemies dug in on opposing sides of a valley.  They are at an isolated location that is far from the front, a geographical anomaly in a global war.  Rumors on one side have it that the other side has some brilliant new weapon that will soon be deployed and could be a game changer.  Noises were heard the night before off in the distance that sounded like muffled explosions.  The morning comes and strange equipment has appeared amongst the trees that has them spooked.  In a moment of extreme psychological tension, the strangest thing happens.

It turns out that the equipment are speakers and they start pumping music into the valley.  The opposing side is bewildered and put on edge, but slowly they find themselves starting to thump their feet to the beat and fingers begin tapping out rhythms on the butts of their weapons despite screamed orders from their NCO's to stop immediately.

Eventually unarmed soldiers appear moving forward in straight lines from the opposing treeline, then move side to side as they come onto the field.  They spin, clap, shuffle and slide in a kind of line dance pattern that repeats and is reinforced by the music.  No one knows what to do b/c the soldiers in the field are unarmed.

Some tone deaf gung-ho soldier fires off a shot, but does not hit anything b/c of the movements and his inability to discern the pattern.  The soldier next to him whacks him on the back of his helmet with a canteen and shouts "cut it out!"  Meanwhile the NCO's are running up and down the lines screaming to open fire, but are drowned out by the music.

BOOM shucka ping shucka BOOM BOOM ping
pa-pa-pa-pa
BOOM shucka ping shucka BOOM BOOM ping

Private Shmucatelli is the first to break lines and heads out into the field with a silly grin on his face, tripping and falling, but then pulling himself aright and moving forward out of the protection of the woods.  He has picked up on the pattern and is mirroring it on his side of the field.  Soldiers up and down the line look at each other with bemused WTF? expressions, shrug their shoulders, and begin to scamper out of their fox holes to join in the dance.

At some point the commanding officer, who has lost control of the situation, grabs a rifle and fires it into the field inadvertently striking Private Shmucatelli and knocking him to the ground.  The spell is broken and everyone breaks for their own lines.  Private Shmucatelli lies face up in the grass and wonders at the clouds framed by blue skies overhead.  He hears his heart beating in his ears as he bleeds out, BOOM BOOM ping... and descends into the deeper music.

The next day the hills are abandoned and the only sound is the song of a bewildered bird, “Poo-tee-weet?”

***

A Hole in Our Neighborhood

There is a hole in
our neighborhood
where a tree used to be.

It anchored the corner
and was the first tree
my son ever climbed.

A new family with two kids
replaced a family with three
who were much loved.

We didn't hold that against
them, but the unthinkable
toppling of that tree can

never be forgiven, ever.


***

On the Shore of the Sea

Standing on the shore of the sea
while seagulls feed from my fingers,
watching the waves lapping, lazy-like.

The smells on the breeze are heady
like the thoughts in my young mind,
so much time left to enjoy this life.

The water rolls back pulling at my ankles,
the sand being sucked off of the beach
uncovering colorful shells, toes...bones.

The sands of time recede like my hair,
like my gums, my skin looking more
blotched and mottled by the day.

Searching for shells, patterned, pretty,
something to fill the pockets of my soul
to leave an echo of love to my children.


***

Conceal & Carry

Conceal & carry a humble spirit over your heart
keeping the safety off and a round chambered
so that jostling causes it to go off unexpectedly.
May it wound the foot of your self-centeredness.
May it rip through the ego and leave it to bleed out.
Carry it everywhere and let no disturbance or
perceived insult pry it from your passionless hand.

***

A Little 80's Magic

Last night I met up with an old friend I hadn't seen since my High School days.  She brought along two of her three sons and we grabbed some dinner at Baja Fresh in midtown Atlanta.  Afterwards we wandered around reminiscing about our teenage days in the 80's.  Then, as a kind of soundtrack to our conversation, I heard "Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News wafting from somewhere nearby.  This brought up the movie "Back to the Future" which was the defining movie of that time period and the origin of this song.  

I loved the music of Huey Lewis in my early High School years and I had their "Sports" album on cassette as well as the Back to the Future soundtrack on vinyl.  I did a report on his song "Bad is Bad" in my freshman English class and made some quip about Huey Lewis being over 40, but still able to rock out.  The teacher was an uptight mid-lifer and she took offense at my attempt at humor.  She also could not seem to grasp the concept of using the slang term "Bad" as a positive descriptor and then turning it on its head again as was done in the song.  In retrospect, she may very well have been feigning ignorance and being intentionally obtuse.  Truth be told, I don't think she liked me very much or my style.

After saying goodbye to my friend and her sons I went back to my hotel room and subsequently learned that the music festival going on near where we were walking had actually featured Huey Lewis and the News that very night.  It had sounded much too tight to be live and so I had not put two and two together.  What are the odds that the quintessential song of our High School days would be playing live nearby as we walked and talked?  A cool coincidence to be sure.

Vonnegut's House

Not too long ago a story popped up on my Facebook newsfeed which noted that Kurt Vonnegut's boyhood home in Indianapolis was up for sale.  It struck me as odd that the city had not purchased it and made it into a national monument of some sort or a tourable pilgrimage site for us Hoosier ex-pats.

I then began fantasizing about buying it and sharing the space previously occupied by this man I hold in such high regard.  Maybe I would brush past his ghostly form on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, tendrils of smoke lifting from his transparent cigarette.  Possession would not be an altogether unpleasant experience if my writing improved, though the nicotine cravings would likely be insufferable.

So the logistics of such a thing... I don't make enough money to purchase such a house.  This is something that could probably be remedied by a boost in ambition and time spent working.  It would also likely include my wife working as well.  But then I read this today from his collection of essays "Wampeters, Foma, & Grandfalloons (OPINIONS)" while sitting in the Columbus airport:

There is an almost intolerable sentimentality beneath everything I write.  British critics complain about it.  And Robert Scholes, the American critic, once said I put bitter coatings on sugar pills.
It's too late to change now.  At least I am aware of my origins---in a big, brick dreamhouse designed by my architect father, where nobody was home for long periods of time, except for me and Ida Young.

Just prior to that he writes about this black woman, Ida Young, who was the cook for his family and whom he spent most of his growing up years with.  He describes her thus:

Her name was Ida Young, and I probably spent more time with her than I spent with anybody---until I got married, of course.  She knew the Bible by heart, and she found plenty of comfort and wisdom in there.  She knew a lot of American history too---things she and other black people had seen and marveled at, and remembered and still talked about, in Indiana and Illinois and Ohio---and Kentucky and Tennessee.  She would read to me, too, from an anthology of sentimental poetry about love which would not die, about faithful dogs and humble cottages where happiness was, about people growing old, about visits to cemeteries, about babies who died.  I remember the name of the book, and I wish I had a copy, since it has so much to do with what I am.

My fantasy was dismantled by this telling excerpt describing his life in a practically parentless house.  I am incredibly lucky, dare I say 'blessed', that I can be home every day by dinner time and find my family there---my wife, son, daughter, dog, and fish.  Not to mention the squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, and a nesting robin that live in our backyard.  As far as fantasies go, this is pretty darn fantastic.  And as a kind of consolation prize, we live in the house where central-Ohio-celebrity Flippo the Clown lived for forty years and built our lovely gazebo which he called his "gazooby."  God bless you, Flippo the Clown.  And God bless you, Kurt Vonnegut.

To Heed or Ignore

I have to steal time to write, to think, to feel.
If I am not careful I begin to feel like a
disembodied eye floating in the head of an automaton,
a hermetically sealed lumbering tower of selfishness.

Writing is a way to ground myself in the reality
of my connectedness to the world around me,
to sense the overlapping rings of water from
raindrops hitting a river that winds through my days.

It is harder to bullshit my way through the day
when I have to organize my thoughts, sharpen my vision,
and lay a line of words like bricks and mortar.
What am I building? A bridge? A dam? (a wall?)

The scarcity of time forces me to focus on what is most
essential for me to live and for others to be able to live with me.
The pen is a sword cleaving inner demons and freeing the heart
from constricting scars and cobwebs, but it is up to me

to heed or ignore.


***

Baseball Fragments

If nothing else,

the beautiful backdrops

and big skies 

of baseball diamonds

have filled my

heart with good things.

This is Elias's third year of playing baseball and it is a sport that he has grown to love. Unlike basketball, he did not initially derive a lot of pleasure from playing this game but it has grown on him and, to be honest, it has grown on me as well. I went from a kind of begrudging involvement to really enjoying the lazy passage of innings, the smack of a ball in a mitt, the pinging noise of a successful bat swing. The thing that hit me today is that every baseball diamond we play at has its own unique personality, but they all share the same big sky with a wide variety of weather patterns that unfold overhead as clouds pass and the sun arcs to the horizon. They are memories that I will treasure even when our mitts are gathering dust in some future attic.

***

thirst for love

A wall of wit
holds back a
sea of sadness

(directing, misdirecting)

wallowing in mud
from the seep
of derelictions

(giving, withholding)

just one man
with a terrible
thirst for love


***

The Paschal Matins

As midnight approaches the entire church goes dark.  All sources of light are extinguished and the people stand in complete blackness.  It is a moment of pregnant silence surrounded by those you can feel but not see.  Then, somewhere in the altar, a single light appears and moves ghost-like to the royal doors.  They open and the priest appears with his lit candle chanting "Come receive the Light from the Unwaining Light and glorify Christ who is risen from the dead."  He is soon surrounded by eager hands holding unlit candles that catch his fire and the flame quickly spreads from the front of the church to the back, person to person.  It is a beautiful part of the Paschal service and a powerful metaphor for the mystery of the Resurrection.


***

Christos Anesti!

Tonight I will be attending the Orthodox service of Pascha which is known as "Easter" in the Western church.  It is a service that starts at 11:30pm and finishes around 2:30am after which there is a huge feast full of joy in celebration of the miracle of the Resurrection (or maybe the miracle is that God died in the first place!).  It's all very hard to get the head and heart around.

Sometimes the feasting stretches into the wee hours of Sunday morning because no one wants to go home, and when you do, the air is still and you can hear the occasional bird chirp as the sky begins to glow in the East.  It is the culmination of an entire year of fasts and feasts that sanctifies time and leads to this moment of experiencing time outside of time.

There is nothing else in my life that is quite like it and the thought that comes to mind today while waiting patiently for the evening to come is that it is something like those cathartic moments in a really good movie, book, play, or musical.  In those moments there are things that swell and things that contract, but mostly there is a deep down sense that what is most real is infinitely deeper than what we can know or fully perceive.


***

Only the Heart

As time passes

and memories fade

only the heart 

will forever keep

what is most precious

in this short life.

***

The Carpenter Bees

Carpenter bees roam 

the dandelions and 

purple-flowered weeds 

of my backyard, startled 

from their perch by 

the wheels of my mower.

They hover and flit, 

sometimes intertwined 

with others of their kind,

unable to stay aloft,

falling to the grass in pairs.

My five year old daughter 

sees that I am unafraid 

and walks into this spectacle 

of fuzzy helicopters and 

exclaims "they are so big!"

I remember them hovering 

near my father's barn

when I was a child, 

frozen in the air for a moment 

before moving on.  

It gave my little brain

the idea to get a  

handsaw to use like a bat.  

When they paused in flight 

to challenge my approach

I would swing the saw and 

hear the ping of their bodies 

meeting the flat side 

of the metal blade.  

I would track them down 

lying stunned in the grass, 

unable to fly or escape.  

I felt I was doing someone a service 

by smooshing them under my shoe, 

having outsmarted them with

my crude but effective weapon, 

for a moment feeling not-so-small,

releasing my rage, stinger-like.

***

The Rookie

I'm one of the parents who tends to come to my son's baseball practices and games to help out where I can without having to carry the designation of "coach" or even "assistant coach."  Because I own a catcher's mitt I've taken on the informal role of warming up the kids who will be pitching the next inning.

Last night the coach let one of the fourth graders in our 4th-5th grade mixed team start the game as pitcher (he’s the small guy at the far left of the picture looking at the camera).  I could tell he was nervous when I took him to the side to warm up.  He had never pitched before and he kept up a kind of nervous banter to talk himself through it.

When he went to make his first pitch his body was perpendicular to mine and he raised up his front leg as pitchers are known to do.  But instead of one fluid motion he just froze there for a few seconds with his leg pulled up looking like a navy blue flamingo.  He then stepped forward and threw a pretty decent pitch.

After watching him flamingo a few more times I suggested he continue to lift that leg like he was doing but make it more of a continuous motion without stopping. He tried it and the ball flew over my head by about four feet.  The coach called over for him to rejoin the team and I quickly told him, "Just do what feels comfortable."

He ended up doing remarkably well and I learned that sometimes a kid just has to go with what he knows.


***

Bedtime Routine

Night has fallen and the darkness
draws close looking for entrance
into our home through crack or crevice.

The kids are in bed and I am the last
left awake to wander the halls and
stand watch for their souls and bodies.

Their small heads on indented pillows
look serenely into the world of dreams,
safe in the knowledge of my presence.

My son's lips are slightly parted, an escape
route for his soul if God so chooses,
my finger on the light switch, hesitating.

Darkness claims his room and I move on
to the soft pink glow of my daughter's room,
her bright brown eyes shuttered for the night.

As I lie in my own bed, the darkness is
complete and I whisper the ending prayer
that is proper for such a time, the "little death"

Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my
soul and body.  Do Thou Thyself bless me,
have mercy upon me, and grant me life eternal.

Amen


***

"Peace"

In February of '91 I was flown down to Ft. Benning, Georgia to start Basic Training at twenty two years of age after talking to a recruiter and dropping out of my senior year of college.  I arrived at Reception Battalion on Sand Hill with long wavy hair and rounded John Lennon glasses.  The dreaded hair cuts/head shavings were on day two or three and during those first few days I picked up the nickname "Peace" from the other soon-to-be basic trainees.  We were a strange mix of shorn and unshorn young men caught between worlds of civilian and soldier.

Because I had three years of college I was given the rank of E-3 or “Private First Class”.  They put me in charge of six other young men and expected me to get them to formations and march them to the various appointments necessary to begin Basic Training.  I had no idea what I was doing.  I left-faced them when it should have been right.  I gave commands while in the parade rest position, not knowing I needed to be in the position of attention before doing so.  I had to make up the fire watch list that involved one hour shifts throughout the night of someone walking between the bunks with a flashlight.  Because I had no real authority if the shit was going to roll it was going to roll uphill making me the focal point of everyone’s frustrations.

It was a very dark time for me and something I had not anticipated.  I'd naively thought I would show up at Ft. Benning and be immediately immersed in yelling Drill Sergeants and crawling through mud.  This in-between place was lonely and interminable.  To make matters worse, the cohort of seven men I was a part of was an anomaly.  Everyone else was in a group of thirty or more and rotated through every 3-4 days.  Because my group was so small, they had a hard time getting us out to one of the Basic Training units and as a result we were there for ten of the longest days of my life.

At least a few of the six men in my group were what I'd consider to be of the criminal element from stories they shared of their backgrounds.  Whenever I'd screw something up they would make vile threats and demean me with the crudest of language.  Unlike Basic Training, there was no close oversight by a noncommissioned officer and so it felt like being in a sequel to the Lord of the Flies.  And in our culture of growing sexualization, these guys were the shock troops.  Every moment of downtime was spent talking of sexual exploits, both real and imagined.  To hear tell it, every female existed simply to fulfill a male's sexual fantasies and no perversion was too far out there to be the object of discussion.  My refusal to participate further isolated me, though there were a few who later showed me a begrudging respect for not going with the flow.

At some point I found time to send out a distress call to my older sister from a pay phone.  I don't know why I chose to call her over my parents, but when I heard her voice I immediately and involuntarily broke into tears that grew to sobs as I tried to speak.  Growing up our relationship had been adversarial to say the least, but that moment was the beginning of a change that continues to benefit me and my family.  It made that momentary experience of a perceived endless hell bearable and sowed seeds of healing in our relationship as brother and sister.  Those troubled young men had unwittingly acted as a catalyst for me to see her in a new light and for that, I remember them fondly.

***

bones

The ego makes its demands and

empties the soul of its substance

like a carnivorous T-rex whose

flesh has long left its bones.


***

St. Hoosierus

St. Hoosierus, play at the Hall for us winners...

Overshadow us with
your courtly might,

drive the paint and

spring into flight,

from the three-line

shoot out the lights,

and never forget 

the days of Knight.

***

An Empty Space

An empty space, long as a mile,
deep as an ocean, that echoes
with the sounds of wants that
are mistaken for needs, end-
lessly multiplied by a broken
culture that does not recognize
the ascetic beauty of temperance,
but instead accumulates bits
and pieces of the superficial
and time-limited, like a massive
landfill full of garbage that we
continually pile to the sky in
a futile effort to feel whole.


***

What Do You Want From Me?

I love how music evokes images and emotions in the mind and can even tell stories without words.  I've been listening to some Pink Floyd in my car recently and a song that has captured my imagination is “What Do You Want From Me?”

The opening has a slow plodding beat that is heavy on the drums and a funky wah-wah Hammond organ that comes straight out of the 70's.  What I see in my mind's eye is that Keep on Truckin’ guy drawn by Robert Crumb taking those exaggerated steps.  Anyone who grew up in the 60's or 70's knows exactly what I'm talking about.  Wikipedia informs me that those guys drawn walking over various landscapes "became iconic images of optimism during the hippie era."

So, that guy is strolling along taking a step for every beat, big goofy grin on his face, giving a thumbs up to bystanders as he struts down the middle of an inner city street.  If I were to make an animation of it I would postpone the entry of David Gilmour's guitar for a minute or so to let the stroll unfold at a more leisurely pace.  I may even give him one of those floppy hats with the brim in the front that was one of  the more ridiculous accoutrements of the 70's funk era.

So, he's "optimistic" I guess, but also oblivious.  Gilmour's guitar soars in overhead like an F-16 fighter and starts strafing the street and buildings with heavy fire.  Debris is flying up all around our guy and he does not even notice as he continues to stride confidently down the street.  Trash cans are exploding, glass windows are shattering, a dog is hightailing it down an alleyway to escape the carnage, but our guy is unfazed.  Listen to the beginning of the song again and tell me you don't envision this scene unfolding as clearly as I did.

Now that I've fully formed this movie in my mind by putting it into words, it occurs to me that my subconscious has created a metaphor for the extremes embodied by the Vietnam War and the Hippie movement.  On one side were young people with absolutely no freedom, following orders to kill and destroy.  On the other side were young people who eschewed authority and absolutized freedom, even freedom from responsibility.  This tension resides in my very head and pleads with the universe, "What do you want from me?"

And the universe replies, "Balance."


***

Like a Drink of Water

Like a desert oasis
for the busy bedouin
is a hug in the midst
of life's stressors.

Like a drink of water
for the wilderness explorer
is a kind word from
unexpected quarters.

Like a morsel of bread
to the famished farmer
is the smile of a
friend and colleague.


***

The Visionary

He was a visionary, and by that
I mean he wore bifocal glasses,
but not just any glasses, rimless
ones that were suspended be-
fore his face by shear force
of will, which is not technically
true, but sounds good in a poem.
And did I mention he was a poet
whose words and rhymes came
out perfect every time (for lack
of an editor), well, at least he was
a man and it was snowing in the
picture, of that you can be sure.


***

Remembering Family

This is how I will always remember them,
Anya as the baby, Elias as the little boy,
and Greta full of doggy exuberance.
They are not dead, to be remembered
in that way, but they are not me,
and it seems I have not always done
my best to get around this separation
imposed by clinging bits of stardust.
Greta is farthest along, 84 in dog years,
and likely the first to go into the mystery.
I come in second, having just turned 47.
I think I must be past the halfway point,
probably well past, as I slouch and sigh.
The picture captures something vital to
who I am, who I want to be, who I will be.
What bright shining souls reside in these
bodies of varying size and temperament!

They are my lot, they are my love, they are my life.



***

I Will Not Write

Today I will not write.  Instead, I will look through my photos and dream up ways of manipulating them using some apps and my imagination.  Something in the photo will dictate the story it will tell.  It is usually my kids that I find so a-muse-ing and they are ready subjects for photo-snapping.

A crop will rid it of the extraneous information not necessary for the story, things that distract the eye from seeing what I want it to see.  If it is not too busy and there is the right amount of contrast b/w light and dark, I may use a black and white treatment to further reduce the  distractions of odd and varied colors.  Black and whites have been some of my most beloved images.

If the color is the thing, it may be too orangey or not intense enough, things easily fixed by adjusting the warmness and saturation.  Is there something front and center that needs to pop out of the picture?  Well then, there is a subtle vignetting that can be done around that central figure, but not too much, don't want to look amateurish.  All of these things can be done with a straight forward photo editing program or app.

But, sometimes that is only the beginning of the fun.  There are a dizzying number of filters that can be applied to varying effects, to make it look older, weirder, or more wonderful in fantastical ways.  It is a creative spark that flew off my newborn son eleven years ago and lit on my heart, setting my imagination on fire...  Oh wait, I just wrote.

***

Seeing Stars

It was a warm and breezy night outside of my army base in South Korea.  I had just finished teaching an English class in the small town of Dongducheon and was out on a walk with two of my students.  One was a Korean Army officer and the other a female display designer who worked in the small mall inside my base.  We wandered the streets until quite late and ended up sitting in a circle on a patch of grass just under the imposing Indian statue of the 2nd Infantry Division.  

Our conversation meandered for quite some time until interrupted by someone bellowing in a drunken manner.  Coming around the corner from the direction of downtown was an imposing but obviously intoxicated Korean Marine in uniform accompanied by another Korean man in civilian clothes.  We watched with some amusement as he swayed and blustered his way down the sidewalk yelling at any American within earshot.  His friend had the unenviable task of trying to steer him away from trouble.

I guess it should have been obvious he was looking for a fight, but I had the unshakeable conviction that no one meant to do me harm.  I had put myself in many iffy situations during my time in Korea and had come out unscathed, convinced I was invulnerable if not invisible.  My Korean companions were a little less sure of the situation and suggested we get up and go elsewhere.  I assured them I was not scared as the uncharacteristically large Korean male stumbled my way.  I did not look at him though I knew he was following the sidewalk that wound around the base entrance and passed only a few feet from where we sat under the statue.

I tried to resume our conversation and for a few moments it was quiet again.  When I heard him again it was very close and just to my back left side.  As I turned my head to look up at where the noise was coming from, I briefly saw a large hand descending fast and hard.  It connected with the side of my head whipping me around and down to the ground.  The world disappeared as my eyes stopped working and all became black, followed by little flashes of light like brilliant stars twinkling in the night sky.  My brain was rebooting.  

Dazed, I pushed myself back up into a sitting position and heard my male companion yelling at the Marine and his friend.  As my eyesight started to clear I saw him grab the Marine's leg and lift it up while pushing him back and off balance.  He then yelled at the friend, telling him to get this guy out of here.  The Korean girl's eyes had grown as large as saucers.  "Are you OK?" She asked.  I smiled and told her I was fine, though I was still in a bit of a fog and felt a little nauseous as well.  It's little wonder that the blow didn't kill me and surely there was a lesson there for me to learn.  Unfortunately, it took several more years, getting married, and having kids before it truly sunk in.  Denial is a son of a gun.

***

The Things They Carried

I am reading Tim O'brien's "The Things They Carried" and just learned that he was 43 years old when he began writing this collection of stories of his time as an infantryman in Vietnam.  The strange thing is, it was three years ago that I took up the pen to begin writing about the things I remembered and I am 46.  I'm thinking there must be some kind of developmental switch that gets thrown in your brain soon after turning 40.  He perfectly describes my experience with this metaphor:

"But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.  You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present.  The memory-traffic feeds into a rotary up in your head, where it goes in circles for awhile, then pretty soon the imagination flows in and the traffic merges and shoots off down a thousand different streets.  As a writer, all you can do is pick up a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come at you."

Sometimes these streets are well demarcated and pull me into the flow easily.  Sometimes it is a narrow back way that is hard to follow but compelling to the point I feel I have to try and work it out.

I've noticed that the flow is most full and true when I allow myself to be vulnerable, to look on my younger self with some degree of pity and compassion.  So much of the pain and loneliness of growing up was covered over by denial which was what kept me from writing for so long.  All of those years I wanted to write, but was afraid to concretize my experiences in words.  It's like I wanted the water to flow under the bridge.  I fought the urge to bottle it, afraid of what I might find.

Like O'brien, I have to carry out these ideas mostly in a fiction-nonfiction hybrid because memory is patchy and there are gaps to fill if I want to capture the essence of what I remember.  Unlike O'brien, this is not a full time gig and I only have rare moments to catch-as-catch-can.  But I think it is important to make the effort.  It was Socrates who said, "the unexamined life is not worth living" or at least I think he said that.  My memory is not always all that good.


***