A Walk down Memory Lane

 

Apparently tonight is my night to be the carpool person and take the girls to cheerleading practice.

I jumped into the car to the sound of my 12 year old whining she did not have “cheerleading shoes”.  There is something so very specific about a middle school girl’s activities and the apparel that goes with it.  There is no approximating, no equivalents or knock-offs.  There is only the thing itself that is essential to have in order to not make one stand out as different or in any way off-kilter.

But I digress.  We drove to her friend’s house and then headed to cheerleading practice.  I was warned by my daughter to avoid playing my music at all costs and remain as silent as possible.  She and her friend talked enthusiastically in the back seat and at some point their conversation moved to kids doing ill-advised things that get them into trouble.  Well, I have a whole treasure chest full of such stories just waiting to be told and so I waited.  And waited… until a pause in their conversation provided an opening.

“You know, I had something like that happen to me the summer before Kindergarten.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror to judge my audience and they appeared receptive so I began my tale:

***

We lived on a cul de sac and the street dead-ended into the back side of a large park.  This side of the park was wooded and a source of fascination for me.  I decided I was up for an adventure on this particular Saturday morning and entered the woods alone and unaccounted for.  I walked through the woods and when I came out into the park proper I was a little surprised to find I’d been to this park before but from a different entrance and had not realized my neighborhood was on the other side of those woods.

[I glanced in the rearview mirror to gauge my audience and see if Anya was giving me the big-eyed “cut it out!” stare.  Instead I saw smiles and so I continued…]

I couldn’t believe I’d come so far so I decided I wanted to try and go farther to see what I could see.  I was scared but excited at the same time.  Eventually I made it to the far side of the park that was bordered by the main road into town and I felt like I had covered several miles on my journey, though it was likely less than one.  I could either go back or head into town and it was so very far back home, so why not?  The day was young.

I was wearing a hoodie and before following the road into town I pulled it up over my head and put my hands in my pockets thinking I would appear bigger or maybe become invisible.  I decided if anyone asked me how old I was I was going to tell them “7” because I thought that was a “big kid” well into elementary school and anything higher would be an obvious lie as small as I was.

[I heard the girls giggling behind me.]

So, I headed towards town on the gravelly side of the road and within a minute or two a police car pulled off the road in front of me.  At first I thought it was just a coincidence, but then the policeman got out and walked back towards me.

“Hey son, where you headed?”

I told him I was headed into town.  I imagine this probably got a smile if not a chuckle out of him and he told me I should get in the police car with him so he could take me home.  

The car made a u-turn and we headed the opposite way that I had been going.  It was tough trying to navigate for him because my 4 year old brain thought of each part of town as separate places that only my Dad knew how to get to by car.  There was our neighborhood, the park, my school, the church, and the ice cream shop all situated in their own exclusive and disconnected geographic locations.  The police officer made some suggestions based on the place he found me and the direction I was walking.  At some point some things started looking familiar and then I noticed the side of our house. 

“That’s it,” as I pointed to our left.

He whipped the cruiser into the side driveway which lead up to two large sliding glass doors.  Inside I could see my Mom leaning back into her exercise machine we called the “jigulator”.  It was an early 70’s fad weight loss contraption that had a wide cloth belt that fit around your butt and would violently shake back and forth, ostensibly to reduce fat in your backside.  She was in a housecoat, hair in curlers, and reading a magazine in full view of the policeman and me.

I’ll never forget the look on her face.  It registered confusion, then anger, then restraint as she came to the door to let us in.  She apologized profusely and thanked the officer but when he left she had murder in her eyes.  

***

At this point I explained to Anya and her friend that back then there were no video games, no cordless phones, and no computers so a lot of time was spent outdoors when the weather was nice.  I also explained that TV shows for kids were only on at certain times, like directly after school or on Saturday mornings.  As a result much of my young life was spent either seeking outdoor adventures or experiencing adventures through books when I learned to read.  That segued into talking about books they liked and then we arrived at Anya’s friend’s house to drop her off.  

It was a drive and then a walk down memory lane for me.  And now that I am finishing this up it strikes me that it was literally 50 years ago.  So very strange to think it could be so very long ago.  I miss my kids being that age and as a parent I am thankful they were not quite so full of “adventures” as I was.  

Ground to Aerial

 

Ground to Aerial

Earth to Sky

Wire to Radio

Nerves to Eye

Beard to Face

Hair to Head

Something old

is almost dead.

Year of the Precipice

 

18 is the year of the precipice

launch versus failure to launch

a post-apocalyptic landscape 

portending survival of the fittest 

moving into uncharted realms of

self-reliance, a tattered safety net

possibilities appear limitless

(which is to say: TERRIFYING)

It is the year of certain indecision

the unknown begging to be known.

***

Thomas Jefferson Crow

 

The crow will take shelter 

under any available edifice

without regard to how grand 

or how humble it may be. So

says Thomas Jefferson Crow.

***

Just go to Sleep

 

Just go to sleep. 

Do not follow those dark thoughts. 

Tomorrow is a new day and 

things will look different then. 

Don't be seduced by easy answers, 

making haste to a finality 

that will solve nothing. 

Just go to sleep 

and know that you are loved 

by someone, somewhere. 

There is pain enough to go around. 

Do not add to it, even if it means 

carrying the burden 

for at least one more day.

***

It was May of 2017 and I was at a conference in San Diego.  I was sitting on my hotel balcony when I learned that Chris Cornell had ended his life.  It seemed so sad and senseless.  He was an incredible human being and beloved by so many.  It was late in the evening and I needed to go to bed but couldn’t find sleep so I wrote this poem.

This is Tranquility Base

“Tranquility Base. Tranquility Base.  Do you read me, over?”

[No, but I do like to read in order to feel connected.  I guess that’s a joke of some sort.  Maybe a pun.  I’ve found this shelter pod and I am reluctant to acknowledge my presence here.]

“You are in terrible danger.  Do you copy, over?”

[So much drama from those so invested in this waking world.  I have given myself over to the certainty of death and the freedom from that inevitability is not so easily attained.]

“Tranquility Base.  Moon Proper has been overrun.  Do you require assistance, over?”

[They will eventually give up on me and that is my hope.  I have accumulated so many disappointments, but now I am fully in control because I have no illusion of control.]

“This is your last chance to reply, over.”

[They are promising silence.  Maybe they feel sorry for me, but I have come to terms with the surety of my physical demise while their world has shrunk to the size of a body’s border.]

“Tranquility Base.  Listen.  We do not want to give up on you.”

[Nobly put but naively understood.  I see an impossible light breaking on the horizon to engulf me in mere moments and so I draw in a deep breath.] “This is Tranquility Base, over and out.”

***

The Beauty Shines Through

rotten traces 

and 

forgotten places

yet 

the beauty shines through

***

Kenotic Knocking

 

Knock, knock, knock
knuckles on wood
hand in a fist, such
a peculiar pose.

It’s a kind of cry for help
a percussive entreaty
“please open the door
I am cold and alone”.

Is anyone home?
It is not a certainty
and to keep knocking
requires faith if not kenosis.

***

Body & Spirit

 

Wandering through life

alone in body but con-

nected in spirit except

when it does not seem

even that is the case.

What then my friend?

***

The Statue

Here I stand
like a statue
hewn from stone.

My heart is hard
and cold like a
gravestone in winter.

My eyes are frozen
seeing only the sadness
of the lack of love.

My fingers are icicles
sharp and unbending
useless for helping.

How did things
come to be this way?
I feel utterly alone.

I wish things were different
from this sorry state.
Why am I here?

Where do I turn when
even God himself
has turned away?

The Karma Machine

 

I feel like I need to fire up the ol’ karma machine.

Too many negatives building up on my ledger.

I’ll keep my eye out for opportunities today and

trust the universe will balance itself out through me.

I’m not sure life really works this way, ya know,

but if there is any possibility I need to seize it.

***

Beauty as Bulwark

 

Over the years I have found that beauty can be a bulwark against despair.  

It can take various forms (visual arts, music, literature, etc) but I’ve noticed it most keenly in visual terms where something catches my eye and triggers some deep feeling pulling me back from a dark place.  In this regard it functions as a kind of metaphysical light shining in the darkness.  And it is in this “darkness” that my eye finds it most readily.  There are numberless examples of this I can think of through some tumultuous times in my life.  I oftentimes find them in a Christian context which is probably due to the cultural milieu I was raised in.  

What comes to mind at this particular moment is when I was a young infantryman living in Korea far from home and finding myself too often utterly alone.  In my incessant wanderings during that time I discovered Myeongdong Cathedral.  It sits hidden like an island on a hill surrounded by skyscrapers in the heart of central Seoul.  To get to it you have to walk through the streets of a bustling shopping district that falls away as you ascend the hill and a large cathedral suddenly appears amongst trees and terraced gardens.  The contrast to the hard steel and concrete of the city surrounding it is startling.

I visited there many times to find some peace and respite, either sitting quietly inside on a pew under its lofty ceilings or on a bench outside in the back where elderly Korean women sat and prayed at a shrine to Mary strewn with flowers.  As the son of a Protestant pastor it was an exotic experience of sorts that should have been disconcerting but the peace it brought me was undeniable.  

 

At one of these visits to Myeongdong an exhibit of large black and white framed photographs was set up on the descending stone terraces in front of the cathedral.  One in particular captivated me.  In it a priest was ascending a path on a windswept grassy hill.  The perspective was from lower on the hill and behind him.  He wore a black cassock and a round wide-brimmed hat from a time gone by.  I can’t rightly explain what parts of me it spoke to, but it was a deep place rarely explored and it gave me a hunger for more.

This might explain why I was so readily drawn to the Orthodox Church a few years later as a young man trying to find my way in Southern Indiana.  I was taking pre-med classes at IU with no assurances that I would even be accepted to medical school.  In relation to the number of applicants the acceptance rate was ludicrously low.  So much was uncertain and I was in desperate need of a stabilizing force.  This came by way of the Orthodox Church with its rich visual imagery and ancient origins.  

In retrospect it was a trajectory that started in Korea at the stone steps of a grand cathedral and carried me through time and space to the front concrete steps of the small and humble parish of All Saints Orthodox Church in Bloomington, Indiana.

***

The Cathedral Remains

 

I have died too many times before 

or maybe I have never truly lived.  

At times only the Cathedral remains

its spires piercing the heavens.

Despair can invade these hallowed 

spaces like an impenetrable fog

even as sorrows ever soar and

my thoughts scatter to the wind.

The edifice suffers superficial

sacrileges yet remains sound

filling with a melancholy song that 

calls me to something higher.

***

Snow Globe

 

It’s a kind of paradox

the world is agitated 

like an aggressively 

shaken snow globe

yet surrounding the 

swirling chaos is the 

beauty of being held

in the hands of Love.

***

Free as a Bird

 

Writing prompt for Monday, January 23^rd: perhaps my favorite photo of John Lennon that I’ve colorized in the craziest of ways while listening to “Free as a Bird”.

His look is one of calm introspection.  I imagine he is working out a song on his guitar.  I can appreciate that frame of mind and how it takes you out of yourself and into a world that is full of possibilities.  There are things going on deep in the mind, making connections and weaving beautiful images together, a kind of metaphysical wrestling, mysteries that bubble up to the surface to surprise and delight us as they blossom into our awareness.

I love his full beard in this one, his long hair, and those distinctive glasses that come from an earlier age.  I had those selfsame spectacles for at least a few years, but the metal bridge sitting on my nose dug in too deep and I had difficulties making them sit straight on my face.  My nose is crooked and my ears are not quite level to each other.  I wanted to make them work but reality dictated otherwise (AND someone at a party said I looked like Harry Potter).

I started to grow my hair out a bit in my early 20’s until joining the Army where it was completely shorn but not before my fellow Basic Trainees gave me the nickname “Peace”.  After I left the Army and returned to college I grew it out as long as it would ever get, but then I cut it after a year or two in order to participate in the Army Reserves to help pay the bills.  A beard came later with my conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy but the long hair never returned.

So, the hair, beard, and glasses never existed simultaneously in my young life much to my regret.  But now I am older and have been dipping more deeply into that creative well that I imagine John Lennon knew so well.  If I become morose about my late start to the game I only have to think of poor John taken too soon from the world as I carry on creating in his memory as he haunts my thoughts and inspires me to try and bring beauty to my fellow man.

***

Simply Present

She sleeps in the quiet of a church, 

front and center, under a candle.

The Psalms are droning on in a 

place just behind her head in the dark.

Friends float in and out all through 

the night to keep her company.

They stand silent, simply present, 

and then bow to kiss her cold hand.

Look, they say inside their heads, she’s 

wearing her knit cap snug in her bed.

Will I pass so peacefully and be cared

for so sweetly when my time comes?

***

For Those Who Truly Love

 

What if we just fly

on out of here, my love?

This house has bound 

us for far too long.

I know I can’t follow

but time and eternity 

will bring us back 

around beyond the sun,

a place beyond hope 

or heartbreak, where 

goodbyes do not exist

for those who truly love.

***

“Drifting”

 

My teenaged son told me he has a friend who was into “drifting” with his car until it resulted in damaging his vehicle at which point it didn’t seem quite so cool anymore.  He described the phenomenon to me and it sounded a lot like fish-tailing which we used to do in our cars that had rear-wheel drive when I was a teenager.  I guess with front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive cars these days fish-tailing is not as easy as it entails losing traction only on the back tires.  So “drifting” is the phenomenon of losing traction on all four tires by banking hard into a turn and over-steering the same direction as the curve.  

The discussion of this phenomenon with my son brought back a memory of maybe the one time in my life that I actually drifted a vehicle in spectacular fashion.  

I was in my early twenties and serving in a mechanized infantry unit in Korea.  Our company was “Delta Death” and each platoon had four Bradley Fighting Vehicles making twelve total (3 rifle platoons and a headquarters platoon).  These vehicles looked like small boxy tanks because they had a rotating turret with a main gun but also a compartment to hold infantry soldiers.  It was a hybrid vehicle of sorts halfway b/w a tank and a troop carrier.

Anyway, our unit was one of the first to transition the Bradleys into use in Korea so we were all green when it came to this particular 27-ton behemoth.  We spent months getting familiar with it to include learning about its specs, maintenance, weapons system, etc, until they finally arrived and we could actually put our hands on one and drive it.  

And driving it was a challenge.  It was a tracked vehicle like a tank and so heavy that getting it to move from a dead stop took some doing.  When backing up if you wanted to turn your back end to the right you would have to rotate the steering mechanism to the left and vice versa.  In a car it is just the opposite and so it was awkward to overcome all of that muscle memory.  Also when driving a car you are thinking about the direction you are turning your steering wheel which is turning the two wheels below you in the same direction, but on a tracked vehicle it is different.  For example, if you want to turn right you turn the steering mechanism right and give it a lot of gas but it is not a wheel that you are turning below you or even a steering wheel in your hands for that matter.  Instead, the right track slows and the left track speeds up in order to turn the vehicle in a rightward direction.  You get the general idea.    

One particularly miserable rainy afternoon my platoon took its turn at a Bradley training area.  It was a muddy plateau that had been carved out of the side of a mountain somewhere in the no-man’s-land between Camp Casey and Camp Hovey.  The main part of the training entailed driving as fast as you can towards the front of a rectangular open bunker, execute a 180 degree turn, and then enter the bunker via a ramp from behind it.  These bunkers are part of the strategy used by the Bradley Fighting Vehicle whereby you drive down into it so that the bottom part of the vehicle holding the troops is below ground level and the only thing sticking up above ground is the rotating turret which can survey the landscape and fire its guns if need’s be at a pursuing enemy.  

Waiting my turn was excruciating.  I watched the other soldiers take their turn and drive cautiously down the open stretch coming to an almost complete stop when they got to the backside of the bunker and then do a slow and laborious turn of the vehicle until they got it far enough around to enter the bunker.  This looked like an inefficient and herky-jerky mess to me.  If you were the Bradley Commander or gunner half sticking out of the turret (as sometimes happens when just driving around) it would feel like being on a mechanical bull ride where your body and head would be flopping around with each punch and lurch of the vehicle as it swiveled in fits and starts.

My time finally arrived and I giddily entered through the driver’s hatch and donned the helmet with built-in microphone.  I pulled the hatch lid down sealing myself into the driver’s compartment.  I heard the sergeant’s voice through the headset from the turret.  “You ready Haney?”

“I’m good to go Sarge!” 

I got the Bradley lined up at the beginning of the run and got the OK to proceed to the bunker.  I pushed the gas pedal to the floor and it lurched forward.  Peering out the little rectangular glass portals was difficult but I could just make out the muddy tracks in front of me and the bunker up ahead which looked like a small rounded rise with grass on it.  I kept the gas pedal buried so it could reach top speed by the time I reached the bunker.  As we got closer the voice in my headset said “Ok, slow down, slow down, SLOW DOWN!”

I estimated at this point I was beside the bunker and without letting up on the gas I buried the steering mechanism hard to the right and that 27-ton monster box slid full sideways and around in a beautiful wide 180 degree arc and ended up facing the way I’d come at a full stop lined up with the bunker.  My foot was off the gas at this point as I paused and then proceeded nonchalantly down into the bunker.

My headset buzzed angrily: “Goddammit, Haney!  Don’t EVER do that again!” as I sat there with a big smile on my face that no one could see.

***

Theophany on Mars

 

They ascend the hill 

with hands intertwined,

their translucent robes 

flapping in a windless void.

They sense the presence

of a being from another 

world transported by a

numinous needle of fire.

The landing has marred

the surface of their world

but only on the most 

superficial of levels.

Curiosity draws them to

the top of the hill as does

the free compulsion of 

an all-connectedness.

In the valley below them 

the traveller is setting up

a shiny cistern of sorts

on a quad-legged table.

Inside his helmet they 

can sense from afar

the oscillations of a chant

forming on a blue wavelength:

“When You, O Lord, were

baptized in the Jordan

the worship of the Trinity 

was made manifest…”

The meaning is unknown to them

but the beauty of it is undeniable

as the subterranean waters 

sing deep below their fleet feet.

***

I Dream of Danger

 

In my dream…

It was something I’d heard about and seen play out a time or two in the news, something  utterly terrifying. In these grainy newsreels it would show someone in a car stopping because of a car sitting sideways in the middle of the road.  Beside the car would be two cartoon-like characters that looked to be men in costume.  The costume made them look like simple children’s drawings: large and puffy, all white, and a simple face drawn on with a black marker.  There was something paranormal about this phenomenon such that if the person found themselves confronted by this scenario they were going to die and there was nothing to be done about it (a la “The Ring”).

So, I am pulling out of a parking lot with my family and as I turn there sits a car with the two cartoonish characters by it blocking the road.  In a full on panic I put my car in reverse.  I speed off backwards towards the downtown skyline and when I get there I briefly see the outline of a giant fox-like creature in the distance towering over some skyscrapers in my rearview mirror.  I realize it is part of this thing I am now caught up in and I make my family exit the car.

We run across the street and into an empty department store.  I am trying to get them to move as fast as possible without having to tell them we are in mortal danger.  I am kind of running behind them saying “go, go, go!” staying between them and whatever is behind us.  We run down an aisle to the back and I am looking around trying to find a way further in and further away from the danger stalking us.

I have them go through some doors into the back offices and then into a bathroom where I lock the door and tell them to be as quiet as possible.  I have no idea if anything I do will actually save our lives but I am determined to do everything in my power to increase the odds of our survival.  We stand in silence and I hear someone or something approach the door.  I put my finger to my lips and make eye contact with each family member to make sure no one makes a sound.  But then my teenage son starts to get impatient and gives me a kind of annoyed look and says in a low voice that isn’t quite a whisper “There’s nobody out there”.

I don’t know how to make him not talk and at this point I am sure we have been compromised.  It is such a feeling of total despair, but I can’t give up hope and so I push open a window and lift up my daughter to get her outside so hopefully she can continue to run and possibly escape the inevitability of this nightmare.

***

The Search for Beauty

Such exquisite beauty and sadness in the world.  

It is the knife that pierces my heart most cleanly, 

two sides of one blade.  It may manifest through 

music, literature, or the visual arts motivating my 

attempts to participate in it as best I can, whether

strumming on a guitar and trying not to strain 

while singing or maybe writing something that 

I hope moves someone or taking a photograph 

to capture the same sad but beautiful effect.  

I see these images everywhere and everywhen.

I would love to be a great writer or musician

but it is the visual aspect that comes most 

effortlessly to me and the eye of my heart.

And whatever it is it has to be enough for now.

I am old enough to have squandered too much

time in the pursuit of pleasurable things that 

are transient and too easily attained without 

the single-mindedness needed for greatness.

***

December Sunday

The drive to and from work
on a dreary December Sunday
when the world has died or
at least gone into a deep slumber.

The tall weeds and slender trees
flow by gray-brown and naked
while flocks of birds fly from
place to place listless and cold.

A time to be alone and enclosed in
my shiny red box, coming or going,
a peaceful bit of purgatory before
reaching either heaven or hell.

***

The Train

 

My grandpa loved trains and when I see them on occasion I think of him.  He was a peculiar man, possibly even eccentric.  He spent the last half of his eighty years divorced from my grandma and living as a single man, working as a janitor, and habitating in various rented spaces before transitioning to a nursing home when dementia set in in his seventies.  

He was gruff, especially to women and children, but as I grew older I began to appreciate him more.  Like all of us, he was who he was and had been formed by forces mostly outside of his control.  He boiled Quaker oats on the stove top every morning and added a pinch of salt.  Lunch and supper were always accompanied by a slice of buttered white bread.  

He kept to his rituals until the inexorableness of his cognitive decline robbed him of them.  I visited him at the nursing home when I could.  I would take my college books down there to work on assignments and study.  I don’t think he knew who I was but seemed appreciative of the company and sometimes unexpected wisdom would manifest in his lost thoughts.

I won’t lie, there was a very attractive nurse there that made it easier to spend time with him.  She and I lived in two completely different social spheres but it was nice to see her smile.  I once challenged my grandpa to a race down her wing.  I took off running half in jest  but when I looked around he was right on my tail.  Her lovely eyes registered surprise if not alarm.

And the train has come a long way since then.  I watch it speed over my head on the way home.  A lifetime of change and choices have come and gone like those coupled railroad cars flying by.  I wonder where they are headed at such breakneck speed?  I sometimes wish life would slow down and let me catch my breath so I can remember who I am.  

***

The Moving Monolith

 

It’s familiar yet alien 

with the caring coming

through in solid stone.

Somewhat like Ray’s 

mysterious Martians 

hapless to time and 

desecration by men

who visit and forget

kindness due to fear.

A lesson we would

do well to learn and

burn into our brains.

***