Driving Down Town

 

Driving around

down town

lost and found

face a frown

silence a sound

in which I drown.

***

Milan Kundera Gone at 94

 

Sad news today of the passing of Milan Kundera at 94 years of age.  

When I hear his name I am immediately transported back to my mid-twenties, newly graduated from college and traveling the globe in a quest to shed my prosaic Midwestern life.  His break out novel in the West “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” was my manual in opening up these new possibilities.  I read it on park benches and train stations in Eastern Europe for maximum effect.  His writing was chock-full of history, politics, philosophy, art, and music that drew me like a moth to a flame.

He was a writer and intellectual from the Czech side of Czechoslovakia and had lived through the Communist takeover of his country before relocating to France to pursue his passion without government interference.  The melancholy of such an experience pervaded his novels and was like pure oxygen to me.  The sadness of top-down attempts to suppress the insuppressible, of struggling to be human in an inhumane system, of being exiled from your home and alienated from your culture.  In his stories I could feel so much longing and in that longing I could find hope for something better or at least different.

In retrospect, reading his novels were likely my first impetus to be a writer although those dreams had to be put on hold indefinitely when I began medical school which swallowed me up body and soul.  During that time I met my future wife who was an English major at Butler University.  As it turned out her academic advisor specialized in Kundera and I was able to talk to him about my experience with reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  I told him how the first time I read it I was sympathetic with the main character (Tomas) and liked him a lot but on the second reading a few years later I abhorred him.  He understood why that could very well be the case and I wished we could have talked more but we were not at his office hours for me!

His other great book in my estimation is “Immortality”.  Maybe he is now experiencing a bit of that not only in literary terms but also in spiritual terms, one can hope.  I am thankful for his attempts to reach out and connect with people like me who are hungry for love, for understanding, and what might account for sympathy in the unbearable lightness of being.

***

All Those Years Ago

 

How strange 

that the paintings 

of a young Adolf Hitler 

were of churches:

-The Minorite Church of Vienna

-St. Charles Church 

-St. Stephen’s Cathedral

-A southern Bavarian church

The only one I’ve seen

in person is St. Stephen, but

I may very well have passed 

the others without knowing it.

A friend and I wandered 

the streets of Vienna for a day 

where I looked for literary landmarks 

while he looked for pastries.

It’s disconcerting to think that

this young artist with such 

talent in good measure 

could become so inhuman.

In my experience art has had 

a profoundly humanizing effect

that I could not have done 

without in these middle years.

“My Struggle” apparently has had

a very different meaning for me 

than it did for that angry man

all those years ago.

***

Find This Place

 

There are lights across the water that are merciless in their inaccessibility, as far as a midnight sky winking with stars of near-infinite distance.

I do not know what brought me to this black beach but I stand in sand with wavelets lapping at my feet staring longingly at that distant shore.

It is something I fear I deserve but my memory cannot conjure the source of offense that necessitates such a cruel and unusual punishment.

Time is spent skipping rocks across the surface of the water.  “Find that place!” is the energy I expend with the full torque of my longish limbs.

An attempt to swim across would be disastrous yet I fantasize about such a thing, binding a raft with ropes of regret and a salvaged sail.

And I imagine I hear a voice across the water, “Find this place.  I am waiting for you.  Do not give up.  I will allay your fears and fulfill a dream.”

***

Man at a Parade

We’ve lived in the Columbus metro area going on 15 years now, first in Worthington and now in Upper Arlington.  Between these two communities we have transitioned from a focus on a Memorial Day parade to a 4^th of July parade in the respective communities.  

One thing that has not changed is the presence of this man of indeterminate ethnic origin and age.  He wanders the length of the parade with glasses perched on his head and a fixed smile, determined to have his picture taken by everyone he meets on the street.

The first time he approached me several years ago I had no idea what he wanted.  He does not talk, but instead points at your phone and then at himself.  After taking his photo he wants to see it and then moves on to find someone else to take his picture.

Today he got one from me again after I hadn’t seen him for at least a few years due to the pandemic.  After me he walked up to a group of teenaged girls who were somewhat amused if not bemused by his approach, but like everyone else they figured it out.

I wonder where he lives.  I wonder what his story is.  I wonder how he gets from community to community, parade to parade.  I wonder why he is so focussed on having his picture taken by complete strangers.  I wonder if I’ll ever see him again and his eccentric smile. 

***

Last Thoughts on The Martian Chronicles

On this cloudy and slightly damp Sunday afternoon I have just finished reading The Martian Chronicles.  In my mind’s eye I see my own reflection in that Martian canal as the novel comes to a close and a thought comes full blossom with roots running into the ground to stabilize it.

It has been discussed ad nauseam, this peculiar phenomenon of Ray Bradbury imagining a Mars that is scientifically absurd with its “thin” but breathable atmosphere, canals full of blue water, exotic vegetation… and yet we WANT to believe it against all that we know to be true.

The discussion then flows to the author’s assertion that it is not Science Fiction as such but Fantasy.  The circle refuses to be squared.  There are astronauts, there are rocket ships, and there are “aliens”.  It’s like saying it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck but isn’t a darn duck.

The thought that comes to mind today is that this is a story set in an alternate or parallel universe where Mars is closer to Earth.  As a result it is more conducive to the conditions Ray describes to include being able to spot Earth easily in the Martian sky and having similar climates.

And the frequent rocket ship trips made by individual families makes so much more sense if it takes weeks instead of several months to reach Mars.  Just this little adjustment in my mind makes the stories so much more satisfying to me and hard hitting as “reality” replaces fantasy. 

***

KVJ Documentary

March 25, 2022

 
I just finished the Kurt Vonnegut documentary “Unstuck in Time” and, ho boy, it surely hit me in the feels.

I’ve been reading some of his novels the past few years to include re-reading Slaughterhouse Five as well as purchasing the graphic novel version at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library gift shop when I visited there last year. It was my first visit to the new location in Indianapolis and because of the pandemic I was the only one there, having called ahead to set up an appointment of sorts. I was donating a copy of Life magazine from 1971 that I’d inherited from my Grandpa’s things and had a Vonnegut short story in it (Richard Nixon was on the cover, for goodness’ sake!). A Saturday morning tour of the museum followed while Elias slept in at our hotel room recovering from an AAU basketball game from the night before.

It seems a shame that I read so little of him prior to my 40’s, but there is much of his work that I would not have appreciated when I was younger. Now in my 50’s it is both painful and fascinating to see how similar our outlooks were/are when he was at this age. The realization kind of came full bloom as the documentary wound down and I realized his last published work before he died was a collection of essays entitled “Man Without a Country” which so strangely echoes things I have written about in my post-Army life, even just a week ago.

Probably the most Vonnegut-influenced thing I’ve ever written was Department of Dance which ends with a nod to Kurt and his famous bird’s call “Poo-tee-weet?” from Slaughterhouse Five that “symbolizes the lack of anything intelligent to say about war.“ Sadly, these are realities that continue to haunt us and I am thankful for Kurt’s unwavering honesty in writing about such things.

***

Particulate Matter

 

He approached the city from the West

not anticipating a skyline that was absent

or at least a ghost of a line largely implied.

Particulate matter particularly mattered

as it entered his pulmonary passages

after its long journey from the North.

It was like a post-apocalyptic scenario

in the books he’d read since his youth

but now wafting into the realm of reality.

***

The Race

Atop my office filing cabinet,

remnants of an 18 year run.

Visited now only in memory,

nearly two decades of fun.

So many falls and flub-ups,

but feels like a race I’ve won.

***

Rust Never Sleeps

It’s the messing around with images and the ideas that they end up sparking that I find so stimulating and enjoyable - therapeutic even.

***

This week it was a utility truck sitting on the street by Grant Medical Center.  I passed it on my way to the car and the rust lines and runs caught my attention.  I find things like this intuitively compelling and it is not until later that ideas begin to flow as to what it means to me.  

This particular image is one of decay and disintegration on a vehicle that was once shiny and new rolling off the factory floor but has been “dying” ever since.  As it rusts away a beautiful pattern emerges with orange and yellow streaks cascading down over months and years.  

The words that came to mind were from a Neil Young album “Rust Never Sleeps”.  This sent me looking for selfies in my iCloud storage and I found one of me mock shrieking in horror in a stairwell at Grant.  The darkened wheel well formed a frame for this primal scream.

I have an app on my phone that I use to work with photos I’ve taken on it.  I’ve become increasingly drawn towards the Double Exposure feature that allows me to put one photo on top of another and blend them.  It allows for a kind of story telling by extreme juxtaposition.

The inside of the truck wheel has concentric circles that look to be shock waves moving out and away from my mouth, projecting the scream.  I made that part of the image black and white.  Maybe my version of Dylan Thomas’ “rage rage against the dying of the light”.

***

The Deceiver

You are the deceiver 

and I am the deceived

except the you is me 

and 

self-deception the sea

I am drowning in 

with nary a plea.

***

25

 

It was that time

overlooking the Rhine.

Feeling so alive 

at the age of 25.

Visiting a castle,

no worries or hassle.

Growing my hair long.

Feeling physically strong,

but emotionally facile.

***

Bottom of the Sea

 

The city sits at the bottom of the sea,

the water’s weight bearing down like

the world on the shoulders of Atlas 

but without the benefit of being a Titan.

He was punished for leading a war

against the Olympian gods for con-

trol of the heavens and I have been 

feeling pretty rebellious myself due 

to the frustration of not really knowing 

my place in the big scheme of things

which is not unlike drowning, honestly.

***