Watching the Wheels

"People say I'm crazy, doin' what I'm doin'..." or so sings John Lennon, a man and his music that I've grown to appreciate over the years. This has been especially true after becoming a father myself and seeing the positive changes it made in his life after Sean came into the picture. It didn't hurt that in my college years I grew my hair long and wore circular spectacles for a time. Those were the days of the occasional comment that I resembled the former Beatle which helped solidify the affinity.

This phenomenon had its strangest manifestation when I was living in Korea. One of my friends during that time was a Korean man who went by the name "Paul". The first time I saw him was at Seoul Union Church, barefoot and sitting Indian-style on a side pew with his eyes closed. He wore all black and had a large wooden pectoral cross hung around his neck. We went out after the service to a coffee shop where I learned he was a Catholic attending a Protestant church because "I'm learning about all different kinds of spirituality." He was a peculiar fellow, fancied himself a monastic of some sort and never without a lit cigarette on his lips.

He had a part time job at a Catholic bookstore and was always broke, which he reframed as a monastic virtue. We spent most of our time together hanging out in coffee shops with me picking up the tab, but on one occasion he took a notion to treat me at a small restaurant near his neighborhood. He was very excited about this and ordered a good amount of food that I slurped down gladly. We were there for what seemed a very long time and the restaurant owner was becoming increasingly impatient, asking Paul if there was anything more we needed. Finally, he came clean with them that he had no money but assured them that he would return by week's end to cover the bill.  What could they do but agree to this atypical arrangement?  I did not have the money to cover the tab or I would have paid for the feast we'd just indulged in.  This, as I was to learn, was par for the course when hanging out with Paul.

Another incident involved one of the ubiquitous coffee shops which cover Seoul like a pleasant rash.  These establishments must top the list of Korea's entrepreneurial endeavors as there are so many unique offerings and so few chains.  I must have visited at least a hundred of these places in multiple cities and towns. The one I'm thinking of was very dark with no windows and low lighting.  Either side of the room had booths lining the walls and running down the center were tables and chairs separated by chest high wooden dividers for a sense of privacy.  Paul was chain smoking as usual and complaining about his extreme sinus pain. He said that he needed just fifteen minutes to sleep and laid down in the booth with his dirty bare feet sticking out into the aisle.  The female owner eventually saw this and came over to tell him he couldn't sleep here.  She looked very stern with hands on hips, but I held up my hand to keep her from shaking him and told her in Korean to please not do that, he was not feeling well. A waitress had come over by that time to see what was going on. The owner's stern look broke at my attempt to intervene with minimal Korean language skills and she gave a little forced laugh. She then directed the waitress to help her move one of the wooden divider walls and they placed it in front of our booth so that people couldn't see Paul sleeping there like a homeless person from the street.

He had a way of exasperating people who weren't in tune with his oddness. It definitely made things interesting.

After being in Korea for two years, my tour of duty with the Army was up and I returned to the States to finish my senior year of college. That last year at Indiana Wesleyan University I befriended the six or so Korean students there and when I returned to Korea as a civilian I met up with two of them at different times to hang out, one in Seoul and one in Pusan. I met the one from Seoul, whom I'll call "Ki" because that is the half of his name that I still remember, at one of the many coffee shops I'd frequented during my two previous years there. We were sitting at a window booth on the second floor overlooking the front of the building.

By that time I'd grown my hair down to my shoulders and carried with me some retro green tinted sunglasses, very different from my military cut and look of the previous year. Ki and I were reminiscing about the good times we'd had the past year at IWU when I glanced out of the window and saw a man staring up at me from the street, fixed in place, eyes big as saucers. It was Paul. He broke into a huge grin and started waving frantically. My Korean friend looked at him and then looked at me with a distinct WTF? expression. As Paul hurried to the front door I quickly explained to Ki that I knew Paul from when I was last in Korea and that he was a little strange, trying to prepare him for what was to come.

Paul barreled up the steps and plopped onto the bench opposite me next to Ki. He was like a kid hopped up on sugar. Ki was bemused but also visibly uncomfortable with Paul's demeanor. I should add here that Ki was a "cool guy" who used expensive haircare products and wore fashionable clothes. Paul prattled on in a rapid fire manner and then, rather excitedly, declared that I looked exactly like John Lennon. He wanted me to put on my sunglasses and would not take "no" for an answer. I finally relented and as soon as they settled on my nose Paul exploded into squeals and clapping, "IT'S JOHN LENNON!  IT'S JOHN LENNON! WOO WOO! YOU ARE FAMOUS! YOU ARE FAMOUS!" Ki looked like he wanted to slide under the table and hide from all of the eyes that were suddenly drawn to our table. I quickly removed the sunglasses but it was too late. Ki was caught in a seriously uncool scene and I felt bad for him, but I couldn't bring myself to be mad at Paul.  No one had expected such a highly improbable meeting. Maybe it was just meant to be.

So, fast forward twenty years to last night. I was feeding Poppyseed her bedtime snack at the dining room table. She typically will refuse to eat any bites unless there is something that interests her playing on the iPhone. A friend had posted a link to John Lennon's "Watching the Wheels" on Facebook earlier in the day and so I pulled it up for her. The video included pictures of John in various poses and situations as well as some live action stuff, some with a beard and some without, some with long hair and some without, some with glasses and some without. Poppyseed leaned forward to get a closer look and said very matter-of-factly "Dat's you." She said it again while pointing at a picture of John with medium length hair poking out from under a beret, glasses and no beard, "Dat's you, Daddy." She looked up at me with a funny little smile as I watched the wheels go round and round in her bright eyes.

The Brothers K

The Brothers K, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

***
I ask forgiveness
for everything
and from everyone
without exception
because the only
evil that matters
is that which
I've contributed
to the noxious mix
of self-centered
wants and desires
that do not
recognize limits
or restraint
where mediocrity
masks as virtue
and suffering multiplies
with my indifference

***

A Family Portrait

A family portrait
of perfect strangers
perfectly framed.
Side by side,
staggered, unsmiling,
staring straight ahead.

A glowing arrow,
disembodied voice
with lovely lilt,
"going down."
The elevator
doors slide shut.

A box of contained
pain, descending
into the depths
of my being,
looking for
a bottom.

The Melancholic Collector

Big Hat, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

***

I don't want to build
or own anything new
but to use and inhabit
what has come before,
molding it to my needs,
a Salvation Army store
approach to living,
breathing in musty
smells while rubbing
my hand along rough
and uneven surfaces
imagining who has
worn these clothes,
what has been
in these drawers,
who has read
these yellowed books,
being the latest
link in a long
chain of existence,
feeling connected to
those who have
gone before while
my days play
themselves out
and the next
melancholic collector
wonders about who
I might have been.

***

Power Trio

Power Trio, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

Today I switched hospitals with a colleague for the convenience of going to a doctor's appointment that is located here. The thing I love most about this particular hospital is that it has a medical library that discards books relatively frequently and makes them available gratis. Many of the books are outdated manuals and reference books from obscure medical specialties, but sometimes, when the literary gods are feeling frisky, they are novels.

Today was just such a divinized day. The discard section was lined with brightly colored paperback spines that drew a running gaze from me, head tilted severely to the right. My eyes tripped along several low quality affairs and a shite-load of Tom Clancy titles until fixing firmly on the name Walker Percy. The book was "Love in the Ruins" and for those not familiar with mid-twentieth century Southern writers like Walker Percy, Eudora Welty or Flannery O'Connor, it might have been mistaken for a trashy romance or other some such thing. As it is, the main character is a psychiatrist and the story itself has a faint SciFi odor about it. It might as well have had my name written in it.

Another book that made my eyeballs stop and take notice was Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions". The last time I'd picked this book up and begun reading was in the early 90's as an overly earnest student at a stridently conservative college. Two chapters into it I had been thoroughly scandalized and saddened that this author whom I'd grown to love and trust for good fiction would write something so trashy and un-American. I stopped reading it in disgust and may have even thrown it away.

This book too was snatched up and put in my cargo pocket. I read the first two chapters while eating my lunch and found myself more than once giggling like a silly school girl. Such brilliant satire! Such scathingly accurate insights! Quirky as heck. Apparently it took twenty years of maturity for me to be able to appreciate what he was doing with this novel.

I met Kurt Vonnegut once, kind of, not really, and managed to piss him off. As a senior in High School I drove up to Indianapolis with some friends and fellow Vonnegut lovers on a blustery winter night to see him give a talk at a large High School auditorium. I had my hard back copy of Cat's Cradle with me and after the talk my friends and I snuck back stage.  As he attempted to exit in the rear I presented my book and a pen for his autograph while partially blocking the doorway. He gruffly waved me aside and pushed past us to leave, burning my friend's hand with his cigarette in the process. If I'd really known anything about him outside of the few books I'd read, I'd have probably known that that shite wouldn't fly with him. But I was just happy to have had my brush with fame, literally (literarally?).

The third book that caught my eye was John le Carré's "Russia House". To be perfectly honest, I have never read anything by him though I was enthralled by a movie based on one of his books, The Constant Gardner. I also recollect that the movie based on Russia House had a beautifully melancholic soundtrack that featured Branford Marsalis on soprano saxophone, a favorite Jazz musician of mine at the time. The music haunted me for weeks afterwards and gave me a burning desire to learn how to play a soprano saxophone.

I even went as far as to buy a soprano saxophone when I was living in Korea, a black beauty with nickel plated keys. I was able to shave almost two hundred dollars off of the price by using the monetary exchange rate to my advantage. The seller refused my offered price in dollars, so I split my offer into dollars and won (Korean currency) that he ended up accepting even though for me it was an equivalent amount. The one thing I learned from that experience is that if you want to learn how to play the saxophone, don't try and start with a soprano. And if you want a good deal in Korea, carry two currencies.

Sadly, I sold that saxophone a few years later for a loss in Bloomington Indiana after squeaking and squawking on it for awhile, but getting free books today has helped take away some of the lingering sting of that memory.

Whatever It Takes

whatever it takes

to escape the pain
if only for a minute

whatever it takes

to keep myself sane

or even to admit it

to take a hit
to draw a drag
to punch the vein
to light the fag

to sniff a snort
to slice the skin
to drink it dry
to grind a grin

to give it up
to a stranger's grope
to hang it high
to knot the rope

whatever it takes

to keep myself sane

or even to admit it

whatever it takes

to escape the pain
if only for a minute

***

A Very Snowy Day

A Very Snowy Day, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

A peculiar thing
to see a squirrel
dragging a cut
of cloth, jumping
from branch to branch,
through swirling
bits of snow.
Later, I ascend
the stairs
to a window,
binoculars in hand.
From my warm
perch I spy
the clump of
leaves and twigs
just slightly above
eye level
and bring the
viewing circles up
to take a look.
At once I am,
or perceive myself
to be,
in the nest
padded by a cut
of cloth on this
very snowy day.

Reading about Poetry

Reading about Poetry..., a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

***
Reading a book
about writing poetry
on a couch
in front of a window
while wind and snow
blow at my back.
My son says,
"Look Dad, it's a
blizzard!" And
so it seems.
***

The Sweater

The Sweater, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

I want to write about the sweater. It has wide stripes of black and red, only some have said over the years that it is dark pink or other somesuch color. The color is not important, though there is some significance to the fact that it was a color other than green. That detail came from how I acquired it in the first place, from friends, on my birthday, while serving as an infantryman in Korea. They were one American school teacher and two Korean students, friends I'd made while teaching English as a volunteer in the evenings in a small town north of Seoul.

They bought it at a shop outside of my military base, a shop among many shops selling cheap knockoff clothes, watches, and anything else that could be stitched or made to look like something it wasn't. But this sweater was different; thick, warm, and roomy. It has been in my possession for twenty three years and it looks like it could have been bought yesterday. What significance the red/pink/salmon whatever color?

My wardrobe then and now is 75% olive drab with the other 25% comprised of mostly earth tones. They were happy to give it to me for my birthday, so far from home, and laugh that they bypassed a nearly identical one that was green and black because I needed something "different" to wear. I later saw the one they passed on and found it exceedingly pleasing to my eye, but I did not buy it.  Instead, I wore the one they bought me out of deference to their friendship, a sustaining force in a hard place in my life, and it grew on me.

I brought it back to the States when my time was served and continued to wear it when the weather permitted, usually with a black or olive drab turtleneck, needing to temper its color with something more familiar, a compromise of sorts. I was wearing this very sweater the night I met the girl who was to become my wife. Accoutrements included a beanie and a man purse that I wore across the chest and called a "pouch." We laugh about it now, such strange ideas, individuality gone a bit awry. It is the prerogative of the single person with all eccentricities at full bore w/o any temperance or tampering by others, significant or otherwise. Somehow it was not off putting enough to disallow the coming of vows and the co-creation of two small but exquisite human beings who fill my heart beyond imagining.

The years have passed and the sweater has followed. It has survived several wardrobe weanings as we've hopscotched from the Midwest to the East Coast to the South and back to the Midwest. I have never been able to part with it, though it has fallen out of favor with my wife almost from the git go and I've ignored it these past almost fifteen years of marriage, sitting in the back of closets or in boxes, touched by neither moth nor decay. Until today.

It was one degree fahrenheit this morning when I let our dog out to potty. Instead of her usual roaming she did her business and returned quickly to the door to be let in. The few seconds of having the door open while standing there in my PJ's was almost unbearable. I made my way back upstairs and looked to my top shelf where I keep my sweaters, digging through the green, beige, brown, and black ones until that odd colored one dislodged itself, unearthed like a pleistocene fossil, the gay coat of a woolly mammoth. I brought it down and unfurled it to take a look, unchanged over so many years, a witness to so much of how I came to be who I am.

It was as thick and comfortable as I remembered it, worthy of a polar vortex. I'd sworn off turtlenecks for decades, nevertheless I dug around and found my old olive drab one and felt the two should be wed once more. Coming downstairs, I found my wife cooking breakfast for the kiddos.  She glanced up at me when I entered the kitchen. There was a hitch to that look that made her eyes hesitate, "You're not going to wear that to work, are you?" I told her it was warm and, ultimately, just a sweater, though in that look I could see that she wished I'd gotten rid of it years ago.

Premature

COSI, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

***
Perpetually born premature
I live out these tenuous hours
in my incubator of a house
kept alive by the oxygen-rich
vitality of my two children
and a spouse who will not
simply let me go with the
pull of a plug when the
drain of my selfishness
has reached its fullness
***

My Father's Shoes

New Basketball Shoes, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

I found them in the back of my father's closet amongst a litter of 70's style above-the-ankle leather shoes with side zippers. To be fair to my Dad, it was the 70's and I was seven years old. Above my head hung what seemed to be hundreds of polyester suits and a rack of ties, each wide enough to prevent any food from reaching a shirt front. In those younger days I had a habit of exploring every nook and cranny of the house when my parents were otherwise occupied, certain that I'd find something of interest that had been hither to hidden from me. And, by gum, I found just such a thing that day.

I picked one of them up and turned it in my hand to look at it from different angles, heck, I may have even smelled it. It was not like the others and it did not seem connected to my father who was a preacher from a very conservative denomination that was always on the lookout for signs of "worldliness." Its function and appearance did not include anything remotely Sunday-go-to-meetin' and had me not a little scandalized, but exhilarated all the same. What was it? Well, I can only say in retrospect what I did not know at that time. It was a bona fide black canvas Chuck Taylor All Star high top tennis shoe.

This was a part of my father that was a mystery to me at that time. He traveled a lot for his weekday job as a carpet salesman and oftentimes got home late. On Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings, as well as on Wednesday nights, he was preaching. The first time I really saw him in action was when he had invited another pastor from the same denomination to bring some of his church members over to play a full on game at the basketball court situated on a corner of the town square.

They all wore short sleeve buttoned shirts and long pants, not t-shirts and shorts which were deemed too worldly. They had to be a witness to anyone that might pass by and plainly see that they were of a different sort. The Chuck Taylors made an appearance that night on my father's feet for the first time since my discovery. I watched him shuck and jive around that court, run from end to end, and throw up several Bob Cousy style running hook shots. It made me deliriously happy and proud.

Now I am forty four years old and I have a son who just turned nine. This evening we bought him his first pair of high top tennis shoes for basketball season which starts this Sunday afternoon. Seeing those black Nike high tops in front of his closet tonight brought back that memory of a thrilling discovery in the back of my father's closet all of those years ago. And it made me deliriously happy and proud.

Purple Play-Doh

***
It's all she wanted
for Christmas
at two, almost three
years of age.
A consistent request
from which she
did not waver.
The look on her face
when she opened
that yellow cup
filled with the shade
of her fancy.
Who can describe
such a thing?
I won't even try.
***

The 4th Day of Christmas

***

On this fourth day of Christmas our almost three year old was playing with her favorite Christmas present, a Sesame Street playdoh color mixing machine, while standing in her tower at the kitchen island. She was also eating breakfast which was a glass of ice water and a small bowl of cut up sausage pieces.

At some point I looked up from my coffee and saw her using the small playdoh dipping spoon to transfer small amounts of water to her mouth, à la Orthodox Communion.  "Hey Anya, you look like you're taking Communion."

This triggered a huge grin and what appeared to be an actual sparkle in her eye. She picked up the glass and gave it a big kiss. "I kiss da cup," she giggled. She then put a piece of the sausage in her mouth. "I eat da bread."

Elias and I looked at each other and started laughing. High on her imagination and energized by our response she proclaimed in a loud voice, "I take cu-moony-yum!"

***

Children’s Classics

Poppyseed has discovered classic children's poems and songs on her mother's iPhone. For the past several days I have found her listening to them or singing snippets around the house. Today I caught "Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater..." coming from the front room. I later went to investigate and as I turned the corner I was greeted with "Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?"

It's strange how technology is shaping the way we ingest information these days. I can remember these exact same poems and songs in our Childcraft books growing up. I can perfectly picture the illustration for "Fishy, fishy, in the brook..." as well as others that really caught my eye and stoked my imagination. The other source of these children's classics as a kid was the record player with it's quarter-sized plastic adaptor for playing 45's.

I'd recently opined that Poppyseed knew more pop music references than those poems and songs passed down through the generations. Now it appears that she is making up for lost time on a smart phone. And now that I'm living in the new millennia I think I'm going to go on line and find those books on Amazon. Poppyseed's birthday will be here before we know it.

***

Ol' Roy

Untitled, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

***
It's raining
in December

Ol' Roy
hangs on
our tree
these past
ten Christmas's

painted before
kids came

A young
married couple
far from
their roots
in the
Mid West

He was
my grandpa
and he
loved trains

Still feeling
the thrill
of his
room-sized
train set

A six
year old
boy with
engineer's cap

shoebox-sized
train cars
powered by
electrified rails

A connection
that gets
more precious
with time

***

A Full Moon

St. Elias, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

***

My son lies
in a darkened room
the lights out
sleeping
as I stand
over his bed.
I can see him
in the cold glow
of a full moon
its reflected rays
slanting through
his bedroom window.
Three fingers together
two drawn downward
making the sign
of the cross
reciting
a paschal hymn
a psalm of protection.
Let God arise
let his enemies
be scattered.
Let those
who fear Him
flee before
His face.

***

The Desert

Watching the Mud Dry #1, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

***
Still haven't figured out this writing journal thing. I've always waited for inspiration in order to write and having some direction has always made writing easier. Writing w/o direction or inspiration, now that's a different story. When there is no excitement to fuel the writing it becomes a vast desert of unexplored territory. And what to explore? Sand? Cacti? The occasional boulder?

Writing seems to be pure magic. When I can't do it I wonder at those who can. When I am writing and it is going fairly well I wonder at where all of this information is coming from and how I am able to make sense of it all. I've also learned that I'm a sucker for alliteration and it comes up frequently when I write. So much so that I have to edit it out sometimes because it can get comical when I'm not trying to be funny. "The conniving clown cut cautiously on his crusty carbuncle." See what I mean?

At present I am trying to write a story about a crow I killed when I was a kid. I sense there is something powerful and disturbing in this story. I feel a need to write it out, to think it through, and come out on the other end with some new insight into myself. I love the idea of writing as self-therapy. I was made aware of this facet of writing when I was taking pictures and writing poems during a deployment to Iraq. It was so desolate there with no escape to familiar places or a recourse to well known faces. Sitting in my little concrete room at night I could handle the fear, the tedium, and the loneliness by writing a poem and pairing it with a picture.

Another recent example was starting with the idea of "I remember when" which led to memories of visits to a laundromat in the small town I grew up in. When we first moved there I was starting first grade and we were renting a house while waiting for our house to be built on the edge of town. The rental house, I later learned from my Mom, had no washer and dryer and that is why we were visiting the laundromat that first year or so. In writing down that little walk down memory lane I was able to gain a greater appreciation for my Mom. Our relationship was pretty bumpy growing up and looking at this one little bit of our lives by writing about it as an adult brought some understanding and healing with it.

So writing *is* powerful, but you gotta put down the words and spelunk the brain. That's what this journal is all about and this is my second entry, Hurray!
***

"Hallelujah"

***

If we only knew
the gravity of grace
that sustains all that is
and all that could be
working in and through us

one word would repeat
in an endless loop
of joy and love
transforming our suffering
into hope and thanksgiving.

***

The Door

"How are you feeling today?"

is the door
through which
the doctor steps.
Some answer, some don't,
some can't, and some won't.
A trickle may come
that is encouraged to flow.
A flood may result
and cover the floor,
two people bobbing
on words and emotions.
He provides an anchor, an oar,
a will to be present.
Whatever happens,
he must never be distant.
Above all else
it must remain open.
But if it is slammed shut,
he will wait patiently
on the other side.

***

Uncle Bob and the Baltimore Ravens

Uncle Bob and the Baltimore Ravens, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

Grabbed my Baltimore Ravens cap as I headed out the door to return my son's books to the library today. I've not worn it out and about before, but today seemed a good time to do so. The trees are in full Fall regalia and the sun is shining down with a cool breeze blowing.

I am not a Ravens fan nor do I know any Ravens fans in the circles I run in here in the Midwest. I've heard that someone on that team had been involved in a stabbing years ago and "got away with it." I don't know much about it, but what I do know is my Great Uncle Bob lived in Baltimore and was a Ravens fan, a mellow man with a sweet spirit.

His sister is my grandma who passed away a few years ago. Their brothers died much earlier in a run of heart attacks due to bad genes and even worse eating habits. I remember those brothers only from foggy childhood memories of a family reunion or two, especially Uncle Charlie who was a real character and had a humdinger of a son named Chuckie whose antics have gone down in family legend.

Several years ago I visited a residency program in Washington DC as a fourth year medical student and Uncle Bob invited me up to Baltimore for breakfast at an old fashioned diner. I remember enjoying pancakes and coffee as well as his quick smile and uncanny resemblance to my grandma who was still alive at that time. When my wife and I moved to DC we visited him and Aunt Stephanie and later brought along our new little boy who was born there.

This past summer we went down to see my family in Southern Indiana. While we were there my Mom remembered that Aunt Stephanie had sent some of Uncle Bob's ball caps for family to have as mementos of his passing this year. My Dad brought down a shoe box full of them from the closet shelf and I went through them one by one. Many had golf themes which was a passion of Uncle Bob's though it is a sport I've never really gotten in to. Somewhere in the middle of the pack I found the Baltimore Ravens hat, a team that had just won the Super Bowl.

So, today I am remembering Uncle Bob in this beautiful twilight time of the year as the days begin to shorten. The leaves are starting to die, but not without an explosion of color to ease their passing in winning fashion.