And Off I Ran

I feel like it has been one of my major accomplishments this past year to get Elias to run Cross Country (XC) in middle school.  It is not a sport that gives immediate rewards which is what most kids seem to look for these days in our increasingly consumer driven society.  “Delayed gratification” has gone from an essential skill to be learned by the developing child to being a dirty word avoided at all co$t.  

One of my biggest regrets from my teen years is that I waited so long to discover this sport.  It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I got my first taste of competitive long distance running, all the more frustrating when I learned that I had a knack for it.  When we finished our season on a golf course in Bloomington, Indiana at Semi-State I couldn’t help but feel I’d squandered so many years not knowing the freedom and joy that can come with a long run.

If I rewind that single season of XC I alight upon the moment when I learned it was something I could be good at.  It was early in the season and we were at an invitational meet in Loogootee, Indiana.  There were well over a hundred runners in my race and I was feeling pre-meet jitters with some nausea and shaky legs.  When the gun fired to start the race I felt like I was spinning in a clothes dryer with the jumble of bodies and the smell of trampled grass all around.  The only remaining memory I have of that course is running a corridor of grass between the road and a chainlink fence.

When I crossed the finish line there looked to be a lot of people in front of me being funneled through the chute.  After having my place, time, and number recorded I was released back out into the wild as it were and found myself wandering aimlessly amongst the chaos of such a large meet.  I was looking for familiar faces and at some point my best friend’s dad found me in the crowd.  He had a huge grin and clapped me on the back, “Haney!  Great job!  Man, you really ran well today.”  I couldn’t quite place his enthusiasm until he explained I’d placed 23^rd and three of our four best runners were in the top ten.  It was a dominant showing for our team and I had somehow contributed to it as the number five guy.

This was a big confidence booster for me moving forward and I consistently ran as the “number five guy” for the rest of the season (for those not familiar with XC, the team score is determined by adding the times of your first five runners to cross the finish line).  It did have its downside, however.  I spent the rest of the season at meets hearing the opposing team’s coach yelling at his runners out on the course “This is him!  This is their number five!  Catch him!  He better not beat you!”  The first few times this happened I found it disconcerting but I quickly learned to take it as a challenge and get motivation from it.  You will NOT catch me!  And off I ran.


***

One of Us

What if God was one of us,

an infinitely older man

seriously tired of our shit?

I certainly hope not,

but I would not blame Him

one.little.bit

***

Books & the Long Goodbye

From about 10 years old to 50 years old (my current age) I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time, money, and resources on collecting books.  I imagined there was a time in the future where I would settle down in an old house full of bookshelves or wallpaper the walls with them, stacked and steadied with gravity alone like the monk cells of Skellig Michael.

I think I reached the pinnacle of my literary hoarding some time in my mid-30’s at which time I went through all the different places they were stored and lovingly counted them, taking in the musty smells and reliving memories of where I was when I acquired them.  The number was somewhere in the 900’s and I felt like God near the end of His creation who “saw all that He had made, and it was very good.”

But geez-oh-Pete, getting married, forever moving out of my parent’s habitations (to include their warehouse), and being responsible to transport this library from place to place was daunting.  As a result the magic number of 1000 books was never reached and the library began to shrink.  Each subsequent move took its toll until the most recent one this summer.

The culling process had always been a painful and deeply melancholy experience for me,  but during this last move it was almost a relief.  What remained of my library was literally cut in half with hard decisions being made as to what had to go and what I felt was not yet ready to be released back into the world.  For at least a few weeks HalfPrice Books became a frequent stop for me with boxes and boxes of books flowing forth from the back of my car, the store speakers buzzing with “Aaron, we have your offer ready at the counter.”

It seems at some point my “children” transformed from paper and ink to flesh and blood. My kids have helped me realize there are more important things in life than accumulating material things to bolster my ego (a major motivating factor if I'm honest).  They’ve needed space to grow and flourish and the books have had to give way to that.

***

Pretty Things

“Billy stayed in the wagon when it reached the slaughterhouse, sunning himself.  The others went looking for souvenirs.  Later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones —to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by.  If this sort of selectivity had been possible for Billy, he might have chosen as his happiest moment his sun-drenched snooze in the back of the wagon.”     

Slaughterhouse-Five

____

Reading this paragraph in Vonnegut’s novel triggered thoughts of what such a moment might be for me in my past.  The image that came to mind was a brief moment in my undergraduate days at Indiana Wesleyan in either 1989 or 1990 before I’d dropped out to join the Army.

I was walking on a sidewalk heading East towards our campus dining facility on an exceedingly pleasant and sunny day.  I passed under the shade of a large tree that is not there anymore and when I reemerged into the sun it triggered an intense feeling that Vonnegut would famously describe as “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt” in an epitaph.

It was startling, really.  I had had so many misadventures and misfirings up to that point post-high school, feeling  listless and directionless, until that very moment when everything seemed right with the universe.  I became emotional and felt tears starting to well up in my eyes.

It was pure delusion of course.  Most likely a dopamine dump  that had flooded my synapses, but a moment nonetheless that gives one hope to keep going and see what’s around the next bend.  Maybe it’s an unforeseen blessing or maybe it’s more misery.  The important thing is that there are possibilities (forget probabilities) and opportunities that float there in the not-yet.

***

Left on Peach Fork Road

We’d spent a week on the beach: me, my wife, my daughter, and my son.  Incidentally, we’d moved to a new house the week prior to that and left it full of boxes which were mostly full.  It was a two week snapshot of extremes of stress or relaxation, but always active.

It was the drive home to Ohio where it occurred.  We were at about the eleventh hour of driving, somewhere south of Athens, and far from civilization.  I was trying to follow the signs to catch Hwy 33, but the “next right” promised by the sign proved to be premature.  

Instead of 33 we found ourselves on a country road and “in the sticks” as we would have described it growing up in southern Indiana.  My wife had been taking requests to play music on her phone and we’d just drove our way through “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas.

I suddenly piped up with “Look up Dueling Banjos!” as we passed a shack-of-a-house being swallowed by weeds and a pickup truck in the gravel driveway.  I was the only one who’d seen the movie or appreciated the reference, but then the banjo began to heat up.

Everyone was punchy at this point in the trip and got caught up in the manic melody.  There was  kind of buzzing sensation in the air.  As we passed a tiny house that looked like it was tiled with multicolored squares I heaved up a boisterous and piercing “YEE-HAW!” 

My 8 year old daughter burst into infectious laughter and all our recent life stressors seemed to melt away in the general hilarity that ensued.  My wife could barely breathe and I glimpsed my 14 year old son in the rearview mirror allowing himself to temporarily drop his inhibitions.

These glorious few minutes continued to build when my father-in-law texted to ask “where are you in your journey?” which was perfect, if inadvertent, comedic timing.  The Garmin indicated ‘left on Peach Fork Road’ so I half-yelled, “Tell him we’re turning left on Peach Fork Road!” 

***

Listless on Europa

Feeling listless on Europa,

Jupiter looming large in the sky.

A Ransomed traveler 

asking the what? and why?

But there is only the sound of

alien waves lapping on a lifeless shore.

A lonely moon sistering 

the Silent Planet of Lewisian lore.

***

Rolling the Rug

He was 4 when we rolled out the new rug,

the moving boxes cut and connected into a 

huge cardboard fort with many windows,

Greta looking on.

He is 14 as we roll it back up to move else-

where after a decade of growth, snickering at 

childish things found in the back of his closet,

Greta long gone.

He is ageless in my heart, whether small with

bright orange hair, or nearly adult-sized with 

his own ideas, direction, dreams, and desires.

***

Gretchen Goes to Nebraska

It was 30 years ago today that King’s X dropped their second album “Gretchen Goes to Nebraska.”  The year was 1989 and I was a new transfer to Indiana Wesleyan University after an aborted sophomore year at DePauw University.  You might say life wasn’t quite unfolding as I’d imagined it would when I graduated from high school.  I was arrogant, insecure, and eager to make friends, but not so eager to be one.  What a strange time it was.

That’s when King’s X came onto my radar via their sophomore effort and it blew me away, well past Nebraska.  The picture of the band members looked edgy and uber cool.  The album concept was heavily influenced by C.S. Lewis and the first song even shared the name of his best known science fiction novel “Out of the Silent Planet.”  The cover was an illustration of what appeared to be a portal into another world cut into the fabric of space-time.  It’s as if a focus group had recruited me to brainstorm ideas for an album that would bring together elements of what I loved most in my young life.

And the music (Sweet Mercy!) was an eclectic mixture of hard and soft, full of soul, with three part harmonies and a relentless drive.  I’d never heard anything quite like it and I fell in love.  

I have six of their CD’s at present count, at least three of which I’ve acquired in just the past few years.  It’s like the band lay dormant for me for a couple of decades before I rediscovered them and was reminded of how much I adore them.  These CD’s are in my car and I love to play them when I’m driving.  My 14 year old son is not a fan because it is “Rock” and he is not into “Rock,” but my 8yo daughter will do some shared head-banging with me from the back seat with a big smile on her face.  She seems to get it.  

***

Unstuck in Time

Aaron has come unstuck in time, much like Billy Pilgrim at the beginning of chapter two in Slaughterhouse-Five.  There’s a kind of snipping sensation when his eyes lose focus and take a rest so that his internal vision can take over the controls.  Don’t try to talk to him when this happens.  You will be just some disembodied voice, like a medium from another plane of existence trying to break through.  He can, and likely will, ignore you.

It is the act of writing that he is experiencing.  The trigger is more often than not a particular memory or, more accurately, the *feeling* of a memory that begs to be re-felt and, in the re-feeling, shared with people who might want to read about such things so they can feel it too.  It is a reflection of our shared experience of the world.  We are all connected, so they say.

Check his backlog.  For some reason a crow is a recurring feature in these stories, especially the ones that reach back into his childhood.  Aaron is not sure why this must necessarily be the case but it seems unavoidable or even inevitable as a stand-in for himself or other key players.  Maybe it’s a symbol for something mysterious or inexplicable, like “all people are connected.”  His favorite, though the title might be a bit too on the nose, is “The Crow.”  That one is a doozy and really happened to his younger self.

What has sparked these thoughts as of today?  Well, for one, he is re-reading Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five due to this year being the 50^th anniversary of its publication.  He just so happens to be 50 years old himself and is at this very moment writing in 3^rd person in case you were wondering.

And something that happened yesterday as well...  Aaron becomes unstuck in time, but only by one day in order to share something strange that happened that is destined to be a felt memory.  His son has gone to the neighborhood Rec Center to play basketball and upon his return the 14 year old boy is obviously upset about something.  He comes into the kitchen and plops down on a stool and hits his not-quite-adult-sized fist onto the table.  

“What’s wrong, buddy?”  Aaron asks, speaking as his father.

“Nothing.”

They go back and forth with no information being exchanged until Aaron takes a stab at guessing what might be wrong to try and break the fruitless cycle.

“OK, I think you are angry at yourself because you saw an old lady stumble and fall at the Rec Center and you walked away and did nothing.”

The son stops staring into space and focuses on his father with a quizzical look.

“Am I right?”  Which is the only thing Aaron can say in response to such a look because he was not expecting it.

“Dad, I was walking home and I saw an old man fall out of his wheelchair in his driveway and he was saying ‘help, somebody help.’  I didn’t know what to do.  I saw a woman come over and she called 911 on her phone but I just kept walking.  I’m so mad at myself.  Why didn’t I stop and help?”

Aaron assures him that feeling upset at himself is a good thing and a sign that he cares about other people but that there was nothing to be done apart from that woman calling 911.  What the father is really thinking as these reassuring words are coming from his mouth is, “How in the sam hill was I able to interpret my son’s emotions so accurately without knowledge of what had actually happened?!”  He suspects time travel.

***

A Soldier for Uncle Sam

A soldier for Uncle Sam

but

I do not know who I am

Not that it even matters

when

the bullet flies, splatters

Making me less of a man

not

more, unaccording to plan

***

Kung Fu Coffee

The sleeve was gone

Coffee cup hot

Making it hard to hold

Fingers burning

But

Like Kwai Chang Caine

I bravely moved it

From hand to mouth 

For a sip of liquid Chi

***

Blue Light Special

Yesterday after work I had to go pick up my son at a friend’s house who lives a good distance north of us off a busy highway.  In order to avoid the worst of the traffic I went straight there, but had about an hour to wait until I was to pick him up.  To kill some time I stopped by a HalfPrice Books.

I roamed the store a bit, read a bit, and checked out some Facebook stuff online while sitting at a table near the entrance.  Next to that table was a cart filled with old games for sale and curiosity drew me in (or was it the musty smell?).  Amongst the forty or so games I found Stratego and a game called “Break One Nine” which involved using a plastic CB radio and pushing your semi-truck piece around a game board.  It struck me that my kids would have no idea what this game was about or why one would use a number code to communicate information over a radio from a vehicle.  Isn’t that what texting is for?

Speaking of arcane knowledge from the 70’s... I then found a game called “Blue Light Special” and in my mind’s eye I was three feet tall again and running through the tiled aisles of a Kmart store looking to find that spinning blue light shining somewhere just above the height of the shelves, a booming voice overhead egging me on, “Attention shoppers!  There is a Blue Light Special in kitchenwares.”  I’m sure my Mom’s voice was the next to boom out without the help of a speaker, “Aaron!  Where are you?  Get back here!”  

“Blue Light Special” is now a cultural reference and as indecipherable to my kids as “Break one nine.”  Like many phrases and references passed down from my parents that I’ve never had any direct experience of due to the passage of time, my kids will likely hear these things from me that will strike them as peculiar.  The advantage that they have that I did not have is they can immediately “Google it” and discover the origins of what they have not personally experienced.  Maybe their kids will snicker when they hear “Google it” and have no idea what they are talking about in some future Google-free world.

***

The Escalator

Looking at a picture of me and my son 

on an escalator in the DC subway system 

unexpectedly brings a kind of epiphany:  

That salvation is the relentless ascent 

of an escalator powered by the  grace of God,

but I have to get on it, maintain my balance, 

remain still, and let it carry me upward.  

My inclination to move will only likely 

send me heading in the wrong direction, 

yet even so there continues to be an 

inexorable pull dragging me heavenward.  

And something about this image gives me hope.

***

A Blue Tongue

If my tongue were blue 

I’d be locked in a zoo

with nothing to do 

but sit and stew 

in monkey poo.

  

In lieu,

my tongue is pink,

I do not stink,

not a missing link,

nor a fuzzy fink,

just a kid on the brink.

*wink*

***

The Shriners

When my sister’s back 

was crooked, not straight,

the Shriners came 

not a minute too late.

They trundled forth

In their little cars 

and paid the bills

like superstars.

  ***

The Last Day of School

It was the last day of school and he figured he wouldn’t waste his time sleeping for the rest of the summer.  Even as his parents dropped off to their slumbers and the sisters fell into dreams, he was out on the back second story deck pondering the universe, suspended several feet above the earth.  By starlight and moonglow he surveyed the endless cornfields and patches of forest stretching southward from his perch on the edge of the small town.

A groundhog trundled through some high grass along the fence line, but stopped and stood on its hind legs when it sensed the thin upright shadow floating above the field.  It was the boy who sometimes called out to him on sunny days.  He fled from other upright walkers, but this boy was different.  They would sometimes make eye contact and with his homey hole so near at hand he tolerated the uncertainty and strangeness of the situation.

The deer was less certain as it stood stalk still amongst the corn rows waiting for the boy to disappear back into his home.  It was also aware of the groundhog who took chances by standing man-like above the grass.  The deer thought it foolish and was certain the small creature would pay for it some day.  Better to stay hidden, keeping one’s ears upright and eyes sharp, sniffing the air.  The boy, like others of his kind, could kill from a distance.    

But the boy’s mind was not preoccupied with thoughts of vigilance or the need for survival.  He was imagining the possibility of tornadoes raging in the distance and whether there was life on other planets.  He wanted collapsible wings and a jet pack to launch himself from that deck into the radiant darkness.  He wondered if angels exist and if they knew he was looking to emulate them with fanciful contraptions.  Was flying synonymous with freedom?

***