Another great pleasure of my life is standing on the stage in front of an engaged audience with profound or funny words coming out of my mouth as naturally as if I were just making them up on the spot.
Tapping away on a computer keyboard or scratching away at new lines, with a pen I like on old dry paper, is one of the great pleasures of my life.
I suppose we all live in this world until we can no longer make sense of it, and then, in the remaining years, we create a sensible world of our own to live in. Maybe that’s what they call senility.
Once, when I was a little boy I woke up from my nap and the world was dark. My parents were out of town and the babysitter led me to the window where it was 2 p.m. and everything was dark as any night. What was going on that day? Why was it so dark? Was it a dream? Was it real? The memory is so old now that it may not even be a memory. I just don’t know. Isn’t that wonderful? I just don’t know.
There’s another storm coming. Will there be one after that?
I’m old enough now where I buy books, start reading them, then 130 pages in realize that I’ve read them before, and fairly recently. Too late to punt. Old age is here.
How long can I deny my feelings? I’ve tried the patience of this question throughout my life on many different issues. My feelings always win out and voice themselves in the end. You’d think I’d learn something from that repeated experience, but I don’t. I don’t really. F. Scott Fitzgerald was right. We’re all in our own little boat. The past wins. The past always wins.
How many keys do you have? What are they for?
One of the biggest lies that people sometimes tell: “I don’t care what anybody else thinks.”
Lately, the cold is really getting to me.
Are we at the end? Nope, there’s still at least this moment. What can we do with it?
“A little bird told me.” Was it a white bird? A black bird? Does that make a difference?
Loneliness can sometimes be a cure.
Is there anything better than closing the door behind you, as you walk into your warm familiar home. after a long, cold day in the snow?
Is it better to go for a long walk when you’re happy or when you’re sad?
My dad was funny. He’s been gone almost fifty years now, but I still remember that. Fifty years after I’m gone, if somebody still remembers that I was funny too, my spirit will be more than satisfied.
A person can tell nothing about the world with certitude, unless that person has an honest friend.
Writers come to a point where they have written enough. Then, sometimes, they just stop for a while. Harper Lee stopped for the rest of her life, and she was right. She couldn’t top herself. No one could top To Kill a Mockingbird.
I love looking out windows when it’s cold out and warm inside.
I want to have all my appointments and jobs crossed off in my little pocket notebook. That would be great. I long for an empty slate. But then what?
I don’t love some of the people on the Earth right now. I’ve got to work on that.
In the end, I hope all that remains of us is love.
I’ve nothing new to report. In some ways that’s a revelation.
Is there anything better than good sleep?
Waking from good sleep may be equal to good sleep.
I rush east for one day at the lake doing some family business, and rush back here to find myself totally disoriented. Which me am I?
Stones from the beach have stories, but we can’t read them. What if we could?
Solitude and loneliness are linked, but not the same.
For solitude to be a comfort, you have to either want to deal with the face in the mirror, even if that mirror is a lake, or already be fine with the face in the mirror. If the former is true you have things to think about while you walk or paddle. If the latter is true you have nothing to think about but the wind as you walk or paddle. Either may be exactly what you need.
“I want to do this myself,” we say. But when we are left to do it ourselves we get lonely.
Either seasons do know or don’t know they are seasons. Deciding which is true, is the difference between faith and agnosticism.
Who is in charge of the seasons?
Is anyone in charge of the seasons?
No one put us in charge of the seasons, but, in our hubris, we chart them out, pretend to know when they will begin and end.
Seasons don’t know they are seasons.
Seasons know that they are seasons.
Whose idea was this? Good one.
Whose idea was this? Good one!
Whose idea? Was this? Good. One.
Whose? Idea, was this? Good! One?
Whose—idea—was—this? Good. One…
Whose idea was this? Good! One!
I’d love to meet a person who knows what she or he is doing. I’d have a nice talk with her or him, and then I hope I’d be kind enough to leave and not to sit back and watch them in action, with the express purpose of quickly discovering their all too human flaws.
In my head, in my heart, thoughts and feelings switch quickly in 180 degree jerk alterations that startle me and make me wonder about my sanity and about the hearts and minds of others. Is everyone the same? Is no one the same?
Wooo hooo! What a party!
Is it over?
I can be a smile for you. Can you be one for me. It doesn’t matter, I’ll still be a smile for you.
I’m for small celebrations and commemorations. I’m against big rooms full of lots of people. Some may say that makes me anti-social, but I prefer intimate conversations with a few friends to show parties where resentments hide behind smiles and everyone is there because everyone else is there and everyone is trying to get ahead.
I have absolute faith in the well meaning incompetence of people.
Once you stop working, as I have recently discovered, there are an infinite number of quiet moments in each day. Some in the snow, some looking out a window, some petting your dog, some spooning up some breakfast, some reading quietly before bed. Infinite. And each connects with a similar moment in a previous or subsequent day. Infinite.
Dreams mesh and contort and synthesize and juxtapose. They are an amorphous blend of physical sensations, memories, urges, fixations, observations. No human being could really live in a dream land safely. It takes time for us to adapt to change. And, in dreams, change is often instantaneous and unexpected. No, it’s fine to dream your dreams, but you wouldn’t want to live forever in the psychological and spiritual forge where they are created.
I notice the end of certain seasons now more than I ever have before. There is a savoring in me that implies something else. You know what that is if you are of a certain age. And if you are not, enjoy your day. Inevitability happens in every way.
The best surprises approach us when we are very busy with things that don’t matter and remind us what does matter.
Joan Baez once said (during the Reagan Administration) that America always gets the President it deserves. It seems to me that the question then becomes: Once we get and experience a bad President, can we learn not to deserve another bad one?
Real leaps ahead will only come when everyone, EVERYONE, accepts the truth and no longer falls prey to the illusion. Yes, it’s a long slow process, and we are only beginning. We are always only beginning.
What faith we place in commerce! How little faith we place in science!
Fairness and joy sometimes become evident only after a lot of life.
Singing loosens the soul.
Quit asking the questions that vex you for a day and just try to live life moment to moment. It can become habit. Discretion then, becomes important.
The subject of poetry is always something the poet doesn’t yet fully comprehend. The form of poetry is the poet’s written speculation about that nebulous subject. Once the words are down and published in even the most humble fashion, the reader is invited to join in that speculation. Together, poet and reader seek answers, agreement, discussion. All this never stops, not even after both poet and reader are dead.
Nope. I’m not getting mixed up in all the new b.s. A friend of mine who works in the news business I abandoned over 30 years ago recently told me that the latest b.s. was getting her down. I told her to quit. Then I added that that was easy for me to say. Then I thought, “Quit what exactly?” And I realized I had no answer for that question. Or, perhaps, too many answers.
Unions came into existence because management is historically and habitually unfair to workers. Executives can play the friendly boss all they like and pretend that as their little company grows bigger and bigger and their profit margin likewise grows, that they will always treat everyone as though they are a part of a little family, this is Walmart’s claim, Amazon’s claim, but the reality is they won’t, they don’t. As a company grows profit will become, always becomes more important than workers. That is the nature of corporations. Big business is about profit. As long as that is true, as long as the goal of business is the bottom line and not the welfare of workers and customers, as long as corporate honchos are looking for massive profits instead of simply self sustaining profits, workers and customers will be mistreated. Unions are not a perfect solution, but they are the only one we’ve discovered so far. Let’s have unions for every worker in America. Let’s have a sustainable wage with affordable healthcare and a wage that supports them and their families. That is the minimum people in a free society should possess. Unions can bring that about.
My temptation is to shut off the news. Thoreau thought that news was basically a repetition of human atrocities. In the end he wondered how many times people needed to hear slight variations on this same awful story. He was probably right. I wonder if I shut myself off from news, whether I would actually understand the world better. I think I would. I think I will.
I’m sick of talking to crazy people, but almost everyone seems crazy.
What’s this wind blowing? What were those words?
The wind is up this morning. And I’m on the road. I love getting into my truck and heading off; especially when I’m heading home or back to camp. There is a loneliness and an urge for adventure in all of us. Isn’t that exquisite?
When you were in the third grade, who was the strongest boy in your class? The prettiest girl? We’re not supposed to know those things, think of those things, but you know, don’t you?
I live in fits and starts. Right now I have a deep urge to be anonymous. Ha, yet I’ve published this. We are all whirling globes of contradiction. So be it.
The other day sitting in my hunting blind in the fog, I heard the odd squawking of a great blue heron I couldn’t see. That’s a little disconcerting when you’re alone out on the bog. Seems like a prelude to something else. Maybe an epic. A dark one. But it wasn’t the squawking that got me so much, it was that at one point the heron squawked out “Shave And a Hair Cut…” and left off the “two bits.” I hate birds that don’t finish things.
Christmas is coming. That used to mean something very different to me than what it means now. Now, what it means is that light has been born inside us, and we must get up each day and find it, until it comes back in Nature.
I’m slowly losing track. It’s nice.
Would you like a smile. I can give you one any time. They’re free.
Slowly take an inventory of every item in your house. Seriously, take out paper and make a list. You’ll never finish, the memories will take over before you’ve written down three things. Then they will become stories, and you’ll have to go tell them to somebody. That may take up the rest of your life. Not a bad fate.
Yup and nope. At least that’s what my neighbor says.
I’m quite content now seeing what each day brings and simply reacting. I know that can’t work for everyone, but it seems to work for me.
Worries all come at once, then disappear so thoroughly, that any memory of them dissipates usually within days, and they are certainly completely gone within a year. That should tell us something, but we are slow learners.
Even an old leaky boat can take you on a great number of wonderful journeys.
Why don’t they get it? Why don’t they understand that they should love: your team, your movie, your song, your party, your way? You know you’re right. Why can’t they see it? But it’s okay. Some day. Some day. Or maybe…
We’re lucky in one way: evil tends towards incompetency.
Every day the lake provides me with a multitude of visions: the lake lit by a full moon; the lake at mid-day; the lake under fog; the lake moving towards full fall, colors everywhere; the lake howling in a west wind; the lake waiting for snow; the lake covered in ice. Who are these visions for? If I see them, and acknowledge them, they can be for me. I am not the owner, though. I’m coming to know the owner. The owner has known me a long time.
Now at camp, having worked over the proofs of my fourth book I wonder, “Now what?” And soon a poem comes to me. So that’s what. And after that? Something else, until there is nothing, and then really something.
If you saw yourself the way others see you, would you be pleased?
Almost any old joke would be offensive to somebody now. So we don’t tell them anymore. Does that mean we’ve grown as a people in our sensitivity towards our fellow man? Maybe. Alternatively does that mean that our skins have gotten thinner? Maybe. I can only view these ideas from where I currently stand, and right now I can feel nothing about this small question, and a myriad of other much more important questions, but wave after wave of ambiguity. Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know.
I keep getting struck by this undeniable fact over and over: if Humankind perished tomorrow, the planet would begin its recovery from our presence by sundown. We are the cause of the fires, the floods, the hurricanes, the plagues, the draughts, not to mention the wars, the strife, the injustice, the prejudice, the hatred. By sundown of the first day, conditions on this planet would get better in the absence of our monumental stupidities. We are the cause, our absence would be the cure. Is that really the best we can do? Wow…we can’t even have conversations anymore concerning certain subjects without the threat of violence. And we aren’t able to begin to correct these problems, even now when the consequence of not doing so is clear: our total annihilation. What has happened to us? Have we always been this way? I’m reminded of Sara Teasdale’s poem which I first become aware of in junior high reading Ray Bradbury’s short story of the same title: There Will Come Soft Rains There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white, Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Fitzgerald writes of “careless people” that “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” Scott Simon of NPR asked us a while back in an editorial to think of people in high places over the last year in reference to this quote. I thought at the time that you can tell great writing by how well it holds up over time. Fitzgerald wrote some great books, but none approach Gatsby. He beat himself up the rest of his life because of that among other things. He really shouldn’t have. To have achieved such art, even once, should be quite enough to expect from one lifetime.
I looked at my key ring on the day that I retired from the classroom and all that was left was the key to my truck and the key to my camp. I thought for a moment about all the keys there had once been on that key ring. I thought about what each of those now absent keys had implied. The weight felt exactly right. I put the keys back into my pocket and walked out to my truck ready to drive to camp.
I dream sometimes of being back in college, raising hell, fearing the call of the dean. Young days have the greatest impact. First knowledge of the world sticks.
Wind has always been especially evocative for me. There always seem to be voices on any wind just below the surface, whispering of things past, things to come.
When I was little I had an imaginary girlfriend. I even convinced my parents to go out to her “house” and pick her up for a “date” once. Why they indulged me, I’ll never know. Love? Anyway, after a while I didn’t talk about her anymore and my sister asked me what had become of her. “She died of cancer,” I said. “Cancer of what?” my sister asked. “Cancer of smoking cigarettes,” I said. My sister stifled a laugh and I remember wondering why. What can I say? I was a strange little boy.
Dreams are maddening some times. But why? Because we can’t control them. Because they sometimes hint at things we don’t want to know.
Sometimes I convince myself that it’s possible to write too much. I think to myself, “I won’t write now for a couple weeks or so.” Then, there it goes. The idea of abstaining from writing gives me an idea and I’m off again. I am a writer. Have been always. I write; therefore, I am. Je ecris; donc, je suis.
I don’t know if I have another story in me, but I’m thinking, “Yeah, probably…” I know lots of poems are still waiting. Probably some non-fiction as what I’m writing now is proof, but less likely fiction. Don’t worry, there’s still lots of Hunter Lake stories backed up and waiting to be published, but, I’m talking about new works of fiction. I’m pretty sure I’ve done what I can do in the science fiction genre. And if I try for contemporary fiction I inevitably find myself, either back in Hunter or at the One Duck Camp. And that’s nice and all, but I’ve been there, and as you’ll see in, I hope the not too distant future, I’ve brought Hunter to a pretty definite close, and anything new there seems to be a repeating of myself, and At the One Duck, I may have said what I have to say too, though a new duck season could change that, I don’t know. So where do I go from here. That’s always the writer’s question.
Young people are quitting jobs in record numbers. “See?” say conservatives. “If you provide people with a kind of baseline income they won’t work.” “Wrong,” say the economists. “There is no evidence of that. There seems to be no correlation between the two circumstances. They’re just quitting. We don’t know why.” I say, “Funny, you provide somebody with a third rate job that doesn’t really support them, basically treat them as wage slaves, causing them to constantly live in fear that they’re going to lose their job, make it impossible to care for their kids, if they have kids, and work at the same time, make it so that they have to have two or there similar jobs just to make ends meet, and then you’re surprised when they quit the dead end job you’ve given them?” These young people are sending you a message, employers, conservatives, and it’s not a new message. Treat people well and they will work hard for you. Treat them badly and they won’t. Treat them badly enough, or don’t offer them a real opportunity but only servitude, and they will quit. Go figure.
“Soylent green is people!”
“It’s unnatural and unhealthy for a mammal such as homo sapiens to drink the milk of another mammal. If it didn’t come from your mother, don’t drink it,” that’s what they’re saying. Um, lots of things we eat and drink, things considered very healthy and good for us don’t come from our mothers. Just saying.
So now there’s a thing against drinking milk. Before it was eggs. And meat, of course. And also bread, people are having a big time right now about the effects of awful, awful bread. Does it occur to anyone who says these things, that human beings have been consuming these natural substances for many thousands of years? At least since Ramses in ancient Egypt? These folks go around citing some nebulous study, and if you do your own research you’ll find that all such studies all pretty nebulous, quite inconclusive at best, and I wonder why? I think, for the folks doing all the bellyaching about bellyaching, it comes down to a matter of having a need to have faith in something. And what faith, and why this? They have faith that something is killing you, killing us. Faith that something we’ve all believed in for an eon is actually evil. It’s good to believe in something, probably essential, but of all the things to believe in, or believe in not believing in, this? Now I’ll grant you that quite a few practices of human beings, carried out over centuries have eventually proven to be evil or unhealthy. But milk, bread, meat, and eggs? On the chart of basic food groups from my childhood, that now leaves only fruit and vegetables. Oh, and a handful of nuts now and then, as long as they are the right nuts. And you can drink the milk of nuts. Almond milk for instance. And soy is said by these people to be wonderful! Soy milk! Which isn’t milk, but juice, but let that be. Come on! Seriously? There are plenty of issues to get behind in this world. There are plenty of worthy ideas to believe in. There are a great many things to be really pissed off about or to stand up for. Get a real cause!
People are eating things in little packages, with certified health food insignias and assurances instead of simply eating food. This is what they eat instead of what used to be called a balanced meal. “I’m very confused and hungry,” says my veterinarian niece Bridget when she goes to the grocery store and peruses the aisles after a 24 hour shift working with horses at her college. My sister tells me this story about her daughter as we sit together at the lake. I say in response, “We’re in a civilization so affluent that it is consciously starving itself to death.” My sister says, “Starving for meaning and truth.”
A white person can’t say, “He’s (or she’s) so articulate!” to anyone in reference to any person of color. And, yes, I absolutely get why, because saying this is insidiously racist even if you or I are just remarking on how articulate someone is without any regard to color. Or think we are. All of us old white folks for years used to say such things about authors, newsreaders, sports personalities, and persons of color of all walks of life without thinking of the implications involved. Why wouldn’t such a person be articulate? Why should we be amazed that they are? The answer? Most white people, even the most well meaning, are racists to some degree or another. There’s no point in going into the reasons for that, which only amount to excuses. Racism and other forms of bigotry are going to be a long, long time going away. And yes, I too, am part of the problem, albeit, I hope, a small one. More importantly I have always tried, since I became my own person, to be part of the solution. I like to think I’ve done my part in that way. I am truly sorry for whatever problems I have, even unwittingly, caused in that direction. No apology, however public, can make racism and bigotry and their accompanying atrocities, disappear. No restitution can wipe them out. But both of those ideas are worth a try. Sadly, I think only time, lots of time, is going to solve the hatred innate in our hearts. I’m very sad that I won’t be alive to see the solution realized. But I truly believe that there will come a better day.
A boomer can’t say, “Things were tough back in those days” to anyone 35 or younger, because they’ve become convinced that nobody has ever had it as hard in youth as they have. (The fact that this is demonstrably untrue doesn’t change anything. They’ve got all the stats and they believe them, and will oh so gladly share them with you.)
A man can’t say “Isn’t that just like a woman”, to any woman, not even in jest, ever. He shouldn’t say it to any man either, because it’s a generalization based on something that wasn’t even true 50 years ago. Woman, if you haven’t noticed, are very different from each other. So there is no honest way to make such a stupid generalization anyway. Any woman, though, can say, “Isn’t that just like a man” any time she likes. That’s not unfair, really, given the way most men are. And in certain cases, that applies to me too.
I can’t throw a baseball or anything else overhand anymore without my arm almost instantly aching. For about a seven year period I threw batting practice to hundreds of little leaguers. I’m pretty sure that’s how it happened. I never had much of a throwing arm, but I miss it, though even if I had it, I wouldn’t use it much anymore. Old men have strange regrets.
There are moments that stay with me in exact detail. They don’t seem particularly significant, but they must be, some of them have been in my head and heart for nearly 60 years.
How long can a person be someone somebody else needs them to be before they speak up and tell this significant other, “You know, this isn’t really who I am?”
Old commercials stick in my head, have been there for 50 years and more. Why?
I’m trying not to take on any new guises, but I can’t help it. I’ve gone from baby to boy to student to athlete to writer to husband to father to teacher to coach to actor to director to novelist to playwright to poet to wild man to sage to bemused old comedian. What’s next?
Is there anything else as reassuring in life as listening to a small child tell you about the day? And having listened, is there anything else that makes you want to strive harder to create a better world? Is there anything else that, having listened, makes you more willing to endure pain, absurdity, deceit, simple daily irritation in order to ensure that things get better? It’s for the children. All of it, the whole package of living, is for the children. We should never lose track of that.
Fall is coming, and with it a certain amount of darkness. We need to accept this and deal with it in full knowledge of its inevitability and of our responsibility, for the sake of everyone, to keep seeking light.
Assertions based on misunderstandings are inevitable. Assertions based on deliberate damned lies are contemptible. Apply this principle to all political discussions.
Opinions are largely useless now. Especially because everyone’s opinion, whether that opinion is based on fact or nonsense, is considered equal. In a free society, any damned fool has the right, and ought to have the right to say any damned thing, but they shouldn’t and don’t have the right, if their thoughts are based on gibberish and conspiracy theory, for their opinion to be considered valid, by discerning people. Everyone has the right to voice her or his own opinion. But opinions should only be respected if they are based on fact.
No villain thinks himself, herself a villain.
I recently had to make several passes, in my new truck, back and forth across the interior of the U.P. from western Marquette County to western Gogebic County. There is very little traffic along that stretch, and a lot of green, wonderful nothing. I made my own movie, listening to a jazz music soundtrack and watching the simple, rich scenery.
There are certain rhythms and repetitions in life. We brush them off as coincidences and happenstance. Next time you run into someone who you have not seen in 16 years, an hour after you’ve just been thinking of them, understand that it is neither coincidence nor happenstance.
The good news is that climate change with all the accompanying pollution of the air water, land, all of the wild storms and fires, famines, plagues, wars, and the rising temperatures and melting ice caps will eventually go back to what we would consider normal. The bad news is that none of us or any of our children, grandchildren, or great grand children, or great great great great grandchildren for that matter, may be here to see it. Our actions are the cause. Our ceasing those actions is the solution. And we will cease those actions eventually, voluntarily through our presence or involuntarily through our absence.
Sometimes you wait for years for something good to happen. Anticipating in minute detail how it will be as you lie in bed at night or daydream during the day. Then, when it finally does happen, you almost wish it hadn’t, suddenly realizing that, in many ways, you’re going to miss the circumstances of the status quo created during the time when you spent long hours wishing for them to change. Life is a constant adjustment. We are quite unfinished.
As my sister says, “broken people” is a redundancy.
If you are a public official, a journalist, a teacher, a writer, a lawyer, a doctor, a cleric of any religion, in fact if you take part in any endeavor, while wading through the gray society of man on a daily basis, and your stomach doesn’t hurt you at least twice a week, you’re probably not doing your job.
There is a balancing act that has to be learned to survive in this world. We are surrounded by broken people with questionable motivations and events and actions in the world are often unfair, exploitive, even illegal. How much will we accept without shouting out and calling the unjust down? How much will we look into the mirror for our own similar faults? How much can we let slide? How much can we, should we, act upon? You have to get through to sundown each day. How much idealism is possible without losing your way of life? How much pragmatism can you practice before you lose your soul?
Sometimes I wish I could be in the head of people who believe in conspiracy theories, just so I could understand. Then again, knowing that a person who believes the moon landing was faked, doesn’t even consider the fact, that in order for that to be true, 400,000 Nasa employees, a likely equal number of Russian space program employees, all of the news services around the world, countless government officials from any number of nations, and independent scientists of all stripes would have to be in on it, makes me think maybe I wouldn’t want to be in so shallow a mind. Worse, some such fake moon landing believers may actually believe that all of these people are in on it. I really wouldn’t want to be in that head. Nope, it’s probably better just to say “Hmm…” when you hear such things from somebody you know, and talk about the weather.
“A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him.” —Saul Bellow. I doubt I’m a brave man, but I like to think I’ve been trying to make the evil stop most of my life. It hasn’t stopped yet, in fact, sometimes I half believe it only increases as I try harder and harder, but I’m not going to stop trying, ever.
My morning time between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. is sacred to me. I draw. I write. I read. I meditate. I study French. I walk, ski, paddle, go for a 12 mile bike ride. This is my prep time for each day. I love it. I get very owly if it is interrupted for even one day. This is true. Ask anybody who loves me.
There are not two sides, or multiple sides concerning every issue. There is only room for argument when the facts are not provable. When the facts are provable, there can be no room for argument. And if you are confronted by someone who insists on arguing with you concerning something about which the facts are known, established, and unalterable, my best advice is just to change the subject and try to help them to calm down. If they don’t calm down, just walk away; it isn’t worth it. I think everyone should keep this in mind, because in the world where we now exist, the arguments persist over even the most provable facts. For instance: whether Joe Biden won the most examined election in American History. He did. The vote tallies and over 60 courts of both political persuasions agree to this. There is no reasonable argument against this fact. Or whether climate change is real and is caused by people. It is. Science has proven this down to the last decimal. There is no reasonable argument against this fact. Or whether the reason that covid is re-emerging is that not enough eligible people have gotten the vaccine. That is the reason. The doctors and scientists agree. There is no reasonable argument against this fact. Or whether Donald Trump and his allies instigated the January 6 Washington riot. And whether it was his followers who carried it out. Whether federal property was damaged. Whether people died. He did. They did. It was. They did. There is no reasonable argument against these facts. So, if you’re confronted by someone over these facts, or other facts which are clearly in evidence, see if you can change the subject, and, if you can’t, walk away my friends. Folks who seek argument over simple facts are not to be engaged. There is no point to engaging them. They have no intention to discuss. They simply want to shout. They don’t want to be bothered by the truth. They have drunk the kool-aid, swallowed the lies completely. And now, as they’ve learned from their frankly despicable leaders, their goal is simply to win by any means necessary. They don’t know or don’t care that there is no victory for humankind in the direction they’re being pushed or are leading others. So, if you can get them to talk about baseball, or gardening, or how their kids are doing, that would be best. There’s hope for humanity in that direction. But, if that doesn’t work, walk away for the good, for the peace, of your community and the world, and resign yourself to the idea that, at least for now, these folks simply can’t be reached. There will come a better day.
Nothing in the world makes me prouder than the thought that several of my former students have become teachers. Some are even English teachers! That’s validation enough for me, forever, even if I had absolutely nothing to do with their career choices.
My younger Labrador, Sam, has a drinking problem. He drinks water from his bowl in the kitchen then walks away without licking his lips and water just flows down to the floor from his jowls and we have to clean it up. By contrast, my older Labrador, Tom, drinks and never drools a drop. Viva la difference!
Sometimes I see amazing things, then look around for fellow spectators, wishing, “God, I hope somebody else saw that!”
Sometimes, oftentimes, everything seems random, and then a moment comes where something, someone else intervenes, and for that moment it is as clear as the morning sun that we are definitely not alone in the myriad nature of universal existence.
A logging truck with a full load of logs once roared past my truck at 80 miles per hour in the turn lane at a stop light which was clearly red. There was nowhere for me to go, nothing for me to do but watch the logging truck rush past, because the other lane was occupied. There was no one in the turn lane or opposite us in the intersection. The light was new and the trucker probably didn’t know it was there, and it was too late for him to stop. Everybody involved came out without a scratch. I’m not sure how that works.
I woke up at 2 a.m. with hypothermia inside a tent during a blizzard 7 miles into the wilderness of the Pictured Rocks once. I came out without a scratch. I’m not sure how that works.
I fell with a casket down an elevator shaft in a funeral home once. Came out without a scratch. I’m not sure how that works.
I fell down an avalanche chute in Utah once. It was terrifying and wonderful. I came out without a scratch. I’m not sure how that works.
I loved playing football. I frankly loved the violence. I was very grateful when my sons became high school runners. It’s a vicious game.
I’m going to throw this out there: I think the riders in the Tour de France are the greatest athletes in the world. They do a five hour road race every day for 21 consecutive days. It is grueling both physically and mentally, in ways I can only imagine. Are there any other athletes in a competitive sport who endure more and must be in better shape? Let the argument begin.
I am approaching my first Fall in 33 years in which I won’t be heading out to work as a teacher. I’m looking forward to it very much, but I’m thinking there may be some pitfalls. Copious “teacher dreams” will likely be among them. Teacher dreams? Yes, all teachers have them: your class has been meeting and you haven’t been there, you are suddenly faced with a new semester and you haven’t created any lesson plans, your principal has just called you into the office and you don’t know way, etc. Pretty maddening. And teachers have them even before they retire like clockwork Spring and Fall.
Observation: In performance, poets always read the title of their work before they start, singers never do. How come?
You know you’ve just seen a good show when, after the curtain has fallen, you don’t want to get up from your theatre seat. In fact, that may be the only really honest assessment of any play.
You can say “That’s the last straw!” all you like, but aren’t you really always holding out for another?
Does every new generation think the world of people will end shortly after they die? Is it any truer this time than it was every other?
Sometimes don’t you just look around and think, “Whose idea was all this?”
“But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness too.” —Saul Bellow You’ve known who he’s talking about, right? Those with lots and lots of rules, trying to make the world safe from any possible calamity. Categorizing everything on index cards years ago, and in digital files now, keeping always to a certain order, sticking with it at the cost of everything, in lieu of living? This isn’t a criticism. I don’t blame them. What choice do they have? What choices do any of us have?
“…in an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness.” —Saul Bellow Here the great novelist recapitulates most of the ideas in Hamlet. Perhaps to be, to exist, in our age, is to be slightly mad. And has any other age been sane?
What did you eat for lunch yesterday? Who was your teacher in third grade? What was your favorite song when you were 15? What’s the most memorable thing anyone ever said to you? What day of the week was your wedding? See what I mean?
Isn’t it strange that our minds only allow us to remember tiny slices of our own lives spread out over all the years we’ve been alive? Who were we between the memories? Was that even us?
My older Labrador, Tom, has to be coaxed to go out the door and sits politely waiting to be invited. May that be said of all of us.
My young Labrador, Sam, can’t wait for doors to open. He often crashes into the door before I can get it open, then rushes out into the day. May that be said of all of us.
So now there’s a thing against drinking milk. Before it was eggs. And meat, of course. And also bread, people are having a big time right now about the effects of awful, awful bread. Does it occur to anyone who says these things, that human beings have been consuming these natural substances for many thousands of years? At least since Ramses in ancient Egypt? These folks go around citing some nebulous study, and if you do your own research you’ll find that they’re all pretty nebulous, quite inconclusive at best, and I wonder why? I think, for the folks doing all the bellyaching, it comes down to a matter of having a need to have faith in something. And what faith, and why this? Faith that something is killing you, killing us. Faith that something we’ve all believed in for an eon is actually evil. It’s good to believe in something, probably essential, but of all the things to believe in, or believe in not believing in, this? Now I’ll grant you that quite a few practices of human beings, carried out over centuries have eventually proven to be evil or unhealthy. But milk, bread, meat, and eggs? On the chart of basic food groups from my childhood, that now leaves only fruit and vegetables. Come on! Seriously? Get a real cause!
How many thoughts go into translation? There is the word-for-word literal meaning, which will almost always lead to distortion in the second language. There is the connotation, which most often doesn’t translate at all. There’s the feel for the essence of a way of speaking, the aura of a people with a long history, which takes long years to understand, to even begin to understand. There is the logic of the syntax which is often elusive in the second language because the logic is foreign. And finally, there is the dreaming in another language, when the translation is no longer necessary. All this to make Oui, approximate yes and to see approximate voir. All this just so that we can communicate. It’s worth it.
My favorite song, “I Can’t Make You Love Me”, written by former NFL star turned songwriter/singer Mike Reid and songwriting partner Allen Shamblin and recorded by Bonnie Raitt, is a haunting work of art that penetrates deeply for anyone who has ever had his or her heart broken. It takes me and many others to very particular places, particular times in life. Reid and Shamblin with Raitt’s rich vocal have really created something truly transcendent. Raitt recorded the song in one take because she said, after trying again she quickly realized that a person can’t go to the place where the song goes more than once in a day. And what is the origin of the song? Some sad experience of Reid’s or Shamblin’s? Nope. Reid based it on a comment he read in a newspaper story about a guy who had shot at his wife’s car, and was up on charges. The judge asked the man if he had learned anything. He answered, “Yes, your honor, I learned that you can’t make a woman love you if she don’t.” Out of such humble, beginnings, art is sometimes born.
Sometimes my brain doesn’t work in a linear fashion, or in any fashion that I recognize. I’ve been trained, when this occurs, to tough it out, try to make it work anyway. If I try hard enough I’ll probably succeed, but at what cost. Maybe it’s good to go adrift now and then.
You can have a brain that isn’t yours and keep it in your pocket. Most of us do. Later, they’re going to offer to attach it to your head. Your call.
Everything and everyone seems to be diverging now. Filing itself or themselves in separate files. I don’t think that’s good.
Every once in a while, as I’m paddling along the lake, I’ll see a flycatcher, kingfisher, or a small finch, wren, or nuthatch flying directly across the expanse of the water water towards the other side and I’ll think, “Boy, that’s a long way for that little bird to fly.” And then it will hit me: those little birds fly from South America to this lake and back every year.
Wishing for other wheres, other whens, other ways of being, when all the wheres, whens and ways we already know are good, and none are really better than any of the others, is something none of us should do, but we do anyway, because we’re human.
I’m not so stuck on me. I never have been really. There’ a lot of reasons for that, but I won’t go into them. In the end, I love me well enough to live with me a while yet.
As I write this (6/16/2021), the Catholic bishops are debating whether President Joe Biden should be able to receive communion because he’s pro choice. The pope has told them that the eucharist is not designed for the perfect, but these bishops aren’t even pretending to listen. Because of this latest onslaught of loathsome indifference and power lust, and without going into the hypocrisy and irony of such a debate from about 12 different, highly disturbing angles, I’ll just say that Catholicism, though like Joe Biden I was born to it and have practiced it the majority of my life, may not be for me anymore. That makes me very sad. Understand, though, that the essence of it, the core of the faith, will stay with me always. I just really can’t handle this kind of obvious, vile, politics anymore. The corruption in some branches and among some members of the hierarchy, is palpable. However, understand this, you tainted church fathers: I’m still a Catholic. You don’t get to tell me I’m not. I couldn’t care less what your dogma says about obedience. The dogma of obedience has been an evil tool of the church to control the innocent for hundreds of years. A person’s soul is his or her own, and I get to choose, not you. God gave me free will and with it I will do what I think is right. And you, in your dens of opulent hypocrisy, don’t get to tell me what right is.
I saw the eagle’s shadow before I saw the eagle. Grand as he was in all his dark wings and white head finery, his shadow had him beat for grandeur. His shadow stretched across all the long green tree tops from Birch Point all down the southwest horizon. That shadow bird could eat this half of my wild world. Diving, ducking, covering wouldn’t save me. It might be an honor, if a painful one, to die by the hands of such a world devouring raptor. Wow…the power in that dark, massive shadow glide!
Early on each day I draw in order to work myself out of dreams. The drawings aren’t good, but are strange even to me. And I sort of know their origins. I draw in charcoal. The colors come later.
I’m not getting any help this morning. Sometimes that’s the way it seems. The dawn is indifferent, the new day is moving without your say so. Once you get used to that idea, those kinds of days can turn out fine, but you have to get over yourself first. That can sometimes be a big obstacle, hubris being what it is.
What if the end of the world came and it was funny? I mean really funny, “Who’s on First?”, pee-your-pants funny, and it might be, because it’s likely there would or will be a bunch of self-important people, mostly men, many of whom would no doubt be prime causes of the disaster, standing around, pacing around saying, “We’ll just see abut this! I’ll call…” And then standing there slack jawed because there would be no one to call and no way out it for them, and in their cases, that would never have happened before. Yes, that would be really funny, just their unmoored, unsettled expressions replacing in those last moments all the hubris and condescension and smugness, but it’s probably not worth the end of the world to see that.
Try not to be broken. You won’t succeed until you do, but when you do, the trying will be over.
Sometimes trying to learn or create something new when your “mind is full of scorpions” is an exercise in futility. Sometimes it’s when art happens. We don’t always know which is which until we’ve had time to process the product, and more importantly, the experience. Oh, for discernment!
As time goes on, you will understand more and more until you gradually understand less and less.Then you will understand nothing. Then you will understand everything.
A lot is known by a few, but little is perceived about the world to come by most of us. We’re still as blind as Oedipus. May we be brave.
Sometimes voices call from the other side of the stars. That seems like a long, long way. It’s not, because there is no real distance anywhere. Nothing is separate. There is no real time either. That’s only another obstacle we’ve created for ourselves somewhere along the line. Everything’s fine. Everyone is in touch. There’s not much to worry about, but we worry anyway. Some people spend most of their time here between birth and death worrying. You could think of that as sad, even slightly tragic, but I bet the gods find it charming that we think the events of our little earthly lives are important. That’s my guess, anyway. Oh, aren’t we a mess brother? Aren’t we some kind of fun sister?
Why do we blush when something we’ve been trying to hide about ourselves is inadvertently or purposefully mentioned by someone we’re talking to in a group or alone, thus, often revealing to the astute or attentive, in the redness of our skin, the very thing we were trying to hide? Is the truth simply trying to come out? Why is there a physical mechanism—the blush—to allow this to happen? It can’t be coincidence combining with genetics can it? How can this be an accident of nature? I would argue for the spiritual, for the cosmically purposeful.
Have you ever found yourself at a crossroads where you experience confluences of connection to other, likely higher places reaching out to you? That’s where I am now. Whenever this happens, I try to remember what it was like. I never do exactly. I try to explain what it is like, as I am right now, but it never shows as reality on paper. It’s like trying to take a picture of the moon, or a sunset. You may get something, some kind of image into your camera, but when you look at it, while it may be pretty, it hasn’t the depth by even a fraction, of what you actually saw. I’m sorry. I’m trying.
Sometimes I think the sole purpose of our life here, is to play some small part in making the inevitable come true.
It is quite okay, I think, to remember the old days fondly, as long as you don’t try to live in them now and wind up losing track of your life.
And maybe I shall take a trout,If but do not seem to care.” —W.B. Yeats Is there a truer metaphor for our experiences in life?
W.P. Kinsella died in 2016 knowing that his Shoeless Joe now existed in popular culture as the cult film Field of Dreams. Further, he died knowing that an actual Field of Dreams existed in a real life corn field in Iowa as a direct result of the words he wrote on a page all those years ago. He also died knowing that each year thousands upon thousands of people go there and imitate the actions of the character in his novel, by playing catch on the field and running the bases, or just by sitting in the little set of stands there and watching for the baseball ghosts to arrive. How, I wonder, did that feel?
Was W.P. Kinsella inspired to write Shoeless Joe from this Annie Dillard quote? “I am the man who watches the baseball game in silence in an empty stadium.” The quote is in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek a wonderful sort of appendix to the reading of Thoreau and Emerson. Surely Kinsella read this book and the books from which it stems, right?
As you get older, this quote from Leif Eager and his lovely book Virgil Wander makes more and more sense, “Memory’s oldest trick is convincing us of its accuracy.”
When you are feeling defeated, consider this observation from Allan Guganus: “We grant ourselves so little daily hope. Meanwhile, barely noticing, we’ve already managed wonders.”
Believe it or not, at least one President of the United States was capable of thought that transcends both good and evil. Lincoln said of this country’s situation during his term in office, “In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party—and yet the human instrumentalities working just as they do, are the best adaptation to effect his purpose.”
Looking for a guidebook on how to live your life? Here’s one from E.M. Forster: “To be humble and kind, to go straight ahead, to love people rather than pity them.”
“It’s good to know where you come from, so that you do not live as though you’re lost.”—Barry Lopez Every time in my life when I have lost my way, it has been a result of forgetting my origins, and believing I’m something I can never be.
Barry Lopez says of animals in the north that, “To be what they are, they require each other.” I believe this is true of people as well, at least the most enlightened people.
“Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”—August Wilson Too many have become complacent these days. Understanding that there is conflict within your soul, is the beginning of enlightenment.
“Landscape is the refuge of the wounded spirit…” —Daniel Mueenuddin Since my boyhood I have sought refuge on this lake. And if I stay long enough, it heals me.
“Staying put is the radical act. …pay attention to the thinking of the place.” —Dean Kuipers This from Kuipers’ fine novel The Deer Camp. Few people stay quiet in one place long enough anymore to hear its thinking. Does that sound strange to you? See?
“There’s nothing more boring than perfection.” —Susan Coyne Ms. Coyne has a character in her brilliant Canadian min-series Slings and Arrows say this. And I believe this simple wisdom is what so many artists miss, struggling for perfection. To them I would say, write down or sing out what is in your mind, your heart, your soul, your spirit, in your fingertips. Once you see and hear what you’ve said, fiddle with it only a little, then let it live. Too much seeking of the perfect word, the perfect note, the perfect color will kill any pure creative impulse’s essence forever. What’s more, such a pursuit of the impossible may well kill you in the process.
When you look at the past through the lens of the present, and then make moral judgements, you should remember that, inevitably, something we’re doing now will be seen as an abomination in the future.
So, I’m alone at camp and getting ready to take the dogs out for a walk and I can’t find my sunglasses, which the doctor now says I need to prologue the inevitable onset of cataracts. I’m looking all over and I know I just had them. I even ask my pup, Sam and my elder statesman, Tom, where they are. I notice a kind of bemused expression on Tom’s face, but I may be imagining it. After a ten minute search, I find them on a string around my neck. C’ie la vie.
I’ve been kidding myself. I am and always will be a teacher. I can see it when I find a moment of objectivity looking at my own writing. Barry Wallenstein, a wonderful poet, and a former of teacher of mine said he found my writing pedantic. I guess, for better and worse, he was right.
I ran across this sentence studying French: Vous ne choisissez pas votre chef. Literally translated into English: You don’t choose your boss. I find it revealing in at least two ways. First in that the French word for “boss” is “chef”. This explains a lot about French restaurant work environments, and about the concept of the chef. And, in turn, about work environments everywhere. But more importantly, what a French philosophy! You can’t choose who is in control of your working life if you are a worker. There lies the conundrum, the birth of unions, and the yearning to be one’s own boss. But to be more metaphorical and perhaps spiritual, I’ll quote Bob Dylan, “You’ve got to serve somebody.” C’est interessant, non?
W.B. Yeats is a favorite of mine for a couple of reasons. First, he was so very human, and even kind of ridiculous in parts of his actual life, I can relate, but second, despite, maybe even because of all his flaws and failings, he was capable of lines like these: “A curlew answered and suddenly thereupon I thought That on the lonely height where all are in God’s eye, There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot, A single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry.”
Lately I’m talking a lot in my dreams with friends who have passed. I know why too, but you might not believe me. I have faith that you can draw your own conclusions.
Once in the middle of reading aloud for a class from a wonderful book by Daniel Keyes called Flowers for Algernon, I had a very strange experience. I arrived at a certain passage in the book, which I could probably still find, page and paragraph, and realized that when I was in seventh grade, I had been reading that passage, in the back of my seventh grade science class, when something clicked in my brain and I began to think and understand like an adult. I stood still years later, in my English classroom, in front of my students, that day and wondered at that crossroads of the continuum. It was as though there were at least two of me. One looking ahead from the past, one looking back from the present, and each could sense the other. Then I wondered, and still do, if this happens to everyone.
Studying French is humbling. After a couple of months I was starting to think I knew a few things. Then I looked at a list of verb conjugations in a French text and realized the lessons I’m studying haven’t even covered all of the forms of the few verbs I know. Yeah, I’m probably never going to be bi-lingual, but, to quote Hemingway, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
Have better lyrics about being young and stupidly free been written, than those in Gentle on My Mind? And Johnny Hartford? Quite a guy!
Once time is opened, anything becomes possible.
When I was little I wondered about a lot of things. Then, for a while, when I was busy working and raising kids, I rarely wondered about things at all. I was busy. Now I’m wondering about things again. It’s great.
Have I ever got a lot to learn! I’m at the beginning again. How often can I go there before they send me away? I can go there always. That’s the thing. That’s what I’m starting to learn.
Sometimes you ask a friend to do something for you, and it’s something that you figure is right in their wheelhouse and won’t take them any time at all. And then it does, and in fact it’s a real pain, and you feel terrible, but there’s no way to stop them from finishing, because they are all in now, and you wonder if, when they’re finally done you’ll even still be friends. And then you are. That’s a hell of a relief, isn’t it?
When was the last time that something you did or said surprised you? If it’s been a while since that happened. Do you wonder why?
If you want to stay on a daily schedule in your retirement, get a Labrador retriever. They know your patterns and will never let you break them without a heartfelt stare-down or a whine at the camp door. I love that about them…most days.
Don’t go out looking for something. Go out looking. Then, maybe you’ll find something.
Father, if it be your will, take this cup from me.” I don’t care what your religion is. I don’t care if you have one. I don’t care whether you believe in God. If you’re human, you have in some way shape or form, wished that some tough circumstance that confronted you would be taken away, by whatever means. That’s why these words resonate. That’s why they are Holy.
One of my last duties as a classroom teacher, when I came to the end of that career, this Spring, was to illustrate for a bright young student why, though the study of the works of Shakespeare may be daunting, it is not a waste of time and that the Bard is not just some moldy old dead white guy who has been given too much credit. It made me sigh that this should be one of my last duties. But it was fitting, I suppose, I fought the same battle with children and adults throughout my teaching career, my work as a theatrical director, and an actor. But it still makes me look around at some of my fellow human beings and exclaim and ask, “Shakespeare is here with us every day! You quote him without even knowing it! He understood human beings and the very nature of the universe as well or better than any other author or artist of any kind in the history of civilization! His writing is at turns both dryly and broadly funny, profound, heart-wrenching, poignant, spell-binding, haunting, cathartic, deeply spiritual, transcendent, life-changing! Why in the world can’t you see it?”
There is risk in doing everything worth while. Almost unbearable risk. It’s so easy to be afraid, to back away. To play things safe. Don’t do that. Take the risk. Even if you fail, you’ll learn something.What if everything were certain? No doubts, no mystery, no fun.
For every man is his own Jacob. He wakes up at the foot of his own ladder and sees the angels going up and down, with God at the top of the ladder.”—Thomas Merton Merton is right. The only thing he doesn’t mention here is that Jacob also once wrestled an angel. So do I. How about you?
In Stuart Kells’ wonderful book, Shakespeare’s Library, the author posits that Shakespeare the writer was certainly the gifted fellow from rural England, but adds that like most actors, directors, and anyone else connected with the creative process of drama, he listened. He heard what people in the street said, he heard what his fellow actors said, he heard what fellow playwrights said, and read what they wrote. Then, better than anyone else ever has or will again, he created, and re-created, he borrowed, he adapted, he synthesized, he was inspired and inspired others, all with the hard-minded intention of filling the seats and with is gift for art of every strain. Then, when he died, the actors who survived him edited, at times even re-wrote his works. Then subsequent generations of actors, writers, directors picked up the torch and added and adapted. Then the critics took a hand by analyzing and relaying their understandings. Then audiences, right up to you and me sitting in the seats and reading the plays added our own personal interpretations of every play, every scene, every character. So who wrote the plays of Shakespeare? Shakespeare did, and everyone who was or is associated with him, was or is a fan, reader, director, actor or involved with one of the works from the 1500’s until 2021 in any way, is in some way, Shakespeare! What’s more, you could apply this same concept to almost any famous writer. Writing is, in the end, a collaborative process between writer and reader, and everyone involved is partially the author of every great book. This is also true of all art. Of all science. And of every endeavor of the human mind, heart, soul, and spirit.
There are certain of my friends who constantly take on guest starring roles in my dreams. Some I only see once or twice every two years. So, are they sending me subconscious messages? Am I sending them subconscious messages? Am I trying to tell myself something? Is somebody else entirely, perhaps not even of our physical world trying to send us both a message? Or, as some scientists would argue are some synapses just firing randomly. If random, why the same people all the time?
If, as in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, you could relive one moment in your life in its totality with full knowledge of all that will come after that moment, would you cry? Laugh? Or be simply overwhelmed as Emily is?
In dreams I seem always to be in pursuit of something not quite realized. What is it?
I just finished watching Ken Burns’ Hemingway. It reaffirms what I’ve long thought. Whatever you think of the SOB, and he was one, there are certain things he wrote that will last forever. The Nick Adams Stories especially Indian Camp, The Old Man and the Sea, large parts of A Farewell to Arms, some sections of For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Sun Also Rises, and certain wonderful sections of A Moveable Feast. Hemingway’s style started me down this writing road when I was in my teens and I am a long ways from alone on that score. His behavior deserves to be condemned on many scores, but the best of his writing, to discerning minds, will stand the test of time, whatever you think of the man.
“When am I ever going to need this?” Kids used to say this to me in my classroom all the time. So much so that I got very tired of hearing it. One day, and for the umpteenth time, a young, fairly earnest boy said this to me. I sighed for a moment, then was suddenly hit by a welcome and unexpected inspiration. I smiled for a moment, then looked at the boy. I told him to go back to his desk and turn to the table of contents of the literature anthology. He did so. I followed him there. Then I said, “Pick out only the stories and poems you’re going to need, and I’ll only teach you those.” “Okay,” he said smiling. I walked back to my desk where a sizable stack of papers awaited me. About three minutes later, the boy returned to me with his brow furrowed. “How,” he asked me, “am I supposed to know which ones I’ll need?” My smile was wide as I asked him theatrically glancing up over my glasses from my stack of papers, “How am I supposed to know which ones you’ll need?”
“I hate poetry! It’s stupid!” Students used to say this to me, and no small number of my friends as well. Actually adults tend to more humbly say, “I don’t get poetry.” To this I always respond, “I can prove that’s not true in five seconds, if you’ll bear with me. Recite or sing one line of your favorite song.” Then, after a little more coaxing usually, they do so. “Oh, that’s a good one,” I’ll say with a little smile, when they’ve finished. “It’s also a poem, and you like it and understand it.”
Pace is the thing that’s tricky in retirement. How much do you want to do today? How little? How fast should you go about it? Should you set your own deadlines, or should you just allow the rest of your life to be one long day, slowly moving if you move at all, listening to the wild, the ways of this new day?
I’ve been writing for a long, long time now, nearly every day since I was in my teens, and I still don’t really understand how it works. An idea will come to me, or a phrase, and I’ll quickly write it down. Ideas will sometimes lie dormant for years, before I find them again and try something out, but the phrases usually become something within a day or so. Where do these phrases come from, my memory? My genes? My soul? My spirit? The collective unconscious? God? Nature? Somewhere so mysterious that I will never know? Yes.
I happened upon this quote from Voltaire while contemplating the previous quote: “ceux qui peuvent vous faire croire des absurdities peuvent vous faire commettre des atrocities.” That is, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” As the hard core faithful of the previous President stormed the capitol on January 6, Voltaire must have been somewhere nodding sardonically. He was so right! True wisdom lives on long after the source has passed from this earth.
“Dit que le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.”—Voltaire That is, “The best is the enemy of the good.” Lately in our political left milieu in America it seems to me that our fine idealists, especially the younger ones, are making enemies of those closer to the center, thus losing sight of what I think should be our goal: getting something done. Our progressives need to realize that President Biden is pushing as hard as he can to make changes for good in America. I want to applaud left wing idealists for being some of the hardest driving forces in that direction, but I also want to caution that it’s unlikely that in the next year or so, all the progressive goals will be attained, and that, when the changes towards the good do come, however incremental, let’s not batter those in the middle who have had to make the compromises for the greater good in order to bring about incremental change, as though they were and are the enemy.
I’m betting you’ve had this experience recently either via the internet or perhaps even in person. You’re talking, texting, emailing or what have-you with someone and suddenly something they are communicating to you, seems a little…well…strange. “Should I believe this person?” You think to yourself. Or is this person a bit off, a purveyor of conspiracy theories? Well, here’s my simple test: Ask this person if he or she believes the moon landings were faked. Then ask them if pro wrestling is real. If they say “Yes,” to either. You should have your answer.
When is the last time you sat down with everyone in your immediate family and had a meal? Try it. It’s amazing what can happen.
Sometimes it’s so tempting to just start screaming! “Why doesn’t anybody understand that what I’m trying to do? Why doesn’t anybody get me? Why are we locked into this repetition of inanities and insanities? Why is nearly everyone either cynical or ignorant? Why can’t everyone just accept each other as human beings and try to move along in decency and altruism? Why does everything have to be so damned complicated?” It’s tempting, and sometimes a person can’t help but to give in to these kinds of thoughts, even say them out loud. But closely and calmly examined none of the above is anything but a half truth, and the world has plenty of light, though, admittedly, it can sometimes be hard to discern.
I was taking down an old blue bowl from the camp cupboard when it hit me. This bowl, and the even older dishes in that cupboard, had outlived my mother who bought them, or inherited them. What’s more, they will likely outlive me. Who then, 30, 50 years from now, will be filling them with cereal, soup, ice cream? Well, whoever you are or will be, I bet I know your relatives. Bon appetite!
When I was little, riding around in the family car with Dad, we used to make stops. There was always a candy bar in it, so it was good to be along. One of the stops was Foster’s Hardware, where Dad would inevitably get into a conversation with Sid. Those two could talk! When I was little I thought the joshing and anecdotes I only half understood would never end. Right now, I wish I could stand in that old store on Newberry Avenue and hear just one of those crazy, adroit, hilarious conversations again.
I’m slowly learning French. The last time I tried this it was 1974. My father had just died and all that year I was a terrible student: mean spirited, angry, obstinate. I like learning this new language now, or having it learn me. I’d just like to add, I’m sorry, Jenny B., my teacher back then, you were trying so hard, and I was terrible to you. If it makes you feel any better, after 30 plus years in education, I know exactly how you felt. C’est la vie.
My wife and I have a running gag: whenever one of us can’t remember some actor, actress, writer, politician or other public figure’s name, either Deb or I, whichever has done the forgetting, will smile at the other and say, “You know that guy that did that thing we like? Well, that’s him.”
Why did I come into this room?” If you don’t remember eventually, and nothing seems amiss, how important could it have been?
Watch out for nostalgia; it’s a trap. When you see the past in that golden glow, you should probably remember that things then were probably not quite so shiny as you remember them being. The world was the world then just as it is now. And even then, there were people talking about the good old days. What’s more, zeroing in on what was, takes your focus away from what is. It’s always now for better and worse. Don’t idealize. Don’t wish for what can’t be again, and may never have really been in the first place.
“…the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes…” In the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, Shakespeare describes an evolved person being in the company of people whose unjust, and poisonous actions and attitudes towards him or her are accepted by said person with good humor, patience, and even empathy. No doubt these are the actions of an evolved person, but patience with such spurns brings on, at the very least, a lot of very real tension headaches and heartburn for anyone with such patience and endurance. Ask any good teacher. Ask any good parent. Ask any good liberal. Ask any good scientist. Ask any good person of faith.
In the English translation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s classic, “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, the author describes two characters as being, “…linked by a kind of compliticy based on real facts that no one believed in…” When I find myself in certain company in America in 2021, with perhaps a friend or two nearby who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid, this is how I often feel. But, it’s getting better.
I wake up from a fitful dream and wonder, “Why did I dream that?” Then sometimes, perhaps six months later I come to a moment of realization and say out loud, “Oh.” Sometimes someone else is standing right there and I get a funny look, so I say, “Oh, I just realized something.” Only those who truly love me can discern whether they should say, “What?” or whether they should just let it go.
Of course we remember words, lots of them, most of the time. But what if words remember us? How would they feel about how they’ve been used?
This existence we inhabit is not without severe trials for each and every one of us. Keep that in mind as you go. And keep your eyes on the light even when you’re in darkness. Light is coming your way. Light is always coming your way. Honest! I wouldn’t lie to you, ever.
Who wants to be a god? Days and nights with no misery, no depression, no despair, endless perfect life, forever, no laments, no back and forth, no contrast between contentment and sadness, robbed of all poignancy, all sweet sadness of life forever? No hard lessons learned. No parents passing. No children leaving home. Every Fall leaf losing its meaning? Deathless days and nights stretching out to infinity? No thanks.
Nobody learns anything by always winning.
I’m sitting by a frozen lake as I write this. But I’m not waiting for the ice to melt. There are plenty of things to do and see along the edges of any water.
The heart has gone out of our daily language. Where the metaphors used to be about flesh, bones, angels, farm animals, now they’re about components bits and bytes.
In every second is the answer. In every atom as well. In every smile. In every storm. In every sunrise. In every stone on every pile of stones. In the scent of every petal of every flower in every field of flowers or tiny window box. In every curse word and blessing you’ve ever heard. In every meal, good or bad, you’ve ever had. In every insignificant thought. In every tick of the clock, wag of a dog’s tail, grain of salt in a salt mine, sliver in your foot, letter in your name, and in all the letters of all the names that have ever been or ever will be. In every croak of every frog in a swamp containing half a million frogs, in every turn of your head, scratch of an itch, moment of wonder, boredom, anger, ecstasy, resignation. The answer is right in front of you all the time and for all time. Are you ready for it? Then, open your senses, all of them, and see what you find out.
Who is looking out through your eyes? Coming to understand that is the first step, and one of the last.
The surprising thing about wisdom, is that when you pass it on to others, you find out from them, a day, or a year, or ten years later, that it’s really true. That’s a genuine surprise.
By the time you’re ten, you’ve done over a thousand amazing things. By the time you’re twenty, you’ve forgotten most of them. By the time you’re forty you’ve forgotten the rest. By the time you turn sixty, you are well on the way to remembering them all again.
Time isn’t real. I’m not kidding or being flip. There is only one moment, and we’ve always been in it. So, be in this one moment. Look around and see all the connections. You have forever.
Keep on doing the right thing. Keep understanding that you’re not doing it for you. If somebody pats you on the back, count it as Grace. Then go back to doing the right thing. A better day is coming.
Grow up. Forgive yourself. Move on.
Free yourself. Say, “It’s my fault.” Then, make amends if you can. After that, grow up, forgive yourself, and move on.
Deliberate, hurtful lies are the hardest sins to forgive.
Learn as much as you can about everything. Then, drive everyone crazy with what you know. It’s our only hope.
What are you cooking up? It smells good.
The public world has become a freak show. Continue to stand by your convictions, and take action when necessary, but don’t go inside the tent, no matter what enticing things any barker says. It isn’t worth it.
Politics is theatre. Really bad theatre.
The most honest and liberating thing any person can say to any other is, “I don’t know.”
For most of my life I have believed that whatever I was attempting at any given moment was impossible. And yet, I’ve been successful much of the time. I could have saved myself a lot of heartache.
If you wake up and suddenly think all your treasured beliefs are completely wrong, go find a sunrise. You’ll discover differently.
Order is everywhere. You don’t believe me? Empty your mind and sit silently for one hour. You will.
My dog, Tom, is constantly in touch with simple truths: the train is coming; it’s time to eat; walks are fun; sleeping is good. Like most dogs, he’s an empath, and gets uneasy only when I introduce my nebulous feelings into his life.
Today, March 31, 2021, as I sit looking out the front window of my camp, the ice is still in and winter is coming and going. I skied yesterday, today I could rake leaves if I was of a mind to. And now snow is falling again with temperatures dipping into the 20’s. Spring in the U.P.
In the Spring Waterfowl return to northern lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams, as soon as there is the slightest stretch of open water. How do they know it’s there? I have no idea. That makes me happy.
As I write this it is Easter Week. Since my boyhood, Easter Week has been spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, even physically difficult and revelatory for me. The fact that I have had an on again off again relationship with the Catholic Church, never seems to affect this one way or the other. Sometimes reality simply is. In every sense of that word, on every level.
Moments of simple clarity are so rare that we call them by a miraculous name: revelations, as though to clearly understand even simple things were somehow supernatural.
Our souls are full of wrestling angels and demons, but not all are black or white; most are gray and as confused as we are.