for Thomas and Frederick

Right from the start I should have seen it coming. The predictable phrasing, the expected lighthearted laugh. I read you again last night, thinking of fathers, thinking of sons. I know your work. I know you know I know your work; the repetition, the subtle humor, the this-was-my-life-too reaction. Was it Ode to Your Father? Maybe. Or maybe Mosaic. Doesn’t matter.

I should have seen it coming.

The casual start, the familiar tones. The narrative rise, the trademark dialogue. The way you write is the way we talk at lunch at that oyster joint. I know the style the way I know the lady with the drinks is going to comment about our return, offer us menus, tell us the specials, not write down our usual order. It’s routine.

Yet I never see it coming. This last time it took two pages of standard stanzas before you made that turn, me tagging along like some newbie waiter. Like the time we talked about our dads, and how tragically humorous it all is, how funny and horrific it all is, and we swapped stories until we couldn’t breathe from laughing—predictable, anticipated. Then somewhere just after she cleared the dishes and asked if we wanted dessert, you remembered a cologne, or was it his robe, and we sat a long time in silence, tried to digest the reality of it all.

Always, you shift gears and make that turn, move us away from where we thought we were going. And I know you will take us there the way you always do, but I always forget, always think this time it will be different, it will stay the same. I never see it coming until it comes, and then I wonder how I never saw it coming.

A bent perfection, the way it makes sense in the end, the way you take us around your elbow and past your ass without a glance back, how you seem to let go all the while keeping it tight; and every time is the same, the way it’s always different. The well-timed turn: predictably unexpected.

Like when you said sometimes he forgets what is real and what is less than real, like westerns or how tall you are. I said for me it was the lucidity, that last time, how just before the end it felt like the beginning again, and he was young and so was I, and then he let go and just left me there, alone, completely expecting him to stay even though I knew, I mean I knew because I saw it coming, was warned it was coming, that he had to go. Nothing prepares you for the turn, no matter how often you sit there knowing, waiting, anticipating, prepared. We had been talking about where he was and why he was there. He made a joke and we both laughed while the clock spun back two or three years. The nurse came in, asked if he was okay, and the sorrowful tone returned, the distance and incomprehension.

And I cried, just like I thought I would, and it caught me off-guard, and I left. Outside the October morning crawled into my spine, stiffened me against the cold. It was clear, that day, and I could see to the horizon and beyond the horizon, all the deep October blue that was beyond the horizon that morning.

On the radio the weather called for rain.

 

(the following is an excerpt from the manuscript about Siberia; part of this except is adapted from a previous work of mine which ran in Kestrel and went on to an anthology. The rest is new, but all of it is an abbreviated form of one of the chapters I want to share today, Father’s Day)

Dear Dad,

Before we boarded the train in St. Petersburg, we waited at the station for several hours. I wanted to get there early so I could painstakingly decipher the Cyrillic letters and figure out where the hell we were supposed to go. That didn’t take nearly so long since our next stop was Yekaterinburg, a few days ride, which on the boards doesn’t look much different than had it been in English. So Michael got something to eat and I stood watching what appeared to be a father and son, about your age and mine, sitting on a bench talking.

I guess they were deciding what to eat. There are many father/son combos here, Dad, and they all seem to be eating or about to. I couldn’t understand them so I simply did what we all do when we see a familiar scene: I remembered.

I miss meeting you at the mall. We always sat on a bench near the food court you always asked if I wanted something to eat. Always in your marvelous deep voice you would ask, “Would you like to get something to eat?”

The conversation was always the same:

“No thanks, Dad, I’m good. Unless you want something.”

“No, I’m fine. I had lunch with your mother and I’m sure we will eat soon after I get home.” It was always about two or three in the afternoon.

“You sure? Some fries or something?”

“No, but go ahead. You have to teach so you’ll be hungry.”

“No, Dad I’m fine, really.” Then I’d change the subject to the places in the food court and which were my favorites, and you always agreed. We have the same taste. Or you would add how much you like the chicken sandwich at one spot.

That routine of you asking if I wanted something to eat started when one time we sat on the bench and I actually did want something to eat, so after that you always asked. If I did occasionally buy something I always got fries with it whether I wanted any or not. Did you know that? I did because it was the one food you would share. You would lean forward and say, “Maybe I’ll just have one of your fries,” and laugh and take one gracefully. I was always glad when you did. I always hoped you would.

The food court here is small, in fact the entire station is not that large but is busy. There’s a soccer game on the televisions, and so naturally I’m thinking of you and our walks at the mall and the baseball games. I love how even when it was empty Dad, you didn’t want to take a table from someone who perhaps might wish to sit and eat. The one exception is when the television at the information booth in the court showed a baseball game; then we would sit at the table near there and watch for a short while. In fact, during the summer it was the first place I would check when I came in the mall looking for you between my day job and my night job. When it was a Mets game on television we wouldn’t walk at all but instead sit for a bit and watch the game and share some fries. I liked those days. When I think of us watching the game at the mall it helps me forget how much we slow down, walk more slowly, with more purpose.  When the Mets won, however, we both felt young and the walk back through the mall to your car was swift and light.  I was sad when the Mets lost but not because of the game.

Michael sat down with me and is looking through the only guidebook available in English about the Trans-Siberian Railway by Bryn Thomas. I wonder if people notice this father and son from another world working their way across the continent, and I’m still watching the father and son across the platform since they got up to walk a bit, and I’m concerned for the old man. He doesn’t look steady, Dad, and he has no cane and his son is ten feet ahead of him. Poor guy. I’m going to teach Michael how to walk with me when I’m your age. Maybe I should go over to this old man’s son and explain to him what I learned through years of practice when I would “accidentally” run into you at the mall between my jobs. I’ll bring Michael with me so he can hear and know what to do thirty-five years from now.

I’m going to do it. Dad, I’m going up to my Russian counterpart while your counterpart is still ten feet behind him, and I’m going to tell him:

Sir, first of all, he’s walking, you’re joining him. Don’t stop if he doesn’t. Don’t keep walking if he doesn’t. You are a shadow, an imitation only.

People should know how to walk with an older man.

Stand on his side where he can better hear you. If he can’t, repeat yourself as if for the first time, no matter how many times. Never say “never mind.” When he tells you something, you have never heard that story before, even if you can repeat it word for word. When he tells you about the baseball games with his Dad seventy years earlier, they are new stories, and your response must sound genuine. When he tells you about the time he went swimming at camp with his friends, and how when they went to retrieve their clothes from under a boat they found a snake, be amazed again, ask what happened. Laugh again since he will laugh.

When he pauses in front of a store, don’t question it. At that moment, allow that his sole purpose in pausing is to look at whatever item is in that display. He might mention how he used to own that tool, those pants. Let him know you remember; do not make a big deal that he remembered. He needs you to know he didn’t stop “to rest”—he stopped to look at the display.  Talk about his grandchildren. Talk about the rain. Do not talk about old times. There’s no need to recall the time he drove you to the airport for a flight to college, and you saw him hours later waving to you on-board the plane. Avoid bringing up the time just the two of you spent the day at an amusement park when you were a child. Instead, ask about the game and if he happened to catch it last week. You know he did. Let him tell you about it.

When he seems tired but doesn’t want you to keep stopping, stop to fix your shoe, to read a sign; look for a bench and suggest you sit and talk. He’ll ask about your son; he’ll ask about work. Have something to say other than “fine, Dad.”

Do not look at your watch. Do not check your phone; most definitely do not check your phone. Leave both in your bag. Do not indicate in any way he is keeping you from anything. No other time is relevant anymore. But you will grow tired and restless. If he senses this, he will insist you leave. He will say he knows you have a lot going on, and he’ll say he’ll see you later, and he’ll do whatever he can to make you feel he is completely fine with it. Stay anyway. Then sit a bit longer. Do not ask about the doctors; the walk is to forget about the doctors. Do not quiz him on medicine or schedules. He is out for a walk, you joined him, it is something about which he will tell others—that he went for a walk and his son was there and joined him. Do not let his story end with “but he had to go.”

When you leave be near him as he steps from the curb, but do not help. He will be fragile and unstable. The step from curb to parking lot is a leap; he used to do it with you on his shoulders and two others running out front. Let him step down on his own but be ready. He bruises easily and a simple scrape is a trip to the doctor. Have the patience he had when your childhood curbs seemed like the Ural Mountains.

Don’t say “I guess I’d better get going.” Don’t make plans. Don’t make any comment to indicate he did well or that it was a “good walk.” He didn’t do well and it wasn’t a good walk. He’s older now. He’s slower now, but he knows this. Really, once the walk is done, the time spent together always seems to have passed faster than we recall. He knows this as well.

The man my age is now too far out front. I’m not sure if his English is good enough, but I still think he’ll understand. Fathers and sons have a universal understanding, and this railway is all about fathers and sons. Mine is right next to me now. And he reminds me so much of you, making you ever-present. 

Always,

You’ve always been a patient nation. You don’t get pissed off when we win the Stanley Cup with mostly Canadian players; you understand when the average American can’t name half of your provinces; and you don’t seem to mind that we’ve pretty much claimed Michael J Fox as one of our own. But we are nervous; you’ve never been tested like this before, and there are few Americans who don’t sympathize with you, who don’t want to stand on Peace Bridge and scream north, “We know! We Know! We’re so sorry! Honest to Ottawa, we’re so freaking sorry!”

Politics aside, trade agreements aside, we apologize (and yes, I’m speaking for all Americans because this one is so blatantly clear) for djt’s rudeness, flippant attitude, crass words, irreverent approach, cowardly tweets, moronic understanding of relations, childish approach to discussions (patience please, I’m almost done), bullying tactics, short-sighted understanding, well…you get the point. We are sorry.

It is frustrating to see Mr. Trudeau act with such professionalism, such grace and diplomacy, and know had any single other human been in the office of the president, things would be fine. Anyone—honest, throw a snowball across International Falls and anyone it hits would have been better. We can sense your frustration as well. Mr. Trudeau is acting with obvious restraint because he knows in just two years we can purge this pathetic piece of moose dung out of office and reboot our relationship.

But at this point on the close side of the summer of ’18, the fall of 2020 seems impossibly distant, as long as a Yukon winter. So, please, we implore you to be patient just a little while longer. In the meantime, please understand most Americans have not lost our admiration for your people and your peaceful ways.

America hasn’t changed our desire to be best friends with you. Truly. We just are going through a phase right now—to put an elegant title on this dark period of our country, let’s call it the “years when this embarrassing thug of a cowardly piece of crap was president” time. It will be over soon and we can again appreciate how important we are to each other and how we won’t take you for granted again.

The poster above hangs in the dining room at the Franciscan Mountain Retreat of Mt Irenaeus in western New York. It is about thirty-eight-years old. Fr Lou at the retreat was interested to know how I remembered its exact age. “I made it,” I said.

When in college I started the World Hunger Committee, which had a short-lived purpose to provide information about the plight of hungry at home and abroad. Maybe the greatest accomplishment of the group was obtaining permission to have just one day where all students who were on the dining plan would turn in their dining cards for that day and the money would go to World Hunger organizations. I do not know if that tradition continued, but we managed my senior year.

But before that, when I was a sophomore, I had twenty-five of these posters made and put them up around campus. A few went in the dining hall, a few in the campus café, and one in the campus ministry, where Fr Dan Riley, founder of Mt Irenaeus, was then working. I still have one at home.

It’s a bit surreal to sit at the dining room table at the mountain and see the poster. I can picture a young man, a boy really, standing next to Mikel Wintermantel in Studio 4 East discussing the phrase to put on the poster. Mikel—or one of his brothers, I’m not sure—came up with the idea of the wheat stalks up the side. It is like a different life, a movie I once saw and only kind of remember the plot. But that scene I recall just fine. And here is the evidence that those times existed—like going from dorm to dorm for floor meetings where we collected money to help the hungry. We were inspired by the late Harry Chapin, who championed efforts to end world hunger, and who had recently been killed. We held a coffeehouse during which we handed out information about the numbers of hungry in the state and the country. And we helped sign up volunteers to assist at the Warming House in the next town. It was a time—both the era and our age—when we believed in things like solving world hunger, like achieving world peace. We were so idealistic.

But like all twenty-year olds I aged, lost some idealism, got busy with life, and the energy of that time faded.

Yesterday when everyone had left the mountain but me I sat at the table and stared at the poster. It was like it suddenly became animated and was calling to me across the room, across decades, and it said, “Where the hell did you go?”

I got sidetracked I guess. But seeing the poster had one immediate effect: I was aware of the food I ate, and the food I didn’t eat.

It is coming on forty years later and today forty percent of food is wasted every year in the United States. Forty percent. Here, in numbers: 40 percent.

60 million tons worth of produce alone is wasted every year just in this country.

According to a study published in The Atlantic, food occupies the single largest amount of room of all landfills. One reason is American’s maniacal obsession with perfection. Most of the waste is the result of blemishes on produce, or other such aesthetic “faults” which cause chefs both professional and not to toss food away. Another reason is how cheap food can be, so throwing it away doesn’t have much impact on the budget. In addition the portions are insanely large, and to make it worse parents stand over their children trying to push in another fork from the way-too-big pile of corn and tell them to “eat every bite” because there are children starving. Result? Some American kids get fatter while some American kids get nothing, and the balance gets tossed in the trash. The only punishment for the stuffed kid is “no dessert” for not gouging his mouth with more and the punishment for one in five American children is to go to bed hungry.

We think of “wasting” food as a “trash” problem. That is just part of it. Wasting food is also a consumption issue. Portions, again, are too large, snacks are too common, people eat between meals, multiple dinners, and while the recommended daily caloric intake is about 2000, the average American caloric intake every day is 2900, while 1 in 5—that’s ONE in FIVE—children’s average caloric intake is 700 a day. That’s just a little less than one blueberry muffin from Starbucks.

I could go on; there seems to be some rekindled idealism in this dormant conscience. But the point is clear: we don’t need to feed the world to help the less privileged—the first step to ending world hunger is much closer to home: Please don’t waste food.

Things I find beautiful:

Two older women at a coffee shop meeting for lunch and talking about the people in their lives, talking about their kids and grandkids. One of them showed pictures.

The toddler coloring while her mom eats. She also has stickers and just offered one of a flower to her mom, who put down her cinnamon roll to put the sticker on her blouse.

A very old man walking very slowly, noting that it is an extraordinary thing to have an ordinary day. He has a cane. He wears a hat.

Caffeine.

Today on Facebook I read the post of a friend of mine who I hardly knew at all from a time in my life so long ago I can hardly remember, is visiting other friends in Arizona, and in the picture they’re laughing. I liked the picture and commented how much fun it looks, and one of her friends said, “Yes, and it is only eight in the morning!” I thought about how time is out of joint. In that one exchange I bulleted to 1973 to today and back again. We are all connected; Facebook is just the physical reminder and convenient apparatus. But we’ve all been connected the whole time, even if we lose touch.

How I noticed when I stopped at an ice rink to say hi to two skaters home from a world tour that these partners are on vacation and spending it skating together, in love with each other, in love with what they do for a living, and everything’s going to be alright. They pursued life the way they wanted it to be and found it. They skate really well too.

Driving across the river I noticed the sun on the water, and the colors, and the shapes of the colors ever so briefly before becoming other shapes, and how my son’s photography makes me notice the beauty in something I’ve been looking at my entire life.

So look, I have a new plan: I’m going to find five things a day and note how beautiful they are. This doesn’t mean I won’t still get pissed at the idiot walking diagonally across a parking lot and holding up a line of cars; or at the woman at the checkout who needs to account for everything in her purse before picking up her packages and getting the hell out of the way, or the punk in front of me at the light who was reading his phone when the light turned green and my quick honk to let him know he can go now startled him into flipping me the bird. No, I’ll still find no pleasure there.

But, honestly, it took me less time to note how the very old woman and her husband at the table next to me were thrilled to share a free chocolate chip cookie than it did to calm down from the finger flipping.

I take a lot of pictures of sunsets, sunrises, and I know they’re trite, I know the worst picture of a sunset or sunrise is still a beautiful thing, but they remind me that whatever falls between the beauty of the start and the beauty of the finish is still as miraculous.

Like the school bus filled with kids counting down their final days before summer.

Or the way waking up at three in the morning doesn’t mean I have to get frustrated at not sleeping when there is an indescribable blanket of stars to see just outside.

Or how endings, as Neil Simon once pointed out, can be just beginnings backwards, depending upon perspective.

Pachabel’s Canon in D.

Wysteria.

Sitting with a friend, having a drink, laughing. Crying. Whatever.

Remembering. Wondering why.

I like the rain. Always have. I like the way I am completely aware of the here and now when I’m outside, blinking away the dripping wet from my face. One time, just east of Fisterra, Spain, Michael and I walked all morning and afternoon in a steady downpour. We were drenched and walked along muddy trails for miles and miles. Some paths ran through trees and it wasn’t all that bad, and sometimes we found refuge, like under the overhang of a medieval church, another time a pub where we played foosball and had a drink. We had no plans, weren’t going anywhere except farther east on our way back from the end of the earth. And anyway, we knew already that eventually that evening when we changed, our clothes would dry. What’s the big deal.

I like working in the garden in the rain, or swimming in the ocean or in a pool. I especially enjoy swimming when there is obviously no chance of lightning. The steady rain on the water is soothing and eternal, something from Eden, something from sometime before that.

When I was a kid and went for bike rides on Saturday afternoons when it rained, a streak of puddle-wet would whip up my back. And while it was slightly irritating when a pebble took flight with the water, it was also visceral, absolute; the rain drowned out any sense of shadows from earlier or later, allowed only the present to persist. Sometimes my face was so wet my skin softened.

It’s raining now, and I’m doing work in a sandwich shop drinking tea listening to acoustic guitar music. That one sentence is loaded with personal imagery: the rain and my youth and walking once to a clearing in the hills behind the college in the torrents with a friend of mine, the music and how it keeps resurfacing, sometimes pushing me along sometimes pulling me back, and the tea and all the times a cup of tea was all I needed.

It is raining now, and I am aware of how much I can feel it on my skin when I think about how my father no longer can; my father and so many friends we’ve lost by now, some not far from here. Or how my friends so far away might be inside working, looking outside glad they are not out in the rain. I picture the times when I have had to find my way through a small village and it is raining, and I don’t mind at all. It is reassuring when I remember those times. It makes me realize no matter what I will always be fine, always be okay. If I can be completely at peace while walking in the rain, why would I ever let anything else bother me?

Another time in Spain Michael and I walked up a long road in the rain and an elderly man was standing in his doorway and asked us to come inside. He made us coffee and gave us some bread and we sat inside awhile, grateful for the break, more grateful for talking to someone new. The rain often brings people together, sometimes in doorways, sometimes in sandwich shops, and sometimes on grassy paths in some other place.

Once, I remember I was about eight and the rain had just passed and my mother let me go outside our home in Massapequa Park on the Island. The sun was out but everything was wet and puddles had formed everywhere, and steam rose from the pavement, and I can still picture it as if I was standing right there on the avenue, and the grass was soggy under my small feet. At home the pool water was cooler from the rain, but eight-year-old’s don’t care about that.

It seems more and more we are less aware of the here and now, but weather keeps me in the moment. Nature is in control; the wilderness will win eventually. I love standing back to watch it all. I love the way I can still feel the rain on my face, or the sun pressing on my neck on a July afternoon. Or the snow and a cool wind coming down from the north in November, and being outside takes some presence of mind.

                  Let the rain kiss you
                  Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
                  Let the rain sing you a lullaby
                  The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
                  The rain makes running pools in the gutter
                  The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
                  And I love the rain.
                                                                                      April Rain Song
                                                                                                –Langston Hughes

At Walmart yesterday a man walked from the back to the front of the store cursing loudly. This wasn’t a disease-caused situation; this wasn’t a self-directed tirade. He was clearly pissed at someone in the store, either in customer service, or, for all I know, his boss, since I couldn’t tell if he was an employee or not. But he walked by, yelling, “This is F.ing ridiculous!!” and on and on, stopping when he was near someone who did work there to direct his anger to that unfortunate soul.

From where I stood it sounded like it took him about five minutes to exit. One woman near me raised her eyebrows and commented that she wants to leave in case he comes back with a bomb or a gun or friends. I understand the fear.

I stood also wondering just how far away I was from being that guy.

Everyone is getting angry way to easily these days. Drivers and workers and customers, everyone. You. Me. And not just at Walmart where a little temper-tantrum from time to time is understood. Everywhere. Everyone. From leadership, opposition parties, faculty, students, police, everyone. It is as if we’ve all had way too much caffeine, or are constantly being poked, or aren’t getting enough sleep. I honestly don’t remember another time in my life when so many were so angry so much of the time.

I stopped at a light and noticed a group of people on their cellphones at a few tables at a corner pub. In cars, on the sidewalk, in the restaurant, the stores, the hallways, the offices, the entire population is on their phones. If those phones were all landlines, I thought, we would never be able to navigate the millions of miles of wires set out to trip us up. Every single human would have long telephone wires running from them to poles everywhere they went, and of course since we don’t live in a symmetrical world, the thick intrusion of wires would be like liquid, like air, like soup so thick we couldn’t walk or see or even breathe.

The light turned and I drove on, and eventually I made it to near my home, out in the country, nothing but the bay and the river and some farmland for dozens of miles in three of four directions. I could breathe, I could look out uninterrupted, I could think clearly. I could relax.

Contemplate this: Every single cell phone is searching for frequencies set out from towers, usually trying to find three towers to hook up to. And this is constant from every single active cell phone looking to hook up or already connected to the towers which transmit the information—calls, data, etc—to the destination, all the time. All the time.

Isn’t it possible our immersion in this saturated atmosphere is fucking with our mood, playing games with our attention span and anxiety level? Our blood pressure? It’s as if while sitting at a stoplight I am drowning under an invisible sea of signals and frequencies, and while it keeps me connected it makes it difficult to function. It isn’t that we are being “converted” into technology, or that technology is ruling us. No. I think it is just the mechanisms to make this all function have saturated the air, cutting off our oxygen, making us stupid.

I want to get out of my car at a stoplight and climb on the roof, or, better, climb a telephone pole to the top. But since towers are usually really tall my own refuge is to escape, to drive to where the “pavement turns to sand,” and break free from the tsunami of data.

Perhaps from some mountainside or the vista from a cliff on the bay, if we could somehow bend light to illuminate that which we can’t presently see, down in the city or other busy areas, a haze of black, or deep purple, or dust-like energy would pulsate before our eyes.

The region from central New York State to the Ohio Valley has been determined to have some of the highest levels of oxygen in the air anywhere. It is easier to breathe there, and more than a few times the regions have been rated to have some of the happiest people with the lowest rates of crime and violence.

And the cellphone reception sucks. Go take a good view in the wildness and see how calm you feel.

Coincidence? I doubt it.

During the election of 2016 the vast majority of anti-Trump citizens were primarily concerned that he’d have access to the “button,” the ability to start a nuclear war with somewhere in the world. It was pretty well agreed upon by rationally-thinking people that the combination of this narcissistic personality with candid illusions of grandeur and the power to annihilate civilizations should not be introduced. Still, that’s what happened.

What irony; what a tragic twist to this pathetic narrative: not only did djt not cause atomic arsenals to rain down upon various “questionable” nations around the world, those same nations somehow managed to gain the support of our allies even as the United States moves dangerously closer to isolation. North and South Korea moved closer to landmark discussions until djt kept pushing with his sensational rhetoric about his being the catalyst behind such talks; he pulled out of the Iran deal which, as a result, will hurt American companies and send Iranian businesses into dealings with our allies, who, despite their hesitation, are more than willing to cover the gap and work with the leaders there.

We live in a world where negotiation trumps threats, and only one person in government doesn’t seem to understand this. It is like the rest of the world moved out of their parents’ home: there is some residual desire to appease and please the folks, but there is an increasing awareness that they’re on their own and it is now in their best interests to do what they want. The United States doesn’t have the political or economic influence it once did, and only djt hasn’t gotten that memo.

The President of the United States did, in fact, drop the bomb, but on his own people. Our country is deteriorating in reputation, influence, and power, and djt is the one pushing all the buttons.

The man keeps pulling out of trade partnerships and other negotiations claiming he can make a better deal, but he still has not got a clue, not a clue, not a freaking clue, that the negotiations and partnerships have less to do with money than they do relationships. Simply put, Free Trade Stops Wars. Trade deals and partnerships are the price we pay for being a powerful country to keep nations from partnering only with each other and ganging up on us. If we think of us as the King and other nations across the Pacific or in the Middle East as fiefdoms, we will all benefit if we build those nations castles in the country and palaces in town instead of sending out our army to destroy them. Nothing is more dangerous than an organized group of people who have nothing to lose by resisting and everything to gain. Add to that the reality that they can become more powerful if they join economic forces, and we’re simply screwed.

All because one man has decided to stir things up. For what? For one, to simply undo anything former President Barack Obama did out of spite and racism and bitterness; for another, to benefit his multiple holdings which somehow seem to make millions every single time he pulls out of a deal, watches the stock market tumble, and then changes his mind, watching his newly purchased stocks skyrocket.

But I know nothing of it. I am not a political expert, I’m not schooled in economics or trade; even my journalistic skills waned decades ago. But I’ve studied human nature for most of my adult life, as a professor and a traveler, and it is painfully obvious that djt has no values or morals which benefit the better good of everyone. We only succeed as individuals and, therefore, as a nation, if everyone benefits.

Anything else is called tyranny.

I walked on the beach last night, then back under the pier and along the water. A heavy fog settled in early and the ships sounded their horns out in the dark. All the pubs along the boardwalk are coming back to life as the season settles back on this tourist town, but it is quiet along the ocean at that hour, nearly a different world, even on the busiest of nights at the hotels.

I stopped at Ocean Eddies for a drink and then kept walking. The air was wet from the weather, but the water is calm, and the further north I walked into the residential area at North Beach, the less I could hear anything at all except the ripples of the water at my feet.

This morning I walked again, this time noting the proverbial line in the sand of my life which divides what has been for three decades and everything that comes next. I’m in that period we all face with a major change: some sort of blending occurs where those whom I’m leaving ask about the future, talk about what’s next, and the inevitable remnants of a thirty-year career in the form of paperwork and some possible unfinished business. But I suspect these two worlds will separate for good sooner rather than later. It reminds me of a song by a New England folk singer, in which she writes, “Getting used to saying ‘let’s keep in touch’ though I know we probably never will; probably never will.”

And the sun came up today; I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. People out on the highway heading to work, rubbing their eyes. People on the sand set up umbrellas, called to kids, and music spilled out from radios, the smell of sunscreen, the taste of salt in the misty rise from the breakers. I find refuge in this routine. I am encouraged by its predictability. City workers planted new flowers along the bike path, and a yoga class positioned themselves right at the water’s edge as they do most mornings.

Eventually I made it to what is known locally as “First Landing”; the spot where John Smith came ashore before settling in Jamestown, ignoring the presumptuousness of being the first when in fact the Spanish trumped the Brit by a century. My mind slipped to the Middle Passage which started nearly a century before Smith’s arrival, but which he helped usher to the mainland. I’ve seen both sides of the Atlantic: obviously from these shores for most of my life, but once, briefly, just over thirty years ago I stood on Goree Island near Dakar, off the coast of Senegal. It was used to hold African men and women before they were chained aboard slave ships for transport through the process until they were enslaved on plantations, some of which still stand not far from my home. There’s Church Hill Plantation standing in all its dark history just across the road from where my son went to elementary school. And River View Plantation dating back to the early 1800s, which grew tobacco slaves harvested and loaded aboard ships in Urbanna just up the Rappahannock River from my house. I am surrounded by history; sometimes on quiet mornings when skulling the Rap I can almost hear history screaming from the fields and foundations.

At lunch yesterday, my friend Tim and I talked about Zora Neal Hurston’s book, Barracoon, in which she interviewed the last surviving slave who came to America on the Middle Passage. History ebbs and flows in our lives, spilling into and sometimes flooding us with emotion, and other times history recedes so far it is hard to remember what it is that connects us to begin with. Until I stand on the sand, not far from the cross which marks that landing four hundred years ago, and look toward the rising sun. It is important to look back carefully.

Our past is always present, swirling around our ankles, pulling us into the wet sand, always the shifting wet sand beneath our feet. And it does this again and again as long as we stand still.

No. It is important to keep moving. Sometimes the only value we can find in looking back is the lesson in not following that path again. It is a difficult balance, knowing which parts of history to remember and which parts to bury as deeply as we can. But the older I get the more I believe we should never ignore history, pretend it didn’t happen, or relegate it to the dusty corners of losing touch. With the right balance of emotion and intellect, history can serve our Institutional Memory so we don’t get caught again falling into the same undertow of time. 

I’m metaphored out. i’m going to go find the beauty of a rose which has not yet bloomed. There is nothing left for that rose to do but to bloom.

I just left my last class at Tidewater Community College. I started here twenty-nine years ago as an adjunct instructor and moved to full-time professor just a couple years later. I taught, traveled, raised a family, built a home, had lunch, and now I just left my last class. It was advanced creative writing and they all read some of their favorite work they produced this semester. I read as well and so did my former office mate Tom Williams. It was fun.

We had pizza and wings and chips and drinks, and we talked about what’s next, now that they’re transferring to four-year schools. Some are going to Virginia Tech, some to Old Dominion, some to William and Mary, and a few aren’t really going anywhere—working full-time and raising children. One is an elementary school teacher here for recertification, and she has her seven-year-olds writing poetry, which she plans to send to them in a few years. We all talked about our favorite pizza toppings.

Afterwards, my son and I sat and had drinks at a boardwalk café. The moon was red just above the horizon, not full, and the light it reflected cast across some vessels on their way north, or south, or waiting to enter the port of Hampton Roads sometime in the next day or two. Venus was setting to the west and Jupiter was just about to appear, not quite visible for its proximity to the moon. I had a rum drink because it felt like the thing to do after all this time. Besides, Michael bought it for me.

It’s hard to imagine the horrors taking place in Syria, Afghanistan, and other places when the water is calm like this and the boardwalk lights illuminate lovers walking quietly, the occasional call of a gull just beyond the shadows on the reach. I tend to look out and think more about the peace that awaits in northern Spain than the hunger that haunts the people in South Sudan, but only because I’ve been so lucky. I mean, sometimes when the Atlantic and I are just hanging out peacefully like this, I can’t help but understand I wasn’t raised in Mosul; I wasn’t born in Beirut.

Humanity is a crazy race, building irrigation systems to help grow food to feed millions while building methods to annihilate those poor souls in seconds. Maybe the greatest irony of education is the stretches of intelligence, research, and application it takes for the human mind to conceive, create, and execute weapons which can evaporate entire cities. The mechanics to build the means by which to destroy someone else wouldn’t cross the mind of an uneducated person. Only educated people can accomplish such a holocaust.

It feels tragically like no one wants to save the world anymore.

There needs to be a new requisite in schools everywhere: Humanity 101. The course could cover the benefits of helping other people, the rewards of sharing not just gains but losses as well. There could be a lesson on compassion and one on being a good Samaritan. A sociologist might talk in one session about how what happens in one section of the globe really does have an impact on the rest, and a psychologist can show the class how to balance the beauty of nature with the evil things people say and do.

A theologian could explain why there are, or at least needs to be, some absolute morals. That person might explain why the belief in postmortem consequences is what can keep evil in check, keep the horrible potential of humanity at bay. Without preaching about salvation in heaven, he or she can certainly drop in a few lectures about earthly responsibility to each other, and if the fear of God is necessary to get it done, so be it; not unlike threatening toddlers who act up with the possibility of Santa skipping their house as a result. The potential of a little supernatural backlash is just what this world could use right now.

Honestly, it seems like no one wants to save the world anymore. I fear for the absence in education of something other than the notion of “career.”

More connections with other people can be made by sharing a meal than college administrators give credit for. Looking back now, I should have taught all my classes over dinner, sitting around a huge table passing the potatoes while talking about social-responsibility and expert sources.  

We might solve more problems by knowing what our neighbors like on their pizza than understanding the treaties that keep us apart.

In any case, it’s time for another round.