Bob Kunzinger
Time. Out.
So here’s the thing: According to scientists who constantly work on and adjust the Asteroid-Satellite Collision Probability, when a meteor or other such space object hits a satellite, the rock “vaporizes into hot, electrically charged gas that can short out circuits and damage electronics, causing the satellite to spin out of control.” Don’t worry about being hit–it’ll burn up on reentry into the planet’s atmosphere. No, that’s not the problem.
See the problem? Yes, no more satellite. And if a large such space rock plays pinball with Space X’s system of communication, we here are earth are, as they might say on “Eureka,” simply fracked.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Age, humanity has forged ahead into the more convenient, even at the expense of the more improved. Further, we have built these castles at the expense of their foundations. The percolator becomes Mr. Coffee becomes a Keurig. Hell, I’ll just swing by Starbucks, and I’m not getting out of the car; I’ll go through the drive thru. Fine, but now give someone a percolator and ask them to make coffee. It’s not going to happen. How many people know their friends’ phone numbers? Their own? Ever been in a store in the middle of checking out when the “connection” fails on their register, and the clerk who can’t write in cursive or add without a calculator stands there completely perplexed?
The world became transfixed by convenience so that ambitious endeavors are no longer defined by “better than it was,” but “more convenient.” As a result, we are completely, arguably, most definitively reliant upon the 2500 operational satellites orbiting the earth (about 6000 actually are orbiting, but more than half simply don’t work). The argument is the more time we save the more time we can spend with those we love.
Nice. But we’re not. People don’t drive by and visit. Hell, they don’t even call anymore. We’re not going for more walks in the park or along the beach. Where is that extra time? Where are all the people?
You know what? Let’s do it this way instead: Every single day, 100 tons of meteorite dust coats the entire planet. This is true. You, me, the cars, buildings, everywhere, everything. It is so miniscule, of course, that we don’t even know it is happening, preferring instead to wait for the Leonid shower, or the Perseid, the Geminid, or even the Urid, to run outside and watch the shooting stars every twenty or thirty seconds on a clear moonless night. Who isn’t transfixed by that? Yet equally, who isn’t freaked out by the thought of meteor dust in their hair? On their ice cream cone?
But wait, there’s more:
The temperature at the core of the earth is the same, about 10K Fahrenheit, as the surface of the sun. I love symmetry but part of me wonders if The Great Universal Thermometer simply stops tracking at 10K. Based on that and some formula they figured out with a slide rule (look it up), scientists–the ones who know what they’re talking about because of generations of research and who have less ability to create a fiction than I do–say the planet is about 4.5 billion years old, but humans of any sort have only been here for about 450,000 years (Note: If you are even slightly considering posting a response about how the earth was created in April about 6000 years ago, go away). Now, if you do the math and divide the history of the universe into a day, humans have been searching for convenience stores for about ten seconds.
Our time here is short. So it comes back to meteors. Stardust. The naked-to-the-eye coating which exploded countless zeros away from here several billion years ago, arriving, now on our chocolate swirl cone.
Keep that dust in mind as we add this to the equation: The greatest scientists in the world have trouble wrapping their mind around the concept that our own planet is an anomaly. Even if you are like those of us who believe somewhere in the deep recesses of unthinkable distance are planets with lifeforms playing Scrabble and drinking Pinot Noir, astrophysicists like Stephen Hawking, Neil Tyson, Carl Sagan, and Brian May can’t tell you where, and they’ve looked with equipment so advanced some of it has left the solar system, some landed on moving asteroids, and some is scooping up dirt on the moon like it’s dog poop and bringing it back. And these experts with combined IQ’s in the thousands do not know.
But they can tell us around 100 tons of meteorite dust coats the earth, and us, daily.
I sat at the river this morning completely unplugged and, to be honest, uninterested in much. I get that way a lot. I felt like going for a long walk in the mountains or sitting on the sand and look for manatee. But both those locales seem as distant as the stars. Instead, I looked out at the Norris Bridge two miles upriver, and the cars and trucks crossing the mile and a half span headed North, up toward DC, up toward New York, up, just further and further up and my mind wandered up as well, across the Niagara Frontier, across Ontario. Up.
I couldn’t hear them, the cars, but I could catch the glint of sun on their windows. Closer, on the river, some bufflehead ducks surfaced then dove again. A workboat headed out from Locklies; I guess to check some traps. And now it is raining, torrents. When it rains like this, when the sky seems to be falling, I don’t want to retreat inside as much as I want to go all in–dive into the river and feel the water around me like amniotic fluid. But it is late. Today, it is about noon, but as far as the history of “time in a day” is concerned, for me it is four in the afternoon. The sun is no longer at its full strength, dinner will be ready soon. The streetlights will soon be on.
I can’t focus on the minutia in life; never could. Some student asks me about subject verb agreement and I’m wondering why we can only see about 2000-3000 stars, not “millions” as we feel when standing at the bay on a clear, moonless night. I’m more focused on the reality that I have so much I want to see, so many glasses of wine to drink with friends in European pubs and small quaint villages and sandy southern beaches, but very possibly won’t, brings me to the brink of psychosis when someone actually screws up simple comma rules. Part of me wants to say, “Come on! This isn’t rocket science! It’s a fracking comma!” and another part of me wants to whisper, “You’re doing fine. It’s just commas–I knew what you meant. Now go bathe in the miracle of meteorite dust. Buy a chocolate cone and wait for it!!”
In some inhumane attempt to find the easier, find the quicker, the more efficient, humanity has drifted too far astray in 450,000 years; so far from the essential; so far afield from what matters.
We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.
There Ought to be Clowns
I was in Prague when a Czech girl about twenty held a heavy sign outside a ticket booth. “Stop by the National Marionette Theatre for a Show,” it said. An arrow pointed up some stairs. She wore a clown suit. Ten AM, no later, she started—I saw her there four hours later, five hours, six, she stood supporting her sign and handing out leaflets to lead me to the “National Marionette Theatre’s Production of Don Giovanni.” I thought of the Statue of Liberty people hawking tax filing; and of giant chickens handing out coupons in the mall. This one is a national marionette theatre. This Czech girl pushed puppet shows on people.
Perhaps passing out flyers pays well. Or her parents preside over the theater, and this is punishment for tangling the marionette strings when she was five. Naturally, I couldn’t support such delayed abuse. I might have taken a look if this person in my path performed with a puppet or two. But no; she just stood there. Maybe she holds the heavy sign in exchange for free admission to any performance she prefers. Tonight, Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro. They’re puppets, though. I’m not easily fooled.
To be fair, exposure to these arts is rare and the ransom of holding a heavy sign eight hours a day in a clown suit is worth it. Still, when she handed me the leaflet, I declined. Taking it, I thought, would provide false hope of my attendance. Perhaps she’s paid per person, and upon entering we must say, “The twenty-year-old girl in the clown suit sent me,” and she’d expect her cut of my admission. That money, added to the rest from other guilt-ridden tourists, might be enough to buy the Bohemian bracelet at the boutique near Charles Bridge. She might, while on break, charge the jewelry having counted on money from her promised patrons. She would eventually pay for it knowing she had income from my gracious acceptance of her leaflet. But I pulled my hand away. You see, when the theatre is mostly empty, and puppets bounce to Swan Lake, she might notice my absence, my lie, my blatant mockery of the marionette art form. I could not walk along Karlova Avenue again, not past that theatre, that clown suit holding that sign, in angst over her noticing me. I know no flier to this theater is handed out without strings attached. Especially if dangling from her wrists, beneath the puffy sleeves, I might hear the clanging of the bracelet still not paid for. I could not bare it.
So, of course, I didn’t take the leaflet.
Fliers about music, however, I accept. The string quartet playing Pachabel and Vivaldi at St George’s still stirs in my mind, or the symphony at St Martin in the Wall. One student once stood between me and the Literature Café after I had been teaching and was thirsty. He pushed Bach on me, motioning toward some small space in the next building. Outside a cello player performed for free, teasing us, baiting us without charge so we’d get hooked and go for the harder, move complicated compositions inside. Good marketing, I thought—the whole Literature Café crowd could conceivably fill a concert hall for Bach. Still, I declined and tried to glide around him.
Unfortunately, leaflet pushers in Prague promote their papers to blind eyes, throwing themselves in harm’s way to deliver the news, the message, the memo that something is about to happen that simply can’t be missed. I see smoke rising on cold evenings from the myriad chimneys across the rooftops and imagine these Czech people, instead of going to the show, walk the streets and collect leaflets to burn for warmth at night, the ashes of theatre and museum bills billowing into the cold Czech evening air.
Hawkers hand out leaflets for museums, tours to other cities, walking tours of the castle, Kafka’s Castle, Havel’s castle; walking tours of the Golden Way where Kafka wrote in a small blue house, walking tours of the Jewish Quarter with its cemetery of headstones strewn about like fliers in a parking lot on a windy day. Leaflets of art museums in Old Town near the atomic clock, tours to the Golden Tiger where Hrabal drank beer and wrote novels; sheets of paper promote discounts at restaurants, coupons for strudel, Monrovian wine tasting, and more music. No guidebook is needed for Prague; no online sources recommending what to do on a Tuesday night in March. Just walk up Karlova Street, or Nerudova, and flier clowns keep information flowing like hot wine in the Bohemian cafés.
One guy one night one year handed me a leaflet for a pub he said was near, right around the corner, an Irish pub, and the next night was St Patrick’s Day, and if I walked that way with him he’d tell me what to order, what foods are best, and if I took the flier with me, I’d get a discount and he’d get paid, and I knew then I was right in not taking that clown’s flier, that she, too, depended upon commission. So this guy walked with me that March 16th, late, through tunnels, up steep streets, and half-way up one narrow medieval way was an Irish pub, and I relaxed, no longer worried about being led into some torture room out of some Tarantino film. I walked in grasping my flier, had Guinness and potato cakes when a large Irish man invited me to his place for a St Patrick’s Day party the next night. “His place” turned out to be the Irish Consulate, and there turned out to be a few hundred people. We drank beer and listened to the Chieftains and to rare Van Morrison, and to the Wolfetones. We ate and laughed about Dublin versus Manchester United, which I had seen in a pub after someone handed me a leaflet for happy hour to watch the football match. The ambassador talked about his love of Prague and one of the guests talked about the cathedrals, when everyone began to talk about the music, and that flier brought it all home for me; the spontaneity that fliers provide. Guidebooks usually are married to planning or at least engaged to thinking ahead, but the almighty flier with its primitive shoving into our faces while heading somewhere else is the ultimate in tangents, the epitome of carpe diem. This is, after all, Bohemia.
“Here’s a flier—do it now—don’t think” is what those hawkers truly hail.
One guy gave me a flier for a free strudel. I don’t turn down free anything, particularly food, particularly strudel. It was warm, with ice cream, and a pot of Irish Crème Tea, and I know the purpose was so I might purchase the pot of tea. Okay.
It is the unanticipated beauty of the immediate. It is the hard left turn. It is the unexpected now when moments of “what’s next” so often occupy our present ones. Sometimes life should be more akin to a pinball game: Instead of pulling our hands in, away from the tugs and tears at our sleeves from friends offering a last-minute road-trip, or family who knock unexpectedly, we should reach out and grab the opportunity. In Prague passing out leaflets prior to the Velvet Revolution indeed meant possible prison and accepting a flyer likely the same sentence. Indication of how important those fliers can often be. The power of the 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper can be immeasurable.
But more than that, they remind us that at any given moment, if we take our hands out of our pockets, we can discover a whole new train of thought, turn a whole new unanticipated direction. Little in our lives is designed for spontaneity; no, instead grand design proves itself with calendars, schedules, voice mail reminders, alarms and wake up calls. The places promoted on fliers are most often in back alleys or misunderstood. They’re the commoners’ billboard.
Once out near the Strahov Monastery, a dirty young woman with a dirty young child lay in the dust and filth of some alley not far from a nice restaurant where I used to drink fine wine, and she handed me a flier written in Czech. Her todler sucked on the crusty edge of his shirt. A passing stranger told me the flier read “Give me some money please. It won’t change your life but it might change mine.”
I did. It did.
Leaflets have been around probably since Gutenberg. But as a means of persuasion, they most likely hit the mainstream during World War I when the British air-dropped leaflets throughout France to communicate with the German army. The Nazi’s dropped anti-Jewish leaflets during the 1930’s and the early part of the 1940’s, Lee Harvey Oswald handed out pro-Cuban leaflets, and just before the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States showered Japan with more than five million leaflets warning the citizens of the imminent attack. It began, “Read this carefully it may save your life or the life of a friend or relative. In the next few days some or all of the cities named on the reverse side will be destroyed by American bombs.”
The Velvet Revolution in Prague in 1989 gained momentum behind the guidance of then play-write and eventual president, Vaclav Havel. The movement gained so much support, however, they couldn’t meet in the streets anymore and designated the Magic Lantern Theatre as their headquarters to organize. The dancers—out of work for the strike—would run leaflets around the city. It was from there propaganda flowed. They passed out bread, they collected money, and they made and distributed leaflets to gain support from students and workers alike under the guise of the theatre.
So naturally while contemplating the clown at the National Marionette Theatre, I rethought the whole puppet thing; maybe I was wrong to walk by so fast. If she did get a cut, and I did attend, then she’d be happy, her bracelet paid for, and I’d attend what might turn out to be an amazing performance of Don Giovanni, albeit by sophisticated Pinocchios. So the next morning I vowed to go. Perhaps my attendance also supported some revolutionary agenda, even if her own. Clearly, it’s happened before.
The next day at the foot of the castle steps a man gave me a flier for the Torture Museum. “Just tell people to walk up and down these stairs,” I joked, but he didn’t understand. I walked across Charles Bridge, up Karlova, and looked for the clown. The twenty-year-old was still there, and I walked close enough for her to hand me the paper.
Don Giovanni, or Don Juan, was written by Mozart and he first performed it here in Prague; Casanova himself collaborated on some of the scenes. In fact, in imagining Don Giovanni, Casanova said, “My life’s been filled with adventures, and truths often become larger than life when they’re retold. I never correct the tales that are especially hard to believe. It would be unkind to those who want to believe in them.”
Sometimes you just need something to believe in.
I sat in the back and enjoyed the marionette show. It was only later I realized I never saw a single string, not one wire.
Just a Good Stretch of the Legs
It’s raining at Aerie today, a heavy wet rain which if it wasn’t sixty-five degrees outside would be snow, the kind that weighs down pine branches and snaps the limbs of the smaller trees.
The sound of the rain is relaxing on the skylight above my head, and out the window the woods are foggy with a mist which looks cold but isn’t. It’s a good day to walk. When I was getting ready to do the Camino ten years ago this Spring, I walked in all kinds of weather from the rare snowstorms to the common downpours. Only lightning keeps me at bay; I don’t do lightning. Even inside I prefer to not sit under this skylight during a lightning storm.
But today is okay, with the rain and the warmth and my work for the colleges all caught up. I’m arranging some material for Ireland, figuring out a trip to West Virginia and Ohio, dreaming about Spain. I often dream about Spain. Remembering Ireland.
The last time I was in Connemara it rained one day, one out of about eleven days. That was in June that year, and the rest of the days were sunny and pleasant. It just so happened, however, that the one day it rained was a scheduled hike throughout the Renvyle Peninsula with famed archeologist, Michael Gibbons. Of course, being in Ireland, and him being one of the fine personalities of Ireland who jumps into bogs to show how dangerous they are and has a sense of humor which directly lines up with mine, none of us minded the rain. We walked through the crumbling graveyard of the Seven Daughters, took a break from the weather in an abandoned house overlooking the ocean, wandered for miles in the wide “wild west” of Connemara, along roads stretching past ladder farms and peat fields, and stood and listened to Michael talk about Standing Stones standing right in front of us, and dilapidated famine homes, and the Twelve Bens—mountain peaks stretching to the north, and curious customs he told us about with endless hysterical anecdotes. In all of my travels, that day, with Michael and my companions, was one of the most memorable.
But I was going to say before the walk about Connemara came to mind and all the matter-of-factness about the rain, as Frost might have said, that today is fine here along the Rappahannock, and the rain won’t keep me from meandering to the water, listening to the foghorns on the fishing boats coming back from the Bay.
I was talking to someone earlier this week about Ireland, about the Renvyle Peninsula where we go, and he asked if I was from there, my ancestry that is. I was proud to answer yes, that in fact a large swatch of my DNA hails from County Galway, in Connacht, and while everyone who travels there automatically feels right at home, I felt some connection we all sense when returning to a place our forefathers come from. I felt it in Brooklyn, too, the first time I returned as an adult and walked the streets where my father and my grandfather grew up, and my great-grandfather too. It was like that in Ireland, in Connemara. I didn’t know my great-grandfather of Brooklyn any more than my ancestors of Connemara; I am as connected to them all.
One evening we all went to dinner at Paddy Coynes in Tullycross, about two miles away. It dates back to 1811—new for Ireland—and is one of the popular pubs in western Ireland. We swapped stories, had oysters and lamb, whiskey and beer, Irish coffee, and readied to leave when I told everyone I had decided to walk back. A few protested, particularly Jacki who knows the roads better than anyone and whose roots run deep in the area. The roads are curvy and lined to the edge with high hedges, and traffic flows on the opposite side than what we are used to. Plus, it would be getting dark soon. Will, whose family is from the neighboring county, seemed more pleased than worried.
“It’s only two miles, and besides if it gets dark it is easier as I can see headlights and simply saunter from one side of the road to the other.”
They stood around talking about the meal we had just completed, and I left. The first mile is fine, with a wide road and wide shoulders, knee high walls and fields stretching clear to the east. On the west side of the street, houses sat back from the road behind Irish gates and Irish lawns—green of course.
At the one mile mark I came to a crossroads with some houses and a pull-off area. I turned to look for the van, which had yet to pass in the time it took me to walk the mile, when out across the reach was one of the most beautiful rainbows I had ever seen, bold, and welcoming me to the Republic in fine Irish tradition. A car pulled over and the driver got out and took pictures, and then he and I talked a bit about rainbows and Paddy Coynes and Renvyle and America and writing and, finally, Guinness, and we sat on his nearby porch and continued our conversation for an hour, drinking beer and swapping stories. When it was time to leave, I decided to walk the last mile along the beach, this awesome Wild Atlantic Way, which I imagined my ancestors might have walked as well, dreaming perhaps of America.
Here’s what I did not know:
- The stretch of beach does not go straight down the coast to Renvyle House, but instead jetties out into the Ocean and then winds back, making the one mile walk about three and a half.
- There are cliffs—not high, about twenty feet, along the water, with a rocky beach; rocky like baseball and softball size rocks everywhere.
- The tide was coming in.
I was about forty-five minutes into my walk when I realized I could no longer see lights anywhere. I enjoyed the walk though, albeit on wet rocks while I was wearing slick-soled Vans more appropriate for standing on the deck of a boat. A few times the waves crashed close enough to wash up my legs to my thighs, and it was only when I turned a bend and the closest lights I could see down the coast, hoping it was Renvyle, were still well more than a mile away.
I slipped once and landed on my butt in the sand, my pants wet but my phone safe. I checked and had received a text from a friend back at the house: “Where are you? We’re all in the lobby! We didn’t pass you coming back.” I quickly replied. “Walking home now, slowly. I met a local man who invited me for beers on his porch.” Okay, I knew that sounded way more planned and carefree than my impending very possible dragging out to sea by a rogue wave on the rocks of Connemara.
Eventually, I could no longer walk along what was no longer a beach—excuse me, rocky path—and I looked up at the cliff and realized it was easier to climb than I had thought. A sheep looked down at me, almost as if to say, “You know we’ve been watching you this whole time. You’re a moron.” I moved up the sandy and grassy side of the cliff with relative ease as there was plenty to hold onto, and I made it to solid ground, a grassy field spotted with cattle and sheep, and in the dark distance a house, presumably the hand who owns these herds. I walked freely, sheep moving out of the way, me moving around cows, and climbed over several small fences and kept walking another thirty minutes, climbing fences and dodging livestock until I could see the lights of Renvyle just a few hundred yards away.
I made it to the beach near our place, and I walked to the front door and walked in to find most of my friends hanging out, drinks in their hands, listening to music, warm by the peat fire in the large fireplace. Will looked up from his camera to ask how it was. I told him about the beers, and he said it was the perfect Irish experience to have, and he was happy for me. Then I quietly told him I walked down the beach instead of the road, and he said, “Yeah, I figured.”
“I think a sheep called me a moron.”
“I know that sheep,” he said, and we laughed.
A friend of mine says since I was born in a water sign, it makes sense that I’d be more comfortable along the Atlantic coasts on both sides of the pond than anywhere inland. Sure, part of me buys that, but just as much of me understands I’ve been coasting along sandy beaches since I’m nine years old and feel more comfortable doing so than in any hallway I’ve frequented.
But another part of me, the DNA part, likes to believe I followed some ancient path my great-great forefathers followed when they dreamed of America, wondered if they’d ever get there, wondered if they could simply ride the tide out past the Twelve Bens, past Achill and Inishturk, across the North Atlantic.
The Russian Arc
The following is the longest blog post to date at A View. It is the result of news today that going to Russia is dangerous even for Russians with dual-American citizenship. I miss the place, the people, the endless laughter and outrageous stories from decades of travel. The country has come full circle in that time. For anyone wondering what the hell happened, here’s what happened:
The Russian Arc
In 1994, the streets of St Petersburg were dank, a monotone of browns absent of advertising, neon, or anything other than some Soviet style atmosphere. The only placards placed in random spots on Nevsky Prospect—the city’s Fifth Avenue—were Marlboro signs, the only western clothing of note worn by the suddenly displaced masses was Adidas warm-up suits. It appeared a parody of itself as presented in 1970’s and ‘80’s anti-Soviet movies. For seventy-five years the country, and Leningrad, moved in darkness under the Soviet leadership, and for centuries before that under the long reach of the Czars.
But in 1994 when I first arrived to teach American culture to faculty at Baltic State University, the first of what would end up being more than twenty-five trips in thirty years, democracy had found the streets of Leningrad, which had just changed its name back to the Imperial “St. Petersburg,” and Russians struggled to figure it out. The first week there, I stood in line for two hours at a bakery, and when I pointed this out at the college, my colleagues shrugged and said, “Da. Canushna.” Yes, of course. I explained that in the States, a new bakery would open across the street and be faster, charge less, offer discounts. Then I had to explain discounts and why, explain that the cashier who stood outside smoking while twenty people were in line would be fired. This led to a conversation about capitalism, and everyone was suddenly enthralled to hear about businesses and learn how to make money, the advantages of choices, the value of options. The men of the previous generation on through to the college students present when I first taught in the city, simply understood service to their country as paramount; it involved time away from family, but also provided pensions and a chance to protect their living conditions.
But after the coup, and certainly in the few years which followed leading up to 1994, it was a brand-new way of existence, and the long, cold winter of communism had finally ended. Things changed—and this is where it got tricky. At first everything was different overnight, like their currency, living conditions, international relationships, and availability of goods. But then the changes slowed to an immeasurable pace. People couldn’t find jobs or food, or they had to work for some organized crime group. Old folks lined the metro begging for money or selling items—shoes, loose cigarettes, empty bottles. But within a few years they figured it out. One afternoon that first year I went to the market behind a cathedral in the arts district. It was a park area with tables covered in tourist items: matryoshka dolls, the famous Russian wooden bowls known as khokloma, pins, small wooden toys bears. Scarfs, shawls, icons, amber jewelry. The following year the market built small booths in long rows instead of random tables. A year or two later, the booths had roofs over them, then lighting was put in for night shopping, and by the 300th anniversary of the city in 2003, the entire market was covered, gates out front, a veritable mall filled with all the previous items, but also fine art, expensive purses, technology, and food were added to the shelves. The Russians were figuring it all out, and many made more money in a month than they had in a year under the Soviet regime. Organized crime groups took over and took a cut, and the city streets once filled with just Russian-made Ladas were now lined with black SUVs.
A friend of mine in the marketplace, photographer and artist Valentine, remained my source of all things business, and the changes almost became too much for him to handle. In 1995, I went in the Catholic Church nearby to find piles of rubble where an altar used to stand eighty years earlier, and the walls had been painted black, on the floor lay statues without heads. The priest, Fr. Frank Sutman, explained it had been used as a storage facility for motorcycles since the Great Patriotic War, World War Two, but the church took it over for the first time since 1917. By the turn of the millennium, the grandeur of the marble floors and beautiful walls had been restored. Across the street was a small shop. In the early years, I had to point to the item I wanted on the shelf behind a counter or in a glass case, and if I liked it, I took a handwritten receipt to the cashier who figured out the total on an abacus (no kidding), gave me a new receipt which I took back to the first worker to retrieve the items. This is how it was in the few grocers, the pharmacies, the bakeries. Only in the tourist market did one deal directly with one person.
Years pass.
A supermarket opened with cashiers at the end of conveyor belts who rang up your items, bagged them, and you walked out like you just left Walmart. The discovered calculators, paper bags, and the shelves were stocked with European goods. And on the streets, neon signs dominated the avenue: KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, clothing brands, cigarettes, alcohol, appliances, cars. Except for the language I could have been in my native New York. The once empty streets were filled with people, all on their new phones, all taking pictures, all donning expensive jackets and shoes.
These were the years of tourism, of an entire generation and the next growing up without memory of Gorbachev, even of Yeltsin. We went on canal rides and took videos, wandered through neighborhoods and graveyards. I went to Victory Day a dozen times, talked to Vets of the Great Patriotic War, who loved to share their experiences, and I talked to the women—St Petersburg became known as a city of old women since the men mostly died in the war and children starved to death—about the changes, often as they swept the streets with brooms made from birch branches.
We went to the Kirov Ballet, the opera, folk shows, and soccer games. We dined in restaurants from Germany, Italy, China, and played music, danced and drink at The Liverpool, a Beatles bar.
Peter the Great’s dream of a city of culture, his “Window to the West” as he called it, had come to fruition.
By 2014, after twenty-years of going to Russia, anyone thirty or thirty-five years old and younger only new this new way of life. The very notion that the government would dictate what they could and could not do was as foreign to them as it is to us in the west. Students graduated from college and set up businesses, tech companies, they traveled freely and often to Portugal, the United States, Hong Kong, Sicily, everywhere. After almost a century of needing to walk everywhere and live with two other families in small communal apartments, they now owned cars and nice apartments. The once common practice of tourists bringing Levis or other western brands to trade for Russian trinkets was not only over, but laughable, with malls opening up with shoe stores, clothing stores, phone, sporting goods, and music stores, all filled with western brands.
The “old country” of Russia had so modified over the course of just two decades, one had to be in their forties to remember the Soviet system. What the average Russian citizen could not know, of course, was that the modifications made in palaces throughout the country, but in particular St Petersburg, was paid for by organized crime to increase tourism and international trade. The city where I could in those early years buy items for a few dollars, quickly figured it out and charged twenty or thirty dollars for the same items. Restaurants appeared everywhere with prices for those driving the SUVs, not for the Lada crowd.
My friends from Russia adjusted. A tour operator learned business well and built a company that dealt with tourists from all over the world. My artist and writer friends found new freedom in being able to take pictures of anything and anyone they wanted without recourse. They criticized the Yeltsin administration without worry of harm. For seventy-five years, the notion of dissidence, which not only included those who wrote against the government, but those who simply didn’t always write positive things about the government; particularly Stalin, had in just a few shaky years, slipped into history. Going to St Petersburg became simple. There was even talk for a while of dropping all the VISA requirements. I wouldn’t call it democracy, as such, but communism was dead. Gone. Lenin’s statues which had been everywhere in the early ‘90s were much more difficult to find. It became simple for a Russian to leave home and travel to the United States. And the did, gladly, relishing in being a part of the world, finally. This wasn’t simply détente; this was the start of a beautiful relationship.
In 2013, my son and I rode the trans-Siberian railway from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, across more than six-thousand miles, and seemingly across decades as we retreated into the previous century the further east we traveled. In Yekaterinburg the western influence was still obvious, but in Irkutsk, another few days east, Soviet style practices still appeared common. The one fortunate thread remained the people, all deeply rooted in new democratic, even capitalistic practices. They drove Kias and Toyotas, they wore Levis and Ray-Ban sunglasses, and they spoke of their vacations in Australia, the Canary Islands, Florida. If I had not been already in my fifties, there would be no basis of comparison to the old, Soviet ways I grew up learning about, fearing, hating. Nothing I had learned about these people was true, even in the early nineties. The propaganda machine, practiced just as efficiently in the west, had turned out to be shallow, and that was with a generation of Russians whose experience had only ever been Soviet or Czarist. This new generation, those already well into their careers, families, homeownership, and substantial investments, just two decades old, was the dominant population across the country, and they knew less about living under a fascist regime than I did.
Until Putin.
He came in early and soft, almost friendly, certainly acceptable. He was a man with a vision for this new country who followed the floundering Boris Yeltsin, and as Putin’s power and wealth increased, he rebuilt his native St. Petersburg. He saved the former Soviet Union from ruin and the economic disaster of the Yeltsin years, which left a rampant homeless and starving population to fend for themselves. Right after the coup to end communism, the nationalization of all businesses and housing ended, but so did the pensions. Housing privatized and if the residents couldn’t afford the new rent they were kicked out. Hospitals quite literally rolled patients out the door and left them near churches to fend for themselves. Putin moved from the city’s Vice Mayor up the ladder to President on the promise he would “clean up” the homeless problem, “employ” people willing to work for anyone, and made business deals that brought unprecedented wealth to the nation. Russians welcomed him; so did western leaders. And the population which benefited the most were under forty, tech-savvy millennials who worked their way up, drove expensive cars, and lived in large sweeping apartments on Nevsky Prospect with beautiful dachas in the countryside or Ekaterinburg. Tourists who visited St Petersburg discovered open palaces with gourmet dining rooms, clean hotels with five-star service, shops with icons, malachite and amber jewels, and all-things-fashion. Russians, too, became tourists able to see more than the dachas they shared with other families. They traveled to Italy, to Portugal, France, and the United States. Satellite television common in the nineties became fast internet service enabling partnerships and communication with anyone anywhere.
Then Ukraine happened.
Those same students just out of communism and thrust into capitalism are now in their late forties, at least, and their children, raised in nothing but a mostly free-capital society with all the advantages and freedoms we understand here in the States, are being drafted into an army to attack a country they spent their entire lives visiting on vacation. When the news speaks of “Russian military,” this is who they’re talking about; men and women whose only reference and background was freedom of choice, of employment, of wandering, of economic wealth. Their only requirement was the possibility of two years mandatory service before they turned twenty-seven. Piece of cake; their billets ranged from one end of the earth to the other. So while their parents may not have been surprised to have been called to service in Afghanistan in the seventies for the Soviet government, these men and women dreading duty in neighboring Ukraine had anticipated their best-laid plans to pursue personal ambitions, and went to schools which had been teaching them international relations and economics, until the hope they had for life was disturbingly aborted for reasons beyond their comprehension or desire.
Then western sanctions hit and the country shut down, banks stopped all business outside the borders, foreign companies which lined Nevsky Prospect with signs and tables and parties were suddenly gone. The streets once again seemed grey, empty of life. Employment disappeared and no pension waited by to save them, so the army promised to pay their bills, which they did for a short while, and when word spread that the truth is they could barely feed their soldiers, let alone pay them wagers a fraction of what they had been used to, many fled.
Back in the mid-nineties, a friend of mine would write complaining about Yeltsin, about the lack of support from the United States, about the homelessness and difficulties dealing with “Old Russians,” who knew Soviet Ways, and how the “New Russians,” assume they have a right to whatever they can get. The anecdote which circulated then was how a New Russian in a Mercedes SUV waited at a stoplight when an Old Russian in a Lada with no brakes hit him from behind. The Old Russian got out of his car terrified, but the New Russian simply said, “Aren’t you glad I’m here to stop you? Otherwise you would have run out of control and killed yourself.” That was the propaganda which took hold and brought this nation to life; this nation now isolated and quite possibly on life support.
In the last few months, after a year of no word from friends who still live behind this new Putin Curtain, I heard from the friend who twenty years ago spoke openly of the problems in the city, back when the place was starting to shine. This time he speaks only of pleasantries, of how beautiful the weather is, and how he loves his city. No word of Putin; my friend remains uncharacteristically quiet about all things governmental. Another friend in Europe tells me his own family in St. Petersburg reports the lines are back for the purchase of many goods, like before the coup thirty-five years ago, and families are once again forced to move in together to save money, and he cried knowing his family whom he could visit whenever he wanted and who came to see him often, no longer has the ability to travel anywhere, nor the means even if they could leave. And he spoke as if this was the early fifties and Stalin was still in charge, that “to speak negatively about President Putin is to be thrown in jail.” And today come reports that anyone with dual citizenship with the US and Russia who had been contemplating going back to Russia should not do so lest they be detained indefinitely in Russian “holding” areas.
Maintaining control over the population of the Russian Empire after the Civil War following World War One was not difficult; the people had never truly known freedom as we understand it; Czarist Russia ruled for nearly a millennium. Russians appreciated the promises made by the Bolsheviks, and despite many of those promises never coming to fruition, most people abided by the Soviet system, even out of fear. And following the fall of communism in the late eighties and early nineties, Russians welcomed the opportunity to break free of the limitations of their previous government, but when almost a decade passed and things got worse, not better, it was not difficult for someone like Putin to convince them a little more government control, “like it used to be,” was a good thing. For a while, he maintained a perfect balance of top-heavy government—albeit one on the take to the tune of billions of dollars—and the personal freedom to come and go, grow and expand, as one pleased. This lasted until February 24th, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
But something is different this time. One hundred years ago the people had only known an oppressive government, as was the case thirty-five years ago, so leading them down the path the new leaders desired was not difficult. But now, two generations into a country used to most of the freedoms we have in the west, the population, despite the Russian propaganda to the contrary, is displeased with their government’s bombing of an innocent nation, ending the freedoms of the people of both countries. When the war began, Russia had 360,000 active troops. In the past two years, 315,000 of them have been killed or badly wounded, only to be replaced by new “recruits.” According to the UN, that amounts to 87% of their numbers at the start of the war. In the Ukraine since the world changed two years ago, more than 30,000 soldiers and civilians have been killed or wounded.
The Russia I knew is dead. I miss my friends, Valentine, Igor, Sasha, and Dima the violin player. I miss the atmosphere, the storied example of perseverance that was the St Petersburg I knew, filled with veterans who miraculously survived the siege of their city for nine hundred days in World War Two; a siege and destruction of people which one of the city’s own, Vladimir Putin, once exclaimed must never be allowed to happen again, until he did just that. The promise and beauty of the Russian artists, the teachers, and the children, are simply gone. And in Ukraine with a history deeper, older, and more beautiful than even Russia’s, a civilization has been annihilated. Historians will not point to a myriad of reasons for this incomprehensible tragedy; studies will not have to be undertaken to better comprehend the causes of the invasion. The brunt of this brutality falls squarely on the shoulders of Vladimir Putin.
A Season Out of time
Sometimes you can sense some sort of lethargy this time of year revealing itself in subtle ways, like not wanting to go to work, not filling out some forms or editing some article, not bothering to return important calls completely out of a sense of avoidance, as if you might be able to wait long enough and all of this will pass—this stuff that brings you down, and to be honest, you’re not really sure what that stuff is. The idleness of society maybe, the constant sense of impending doom reported in all forms of media about democracy, about pandemics, about weather, climate, Ukraine, Gaza, shootings, political attacks, corruption, the economy, about depression and isolation. You have no reason to take any of it personally, but some people can’t let it go, it is so overwhelming and it weighs heavy, and you wonder how can you hold out hope for anything, let alone just one good day, when humanity is humiliating itself; so you settle for avoidance, which adds to the isolation, which fans the grief.
And you wonder what happened to everyone; what did you say or do to create some distance with family or friends, which may not be true at all, but with Seasonal Affective Disorder, it’s exactly true, and it’s your fault, clearly, and you know you’ve made mistakes but you know also what no one else does, that some contact can cure, even for a short while, some malaise.
You can sense yourself not trying as hard or caring as much, like eating whatever is around instead of thinking it through, not going for a walk because you don’t want to be bothered putting on a coat or dealing with any sensory change. You’re sitting; you’re comfortable, and you’re numb. It works. Numb is good.
Going for a walk helps. Filing out the forms, returning calls, all help by providing a sense of accomplishment and forward motion, like checking things off the to-do list, it leaves you with the hint that if you keep going there’s something worthwhile on the other side. You convince yourself it is the medicine side effects. You tell yourself the mistakes you made are in the past; you know it doesn’t matter.
There’s the rub. It seems you keep reaching the other side and there’s still nothing there to lift the spirits, not this season anyway—more hostility in the east, more pessimism in our government, more variants on deck ready to step to the plate after some new mass shooting smacks a triple into right field. So you try a little less at one task, and it spirals from there. You realize it’s not depression; it’s, well, yeah, it’s depression, but not in the deeply caving sense; more like in the “whatever” sense. You tell yourself you’re not even close to suicidal; then you read telling yourself that is a bad sign.
More spiraling.
The problem with this type of malaise is it can be debilitating to you without being scary to others if you are not suicidal. The truth is, the vast majority of people who deal with depression are not contemplating suicide and will never kill themselves, which is what most friends fear most, and when those friends learn that is not part of the equation, they feel better. But that can often make it worse since the objective is for you to feel better, not them. But that’s fair since you know what they don’t: that a different suicide exists, a slow erosion of sorts, which anonymously eats away at ambition and accomplishment, takes the edge off of energy and momentum. It’s the guy sitting at a bar nursing a beer, nowhere to go despite having a million things to do. It’s the one on the park bench watching people walk by but not noticing a single one of them; it’s the inability to concentrate, the disinterest in listening, the short responses to questions, the inability to make it through the most basic of activities. It’s writing endless emails about nothing to others in some attempt to reach out; but that just backfires. Rational thought has nothing to do with it. “Knowing” what to do is not relevant. Your mind is suspended, your thought process withdraws into some elementary state.
On the one hand it’s situational—financial problems, relationship problems, blizzards. But it can also be chemical if you don’t have medical help. It’s addiction without restraint. It’s a combination of these, and it is unpredictable because the same thing that leaves you in bed staring at the ceiling feeling hopeless can drive you to your feet to tackle whatever it is that left you prostrate to begin with. It is a conundrum that plays handball in your brain.
The guy at the bar with the beer, the woman in the park, the man at the river watching the tide roll out, all know exactly what the problem is. But their brains are aflush with fog, their anxiety has disabled their decision-making capabilities, and their strongest assets and most celebrated talents that normally keep them going the rest of the year, are no longer applicable since they carry a sense that those traits are probably what brought them to this place to begin with. They sit and wonder what if. They sit.
“Maybe if I had just…”
“Perhaps I should have…”
“Fuck it.”
At some point it seems you stop fighting altogether and are either not afraid to hit bottom, or you hope to use that bottom to bounce back, not afraid to fail since it can’t be worse than this. It is extreme but that is part of the diagnosis—extremes, polar reactions—sometimes both in one day. Sometimes within one hour.
More often than not, the guy on the corner holding the cardboard sign didn’t “decide” to quit, didn’t give up, but “felt” a pressure that he no longer could handle or define, caught in some stream of disconnect and hopeless confusion. Sometimes the one who does, in fact, tragically go that last fatal step didn’t “decide” to do anything at all, and that is the point. Suicide is not a decision. It is one step beyond decision making. The vast majority of people who deal with depression have that in check, less so in the dead of winter, of course.
But that’s not you. Truly. And that is the problem; you really aren’t suicidal at all. And when suicide is not part of the equation, others feel that you must be “okay,” or “going through something right now.”
Yeah, winter, you’re going through a snow bank that’s three months thick. This is the worst time of year for many people with depressive issues. Seasonal Affective Disorder is real and feels like all of the above. Nothing helps but time, but time to some people sounds like the slow drip of icicle melt. Others say you’ll get over it, it will pass, hang in there, talk to someone. Yes, all of the above, but right now–right this minute–you need help and you don’t know it.
Other people try to help so they talk about the weather or sports or anything at all with enthusiasm and a sense of caring, but it often makes it worse, only emphasizes that others get excited about the minutia while you can no longer find value in a sunrise.
And the disguises are nothing short of cunning. I’ve known people fighting depression who on the outside resonate as the very poster image of Carpe Diem. I’ve been friends with people who contemplated overdosing on Monday while making plans for Tuesday, who loved others more than the average soul but only wanted their puppy nearby at checkout time, and people who fought depressive ways by pushing adventure to the limit, and beyond. “What a lust for life!” people exclaimed. They had no idea.
It isn’t exactly depression, by the way, though it is easier to simply call it that because it certainly wears the same eyeshadow as depression. It is indifference; it is a vague inability to muster the energy to lift your spirits enough to give a damn about anything. It’s not like you woke up depressed so you decided to stay on the couch all day; you simply don’t care that you’re on the couch to begin with. Complete apathy. You’re not down about anything; you answer “fine” because you really are fine; fine’s a fine word; vague and indifferent. It has the definitive weight of a horse shoe and the value of fog. “I’m fine, really,” should never be left alone with a person who fights depression.
Ironically, for most of these afflicted people, life is amazing, every half-beat is a moment of “miracles and wonder” which is why you cannot comprehend the misuse of time. The abuse of time in so short a life, you think, is as suicidal as the abuse of substances, and that can be depressing as well.
It is the time of year when you wake at three am knowing nothing is going to work, and you’re going to lose your house and your sense of security and no answer makes sense, no way forward seems rational. Equally, the dawn can come with new ideas and hope, and if you push those moments far enough into the morning, you just might be able to make a day of it. But January has 285 days. And February is several months long. March? Well you well know that March is merely a tease. April comes and breathing is easier. May, and nothing stands in your way. But in January it is safe to say yet difficult for others to understand that May hasn’t even been invented yet. It doesn’t exist and neither will you by then.
On the outside you seem to be fine. On the inside you’re grasping the thin rope of enthusiasm with clenched fists, pretending all will be well, but your insides—much against your will—are shredding at the thought of what to do next.
You “hang in there.” You “get through it.” You suffer the trite suggestions of others who simply can’t understand what the big deal is. That’s okay though, you think. Really. You absolutely know, logically, it is chemical; while at the same time you absolutely know, logically, the world has moved on without you. There are no solutions, per se. Just more questions. And “hang in there” is at the very least an acknowledgement you really aren’t trying to dismiss your very existence; it just happens sometimes. Depressed people do not feign depression; they feign contentment.
This afternoon I went to the river where a bitter breeze is pushing down from the west. There’ll be ice tonight somewhere, and snow, but I sat reminding myself I have been there, touched that ring of undefinable despair, and I’ve moved through it, sometimes with difficulty, often with ease, always with the knowledge that I’ve had one freaking incredible life so far, and time enough left, I hope, to continue my pilgrimage well into the next mood swing. But there are moments, collisions with frustration at the gap between the way things are and the way things should be, that catch some people off guard. “You’ve been like this before,” a dear friend told me not long ago when things were less than fine. “And you’ll be like this again.” And all you can think is, “Yes I will, like right now.” But what she meant was this is you, this is part of your DNA, this is as much you as your skin. What she meant was there is no “fighting” the tigers that come at night. Better to sit and dine with them, pour some Bailey’s on the rocks, and wait. Just wait.
And Eventually you remember that the seasons, like everything else, change. And love, despite its bad reputation, is holding the other end of that thin line you’re grasping.
Because nothing else matters but love. Nothing.
I’ve been released
And I’ve been regained
And I’ve been this way before
And I’m sure to be this way again
One more time again
–N. Diamond
stēlla
The moon last week through the telescope looked like a golf ball, the dimple-craters and the bright white side imbedded in the mud of the dark side. We looked at it a long time with the perspective Apollo 8 must have had when it orbited the place, moving around it like Tiger Woods circling his next putt.
It’s cold, but still, and the air off the bay bites a bit, and some rustling in the leaves makes me think the fox is around tonight, or a cat from a house through the woods, but it is how it should be–we seem to look at the stars most in winter because it gets dark so much sooner, the air is cleaner, the humidity low.
But last week despite the bright half-moon, the sky was dark and the telescope picked up an amazing nebula all ablaze not far from Orion, shining out from billions of years ago. It is the middle star on the belt and the brightest nebulae up there. I’ve needed perspective lately. When “the world is too much with me” and “life is like a pathless wood,” it is good to look at the same stars as did Copernicus and Galileo and ancient astronomers who saw bulls and crabs and horseheads where I can only see a random sampling of bright dots, like dots on a map.
And the top half of a golf ball stuck in the mud of space.
“Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?” wrote Van Gogh to his brother, Theo. “Perhaps we take death to reach a star. We cannot get to a star while we are alive any more than we can take the train when we are dead. So to me it seems possible that cholera, tuberculosis and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion. Just as steamboats, buses and railways are the terrestrial means. To die quietly of old age would be to go there on foot.”
I like that, the illusion that death is another mode of transportation, and those we love and lose here are simply on some galactic pilgrimage. I have several books about the stars given to me by my brother, by my son, and I’ve read them, returned to them for reference, for maps, and I have such trouble remembering the names of space stuff. I mostly use my cellphone app, point, and then say with absolute authority, “I’m nearly positive that’s Avior. I think it’s a star in Corina if I’m not mistaken.” But I swear ten minutes later if anyone asked me to repeat it, I couldn’t.
So I’ve started making up my own star names, like the International Star Registry, only specific to Bob. Deep in the Pleiades I can see “Cole,” leaning into the other stars, preaching, pushing them into agreement about the colors he should use to paint Jupiter with all her moons. And what used to be Lesath in the Scorpio constellation according to my Backyard Guide to the Night Sky is now “Eddie.” I can almost hear some Janis wailing from his band of Red Dwarfs. “Dad” is clearly Polaris, my North Star, up there to guide me if I wish, follow him when I’m lost. I wish I had turned to him more when I couldn’t find my way.
Now, I know from these books from my brother and son that the brightest star in the night sky should be Sirius. Orion’s belt points right at it, yet more than a few times I’ve mistaken it for her sisters, like Vega and Canopus. So I’m saving her, putting a sticky note on Sirius. I have a special name for her I’m keeping to myself and will send to the Star Registry—though I doubt they’ll change the name of such an important celestial body; but I will, if only in my mind. And I’m going to memorize her location so I can go outside on a clear night and talk, reminisce, find a bit of permanence in an all too temporal existence.
NIL for Everyone
For the past several years at the college, I’ve had more than a few athletes in my classes. This isn’t unusual when one teaches general education courses, required by the college for every discipline. One of those courses on my schedule every semester is an argumentative course of critical thinking and writing. And one of the hottest topics for quite some time that inevitably comes up during our weekly discussions is, “Should college athlete’s get paid?”
The conversation is partly predictable. This semester a starter for the women’s basketball team is in class, several lacrosse players, a few swimmers, and a rower. Last semester three or four football players. Their contribution to this particular subject is generally predictable; they’re in favor of paying athletes. Go figure. The basketball player, in respect to the rower, said it depended, and that she would not want to get paid if it came at the cost of cutting smaller squads, like the scull team.
The focus we land upon, however, since any argument is irrelevant if you don’t find a particular point to address to avoid butting heads all day, is what is known as a NIL contract. This is when college athletes are paid for the use of their name, image, or likeness in promotions, on jerseys, in gaming. Most agree this seems fair, though most agree it probably doesn’t add up to much unless you’re up for the Heisman Trophy and play for Alabama or Notre Dame. Still, it’s something (above the full ride and other benefits—I’m not arguing this here). In a gross oversimplification, the NIL contract is through a third party such as Nike or Cheerios, not the college, and cannot be tied to performance or choice of schools.
Okay, it’s something. For some not enough, for others more than they imagined. Not everyone is going to be Bronny James of USC Trojans basketball, who makes $5.9 million from his NIL deals with companies like Nike, Beats by Dre, and PSD Underwear. The average NIL deal is roughly between $1000 and $10,000, which is no small chunk of change, but the numbers can be distorted when coaches are pulling down seven figures and some colleges’ television deals seem like enough wealth to share the good fortune with the players who generate the revenue to begin with. But there are more than half a million athletes in the NCAA in this country, and only about 2% of them will ever play professional sports. So on the one hand any NIL contract provided by a company is not going to last long; that is, it is unlikely in 98 percent of college athletes to transfer to a professional deal, but on the other hand for that 98 percent, it is as close as they will come to compensation beyond their tuition, room and board.
But this isn’t about them. I really don’t care either way.
This is about me.
I left class last week with these numbers swirling in my head, walking with basketball player who said she really enjoys my class. “No kidding, Professor Bob, I tell everyone about the class; I look forward to this every single week.” That feels good. We never ever hear it. Like ever. 😊
Player went her way, and I headed toward the parking garage considering something that had never crossed my mind: I want a NIL contract. Why not?
I once wrote a piece comparing my salary over a thirty-year career, total, to Alex Rodriguez’s, who at the time was the highest paid player in baseball. It turns out in my entire career, including cost of living increases, bonuses, overloads, and raises, I will earn, total, what A-Rod made in seven games, eight innings. Something is out of whack. I understand that no one is running to the bookstore to buy jerseys with my name on the back, and that whether I show up on the collegiate classroom playing field or not, students will still come, still take the course, and still graduate. Still, surely the transitory impact of watching a sporting event cannot be measured against the lifelong impact of a college degree. But in comparison to A-Rod you might say I made nil.
I know the college won’t pay me more, but someone can supplement my income, like LL Bean, Vans, 3M paper products. For a small sum I’ll wear a polo shirt with Nike on it and throw a swoosh at the bottom of my course outline. It can’t affect my teaching; and hell, the news stories alone at the beginning will make it worth it for the company. There can be billboards with my name and image, stating, “Prof B uses 3M sticky notes,” or one of me walking into the classroom with my vintage tan Vans, stating, “Walking from his office to classes and back is easier in Vans.” Come on, there’s a gold mine to be made.
It is laughable, of course; a parody of such ridiculous proportions that all I’ve done is made people more aware of the financial situation in collegiate sports.
But think about this: forty-five years after I started college, I can only remember the names of one or two athletes, and at the time, St. Bonaventure’s basketball team was decent under the coaching of renowned Jim O’Brien, going 20-10 and 18-13 back-to-back seasons. I knew a few of the starters and still can’t remember their names.
But I don’t know a single person my age who can’t tell you the names of every professor they had in college. Every one of them; the impact they had, the life-steering energy some of them provided. Every semester, professors have anywhere from sixty or seventy students to one hundred and fifty, depending upon the school. Every season students watch forty or forty-five football players, a dozen or more basketball players.
Yet every semester each student has just four or five professors, two or three times a week, for fifteen weeks. It wouldn‘t kill a company to toss some action our way and gain a reputation for supporting education in America at the same time.
And why can’t the bookstore rack some jerseys with “Kunzinger” on the back. Hell, I’d buy one.
Valuation
It’s foggy across the river and bay this morning, and out on the bridge a heavy mist blanketed the area so that even seeing the sky-blue girders above us was difficult. A foghorn sounded from the mouth of the river, presumably menhaden boats out on the Chesapeake, perhaps an oyster workboat. It’s chilly, but not too bad. That could be a description of my head, but it’s not. It’s outside my head I’m pretty certain.
The view from this desk is only slightly better. The woods are misty, but the fog lifted. I can see pretty deep into the trees, and the skylight above my head is wet.
Sitting before me is a to-do list. I need to record a few art lectures for a university in Ohio, send edits of a piece to a journal, read proposals from capstone writing students in West Virginia, make a topic list for my writing students down in Norfolk, rewrite twenty pages of the monster—twenty pages about a time in my life when absolutely nothing happened, but something should have happened and that is the point of nothing happening, so that the reader will feel like something should have happened all the while nothing happens at all. Wow. That sounds like a metaphor for life. But it’s not. It was life, once.
And I need to send emails to a bunch of people who I was supposed to send emails to a few weeks ago but then college happened. And deadlines. And basic malaise. Luckly, the Kahlua bottle behind me is still full.
Alternate plan: Sail down to the Gulf of Mexico, teach online from the aft cabin, grab the guitar, play some Fogelberg and Cat and Van around a beach bonfire with friends and Malibu rum. Forget finally that social media had ever been invented. Go back to wondering how everyone is instead of knowing constantly. I miss wondering, I miss “catching up,” telling stories about things that others don’t know about yet. But we don’t. We value our homes and the lives we built; we asses and measure in terms of security and balance instead of whim and ideals. Of course. It’s called being mature, something I have rarely been, I suppose. I don’t know why; a design flaw, perhaps? Too much daydreaming when I was young? Not enough classical music?
So naturally I’ll need to stick with Plan A for a while. I wonder why, of course. Not enough nerve? Gummies? Too many responsibilities?
First, though, I need to complete a self-evaluation for the college. It’s a once-a-year thing, not difficult, which includes understanding what I did right, what I might change, how I respond to criticism of others, particularly students, what I’m going to include or exclude in the future, and some sort of game plan. It sounds more involved than it is, and it won’t take long. And after thirty five years of these things, I can clearly see how they have helped fine-tune my work.
Yet recently I realized I should have been doing one of these self-evaluations about my life all along. Five pages about the year, perhaps. Five written pages about what worked, what didn’t, what I need to do differently and proposals of how I might get there. This time five pages might not do it; I messed up in some big ways simply by not doing things, which should be part of any evaluation: what didn’t I do that I should or could have?
Do you do this? Maybe schedule a drink with a significant other or close friend next to a fire, talk a bit, then do self-evals with each other. It’s what I like about the assignment: At least a few other people are going to read it, so I need to be clear, concise, constructive. And so the “life-evals” should be too, whether oral or written. In both cases, honesty is essential. In both cases, brevity is dangerous. The college assignment is two or three pages of actual written self-analysis. That’s just short enough to bullshit with the best of them, which is why I believe it should be five pages; then I’d have to come up with some serious details and examples to maintain info about the man in the mirror for that long. Plus my writing is foggy and misty for the first two pages, even in rewrites, but by the time I’m moving into page four, everything is clearer, and you can see even my metaphorical trees far into the woods.
She’s a 41’ Morgan Out Island, spacy aft cabin with a queen size bed, long and wide main cabin with a navigator’s table which converted makes an excellent writing desk, another two cabins up front and two heads, one forward and one aft. The stove is a good size, and the refrigerator holds more than a few bottles of Kahlua.
What would you do? How do you write this into your self-evaluation? Truthfully.
I guess we’re not always so honest with ourselves after all, are we? I need to finish preparing the week’s lectures, send in the rewrites to the journal, and clean up the monster, clarify I wasn’t doing anything when I was hoping to be doing something.
That’s the point, though, isn’t it?
I Never Needed Anybody’s Help in Any Way
I heard an interesting comment on NPR last week. When talking about someone who died by suicide, the victim’s brother said he didn’t think his sibling didn’t like life anymore as their mother had suggested, but just didn’t like one particular part of life, and somewhere over the course of time—maybe weeks, maybe months or longer—the poor man hyper focused on that one aspect until it became a monster, blocking his view of any other aspect of existence remotely salvageable; even the finest reasons to continue were saturated with the pain of one part, perhaps even a small part, of life.
On the one had it made their mother feel a bit stronger—that her late son did not despise life, and in particular perhaps not the life she and her husband had built for them, but one thing happened, who knows what, and that overtook him despite the beauty around him. He couldn’t see past that monster any longer, and in his then-compromised view, nothing else existed any longer. Life became about the pain-inflicting monster, so killing oneself seemed the only clear way to end the pain.
On the other hand, for those who still know someone with some form of depression, particularly situational depression and not chronic or manic depression, being able to unearth and understand that aspect of life which has the potential to take over a person’s mind can help isolate it and, over time maybe, destroy it. At the very least the knowledge of the issue might help others keep it in perspective, perhaps even eliminate it.
The surviving brother then, almost off-handedly, said, “I wish we had gone hiking more.” No one picked up on it; at least not on air. But I did. It slid right in my thought process and simmered all day. His brother must have been considering how things might be different if he had helped replace the monster with something more powerful, more soul-owning. For them, apparently, hiking. Had they gone enough times, or consistently enough anyway, for the deceased to have discovered that hiking was his life and he now could own that choice, his routine and whatever negative issues came up—a problem with a partner, finances, even simple malaise that chronically depressed people will never be able to explain—would be minimized by the power found in something positive.
It doesn’t have to be hiking. Could be music, sports, food. But something active, something visceral and kinetic.
I asked my students the other day how much time each day do they spend watching other people live their lives or pretend to live life. That is, how much time are they stagnant viewing other people’s happenings on tv, movies, TikTok, etc. I’m not talking about going to events like sports or lectures or the like. No, those are very participatory. I mean the dead-brained observation we do that when we’re done—or better stated, when we take a break–we are exhausted, and we never did a damn thing.
The suicide rate among college-aged students is about 2 percent, about 1100 per year, and about 25% know of someone who killed themselves, and just over that percentage thought about it themselves, all of them offering as their primary motivators pressure, helplessness, relationships, loneliness, and money.
It takes just one issue to debilitate a person, make them feel hopeless, and all the time in the world trying to balance it with positive acts cannot extract that monster from the mind, and eventually ration slides away so that suicide is not a conscious decision but in itself a rational act to eliminate the pain, which by that point is all there is.
And later people say they wish they knew, they say they would have helped. The man on the radio said, “He asked for help; we told him we had helped him all we could and he had to do this alone.” He was riddled with guilt, but then realized that the way he could have helped may not have been clear to either his brother or him at the time. One just assumes the help one asks for when in a bad place is the only way to help them out of that place, but that’s not always accurate; in fact, it is often hardly ever accurate. “I just should have been there more, called and asked how he was doing more, had lunch,” the brother added. Exactly.
Yes. He should have, but not because of his tragic loss, but because we are humans, responsible for each other, and I am so guilty of not being there for others it is disturbing. I can change that, but there are some things I cannot change. We can at least change the things we can. I’ll leave the wisdom part for someone else.
I guy I knew a long time ago told me a story about a friend who couldn’t see past a bad relationship, a mentally abusive relationship, and saw no way out of it, particularly since they just had a baby girl. In all other aspects of his life he was okay, very giving, impossibly kind to others, but he felt he had nowhere to turn. His mother ignored him, his father tried to help but without emotion, making it difficult. And he thought his friends had moved on. One morning the troubled one called a friend, but the friend didn’t answer the phone. The friend was pretty sure he knew who was calling and that he was probably depressed, but he didn’t want to deal with it at that moment. Three hours later the guy I knew called to tell him that the troubled one killed himself. He told the friend that the widow told him his last outgoing call was to the friend. He thought it would make him feel good to know the dead guy was thinking of him, probably missed him. He had no way of knowing that the man had ignored that very call. I knew these people; and it is easy to say there was nothing anyone could have done, but that simply isn’t true. We just tell ourselves that. Certainly we may not be able to save someone’s life, but we can save some time for them. It’s a tough call but an easy decision; make the call, stop by, go for a walk. Grab some tea.
Give them a reason.
We are here for each other. It’s all we have. We are only here for each other. We can’t save others if they don’t want to be saved, but by trying to help others we just might end up saving ourselves.
a view from this wilderness 