Life

Vincent

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The following is an excerpt from my 2018 book Blessed Twilight: The Life of Vincent van Gogh; however, the words are his from a letter he wrote to his brother Theo in 1888. Often, an artist who excels in one genre does so in others as well; Vincent was no exception. I believe his writing to be as artful as his paintings.

Vincent van Gogh: March 30, 1853-July 29, 1890

From a letter to Theo:

It certainly is a strange phenomenon that all of the artists, poets, musicians, writers, and painters are unfortunate in material things—the happy ones as well. Maupassant is a fresh example of that. It brings the eternal question: Is the whole of life visible to us or isn’t it rather that on this side of death we see one hemisphere only? Painters, taking them only, dead and buried, speak to the next generation and very often several after in their work. Is that all or is there more besides? In a painter’s life, death perhaps is not the hardest thing there is. 

The earth has been thought to be flat. It was true, and is today, that between Paris and Arles, it is. But science has proven the world is round and nobody contradicts that nowadays. But notwithstanding all of this people persist in believing that life is flat and runs from birth to death. However, life too is probably round and very superior in expanse and capacity to the hemisphere we know at present. For my part, I know nothing of it. But to look at the stars always makes me dream as simply as I dream over the black dots of a map representing towns and villages. Why, I ask myself, should the shining dots of the sky not be as accessible as the black dots on a map of France? If we take a train to get to Rouen, we take death to reach a star. One thing undoubtably true in this reasoning is this: that while we are alive, we cannot get to a star any more than while we are dead we can take the train. So it seems to me possible that cholera and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion just as steamboats and railways are the terrestrial means.

To die quietly of old age would be to go there on foot. 

I feel more and more that we must not judge God on the basis of this world; it is a study that didn’t come off. What can you do in a study that has gone wrong if you are fond of the artist? You do not find much to criticize; you hold your tongue. But you have a right to ask for something better. It is only a master that can make such a muddle as this, since then we have a right to hope that we’ll see the same creative hand get even with itself. And this life of ours, so much criticized and for such good and exalted reasons—we must not take it for anything more than what it is and go on hoping that in some other life we’ll see a better thing than this.  

I’ve Got Your Number

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I recently had to get a new phone. It didn’t work out, but that’s a different issue. You see, I have had an iPhone since my Blackberry died years ago. But I ordered an Android by accident. It came and I gave it one day and could not deal with it. Quick sidebar: I’m not remotely interested in pursuing a discussion of the differences, advantages, and quirks of phones in this space, or the comments, or casually—like, ever. I mention it only to illustrate that transitioning from the I to the A simply didn’t work out.

Ironically, the transition itself was ridiculously easy. I simply took the SIM card out of one and put it in the other. Done. Everything transferred. Very cool. But that wasn’t always the case. Some years ago I gave up my Blackberry for my first iPhone and in doing so I lost everyone’s phone numbers. Gone.

I wrote about it back then. What happened was I had to send an email to everyone I knew. It went something like this:

“Can you please text me, ‘Hi, this is _____’ so I can put your phone number back in my contact list?”

It was, I thought, a simple request.

First, my friends Robert and Molly in Ohio carried this out perfectly. From both I received a text with their names in the text. Understand, when you send a text to me, I can only see a phone number; it does not come through with your name on it unless you are already in my address book, which obviously no one was. So for the twelve people who wrote, “Here you go” or “It’s me” or “Sorry about your phone, here’s my number” or “Here ya go, let’s get beers,” some deciphering was necessary.

“Let’s get beers” was easy—Jose. It is his standard comment to me, so perhaps he wrote that on purpose knowing I’d know he’d know I knew. Someone else wrote, “So if I don’t say who I am, will you be able to figure it out?” which I figured out immediately because I could hear her “tone” in the response. For a few of the texts I had to look up the area code to figure out who it might be. One of them was on Long Island, so I knew it was a cousin, but that really doesn’t narrow it down much in my family. Then the message said, “Funny I just saw someone who looks just like you and I was smiling, thinking, ‘Hey there’s my cousin’ when he clearly thought I was smiling at him and it kind of got me in trouble,” so I knew it was Lisa. My cousins, all of them, have distinct personalities. Lisa has several.

My late friend Dave emailed his name, address, current location, plans for the weekend, apologies for my troubles, offers of assistance, and his next week’s schedule. But no phone number. No kidding. And since it was an email and not a text, I still couldn’t call him. Eventually I received a random song lyric from a Florida number and added “Dave” to my contacts. He’s one of a dozen or so contacts no longer with us. I am not sure how long I should wait until I delete them. I don’t think I ever will.

My brother, my friend Jack, and several others just replied to my email with their phone numbers, which was actually much easier and made more sense, but they also took that opportunity to welcome me to the 21st century and the world of Smart Phones (though my Blackberry was pretty smart). And that really is the point here.

There was a time back in the last millennium when I knew everyone’s number by heart. That was when I had no “contact list” in my phone; back when “my” phone was a fat machine on the counter used by the entire family, long before the invention of voice mail, call waiting, or answering machines. When we looked up someone’s number in a small address book enough times and then dialed it (rotary) enough times that the digits tended to stick in our minds. I can recall most of my own numbers well back into my childhood, most of my friends’ from then and through my twenties, as well as work numbers and relatives’ numbers, including my grandmother’s from her apartment in Queens in the eighties. It is not age that stole my retention; it is convenience. We now live in a world where, “If we don’t have to, we don’t.” In fact I know it isn’t age because I once went into one of my classes and asked fifteen twenty-year-olds if they could tell me the phone number of their best friend, and only one of them could. These are the same people who don’t take notes or rewrite notes from a peer after they’ve missed class, but instead simply take a picture of the pages and then can’t understand why they don’t understand.

I had a friend at Penn State who asked me for the date and time of something I was involved in. When I told her and asked if she wanted a pen to write it down, she said, “No, if I write it down I’ll forget it.” Exactly. Certainly, my memory is not what it used to be. Students’ names for me are nearly impossible, though to be fair that has less to do with memory than it does interest. One young lady said I don’t remember their names because I’m not trying hard enough to do so, and I said she was wrong, that I wasn’t trying at all. Ironically, I can tell you the name of every single person in my first class I taught thirty-five years ago. Much like the phone numbers, however, I had more reason to retain them years ago than I do now.

Numbers, though, have always come easy for me. I never had trouble committing to memory zip codes, addresses, bank account numbers, as well as phone numbers, and I still can. I even still remember one particular airman’s social security number, because in the ‘80s when you addressed letters to people in the Air Force, you followed their name on the envelope with their complete social security number. It was a different world. Today’s world has made it easy to forget what is essential—the phone numbers of my loved ones. Shouldn’t those numbers be second nature?

Apparently not, so I emailed everyone. Some people didn’t respond at all, which made me realize, yeah, maybe I don’t need them in my life. What a great opportunity to weed out the ones I wonder why I knew to begin with. Worse, there were numbers for people for whom I don’t have emails and can’t contact them at all. I know if there is a reason to contact me they will, but something more revealing crossed my apparently feeble mind: I don’t need nearly so many people in my life. My average contact-scroll used to take a while. This turned out to be a great way to clean house. I thought it would happen again moving from iPhone to Android, but no.

I most likely will not return to memorizing numbers, though I will attempt to retain a dozen or so of those people I can’t imagine not being able to call in an instant. What if I had to borrow someone’s phone? I’d like to remember those numbers or recall someone’s birthday without a Facebook prompt. One response via text was, “Hey, it’s me! Shouldn’t you know my number by heart?!”

My immediate thought was, “Yes, of course.” But then I thought, “No, I shouldn’t.” What I should be doing is seeing loved ones often enough that we have no reason to call. We should be laughing together at pubs, at picnic tables, across the fence in the yard, across the room, across time. Numbers should be pointless. Memory should be irrelevant for our consistent commitment to spending time together now. Too many numbers have no recipient anymore. People get deleted too quickly, and before you know it we’re wishing we could just meet them somewhere—no phones, no devices. Just the human touch.

One text came through as “Poetry is Bread Brother!!! Eat it up!!” so I entered, “Tim.” My favorite response to my email was the last text I received. It said simply, “Just put me in your contact list as ‘Tumbleweed’.” I knew exactly who it was even though that handle had been unknown to me before that text.  

I had no reason to contact everyone this time, which was a bit sad, actually. But in the end I gave up on the Android—it has no Facetime. So I simply moved the SIM card back to my iPhone and said, “Hey Siri. Text everyone,” to which she (mine’s a she from Ireland) replied, “What would you like to say?” I thought about it while the little squiggly thing moved back and forth, then replied, “Call me. Let’s talk.”

“Send it?”

“Yes.”

“Done.”  

Dave

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 6 Comments

That’s my friend Dave Szymanski. He died Tuesday, May 14th. RIP my brother. We laughed so much that now just laughing at all often makes me think of him. We were going to get together when we both turned seventy and sing “Bookends” on some park bench. No kidding; it was part of the plan. We wanted to belt out to whatever audience was out walking their dog, “How terribly strange to be seventy!” Well, that won’t happen. Still, I am absolutely certain if I make it that far I’ll most definitely do just that, but alone, crying, laughing. I have so many stories about Dave you’d think we were twins. But those are mine now–Dave and I agreed to have joint custody of the stories of those times, but since he is gone now, I’m assuming full ownership. Unfortunately, they fall squarely under the category of “You had to be there,” so there’s no point in sharing them.

This is not likely to go where you believe it might go.

I’ve been thinking about what I can best call the start of some independent consciousness–that is, the time when I was first aware I was a growing, independent thinker/dreamer, mentally unattached to others, my thinking not entirely tethered to parents or siblings or teachers. I guess I was in what we then called Junior High, now Middle School, and at thirteen or fourteen years old life was still idyllic. That’s the point I think I started to think of myself as an individual. I have no idea if that is late, early, or disturbed. We lived near the Great South Bay next to a State Park and an arboretum, a golf club, and I was surrounded by friends in the village of Great River. I have memories before that, and possibly even dreams, which at that time were to either be an astronaut (Apollo 11) or play baseball during the summer (Miracle Mets) and be an ice cream man in Florida during the winter. But those were the “in the immediate” aspects of life; that is, things you thought about and said to friends but then forgot nearly instantly. But realism crept into my view somewhere around seventh grade when more realistic plans surfaced, like sailing around the world or riding my bike across the country, or being a musician or a writer or a tennis pro. All seemingly real plans at the time; those things which you no longer imagine and pretend but which you pursue, even if fruitlessly and without much talent.

No one save his family knew Dave was sick, so most of us didn’t have the chance to take the time to reminisce. It’s important; we always say, “Tell people how much you care about them because you never know if they’ll be around next week,” but we rarely follow through. We know it is true, and we know it is real, but we just don’t. But if we really did know it was the last time we might talk, the last chance to say something, like how much you appreciate the long conversations in the radio station at five in the morning, you picking out albums, him tearing UPI articles for the news; or how the three am pancake house runs were more important than final exams; or how the weekly texts through the next forty years kept you going, you’d tell him. Listen: Please, make sure if something happens and you know you’re going to be checking out, do not keep it a secret; some of us have a few things to say.

Anyway.

A few days ago someone asked me for my favorite picture of Dave. I went searching deep both on and offline, but I do not have many at all since back when we spent a lot of time together we rarely walked around with a camera and film. But I looked, all the while sifting through tons of other photos of the scattered years throughout my life, and at some point I stopped and simply sat remembering, and I realized something close to lifesaving during an otherwise heartbreaking week: What an amazing ride this has been so far.

I’ve mostly taken the paths of least resistance, I must admit, but apparently someone was up ahead clearing it for me, because it’s been outrageously fortunate. And I finally figured out what the pictures are for. Not only to reminisce, but to remind myself when I get lethargic or depressed, lonely, or tired, that I’m still walking this brilliant Camino, and to remind me of the words of Virgil when he wrote that Death twitched his ear and whispered, “Live….I’m coming.”

Not knowing when someone is going to die, or even that they are sick, is a cold reminder that we don’t know when we’re going to die, or when we might fall ill, and the truth is we just might have a few things to say to those we will leave behind. Speak now or forever…

I normally try to not write too directly only about myself, choosing instead for a digression into some common ground. But not this time. Honestly, this one is for me. Just a few findings from the journey so far:

Sandy. My best friend forty-five years ago.
My yellow house in Oakdale, MA. I lived for a few years on the first floor/basement behind the hill. The water is the Wachusett Reservoir, and up the road to the right was an apple mill, then up the mountain to the ski slopes, Princeton, Massachusetts. I loved it there and never should have left. 100 years earlier the house was a fish market.
My siblings and me (in the middle) in Massapequa Park on Long Island, where we lived from just after I was born until I was nine. It was a great place to be; Dad worked his tail off so we had great childhoods. My siblings are two of my five heroes.
My friend Michele during high school. One day I borrowed Dad’s car to go to Michele’s for “about an hour.” Instead, we drove to the end of Knott’s Island on the Carolina border, drove onto the ferry, and headed down the coast of the Outer Banks. Neither one of us wanted to turn around. If we hadn’t we might well still be driving.
In Senegal where I spent some time before headed somewhere else in Africa. A few months earlier my life had completely changed, so I decided to change it further and ended up there. My college friend Claire and me with a village jeweler on the left. We had no clue who the dude on the right was. He just jumped in the picture.
I lived in this cabin in northern Norway for March of 1995 with my colleague Joe and American teacher/writer John Slade while we taught at the Bodo Graduate School of Business. We filleted cod caught by our seventy-five year old neighbor, Magnus. A Russian guitarist, Max, and I spent evenings in the cabin dueling folk tunes from the US and Russia. One night I fell through the ice on a lake but only to my ankles. Another we felt we had to duck from the swirling bands of the Northern Lights. Another we chased moose up a hill. Other stories for another time.
This old guitar saved my life. Coffeehouses kept me from falling through some proverbial ice during those years. And what stories from those gigs, like the time when 150 people sat to watch us play and at one point we opened the curtains behind me (there’s an Olympic size swimming pool on the other side of the windows) at the exact time a swimmer climbed out of the pool and his suit had slipped to his knees. We all waved. He dove back in the pool.
The Great River house my father had built and where we lived until moving to Virginia in ’75. When people ask where I’m from it is a difficult question to answer, but as I get older I say “Great River” and it is listed that way on my FB page. I live in Virginia. But I’m from Great River. Hard to explain.
My advisor and mentor, Pete Barrecchia. He was one of the true journalists of this country and the source of my first and greatest writing lesson. When someone in editorial writing class complained about not knowing how to start and where to put in the research and on and on and on, he put down his cigarette, grimaced, and said, “Oh just write the fucking thing.” It worked.
One of my escapes during college; Letchworth State Park. My escapes were either music or nature. Sometimes just the smoke-filled art studio beneath a dorm on the other side of campus. But escape was always important for me. Hard to explain.
My boss in the mid-eighties. One of the finest humans I’ve ever known. Yes, that’s him.
Village chief. And his wife.
My Great Uncle Charlie Kunzinger and Aunt Jane. Time note: He fought in WW1 in France, and when I was a freshman in college at St Bonaventure, he was still writing me letters and sending poetry.
Mike Bonnano and Kermit when idealism was still okay to sing about, and where no one cared how bad you were.
My friend Tim O’Brien who most know for his prose writing but few know is an extremely accomplished magician. True story.
Michael and me in mountains of eastern Quebec many years ago. We’ve been literally around the world since then, and we’re still going. With apologies to Maya Angelou, “I wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now.”

Call someone. Tell them something. Anything. Forgive them. Ask them to forgive you. Tell them you’re sorry you didn’t answer the phone that last time they called and said they felt like talking. You planned to call them back but just didn’t “feel” like it yet. Now you can’t. Go ahead, call someone and say you wish you were as good a friend to them as they have been to you. Don’t be embarrassed. It’s only life, you know. That’s all.

It’s only life.

Instead, this:

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 2 Comments

I started this blog twenty-three times tonight and ended up with nothing. It is one of those times when nothing I write comes close to what I want to say.

So instead, this:

for Dave

“I counted my years and realized that I have less time to live by, than I have lived so far.

I feel like a child who won a pack of candies: at first, he ate them with pleasure but when he realized that there was little left, he began to taste them intensely.

I have no time for endless meetings where the statutes, rules, procedures and internal regulations are discussed, knowing that nothing will be done.

I no longer have the patience to stand absurd people who, despite their chronological age, have not grown up.

My time is too short: I want the essence; my spirit is in a hurry. I do not have much candy in the package anymore.

I want to live next to humans, very realistic people who know how to laugh at their mistakes and who are not inflated by their own triumphs and who take responsibility for their actions. In this way, human dignity is defended and we live in truth and honesty.

It is the essentials that make life useful.

I want to surround myself with people who know how to touch the hearts of those whom hard strokes of life have learned to grow with sweet touches of the soul.

Yes, I’m in a hurry. I’m in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.

I do not intend to waste any of the remaining desserts. I am sure they will be exquisite, much more than those eaten so far.

My goal is to reach the end satisfied and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience.

We have two lives and the second begins when you realize you only have one.”

~Mário de Andrade (San Paolo 1893-1945) Poet, novelist, essayist and musicologist

That Student

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Its the end of a semester, finishing up today, and I sit and remember one of my favorite moments as a professor; ironically, it was a day I encouraged a student to quit school. Honestly, not everyone belongs. Not yet.

A student comes to see me. He says he can’t handle the pressure of school. I tell him I think he’s a good student and he says yes, he can do the work, he just can’t stand it. He hates it, he says. He gets bored fast. It’s a good conversation, honest. Had we been somewhere else we would have talked over beers. He looks at his watch and says he has to work in a few hours and sighs. He runs his own roofing company but hates that too. He has six grand invested in equipment and no help and he just dreads doing the work now. He says he’s at some fork in the road, two paths that look the same so he’s frozen, easier to just stay put. He gets quiet and stares at a photograph on my wall of a village in Africa. Looks nice he says, like he wants to say anything to forget what he’s really thinking about. Then he remembers and sighs again. He’s quiet for some time and I find myself drifting.

I worked at a bar. Good money and mindless work; the kind of work where if you don’t think too much about what you’re doing, you can keep on smiling. I know I spent a few years there but it seems like it was always winter, all grey and bone-cold. One morning I woke on a bench near a lake in a state park near my country house, but I didn’t know how I got there. I had to work a few hours later but never made it. I drained my accounts, stuck a little aside, then bought a ticket to Africa. Turns out changing my life, kicking my own ass out of the same ‘ol same ‘ol, was as easy as jumping off a cliff knowing you’re either going to land on your feet or learn how to fly. Boring disappeared from my life.

But this student has trouble talking about it, so I talk: I tell him I get that feeling in my chest too. Tight, constricting, difficulty breathing. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the sense that something needs to change. It’s the Philosophy class with five minutes left of three hours and the prof starts another chapter because there are still five minutes left; it’s the meeting you can’t tolerate but you’re in a row of seats with too many people on both sides so you can’t leave; it’s that this-homily-is-way-too-long feeling. It’s the feeling you’re just one day away from something else, but then that day comes and you find yourself one day away from something. It’s the Whitman poem about astronomy; the wide awake at three am feeling and you can’t move so you stare at the alarm clock. Exactly, he says. I’m always staring at the clock, he says. I’d love to know what you’d do, he says.

I tell him about that bar somewhere I didn’t belong. I remember working and then not working but I don’t remember what happened between the two. I just recall waking up one day in the peace-of-mind of another world, centuries away from being behind bars; like I could finally breathe on my own. I let him know I remember dreading the moment between what was and what was next so I just kept pouring drinks, and he nods. He knows. Then I say that one day I didn’t. It was that simple. He looked at me like I was looking in a mirror. Then he says he’s going to work and he leaves. I went to class slightly high on remembering, still somehow slightly down, suddenly lethargic.

Six months later he sends me a postcard from Australia. Don’t know when I’ll be back, it says. When I am, let’s get some beers and talk. I look forward to it but, of course, way leads on to way, and I doubt he ever came back.

Cathy Kunzinger Urwin, Ph.D.

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 1 Comment

Today my sister turns seventy-years-old.

Let’s start with this: My sister should be dead. Some years ago Cathy was diagnosed with aggressive stage four ovarian cancer. She had to undergo treatments in Philadelphia, knowing the odds of surviving even for just a couple of years were slim. She continued to work daily in Princeton, New Jersey, forty-five minutes from home, and she battled the monster. To the point: If you know anything about my sister, you know that ovarian cancer, even stage four, didn’t stand a chance. That was more than ten years ago, and not only did she defeat the cancer, not long ago she was told she is completely cancer-free and doesn’t need to return.

First picture ever of the three of us with Mom, Point Lookout, NY, 1960

Of course. That’s Cathy. One of my heroes.

I thought about telling “Cathy stories” here, like how she got my copy of the then-brand-new Let it Be album by trading me a Bobby Sherman album. Or how she let me use her guitar all I wanted. Or how she sent me care packages, made me ceramics like a seagull mug and another of a seagull standing on one wing, a beautiful rug she made of a seascape, and a pillow she made of Fozzie the Bear. How she introduced me to the music of John Denver which carried me through some difficult nights as I went out on my own, and how she sent me a plaque she made with the lyrics to John Denver’s “The Eagle and the Hawk.”

Cathy and Fred holding up their chubby brother

She doesn’t recall but I do how during the Watergate fiasco, my history-major sister quizzed me relentlessly in who the primary players were at the hearings. I was thirteen and she was in college, so I didn’t really see her too much after I turned twelve. But I ended up at the same college some years later to discover she had left a mark at our alma mater, graduating seven years before I did, but her former professors knew who I was because of her. I let them know quickly I was not my sister; an always straight A student who excelled in her studies, particularly in history, eventually earning her doctorate at Notre Dame where she met her loving and devoted husband, Greg.

Cathy and Greg

I’m not going to provide details of the myriad times she ended up being the butt of my jokes and those of our brother Fred. I will say she is such a fine cook and baker that her food should be in restaurants, she is an excellent writer of both history and other subjects, authoring the fine and definitive book Agenda for Reform, about Winthrop Rockefeller. I’ll not embarrass my sister with stories of her dancing to the “Hokie Pokey” at a resort in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, or bring up the complete drenching she received on the Roman River Rapids ride at Busch Gardens in Virginia, where she apparently didn’t know she’d get wet, to which her son replied, “Ma! It’s Roman River Rapids! What did you think was going to happen!”

Cathy with Lyra

I’m going to save the story of calling her one August day in 1988 just seconds after she received beautiful news that would change her life; how she became a committed and loving mother; a passionate grandmother, which only deepened her love for her husband and the rest of our family.

Cathy with Henry

There are too many details necessary to explain the time I finished a reading at a major conference and afterwards a woman approached me and asked if I was related to Cathy Kunzinger Urwin. When I told her, she said, “I’m with the Winthrop Rockefeller Center in Arkansas and we’ve been trying to reach her! Her book Agenda for Reform is the best work written about Rockefeller and the work he did, and we want to invite her to a symposium.” I was never so proud of my big sister, and I really don’t remember much about the rest of that three day conference, but I remember that.

The three of us at the World’s Fair, Flushing, NY

And I’m going to keep to myself the history we’ve shared not solely as brother and sister but as friends. And readers do not need to be reminded of what it means to have an older sister; how she is counselor, surrogate mother, teacher, patient audience, how she teaches scared younger brothers how to care about others, how to show compassion, how to think of others first. Few people with an older sister don’t already know she is a security net for the most challenging of emotional events, how she listens, how she is tolerant.

“Life is paper thin,” my friend Toni Wynn once wrote. Sometimes we all take each other for granted, forget to check in, see how life has been treating us. On the one hand we might talk often enough to know our sisters are there if we feel like calling. On the other, we don’t let them know nearly enough, not nearly enough, how much they mean to us.

Happy Birthday Cathy.

Cathy and me, 1988

But I can’t avoid this one, just for old-time’s sake:

For Cathy:

(Re)Solution

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 1 Comment

I wish we could design our own year, like some magical date book we get for Christmas that comes with a special pen, and we sit near the fire, pour some wine, a bowl of gummies. and start with January, marking away at how the year will go. And, whoosh, it just happens.

It used to feel that way, didn’t it?

But lately as I get closer to the New Year, I feel more like a first-time marathoner dragging my tired ass across the finish line. I used to hold that C.S. Lewis wasn’t far off when he said, “There are better things ahead than any we leave behind,” but not so much lately.

I don’t like feeling this way. 

It’s the last week of December and the full moon is on its way out with the old year. It is beautiful, and the air is chilly, but still, and quiet, and clear across the river to the north and the bay to the east is nothing but the same peace. The few lights of Windmill Point are faint, and the stars fill the sky despite the bold, recessive moon. It’s hard to imagine anyone anywhere is awake. I am absolutely alone, save some ghosts. It’s not as depressing as Frost’s darkest night of the year; poor guy. No, though too many of us will do anything, as Jung suggested, “to avoid facing their own soul.” But I’ve learned to embrace three a.m. I’ve taken to these internal battles between what I need to get done and what I need to never do again.

I won’t rehash the news here; but we demonstrated this past year just how far below the angels we truly are. The human race has mastered the art of being inhumane. It is hard to get up some mornings, for me anyway. I certainly hope the hostility and sheer madness and genocide of 2023 doesn’t hemorrhage into 2024. Lao Tzu is on a loop in my head: “If we do not change directions, we may end up where we are heading.” One truth is absolute for me: I’ve spent way too much time accepting the things I thought I couldn’t change only to discover later through time and self-analysis that I got it wrong; I totally could have changed it.

So tonight in this indescribable, beautiful stillness of peace, and with a calm soul, I’ve decided this year to open the magical date book and make note of what the next year will be, and what it won’t be. I’ve talked it over with my other selves who tend to gather around this time of late night/early morning, and we all agree—if I work together on this, I can turn things around. It seems time to listen to some long gone old friends still whispering at this hour, telling me to trust myself, and not to forget that we can’t do a damn thing about the world at large; each of us is a constituency of one.

This coming year some of my hopes are based less upon what I want to happen and more focused on what I don’t want to happen anymore. But where in the list of resolutions does one make note of something that won’t ever happen again? Where do you put that on your calendar?

When I was working at a health club in New England, the owner and I talked often about how the most promising members of the club–that is, the ones most likely to stick with it and go the distance–were the ones who came with what we called “a quiet resolve.” We didn’t know what drove them, and they didn’t post signs or make announcements; they didn’t have mini celebrations along the way; they didn’t make it something separate from their life that needed to be tackled or climbed or conquered. If there had been social media then, these driven individuals would not have posted a single word about their accomplishments. They simply came in, did their thing–sometimes a little more each time–wiped off the sweat and went about their business.

That is not a resolution. That is resolve. There is a difference. One is a statement; the other is a way of being. So, the question is do I have the resolve to quietly yet decisively change the things I can? I’m not going for the wisdom to know the difference; not this year. Maybe 2025.

It’s a beautiful late night here along the Chesapeake, and these early morning stars reach beyond my imagination. Perhaps some of us need to forget about that “to do” list we tend to create this time of year, and simply “let the old ways die,” as Jason Isbell noted. That just might be the solution to a lot of issues that wake me up to begin with.

The Dead

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 2 Comments

I guess the first was Karen. Karen was from Pennsylvania–this was quite early in my career and I had just moved back to the Beach from Pennsylvania myself, so I could relate to her writing. She spoke in class about adjusting to being away from home for the first time. Her husband was military and they were stationed here. Her paper was about the changes. I sat on my couch and read about her excitement to start life anew and all the places they would finally see together like they planned. She took a job–not because she needed the money, she wrote–but because she wanted to do something. So she took classes and got a new job as a server at the North Witchduck Inn in Virginia Beach. She got lucky, I read; another worker had been fired and she filled the opening in the place not far from their home.

I had just put her paper down and moved on to the next when the phone rang and it was the provost of the college. He wanted to tell each of her professors before we heard it on the news. The fired server and her boyfriend returned to the North Witchduck Inn and shot four people in the back of the head, execution style, including Karen. For a few years I held on to that paper. It reminded me how in a class filled with “I’d rather be anywhere else but here” students, someone was glad to be present, to be truly present.

Then there was Mark. Mark stopped me in the library and asked if we could talk. He had just received orders he was headed to Kuwait for the first Gulf War, and he was told to get his “affairs” in order. “Talk about telling you you’re going to die,” he said. I assured him everyone going overseas in the military is told to make sure their affairs are in order. We laughed a while about nothing; really nothing at all. The smallest of things that day were funny, the simplest of moments were beautiful. We walked to his car and he showed me a picture of his son. We talked about how when he got home our boys could play together. I don’t remember Mark’s last name, but I will always remember his face.

Tricia and I used to talk at the copier every day. We talked about music and travel. We talked about food and how the smell of cinnamon buns is better than the aroma of coffee. She had braces and said her students haven’t said anything about them yet, but she was certain they noticed. I remember her asking if I noticed her braces and I laughed out loud, right there, like the laughter was my answer, then I said, “Well, T…yeah! They’re right there! But they’re beautiful. I can’t imagine you without them. They’re just so you!” We laughed a long time. T got depressed easily and I could usually tell from the faculty workshops about recognizing various issues with students when she was in a down cycle. The dean came to me and said Tricia’s medicine was messed up and her husband found her hanging in the kitchen.

Stay with me. Please.

Then there was Rachel. Dear, beautiful, full-of-life Rachel. On a study abroad in St. Petersburg, we walked freely down Nevsky Prospect, the Fifth Avenue of the city. I was right behind Rachel on the crowded street so we were all pretty close to each other. As usual, she was engaged in taking pictures and writing in her notebook, jotting down “Kazan Cathedral” which was just to our right. Of all the people I’ve traveled with—numbering well over four hundred—Rachel was by far the most diligent about drinking it all in, making notes, taking countless photographs. She always smiled anyway and could make everyone around her laugh, and there on the other side of the world she was in her element. She absorbed every single moment. In the evenings she’d come into my room and show me what pictures she had taken that day and double-checked their locations. Then we’d sit and talk about her impending motherhood, what it’s like being a parent—my son had just turned ten. We walked past Kazan Cathedral; she was absorbed in her notes and stepped right off the curb and into the cross street where a bus was ripping past us at forty miles an hour. I was close enough to Rachel to grab her hair which she had pulled back in a pony tail, and I yanked her back into my chest, and the bus was close enough to knock her bag out of her hand on into the street. Those around us screamed and Rachel turned back somewhat unaware of what had just happened. “He saw me,” she said, to which I replied, “Yeah, he did. He just didn’t care. Pedestrians don’t have the right of way here.” We picked up her belongings and in no time she was back into enjoying her tour of Russia; my heart didn’t settle down for hours. The last time I saw her she brought her daughter, Shaylyn, to my office. This beautiful woman with her beautiful little girl was so excited to move on with her life; she’d be a single mother, she told me, and hoped she could set a good example. Then we remembered the bus in Petersburg, laughing at the nearly tragic outcome, and she assured me I had saved two lives that day. I laughed and told her I was just glad she hadn’t cut her long, curly hair. “Yeah that hurt, by the way,” she joked, grabbing the back of her head.

Her daughter has her eyes.

Not much later, in May of 2005, the little girl’s father went to find Rachel who was hanging out with some friends at their apartment. When she refused to let him in, he cut a hole in the screen and climbed through. Rachel ran out the back door and called 911. Her ex walked through the house and shot four people killing two of them before he found Rachel hiding outside. She had called 911 and the operator had to ask several times what was going on, but Rachel was quiet, until finally she replied, “He saw me,” and her ex put his gun to her skull and shot her in the back of the head, killing her instantly. This one breaks my heart.

I sat in class last week and watched my students do group work. A few engaged students carried the rest, but more than half the class kept reading their phones, staring out the window, messing with their hair. “What are you doing here?” I asked in a general fashion. They were quiet. “What are you doing here?” I asked again. They just stared at me. I remembered the rule of threes: First time they hear it; second time they think about it; third time they start to understand it, so I hit it once more: “Seriously,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

They remained quiet.

Bobbie slipped slowly inside herself. First alcohol, then drugs, then homelessness, until this beautiful woman who became a neonatal nurse was found dead next to a dumpster. Carrie OD’d and ended up in a brain center where she kept telling me the same joke when I’d go visit to talk to the patients: “Knock Knock. Who’s there? Cargo. Cargo who? Cargo beep beep.” We’d always laugh and she’d keep laughing long after I moved over to Dave who was learning to walk again. Carrie was a biomed major, graduated high school early and had applied for Drexel University to transfer and had just been accepted. The stress got the better of her and she “used a little something to keep her nerves in tact.” Dave was found in the garage. He brought the dog.

“For the next project,” I told my students before leaving on a reading trip to Ohio two weeks ago, “I want you to tell me what you are doing here. Include your short range and long term plans. Include your hidden ambitions, your unspoken dreams, that secret that can ignite your internal motivation. Tell me what you hope this moment looks like when you look back five years from now.”

They stared at me. No one, not one, not a single student: NOT. ONE. TOOK. NOTES.

I asked Geoff, who bares a stringing resemblance to Johnny Depp, and is someone I can usually count on to keep up, what they need to do. “Write about what we’re doing here.”

“And?”

“And…be ambitious with it.”

I repeated what I had said, asking them to write it down, which they all did–on their phones. Fine. I looked at a woman on the right side of the room. Sometimes I hope to see Karen. Or Rachel. I asked her the name of the woman immediately next to her who she had been talking to during group work for a half hour for the fourth time this semester, and it was already late October. “What is her name?” I asked. She looked out the side of her eyes as if the woman wore a badge.

I stared at them. “What are you people doing here?”

I am haunted, some days. Not by the dead or their memories; not by the tragic loss of life and the repulsively early departure of far too many souls–a dozen more of whom I’ve left out of this. I am haunted by how easy it is to not live at all. I stopped at the door. “If it makes you feel better, most of the time I have no idea what I’m doing here either.”

They laughed, and I thought of Bobbie. They laughed and the woman introduced herself to her classmate of ten weeks, and I thought of Karen. I thought of Rachel and Trish–adorable Trish. They laughed and I realized not every moment should be one of ecstatic joy. But we certainly should be closer to life than death, shouldn’t we?

Oh, and there’s Kevin, who simply disappeared, and Charlotte, who just three weeks ago tried to kill herself. Charlotte is transitioning and has just about as little support as a person can get. I leaned against the door jam and asked if they understood the assignment. So I asked again, knowing, waiting, certain someone would give me the answer I absolutely knew they all knew, and someone finally did.

“What are you doing here?”

“It’s required.”

I smiled. “No. It’s not,” I said. “You’ve been deceived. Certainly to attend this college, to graduate, this is a required course. But nothing is required of you anymore. You’re not children. You can tend bar in Key West. You can hike across Europe. You can be anywhere, do anything, and you, for some apparently unknown reason, chose to be in my class on this day at this hour and sit and stare at your phones even though you could be anywhere else.” I laughed at the last part. “Anywhere!”

“With that in mind,” I added, “What are you doing here?”

Oh, and Bo, who got killed when the car he was riding in hit a tree on the way to Florida. And Eddie. Dearest, kindest Eddie. And Marcus. Jamal. Chris. Joe.

Karen wanted to have kids. Rachel wanted to be a teacher. Mark wanted to come home and bring his son out for ice cream. Bobbie wanted to dance.

All she ever wanted to do was dance.

Listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg-Qdrr3XSk

A Wealthy Soul

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 1 Comment

I fell through the ice on a frozen lake in northern Norway in March of ‘95. It was two in the morning, twenty below, and I followed two friends across the snowy ice toward a road on the other side. I heard the ice crack and I stood still, a green band of aurora borealis bent just above us, and I stood still like Wile E. Coyote—suspended for just a moment listening to the ice crack—and thought, “oh, wow, shit,” and went through.

I landed just about ten inches below the surface on another ice shelf. I stood just deep enough for frigid water to cover and fill my boots about calf high. I waited for the next crack when Joe turned and we froze in fear of us both plunging into the lake. This wasn’t the first time I’d walked on thin ice, but previous mishaps were mostly metaphorical. I stood with icy feet; my heart pounded in my chest ready to plunge into my stomach when the ice again cracked. Nothing. Our friend John turned and laughed. “It’s day melt,” he said, ahead of us by twenty feet, already on the shore. “The surface ice melts a bit each day then freezes at night, but it’s thin. That’s what we were walking on. The second layer you landed on is probably six feet thick.” 

“Why didn’t you go through?” I asked, John was six three and not a light man. 

“I was first,” he said. “I loosened it for you.” “Why didn’t you watch where you were going?” John asked.

“I was looking at the northern lights,” I told him. He looked up and nodded, “Oh yeah,” he replied. “I didn’t notice.”

WTF?! I thought.

I sloshed to shore, took off my socks, and stood at the end of a fjord when across a field six moose stood taller than us all. I put my boots back on and watched the moose move toward us. They were bull-like, each one heavier than the three of us combined. The night was still, and the air was calm. To the north lay nothing but wilderness for a thousand miles; the Arctic Circle sat a hundred miles south. I was soaked in below zero temperatures, green bands of borealis bent above my head, the moose moved toward us, and I never felt so awake, like sleep wasn’t part of the Human idea. Awake. The northern lights lingered as if in water, as if the sky was submerged and the green bands couldn’t bend faster than the deep blue flow would allow, and we floated between. The moose moved closer. I held my breath. Two leaped just beyond our reach and bounced over the ice with absolute grace.

That moment, right then, will never go away.

I’ve been thinking about life lately, the highs of accomplishments and the stress that comes with obligations, and I looked out across the bay this morning, took a deep breathe in the chilly autumn breeze, and thought about how grateful I am for having such wealth for just about my entire life. Truth be told, I have always been wealthy.

Like the tram ride at Lake Baikal in Siberia or just about any day in Spain, the sunsets in Tucson and just about any evening at the river. We rise every morning and gaze at life around us, but how often are we awake, I mean completely and blatantly awake? Sitting here tonight I understand for all of the gives and takes of life, I’ve had the privilege to be wide wake for most of it.

I mean Alive. It doesn’t hurt to take stock of those moments from time to time to remind us when we need a slap across our attitude to snap us back to the awareness that we are always alive if we choose to be.

Like sitting on the sand at the Gulf of Mexico drinking coconut rum and laughing; standing between cars on a train ten thousand miles from home; knee deep in the Great South Bay singing Harry Chapin songs; waist deep in the Congo in the rain; that lunch with my son, my brother, and my dad at the beach; riding a motorcycle from Amsterdam to the Zuiderzee; lunch at La Caverna after buying blankets; breakfast on the dirt in Dakar; clawing my way to the Wind Cave in Utah. 

Studies tell us that most of us sleep a third of our lives and most of us work a third of our lives. And now at my age with hopefully about a third of my life left, I’d like to spend as much of what amounts to one third of that third being fully awake before the ground falls beneath my feet.

My grandparents’ attic; my mom’s laugh, salt water on my lips. My dad’s deep “very funny” response to a joke, that time I stayed with my brother at Notre Dame and we stood in the student section and watched the Irish destroy Air Force.

Pigeons at a graveyard on the Gulf of Finland. 

The way Eddie and I would hike forever through the marshes of Hechscher; sitting behind third base at Shea in ’69; hitchhiking to Niagara Falls–an hour and a half drive that took us an hour and a half to thumb up there from college, but we began our hike back at 5 pm and were still walking at 3 am. The end zone at Rich Stadium when they retired Simpson’s 32. My sister’s guitar and how I played in Steve’s basement, how I listened to Jonmark in just about every venue in Virginia Beach, how I played my way through college, that time singing and playing “Danny’s Song” with KL in the dressing room before a gig, the midnight sun in St Petersburg in June of 99.

Oysters on ice. A good slice of pizza. The smell of food grilling. A blanket of stars.

The colors of autumn outside my home in New England, the smell of cider drifting down from the mill in Sterling. Running into an old friend in a new place. 

A cow driving to work. My dog hiding beneath the bed during a storm. My son holding his too-big-for-his-arm’s bunny. The way when I returned from a month in Russia when my son was two, he grabbed his zoo book of pictures, climbed on my lap and would not let me get up. 

An email from someone I had not heard from in twenty-two years. The first green showing through the snow in spring. The leaves just past peak. The sound of waves. The sound of kids laughing. An old couple holding hands. 

The front edge of an idea. That feeling of outrageous anticipation when you decide to do something brand new. The way you one day realize who you are and that you’re okay with it. 

Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Bach’s Joy. Walking down an old street in St Augustine and hearing a guitar player singing Marley’s Redemption Song like it was Bob himself. Chasing ghosts at the old lighthouse.

And other moments:

“Yes sir, it’s a boy.” 

“He’s gone. Come back when you get this.”

“Hey…it’s me.”

I can tell you how much money I have made from working in hotels and health clubs, from teaching college and writing books, but I can never calculate the wealth of my life. Can you? Can you measure the moments on a spreadsheet? Can you figure the net value of that time you saw your dad waving to your plane from the observation deck at the airport? The value of those last lucid moments when he seemed young again? The priceless moment your son’s voice cracked and changed. That moment you realize it would have worked out just fine if given the chance. That moment you realize sometimes the most painful moments are the ones that taught you who you need to be and what you are made of.

We are alive. Now. Today. And yet people hold grudges, people don’t forgive, people don’t realize how fast it is, people don’t look up to watch life bounce across the sky.