writing

Student Comes to See Me

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ Leave a comment

A Personal Reflection This Week:

I woke about three this morning; it happens a lot. This time it happened because this weekend has always represented change in my life. Growing up, of course, the school year is just about over and summer is waiting; throughout my college summers not only was one year over and another still three months away, during that time I worked at a beachfront resort hotel every summer, so the “season” started this weekend. And for more than thirty-five years in higher ed, this is about the time of year we finally exhale for a few months. At three this morning I woke thinking about those changes this weekend those years, but this time I found myself surrounded by the ghosts of those dear to me, and in my tired, gummy-induced thought process, they all had the same opinion.

This weekend might feel more significant because so much of my life completely changed in the past twelve months, beginning about mid-May last year, and I added to that weight by spending this same year tuning my manuscript for my next book about a time in my life when I had to grow up and move on, about learning what to let go of and what to hold on to and guessing wrong in both cases. The brain decides on its own when it will dump all of this in your lap to stare at and make sense of. Usually it’s at three am. And raining.

It’s safe to say that my life has been anything but consistent and predictable, but when we’re young we have more courage to change. I believe that’s because if whatever we try falls apart, well, we’re still young enough to laugh it off and start over. But as the years pass, we tie ourselves down, let the roots take hold, gather more responsibilities and obligations. So change is usually subtle, a series of nuanced negotiations that are closer related to diversions than anything resembling a complete abandonment of one way in favor of another.

When I was young, I would regularly jump into some unknown ideal. Now, with Realism as my guide, I am more apt to step off carefully, insuring there is solid ground ahead. But at three am the smallest variation in our path can seem like a canyon. This morning started like that as I listened to the rain on the skylight. I felt my anxiety simmer just below the surface and I was in danger of completely waking up, so I tried to repress it, remind myself that whatever status quo I find myself part of is not only fine but damn near ideal. But that didn’t hold. I thought of a line from, of all people, Barry Manilow: “My life goes along as it should; it’s all very nice but not very good.”

Just wait. I’m one of the more fortunate souls I’ve ever known, and I know that; but that is an external judgement. “Very good” is a relative term. We are in the awful habit of comparing ourselves to others when we should be measuring ourselves against ourselves alone: What are we capable of? What do we wish we had done? What are you going to do with the time that is left? This is that old axiom, “The only way to fail is to not even try.” And this isn’t about you. I swear it’s not. It’s about me, from the young boy in the park, to the young teen on the courts, to the young man on the go. The distance between where I am and where I will end up can only be measured by how I feel about where I am and where I am going; this has nothing to do with “accomplishment” and “achievement.” I think I’ve done okay. It’s has something to do with fulfillment and a personal sense of purpose. Honestly, success has many definitions; just ask the ghosts.

So I stumbled to my desk to organize my thoughts, write down my list for the day to help settle my simmering mind before my anxiety won, and in the pile of stuff I created on the floor while trying to find a piece of paper to write on, I found a postcard from one of my earliest students.

It was about 1994.  

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’s twenty-five and 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, referencing our work in class, two paths that look the same, so he’s frozen, finds it 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 working. I know I only 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 park and didn’t know how I got there. I had to work a few hours later but never made it. I quit the bar, withdrew most of my money, and bought a ticket to Africa. Turns out changing my life was as easy as jumping off a cliff knowing for certain I would either land on my 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. I tell him all of that, and then I think, but I don’t say, that 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 and all you can think about is how if this is your career, if this is how you’ve chosen to spend your life, shouldn’t you love being here, love the interaction and discussions instead of dreading every word that someone says; 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. I tell him 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 wondering what your someday-dying self would say to you now.

Exactly, he says. I’m always staring at the clock. I’d love to know what you’d do, he says. I tell him about a 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 remember dreading the moment between what was and what was next, so I just kept pouring drinks, hesitating, putting off change. But then one day I didn’t, and when I looked back from where I ended up, the “what used to be” that so engulfed my life didn’t even exist anymore. He looks at me like I am looking in a mirror. I tell him if it were me, I’d withdraw from school, liquidate my roofing equipment, put some in the bank and some in the gas tank and take just one slice of life to myself for a while. School isn’t going anywhere, I tell him. We’ll wait for you.

He stares at me a long time then laughs, sweeps his long blond hair back and blinks his eyes a few times, as if to restrain some emotion. “I’m not that brave,” he says, and we laugh. Then he says he’s going to work and he leaves. 

Six months later he sends me this postcard from Australia. “Don’t know when I’ll return,” 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

Fifty Days and Counting

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 1 Comment

It is fifty days from my mother’s birthday to mine. This year feels different since this was the first of Mom’s birthdays that she is no longer with us, and this year I will turn sixty-five. Funny, but I don’t feel my age; I think of myself as about fifty-two. Maybe, on good mornings, fifty. Let’s call it that; so with fifty days to go to my birthday and feeling all of about fifty, I’ve decided to change a few things. I’m going with a “Fifties” theme this year. Cue Buddy Holly.

Fifty.

I can’t lose fifty pounds. I mean I can, but then my weight would be about what I weighed in high school when I was slightly more active and my body could digest Tupperware and be fine. So let’s try for some variation of fifty pounds to keep with this year’s magic number. Five pounds should do it. I re-joined the Y near my home, so I think for the next fifty days I’m going to get on the treadmill and walk for fifty minutes five days a week. If the Cartoon Network is available, I’ll stretch that out to fifty-five.

I’m going to write five pages a night on one or another book project I’ve got going—I really do have five files of work-in-progress here, but then I’ve had the same ones for going on five years now. Still, this next month and two thirds is different.

Damn right. High five.

Listen, like the rest of us, I know about time. I’ve read about it, watched it tick away, felt it creep up my spine and into my mind with new drips of hesitation and doubt. Geez I know about time, the way it tricked Bobbie into thinking she could get better, never knowing the addiction had already won, and the slight of hand it pulled with Letty, and Dave, and Cole, and others; tricked them all, so yeah, I know something about the passing of time. We all do, especially as we move through the years, and about how Mom and Dad made it to their nineties—no complaints there—but how Rachel didn’t make it out of her twenties. I’m sure I’ll be thinking a lot about time in the next fifty days, and about Mom and Dad as I hit the Medicare mark, and about Letty who died on my birthday, and about Michael who right now is exactly half my age yet when I was his age I felt like I had already lived several lifetimes. Honestly, I think I turned sixty-five when I was nineteen. Time, man. I can count on it to keep pace, not lose one fat second on my account. It doesn’t take a time out, doesn’t sit one out, doesn’t find any value at all in changing the pace. Yeah, we all know a little bit about time.

Fifty days. Forty-nine days and about seven hours actually. Fifty glasses of wine, fifty gummies, fifty mornings at the bay watching the sun crack the surface, fifty evenings at the river watching it take forever to fade. This year I’m going to make fifty phone calls and write fifty letters to old and new friends; I’m going to find fifty beautiful moments—one a day—and keep that habit going another fifty, then fifty more. That’s the thing about time; it can’t decide for me what I do with it, only when it will end.

And it will end.

So fifty songs that give me chills and fifty minutes spent each day finding just a little peace of mind.

Fifty is the fifth magical number in nuclear physics. It’s the Golden Anniversary. It’s half of whatever whole you fall into. Fifty is the traditional number of years for a jubilee. Fifty in both the Torah and the Bible is associated with the concepts of freedom and abundance.

There are fifty stars for the fifty states. It’s two bits. It’s just sitting out there as some sort of centennial half-way point.

In fifty days I’ll be ready to turn sixty-five and feel fifteen years younger than that. It was fifty years ago my life completely changed as a chasm fell between everything that was when I lived in New York and everything that would be when we moved to Virginia that June 18th. I was terrified. I was just a few weeks short of fifteen, which is young at any age. But looking back now fifty years on, it seems to have turned out okay.

Seriously, what a time it turned out to be. For fifty days I’m going to remind myself I have a home and food, I was not born in a refugee camp in Somalia, was not born during a bombing campaign in the Middle East, was not born on the streets of just about any American city.

I’m going to remind myself of passion and hope, and that I still have the energy to climb mountains or simply just fall asleep. That I’m really good at. But for now, I’m going to keep moving, keep noticing the beauty and continue to look for the peace. I’m going to remember the grace I experienced being able to have the parents and siblings and friends I did for these years, I’m going to remember all of the love I had in my life from those who passed this past year, and I’m going to look forward to what happens next.

Time is persistent, yes. But how we measure it is completely up to us. Hell, they’ve already changed the calendar several times out of little more than convenience; I can do that too. For the next fifty days, I’m going to grow young again.

May 15, 1933

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 3 Comments

May 15th would have been Mom’s 92nd Birthday.

I can write volumes about her life which is a true record of life in the twentieth century, or about her ethnicity which rewrote itself in her mid ’80s, or her uncanny ability to make friends with a two by four; I could write about how she’d become friends with the ladies in the bakery or the fish market or the produce section of Farm Fresh. One day I stopped by and Dad was all dressed waiting for Mom. I asked where they were going. “To a wedding,” he said. “Oh? Who’s getting married?” “The daughter of the lady who sells fish at the food store.” Of course.

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But before that:

I can recall going to A&S’s with my mom, walking through racks of skirts, pushing aside blouses a few racks away, my face near the metal pole waiting for her to call me out. I made her laugh, but, honestly, everyone could make her laugh; she was light, light as air, and laughed like that too, aware of her deep breath.

I remember her making Irish Soda Bread for Ethnic Food Day in second grade, and she said, “Wouldn’t you rather have German potato salad,” noting to my father how much easier it is to make. “Please Mom?” I pleaded. Of course. Yes, of course. She joked with me not long ago about that day and how if she knew then what she knows now I would have just brought a bowl of spaghetti with marinara sauce.

Mom was always there. I remember in the East Islip Public Library asking the librarian a question and when she answered, I was looking down, and Mom said, “Always look in the eyes of someone talking to you.” I never didn’t again. I remember after that we went to Stanley’s Bakery for black and whites and hard rolls with butter. Non-New Yorker’s need to trust me on that one. To get to Stanley’s Mom would tell guests at our house to “turn right two blocks before you get to the mailbox.” It made sense to her.

We went to the doctor when my lower back hurt shortly after joining the track team at Islip Terrace Junior High. Dr. Wagner said, “I’m afraid he has strained his sacroiliac,” and my mother sat quietly a second and then laughed and said, “Are you making that up? There’s something in him called a sacroiliac?” There is and I did so I dropped off the team and she bought me a tennis racket. She had a subtle way of changing my life that way.

Can anyone truly grasp the lessons we learn from our mom’s who somehow manage to teach us things without doing anything more than practicing unconditional love? That’s it; that’s everything, the secret to parenting. Mom would yell–and she could yell–if I did something stupid, which was not that unusual, and it took me years—years—to understand she was yelling at herself, not at me.

Then life got interesting.

My sister was at St Bonaventure, my brother at Notre Dame, Dad had moved to Virginia to buy the house we would eventually move to, but Mom and I stayed on the Island because it was a recession and it took more than a year to sell the house out in Suffolk County. It was just her and me, driving once a month four hundred miles to Virginia Beach and back. We had fun dinners like pizza and omelets, family over for visits, and I had more freedom than most fourteen year old’s as I’d explore the state park day after day, endlessly. And that winter in the mornings I’d sit in the kitchen before school while she made breakfast, the radio playing a bank commercial. “F. B. L. I. Leaves you more money for living…” and I’d walk to the bus stop with the rising sun. In the evening she’d make spaghetti, or we’d have eggs and fries, or we’d have subs from the deli out on River Road, and once a week I’d get to watch “All in the Family.”  

That last day there in the house which I consider to be where I grew up, she had to be at a lawyer’s office to close on the house, so I walked home from school on the last day of ninth grade with my friends Steve and Eddie. My aunt met me in the driveway and we went back to her house where Mom picked me up and we drove the eight hours to Virginia Beach, June 18th, 1975. Life completely changed; everything I had ever known was suddenly an eight hour drive north, and Mom and I adjusted to our new life together.

Time passes.

High School.

Gap Year.

College.

In the Summer of 1983 I decided to move to Tucson, and I packed my small, light blue Monza and she stood at the door early one morning as I backed out of the driveway to head west. She waved once then closed the door. At the time I didn’t know why.

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I could add more, of course. Yes, of course. Like how no matter the conversation she could without missing a beat turn one of the lines into a song she remembered from her youth, and she’d sing it. Like the time my siblings and I locked her out on the roof of the house on the Island when she was washing windows, and by the time she was back inside we were all laughing. Or how our German Shepard was so terrified of her that when the dog was in my sister’s room one morning, all my mother did was whisper “Is the dog up here?” and that poor dog didn’t touch a step flying down the stairs and into the safety of the kitchen. Or how when it was time to give my dog Sandy away, a dog which won Mom’s heart, when she dropped him off at the new owner’s house, Sandy jumped up on Mom and put his paws on her shoulders and whined for her not to go, and Mom cried all the way home.

I can clearly recall several years worth of five thirty am talks in her condo kitchen while Dad was still sleeping, and I’d complain about problems at the college and she’d listen so well, and then she’d talk about Dad’s health and small signs she’d notice or which I had noticed the night before, and we’d compare notes. She loved him, honestly she loved that man like a person who should be used as an example of love, for sixty-three years she loved him like that. And no matter how frustrated she got, that always rose to the surface, that love.

Laughter and Love. That was my mom.

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She loved light blue.

She loved music.

She always worn a Miraculous Medal.

She had a life I can’t write about properly except to say she took on serious responsibility at a very young age, walked through some serious fires in her life, and always maintained a strength and intelligence and a sense of humor that set an example I can never match. She taught me how to be alive. 

But, with apologies to my late beautiful mother, Joan Catherine, she has one blemish, one which scarred me for, well, I’m going to be sixty-five and I still remember it:

In 1974 or 75 I stayed up to watch The Poseidon Adventure on television and with just fifteen minutes left she yelled down for me to go to bed. I said, “Ma! Gene Hackman’s hanging from a pipe!!” “I don’t care it is getting late and you have school!” she called back, and so I went to bed and wouldn’t see Hackman fall into the fiery water for another fifteen years.  

Some people think their mom’s are just oh so perfect and easy to love and can tell stories about what amazing women they are and that’s fine, really, that’s fine, and I’ve tried, I really have, and she comes close, but, seriously, the Poseidon Adventure, Hackman, the freaking climax of the movie for God’s sake. Come on. There’s simply no forgiving that.

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Periods of Long Ago

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 3 Comments

A few days ago I walked out on the 14th Street Pier in Virginia Beach and stopped in Ocean Eddies. It was the dive I would frequent the summers during college. Back then the bar money was kept in a box and the register was a big brown monster. There was no a/c and the windows had to stay open in the oppressively humid night, but the live bands would wake up guests at the hotel I managed next door, so I had a deal with management: I’d not call the cops on him and he quit the music by 1 am, and I’d get free drinks and a burger. Now, almost fifty years later, there is a  deck around the outside, inside has ac, and the food is better. The tide, however, is still just a few feet below the floorboards.

I was nineteen when I got the job at the Sandcastle Hotel at 14th Street on the beach. The owner, Johnny Vakos, and I got along, and the manager, Jack, had a heart attack about a month after I started, so John made me manager. I stayed that way for four summers, May until August, working all shifts, dealing with every character conceivable. Sometimes at night I’d head out to Eddie’s and swap stories with other locals over margaritas. Sometimes when I worked the overnight shift, come morning I’d head up to the seventies past all the hotels and sleep on the beach, and later in the day friends would show up and we’d waste away an afternoon swimming and listening to music. At night we’d all head to Sondra’s Restaurant or the Jewish Mother or Fantastic Fenwick’s Flying Food Factory to listen to my dear (still) friend Jonmark Stone play guitar. But come the following morning I was back at the beach, working the desk, talking to Niki the bike rental girl, bs-ing with guests about where to eat or about the weather or surf conditions. I only have to think about those days and I can smell the salt air.

Something was different this time, like I really won’t be back this time. It happens.

Still, that part of my life stayed in my blood and every once in a while it passes through my heart and becomes real again. We all have periods of long ago like that. For me it’s probably this place because I’ve almost always lived near the ocean, or maybe it’s because our brains and bodies and this planet are all about seventy percent water and I simply feel the tug of the tide. Perhaps I just like the sound of the surf. But I’ve not come upon many places in my travels which simply don’t change. Old neighborhoods seem smaller, the trees suffocate the once open fields, and old hangouts usually have new crowds, or shut down, weeds pushing through parking lot pavement, some windows broken and boarded near the rusted dumpster. Sometimes it’s simply that people pass away, and the reasons for being somewhere pass away with them.

But the ocean and me, well, we go way back. The rest of nature can show signs of change as well. Forests give way to fires, or new growth simply pushes out old oaks changing the landscape; rivers erode at the banks, and while the mountains can retain their majesty, trails and roads can rip small scars across the land, or some new cabin is built whose windows catch the sun and the glare flickers across the valley.

But I can stand on the sand behind the pier and know what i’m going to see. Certainly some days are rougher than others, and in winter a white foam can gather at the break point, but it is the same as it ever has been. The strength of a wave is like no other natural force on earth. Just to stand in the surf waist deep is a lesson in mobility and resistance no physics class could replicate. At some point you give in and fall back or dive forward, and feel that dark, salty, always slightly cool water sweep across every aspect of your body.

And when you look out across the vastness of nothing but blue water, steel blue, metallic greenish slate blue water, you are looking out at exactly what John Smith saw when he first landed a mile and half up the beach four hundred years ago. It is what Powhatan saw, and whatever wandering seaman or viking or ancient civilization saw, exactly the same. Maybe rougher, maybe in the morning perfectly still like glass. Maybe the tide was higher, or so low they could walk out to the scallop beds and pull them up by the load. But it is the same. Exactly.

I can stand here and it might as well be 1979, or ten years earlier and four hundred miles further north, on the beaches of Long Island. It simply makes sense to me. We all need a place to go that makes sense. It was just ten blocks north of here at my son’s tent for a juried art show in 2017 that my mother walked for the last time without assistance; it was just fourteen blocks south at The Inlet House that my dad lived when he first moved to Virginia Beach before buying the house we would all move into four miles west. They’re all gone now, Mom and Dad, the Art Show moved to October, the Inlet House is a parking lot. But this ocean, well, it’s right there keeping my anxiety at bay.

I read once that we all should discover a “third place.” We have home, which comes with it certain responsibilities and routines. We have work with its predictable patterns of give and take. But we need a third place that is neither, that is ours to claim how we want, and gather with friends, or be alone, and let our stresses and expectations dilute in the deluge of “somewhere else.” For many it is a bar, or a coffee shop, or a park or a gym. For me, back then, I thought it was Ocean Eddies where I learned more about people than I ever cared to know. But it wasn’t; it was outside, on the sand, looking out toward Portugal, toward Spain, and Africa. Looking up the coast toward the Island. It’s lonelier now than it ever has been, and maybe I’ll not be back for some time, or ever. But I like knowing it is here. I like that I can depend upon this. I like that I know it is time to leave.

Somewhere Down the Road

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Asian water buffalo of course

Since I’m a child I have wanted to travel the world–I think it was Pippy Longstocking who first turned me on to the idea of exploration and adventure. Certainly Robin Lee Graham and Woody Guthrie and Mark Twain. And I have done just that; more than I imagined. Ironically, for almost thirty years I’ve lived in one house which I built here in the country. My previous homes lasted, from birth, four months, eight years, six years, four years, four years, eight months, three years, three years, three years, two years, two years, and now, well Aerie since my mid-thirties. 

If I had to choose between being always on the go for the rest of my days, or always at home for the same life, I’d choose home. I’d learn to garden and each year expand the crops with more tomatoes and cucumbers, and I’d have a fig farm on the land, perhaps more apple trees, and I’d share the results with neighbors. I’d know the names of the birds, and their migratory dates, and over time I’d have the hummingbird feeder ready for their return every spring. I’d add flowers to the land each year so that the back trail was lined with impatiens and the front with marigolds, and the north side toward the river would have a new trail with hanging baskets of herbs. I’d build by hand and bricks and stone a small guest house, with carvings in the doorframe and a wood-burning stove in the corner on clay tiles I made myself in the kiln I would build in the field. I’d have a dog, some cats of course, and a goat or two. Watermen and farmers would swing by sometimes to chat out front in the gazebo. And I’d walk to the post office to mail my manuscripts; I’d no longer be in a hurry. 

Just as easily I might simply leave, keep going

I’d do the Camino again, perhaps for years, and everyone would come to know the “old American” who is always out there heading toward Santiago. I’d relish the knowledge that no matter what else happens in my life, I have as a foundation to keep going the Way, the pilgrimage trail from France to the west of Spain. I would take Paulo Coelho’s advice and unbecome all the things that I’ve accumulated over the years which were not me at all, until finally I become who I was supposed to be to begin with. 

If I needed a break I’d head up to Connemara in August each year to walk the Sky Road near Clifden. Or I’d head to Prague in May for the music festivals in Old Town and stop and see my friends at the university. I’d have strudel and tell newbies about the time I used to write in the corner of Nerudova 19 when it was a tea room, and I’d write and have a pot of tea and strudel, and I’ll say it is too bad they weren’t around then since now it is an ice cream shop and it isn’t the same. 

Parts of me are already scattered all over the world. Pieces of my twenties are in Mexico and Africa, and large portions of my thirties are in Russia. Some of my forties made it there along with Prague and Amsterdam, and slices of my fifties are sprinkled like diction across this country from St Augustine to Seattle. If I had been able to simply keep moving, I’d have distributed what’s left of me in Spain and Ireland, with a small sampling saved for a state park on Long Island’s Great South Bay where most of the elements in my being come from to begin with. 

Still, I like the idea of spending my life in a small town where I’ve always known everyone, and I leave the doors unlocked, and I have a running tab at a local shack of a pub. Equally I like the notion of having friends all over the world, writers in cities throughout Europe to call up and spend time with on my way through again. I like knowing other cities in other countries as well as I know the trails here at Aerie. 

I wrote a book once about a guy who traveled the world until he settled in a small town and meets a woman who knows everyone and is from there, and they fall in love and the idea of staying grows on him, but she, by meeting him, understands she isn’t stuck in a small town after all and there is a world out there to see and experience, so she leaves. He decides the small town life isn’t the same without someone to share it with, so he leaves too, ironically also traveling the world, always wondering where she went, looking for her in crowds and metro stations, but he never finds her. It was a great idea and a decent manuscript, called An Innocent Season, but I could never figure out how it should end. That and I suck at writing fiction.

Life has a way, doesn’t it?

Last week I pet a water buffalo. This was near Neunen in the Netherlands. He was quite cute, still relatively small, and I scratched his neck and rubbed his face between his eyes, and he kept nudging me to continue, licking my shoes and pushing my hand. Luckily he was an Asian water buffalo who are kind, unlike the mean African ones. We stood at the fence and I pet him and we had just bought water buffalo yogurt and cheese but passed on the water buffalo ice cream. This little guy was loving on my shoes and my hand but I had stepped back and he came closer and his nose hit the electric fence, and we could hear the “zap!” and a small spark shot out and that little guy backtracked to his mother near a muddy area across the pen. He just stared at me with scared eyes as if to say, “Why?!” It wasn’t anger; no sense of “you bastard” in his face. Just a questioning “why did you hurt me like that?” and it made me a bit sad. I ate the yogurt anyway, though, with raspberry jam and some nuts. 

But we do that, we get close and then our perception is thrown off. Something zaps us and we associate that pain with those close to us when they might have had nothing to do with it; it was more than likely just circumstance, timing, the time of day. I wonder now how long will the little guy remember the pain. Will it make him leery to get close to the next guy with Hokas on and a hand stretched out? Or will he just keep getting hurt because the pleasure is worth all the pain? 

I would. In fact, I have more than a few times. Emily Saliers wrote we must “take part in the pain of this passion play” if we must love. The worst pain of course is departure, leaving again, and one comes to realize that eventually you’re best off either to just keep going, following whatever Camino you find yourself on, or agree to stick around awhile and simply accept that the pain is part of it all. 

So we ate the yogurt and gave away the cheese and went back to Amsterdam and flew home. Three days later my beautiful mother passed away. I’ve been thinking about my youth, and mostly I remember laughing. My childhood included every emotion possible, but what comes to mind first and strongest is the laughter. I remember going to the supermarket as a kid and pushing the cart and getting a treat. I remember her making food for my class in elementary school and not minding when my friend Eddie and I dragged in mud from the state park. I remember her making lemon meringue pie because I liked it, and I recall perfectly her listening to me attempt to play the guitar for the first time as I butchered John Denver’s “Sunshine on my Shoulders.” I am sure I was zapped more than a few times back then by her voice when I inevitably did something wrong, but I can’t pull those memories up right now; only the good things. Like all the laughter and the music; these two things I inherited from my Irish-Italian mother–laughter and music. 

That and to keep going. Perhaps the finest lesson of all; just keep going.

The Laughter Never Stopped

neither did I

Best. Professor. Ever.

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ Leave a comment

To start, one of my students wrote this sentence: “The iridescent luminescence of the phosphorescent fungi, a phenomenon both ephemeral and mesmerizing, cast an ethereal glow upon the cavern’s labyrinthine corridors.”

I am a bloody brilliant professor. It took me more than thirty-five years to reach this level of excellence as a teacher, but at last I have proof of my abilities to teach college freshman to produce excellent work. Allow me to set aside any semblance of humility for this moment to suggest some rewards should be forthcoming. Teacher of the year, perhaps; a newly-imagined accommodation introduced this year for the purpose of honoring me, maybe. If there is still a Department of Education, maybe a plaque on a wall. 

For the first time in my career, more than fifty students (out of sixty five) wrote nearly perfect papers. Every sentence structured with absolute perfection, diction equivalent to PhD candidates of some Ivy League institution after the work has been combed by editors with a thesaurus, and not a single comma out of place, even the Oxford commas; every single one of them exactly where they should be. 

There’s more. Oh, and wait for the Big Reveal.

The expert sources, despite their association nearly exclusively with universities in Southeast Asia and India, all precisely attributed. What is especially satisfying is that I managed to enable my students, on only their second paper ever in a collegiate class, to write better than any student I have had since the end of the Reagan administration. These magnificent students used compound sentences with five-syllable words with such accuracy and topic-specific precision I have a renewed faith in this country’s education system. Bravo! primary, middle, and high school teachers! You have passed to us college instructors the finest composition writers in a generation.  

But here’s the real reason to celebrate: These students are all high school students taking my college writing class in a Dual Enrollment Program. Again, Bravo! And, well, just Wow! And imagine, they’re almost all just seventeen-years-old.

Okay, so this can’t be a unique situation, one might think, and therefore not worthy of the accolades I suggest. So here’s more: This all happened in the past few weeks in West Virginia where 27% of high school students failed to meet the reading proficiency. And according to an extensive study by the University of Wisconsin of English Learners in Middle Schools and High Schools Pre, During, and Post Covid, English scores declined steadily and significantly just about the time my current students were in ninth grade. The most dramatic decline was in writing skills, followed closely by listening skills. And yet, I pulled their previously unrecognized talents out of the hidden depths of their inattentive minds and produced extraordinary students writing exquisitely ideal papers. 

I’m that good. 

Some suggest I investigate the possibility the papers were ChatGPT generated, but I say there’s no need. I understand their defense of AI with the car-replaces-the-horse analogy, and that the need to know how to write the essay is secondary to their ability to know how to find one that meets the requirements when they need to do so. The previous example in education might be the Texas Instruments primitive calculator replacing the slide rule. I do understand. But these seventeen-year-old Best-Essay-Writers EVER students would not use such devices since I specifically and clearly instructed them that to do so would result in failing the course and possible expulsion from the university for Academic Dishonesty; why would anyone smart enough to write such pristine essays at the same time be dumb enough to risk their entire college career and subsequently their livelihoods by cheating on a college essay by plagiarizing, even if from a computer? Nay! This work must be original! 

Honestly, I had doubts at one time that I ever should have been teaching college. I wanted to raise goats. But I’m convinced now that this path I stumbled onto was the right one. I have written my own essays for more than forty years, shared them with best-selling authors and acclaimed writing faculty at the finest colleges for suggestions and assistance, and have an extensive publishing record–pardon my lack of humility here. I just write this to highlight the fact that I find myself surrounded by minors–for only a couple of these students are yet eighteen-years-old–who have clearly surpassed anything I have been capable of, editing and sentence structure wise, I mean. Nothing can be done about how dreadfully boring their essays are. But I do not grade college compositions based upon their level of “excitement.” No, these 900 and 1200 word essays, all in perfect APA format, stand alone as unblemished. 

I’ll be straight–I was a bit worried at the beginning of the semester when I posted on the online discussion board for each of them to explain their interests, hobbies, and hopes for their future, and the responses were riddled with incomprehensible fragments and more dangling modifiers than I’ve ever seen dangled before. But my worries where unfounded. After just five weeks I have successfully produced a stellar group of writers, all in a school district ranked 41st out of 55 in the state. All in a state ranked last–50th–in overall education.

At the very least I deserve a raise. 

The Joanie Channel

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 1 Comment
Joan in the Great River house, circa 1969

On June 22, 2002, my sister sat at our parents’ kitchen table and recorded an audio interview she did with them about their lives, about life during the depression and World War 2. She asked other questions, and just like Terri Gross on Fresh Air, did a great job of bouncing off of their responses. She sent copies to my brother and me about five years ago, and when I sat to listen to them, a few things struck me. One, my father was precise in his responses, and my mother was hysterical in hers. He was 77 at the time, and Mom was 69. But what hit me hardest was hearing our father’s voice for the first time in half a decade. I can hear his voice in my mind, of course, but to actually hear his voice like he was sitting there made him young again. The last few years of his life I was around him all the time and his dementia grew worse and worse. So when I played the cd, I heard not just my father, but my father younger, still alert to everything. It was nice to push past the sound of his weak and confused voice that had filled the corners of my mind and hear him as he had been. Ironically, at the same time it makes it hard to listen.

About two years ago while out to lunch I randomly recorded a video of my mother talking about something. I don’t remember what and the video is gone, but the idea took hold, and for the last two years every couple of weeks when we were at lunch or getting coffee, I’d ask her a specific question, or I’d encourage her to remember a particular time in her life. Note that she is one of the funniest and smartest people I’ve ever known, and understand too that she has had quite the life from the streets of Bushwick, Brooklyn, to Long Island, to Virginia Beach, and now in Williamsburg, Va. There are fifty plus videos here, but I recorded more than a hundred and deleted many. Some were redundant, and some in the past year or so I got rid of when Mom would struggle with a memory, or lose track of what she was talking about.

Still, this is decidedly not about Joan Catherine.

It is about time. This has everything to do with the brief flash of time we have to share with each other. Watch how a person can at once both change so much and still be themselves, who they are in their heart. The truth is at some point as we age we realize that we must set aside our anger and anxiety and arguments, and we seem to do so far too late in life. In the past year I’ve lost a half dozen people I loved very much who were my confidants and companions, and every one of them died relatively young, three of them in their early sixties. At the same time, my mother has nose-dived into a wall, fallen and slammed her head on a porcelain tub, fallen on the floor, faced cancer–again–had a pacemaker put in, battled neuropathy, and moved from her spacious condo where she lived with my dad, to an independent living apartment in Virginia Beach, to an assisted living apartment in Williamsburg, and she just keeps going. Last July she was in the hospital with pneumonia and sleeping eighteen hours a day, and the doctor did not think she would leave the hospital. Yesterday we went to lunch at an Italian restaurant and she woofed down a massive piece of tiramisu. She Just. Keeps. On. Going. And always with a sense of humor. She talks here about her move from Brooklyn to Long Island, from there to Virginia, and about how patient she can be. Or not. She sings the Banana Song, Woody Guthrie, a Shampoo commercial, and in one of my favorites when she had no idea I was taping from the cup holder of my car as we drove along, she sings “New York, New York.”

But this isn’t about Joan. This is about brevity. When we look ahead–when we anticipate–time can slow to a tragically slow pace. But when we look back, when we recall, we can transport our mind instantly to another era, as if it happened two seconds ago. This makes it seem like time goes by so fast. But it is the same now as it was when we were children. That’s the thing about time: it is dependable. Not one fat second will lose an ounce on my account. But the older we get, the more we recall instead of plan, so the clock can be deceptive. In these videos, Mom is full of energy, sitting up and laughing, with immediate recall of incidents an hour earlier as well as two generations ago; at the same time, here Mom is wearing oxygen, sometimes softly gasping for air, and her memory is nearly non-existent.

Time. It is the only measurement that matters. And we are endlessly distracted by the news and entertainment and the stress of finances and politics and health. But all of it slides away when we start to list what is essential. Then, the answer is easy: each other. That’s it. People leave us, sometimes slowly and sometimes with the swiftness of a cool, autumn morning that takes us by surprise. But they do, in fact, leave.

These videos are in no order, so one of Mom recently trying to remember her Uncle’s name might be followed by one of her looking stronger, heavier, talking about her favorite foods. I decided against a strict chronological order so that instead of watching a woman’s slow decline as age takes hold, we can see how life is, in the words of my friend poet Toni Wynn, “Paper thin.” I will add more to her page as time permits. Thanks for enjoying our mother’s beautiful sense of humor and simple take on what matters the most.

Note: There are some videos on the “Video” tab, but most of the videos are on the “Shorts” tab. Please check out both. And “follow” The Joanie Channel.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheJoanieChannel/shorts

The Five Things I did This Week Assignment

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 2 Comments

Despite my dislike of djt and em, two of the deplorables, I am intrigued by the assignment put forth by the South African/Canadian currently in charge of the United States; to record five things I accomplished this past week and send it to my boss.

I don’t really have a boss, per se. Never did actually. I mean, at the college I have a supervisor, but we’re trusted enough to be left alone to do what we need to do to accomplish the college’s mission. That’s the thing about good leadership; it lets the people who know what they’re doing do what they know. In my twenties I ran a health club and in my late-teens and early twenties I managed a hotel and in both cases my boss was either across the country or across town. So while in all those jobs I had someone above me, likewise in all those cases, they let me do what I needed to do.

My point is I am not sure to whom I should send this Muskian request of five accomplishments, so I decided to put it out here in the Wilderness, where thousands can View what I’ve been doing this week which I believe warrants that I continue doing what it is I do.

  1. I made a list of what I would do if I wanted to rule indefinitely without anyone able to stop me. I’d fire all the Generals who are responsible for insuring checks and balances is taking place. I’d fire the chief counsel at all branches of the military along with the Chair of the Joint Chiefs to make sure if there is any sort of “delay” in my leaving office, I will have the military and the ones fighting on my behalf in court all on my side. I would trim down all branches of the government which could somehow seize my power back financially, and I’d discontinue media access to press conferences to anyone who did not agree with me, so that the propaganda is not directly from my office but from the media’s lack of coverage of dissenting opinions. This is just a brief list so far and I know it is ludicrous to think congress or even a conservative senate would allow this to happen knowing their legacy depends upon the preservation of our country, but I had to accomplish something this week and I chose this.
  2. I filled out the form and made an online promise to participate in the march on Washington in defense of DEI employees, for LGBTQ+ rights, for diversity and inclusion in the military, and more. I am confident my chosen supervisor genius inventor idiot would never fire me for wanting to make sure as many people as possible in this country no matter their backgrounds, their gender, their identification, race, religion, or any other aspect of their humanity that these two feckless weaklings take issue with, have as much opportunity as possible to make this country greater than it already was.
  3. I asked my critical thinking and research students to find one federal program that was cut and investigate what are the long-term losses by the programs demise that are apparently compensated for by any short-term financial gains. And if there aren’t any gains in the long run, I asked them to find out who will be responsible for fixing it. I suggested they start with the many medical and health assistance programs which save the lives of children around the world, which prevent the spread of deadly diseases such as Ebola, or anything they want really. It is up to them. I suggested they wear masks while doing the research as measles is getting bad again.
  4. I walked through the woods and along the trails here at Aerie. I wandered down to the river and sat on the rocks and visited with some ghosts I’ve known for some time. We talked about the changes that find us now, and how they leave me so cold and so scared. I told my spirited late friends that thinking of them brings me peace, and maybe because of the heart trouble and kidney cancer, and the heartbreaking brain tumor, that they are free from this slow erosion of democracy and now they don’t need to watch. I laughed and thought of how they all might respond, and then I remembered what a writer once said, that “so long as I have breath and the ability to write, I will remain here to fight another day.” And so I shall. It was a beautiful walk and reminded me too of what is important. I miss my ghostly companions.

Which leads me to number five:

  • I’m writing a group of songs. I’m about halfway through. Let’s call them folk songs, but let’s also call them protest songs. I’ve taken out my guitars and they stand obediently on their stands near the window. I have a pile of notes and scribblings and some complete sheets of paper with phrases and lines and irony and metaphor. I tried doing something similar to this forty-five years ago when I was a young, immature college student badly playing coffeehouses. I couldn’t write well at all then. Now I can. And at some point I’ll record and upload the group of—let’s call them Go-Fuck-Off-Don and Elon songs—to Youtube, and at that point I’ll complete my “five things I did In Class Today Mommy” assignment properly. Maybe the album will do so well I’ll receive a Kennedy Center Award.

Oh Right! Number Six: Turn down Kennedy Center Award.

So what’s on your list?

Parenthood: A Lesson in Algebra

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 2 Comments

I’ve told this story before.

When Michael was about three or four, he used to play “Sir Michael the Knight.” Sometimes it would be on the sand in the yard of a beach house we rented one winter where we would build elaborate castles and he’d be Sir Michael and I was the dragon inevitably slain by the knight, culminating in my plunging death into the castle. Most often he occupied himself on rainy days when he would don his shield and sword and cardboard helmet and then barrel around the house. One time he ran through his grandmother’s home, cardboard sword before him, through the kitchen to the living room to the dining room and back into the kitchen, several times always calling “Sir Michael the Knight is going to slay the dragon!” or “You can’t get away from me dragon!” as he passed again, his voice fading in some Doppler effect as he disappeared into the kitchen, emerging around the corner seconds later. On one turn he was mid-sentence running into the dining room when his shoulder clipped the table and his feet flew out before him and his entire body slammed to the floor in perfect professional wrestling fashion. I jumped from the couch when I heard his head hit the ground, but he only lay there a second before he said, “Sir Michael the Knight hurts himself bad.” He got up and kept running.

He is still running. Michael turns thirty-two tomorrow; half my age. When he was born, I was thirty-two times his age, and now we’re down to twice his age. He’s aging, I’m not, is how I like to look at it.

What’s crazy is the obvious math here: The time it took for me to get to Michael’s birth is the time it took to get from his birth to now. It makes me examine everything I did in those first thirty-two years, and it was a lot. By the time he was born I had been around the block, to be sure. Time pushes us in multiple directions. A week from now seems a stretch compared to thirty-two years ago. Anticipation slows down time, but recollection instantly thrusts us back to one moment like it just happened. And when I look back at what happened, I often wonder how I’m still here. But all of those years are nothing at all compared to what we’ve done since 1993. It’s been one hell of a ride.

It isn’t unusual to find us at a local oyster bar splitting a dozen and drinking hard cider. Together we’ve ventured to various east coast spots like Long Island and the Outer Banks of North Carolina, trained across Europe and Asia on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and walked across Spain. We’ve seen more together than most fathers and sons get to experience in a lifetime. I am constantly aware of this and deeply grateful.

But none of those journeys compare to the pilgrimage we make to the river every evening when we’re both home to take pictures of the setting sun, and we wander around in silence to listen to the water and watch the wildlife. One of us might mention a colorful cloud formation or the approach of an osprey, but mostly we take pictures and point out the peacefulness. This has been a steady routine since he was four; the picture taking started just a few years later. In the summer the sand fleas can be unbearable but we tolerate them, swatting our legs and faces determined to remain at the river a bit longer. In winter we bundle up ready for whatever wind whips down the Rappahannock toward the bay.

Over these nearly three decades we must have taken thousands of pictures. I prefer to point my camera up at the ever-changing cloud formations picking up the last bit of light from the fading sun. I try not to allow anything “earthbound” into the frame, including trees or even the water. I like the fluidity of clouds, how beautiful they are ever so briefly before they dissipate. Michael aims at the surface, seeing hues and shapes that swirl and gather and disperse as fast as he can find them, capturing just the right combination of color and design before the tide takes over.

It is about perspective.

He’s been around the world on his own. Ireland, Spain, Cuba. And he holds together the art community here on the Bay. He’s done alright. When someone asks who he is like in the family, I don’t have to hesitate: My father. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

These days I prefer to look forward. There’s a lot to look forward to, and more often than not these days it is separate from each other, but always letting each other know how it’s going.  I am not sure where Michael’s headed next but wherever it is and for whatever reason, I am confident it is with faith, a sense of humor, and an instinctive ability to be kind to people. I am as excited as he is about what’s laying out there ahead of him in that land of hopes and dreams.

Happy Birthday, Sir Michael.

Looking for Space

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I don’t fit in. That’s okay.

When I was young I certainly had friends, but I was never completely comfortable around anyone—it probably explains my ease in front of a crowd instead of in a crowd. When I was growing up, Eddie and I would wander the state park and sing, and even with him, my best friend, conversation came with a melody and lyrics. Things don’t change. Honestly, I’m much better and more myself in front of two-hundred-fifty people or more than I am with three or less. The art of small talk has always eluded me; in fact, I wrote a relatively successful piece entitled just that, “Small Talk.” It’s not my thing.

I could never involve myself in the minutia of life. I was always better at big picture jobs—a hotel, a health club—where the objectives were clear and the conversation was kept to a minimum. So you can see the irony coming, right? Yes, thirty plus years teaching and discussing and reworking writing by college students, very often one-on-one. I always fell back on my health club training. That is, I became not so much a professor of grammatical skills or syntax as much as I was a motivator.

Big picture themes. That’s my wheelhouse.

So I never fit in at departmental meetings or brown bag discussions. In those places my mind shut down when endless conversation ensued about how to word one sentence of a document or the need or not the need for the Oxford comma, and on and on and blah blah blah and whomp whomp whomp…They didn’t want me there anyway. They didn’t mind me there, but they knew–I knew–I had no idea what they were talking about, not because I wasn’t smart enough; I just didn’t care so much and it showed. I didn’t take it personally. They argued about policy and pedagogy and pedestrian approaches to the diaspora of whatthefuckever. I watched a hawk outside. It seemed more important.

I went to a high school reunion a few years ago. I knew just four people there. Kathy, her sister Patti, our friend Michele, and…okay three people. In retrospect that makes sense—I didn’t really do much in high school. My friend Mike and I did announcements, and that left the appearance I was involved, but I wasn’t. There was a mic, a room, and hallways between me and everyone else. Perfect.

In college it was the same. I was very involved, but scrutiny of that involvement is illuminating for me. Radio station (alone in a studio talking to the campus); coffeehouses (alone on stage in front of a crowd of people I couldn’t see anyway because of the lights); weekends with keg parties and drunken floormates found me borrowing a car and heading for Niagara Falls alone or with one friend. I was more comfortable around the resident directors and priests who were often alone in their apartments, or driving to Canada, then my floormates.

Throughout my life, even when I did participate, what I participated in is defined by the singular concept of “one.”

Tennis is an isolated sport.

Guitar can be played without accompaniment.  

Writing. Oh hell, I’m not even there when I’m writing.

Walking. Hiking. In college it was the Allegheny River, in Tucson I’d drive down and wander the empty streets of a Mexican village, and in New England I’d hike to the top of Mt. Wachusett where kettles of hawks kept my attention for hours.

Nature.

I find myself more comfortable in nature because it doesn’t mind failure, it pays no attention to shortcomings and disappointments. It simply allows us to exist as we are without judgement or ridicule. It doesn’t care who is in charge. And in the end, Nature is in charge anyway.

This afternoon after the storm I sat on some stones at the river and watched the choppy waters, the heron gliding across the duck pond toward the marsh, a kingfisher perched on a wire, and the distant, dark clouds building again, bringing more rain again.

It was a few moments of absolute peace of mind.

A thought about this: The peace of mind thing is not easy to obtain. It is not an absence of sounds and conversations, it is an internal escape from one’s own internal disturbances; the constant interior monologue about everything from the practical (money, transportation, deadlines) to the emotional (sick friends, relatives), to the fleeting irrelevance in life that get their claws in your thoughts and won’t release. So finding peace of mind is not easy to do just because my surroundings are quiet and natural; it just makes it easier. I have found peace of mind in the midst of a thousand people and felt trapped inside a panic attack when alone on a beach. This is definitely a mental thing.

So I sat on the rocks in a rare moment of internal quiet, the still waters of my mind undisturbed by some psychological pebble, and I looked calmly across the river and realized something profound: nature doesn’t necessarily want me there either. It was not created for humans, it is not set up for people. It’s why the heron flew off because of me but not because of the egret or the eagle or the osprey. It is why the tide will ebb and flow based upon the natural phenomena of the moon and the sun, gravity and storms—not because of anything or anyone anywhere.

Nature has a whole other level of confidence. Still, it’s as close as I have come in life to being myself, being out there. Hiking in the mountains, canoeing, simply walking down the coast toward some other where.

Some people never find their reason for being here; they let the world saturate their thoughts like a swollen river and swallow them, giving up, giving in, letting that minutia like money and disappointing others get the better of them. It’s easy to do; it happens. I suppose most people don’t ever feel completely comfortable around others, a bit of self-consciousness slips through. But for me it isn’t that, exactly. I don’t feel uncomfortable around others; I’m okay in my own skin. It’s more of a feeling of always thinking I should probably be somewhere else.

Counselors have said since counselors have been saying things that it is essential to find your place in the world. I agree. I’m not sure I ever will, but I certainly agree, and at least I know where to look.

I’ll be outside. Don’t come.