Seattle, Washington
Written in June, 2008

COUPLE QUANDRY

Do you do this: Stare in awe and wonder at a couple walking by - a couple of unlikely mis-matched ill-builts - and think, “What on Earth do they see in each other?” Yes?  Me, too. Nonstop. We examine the passing exhibition of the human species as if we were the judges in an ongoing State Fair livestock competition. Couples, especially. “Ohmygod, look at them!”

Many’s the time in the days when I was a parish minister when an appointment was made to discuss wedding plans and I would look up in astonishment at the couple when they came into my office and think, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

I had the same experience with the appearance of my teenagers’ first steady boyfriend or girlfriend. “What the hell . . . ?”

Fat with thin. Ugly with gorgeous. Old with young. Weird with straight.
Smart with stupid. Zebras with orangutans, a moose with a Jersey cow, a giraffe with a warthog. And on and on and on. You know. In fact, you may even be part of such a couple. (Though you’re probably the last to know it.)
It’s a mystery - the Couple Quandary.
Not only does love seem blind, but also deaf and dumb and stupid and twisted, and hopelessly hopeful as well. At least from the outside.

This profoundly original insight is a prelude to telling you of today’s sighting: A couple walked toward me on Queen Anne Avenue. About the same age - mid-thirties, maybe.  Holding hands. Laughing. One was at least six feet six inches tall, athletically healthy, short black hair, well dressed, and well-proportioned. The other was five feet tall at most, likewise in great physical shape, tanned, very fit, and quite handsomely dressed.

They seemed blissfully delighted to be in each other’s company, and walked at that casual pace people use to wander about in art galleries. No rush. No cell phones or I-Pods or dog or baby stroller. A couple. Together.

(You know I’m shamelessly leading you on. But wait for it . . . )
The big one - was a woman - very feminine - quite pretty.
The little one - was a man - very masculine - quite handsome.

My mind went wild.
What was he to her? Her lunch? Her jockey? Her substitute for a pet?
What was she to him? His bodyguard? His trained huntress? The other half of his circus act?
And, well, I admit it - I wondered what went on between them in bed. Who did what to whom and how? How could I not wonder that? Wouldn’t you?

So I turned around and stalked them - followed at a distance for awhile.

At times he let go of her hand and placed his arm around her shapely butt.
(It was as high as he could easily reach.) And she rested her hand on his shoulder or on the back of his muscular neck. And then they went back to holding hands. Always in touch. And the touching was always tender.

They window shopped.
They stopped to look at the flowers in front of the Metropolitan Market.
He picked orange roses. She picked some blue flowers I don’t know the name of. They had the clerk wrap the flowers together.
“Is this a gift,” the clerk asked. “No, just for us,” she said.
The man paid, but they took turns carrying the flowers as they wandered on down the avenue.

We - they, with me still tagging along - went into Café Ladro for coffee. They both ordered an iced latte - single shot - to go. She paid this time, while he held the flowers. They sat down in the chairs outside to drink their coffee and watch the world go by. Still holding hands. And I, sitting three chairs over, finally noticed the wedding rings on their fingers.
Really? Really.

I couldn’t hear what they said, but they laughed a lot. And once she picked up both their hands and kissed them both lightly in a wordless blessing.

I left.
I was afraid I would say something to them.
Something stupid.

Like I had been following them. Like asking them for their story - the rest of it. Like asking them how they saw each other beyond the cultural categories of Big Woman / Small Man. Like some sage comment on the mysterious nature of love. Like telling them the story they made for you and for me - the one I was going to write when I got home.

But, no.
Sometimes - not nearly often enough - but sometimes, I am wise enough to mind my own business. And sometimes I am also wise enough not to explain the obvious to those who read my journals. Like you don’t know the point of my telling you all this? I trust you can take it from here . . . 

Seattle, Washington
Written June 1, 2008

ACCOUNTING

“What did you learn in school today?”
A question we ask children. Why are we surprised at the stock answer?
“Nothing.” or “I dunno.”

If we understand the interchange as a mere formality between adults and kids - like “Hey, how are you?” “OK.” - then the mission is accomplished - we’ve noticed each other. But if you really want information on what the kid learned in school, then you need to first understand that the kid’s suspicions are immediately aroused by what seems like an oncoming investigation: “Uh-Oh.”

Better you should be more specific and empathetic. For example: “When I was in fourth grade I learned about Chicago. I will never forget Chicago, even though I’ve never been. Do they still teach Chicago?” It’s an opening for a conversation. Little kids recognize that and will talk to you. Maybe not about Chicago, but about something. And isn’t it the conversation that you wanted in the first place, not an accounting of educational increase?

Somewhere along the way we quit asking “What did you learn in school today?” Never have I, as an adult, asked or been asked that - by a kid or another adult. But I was asked yesterday by a boy at a funeral. He was on the sidelines reading a book. The last Harry Potter one. I am also a reader, so I asked him about his book - one I had not read - and we talked.

As the conversation was winding down, he asked me, “Do you still learn stuff?” “Yes.” But he didn’t get to ask “Like what?” because some other people came over and interrupted our conversation.

I thought about his question all afternoon. And again this morning. Suppose I had to write a report. “What I Learned This Week - by Bobby Fulghum.”
Not all of it is consequential - as is often the case in education. Never the less, here is a partial list - things I learned, that you might want to know:

1. If you read in bed at night, and if you like noting important passages with a permanent yellow marker pen, and if you fall asleep with both the book and the marker still open, when you wake up in the morning in the dark and bumble down to the bathroom, you will see in the mirror that your skin has developed yellow blotches and you will think, for a moment, that you have a tropical disease. You will be wider awake than you want to be.

2. Permanent yellow marker cannot be removed from sheets and pillow cases. Not even with Goo Gone or its companion product, Goof Off.

3. Factoid: Hit at three miles an hour by the bumper of a car backing up, a large plastic recycle bin will travel thirty feet across a street. When it hits the curb, it will stop. And fall over. And spill its contents across the sidewalk. If this happens at the edge of a primary school playground where children are present, they will be massively entertained. You will not be. And you cannot say aloud what you are thinking because children are present.

4. If you have large scarlet-red oriental poppies blooming in your yard, and you want to cut some and bring them inside, even though you know they will not last the day, if you immediately burn the end of the cut stem with a candle flame before putting them into warm water in a vase, they will last a week. And if you let the petals fall and leave them where they are, the petals will last another three days in a beautiful scarlet-red ring around the vase.

5. If you have a birthday coming, but you don’t want to celebrate yourself, but what you would like is to be with a group of friends who are far away, you can send two of them a fish - a huge copper river Alaska King Salmon - by air express, knowing full well they will have to invite the rest of your friends to eat the thing. And they will all have a grand time and think well of you. And you don’t even have to be there to have them sing the song at you. This technique is called “Giving Away Your Birthday.”

6. If you have an older neighbor - one you see every day - and she dies and you go to the memorial service, you will learn amazing things about that neighbor that, had you known, you would have made a point of sitting down with her and getting her to tell you all about. And you would have had something really fascinating to answer if anybody asked you, “What did you learn today?”

7. Asking is usually a good thing. 

Seattle, Washington
Written in late May, 2008

FOLK LIFE

On re-reading what I’ve been writing in this journal for the past few weeks, I recognize a trend. Fulghum has been going around in the world lately like Good Old Charley Brown in Peanuts - who lived out his existence between eternal Hope and inevitable Disappointment.

Sometimes I feel like a living, breathing cartoon figure - naïve, optimistic, and grateful for any sign of the Good, however small - despite knowing that the World will always break your heart if you let it.

That’s why I buy but do not read The New York Times daily. Usually I let the papers pile up and take a look all at once on Saturday. That way I get the reasons for despair over with all at once. Seldom is the good news in the paper - that must be read from the daily evidence closer by.

Example. For the past 37 years Seattle has celebrated Memorial Day weekend with the FolkLife Festival. At Seattle Center, which is a ten-block downhill walk from my house. In my neighborhood.

When I was a child Memorial Day meant a trip to the cemetery to remember and honor the dead. Now I avoid cemeteries. I know that folks die. And I remember. But I believe that I honor the dead best by getting involved with as much life as I can on this weekend.

Besides thousands and thousands of attendees, there were 7,000 performers over the four days of FolkLife this year. Musicians, jugglers, artisans, dancers, singers, poets - professionals as well as amateurs - young as well as old - and from just about any ethnic and cultural you can imagine. And while I did attend performances and exhibitions, the best part was sitting in one place and watching the crowd. Folks. Of every kind. Some you can imagine. Some you can’t. You have to be there.

For one thing, a great many of those passing by were carrying instrument cases, obviously containing guitars or fiddles or horns, but less obviously shaped to carry more exotic instruments. If I saw most of these people on the street I would never think “a musician” - but I saw them here and my impression was dramatically improved. Especially when I know that most are not professionals. Most just play for companionship and joy.

For another thing, the festival encourages busking - unscheduled offerings by anyone who wants to stake out a small space for awhile and perform. Many are young, not yet proficient, and a little fearful of what they’re doing. I try to stop and watch and listen - and make a donation - to as many as I can. Some come back year after year, having improved their acts and expertise. Their courage, their ambition, and their earnest dedication to their craft impress and inspire me.

My favorite busker this year was a very young woman - maybe 12. Long blond hair in a pony-tail. An unspectacular costume - black pants and beige sweater. She unfolded a small silver performance pad, placed a huge pink ball in the middle, and dropped a hula hoop over that. Then she took a fiddle out of its case, and tuned it.

And then - quicker than I can describe - she somehow was balanced atop the ball - rolling it forward and back - while keeping the hula hoop going - moving it up and down her body - while playing a lively tune on her fiddle and singing. Amazing!

None of her individual skills were extra-ordinary, but she had taken the things she could do and put them all together, and then had the courage to perform her act it in public. She did it very well.

The little girl came to mind later when I went to a workshop for people who wanted to learn palmas - the hand-clapping technique used in Flamenco music. Knowing I will never look like a Spanish gypsy or manage the guitar technique or the passionate dancing, I was excited that I might at least learn the secrets of Flamenco clapping. I can clap. I got rhythm.

So. Armed only with enthusiasm, I stepped into the trap of “How hard can this be?” and joined the group, sitting on the front row. Maybe fifty people, including a policeman. The only person who might be a gypsy was the teacher, Anna Montes.

There are two basic Flamenco claps - with both palms open, and with four fingers of one hand slapping the other. So far, so good.
Then comes clapping in threes, twos, and finally, in twelve beats. OK.
The beat of the foot was added next. And then counter-clapping on the off-beat in half measures and non-beats. Maybe.

Then doing all this in two groups without counting aloud. With the foot on the 3, the 6, and the 10. Then faster. And adding an Ole! or two now and then. Keeping the back straight - the body posed and dignified. Oh, sure.

All too soon Senor Fuljumero was flopping around barking like a seal begging for fish. Terribly enthusiastic, but way off beat. And not doing the foot and the hands at the same time. (Counter rhythms seem to be my specialty.)

Shouting Whooo-ha! instead of Ole! did not add to my image.

It was a relief to have the teacher explain as class ended that clapping is not done by the audience, but only by the performers. What a relief! But it is useful to know, as she pointed out, that the support of an informed audience is important to the dancers and musicians.

Still, like a performing seal, I was just happy to be there. If not fed with a fish, then at least nourished in spirit. Just there. In the afternoon sun with a truly random collection of other human beings in a random mood.
Clapping! Laughing! Folk! Life!

The little girl came to mind. Maybe I could do this if I worked on it. It could be my act. Imagine. Bob the Busker. Next year at the festival. Next to the little girl on the ball. What does he do? He . . . he claps. Quite well, actually. It’s a trained seal imitation. He’s not bad - if you think applause is a talent.

Well . . . it is.

Seattle, Washington
Written in late May, 2008

GOO

I do not usually endorse consumer products, but this one is a winner.
GOO GONE.
I don’t know what’s in it - the label doesn’t say.
Though it does advise not to drink it, give it to children, use near fire, or rub on your body.
But I know what it does.
It removes basic irritation.
The kind that comes from trying to get goo off.

By goo I mean the residue of price stickers, crayon marks, candle wax, scuff marks on walls, tree sap, glue, tape, lipstick stains, grease, shoe polish, wet paint, rust, mildew, and even what’s left behind when you squash a bug on a dress shirt. Just about anything that makes you say, “I can’t get this damned goo off.” And it’s ruined your day. And you know it’s a trivial matter and that makes your irritation even worse because it’s petty.

Goo Gone is a happy ending in a bottle.
More than once it has saved the day.

How I wish I could get something like this for my existential needs - for the times when my spirit gets stained with the small marks of the cruddy goo of daily life.

There’s no product to deal with the big troubles, but it’s the little ones that drive me crazy, and send me to bed in a sour mood. And I hate me for that. “Put it down, lighten up,” I mutter. “Give it up - it’s not important.”

Perhaps this is how memory serves me - knowing I’ve been gooed-up before and life has gone on. Perhaps laughter at my own small-minded-ness is a kind of goo-gone. Knowing that this, too, will pass, and the goo will go.

Seattle, Washington
Written in late May, 2008

QUESTION

“Why me?”

A question asked when life goes suddenly, seriously wrong. You’re diagnosed with cancer, you get fired, your spouse sues for divorce, a child drowns, your house catches fire, your troubled teenager runs away, your health insurance is canceled, or your life savings are lost in a bad investment. And so forth and so on and so forth and so on and . . . so.
Sometimes it’s not just one but several of these soul-blows at once.

“Why me?”

In the years when I was an active parish minister my counsel was often sought in these situations. “Why me? - I don’t deserve this!” people asked.
An ancient demand for clarity and justice. The Book of Job in the Bible is built around the same anguished cry. The underlying enigmatic question is “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

Hard to answer. Maybe it’s the wrong question to begin with.
It helps to know you are not really the special target of the forces of evil.
But not much.

Thick books have been written addressing the conundrum. Friends, family, psychiatrists, priests, social workers, and bartenders do what they can. We shake our fists at the gods and the fates and Lady Luck without results.

Most often, however, the question arises out of far less dramatic circumstances. A month of just one damned thing after another - the accumulation of the everlasting paper cuts of daily life, when things break or go wrong or turn sour and we say we just can’t win for losing. The scrambled egg of existence lurches out of the frying pan onto the floor.
Depressing. Disheartening. Frustrating. Irritating. Maddening.

“Why me?”

On the other hand.

There are those weeks, when the sun shines, an unexpected kindness comes our way, something truly amusing happens and we laugh ourselves silly, we get enough sleep, have sweet dreams, an old friend takes us away for an evening of music, a neighbor leaves a thank-you bottle of champagne in the fridge, a child gives you an unexpected hug, the wisteria suddenly blooms, you find a forgotten photograph of a lovely place and time you will never forget, and, and, and . . .

The world is “Yes” instead of “No.”
It’s not your birthday, but it feels like it - a rebirth of joy on a small scale.

There are those times, when for the very same uncontrollable reasons that the world seems to turn against us and every little thing goes wrong, that the world turns for us - and everything goes well for a spell. We’re ahead - on the plus side - a winner in the lottery of life.
And for a time it’s good to be so alive.

Happens.
When good things happen to good people.
And the question then might be, “Well, why not me?”

Odd that it’s actually more awkward to talk about ups than downs.
Nobody ever called me in the middle of the night to say they were happy.

But I just had one of those weeks.
I just wanted to tell somebody.
Why not you?

Seattle, Washington
Written in mid-May, 2008

COULD BE

This is a secondary story. By that I mean it was told to me by a dear friend. But it contains a kind of elegant veracity that lodged so deeply in my mind that it feels like the memory of a personal experience. I can imagine it happening to me. I wish it had happened to me. And so, I tell it to you in first person as an exercise in creative non-fiction.

There is in Seattle a repository of the city’s past called the Museum of History and Industry. Seattle’s attic. A small institution, located out of the mainstream of traffic, un-flamboyant in its public presence, and more often visited by school children on field trips than tourists on vacation. It is also a standard stop on nursing home van tours. Or, as in my case, a surprise
re-discovery while out wandering around exploring the outer edges of Seattle on a spring afternoon.

A senior’s outing was underway as I arrived. Accompanied by attendants, the elderly and disabled - some in their wheelchairs - some using walkers or canes - were moving slowly up the entrance ramp ahead of me. One of their group, a skinny, spry old man still independently mobile, walked well ahead of his peers and into the museum with focused purpose.

Inside the museum, I carefully worked my way through the excursioneers and on up the stairs into a second floor gallery. One wall was covered with a photo-mural: The Pioneer Square area of downtown Seattle in 1908. Brick buildings, street cars, horse-drawn vehicles, early automobiles, and pedestrians in the attire of the time. Because of the enlargement process, the soft-edged grey-and-black-and- white image seemed more dream-like than photographic - the faded essence of a moment in time long past.

The only other person in the room was that old man I had seen going into the museum ahead of his group. He was standing close to the photo-mural, closely examining one corner of it. Sensing my presence, he turned to me, and motioned for me to join him.

“Come look,” he said.

“My mother and father lived in Pioneer Square when I was born. Next Sunday I will be one hundred years old. I was there in 1908. Look here. See the man and the woman pushing the little boy in the carriage?”

I looked. The couple were indeed there. Holding hands. Pushing a pram. And there was a baby in the carriage. A boy? Well . . . hard to tell.

“My father dressed just like that young man. I’ve seen other pictures. And my mother dressed just like that young woman. Seen the pictures. That baby there is me. Right there. One hundred years ago. What do you think?”

“Could be,” I said.

The old man bent over, and, eyes inches away, he stared hard at the image.
Standing back, he looked at the baby again, and turned to me.

“Could be - is good enough,” he said.

And smiling, he walked spryly away, back down the stairs to join his group.

“Happy birthday,” I thought. “May the possibilities be with you always.”

And then I, too, walked spryly away, down the stairs, and on out into the warm spring sunlight of a late afternoon in May 2008, repeating the mantra for the day:

“Could be - is good enough.”

May the possibilities be with me.
Always.

Seattle, Washington
Written in the first week of May, 2008

(Fiction – This is a continuation of story—see April 03 journal entry and May 05 entry.

THE END OF WAITING
On his bathroom mirror he wrote with a piece of soap,
“Whatever became of me?”
Underneath he added a new line:
“What am I waiting for?”

*
On this Sunday morning, just after sunrise, once again he ritually set the kitchen table for breakfast - as carefully as an acolyte might prepare a church altar for a communion service.

On a pale blue tablecloth, he set out two of everything: square blue-and-white Chinese plates; orange-and-blue Japanese cereal bowls; blue Mexican glasses; antique silver spoons, and small white porcelain cups for espresso.

And flowers. There were always fresh flowers. From a friendly neighbor’s yard he had cut two tall purple irises, which he placed in a vase in front of one plate at the table - not as decoration, but as a kind of offering.

The menu did not vary: Fresh squeezed orange juice, croissants, butter, and lavender honey. Blueberries. Sugar and cream.

When he had finished setting the table, he stepped back, considered his work, pushed the play button on the stereo and sat down. The background music was always Mozart - the Clarinet Concerto in A.

For almost three years now he had laid out this Sunday breakfast for two. As lovely as he could make it. As he thought She would like it.
However. Only one person would be there.

He would be alone. There was no She.

His housekeeper, who always put away the unused table setting on Mondays, was the only other person who knew about the Sunday communion. She never asked about it, assuming the second place was set for his absent wife, She-Who-Went-Away.

The housekeeper thought his ritual was a sign of relentless sadness - a gesture of grief. She remembered the first year. He had left the back porch light on every night and placed a note on the table just inside the door:

“Welcome Home.”

For an entire year he did that. The housekeeper would turn off the light when she came each morning, set the note aside, and begin her day’s work in tears - especially on Mondays after the Sunday breakfast. She never spoke of this. She thought she knew and understood.

The housekeeper was right about the missing person the first year.
After that, someone else was on his mind.

While he did have a deep and sorrowful nostalgia for the love that had withered and died, She-Who-Went-Away had been on the verge of departing for years. It had taken twenty years for their companionship to wither and dry up. A ripe plum had become a stale prune.

He was not surprised that she finally left, only surprised that it took her so long. For the last ten years her hand had always been on the door knob. She exited his life like someone dying after a long terminal illness. By the time it happened, he was used to it. Nothing remained but a shadow.

Nobody’s fault, no obvious reasons - except that the ties that bind somehow fell away. Love is born, lives, and dies. That happens. It grieved him. But, if truth be told, he had to admit that she simply got to the exit before he did.

He found it easier to sorrow over her absence than her presence.
On the wall of her empty room he had written:

That was then – this is now.
That was that – this is this.
This is it – this will do.
And that is that.

Technically, they remained married - but only for legal and financial convenience - and would probably remain so until one or the other found another love. He expected that would happen for her soon. He sensed that a final settlement was not far away. He felt hopeful when he heard that she had a new companion.

And he was also expecting that might happen for him.
Thus the empty place at his Sunday breakfast table was for someone else - The One, who, despite his yearning, had not yet appeared.

Setting a place for her at his Sunday morning table was not unlike the act of lighting a votive candle in the private chapel of the church of his life.

His faith could be superb self-deception. He considered that. But he had come to rely on the power of his imagination, which arises in part from what it refuses to foresee. He imagined she would come. He waited.

Waiting contradicted his experience and personal style. Most of the finest things in his life had come to him because he had not only imagined them possible, but he had pursued them with all his heart and mind and resources.

He had always been willing to risk an improbable life and take the consequences. Luck and fortune and surprise seemed to pass through most people undetected, like neutrinos, but he sensed their presence, and reached out for them. Luck and fortune and surprise favor the alert, the open-eyed, and the prepared.

Some things cannot be found unless looked for. He always said that if you wanted to catch a train, one must first go to the station. If he wanted to win the lottery, he must first buy a ticket.

“Then, why,” he asked himself, “have I waited so long?”

However.
And it was this “however” – this “on the other hand” – this dark balance weight to his optimism - that had kept him waiting.
True, he yearned for love.
However. There was the other truth:
Most of what he believed about true love had proved to be crap.
There - that was the contradictory answer to his question.

It wasn’t love he wanted but something like love - something parallel to it - the same shape and form, but harmless in the end. He wanted everything love had to offer except being stretched out on the torture rack at the end.

It wasn’t Love or The One he wanted, but all the feelings that went with the journey of seeking and finding and exhausting that enterprise. The pulsing flow of blood that went with that emotion as it ran its course. The intensity it brought to life - joy, excitement, fear, pain, ecstasy, mystery.

But he did not want the responsibility for the inevitable consequences - not for himself - or for the other person involved. One morning he found himself thinking he wanted to experience love as theater. As a play with actors and actresses and scenery.

That thought was what brought him through the door of Waiting. A door that had not been locked - just closed. For no specific reason he could think of, the time had come.
The end of waiting.
This Sunday breakfast would be the last solitary communion.
“Enough,” he said to himself, “Time to get back out into the flow of the world.”

No more waiting.
He ate his breakfast, and cleared all of the dishes away. When the housekeeper arrived on Monday she would find the table empty.

The next day, the first Monday in April, fired by his idea, he would go out into the world to seek his fortune. He was going to hire an actress. Someone like that woman he had met in Santa Fe and then again yesterday. After that he was going to enroll in dancing class again - to refresh his ability to tango.

But first, he would invite the forces of magic and wishes and spells. Just to set his mind in the direction of surprise. On the now empty dining room table, he laid out his supplies. And put tango music on the player.

Seattle, Washington
Written in the first week of May, 2008

Note: This story picks up where the April 03, 2008 journal entry left off. (Click here to link to the story and read it.) This is fiction. Another part of a small, new, novel-in-process.

SPELLS

About the man who returned the serape to its rightful owner:
He did own the antique shop - among other enterprises.
But Marisol Machado was right - she might not see him again.
She was focused on Fate. And he was relying on magic.

He did not believe in magic.
Not in the sense that he believed in the grocery store and that if he wanted milk he could go to the store and get milk.
But he did believe in retroactive magic.
In the sense that when he reviewed his life he could truly say there were events that only magic could explain.

He did not believe in wishes.
Not in the sense that he believed in coincidence as a rational explanation for surprising outcomes of desire.
But he did believe in retroactive wishes.
In the sense that, when he looked back, there were times when his wishes had come true.

He did not believe in spells.
Not in the sense that deliberately stacking the odds in his favor over another person often produced the desired results.
But he was beginning to believe in retroactive spells.
In the sense, that when he looked back, there were times when some small or peculiar conscious action seem to have directly affected success.

He had noticed that there seemed to be some truth in what was called the Second Law of Magic:
That which once directly affected someone or something continues to have an affect at a distance. This may not always be controlled, but often encouraged.

The consideration of casting spells seemed ludicrous to his rational mind. But he knew that his rational mind could be pleasantly distracted by the pursuit of some irrational enterprise.

And just now he badly needed to over-ride his intellectual obsession with a vexing conundrum: The tension between thinking of two distinct people: “She Who Went Away” and “She Who Is On The Way.”

And that is how he came to consult several books about casting spells - ranging from the ancient practices of the occult to the contemporary poetic manipulation of physical metaphors. Why not? It would occupy his mind and give him something interesting to do while the pool of his confusion settled and cleared.

He made a list of the components and ingredients he would need for constructing and casting spells:

A packet of needles of various sizes for various uses.

The heads of dandelions after they had seeded into puffy globes of white.

Several lengths of colored yarn - scarlet, sky blue, and black.

A small magnet.

Three wishbones - from free-range chickens.

Several kinds of special salt - from the sea, from deep in the earth, from far
away - in several colors - white, black, and saffron.

Thorns removed from a rose in bloom and still on the rose bush.

Five small spider webs.

Honey still in the comb - from summer flowers.

Smudges - small bundles of dried sweet grass and sage.

Sand - collected from ant hills, brought up from out of the earth.

Five small candles - one each black, white, red, blue, and yellow.

Several squares of small, handmade paper - ivory colored.

3 small bottle of ink - black, scarlet, and invisible.

5 small stones from a place where the tide meets the shore.

Some ashes from a fire made from dried weeds.

Incense - not sticks, but in bulk form - dragon’s blood, frankincense, pinyon

3 small bottles of water - from rain, snow, and morning dew

Several small plain muslin bags

Several lengths of colored ribbons - black, white, scarlet, and blue

Strands of hair from those one wishes to affect.

For some time he had been collecting these materials to use in casting spells.
Not that he intended to cast spells. Collecting was an amusing distraction.
But then, again, what harm if he did cast a few spells? What harm, indeed?

Some items proved easier to acquire than others. For example,“She Who Went Away” had left behind a hairbrush laced with strands of her long black hair still in it. And he had a hairbrush with strands of his own hair. But what about a strand of the hair of “She Who Is On The Way?” By virtue of the unknown being unobtainable, he had no way to get one.

He would have to rely on Magic and Wishes and Spells.

And so, one spring Sunday afternoon he allowed his temptation to flourish.

He was tired of waiting. 

Seattle, Washington
Written Wednesday, April 30, 2008

SPITTING WITH BREAKFAST

Setting: A neighborhood café on a Sunday morning around ten o’clock.
Outside: Spring rain and wind and cold.
Inside: Bedlam - too many customers, too few waiters, and only one cook.
Players: A family of four. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
Mother and Father: Urban, middle-thirties, jeans-and-T-shirts-and-fleece.
Dog: Big brown Lab tied up outside, barking, barking, barking.

They are here because the father has decided to treat the family to a Sunday breakfast out. But nobody seems happy about it. The mother stares out the window. The father is absent-mindedly cleaning out his wallet. The daughter is grooming her hair. The little boy is wiggling, wiggling, wiggling.

The girl is in the 9-10 range, already pubescent, with mind focused on dangly earrings, lipstick, kitten heels, personal cell phone, perfume and a bra. She doesn’t have all of these things yet, but that’s where her mind is.

The little boy is in the 4-5 range, already in an energy-explosive state, like a bomb that’s primed, fused, and ready to blow. He should be taken to an open field and allowed to run in circles and scream. But he’s here. Wiggling. He should have been tied outside with the dog. Which is where his mind is.

Finally, the food arrives. The family eats in concentrated sullen silence.
The girl tidily finishes her eggs, and then starts being a Mommy, harassing the little boy to stop making a snowman out of his pancakes and bacon.

The little boy makes a face, sticks out his tongue, and spits on his sister.
She screams. As only pubescent sisters can at such moments.

Uncomfortable silence in the café. Everybody’s looking.

The father makes one of the cardinal parent mistakes: Making a threat you will not likely follow up on. “Stop it or I’ll kill you,” is an extreme example. But this father growls, “No spitting! If you do that again I’ll jerk you up and take you home and put you in your room!”
The girl sits smugly, knowing there will be a follow up move by somebody.
The mother looks out the window again, avoiding what’s coming.
The father - in an “I mean it” position - glares at the little boy.
The little boy grins.
His father has just handed him a golden ticket out of here. Spit. Go home.

He spits on his sister again. On cue, she screams again.

Now all eyes in the café are on the drama.

The father goes red in the face, and starts to get up.
The mother reaches out, catches his wrist, says, “John, John - look at me.”
He looks at her.
The mother makes a brilliant move.
The mother purses her lips and spits at him - a gesture without moisture.
And laughs.

John laughs and sits down.
The little boy hangs his head and giggles.
The sister does the complaint-whine, “Daddeeee . . .”
The father purses his lips in the spitting position aimed at the daughter.
And she laughs.
Bomb disarmed.
Time to go.
They leave. Laughing.
The knowing kind of laughter - when silliness is wisdom in disguise.

Alone at my table, I catch the eye of the mother at a family breakfast sitting across from me. She smiles. Laughs.
I return the laugh.
Her family knows why, and laughs.

Afterward, walking home in the rain, I realized a great opportunity was lost.

We should have given the spitters a standing ovation as they left.
Pancakes and bacon and spitting and laughter.
Great breakfast combo!

Seattle, Washington
Written Sunday, April 27, 2008

Christos Ahnesti! If you were a Greek Orthodox Christian, you would reply:
Alithos Ahnesti!! An exchange of greetings on Easter Sunday - Pascha - which this is, due to ecclesiastical calendar complexities.

For the first time in fifteen years I have not been in Crete for Easter. Having described the experience in detail on this website and in my recent book of essays, “What On Earth Have I Done,” I’ll not indulge in nostalgia here. Still, because close friends are staying in my house in Crete, talking with them this morning puts me in a Cretan state of mind.

And I am feeling vaguely holy on this Sunday morning. For a weird reason.
The Dalai Lama was in Seattle recently. A local company did all the staging for the events. They know what they are doing, since they handle the big Microsoft events, The Rolling Stones, and the like. Last night I was at a party where I met the man who was in charge of the Dalai Lama’s chair.

The same one had to be used and moved from event to event. He was surprised to learn that he could not just grab the chair and carry it out to the next venue. Many people wanted to come to touch it or put their hats or coats or scarves on it. The chair was considered holy. So I touched the hands of the man who was in charge of the chair in which the Dalai Lama sat.

Did this add anything to my life? Who can say? But just in case . . . .

But I digress. I am also in the last stages of the technical tinkering on the English version of the manuscript of my novel, “Third Wish,” and today’s work was on the section set in Crete. The good news, by the way, continues. The novel may be available in print as early as September. The illustrations, music, cover design, and text are very close to being ready for the printer. More details in a few weeks - as the project unfolds.

Meanwhile, since Crete is where my heart and mind are today, I will share with you a new taste of Easter in Crete from the novel. While this is from a work of fiction, it contains substantial experiential truth. The two main characters involved are Alexandros Xenopouloudakis - called Alex - an older Greek man - and Max-Pol Millay, a young American physician.

RODOPOS

Alex has a genius for making friends who, in turn, want to introduce him to their friends. His personality is an oasis of enthusiasm in the middle of the desert of daily dullness.

On one of his snooping, wandering walks through the back streets of Hania, he stopped into the smallest and oldest church of the city to admire its icons. He sought out the parish priest to get some explanations of the paintings. And met Father John, who, coincidentally, was a Welsh Greek who had studied at Cambridge.

“Cambridge! Well, then.” (Alex was himself a student there long ago.)

A five-minute visit became a two-hour lunch. Father John brought along to the meal his closest colleague, Father Anthony, who is the parish priest in the village of Rodopos, and one thing led to another. It is the story of Alex’s life - it could be chiseled on his tombstone:

“For him, one thing always led to another.”

And now Alex and Max-Pol and their friend, Kostas, are all invited to attend Sunday service in the village church, and to get a tour of the Rodopos peninsula. Afterward, there will be lunch with Father Anthony and his family, joined by Father John and his family and any other family that happens by.  Invitations to such impromptu feasts are typical of the seasonal run-up to Easter in Crete. 

*

The Rodopos peninsula is one of the two long horns jutting north into the Aegean Sea from Crete’s western end. Twenty kilometers long, with peaks up to eight hundred meters high, it is not an incidental piece of topography. It forms one side of the Bay of Kissamos, and is so commanding in height it almost cuts off the far west from the rest of Crete.

Once, millions of years ago, it was a separate island in its own right. There are rocks and fossils here not found on the lowlands on either side. Its high places are frequently above the cloud and fog banks that form down closer to the sea, giving the Rodopos highlands an aura of mystery.

On the other hand, olive groves, orchards, and vegetable farms fill the peninsula’s lower valleys all the way up to the centrally situated village. As the land rises beyond the village, the vineyards take over in the rocky, less arable soil of the shallow gorges.

Farther on, the peninsula is so high and barren and rocky that its thin pasturage is given over entirely to sheep and goats. Herds of the long-haired traditional breeds roam the treeless landscape. Snow is not unknown here in winter. And wild orchids bloom in the areas around its springs in summer. Altogether a startling, enchanting landscape.

The village of Rodopos is the focus of life for about a thousand people who still carry on a more or less traditional way of life. It seems like a long way from anywhere, and in its churchyard is a surprising reference to the length of Rodopos’s place in history.

Here stands a round marble monument that looks like nothing so much as the stump of a weathered gray telephone pole. It bears a faded Latin inscription. A modern marble tablet explains that this memorial marks the completion of a road built in the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan between this village and the temple of Diktyna - goddess of nets - at the far end of the peninsula. 112 A.D. The road was paid for from donations to the temple. The same roadway is still in use. 

When asked about the marker, the villagers reply offhandedly, “Oh, that.” The church gardener usually hangs his coat and hat on this, one of the smallest of Trajan’s many columns, while he works.

In modern history, Rodopos is famous for its heavy red wine, its wildflower honey, its part in the resistance to the German occupation, and for the several members of one of its families active in Cretan politics. A bronze bust of the patriarch, Polychronis Polychronitis, looks sternly across the village square opposite the kafenion - as craggy in his face as the hillsides around him. All of the life that survives and thrives here is fiercely resilient.  It must be.

Alex is excited to be here. In the spirit of his cheese experience of yesterday, he points around him and shouts, “Now this, this is Crete!”

*

The church service is in progress when the visitors arrive. Not until they find their standing places and begin to look around do they notice that three of the five men leading the liturgical chanting of the service are in army uniform. Not just army. The elite of the army. Greek Special Forces from the paratroops battalion stationed at Maleme.

The young men obviously know the service. They sing with passionate authority. With the addition of the deeper voices of two older men and the mellow baritone of the priest, the service is surprisingly beautiful - not what you’d expect in a remote village church. St. John Chrysostom would be pleased to know his liturgy survives in such a place and is well served and well sung after more than sixteen hundred years.

The church itself is plain - a working church for a living community, not a tourist attraction. In contrast with the high elegance of the service, there is a comfortable informality in the usual coming and going of the villagers during the ceremony. It is not required that one stay all the way through - only that one should pay one’s respects for some time during the service.

After receiving the blessed bread from the hands of its priest, Father Anthony, the small congregation greets visitors warmly, as if they were an early-arriving contingent of the Diaspora come home for Easter. Afterward, the men of the village move more or less en masse to the kafenion across the street for tsikoudia and coffee and talk. The women return home to prepare lunch.

Max-Pol wants to know about the participation of the soldiers.

They speak English and are surprised that he asks. All three are twenty, and have had two years at technical universities. Yes, they are Special Forces paratroopers - commando trained - the first to go if there is war with the Turks. But they are citizen-soldiers, with an emphasis on the citizen. Every Greek man must serve two years. Service is a responsibility and an obligation of citizenship, rarely a profession.

These young men are from east Crete. They’ve grown up assisting in the service in their village churches, and they like being off-base and back in a village like home. So - they volunteer. Their commanding officer is also a singer and feels the same way about his roots. He would have come along with them today except his wife is expecting a baby this weekend. Mixing church and state and armed forces and family - it is and always has been the Cretan way. About such things they have no doubts whatsoever. To keep these traditions they will sacrifice their lives - or take yours.

*

Since lunch would not be served until two o’clock, excursions were organized. Kostas and the soldiers went off in a pickup truck out to the far end of the peninsula to see where the Germans had built emplacements for their coastal artillery during the war.

The two priests and four of their children went to pick wildflowers in the hills above the village. The women were glad to have the kitchen to themselves. 

Alex wanted to wander around the village and look at donkeys and donkey saddles. He has a fondness for donkeys, having tended and worked them when he was a child. The personalities of donkeys appeal to him. They are the most bloody-minded of creatures. It has been a long time since a donkey was seen in the streets of Hania. And while some are still in active use here in Rodopos, their days are as numbered as those of the older generation of villagers who keep them.

Max-Pol went along with Alex.

“Well, then,” began Alex. “The donkey - the gaidaros, or gaidoura, if female - is called the Cretan Volkswagen. It will carry almost anything almost anywhere - twice its own weight is common. It is very tough, very easy to keep, usually gentle, and lives a long time. And look, here is the very creature.”

Tied to a tree on the far side of a ditch, a small, slatternly lady donkey solemnly ate grass, paying no attention to her audience. Alex continued, “Donkeys don’t ‘do’ anything to entertain you and they do not demand attention or affection. They are a beast of burden. They are a live-and-let-live animal. You don’t bother them - they don’t bother you. They work very hard with very little complaint for a very long time. An admirable creature.”

Alex and Max-Pol crossed the ditch, inspected the unpretentious gray-brown animal, stroked its back, and petted its head. The donkey ignored them.
Alex observed, “Odd that such a small member of the horse family should have such a large head in proportion to the rest of its body. You wouldn’t call them handsome, nor is their singing beautiful.” Unfazed by insult and uninterested in company, the donkey went on single-mindedly eating grass. Live and let live.

Getting no response from the donkey, Alex and Max-Pol ambled along on a dirt track, out toward the edge of Rodopos where the vineyards began.  As one more sure sign of spring, the vines had been trimmed and the trimmings stacked for burning.

Sheep were near the vineyards, browsing on the lush flowery undergrowth around the trunks of the vines. The soft tones of the bells around their necks punctuated the silent feeding of the sheep. Bong, bung, bingle bingle, bang, bong-bong, bunk, bunk. The bells were a collective musical instrument, and some shepherds still bought them in tuned sets for the pleasure of the distant harmony.

The two men sat down on a stone wall.
Looking, breathing, listening - consuming the ageless tranquility of the scene before them.

The Cretans say that when Jesus does come back - he will come first to Crete - to such a place as this in spring.

Seattle, Washington
Written Sunday, April 19, 2008

Where have I been? Whatever became of me? You may wonder. So do I. Funny how time slips away. A week of nonstop adventure in Utah with senior son, his wife, and their two children, left little time for writing or reflection. And then closing down my house and studio there, traveling to Seattle via Grand Junction, Colorado, and Salt Lake City, only to arrive in the noise and traffic of the city and stand dismayed before a desk piled high with mundane busyness demanding my immediate attention - well, it’s daunting and disheartening and depressing. Instant stress. Avoidance and denial kick in. Can’t just turn around and go back to the mountains. Can’t deal with the pile. So I went for a walk . . .

DIRT

As background to this essay you should be told now that I have been perusing a new book - “PERFUMES” - written by two experts on the subject of smell, Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. Early in the book I found this statement: “What scent drives men wild? After years of intensive research, we know the definitive answer. It is bacon.”

Hold that thought as I wander on.

Six blocks from my house is a sanctuary - a sacred place - an open air temple maintained by a religious community - the Brothers and Sisters of the Holy Earth. That’s how I think about it and them.

More literally it is called a P-Patch. An isolated piece of city property in the middle of a block, surrounded on three sides by wild blackberry bushes, unkempt woods, and on the fourth side by fences marking the back yards of several houses. The P-Patch is hidden. I found it last year only by wandering down a path leading away from a dead-end street.

The property is marked off into garden plots. Raised beds outlined by wooden frames and filled with rich dark soil, with pathways between the plots allowing access. For a small annual fee, people from the neighborhood raise flowers and vegetables and fruit trees in these plots - for their own use, but also to provide for local Food Banks serving the needs of the poor.

Though most of the P-Patchers have day jobs and professions and careers, they are farmers at heart who find great satisfaction in tilling and planting and growing on a small scale. They are old and young, male and female, in many shapes and sizes. Some are apartment dwellers without land, some have yards not designed for agriculture, some are friends who like sharing a project, some have families who do not share their farming tendencies, and some are just plain lonely and want the companionship of their tribe - the Green Thumbs People of this world who are not happy without a direct relationship with a patch of earth in which to grow things.

Alas, I am not one of these. Or I should say that I do not have a plot in the P-Patch and am not around often enough to tend one. Someday. It’s high on my life list to stay in one place through all the seasons to tend my own plot. Someday.

But for now I visit the P-Patch when I need to calm down and re-center myself in a sane environment. And to serve as a friendly witness to the enterprise of others. Visitors are welcome. They like and want Witnesses. Most of the tillers of the soil are what they call “P-Patch Proud” - and are pleased to brag a little about the quality of their produce. There’s just no way to avoid an unspoken air of good-humored competition over techniques and personal secrets and tricks of the farming trade.

The flowering fruit trees are in full bloom, and the hive of bees at the end of the P-Patch is already humming with activity. But it’s still early in the spring for planting most things. And this spring has been late and wet this year. Snow is predicted for the weekend. Because Queen Anne Hill is the highest ground in the city a frost is still a possibility. And having your garden fail because you were too eager makes you a P-Patch Fool.

So what is to be seen now is soil that has been prepared - cleaned of last year’s debris, mulched in with compost and fertilizer, raked and ready. Stakes and poles are in place for climbing beans and flowers and tomatoes and berries. The first week in May is usually the beginning of planting time.

Only one old man was at work when I was there on Friday.
“Can’t wait,” he explained. “Been cooped up all winter in the house.”
He knows he’s early - pushing his luck - but he’s been to the nurseries and has his plants and seedlings all ready to go in his closed-in back porch.
“Them onion people started it,” he says - “Already got their sets in. But I’m not an onion man. I’m a tomato man.  And only an idiot would plant tomatoes now. But I’m ready. Smell this.” He scoops up a handful of dark brown dirt and holds it under my nose.”

I smell.

The authors of the book, “PERFUMES” acknowledged that the smell of bacon drove men wild, but nowhere did they indicate the smell was available in a perfume bottle. Perhaps it goes rancid in a short time. But I agree and would follow a woman around if she smelled like bacon. The same for fresh-ground coffee.

Another scent missing from the book is the smell of planting soil in April. A woman who smelled like fecund earth would drive me wild. If Tango music was tangible - if you could run your fingers through the opening notes of “The New World Symphony” - or smell Frost’s poem about going down to clear the spring - or put naïve optimism in a bottle - or, well never mind flashy literary acrobatics - you know, if you are fortunate, the smell of unseeded soil in spring. Dirt - electric with possibility and promise.

I ran my hands through the dirt until I had it well-established under my fingernails. Then I asked the man if I could take some of it home with me. He gave me a quart-sized zip-lock bag of it, and as I write it is in a bowl on my desk in a place of honor. And the dirt is still under my nails.

This feel and smell of dirt in spring is an antidote to the frantic madness that takes over my life sometimes. I smell it. I touch it. I might even eat some of it - so that something elemental circulates through me and I am restored.

When I die I wish that my body and bones be composted - mixed in with dirt, and something planted in it that would grow and flourish and bloom.

If I only could, I would send you some of this sweet soil of late April as a simple gift, with the message: “Run your fingers through this.  Smell it. Close your eyes. Be calm. Be hopeful.”

Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Written Friday, April 4, 2008

WAKE UP CALL

A couple of restless nights.
Awakened twice by my cell phone’s ring tone playing the “Itsy Bitsy Spider”
I don’t have a cell phone.
But I got up to answer it.
Only once.
The second time I thought, “Let it ring. I’m not here.”

There are formal terms used by sleep researchers for this phenomenon.
I don’t know any of them, but I can tell you what’s going on with me.
Did you ever see a dog chasing its tail around in a circle and yapping?
That’s what I think my brain is doing when it makes up ring tones.
Just restless. Nothing important to do – nothing better to do.
Ring, ring, ring.

Or maybe it’s a sign of mild anxiety.
My grandson, age 12, and granddaughter, age 10, are coming for a week.
They’re both smarter than I am.
Faster than I am.
And a whole lot harder to fool than they used to be.
They’re at that age where no matter what you tell them – no matter how amazing – the first thing they say in response is, “I know.”
And they usually do.
I would throw that old backyard taunt at them, “Yeah, well prove it.”
But they probably can.

They’re big on dinosaurs. Junior paleontologists. Seriously informed.
I’ve been madly reading up on dinosaurs, thinking all the while that there’s nothing I’m reading they don’t already know. And I can’t even pronounce most of the terms and names well enough to make conversation.
But I bet they can.
So I’m anxious.
But not as much as I was.

On my way to town this morning I heard an interview on NPR with a medical scientist who said, “You have more bacteria cells in and on your body than you have human cells in and on your body.”

WOAH! I pulled off the road to think about this astonishing news.

That’s when I remembered seeing a book in the local bookstore full of pictures taken via super-power microscopes of the creatures that live on the creatures that live on our faces and noses and in our gut. The ones, that if they were dinosaur size and coming down the road would cause mass panic.
You’ve seen these pictures. They often appear in National Enquirer and other reputable scientific journals.

So I went to the store and bought the book.
And reproduced some of the photographs on my color copier.
So that when grandfather gives his “remember you’re in the Wild West” lecture on being careful around the ranch – “Watch out for spiders and scorpions and snakes – and especially things like . . . The Spiny-backed Boogersaurus, the Triple-clawed Cell Sucker, the Blue Widow Hairopterous . . . the Slimytoed Earwax Eater” . . . there might be a little more interest in the information I possess.
“Really?”
“Yes, I have photographs.”

Dream on, grandpa.
They’ll probably say, “I know.”
And they probably will.

That’s why I’m losing sleep.
Maybe the late night call was for me.
Ring, ring, ring.
“Yes?” –
“Wake up, dummy, you’re going to feel stupid for a week.”

Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Written in the first week of April, 2008

APRIL

The month of new beginnings. April equals Spring. (Though after my excursion last year into the southern hemisphere, I am reminded that April equals Fall in Argentina. But I am here and not there.)

Despite the headline of this website, most of the postings have been journal items and essays. April seems a good time to revive the other promised category - New Stories. Because I’m absorbed in the final detailed review of the manuscript of my big novel, Third Wish, before it is published in English – Yes, it’s happening– and because I’m also assembling a new novel based on my tango dancing adventures, my mind is cultivating the fields of fiction.

So. I will tell you a story.

__________________________________

MERRY APRIL CHRISTMAS

Marisol Machado had never been alone on Christmas Eve. She had never been without the promise of presents, the feast with family, a party with friends, or a tree to decorate. But now, at eight o’clock in the evening on the 24th of December she stood alone by the front window of The Southwest Sinderella, a fashionable boutique on a narrow side street in Santa Fe. Outside, the snow floated lightly down. Inside, the store was silent after she had turned off the tiresome holiday music.

Marisol Machado was a long way from home – Spain – and a long way from the man she had followed to Buenos Aires – Hector, the flamenco guitarist. Fleeing failed and foolish love, she had traveled to New Mexico for the winter, for the time being on the way to whatever Fate had in mind, for she had taken her hands off the steering wheel of her life and placed herself squarely in the hands of fortune. Not forever, just for the winter.
She had been drawn to the flamboyant clothes in The Southwest Sinderella. A shop featuring one-of-a-kind originals influenced by the traditions of Colonial Spanish, Navajo Indian, American Cowboy, and nomadic folk art. Outfits combining fringed silk shawls, leather vests with silver conchos, pleated velvet skirts, linen blouses with colorful needlework, and belts inset with blue-green turquoise stones. High-heeled snakeskin western boots in reds and pinks and greens completed the ensemble. The essence of Santa Fe Style.

Though Marisol was a temporary visitor without a work permit, she had so often visited the store and tried on so many outfits with such pleasure that she was offered part-time holiday employment. With payment in cash - off the books, of course. Her lively, affable personal style, Latin good looks, and fluency in English, Spanish, and French might be an asset to the shop. And so it proved to be. Moreover, she was also willing to work late in the evening and close the store. Even on Christmas Eve.

Through the shop window she saw a man walking down the opposite side of the street. Black overcoat, black beret, and a crimson red scarf wrapped around his neck and pulled up over his chin against the cold. “European,” she thought. Santa Fe was a magnet for European tourists. They came from all over the continent for a taste of the Wild West - cowboys and Indians, the art scene, and the cuisine.
“Spanish?”she wondered, as she watched the man. Spaniards felt an ancestral affinity for this part of the New World which had been settled by their people before the United States existed.

The man paused and considered the silver jewelry and Indian pottery displayed in the windows of shops already closed. As he turned to move on, he glanced across the street, noticed her, and pressed his hands together and then apart, asking if her shop was open. Marisol smiled, nodded yes, and with both of her hands she beckoned him to come.
He came.

"I’m surprised you’re open,” he said.
“Not Spanish, she thought – American.”
"It’s my job to stay late – there are always last minute shoppers.”
He glanced around the shop and smiled. “Beautiful.”
"Everything in the store is unique,” she said.
He turned his gaze at her and smiled again. “Yes.”
"Please take off your coat and take your time. Would you like a cup of hot spiced cider? There’s plenty still in the urn.”
"Thank you. Please.”

“A gentleman,” she thought.
By the time she had filled his cup he was already carefully examining the clothes. He took pleasure in touching the fine fabrics, spreading out the pleated skirts to reveal the hidden designs, running his fingers across the silk shawls, and examining the beads and turquoise with the eye of an appraiser who well knew the difference between what was authentic and what was imitation.

Marisol handed him the cup of cider. “These clothes are designed for women. Are you looking for something for a special woman?”
"No, but I have been to parties in Santa Fe where certain men would wear any outfit in the store with delight.”
“Gay,” she thought.
"But not for me. Is there nothing at all for a man?”
“Not gay,” she thought.
"There is perhaps. In the back room. No woman has ever tried it on, but I think that the right man might well wear it for the right occasion.”
"May I see it?”
"Of course. Just a moment.”

"This,” she said, holding the garment up for him to consider, was once what the Mexicans call a serape and what is called a poncho in Argentina, where men still wear them with pride in the countryside or at polo games or horse shows. This one began as a man’s serape, but the designer has split it all the way down the front to make it more of a coat or cloak, and, as you can see, the designer has added feminine touches that might make it too decorative for a man’s taste.”

The garment was a single piece of woven cloth, once with a hole in the center to allow it to be worn over the head, but now opened for easier access. Wide enough to cover the shoulders and the arms to the elbows, and long enough to reach below the knees in front and behind. Once striped in bright yellows and reds and greens, now softened with use and faded like the last colors of a desert sunset. 
The designer had added silver conchos with strings of bright ribbons hanging from the centers. The ribbons had amber beads tied at their ends. The head opening had been reinforced with yellow leather. In the center of the back was a colorful piece of antique embroidered tapestry from which hung a black silk tassel.
He took it from her, examined it closely, and said:
"Exquisite. A cloak to wear in a fairy tale.”

Marisol explained: “It has not sold, I think, because it is too long for a women, too strong perhaps. And, well, far too expensive. The serape is quite old – hand woven – an antique of museum quality. And the beads and silver, likewise.”

"Magnificent,” he said. “May I try it on?”
"Of course. You will be the first, actually.”

He stood before a three-sided mirror. Marisol noticed that he was only admiring the coat - not admiring himself in it. “No sale,” she thought. He removed the coat, folded it over his arm, and asked, “I’ll sit down and finish my cider? I trust I’ll not be keeping you. Will you join me?”
And invitation, not a question.
"Yes. I’m alone and the store must remain open late.”

He chose a chair. She sat down on a bench opposite him.
"Are you from Argentina?” he asked.
"No. I was there for some months on an . . . how shall I say . . . an adventure. Traveling, as I am here. But I’m a native of Spain, where I grew up, and where I must soon return.”
Before she could ask, “And you?” he took the initiative.
"Take me to Spain, where I have never been. Tell me about Christmas there – memories from any time in your life – anything and everything.”
Two hours later, urged along by his adept questioning, she had unwrapped all her Christmas memories – sometimes laughing – sometimes wiping away a tear – and sometimes surprising herself by the details she remembered. She gave him what he asked – anything and everything. Christmas in Spain. But he gave her no opportunity to inquire of him.

Just as he was about to insist on sharing his Christmas memories, he glanced at his watch, rose, and said “Thank you for your gifts. I must go.”
Holding out the cloak of many colors, he said, “I’ll take this with me.”
"Shall I wrap it as a present – for someone special?”
"No. Actually it’s for me. I often buy beautiful things just to enjoy their presence in my life for awhile. And also because I like having them available to give away when an unexpected special occasion arises.”
He looked away into the shop, as if wanting to preserve the memory of the colors and textiles and trimmings. His demeanor did not invite further inquiry. And she, Marisol Machado, was brought up as a proper Spanish Catholic woman who did not question men who did not invite questioning.

However. If he had said something like “I’m alone for the evening. If you are also alone, may I be bold enough to ask you to join me for a drink or dinner?” she would have closed the store and gone with him. Under the circumstances, an invitation provided by Fate would have been acceptable.
But he did not ask.
He paid, put on his coat, and accepted the serape in its plain bag.
"Thank you,” he said, as he opened the door to leave.
"Gracias, senor, Feliz Navidad.”
He closed the door and was gone.

Standing alone once more in the shop window, Marisol watched as he walked away down the street in the still-falling snow.
He stopped, turned around, and walked back toward the shop.
She opened the door. “Did you forget something?”
"Yes,” he said, and dropping his bag, he gracefully embraced her in his arms and held her close for what she would remember as an infinite moment. Cautiously, gently she hugged him in return.
Releasing her, he stepped back, smiled, held up his hand as if making the sign of a blessing, and said, “Merry Christmas.” And picking up the bag with the beautiful treasure folded inside, he turned and was gone again.

Marisol Machado stood in the open door, barely restraining herself from running after him. If he had so much as glanced back she would have run out into the snow to him. But he did not. And the pace of his walk as he turned the corner told him he would not return. Now. Or tomorrow. Or . . . ever.

Fate had brought her a present after all. An unimaginable memory.
Marisol Machado closed the door, locked it, and turned out the lights.
Later, on her way to midnight Mass, she was humming carols.
“Feliz Navidad,” she thought, as she crossed herself before kneeling in the church. Her mind was not on the holy baby Jesus, but on the man who had come to her at The Santa Fe Sinderella. She did not believe in angels, even if they existed. She did believe in Fate, though its shape was vague.
She knew it could not be summoned. Could not be compelled. Could not be predicted or explained. Only acknowledged and accepted. Fate may be cruel or kind, but it never plays jokes.
“So be it,” she said to herself as she kneeled in her pew to pray.

SIXTEEN MONTHS LATER, Marisol Machado was back in the United States. After returning to Spain and her family, she had found work as a journalist writing a regular column on international travel for a famous Spanish magazine.
Today, in the first week of April, she was in Portland, Oregon. After spending the morning in its Japanese garden to see the iris in bloom, she had explored its famous bookstores and coffee houses in the afternoon. For the last two hours she had sat contentedly outside in the April sun drinking tea, reviewing her notes and considering the passing parade of Portland natives.

Her waitress came to her table holding a package wrapped in bright red paper and tied with dark green ribbon.
"A man asked me to give this to you.”
"Which man? Why?”
"I don’t know. I didn’t really pay that close attention, but, anyway, he’s gone now. He handed me twenty dollars, asked me to deliver this, and walked away up the street.” She stepped out onto the sidewalk. “I don’t see him.”
"Are you sure that’s all you know?”
"Well, I might have seen him before sometime. Maybe in that antique shop across the street – the one with the “Closed” sign hanging in the door. He may be the guy who owns it. I’ll ask around if you want me to.”
"No, thank you . . . thank you . . . don’t.”

Marisol Machado untied the green ribbon, carefully pulled the sticky tape away from the red paper, and opened the package. “Oh, no!” she said aloud. But, yes. Inside was the coat of many colors from Southwest Sinderella in Santa Fe. And an envelope. Heart pounding, she pulled out the card and read the message written in elegant calligraphy:

“If I am ever asked to tell someone about the best Christmas Eve of my life, I will tell them about Santa Fe and you and this cloak. Remember that I explained that I would enjoy its presence in my life, and then give it to someone special someday on a special occasion. This day in April is that day and you are that person. The work of fate then, and the work of fate now. No more. No less. It is best that you do not know my story, but it is enough for you to know that you saved my life. Merry April Christmas.”

Marisol Machado stood up, took off her jacket, and draped the cloak around her shoulders. And sat down again. “Fate,” she thought. “Fate.”

And then what happened? You may well ask.
Answer: You may imagine. It is your right and privilege.
Always remembering, of course, that Fate, however fine, is unreasonable, and does not respond well to demands. But for those who trust Fate from time to time, magical moments may occur – let that be sufficient.

Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Several days in late March 2008

KINDLING FOR THE FIRE

Spring is slowly working its way up to 7,000 feet where I live. There’s still snow in the mountains above me. Lower down, between here and town, the first wildflowers are rising to the seduction of clear days and warm sun. My house is in between. Not much sign of fresh green around yet, though the earth has dried out beyond the muddy stage. When I look around me I imagine the new life that is moving just inches below the dirt about to explode. Any day now, KAFOOOM!

Finally freed of the clutches of shingles, my own energy is renewed and I am out soaking up the sun and cleaning up the winter clutter downed by wind and snow. Mostly dead branches of pinon pines and junipers. I collect this dry wood, break it into short lengths, and stack it on the west porch. At sundown I light a small fire of this kindling. And sit in a rocking chair enjoying the snap and crackle and smell of the privilege that is mine.

I say privilege because in most parts of this civilized world it is unlawful to collect and chop wood or build a fire out of doors. In Seattle I would be visited by the fire department and police, and fined for any outdoor burning. Even using the indoor fireplace in my Seattle house is limited to days when there is no wind or it is raining.

Here in the great open spaces of the west, wood cannot be gathered on public land without a restrictive permit. And no fires are allowed in National Parks or many public camping areas. If you have a fire in a designated space, you must bring your own wood.

Of course there are good and obvious reasons for these regulations. A huge percentage of the human race still depends on fire for heat and cooking. And in most of those areas, the land has been stripped to the bone. Dried animal dung is the only renewable resource. I actually built a campfire out of cow chips to see what it was like. Depressing experience. What a stench! It took two washings to get the smell out of my clothes. Maybe I should have used drier cow patties.

So I stick to collecting small kindling, building small fires, and sitting quietly with my mouth turned off and my imagination turned on. There is such a deeply pleasurable experience in having a bright fire to sit by out under the stars. Something ancient is stirred by staring into the flames – no doubt left over from the thousands of years when fire represented security and survival. I never go to bed after watching the last coals die without feeling calmed and contented.

I apply the notion of collecting kindling for fires in another sense. One that I use to begin my day and provoke my thinking and writing. These are phrases, words, notions, sentences, and thoughts of others gleaned from books I read.

(Several years ago I published a book, WORDS I WISH I WROTE, that consisted almost entirely of this material. The guiding principle was, “I wish I had said that, because I cannot express it any better.")

Though I try to be original in my writing, I know all too well that there is really nothing new to say. You renew existing truth as it passes through you for the first time and is recycled in your way of expression out of your specific experience. A creative writer’s real task is to mask and disguise plagiarism well, and rephrase everlasting wisdom in the currency of the language and metaphors of one’s own time. One is always building with used bricks.

Though my stringing together of words into sentences may be common craftsmanship, some of the beads on the string represent profoundly powerful ideas. That may be said with confidence because the ideas are not mine, but those that have been found in older, deeper quarries than mine.  If all I do is choose and polish and pass this lasting richness on to those who read my writing, well enough. Gold doesn’t rust.

For example, here’s a page of recently acquired kindling for my fire – what I’ve collected over the last month and re-read this morning. (I should note that, since these are out of my private, personal journal, and because they have been modified somewhat by me for my use, there’s no attribution.)
_________________

If nothing’s chasing you, don’t run.

Don’t cut anything you can untie.

You can exhaust yourself, but not the world.

Each one was the one and only. And if that riddle baffles you, then you don’t know much about love.

Before getting into bed, as if she was snuffing out a candle, she blew out that day’s tiny flame.

If you have an imagination that wanders far and wide, you can live far and wide.

If you know there is a door in the room of your life, you must open it and go through. Otherwise you will only be forever arranging and rearranging the furniture in the room in which you live.”

Joy is a fruit Americans eat green.

If you wish to be an artist you must learn to look at the world five times.
First to focus on the world immediately before you.
Then to focus on the world nearby.
Then to lift your eyes and focus on the distant horizon.
Then to look up and see the sky.
Finally, to close your eyes and see what you can only imagine.

tatemae (ta-the-mah-eh) Japanese – the reality that everyone professes to be true, even though they may not privately believe it.
hone (hon-neh) – the reality you hold inwardly true, even though you would never admit it publicly.

I should be content to look at the sea or a mountain or a river for what it is and not as a comment on my life.

The world is forever out of control.
The world sucks.
So? Embrace the suck and go on.

Advice from a man about swimming the English Channel:
“Start on dry land. Finish on dry land.”

He was never on time. He was never in time. But his timing was exquisite.

He founded a society so exclusive that he himself did not qualify for
membership.

The Labyrinth of the World.
The Sanctuary of the Heart.

Very short love story: She wanted a dog. He did not. And then one day she came home with two puppies. What? You can have a pet, too, she said. The next night he came home with a boa constrictor.

If you can’t be with the ones you love, love the ones you’re with.
If you can’t love the life you have, love the life you invent.
If you can’t have the life you want, want the life you can imagine.
If you can’t live the Way you please, please live well the Way you can.

The life you plan can get in the way of the life that’s waiting for you.

Sometimes I feel like I’m driving lost in the dark, but I can turn on my headlights, and though I can only see a little further down the road, I often get all the way home that way.

_________________

Enough. That’s this month’s kindling for the fire.

Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Good Friday morning, March 21, the 81st day of 2008
The birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685)

KIVA

If you are familiar with the Pueblo Indian culture of the Four Corners region of the Colorado Plateau in the American southwest, you will recognize the word: kiva. Perhaps you have visited the great ruins at Chaco Canyon or Mesa Verde or Hovenweep, where kivas have a place of paramount importance in the architecture. If you have been a back-country hiker in this region you may have seen or actually been in one of the many kivas left behind by the Anasazi – the ancient ones – when they abandoned their almost inaccessible stone villages more than nine hundred years ago.

Or, you may have been fortunate enough to attend the seasonal celebrations of the contemporary Pueblo villages in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico where kivas are still very much in active use. Seeing dancers representing buffalo and deer emerge out of the earth to the pulsing of drums on a cold snowy winter day is a never-to-be-forgotten experience.

Simply said, a kiva is a unique sacred space. Usually circular, walled and floored in native sandstone, and built underground with a roof of logs, wattle, clay and stone. The inner walls were plastered over and sometimes decorated. Most have a deep altar-like niche in one side, and all have a sipapu – a hole in the floor that is said to be the passageway between the lower and upper worlds.

Ranging from the size of a small bedroom to a chamber eighty feet across, the single space is usually eight to fifteen feet from floor to ceiling. The only opening is a square hole in the center, with access by way of a single ladder. The Great Kivas at Chaco Canyon and Aztec could hold several hundred people. The smallest in high cliff alcoves accommodated only a few. As far as is known, the use of kivas was exclusive to men.

Thick books have been written by white men speculating about the purpose of kivas. The original creators of these structures left no records. Modern Pueblo Indians do not welcome inquiries or allow visits from non-Indians. It is sufficient to say that kivas were and remain the center of ritual activities – religious and cultural. The power of their place in the lives of Indians of the southwest is unambiguous.

You may be somewhat surprised, therefore, to know that I have a kiva.

It is attached to my writing/painting studio here in the mountains south of Moab, set deep in the ground, and accessible by a hidden subterranean tunnel instead of a ladder. A small round kiva, twelve feet across and nine feet high – built according to tradition – log roof, plastered walls, with a stone bench topped with wooden slab seats around the wall, a niche in the east side, a sipapu in the floor, and a square hole in the roof open to the sky.

Why? When it was being constructed one of the workers, Will Chavez, who was himself a member of the Jimenez Indian tribe of New Mexico, not only had the same question, but he was personally offended by what he saw as a White Man’s Wannabe-An-Indian attitude.

I will tell you what I told him. I do not want to play Indian in any way. I simply wanted a small, private, sacred space to use as a personal chapel. A kiva seemed to be the most appropriate design for the purpose. A gesture of respect, to be sure, toward the traditions of his past. But built to serve the personal spiritual needs of a modern man who badly needs to sit in a special place from time to time and be quiet and still – well away from the cacaphonic noise and mad traffic of his usual daily life.

Will Chavez could accept and understand that. Once, after the kiva was completed, I found him sitting alone in it. He took my hand, and without any elaboration, he said he had, in his Way, added his blessing to the kiva.

Most mornings I begin my day by going into the kiva, where I first sweep it clean of what blows in through the sky hole or is left behind by visiting birds and rodents. I light a small oil lamp and a stick of incense, and place them in the wall niche. I strike a small bronze bell. And sit down. Hoping only that a few minutes in that sacred space will help preserve a sacred space in me – a wordless mindset that will carry me sanely through another day. It’s a stopping by a well to drink a cup of peace of mind. And to address a yearning within me for inner grace. That’s all. Nothing more.

Locals who know about my kiva help preserve the myth that I get naked in there, paint my body blue, do animistic dances, ingest mind-altering mushrooms, and make ritual sacrifices of live rabbits. I have encouraged this myth. A reputation for eccentricity helps preserve the solitude I seek.

I do not consume the bleeding hearts of bunnies, but only seek the quiet heart of a man who tries to keep in touch with himself in a sacred place.

This is not easy to accomplish when I am elsewhere. The noisy busyness of the world is an unyielding distraction. Sometimes in Seattle or in Crete I withdraw into the quietest room of my house, turn out the lights and close the shades, put a black sleep mask over my eyes, and adjust a pair of Bose sound-deadening devices over my ears. Alas, all too often, the retreat into inner space only results in sleep. A nap is not a bad thing, but, still not quite what I seek in my kiva.

On my travels I used to seek out cathedrals and mosques and temples, but the invasion of the chattering masses of guides and tourists carrying cameras and cell phones did not bring peace of mind – only homicidal urges – a desire to cleanse the holy places with assaultive screaming rages at the insensitive heathens. OUT! OUT! OUT! To avoid arrest, I avoid these religious compounds now. I say that a place of worship should not be a public museum except at very limited hours of the day.

Actually, I’ve found that great cemeteries at dawn are the only places where some sacredness of space is still available when traveling the world. How strange. The dead are better company than the living. And I am reminded that, in time, I will find, underground, ultimate peace of mind in the smallest sacred kiva space of all.

Meanwhile, when I sit in my kiva I try very hard to burn the image of the experience into the center of my mind, so that when I am far away and overwhelmed by the wonky world, I can close my eyes and sit in the kiva in my minds eye of imagination, take a deep breath, and be in that sacred space between the world above and the world below – between now and forever.

Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Tuesday morning, March 18, the 78th day of 2008
Spring weather: wind, rain, snow, sleet, hail, and sun – in 24 hours.

MENOPAUSE

“Maybe I’m going through menopause.”

A meant-to-be-light-hearted reply to those who ask how I’m faring with the course of my case of shingles. It is the case that surface manifestations have ceased – no more rashes and raw sores. The scabbed skin has sloughed off. Mild vitamin E cream has replaced cortisone ointment. And ibuprofen works now when only codeine would address the pain in the beginning. Even the spider bites, which may or may not have triggered the shingles, have stopped itching. Undeniably recovery is well along.

So, why the menopause comment? Ignorance and superficial information, I suppose. Several women gave me a harsh look and sharply pointed out to me that I will be over the shingles in a month, not years.

What I should say is that I have the smallest understanding of what women mean when they speak of hot flashes. For the past week every night has been passed with three hours of sleep, interrupted by an inner alarm - waking up feeling weird. Then WHAM! Overheated, sweating, and gripped by a bizarre desire to throw off covers, tear off my clothes and run out into the cold air.

But that passes. Wide awake, chilled and wrapped in bathrobe and blankets, I sit in the dark on the living room couch wondering What the hell is going on? After a week of this, I know the drill: Wait. Drink a cup of chamomile tea. Let my brain do whatever weird gymnastics is chooses. And try not to fall asleep crouched up on the couch – just get back to bed – because it’s going to happen a couple of more times before dawn. And then I’m going to have a weird day – be drowsy, irritable, and with either no appetite or ready to eat hourly. I can’t imagine putting up with this for years and years. Menopause was a bad analogy. Already I’m over that stage of shingles.

Several times I’ve run across references in nature magazines about insects that lay their eggs in the head or abdomen of other insects. The eggs hatch, eat up their host from the inside, and burst forth from the corpse. Maybe this is what’s has happened to me. I am a victim of an alien species that has laid eggs in my brain, which are now hatching and eating their way out. That’s what it feels like during the second wake-up fire drill around four a.m.

But all this will pass. I know this. And while waiting, the challenge is to practice what I often preach about any bad situation having opportunities.
My body is at war with a virus. My body will win. Meanwhile, my brain seems OK and available. So, for example, as long as I am overheated in the middle of the night, I might as well go ahead outside and see what’s happening with the sky. I’m rarely regularly up every two hours in the middle of the night. Distract the mind.

This week the new quarter moon and Mars were on display side by side, along with millions of stars. Actually, that’s not quite true. Neil Tyson, the astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium, says we can actually only see between five and six thousand stars on a clear dark night with an unaided eye. And, unless you are standing on a flat desert on a moonless night, the number of stars you can see is limited by your horizon – hills and mountains, in my case. So I didn’t actually see millions of stars. But I saw enough. At nine, p.m., midnight and three a.m. and five a.m. Five nights in a row. Each time, of course, the sky was different, reflecting the variable motions of the earth and the universe. And me.

Another coping mechanism was to turn on satellite radio while I am up. Thanks to Sirius and the World Radio Network, I listened to Radio Netherlands, Radio Prague, Radio Romania, Radio Australia, Rise and Shine Radio Africa, and Radio Ireland. The programs were mostly cultural – not the usual bad news and body count from regular radio. Nice to be reminded that some good things are happening somewhere.

As long as I was up and awake I could use the free brain time to think about things I’ve never deliberately thought about. For example, I tried to consider every bed I’ve ever slept in during my life. Looney? Not really. Imagining the beds led to sidetracks down other lanes of memory. Another night I tried remembering great meals – and the same thing happened. Instead of going back to bed in dread, I went feeling good about my life and looking forward to the next awakening in a couple of hours.

So, the simpler answer to the How are you? question is: still feeling weird and tired, but certainly better. This is the first time I’ve written in days.
A friend suggested that maybe I have Dutch Elm disease or Chestnut blight. Dead wood at the top of my tree. Perhaps I should consult an arborist. 

I started thinking about what I actually knew about menopause. And that led to buying a book about the female brain when I was in town on Wednesday.
A good read during the midnight wake-ups. Major update on hormones and chemistry and therapies. Turns out my knowledge was way out of date and a better understanding of what women endure was way overdue. 

It’s hard to explain to people that one residual result of having shingles is that I know a lot more about menopause. But that’s true.

Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Sunday morning, March 9, the 69th day of 2009

MONDAY REFLECTION

In town yesterday I saw a rare sight.
A young man and a young woman walking down the sidewalk together wearing T-shirts with absolutely nothing on them - front or back. Just plain cotton T-shirts – white, clean and uncluttered. No maker’s logos, no designs, no advertisements, no clever messages or autobiographical proclamations.
Silent T shirts, adding nothing to the visual noise of the world.

There are days when I want to greet the world that way.
Nothing to declare. No attention desired.
More out of being contented than frustrated.
Much to say, but no urge to get it written.
Not writer’s block, but writer’s freedom to be silent sometimes.

It is true that writing is mostly a way to be a good companion to one’s self.
It is true that writing is a way to live your life over several times.
It is true that if you write only to get the attention of others, you will never be satisfied. Because you can’t ever really know what others think.
This is especially the case with friends and family and neighbors. The closer people are to you, the less they will have to say about what you publish. 

It’s the people you do not know – the readers from far away - ones you will never meet – who will write to you and reflect on your writing. In part it is because they have imagined you. You are a projection of their lives and thinking. Fan mail is more about the fan than you.

This Monday morning train of thought reminds me of an anecdote I heard about Maurice Sendak, the great writer and illustrator of books for children. He tells a story about a little boy who sent him a drawing inspired by his book, The Wild Things. Sendak was so charmed that he returned the favor with a postcard on which he drew a wild thing, adding a note saying how much he appreciated the child’s drawing. The child’s mother wrote back to say that the child loved the card so much that he ate it.
Sendak said it was one of the finest compliments he ever got from a reader. The kid saw it, loved it, and ate it. 

Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Tuesday, March 4, the 64th day of 2008

LIFE LIST – PART THREE
Note: Fulghum has returned to the mountains, still nursing a case of shingles, and still thinking about the matter of having an active bucket list.
To catch up you can scroll down to parts one and two of this essay.

The high moment of my weekend was sitting on a floor with a group of little kids. Story time. Always a pleasure. Always a surprise or two, because little kids tend to deal their cards right off the top of the deck, face up.

It’s always a good idea to check in with your audience first.
“So,” I began, “What’s up?”
A tiny girl waves her hand with explosive enthusiasm.
“Tell me your name,” I say.
“PAMELA!” She shouts. “And guess what! Guess what! GUESS WHAT!”
“What?”
“This very, very day I am THREE YEARS OLD!”
She waves three fingers around for all to see. “THREE!”
“Great! Pamela, Congratulations! And what else?”
I ask because she’s still waving her hand.
“This morning I sat on my potty pony and did my business all by myself!”
“Great!” I say. “I know that feeling. I can relate.”
She’s still waving her hand.
“And what else?” I ask.
“AND I WIPED ALL BY MYSELF, TOO!” she shouts.
“Wonderful! How are you feeling about all this, Pamela?”
“JUST GREAT!” she shouts, jumping up and down, both hands in the air.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been where Pamela is – overjoyed with the simple accomplishments of independence. Capable of feeding myself, taking care of my business, looking forward to a party day in my honor with presents and cake, and being carried off to bed, with sweet dreams at the end of it - without a worry in the world.

On my Life List is the wish for one more day like that before I die.
However. . . .
It’s not going to happen. I am an adult. I’ve been around. I see what’s happening. I know too much about the realities of this world. Life gets and stays complicated. All too soon Pamela will know, too.

But if I am ever elected God, everybody in the world will get one of those days from time to time. Everybody. Surprise! You’re three for a day!
I’ll never understand why Whoever is in charge doesn’t make that happen. Why not? But that’s theology and we’ll not go there.
Remember to vote for me if there’s ever an election.

Reflecting on what I’ve just written, I suppose, if I am patient, and do live long enough, I will finally get back to where Pamela is – simplemindedly overjoyed by just being able to go to the bathroom all by myself, and willing to settle for that as a good day. 

Seattle, Washington - February 29, 2008

LIFE LIST – PART TWO
(Note: This picks up from Life List Part One (posted February 05, 2008). It won’t make sense unless you read and review Part One. Scroll down to find it.)

“Let’s do it!”
One result of the posting of Part One of this Life List essay was a pact with my friend, Gerard, to take a vacation together in Seattle, treating it like an unfamiliar foreign city instead of our well-known home town. The project is not as brainless as it first appears, but a subset of the principle that the good stuff is often close by, obscured by the myth that it must always be far away or long ago. Basic notions like these must be tested once in a while.
Now I have a willing co-conspirator. We shall do it.

Continuing down this road of shifting abstract intentions into actions, I thought “Why Wait?” in regard revising my Life List from Things I Want to Have to Things I Want To Give Away. Do it. See what happens. As a trial, I chose three close friends and sent them fine things. (Who? and What? are not important here – just the spirit of the gesture.)

How did they respond? All three were surprised and pleased. But. Two thought the idea good enough to require reciprocity. They had stuff to give me. For the same reasons. How could I refuse them? Now I have some nice new stuff.

Instead of simplifying and lightening my life load, I’ve only exchanged one set of good stuff for another set of good stuff. Well, it’s not a bad deal, actually. Just one I had not expected. The Law of Unintended Consequences kicks in once again. If you do unto others, others may be inspired to do unto you. Never the less, I shall continue the giveaway. This may get wonderfully out of hand.

In the same spirit of “Do It Now” I let three people know I wanted to come see them some time soon – for reasons I explained in Part One of this essay. Unintended Consequences again. One thought something must be wrong with me to pay what felt like a farewell visit. What kind of trouble was I in? They would come to me immediately if need be. (That took awhile to unscramble.)
Another had been wanting to come see me, and offered to meet me somewhere soon. And one understood and is expecting me this spring.

In other words, if it involves other people, the notion of a Life List is complicated by the “Life” part – turning a list of aspirations into a living experience means the lives of other people become part of the equation.
They, too, have lists. And, as I should have known, I am on theirs.

(This Life List consideration continues, but I’m back on the road to Utah and will continue this essay from there next week.)

Seattle, Washington, Monday morning, February 25, 2008

SHINGLES

If you have ever had shingles, you may slightly wince from remembered pain when you read the term. You know. And now I know. And that explains why Fulghum has not posted anything on this website for ten days.

Back story. On Valentine’s Day night I was bit by a spider on my shoulder while asleep in my bed in Utah. Happy Valentine’s Day. Whatever brand of spider it was, the venom is a neurotoxin - affecting nerves. And that apparently might have provoked a rising up of a virus left over from a bout with chicken pox as a child. It’s been sitting there, somewhere, waiting. Whatever stirs it up, the virus suddenly runs rampant through the nerves on one side of your body, exploding into a blistered skin rash that looks and feels like you’ve been scalded and then scalded again. Painful. Add headache, nausea, and flu-like ennui. Plus ugly body syndrome. Not good.

So? See a doctor. However. Doctors don’t really know too much about shingles. Shingles come. Shingles go. It seems that maybe stress and anxiety are associated with shingles. Either before you get a case but certainly after.  Doctor said that I’d feel like hell for two or three weeks until the mess clears up. And there were some pills that may or may not help. And some goo to put on the raw flesh that may or may not relieve the burning. And meanwhile the pain could be addressed with some narcotics that would put me in a stupor zone but also make me constipated, Of course there were some more pills for that - but don’t overdo the laxative. Then, by the way, there’s always the caveat that in one percent of cases people go blind, lose their hearing, or die. And, oh, one more thing, stay away from contact with pregnant women. Good luck.

It probably wouldn’t help to tell a kid with chicken pox that even though he will get well now, fifty years from now, like the return of Haley’s Comet, the virus will take one more shot. And one more time he will cower in the dark in his bedcovers like an enraged badger, glaring out at the world in irritable confusion, wondering why me and why now and just who is in charge of what goes on in my body. The answer then and the answer now is the same. Nobody knows for sure. Lie down. Wait and see.

Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Written in the second week of February, 2008

Despite a near-record winter snowfall, and despite the deep cold that has accompanied it, and despite that it’s still early February and winter is not yet finished with us – when I walk across nearby fields and along the frozen creek I see the signs of spring. Ambitious buds on the willows and oaks. The pale yellow of new growth on the cottonwoods.

And the old apricot tree planted back in homestead days is even further along – the slightest tinge of green leaves showing at the edge of the swollen maroon buds. It’s a chancy thing, but the tree has been around for a hundred years or more, and it must know what it’s doing. The confidence of that elderly tree throwing forth new life so early provokes the urges of inevitable spring in Fulghum. WATCH OUT! HERE IT COMES AGAIN! I shouted to the world around…

I pray the juice shall rise again in me. 
May I, too, bud, and bloom, and bear fruit once more.
Amen.

___________________________________________

TRUE LOVE

That’s the title of a book I produced in 1997. Not my choice of title. I wanted to call it “LOVE’S A BITCH AND IT HAS PUPPIES” – but my editor had the last word. Besides, her title more accurately reflected the book’s content - a collection of stories other people told me about love in their lives, with some added commentary on my part.

Many contributions came in the mail – but most were passed on to me in person in response to my sitting around bars and taverns and coffee shops with a sign that said, “Tell Me A Great Love Story And I’ll Make You Famous.” When people learned that all the royalties from the book would go to Habitat For Humanity, the love stories poured out. It was one of the best publishing experiences I’ve ever had.

The book, TRUE LOVE, is out of print in hardback now – though I’m told that copies are still available from the usual on-line sources. But the idea of true love lives on. The true stories are the best ones.

Walking through the aisles of my local supermarket yesterday, I noticed we are already in that season where the juggernaut of commercial love runs over us. Valentine’s Day!  Red and pink and white! Chocolate and roses! And just because you think it’s all bogus, you’re not out of the woods. What about the believers – those you love who expect hearty action? There’s not much to say except WATCH OUT! HERE IT COMES AGAIN!

Inspired to read TRUE LOVE for the first time in ten years, I was pleased to find something I liked well enough to reprint here – a line of thinking at an oblique angle to the main stream of Valentine’s Day.
(The essay has been updated and revised.)

_________________________

PERSPECTIVE

Love can be connected to an object.
That’s why we have drawers and boxes and trunks stashed with keepsakes whose meanings are known only to us. And sometimes love lies casually about us - right out in the open - imbedded in the most common things.

In a drawer in the kitchen of my house here in Utah is a set of tableware meant for daily use. Stainless steel knives and forks and spoons with teak handles. Danish. Dansk design. I’ve been using these implements since August of 1958 – almost fifty years.

These utensils were among the first items my first wife and I listed on our wedding present registry. We received the whole set. Within a few years several pieces went missing because my children employed them for excavations in the back yard when they were small. Some of the wooden handles acquired teeth marks, left by Findley, the beagle – a dog who could not be cured of chewing household furnishings. (He was finally exiled to live with a lady who would put up with him. She chewed tobacco.)

When I left the house of the first marriage, one of the few things I wanted was that set of tableware. It connected me to daily life with my children. Since then, as I have moved from house to house through the years, the knives and forks and spoons have moved along with me.

When my oldest son said he wanted to have them someday, I took advantage of the services of a company that specialized in supplying missing pieces of out-of-date tableware, and not only re-stocked the set, but bought all the specialty pieces like serving spoons, steak knives, and carving forks. Now I have the works - plus a few extras - in case another digging child or chewing dog shows up sometime, somewhere for somebody, long after I’m gone.

When I’ve oiled the wooden handles from time to time, I’m reminded that I admire these knives and forks and spoons. Useful, lasting, and, after fifty years, still elegant to look at and pleasing to hold. This cannot be said of many things in my keeping. Not even of me.

Holding a scratched and tooth-marked spoon while eating my Cheerios this morning, I reflected on its connection with love. I once loved the woman who helped me select it so long ago. I still love the mother she became to my children. I loved the many houses it has been in. I even loved the dog that loved chewing the spoon.

I love the memories of the many mornings spent using the spoon in all the seasons and moods of my daily life. I love thinking about the many people who have used the same spoon on so many fine occasions. I love the son who loves the spoon. And I love his son and daughter who will sit with me and use the spoon to eat their Cheerios with it this April when they come for a visit. (One spoon? Yes, for a ritual first bite and an explanation of the Power of the Spoon.)

If only the spoon could talk, it would tell them lovely stories. I hope my grandchildren will connect abiding memories with the spoon in time. Perhaps stories out of their lives will be added to mine and their father’s.

I hope they will come to understand that the spoon and its companion pieces are talismans of family love relationships. I hope they will understand what’s invested and embedded in this tableware – these furnishings of ordinary days – and their part in how that comes about over time. “Remember when . . .”

This sentimental attachment to knives and forks and spoons is one of the dimensions of true love. It’s not something I can rush out and buy for Valentine’s Day. It’s enough that I noticed it once again this morning, in the curved simplicity of an old spoon sitting in an empty bowl after breakfast.

Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Begun Saturday afternoon, February 2, 2008
All night, all day snowfall – light, fluffy, dry snow that kicks up like dust as you walk in it. The breeze-blown drifts quickly refill the tracks of all creatures – birds, coyotes, bunnies, and me - as we move on cross country in the white silence. Behind me, all trace of my passing is erased.

LIFE LIST - Part One

This essay was provoked by three events.

1. Last night I drove in to town to see a film – “The Bucket List.”
The pleasure lay in watching Jack Nickolson and Morgan Freeman act and interact. The premise of the film is an old question: What to do with your life if you are told you have a limited time to live. In other words, if you know you are going to kick the bucket, what? Laughs and tears as expected. And unexpected deep thought as I drove home slowly in the snowstorm.

2. I spent the rest of the evening rummaging through notebooks and files looking for several bucket lists of my own. Ones I had kept several times in my life. Found them. Considered them. And went to bed to sleep on what my bucket list might be now. Time to update the list.

3. This morning I went down to my painting studio to clean up and put away work in progress that had stalled, with the thought of starting something new. I stopped to read a sign I had posted on my wall several years ago:

“NOTICE FROM THE MANAGEMENT: You have more tools and supplies and materials for the road ahead than you have road ahead.”

Underneath that sign I had added this thought a couple of years later:
“CODICIL: You have more unfinished projects for the road ahead than you have road ahead. Finish something.”

Today I posted this addendum:
RED ALERT! – And you have more plans and ideas and inspirations and thoughts for the road ahead than you have road ahead. Get on with it!

After a long, long walk up the valley in the snow, I began this essay.

It’s not that I’ve recently received a medical death sentence.
But for years I’ve gone my way believing that life is a near-death experience. No fear. Just the fact. And sometimes I’m able to shape my thinking with that in mind. Now, in my 71st year, the thought crops up on my active screen more frequently. That’s why, for example, I went to Argentina for three months last year to learn tango. And why, while I was there, I went around Cape Horn by ship. These were items on what I’ve always entitled my LIFE LISTS.

(Not the same as New Year’s Resolutions. I gave up that self-flagellation exercise years ago. Better to make a list at the end of a year of all the good things I actually accomplished, and then back- date the list as if it was what I resolved to achieve in the first place. Nice feeling. Self-delusional, perhaps, but part of living a flourishing life is choosing your illusions well, yes?)

It doesn’t seem useful to share my Life Lists in full.
This essay is not about the specifics of Fulghum’s old lists.
Furthermore, many of the particulars written years ago are embarrassingly personal, foolish, naïve, selfish, or just plain dumb. As in “I can’t believe I ever wanted to do that or thought that was important or worthy.”

It is gratifying to notice how many items have a check mark beside them as having been accomplished. Or else carried out far enough to be satisfied that the goal was not worth achieving, even though the journey toward it was rewarding enough in itself.

Some entries have a line through them because I now accept that I do not have the mental or physical ability to retain them as active ambitions. For example, despite all the efforts and methods I’ve employed, being fully fluent in another language is not going to happen. And I no longer have the stamina or upper body strength to perform on a flying trapeze.

Limitations mean aspirations must be adjusted. Learning Greek gave way to learning the language of music. Tap dancing gave way to tango. The flying trapeze gave way to slack-rope walking. Realistic adjustment is not failure.

A few entries have a parenthesis around them.
These fall into special categories of things I might have done and could have done but which have shifted into the pleasure of seeing someone else accomplish the same goal with my encouragement. Learning to weld and work metal is an example. That’s still on my “possibles” list but no longer a priority.  However. Encouraging that interest in my second son and watching him achieve skillful proficiency is a secondary accomplishment. I’m proud of him – that he does well what I do not.

Other changes I notice upon scrutinizing my Life Lists:
Things I wanted to have are checked off or eliminated.