I would like to say that it was a perfect day, but Dawn and
I had already bickered, idling at the gas station before we left Lawrence. After
nearly thirty years, my wife is still too quick and I am still too slow.
But the sun was coming out to bright blue skies after days
of clouds, even though it was rising low over bare branches to the south, the winter
solstice – our anniversary – only a week away.
Dawn had informed me that we were going to see an exhibit of
Michelangelo and I had very readily agreed. And then, when we were approaching
only a few short blocks from Union Station in Kansas City, I saw a billboard
announcing the exhibit of Leonardo DaVinci. One renaissance man is much like
another, we more or less agreed. And so we touched and didn’t touch the models
of DaVinci’s brilliant vision according to the little placards. There were
wooden pulleys that pulled and flying contraptions that wouldn’t. The
reproductions of his paintings appeared cracked and crumbling just like the originals
we couldn’t actually see. And Michelangelo hadn’t painted the ceiling at Union
Station. Yet it was still magnificent so very high above our heads.
But one barista is not like another and Kristina would be working at
the Chez Elle, a creperie and coffee shop in the Crossroads. We took Broadway Street only to turn around to take Broadway Boulevard, instead. We found her more than an hour after lunch time. I would have liked to have hugged
her but the counter got in the way. We smiled and spoke warmly. There were
sugar cookies that she had baked under the glass – green and red sprinkles on
cream cheese frosting.
And I would have liked to have just looked at her longer and
I would have liked to have talked with her longer - even about nothing very
much - but she was working. I had gotten to know her at Aimee’s coffee shop in
Lawrence and meeting each other in passing has been as close to perfection that
we will get.
The asparagus tips and the Black Forest ham wrapped in a
savory crepe with some creamy sauce were some bites too few and yet more than
enough. The coffee was good - and not because Kristina made it. She had, of
course, but I had the iced tea.
Dawn and I sat and ate by a window, talking of nothing much.
The Paris skyline was on the wall. An arm’s length away, I watched my longtime
love catch first one wire of one earring – and then the other - in her scarf
wrapped around her neck. Folds of colored threads in a fabric of loose loops,
catching.
Her scarf reminded me a lot of Kristina’s colored skirt
wrapped around her hips – her younger body and legs sheathed in black. I hadn’t
noticed her earrings, or if she wore any - yet somehow I remember the loops on
the laces of her boots. We got our chance for hugs before we left,
Kristina’s voice so unmistakably hers in
my ear for a moment.
But the perfect day was still awaiting.
Dawn and I wandered into the afternoon, warm for December,
but maybe not for Kansas. But we were now over the line. We looked at old and
magnificent houses, stories on the hill, modern styles mixed with the old. Dawn
took my picture with the Performing Arts Building in the background and she remembered
that we had forgotten to get a photo with Kristina.
But it wasn’t the photo that I was lamenting. Once again –
once upon a time - it was that the time itself had moved too quickly. Thirty
years and a day have turned out to be so far from perfect and yet so close to
more than I would ever have been able to dream of when we set out.
The sun was lowering and Dawn and I got into our car and we turned
north on Summit when we should have turned south – and then we drove many
blocks south so that we could go north on 35. And then so soon curving onto I-70
west.
So many moments I would have held longer.
Leftover chicken-beer stew over rice a little too old by
candlelight at home. So savory. Plastic greenery over archways hung with Christmas
ornaments as old as our marriage. A little cheer.
Even the moment hours later when Dawn blocked my way coming out
of the bathroom after I had brushed my teeth, the look so warm in her eye, the
sound of her voice, soft. They are still close in my mind, not faded. To think,
if she hadn’t been too quick to say ‘yes,’ we would never have made it this
far. And, no, we never had kids. But we have come as close as we can come so
many times. And we reach for them a year
or a day at a time.
And now, today’s another day. I won’t remember every moment
of time lingering longer or shorter. I hope never to forget the looks and
sounds of imperfect love. There simply seems to be a lot of catching in life,
but not so very much caught.
I walk along the levee as late afternoon turns to evening.
The dark gray clouds overhead are roiled and scudding towards the north. I look
across the river to trees along the far bank that have mostly lost their leaves
for this year. As the sun nears the
horizon, I can see red rays touching the trailing strands of clouds and turning
them dark red. Almost the color of blood.
And then the earth turns farther around and in about a
minute all is gray again. But there is still light. Along the edges of the
earth where the cloaking layer of clouds haven’t reached is an irregular band
of yellowing blue. And up, higher, where the clouds are trying to break apart,
brightness. And there are electric lights, car lights - signs of human beings
everywhere.
I like to walk alone with myself in a world both scarred and
beautiful. I mostly see the beauty. What we have done to the earth and to
ourselves in our unceasing quest for happiness has already been done. It’s a
kind of spilled milk. And we should do better. And it must also be acknowledged
that nature, with its order, is also random and arbitrary, often destroying as
it builds up.
And, yes, human beings have also managed to do some things
right. People are nature too and we sometimes do some things in a harmonious
dance with the rest of nature. And so here we are at this moment in time. One
part of it all. A little too proud of ourselves as sapient humans. As if we,
alone, had created ourselves.
But why should I waste more time railing against human
hubris and the wreckage we have left in our wake? The mystery beckons. Why do I
see beauty at all? How can what I see as I walk along this man-handled river seem
so wondrous to me? What can it all possibly mean?
And now I am possibly leaning too far over that edge, as
well. The mystery will have to wait. Better to return to the hard gravel top of
the levee under my feet as I walk along the river.
I turn, now following the red tail lights heading across the
near side of the bridge into the city. Then I walk underneath the bridge and
out onto the other side.
There will be time. Eliot said it in Prufrock. Now I repeat
it. There will be time.
I pause, looking out over limestone boulders. The river
flows. The quantity of time spent in watching
and waiting seems not very important this evening.
Then, eventually, I head home. The sky – now darkening, a
rough gray – is reflected in the river below me as I recross the Kaw River
Bridge. Trees, sandbars, the muddy water, the Bowersock hydropower plant. And
downtown Lawrence ahead of me. And then, past South Park and Central Middle
School, and then onto New Hampshire Street.
I step through the front door. Everything has changed, but I
am not astonished that everything appears to be very much the same. Heraclitus
wrote more than two thousand years ago that no one can step in the same river
twice. I think that he was saying something about time. So very many humans
have.
I can walk across the Kaw River Bridge, turn, and walk back
home in about an hour. Often it takes longer. But each time I walk - each and every
step that I take is taken only once. Time does not wait for me. Or hurry on
ahead. Light speeds and appears to stand still. The passage of time is embedded
in every place and every thing in the universe. And yet there is so much to
notice other than the inexorable passage of time.
I will have supper with my wife. And that time, too, will
slip-slide away without our assistance. I am left with more questions than
answers.
But I can say this much. The last red rays of a setting sun
drew me outward. And the pale yellow light beckoned from the windows of my
home.
And I will give Mr. Eliot the last words:
There will be
time, there will be time
To prepare a face
to meet the faces that you meet…
I understand that it’s almost Thanksgiving, and all that, I should
probably just shut up and think about mashed potatoes and turkey gravy, but
seriously, folks, If I don’t somehow get this off my chest I might blow a
gasket. Perhaps I might at least loosen a belt or something as a precautionary
measure. This whole thing is likely just a colossal waste of time.
I mean, a man could spend his whole life looking for minute tapioca. And just so someone who shall
remain unnamed can thicken her pie filling. I mean, I walked up and down the aisle
where all of the baking stuff was – I’m sure that I’d found it there before - I
looked high and low and then back and forth again. And then I went all the way
around to the next aisle, just in case, and then I began repeating process
where I started. It must have been literally five or six minutes. Maybe four. And
then there it was, right next to the Jello where I had started looking for the
minute tapioca in the first place. Someone had put that thin little red box all
of the way down on the bottom shelf.
And then – and I I know you won’t believe this – the
buttermilk wasn’t right next to the milk. It all was starting to remind me of a
broken record. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I have bought
buttermilk. I have just walked into the store and have plucked a plastic bottle
off of the shelf in the cooler - right next to the milk - and that was that. But
today, after searching high and low and back and forth all over again, I even began
to think of asking someone.
And then I started reading the tiny little price labels on
the shelf where I though the buttermilk should be, and then, right where in
small print, it said buttermilk. Sure enough - two bottles had gotten stuck
clear in the back and I stretched my arm all the way in up to my elbow and plucked
and stuck one bottle in my basket.
I tried not to be unpleasant at the checkout – it being the
day before Thanksgiving and all, but there I was, wasting my life away, merely
stalking the elusive minute tapioca and buttermilk. I might have been doing almost
anything else infinitely more meaningful – or at least considerably less
tedious.
Well, I finally did get home. The weather was certainly
balmy enough for late November, but I won’t get started on that. And then, instead
of doing all of the things I had hoped I might do with my precious time while I
had been wandering around instead in the grocery looking for – well you already
know what - I’m certainly not going to waste even more time by saying it again.
But as I was telling you, instead, I sat down in this
comfortable chair and I began to write out this whole nonsense. I mean, really!
And if you’ve gotten this far, I completely realize that I am now compounding the
wanton waste of my irreplaceable time with this descent into more mere trifles
and tedium.
But think about it: I could have been taking yet another
breathtaking photo of the sun and the river – rising like clockwork, day after
day - flowing to the ocean, day after day. I might even have clambered down to
the water’s edge and written my name in the sand with a stick where the river,
rising after rain, would wash it all away. I know that all of that might not
have mattered very much to anyone else, but at least I wouldn’t have been
wasting my life searching all day for a little box of minute tapioca.
But no! No! I had to go the store and get buttermilk – and
other assorted items. Well, at least I actually wanted the buttermilk so that I
could make waffles for Dawn and myself. For waffles, I toast the pecans and
chop them coarsely on a cutting board that I made way back in high school shop,
where Mr. Penner had told me to take my time with the sanding. And I did. And
now I still have that cutting board, maple wood, joined with dowels and glue to
walnut and then more dowels and glue and more maple wood. We used bar clamps. And
I sanded the boards with sandpaper and my hand. That is how you spend time. And
I could show you the cutting board, if you don’t believe me. But looking for
minute tapioca and buttermilk? I digress.
Yet one more thing: we usually have real maple syrup. And of
course, I might tell you that waffles are a time consuming process, the
toasting, the chopping. And there’s the dry ingredients, the separating of the
eggs, the beating of the whites, the oil - and yes – finally, the buttermilk.
And there were steps down into the basement to retrieve the waffle iron and
then all of those steps back up to our kitchen. There’s more, so much more, but
I should, perhaps, spare you the tedium of my life.
Of course, you should understand that waffles straight from
the hot waffle iron to the plate are wonderful. But consider this point: In the
time it took to buy that pint bottle of buttermilk, the sweetness of the syrup
and the chew of a crisp and fluffy waffle topped with toasted pecans is over.
This is pretty much the story of my life!
So much time spent doing something again and again, like
walking to the river, maybe picking up a
rock on a sandbar near the edge of the river that looks more or less like all
of the other rocks – but some color or texture or shape catches my eye - and I bend
down and I pick it up and carry it with me for a few steps and then I chuck it
into the river. Sometimes there’s more than just one splash. And then, as it
sinks, my life passes before my eyes.
And yet so much more time will be wasted. Simply wasted.
Yes, there will be waffles. And so here is the question I’m now left with: How
can I have one thing without the other? And why do I waste so much time
complaining about the process, but even more, about all of my time wasted when
the time that I have in the first place is an unexpected gift to me? Neither
the beginning nor the end of it has been or will be up to me.
It’s there in the middle of aisle number 7 that I do care –
and not only always about myself. And so
many times I care about who I am with and where I am and the meaningless thing
that I am doing. I care! I might have a screw loose. Here on the one hand, I do
want every moment in the middle to matter. But every moment is connected to all
of the other moments with the arrow of time moving inexorably forward as if life
was like a needle thrust through happenstance beads strung and simply along a
string. And if you don’t buy buttermilk, you don’t have buttermilk waffles.
It’s no revelation to say that I can’t get waffles with my
wife -one bite at a time, pausing to talk about the syrup or the toasted pecans
yet again – or something else that we probably will have forgotten about before
I’ve sopped up the last of the maple syrup on my plate – all of that without
someone else also taking time to stock a shelf or tap a tree.
And the difference between wasting and spending and taking
time isn’t as clear to me anymore. And, if you’re looking, there’s color and
texture and shape that might catch your eye while you think that you’re just trying
to find a thin red box. I’ll tell you, just in case, that the minute tapioca is
right by the Jello – on the bottom shelf. But it probably won’t there be if you
look for it there. Mr. Penner’s advice is still sound. Take your time. Some
beads just have to get strung before you get to the one that you want.
And so I suppose that walking to the river is not unlike
going to the grocery store. But neither are they entirely the same. And life is
not all toasted pecans and real maple syrup on a waffle. And finally, one
metaphor is surprisingly like the next one. And sometimes everything just gets all
mixed up.
It’s all just life, after all – more or less. And I have indeed
wasted so much of my time. And maybe you, too, even now, are wishing like me,
that I hadn’t just said something once again that has already been said so many
times before. If only I had at least gotten a few more splashes out of this
stone.
Oh well. Now that I’ve scribbled this all out, it’s actually
time to make the waffles. It will go down pretty much as I’ve described. I
already have everything thing that I need. I didn’t even look at the price of
the buttermilk. And the time wasn’t really that much when you step back and
look at nearly sixty years And the
weather was balmy for this time of year.
I stopped on the way home to talk to three brothers across
the street - three sons, three young boys - raking leaves and writing Happy
Thanksgiving on their sidewalk with chalk. Along with the sentiment there was
something that they said was a camel and below, also a small, chalk turkey,
drawn by tracing around one of their hands. I put my hand on the sidewalk and
Zach took his time tracking around each finger. It was only a few minutes that
I paused. I had waffles to make. And I’ll be thankful for pie tomorrow.
The dark red bricks of Central Middle School, were stacked
like blocks next to a trampled back yard - lined for football, the grass
fading. I stood there, looking.
I had caught the answer before I had even gotten to South
Park, where two apparent lovers sat at far ends of a black iron bench. They scootched
over as a photographer waved them towards each other from where she was
standing near the flower beds - some flowers still blooming in mid fall - her
long lens catching multiple images of the lovers as they kissed and kissed
again. I had caught some splashing from at least twice as far away.
I had earlier asked for a refill at Aimee’s and as Abbi had scooped
ice from a bin, she had asked: tea or happiness?’
Good question, I thought.
And for a split second, I was caught betwixt - then I noted
the question onto a scrap of paper. Nimble matters. But no time now.
My quick answer, on walking along the sidewalk with my
refill, had been this: Tea and happiness are nearly the same. I had found the truth,
really, in a heartbeat. They both pour easily, if you please. And I’ll play
with the words, if I please. I think that the secret is to have your glass
receptive.
Sometimes, if your face is turned towards the source of the
pouring, you get splashed. Sometimes, tea and happiness spill over.
A woman working with wood in her garage off the alleyway between
13th and 14th streets had tipped some my way as I passed
- some of her happiness into mine as we chatted.
My iced tea refill was half sipped by the time I had reached
the field at Central.
If you spin out in the open, your arms outstretched, your
eyes wide open, everything blurs in a mostly pleasing sort of way and then, when
you stop, the world wobbles a little. You might as well have just drunk a very
fine wine.
And then the last half block through the leaves on the sidewalk carried my
foot falls home.
I opened the front door and then still more happiness poured
from my wife’s eyes, changing and unchanged for the last thirty years. We
caught each other for a few moments. Sometimes happiness is the easiest thing
in the world.
Then refried beans, reheated, from a container in the
freezer, then wrapped in a tortilla, reheated a little more. Some yogurt and
salsa on top. Kale on the side. It’s as good as it gets – and it’s just refried
beans.
It is who you see and how you ask, of course.
And then before going off to book group after the dishes
were washed, I cut an oversized Serpente squash from the vines in the garden for
Susan, who later served us fake cheesecake on paper plates for dessert. ‘It’s
so easy to make,’ she had said. And her laughing at the silly squash had splashed so
easily. The thirty or forty years between Abbi’s and Susan’s ages seemed to make
no significant difference at all. Tea and smiling women go together
like ice in a receptive glass. But don’t just stand there.
Happiness and tea can be poured. If there is a secret - and it
is not that well-hidden - it is simply how you hold your glass. Refills – now I
am being specific about tea at Aimee’s – are included in the price that your
pay at the register. Consider who and how you ask, but refills shall be given.
Whether you call it tea or squash or happiness, the words
are not so much the difference. The point is to ask for what you want and to
give freely. The result is a refill of what you naturally desire.
The harder question is this: why would we withhold our glass
when, for example, iced tea is so simple – it’s just ice and tea – and water –
poured?
And like tea, happiness can be similarly refilled with a
smile. You truly just have to know who and how to ask. If you ask me, I think
that you could walk out the answer for yourself in a few fortuitous blocks.
Invisibility is not that hard to achieve. Of course, it was dusk
turning to nighttime and the kids and the parents were watching where they were
walking. And they could see that our porch light was on. But I was certainly watching
them as they came, illuminated by that same pale light. I stood next to the limestone
porch pillar, the last of the summer’s morning glories and the oak leaf
hydrangea about my head and shoulders. I was clothed in the color of shadows,
standing motionless except for some deep breathing. There really was no reason
to expect a 210 lb. man to be standing there at all - except that it was
Halloween night. I was invisible.
I could hear the kids telling each other that this was the house as they hurried past
me. Last year there were these two dummies, and then one turned out to be real.
It was Pumpkin Head. And there have been years before that.
From where I stood this year, I could hear a kid tell my
wife who was handing out candy at the front door that ‘that guy’ had scared him
so bad last year that he had nightmares. Of course, I was happy to see that he
had come back for more.
The girls from across the street paid me the high compliment
of saying that I looked creepy even when they knew it was me underneath my cloak
of invisibility. They had skipped my house several years earlier - even with
their mother with them. Back then, even candy couldn’t entice them to our
porch.
A neighbor, from two houses over, walked up the walk behind his
daughter as she climbed the porch steps. I moved soundlessly up behind him as
he asked Dawn, who was standing with the candy on the porch, “Where’s Bert?” A
pumpkin-headed dummy was sitting at a card table just to one side of the
sidewalk and physicists aren’t easily fooled.
I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned and exclaimed,
“Claude Rains!” I had my face wrapped in an ace bandage, my eyes covered by
plastic purple slatted glasses. My fedora was a little rumpled. I looked the
part of The Invisible Man - if you could see me.
It had still been dusk when Keller, the seven year old girl
from down the street and her dad walked past me, waiting by the pillar where I
could easily overhear them talking to each other as they went by. They turned
and then they stopped part way up the front walk to wait for Keller’s brother,
Owen, to catch up. He was still across the street. I took one quiet giant step
out from my shadows as he was crossing and Keller was looking the other way. I froze
again.
I couldn’t figure out who she was dressed as, but she was aqua
colored from her head to her feet. Then I called out her name in a low voice,
“Keller.” Her dad saw me then but he didn’t give me away. Her older brother
came up and I called out again, just loudly enough to be heard, “Owen.” He
looked over at me and figured it out right away. I had talked to him earlier in
the day about his own costume. I had not really changed that much since then.
He walked confidently to the porch, but Keller was
uncertain. She had suddenly seen The Invisible Man standing still where there
had been no one standing only moments before. She stood frozen in her own way
to the sidewalk. Her dad urged her to hurry and go get the candy and then they
could run away. But she wasn’t sure enough about what she was seeing to do
anything at all and she kept looking at me for some sign that nothing really scary
was there.
Her brother came back from getting his candy, and then
finally Keller grabbed her dad’s sleeve and hurried him up to the front door with
her. And then, as they reached the sidewalk and turned up the street, I could
see her aqua face looking back at me from over her shoulder. I had remained
almost motionless, but I do hope that she saw me eventually waving.
At some points in the night, The Invisible Man just wandered
the yard. Sometimes the kids came so fast, I just couldn’t make it back to my
shadows. I grabbed a bold one or two and chased a few – an advancing step and a
word were all that it took. I materialized as a very large dark scarecrow in the
tall zinnia stalks in the flowerbed near the street - three girls daring each
other to go touch my outstretched hand.
And I was back in the middle of the front lawn when a young
mother turned her head and noticed me standing there in the grass. She stopped
about where Keller had paused. I was no more than three or four giant steps
away from her. Her husband and her child had already gone up to the porch.
“That’s not real?” she half-queried her husband. He quickly
replied, “No that’s real.” I stood, motionless as a statue, as husband and wife
disagreed back and forth several more times. Eventually, as these things go, the
father and their child came back from getting the candy and the young mother
said emphatically one more time, “That’s not real!”
I took one step towards her and she screamed.
Music to my ears.
And the kids just keep getting younger – and older.
I feel as if I am drowning in my words. My thoughts and
feelings condense to drops. Phrases and lines have trickled down. Observations
and experiences become streams and rivers. And so soon I’m flooded out of my
mind.
What is a metaphor or a simile good for when so many poets
have parted the waters like Moses?
There is nothing new under the sea and on dry land a glass
of cold water will quench your thirst when you are thirsty.
From their side of the glass, everything said has already
been said. The image makers, the storytellers, the rhymers of rhymes and the
teller of tales. Beauty and truth and truth and beauty. Tragedy and ongoing
comedy.
And yet from my side of the glass, I wonder if this might be
my first time. So swim I must. At least I’ll wade in the water.
The toad on the riverbank has no new song to sing, but he
and I might have something to say even if we are the only ones awake underneath
the moon.
And then I heard the katydid and I walked over to where she
was calling. And when I began to tell her of my woes she just tittered.
“Look over at those lightning bugs flying over the grass,”
she chirped. “Not a word do they speak, only a streak in the night - over and
over again. All night long, not a song,
but a fleeting, glimmering glow. If you want to write you should join the
cacophony - the torrent - whatever you want to call it.
“Talk to the moon and the stars if you want to. They have
time. Write words if that’s how you want to express yourself. You’ll never,
ever make the sun come up in the morning, you silly little dribble.”
And then, Katydid laughed. “And look over there. That
lightning bug just got published.”
~ 18 min. video: My story and a reading of 'The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' by T. S. Eliot.
Text:
Cracked Blue Pitcher
Productions presents “The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T.S. Eliot:
Read by Bert
Haverkate-Ens
I do not wish to make a presumptuous pronouncement, but I’m
not sure that can be avoided if I open my mouth. Better for you, perhaps, to see
if you can find truth and beauty within yourself, or, perhaps out underneath
the stars above at night. When I step outside in the wee hours of the morning,
often there is no genuine silence. The world seems to hum. It sounds a lot like
my refrigerator. I have thought about trying to find the source of what, to me,
seems like dull noise. In the absence of many of the noises of the day – often
I still hear a siren moving through the night – this humming intrudes into the
sense of clarity that I seek. I suppose if I could find the source of the noise
- I would just follow my ears. After all, few people would be willing to get up
out of their beds to try and stop me. I would just pull the plug. But something
almost surely would go bad.
So I don’t.
I am just imagining that I am telling a story here and
reading a poem that reveals truth and beauty to me. YouTube has kindly agreed
to store this recording on their servers and make it available to anyone who
wants to listen for a click. It seems reasonable. How they make a buck out of
it is their business. Time – and not money – is the value at stake hear. But
never mind.
Late last summer, I walked into the Social Service League. I
was on my way to the river, a walk I take nearly every day. The thrift store
was in temporary quarters across the street from the Douglas County Courthouse.
I’m not saying that I discovered a miracle in that cluttered and cold, dimly
lit, nearly abandoned warehouse space. It’s too soon to tell. But I might have
found part of the great mystery of the universe.
On the shelves at the Social Service League, among all of the
twiddle and the other odd stuff, was a blue pitcher. The color and the very
pleasing round shape appealed to me. I held it in my hands. The ceramic was
smooth and cool to my palms. There was a chip or two and some apparently
negligible cracking but I wanted the pitcher. It was in a thrift store, anyway.
I then browsed the poetry section of the used books. On the
top shelf, I saw a pale green copy of T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland and other
poems.’ I had that very book at home, the black and white slightly enigmatic
photo of Eliot, his chin resting on his hands folded over a cane on the cover.
I suppose, it might have been an umbrella. The photo was cut off below his tweedy
elbows. Maybe the book could be a gift.
At the counter, they asked for and I paid two dollars. I
didn’t get a receipt so I don’t know how much for the cracked blue pitcher and
how much for poems I already had on my bookshelves.
I carried the pitcher and the book with me as I walked. I
had slipped my digital camera into my pocket before leaving the house and I posed
the objects among the petunias in the planter boxes along Mass St, and in other
places.
If time is the preeminent value we are talking about here, I
had gotten my money’s worth before I even got back home. I cleaned up the
pitcher a little and filled it with water. When I came back some time later,
the pitcher was empty and the counter was all wet. To me, it was clear why someone
had donated the pitcher to the Social Service League. It didn’t hold water.
Still, it was a beautiful object. I was happy to have it. I place it around in
several different places in my yard. Finally I put it into my little garden
pond after the ice from the winter had melted. It seemed suited to its element.
Occasionally, the wind would rock it enough so that water
spilled into its mouth and it would fill and sink to the bottom. Easy enough to
reach.
Eliot, on the other hand, was confusing me some. I carried
the thin little paperback with me now and then. I could hardly make any sense
of the Wasteland, though some individual lines would make me laugh. But ‘The
love song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ continues increasingly to bring satisfaction
to my soul. I don’t particularly mean anything much by that word, ‘soul,’ I
just don’t have a better one handy. I don’t think I’m especially religious
anymore, but since things mean something to me – even if only apparently – I
suppose I might have some sense of the sacred in me somewhere. I had a
philosophy professor once tell me that it was difficult to tell the difference
between the voice of God and indigestion. I know I cannot.
But Prufrock gets to me. ‘Let us go then, you and I/ when
the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a
table;/ Let us go …’ Well, Eliot goes on for several pages. I think that he is
talking about time. He uses the word ‘time’ directly any number of times.
I first read this poem years ago. Before I got married,
even, and that was half a lifetime ago. Thirty years this year, if you’re
counting. One night -I don’t know how all of this happened - I read the entire
poem out loud on the telephone to a friend of mine who is completely blind. I
could hear her breathing in my ear. It turns out, I have never read that poem
better than when she was listening. Of course, I have read it silently and out
loud for myself and also for a few others, both in fragments or whole some
times since. And now I would like to share Mr. Eliot’s poem with you. If it
doesn’t mean anything to you, if you don’t enjoy the sounds of the words and my
voice, am sorry. Or maybe it was my story that soured you. Time is what can
never be recovered
But if, and I trust you, if there is any stirring in your
soul as you listen to me read, go to the Social Service League – or find a
street performer - and give them something for their time and stuff. You don’t
have to tell them that Prufrock sent you. But gratitude should be paid. The
universe is a vast and random place – but not without some personality. You and
I are part of the universe, after all. And I, of course, I thank you from the
bottom of my heart. I think that I enjoy reading Prufrock more if someone –
even if I am only imagining you – is listening. Some mystery is involved.
So now, Cracked Blue Pitcher Productions presents “The love
song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T.S. Eliot:
"Let us go then, you and I, …
**
~ 8 min audio: My reading of 'Prufrock' with sampled soundtrack from 'Still breathing.'
The words are the same, but the sound is different. You may or may not hear anything differently. If you do, it might have to do more with who you are at the particular moment. Some things simply take time and attention.
My resolution is pretty good. My memory card is organic. I
framed her image in the window of the bike shop on Delaware. Her fingers went
through her hair – light brown, soft – I had held it for a lingering moment
when her arm couldn’t reach her collar. She had ridden last year and accidentally
tumbled onto her head and shoulder on the bike trail below the levee months
ago. Later while she had been abroad, her bike had been stolen. She was picking
up a new used one. Now, as I watched, she pulled her hair tight and thick into
a bundle in one hand, the other hand manipulated a rubber band in her fingers
as if she had done it a thousand times before.
I watched her carefully as she turned to face me, one strand
slipping away from her pony tail like in thousands of pony tails I had looked
at before. It’s physics I tell you – the way they bob and swing, the wind the
familiar force that makes the tail end of the hair flutter. This wasn’t
physics.
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. My heart must
have been beating, but I didn’t notice. The baker had asked me if she were my
daughter. My imagination had not stopped hoping since we had finished the coffee
and pastries and walked to the bike shop. My resolution isn’t as good as I’d
like, but I don’t want a new camera for Christmas. What I want is for what I
want – mostly I want to have what I have and always to want more than I can
have.
We rode across the bridge together. From in front of her I
looked out at the sun on the river. The day could hardly have been brighter. I
could see quite clearly her joy entering my mind, the wind in her face, her
voice, carrying as far as my ears. She was simply so happy to be riding her new
bike. I suppose I will have to refresh my image of her pony tail, but that is
not what I am trying to tell you about.
How could I have known what I wanted before I saw someone
else’s daughter in a coffee shop more than a year ago. And the look in her eye
as she looked at me? It was more than imagination.
I had made some videos – one of my wife riding a bike along
the Haskell Creek Trail – and she had seen them. My young student
cinematographer friend told me as we rode that morning towards the sun that the first thing
I should do is improve my camera resolution and she asked me what I wanted for
Christmas. We were out along the levee by then and I told her that I really
didn’t want anything. She laughed and said that was what her boyfriend had told
her when she had asked him. I didn’t say much more, but I couldn’t really tell
her that I hadn’t really told her the truth. But it wasn’t a Christmas thing.
But if I could watch her pony tail, fluttering in the wake
of her smile, once or a thousand times more, I could possibly live with that.
She will always be someone else’s daughter. But that summer morning, she was
riding bike with me.
**
Postcard to a traveling friend:
I had simply neglected my work this morning. A househusband’s work is
never done. But the weather was perfect for a bike ride. But in the other room my
wife was slamming the school books and muttering. So I instead unlocked just the
one bike, but at least I didn’t leave without uttering those words a spouse
longs to hear: “Do you need anything from the store?”
Well, when I then rode past your place on my way to the store, I knew that you were already playing hooky yourself and wouldn’t be back for
a couple of weeks. But “I was thinking of you” is always a good way to start a
postcard. And to be completely authentic you should conclude with, “wishing you
were here.” But I was standing by the red bell peppers by then.
And you won’t believe it, but I will tell you anyway. I came
home without the eggs my wife insisted were essential for a happy marriage.
I could have cared less, or was it instead: I couldn’t have. I
should have cared about someone or something and truly I had and I would. But
the bright blue sky was in my eyes. Friends and lovers might be just over my
shoulder or across the deep blue sea. Imagination is sometimes the next best
thing to reality.
And so here I now sit. My bike, locked up on the porch. Even
my cat is taking a nap. Maybe after lunch I can go for swim. I know a quiet
pool were the fish won’t nibble at your tuckus. And the skies are not cloudy
all day.
Or maybe I’ll take a short nap in the sun and then I can
reopen my eyes. And maybe my wife and I can take a bike ride after supper. And maybe I can ride again with you still later
in the month.
When no one is speaking except the wind and the water, you
begin to hear with the elements of your being.
Stars exploding. Then hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and the
other elements – coming back together to form the world. And you and me.
But long before conscious awareness. Before male and female.
Before words. The wind and the water were speaking. Have been speaking. Perhaps
they began by singing. A deep breath becoming music. A song? Could what I am
hearing be a song? How could I – so very, very young – how could I possibly
know?
And yet when there are no sounds but the wind and the water,
I begin to listen.
How could I hear the song? A song? The sounds are very, very
old. And living.
… hhhaaaeeeiiiooouussshhh …
Singing.
Softly against my cheek.
Singing.
Whispering.
Singing.
Song without self-awareness …
And my mind chatters on. What am I – this stutter of me? What
am I missing? I barely have ears.
But when no other voices but the wind and the water are
speaking, I begin to hear with the elements of my being.
I begin again.
What if what I am hearing is this? But what am I hearing?
Wait. What if? But when the only sounds are the wind and the water trying to
make up their minds, there really is no need for me to interrupt. It is enough for
me to make eye contact with a drifting cloud. Or nearby, the ripples on the
sky-reflecting lake at my feet. The sun winks at me as if it knows something
about what the wind and the water are saying. I should listen. I should listen.
But I feel as if I should say something. I feel … I want to join the
conversation. But what human word would belong?
I make a few notes for myself. Perhaps I could send a card:
to whom it may concern. Later. Much later. I should listen. Begin to listen. Maybe
one day I could find utterance worthy of their conversation, but I think that I
am not old enough yet for what the wind and the water are saying. Their
thoughts are too subtle and enduring for words. And maybe they are singing.
I don’t understand.
I listen. I begin to listen. I am drifting off. Naptime for
me. Let the old ones continue their conversation. The wind and the water…
Maybe it is a song. One very long song. Could it be a song?
How would I know? My mind keeps trying to say something, but
only manages a few fragmentary words. But when no one else is making a sound
but the wind and the water, I begin to hear something with the elements of my
being.
**
And this recording barely captures the sounds I heard. And now that moment - many moments - are merely memory. But perhaps I will listen to the wind and the water again. Who knows?
A kind of love letter. This one, about little loves. And somehow I go long and sentimental.
Spoken version: About 12 minutes, with photos of wildflowers.
Written text:
Wildflowers
Bert Haverkate-Ens
Perhaps a simple salutation would suffice for a beginning. ‘My
dear’ and then would follow a long ellipses.
But I thought of you. And only you, however short-lived was the
glimpse of your eyes looking into my soul. I was wandering in an alpine meadow
in the high Colorado Rockies. Old enough to think clearly about the difference
between wildflowers and women. But it seems that my emotions had yet to catch
up with the rest of me.
There was such a profusion of wildflowers among the grasses.
Over the years, I had hiked at these elevations before. Maybe, this year had
been a good year for rain. Maybe it was simply the season. It was late July.
But my mind slipped from seeing the field to seeing
wildflowers one by one. I knew only a few by name. And then a kind of flower I
had never seen before caught my gaze. And then another. And another.
And then it was you that I missed. I suppose it sounds
silly. I was only to be gone for a week. And in truth, I often didn’t see you
for longer than that when I was at home. And then it was not much more than a
smile and a word or two – some change from a few bills in my hand – and then
often I would simply stare out across the street until only a few ice cubes
remained in the bottom of my egg creme.
Of course, it wasn’t that. And it was not just you. But it
was only you, for a moment. You have multiplied my feelings of care – added to
my heart’s list, truly, one at a time. And so, when I walked alone in a meadow
filled with wildflowers, I thought of you. And in the mix up of names and
faces, I thought to match the flower’s faces with the names of women who had
brushed up against some soft spot in my heart. I couldn’t do it. It’s not that
it was so silly a notion to match the species of wildflowers with the faces and
lives of human beings. I simply couldn’t keep all of it in my mind at once.
I could have been anywhere. But I wasn’t. The sky might have
been blue, but it was gray that morning. I walked on a slope, a road gouged out
above where I stepped. There was some dew. The ankles of my pants were getting
wet. And then the wildflowers reminded me of some baristas from more than 500
miles ago. Young women making drinks and sandwiches, waiting for the rest of
their lives to begin. And you.
I thought for a moment of my mother’s face. Her’s was a
great love. And now her’s and my father’s face will never be before me again. That
should have been the sort of thing that was stirring my feelings. Or the face
of my other great love, only just out of my sight for the time being. But now –
and I am slipping again back in time – now that I am walking among wildflowers,
why should I want to see your face? Why does such a little barely apparent longing
grow to fill my heart?
There were some wildflowers called asters, I think. Round
circles of lavender rays. Already loosely bunched for picking, but they
wouldn’t be separated from the earth by my hand from the cool and fiery field
of other flowers. And Indian Paintbrush. An orange so brlliant it seems to become
red. And then, already I was running out of names and one after another there
were more wildflowers. I had to look away or lose my mind. Maybe my heart. I
confess, I don’t even know what those words mean.
This is not heartache. It is heart over-flowing. If it
sounds like nonsense on this page, the feeling still seems right – if at the
same time, somewhat lacking in propriety.
And then time passes. A day or two later, I am back on the
road again. Heading for home.
And now I shall miss the wildflowers I could not name. And another
very early morning, the bristlecone pines, stark black, reaching up against a
starry sky. I shall only be able to recall that I had seen Orion’s belt, three
stars rising straight up in the east over the hard black ridge across the
valley. And another time, the pyrite glimmering in the rocks in bright day.
The very same sun and stars will shine on me when I am back
home, of course. But not quite the way I saw them on that singular morning. And
surely, context matters. And, you see, each star also seemed to want a name as
well and I couldn’t manage it. There is
a constellation or two that makes me think of people that I love. And there is one
that makes me think of you.
And so, perhaps, I will also miss that early morning
leftover patch of snow on Mt. Bross, reflecting the gradually lightening sky
into my eyes. Or perhaps the snow reflected the half-illuminated moon. The very
same moon – a singular moon - reflected in a pool of clear water, rippling away
when I reached for it.
I was only passing through the Colorado Rockies. And yet,
for a time, heading toward home, I would still miss the sound of water
murmuring through beaver ponds.
But as the prophet saith, the grass withers and the flowers
of the field fade.
And one day back home one of the baristas I hardly know and yet
have known enough to care about will make an egg crème for me. And I will sit
at the stainless steel counter daydreaming of wildflowers far away.
I think that maybe love is only like this, after all. I
practice caring by taking baby steps. And now, I suppose, it may have come to
what Emily Dickinson wrote ages ago, the heart wants what the heart wants, or
else it does not care.
If so, I think that it has indeed come to only this or that
and the other thing. I will miss the boulder in the middle of a snow-melt
stream, interrupting, briefly, gravity’s law. And I can hope that my
high-altitude sunburn will hide the flush in my cheeks when I see your eyes
that I had missed seeing a little when I wandered alone among the wildflowers.
On another day, I shall push through the coffee shop door.
Pay me no mind if I tell you that your eyes remind me of asters. They are not
even the same color. Nor are they yellow-centered. Rather your pupils are
closer to the color of the bright night blackness, luminescent – only deeper,
somehow. That could hardly be possible. But I have yet to measure forever.
I do not wish to flirt. I only care about you and all of the
other women who have a claim on my heart because I do not know how not to care
- sometimes. Often, only for one at a time. I do care. I’m not sure that better
understanding would do me much good. Perhaps, I am but a fool. But I do think
that the word ‘pathetic’ might perhaps be reserved for those who cannot care
for pyrite, let’s say. Or if I felt no twinge over wildflowers, death may just
as well come sooner as later. Of course, I could not take all of those alpine wildflowers
with me – or you. I did press a few of them in a book. And I most certainly have
some very dear loves so close to my heart that I will try to hold onto them.
But there are all of these little loves scattered about. And you. All I know is that my heart only
wants to see you once more again.
I am still only taking baby steps although I am old enough
that some people think I should know better. But when I manage to care about
the way your eyes change as you look over your shoulder hearing the sound of
the front door bell as I push my way through, it is but a single aster.
Something to live for.
I will not weep over spilled milk. That would in fact be
pathetic. But that faint band of uncountable stars over head was not the same
thing. And among the wildflowers, I really only missed you just enough to pause
for a moment.
And the chocolate syrup in the bottom of a glass is only
black.
Maybe I shall show you a photo of some of my lost loves one
day. The Indian Paintbrush, thriving among grey boulders. You surely must see
that wildflower one day for yourself. If it were merely orange-red, how could I
possibly care about that?
One night, early morning, I walked alone in my moon shadow.
And one morning, night gone, there was a clear, blue sky. And it was not all of
you, even most of you, who walked along on that pathless path with me. Yet some
part of you must have been in the wind, or maybe it was in the water. I think
that I only missed that infinite part of you that my heart truly wished to see
in that moment. It was you that I
missed. Great or small is not the question here.
So if you will look carefully, the angle from the sun
shining just right will make the pyrite in the rocks glimmer like silver or
pale gold. It will help if you’re not easily fooled by what might be or not be.
Attend. And if wildflowers will remind you of small loves or large ones, you’re
apt to see beauty wherever you look. Enough to waken your heart, my dear …
