Older steps

A young woman almost fell,

but she did not almost fall for me.

Oh, it seems the last step on the stairway was missing,

or, perhaps, there should have been just one more.

So she just stumbled, really,

never her supple and slinking body arcing

over sideways and entangling with mine.

Oh, I would have caught her in my arms -

if only I could have.

And then, instead,

when I did ask her if she were alright,

she said ‘yes’ –

and then, ‘thank you’.

So that was something.

And then she walked off up to class

as if nothing had happened

and I drifted off down to the street.

Oh, it was just as well,

I said to myself.

I wouldn’t know what to do

with a modern young woman,

anyway. And besides,

I couldn’t afford her tuition.

House call

I turned on the light and woke up the cat

just long enough for it to stretch 

and settle its head over its front paws -

eyes soon closed again.

Whether her ears perked forward,

listening, I could not tell.

The window was dark.

The house quiet.

No sound coming from outside.

There was a ringing in my ears,

I answered it.

No one was on the other end.

Then the refrigerator kicked on.

Thank goodness!

For a moment I had thought 

that I might be all alone.

Well, there was the cat,

now curled up on a pile of clothes

in the purple chair.

And if I opened the study door,

I would likely hear Dawn

softly snoring

snug as a bug

in her blankets.

Then I heard a train,

faint, in the distance.

And now I’m thinking of you

looking over my shoulder.

Why don’t you hang around here with me a little longer 

if you have nothing better to do.

I welcome the company of your memory.

You told me once or twice that you played with words

in the night long ago.

Would you like a glass of water?

There’s a little leftover pie,

apple.

The doctor gave me some news today.

She said nothing of dying.

That’s good news, right?

If I turn off the light in front of me,

I can see out of my window some of the cane,

scalpel leaves, in silhouette 

against the street lighted trees on Mass Street.

You gave me a bagful of root and stem –

that cane - a dozen years ago  –

it must actually be more than that now.

I had to finally put down a metal barrier 

to try to keep the cane out of the tomatoes

last year.

I’m thinking a BLT would be good right about now,

but the season is long over.

What do you say to some pie?

Then I think I’ll see about curling

my nose into my tail.

Quiet.

Morning in a few more hours.

Stand close

If you had stood where I had stood,

on a mostly overcast afternoon in January,

you would have easily seen the gulls

circling, white wings over white turbine-churned water,

their calls sometimes piercing through

the whine of spinning generators.

And you could hardly have missed

seeing the water flowing round the bend

and then the next bend and the next.

I did not bother to count the bends

or the circling gulls.

An island of white limestone to the left,

a red brick power plant to the right -

why was my gaze drawn to the horizon?

At that distance the bare branches

lining the banks of the Kaw River

were fuzzy swatches of gray.

And then, as if a patch of gray underneath the gray

had caught on fire, the burning color of sunlight sped

from bare branches to the streaming water into my glancing eyes.

Seconds later, not a thing appeared different -

still circling, still bending,

still whining and churning,

And no charring, no dying embers.

Except that the tips of the white winged gulls looked singed with charcoal.

One step sooner or closer and I might have been consumed.

Aw baby. I missed you.

Sometimes you end up in a time and place you could never have imagined. And then afterwards you walk away into the night completely changed and more yourself than you thought possible.

I had become good friends with a young woman who was interested in making films. I had seen one of the flyers she and the young director of a short film had posted around town. It was a casting call. The colorful 8 x 10 photocopy said that they were looking for females and males: early 20’s & 30 – 40 year-olds.

I had joked with Bailie at one point that I might be interested, but that I was well out of the range – nearing 60. She said that they were looking for a father figure in the film. I had replied that I was nearly a grandfather figure.

Still, I was interested. Film is another way to tell a story and I am working at telling stories.

The Friday and Saturday casting times came and went. Sunday, at 6:30, was the last chance. With Bailie’s encouragement in my mind, I walked on down to the Percolator on a brisk February evening. The Percolator is not even off-Broadway. It’s certainly not Hollywood. The Percolator is just a small, non-descript building off the alleyway hidden behind a multi-story, luxury hotel – luxury for Lawrence, Kansas, that is. It serves as an art gallery and meeting space for local artists.

Bailie happened to be standing a short distance away from the building near the alley as I walked up. She said that she recognized my walk in the near darkness. I explained to her that I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time, but that I was thinking I might read for the part. She didn’t hesitate and I could only follow her inside.

Bailie explained to me I would be reading for the part of Ricky, a meth addict, a father who was  not able to connect with his daughter who was bailing him out of jail. Now in real life I think that it is fair to say that I am a decent guy, happily married for thirty years, no kids of my own. This casting call that I had sort of stumbled into the middle of was going to have be just about acting.

But in acting – just like with everything else - experience and practice matters. My last acting experience was on a high school stage. I think I might have had one or two lines.

Bailie apologized for not getting me the sides ahead of time. I didn’t even know that ‘sides’ was jargon for a bit of script. The side in question turned out to be two sides of a half-sheet of paper which Bailie handed to me.  Then she turned to take her place at the video camera on a tripod off to one side from where the director and her assistant were sitting. A couple of other young women were preparing to read a scene in what had become the front of the room. Several more young women sat in chairs near me. Except for a guy about forty sitting in the other corner near the back of the room and a young man behind me, I found myself taking my place on a folding chair near the  back of a room full of 20-something women. Okay, maybe it was six or eight young women. I couldn’t quite take it all in. I had never quite been in a time and place like this before.

I would easily say that all of the young women were pretty. And I suppose that is what you would expect me to say when they all seemed young enough to possibly be my own daughters or even granddaughters. They were each one young and attractive in their own particular way. The way that you would want human beings to be.

I looked down at my lines.

Ricky was being escorted from his jail cell. He walks up to his daughter and kisses her on the forehead. The line he speaks through grinning, yellow teeth is this: “Aw baby. I missed you.” I tried to imagine how those words would sound coming out of my mouth. Then I tried to imagine kissing one of those young women on the forehead. This was not the father figure I had anticipated.

I read further. It turned out that Ricky also had a very trampy girlfriend who would show up shortly in this scene. Ricky was supposed to make out with her like a man who had been in jail would.

Now, I still struggle to find words to describe the feelings jumbling through my mind in those moments. I told myself that I would be acting. Acting. My wife would be grading papers for her students back home. And while – let’s call it - physical affection is part of our marriage, it doesn’t look like it did on the page in front of me. And she and I have only really mostly just practiced on each other. Even in my younger days, I never acted the way Ricky was supposed to act in this film. But this was acting. This is acting? How in the world was I going to play my part? How in the world?

I watched the young women playing the parts of Sara, Ricky’s daughter, as well as her friends – changing off to act different roles. Bailie was at the camera. The two directors were giving direction. I watched the women acting. Which one would be Sara when it was my turn? Which one of them would play my girlfriend?

I sat there watching. I couldn’t escape my age. They were girls up there acting like young women that they weren’t. And they were convincing me that they were the characters they were acting - not the young women who they really were. After several minutes of mild panic, I finally realized that, at least for that evening, there would be no kissing or making out. We were all just reading our lines.

But for a nearly endless short period of time, I had wondered back and forth more times than I can now recount whether I could act as Ricky was being directed to act. With considerable relief, once I realized that those actions were only the questions scrambling my mind, I think that I had almost convinced myself that I could possibly kiss a woman I had never met before on the forehead. But I was not close to being prepared for a make out scene. They mostly felt like girls to me up there. I saw their faces, their bodies. They were human beings.  They were the daughters or possibly the granddaughters of some guy like me.

I understand now, and then, of course, in my mind that they are indeed young women – that they choose to act – perhaps to understand who they are in a similar way that I write to try to understand in some part who I am. But it must take considerable time and practice to learn to separate out the various parts of oneself and then just show some part. This scene was as close as I had come to the art of acting. I became astonished at the level of these young women’s craft. They became who they weren’t – at least with the part of who they were that showed on the outside. But who was the person inside each one of them? I could mostly only feel my own self and wonder at the selves they were.

The young women actors and the young man had finished reading and had left the Percolator. It was still my turn to read the part of Ricky. I would first read as the assistant director read the other lines of the script back to me and then, again, I would deliver my reading of Ricky toward the director. They sat behind a table strewn with scrawled notes.

I could imagine that they were my daughters – daughters that I loved, meant to love, wished that I could love - if only I could stop caring so much more about my own needs – his own needs - the way Ricky must have felt. I wouldn’t even have had to act the awkwardness I would have felt if I had had to kiss their foreheads.

The rest of the scene is on video tape. I gave it a shot.

I stayed to watch the seasoned actor read Ricky. It was completely apparent that what he was doing was so much more what it looks like when someone has practiced acting over time. I shook his hand afterwards. And at no time during the entire evening was I not given complete respect for my own halting efforts. There was some acting and then there was being human that evening. All of the people in the Percolator that evening were themselves and I was me. Bailie hugged me briefly and then turned to talk with the directors.

I walked outside, bundled up into the night. As I thought about what had transpired, I began to laugh. I couldn’t act. And yet it had been fun to try. The difference between play-acting and being your self is vast. And yet, sometimes it is quite hard to tell the difference. We are people playing a kind of game, after all. Shakespeare said that better. And after all, it is common to say that we are not always acting like ourselves. We could, perhaps act better than we do. We are who we are and we act our various parts of our selves all of the time.

As I stood there in front of the camera, I realized that if you intend to be an actor, not only are there countless ways to deliver a single line, but your expressions, your body language and movement – all of it has to be convincing all at the same time if the audience is going to believe the story you are trying to tell.

I think with a little direction, I might be able to get that first line for Ricky right. Mostly, because I wouldn’t have to act that much differently than I already am.

But I wasn’t going to get the part. I get to be the character walking down a dark alley, stars overhead, laughing a little at who he is.

The beautiful day

Link to The beautiful day - a ten minute photo/essay on memories


Almost the same text as recorded:

You could say that each life is the collection of our unique memories. Memories are like beads on a string. Time is the string. This is, of course, all too simple. At every moment, images, sounds, thoughts and feelings – the sensations and experiences of life - are moments becoming a memory. Only a few will be we able to recount. The rest, perhaps, inform our being. Sometimes, a registered moment will return unbidden to our awareness, reminding us who we have been.

Scientists can explain some of this, but in large part, the mysteries of memory remain unmeasured. I experience my life as humans have experienced their human lives since the beginning. Each of us from our own unique perspective, of course.

A Sunday not long ago was a day I would have liked to hold onto forever. Or at least in safer keeping than in my fragmented mind so that I could bring the best parts of it back into my close awareness. Some of those moments happened so quickly that only in a more reflective moment did I realize their worth to me.

Because it is so simple in modern times, I took some photos that day. But most of the day went unrecorded – except as memories – most of them irretrievable – in my mind. I did take some notes with pen and paper – but my thoughts scrawled ahead so rapidly that I can hardly make out more than a word or phrase on those pages.

And so, all that is left is for me to tell you what comes to mind.

I have repeated my path from our house to the river so many times, that it becomes nearly impossible to know which time was which. I certainly don’t notice every moment as I pass through it. Let’s just simplify matters and say that on that Sunday morning it was a beautiful day – the planet turning as it always does beneath my steps. Sidewalks and streets. Trees and buildings. Light and colors and shapes and textures. Sky blue sky.

And once again I took yet another picture of the sunrise over the Kaw. And this time, I noticed the shadows of the railing against the concrete barrier between the pedestrian and vehicle sides of the bridge.

And there’s a story about this black flag near the water’s edge that I won’t tell you about now. Maybe I never will.

I stopped at Aimee’s Coffee Shop as usually do. My mind is filled with fuzzy images of Emily and Abbi – as well as the other baristas and regulars that I have seen there and talked and listened to. I’m sure that I was glad to see Emily and Abbi at that hour on a Sunday morning. I could tell you what they look like, but it hardly matters.  And which smile would be the one I try to describe? And who knows what we chatted about? Should I try to tell you on a scale of one to ten how happy I was to be alive for that hour or so?

But Dawn and I were planning to go to the Nelson in Kansas City later. It was still a beautiful day as I walked the few blocks towards home. And should I say that the drive in our Corolla was uneventful? I remember some hesitant crosstalk about where to turn and whether it was this way or that. We meant to stop to see if we could see a former Aimee’s barista, now living and working in KC. Chez Elle on Summit Street was packed around noon that Sunday. About all we could do was say ‘hi’ as Kristina made coffee drinks behind the order window. The photos hardly tell the story of time she and I had spent together at Aimee’s that was somewhere in importance for me between something and everything. You can see that her hair was blue that Sunday but that it wasn’t her hair that I wanted to see.

There’s a bead here that I don’t want to lose, but of course it will end up in a little cubby hole in my mind, eventually. How long will I think to look for her there? We couldn’t talk that Sunday. And as the poet said, Dawn and I had miles to go before we slept.

We parked the car near the plaza. As we walked, we talked about eating at Houston’s. But from the outside they seemed busy. We reverted to our original plan to eat at The Classic Cup.

I ordered – I think it was called – a Northern Eggs Benedict. It had salmon. Dawn ordered something with grits and sausage. We shared food. The waiter was bald. Of course, there was more to our lunch together than that.

But it was still a beautiful day as we walked towards the Nelson. As my words are somewhat sketchy, I suppose you might appreciate that we took some photos with our devices. The measurement of a picture being worth a thousand words is unfortunate. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. Or salmon with sausage. But to tell you the stories that might be associated with that picture of Dawn next to the shuttlecock is considerably more than a click and done. Still, a photo gives a quick impression of appearances. And perhaps you can see that we were appearing to have a beautiful day.

I don’t know how many words it would take to describe what I mean by ‘beautiful,’ assuming that I could put our experience into words. And sometimes the memories are like knots in nets. Or layers of soil laid down over millions of years. Sometimes like sunlight off the Kaw River.

We entered the gallery by sort of the back entrance. It was packed – for an art gallery – for a member’s event of the opening of a show of Dutch paintings – the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer. Not holding tickets, we wandered through an exhibit called ‘Colors.’ A guard said that we could take photos, so we played with the art a little. Easier to show you than to describe, of course. Easier to remember.

Then a couple handed us their tickets for the private opening, saying they were ready to leave already. We weren’t allowed to take photos, but we wouldn’t have wanted to. The paintings were exquisitely made, but mostly of posed Dutch men with their ruffled collars.

These are just the gallery windows. And your eyes may play tricks on you with this wall sculpture made of wires. How much more did I not show you? Or tell?

We left by the door we had entered and walked back to our car. It was still a beautiful day. I should have perhaps mentioned that the fountain on the corner of one street and the other with the bronzed horses and riders spearing sea creatures and stuff was dry. And still, people were sitting around it. Must I say that many people were experiencing their own beautiful day?

I fell asleep in the sunshine through the window on the way home. It should be obvious that Dawn was driving. I continued my nap when we got home and when I got up I think I went for a walk. Unfortunately, I have no more photos and made no notes, so that I can hardly recall where I went or what Dawn and I had for supper.

Yet another barista from Aimee’s had made sort of an offer that I read for a short film she was helping one of her friends make. The story of that continuation of the beautiful day extending into the evening will have to wait till next week. I will tell you this much in advance. I am not an actor.

Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder, but if you can behold beauty, you will also discover it in the spaces and moments between the obviously beautiful high points. And, it should go without saying that the weather does not have to be beautiful for a day to be beautiful, but at times you will notice that the weather is memorable and forgotten all at the same time.