Windy day – A tale of near coincidences

As I look back on it, it all almost seems like a convergence of near coincidences – although, still, all of it can be easily explained away. Things happen at the same time all of the time. It doesn’t mean that the coincidences signify anything.

But it was a windy day.

I was working at my study desk in my study. It was a warm and windy day for November, but it looked a little bit like March from the inside. Except that it was this year’s leaves blowing across my back yard. And swirling. Currents and eddies of leaves. Like a river of leaves. Or maybe a freshet. On top of the tall cane stalks that were reaching up towards the clear sky, the cane seed heads were waving back and forth with every gust of wind. I didn’t think that they were waving at me.

It was just a windy day.

And then I noticed the aluminum gulls on my windmobile - aluminum flashing from the hardware store that I had cut with a metal shears and bent into something like five small seagulls and delicately balanced on lengths of music wire. The gulls were catching wind. I call the windmobile, ‘5-gull,’ for something to call it. It was a wind mobile and it was flashing in the sunlight.

Now, I did think something of the slight coincidences apparently gusting about, but I was not really thinking all that much about anything at the time. I might have been about to catch something not quite unimaginable out of the corner of my mind. I got up and went out into the yard to take a picture. It was warm enough for March - and of course, it can sometimes be warm in February - but it still mostly felt more like November to me. But warm. I didn’t bother to check the calendar on the refrigerator again and I didn’t bother with a jacket.

I crouched down on the lawn to try to take a photo of the flashing gulls careening and swooping all over the place in a very, very late March wind or one that was just a little bit too warm and early for Thanksgiving.

It was a windy day.

I should have mentioned earlier that I had been listening to a song on my wireless headphones. I was listening for the song that I couldn’t quite remember. I might have been trying to remember the lyrics. Or perhaps it was just the tune I was trying to catch one more time.

These are the days of miracles and wonders. But those are the lyrics from a Paul Simon song that I wasn’t listening to that afternoon at all. Not those lyrics. But I have sometimes wondered what a miracle would look like. And would a March wind in November even be enough for a coincidence? I doubt it.

And then, the next song in the algorithmic queue began playing in my headphones.

The first time ever I saw your face… began playing in my headphones. I was sure that it was Roberta Flack. I can’t remember when I heard her voice for the first time. And now I was hearing it again.

It was a windy day.

I switched the switch on my camera device over to ‘video’ and I just listened to Roberta Flack as I crouched  and watched the gulls flashing in whatever wind was now blowing my way. Blowing in the wind, as it were. How many roads … ?

It was hardly a miracle. These things can be explained. Things happen. And those are just lyrics from another song that I hadn’t been thinking of just then. And now it is now and I’m writing things down.  I have just happened to listen to Dawes from time to time. All of this was neither here nor there at the time. And yet things were unmistakably happening. Gusting. It might have been November. It was in the afternoon. I was beginning to doubt my doubts.

It was a windy day.

Well, I certainly wasn’t going to go back to my computer keyboard after listening to Roberta Flack singing - even if she wasn’t singing to me. The lyrics had turned to pretty intimate stuff and I hardly knew her all that well, besides. Well, I really only knew her voice. And besides that, the coffee shop I often stopped at for iced tea closed in the middle of the afternoon on Monday afternoons. I could definitely use a glass of iced tea. Some things are clear. But not iced tea. But what about ice in November?

Never mind the words cartwheeling in the wind. Besides all that other stuff and nonsense, I have a rule. Sort of a rule. It’s more of a saying really, hardly enough to even be a common expression. But the words might at least sound vaguely familiar: A smile a day is better than five birds on a wire. Not to mention keeping the doctor away. Healthy, impoverished and foolish. And if you have your health …

Well, as I said, it was a windy day.

Now it is just a very simple fact that my father was a doctor for much of his adult life. And even if oranges are not apples, at this point in my life, I suspect that I could probably play my dad in a made for TV movie. I have his face. At least his nose. There is some resemblance. But his life was better than the movie that won’t ever be made could ever be. But still the Kodachrome gave us the nice bright colors, as the old song goes.  Not that old. But Kodachrome rarely rendered blue sky as true sky blue.

And so the cane growing in my back yard, hard and factual, came from my dad years ago. The old home place. And he’s now long gone, not so many years ago. But the cane itself surely signifies nothing. The cane is only waving in the wind. And I am only the teller of this tale. I could never be Shakespeare – nor wanted to be or have been. I had never ever even been born all those years ago.

But what signifies? And what if Macbeth was mistaken about the idiot’s told tale? But then the sounds and fury of the day in my questioning were barely negligible. And some sense I am not making. Clearly.

It was a windy day.

I got one of the bicycles off the back porch. One of them has a bell and the other one doesn’t. I took one of them. The bell surely signifies little of consequence unless I ring it. And even then. I put on a light dark evergreen windbreaker mostly for show. The wild wind would not be broken by me.  But what of my mind or my heart? It was quite warm - a curious wind - as I have already said - for a late mid-afternoon in November.

When I got to the coffee shop, two baristas, who I happen to know only just a little, smiled at me. Along with the iced tea, I was good to go, but I stayed for a while, maybe longer.

Then one barista left to take photos by the lake with another barista – she was another young woman whose smile I could easily recall in a heartbeat, so long as I still have one. But I expect that the rest of her will eventually fade in my memory like a Cheshire cat. I think that she wore her hair in braided pigtails one day – or twice. I hadn’t been counting then - and then, again, I couldn’t recall the first time ever I saw her face. But it wasn’t ever going to be the whole Roberta Flack thing with her anyway. But there was something almost magical in the moment - or twice. In her face. And there must have been a first time.

It was windy day.

Years ago, another barista had started working at the coffee shop and I didn’t realize that I had seen her miming out on a street corner before she had taken the barista job at Aimee’s. And then I thought that I might actually recall the first time ever I saw her face because I had written something about it. But now looking back, I think I might just have written another bit of writing about some other time. Maybe I just can’t find what I thought I remembered. There are so very many words and pages and books. There might have been something about a skirt that was blowing in the breeze on a long ago afternoon. Who can remember what month?

But this is all beginning to seem like the strangest thing. Or perhaps it’s just a little odd. Perhaps it is all part of a grand illusion that time plays on idiots or fools - mere mortals - on windy afternoons. Diversions are everywhere blowing hither and yon and one leaf looks like another and no one can look closely enough at all of them. And then you pick a leaf out of the pile and it somehow looks just like the one you kept in a book. But then you can’t remember the book and you can’t remember the first time you ever saw her face. Or anyone’s face.  Any face.

It might have been a windy day. The first time ever I saw her face. And now, whose?

It seems to me as if it would be helpful to recall the first time I saw something so that when the thing happened again I might understand why I feel the way that I do. Not that I understand what I was feeling that afternoon or any other afternoon in November or March.

A flock of pigeons were flying in the blue sky, their wings catching the sunlight as if the sun was the sky and the air was the wind, gusting and swirling, all of it all swooping and careening together as they circled  and turned over above and over and over and again, the one and two story buildings stone-still across the windswept way. But it might as well have been just another day. And maybe it was. If only I could pay better attention. But there is too much of everything. And how do I know what to pay attention to?

It was a windy day.

The barista that left by the front door might have been wearing a black jacket. Her hair was dark with hints of red - and smooth. I want to say that her eyes were dusky, but more and more, eyes seem to be more illusion than things.

I think that I might have been watching the leaves blowing along the sidewalk. Or I might have been just looking at her shoes. I’m pretty sure that I saw other young women walking along the sidewalk. They must have been wearing shoes, but I don’t think I ever noticed their shoes, either. I think I saw one woman going and coming. But only because I noticed her going first. She wore shiny black leggings.

I imagine that baristas are like leaves, coming and going – mostly going - and then you realize that you can hardly remember how they wore their hair. And not that it matters. But if at least I could have something to remember their many smiles by. I have at least noticed that often their smile is not primarily in their lips, although a corner might give something away. But you can’t press a smile in a book.  And frankly, I do think that their eyes are more illusion than iced tea. And even iced tea disappears when you drink it. I suppose that I might indeed believe in true magic in the moment – or twice. But I have a hunch that I should not look for more explanations. I just might find one. And an explanation by itself signifies nothing.

It was a windy day.

It was past time for me to go. The sunlight on the buildings across the street was being swallowed by the blocks of shadows coming up from the sidewalk. And I had only leftover ice in my glass. I had managed to slip in a dumb joke when the barista wearing a T-shirt wasn’t looking. The T-shirt might have been dark blue with red lettering. Or maybe sky blue lettering. I think I noticed some lettering on the back of the T-shirt. I’m not sure about the colors. Her hair was thick and curly.

I noticed passing clouds in the sky as I looked out of the window. And then I wished I had a picture of the look on the barista’s face when she caught my dumb joke out of the air before it fell onto the floor. Leaves swirled on the sidewalk. And then they swirled again. More leaves swirled. I decided to try to pay better attention before losing the whole day.

It was – after all - a windy day.

I left through the same door that the barista with the dusky eyes had so recently left, but I had given her a head start and then I went left and she had turned right. She was heading for the lake and I rode my bicycle in the general direction of the river. Not just for reassurance, but for the colors. And the rollicking ripples. But still I found that I was arriving at intersections and turning the corners nearly by chance.

Then I noticed a woman, younger than me, in a bright red skirt. But at sixty-one, I certainly wasn’t surprised by that. Though sometimes I am startled to realize that I am already sixty-one. Younger or older than Shakespeare, depending on how you count the ellipses around the sun.

The one near and far sun burning in a solar wind without discernable expression - something like a face over my left shoulder – then the right one.

 Nevertheless, the younger woman was wearing a red skirt that came nearly down to her knees. And she wore black stockings and short black boots. Her heels were not too tall and not too short. She might have been wearing a black jacket, but I guess that I wasn’t really paying that close attention at that point. I only noticed her because she was crouching down on the sidewalk taking a photo near the corner where I was turning – and she was wearing a bright red skirt.

It was a windy day.

And then, not long after, I was riding up on the levee away from the setting sun. There might have been some clouds but I remember seeing blue sky. I noticed some yellow cottonwood leaves hanging onto the ends of the bare cottonwood tree branches. I could see the river reflecting the sky through the trees. Reassuringly. I only noticed the leaves because they were few.

It was a windy day.

And then I noticed two young women, running towards me side by side. One was wearing shorts. Her legs were smooth and bare. The other was wearing black leggings. Her legs were not too long or too short. The young woman’s legs were covered to the ankles in black clingy leggings. I only saw their faces for an instant and then the levee trail curved in front of me. I passed them once again, after I had turned around in a half-circle at 8^th Street and then I headed back into the face of the sun. I only noticed the young women because they were running together and one was bare legged and the other wore leggings.

It was a windy day.

As I was heading towards home, I noticed the side of a house. The house was built with painted brick all colored in one of the orangish colors of fall. The house was two stories tall – just about right. There were leaves all around on the ground. The house might have been a dusky orange. The windows reflected the sky. I stopped and crouched down to take a picture. I noticed the house because it was made all of dusky orange painted brick.

It was a windy day.

As I neared home, I noticed a bald man in a white van. He was not too old and not too young.

He was looking the other way. I was about to turn in front of him as he was about to turn in front of me. Then he saw me and we smiled at each other through his open window as I rode on by. It was November. I didn’t use my bell. I only noticed him because he was looking away.

It was a windy day.

And then, after all of that and more, when I finally got home, I parked my bicycle with the silent bell on the porch and I opened the window on my laptop. And yes! Still I found that I was completely surprised to see the two young women, the one with the dusky eyes and the one with the pigtails - but the pigtails had been yet another time.  They were taking a picture of themselves and posting it on Facebook. They were smiling at me through the screen. But maybe they weren’t smiling at me this time after all. But I’m sure that this never happened to Shakespeare. But that’s not the point.

Imagine! Two young women whose faces I had ever - but not forever - seen sometime before, young women who had handed me an iced tea or something once or twice – who can account for everything? –The faces of two baristas who just happened to be taking their picture on a November afternoon by the lake were there on a screen in front of my face. What a coincidence! Of course, it could all be explained. Mostly. I suppose. The how of it might indeed have a few holes left where no one had been paying close enough attention to see just what had happened - or what color their eyes were.

But why were they where they were in the first place? Why those two? Why there? And why is anyone anywhere in the first place? The very first place? And how else could you ever remember them if you only ever saw them in the second place? And just what did Roberta Flack see the first time ever she saw his face?

It was a windy day.

I think of myself as fortunate man. But it helps if I pay attention. Without true magic, it’s all just a trick. A stacked deck. The rabbit was always in the hat. A false compartment. There was a trapdoor under the carpet through which a curvaceous woman wearing glittering sparkles appeared to disappear. I’m not really trying to figure it all out anymore. Things happen. At this stage in life, I would rather try – if only I might - to see the magic the first time – if it is there. It might be. Magic. And then every time thereafter.

It was a windy day.

One of the young women was wearing dark lipstick and the other was not. She with the dusky eyes might have had a silver ring through her lip. I know that they both were smiling with their eyes into the camera lens. The bare trees behind them grew out of a tilted earth. The sky was the same as the sky I had seen all over town all afternoon. I noticed them because they had smiled at me the first time. It might have been the first time ever I saw their faces.

I could not remember when.

It was a windy day.

Some things just seem so unlikely to me when I look back on what I hadn’t imagined when I woke up. And then I have gotten out of bed in the morning and then the day all just gusts on ahead of me and things happens the way things happen. It was only a windy day after all. Women wear red skirts and men are looking the other way all of the time. And why shouldn’t only a few leaves hang on tightly in November?

And then, once more – or twice - beyond the screen in my study, the two young woman still laughed  in their still, silent, sepia tones into my imagination. And then I looked up and I noticed that the sun was going down beyond my own backyard yet again. Branches bare over the garage, the tall cane leaning against and rising above the back fence, growing darker in silhouette, the five aluminum gulls balancing at the ends of lengths of music wire. Twilight. I only noticed the sunset because of the sun-bright sunset colors and the cloudy blue-gray clouds. It may have been the first time ever I saw the face of the sky quite like that moment. But surely not the first time ever.

The wind was nearly still.

***

If you wish, you can listen to Roberta Flack singing while you watch the wind work its magic with my windmobile. Open a separate tab and come back to this place on this blogpost and click the YouTube song (get past the ad). Then click back to this window in the first tab and click on the YouTube windmobile link. Expand the window - and listen to Roberta Flack sing. You might ask yourself, whose face or faces come to mind?

The first time ever I saw your face - Roberta Flack

5-gull windmobile - November 20, 2017 - It was a windy day


The song runs a couple minutes longer than the video.

Travelogue – What I saw on my recent trip around the sun

I had thought of turning the gray day photo series into a video. After spending much of an evening futzing with the software and trying different things, I gave up and posted them as stills. (FB 11.13.17)

I don’t really know how to incorporate the element of time into photos like these. I am already aware that two dimensional photographs capture primarily color and line within a frame. It’s mostly about the light. And it is about people, places or things. That a photo manages to convey some of the emotion of a moment sometimes happens. But things happen in time.

I spend a considerable amount of my time looking at the natural world. I am interested in questions of beauty. But now my choice of words still somehow misses the mark. But I am not surprised by that.

What surprises me is how I feel sometimes as I am moving along with time. And if I can’t put everything into words or an image, well, isn’t that what I want? I want to be splashed in the face by color. I want to trip over a line I didn’t foresee. And it’s okay that I didn’t see love coming. Life truly is better this way.

For me, at its root, art is an attempt. A piece of writing or a photo – art - captures something. But it is because the world – and life – is so rich – so vast and random and ordered and intricate – so infused with beauty (I will use that word) – that almost anyone can point and click and reveal a bit of the essence of everything.

But doing art, or making photographs in this instance, is for me, primarily about ‘seeing’ – more clearly and more deeply. And about remembering. Making what I see a part of who I am.

I am on a bicycle these days. Trying to heal an injured foot. Cold gray days are less inviting when you have additional wind resistance. But I ride at a pace that sometimes seems just too fast. I miss walking. But with a little excuse, I can always slow down. If I choose, I can always get off the bike and try to take a photo. Catch something. As I look around to try to compose the elements within the screen on my camera, I begin to slow down in my mind. Or maybe I’m hurrying forward into some mystery.

Time indeed has an objective sense. Time began – along with space - at a beginning billions of years ago. Spacetime. And the pace of everything has proceeded steadily forward ever since. Call it: linear time. Psychological time is something else. Our perception of time seems almost immeasurable – at times. Certainly, quantitative analysis only takes me so far. And our words reflect the reality of time ambiguously. I didn’t really capture time. I took snapshots of it in passing. Or I tried to. Time is elusive.

I can tell you that I took the first photo in the series at about 3:30 in the afternoon. It was November 13th, 2017. I rode along familiar ways – to the Kaw River Bridge - and then, back towards home. It was a gray day. That is, the skies were cloudy all day. Just another day in Kansas.

And then I parked my bicycle on our back porch at about 5. Getting dark already. I had clicked the shutter on my device camera something under two hundred times. I rapidly deleted close to half of them after uploading them to the computer, and then, looking more carefully, I selected through what remained in the evening. I cropped and sometimes adjusted color or contrast. Now I have 27 pictures to show for my time. The public library, the river, Central Middle School and my neighborhood are featured. And a hawk.

But I wasn’t counting the shots as I took them. And I had nearly forgotten time when I was within that extended moment. That is, I wasn’t aware of the passing minutes. And I was trying to take photographs of a different aspect of time. The change of seasons. But I was only partially thinking about all of that. I saw. I clicked. Somewhere in all of that was how I felt during that period of time.

Some of that feeling is reflected in these words. And some snapshots of what I experienced tethers fragments of what I saw.

But the natural world wraps around me. With sound and sometimes smell. And touch. Never a still moment, but everything is there within the continuity of time. And yet I like how with a camera you can freeze a moment and then look more carefully at various elements.

But if I can tell you in a few words about how I saw the leaves in the late afternoon as I rode along the levee - leaves brown and curled, gathered in shallow drifts against the white limestone rocks. I am still leaving almost everything out. The boulders have shape and texture – and they are only white-colored relative to the river – which is gray – but not really. The river reflects the sky. And gray is not the true color of a subtly varied sky. And in these words we are still only beginning to think about light and stuff.

Writing is also an impressionistic medium. I state the obvious. But those words –  describing the brown leaves – surely they were dry and crinkly if I had stopped and grabbed a handful in my hand – that is what I saw as I rode along the levee. The gravel was tan. Maybe a light reddish tan.

I geared down as I rode onto the bridge. The incline is slight to look at, but I still took the lowest gear. And it is hardly important to mention that I took some care not to ride with my handlebars too close to the railing on the bridge. Or that the tiny signal bell next to my left hand tinged on its own when I rode over the edge of the bridge back onto the sidewalk – made of concrete which had been poured down onto the very earth itself. Troweled smooth. Now the side walk was rock hard.

The ‘ting’ just reflected an insignificant bump in an otherwise continuous sidewalk. And I had also seen a man standing, about my age, a little shorter, pausing, leaning against the railing. I had seen him nearly about in that very place the day before. Does it matter that I have included that detail?

I constantly look for significance for myself. What matters to me? When I am out in the world, trying to pay some deliberate attention to things, my conscious awareness of that question is only a small part of it. My entire being – the being that is underlying my consciousness senses the world around me. A small part of me searches.

I think that it goes something like this: I’m in some sort of process of solving a puzzle in my mind. My mind and the minds of each of us have been shaped by the natural world over time. Millions of years of it. Our conscious awareness is a relatively new thing – certainly mine seems new – or maybe old – depending on your perspective. I am sixty-one years traveling around a five billion year old sun. And every year, summer turns to fall. And so our minds contain patterns from all of that shaping of everything - over time. I am looking for how I fit.

And the sun and blue skies. The rain and rivers. The trees baring their branches and the leaves drifting against limestone boulders. All of it - and much more – form various kinds of patterns that I see – color and line – shapes and textures - that our human minds and bodies somehow recognize. Even when we are unaware of most of it, our mind is looking for a good fit. And when a piece settles into place, we say, ‘isn’t that pretty.’

But I surely oversimplify. That in any given moment I might think some bit of yellow leaf against a gray sky is appealing to me – well, sometimes I do say so. Things catch my attention.

Life goes on. Sometimes I want to catch hold of the tail and fly. But it’s only like that sometimes. And, like a tourist, I want to take pictures to remember my trip.

Oh! And did I tell you how when I approached the corner of Rhode Island and Seventh Street I heard this cacophony of chirping. And when I followed my ears, I saw this large tree across the way, birds all over the place in and across the top of a very large, bare branched tree. Like Kentucky Coffee Tree seed pods, the birds looked to me. But they were singing. Probably starlings. But it was the sound that caught my attention. And then I saw them.

Does it matter? Not much. Except that each cheep and chirp, one after another, on top of each other - hearing it, seeing it - mattered almost as much as anything matters – for those few moments of time. I have remembered it. But only for a little while.

And then I turned down Seventh. If I ride – if I ride past Connecticut, the curvature of the planet becomes apparent. I coast. Gaining a little speed. Sometimes I lean into the wind just because I can. It feels fast. I am riding through the sky, the wind rushing past my face. And when I reach the bottom of the hill, I swoop with some gracefulness around the corner onto New Jersey Street. And then I start pedaling again as I work my way up, away from the river.

The significance of things is not fixed in time. You catch only moments for a moment and then you are sweeping on past, on your way to looking for more moments that will matter to you.

But you want to share moments. You want to share your life. And I want to be part of everything – and part of you.

So art is something of a fitting process. One part.  I had a camera full of snapshots of my experience of an afternoon. I had already lived the moment. I had already experienced seeing things fall into place in my mind. I can’t possibly explain how that all works. I can hardly make what mattered to me matter to you. But I might try.

And yet, a picture will sometimes connect the dots. A dot in my mind and a dot in your mind. A tree full of starlings singing. All together a cacophony – or a symphony. Or maybe just a tune. If you are a starling. Or human.

And I’m only now mentioning music. Of all of the arts, music probably matters most to me.

Sometimes I get beyond music as background noise. And then music matters.

And so, here I have cobbled this whole thing together after all. Words, photos, music. The 27 stills are stitched together into a little more than two minutes of silent video. Time has been distorted. But I hope that by putting the photos into a form that just allows them to blink past you as moments, one after another, a little like the way a yellow leafed tree goes past the corner of my eye on a bicycle, you will see something that matters to you. Just ordinary beauty, perhaps.

And perhaps, something of time.

What if – and I am just letting my imagination wander – what if time is more than linear time? What if time is some kind of spirit-being? Human beings used to think that way. Some still do. As if there are spirt-beings within everything – shaping matter and energy into significance. What if? And what if my own spirit-being is somehow part of it all? And there is significance?

It is only a way of looking at things. And you might find different pieces of something like a puzzle fitting in your mind as you walk or bike along the same paths that I have taken. This collage of sorts shows the world as I saw it. But somehow, it seems as if we are working on the same puzzle together.

And this is now my simple suggestion. I have picked a few songs that I like from the soundtrack of the TV show, Northern Exposure, to accompany the slide show. In linear time, they won’t quite fit, but maybe they might go together. Or not. Just add a little randomness. Maybe you prefer silence. But go ahead, if you want to. You'll have to navigate between different windows - a little back and forth from my blog over to YouTube, but you can do it. Click on a YouTube song link in the list below (get past the ads) and then, in a new tab, click on the link to my stills/YouTube below, expand the video to full screen, and then just listen and watch for a leaf before it falls.

The map is not the thing, but sometimes the map is its own thing – a little bit of art.

Walk to the river.

The phrase means what it means – for me or for anyone else. Actual and metaphorical. Walk in time with the music. Okay, now I’m just getting a little too ambiguous. One yellow leaf at a time. Except that it’s not like that - in time.

Walk to the river

Theme from 'Northern Exposure'

Etta James - At last

Chico Street Man - Everybody be yo'self

Magazine 60 - Don Quichotte

Nat King Cole - When I grow too old too dream

Bailero - Chants d'Avergne


YouTube link: Gray day photo series - Slideshow


* I retook some of these photos on a blue sky day, two days later. They can be seen for comparison on my Facebook page, November 13, 2017, in the comments associated with individual photos. Except for the bright blue sky, the colors look more vivid on a gray sky day.

Trash poem No. 2

A trashy little poem (FB - three years ago)

If your cart is full
when you haul it to the curb,
and the moon is full and rising,
what else is left but to think of someone
else not with you in the evening
and write blank verse on the internet.

And of all non-people, FB thought I would want to share it. Well, okay. It's no skin off my nose. But not without comment. And not with a damned 'See more..."

The trashy poem I wrote three years ago –

and posted on FB –

is no better

and no worse

than it ever was -

or will be.

But I have changed -

my socks and my

shirts,

and I have taken on weight

and gray hair

and taken some off –

I mean the weight -

but it’s true that my wife uses a scissors –

but I cannot help it if

she makes pie.

But I have not changed who I love –

unless it is for more -

or for less.

Well, that’s just not true –

but I’m certainly not going to change what

I said at this point.

It’s not that far off.

Like the moon.

(Been to Andromeda lately?)

But nothing is more impossible

for me

than staying the

same.

And if a cat steps on my

keyboard

that’s not

my fault

either.

Were it not for opposable thumbs we wouldn’t need a spacebar at all.

My point -

and I hope, if you find one,

you will let me know just what it is -

my point just barely clears the low bar for trash.

Because, after all these years I do love you.

I just don’t know who I am

or what love is

or where in the world you

are.

And who are you?

It’s not that I am entirely mistaken

about everything,

but with the recycling in the blue bin

and the trash in green bin

and the blue bin goes out every other week –

and it stays in every other week -

and that’s to say nothing at all about the

compostables -

some of which I bundle

with twine

and some of which I just

toss onto my own

pile -

I should remind you

that no one forced you to read this trash -

and maybe I wasn’t writing this to you

anyway.

Now don’t you feel

embarrassed for reading someone

else’s poem?

But the FBI has a history

of rooting around in other

people’s blue bins and

green bins -

(but they generally stay out of the

compostibles.)

And Facebook is almost the same thing -

without the Intelligence.

Don’t trip over coincidences.

There’s a handy curb on both sides of the street

you might trip over in real time if you want to –

unless there a ditches

that you can just as easily fall into -

or not.

But as I was saying,

if I love you

I don’t know what I am

saying.

And what I mean

is anyone’s guess,

but I am just as sure as the world

that I have seen something

in a woman’s eyes.

Which one,

and which time,

and how often

and for how

long

is nobody else’s business.

And I’m not even sure

about me -

and you.

It’s about once a week

that I care enough to

hall my cart to the curb

and if I howl,

I howl.

And I mean at the moon

by the curb

at the end

of my

concrete

driveway.

But -

And I have to know:

is it the light true

or is it reflected?

And how is it that my eyes

see the absence of light

in the night?

And sometimes the very black

is like the fur of my cat –

soft wandering between the LED’s

on my way to the bathroom.

Which one of us wanders more

I could not say.

I couldn’t walk

a straight line at that

hour if I tried.

(Is door jam one word or

two?)

The important thing

is not something I wish to

spell out at this time.

And unless I am writing

to you,

I am not writing to you.

Come to think of it

I’m not even sure I believe

what I saw in your eyes.

This is trash –

too many words by half –

or more.

But I’m not going to take

anything back.

I don’t stand by anything

I said and didn’t mean –

And I don’t stand by what I meant

and didn’t say.

And I already said too many times

that I don’t really know what I mean

anyway.

So don’t bother trying

to read between the lines –

it’s just white space.

(Insert emoticon here)

Pardon me,

this is just trash

and I am taking it to the moon.


If you've come this far, listen to Paul Simon. I'm just playing around, here. He sings about the true light.

If my colors all run dry

I had left the coffee shop, zipped up my winter coat, eased my leg over the seat of my bicycle, and had pedaled slowly away towards home. I felt a little better, but I was mostly just working my way, with some effort, through a depression. The absence of the vibrancy and tang of life is something I have become somewhat accustomed to, from time to time. It’s always hard. I don’t have the words for how hard.

That late afternoon, all I knew for certain was that I was not well. Health, by my measure, is when I am as aware of other people and the world around me - as I am aware of myself. That afternoon I was far too aware of just how I was feeling. Still the sun was shining and the sky was blue. I could see that much. And so I didn’t go straight home. Instead I pedaled and coasted around the sidewalks in South Park.

I am often trying to find words to say something about my experience of l living in the world. And I often doubt my ability to put into words what sometimes seems to me to underlie otherwise ordinary beauty. Sometimes, I sense something compelling – almost overwhelming - within the natural world that my words just don’t seem to quite convey. I give a reasonable effort.

That afternoon I really was not feeling the mystery.

But in truth I don't know myself fully what I am seeing even when I do feel fully alive. Oh, I can usually see that there is some kind of beauty out there. But I sometimes have a sense that there truly must be something much more than just the colors and shapes and textures I see. And it might be something beyond words.

But they say that depressed people are the most realistic about the world and life. No illusions. Healthy people, of course, must have their illusions. That’s life. Of course, these, too, are only words.

Right there in front of my eyes, as I rolled along the sidewalks in South Park, with the nearly setting sun at my back, I saw a large maple tree near the gazebo. The tree was bright red, almost in flames. I rode underneath the branches already strung with Christmas lights - lights that will glow in the dark nights when the trees have dropped their leaves and the branches are bare.

I rode on around a loop, seeing a few pink petals hanging onto rosebush branches. I turned again and nearly ran over a squirrel crossing the sidewalk. If the animal hadn’t frozen in its tracks, it might darted just wrong in an instant and my bicycle wheel might have broken its furry back. As it was, I missed that squirrel by less that the width of its bushy tail.

I rode on. With a few more half-hearted pushes on pedals, I rode along the street along the far side of the park - or the near side. The distinction is hardly important. And then there was another maple tree.  Two of them, bright orange. The sunlight of a setting sun coming through the leaves from the other side.

I turned again and rode on the sidewalk along Massachusetts street. Cars and a pickup truck driving by. The pickup might have been red. I slowed even a little more as I rolled past, on her left, a woman, well bundled, walking. I noticed the late afternoon sun on pale Sycamore bark, the broad trunks of trees with more years than mine, perhaps. Who knew? Who cared?

And then, just a little farther on, I saw a yellow tree by the county courthouse. A fine limestone building. Old. Limestone. A clock in the tower. There were some light shades of yellow-green in the lower branches of the yellow tree. The leaves would all be on the ground soon enough.

All of the colors of fall were represented. Red and orange and yellow. And the sky was sky blue. And I just rolled around South Park in a kind of holding pattern. No place to land.

Finally I turned and pedaled on down one of the sidewalks, angling through the park towards my home.

I had passed some time in a coffee shop earlier that afternoon trying to get out my own head, or at least to try to expand my sense of the world beyond the emptiness of my own feelings. There were other people walking back and forth on the near sidewalk - and the far sidewalk – the sidewalk across the street as I gazed out of the plate glass window of the coffee shop. On the near sidewalk, I saw a little boy crying in the arms of a woman with gray hair. More people were standing in line on the far sidewalk for a concert at the Granada. And more people. People just walking from there to here or from here to there. People whose pain and pleasures I cannot directly feel. Ever. We are – each of us – alone.

But we are all alive. And I do want to believe that we are somehow connected to each other. But, at least, it is something for me to be reminded that this life – however full or empty it feels at times to me - is not just all about me.

At some point, I had plugged my device into the speaker box and I had played some tunes from Pandora. After a while I realized that I - and the few people with me in the coffee shop - had possibly had enough of the sad songs I was playing. Leonard Cohen does sounds a little gloomy, sometimes. I switched over to the Eurthymics. Perhaps it was a timely coincidence. In the strong rhythms and the bold lyrics of the song, I heard the sure lifting voice of a woman, Annie Lennox, singing, “I was born an original sinner ...” I caught the smile on Abbi’s face – she is one of the baristas at Aimee’s – as she stepped lively up the steps. That look on her face surely meant more than I could read or more likely that I could ever say. We had caught each other’s eye. So what if I can’t know just what is behind those eyes? But I don’t think that I am mistaken about everything.

I had watched Abbi sweeping the floor as I took occasional sips on my glass of iced tea. The refill is free at Aimee’s. Or you could look at it this way: You pay for thirty-two ounces of iced tea, half poured twice into one glass. The tea tasted good. It’s not always about the words. And there will be new crumbs on the floor tomorrow for Abbi - or someone else - to sweep up. 

I sat quiet – mostly - at the counter that afternoon. I had told Abbi some of my troubles and perhaps she understood some of what I had said. But she surely couldn’t understand it all. I couldn’t even understand myself. And even on my better days, I wonder about who I am and why I am here. Perhaps, I think too much about it.

But here is the point that I am trying to make. The world out there beyond myself does help keep me from spiraling down into myself – my aloneness. And yes, water swirls down the drain in the opposite direction in the other hemisphere and dishes get dirty and the dishwater spirals down in the sink either way. If you look, there are coffee shops and maple trees. They might mean something. I might not be able to say what. But I can try.

And there might be this: perhaps we find something of what we have lost of ourselves in the eyes of others. It’s just a thought. At least I could try to borrow some of Abbi’s hope on a day I couldn’t feel my own very well.

And I still look forward to the day when I might somehow embrace more fully some of the lives of some of the other people around me. And even when I cannot feel the fullness of life - or the mirth of beauty – I haven’t yet lost everything. I do fear the valley of the shadow of death. But I have learned to take comfort where I can. I still keep on trying to get through the shadows to the valley of love and delight.

I told Abby, as she had stood for a moment near the front door when I finally left the coffee shop, that I felt ‘this much better’ - and I held my thumb and index finger just a fraction of an inch apart. But I had been glad to have passed a little time with her – and the others at some distance – it helped to be with people who weren’t me. Their pain and pleasure are their own, but I can sometimes be encouraged by the pleasure they express. The words spoken that afternoon weren’t the most important thing.

I rode away on my bicycle. Abbi still had a tile floor to mop.

And if the patterns hold, I will be laughing loudly once again. My cup will run over.

But not that afternoon.

After riding around South Park, and through the alleyway I usually pass through, I eventually parked my bike and sat on the bleachers at Central Middle School. I could feel the warmth of the sun, finally almost down. I’m not talking about an emotion, now, but the plain warmth of a nuclear fire ninety-three million miles away. The sun was going down – as we say. The earth is turning toward tomorrow - come what may. A brisk autumn wind moved the fading grass in front of me. I made some notes. I didn’t really feel all of it, but I felt enough to keep me going. I would go home and get some supper together for me and my wife.

So is this what remains? These words? Will they make sense for all time? Will they make sense tomorrow. They’re only words. Reality will always exceed my grasp. But I am part of it.  I think – for today - that life is a gift. Even though I don’t feel the gift part.

And I think that those last words try to say too much – and then say too little. For now, I just see through a glass, darkly.  Timely coincidences only carry me so far. This afternoon the squirrel with the bushy tail didn’t die - and then it ate acorns and chattered to the other squirrels in South Park. And I suppose that it will have to be enough for me to say that sometimes just a glimpse of the light in someone else’s eyes will just have to  hold me until tomorrow. Or a colored leaf against a blue sky.

Pumpkinhead 2017

I’ve played ‘Pumpkinhead’ before. I say that I’m scaring kids on Halloween, but who am I fooling? Oh, I have scared a few. Kids – and parents – have told me so.

But this is all a game. It’s a little spooky. That is the point. Sort of.

But it all happens so fast. I can barely see shapes and shadows out of my eyeholes. I’m listening for voices. I do know some of these kids – and their parents. And more kids that I will only meet once – as Pumpkinhead. But no one – not even me - knows for certain quite what they are seeing right in front of their eyes.

I remain motionless where I am sitting or standing. Big Mama sways a little in a nonexistent wind. I am looking into eyes I mostly cannot see. They are looking back into eyes they cannot see. Looking back and forth at the figures in front of them. Then, finally, I lift my arm – ‘that is Pumpkinhead No. 1’s arm – and wave. And then I hear laughter when they realize that their eyes haven’t been seeing what they had thought they were seeing. And I hear myself laughing.

We’ve all been fooling ourselves. Mostly. Playing along with illusions. I am sitting out there in a dark, cold, porchlit yard all evening – I have a front row seat - and I still miss most of the show. It is dark, after all, and it all happens so fast.

One girl paid me the ultimate compliment from the side walk as I waved. At least I took it that way. She said ‘There’s a person in there.’

I pulled the pumpkin mask away just a few times last night. I wanted the kids to see my face. Who am I fooling? I wanted to see theirs more clearly.

But the game goes on. I put my arm around Big Mama and we sway together a little in a nonexistent wind. I hear some rustling sounds in the dark. I wait and watch.

I mostly listen for the laughter. There are persons out there.