Old Post, Year After Year

You are every place, and no place.

You are you own home.

A change of address, change of name, suddenly you

abandon an alias, then someone calls out,

"Christopher, good to see you!",

and there you are, sitting by a fire,

reading a paper, and worrying about the bills,

wondering if you can afford the

renovation of the upstairs bath,

and it's then that your heart whispers,

the last lines of an undelivered love letter

you buried in the pages of some book by

Dr. Suess, The Lorax or The Butter Battle Book,

can't be sure, but you wonder, and you wonder,

"How can anything find me in

middle of all this history?"

You thought for a moment you were caught

in the act of being you, and you were.

Later, after a few drinks, you might think

of walking off into the woods,

where there are no woods,

or in the early morning mist of a dream wish

the woods might come to you, and you rail, and you rail

against prophecy or bad luck, and you pray, and you pray

that someone will want to take all the lucky pennies you pick up,

and you check the mailbox for an envelope containing

the tennis racket you lost at summer camp, or the idea

you had for eradicating homelessness.

You hide money in the mattress like your dear grandmother,

who would mostly smile at misfortune,

and who loved to sell eggs,

or you consider joining some hip group of

well heeled anarchists, tell yourself that

you do not need to live by law or by land, that you

could, if you had to, carry an ocean of someone else's want across

a vast and dangerous desert and not care.

You travel where you think you have to travel.

You live where you live.

Mail is constantly following you back from nights out,

or even the fantasy of nights out.

So you pay bills on time and you send out what needs to be sent out,

and you keep building, and you keep building, a little house

in a far off corner of your soul, where everyone might be right

to call you whatever they felt like when they came over,

but for now, when you look in the mirror,

you know you have a name,

you know you have a name, and it follows

you wherever you go.

Brooklyn Dodger

Last month I moved into a new apartment in the awkwardly named Prospect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn, a few blocks from the site of the old Ebbet's Field (which is now a somewhat ghastly apartment complex with no commemorative monument or plaque that I could find to designate this hallowed ground, but progress is progress and people have to live somewhere I suppose). If I had been born in New York and half a century earlier than I was, I would have been a Dodger's fan.

According to Wikipedia, the Dodgers were so called because, "By 1890 New Yorkers (Brooklyn was a separate city until it became a borough in 1898) routinely called anyone from Brooklyn a "trolley dodger", due to the vast network of street car lines criss-crossing the borough as people dodged trains to play on the streets."

Things seem to be coming at me thick and fast these days and so I find myself considering with some frequency the way in which I tackle the onslaught of potential joy and potential disaster that is "real life". Adult life, I might say. It's true however that these "things" are not actually coming at "me", per-say, they are just coming down the trolley tracks on the streets in which I play, and I think it is important to remember and relish the essential indifference of the universe. Strange thing for me to say, given my considerable vanity and manly pride, but I like saying strange things and I suppose it's my way, my unavoidable, undodgeable self.

In his sexy, somewhat self-important (but thoroughly delightful) 1950's Greenwich Village memoir Kafka was the Rage, Anatole Broyard asserts that the art of living in New York City lies somewhere in "crossing the street against the lights." I always liked that, imagining myself as part of some grand dance where the object, no in fact the point, was to lead, not follow. So, in this city, and in this new home, I find myself amidst the unavoidable and it is not unimportant that I chose to throw myself into the soup. I came to Brooklyn. I came to conquer the seasons. I came to be more that I think I might have been had I just stayed put amongst all that is knowable and manageable in seaside Maine where Nature plays out against itself in all its considerable beauty and mystery, but where I already knew what I wanted to know. I came for the same reason everyone comes to New York, because they did not have at home what I wanted, and I thought they might have it here. I came to risk everything on not knowing, to play in traffic, dodging disaster and hopefully crashing into myself somewhere along the line, and crash headlong into my heart is what I did.

As a baseball fan I thrill in all the wonderful metaphor that permeates our nation's pastime. I will not say anything new here. I marvel at the notion that each season offers the opportunity to better last year's results. I think that John Updike may have uttered the deepest kind of affection when he said, "I love you baby, more than I love a triple." Loving the American experiment as much as I do, I revel in a game played by men who have stretched the summer of their youth to its very limit, to play out a game in the city on a pasture where the clock has no place. Everything is everything all at once and oppressive time is banished. We can be in love as long as we need to be, and the only thing that decides anything is action, a long fly ball, a strikeout, a home run. When we watch a ballgame we can, for a time, dodge the march of time.

I came to Brooklyn though, where they banished the Dodgers a long time ago and so there are choices to make. I must discern between what I can escape for safety's sake and what is inescapable. But perhaps, like my favorite game, none of this thick and fast life is played out against the clock. The earth will spin its spin, and Autumn will come and I will accept the fall of dead leaves. Winter will blanket the concrete and ice will turn to slush and I will not to want to walk a treacherous walk, but I will. Spring will remind me that the only thing to count on is renewal and (thank god) all this wonder is happening without me even wishing for it. Finally, Summer will arrive and New York roses will bloom in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden steps from my house, and though I may be a thorn they will not bloom for me, but they will bloom, they will bloom in every color and shape and size, all perfect and rare and exquisite, and how god damned lucky am I to be around to bear witness?

They will speak to me in they way that Nature speaks to a boy from Maine, and I might even hear my favorite rose say (if she could speak), "Surrender Christopher. You are where you are. I am what I am. Go out into traffic and dodge what you have to, but if you can, do so artfully. The only thing you're waiting on is you."

The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road—the gay fresh sentiment of the road.
O highway I travel! O public road! do you say to me, Do not leave me?
Do you say, Venture not? If you leave me, you are lost?
Do you say, I am already prepared—I am well-beaten and undenied—adhere to me?
O public road! I say back, I am not afraid to leave you—yet I love you;
You express me better than I can express myself;
You shall be more to me than my poem.
I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all great poems also;
I think I could stop here myself, and do miracles;
(My judgments, thoughts, I henceforth try by the open air, the road;)
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me;
I think whoever I see must be happy. -Walt Whitman

Possible Ideas, Available Materials

Feeling dependable and useful one day last week, I embarked on a trip to the hardware store on Court Street (http://www.americanhousewaresny.com/), the installation of a bathroom towel rod and the repair of a metal rack for kitchen utensils that had come undone from the wall were on my mind. My purchases included, one hacksaw ($4.99, I should be able to use it two times at the most), one small tub of Spackling paste ($2.19, upon returning to the apartment I realized MLR already had Spackle. Of course, of course, who did I think I was dealing with?) one sponge brush ($1.19). I had a plan to make a few small things right in the world.

I know a man from Maine that I can only hope to be as helpful as one day. He has kind blue eyes, hands made rough by wind and saltwater, and crazy wisps of gray hair. He's always working on something. Planting a tree, carefully considering the placement of a whirligig, regulating the temperature on the hot water heater, teaching me to start the small engine on the weed-whacker by spraying ether on the carburetor, painting the bottom of his boat, or lovingly sculpting a bust in clay in the basement, his first piece of sculpture in years. He's an artist, and artfully he helped my mother make a home.

I have a distance to travel before I make the things he's made, but for now: two small jobs, easily done, and one hour happily spent imagining that I might take on bigger projects here some day.

Ruth Kaye Sousane

I found two selections from E.B White written for the “News and Comment” section of The New Yorker that I think speak to the way my Grandmother Ruth saw the world and that evoke a spirit of the life she lived. I imagine she would like to hear them and though I’m sure she would be shy, even embarrassed to have me go on about her at any length, I hope that it might make her smile to be remembered in this way. The first piece is called “Life”, published Sept 1, 1945.

“AT EIGHT OF A HOT MORNING, the cicada speaks his first piece. He says of the world: heat. At eleven the same day, still singing, he has not changed his note but has enlarged his theme. He says of the morning: love. In the sultry middle of the afternoon, when the sadness of love and of heat has shaken him, his symphonic soul goes into the great movement and he says: death. But the thing isn’t over. After supper he weaves, heat, love, death into a final stanza, subtler and less brassy than the others. He has one last heroic monosyllable at his command. Life, he says, reminiscing. Life.”

I am lucky to have spent much of my childhood riding around town with “Ma” (a nickname I coined when my young mouth was unable to produce the sound of “Grandmama” as she pronounced it to me). In recent years, she and I would converse while sitting at the kitchen table, a pile of newspapers between us. Often she would search for an article she thought might be of interest to me (she found particular glee in sharing the work of her optometrist’s son, a feature writer for the Boston Globe), or she would have an entry in the World Book Encyclopedia marked: “Look Christopher, I’ve been reading about Sacagawea.”

She was always gracious and well spoken. In November, after surgery to repair her broken hip, she told those of in her hospital room that her mother had paid for elocution lessons when she was in school. This was a fact I had been aware of, but now she added the surprising revelation that what she really wanted was dance lessons. Her Baptist mother did not approve. Despite this artistic setback, it seems to me that elocution suited her well and I for one always appreciated the clarity of her speech and her clever turn of phrase. She could talk with anyone on any subject and often did while selling eggs, pumpkins or box plants to strangers who stopped at her farm stand. She was deeply and genuinely interested in other people. One of her favorite movies was the Jimmy Stewart classic Harvey. She admired its hero Elwood P. Dowd and his easy way with people. Elwood says, to the cabbie hired to drive him to the sanatorium: “So you drive for Apex and your brother drives for Brown. Well isn’t that interesting?” Ma shared this same kind, thoughtful manner with Elwood. She took care to listen to people and to take in their stories. On a visitor's second trip to the farm she might inquire after their dog, or college studies, or trip to Europe.

In Jr. High School I had an assignment to interview someone who had lived through the Great Depression. When asked her general impression of the time my grandmother replied directly, “If you didn’t have money before it started, you didn’t notice much change when it was going on.” There are other examples of this dry wit; referring to my Aunt Nancy’s enthusiasm for the movie Bull Durham she quipped, “Christopher, that movie’s not about baseball.” How true.

She was highly quotable at other moments. Giving dating advice: “You should just be nice to the girl.” On Fashion: “The girls with the Stetson hats were the top, the absolute top. I was smart enough to know I shouldn’t wear one. I looked like a mushroom.” She had a flair for surrealist nature haiku. One birthday I got a note that read: “Spring is coming late this year. Baby’s in the barn. Dogs caught a opossum.”

I have an image of her driving the hay truck or tractor into her 80’s (Baby tells me that she favored the John Deere because its pedals we easier to reach than the clutch in the pickup). I can see her slight frame bouncing, bucked by the ruts in the field. I see her at holiday dinners cooking squash, potatoes, peas and rolls on the stove, always moving, always the last to sit down. My happiest holiday memories involve Ma and our assembled family and the pleasure of hearing the same stories over and over again. Stories shared by her children, Nancy, Sally and James, stories of growing up together on the farm, stories of kids eccentric exploits, stories of my late grandfather and his love of football. Our family currency is stories and she valued them as we all did. A rich family history was shared across the holiday table, a table that she set.

She was an amateur naturalist. She would identify local birds and seasonal flowers with joy. Often a New Hampshire field guide or literature from the Audubon Society could be found on the kitchen table. She loved to hear the summer wind in the maple trees that tower above her house. Expressing a fondness for dreary weather she would say, “Christopher, I love a gray day.” Again E.B. White echoes this sentiment in a piece called “Dismal?” written February 25, 1950.

“THE MOST STARTLING NEWS in the paper February 13th was the weather forecast. It was “Rainy and dismal.” When we read the word “dismal” in the Times, we knew that the era of pure science was drawing to a close and the day of philosophical science was at hand. (Probably in the nick of time) Consider what had happened! A meteorologist, whose job was simply to examine the instruments in his observatory, had done a quick switch and had examined the entrails of birds. In his fumbling way he had attempted to predict the impact of the elements on the human spirit. His was a poor attempt, as it turned out, but it was an attempt. There are, of course, no evil days in nature, no dies mali, and the forecast plainly showed the weather man had been spending his time indoors. To the intimates of rain, no day is dismal, and a dull sky is as plausible as any other. Nevertheless, the forecast indicated that the connection had been reestablished between nature and scientific man. Now all we need is a meteorologist who has once been soaked to the bone without ill effect. No one can write knowingly of weather who walks bent over on wet days.”

This is how I will remember Ma, or Mama to her children, or Auntie Ruth to Richard, Dorothy and their families, or Ruth to friends, or Ruthie to her husband George (a pet name tinged with delicate affection): I will wish her underneath a maple tree on her stonewall farm, in the shadow of the old red barn, late on a summer afternoon, as storm clouds darken the western sky and the northeast wind whispers a warning in the low branches, there she is, standing, defiant, eyes glistening, smiling.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/fosters/obituary.aspx?n=ruth-sousane&pid=139439839

Beautiful Women of North Dakota

The people of North Dakota are more beautiful than books. This morning I found myself in Atomic Coffee on Broadway in downtown Fargo (http://www.yelp.com/biz/atomic-coffee-fargo) listening to an old timer (complete with round round belly and John Deere hat) question a young hipster about life in The Twin Cities and exclaim about the delights of the turkey dinner special he was planning to enjoy later in the day. Hearing him talk warms my heart and makes me feel quite at home in the heartland. I am reminded of the New Hampshire men who sit for long afternoons by the register of my Cousin's gas station (Dover Paint and Varnish) and amuse each other with colorful tales of rural life. I imagine I am something like the artsy Fargo youth being cross examined over coffee, both of the place and somehow separate from it. Part familiar, part foreign, all confusing.

Just down Broadway is a charming shop, Zandbroz Variety (http://www.zandbroz.com/). It sells local crafts and has an eclectic selection of books (it also has a soda fountain in the back, the siren song of chocolate phosphate calling to me). The title that catches my eye, "Beautiful Women of North Dakota", is a slim black volume wrapped in plastic. Strangely, this display copy is the only one available and so I have no idea what lies between its pages. And this is best I think, because it leads me to wondering, and wondering leads me to realizing and realizing leads me to a better day.

I wonder, "Who are these beautiful women and how, Billy Black (if that is your real name), can you claim them for North Dakota? How bold." Not being able to view the beauty of these women I realize, "I'm thinking very small to want a book to describe to me the beauty of a place, particularly its women. And more than that, keeping these beauties wrapped in plastic affords me the happy opportunity to imagine my own version of a beautiful North Dakota." What a lucky reminder. Thinking on beauty opens my eyes to more beautiful scenery. The wind sweeps the snow across the streets, trains head out into blinding white prairie, an old man gets to know a young man, the girl who serves me coffee will graduate from college in the spring, the snow will melt, the ground will thaw, crops will be planted and harvested, and the ground will be covered again in sheets of ice like the plastic wrapper on a secret book. But for now, while all that may be true, it's my ability to improve the present with a more careful mind that makes for a happy day, so I thank the shopkeeper at Zandbroz for keeping these images at arms length. http://beautifulwomenof.com/

Surprise

I shiver and smile at the first taste of scotch.

I'm going to meet you out tonight

Neither of us knows where,

You say, "Find me."

I imagine you trying on a new necklace.

I'm not sure where it

Came from, but I think I bought it.

It's just your style and I'm jealous

Because it gets to hang around your neck.

I decide for a change

I'll make myself magic.

It's my rebirthday, I'm feeling fancy.

There's a letter from you on the kitchen table,

a silver skeleton key, a map of

Mesopotamia written in tea and instructions:

"Find me."

We unriddle each other in this way,

Hand written notes, ancient runes:

You called me by my true name,

I gave you correct change,

You guessed my favorite band,

I cooked your favorite meal for myself,

You painted a picture of my childhood home,

I invented a language you already spoke.

"Find me."

I shiver and smile at the last sip of scotch,

I check the magic in the mirror,

Head out into the heavy city air

That's thick with expectation

And too many bad dreams.

"Find me."

I stumble and stumble and walk straight

To the place we never agreed upon.

I open the door

To find you reclining in a resplendent room

Decked out and dolled up for a party.

You scream without sounding.

I shudder without moving.

I smile because I knew you'd be there.

You smile because you knew I was coming.