Category: Verandah

A plea for good postureA plea for good posture

“It’s better to die standing up than live on your knees.” — Alexey Navalny (from “Net Impact,” by Julia Ioffe)

A plea for sufferingA plea for suffering

“You’re abandoning a lot of ideas when you are too into comfort.” — Christian Louboutin (from “Sole Mate,” by Lauren Collins)

The enduringThe enduring

“Countries may fall, but their rivers and mountains remain.  When spring comes to the ruined castle, the grass is green again.” — Basho (from “Aftershocks,” by Evan Osnos)

On the road to nowhereOn the road to nowhere

Colorado is one of the places where God kissed Mother Earth.  Susanne and I spent the past few days there, in and around the Conejos River valley.

When we arrived at our lodge, the first thing management wanted us to know was that a bear had been through the compound the night before, thoroughly inspecting the trash cans.  The District Wildlife Manager had been by later that morning and had left a supply of circulars to be circulated, “Be Bear Aware.”  We have bears near where we live, so we already generally were.  One of the things the circular instructed one to do “if bears are present” is to “remove all bird feeders, including hummingbird feeders.”  Lodge management had taken down the hummingbird feeders not long before we arrived.  The hummingbirds were pissed off.  They were diving down on the chains from which the newly-removed feeders had been hanging, and were flying about with the angry buzz they put in their wingbeats when they are upset.  They’re fiercely territorial animals, as anyone who’s ever been buzz-bombed by one can attest.

We didn’t get to see the bear, it didn’t come back around while we were there.  We saw deer, which is not hard to do in Colorado.  They were mule deer, so common they might be considered the four-legged finch of the Rockies.  There were also plenty of GEICO squirrels, playing Truth-or-Dare with passing vehicles.  And free range cattle, there were those, at one point a herd of them being driven down the road by two mounted drovers (“cowboys,” yes) and an Australian sheepdog.

There was a train, the Cumbres & Toltec, which pulls carloads of tourists through the mountains along a narrow-gauge track that a century and more ago was the way to get around up there.  The train is pulled by one of the little engines that could, chugging along, slightly sulfurous black smoke pouring from its funnel.  Susanne and I rode it, taking the parlour car, which is the last car on the train, far removed from the smokestack.  We were served Danishes, fruits, and rum cake, while the car attendant was quick to evict anyone from the car who hadn’t secured parlour-car passage.  No, the attendant did not throw the miscreants under the railcars, simply shooed them back to the cattle-car where they belonged.  Several of the Republican guests in the parlour car complained, having preferred to see the interlopers tossed from the train and made to walk back down the mountain to the station, but the Democrats, who always outnumber the Republicans though at times are slothful and inattentive, would have none of it and proposed that everyone on the train be allowed into the parlour car.  “Let them eat rum cake,” the Democrats said, “a crumb apiece for everyone,” to which the Republicans struck up a chant of, “Nanny-staters!  Nanny-staters!”, until the car attendant got everyone settled down and back in their proper and duly-purchased places.

Susanne and I spent the next day along the banks of the Conejos, sitting under the trees while the waters rushed by.  Downstream a little ways, a fly-fisherman cast and cast again.  Susanne had her pencils and her sketchbook, and she sketched.  I had a copy of the manuscript I’ve been working on, and on it I did work.  Robins and crows and other birds were about.  Mosquitoes sought meals, and many died for their efforts.  Hummingbirds remained angry and went elsewhere.

“Conejos” means “rabbits,” but we didn’t see any of those.

No one ever gets it rightNo one ever gets it right

“Parenting is hard.  As any one who has gone through the process and had enough leisure (and still functioning brain cells) to reflect on it knows, a lot of it is a crapshoot.  Things go wrong that you have no control over, and, on occasion, things also go right, and you have no control over those, either.  The experience is scary and exhilarating and often humiliating, not because you’re disappointed in your kids, necessarily, but because you’re disappointed in yourself.” — Elizabeth Kolbert, “America’s Top Parent”

Not only that, they spent all the money, tooNot only that, they spent all the money, too

First things firstFirst things first

“Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.” — Josh Billings

Suffer the citizensSuffer the citizens

“A prince should deliver the citizens from the sufferings brought upon themselves but should not bring suffering to the people for his own cause.” — Valmiki Ramayan, Ayodhyakanda Sarga 46

I see a red moon a-risin’I see a red moon a-risin’

You know what a “blue moon” is, and if you don’t, you can look it up, but you don’t have to because I’ll tell you right here and right now–a conjunctive spatio-temporal indicator, by the way, which is both fixed and flexible in, not only the virtual world of the internet, but the virtual world of what passes as reality, which always passes quickly and rather subjectively–anyway, I’ll tell you so you don’t have to wander off and look it up and maybe never return, because, who knows?  Stuff happens.  The phone rings.  There’s a knock on the door.  The plane crashes.  The child is born.

The “blue moon” is the second full moon in a calendar month.  This month does not have that.  What it has is two new moons in one calendar month–one on or about today, the 1st of July, and one on or about the 30th.  I hereby dub such a celestial occurrence a “red moon.”  Pop corks, pour out, and enjoy.

short and sweetshort and sweet

This week I’m posting another of those lower-case short-shorts I wrote in the mid-90s, “mama when she’s really pretty.”  I was channeling a six-year-old girl when I wrote this.  It was published in Chiron Review, a litmag run by Michael Hathaway for nearly thirty years before folding earlier this year.

Simply putSimply put

“I do believe in simplicity. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation from all encumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real.” — Henry David Thoreau

Just close your eyes and chooseJust close your eyes and choose

“We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us.  But that’s often not the case.  Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved.  And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true.  When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.” — Jonah Lehrer, “The Truth Wears Off”

SmittenSmitten

“It can be felt as love when you want to fuck someone and can’t.” — E. L. Doctorow, “Assimilation”

There were villages in the land thenThere were villages in the land then

“Duty, as well as inclination, urges the Lay Preacher to sermonize, while others slumber. To read numerous volumes in the morning, and to observe various characters at noon, will leave but little time, except the night, to digest the one or speculate upon the other. The night, therefore, is often dedicated to composition, and while the light of the pale planets discovers at his desk the Preacher, more wan than they, he may be heard repeating emphatically with Dr. Young, ‘Darkness has much Divinity for me.’  He is then alone, he is then at peace. No companions near, but the silent volumes on his shelf, no noise abroad, but the click of the village clock, or the bark of the village dog. The Deacon has then smoked his sixth, and last pipe, and asks not a question more, concerning Josephus, or the Church. Stillness aids study, and the sermon proceeds.” — Joseph Dennie, The Lay Preacher (1796)

It’s a zoo out thereIt’s a zoo out there

“To better imagine zoo life, you might picture yourself living with your brother (if you are male) or sister (if you are female) in a department store’s window display that looks like a luxuriously furnished home.  Satin drapes shroud the French doors, white woolen upholstery encases the armchairs and the sofa, and a thick silk Oriental carpet covers the parquet floor.  But the doors lead nowhere, the books on the shelves are fake, the TV doesn’t work, the radio has no innards, and the only magazine, a copy of House Beautiful on the coffee table, is dated 1980.  Anyway, you have read it so often you now know it by heart.  Long ago you and your sibling have resolved all your differences.  You have little to say to one another and you no longer think of escape.  You have forgotten your freedom and have accepted your fate.  The building is your prison, and both of you realize that you will never leave it alive.  To forget the boredom and the crowds of people going freely wherever they please, who gather each day outside the glass window, oohing and aahing at the luxury that surrounds you, you and your sibling lie down behind the sofa, where you escape into dreams.  You don’t wake up if you can help it, not even when people in the crowd notice your feet poking out beyond the sofa and bang on the glass to rouse you.  You dream of the night, which you spend with three or four other prisoners shackled to the chairs in the employees’ lounge.  At least you and your fellows can talk all night without wild-looking faces staring at you.” — Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Tribe of Tiger

ClubbableClubbable

“A few years ago, a group of economists looked at more than a hundred Fortune 500 firms, trying to figure out what predicted how much money the C.E.O. made.  Compensation, it turned out, was only weakly related to the size and profitability of the company.  What really mattered was how much money the members of the compensation committee of the board of directors made in their jobs.  Pay is not determined vertically, in other words, according to the characteristics of the organization an executive works for; it is determined horizontally, according to the characteristics of the executive’s peers.  They decide, among themselves, what the right amount is.  This is not a market.” — Malcolm Gladwell, “Talent Grab”

Breakfasting in Challenger DeepBreakfasting in Challenger Deep

“Art is a sort of experimental station in which one tries out living.” — John Cage (from “Searching for Silence,” by Alex Ross)

Tanzen verbotenTanzen verboten

“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoint them.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1774

The rational manThe rational man

“I like to do things that frighten me.  When I’m afraid, I understand more things.” — David Grossman (from “The Unconsoled,” by George Packer)

Dream a little dream of meDream a little dream of me

“The dream of artists–which is simply the dream of friends and lovers, magnified–is to plant themselves in other people’s heads.” — Tad Friend, “Sleeping with Weapons”

Places to bePlaces to be

“All the dreams you show up in are not your own.” — Gil Scott-Heron

The necessary and the sufficientThe necessary and the sufficient

“Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (from Steel’s Walter Lippmann and the American Century)

Survival of the cleanestSurvival of the cleanest

“If a cat walks around smelling like yesterday’s lunch it is much more likely to attract the unwanted attention of both what it is hunting and what is hunting it.” — Dodman, The Cat Who Cried for Help

Putting things in perspectivePutting things in perspective

“Play is never taken seriously by the players–that’s one of its hallmarks.  If it does become serious, it ceases to be play.” — Dodman, The Cat Who Cried for Help

HitchedHitched

Amtrak runs the Southwest Chief between LA and Chicago.  Last week, Susan and I took it eastbound from Albuquerque.  She was born and raised in Chicago* and we went there to be wed and to honeymoon.

(*Onion-town, the legendary, big-shouldered, fog-footed Kenyan capital of the glittering island kingdom of Kansas, where edible dogs are raised up to be served shoreside in deep dishes of Italian and other Slavic spices.)

It’s a twenty-six hour ride by train from Albuquerque to Chicago.  Same amount of time going the other way.  It is a pleasant and civilized way to travel in these terrified times, given that going anywhere in America by commercial airliner nowadays is to find oneself at that nexus where the axes of paranoia, learned helplessness, bald-faced greed, bureaucratic sloth and incompetence, and sadomasochism all meet.  Amtrak, from the evidence we saw on our trip, is staffed by capable and committed people who are usually cheerful, sometimes cranky, always professional, and who work their asses off.  The food is good.  The trains run on time.

If you have to get someplace in a hurry, you have to fly, I’ll grant you that.  I am grateful I don’t live the kind of life wherein I must fly the commercial airways.  While there is something to be said for the exhilaration of take-off and the views from above, there is much to be savored in traveling overland.  You get a sense for the vastness of the country when you cross better than twenty-six hundred miles of it by train.  You get a sense for the people and the places where they live and work.  You may find yourself taking notes and later writing a little something about your trip.

We saw antelope on the high arid grasslands of northeastern New Mexico, small herds of a half-dozen or so.  One antelope who had become separated from the herd and was in the railroad right-of-way galloped madly along the fence line, looking for escape.  Another, a buck, stood on a hillock beside the right-of-way and watched our train as it passed.  In the mountains of northern New Mexico, as we crossed Raton Pass, we saw elk grazing by the tracks.

There were cattle.  Cattle cattle cattle, grazing on ranges and in pastures across New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois.  Many, many cattle.  Horses, too, of course, and a few goats.  No sheep or pigs.

A notable number of farmhouses and houses in small towns in southeastern Colorado and into Kansas flew American flags from tall poles, as though the inhabitants sought to convince themselves and others that they really were in the United States.  The inhabitants further to the northeast seemed to have a more relaxed confidence regarding their nationality.

We crossed Kansas largely by night.  I caught a glimpse of the ghost of Dorothy walking the streets of Dodge City after closing time, her little dog in the basket she carried in her arms, their once-fertile farmlands devastated by overgrazing.  Tears stained her dirty cheeks.

Outside Kansas City at night, by the tracks, a small building burned.

The parts of American life you see from a rail car (we had a compartment in a sleeper, and also spent time in the dining car and the lounge car) are somewhat different from the parts you see from an automobile on the interstate.  There were many instances of what I came to think of as “shacks by the tracks.”  There was much graffiti, some quite clever, in those places fronting the right-of-way and where the local graffiti eradication teams rarely go (they have enough to do in those parts of town where the graffiti is more visible).  In some places, particularly in the cities, there was an immense amount of trash, usually of the metallic, industrial kind, in lots along the rail line.  Only a wealthy country could have so much trash.

And it is a wealthy country.  The immense, fundamental wealth of the farmland as we crossed Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois was ever evident.  Toss aside all your pieces of paper claiming who owes what to whom, get down to the dirt, run your hands through it, and you will see.

There were many white clapboard houses.  This may not be notable to persons from the Midwest who are accustomed to white clapboard houses, but in New Mexico where I live, they are much rarer.  There were whole little towns in Missouri and Iowa where it seemed nearly every structure was of white clapboard.  Some of them needed a fresh coat of paint, and some did not.

Susan and I, who have been together nine years now, married in a civil ceremony at City Hall in Chicago, in Marriage Court, Judge Williams presiding.  We had dinner later with her family, up in Skokie.  They are a warm, kind, and generous people.  The weather was cold and rainy, but soon as it cleared up a bit, we went to the lakeshore and walked along the beach.

There could be more to tell, but for now, this is all.

Settling accountsSettling accounts

“You cannot make up for the evil things you do–they’re there forever.  You can only add better things to your list of deeds in hopes of creating some kind of cosmic balance.” — Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Hidden Life of Deer

Holiday resortingHoliday resorting

This morning I posted another of my published stories, “Tahoe”, to this site.  “Tahoe” is a story that was a bit of a mess when I first wrote it, about ten or fifteen years ago.  I sent it around a bit and it got rejected a bit, until Christopher Chambers, the editor at New Orleans Review, contacted me about it.  A computer crash has since lost me the e-mails we exchanged, but the way I remember it, Christopher told me the rest of the staff thought the story should be rejected, but he thought it contained the seed of something useful, if I was willing to work with him on it.  I was and we did.  His input was so crucial to the fashioning of the finished tale, I thought he and I should get credit as co-authors, though I’ve never publicly said that before now.

Saying it rightSaying it right

“It don’t sound right if it ain’t said right.” — Bill Withers, Still Bill

Plugging awayPlugging away

This guy’s brilliant:

http://www.benloory.com/

Bogie at nine o’clock lowBogie at nine o’clock low

I went out this morning to water my back yard, which is mostly desert with a few patches of wild grass and herb borders and a vegetable patch, and there was a falcon there, eating a breakfast of fresh dove.  I went back inside and called my wife and said, “Come quick!”  We watched the falcon for a few minutes through a window, then I went back out to water.  The falcon continued its breakfasting, which included the plucking of feathers from its entree, until I turned on the hose, at which point the falcon gathered up its meal and flew a couple yards over to finish.

The house my wife and I live in is near the geographic center of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the Uptown part of town.  Our neighborhood was built about fifty years ago, during the great expansion of Albuquerque that followed the Second World War.  Adjacent parts of our neighborhood weren’t built up until the past twenty years or less, remaining desert enclaves until that time.  Roadrunners who used to live in those enclaves migrated to our neighborhood and found they could survive here, so now we have about a half-dozen or so roadrunners about.  We have various songbirds, doves and pigeons; in the winter we have crows and in the summer we have grackles.

The grackles have already started returning.  One of them was perched on the top of a neighboring juniper this morning, giving warning cries about the falcon.  I don’t imagine a falcon would go for a grackle with so many pigeons and doves around, pigeons and doves being essentially the sheep and cattle of the urban bird world.  The falcons live down by the river (the Rio Grande), in the woods there, but we’ve had one in our neighborhood for at least a year.  I’ve lived in the American Southwest most of my life, and this is the first time I’ve seen a raptor with its prey in my own back yard.