AUTHENTIC LIFE

Mom crashed the car through the garage door--again.  Dad spent four hours in the ninety-degree humidity, on a five foot ladder, attempting to fix the busted garage door opener--to no avail. I came out to assist and was given the task of taping the broken garage window--with blue painters' tape. I got a Ct for the work...

Inside, Mom was pissed off at Dad; herself; my sister Ann for buying a roasted chicken for dinner--"Dad's not a chicken person...I was going to make macaroni..." ( Dad isn't a pasta person, either. )She was also pissed, in general, because by fixing the garage door, Dad hadn't come in to carve the chicken for supper.

"Ma, would you like me to carve the chicken?" I ask, even as she is wielding the electric knife.

"Right--you carve the chicken--" She saws through a thigh bone, the knife whining in horror.

"I'm fifty-six. I think I can cut chicken meat off the carcass with an electric carving knife..."

"I don't know how you took care of yourself back in California all those years alone--" Bits of bone and skin and meat are flying through the kitchen atmosphere. The dog is dancing around, both delighted at her windfall, and horrified at the sounds.

"I did fine--and I wasn't really ever alone--" I know it's the wrong response even as I say it.

"Just go do your thing, Karen...if your Father would just call the repair man and stop trying to fix everything himself...(More flying dead skin and gristle...more muttering under the electric whine.)

This morning, when the Africans-doing-the-sweepstakes-scam call for the third time in a row, Mom has her whistle. Dad is on the phone, downstairs, about to "try to trap the creeps" again when Mom lets loose. I am in my room, reading. I jump three feet--then run into the hallway--as if it's a raid.

"Just those Africans!" Mom comes out of her room, pleased as punch, lipstick on, whistle dangling.

I go back to my room.
I turn on the Toshiba to see what real-world events are passing me by. There's an e-mail asking me to renew my writers' review form for a small press publisher I occasionally get books from...they want to know the nature of my blogs...

"A writer trying to re-make an authentic life in a closed society...coming home after thirty-five years to a town that has no room for her, to a family that thinks she is really an alien cartoon on a visa, to confrontation with a life that is the exact opposite of what she has dreamed it would be when she was five years old...unfamous, single,broke and still round...a writer looking for who she always thought she would be."

That about covers it.

(Back to the garage doors...)

THE SUNDAY NEWS

Since I was a kid, I have read the newspapers. Especially the Sunday News--often from other states (as well as the state I was living in.)--not just the comics, either. The front page gave me a quick "take" on the items that everyone else deemed most important. The arts section and the book review section gave me takes on what I found important.

At the dawn of computers, however,the constant deluge of "info-mation" got to me. I began to drown. I was exhausted as I tried to wade through the currents of information breaking all over my mind. I nearly gave up when I found myself having to double-check every story for its validity and accuracy--using a multitude of websites to cross-reference even the most mundane facts. To what end? Did it really make me more well informed--or did it simply sap my life? Was I entering the ideas of others around the world or was I assimilating only the ideas of other "Leaders"? Who owned the information? Who let it loose on the world? Who decided what was truly "important"?

Hope for better humans seemed to diminish as I learned more about the human race. No amount of  "feel good" interest fluff counter-acted the depression of what was happening in every country to almost everyone I knew...this planet is a place of vast physical beauty and vast suffering. Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, Lao Tzu--they all knew it. They all told us; attempted to rake through the muck and prepare us; float us to safety in another place. (I remain grateful for the saints and sages and the God who walked with us for a while. Truly.) However, our suffering hasn't abated. Just now, we can get a closer view with a wider array of statistics. How this serves us, I am not convinced. (Surely not enlightened.) Suffering for the sake of suffering has never been a scenario I bought...there has to be a reason. (Why can't we know, for sure, huh? Enough with the theories: I want the truth...) No newspaper, no t.v. broadcast, no internet website has provided any answers--only illustrated the worst possible details of that suffering. Sunday news from the pulpit doesn't add much clarity, either.

We are in this, together, to find ourselves. (A bit of a conundrum. Nevertheless, true.) By finding ourselves, deeply, honestly, completely, we find the Almighty. By finding the Almighty, we get free of the suffering. We get free of the small "self" and merge with the "SELF"--with the others who are part of the "SELF". (Why not just stay merged with the Almighty to begin with? Why the separation from the start?) This is where it gets sticky. This is where I begin to feel like a Spiritual Slacker...Nobody has given me a clue to why this whole "play" has to be played out--news of any kind adds to the miasma.

In the meantime, all the smoke and mirrors, all the bells and whistles and syncopated news of the horrors surrounding this life seek to engulf us; seek to separate us; seek to sink us with despair. The Sunday News, as the rest of "the news", no longer informs me. No longer gives me a slice of the planet--nor even a new recipe I might add to the plethora of recipes I've been collecting my whole life. The Sunday News has become like every other outlet of information: political in a game which the common person can never really play; "human" in a way that merely points out how others are holding it together and succeeding while we secretly fail; entertaining in a way that is stale; boring; dated and trite. (Reviews on Sunday have been previously posted all week long--some before the film or play or performance has even been released to the public!) The people being interviewed and fed to me as "stars" don't shine--are almost interchangeable--and if one scratches the surface, one finds that they had "connections" from the beginning, to get them in those positions of adulation and success... how many resurrections of Charlie Sheen or Rhianna or The Real Housewives do I have to see before even "resurrection" becomes a used-up verb?

My bitterness comes from spending an hour reading the Sunday Times today. It wasn't romantic. It wasn't relaxing. It wasn't enlightening or energizing or even slightly entertaining. It felt like work--piss poor work going nowhere. If one article can be published heralding a rise in reading scores in Massachusetts while another, one page over, points fingers at the educational system in Massachusetts because of poor reading scores in different sections of the state--and no one on the op-ed pages sees this...no one comments critically...or one story in the "Living" section touts the latest findings about cholesterol and Baby Boomers while another contradicts the exact stats--and both are only talking marginal numbers and finite findings but no one is commenting on the fact of how these articles and "suggestions" from the "experts" are confusing us--or that the price of avocados and fresh veggies rivals the price of meat these days and McDonalds doesn't really offer a helluva lot of vegetarian courses anyway--and kids don't eat at home, so who cares?

We wonder why our kids don't read: books, newspapers. (Or go to Church anymore...)We wonder why people rely on twenty-minute ticker-tape renditions of the news flashed on big screens at the supermarket or the restaurant or the bar or the subway station. Or their phones. We wonder but it is right in front of us. We don't want to read through what is printed because we know it will confuse, enrage and not engage us deeply.

Our phones and our screens keep us from pointing out this fact and sharing it with our children. The flashing info-bits are pretty colors and noise--the stuff of sleep-walkers and infants; the stuff of dreams. If we were awake and able to rummage through the dross we might find the truth.Through our neighbors we might find ourselves. (Through ourselves we might find God. Through God we might get through the pain and bitterness and lack of hope; we might go beyond the self-condemnation; the loathing; the anger; the hate.) We might see what beauty if truly there.

 We might.

But we won't find it in The News.   

SKUNKED!

Remember being in the family car on a summer trip to the beach and your parental unit ran over an already- run-over skunk? The heated rubber, clinging-like-smoke- stench that filled and followed the vehicle for the next few miles? Remember the screaming and nose-holding and fake gagging and the inevitable yelling (from the front seat): Will you kids stop it?! It's only a skunk!!
Remember?
Yesterday, after tutoring, I had to make a trip to the drugstore. I told Dad I was going: where I was going:told him my return approximation.
Dad waved me on outside.

It was about one hundred degrees in the street.
Earlier, neighbors had "alerted my father" that, "your daughter left her back windows down in the Subaru"--mainly because where I am parking the car is now absolutely visible to the entire street. No tickets but no privacy, either.

My father "alerted me", and gave me the "you better get out there and do something" lecture even as I was changing my clothes...so, he knew I was not going to be long, drugstore sidetrip or not.
On the way, in the drive-thru line at the store, my car simply died. Radio, air, headlights, everything just cut out. All the warning lights flashed. People began honking. The lady at the window was waving madly, while I tried to explain, two feet below her sight line. The manager came out and demanded to know if I had triple A. She told me she was sending "two guys to push your car out of the lane". I explained it was stuck in park; they wouldn't be able to move me. We then discussed my "preferred garage for towing".

I went to the ''get out of long explanations for free" card: I'm from California...

Immediately, there were three people at the window. All were smiling, knowingly.
I kept fiddling with the usual stuff: steering wheel, ignition, turning everything off, finally reaching for the owner'smanual. (This has happened twice before. Always after driving, then parking for a bit. Always before my various "fiddlings" somehow worked and the car started up). Once again, something in a random order of "somethings" was the right thing. Before I even cracked the manual, the engine kicked in and I pulled out of the line.

"Have a nice day!" the teen-ager in the window waved.
Finding a spot directly in front of the house, I thanked all the saints and angels still listening to me these days, and proceeded up the steps. When I got to the front door, the screen was locked...I can't use my key in the massive wooden frontdoor if the screen door is locked...hadn't I just informed my father, like fifteen minutes earlier, that I would be back?

I ring the bell.

I can see inside.

 He is watching the Red Sox, in his recliner.(I know he can't hear me on the porch.) However, he CAN hear the doorbell.

He gets up.

He goes to the backdoor...

I wait a minute then ring the front door,again.

Still, no answer.

(I know Mom is upstairs. She can hear nada, downstairs--especially if her t.v. is on or if she's on the phone.)I wait some more.

Finally, Dad comes to the front door.

"I told you, I was coming right back..."
"I thought you'd come in the back door..." he grins, sheepishly.
I follow him inside.

Immediately, a cloud of stink assails me.
(It is like my summer childhood tarbaby-in-the-station-wagon stench: skunk!)
Maeve runs into the carpeted living room, rubbing her nose and ears on all the furniture and the floor. She is dashing around as if someone is chasing her.

"Does she smell?" Dad asks, innocently.
"O my God, Dad! She got sprayed!"
The house reeks.

"Naw...maybe she got close to where the skunks are..." Dad goes into this long lecture of how one winter Maeve cornered a young skunk in a snowbank in the yard and got the full "green slime" treatment all over her. How he and Ann were in the garage, with heaters and sprayers and cans of "skun-off" for hours before they could let the dog inside. (Mom fuming from upstairs...as I know she will fume if she comes downstairs right now...) "She's just a little stinky..." Dad goes back to the baseball game.

I corner the dog.

Maybe not "green slimed", but decidedly hit--Maeve reeks of that eye-watering mouth drying scent. I get the "skunk off" from the cellar, while trying the corral the fleeing pup. I plop her in the sink--telling Dad there is no way I'm carrying her upstairs to the shower. Mom is up there and the whole bathroom will be a disaster area. For once, he agrees to the kitchen treatment.

Two long processes of "de skunker" juice, about fourteen hand- towels, my own self now "skunkified", Dad's guilty admission of: "When  you left, I put her outside and then I guess I forgot she was there...she was trying to come in when I went out back to let her in...I guess she knew she'd been sprayed..."

(It wasn't the doorbell that made him go to the back door...)

"I thought you'd come in the back..." Dad shrugs.

Maeve tries to lick my nose.
Her breath smells like the rest of her.
"Dad, I don't go in the back door at night--WE HAVE SKUNKS!"
"Well, they don't usually spray--"
I know I can't win this. (I also know I have to spend the rest of the night trying to do laundry and clean up the kitchen. Where Maeve has rubbed her nose on the rugs is almost a lost cause. Febreeze does NOT take out skunk oil...trust and believe.)

I barricade the drying dog in the kitchen, reminding Dad the gates are up and not to let her out until morning.  I put down extra water and piddle papers. Maeve doesn't balk.
In the morning, when Ann gets home, all I hear is how I didn't use her "special de-skunker".
Dad is in the yard, with the new hose head, wetting the yard to get rid of the residual odors. The neighbors all join in the discussion.

Ann takes over with her "remedy" and washes the dog several more times, on the back porch, Dad lending hose help. (I am the towel-boy...and the scissors-kid...and the shampoo-- dispenser...and the rug-runner...all the time getting the lecture about how Maeve is never "to be out in the yard alone after dark"...and how I should have immediately made up the seven ingredient skunk remedy instead of using the commercial batch that was at the ready.)  ARRRRRRRGGGGH!

"It's only for emergencies--" Ann tells me, rolling her eyes.

"It was...Maeve was rubbing her skunked self all over the house--"

"Well, still, you should have made my recipe up..." Ann gives me no slack.

Maeve, absolutely miserable, gets toweled off once more and is allowed inside.
(She keeps giving me the dirty looks--as if I'm the one who ratted her out...)

As usual, she is shaking her coat, bouncing like a mad-woman after her baths. This is how she always is. She feels great and can be freed of the confinement of human hands and itchy soap. She is rejoicing.

Mom is now, of course, in the "good seat", downstairs.SHE begins her critique of the situation, how it is being handled, how we have all botched the job and how to do it better--after the fact--like twenty - or so hours after the fact. (I don't want to tell  her that Ann has stuffed the entire dog bed into the washing machine.) Or that I have fourteen hand towels that need to be de-skunked, after. Or that the house still smells like the back of our old car in August--I let her be especially upset with my father, who still insists that the dog "didn't really get sprayed".  (Right.)

Maeve is getting that "Cujo look" in her eyes.
She's had enough.
I leave her to her "mother"--Ann.

I still have to go to the drugstore to pick up my prescription.
I still have to get the car to a mechanic.
I still have to go to the bank.
I still have a ton of laundry to de-scent.

(What was I saying about karma, earlier this week?)    

KARMA CHAMELEON

6:00 a.m.
A knock on the bedroom door.
It cracks open before I can open my eyes half-way...
"Your car is gone!"
I roll over.
"It's not out front! Somebody must have stolen it!" Mom is sticking her head into my room, falsetto whisper screeching through my brain.

"I parked it two houses down, Mom. There was no space out front when I got home..."

8:00 a.m.
My bedroom door swings wide.
"Wake up!"
I roll over.
"I know...my car isn't out front--"
Ann walks to the end of my bed, kicking it as she passes. "I'm not here about the car--though I did mention it to Dad this morning--it's about your kayak--"
I struggle up.
"Come on, wake up, you need to hear about this--but I don't want you telling Dad or Mom--"
I reach for my glasses.
Ann stands there, arms crossed, laughing, " Did you hear the dog this morning?"
"I only heard you and Mom..." I sigh.
"Well, she kept bouncing around your kayak and circling it in the yard...I knew something was there...I thought maybe the skunk was back. Then, two little furry things dropped off the ledge. I ran over before Maeve could get them--they were so cute!" Ann is laughing harder.
"What? They fell off my kayak?!!!" I am sitting upright, now.
"Actually, I think they fell out of your kayak--"
"What are they?" I shudder.
" Baby possums! But don't tell Dad--he'll exterminate them--if we just leave them alone for a few weeks the mother will move them off or they'll find a new place--your kayak is just the perfect nest for right now cause they're so little--"
"Oh come on! Possums?!"
"Yeah, so don't take your kayak out for a few weeks and it will be okay--I'll see if there's a wildlife sanctuary that can take them..." Ann leaves, chuckling.

I get up. No sleeping in anymore.

Downstairs Dad meets me by the coffeemaker.
"Leave a note on your car, next time..." he is laughing.
"What?  Outside on my car? Leave a note--for who??" I stop short, mid pour.
(Last week I got a fluorescent orange fifty-dollar ticket, which Mom and Dad didn't stop talking about for the entire week--for parking in the same spot I've parked in for a year and a half without incident. Now, choosing another place just two houses down, far, far away from driveways and fire hydrants and the edges of anyone's home, they want me to leave a note??Whaaa????)
"Here--on the kitchen table. So your Mother doesn't get nervous when she doesn't see your car outfront. Leave a note that you've parked somewhere else on the street..."
"Every time I park someplace on the street, you want me to leave a note on the kitchen table?"
Dad smiles, seriously. "Yes. Leave a note."

Ann is playing on her computer as I chew my bagel at the kitchen table.
"Possums may hiss, bare their fifty needle-sharp teeth and discharge a smelly green liquid, when threatened--if that doesn't work--they will play dead...Better leave the kayak alone for a while..."
Ann scrolls through the website.

I better.   

FATHERS' DAY

What do you give a man in his mid eighties? (This isn't a set-up for a joke...)
What do you give a man in his mid eighties who has five kids and three grand-daughters? Who has a wife (also in her eighties), extended family and friends still around, and a dog who adores him? (Though she chases him down the dark hallway at night,growling, when he heads for the bathroom...)

What do you give a man in his mid eighties with lots of friends and family and a dog who loves him, for his birthday, Christmas, anniversary and Fathers' Day?

As he,himself, has pointed out, repeatedly: "A guy can only wear so many pairs of socks..."

Or tee-shirts (regardless of the wit printed on the chest); or khakis (chinos in his vernacular); or ties (even though he attends at least three funerals a week and enough rubber-chicken luncheons and benefits to rival a senator); pairs of sneakers (he keeps Krazy Gluing the three pairs he actually wears--the others have various deficiencies only his feet can identify...); sweaters and sweatshirts (he only wears the tees at  home, wondering why he is constantly chilled...) after shave and colognes (OLD SPICE ORIGINAL and Aqua Velva, still;forever...).

In recent years he has cut down on the power tool usage--many being handed over to my brothers who actually have homes where powertool jobs are routine. However, in the cellar and garage, workshops remain. There are the answers we all look for on these gift-bearing occasions.

The garage: home to his newest hobby: gardening. Or: the yard.
The backyard and side yard and front yard are small. His mower is mighty--outweighing him by a few hundred pounds. It takes gas and oil and needs all sorts of screwdrivers and wrenches and wires and fuses and duct tape and rubber things and wheels and compressed air to run. It makes the kind of roaring sound he used to make on weekends...He loves his mower. He will not replace his mower. He will fiddle and twiddle and tweak but he will not upgrade. "I will die over this mower," he has been heard to mutter.

 (My sister Ann fully expects this.)
My sister Bren is a gardener in a serious way. Flowers AND veggies. She usually buys him plants and seedlings and potted babies that she helps him set up and try to grow. (Dad overwaters, over sprays, absently cuts down--with the powermower--and basically truncates the lives of the green things in his care. However, he has a helluva time doing it.) Ann, my other sister, also a gardener (but of vines and flowers and animal friendly things) adds to the collection each year. They have tried upside down guaranteed to grow tomato plants and peppers. (He backed the car into the tomato stands...and the peppers grew something small and green and evil tasting--they actually scared me as they sat on the kitchen table after being proudly picked at the end of the season by Dad. They had mutated after their once a week bug spraying routine...). He watered the wildflower seed mats they bought him--also guaranteed to grow (but not on a floodplain). Still, stuff does rise.

He points that out proudly, every year. So they know what to get him.

His granddaughters and daughters- in- law and sons rely on electronics. (I sometimes wonder if they are making up for the powertools...). While he won't allow us to pry his JITTERBUG from its hip holster, he will allow flashlights; car interior gadgets; anything that makes noise or moves--solar powered is the newest preferred genre.

Solar paneled bird houses and feeders; a lighthouse on the front lawn; surveillance lights all around the perimeter of the house; in- the- garage- alarms; bug zappers; field lanterns; air compressors; auto vaccums...Dad has all of them in multiples. (You wonder who buys this stuff you see in the hand-shot commercials? My family does: for Dad.)

Oh, there are also the garden critters--the fairy balls and leprechauns and statues of exotic animals...there are whirligigs and metal sculptures. (Last year he put a wire-formed dog sculpture in the backyard garden amid the lillies--but he couldn't find the head....This year it appeared re-incarnated with a new head...he had soldered the old one backwards so the tail was on the neck..."Looks like an elephant. don't ya think?"...)

I have until Sunday. The entire clan plans an all-day bar-b-que. This afternoon,Ann and I and Maeve the dog are traveling to New Hampshire, to buy a special dessert. On the drive, I will be thinking about dashing back home to find an appropriate present for this Fathers' Day...something unique...loving...sensitive...reflecting all I feel and what I think of his persona...

I saw a solar-powered whistling gnome at the hardware store...(It would fit very well in the last patch of shamrocks by the back porch...)

Happy Fathers' Day! 

WE ARE WHAT WE OWN?

Processing the new blog post by writer-friend Terry Wolverton, which deals with consumerism and its effect on our lives, I am filled with the usual conflicting guilt, upset and frustration I always feel as an American with a Liberal Arts education. First let me say: Terry is an excellent writer. Always has been--in most forms. She is also an excellent person. (However, I might be saying that because the way she thinks is familiar...we are contemporaries in background experience and time...our spiritual wanderings (adventures) are different in detail but resound in similarity.) Our concerns mirror each other as we flow through the West. So, with that confession, the fact remains: Terry is an excellent writer.

Now, the issues raised in her blog...hmmm. I write this as I peer around my younger sister's childhood bedroom. She moved all of her stored "stuff" so I might move back in--refugee from the California financial debacle and runaway from all that New England means--now back--trying to find a new life amid the bloods.  My sister wasn't happy with the move. Not only do I upset the careful balancing act that is my family, her stuff doesn't have a permanent home anymore. She, too, is looking for a new job in this terrible economy. She has a house that is on the market; she has a new car and a newer boyfriend and like me wants to move in closer to the aging parental units. If the delicate balance of unemployment insurance, relationship angst, sale of the house gets tipped, I am occupying "her space". This reality of "stuff" isn't funny. It has caused an unique "riff" in our reality. The balance of "where to stuff the stuff" vs. "where to stuff myself/ my life" vs. "where to stuff the feelings of owing the folks/the family" vs. "what IS my life at this moment, anyway" makes for a warzone in my head. (And I am sure, hers, too.)

When I left the West Coast I packed my "most important things" into seven boxes and mailed them home. I carried my laptop and one suitcase. I figured (a year and a half ago) that whatever I had to leave (or give away) was replaceable. (How many people say the same thing after a devastating wildfire or a hurricane?) As I've always been employed, making more money and getting more "stuff" seemed like a reasonable assumption. Deciding what constituted "important things" was more problematic.

Clothing for the East Coast Teacher is quite different from clothing for the West Coast Teacher. I'm not just talking "no jeans"...I'm speaking of boots, sweaters, blazers and heavier underwear. I'm mentioning investing in coats for three seasons, hats that don't make one look like a Gangsta, gloves and heavy socks. Almost nothing I brought back was of use in the first few months I was back. Since I am the shortest of anybody in my family--and I mean ANYBODY--and fall in the middle of the weight/width line--there were few handmedowns that were appropriate. Much of my unemployment funds went into second hand and consignment shopping sprees. (Luckily New England--at least this part of MA--is highly forgiving when it comes to the wardrobes of its educators. Conservative, bland, practical--yes. Unisex--often. Heavy--always. But, forgiving.) Luckily the brands in the thrift stores followed classic Eddie Bauer and L.L. Bean lines. However, the search for the best boots became a problem.

I'd given up my drums and guitars to various friends in L.A. and the OC. So too my paints and brushes; canvases; my truck; my kayaks; my backpacking equipment. I'd donated my board shorts and Hawaiian shirts; my adventure shoes and hiking boots; my slashed designer jeans and most of my leather jackets. (I kept a couple...thank God!) All of my books--except copies of those I'd written--were given away, too. My music, my dvds, my cds, my electronics--all of it vamoosed. While this wasn't awfully tragic, somehow it stung a bit. I mean, these accoutrements made me who I was in the world....Defined me to the people I'd known for three decades...identified me to strangers. I knew I wasn't "what I owned", but "what I owned" helped me maneuver through this life. Helped me hold on and move forward.

When I returned to 88 Maple Street, it was to a house full of the entire family's "stuff". Decades away, I hadn't witnessed the "storage of things" that took place. Even as family members moved out and then back in and then out again, "stuff" remained. My Dad comes from the Great Depression. He has always "stored stuff"--repairing even the smallest broken item, to be used until it breaks down its very molecules and blows away. There wasn't a lot of room for my seven boxes.

Perhaps I didn't need even seven. I mean, the cheap guitar which replaced my three great guitars in CA, isn't a necessity--though it calms me and gives me some hope...my many pairs of sneakers and "adventure shoes" perhaps are excessive--though I've always had sore feet and have always sought "the perfect shoe" that could be worn through an entire day and night--now I had to add snow and sleet to the equation. So, this was an experiment in haberdashery that wasn't likely to go away. (I'm still searching for the perfect shoe/boot--one that is supremely comfortable, flat, supportive but cushy, rugged yet refined. I take all suggestions...) The point is, aside from shoes, and the books that I began to accumulate (another tool of the trade that isn't going to go away...I'm an English Teacher and a writer, for God's sakes...), I am not a creature of "collections".

But, my "stuff" began to fill the room around me. At 56, as I gaze about these walls, to know that almost everything I own (except for my kayak--a Christmas gift from my sister--and my 1999 Subaru--a gift from my parents) resides here, with me, is a bit disturbing. I am thrown back to being a child--or a teen--wondering when I would ever graduate out of this house and begin a life with better clothes, powerful wheels, any and all paints that I desired so I might create the world that I really saw, and excellent space of my own where no one questioned my life. At 56, as I gaze about these walls, I am embarrassed and humbled...thank God my family has room for me and my seven boxes. Thank God that however unsuccessful they may think I am, mostly they keep it to themselves. They watch me succeed in the myriad details of establishing one's new life back "home" after 35 years away. They see I'm not really a slacker. They understand that "back there" I had been fully an adult--fully engaged--fully useful and successful and maybe even dynamic. But in this time-warp and failing economy--I am back in awkwardsville. Like so much "stuff" which has been stored in this house and often "forgotten", perhaps life has "stored" me...hmmm.

Seven boxes. (Maybe now eight...), a cheap guitar, an old car and a kayak...it is hard to not measure one's life through one's "stuff". It's hard not to want more "stuff"--because one is often judged by one's "stuff". Is this the greater schooling? Is it because I am deemed "ready" to be challenged, yet again, by a Universe, to go beyond an identity created by "things"? Or more: an identity that the mainstream society only comprehends via "stuff"? Am I strong enough to actually believe what I have studied and chased down for so long? That: we are more.

So much more.

We are, as Shakespeare has said, the stuff the Stars are made of...

I wonder.           

THE REAL DANDELION WINE

Ray Bradbury's passing didn't go unnoticed by me. It just came on the heels of so many important icons in my life transiting out that I have needed the time to "process". I guess when one hits one's fifties it is natural to lose "the elders" in large swatches. The mown meadow of my young adulthood now ploughed under completely...(Like all "ploughed fields", one's life--my life--begins to look cold; bleak and barren; somewhat hopeless. However, as with all ploughed fields, it is only the time of waiting for a new abundance. New life-force--or the old life-force, transformed.)

I taught Ray Bradbury at the also-passed-over UCI Farm Elementary School when I was teaching their eldest students language arts. I was allowed much freedom of choice as Head Teacher and my choices included whole novels by American Masters. No "excerpts" spread out like a potluck dinner--but real feasts of literature taken from the pantry of time. Ray Bradbury was one of my contemporary American authors. His works were excellent choices.

When I was in sixth grade I came upon SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. It mirrored the darker side of my own hometown. It delighted me; made me feel as if someone, somewhere "got" what I intuited about life--what I saw around me. It was especially delicious that good overcame the evil and that kids were at the heart of the story. It was also wonderful that however dark things seemed, there was no pettiness in Bradbury's writing. If someone or something was evil, they were very evil and a reader could understand the malevolence of the matter. No cute and cutting commentary nor sly put-downs in his writing. If you were bad you were really bad and we all knew it. If you were good it was often a bit more complicate, but still, no mean spirited asides slipped between the lines.

I loved that. I still love it. (There is far too much meanness around. Far too much petty judgments and in-accurate diagnoses of people's character.)

The next book I discovered by Bradbury was DANDELION WINE. For me, it remains his masterpiece. Though now very dated (it almost qualifies as a historical novel of Americana), the intense plotline could have been written today. In the details of the lives of the characters, also led by children, a whole world is born. Generations grow, thrive, wither and pass. There is Spirit and there is Wonder in every house on every street--some of it is frightening. Well titled, I often feel tipsy after I re-read this novel. It is so rich and satisfying...It also is American English at its best. The purity of the words fill one's mind forever. It is the perfect "forgotten classic" that all Teachers should assign, discuss and thoroughly digest with their classes. It was a big hit at the Farm School--with kids as well as parents who picked up the novel after their children were asleep.

FARENHEIT 451 is most often the go-to book we all meet in High School or college lit classes. It is Bradbury's take on a society who begins to burn its own books. While it is interesting and well written, as are all his novels, I find it less realized than other books about a crippled future.
I preferred 1984 and ANIMAL FARM--who also occupy the niche of "holocaust novels". But most people read FARENHEIT 451 and feel its force for years.

When I moved to Laguna Beach, in the 1980's, their primary bookstore was FARENHEIT 451. Many hundreds of hours spent in those stacks are somehow bundled into my Bradbury experience and I am forever grateful. I often suggested older students, still hungry for more Bradbury, go on to the MARTIAN CHRONICLES and THE ILLUSTRATED MAN. Beyond those collections I let the young readers find their own paths to the Master.

Sometimes those paths led them to the living, fleshly man: Bradbury often gave readings and invited local schools to them. Whether it was an adult audience at a book signing in L.A. or an auditorium of students hanging on to his every word, Ray Bradbury was always witty; erudite; generous. He never failed to talk to his fans after the event--nor to sign whatever they brought for him to sign. Often, I noticed, it would be battered, duct-taped copies of his early work; DANDELION WINE one of the contenders. (That never failed to make me smile. Like I knew a secret and had met a fellow traveler--though we might both be slipping through, disguised...)

Bradbury was idyosyncratic as any of us who find ourselves in the clutch of wordsmithing. He was not perfect. Some trivialized his work as mere fantasy or sci-fi--and not the most technologically correct, at that. Others think of him as one step above a Star Trek writer--not a great American author at all. They are so wrong.

For those of us who really read the man, our lives have been validated; enriched and forever changed for the better. I feel his movement back to the stars.

I feel less because he's gone.
        

MY RELIGION

What does one do with a broken heart?
I don't mean a weird rhythm, heart attack nor death, nor do I mean a romantic interlude gone south. I mean what does one do when one's spiritual trust rejects one's life? When one's spiritual mentors turn cold; go silent; speak in untruths and misleads? When the people who are at once hugging one in fellowship; prodding one back (either using encouragement or guilt--whichever works); reminding one of the beauty and warmth of a "viable community"; speaking of all enclusion and need for vital members who exude committment and talent and energy; who tell you "Come home. Get involved. Believe we have changed and now welcome you back...", turn silent. Turn their eyes away. Turn their mouths off the welcome phrases. Let you know, behind closed doors, that really, your life choices are so wrong you will never be included again. Not really. Not where it counts.

Any talents; gifts; qualities or energy you possess and are willing to donate--are unwanted.
Tainted. Simply because of who you are. Who you have been in the past. Who you "might" be--in their eyes. Though God makes no mistakes. Though you are who you are as are every creature in Creation is meant and designed to be. Though from the pulpit echoes of the Prodigal Son and Loving one's neighbor and believing in the continuing imperfection of all men and the redemptive power of the Christ who forgives Everything falls on our heads every liturgical celebration, you are not wanted.

Now that you have shown them remorse and tried to re-enter the fold; now that you have admitted your mistakes or days of doubt and asked forgiveness; now that you "know who you are"--and accept second or third class status and lack of any say in your own life among them, and know that you are not valued; not heeded; not truly cared about, (no matter that generations of your blood have put lifefunds into their buildings;their Hierarchy's success...have given when it was a familial sacrifice to give...have proven devotion and swallowed their own cross generational pride in bowing their heads)now that you have become the example of someone who knows "the edges" and where one must sit their point is made. You are no longer of interest. You have been brought down; cowed; embarrassed publicly; had your hope for reuniting dashed on the rocks of their judgments yet again.

Go away, now.

They've made their point.

Go away.

Is there any confusion why I hold to the Buddhist profession: "My religion is Kindness." ?

Amen.   

GARDNER-LAND

This weekend I put Maeve into my Subaru and drove down to one of our favorite spots: Dunn's Pond.
When I was a child, my brothers and I would hike the mile or so to the pond, to spend the day fishing, catching frogs, spotting turtles. Sometimes we would try to "cook" the fish we'd snagged--usually they fell into the campfire or were so blackened they could filter water. (Years before "Cajun" cooking meant black food...)

While these meals were not especially delightful, they symbolized, for us, a kind of independence one found in novels. We were Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. We were the Pirate children from "Peter Pan". We had our own side of the mountain. We could surely exist without parents--if need be. Of course, when some accident occurred ( Kev lighting the pine trees on fire by accident; Bud snagging his thumb with a fishook; all of us slicing ourselves with a slippery pocketknife, while trying to gut fish or cut a tangled line or "whittle something"...)then heading home seemed far more reasonable than staying in the woods--however good the fishing might have been.

Really early days at Dunn's consisted of Dad or Mom or Aunties and Uncles packing us all into a station wagon and driving over to the playground swings and slides at the park's entrance. In summer, we'd fight the mosquitoes and yellow jackets for our hotdogs and orange Crush. We were never allowed to swim in the rusty water of the pond, but we could explore the edges. Tadpoles, water skaters, dragonflies, tiny darting lines of baby fish--even the bubbles of a snapping turtle under the pond lillies--these were the joys of the wild waters at Dunn's.

When I came back to Gardner,the shock of all the furniture factory  closures were only outweighed by the loss of the "wild places" I had haunted. Crystal Lake field, the scene of tobbogan rides and early meditation attempts, as well as the setting for countless short stories, has been replaced by a state skating rink. All the "wild" lakes are now "posted", with hours and fences and gates. You cannot even touch a fishing pole without a valid license--let alone bait a  hook or reel in a line.

As for Dunn's...well...this winter, Maeve and I discovered that there is now a paved parking lot. Gates. A boat house. And shock of shocks, a place to swim!

"They drained it and pulled out all the junk...it's clean...they even have a little beach..." my family informed me.

I thought of the snapping turtles; the old frogs; the horn pout and pickerel--where did they go during this "draining of Dunn's"?  I didn't ask...

In the fall and winter, there had been no guards to lock the gates and no one to man the boathouse. If you wanted to slip into the parking lot and take the dog out on one of the forested trails, you would be unmolested. Though it was a far cry from the adventure in the briars of my  youth, the new nature trail, with the doggie poo bag stations and markers for the blind, were easier to follow. For a while, I had visions of summer mornings. The mist rising off the face of the water. Me slipping my kayak, silently, into the shimmery depths...a silent paddle before anyone started tossing styrofoam noodles and floaties at the kiddie end of the swimming area...

So, as Maeve and I turned into the usually unmanned gate, imagine our surprise at four state Conservation Police populating the booth!

"Five dollars, please," one smiling tanned dude in green waved me down.
"Five!!!" I was aghast. "I don't want to swim or picnic, even. I just want to walk the dog..." I held the clean doggie doo bag up so he could see I was a respectable citizen. Maeve wagged her tail, unconvincingly.

"Sorry. It's to keep the park maintained...five dollars in the lot...no matter what..." he dropped his smile.

I saw people begin to pull in, behind me.

"Can I make a u-turn and get out, here?" I asked, my face beginning to burn.

"Alright...go slow..." the guy waved me out of the line and back to the main drag.

Maeve whined, disappointed. (This was "our place", "our woods"; what had changed???)

I ended up walking her by the old high school. Far less fun for us both. No mist. No lake waters. No jumping fish or passing ducks. Just sprinklers and people picking up their Sunday papers off their lawns...(Maybe it wasn't even the Sunday paper...) I cannot afford five dollars to park just to walk the dog.

If I want to drive out of town, I can find other "woods"--but not the places of my childhood. There is talk that these "other walks" will also begin to put up gates, chains, booths for collections of fees. All in the name of "maintaining the woods". All in the name of collecting money for the state...All in the name of what? Really?

Seems like the woods have done just fine on their own.
Not so, the state, even as it adds more fines, more rules, more money to its coffers.
(The churches, and synagogues and public libraries--all spaces of quiet contemplation, of meditation and prayer, they, too, have locks on doors, even in daylight. Truncated hours. Parking regulations.)It's Disneyland without the glitz--where even the water is too expensive to drink.

(No wonder bags of pine needles and spray-scent sell in gift stores...)

When will the poor take back the forests?