Clover — 16

By on May 21, 2013 in Clover

Catcher in the Rye

Up until a few days ago Sandy-May’s books were still in boxes against the wall in Tina’s old bed­room, where they’d been since last fall (when I hauled the boxes out of the car­port to find some­thing for that mis­er­able book­club I let myself be roped into). Now and again, I’d squat to my haunches, pull out a book and start read­ing. More often than not I’d soon lose inter­est, put the book back in its box and drift off to do what­ever, in the back of my mind think­ing I should really get a decent set of shelves to do the books some jus­tice. Which I finally did a few days ago.

A small trib­ute to my good lady.

The books look great and they’ve spun some magic on the room. It’s funny, with the ren­o­va­tions I’d thought of pulling down the walls. To open up the space. But some­thing stopped me. Made me pon­der the thrust of such a deci­sion. I’d be alter­ing the cabin’s energy. Los­ing a deep pool of mem­o­ries that stretched back to the days when Phillip and me did bat­tle over who’d get the top bunk. Ulti­mately, the grav­ity of pre­serv­ing this well­spring of mem­o­ries trumped any other consideration.

For this I am a happy man.

True, the room was essen­tially wasted space for almost three years. Merely a place to put things I didn’t know what else to do with. Like the books. But with the sim­ple addi­tion of a book­case things have taken an unex­pected turn for the bet­ter. I’ve got­ten rid of the bed and moved my desk in—it fits per­fectly beneath the win­dow, which looks onto the lake. Today I enlisted Frantisek’s assis­tance to deliver a new recliner, a floor lamp, another set of shelves, and a goodly-sized cof­fee table.

And now, hours later, I’m sit­ting at my desk. It’s rain­ing. There is dark­ness out the window.

I’m drawn to the books.

To say that they rep­re­sent Sandy-May under­es­ti­mates their impor­tance. In a way they are Sandy-May. They were touched by her hands, yes. But there’s more. These par­tic­u­lar books were selected to be part of a col­lec­tion that, in short, was intended to be housed here at the cabin. Where we fore­saw spend­ing a good por­tion of our retirement.

On top of the book­case are three books I set aside when unpack­ing the boxes. East of Eden. Leaves of Grass. Catcher in the Rye

Well­spring.

Sandy-May and I spent our hon­ey­moon here at the cabin. Eight bliss­ful days to kick off the offi­cially avowed stage of our life together. The first thing she did upon enter­ing as Mrs Spencer Kavanaugh? Put the afore­men­tioned three books onto the shelf by the fireplace.

“Don’t they just look perfect!”

Thus began the Cabin Collection.

She was so thrilled.

I step over to the book­case. Han­dle each book in turn. Even­tu­ally opt­ing for Catcher in the Rye, I stand there read­ing the first two chapters.

They flow so eas­ily I want more.

I make tea, put on some Randy New­man in the other room, set my mug on the cof­fee table, turn on the floor­lamp, sit in my new recliner to con­tinue read­ing Salinger. For some rea­son I’m trans­fixed by the open­ing lines of chap­ter 3. I repeat them in my head numer­ous times. And then some­thing won­der­ful hap­pens as I start to say them aloud:

“I’m the most ter­rific liar you ever saw in your life.”

The lamp­light seems to get brighter.

“It’s awful.”

Yes, the lamp­light is def­i­nitely brighter.

“If I’m on my way to the store to buy a mag­a­zine, even, and some­body asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera.”

Bright­ness all along.

To test, I con­tinue read­ing silently. The light dims. I read aloud. The light brightens.

Sandy-May.

She didn’t get the chance to dig into her Cabin Col­lec­tion. But there’s no rea­son in the world I can’t read them to her.

To her.

Mmm. It sure does feel right in here. A per­fect space to liaise in. Yes, liaise.

Comments { 0 }

Clover — 15

By on May 13, 2013 in Clover

holding hands

One day after school Tina asked, “How come I’m the only one?” She was 5 or 6. We were in the kitchen. Wait­ing for her mom to come home from work. The plan was for the two of them to make a fresh batch of cheese.

Sandy-May had just called to say she was run­ning late. Tina responded to the news by pulling out her pen­cil crayons. She was still in that phase of draw­ing our fam­ily as stick fig­ures hold­ing hands. We were always out­side. There’d be huge flow­ers and trees. A house, a yard with a swing. Maybe a dog or a cat or some­times both. The sky would be what­ever color the paper was. And there’d be a sun up there with a smile on its face.

It was one of these idyl­lic scenes that Tina was cre­at­ing when she posed the ques­tion. Parental instinct told me she was refer­ring to the fact that she didn’t have any sib­lings. And it cut into me like a knife between ribs.

I couldn’t tell her the truth. That her par­ents tried to have at least one more child. That Sandy-May had suf­fered through 2 mis­car­riages. That we, together, hus­band and wife, how­ever much we wanted oth­er­wise, came to a deci­sion not to try again.

Our pri­mary con­cern was Sandy-May’s health. But there were other fac­tors. We were still find­ing our way as a team nav­i­gat­ing the grown-up world of liv­ing within our means. Writ­ing had yet to pro­vide a steady income (and really wouldn’t til after Sandy-May passed). My other gigs kept us afloat but they weren’t exactly lucra­tive. And of course there was Sandy-May’s out­look to consider.

Although she har­bored dreams of one day becom­ing an artist, she hadn’t as yet stum­bled upon an art. She had prac­ti­cal talents—like mak­ing soap and paper and scarves and neck­laces (and bread and cheese!). These days such skills fall under the accepted ban­ner of sal­able crafts. But back then it wasn’t often you’d come across such offer­ings out­side one’s own home. Besides, what she most wanted to do was teach.

It’s what she men­tioned doing back in our first sum­mers. Her par­ents were both teach­ers. It seemed only nat­ural that she’d fol­low suit. Strangely, she got side­tracked in high school. Apti­tude tests were mak­ing the rounds. Sandy-May scored high on the artis­tic side of things. Her art teach­ers and school coun­selors lauded her abilities.

So it was that she became a fine arts stu­dent in uni­ver­sity. She took all kinds of classes. And was good at every­thing she tried. But not great at any of them. Most impor­tant, none of what she tried truly inspired her.

With Tina, how­ever, the old desire returned. Watch­ing her own baby grow and become a small per­son with a world of oppor­tu­ni­ties at every turn. Yes, this was the stuff she wanted.

At first it man­i­fested itself in hav­ing a sec­ond child. Our efforts led to two tragedies.

Two tragedies.

But out of these tragedies came the momen­tum that would lead Sandy-May back to school. She com­pleted her after-degree in Edu­ca­tion. And got a job straight off. At a junior high. Teach­ing art. She’d been at it for almost 2 years by the time Tina popped her question.

My response? Some­thing along the lines of say­ing that she was the sun­shine in our sky.

Sandy-May came home shortly there­after. Cheese was made. Din­ner was eaten. Dur­ing which it was decided that we should have a dog.

(I feel another knife in my sides remem­ber­ing that, a few years on, another sun did in fact start to rise in our sky. Sadly, this happy news was fol­lowed only weeks later by the bad­dest news.)

Comments { 0 }

Clover — 14

By on May 7, 2013 in Clover

cocking instructions

Dropped in at Post Stop. Al, seated on the mis­ery side of the bar, back bathed in sun­light, han­dling an iPad. He turns, peers over his read­ing glasses. See­ing me he says, “Fact. We’re car­ry­ing our hand­bas­kets to hell. Directly.”

A fancy way of say­ing how do.

I stand beside him. He shows me the arti­cle he’s read­ing. About the con­cen­tra­tion of CO2 in the atmos­phere pro­jected to sur­pass 400 ppm in the com­ing month. He takes off his read­ing glasses. Vents some on the state of the world. About knowl­edge and know­ing. How none of it means much if we haven’t the com­punc­tion to do any­thing with it. Knowl­edge and know­ing. I don’t have any­thing to say on the mat­ter. Which isn’t what’s he’s look­ing for. I mean, he’s not look­ing for answers. He just wants to let off some steam. Which we all need doing from time to time. And Al does it well when he does. Let off steam. Only, this time I sense he’s not in a favor­able mood. Which doesn’t hap­pen too often. Even when he mounts high horses there’s usu­ally a light­ness to his tone.

A cur­mud­geon. Yes. A bit­ter cur­mud­geon. Gen­er­ally not.

I take a stool, won­der­ing if maybe this is one of those days he’s off miss­ing the way of being a farmer. Al closes his iPad, clips his read­ing glasses onto his col­lar (he’s been hold­ing them in his right hand since remov­ing them from his nose), stands. “You’ll be want­ing some­thing cold, I expect?”

He sets me up with an iced tea and goes into the kitchen. I look at the iPad as a blank dark thing. A ridicu­lously big phone. I know it’s more than that. But that’s how I see it in the moment. There’s a news­pa­per on the bar. A thing more imme­di­ately tan­gi­ble. Infor­ma­tion in paper clothes. Soon to be a thing of the past per­haps. But for now a still con­ven­tional means to pass­ing one’s time con­struc­tively. Regard­less, I’m dis­in­clined to its offer­ings. Set­tle instead for the muted scenes of destruc­tion flash­ing by on the TV.

Al returns with a bowl of corn nuts. He shoul­ders a towel, crosses his arms.

This is where I notice the white tape on his left hand. The lit­tle fin­ger affixed to the wed­ding fin­ger. He sees me look­ing. Holds up the dam­age. “Had me a lit­tle mishap yester.” Short burst of wise mirth. “Fell up the stairs, if ye can believe.” He gets on to show­ing me the angle his wed­ding fin­ger was point­ing at. “A good 30 degrees to the wrong. And halfway to being a golf­ball.” He shakes his head. “Had to cut off the ring.” Brings the dam­aged hand back to clutch­ing his elbow. “The mis­sus has been a right thun­der since. Bet­ter if I’d lost the finger.”

The rea­son he tripped up the stairs? Cock­ing his grandson’s bb gun.

Telling about his fin­ger light­ens Al’s mood con­sid­er­ably. A few patrons come and go. My phone rings. It’s Clarke. My agent. I take the call outside.

Hear straight off he’s a lit­tle ornery. That I haven’t seen fit to give him an answer already. (Seems he agreed that I should think about being involved in writ­ing the script for a film ver­sion of my run­away best­selling series that I no longer have any­thing to do with writ­ing. This is what he’s upset about.) The way he sees it I should be jump­ing up and down like a yo-yo. Will­ing to do what­ever mas­ter wants. “Not every­one gets a shot at mak­ing a movie.” I have to remind him that I’m doing noth­ing of the sort. He says I know what he means. I say I do but that it doesn’t change anything.

He tries the money angle. Which means he’s really fish­ing. Because he knows the money doesn’t mat­ter any more. And hasn’t for years. I ask if this is really about him need­ing some cash. He says no. I know he’s lying. And tell him if he wants to he can sell the house for me. Take his cut from the make. He breaks a spell of dumb­founded silence with, “So, ah, run by me how that’s sup­posed to help?”

I’ve com­pletely for­got­ten that he’s been liv­ing in that same house for over a year now. On the cheap. Because I don’t need the money. Just some­one to look after the place. And who bet­ter than Clarke. When he needed it most. After his wife caught him fuck­ing around again. Flash­ing his quickly dimin­ish­ing wad.

Ah Clarkie.

Back inside Post Stop I order a beer, lik­ing the fact that Al doesn’t give me no guff about it.

We chat out the bottle.

I’m think­ing nothing’d be finer this bright evening that a cou­ple more cold ones on the porch lis­ten­ing to old records and tak­ing a shot at another book off Sandy-May’s shelf of mustreads.

Noth­ing finer.

But one last gem. Before I get to leav­ing Post Stop, Al says to me, “Maybe it’s the sun­shine and all, but I gotta ask. You been using hair dye or something?”

Comments { 0 }

makings of a story

By on May 3, 2013 in Exposure

letters

The build­ing where I work recently had installed a new swipecard sys­tem for after­hours access. Most work-mornings since, I’ve crossed paths with a guy from cam­pus secu­rity mak­ing his rounds, unlock­ing the doors into and in the build­ing. In and into. It’s always the same hall­way I see him in and each time it’s as he’s about to unlock a par­tic­u­lar door. He’ll open the door, poke his head in, peak around, then close the door and be off. Though we must’ve crossed paths a dozen or more times it wasn’t til ear­lier this week that we acknowl­edged one another as we were pass­ing. He said, “Morn­ing.” I said, “The door-man.” He laughed, opened the door.…

I’m not sure why but this sim­ple exchange trig­gered some­thing for me. Most of that morn­ing ear­lier this week I imag­ined a char­ac­ter who, going into work one morn­ing, hap­pened to walk past the build­ing secu­rity guard the moment he opened a door to a room wherein was a dead body.

Okay. Seems we have an inci­dent. But what about the first char­ac­ter, the one walk­ing into work one morn­ing? What’s his deal?

Well, after some thought on the mat­ter, his name is Casey. He’s 26, likes skate­board­ing and exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ica, has a girl­friend (Heather), and a few months back landed a job with a global soft­ware and ser­vices com­pany. For the most part he deals with online cor­re­spon­dence. Almost cus­tomer ser­vice, but in real­ity a glo­ri­fied mail­room clerk, facil­i­tat­ing the deliv­ery of emails to appro­pri­ate inboxes

Delight­ful.

Let’s see. The com­pany Casey works for is efTech. They’re huge. And their head­quar­ters, where Casey works, is a small cam­pus of build­ings on the out­skirts of a big city. Each build­ing on the efTech cam­pus is named after a let­ter of the Greek alpha­bet. Sigma being the the one Casey works in. More­or­less by him­self. In fact, the only peo­ple he sees on a daily basis are the secu­rity guard (who’s only there in the morn­ings, around 8, to unlock the doors) and the cus­to­dian (who arrives at 5, and is pre­sum­ably respon­si­ble for lock­ing the doors when leaving).

Hmmm. Sounds fright­fully like an invi­ta­tion to explore.

More on efTech. Seems it isn’t all that well known to the gen­eral pub­lic. It’s so big it’s prac­ti­cally unknown. Like transoceanic ship­ping or agribusi­ness com­pa­nies. At least it was, efTech, prac­ti­cally unknown, til last year they began an aggres­sive cam­paign of mergers/takeovers/buyouts. Noth­ing that got it a head­line, but its deal­ings made the busi­ness and tech­nolo­gies section(s) of the news. Per­haps the story that caught the most atten­tion was the some­what hos­tile pro­ceed­ings involved in efTech’s pur­chase of the mobile app phe­nom, skip.

skip. no cap­i­tal letters.

no majus­cules.

The thing about all this is. Get­ting back to the dead body. It turns out the dead body belonged to a man named Tim O’Neal, oth­er­wise known as Skip­per, the brains and trust behind, yes, you guessed it, skip.

Well well well.

Back to me for a minute. It is now Fri­day. I haven’t seen the door man since Mon­day morn­ing. But every time I walk down that one par­tic­u­lar hall­way I glance into the room with the door that the door-man always seems to be about to open when­ever I’ve seen him.

Comments { 0 }

Clover — 13d

By on April 29, 2013 in Clover

b key

A gen­tle rain pat­ters the roof. The front door is open. Let­ting in other sounds of wet­ness and the lively smells of spring. Cool air comes in pulses. The rain veils K Cabin against the night. Almost makes me for­get how late it is.

How late? ‘Round midnight.

It’s hours now since I col­lapsed onto the couch. I’ve been at the desk. Engrossed in this account­ing. Get­ting up every so often to change the record, to muse on the porch, to fix a snack, a spot of tea.

Quite a spell.

Mul­ti­ple lines of inquiry have come and gone. Birds of the mind. Flit­ting, singing, fly­ing off. What I’ve allowed to stay on the page scarcely accounts for the major­ity of what’s passed for think­ing. Like where my jazz records are. How inte­gral to the process they used to be. Before any­thing from my pen sold. Well before my pseu­do­nym became a house­hold name.

Hope­ful sto­ries. Sto­ries that hoped to be.

I’ve won­dered after Daddy K’s col­lec­tion of model rail­way cars. The engines he kept in their win­dow boxes. For dis­play only. Not for play­ing with. And yet. How many times us young sons of his did exactly that. Pulled them out of their boxes. Laid them on the tracks. Pushed them back and to.

Decou­pling the precious.

The neck­laces Sandy-May made for me. Back when hold­ing hands was a clear indi­ca­tion of com­mit­ment. A shoelace from her sneak­ers when she had to leave our first sum­mer of romance. Which I refused to take off til I saw her again (and failed). Then the more elab­o­rate leather cords. To hold beads or shells. And later the type­writer key. This from our col­lege days. When we were rum­mag­ing through a thrift shop. And she played at an old man­ual and the B key fell off in her hands and her mak­ing a gift of it to me, months later, for our 5th year together. A keep­sake I didn’t take off til she died.

August 6.

The day we first kissed. Up on Old Mont­gomery. After I told her my ver­sion of the best story Daddy K ever told.

August 6.

The day we got married.

Another tan­gent. A glass of wine on the porch. The rain mak­ing me hum­ble. Fully aware of the shoes on my feet. The very ones that in essence set me on this min­i­mum opus. Almost half a day ago.

At this remove it’s hard to fathom the pain I was in after Fran­tisek deliv­ered me home. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t move. The throb­bing had worked its way up to my head, planted itself there as the thick debil­i­tat­ing rhythm of migraine.

I hit the couch like a felled tree. Down for a count that should have stolen me from con­scious­ness for many hours. And yet. Mere min­utes later. No more than 10 by any stan­dard mea­sure of reck­on­ing. There I was ris­ing. Cau­tiously at first. Expect­ing at least a pro­tracted stiff­ness to resist my intent.

And yet. Noth­ing of the sort.

I felt spry and refreshed. Recu­per­ated. Some­thing I never expe­ri­ence from nap­ping, or from emerg­ing from the con­fines of longer spells of sleep. At least not until recently.

The migraine was gone. No trace of aches in knees, hip, back.

To top it off I felt chip­per. Sing-songed my way to the bath­room. Where the mir­ror seemed to con­firm some­thing of what Fran­tisek was allud­ing to. A reflec­tion of a head of hair less grey than it had been when last I looked. And I wasn’t crooked for­ward, squint­ing at myself for the lack of glasses.

No I was stand­ing straight. Reflect­ing upon how that dand­some hevil looked a lot a like a lit­tle bit of a slightly younger me.

I con­tin­ued sing-songing. Up for a round of writ­ing. Some­thing new. Maybe a story. A fic­tion of tales.

Maybe.

I set the kettle.

Came to the desk and saw on my notepad: cat, paw, dog, tail, lizard, scales, armor, knight, sword, blade, grass, green, envy.

Clearly a game of word asso­ci­a­tion. Like that Sandy-May and I would play. That Tina would later learn to play with us. And later still that Tina and I would play. Even on into her adultness.

Small mer­cies.

I can’t explain me this. How this train of words landed on my notepad. It’s past expla­na­tion. They are here.

With me.

Here.

This can’t be a bad thing.

Sim­ply can’t.

Comments { 0 }

Clover — 13c

By on April 25, 2013 in Clover

shoes

Shoes. I go through them quickly. Doesn’t mat­ter how expen­sive or well-designed they are. My feet will find a way to break them down. Usu­ally in less than three months. Even with orthotics, which I wear reli­giously. The down­side of being a walker. Soles don’t last. And a walker needs shoes. I don’t mind hav­ing to get new ones. But it does seem a waste to dis­card them after so short a time. Some­thing from my upbring­ing I suppose.

Slow dogs.

So I keep a few old pairs around. For instance, the slip-ons by the front door. Their only pur­pose is to cover my feet when out on the porch. They do this job mag­nif­i­cently. But to ask any­thing more of them is ask­ing for trou­ble. Thing here is I like the ease of slip-ons. And the pair I cur­rently use to leave the cabin are of sim­i­lar styling to those used for stay­ing on the porch.

Upshot: today I wore the wrong shoes. Remark­able the effect on my knees, hips, back.

I started notic­ing it on the walk to Old Mont­gomery. The effect. Dully aching joints. But motion off­sets the aches. Saves them for later. It’s stop­ping, for a pro­longed period of time (or more accu­rately start­ing up again after hav­ing stopped), that makes the aches throb.

This is what hap­pened shortly after Fran­tisek snapped me out of my reverie. One minute I’m telling a story to Sandy-May—like I was actu­ally there! The next I’m returned to the here and now. Objec­tive real­ity. Forty-some years elapsed in an instant. That alone, the shock of sud­den time-shifting, was enough to send me reel­ing. Which it did. My feet in two dif­fer­ent worlds. Then the throb­bing kicked in.

Beje­sus.

No won­der Fran­tisek looked bewil­dered. Guess­ing it was an awk­ward moment for him. But he got me to his car and we were well on the way here, to the cabin, before it occurred to me that we hadn’t done what we’d met at Old Mont­gomery to do.

He told me not the worry about it. Then asked who I was talk­ing to up there on the bridge.

“You heard that?”

“Not the words so much as the tone. Sounded like you were telling a story.”

I told him I was. We talked a bit about Sandy-May and when we got to the cabin he asked if I still missed her. I said that I do, of course. But not in a bad way. I tried to explain how my mem­o­ries of her, of being with her, have become more vivid. Like they’ve taken on a new dimen­sion. He nod­ded under­stand­ing. Then said, “You know, when I saw you on Old Mont­gomery you looked, I don’t how else to say it but…younger.”

He turned to look at me directly. “And you know, you do. Look younger.”

I said I sure didn’t feel it.

“Noth­ing a good nap won’t cure.”

Comments { 0 }

Clover — 13b

By on April 21, 2013 in Clover

graincar

When we first started com­ing to Clover the trains still ran here­abouts. Many a time dad would hike us boys along the banks of the creek so we could watch the end­less stream of grain cars pass over Old Mont­gomery. The noise was deaf­en­ing. And the shock of air almost threw us on our back­sides. But being so close to those great gal­lop­ing masses was hugely sat­is­fy­ing. Phillip and I jumped around and hollered our heads off. Like rav­ing lit­tle mani­acs. All the while try­ing to count the num­ber of cars. And when the caboose finally came we’d wave at the con­duc­tor until the last of the train was swal­lowed by the trees and ground ceased shaking.

After­wards, once us boys had burned off some of our excite­ment throw­ing stones into the rapids, we might find dad seated on a good rock, cut­ting up an apple onto a han­kie. He’d point to the apple, hand us the water can­teen, and set to rolling up a pinch of tobacco. If he was in the mood he might even launch into one of his trade­mark rail­way stories.

They always started the same. “Did I ever tell you boys about…?”

Dad was a closet rail­road buff. He seemed to know every­thing there was to know about trains and the his­tory of how they stretched their rails and made this coun­try pos­si­ble. The com­pa­nies, the lines, the engines, and even the names of some of the engi­neers. What it took to blast tun­nels through moun­tains, how tres­tle bridges were con­structed, the resources (includ­ing peo­ple) required to lay how­ever many miles of tracks, where the sta­tions used to be etc.

All very inter­est­ing. But Phillip and I were just boys. We wanted tales of derring-do, not lessons in his­tory. It was there though, under the gaze of Old Mont­gomery, we heard the best story he ever told.

Before Old Mont­gomery, the bridge over the unnamed creek was a wooden one. Built in the 1860s or there­abouts. Back then the hills still had most of their big trees and the fer­tile lands of Dixon Val­ley had yet to be entirely parceled off. Home­stead­ers there were. A hand­ful maybe, scat­tered here and there. And trap­pers. There may even have been a few bison kick­ing around. Dixon was Fort Dixon, a trad­ing post/garrison. Clover, as such, didn’t exist. But there were train­tracks, laid to get the coal in yon­der hills and the gold on the coast.

That wooden bridge stood for almost half a cen­tury. Until the early 1900s. When early one morn­ing a trio of ban­dits blew it to sliv­ers, thereby forc­ing the oncom­ing engine and its short train of cars to come to a sud­den screech­ing stop. Unfor­tu­nately, for the ban­dits, the engine was on her last run. She was pulling two sleep­ers, a din­ing car, and her part­ner caboose. On board were but a few com­pany men, hun­gover from a night of boozy cel­e­bra­tion, none of them too happy with hav­ing been awoken so abruptly.

Two of the ban­dits scam­pered into the hills. The third, after tak­ing a shot at the engi­neer, was gunned down try­ing to get on his horse. No one knew if he died from bul­lets or the horse drag­ging him. One thing they knew for cer­tain: Old Mont­gomery, the moniker of the engi­neer, who was set to retire with his ride, died that day.

Yep. Not a par­tic­u­larly grand heist story—I mean it’s got noth­ing on Billy Miner. But, as I say, it’s the best Daddy K ever told.

And today, up on Old Mont­gomery, I heard myself telling this story (albeit greatly embell­ished) to Sandy-May. Like it was that first sum­mer we got to lik­ing one another. And there were still tracks on the bridge.

I was halfway through it, telling the story, actu­ally say­ing it aloud, when Fran­tisek clapped me on the back.

“Spence?”

It took me a few sec­onds to gain my wits. To remem­ber who Fran­tisek is.

“Spence?”

I looked at the board­walk at our feet.

And that’s when I noticed that I’d worn the wrong shoes out.

Comments { 0 }

BS — April 2013

By on April 19, 2013 in Bookshelf, From the Notebooks

april 2013

Tak­ing notes. Even with all the gad­gets and apps out there I still find it most effec­tive to use pen and paper. That’s why I con­tinue with note­books. I’m picky about the ones I choose. And why not. I spend a good deal of my time inhab­it­ing them. For almost a decade I’ve used the same style. A9 hard­back. They work. As a bonus they shelve nicely.

Too clever by half.

Of course, it’s not always con­ve­nient to pull out the note­book. For such flash­ing moments I’m happy with scrap paper — and yes, I do always seem to have a pen on my per­son. Note taken I fold it up and put it in my back pocket. Once home I remove the note, place it on my desk. In the gen­eral vicin­ity of shit I want myself to review. At some point. Whenever.

A fool and his habits.

Week­ends, I spend at my girlfriend’s. This last one I grabbed a pair of jeans I hadn’t worn in a while. Wore them home. Tak­ing them off I per­func­to­rily checked the pock­ets. Found a few notes from I don’t know how long ago.

EJAC — acronym for the Euro­pean Jour­nal of Amer­i­can Cul­ture. Talk about coincidence.

Starched up shirt col­lars. A fash­ion thing. Maybe it’s chic. Makes me laugh. Maybe I’m still a hick.

We don’t archi­tect our desires, hopes, dreams, aspi­ra­tions. Maybe we should. (It’s not just lan­guage and usage I’m refer­ring to here.)

This Will Destroy You
The Burn­ing Hell
(These are bands.
That I’ve since come to appre­ci­ate why I took down their names.)

Evi­den­tiary [sic] it’s now legal to scav­enge road­kill in Montana.

Plus a reminder notice that’s it’s time to have my eyes check.

In my back pocket right now. A receipt from the chi­ro­prac­tor. Where I went after work today. To tend to my chronic ail­ment. After­which I went into Whole Foods. (Because it’s right beside my chiro and I’ve had a gift­card in my wal­let for months.) Wan­dered around look­ing for stuff that wasn’t too exor­bi­tantly priced. On my third or fourth wan­der past the cheese I sensed a pres­ence loom­ing towards me. Turned to see my good old friend The Gen­eral bear­ing down on me, lips puck­ered to give me a mon­ster wet one.

Scrub­ber.

That’s what led me to The Grind­Stone Café after 6 on a Fri­day night. To cob­ble together a few thoughts on tak­ing notes. (Ah, the grind­stone. Check out/revisit the open­ing track off Uncle Tupelo’s March 16–20 1992.)

April’s books [L-R]:

  • Geoff Dyer — But Beau­ti­ful
  • Masako Togawa — The Mas­ter Key
  • Geoff Dyer — Out of Sheer Rage
  • Geoff Dyer — Paris Trance
  • David Mark­son — Epi­taph for a Tramp & Epi­taph for a Dead Beat
  • Tet­suo Takashima — Fall­out
  • Gor­don Lish — Peru
  • Jay Far­rar — Falling Cars and Junk­yard Dog [seri­ously, check out/revisit Uncle Tupelo!]
  • Hiromi Kawakami — The Brief­case
  • Masako Togawa — Slow Fuse [excel­lente!]
  • William H. Gass — The Tun­nel

BTW, another fine record that’s just been released is The Shout­ing Matches. Think I’ll put its dig­i­tal equiv­a­lent on right now and make my way home for a spell of real writ­ing. Til next month…be the archi­tect of your dreams!

PS. On bus fin­ished Noth­ing More than Mur­der (Jim Thomp­son). It ended a fair ways off how I’d had it fig­ured. In a good way. (Gen­tle now.) Why I read!

I’ll leave yez now. With a note from my cur­rent note­book. Writ­ten this morning.

Nov­els that take your time and don’t return any favors.

Comments { 0 }

Clover — 13a

By on April 16, 2013 in Clover

creek ripples

Frantisek’s got a rich story. Grow­ing up he liked to climb trees. His father, an arborist, couldn’t very well dis­cour­age his son from climb­ing and did his best to teach Fran­tisek the refined skills of the trade, always hark­ing on about safety and the dan­gers of being reck­less. But Fran­tisek didn’t care so much about the trees as he did climb­ing them. The higher he climbed the greater his con­fi­dence grew, to the point of feel­ing invin­ci­ble. By 18 he was ascend­ing giants and com­pet­ing in tree climb­ing com­pe­ti­tions. He did things oth­ers wouldn’t do. And one day his fear­less­ness got the bet­ter of him.

“Best thing that ever hap­pened to me,” Fran­tisek says of the fall that came close to end­ing his life. Because one of the nurses who aided in his recov­ery would become his wife, Joce­lyn. With her sup­port he learned to appre­ci­ate life and in time gained a healthy respect for the seem­ing docil­ity of rooted organ­isms. He put his dare­devil ways behind him, became a cer­ti­fied hor­ti­cul­tur­al­ist, took up with his father, and for the last twenty years has honed his exper­tise. Along the way expand­ing the fam­ily busi­ness to include a thriv­ing nurs­ery that spe­cial­izes in native species, as well as a non-profit arm that con­tributes plants and vol­un­teer man­power to rel­e­vant restora­tion projects.

This is how I came to know Fran­tisek. Vol­un­teer­ing. Ini­tially as a will­ing (if not fully able) body, and then, once he dis­cov­ered my knack for tech­ni­cal pen­man­ship, I adopted the role of project writer, entail­ing every­thing from pro­pos­als and grant sub­mis­sions to progress reports and analysis.

In this capac­ity, the biggest project I’ve been asso­ci­ated with involves Old Mont­gomery, a girder bridge that was built for trains but now serves as a pedes­trian link between Berm Trail and the series of trails south of Clover Creek. Over the last two years Frantisek’s non-profit assisted in sta­bi­liz­ing the banks of Clover Creek, from its incep­tion at Clover Lake to Old Mont­gomery. A stretch of about two kilometers.

Today I was to meet Fran­tisek at Old Mont­gomery. To see how the banks are fair­ing and to deter­mine if more work is required.

I got there early and took up the rail­ing fac­ing west. It was a glo­ri­ous morn­ing. Chilly but bright. The trees cud­dling. Birds singing their refrains. The creek below, deep in its rocky chan­nel, rush­ing to join the mighty Dixon, 4 miles yon­der. How mes­mer­iz­ing the sound of the cas­cad­ing flow of water.

Old Mont­gomery.

The name alone elic­its my old man’s voice and the sto­ries he used to tell me and Phillip about the railroad.

Comments { 0 }

no title 1

By on April 13, 2013 in From the Notebooks

Half the time I don’t know what I’m doing. Most the rest of my time is spent sleeping.

Liv­ing in a time of richness.

Life does appear to be head­ing some­where. I don’t get the sense there’s a fixed des­ti­na­tion tho. How could there be? I’m not think­ing about ideals here. Or any one par­tic­u­lar life. Big L Life in gen­eral. The endgame of which is, as with any­thing liv­ing, Death.

The equiv­a­lent of zero.

How­ever. There is decom­po­si­tion.
(And redis­tri­b­u­tion of life-enabling nutrients.)

Lit­tle d death begets life.
Or allows it to continue.

Phy­tore­me­di­a­tion. Where veg­e­ta­tion is used to revi­tal­ize con­t­a­m­i­nated soil.

That the build­ing that housed the Amer­i­can Folk Art Museum is slated for demo­li­tion.
A mere 12 years after its lauded open­ing.
Rea­son: it doesn’t fit the new owner’s aes­thetic.
(Could it not, as it stands, as a build­ing, be a museum piece?)

Liv­ing in a time of richness.

Turn­ing on the Lon­don Array.
A wind­farm.
The world’s largest.
In the Thames Estuary.

Valor being the bet­ter part of discretion.

“Oh, that Prov­i­dence would send us many more Antolin Sanchez Paparrigopuloses!”*

Char­ac­ters in Omensetter’s Luck:
Dr. Trux­ton Orcutt
Henry Winslow Pim­ber
Valient Hat­stat
Rev­er­ent Jethro Furber
Israbestis Tott
Gladys Cham­lay
May Cobb
Mossteller
Bracket Omensetter

Alliants. Char­ac­ters on the same side of a story. Not nec­es­sar­ily allies.

Crino­line.

Rhi­nos and their horns.
If the Asian apothe­cary ther­a­pies that call for such are based on ancient tra­di­tional recipes, why are African horns so highly prized?

How do mus­tangs deal with­out shoes?
Are there wild farriers?

Tak­ing our dis­tin­guished feets for granted.

The retire­ment of James Hansen.
(No, not the Mup­pets creator.)

Rep­u­ta­tion.
Rep­e­ti­tion.
Repli­ca­tion.
Redun­dan­cies.
Redunderpants.

Throw the cal­en­dar away.…
Son Volt, ‘Juke­box of Steel’.

Humankind­ed­ness.

Hard work, good pay, and you get to drive around in big trucks like you always wanted to. There’s beer to drink, crap coun­try to get anthemic about, and who knows, maybe a fight or two to start or join. No mat­ter what, you’re counted on to make an ass of your­self. You get to shit-disturb every­where you go. Get a snow­mo­bile, a speed­boat, guns, an ATV. (And prob­a­bly gen­er­a­tors to keep all kinds of lights on and TVs going etc.) Every­where you’ve been made a lit­tle bit poorer by you hav­ing been there. Hard work, good pay.

The idea of a ruler.
(Think­ing here about kings and such,
but same could be said for mea­sur­ing devices.)

Ours is not to ques­tion why.

Bot­nets.

“Slick pieces of work that don’t bite and have no hold.”

Bit­coins.

Long­shots and con­se­quences.
Sim­ple things add up.
More and more
we become aware
that every lit­tle thing we do
is less than magic.
How rare it is we stop
to con­sider where things come from
or what hap­pens to them when we’ve thrown them away.

The res­ur­rec­tion of extinct species.
Over­heard some­one argu­ing against.
By using the expres­sion sur­vival of the fittest.
Nev­er­mind the flawed under­stand­ing of evo­lu­tion­ary genet­ics.
Because we can doesn’t mean we should.

Is ours not to ques­tion why?

Wis­dom on the tip
of a slip­pery tongue.
Stay my pur­pose.
Noth­ing pleases the mind so well as
sleep.

—

*Miguel de Una­muno, Mist

Comments { 0 }
← Older posts