Thoughts walking through Ft. McNair

A walk around Ft. McNair. Not an exercise walk. A clear my head and stretch my legs walk.

The Black Keys are in my ears and wind in my face. The walk, for lunch on a beautiful D.C. afternoon, is a solid call. I needed this. The breeze and voices of the Keys breathe air and energy through my lungs.

Without running or any workout routine going, I've been a passenger in my body and through the weeks. A new school schedule for Robin and the girls will likely make lunch runs and workouts the norm. I'm ready for that change, though I'll try to keep some early morning runs, when I get back to running.

Seeing an American flag in the wind at Ft. McNair carries its own awesome meaning, especially this week with the SEAL helicopter going down in Afghanistan. I walk past soldiers and sailors and Marines and I wonder--how can I serve? What is my part? I frequently have that feeling that I am someone who should have been in the military.

Philip Levine was named U.S. Poet Laureate this week. He's been one of my favorite writers for some time. One of the things that moved him further into poetry was reading a book by Wilfred Owen, given to him by a high school English teacher. Owen was a lieutenant in World War I. He wrote about his experiences in the trenches, the literal and figurative casualties of war.

Levine graduated from high school in 1946. He had figured he'd be drafted out of school, but World War II had just ended. He knew his calling was to write poetry. To know your calling.

He worked in automobile plants, a Detroit factory worker, and wrote grease-stained poetry on the side. We need more grease-stained poets and writers, like Levine and Palahniuk. That's how you arrive at Levine's "The Simple Truth:"

                                                           Some things
you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light fathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.

Maybe that's it. Maybe that's my part, my calling, but more to the point, maybe that's any of our parts: for our lives, for our selves to be "simple and true," "laid on the table beside the salt shaker," and standing for ourselves.

Can't not

It's the sparsity that speaks. A man sits alone in his shirtsleeves, a desk and typewriter in front of him in a simple wooden shack or shanty on the water. It's the kind of view that will cause the mind to wander, coupled with a lack of distraction. There is no fluff. There are only thoughts leading to words. Not just any words: the right words.

He sits there and tries to work it out. Tries to say what he has to say because he has to. He can't not.  It's primal and inherent in him. He might be the tide, the breeze or the sun. He is just carrying out his purpose.

I've always dug that photo. I first saw it as the cover to E.B. White's "One Man's Meat." It's the archetypal writer, in any age, all you need to do is change his tools to suit the era.

Maybe it's the influence of reading Palahniuk, but I sometimes picture this scene with there also being a gun on the desk. For specificity, we'll call it a 9mm--a shotgun would throw off the balance of the desk.

The writer then has two options for how to express himself. There are times, if the words aren't coming, if genuine communication seems compromised, that shooting a hole in the wall of the shanty probably says as much as any words could. Yeah, it's probably best if writers don't keep handguns on their desks.

But for me, this morning, it's the primacy of words, the right words. When distractions abound and I'm not sure what, if anything, I have to say. When words are strewn like litter, used and tread on and I'm picking them up and turning them over, I dig calling up this picture. The writer, stripped down. The words. The attempt. The purpose.

The can't not.

On the shelf

I hope to wear real shoes this week. That's after being on the shelf for more than two weeks now with an ego-induced ankle injury. One of those things, like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, that you knew wasn't going to have a favorable outcome.

I don't take well to being injured. And semi-hobbling on a fat ankle, almost doubling-over in pain to hot-foot it across the Giant parking lot or turning sharp while cutting the grass, well... sucks.

This past Saturday I got in about a half-mile open water swim, while we were beached, hanging out on Jamaica Point, out on the boat. That accounts for the only real physical activity I've logged since the snap-crackle-pop of the ankle.

The hope is that it's a learning experience. The hope is that this time on the shelf reminds me not to try to kick the football. Charlie Brown had trouble with that lesson. But no one really wants to be Charlie Brown. And no one really wants a gimpy ankle, particularly when their (my) motivation for running, for longboarding, for biking, was just starting to crank with possibilities this summer.

Note to self: learn, motherfuc#$r.

Timing is an wily bastage. While I bide my shelf time, I've been reading Chuck Palahniuk's "Rant." In my reading encounters Palahniuk and maybe Tom Robbins each have a way of making you think about how you experience your life and what some alternatives are to how the rest of society accepts a shared reality by assumption.

I'm pretty well with Palahniuk and Robbins. I tend to be someone who likes to experience things for myself, even prior to shelf time. But taking a seat on the sideline hammers that point home.

I gotta watch out for kicking footballs. Next time it's held out there, I'm kicking Lucy.