Cast Off

Hass is in the backpack. He has seen me through some rough times. He's become a solace of sorts. I don't want to say a security blanket, this isn't a Linus Van Pelt situation, but Hass has been a comfort. This spring, I carried and consulted his "Sun Under Wood." This go round I've gone back to the source, his first book, "Field Guide."

Hass is meditative. Calming at times. His descriptions of landscapes, animals, family, what makes us human.

Of all the laws
that bind us to the past
the names of things are
stubbornest

Hhhmm, We didn't name this world we encounter. It was named for us, before us. Dammit, we are bound to the past. But that's alright, it gives us a record, a continuity, a history.

The funny thing, this time, Hass isn't enough. There is something to calm about his words. It can't touch on the manic. The excitable. There's no restless leg or restless soul syndrome. That's where Roberto Bolano comes in. Bolano is less sure seeming. He is grappling, struggling, he is not removed or in the background.

Brief like beauty,
Absolute beauty,
That which contains all the world's majesty and misery
And which is only available to those who love.

Beauty, majesty, they are a package deal with misery. You only get them if you put your heart out there. Bolano's "The Romantic Dogs" is a soul experiencing life first-hand, without a field guide.

On the dogs' path, my soul came upon
my heart. Shattered, but alive,
dirty, poorly dressed, and filled with love.
On the dogs' path, there where no one wants to go.

Being replaceable. That's one of the things I've been stuck on recently. Most of us can be replaced at our jobs. Within a year, people will forget who you were. Work at a big enough company, most people don't even know if you are there or not.

Fifty or so percent of spouses are replaceable, it would seem. If someone isn't happy, they can move on, replace spouse one with a newer model. That's where we are, and that's the reality that relationships, marriages face.

We have an idea at the vastness of the Universe. And our minuscule size therein. Why wouldn't we all be replaceable? What kind of hubris would lead us to think otherwise?

And yet, we long to be unique. Individual. And maybe that is possible. Maybe it takes the right job. the job that brings to bear the things you can do that no one else can do the same. Maybe it takes the right partner: the one for whom the things that make us unique are the things they love, and the things that make them unique are what we can't get enough of.

Routine. Time. Habit. Sunrise, coffee, shower, drive, punch the clock, sit in a chair, punch the clock, drive, child's practice, dinner, homework, sleep. Repeat. x 5. x 30. x 365. And you look around and wonder about the time. Where has it gone? Time, you say? That's a thing we made...

Actually, the concept
Of time arose from the weaving
Together of the great organic
Cycles of the universe,
Sunrise and sunset, the moon
Waxing and waning, the changing
Stars and seasons, the climbing
And declining sun in heaven,
The round of sowing and harvest,
And the life and death of man.

That's our man Rexroth joining the fray. He's the third book in the backpack these days. He's roped onto the big questions, soul permeating the landscape and history, sex weaving its way through his adventures and words. Activity.

Maybe that's what I am getting from Bolano and Rexroth right now: activity. Movement. Getting out of the rut. Get out on the water. Blow bubbles at the sunset. Find and do and be the things that make you, YOU. Find unique and cast off replaceable. Cast off.

Everyday Adventures

Sometimes it's tough to see every day as an adventure. Sometimes there isn't enough coffee in the world to get even the most positive person out the door for a day half full.

Sometimes the mundane spreads its sleep-heavy arms wide around and squeezes tight. Bills. The same commute. The same four walls. The same cubicle. Painting the same house. The work that keeps you from doing the work or play where you feel your adventure awaits.

It is those times when it helps to have friends that remind you of the everyday adventures right in your back yard. Who look for and create adventures where other people drive past, don't take the turn, and never get out of the car.

Places of adventure. Like Claiborne, MD. Where on a Sunday too windy for most to consider going out on the water, a group of kiteboarders turn that wind into this. And just 24 hours later, you have a soul stunning sunset that can make the rest of the day and the world stop, if you take the time to look.

What if we could all see a sunset the way Kenneth Rexroth does when he is just chilling in an apple orchard, reading Sappho with a lady friend:

See. The sun has fallen away.
Now there are amber
Long lights on the shattered
Boles of the ancient apple trees.
Our bodies move to each other
As bodies move in sleep;
at once filled and exhausted,
As the summer moves to autumn,
As we, with Sappho, move towards death.
My eyelids sink toward sleep in the hot
Autumn of your uncoiled hair.
Your body moves in my arms
On the verge of sleep;
And it is as though I held
In my arms the bird filled
Evening sky of summer.

Watch a sunset with someone. Read and be transported back in history and feel the Universe moving through each other in that moment.

There are adventures that fill the mind. There are adventures that stretch and push the body. And there are adventures that enlarge and expand the soul. They are in small towns with no traffic lights. They are in books. They are in sunsets. They are with your people.

Everyday adventures. If we have the eyes to see them. And the mind to take the time to give them a chance to happen.

November is more than Wyclef

November gets the shaft. Walmart goes from Halloween to Christmas and all November gets is a Wyclef song.

November is the calendar's transitional phase. It's a table-clearing, dish-washing break to get ready for Black Friday. We can't market November. How the fu** can we package giving thanks??

November for me is a month of trail runs and memories of the JFK 50-miler. It's a month of football, cool mornings and dark drives home from work. November is a month for beer you can't see through and clothes smelling like back yard fire pits.

November gets profound poets like Kenneth Rexroth, who most people haven't heard of, saying things like, "November comes to the forest," and:

We stand in the snowy twilight
And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.
Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,
Glimmering with floating snow.
An owl cries in the sifting darkness.
The moon has a sheen like a glacier.

November is the simplest month. No costumes, no pretenses, no shopping overdose, just family, food and a blank slate between two louder siblings.

November is a fireside view of winter coming, reflected.


* Photo is of the Arado Weehouse in Pepin, Wisc., by Alchemy Architects.