Bare Handed

Bare handed the man contends with spring...

It's a slow conversion, it's taken maybe 40 years, and the last two, to realize I'm becoming a spring soul, rather than fall. Last year was the first time it really hit.

This year, walking home for lunch with no jacket; warmer temperatures and t-shirt sweat for running; sitting out on the deck for happy hour and reading, after shunning it for the winter. There is both a calm and an energy in the warmer weather, the sun on my face. I've dug into William Carlos Williams's "Spring and All."

Bare handed the man contends with home...

Sharing deep, unscripted conversations with the girls is one of life's profound pleasures.

Home is.... Since July, the girls and I have been fortunate to call a great house in Oxford, "home." They have taken to Oxford. They have taken to the community center in town where I work. Anna and I were talking this week about looking forward to spring and summer in town. Riding bikes, paddleboarding, the Strand (beach), Schooners Landing and the Masthead (dock bars/outdoor restaurants) re-opening, along with the Scottish Highland Creamery (best ice cream on the planet). We got talking about the house, which is our second in two years, and not wanting to/having to move every year. Then we both said the house hasn't felt like "home" yet. That's a curious feeling to both have.

Maybe it's inherent in not knowing if you can put roots down in a house. Maybe it's a part of renter's remorse. Maybe the girls living between two parents and two houses has shifted the notion of what home feels like. Probably it is all of those things. I fully believe that home is a feeling; home is a mindset; home is a community; home can be people. But the physical home of where you put your stuff, where you lie down at night, where you cut grass and eat meals, that has a big role in being "home." Oxford is a place that goes quiet in the winter, especially for 11 and 14 year olds. After moving in last summer, Ava spent a month in a Pittsburgh hospital to end her summer. Hoping the return of spring, of bike rides, swimming, ice cream and sunsets in the Oxford Park; of grilling in the yard, will stoke some homey vibes.

In "Spring and All," Williams writes, "Bare handed the man contends with the sky, without experience of existence seeking to invent and design."

Bare handed the man contends with the sky...

I fully love that, and feel it. We don't have the tools or experience to fully grasp it. We are bare handed, minimally equipped to take it all in. I've had this feeling a few times this week already. Walking down the street to the shore line on the cove with my morning coffee to watch the sunrise. And two nights ago, standing out in the field next to the house, taking in the clear, spring night sky, and seeing two shooting stars in about 15 minutes time. Contending with the sky can overload the soul.

Bare handed the man contends...

Beer, Poetry & Happiness

Maine Beer Company combined two of my favorite things: beer and poetry. More specifically, really good beer and an iconic poem by one of my heavies, my all-time favorite writers, William Carlos Williams. Red Wheelbarrow Ale has climbed among the leaders in my favorite beer crew.

Beer and poetry are two things that I like to imbibe daily that spin my mind and soul a bit. They can reshuffle the deck, and spin the compass in myriad directions. "Red Wheelbarrow" the poem is short, simple and confounding. Check the technique:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I've written about Williams here before. He was a physician, who had a lifelong medical practice in Rutherford, New Jersey. He was not an ivory tower academic. He didn't much dig T.S. Eliot, who he felt was too stock in Europe--history, culture, tradition, allusion--and Williams looked to dial poetry back to more common, everyday language, and write about things and people that were more everyday life.

Some of his poetry, "Red Wheelbarrow" included is about the image it creates, like a still life painting. You can just sit with it, like you would a good beer on a deck in the sun on a spring evening, sun going down behind tall pine trees. It's a scene. You can also play with the Zen idea of the interconnectedness of the Universe. Hell, you can do just about anything you want--the thing about poetry, like beer, is not all tastes are the same, not all interpretations are the same, and you can sit and ponder that shit for a while.

I found good poetry before I found good beer. I'm not sure what the first "good" beer I drank was. But I do know that it was Carl Sandburg that slammed down the strong man mallet and lit the poetry neon sign up for me, when I was 15.

Sandburg dug and wrote about Chicago. So that became the first city I thought about when I thought about poetry. Dude, Chicago has their own poet; a cat that writes all about them and their people, the blue collar folks. Sandburg and Williams had that in common, the common.

Sandburg made his point for me, especially, in a poem called "Happiness:"

I ASKED professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
      me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
      thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
      I was trying to fool with them.
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
      the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
      their women and children and a keg of beer and an
      accordion.

Thank you, Carl. It's not the academics or philosophers who know happiness. It's not the business people, who are too clever to get caught in that game. It's the families, sitting along the river, with a keg and music.

When I think of Chicago today, I think of happiness. Not that Chicago is a happy city, but that image resonates. I think of a trip I took there and running along the lake, to Navy Point, going to the Field Museum, the Art Institute, the Adler Planetarium. I think about Wrigley Field and Soldier Field and digging the Bears after the Colts left Baltimore. But those are details, memories.

Today, it's beer, poetry and happiness.

Intersecting Egg McMuffins

I spent much of geometry class at McDonalds, full disclosure. The classroom was located next to the student parking lot and I had a friend that thought highly of Egg McMuffins.

Let's put that out there as we measure a theory in existential geometry: I am likely wrong. But here goes anyway. Two lines intersect at a point. I'm thinking that any given person/individual is a unique collection of points--the intersections of various lines. These lines not only meet at points, but these points actually create us.

Lines come from everywhere. Our parents are two lines. Where you grow up is at least one line. Family members, friends, teachers, what books you read, what sports you play, imbibing a memorable sunrise on the river or in the mountains--all the various experiences we have are all lines, intersecting at you/me.

Each person is a different collection of points, of intersecting lines. And the funny thing is, in as much as we are a collection of these lines, these points, we are interconnected and not individuals alone.

William Carlos Williams busts this line/thought out in Paterson, pulling the disparate together to clarify/ and compress.

To think of that pulling the disparate together as the role of the artist or poet is spot on. But I also think each of our existences is the same concept--the pulling together of the disparate lines, which meet in points, which points are us. Intersecting Egg McMuffins.

* Sculpture is "Tracks," by Gene Kangas, 1983.

As the bush shakes; I'm shaking it, boss

Early fall's rented orange has begun its move to brown. Brown holds the hue, but can't keep the space, lets go and, relieved of the weight, branches shake in the wind.

"I'm shaking it, boss!"

We track the leaves, our arcs are the same, dropping to the grass, leaves, bushes. It's not the real estate we picked out, but here we are. Now what?

"I'm shaking it, boss!"

Keep shaking. Don't know what else to do. We're not ready, don't want the barrel delivery at the end, that comes when we go still.

No, not still--we're shaking it, boss. Every day, when still prevails, we shake the bush, we show we're here, accounted for. We're here, boss...

all of a piece, alone
in a wind that does not move the others--
in that way: a way to spend
a Sunday afternoon while the green bush shakes.

* italics from "Cool Hand Luke" and William Carlos Williams's "Paterson"

Three Bridges

The river was dry at that point. The foot bridge no longer necessary, but cool. It used to shush trains across, through town, now the girls like to bike to it. A new job, a new life, re-imagined.

Not like the bridge at lunch, which never stops vomiting cars across. Near that bridge, the waterfowl is primarily helicopters and commercial jets, which you can't shoot at. There are no duck blinds along the river. No one works the water, except to give tours.

Near both these bridges, a third, but not geographically. In Paterson, N.J., but in this case held in the mind, lit there by the pages of Williams' words. I've never seen it, but, sitting next to the lunch bridge,  the sound of Paterson's falls drowns out the whup-whup-whup call of the bird about to touch down and the one taking off.

"Refined by the fire"

Three lines have stuck with me. They are renting space in my mind, probably deeper. The first is from John Harbaugh during a Sunday night press conference.

"That's what being refined by the fire is all about," he said it about wide receiver Torrey Smith, who dropped a game-winning touchdown before catching the game-winner a couple plays later to beat the Steelers. Refined by the fire, learning and being changed by doing it, real-time, on the stage. The bigger the stage, the bigger the fire, the greater the refining.

The second line is from TV on the Radio and pumped through my headphones while on a four-mile run last week, the longest so far of my return to running.

"There is hardly a method you know," which I thought about in terms of getting back to something. It's not about method, or technique, it's about the attempt. It's about getting out there and learning. And the going changes you. It refines you by action.

Sport isn't just about form, or study, or preparation, though all those things are a part. It's about being on the playing field. In that context, for me it's about getting out the door and running, or in the gym, or on the rock climbing wall.

I've also been diving back into William Carlos Williams, who supplies the third line for us.

"There are no ideas, but in things," from his epic and awesome Paterson, which is a constant source of inspiration and motivation for me. Tied into the first two lines, the first two ideas, you don't have "perseverance" as an abstract concept, you have Torrey Smith catching a game-winning touchdown after making a couple mistakes earlier in the game. You don't have "endurance" as an idea apart from the runner pushing him/herself beyond their limits into that reserve. You don't have "art" aside from the painting or poem or play.

Three lines, over the course of the week, each of which has stuck to me. A post-game press conference, a lyric heard during a run, a heady, memorable line from Williams. But even the lines don't exist in the abstract, they are tied to people and particular points in time. Maybe they point somewhere. Maybe it's back to the sources.

Fringes

William Carlos Williams was a doctor. Wallace Stevens sold insurance. Frank O'Hara worked at a museum. If that's all they did, we wouldn't know them--wouldn't remember.

We know them for their fringes. For what they did with the edges of their days--their mornings, commutes, lunch breaks, nights.

Ultimately, they weren't defined by their jobs.

I take cues from people like this in my life. From the naval architect who plays the mandolin. From the teacher and graphic designer who spend nights in their art studios. From the carpenter who still checks the Ocean City surf report and migrates to Costa Rica when he can. From the pediatrician who got me skateboarding again.

It's the fringes that are ours to claim. Those times outside the lines of our jobs.

What do you do when no one is telling you what to do?

Is that what we make of our lives? Is that how we'll be remembered?

If it is, I hope I paint my fringes aquamarine and wear them on my sleeve, or feet or hat. I hope I stretch them from night to morning and hang them on my office wall.

I hope I wrap our girls in fringes so that they will cultivate and decorate and color their own.