Moving On Up, or Over

For those of you kind enough to check in here and read from time to time, I have moved my writing and blogging over to michaelvalliant.com. I am not taking The 4-1-Run down, and have loved having you all here. I've reached a point where I am trying to consolidate my writing, do more of it, and make it easier for people to find. There's already a few posts over at the new site, "A Thinking Man's Guide to Oxford," a travel, living simply, living outside piece; "Growing Up Goonies," looking at the difference in unstructured time for kids in the 1970s and 1980s versus now; and "The Head, the Hand, and the Heart," about our thoughts, our actions, and love coming together to make a life like fine art. With much more to come.

I hope you'll be kind enough to check out the new site and keep reading.

Life is a Song; Turn it up, man!

Life is a song the Universe is constantly playing. The notes, the structure, the chords, can be heard and felt whenever we listen. Our lives, when they are in sync, contribute a part to the larger Song. A part that no one else's life can. The Song was going on before we arrived and will continue after we are gone, but what we contribute is our part.

We didn't write the Song/the Universe. Let's give God/Creator (or you can insert your answer here) credit as the composer. That being the case, if we just bust out a drum solo with our lives, that doesn't contribute to the greater Song, we can feel out of tune. Isolated. But I think most of us have been lucky enough, even if for a little while, to feel what it feels like when we are a part of the larger Song.

I have no idea what the Song is, where it's going, what it sounds like ultimately. I get snippets when I sit still at the sunrise. When I run. When I read or write or pray or meditate. When I love. I get snippets when I stand in the snow and rain on a lacrosse sideline, drenched and cold, and see my daughters make an incredible defensive play and lead a fast break, or score a goal. I hear the Song having coffee rocking in a blue-hued swing, watching blackbirds, grackles, rabbits and squirrels unfold their morning.

Our lives are a continuous song. We don't change what we've played, what is behind us, but we can be conscious of what we are playing now. Jim Harrison has been speaking (singing?) to me of late:

The song stays.
No new one carries us, bears
us so high, more swiftly.
And it has no place,
it changes as we change

Our song, our past, is a part of us, it is what gets the song/our lives to where we are. And there are times when it feels familiar, like it's our jam maybe, we can headbang, waltz, slow dance, kitchen dance, what have you, and we feel comfortable in knowing the tune. And there are times, speaking for myself, where the tune seems new, novel, unknown. I don't know where it's going. And that can be thrilling, exhilarating and downright terrifying at some points.

But maybe it's like Zeppelin always said, "the song remains the same." It keeps playing. And we can hear it and join in. Trust the song, trust the Universe, trust the Composer.

River at spring crest,
sky clear blue,
forest at June greenness,
delight of eye in brain fully flowering,
delight of air and light and breath.

What do you do with all that? When we can feel it; when we can hear it; we know we can be a part of it, with our lives?

"Hey man, is that Freedom Rock?"

"Yeah, man!"

"Well turn it up, man!"

Observations After Storms and Fire

After the storm, a watercolor washed sky. The colors were created by the storm, they didn't exist beforehand. Back out on the deck, listening to Big Bill Broonzy, a Great Blue Heron flies overhead. Clouds have stretched out lazy. Three deer are fanned across the yard.

Broonzy is singing stories. The sun stalls from dropping with the moon overhead, both wanting to hear about Joe Turner. The setting sun, the overhead moon, Broonzy, and me; we each have a part in this jam session, even if mine is just to be here to document it in some way.

I don't think anyone misses being 13. I watch a daughter trying to figure out whether to stand out or blend in. At that age, no one wants to call attention to themselves. You work hard to have friends while earning widespread anonymity.

That's the age I found skateboarding and punk music. The individualism each espoused hammered a hardcore riff in my soul. Listening to lyrics, imbibing street art, and learning to navigate a streetscape and teach a growing body and 10x30 board on wheels to ollie, railslide, powerslide, gave me something else to focus on.

For all the attitude problems that came during that period, skateboarding and what it meant helped steer me to the person I am still becoming. I have found that anytime I let myself blend in, fall in step, life intervenes, kicks my a** a bit, knocks me down, and says, "nope, that's not you." This past year has proven that all the more.

Gary Snyder is a writer I would dig meeting. He is a poet of rocks, of birds, of myths, of people, of the Earth. He includes and integrates everything into his writing. He also gets the real and symbolic cycle of death and rebirth:

"Lodgepole Pine: the wonderful reproductive power of this species on areas over which its stand has been killed by fire is dependent upon the ability of the closed cones to endure a fire which kills the tree without injuring its seed. After fire, the cones open and shed their seeds on the bared ground and a new growth springs up."

Fire. And after fire, growth. I can find that cycle over and over again looking back at my life. For me, rebirth and growth has often come through running. I find something of myself and the world on the road and trails and I'll have opportunity on both training for the Patapsco Valley 50K in October.

Storms, standing out, individualism, fire, growth, growing up. I'm not sure I ever come up with answers so much as observations. Being a father brings all kinds of stop-me-in-my-tracks observations. Especially cool are the times when I look around and notice a daughter in her element, taking everything in, completely comfortable in her own skin. And I realize that's how they all add up, the storms, the fire cycles, rebirth, trying to figure it all out, being a father--it's those moments when we're learning who we are, and we have those moments of "yep, something like this."

It's not that I am getting older

It's not that I'm getting older. Or slowing down. But I walk more. I still run, still push myself. Hey man, I'm still hardcore, haven't gained weight in the past year. I still know how to earn sweat. I walk to notice the things I only ran by. I walk to keep up with the girls.

You can't build forts if you're too busy running. You can't stare into nesting ospreys or cardinals playing hide and seek. Only lying on your back can you properly discuss cloud formations, what color blue the sky is, or imbibe the cosmos via stars in the night sky.

I heed the same elders:  Hass, Snyder, Merwin, Merton. I've maybe added a few to the list: bluebird, woodpecker, hawk, At this time last year, I wrote this on turning 42. The view has changed, but I try to live each of those things everyday, the best I can.

It's not that I'm getting older, but life feels deeper this year. Like I've had a year submerged and am getting back in touch with the air.

I have no new advice this year. I'm not generally one to give it, and not always to take it anyway. But I still think Gary Snyder got it right when he advised:

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

I don't dare to add to Gary's simple mantra. But if I were, I might say:

find your people
watch the birds
go for walks

Life Isn't Shaped Like a Baseball Bat. I hope.

I hope life isn't shaped like a baseball bat. A bat has a "sweet spot," the part of the bat a batter wants to hit the ball with to send it on a ride. The sweet spot is a small part of the bat, and if you are standing in the batter's box, you are using all the rest of the bat to try to connect the sweet spot with the ball.

If life is like that, then a whole lot of your life is spent trying to get to the sweet spot; the best part. This came up at dinner with friends the other night; not the baseball bat analogy itself, but the sweet spot. And why, when you find something great, a period of time at work, or life, does the sweet spot have to be finite? Why can't it be extended? Why are the best of days numbered? Looking back at 20-ish years working at the same place, one friend could pick out the best five or six years, which were towards the end of his time there, but didn't last beyond that time frame. Things change.

Life is not all about a job, I think many people will tell you--those with a family, hobbies, passions, a relationship. So maybe it is that careers are shaped like baseball bats? I don't know, I think we can all look back on our lives and find different times when things were cranking along as you'd want them. But invariably, life's sweet spots get superseded, or end, or maybe just change when we weren't looking.

Einstein was a pretty smart cat. Let's invoke him here:

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.

Maybe that's the rub. That we expect things to stay the same. We expect to keep doing the same things, which seem to be working at the time, but that is only for a time, and we don't see the change coming. What was the sweet spot becomes a rut, a habit, when we aren't paying attention.

What's a good change metaphor? Let's go with water. Mankind dealing with change is like being in water. If you want to get beneath the surface, you can emulate the diver. Per Pablo Neruda:

Time after time
he takes hold of the water, the sand,
and is
born again.
Submerging
each day
to the hold
of the pitiless
current,
Pacific and
Chilean
cold,
the diver
must practice
his
birth again,
make  himself
monstrous
and tentative,
displace himself
fearfully,
grow wise
in his slothful
mobility, like
an underseas
moon.
Even
his thinking
must merge
with the water

Neruda was not kind to paper. But he was frequently on to things. His odes, love poems, and epic "Residence on Earth" are a man reckoning with life, existence, the Universe.

"Even his thinking must merge with water."  When the physicist and the poet say the same thing, it might be time to pay attention. Embrace change. Don't hold onto things for too long expecting them to stay the same. Merge our thinking with water.

Life doesn't have to be shaped like a baseball bat. If life is change, like water, maybe we can be the diver.

The Waiting Place: trolling or bottom fishing

Sunday morning's run around town, a run to sweat Saturday night out of me, was couched between waiting songs. Early on it was Fugazi's "Waiting Room." Towards the end, it was Trampled By Turtles, "Wait So Long." And that got me thinking about waiting. And reading Dr. Seuss's "Oh the Places You'll Go" to the girls. The good doctor frequently has a lot to say to grown-ups, the same as kids. Take for example, The Waiting Place, where people end up getting stuck, waiting:

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come
or a plane to go or the mail to come
or the rain to go or the phone to ring
or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

Everyone is just waiting.

I have a short attention span. I don't sit still well. I don't have much patience, though I try to have more. Waiting does not suit me. Beckett brings it to the front, Waiting for Godot, who never shows. Fu** that.

Growing up fishing with my dad and my grandfather, out in the Bay or the Choptank River, we mostly trolled for blue fish or rock fish, often around Sharp's Island Light, dragging whatever color hose the fish seemed to be biting on that day. Trolling is an impatient man's fishing. For someone who doesn't want to just cast and fish the bottom and sit back and read, or drink a beer, chill out. To be honest, that kind of fishing, that kind of waiting has a great appeal to me, for just being kicked back. And then there is fly fishing or casting, which might be the best of them, but I haven't done much of that.

But you get to a point in life where, say you are 42, just to pick a number. And life has flipped itself on its head, not death or serious illness, not hunger or homelessness, not the big shit mind you, but life as you know it, nonetheless has fundamentally shifted, beneath your feet, where you don't quite trust the ground anymore. You wait for that shit to shift on you some more, or you look at where you were standing and it was right on a fu**ing fault line. And you can see that, and you step away from the fault line. You find yourself some higher ground (cue Stevie or the Chili Peppers). And you think long and hard about where you want to be standing, what you want to be doing. And you've got it in your head. You know what you need to do. And you are ready to do it. And then what happens?

Waiting. You throw your intentions out into the Universe, and you wait. And maybe fishing is the most apt metaphor for what comes next in life. You try to pick the best bait, you listen and learn where the fish are biting, you decide what you want to catch, and then you cast. And then you wait. Because life. And we do spend an inordinate amount of our time... waiting.

But the thing about Dr. Seuss. He rarely leaves you hanging. He'll often give you some hope. Maybe an alternative. A way to be different. And true to form, he does, simply:

NO!
That's not for you!

Somehow you'll escape
all that waiting and staying.
You'll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.

With banner flip-flapping,
once more you'll ride high!
Ready for anything under the sky.

I've read some fairly profound shit over my 42 years, books that have changed my life, my worldview, my thinking on about every level. And it's funny how much of that stuff Dr. Seuss can pack into any number of his "children's" books.

Sunday evening, I had dinner, had a Dale's, and was folding laundry. Typical Sunday evening. The Nats were playing the Braves on Sunday night baseball. I got a text message from a friend that said, paddleboarding in Oxford, leave at 7pm. It was 6:40pm. It wasn't how I had figured the evening at that point. Instead, I was going to be... waiting.

I'm in. See you down there. We put in, paddled around Batchelor's Point, into a choppy, windy Choptank River. we rounded into Boone Creek and literally surfed waves up to the sand bar. The super moon was huge on the horizon. There were herons, birds, glassy water. This is where we skimboarded for hours in high school. Joel snapped some photos. It was getting dark. We were dreading the likely rough paddle back.

When we left Boone Creek, the wind had laid down a bit and was at our backs, with the current. The waves pushed us, from behind, surfing. It was the exact opposite of the paddle out. It was an effortless floating. As we got back to the beach, the moon was huge and bright and beaming off the river. It's the kind of thing you don't see, the kind of evening/sunset/night you don't have, if you're just waiting. Nope. It's where Boom Bands are playing. And you need to be ready for anything under the sky.

Running alone through the dark and back yard happy hours

A packed house is when I feel the most alone. Bar scene, packed house, music blaring, I am pretty well alone. Background noise to the forefront, sound becomes gray, I float on the outside of conversations. I've always felt the outsider.

But that goes back further than bars and crowds. Never fully identifying. Never knowing exactly where I fit in. I remember, high school era, four of us cruising in a car one night and our friend sitting in the back seat next to me looked around the car and said, "Check it out man, we've got a rasta, a skinhead, a longhair, and a... a... a Mike!" And at the time feeling like, well, shit, how come I'm not anything? And then realizing that that may have been the greatest compliment I have ever received. At a time when we were labeling, no label fit.

Among soccer players, I became a skateboarder; among skateboarders, I became a writer; among writers, I became a runner; but was all those things. The thing about it, is all those things, shifts, evolution, I don't know what to call it, happened without thought. It felt more like peeling off some other superfluous part of me to get to what was inside. And when I didn't think about it, it felt good.

But thinking. And man, I am guilty of chronic over-thinking. When I would sit and think about it, the end result was... alone. And Camus is right, if you make too much of defining happiness, you likely won't be happy; if you make the search for the meaning of life everything, chances are you aren't living.

So what does that mean for the outsider, the over-thinker, the stuck in my head? It means happy hour. It means go for a run. It means paddleboarding, skateboarding. It means find your niche, maybe.

Funny things can happen with time. And this came up in conversation recently, where at one point, feeling always a little outside, a bit different, standing within but not a part of the group, sucked, at some point it became the only perspective I wanted. It became what I dug most, that it wasn't any one group. It was maybe a group of one.

And even more odd, when that made sense, comfort in difference, you start to know yourself, and show yourself a bit more, you start running into other folks more and more like you. I think about our group of running friends. On a morning when we would run, I would start out from my house, running through the still dark. Over the next few miles, other folks are doing the same, running alone through the dark. And then we would each come into a familiar glow, the streetlight of the corner where we always met. And there would be four or five of us, together, running through the dark, smiles, conversations, questions, stories, sweat, soles hitting pavement.

And I got thinking about that more clearly the other night, at a back yard happy hour, celebrating/seeing off friends who are moving out of town. And I talked to the elementary art teacher about skateboarding, about Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," and talking to the brewmaster about Liverpool, and talking to the physician's assistant about malt liquor and Camelbacks, and watching the photographer shotgun a craft beer, and watching all of our kids attempting to pole vault across the yard with bamboo poles, or playing soccer, or climbing on the swingset.

And I looked at the assembled group, the folks and families around me, and thought/felt, yep. That's it. I am not a crowded bar, I am a back yard happy hour.

And this may have nothing or everything to do with all this, but I read it this morning and it is stuck in my head. So now you can have it...

We live by tunneling for we are people buried alive. To me, the tunnels you make will seem strangely aimless, uprooted orchids. But the fragrance is undying. - Anne Carson, "Plainwater."

A Real Cool Hand

Life's mysteries start to reveal themselves when you discuss "Cool Hand Luke." It just happens that way. Maybe because Paul Newman was a bad ass. Maybe because one of the all-time great movies is just packed full of an attitude that most of us could use a whole lot more of.

The title scene of the movie, Newman and some other inmates are playing poker. The betting is getting high. People are folding rather than chancing losing. Newman keeps going all in. Wins the hand. When he shows his cards, he had nothing. He bluffed his way through it. His friend calls him out for having nothing. Newman pops a beer and says one of the greatest lines ever spoken on screen:

"Sometimes nothin' is a real cool hand."

I have heard folks complain about the hand, the cards life dealt them. Not third world country poor folks, not homeless folks, but folks who have things in their lives that some would kill for. But more to the point, it's not about the cards you were dealt, but how you play them; what you do with them.

If life is a poker game (and not a box of chocolates) and you get crap cards and fold right off, then you have no one to blame but yourself. Play them for everything you can. Because you know what? Maybe the person with the best hand is afraid to lose, afraid to play it. It's not the cards, it's the attitude. It's what you do with what you've got.

And that got me to thinking, about the cards we are dealt, Life cards. Maybe that's God as dealer's big joke. Maybe we are all dealt EXACTLY the same hand of cards. And we all walk around with them close to the vest, letting only ourselves see them. When if we play them, we learn we don't lose. These are meta cards people, you're not playing for the cash in your wallet.

Newman's attitude in Cool Hand Luke made being in prison an adventure for him and those around him. He didn't mope around and go into a funk. He ate 50 eggs. He boxed the biggest dude there and wouldn't quit. He won a poker game with a nothing hand.

What if we brought more of that attitude to our own lives? What if we had the stones/balls/guts to play our hand to the fullest? We could learn a bit from Lucas Jackson. Play your cards, whatever they are, and what they are likely won't matter. It's in the playing.

Dreams and Understanding

Park ranger is the first job I ever wanted. Really wanted. Daydreamed about. I pictured driving a truck around a national park, clearing trees and trails, helping out visitors, hiking trails, observing wildlife. Then coming home to a log cabin, either solo or with a wife and kids I hadn't pictured yet, hanging out, catching up, writing and reading. My writing and reading would be for me. John Muir, Edward Abbey, Gary Snyder style. That was the dream, life outside and in the world. And now I drive four-plus hours to and from work and sit in a cubicle for most of the day.

Hhmmm.

Understanding. Both yourself and someone else. I don't think I really got that until this last month. That's something I have stared down in the mirror and where I've made my biggest change, I think. Really understanding someone else. Getting out of my own way, my own selfishness, my own head. Maybe it's like empathy, but deeper. Much deeper. It's both easy and hard; hard as shit, maybe impossible until it's there and then, when it is, you wonder how it could not have been there.

I understand. That maybe wasn't true until this last month. It took some rough, heavy life to find it. I get you. I hear you now, when I didn't before, and now I don't know how I didn't. And I'm sorry.

And life feels different.

Dreams and understanding. I've found one. Maybe there's still time for the other.

Transformation, aka Take My Chrysalis

I failed out of college spectacularly. There is not a single professor at N.C. State who would remember I was there. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who did, other than my fraternity brothers. And maybe one disciplinary officer who reprimanded a friend and I after we water-balloon launched an apple some 175 yards through the back window of a neighboring house. Remarkable shot, but that's a different story.

I was a horrible student. I left Raleigh with my tail between my legs, thinking the only option that would make any sense was to go into the Army, do things differently, be out of school for a while and save some money. I've been over this here before, but during the next few months I got myself into Ironman shape and got ready to ship out. And then I met my wife Robin.

My life came down to a decision: go to the Army on April 22, 1995, or opt out and stay. If I stayed, I didn't know what I would do to get back on track. But I knew after meeting Robin that I couldn't go. I had to find out if what we had was as cool and big as what I thought it was. So I stayed. I started cooking again at a seafood restaurant in Oxford. Robin and I moved in together.

I'm a serviceable line cook, prep cook, expediter in a kitchen. I'm not a chef. Words have always been my currency and where I knew my vocation had to be. That meant back to school.

When someone fails out of college, I wonder what the odds are of them going back and graduating are? Not particularly good. What gave me the thought that going back to school would be different, that the outcome would be different? Because I knew. I knew the person that failed out of N.C. State was gone. I knew the outcome would be different, because I knew I was different.

Dean's List at Chesapeake College and an Associates Degree. Scholarship to Washington College. Graduated 10th in my class, 3.8, departmental honors in English, minor in Philosophy, Magna Cum Laude. All while cooking in the evenings and weekends, getting home from work, showering and writing papers all night. My life was different. The person I had become with Robin, there was never a doubt in my mind what the outcome would be.

It seems in my life I have to fail spectacularly in order to get off my ass and make things happen. That's really something I should try to process. Who am I kidding, it's all I've been trying to process lately. Maybe I masochistically like to get knocked to the mat in order to get up and do something really fu**ing cool. Maybe I go through bouts and phases of depression, where I check out, drop out, and need some huge external stimuli to rock my to the core and make me get the fu** up. Wake the fu** up.

But once that happens, I don't go back. I can't go back, because the person that let that sh** happen is gone. Has been annihilated. Has been transformed. A butterfly can't go back, anymore than it can be a butterfly before it is time, anymore that it can get out of its chrysalis before it is time. But once it breaks out, it isn't fu**ing going back inside. It's different. Transformed.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not calling myself a butterfly. I've got tattoos, but I'm not that colorful. I'm not much for flying. But I am transformed, again, and I can't go back. My own version of a chrysalis is shed. No more wasted days.

Thank You Lightning; Fu** Auto-Pilot

How does it happen, where I put my life on auto-pilot? And not at the good times, where I'm cruising and digging where I'm going and what I'm doing. No. Auto-pilot on the long stretches when I'm not paying attention and just letting my life cruise away, not engaging myself or those around me.

I know how. I tend to live in my head. And when bills are due, four hours of commuting each day is wearing on me, the kids are nuts, those are the time that, hey, what's wrong with dwelling in the cranium? I can change the view up there. Change the drapes. Open a window. Put a different song on the world of the head.

The funny thing about living in my head and letting my life cruise on auto-pilot, it doesn't work so well. I end up getting out of the car/truck/land-speeder, and I don't recognize where you are, how I got there, or maybe fully who I am when I look in the mirror. Fu** auto-pilot. Life is too short, love and people are too important.

I'm an introvert by nature. Writing, reading, running--time and activities spent in solitude recharge my batteries. But what good are fully charged batteries if I don't use them, or if there is nowhere to use them after life has been on auto-pilot for too long.

Sometimes it takes a lightning strike to zap your life on auto-pilot, to bring it back in front of you for inspection. Do you like where you are?

Thank you, Lightning. Fu** you, auto-pilot. I'm driving.

Chasing Wallace Stevens, Adam Brown and Danny Way

Maybe I've been chasing Wallace Stevens all along. I don't know. I'm no expert. Didn't know that much about him, really. But he came to stand for something in my mind before I even read him.

Wallace Stevens is a path, a way to combine the philosophical and the creative; the absurd and the profound; the stars, the Earth, myth and books. From my first times reading him, I've know he was doing something with his writing that I want to do with mine. It's also his commitment to writing, since he didn't write for a living, but still made time, composing in his head on his walk to work. All the same, I don't want to get shoved to the ground by Hemingway or sell insurance like Stevens did.

I like Stevens as a model, albeit an imperfect one. Not a catwalk-turning model, but something to strive for.  I've been thinking about a couple other models lately: Adam Brown and Danny Way. I don't have designs on being a modernist poet, a Navy SEAL or a game-changing professional skateboarder. But at times I've wanted to be all three.

I'm not going to go into detail about Adam Brown's story. I'll let Eric Blehm do that for you in his book "Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown," which I think all human beings should read. What I want to say about Brown is that he has become a model for me for overcoming obstacles. From drug addiction to injuries that should have ended his career, Brown relentlessly and compassionately ran down his dream. He would not be stopped. That's something I want to cultivate further in myself.

And Danny Way represents a couple things. Forging a new path, a new way of doing things is part of it. As I've mentioned here, I've been hooked on skateboarding since I was 13. At that time it was Tony Hawk, Mike McGill, Lance Mountain and the Bones Brigade. It was Christian Hosoi and the Alva skaters. It was Mark Gonzales and Mike Vallely. And then at a time when I had drifted a way from skating, Danny Way started building mega ramps and doing things that make my jaw and stomach drop.

If you want to be inspired by the story of a guy who goes after what he loves doing, watch "Waiting for Lightning" about Way jumping over the Great Wall of China. But it's as much Way's life story as it is the jump itself. And that's where it's most powerful. Way represents for me, figuring out how to make a living doing what you love, even when you weren't sure there was a living to be made doing it. Way didn't become a pro skater in a cookie-cutter manner, he redefined what people thought could be done on a skateboard, and revolutionized the sport. Whereas most people think that work is somewhere you go, put in effort, get paid--doctor, lawyer, teacher--Way invented another way to go, doing what he loves.

So there are three models I'm perpetually chasing. Chasing Wallace Stevens is a commitment to write and a striving for depth and form, marrying philosophy and creativity. Chasing Adam Brown is living up to Brown's example of overcoming any obstacle in my path, while not losing sight of what's important in my life. And Chasing Danny Way is creating a new way to think about, to pursue making a living and doing what I love.

That's a lot of chasing. Time to lace up the running shoes.

Marriage is a beach

Being married reminds me of swimming off the Oxford Ferry dock when we were little. It's easy to get nostalgic. And it's fun. Thankfully, after 13 years today, our marriage hasn't been banned like swimming off the ferry dock.

With a late June wedding, summer makes me think of our day in the sun, getting married on the Tred Avon River in the church I grew up in. But summer makes me think of Robin and our 17 years together, in general. She is a teacher and a good many of our trips and adventures have happened over the summer, when she is on vacation. We've covered some ground--Colorado, Maine, Florida, Cooperstown, N.Y. (pictured above), the Outer Banks--or we've been just as happy on our home rivers or Ocean City.

I know that summer is going to bring us time together, to do whatever. Marriage has done the same. So maybe marriage is summer vacation.

Maybe I've been mulling over too much Kierkegaard lately, with his fear and trembling over life's big decisions, but life can come unwrapped or unglued or just be generally chaotic at times. We'll keep the water metaphor rolling here, with life as water/river/ocean. Our response to the water, is to build a life--whether a dock, a living shoreline, bulkhead, beach. Something to buffer us, something to comfort, something to give us shape in the midst of chaos. Our jobs, our likes, our families are part of that. So maybe marriage is a beach.

For me, Robin and our marriage has been that constancy. You don't often see marriage billed as a buffer against existential dread, nor should you, as that sounds pretty fu**ing glum. But maybe you see what I am getting at. When you find someone to go through life with, through the tough times, through uncertainty, that's a rare and special thing.

But in 13 years it has rarely felt that way. It has felt more like the kind of beach you picture, non-metaphorically--it's been fun. Fun to the point where I know I would be missing out on life's most fun times were we not married. From concerts to boat rides, from parties for no reason to speaking slurred French at Schooners Llanding 17 years ago. When I string my best, most fun memories together, most of them have happened in the time Robin and I have been together.

Marriage makes me nostalgic in that way, enjoying the looking back at where we've been. But it also makes me hopeful. The looking ahead to where we might go. But beyond looking in either direction, it makes me enjoy the now. It makes me enjoy getting up in the morning and it makes me enjoy coming home after work.

I'm not sure what I think of marriage as an institution. It doesn't always work. Maybe it's flawed. Maybe people don't take it seriously enough. Maybe marriage shouldn't be so serious. For me, I know why marriages don't always work. Because not everyone finds Robin.

In the spirit of looking back, here are thoughts from our 12-year anniversary last year and on our 11-year anniversary the year before. 

Life, death, greatness and cutting the grass

In the morning, I'm reading about Branch Rickey. Jimmy Breslin's book about a man who changed the world by calling up the first black baseball professional baseball player in the all white league. Breslin can write, he's someone to emulate, and reading him makes me want to change the world like Rickey and Jackie Robinson.

But I cut the grass instead. Our Founding Fathers and the other world changers must not have cut grass or had chores. How the hell can you change the world when you are doing yard work? They went out and did big, great things, unbothered by filling up the gas can or emptying the dishwasher. Everyone has those motivations toward greatness from time to time, but details get in the way.

Taylor Spies is someone that seemed destined to be a great man. You got that sense meeting him when he was 14. Then he died in his sleep Thursday night/Friday morning. He was 37 years old, married, with two sons three years old and younger.

I met Taylor at Easton High School in the Youth and Government program. He might have been five feet tall standing on a phone book at the time. We thought of him as a sort of younger brother and gave him a wedgie for the ages at an Annapolis hotel. He would still laugh about it when we talked. None of our friends escaped wedgies in those days.

The next time Taylor and I connected, we were both working around Easton and would see each other daily at Coffee East. I left smiling and inspired after every conversation. Every time.

I'm cutting the grass and listening to Nas, his album "Illmatic." Nas says, "I never sleep cause sleep is the cousin to death." I've often felt that way, not wanting to sleep for fear of missing something big. Taylor's death resurfaces that thinking. Wednesday he is posting pictures of his boys, Friday dead.

Nas is on shuffle on my ipod and next he says, "Life's a bi*** and then you die, that's why we get high... cause you never know when you're gonna go." Nas is wise beyond years and words but I don't want to believe him.

I don't know what I think about God, but I don't want to see life that way. I think about going on Anna's field trip this week and being there to see her get her school award for her straight-A report card. I think about taking Ava to her first Major League Baseball game and the Nationals' Ryan Zimmerman hitting a home run. When you add up all the little moments, all the things that happen only once ever, that we get to experience, to be a part of, and it has to add up to something more than "Life's a bi*** and then you die."

Then there are Taylor's boys, who will have a hard time remembering their dad as they grow up. They'll see pictures of him, maybe at the ages we knew him, and wonder what he was like, what he was thinking. They are lucky to be Spies's because their uncles, grandparents, cousins and great family will make sure they remember Taylor.

It's later in the day and I have not become great like Branch Rickey. I haven't figured out a way to capture Taylor's great light and put it in a lantern to carry with me.

I cut the grass. I ran out front with our seven-year-old to catch the Good Humor truck and get the girls Fat Frog pops. I watched the Nationals win in extra innings. It's later and I'm sitting in the back listening to the wind with a Dale's Pale Ale.

Melancholy blows in like the clouds that are beginning to cover the sky. I think about Taylor and about Alvin Sanger, another great soul that left us this week. I can picture both of their smiles and how excited each of them got when they saw you--like you were the one person in the world they were hoping to run into.

Maybe being able to picture that so vividly--me, who wasn't one of their closest friends or family--the fact that they can have so strong an impact, maybe that's how we get beyond Nas. Each of their personalities, their accomplishments, their families, their friends, their lives as examples, they certainly live on. They are still with us.

In an interview, Nas talking about how he came through the death of his mother, said, "This is what happens. This is life. You've got to keep living on."

I did not become great today. But maybe, having known Taylor and Alvin, remembering them today, thinking about the ways they are still part of the people they touched; maybe it's through knowing great people like them, that we touch greatness.

Diamond-shaped temple: Borges, Ripken, Flanagan

Perhaps he was a god, breathing life into, animating, his various worlds and people.

"He sought a soul which would merit participation in the universe."

Wednesday was Jorge Luis Borges's birthday. He would have been 112 years old. He earned himself a Google Doodle with his worlds and people, his lifetime of creation. It was also Cal Ripken, Jr.'s birthday. He was 51. He's earned himself a household name that more people in America know than know Borges's. No Google Doodle, but Cal could run for and win any elected office in Maryland.

Reading Borges's story, "The Circular Ruins," all I can picture is a diamond shape. A baseball field. He says "the circle was a temple..., whose god no longer received the homage of men."

When I was seven, eight, ten, I breathed life into my baseball cards. Murray, Singleton, Bumbry, Dempsey, Palmer, Flanagan. I could recite statistics and characteristics and when I would watch them on TV, the Orioles and their diamond-shaped temple were more than images on a screen and somehow more than people--athletes--when we would go worship at Memorial Stadium.

I wasn't the only life-breather when it came to baseball and the Orioles. The diamond-shaped temple was full. And the breathing was dialectical: they, in turn, filled us with life, via home runs, strikeouts, a hometown pride and a cartoon bird.

Ripken earned himself a demigod status in Baltimore, perhaps in the wider baseball world. He was and still is baseball in Baltimore. The city's chosen son.

Flanagan was my favorite pitcher, and behind Murray, my favorite Oriole. 1979 was one of the first years I was quoting Orioles statistics and he went 23-9 and won the American League Cy Young Award, named the best pitcher for that year. Flanny and the O's went to the World Series, losing a heart-breaker to the Pirates. Perhaps we didn't pray hard enough at the temple until 1983.

Flanagan wore number 46. He was the only 46 I could think of my sophomore year of high school at Easton High, when I grabbed my jersey and became another number 46. The same black and orange colors, though I didn't have the cool mustache or long hair, and wasn't left-handed.

Wednesday, with Borges's Google Doodle and Ripken's birthday, the Orioles played baseball at a diamond-shaped temple. The Orioles have not been a good team for some time, and you might say their god, the cartoon bird no longer receives the homage of men, though the town wants to pray there. On Wednesday night, #46 was on the mound for the O's and pitched them to victory, not unlike Flanagan did so frequently in the 1970s and 80s. Maybe the temple was alive for a night.

But as Jim Palmer spoke after, the game faded into the background. We were no longer breathing life into Flanagan. At least not in a real sense.

But yesterday, driving to work and listening to people call into 105.7 The Fan, and tell Flanagan stories, there was no doubt: he was still breathing life into us.

11 years

It all started at the Avalon Theater. The same place where, as a kid, I saw Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Years later, at a Blue Miracle concert, I met my wife.

There were different times before we started "going steady" that we were out with friends and Robin and I would get talking and the noise of the bar and everything around us would just fade into the background for me. I have a crystal memory of Robin and another friend, Nan, sitting in front of a computer with 3D glasses on, laughing hysterically, and thinking that I could happily hear Robin's laugh for the rest of my life.

Of course, when we met I didn't have much in the way of prospects going for myself. I had freshly failed out of NC State and had dedicated myself to running and lifting weights to get ready for the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. Kick my ass, get my life straight, get some money toward finishing college.

Meeting Robin didn't happen at a time when I was looking for the other half of my soul or at a time where it made any sense to find her. But when it happened it was blatant. Obvious. This changes everything.

Our life has been co-designed and co-built ever since. It's like putting a "c" and an "h" together, you no longer have a c sound or an h sound, but a "ch," whi"ch" has been mu"ch" better in my book. The life and family we have built together far surpasses anything I could do on my own.

On my end, from the decision not to go to the Army, to getting back to work in restaurants, to our first apartment in Oxford, to graduating from Chesapeake and Washington Colleges, from deciding against philosophy graduate school at Duquesne, first public relations job at the Academy Art Museum, to getting married 11 years ago today.

From buying our first house, finding our Golden Retriever Ivan, to the birth of our first daughter, Anna, job at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, moving into our second and current house, birth of second daughter, Ava, Robin transferring from Tilghman Elementary to Easton Elementary, these are just some of the very few bare bones chronological milestones over our 15 years together.

I guess growing up you have some vague notion as to what marriage and family is or means. But it isn't until you find someone who you can't wait to go to bed with at night and can't wait to get up with in the morning and can't wait to spend the day with in between, that you truly know what marriage brings to the table.

And once you share the moments of bringing kids into the world and watching and helping them grow and getting completely amped to see what they learn and accomplish and have fun doing and can look at each other and smile and know that you can't wait for today and the next day together, still, that I realize the blessings that I've got, for having found Robin.

I look back over our 15 and 11 years together and married and see both the chronology of our lives together, but also really powerful and/or random snippets. Driving to Colorado and Maine together, time in Cooperstown, NY, sunsets on boats on the Choptank and Tred Avon Rivers, trying to speak nothing but French for an evening drinking at Schooners Llanding, a random Jeb Loy Nichols concert at Rams Head On Stage, our honeymoon on Ocracoke Island. Both fragments of so far and maybe a road map of the next 15 and 11 years and beyond, of going to bed together and waking up together and seeing what to do with the days, together.

Different bubbles, same hot tub...

Lately it's been the differences that stand out.

With the weather changing, the warm short-sleeved days vs. the frost-on-the-windshield sweatshirt days.

It's the differences in the personalities and ages of our girls.

Mornings, it's the physicality of a running or gym morning vs. the mind-heart connection of a kicked-back, cross-legged writing morning.

As a morning run moves on it's the pace and grace of the fast bastard Rise Up Runners vs. the slug-it-out strides of the rest of us.

On the palette it's the hoppiness of an IPA vs. the ease of a pilsner.

For evening TV entertainment it's the differences between True Blood and Twilight.

With baseball season primed to play ball it's the hopefuls vs. try-again-next year's.

Daylight Savings has highlighted the light vs. dark mornings.

As evidenced all over the media and Facebook posts and beyond, it's the reaction to the health care bill and those who think health care is a free market commodity and those who think it should be a public service like education.

It's hacking off branches and at the same time watching new growth sprout--the difference between green and brown on the landscape.

Morning coffee or grown-up time in the evening, it's the ways in which Robin and I approach things differently.

And what I think is that difference is a gift. That fall and spring are two times each year when, for various reasons and in various ways, those differences take center stage.

I think I do well when I recognize differences and smile at them. I think some of my best days are a celebration of both existential and surface diversity. Especially, and soaking in the hot tub of paradox, in that it's through these seeming differences that the similarities and commonalities come again to the surface and speak their truths of how they all stream together--different bubbles from the same jets, spinning in circles of the same water. How's that for a Monday morning metaphor? ;)

A gift this morning, the next two pages of my notebook, which Anna had borrowed to draw in on random pages some time ago in the backseat while we were driving.

Influence

William Carlos Williams had a thing for red wheelbarrows. He didn't use a lot of words, but flung it out there as a symbol of everything being tied together, interconnected, if you will. And whether a wheelbarrow, red or otherwise, a farmer, or a pot of flowers, things that Williams experienced is what made itself onto the page. Objects and direct experience influenced his writing. How could they not, eh?

I, too, have been under the influence. Of the stuff I run into on a walk, or a run, or subjects or thoughts that come up in conversation. Of music, sometimes new-to-me stuff like Langhorne Slim or Blind Pilot, other times stuff I am coming back to, like Bob Marley, Mingus, or Hendrix.

I've been heavily influenced by Mr. Williams' notion and example that poetry, or writing, for him focused on the local, what's right around you, rather than having to fly off across the (big) pond. I've been pulled by what has put itself in front of the camera lens, or in some cases, what has turned up as the image later.

I've been inspired by a poet named Frank O'Hara, whose book "Lunch Poems," has served as a guide, a call to action, and an inspiration, for the 30 Days Project I'm in the midst of. O'Hara's book was largely written on his daily lunch breaks as he walked around New York. And it fits well in a pocket, so it sometimes accompanies me on my lunch break and/or walk up town into St. Michaels. The other folks I'm reading, from Gary Snyder to Robert Hass, from C.D. Wright to Tony Hoagland, are all taking root in one way or another.

And I've been vibing on the local, the people around me. By two teachers, who make the time to write and play music and recently threw their new CD my way, which makes my mind cruise along with it, as well as kicks me in the arse to question how productive I am with my own free time. By an artist friend and several year source of pants-kicking, Rob Brownlee-Tomasso, who makes a commitment to spend time in his studio each night working on a new painting or series of paintings. By a cat who Mike Keene and I had a chance (loaded word) encounter with on the Appalachian Trail, who ended up moving to the Eastern Shore for a time, buying a sailboat from Mike, has fixed it up, and is neck-deep in his dream to spend time sailing it all over the place (currently cruising down the intercoastal to South Carolina, I believe). You can follow Woody's saga here (any blog called "The Peanut Butter Diet" is worth something!) And by other writers in the round, including another now Easton writer/blogger, whose frequent soulful posts and tip on Gary Snyder's book, "The Real Work," has opened up some new avenues, or country roads, or singletrack trails of thought.

This influence is a funny thing. It's what I encounter, it's what I read, it's who I run into, it's who I run with, it's what I do with my time, it's being present and mindful around our girls, to hear the endless creativity they employ not just daily, but minute to minute. It's all connected. And because we're all in different places and the culmination of own points influence and experiences, it's all unique. Uh-oh. The same, all connected, but all unique. Well, that sounds like a paradox to me...

Once Removed

Robert T. Valliant, my grandfather, at his father's shucking and packing houses in Oxford, Md., where Bates Marina is now. Circa 1905.

My dad turned his knee around backwards. Kneecap got whacked side-on by essentially a 2" x 10" or so and spun it clear off its hinges. He was a boardsman for a Chesapeake Bay log canoe at the time, likely racing with Doug Hanks at the helm. That was the end of his log canoe sailing days.

Our family has become further removed from the water with each generation. My great grandfather, Jeremiah Valliant, was a partner in William Valliant & Brothers packing houses in Bellevue, Maryland, until a business falling out saw him open his own competing shucking and packing houses in Oxford. He had four young'ens, an even two boys (Robert and Jeremiah) and two girls (Louise and Harriet). The two boys would end up running Valliant Brothers Marina, where Bates Marina currently sits at the end of the Strand, same Oxford location as the shucking and packing houses.

Robert was my grandfather. He's the young lad pictured above. He was born in 1899 and lived to be 95. Marina owner and beyond, he was a lifelong fisherman. He kept detailed logs of every time he went out, what they caught, who he went with, what they used. He took my dad fishing, and he lived long enough to take me fishing a number of times from when I was little. I still remember turning around and seeing him peeing in an empty milk carton at the back of the boat. I never asked where the bathroom was after that.

That love of fishing, boating, and being on the water translated directly to my father. But he doesn't own a marina, he's an accountant. His education and occupation don't put him right on the water, though he'd no doubt love to spend more time there.

When I was 15, I came into a 13' Boston Whaler with a 40 horsepower Evinrude outboard motor on it. It was tied up behind our house, in shallow water or mud if the tide was out. $5 worth of gas and you had more than a day's adventure. There wasn't a creek between Oxford and Easton that we didn't explore or a beach we didn't pull up on. Maybe a couple, but not many. I wasn't that concerned with a driver's license when I turned 16, it couldn't hold a Zippo to being on the river.

I feel connected to Oxford, the Tred Avon, the Eastern Shore, the Bay. A bond in the blood and in the bones. But I am further removed. I wonder if I have it like my grandfather did. Or my father does. The water, creeks, rivers, bridges, is where I feel it inherently. But I don't do enough with it. I get it when we're on the water with the girls, or this summer on a stand-up paddleboard. And I look for more.

Unrelated Fragments

Downpours glut. Senses
and themselves. Hum
or drone to roar. Background
to forefront.

Smells

become

intense.

Coffee. Dog. Candles.
Ground. Light inside
stands out. Turns wet. Succumbs,
assimilates into noise.
Gray. Sleep.
Or more awake because

---

A camera is permission to look closer. To see through the surface. A deeper glance.

Patterns. Metaphors. Productions. On the house.
Newly framed, things

become
beyond common.

---

That there were train tracks next to Holiday Inns was a running joke. There always was. It became comforting.

Shaken awake at 2 a.m., the bed rattled out smiles.