The Gaslight Anthem: Clothing or Baring the Soul

Sometimes, fu** the good old days. Looking backwards makes it tough to walk forward. And I am one to tell stories, the good stories of where we've been, as much as any other. But you can't live there. And trying to negates where you are, where you are going. Which might be nowhere.

The Gaslight Anthem is the band I can't stop listening to at present. They are not new, but they are becoming my soundtrack for the spring and summer. I play them on the back deck with a beer, cooking or doing dishes in the kitchen. Or as a shuffled playlist on a run. And this is a line that stuck in my head as my Saucony's pounded the pavement:

And God help the man who says, "if you'd have known me when..."
Old haunts are for forgotten ghosts

And that sets me off. I never want to get to the point in my life where all I have are stories, where the past was more than the present. Where I was more interesting, funnier, faster, and can't find something to be, something offer, something to become, something to be, now. I don't want life to be a series of photo albums, scrap books, articles, memories. Not just those things. Even into old age, if I get there, I want to be a grandfather, or just an old druid/dude, who people want to hear what I have to say; be at ball games and drinking coffee with the sunrise; still writing as relevantly as W.S. Merwin; still going for bike rides or hikes; still going to concerts; still trying to do something in the garden; still sipping a Dale's Pale Ale in the evening; embracing the differences that life gives you over time.

Obviously we don't control everything, how we age, what happens to us (we have some control there), and I am not sure I am aging, or will age gracefully, I fight that clock as best I can, just by having fun and trying to enjoy what is in front of me. I hope I can continue doing that.

Change, like shit, happens. And that isn't always a bad thing. I think we all know people, we all have friends we love, who are still the exact same person they were 20 years ago. And as much fun as I had 20 years ago, it seems like being in that same place would get old. So here is the next Gaslight thought that hit me during the same run:

But the clothes I wore just don't fit my soul anymore.
No the clothes I wore just don't fit my soul anymore.

Different song. But the thread continued in my head. The soul grows, changes, doesn't fit into the same ways or clothes it did. That's not to say your soul is getting fat. Though a fat soul sounds jolly in its own right. But I don't think that's what is going on there. I think in how I see the soul evolving, it becomes more clear and more stated as you get to know it. It starts to bare itself. Maybe the soul doesn't need the clothes you used to put on it to conceal it, to keep it covered.

Maybe the soul needs to be naked. Maybe life is a striptease for the soul, until we get to that point in the dance where we are comfortable enough to bare our souls. And once we do that, who wants to put soul clothes back on?

So here's to looking forward. To not saying, if you'd have known me when. Of being worth knowing now. Carpe the diem. And here is to bare, naked souls. Leave your soul clothes at the door.

Honeysuckle and Ether

Honeysuckle mainlines spring. For the nose, tongue, eyes, it shoots straight into spirit, into memory. Walking to work in Anacostia, DC, I walk under 295, next to a highway and I smell it blatantly. There shouldn't be honeysuckle here, but there it is, growing in a stand of trees between freeways. And it takes me two places.

Over the weekend, Anna went back to the corner of the yard, where honeysuckle grows on the fence. She picked some and sat on the deck with me, dissecting each piece to suck its sweetness. She's done this for years now, anywhere she finds it.

Growing up, honeysuckle grew at the shoreline in our back yard, but even more so in the marsh behind our neighbor's. And we harvested it for the same fleeting sweetness. You had to get bunches to make it worth your while. Kids housing honeysuckle is timeless.

Each day I go into the ether. The ether is what I've taken to calling the realm of the internet. There is no cell phone reception in our building, so the internet and email is all you have. Somewhat cut off. But really the ether encompasses all of our virtual worlds. The world where we experience reality on a screen--computer, laptop, tablet, cell phone. Where people are profile pictures or avatars. Where emails, blogs, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, allow us to hide, to filter, to present ourselves as we want others to see us.

There is no honeysuckle in the ether. The photo has no smell, no taste, can't get you there, and words and images can't put those things there. They can't create it.

I like the ether. I better, since by virtue of reading this, that's one way you know me. I get to expound what's on my mind and have you read it. I dig it. I work as a writer, in communications, in public relations, so I sure as hell better be down with the ether.

But I can't live in the ether. I can't smell coffee, or go for a run, or drink a beer. The ether won't let me dance in the kitchen, or steal a kiss, or ponder the moon from the front steps. The ether can't stand waist-deep in the river with my daughters paddleboarding, feeling both sun, water, muddy river bottom, and hearing their splashing laughter, watching them learn. The ether has no blue in its night or morning skies.

Those things live in the honeysuckle world. The sensory world of our experience.

I am cognizant of my ether addiction. Of how much time I spend in it. Of how I need it to do what I do. And how it can connect me with people I have lost, and how it can enable me to do my job and make a living. I am thankful for what it can do.

But I am more of the honeysuckle world. That's the world that connects me to my childhood. That connects me to my daughters. That connects me to my senses. That connects me to Nature.

On my morning walk into the ether, I smell honeysuckle in the city. Where it shouldn't be. And I breathe in. And I remember.

Scenes from a Run

Running is my repetition. It is my practice. It is what I do to reset my mind, body and soul. When I walk out the front door, running shoes, shorts, t-shirt, skull cap to keep my cheap ear buds in my ears, tunes on the phone in my hand, I both know what to expect and have no idea what I will find. My daylight runs generally start on the rail trail near our house.

It's a foot bridge now, but at some point, trains crossed over this stretch of stream. They were faster than I am and I can remember them. I am running, so I keep running, but I fight the urge to stand in the middle of the bridge and watch and listen to the wind.

When I turn off Rails to Trails, I am a ghost. My shadow is the only proof that I was here. But if you look for it, you won't find it. Shadows are slick like that.

Speaking of ghosts, it's Memorial Day. That's why I have time on a Monday for a daylight run. It's a day to remember, to hold in our memory those that have died for our country. Those that have died so that I can go for a run; so that I can drink coffee in the morning; take the girls paddleboarding in the afternoon; hit the grocery store; grill steaks out back; feed my family; and then sit on the front steps sipping Jameson's while watching our younger daughter ride her bike around "the loop" in our neighborhood. I owe it to those who have died, to make my life, and theirs, count for something.

Jack White's "Freedom in the 21st Century" is playing as I run by the church. Stone churches and wooden barns are sacred architecture to me, just as forms, even stripped away from what goes on inside them. They elevate my thoughts.

Back on Rails to Trails, I run hard, to feel my heart, to feel sweat pour down me, to make the run count. This run was the same and different from every other. Running is my repetition. Repeat.

And Druids Come Back in Fashion

Birds rarely shut up in the spring. It doesn't matter what time you wake up, their soundtrack is on a loop. Whether or not you are a fan of birdsong might determine what you think of spring.

If birds became quiet, like people can, we would want their noise back. Silence is a place people can find and have trouble coming back from. Frank Bidart says:

When what we understand about
what we are

changes, whole
parts of us fall mute.

And that leaves me quiet. When what we understand about what we are changes, whole parts of us fall mute. And I have had those days. When I am walking through the grocery store looking at other people going by, and wondering, does anyone else feel this way, and then thinking, everyone in here has had some shit to deal with, to work through, and when we pass by each other in the aisles, we don't know the other person's story. He or she might have just found out they have cancer. And not told anyone yet, is picking up dinner and some wine to go have that conversation.

And there are times when if someone asked what's up, I wouldn't have words for it. Things have shifted, but not yet to a place where language has caught up to it.

Jorie Graham contemplates a maybe related change:

We call it blossoming--
the spirit breaks from you and you remain.

Spring is the season for blossoming. I am reminded of it and awed when I am cutting the grass or walking the back yard with a beer. The roses in the back garden weren't there last week and this week, full bloom. Wisteria was bright in our bus stop faces, but now it is green and quiet. Maybe after blossoming, wisteria understands itself differently and falls silent. Until it remembers again, next spring.

Spring is loud. It moves. Change on the outside does not happen quietly. Spring and the soul can also be about renewal, rebirth. Blossoming. And that kind of change, in the spirit, brings on silence. We don't have words. But we are waiting for them to catch up. I like another thought from Graham about that:

.............Just as
from time to time
we need to seize again
the whole language
in search of
better desires.

Maybe the words we had don't work anymore. Maybe as we change, their meanings change, no longer suffice. Maybe we need to step back and grab up the whole language again, not just the words we've come to rely on. Maybe awesome becomes magnificent and roses become tulips and druids come back in fashion.

Looking East

When in doubt, I look east. That seems to be a theme with me. We've established my deep-rooted connection to Maryland's Eastern Shore, its brackish water and shallow rivers; its small towns and open fields; its marshes and panoramic Bay sunsets. Its history and my family's intertwined. There are times when it feeds my soul.

But that's not the only east.

There have been times when my soul struggled. In college, it was Buddhism and writers/thinkers like Thich Nhat Hahn and Fritjof Capra that dialed me in to interconnectedness and gave me a new way to think about spirituality. When I was between jobs years ago, it was Chogyam Trungpa's "Shambhala," that gave me a code, the code of a sacred/spiritual warrior, to think about and try to model my life around. It has been yoga, second to only running, that has grounded me and elevated my awareness of my body, pointed out how connecting mind and body creates a holistic peace that I can't go without.

Aesthetically and creatively, it is east-meets-west writers, Gary Snyder, Robert Hass, Alan Watts and Tom Robbins that have meant the most to me.

And recently, I have turned east again. This time to Cold Mountain. I had read some of the songs of Cold Mountain through Gary Snyder's translations. I used some birthday Amazon money from my sister and her family to snag Red Pine's take on Cold Mountain's songs. Cold Mountain was a person, not a place. His name in Chinese, "Han-shan," translates to Cold Mountain, a name he took from the cave he chose for his home. He lived mostly as a hermit. And he wrote. And what he wrote connected soul to land to Nature to Universe. Like this:

Today I sat before the cliff,
sat a long time till mists had cleared.
A single thread, the clear stream runs cold;
A thousand yards the green peaks lift their heads.

I may have said this before, but I wish the Eastern Shore had mountains. I'd like to import some if we could. There is a sense of awe and beauty that a smooth landscape just doesn't touch in some ways (though it does in others). But while I don't have mountains, I can follow his example on a more simple scale.

When I am having coffee or Dale's on the back deck, watching a male cardinal circle repeatedly, I can pay attention. Or a robin protecting her nest in our rose bush, which is beginning to bloom. Or when I sit on the front steps, and feel a breeze come up from nowhere, and see the moon rising in the dusk, just as the streetlight comes on and tries to copy the moon's glow. Or being divebombed by spring birds while out on a run, who seem to be having fun with me, showing me Nature's smile.

I don't think I would make a good hermit. Or much of a poet. I don't have mountains or solitude. But I understand, sometimes, what Cold Mountain is doing, what he is showing me. And, as has often been the case in my life, I will keep looking east.

Wrestling Rilke

Rilke stands in the doorway. You have to reckon with him. If you write and think and feel, there is no getting around him. He has said too much. Even to folks like me who have and will only read him translated. I put Rilke and Rimbaud in the category of favorite poets whose asses I would sometimes like to kick. Because as brilliant and breath taking and mind and soul expanding as they are, sometimes I don't want them to be right.

Let me explain. Here's Rilke from the first of his "Duino Elegies:"

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming experience.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.

Fu**. Now what? I have sat reading Rilke in the Oxford Park. On Deer Isle in Maine. In the library at Washington College, though I never studied him in a class. Sitting on the back deck of the last three houses we've lived in.

"Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror..." that, "serenely disdains to annihilate us." Picture Jack Nicholson in military uniform leaning forward in your face saying, "You can't handle beauty!"

Those things we spend our lives looking for, hoping to find. Beauty. Happiness. Peace. Then wrestle with the idea that beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror. And let's talk about love for a minute as something of beauty. The early days of being in love, as fantastic as they are, for most people who harbor healthy insecurities, there is also some real fear lying just behind the beauty of it. Fear that it won't end well; fear that you'll be swept away and maybe it won't be reciprocated; fear of losing yourself; fear of getting hurt. In matters of the heart, that fear is there.

That's not a perfect analogy, but it points the finger, for me, at what Rilke is saying. But there is more to Rilke than that. A shit-ton more. This is what I've got time for this morning. So wrestle with beauty and terror is the same experience. Wrestle with Rilke. And maybe we'll come back to him and show why sometimes you don't have to feel like he needs an existential ass-whooping.

Samuel

The child I am most in awe of is not mine. We've got two beautiful girls, ages 12 and nine. Not a day goes by that I am not thankful for them, that I don't learn from them, that I don't love them. But the child I am most in awe of belongs to my sister and her husband.

Our nephew Samuel is six years old today. When my sister was pregnant I had never heard of hypoplastic left heart syndrome. I don't think she had either. When he was born, he was rushed via underground tunnel over to Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C. He was hooked up to machines and had his first heart surgery when he was two days old. He had two more by the time he was two. Now, other than the zipper scar down his chest, there is no way you'd ever know. Not watching him run or skip shells at the beach, not watching him play soccer or tee ball. Not watching him clobber his older brother if need be.

Our daughter Ava had a neurology appointment this past week (all is good). We were answering questions about family neurological history (I have nothing documented, you can't prove a thing) and Ava said, "Dad, Samuel." I explained that our nephew Samuel had hypoplastic left heart syndrome, though it isn't a neurological condition. The doctor looked up and said, "How is he?" I said, fantastic, you'd never know. She smiled. She's been working in pediatrics for 30 years and knows what that condition used to mean. It wasn't good. And she's seen what it means now, which is why Samuel is here.

I have often thought I was born into the wrong era, the wrong time frame. That I would be better suited for a simpler time. But that's just a matter of preference and perspective. Samuel was born as the exact right time. So I guess I was too, because I get to know him.

I try not to exaggerate or speak in hyperbole. But Samuel's smile lights up a zip code. It makes everyone around him smile. I've watched it happen. He has also established himself as king of the zerbert. He'll track you down. He'll get you on the stomach or the side of the face or the leg. He is relentless. At this point, I have the advantage that I can pick him up. So we have some noteworthy zerbert battles. He's got six years of experience under his belt. We'll keep the zerbert war going for another six. And then six after that. And six after that. And you get the idea. I'm going to have to develop a new strategy when he is too big to pick up anymore. I'm starting to work on that now. Happy birthday, Samuel :) Keep on smiling.