One thing I've learned over this past year: People don't like to talk about dead babies. I'm sure just reading that last sentence made you uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable too. It was about a year ago that we lost our baby, and long before this milestone was upon us the "get over it already" vibe had taken hold among many of our friends, family, and co-workers. And, in fact, many of them had suffered the same kind of loss. (I still cringe when I think about the day my very thoughtful and well-meaning boss told me, "God is in control, and everything happens for a reason" and I shot back, "He was in control of the Holocaust too, and that happened for a reason: Does that make it OK?") Innumerable times, my wife and I have looked at each other and wondered out loud, "Are we weird, or is everyone else?" Is this just easier for some people? Or was this child's life less of a life because we never got to meet him or her? But the truth is that everyone who has lost a child to miscarriage or stillbirth has a choice to make: Suffer as part of a whispery, mostly silent group, or act as if it really wasn't a "whole" loss like the loss of a spouse, parent, sibling, or older child. Either way, it's a lonely, long walk.
So, I've made a conscious choice to do the uncomfortable thing: To honor this lost child by acknowledging his or her life; to always be sure to explain to people that I am the father of three, with two at home.
As you can tell, we didn't get a chance to find out if we were having a boy or a girl. We're not quite sure how or why -- in the rush of the events leading up to the loss -- we did not have the presence of mind to ask for a confirmation, and why nobody had the thought to make us the offer. So, we're left in that hazy perpetual state of mystery that all parents experience with their children early on. Blue or pink? New clothes or hand-me-downs? In a way, that makes it more difficult. (Grammatically, especially: It's hard to be eloquent when you're constantly saying "his or her," "he or she," "his or hers." But we refuse to dishonor him or her with the label "it.") In another way, it leaves a surprise to one day look forward to. Either way, we wanted to name this child, so we settled -- somewhat tentatively, I think -- on "Wynn." It's an ambiguous name, but also a family name, on my dad's side. For a long time, we had considered a Puritan name, like "Welcome" -- also, as it turns out, a family name. It would be a fitting name, because in spite of the loss, Wynn was most surely Welcome. And I take comfort as much as I can in two things: First, that all this baby ever new of life was peace, comfort, and love; that he or she knew the muffled sounds of the joy of his or her brothers, mother, father, and grandparents. Second, that God has a perspective so wildly different than that of my own mind's comprehension, that in some way in his vast being, this is somehow not a loss at all, and we just haven't entered into that knowledge yet.
At any rate, today I remember Wynn. This child was precious to us, and very much loved.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Things Unseen
Maybe things aren’t as bad as you think they are,
Or maybe they are, or they’re worse.
Seconds pile up in the river against
Broken tree limbs and dead muskrats,
And that’s the way minutes, hours, and eons are made.
That’s life, the way it is.
It’s the ugly truth.
Your children are sweet,
But this does not
Necessitate a future
Free from cocaine, pornography;
Legs lost in foreign lands.
Links, bonds, marriages
Are made and broken. Who remembers? Why?
We all lose sleep — in some measure —
Trying to remember if we are remembered;
If we still matter in some way to this person or that,
Bandaged in the snow.
In the end, just one question:
Is there something more, or nothing more?
It only matters
If you care about the way your cousins
Laughed when you were seven
And wonder if that has made a difference;
If you have watched the leaves turn
Gold, red, orange
And supposed this captured meaning
Beyond apparent logic.
Or, if all else fails,
And the great multitudes of distances
Between darkness and light —
Gradients to some and gulfs to others —
Are unconvincing,
And you should choose to waiver and wager
Trackside in the morning,
Remember that
If you travel north and leave a body
For moose hunters to find
In the spring,
You were worth everything
To somebody
In the moment before the last,
And this singular truth lights great fires
Along narrow pathways
Through the dark woods.
Or maybe they are, or they’re worse.
Seconds pile up in the river against
Broken tree limbs and dead muskrats,
And that’s the way minutes, hours, and eons are made.
That’s life, the way it is.
It’s the ugly truth.
Your children are sweet,
But this does not
Necessitate a future
Free from cocaine, pornography;
Legs lost in foreign lands.
Links, bonds, marriages
Are made and broken. Who remembers? Why?
We all lose sleep — in some measure —
Trying to remember if we are remembered;
If we still matter in some way to this person or that,
Bandaged in the snow.
In the end, just one question:
Is there something more, or nothing more?
It only matters
If you care about the way your cousins
Laughed when you were seven
And wonder if that has made a difference;
If you have watched the leaves turn
Gold, red, orange
And supposed this captured meaning
Beyond apparent logic.
Or, if all else fails,
And the great multitudes of distances
Between darkness and light —
Gradients to some and gulfs to others —
Are unconvincing,
And you should choose to waiver and wager
Trackside in the morning,
Remember that
If you travel north and leave a body
For moose hunters to find
In the spring,
You were worth everything
To somebody
In the moment before the last,
And this singular truth lights great fires
Along narrow pathways
Through the dark woods.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Is Canada Haunted?
This Halloween, as I was lighting the candles in our hastily carved jack-o’-lanterns on the front porch, I was wondering what I would one day tell my kids if they asked me to tell them a real-life ghost story. My brushes with the paranormal have been few and far between, no doubt, but there have been a few. Nearly all – secretly – I’ve been able to dismiss using any number of rational explanations with a wink and a nod. Oddly, most have been experiences shared with others: There was that stage screw that flew in a straight line stage-left to stage-right in the supposedly haunted auditorium of Thornridge High School right before the startled eyes of myself and my friend Greg as we prepared to lock up, the only two remaining souls in the building … or so we thought!; There was that mysterious man who seemed to materialize out of nowhere before my cousin Alan and me near the old decrepit hunting cabins in Gladwin, Michigan in the November snow. (Only years later did it occur to me that he may have been … a hunter.)
Some twelve years ago, I found myself in circumstances that – at the time – seemed to warrant a bit of coming unhinged. We won’t go off into the weeds here … suffice it to say there were freight trains, lost vacations, and rubber-tramping ventures into the jungle.
One week in November, I had the crazy fool notion to point myself north and see just how far I could get. I had a map, and the vague idea that I’d like to see what Manitoba was all about. And so it was that I found myself well north of Winnipeg in what was supposedly a haunted motel -- or so the elderly-ish woman named Marge who managed the place told me. As it happens, I had a terrible time getting to sleep that night. On one occasion, I heard what was clearly the sound of something heavy falling and hitting the floor somewhere in the room, only to find nothing out of place. On several occasions, I was startled awake by what I though was someone shouting "Kevin!" I ended up walking back to the lobby/lounge area, where Marge had a happy fire glowing in the fireplace. Marge and I talked for a long time that night, and I whiled away that night partly in conversation, and partly underneath the Canadian stars.
When I've recounted this to others, they've encouraged me to write about it. The thing is, I've written about it quite a bit. In fact, I wrote this in my notebook the following night, and included it in the preface to a poetry chapbook I "published" back in 1998:
(Why I wasn't handed the Pulitzer Prize for literature immediately upon publication, I'll never know.)
Reading that now, it's clear why I've struggled so often to capture what was going on that night and why it was such a big deal: What is lost in the whole account is the sense of grace that it left me with ... which, admittedly doesn't really make for much of a ghost story. But it isn't the "ghostiness" of those nights that is worth anything anyway: I WAS after all exhausted and sent to bed primed with stories about ghosts waking up weary travelers by shouting their names, so, yeah ... perhaps not really much of a mystery there. The supernatural aspect is much more "Holy Ghosty" in nature, I think. Now, when troubled days come, I think back to that trip and am comforted by it somehow. So here is another attempt to get at what was going on back then, so far away from home:
Remembering
The ride
Up through both Dakotas —
Hands, ears
So cold,
So set against the proud rush;
Embers on the skyline;
Red River
Everywhere that year
And embarrassed with twilight.
Unwashed, unworthy
Of that horizon,
I entered in regardless,
Underneath
Clouds belly-full with snow.
Somewhere
Against an unnamed bay,
The voice of the road
Flickered
From whisper to hush,
And American dollars
Were barely enough
To buy a haunted room
In a haunted inn in November.
Recalling
The walls there —
How they whispered
My own name
Always at the edge of sleep each night
And chased me to fire-lit places,
And warmth —
It is good to know
That name is
As familiar as it is
To wild shorelines;
Abandoned trestles;
Dead innkeepers;
Aurora.
And so, often,
I find myself
Looking north,
Humming to myself “It Is Well”
In times of trouble,
Not because it is,
But because it was,
And will be again.
Some twelve years ago, I found myself in circumstances that – at the time – seemed to warrant a bit of coming unhinged. We won’t go off into the weeds here … suffice it to say there were freight trains, lost vacations, and rubber-tramping ventures into the jungle.
One week in November, I had the crazy fool notion to point myself north and see just how far I could get. I had a map, and the vague idea that I’d like to see what Manitoba was all about. And so it was that I found myself well north of Winnipeg in what was supposedly a haunted motel -- or so the elderly-ish woman named Marge who managed the place told me. As it happens, I had a terrible time getting to sleep that night. On one occasion, I heard what was clearly the sound of something heavy falling and hitting the floor somewhere in the room, only to find nothing out of place. On several occasions, I was startled awake by what I though was someone shouting "Kevin!" I ended up walking back to the lobby/lounge area, where Marge had a happy fire glowing in the fireplace. Marge and I talked for a long time that night, and I whiled away that night partly in conversation, and partly underneath the Canadian stars.
When I've recounted this to others, they've encouraged me to write about it. The thing is, I've written about it quite a bit. In fact, I wrote this in my notebook the following night, and included it in the preface to a poetry chapbook I "published" back in 1998:
"The hotel I am staying in is supposed to be haunted. Last night I awoke with a start to the sound of a woman saying my name, to find the room empty; sub-arctic starlight gracing the room with icy silver. It seems I carry some ghosts with me; perhaps some will stay behind. Margaret, the sixtyish women who manages this place, has found me scrawling these notes as I sit wrapped in a blanket on a worn red-velvet chair before the hearth. She is a poet too, and asks me to read a few out loud. My voice rings strange against the firelight — cold and filtered through smoke; older and more sad than I have ever heard it. She listens, the words straining through days that have lacked all audible speech. She tastes each syllable, her eyes gazing off to a place somewhere far behind me, a smile spreading across her face as though she recognizes an old friend; though clearly there is no one there, in the gold-flickering doorway. When I have finished, she clasps her hands loudly together, surprising the night, and exclaims 'Wonderful! Wonderful!' Grace again in the strangest, most beautiful places. I talk with her long into the night, knowing that her eyes give such wonderful gifts; knowing that already I long to squeeze these hours into some small, antique bottle and keep it always near me."
(Why I wasn't handed the Pulitzer Prize for literature immediately upon publication, I'll never know.)
Reading that now, it's clear why I've struggled so often to capture what was going on that night and why it was such a big deal: What is lost in the whole account is the sense of grace that it left me with ... which, admittedly doesn't really make for much of a ghost story. But it isn't the "ghostiness" of those nights that is worth anything anyway: I WAS after all exhausted and sent to bed primed with stories about ghosts waking up weary travelers by shouting their names, so, yeah ... perhaps not really much of a mystery there. The supernatural aspect is much more "Holy Ghosty" in nature, I think. Now, when troubled days come, I think back to that trip and am comforted by it somehow. So here is another attempt to get at what was going on back then, so far away from home:
Remembering
The ride
Up through both Dakotas —
Hands, ears
So cold,
So set against the proud rush;
Embers on the skyline;
Red River
Everywhere that year
And embarrassed with twilight.
Unwashed, unworthy
Of that horizon,
I entered in regardless,
Underneath
Clouds belly-full with snow.
Somewhere
Against an unnamed bay,
The voice of the road
Flickered
From whisper to hush,
And American dollars
Were barely enough
To buy a haunted room
In a haunted inn in November.
Recalling
The walls there —
How they whispered
My own name
Always at the edge of sleep each night
And chased me to fire-lit places,
And warmth —
It is good to know
That name is
As familiar as it is
To wild shorelines;
Abandoned trestles;
Dead innkeepers;
Aurora.
And so, often,
I find myself
Looking north,
Humming to myself “It Is Well”
In times of trouble,
Not because it is,
But because it was,
And will be again.
Friday, November 5, 2010
"Neverland Wynn's Owl Remix"
One last remix from The Choir's excellent "Burning Like the Midnight Sun" disk. This is the "Wynn's Owl Mix," courtesy yours truly:
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Silver
Won’t your hand
Find my hand
In the watery grave
Of the moon?
When the silver
That drifts
Along the sliver
That lives
Between the light
Of stars
And the ink of night
Alights upon
Leaf-tips;
Sleeping barbicans
In the flicker
Of long-gone autumns?
When the combines
Swarm along state routes,
And their reflections
And their shimmerings
Quiver in the wind
As we pass in the silence —
That Silence.
Among trees;
Among ruined bridges;
Among rail-spans, spillways, and lift-bridges;
Among the shadowed spans of doorways
Awash in the last
Innocent Christmas
You remember;
In the ash that leaves my lips
And settles on my sleeve
As we traverse each distance.
You lean in close,
As the road descends
In its grace
From blacktop, to gravel,
To grass.
You have found a secret; that secret:
An ending — here —
The beautiful ending of lights —
In a world that never once
Deserved those lights,
Or the finding of those lights.
We move together, then:
Beneath, among, above
These horizons that
Have held us to the earth,
And we are free:
As free as
Every silver thing.
Find my hand
In the watery grave
Of the moon?
When the silver
That drifts
Along the sliver
That lives
Between the light
Of stars
And the ink of night
Alights upon
Leaf-tips;
Sleeping barbicans
In the flicker
Of long-gone autumns?
When the combines
Swarm along state routes,
And their reflections
And their shimmerings
Quiver in the wind
As we pass in the silence —
That Silence.
Among trees;
Among ruined bridges;
Among rail-spans, spillways, and lift-bridges;
Among the shadowed spans of doorways
Awash in the last
Innocent Christmas
You remember;
In the ash that leaves my lips
And settles on my sleeve
As we traverse each distance.
You lean in close,
As the road descends
In its grace
From blacktop, to gravel,
To grass.
You have found a secret; that secret:
An ending — here —
The beautiful ending of lights —
In a world that never once
Deserved those lights,
Or the finding of those lights.
We move together, then:
Beneath, among, above
These horizons that
Have held us to the earth,
And we are free:
As free as
Every silver thing.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
It was not all a dream.
My parents recently concluded what can only be called a terrible real estate transaction that began with discussions about the changing economic profile of their neighborhood, the realities of yard upkeep, and proximity to grandchildren ... and concluded with curses issued to our federal government, a brush with financial fraud, and several episodes of yours truly brandishing a glass of straight gin on ice cursing under his breath very late at night. All of this over five months, in the worst real estate market this country has seen since the Great Depression. It's an interesting story, but not meant for this space.
Back in 1976, I was as much of a mess as one 7-year-old boy could be: I was at the top of my form in good old Riverdale, Illinois, in my quaint track-side school that went from kindergarten to third grade: I was the fastest, the strongest, the funniest, and -- I thought -- the smartest in all of Park School. (Ah ... big fish in little ponds.) And then my world went upside-down. When I first caught the scent of the possibility that my parents were considering pulling up roots and moving elsewhere, I was indignant: This was not possible. What motivation could explain this absurdity? Here, all was well: I was within walking distance of my school, my grandmother lived in the "apartment" upstairs, my great-grandma Torrenga lived a mere two blocks away, my best friend's grandmother lived right next door (affording me access to said best friend upon his frequent visits), and all was right with God and his universe. Of course, my seven-year-old brain failed to recognize details such as the gang- and riot-riddled high school my sister and I were destined to attend based upon our address, or the fact that our parents were forced to sleep on a fold-out hide-a-bed so that my sister and I could have separate rooms.
And so we landed in South Holland. I remember how terribly conflicted I felt the first time I stepped foot on the property: Here was a foreign land, a virtual desert expanse of suburbia compared to our near-Chicago bungalow jungle in Riverdale. Here, few backyards had fences; the railroad passed right behind the house -- and there were four sets of tracks! The block offered no less than four neighbor boys -- boys! -- to play with as opposed to the oddly imbalanced overabundance of girls to be found on our Riverdale block. It seemed oddly rural compared to our Riverdale address: there was something sad and lonely about the evenings here, and the dark seemed darker and the night more deep. The school wasn't a simple kindergarten to third-grade affair: No, it was kindergarten straight up to sixth grade. It seemed like a college campus to me, where I was at the bottom of the seniority list.
But, my vote was a small one weighed against our circumstances, and we took the move. I think back on it now, and I feel bad for my parents: The grief I must have caused them. My oldest son cries whenever we cart an old piece of furniture or a decrepit appliance to the curb, he's that sentimental: "But I LOVE our old water softener!" he sobs; "But I love that washing machine." My heart aches for him, but I'm exasperated: Life finds innumerable ways to explain to us the grief we've unknowingly caused others, no? But I digress.
The day we went to our soon-to-be-new house, I was nervous, but excited. There was a basement stairway, with grapevines growing upon the railing. (With real grapes! That you could eat!) There were, of course, the rail lines, with their regular schedule of house-shaking freights. There were dirt bike trails and their attending dirt bikes -- soon to become the nemesis of my father. There were the string of backyards that would become a convenient baseball diamond/football field/battlefield/graveyard. And there were paintings, left by the previous owners, of naked ladies in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Wow! (These were seen once, and never again.)
So we bought our house on Prince Drive in South Holland. We settled in, we made a life, we grew up. It was a good place to grow up -- the right balance of comfort and toughness that a kid needs to learn his way. There were the crazy kids, and the good kids, and the bad kids, just like every other neighborhood. In the summers, we would spend too much time with each other, get bored, get into fist-fights, storm off, and realize that we were the only game in town, and learn to negotiate peace. My poor father -- forever pining for a return to his pure rural roots -- found ample space for a large garden; my mother, a daughter of Chicago, found herself on familiar ground. It was as close to a perfect compromise as the family would ever find.
I don't know what you can say about a home, except that you know what makes it a home while it is yours, and whatever that is can never be truly expressed to anyone else. Thinking back, I have glimpses: Of hot summer afternoons spent swigging cold Coca-Cola from glass bottles beneath the mock-orange tree in the backyard while the freight trains rocketed by; of snow-days and blizzards spent too-long in the backyard making snow forts until runny noses chased us indoors to hot chocolate and Spiderman cartoons. It was a good house, a good home.
My parents stayed as long as they could. Things were getting to a place where I was uncomfortable letting Liz and the kids travel there on their own. It's just one of those things. The church was gone; most of our friends and family were gone. My best friend and I were robbed at gunpoint two blocks away one Christmas: "Throw your wallets on the ground, and there better be money there or you're both fuckin' dead!" There you go. Welcome home. It was time. Dad had to give up a glorious yard, hard-fought-for and hard-won; Mom had to give up the home she'd tweaked to her tastes over three decades. And, for me, on that last day -- as the moving vans closed their doors, and I backed out of that driveway for the last time -- I couldn't resist one last circuit around the old sights. The thing is, I realized fairly quickly that I'd become a relic; a stranger among my old haunts.
My parents are blessed to have a wonderful home in a wonderful neighborhood, not more than 10 minutes from where I live. Our kids are silly with excitement, apparently because they have a new house to explore, but clearly because their beloved grandma and grandpa are now only 10 minutes away instead of 45 minutes. My father has lost a wonderful backyard, but gained an entire neighborhood that is safe to walk around in, day or night. It's taken me a long time to get that life is nothing more than a series of chapters that conclude and subsequently serve as the prologue to the next, and that this isn't a bad thing, or even a sad thing, just a true thing.
Back in 1976, I was as much of a mess as one 7-year-old boy could be: I was at the top of my form in good old Riverdale, Illinois, in my quaint track-side school that went from kindergarten to third grade: I was the fastest, the strongest, the funniest, and -- I thought -- the smartest in all of Park School. (Ah ... big fish in little ponds.) And then my world went upside-down. When I first caught the scent of the possibility that my parents were considering pulling up roots and moving elsewhere, I was indignant: This was not possible. What motivation could explain this absurdity? Here, all was well: I was within walking distance of my school, my grandmother lived in the "apartment" upstairs, my great-grandma Torrenga lived a mere two blocks away, my best friend's grandmother lived right next door (affording me access to said best friend upon his frequent visits), and all was right with God and his universe. Of course, my seven-year-old brain failed to recognize details such as the gang- and riot-riddled high school my sister and I were destined to attend based upon our address, or the fact that our parents were forced to sleep on a fold-out hide-a-bed so that my sister and I could have separate rooms.
And so we landed in South Holland. I remember how terribly conflicted I felt the first time I stepped foot on the property: Here was a foreign land, a virtual desert expanse of suburbia compared to our near-Chicago bungalow jungle in Riverdale. Here, few backyards had fences; the railroad passed right behind the house -- and there were four sets of tracks! The block offered no less than four neighbor boys -- boys! -- to play with as opposed to the oddly imbalanced overabundance of girls to be found on our Riverdale block. It seemed oddly rural compared to our Riverdale address: there was something sad and lonely about the evenings here, and the dark seemed darker and the night more deep. The school wasn't a simple kindergarten to third-grade affair: No, it was kindergarten straight up to sixth grade. It seemed like a college campus to me, where I was at the bottom of the seniority list.
But, my vote was a small one weighed against our circumstances, and we took the move. I think back on it now, and I feel bad for my parents: The grief I must have caused them. My oldest son cries whenever we cart an old piece of furniture or a decrepit appliance to the curb, he's that sentimental: "But I LOVE our old water softener!" he sobs; "But I love that washing machine." My heart aches for him, but I'm exasperated: Life finds innumerable ways to explain to us the grief we've unknowingly caused others, no? But I digress.
The day we went to our soon-to-be-new house, I was nervous, but excited. There was a basement stairway, with grapevines growing upon the railing. (With real grapes! That you could eat!) There were, of course, the rail lines, with their regular schedule of house-shaking freights. There were dirt bike trails and their attending dirt bikes -- soon to become the nemesis of my father. There were the string of backyards that would become a convenient baseball diamond/football field/battlefield/graveyard. And there were paintings, left by the previous owners, of naked ladies in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Wow! (These were seen once, and never again.)
So we bought our house on Prince Drive in South Holland. We settled in, we made a life, we grew up. It was a good place to grow up -- the right balance of comfort and toughness that a kid needs to learn his way. There were the crazy kids, and the good kids, and the bad kids, just like every other neighborhood. In the summers, we would spend too much time with each other, get bored, get into fist-fights, storm off, and realize that we were the only game in town, and learn to negotiate peace. My poor father -- forever pining for a return to his pure rural roots -- found ample space for a large garden; my mother, a daughter of Chicago, found herself on familiar ground. It was as close to a perfect compromise as the family would ever find.
I don't know what you can say about a home, except that you know what makes it a home while it is yours, and whatever that is can never be truly expressed to anyone else. Thinking back, I have glimpses: Of hot summer afternoons spent swigging cold Coca-Cola from glass bottles beneath the mock-orange tree in the backyard while the freight trains rocketed by; of snow-days and blizzards spent too-long in the backyard making snow forts until runny noses chased us indoors to hot chocolate and Spiderman cartoons. It was a good house, a good home.
My parents stayed as long as they could. Things were getting to a place where I was uncomfortable letting Liz and the kids travel there on their own. It's just one of those things. The church was gone; most of our friends and family were gone. My best friend and I were robbed at gunpoint two blocks away one Christmas: "Throw your wallets on the ground, and there better be money there or you're both fuckin' dead!" There you go. Welcome home. It was time. Dad had to give up a glorious yard, hard-fought-for and hard-won; Mom had to give up the home she'd tweaked to her tastes over three decades. And, for me, on that last day -- as the moving vans closed their doors, and I backed out of that driveway for the last time -- I couldn't resist one last circuit around the old sights. The thing is, I realized fairly quickly that I'd become a relic; a stranger among my old haunts.
My parents are blessed to have a wonderful home in a wonderful neighborhood, not more than 10 minutes from where I live. Our kids are silly with excitement, apparently because they have a new house to explore, but clearly because their beloved grandma and grandpa are now only 10 minutes away instead of 45 minutes. My father has lost a wonderful backyard, but gained an entire neighborhood that is safe to walk around in, day or night. It's taken me a long time to get that life is nothing more than a series of chapters that conclude and subsequently serve as the prologue to the next, and that this isn't a bad thing, or even a sad thing, just a true thing.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Burning Like the Midnight Sun Gold Ring in the Mud Mix
Well folks ... this is probably it for the "BLTMS" remixes for me. This was particular fun.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Mr. Chandler "Drive into the Wilderness" Mix
My second remix from "Burning Like the Midnight Sun." This was more or less a response to my good friend Jeffrey Kotthoff, who suggested most remixes were too "safe."
Burning Like the Midnight Sun "Forever Rising" Mix
The Choir has provided mix stems from their latest album, "Burning Like the Midnight Sun" so that those so inclined can take a turn at remixing the tracks. This is my first effort, basically just a more ambient take on the original.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
RIP Michael Been
Michael Been, lead singer/songwriter for the semi-obscure post-punk band "The Call" died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 60. He was to music what Flannery O'Connor was to literature. He was someone who described his musical and spiritual journey as the "slow wearing away of ignorance." He understood the realities of grace — both wonderful and terrible — better than most. I count myself very fortunate to have discovered his talent in my formative years. Tribute poems are seldom good, and I seldom have written them, but here's one — for what it's worth. RIP Michael Been.
God arranges to have certain people
Born in Oklahoma, where Union Pacific
Lines are straight as the skyline
Save for the earth’s curve,
And twisters noose downward from cliff-clouds
To lasso thin towns and two-lanes.
Your voice is still heavy as blacktop —
Grace and mercy washed against
The cinder block basement-wall of law.
In back country like this —
Jungled up in the scrub next to the tracks,
Sharpened against the edge of hot panhandle nights —
The ache for a glimpse of treeline or riverbank
Leaks
Into every voice you might carry to the world.
In ways like this
God arranges to grant to the earth
The meek,
Those who know well to whom we die,
To whom we’re to be reconciled.
They lead us through the desert,
Some urgently singing at each fork in the path;
The mocking governments, the mocking mainline,
The mocking fringe, the mocking world
Held fast — dumb — by the throat
While the poor in spirit snake by.
It’s a violent grace —
A dam-breaking,
House-swallowing,
Brother-drowning grace.
It presses even the preacher
Until the preacher cries out
“Hell’s been raised!”
And there in the ending of all moments
There is mercy in Hell.
God arranges to have certain people
Born in Oklahoma, where Union Pacific
Lines are straight as the skyline
Save for the earth’s curve,
And twisters noose downward from cliff-clouds
To lasso thin towns and two-lanes.
Your voice is still heavy as blacktop —
Grace and mercy washed against
The cinder block basement-wall of law.
In back country like this —
Jungled up in the scrub next to the tracks,
Sharpened against the edge of hot panhandle nights —
The ache for a glimpse of treeline or riverbank
Leaks
Into every voice you might carry to the world.
In ways like this
God arranges to grant to the earth
The meek,
Those who know well to whom we die,
To whom we’re to be reconciled.
They lead us through the desert,
Some urgently singing at each fork in the path;
The mocking governments, the mocking mainline,
The mocking fringe, the mocking world
Held fast — dumb — by the throat
While the poor in spirit snake by.
It’s a violent grace —
A dam-breaking,
House-swallowing,
Brother-drowning grace.
It presses even the preacher
Until the preacher cries out
“Hell’s been raised!”
And there in the ending of all moments
There is mercy in Hell.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Untitled ...
Blurring, stammering,
Miles pile close together against years —
Cold ash on calloused hand-skin
The remembered feeling of fingertips
Against palms:
Nickels rubbed dime-thin in hidden earth
And smeared across the decades
While you remain,
and wait.
In the late wind, you sleep too near the shoreline;
Too near the railyard.
It’s a crime,
They say.
Truth be told,
You dared the eye of each horizon’s devil:
You paid your dues;
You awoke to hail;
You gave your shoulder over to bent, broken tree trunks
And lost cemetery names —
A sea-crashed view;
A shadow
Left in last night’s fire-ring
And given over to the morning —
Which finds the night (along with you)
Mis-remembered, precious, alight.
There it is — the crux of all things —
Christ on his cross,
And you in the man-tall weeds, much later,
Waiting for the conduction of crew changes near the viaduct;
Waiting for straight avenues out from underneath
Storm warnings
Via hotshots heading west —
Bolt-out of prairie-school nights.
Still, there — adrift, awakened, remembered —
The lightning-soaked cloudfields
Have no part of being escaped, or left alone.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Treasures
This week’s list of treasures/artifacts nearly lost to the lawn mower: one small rubber lizard and one small rubber frog from the dollar store; one piece of orange sidewalk chalk; one non-functioning squirt gun; one hand trowel; one spark plug gap gauge (i.e., “space money”); one Matchbox Corvette (lucky save); one Hot Wheels “highly modified and stylized” school bus (Hot Wheels … would have happily mowed over it); multiple “favorite stones.” A pet peeve I share with my wife is a yard cluttered with the detritus of the day’s joyous chaos — the inevitable evidence left after two little explorers/spacemen/bad guys/Jedi/firemen/policemen have run roughshod over the property — so this was a somewhat unusual yield.
I sigh with frustration when I nearly mow over these treasures, not because I am afraid my Briggs & Stratton might be threatened by an encounter with any of them, but because I remember the strange combination of jealous attachment and fickle abandonment that accompanied similar treasures when I and my friends were young. In fact, I recently had the weird experience of not only putting my hands on some of those forgotten treasures, but also passing some of them along to Sam and Luke. This weekend we helped my folks clear out their attic in preparation for their impending move. I spent a sweaty, spidery, uncomfortable hour in the attic followed by a six-hour hike down Memory Lane. Here, preserved undisturbed for 30 years, were the possessions I treasured enough to carefully entomb in the attic when I was still a child. For my kids, it represented quite a haul: As I type this, I’m glancing over at a Ziplock bag containing Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Boba Fett, and one hapless unnamed stormtrooper — a length of string still firmly tied around his waist, his terrible yet well-deserved last moments spent dangling over the source of some no-doubt horrific demise frozen forever in time. There were hundreds of Topps Star Wars trading cards — harvested from untold numbers of hot summer-day walks to Kim’s Rexall to buy bubblegum packs. There was the big box full of Legos — the revelation of which elicited an actual gasp of surprised shock from my oldest son and some sort of “ecstatic collapse” upon his grandparents’ floor (promptly mimicked in slow motion by my younger son) — that still contained several fully realized space fighters carefully sculpted by yours truly when Ronald Reagan was our new president. There were notes written in the language my best friend James and I invented; pins and coins; birthday cards from my great grandma; diaries and first love letters; bullet casings and “No Hunting” signs from the farm in Michigan; that big bowie knife my grandpa bought me over the protests of my mother; a forged ring and length of chain unearthed at an abandoned farm; countless railroad spikes found along the tracks behind the house; a rusted horseshoe unearthed at a Boys Brigade sleepover behind our church in South Holland; and on and on.
And then of course there was the actual treasure box: A little wooden chest bought as a souvenir on a vacation to King’s Island, containing the absolute cream of the crop. When I was a child, the box and its contents were so important, I wrapped it in bicycle chain and secured it with a padlock. Here were all the objects that one little boy treasured above all else. Seeing them now was vaguely touching — my grown-up brain now able to connect dots and make connections that I was then unaware of. Here was a toy stopwatch, given to me by my father: When I was very young, I spent an extended period of time in the hospital with pneumonia and a terrible pancreatic infection. It was touch and go. The day I was finally released, while my mom was wading through paperwork, my dad hoisted my still weak body up into his arms, took me to the hospital gift shop and asked me if there was anything I would like. I was fascinated by watches and stopwatches — still am, actually — and I was fixated on a particular toy stopwatch behind the counter. “Are you sure?” my dad asked. “That’s not a real stopwatch, you know. It’s tin and plastic.” I didn’t realize it then, but I know now he was happily prepared to buy his surviving son an actual, honest-to-goodness stopwatch. But I wanted that toy stopwatch, and so I had it. When I lifted it out of my treasure box on Saturday — and you need to trust me when I say I’m not adding this for dramatic effect — I’ll be damned if the thing didn’t start ticking away loudly when I thumbed the start switch.
There was a jumble of keys, each one a story. One skeleton key was unearthed while digging in the backyard of our corner house in Riverdale. I was delighted when it happily engaged the lock of our heavy oak door. I was doubtful, by my great-grandmother encouraged me to give it a try. It was like magic. I still remember the way she smiled when the tumblers clicked. Several of the keys came from my Uncle Gil, who knew I loved keys, and would produce one or two of them upon every visit to our house. I was a shy boy, but Uncle Gil would make a point at the beginning of every visit to crouch down to look me in the eye, and carefully display and explain each key — what it was for; how it was used; how he came to be in possession of it; what he liked about it; why someone would want a key for its given purpose. I didn’t know a lot about Uncle Gil, but I knew he had fought in the Philippines in World War II, and that he never talked about it, and that I should never ask him about it. Uncle Gil never had any kids of his own, but he sure was a great uncle. In fact, all my uncles were great, and I’m thankful for my own kids’ uncles — every crazy one of them. Most of my keys came from uncles, most with a story. There were keys in the box from other sources: Some from old cars we sold; others from the old house; others found while playing in the yard or in the park. But all the keys from my uncles are together on one ring, a separate ring.
There was a chunk of fool’s gold, a vestige of one of the many vacations my family took with my best friend’s family. We were in Cuba, Missouri, and the walkways were literally paved with fool’s gold. James and I thought it was fantastic. Our dads patiently indulged us as we gathered literal buckets full of the stuff. Not only did we collect these buckets during our time there, but we actually carted them home. At the campground where we were staying, they would show Yogi Bear cartoons just after dusk. One night, while we were waiting for the cartoons to begin, my dad and I saw a fireball streak across the sky. My dad said that was a piece of a rock that had been flying around in space for thousands of years that was burning up in our atmosphere. I was awestruck. For years these buckets of fools’ gold remained in my parnets’ garage. Years ago, I had chosen the most brilliant specimen and sequestered it in my treasure box.
There was a pair of cufflinks and a tie bar my father gave me — no doubt around the time cufflinks and tie bars were going out of style; a piece of gunflint unearthed at the Tippecanoe Battlefield near Lafayette, Indiana; a 4H pin from my dad’s days on the farm; Indian head pennies rationed out by my Grandma Bink over the years; my first pocket knife; a ring with my birthstone in it; a resin-embalmed scorpion given to me by my aunt and uncle who moved to Arizona back in the 70s.
I watch my sons play together, and I instantly recognize the shorthand of their love and their interaction. There’s something about boys that leads them to talismans or totems … treasures … little altars built to their conquests and discoveries. I have a sister — who I love dearly, and who I happily played with on countless summer days. My childhood neighborhood was bereft of male companions, so I made do with my sister and her friends. But our play was in some ways always negotiated: We’ll play house, but only if I get to take off Ken’s head and pretend he’s the Headless Horseman; we’ll play Batman, but only if he’s happily married to Barbie and has a baby. But there’s just something about brothers and the mischief they make and the treasures they uncover … I wasn’t born with a brother, and so I had to find one. His name is James, and we have been of one mind for a long, long time. Our play never involved negotiation: We innately knew that the Lego vehicles we spent 30 minutes carefully crafting and engineering in silence were going to meet their fate crashing against the side of the oven from atop the stairs; we knew that, while camping, we were going to wake up at the crack of dawn with the unspoken mission to conjure the previous night’s fire from nothing but ashes and cooling embers, armed only with our breath and a few dry leaves. When I was crazy, wreckless and wandering with a stupid, broken heart, the Spirit moved and gave James the grace of his dead dad’s gun collection and the wisdom to drive me to Beecher to shoot shotguns at empty paint cans and pumpkins. That’s the way it works. As old as we get, it never leaves. It’s a weird, undefined thing … call it the Holy Spirit moving over the face of the deep. I see it when Luke is scared, and Sam drops every treasure he owns in that moment to the ground to rush to his brother’s side.
I sigh with frustration when I nearly mow over these treasures, not because I am afraid my Briggs & Stratton might be threatened by an encounter with any of them, but because I remember the strange combination of jealous attachment and fickle abandonment that accompanied similar treasures when I and my friends were young. In fact, I recently had the weird experience of not only putting my hands on some of those forgotten treasures, but also passing some of them along to Sam and Luke. This weekend we helped my folks clear out their attic in preparation for their impending move. I spent a sweaty, spidery, uncomfortable hour in the attic followed by a six-hour hike down Memory Lane. Here, preserved undisturbed for 30 years, were the possessions I treasured enough to carefully entomb in the attic when I was still a child. For my kids, it represented quite a haul: As I type this, I’m glancing over at a Ziplock bag containing Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Boba Fett, and one hapless unnamed stormtrooper — a length of string still firmly tied around his waist, his terrible yet well-deserved last moments spent dangling over the source of some no-doubt horrific demise frozen forever in time. There were hundreds of Topps Star Wars trading cards — harvested from untold numbers of hot summer-day walks to Kim’s Rexall to buy bubblegum packs. There was the big box full of Legos — the revelation of which elicited an actual gasp of surprised shock from my oldest son and some sort of “ecstatic collapse” upon his grandparents’ floor (promptly mimicked in slow motion by my younger son) — that still contained several fully realized space fighters carefully sculpted by yours truly when Ronald Reagan was our new president. There were notes written in the language my best friend James and I invented; pins and coins; birthday cards from my great grandma; diaries and first love letters; bullet casings and “No Hunting” signs from the farm in Michigan; that big bowie knife my grandpa bought me over the protests of my mother; a forged ring and length of chain unearthed at an abandoned farm; countless railroad spikes found along the tracks behind the house; a rusted horseshoe unearthed at a Boys Brigade sleepover behind our church in South Holland; and on and on.
And then of course there was the actual treasure box: A little wooden chest bought as a souvenir on a vacation to King’s Island, containing the absolute cream of the crop. When I was a child, the box and its contents were so important, I wrapped it in bicycle chain and secured it with a padlock. Here were all the objects that one little boy treasured above all else. Seeing them now was vaguely touching — my grown-up brain now able to connect dots and make connections that I was then unaware of. Here was a toy stopwatch, given to me by my father: When I was very young, I spent an extended period of time in the hospital with pneumonia and a terrible pancreatic infection. It was touch and go. The day I was finally released, while my mom was wading through paperwork, my dad hoisted my still weak body up into his arms, took me to the hospital gift shop and asked me if there was anything I would like. I was fascinated by watches and stopwatches — still am, actually — and I was fixated on a particular toy stopwatch behind the counter. “Are you sure?” my dad asked. “That’s not a real stopwatch, you know. It’s tin and plastic.” I didn’t realize it then, but I know now he was happily prepared to buy his surviving son an actual, honest-to-goodness stopwatch. But I wanted that toy stopwatch, and so I had it. When I lifted it out of my treasure box on Saturday — and you need to trust me when I say I’m not adding this for dramatic effect — I’ll be damned if the thing didn’t start ticking away loudly when I thumbed the start switch.
There was a jumble of keys, each one a story. One skeleton key was unearthed while digging in the backyard of our corner house in Riverdale. I was delighted when it happily engaged the lock of our heavy oak door. I was doubtful, by my great-grandmother encouraged me to give it a try. It was like magic. I still remember the way she smiled when the tumblers clicked. Several of the keys came from my Uncle Gil, who knew I loved keys, and would produce one or two of them upon every visit to our house. I was a shy boy, but Uncle Gil would make a point at the beginning of every visit to crouch down to look me in the eye, and carefully display and explain each key — what it was for; how it was used; how he came to be in possession of it; what he liked about it; why someone would want a key for its given purpose. I didn’t know a lot about Uncle Gil, but I knew he had fought in the Philippines in World War II, and that he never talked about it, and that I should never ask him about it. Uncle Gil never had any kids of his own, but he sure was a great uncle. In fact, all my uncles were great, and I’m thankful for my own kids’ uncles — every crazy one of them. Most of my keys came from uncles, most with a story. There were keys in the box from other sources: Some from old cars we sold; others from the old house; others found while playing in the yard or in the park. But all the keys from my uncles are together on one ring, a separate ring.
There was a chunk of fool’s gold, a vestige of one of the many vacations my family took with my best friend’s family. We were in Cuba, Missouri, and the walkways were literally paved with fool’s gold. James and I thought it was fantastic. Our dads patiently indulged us as we gathered literal buckets full of the stuff. Not only did we collect these buckets during our time there, but we actually carted them home. At the campground where we were staying, they would show Yogi Bear cartoons just after dusk. One night, while we were waiting for the cartoons to begin, my dad and I saw a fireball streak across the sky. My dad said that was a piece of a rock that had been flying around in space for thousands of years that was burning up in our atmosphere. I was awestruck. For years these buckets of fools’ gold remained in my parnets’ garage. Years ago, I had chosen the most brilliant specimen and sequestered it in my treasure box.
There was a pair of cufflinks and a tie bar my father gave me — no doubt around the time cufflinks and tie bars were going out of style; a piece of gunflint unearthed at the Tippecanoe Battlefield near Lafayette, Indiana; a 4H pin from my dad’s days on the farm; Indian head pennies rationed out by my Grandma Bink over the years; my first pocket knife; a ring with my birthstone in it; a resin-embalmed scorpion given to me by my aunt and uncle who moved to Arizona back in the 70s.
I watch my sons play together, and I instantly recognize the shorthand of their love and their interaction. There’s something about boys that leads them to talismans or totems … treasures … little altars built to their conquests and discoveries. I have a sister — who I love dearly, and who I happily played with on countless summer days. My childhood neighborhood was bereft of male companions, so I made do with my sister and her friends. But our play was in some ways always negotiated: We’ll play house, but only if I get to take off Ken’s head and pretend he’s the Headless Horseman; we’ll play Batman, but only if he’s happily married to Barbie and has a baby. But there’s just something about brothers and the mischief they make and the treasures they uncover … I wasn’t born with a brother, and so I had to find one. His name is James, and we have been of one mind for a long, long time. Our play never involved negotiation: We innately knew that the Lego vehicles we spent 30 minutes carefully crafting and engineering in silence were going to meet their fate crashing against the side of the oven from atop the stairs; we knew that, while camping, we were going to wake up at the crack of dawn with the unspoken mission to conjure the previous night’s fire from nothing but ashes and cooling embers, armed only with our breath and a few dry leaves. When I was crazy, wreckless and wandering with a stupid, broken heart, the Spirit moved and gave James the grace of his dead dad’s gun collection and the wisdom to drive me to Beecher to shoot shotguns at empty paint cans and pumpkins. That’s the way it works. As old as we get, it never leaves. It’s a weird, undefined thing … call it the Holy Spirit moving over the face of the deep. I see it when Luke is scared, and Sam drops every treasure he owns in that moment to the ground to rush to his brother’s side.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Some have been encouraging me to share more poems. This is one of those rare ones that actually felt finished after I wrote it down. It's actually — and I guess obviously — a collection of several poems written together over the course of a few days. From my "wanderings in the wilderness," when I was always heading north ... always north; as north as north can be. (Why north? Because it isn't south, apparently.)
The Canadian Northern Suite
I. Departures
Union Pacific
Runs slow as sap
This year,
Still I insist
A stranglehold —
Track-pulse coursing through the grabiron
Like last life through a vein,
Thundering,
Drinking in the autumn
While it dies wonderful deaths.
I have missed
The slack-action
Of great departures
All my life —
A long day
Sheltered at the siding
Watching trains slip by.
I would trade
My life for this —
One skull
Worth the moment;
The great rivers
So much larger
Than each bridge.
Sunsets dig beneath
Each surface
As they fade,
Parade the light;
Give the tree-line
Bones, ghosts,
wings —
Creation myths
In life unceasing.
I have never put
That light behind,
Bulkhead-strong
In tatters
And torn blankets;
County bridges, good weather,
Grace in transit.
II. So Taken Care Of
That day when the sky was God,
Smoke spiraled
Clean sacrifice
To heaven;
Bare sleep on old rugs
Was devotion
In the cool bridge-shade
Of early morning.
That black street preacher’s
Holy Ghost
Smiled my face,
The way he reached me
Here, after every
Dangerous mile,
And trusted
That my soul was saved.
That day Jesus was demanding
In the rush of boxcars in the yard,
I was awakened by the growl of
Harleys on the four-lane,
The sky clouding over
So shafts of light
Might girder my chest.
That day he cracked a smile,
Said
“Be that way!”
And walked out ahead of me
Down the line,
The slack-action
Rippling through the couplers
A lifelong journey up my spine;
The birds of the fields
Well-considered;
So beautiful;
So taken care of.
III. Fire Ring
Finally,
The corn is neck-high.
A little late —
Autumn clouds now rolling in;
Heavy silence
Near the fire;
Late summer’s whispers
In the rows
To the clearing
Near the river.
Moonshadows
On the face of us,
Gathered from
Convergences
Untold,
Let go of
A little late;
Eyes shining gold
Through fire,
Giving everything
To flame,
To the murmur of current
Over the rise.
Moonbeams cross-section
The moments,
Distilled forever;
Tin cups
Filled with it —
This night —
Sugared coffee;
Cloud-smothered Perseids
Streaming songs
Of falling to the world.
A little late —
The earthen us —
Thinking of
The double-doused circle
In the morning;
Perfect, magical ring
Holding always
Dying embers in the speeding sun,
Drowned with
Water from the river
Even now
Coursing hopefully on.
IV. Arriving
I remember knowing
The necessity
Of stumble and momentum —
Hovering above
A grid-covered earth
And drinking in direction.
I recall new vocalization;
Songs of pilgrimage
And journey
Pushed through well-hewn
Stiff-water doors,
Arriving out of anterooms —
Out of tunnels
Through the black-lung crust
On platinum rails,
Escape velocity
Twitching in the ears,
Humming every year
Into crosshair focus.
Arriving I imagine
The days before the roar
Of flow and current,
When the curvature
Of the earth was overstated,
Misdirected into confines
Hoping to ice the soul
From care.
V. Catching Out
Living all of life tonight —
One night
To force familiarity
Into endless American miles.
Roadside with open arms
And hands
I give you
Bandaged days;
Every tired moment.
The world collects its toll —
Nightshade-deadly
As a thirty-eight
Hidden in the hay-bin;
Strangers on the road;
Boxcars coasting in the yard.
Wind through weeds
Pulls tomorrow’s miles
Longer,
Stretches me through
Fields of pumpkins,
Over mountains,
To the sea.
Tonight we sleep
A crucifix
In tall grass,
Stars shining through
A distant surface
And bleeding ancient light —
Our eyes oceans
To accept it.
And grace at last is the diesel pull
Of forward and forever,
Trackside always in the morning,
Fires for the chill of Fall,
A glimpse of Jesu
Through safety glass,
And coffee steaming through
The sunrise
Where we part,
Where I am unashamed to laugh aloud alone.
VI. The Trestle
You have traveled north
To where the earth
Holds onto the sun
For as long as it can,
And still stays cold,
Sighed into a flat sleep
Against the sky.
You are stepping off of trains
That have brought you
From the door of one life
To the next,
And interrupt the journey
With this trestle —
Triple-layered lumber
Stacked
By unseen hands
To last the floods,
The winds,
The claws and the backs
Of bears.
You will catch the sun
Between the creek bed
And the rails,
Find Polaris next
And watch it drift
Into your tomorrow.
The Holy Ghost brought you here
To breathe aurora —
To sleep and then awake
To watch this trestle
Take the weight
Of pilgrimage again:
Strong shoulders give it all
In one deep groan,
Longing for the promised land;
Wishing it as easy.
In the morning
You will find all things new,
Beautiful and strange
As a dead bird’s wings
Spread open on the tundra.
And you —
You must let go of it and leave,
And catch out
From all these standing places,
Having dirtied your hands
Against all manner of iron;
Against the dust
Lifted up upon your palms from
Sifting through
The old-bone days;
Caught in all ways up within
The very journey toward
The unsaid things you seek.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Terrors of Boyhood
I was probably about 6 years old when Matthew Meese, who lived around the corner from me, had the brilliant idea to play cowboys and indians. We went to his house, where he ran inside and momentarily produced the following: A papier mache "Indian shield" that his older brother had made in art class; a handful of .38 caliber bullets; and a chrome snub-nosed .38 revolver. (Matthew's father was a security guard.) He handed me the poorly painted papier mache shield and all but one bullet, and then began busily working at the revolver, trying to figure out how to get the chamber free from the gun in order to begin loading bullets. While he was doing this, my eyes were darting from the shield to the gun. I can still feel the sweaty lead tips of those bullets tumbling around nervously in my hand .... My six-year-old brain was apparently ahead of Matthew's in the logic department: "I don't think this shield will stop bullets," I offered. His response? "It's a shield, shields stop bullets." No, no ... something was wrong here. (I knew that when mom safety-pinned a bath towel around my neck to approximate Superman's cape, that didn't mean I'd suddenly inherited the ability to fly and stop speeding freight trains with my outstretched arm.) Maybe I should run this whole thing by my mom. I handed Matthew the shield, and ran back around the block back to my house, where my mom was standing on the sidewalk talking to neighbors, like they used to do back in the old days. (The days when six-year-olds were free to roam the block on their own.) I approached my mom, and tugged on her shirt. I held out my hand and asked if it was true that ALL shields stopped bullets, even ones made of paper.
And that was the last time I ever saw Matthew Meese.
I did manage to keep a bullet ... As I recall, I had a pretty good idea my mom would confiscate them, and so I pocketed one on my way around the block. I had that thing for years. I would lose it much later, after we'd moved to a new town. Another crazy friend was convinced that one could cause a bullet to fire simply by smacking the end of it hard enough. He tried his best to drop it firing-mechanism-side-down into an empty storm sewer in an attempt to set it off. And there it remained, despite all attempts to recover it.
There are days when I stare in amazement as my two boys tempt fate - seemingly in every conceivable way - around the house. My oldest - who will cover his ears and run screaming from the room if you attempt to read him any story wherein a character gets in trouble or becomes sad - will happily try to traverse the living room by leaping from chair-top to chair-top. (Thankfully his head is harder than his pillow-soft heart.) My youngest son has made a habit of announcing all of the things he was thinking of doing, but didn't do. It's a frightening list: "Daddy, I didn't put my arms in the fire ..."; "Daddy, I didn't hit that little boy in the face ..."; "Daddy, I didn't put my head in the TV." He's also taken to providing sneak previews of intended future life choices: "Daddy, when I drive my car, it will be faster than police cars ..."; "Daddy, when I grow up I will jump out of helicopters ..."; "Daddy, one day I will break up all the trees in the whole world." (?) From both of them I get helpful promptings: "You should drive the car FASTER!"; "You should put your glasses in the fire ..."; and my favorite - SAM: "Let's take our brains out and step on them!" LUKE: "Oh YEAH! Take our brains out and put them in a MONSTER TRUCK!" This is the state of affairs at 5 and 2. Drat.
And that was the last time I ever saw Matthew Meese.
I did manage to keep a bullet ... As I recall, I had a pretty good idea my mom would confiscate them, and so I pocketed one on my way around the block. I had that thing for years. I would lose it much later, after we'd moved to a new town. Another crazy friend was convinced that one could cause a bullet to fire simply by smacking the end of it hard enough. He tried his best to drop it firing-mechanism-side-down into an empty storm sewer in an attempt to set it off. And there it remained, despite all attempts to recover it.
There are days when I stare in amazement as my two boys tempt fate - seemingly in every conceivable way - around the house. My oldest - who will cover his ears and run screaming from the room if you attempt to read him any story wherein a character gets in trouble or becomes sad - will happily try to traverse the living room by leaping from chair-top to chair-top. (Thankfully his head is harder than his pillow-soft heart.) My youngest son has made a habit of announcing all of the things he was thinking of doing, but didn't do. It's a frightening list: "Daddy, I didn't put my arms in the fire ..."; "Daddy, I didn't hit that little boy in the face ..."; "Daddy, I didn't put my head in the TV." He's also taken to providing sneak previews of intended future life choices: "Daddy, when I drive my car, it will be faster than police cars ..."; "Daddy, when I grow up I will jump out of helicopters ..."; "Daddy, one day I will break up all the trees in the whole world." (?) From both of them I get helpful promptings: "You should drive the car FASTER!"; "You should put your glasses in the fire ..."; and my favorite - SAM: "Let's take our brains out and step on them!" LUKE: "Oh YEAH! Take our brains out and put them in a MONSTER TRUCK!" This is the state of affairs at 5 and 2. Drat.
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