02/27/2022 - Random Thoughts - Not Necessarily To Be Taken Seriously

 02/27/2022 

Trigger Warning - Random Thoughts - Take 'Em Or Leave 'Em

God is in the details? So said Albert Einstein, a sly way of not having to explain things. I get it…if…if you believe in God, but suppose, just suppose, you don’t believe in God? In the current vernacular: you simply don’t go there. Your call, of course - I’m not sayin’ - however, that doesn’t mean there are no details. The details are there regardless. Believe. Don’t believe. So what? Doesn’t change a thing.

Now

What about those details?

Most flowers have up to five stamens. That’s their male fertility organ. Slender and graceful. It trembles. Buttercups have between thirty and seventy. Anemones of the meadows. That doesn’t seem to be a problem for them. Focus on one stamen, focus on every stamen and time goes away, grief goes away, pain fades to black, comfort calls, a down pillow, a distant tingle, stamens, look, their curls, their furls, the colors of dreams, pleasure remains, simple, soft, unguarded, open. Time flies. Where does it go? What replaces time when suddenly it’s no longer there? Nothing. It’s in that instant we realize eternity. It’s where we are. It’s where we’ve always been, where we’ll always be. But, it’s in that instant that we actually know it - where we are - know it - and it will stay that way and we will stay that way because it just is, and we are in it. Forever. Or for what “forever” really is. And, anyway, who’s going to define it?

SPRING? 02/20/2022

Spring is out there today causing some seasonal commotion, but it's a fraud, a cosmic, meteorological con job. It's never the most pleasant season, but it is the most interesting. Life is underway. Stuff is beginning to ooze. Higher temps mean lots of melt, meaning lots of mud - deer daintily nibbling winter worn, bruise tinted apples under the stunted old tree, skinny black squirrels already scampering, four fat black crows like cannon balls chasing bald eagles across the creek, 40 degrees, thin river ice. However, like I said, it's one big con. We're not through February and could still have a blizzard into April.

And yet.

We had a full moon over new snow only days ago, so bright you could actually see animal tracks imprinted in the virgin meadows. That's what I look for when I see a fresh snowed field - what crossed it? How long ago? Why did it stop? Where did it go? Deer. Turkey. Coyotes, Rabbits. Black squirrels. Raccoons. Mice. Fishers. Weasels. I once actually saw a kangaroo rat hop across my garden, but they're a desert breed, not even supposed to live here. Well, as least, one does. Did. I'm sure something got it. It always does.

I don't always recognize the tracks, especially when the weather warms, when the edges of the snow and ice melt and run. Coyote? Dog? CoyDog? CoyWolf? I don't know, yet something was there that isn't there now, but will be again. It's like any other mystery, isn't it? Awe and wonder waiting to be solved except you can't solve it, never will, and you know it. Still, here you are, somewhere in the mix of it, not worrying about the tracks at all. Yours are there, too.

I once tracked a bear in Montana. I knew he was there, had even seen him once, but this time I decided to follow him to see, well, to see why he went over the mountain. There's another story here, but this one comes first.

Bears have always fascinated me - a huge, muscular, lumbering powerhouse that bounds like a greyhound, fast as a race horse for thirty yards (all it needs), shreds stumps because it wants to, flips boulders like tiddly-winks, swallows a bleating sheep wool and all. Deranged humans who believe they are soul mates with wild predators risk getting disemboweled when they croon lovingly and open wide for a hug.

I've seen both black bear and grizzly, but never arms length close and never more than seconds - a quick flash through brush, a ramble at fifty yards, back hair on a barbed wire fence, piles of poop the size of hubcaps. Remember I said I had never seen one up close? Still true. Never seen one up close. But, I did hear one. Up close. Real close. So close he could have removed my head from my shoulders without my ever having seen him. I've never killed one nor do I expect to. For the squeamish, ease up. That's not what this is about. I had a shotgun with me, but only because I had hunted grouse for dinner, and, anyway, that bear would brush off those tiny pellets of birdshot like a horse tail flicking nits.

It was an unusually warm fall. Dusk was maybe an hour away. I went down to a spot in the creek where I'd seen him pass. He wasn't there, but his paw print was, not the biggest one, but, still, who cares. That's a bear track, and it's fresh, and wider than my foot, and that bear is up there somewhere and I'm gonna find him. There is no other focus.

It'd been dry, and the creek was really shallow. so I simply followed it, slowly, softly, step by step. No toe to heel or heel to toe but the whole foot set down at once. Evenly. You don't want anything to crack underfoot. You want the wind in your face.

It grew darker as I moved but not too dark to spot a clear print with water seeping into it. He had just been here! Right there! Here! He's out there. I knew that grizzlies are known to circle back and come up behind you, but this guy was a black bear with a much less aggressive attitude, at least, the years I'm talking. Nowadays, they've become more unpredictable. Just last summer one charged up a creek bank towards a horseman on the trail, and, yet, I've stood and watched a sow

with three cubs peacefully wander east along the same creek bank hoovering blueberries.

I stood and watched water seep into the print and tried to picture the creature that left it there. I just wanted to see him. So, I started up the creek again then - I'm not sure why - I climbed a hill and crossed a clearing. It would be dark soon, but I wasn't worried about getting home. I just wanted to see what I could see.

There was barely light to see when I stopped next to a large clump of brush, maybe a low hung evergreen, I'm not sure, but what I am sure of is the ghastly, carrion yawl that lacerated the air and drove tracers of ice through my veins. That bear, hidden in that patch, was close enough to kill me. Afraid to move. Afraid to stay still. Slowly, very slowly, I stepped backwards until I was out of critical distance. I never saw him, never heard the chomping of jaws or any nother warning. He faded quietly back into the night.

I once thought of buying an ancient bearskin coat at some roadside junk yard when I taught at UConn, way before my wild west coast days. It hung from the limb of a scrubby tree, a bum's coat in need of serious repair and probably a bucket of disinfectant, but it intrigued me, so I tried it on. The heft of it was an unexpected shock. Let me explain.

Put on a trench coat, any good looking top coat - Saville Row, Macy’s, Brooks Brothers, Burlington - you're wearing a coat, looking snappy but, still, you’re a guy wearing a coat and proud of it. Why not? You earned it. You’re a well dressed guy in a shirt and tie. Ready to join forces. Go for it. No slouch there.

But

A Bearskin Coat

Sleeves to slip on, bone toggles as clasps, encasing its bearer in the beast itself, the weight of it overtaking the body, hunching with power, the power of the beast. Put on a bearskin coat, and you become the bear. News Flash. Think what you will, but you will never have the power of that beast because you are not that beast, and you are not akin to that beast. Why not a gorilla suit? No telephone booth needed. Try to hug one. It’s breath is awful, and it will kill you. I do, however, believe in Halloween. Have fun. I mean it.

January 23, 2022

         Winter has been stalking us for awhile but it didn’t pounce until a couple of days ago when the howling squalls that paralyzed so much of the country settled onto our valley and transformed these hills into a whisper of Paradise. The creek. That’s what you hear. The creek. In places where the ice is translucent, the currents swirl under it in gracefully shifting patterns oddly like the curtain dance of the  Northern Lights.

We prepared for the worst, of course: power outage, falling trees, downed and twitching power lines, wind damage, no phone service, no internet, and crossed our fingers to ward off some emergency we couldn’t see coming. We filled containers with water to drink and the bathtub with water to flush; lanterns in every room; portable generators charged; flashlights in pockets; salt on the steps; Forester parked facing out. We were ready. The local road crews were ready. Each inch means more overtime. The wind blew. The snow fell. The worst came and went, leaving us unscathed with two feet of new snow, one full moon, and a landscape that could have been Narnia.

It’s always been a challenge to live here - a drafty old farm house in the boonies - especially so now that we’re older (I did use the chainsaw yesterday to cut some firewood, although that, according to my RN daughter, is no longer an option). But, the peace and beauty of this place is too valuable to kvetch about the downside. There really is no downside, just a bunch of hard work. But, so what? Stop procrastinating. Get up on that roof, boychik! Yes, it used to be, “So, what?”, only, let’s be honest, these days it’s more “Oy, vey!” Lucky for me that Jamie’s such a good sport. We’re a “fur piece” from Hollywood. She traded in her high heels years ago. “Hi, Ho, the glamorous life…”. 

For years a snowfall such as this sent me out into the woods dawn ‘til dusk. What you can see and hear in all that stillness! Now, I think, I’d better get the walk shovelled for the FedEx guy delivering the paper towels from Walmart and hope I make it back to the porch. But, I am telling you folks, a snowfall like this one, a fire blazing in the hearth, a snifter of Port, a companion of forty-four years with beautiful green eyes who loves me even when I’m acting like an asshole, and two dogs. Hard to beat, huh? And I don’t have to go to Aruba.

    So, the question remains. A neighbor, a local, now deceased, but at the age of 91 drove himself an hour away to the hospital while he was in the midst of a heart attack. Those folks were some tough breed. Used to be our local hospital had to send out for band-aids. Nice people, caring and   very nice, but it hasn’t gotten a lot more medically adept since we moved here nearly forty years ago (Medicare does not cover “bleedings”). So far, our one emergency, mine, was handled beautifully by our local paramedics. Still, we’re a long way away. I tell myself the thirteen steps to the second floor bedroom are great exercise, as is planting stuff, minor repair stuff, hauling wood and whatever else gotta get hauled around here, but it is getting harder, and that’s a bummer (That dates me, doesn’t it? Bummer). I know, like preparing for the storm, preparing for the future ought to be a no-brainer except when one has no idea what that future is supposed to be. Is this where Zen kicks in? “I’ll deal with it when it gets here?” But, what is it, exactly, that is going to get here? And when is all this whatever supposed to happen? Conspiracy theories welcome.

December 25, 2021

 Oy, vey!

Another tree. Another wreath on the door. More red ribbons around the coach lights. Boombox carols in the air. Ham and sweets for dinner. Again. Tradition. Latkes were last month. Biscuits and gravy the morning of the 23rd. Fried chicken that night. Challah last night. And now?

Oy, vey!

Mulled wine not Manischewitz?

How?

Fall in love and find out. I married an Irish Catholic. She married a Russian Jew. 44 years in 2022. Believe it or not (I’m joking), it took some compromise to get us here. I never had a tree inside of anywhere I had a roof, not one tree, and certainly not a Christmas tree. She had never sat through a Yom Kippur service let alone no food or drink for 24 hours. She thought no food or drink was only on Fridays. So, here we are.

I’m in my office. Out the door three steps to my right is our living room. Even though this year’s firewood hasn’t been fully cured, a fire roars in the fireplace. It helps to  have this napalm like concoction to squeeze on the logs. My son has Chet Atkins playing Xmas music on his computer. My daughter helps her nephew navigate his myriad of toys. Sweet smells from the kitchen: ham and corn pudding on their way. My family is happy, and, I’m thinking, maybe I am, too. It’s taken me a lifetime but I think I’m beginning to get it, just as I think, at this age, that I have finally learned how to write and what to write about, and why I need to write about it. No coincidence. The place where I wrote from then is not the place I write from now.

(In some other life I once went out with a woman who said, “coinkidink”. One “coinkidink”. That was it.)

Everyone waited until Dorian, aged three, woke up because we wanted to see his face when he saw a brightly lit tree surrounded and stacked with all shapes of things wrapped with ribbons and a kaleidoscope of party paper. He spent a few seconds being stunned by the lights and a crystal that caught them. Unlike the Hanukkah menorah, he could not blow these out. Then, practical little creature that he is, he turned to a colorful mock-up of a kitchen complete with appliances and ware. My daughter and my son’s good friend had spent hours the night before putting it and everything else all together. It made me think of trying to put all that gear together when my kids were small: instructions translated by someone with English as a fifth language, screw holes a hair off, a threaded screw, one too few bolts in the bag. Drove me nuts but gives me pleasure watching my kids do it. It also made me think of it as a sign of the times. When my daughter was Dorian’s age we gave her a toy kitchen set that magnetized her from the time her eyes registered what it was. My son was given a train set. I’m sure you get my point. 

So, I’m sitting there this morning in my father’s chair - the same one I’ve been toting around since his death 60+ years ago - watching this little three ring circus, noting that my grandson was given a kitchen set but nowhere was there one of those small plastic basketball hoop set-ups. To be sure there were building blocks, construction stuff, race car tracks, and a plastic razor kit - Shave With Grandpa. I’m not suggesting these couldn’t or wouldn’t be used by a little girl, simply noting that there was no visible jock paraphernalia, and that mock-up kitchen really got him. Plastic taco, anyone? You would be surprised. I wouldn’t kid ya.

The thing is, they are happy in there. The living room is happy. This house is happy. If it could dance it would, not the kazatzka or a mazurka, not the Lindy or a do-si-do, but a waltz in some soft tempo. If it could sing, well, it seems to be doing just that right now, all the ages and voices and an occasional bark from one of the dogs, silence outside, all one. Joe Cocker sang, “You are so beautiful to me, yes, you are, you are so beautiful to me…” Elvis sang, “Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go, you have made my days complete, and I love you so.”

Bury me with this shit eating grin on my face.

As much as I have admired Joan Didion, I don’t think she would have admired me. Too sentimental. Perhaps too much chicken shmaltz on Shabbos as a kid or too many junkets to Sammy’s Roumanian Steak House on the Lower East Side. But, I have very smart, very big hearted Jewish friends who have an edge I don’t. An observation not a criticism. For a long time I wished I had that edge, and tried to, only I wasn’t an adept. It had to come as naturally as which hand you use, yet it didn’t, not to me. I’m not usually naive, only at critical moments when it really matters. Of course, this “flaw”  became another good reason to beat myself up. I wouldn’t say I’m a bleeding heart, but I do admit to needing the occasional tourniquet. Fine. Because I don’t care anymore. This “flaw”  has been known to fight for its right of return. A quick, full frontal counterattack drives it back. Dickens was sentimental. I should be so lucky, although I admit not being able to get through more than half of “Oliver Twist”.

I was raised in a violent household where we were taught “happiness is for idiots” aka “only idiots are happy.” My mother damned Portnoy’s Complaint as a batch of lies, especially that scene where his mother threatens him with a knife because he wouldn't

eat his liver. So, I reminded her, “Wait a minute, Mom, you forget, you once hit me with a knife because I wouldn’t eat my eggs.”

“I didn’t forget,” she shrugged, “I had to get you to eat your eggs somehow.”

Happiness is for idiots.

I swear.

Anyway, the point is, this happiness stuff: I could get used to it - that brush of butterflies fluttering happily in my belly, happily, I said, nothing fearful about them, just the trilleto of gossamer wings drawing light.

Just one of those things. 

Gossamer wings. Drawing light.

Just one of those crazy things. 

Water Starts In Wild Places

 My Godson, Reuben Sack, wrote this line: “Water Starts in Wild Places.” It got me thinking.

Is it true that every drop of water on earth has already been everywhere on earth a drop of water could ever be - above and below - every nook, each cranny - every crack and fissure, every undiscovered drip on the entire planet? Everywhere? Even the Gobi? A Cosmic Recycle? Somewhere I learned that.

I keep a sketch on my bulletin board of a whimsical little boy with his elbows on his knees next to a little stream. Its caption: everybody should be quiet near a little stream and listen. Except for the fact that, as a little boy, I always thought I was fat, it could have been me. 

I stand on a small bridge crossing the creek in front of our house, and I begin to listen. The rush of Spring melt charges down the mountains taking no prisoners as it thunders through its channel. Trout get fat. The banks roar no matter where you walk. Summer water is quieter, still deep enough to cushion the sound, strong enough to chop water over rocks. Now, you can walk the banks and, if you listen hard, if you keep the flow in your ears, the water will tell you what’s beneath it. Come Fall the water feels lazier, flowing along, meandering at leisure. There’s less, so you can hear it better. Fresh water flows hoof deep over the flats. The deer will drink here. Come winter with its deepest snowfall under the full moon, come then a great hush. Is it any wonder? Is it any wonder at all? The creek is right underneath me. I fancy I can feel it’s vibrations through the soles of my boots. Its banks are too deep in snow for me to walk, so I stand on the little bridge and listen to the trickle of distant water right there beneath my feet.

This is why I write. I write to hear the water.

Poppa Took My Hand

           I finally wrote “The End” to novel #4 - “Been A Bad Ol’ Booger But He’s Come ‘n’ Gone”.  It’s a grandfather-granddaughter story that still needs work. The following is another excerpt. 

Please stay tuned.

Poppa took my hand and led me through the copse of ancient hemlocks as if I needed his protection. It was early spring. Daffodils had come up but lilacs were still a week away, mountain laurel three weeks from that. Jays were gone. Chickadees back. A blue heron fished the creek. We had to spray the dumpster with ammonia to keep a hungry bear at bay. Coyotes ambushed a raccoon near the chicken coop. All that was left of it were strands of grey and white hair. Coyotes eat everything but a gland in the anus. No sign of that, either. A morsel for something else. 

Poppa normally never hesitated to talk about anything at all, but this morning he stayed silent as we walked, setting his feet as if he were hunting, almost reverent, unwilling to disturb the peace. We stopped at the edge of a clearing where Poppa indicated something out there with his chin. I couldn’t see what he wanted me to see, but I followed him as he walked into the clearing until...There. Unclear to me until I moved closer. I had never seen anything like this before or since. Poppa had, but once. The racks and bones of two massive deer, thick-necked bucks with ten point racks, stout as cudgels, tangled, twisted, ultimately locked together, trapped, having fought until they died, socket to socket, smack against each other’s sight and smell, socket to socket, until they died. Much of the rest of them had been strewn about the clearing, vandalized by varmints, but those two skulls, now blind, remained, for eternity, locked in mortal combat.

A few days later, I found this on an index card that had fallen on the kitchen floor.

Talk to me of death

And I will tell you of a woodland dance

Hemlocks - a thick grove of them

A fitting place

A pas de deux - both dead

Like Romeo and Juliet

Only rivals

Beams eight points and ten

Thick as cudgels

Entangled by their horns

     And not their hearts

Titans locked in deadly battle

Crashing heads

Bucking for the “A” list

Eighteen tines tangled and trapped

Eye socket to eye socket

Call this place 

     Ozymandias

Someone with that name

Ruled over ancient ruins

This inscription left

  On a piece of stone:

“Look on my works and despair.”

Seed unspread

Scattered bones

Picked clean

Antlers gnawed by mites

     With yellow teeth

Ozymandias

  “Look on my works and despair”

Scattered bones don’t even get that.

VETERANS DAY 11/11/2021

 

USMC  18 years old