To The “About Us” Section of My Fantasy Business

I’m grateful for this small but standard link that gives me the chance to tell you about who we are and what we do.

We run a small farm in upstate Wisconsin, just outside of Rhinelander. It is a light farm; we cultivate natural, or as we call it, “wild” light. We harvest it and age it under a variety of conditions: a nineteenth century barn with several gaps that allow the light to breathe, the lower 23 acres that we have filled with imported Greek dandelions which bloom one day a year and which color the light so perfectly. We collect light in sea glass bottles and store them in the attic where we have a loop of Mozart’s Jupiter symphony playing. It mellows the light, but it’s a process that takes years. The Jupiter light is our most expensive.

We believe in the importance of tension, the truth of contradiction. We encourage our employees to work on their day off and sleep when they work. We serve them salted sweets at the annual company picnic, which we hold in February. No one attends. We encourage a lot of input from our customers and we do the opposite of what they say. Most are repeat buyers because they know they are not always right and they appreciate our honesty, say it’s refreshing. We do not like irony.

I am the president of this company.I eat cinnamon toast for breakfast and also for dessert. I long to remember my dreams but every time I do, they seem like someone else’s. I remember eating olives in a hostel in Spain. We crowded around the refrigerator and ate them out of jar. We washed them down with fresh memories of the day and a red wine with no label.

The Olive Trees by Van Gogh

I started this light farm after my bag was stolen off an Italian train while I was sleeping. Perhaps the thieves thought they would find something valuable, but inside my bag was a toothbrush, soap, clothes and my annotated copy of Pablo Neruda’s Collected Works. I found the conductors to report it. They were sitting in one car up front drinking espresso from tiny cups and smoking cigarettes. The light in the car was blue. I tried to explain and they tried to listen. They nodded. One ushered me to sit next to next to the window and when I finished speaking, he kept pointing outside. Olive trees bend at weird angles and the light wraps around the branches before spilling into the field. Neruda may be gone, but who wants to read? No, no. Read the letters the trees write. Read the scripture in the grass. Read the light on the coast as it breaks your heart. Survive this and go home.

To the Optometrist's Eye Chart

I have to pretend I don’t know it by heart, that I haven’t been in the chair reading that chart so many times before. She turns the lights off, turns the machine on and we begin.

I’ve done this since I was two. The doctor had a little animatronic dog that would give a cheery yip if I got one right.

They must teach them in optometry school how to move the wand they use to cover your eye; they all flick it away when I’m done reading. I’ve not had one yet that doesn’t remind me of a hummingbird flitting around the dark room.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/
commons/9/9f/Snellen_chart.svg

I wish she would let me start at the top, the big bold E is clear as day and very confidence building. No, I always start 2 or 3 lines down. She tests one eye and then the next. The “T” could be an “E;” the last one is a number. A 5? It looks like an “S”. But then it looks like a 4.

She pulls the lens machine in front of me, sorting and adding different lenses and then asks me to read them again. She flips a lever and the lens changes, “Is it better here?” then flip, “...or here?”

Eventually, she narrows it down so that I can’t tell the difference, though I want to. “Is this better [flip]...or this?” I strain to see which is more focused, which one makes the lines on the “E” cleaner, the curve of the “C” smoother. “Go back,” I say.

“Here…[flip]...or here?”

I stare and study the chart, my eyes are so working hard that I can feel the muscles tighten. The chart comes in and out of focus just barely, almost imperceptibly. I squint, like I’m looking three minutes into the future.

To Copernicus

It’s easy now. We paint murals on our kids rooms: stars here, the sun here. The earth travels. Goodnight, moon.

But when you are the one to realize that everyone is wrong and you are right, there is no good night.

"Astronomer Copernicus, Conversations with God" by Jan Matekeo

He wanders the stone streets of Rome, cataloging the motion of the stars, charting them each night. He shreds, piece by piece, Ptolemy's complicated web of moving stars and sun, a fixed earth. One night, he sees it: the sun at the center, the stars are fixed and the planets, the planets, move.

The earth moves.

He is dizzy. He tries to walk downstairs but the vertigo stops him. Heliocentric. Perfect. Simple. Terrifying. He has to write it down. The table seems to move a little. Trust everywhere seems fractured.

The rule in science is that when two theories compete, the simpler theory wins. And when he draws his map of the universe, it looks cleaner, fewer circles, but is it more simple? They will want to know why we don’t fly off into space, why the earth isn’t ripped to shreds given the force or why, when something is tossed in the air or dropped from very high, it is not left behind by the earth’s movement.

None of that matters. He knows the truth. He dedicates the book to the pope in hopes that will garner some favor, but he does not want to defend it; he doesn’t have to. He doesn’t want to live with the questions, so he waits until he is dying, sends the book off for printing.

Mathematics is written for mathematicians, he says. I cannot help you if you don’t understand this, he says. The stars are so much farther than we can imagine. We are not the center. Forgive me for this truth.

To This Haunted House in my Neighborhood

A little girl calls you “spooky” and when she walks by, she edges her way to the far side of the sidewalk and looks down. She can hear the ghosts singing. I listen. I hear the dry leaves rustle, though it’s spring.

She describes voices, so you must host several ghosts. They are frustrated and lonely, locked up in a house no one has lived in for 32 years. When people live in a house, they open the doors and windows to come and go, but without the living to turn the door knobs, to lift the sashes, the ghosts are trapped, their airy hands too delicate to turn the knobs.

You must have built, like most houses in the area, around 1923, for Goodyear executives and managers. The man who called you home was not happy, despite the growing business and the increased responsibility. They need him now more than ever, but, like so many with enough money to free their minds for self-reflection, he wonders if this is all there is. He feels a space open up somewhere deep inside him, cold and hollow, and he tries to pretend it’s not there. But every time he hears his daughter call his name, every day he pulls the car out of the drive, every time he has to shake someone’s hand and introduce himself, he feels the air stir in that space. He feels the ghost inside him growing.

He’s not the kind to take his own life and doesn’t even consider it, but he does little to encourage the one that he has. When his daughter, who he tried to love but couldn’t, says she leaving, he’s silent. When his wife makes him dinner but leaves him to eat alone, he says nothing. When the snow builds up around the windows, three years to the day since the market crashed, he stands and watches the light play across the lawn, the emptiness filling the entire street.

So it’s not surprising that when he died, he had nowhere to go. He had not planned on his life after death and he had not lived deeply enough so that his soul felt free. And he trapped his wife. And his daughter, who died at 17 of consumption. The neighborhood rumor is that the city is tearing down you down this summer. The ghosts will be homeless but free of each other.

To LeBron

This city belongs to you the way canyons belong to rivers, the way Rodin belongs to The Thinker, the way Shakespeare belongs to Hamlet on stage asking the only question we ever ask, “To be or not to be.”

Market Street, Portage Path, Thronton Street, High Street, Copley Road. East Ave.These are your streets. Boondocks. Overlook. Rousch’s Market. Elizabeth Park projects. Riedinger Middle School where you made a slam dunk in 8th grade. That school belongs to you.

LeBron James

You didn’t want to go to a private school, mostly white kids escaping their neighborhood public school. Dru talks you into it. There’s a coach. He’s good. Real good. Alright, you say, you better be right.

First year in and you own St. V’s. The court, the halls, the trophy case, the coach, the team. All yours.

Hanging in the classroom, a map of the U.S. You pick out Ohio. You trace the cities with your finger: Cincinnati. Dayton. Toledo. Columbus. Cleveland. No Akron.

Akron isn’t Cleveland. You hated Cleveland. Everyone knows Cleveland and Cleveland isn’t home. You aren’t from Cleveland. You don’t know Cleveland. You’re just a kid.

From Akron. You own it. And you will put it on the map. You will make sure if the world knows you, they will know Akron. The city that shaped you, that loved you, that carried you.The Akron that saw you. King James. The Chosen One. Amen.

To Cleveland Sports Fans

Fifty one years. Three major teams. Not one championship.

The last time a team in Cleveland won a championship, color TV was beginning to sweep the nation, Ford was a trusted car brand, the Beatles held the top 5 spots on the music charts and the Rolling Stones released their debut album. The U.S. entered the Vietnam war and G. I. Joe hit the market. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

Fans in Cleveland my age have never seen a hometown team win that national trophy, wear those rings. And yet…

By Moe Epsilon [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

You wear those brown and orange jerseys faithfully. You debate the skills of this or that coach or player. You suffer the slings and arrows coming from Cincinnati, Detroit. Even Pittsburgh. You buy, mostly with whatever optimism remains, season tickets. You go to the games and drink crappy beer. You have an inhuman faith in your players.

Not all of you. Some of you left. Enough so that they sell Steelers cakes in the grocery store on game day weekend. If you will, please check page 152, Section 34a (iii) of the Fan Handbook and you will see that you are not allowed to cheer for or become a fan of a neighboring city’s team simply because your team isn’t winning. There’s no exception for length of losing streak or bad coaching. If you have a personal connection (past residence of 3 years or more in said town, one or more of your parents or grandparents grew up in said town), you are allowed minimal fan-ship. But the rest of you? You don’t like the Browns just because you don’t like to lose? Then you support no one. You move on to your local high school curling team. You find a team nearby you can tolerate and you paint your face in their colors. You do not abandon your team for the rival. You don’t wear black and gold. Ever.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rmtip21/9163069867

Those who stay loyal are true fans, true believers, not just in the team but in the idea that we are nothing without each other. We may be a nation of rugged individualists, but we also know that together we are greater than the sum of our parts. Cleveland sports fans have drunk from the cup of disappointment so often, the familiar bitter is just part of the season. And they know one thing is true: at least, at least they are not home to the Cubs.

To The Friday Night Kitchen Fantasy That I Am Chris Robinson

I have one Black Crowes album because, in truth, there is really only one.

And really, there’s only one song.

Occassionaly, on A Friday night, Keith and Whit are out: a new action movie or a road trip to Michigan and I’m in the house alone. I play my music loud. Real loud. The dogs go upstairs. I shut the windows out of courtesy for the neighbors, though I’m sure they can still hear it.

I always start with Nirvana. A small amount of Smashing Pumpkins. Pearl Jam. I’m getting my grunge on, the mix of speed and slow, the rasp in the guitars, the restrain--and then not--of the drummers. And this is dance-in-one-place music. My kitchen is small so it’s like dancing at a crowded concert, like the Pearl Jam concert I saw with Anne in Indiana, only in my kitchen, it’s less terrifying because I only imagine the crowd pressing me toward the stage.

‘90’s music isn’t the music of my era; I had already grown up. Not my high school nor my college soundtrack and I felt cheated. In retrospect, the 80’s had it going on, but at the time, I found most unbearable. I wanted to be a child of the times, but those asymmetrical haircuts and Duran Duran? No.

So I have an unearned nostalgia for 90’s music and fashion. And I live it out on Friday nights in my kitchen, put the playlist on shuffle and wait for it: “She Talks to Angels.”

That little lonely guitar riff, repeated. Two notes in and I am Chris Robinson himself, sometimes

By DickClarkMises (talk)DickClarkMises
at en.wikipedia [Public domain],
from Wikimedia Commons

playing to a small bar crowd under an assumed name so no one knows it’s me until I start. Or sometimes in the studio. 3 AM and dead serious. I’m wearing a sport coat, faded blue jeans and suede saddle oxfords (clearly, I take liberties with Robinson’s wardrobe). I have a fedora and a long white scarf, but they are hanging on the back of chair. I move to the mic. The song is perfectly in my range, especially the louder I play it over the sound of my own voice.

“She never mentions the word addiction/in certain company.” I ad lib a few “yeah’s” and “mmmm’s” but don’t go too far off script. The song is perfect. I never move from my spot but there is so much goddamn soul in this performance the crowd is hushed. My stage prop is a pool cue I grabbed on my way in and I lean on slightly in the slowest verses. I am, as they say in the business, leaving it all on the stage.

Some nights I am Margo Timmons. Or Billie Holiday. Or Lucinda Williams. I can be in their songs rather than just around them. But Chris and I? For this song? We are not just soul mates, we are one soul. And that lock of hair she keeps? We know who it’s from. She told us. She told only us.

To Old School

Writing Papers

Step one was making the margin line for the top and the bottom of the paper, one discreet pencil mark to be erased in the finishing touches: begin here, end here. 

I had to know what I wanted to say before I wrote it. I couldn’t, halfway down the page and midway through a paragraph, realize the main idea is actually a different point and just backspace to fix it. I had to take the paper out, write down the new idea and make sure that it can connect to the final words from the page before, otherwise I have to retype that page. And then the page before.

Re-reading it, finding a “your”  when it should have been “you’re” on page two?.The right one didn't ’t fit in the space. I got out the little bottle of liquid paper. Paint the mistake away...but when I go to re-type it, the liquid paper isn’t dry and soon I have a 3D mess where there was once a simple typo. I decide to go to bed and take the grade hit.

The professor has no tolerance, thinks I’m lazy. The evidence is obvious.

Changing the Channel

A knob on the front panel of the TV set. Every turn sounded a small clunk, as if in the tv set, there were weights and pulleys dragging a set across the screen. It took a full two minutes to accurately assess what was on all seven channels.

By Housing Works Thrift Shops
(Flickr: Orange Retro Philco TV)
[CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

If several people were watching with you and they were farther away from the set, they also had a remote. It was called [insert your name here]. Also, if you have older siblings they also had one. It was called [insert your name here]. They don’t even promise to hang out with you later. They think they’re so cool, sitting there stirring their Nestle Quik into their milk. It doesn’t feel like there’s a choice. You stay and watch what they want.

Some day, you think, some day I’ll have my own TV.

Social Networking

Noelle passes me in the hall as we walk in lines during the change of class. Her line is going one way, mine is going the other. She passes me a little paper triangle, note origami. We don’t make eye-contact.

I unfold it during Mr. Kerlick’s class. Math. I can’t bear to watch him shake his hair like Vinny Barbarino anymore. I keep it in my lap and glance down every now and then. No names are used, in case the note will be found later. The Boy likes someone else. She heard rumors. She thinks it’s BK. I should meet her before lunch in the restroom. I should destroy this note when I’m done. I spend the rest of class slowly, silently tearing up the evidence of the other life we live in school.

Leave no trace. Tell no one but your best friend. And don’t be surprised when next year, after sharing your deepest secrets, she pretends not to know you.

To The Silent Treatment

For being silent, you are so noisy. You are louder than the radio in the kitchen, the basketball game playing in the next room, the dog barking after the rabbit in the backyard.

Two summers ago, we had a nest of baby bunnies in the backyard. The dog was pure instinct, bred and born to hunt very small animals, to follow them into holes, to shake them to death.  

We found one. And then another. In the grass. They are the size of a dollar bill. Once you see it, lifeless, it seems there is nothing else in yard.

The silence as I pick it up rushes through me. It’s not still or quiet. It’s violent.

I have been silenced by my own anger at times. In those moments--when I was young, angry at my parents, when a boyfriend slept with another woman--it’s as if I have never spoken a word in my life, as if I don’t know my own name. And I need to call for help. I need a way out. No words form and I am crushed, not by the anger, but by the silence exploding again and again.

 Eventually, it stops. I find myself in a dry creekbed, a path cracked and scarred. I have no map back and though I hear something--a soft tapping somewhere, my breath as I inhale, a voice in my head that says walk--the landscape is always unfamiliar. There’s no sun or shadows, no direction to turn to or away from.

Silence does what it is supposed to do. It’s why, even as an an atheist and to no particular god, I pray.

To The Things I Wish Had a Snooze Alarm

Dinnertime. Not that dinnertime isn’t flexible; it is. Maybe I should say my hunger. at 5:30 or 6:00 it’s clear I can’t wait much longer, but I would like to get one more thing off my day’s checklist: a short run, a load of laundry folded, walk the dog. One of those essential things that makes the day feel complete. 20 more minutes before I start.

Snooze on

Sunrise. I can hit the snooze button for myself, but I would prefer one for the actual sunrise. Morning dark is full of promise, all the hours seem enough. But when the sun begins to rise, when it reaches the tops of the trees, I begin to wonder. I would like just one more handful of believing there’s plenty of time.

The dog’s urgent need to go outside. Otty can wait, but Indy, when she needs to go out, there’s no waiting. She hops around as if the floor hurts her paws; she yelps and cries. Two seconds ago she was sound asleep and now I have to drop everything, get up and let her out. No slow build. No gradual increase. I would like to tap her head and  put her back to bed.

Arthritis. It’s not that bad yet. But every year it shows up again in a new joint. My back one year. My fingers. This year it was my foot. The pain right now is just a hint, just a little reminder during some days that not all is well. But I can imagine what’s coming in 20 years, 30 years. I would like a full decade between me and whatever else will ache.

The day we will move out of this house. I’m looking forward to the moving, the smaller space, less upkeep. I’m tired of yard work and living on multiple floors. I’m not really a house person. I have a romance with old third floor walk-ups and zero-lot-line condos. I don’t like being responsible for this space. Something about having a kid made it seem like the right thing to do, but now, I’m over it. But that means that someday I will have to deal with the crappy floors, the roof, the fence in the backyard, the crack in the attic wall.

The day Whit drives alone for the first time. I want to turn to him, the way my dad turned to me on the very first day I ever drove a car alone, and ask him to go to the store for some milk. Like my dad, I won’t need it, but maybe, like me, Whit will need a little push to get out there. No place far and nothing urgent. But that moment, when he says, “Alright, Mom” and grabs the keys off the hook by the back door. That moment when he rounds the corner and I hear the back screen door bounce a little against the frame behind him. I hear the car pull out of the drive. That moment? Set the clock back just one more second on that one.

To the Struggle Bus

Some days, before you even get up, you know you will be riding the struggle bus. Yesterday may have ended, you may have gone to bed, but the day was far from over. The “to-do” list got longer and the “done” list didn’t. The alarm goes off and you hear it all downstairs, waiting for you, all your obligations mingling, grabbing a cup of coffee and toasting Pop Tarts, making themselves right at home. You have just enough time to take a shower and figure out what to wear. The bus will be pulling up shortly. You expect to take up several seats.

Other days, the ride is a surprise. Humming along, literally and figuratively, while you mow the lawn for the first time this spring. The lawn mower started right up and the lines you carve into the grass make the day seem neat and clean. You feel responsible and capable in this everyday chore. And then, you remember it’s summer. July 4th is coming. You remember being in the NICU, watching fireworks from the window. The nurse explained earlier he will be a special needs baby. She thinks it’s bad news, but you’re relieved because no one has talked about his future at all, as if he had a future. He didn’t. The bus pulls up; the doors open. Everyone riding is quiet today.

Sometimes your husband rides the bus or your dad or mom. Sometimes your niece or nephew. Sometimes your next door neighbor gets on and she’s in so much pain she can barely get there, but everyone makes it on when it’s time to ride. Sometimes you see people riding who you don’t really like and you’re reminded that you once did. Sometimes you see your son walk out the door and when you look out the window, it’s there. When he was little you could ride with him, but you can’t anymore. You can only hope it’s a short trip. All you do is wait.

And it’s not called the struggle bus for nothing. The driver is always new and never knows where to go. One day, she plays only Chuck Mangione songs thinking it will cheer everyone up, but it only makes things worse. Or there was the time when he was so short, his feet didn’t touch the pedals enough to really hit the brake, so the bus could slow down but never really stop and he had to blow his horn through all the intersections. The bus overheats a lot and always far away from water. They never keep any on the bus. It’s always packed and there is always someone sitting next to you.

The ride ends. Sometimes it drops you off in a new place, a place you’ve never even heard of. You have to ask for help. You have to decide, then and there, if you want to go home. Sometimes the ride takes you home, but the struggle bus is like space travel and they’ve all aged a great deal and you hardly at all. They have stories to tell you, memories without you in them. You listen while you eat your sandwich. The bread is different, not bad, just different.

When you get off, you may be yourself again. You may feel better, the way hard work makes you feel better. You feel like you really learned something and you know you’re not getting back on that particular bus anymore. A few rides have changed you. Two in particular. When you got off the bus both times, the air smelled like burnt sugar. No one recognized you, which was both a relief and terrifying. The driver handed you a map and Sharpie before she left. You open it now; it’s blank. And the page keeps unfolding.

To Cast Iron

Gumbo begins with the cast iron dutch oven, empty, over high heat. While I chop the onions, I wait until I begin to smell the hot iron. I add the oil and chop the celery. I wait for the oil to smoke.

Look at that shine. 20 years of cooking

The instructions say to season the pan; they make it sound like a one-time thing. Heat the pan, rub oil into it, wipe out the extra. They don’t tell you that you will do this for years. That shine that was on your grandmother’s pan? That doesn’t come without work. Every single time I used it, I would repeat the process. Rubbing in the oil as if I could press it into the iron, as if the iron is permeable. As if the iron breathes.

Seasoning is gradual thing and for years I thought I must be doing it wrong. I wondered every time we moved if the weight of that box was worth it, the rust that would appear before I got to it again. But the roux doesn’t really work in any other pan; I needed it. We moved 6 times in 6 years. Every year, the pan was a little more seasoned.

Twenty years later, it shines like smooth water. I can almost see my reflection as it heats up. The oil shimmers and then smokes. I can cook from memory; I have learned this much.

To Total Pain

When did we lose that basic human instinct to care for the dying? As medicine became a science, with careful testing and blind studies, did we slowly erase the person until we were left with just a thing to connect tubes and wires to, something to test and poke, hopefully cure, of course, but when it was clear the disease was not cured, were patients something to walk away from because there was nothing left to be done?

Source: http://www.stchristophers.org.uk/
about/damecicelysaunders

There is so much more to be done, she would say. Cecily Saunders recognized you, named you “total pain.” Not just the pain in the bones, coursing through the nerves, up and down the spine, across the fingertips so that touching the wool blanket hurt, but the pain the soul feels as it breaks away, the ache for more.

You were lucky to be noticed at all, but Cecily fell in love. He was a Polish immigrant, a waiter, a man who earned his living bringing hot soups and roasted chicken while diners talked about the love they were in or the love they were falling out of. He knew when to approach the table with more water, to take a plate away, and when to wait. One reaches for the other’s hand. The other reaches for the wine instead. As the waiter, he watches and waits for every right moment.

She met him as a patient, dying of cancer. It’s wrong to fall in love with your patients her friends would tell her. You can’t remain objective; you won’t be able to care for him properly. But Cecily knew the opposite was true. He was the first patient she truly cared for, the first she could really see all that was hurting and all that needed treatment. She brought him morphine, priests and social workers. Total pain, total care. She was easing his pain; she was easing her pain.

We do not live only in our bodies, and we don’t die there. And medicine is not only for curing. And dying is not a failure. And healing is not an occurrence. And pain does not exist in one person. And she could not ignore it.

To Laying Out

Today I know better and take the appropriate precautions: SPF 30, a broad-brimmed hat, a spot in the shade at the lake. Perhaps is best not to lay out at all, but I can’t resist.

Maybe because it’s such an old habit or impulse. As a kid, I used to put iodine drops in baby oil as a suntanning lotion. We would stake out a spot at the pool, on the cooler grass area if possible, but sometimes there were not spaces, so we had to lay out on the concrete. We never thought about the damage. 

Even today, I like to set up the spot with all the necessary extras: a book or magazine, which I usually read for about 12 minutes, but then I just want to close my eyes; a bottle of water; a snack, grapes, chunks of salted watermelon, strawberries in early summer. I use a rolled up t-shirt as a pillow. Hard to imagine needing anything else.

But it’s really all about the heat. Very hot days are the best, 95 degrees. The heat presses me into the ground and moving feels heavy. Oppressive heat. Heat I cannot play in or think in. Heat that says, “Stop. Whatever you’re doing, just, no…” Heat I can see in the distance. Heat that hums in my ears. You win, I think, I give up. And giving up is so easy, so simple, so complete.

To ABC Afterschool Specials

Some producer in the 70’s thought that if kids are going to sit around all afternoon watching television after school, then why not make it useful, dammit! Educational! TV is a powerful tool and we are wasting it on shows like Glligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch. We can make real. We can make it matter. We can make a difference.

Surely there were the naysayers: no one will watch it. Parents won’t let their kids watch a show about a 13 year old boy who gets stoned in the school bathroom. No one wants to see a show about a kid getting bullied. We want heroes and cowboys and presidents.

The shows were nothing short of brave and as kids we loved them. We organized our lives around them, the special events that they were. This was real TV and it was going to tell us about real life, not some island misfits or weirdly harmonic step family. It felt like someone had whispered to us, Look, we will only tell you about this on a need-to-know basis. And you need to know.

A girl wants to join a boys’ baseball team. A country bumpkin moves to the big city and has to make new friends but everything is so different. A “normal” kid has a brother, cousin, best friend, teacher, neighbor, uncle, grandparent who is “different” and, although reluctant at first, defends that person from the haters only to find the kind of real friendship few experience.

Then there were the sex shows: where babies come from with live action birth scenes. Boyfriend pressures girlfriend and then, whoa, the girlfriend pressures the boyfriend. Venereal diseases, teen pregnancy. The dreams deferred, the dreams denied. So much penicillin and still the real scars never heal, do they? Is it worth it?

Don’t drink. Don’t smoke reefer. Don’t snort coke. Ignore your parents when you catch them doing this: you slightly open the bedroom door to ask your mom a question and see her bent over a glass on her dresser with a rolled up white piece of paper in her nose. Do not follow her example. Parents can be wrong. Not often, but definitely if they’re doing drugs.

Parents get divorced. It’s not your fault. They will date. It’s not your fault. They will get remarried and seem to forget you, but they haven’t. You just think they have because you shut them out and that is your fault. Growing up is hard, but when your mom puts her hand on your head or runs her thumb across your cheek, you know you can do it.

Doppelgangers are fun. If you can find one, trade places. You will appreciate your own life so much more because it turns out that rich kids have problems, too. Time travel is also fun. So is dancing if you can just be yourself.

The shows were a 4 PM national “head’s up” for all the shit we were about to face. Here’s the script and here’s the plan for how to cope. Got it? Good. Now, do that math homework. Get to bed on time. Feel good about yourself. Despite every voice in your head. Despite those dreams you keep having. Everyone is just like you. No one is just like you. This is either a great comfort or utterly horrifying.

To Railings Along the Edges

The gym track is on the third floor, but the middle and edges are open, so I can see the floors below: the second floor with the cafe and reception desk, the first floor with the machines and the basketball court. I watch them play as I run.

Around the edge of the track is a metal railing about waist high. It has a smooth thin top rail and it’s painted the color of cheap butter. Because walkers are supposed to take the two inside lanes, I don’t run near it.

Kundera says, “The fear of falling isn’t a fear of falling, but a desire to, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.” I feel the pull during my whole run. The top of the fence is low enough; it would be so easy; three floors below onto the hard basketball court. It could be quick, maybe painless.

Photo by

Ron Cogswell

But more than the landing, I think of the falling, the Alice in Wonderland moment I dream of, long for and dread. Not weightless exactly, because I am falling, but nothing below me holds me up. I imagine this every time I see a fence on a bridge or the edge of a building. The fall would be better than Alice’s though: hers was down a dark tunnel, she couldn’t see where she was or where she was going. For me, it’s always in the bright daylight in a wide open space. If I can avoid it, I never approach the edge; like Odyssues tied down as he passes the sirens, I want to be restrained.

 

Beauty lives on the edges: the jagged edge of the iris, the curve of a bent knee, the last note when the chickadee sings, chick-a-dee- dee-dee. It’s the first moment your lips touch your lover’s lips and it the split second before you break apart. The first and then last word of a book. We know this world because of the edges and the pull to approach them, to run our hands across them, to lean over, farther and farther; this is our deepest curiosity looking for more: what if this? what if that? what if now?

To Take Out

Fish and chips: the best of all take out

You seem so post-industrial, part of a culture so busy, so tied to the clock and the 9-5 day, that’s it’s hard to fathom your age. We stuff bags of burgers between the seats, eat tacos with one hand while we drive, unfold boxes of lo mein at the end of the day in front of the television lamenting the loss of the the days when people ate home cooked meals.

But you are nothing new. In Colonial America, vendors sold street food. There was a nation to build after all. But even the nations that were already here and built had vendors who sold tamales made of frog or gopher. We think not having time to prepare and cook a meal is new, but clearly we have never tried to make frog tamales. Much easier as take out and who wants to fuss with all those tiny bones?

Even ancient Greece, vendors lined the streets. Socrates is hungry because thinking and teaching is hard work. His entourage with him. As they approach the steaming pots of boiled fish, he asks a question and then holds his hand up to shush them as he orders his fish. The students appreciate the extra time to think of an answer, to try to beat Plato, such a teacher’s pet, and as they start to walk again, they shout out answers.

Wherever there’s a city it seems, people will sell food on its streets and other people will welcome the chance to not cook tonight. You require a certain density of population, a minimum number of streets and intersections, a prerequisite crushed relationship with time. And we are so happy to hold the food in our hands--the burger, the sandwich, the newspaper cone of fish and chips--to barely interrupt our lives with all the chopping and steaming and stirring and just eat. More time to answer the questions. More time to ask them.

To Bugging Out

I tell Whit I am writing a series of letters to phrases that end with “out”--freaking out, shouting out--and I ask him for suggestions.

“Bugging out,” he says, without a pause.

“Like eyes? Like freaking out?”

“No, like in war, when you know something bad is about to happen and you pack up and leave immediately.”

Photos: Creek Stewart / Willow Haven Outdoor
http://news.discovery.com/adventure/survival/how-to-build-your-own-urban-survival-bug-out-bag.htm

 Lately he talks of leaving, going off to college and the sooner the better. Looking at his life, I’m not sure where the urgent sense to leave comes from. He gets steak and pizza. He has his room set up like NASA’s mission control. His dog leaps onto his bed in the morning and keeps him sleeping, just five more minutes.

We aren’t farmers getting up at 4 to tend to the livestock. We aren’t madly rushing out the door every morning so I can be on time for a train to work. We aren’t nomads; we have reliable, high-speed wifi.

Every semester, I talk with my students about when they were young and wanted to be grown-ups. They describe what they thought it meant: no one to tell you when to go to bed, cereal for dinner, staying out until whenever and just going without having to tell anyone. No one to answer to.

And now? It’s nothing like that, they admit. School. Jobs. If they stay out all night, it’s likely because they are working until 3 AM at Burger King. The manager said she understood the whole college thing and promised a good schedule. This is what she meant. Yes, cereal for dinner. Again. No other option. No one asks, when they get back to their rooms or apartments at the end of the day, “Did you have a good day?”

But homesick as they are, most don’t want to go back. This is actually what they want: the work, the struggle, to prove they can do it and figure it out, however hungry and messy and tired and smelly they are.

Leave before something bad is about to happen. Leave before you get too comfortable. Leave before you rethink your plan and notice all the flaws. Take only what you need. Only what you can carry. Leave everything else behind.