Welcome

Outside of commercially manufactured adrenaline rushes, the emotional toe-dipping lust for hot new skinny jeans or the fastest phone exists our increasingly rare genuine human experience. I sometimes struggle to remember that while life lives episodic, it is based on eternal themes. I hope that you are entertained by my exploration of this apparent dichotomy.

Monday, May 28, 2012

Memorial Day


Memorial Day in the United States is celebrated annually on the last Monday in May.  When one considers the solemnity of the occasion, it’s difficult to view it as a celebration or a holiday as one generally views such things.  It is the day that this country has officially designated to honor its soldiers that never returned from war.  Whether that war was ever officially declared (think World War II) or not (think Korea or Viet Nam or the current deadly exercise in nation building from which the U.S. is now trying to disentangle itself), these people demand our respect and remembrance. 

It is not my intention to discuss the merits of one war or another.  They are all lethal to far too many.  And however one may feel about war in general, one cannot argue that it is not right to commemorate the lives of those who “gave the last full measure of devotion,” as Abraham Lincoln noted.  Arlington National cemetery in Washington D.C is filled with the earthly remains of young men and women who believed in something bigger than themselves, went to serve, and never returned.  A thousand smaller veteran’s cemeteries dot the U.S. and other countries where the same kind of courageous people now rest.  The names of most are known, while tragically, others are not.

Flags are seemingly everywhere on this day in the U.S.  Little ones line the streets of small towns.  Larger ones wave from monuments and are flown at half mast from official buildings and flag poles.  It is a sight that touches most Americans in a special way.

When asked how, what they feel, most will respond “Pride”.  But pride in what?  One must be careful to discern the source of that pride.  Surely, to some of our more simple-minded “my country right or wrong” brethren, it’s simple pride in the U.S.’s ability to impose its will, to project its might, anywhere in the world with devastating results, however effective those results may or may not be.  This is willful blindness.

But most, the thoughtful ones of any political persuasion will give quite a different answer.   They are simply proud of the young people themselves- the ones that took an oath to serve their country, the ones that obeyed lawful orders even to their own peril, the ones that were willing to die not for some abstract principal like liberty or freedom, but to protect their family and friends and often, the other young people next to them that took the same pledge.

Dead heroes can’t talk about why they did what they did, why they put themselves in the exact position that resulted in their deaths.  Living heroes simply don’t seem to talk about it.  During my years in the Army, I had the honor of meeting a Medal of Honor winner.  I met many other Viet Nam veterans that had been wounded or honored with other medals.  I once worked with a gentleman that had been a special operations soldier in that same conflict.  None of them spoke freely of their acts.  I saw a young soldier once have the temerity to ask one of these heroes what it had been like “there”.  There was a pause before the old soldier said that he hoped the kid would never have to know.

And that’s a crucial sentiment.  If you are of my country, be proud yes, but for the right reasons.  If you are one of my readers from another country, please try to understand the source of that pride.  I have no idea how other countries commemorate their war dead, but I suspect it is for the same reasons that we do.  The soldiers themselves know their duty and do it, even to the point of self sacrifice.  But far too often the same cannot be said of the men that send them to war. 

It seems to me that the most fitting tribute that we can pay to the lost ones is to build a world, to choose leaders, that insure that another naïve kid never has to know what it’s like “there”.   
 

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Town Square (Part 1 of 2)



It’s early May and I sit in the Duluth, Georgia town square, a place that is struggling to maintain a small town feel while adrift in the suburban sea.  One anchor of the square is City Hall, built in the old style with columns, verandas, arched windows and ornamental carved eave supports.  Robbed of any real charm either by newness or recent renovation, it feels like one of those new outdoor malls called “The Avenues” or perhaps “The Centre,” as if spelling it in the British way will render it more interesting.  There is here a past to feel that has been painted over.  It will gain much if it remains standing for a hundred more years.  Architecture acquires character, a soul, only with time. 

The City Hall overlooks a new festival center and amphitheater, capped with a cupola that carries on with the imitation early 20th century scheme.  Onstage, the Gwinnett Community Band plays Gershwin, which they do quite well, making it sound oddly enticing on a bright May afternoon.

There are young families with children everywhere, mainly toddlers.  They amble along, upright on legs too stiff, each step a deliberate new experiment in gravity.  There are boys with thick dark curls and silken blond little girls.  Their shining eyes, blue and brown, look up from faces painted with flowers and ladybugs and Batman, clearly expressing the wonder and joy that was long ago left behind by the parents that love and care for them.   

But the grayer and slower moving adults show it.  That joy and wonder is apparently not lost.  Perhaps it’s simply dormant as people work through those middle years of building a life, only to be reborn with the first grandchild.  It’s obvious in their gentle smiles and gazes at these beautiful children.  

Other kids, older ones have been cut loose to roam the square.  They seem to have left their shoes somewhere in an enormous pile.  Not yet worried about being cool, their feet slap the red brick walkway as they run by or stare at the blacksmith demonstration or the snow-cone machine.

There are the still older kids, the ones that under some otherwise unnoticed full moon changed into teenagers.  The girls are budding young women, aware of their new beauty but not the power it has brought them.  The boys are becoming men that move with the casual confidence of youth, still unaware of manhood’s uncertainties.

A group from The Southern Ballet Theatre has been introduced and is taking the stage.  It is composed entirely of females that appear to range in age from maybe sixteen to perhaps mid twenties.  They are swans in slippers that glide like skaters across the stage and leave behind not ripples, but crinoline echoes.  They weave a dance of fluid movement and graceful jumps and intricate passages with, around and through each other.   There is no need for knowledge of their art here.  They are breathtaking beauty and undeniable grace.  They pirouette and plie on toes and flexing thighs and tightened calves as slender arms move in smooth circles. 

I watch each girl for a moment and, despite their synchronization, begin to see stylistic differences.  Some become lighter and smaller as they move. Others are stronger, more assertive in their movements.  Still others seem to become a vision of the song itself, soft jewels in a musical crown.  And together, they are so enchanting that only when the music ends do I realize that they are slipping into the wings. 

I wait a few moments and one of the dancers walks casually across the stage and takes a place on the corner.  She is beautiful, one of the older ones and she, more than any of the others, personified those that seemed to become lost in the dance.   A contemporary song starts, “Paradise” by Coldplay.  It’s a wistful one of a young girl’s dreams.  She begins to move and immediately captures the audience.  There are steps quick and anxious.  There are moments of writhing regret and wallowing want as she lies on the stage.  There are arm movements from arcs to circles to angles that flow as smoothly as water in a stream.  There are hand movements that defy anatomy.  There are leaps, incredible moments when she hangs above the stage and time itself stretches.  She makes each of these movements transition unnoticeably into one another.  Finally, she returns to her starting position, wearing the lost look that she has maintained for the entire dance, and the music ends.  There is silence for a moment while I and my fellow oafs of the arts are stunned.  Until applause and shouts begin to smother the amphitheater.  She gets up, bows and smiles.  As she walks off stage, there is a bounce in her step. 

Another modern song starts.  I don’t recognize it but it has an energetic beat, not quite a dance song, per se, and lyrics of challenge and personal victory.  Out comes another of the older dancers.  She was the best example of the more aggressive dancers.  She begins to dance and her steps are definite, purposeful.  Her moves are also fluid, but, more like a stream overcoming a rocky bed, moving from one to the next with absolute clarity.  She seems to at once flow and snap into position.  Her stances and leaps exude strength and assertiveness.  Her shoulders, neck and cheeks begin to flush as she commands the song to come to her.  She attacks the dance with utter confidence.  She challenges the audience with her direct gaze.  She seizes the stage and crowd.  Finally, after exorcising all resistance from all quarters, she moves back to her starting position as the song ends.  There is again that moment of stunned silence before applause floods the tiny valley.  She bows and her steps are defiant as she walks off stage.

Her performance was the equal to her colleague’s.  But in a completely different way.  One dancer had taken music and moment and gently molded herself, almost loosing herself in it.  The other had taken music and moment and molded them together through strength and will, absolutely owning it.

            I move on in awe of these different faces of beauty.


These people do beautiful things:  http://www.southernballettheatre-ga.com/

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Fat Little Life

I got a fat little mortgage
And a fat little wife,
That I could just afford
For my fat little life.

Borrowed 200 grand
For a cute bungalow.
Now the bank ain’t my friend
Cause I ran out of dough.

I worked every day
Till my job got outsourced.
But I just couldn’t stay
The unemployed workforce.

New job’s at a shoe store
Twenty hours a week.
Now I’m the working poor
But folks have to eat.

So I work at Home Depot
On weekends at night.
But since my car was re-poed
I can only hitch hike.

Work 60 hours a week
In two dead end ditches.
Insurance is a dream
Except for full time sons-of-bitches.

Kid’s college fund’s been spent,
Covered what I didn’t earn.
My children didn’t consent,
To economic downturn.

My annual vacation
Comes complete without pay.
The answer’s de-regulation
Is what D.C. folks say.

We all sink or swim.
Depends on if we’re smart.
It’s not Wall Street’s whim
Or venture capital as art.

If what we pay for fuel
Is because of demand,
Why do speculators drool
For war in desert lands?

It’s the American way
Is what we’re all told.
To think another way
Makes the socialists bold.

We pull our own weight,
And leave churches to care
For the lives left to fate,
So we can sleep, call it fair.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

For Mom


It was longer ago than I care to admit that I came into this world.  But this is not about me.  It’s about the woman that brought me into this world.  While I may look back with a bit of regret here and there, she looks back with a smile.

I have pictures of her from the fifties and sixties when she was a young woman with bright eyes and dark black hair done up in the poofy fashions of the times.  She’s there with my father as young man, or with my curly haired sister and fat little me.  She’s always smiling. 

She still is.  Even so, she still has a temper.  She always has, though it's mellowed over the years.  I recall times when, being the most challenging child that I possibly could, I brought on her anger.  I brought it on, but never out.  I never remember her reacting to my misbehavior in anger.  Rather her discipline was, even if strict by today’s standards, measured and richly deserved.

As I look back I realize that she made possible most of the things that make childhood happy.  I owe her all of my child smiles. 

She provided wisdom and guidance as, still a challenge, I grew into a man.  She was a shoulder to cry on and a source of kind words and confidence.  She lifted me up when I needed it and took me down a peg or two when I deserved it, always gently guiding. 

She’s older now and she’s suffered the things that we all will in time.  She’s lost sisters and friends.  We lost my father ten years ago and even though she still misses him daily, she lived through it, a heartbreak that I cannot imagine.  She’s had the physical ailments that come with the frailty of age.  Those have only slowed her down a bit, not stopped her.

A few years ago she was injured and I was granted the opportunity to repay to her the tiniest fraction of what she’s done for me.  She’s a woman of faith and would probably say that God wanted it that way.  I just know that I’m very grateful for that chance.    

She’s still kind.  Still cajoling.  Still laughing.  Still living life.  And still showing me the way.  I look to her to learn how to age with grace and acceptance, yet without surrender.

So, to all the women out there that have ever put a child’s happiness before their own, I say thank you. 

To all of you who have such incredible women in your lives, try to find a way to thank them.  You can never do it enough, but don’t worry.  They’ll understand.

And especially to the one in my life, to my mom, thank you and I love you.

Happy Mother’s Day!


Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Zelda

Last night I held
a little girl
I’d named Zelda
and dressed her
in the Jazz Age
way.  She was
a beautiful
little fool
that left for West
Egg with cellos
in the background
stringing along
the wrong song.

I held her
to the night
where she became
the space
between stars
and I held her
higher against
the moon where
she became hollow
and I saw a
woman waiting
inside.  

She is the
iceberg drifting
around me,
I can’t see
most of her.
This is the peace
that jars me,
this is the
chronology
of a slow fade. 

The distance between
truth and lie
depends on who
I tell it to. 
The distance
from lost
to tossed
depends on if
I’ve let go. 

These are things
of which
I know
nothing and find
myself  speaking
with conviction.
This is my
name in her
Book of the Dead.
This is quiet war
where a man
of ash moves,
where only
I get hurt
if I do it right.

Art courtesy of  http://www.red-letterimaging.com/

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Flutter

The butterfly,

the she who finds and flees me. 

Delicate determination of disjointed direction

            flows so unsteadily, so constantly. 

Whatever wind, velocity varies, compass careens.  She shelters
         
            only from storm, rests for rain’s reign. 

It dies and frantic she flies

            elusive on iridescent wings flashing bruised indigo

            into blinding blue,                             

shaped only by her careless caress of sun. 

Movement calls attention, melts to beauty, disappears,

reappears, disappears.

Never captured, but imperceptibly drawn.