April 29, 2012: He Doesn't Belong to Us Anymore

April: Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.
-Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce
It was a grey day, last Friday, with that rolling April wind that comes on like it's made of silk ribbons of warm and cold air.  The kind of day that seems poised on an edge, ever changing, tempestuous.  Appropriate since it mirrors the way I feel about visiting my father in the Home.  I love him dearly, and I realized quite some time ago, that he was maybe the only real hero I ever knew.  But to visit him now, to see him as he is, it wrenches me.  I don't think I'm being egotistical or unfair to my family by thinking that my father was one of the special ones.  Born third of seven, he seems to have been  an accessible man to all of his brothers and sisters.  They all had reasons for thinking they had a special connection with him, in that way that people confirm the existence of love by certain memories, callbacks to emotional times, shared moments.  He didn't stand out in a crowd, he didn't draw attention to himself, he smiled at you and laughed with you.  But now, there isn't much he can do for himself.  He can't talk, can't remember how to take care of his personal hygiene, and can't survive on his own.  Alzheimer's doesn't hurt you, it takes you away.

Opening the door to the Home is like falling down the rabbit hole.  Old men and women walk around the house trying to connect with place, with each other, with the images they see.  They speak to the caretakers, to visitors, and to each other, but they say nonsensical things.  Some are obsessively complimentary, some are overtly crude and racist.  Some call out for help.  It is an amalgam of damaged humanity.  A slice of primeval mind... men and women lost in a haze of dreams and memories.  In order to relate I try to imagine that feeling I have of trying to remember the name of an actor or book that escapes me... desperate to make the right connection, searching for that name that's on the tip of my tongue... endless.  I have a theory that they are all in a memory loop, having old conversations, speaking to their families, enjoying the life they had again.  My father has garnered praise for being quiet.  The caretakers ask me if he's always been quiet, and my mother says he was, but in my mind I can only think of all the times he's spoken, a lifetime of laughter and conversation.

He seems to have had problems letting them help him with his personal hygiene, which has forced them to use drugs to sedate him a little.  Although they shave his face, brush his teeth, and give him a haircut, he seems to have a permanent tuft of hair coming out of his nose, and it's always a mess.  Towards the end of his time at our home, he would spend way too much time brushing his two front teeth, up and down for 15 minutes at at time.  We've had to buy him new shoes with velcro because he took all his shoestrings out and lost them.  If there is a napkin on the table or a piece of paper he picks it up and tries to arrange it, or fold it, always keeping his hands busy.  When he stands in front of a mirror he can't connect the man in the image with himself, so he becomes obsessed with his reflection and tries to talk to it, threatens it, moves his hands trying to figure out how the man in front of him can mirror his actions.  He can only walk in short, stunted steps, seemingly afraid to stride confidently forward.  Just thinking about him, and the way he is now, seems to scatter my own mind.  I've tried three different times to write about my father and it always seems to fall short of my ambitions.  I always end up trailing off, unsatisfied with the results of my attempts to describe my feelings for him.  It's so difficult to decipher these new rules.  So hard to translate in the spaces we're allotted.  If I had more time, if I could spend years on it, I could come up with a definite answer to the riddle Alzheimer's sets upon us.  But all I can do is describe the broken pieces, try to untangle this web one strand at a time.

My mother met me at the Home last Friday, but I was early so I sat down with him, tried to coax some kind of greeting out of him, some small talk, only to come up empty.  So while we waited I picked up a newspaper and told him about the Detroit Tigers and the Mud Hens... I read him some of the headlines and talked about current events, and this seemed to engage him.  He perked up and listened, trying to remember the names of people in the news, watching me talk.  Perhaps this is something I can indulge in with him.  Maybe he doesn't need to tell me things anymore.  Maybe I should tell him things.  When my mom showed up she brought him his new shoes and we took him out to dinner.  We went to Rudy's and had some chili dogs and fries, and since the weather was bad we took him back.  There wasn't much we could do for him that day.  We took him back into the house and he simply fell in line with the rest of the residents, walking behind them into the dining room to eat dinner.  Mom and I watched him walk away, decided we might as well go, and walked out.  As we left my mom said to me, "He doesn't belong to us anymore, he belongs to them."  All I could do was put my arms around her and let her cry a bit.  I think she's been on the edge of breakdown for the past few years.  When she feels down, she must have that sick feeling in her stomach, that seemingly black empty hole that leads to real heartache.  She begins to cry then pulls back, avoiding a debilitating, paralyzing, three day sob.  After all she has to drive home.

What seems to me the real crime here is how young he is.  He's sixty five and my mother is almost sixty two.  The golden years have been ripped away from them.  Their plans to travel and enjoy their retirement are over, and it appears to me like he won't be able to even be there for my wedding.  If we have children, he won't know them other than the times we bring the baby to him.  My future wife will never know the man he was and her family will never know him.  It is a kind of tragedy.  I always knew that one day my parents would both be gone from this world, and as we've aged I've become more and more philosophical about it, but I always thought we'd have more time, more memories to make.  But it's a bit of a blessing, too, because I can see now, how short life really is, how beautiful is this world and this time, how much of it I've wasted, and how I don't want to waste anymore.  My future life has always seemed like a distant horizon, I could see it and I knew I was moving toward it, but always it was undefined, vague and blurred.  Now I am careening toward it, actively chasing it, desperate to live a good life.  It's what he always wanted for me.  Until we meet again...  

April 8, 2012: Copper Colored Tungsten Carbide

Perhaps it's always been this way.  Perhaps throughout the vast generations of men and women loving each other and following that grand old ritual of courtship, flowing into the promise of engagement, then fulfilling the sacrament of marriage, men and women have always struggled with the disparate nature of their excitement for the impending ceremony.  The timing, the levels of anxiety, that search in the other's eyes for the light of acknowledgement... the agreement of the weight of the occasion to be undertaken... this does not always occur simultaneously.  It cannot be faked either.  Insincerity in a relationship is quickly discovered by the lover as she or he sees the slight look away, the withdrawn muscle, the aura of falseness.  No one should dare to try to sell that lie, to fake enthusiasm, because it is quickly resented, and trust is a hard thing to earn.

Since early May of 2011, when I asked for Anna's hand in a beautiful restaurant in the Renaissance Center overlooking the blue Detroit River, she has poured over details in magazines and on the internet.  She has searched through examples of other weddings, cataloged countless ideas from glossy pictures of models in dresses, flowers, centerpieces, locations, and all the other untold minutiae that goes into putting together a wedding.  I've watched her agonize, trying to reconcile the vision of the wedding she's always dreamed of with the desire to satisfy the needs of friends and family who will grace us with their presence.  She has had to do all this while at the same time keeping up with an enormous work load.  At times she has been overwhelmed.  At times she has been overjoyed.  She began counting down, marking each second day of each month with a smile and the question, "You know what today is...?"  Up until recently, the best I could do was muster a smile, laugh and say, "Six months until our wedding day."  I simply couldn't match her excitement.  While the vision was being layered like warm blankets on a cold bed, I sat in the background wondering how she could invest so much into an event that seemed so distant, a light on the horizon.  For me, I've held my excitement in reserve, because it would make the waiting so agonizing, almost unbearable.  Time, months... weeks... days, would drag until, like her, I would be burned out, wishing only for an end to the wait, for the day to arrive.

For her, each new task she has accomplished has been a joyful occasion.  Booking rooms, arranging for the flowers, finding a location, buying a dress, these things have been torches on the path leading to a distant hillside, at the tail end of a summer, under the warm afternoon light, in front of hundreds of friends and family, by my side.  Trying not to dwell on that day has been like sailing against the wind, and I know I have been of little help to her.  The fact is she knows what she wants.  She knows how the room should look, how the ceremony should go, what kind of menu she wants to offer, what kind of music she wants to hear, and she knows how to go about getting it.  I've listened, offered alternatives, helped her in her considerations, but the truth is all her ideas are well thought out and along the same lines as mine.  While I've played a role, it has been minor, and I've been fairly stress free for all this time, able to carry on with other things while this long year and a half has dragged on.  Until this weekend.

May 4 will mark the year anniversary of my marriage proposal to Anna.  We will celebrate by returning to that restaurant for a meal.  There will be four months left, a third of a year, of this seemingly endless stretch of time until the day we are married.  That knowledge has begun to seep through to me.  I see now that there are many small details that need to be dealt with, and the overall painting of the wedding needs to be shaded and detailed.  These kinds of details can't be done alone, and now the things she needs from me are being more defined.  The role is changing.

On Saturday, we went to a mall, to a Men's Warehouse in order to be fitted for a tuxedo for a friend's wedding I will be attending in November.  While we were there we visited a jewelry store in order to find out what size ring I needed so we could order it online.  We were simply looking to find out the size ring I needed because we had a pretty good idea what kind of ring I wanted.  However, like many surprises life offers us, we found a fantastic copper colored tungsten carbide ring that simply jumped out at me, like it was waiting there the whole time.  Perhaps this is the one thing that gives men a feeling comparable to a woman finding her dress.  Anna watched me with a knowing smile as I danced to the music in the mall, and swayed in that golden light that seems to shine on true believers.  I was, and am, in the trance of love, and the agony of waiting has become very real to me.

Maybe this is the way of things.  Maybe this staggering of excitement is part of the ritual, ordained for the purpose of infusing new life and new energy into the couple when the hardship of anticipation is most keen, allowing the one who is working the hardest a moment of relief, a re-freshening, so that the work can get done, and the hopeful feelings of a lifetime can be invigorated.  Until we meet again...

March 13, 2012: Spring and the Resurrection

Spring rolls in on the backs of the shimmering clouds of blackbirds, swarming together above rivers and fields, dancing aloft for the delight of us children.  Spring is cast upon us by roiling clouds thick from treks across vast waters.  Spring is the baptism of the once sleeping bear that is our soul in winter.  Creeks rise, overcome by the multitude of frozen dewdrops come undone.  Pieces of tree bark, shed from last autumn, combine with old fruit, forgotten leaves, dead branches, and children's mittens to clog the arteries of runoffs, forming patchwork swamps, silting the land like a small river delta, providing the growers with loamy rich topsoil for gardens and flower beds.  Spring is the time of the Resurrection, the promise of the sun, and the quenching of thirsts.  The herds migrate, the people open their wells, the ice packs, which scoured the granite to a polished shine, recede into dark memories.  Consciences are formed from those old ice packs, and we are loathe to celebrate too decadently, for there is work to be done, seeds to be gathered, and hearths to be readied for the return of the cold.
When people ask me what my favorite season is to be working outside, what they're really asking is, which season do I hate more, Summer or Winter.  At this latitude, in this climate, people either love the Spring, or they love the Autumn, because those are the seasons of great change, the time of remembrance, of temperate air.  A summer rain may be a blessing, but the rains of spring and fall are pregnant with meaning, and carry a certain violence with them.  To be outside, in the watery sunlight of a sixty degree day in March, is to be counted with the angels, to be enlightened in the old sense, the impassioned sense.  This year, the winter was about as mild as I've seen in my nine years of reading meters.  I can barely recall the number of days it dipped below thirty degrees.  I must admit I feel a bit disappointed by that, as if I was robbed of a certain hardship, nullifying any glory in the onrushing Spring.  It lends to the unease, the strangeness of this strange year, the year of change, of catastrophe.  I kept thinking, as January turned to February, and into March, when will we reap the bad harvest of days we have sown in this field of pleasant weather?  It seems as if there is a storm coming, a storm that's been brewing since the time of the first calenders.  Are we in the eye of the storm? Is this the calm before the storm?  Perhaps this is a product of our interference with the natural flow of the waters?  Unanswerable questions flower up out of the richness of Spring, just as Pleasure and Leisure spring from Summer, Memories and Sadness from Autumn, and the Ponderance of Mortality in the depths of Winter.
So to answer the question, my favorite season in which to work outside is the Spring.  Maybe as I get older I will change, but for now I'm young at heart, and the Spring is the time to sing out loud, to throw open the windows and shake off the dusty blankets, to wash in the rivers and turn over the soil.  Spring is the time to awaken to birdsong and smell the dank swampy sod.  We fall in love in the spring, we court in the summer, and we wed in the Autumn.  And our lives are full of that first morning light.
Until we meet again...

March 3, 2012: Politics

To use this forum as a means of political expression was never my intention.  Mostly I wanted to speak about the personal, the inner burgeoning consciousness, to express myself publicly in order to reach an understanding with the outside world.  With the whole world seemingly involved in an extreme political discourse, I thought it would be futile and pointless to add yet another voice to the cacaphony already engaged in what has degraded into a shouting match.  However, I realize now that my own political viewpoint is intertwined with my awakening, and to disregard it is to ignore a large portion of my feelings and my time.  Most of my day is spent in my car or by myself, listening to news and current events, podcasts, public radio... I check my phone for updates on the presidential race and world news... and I read links my friends post on facebook.  There was a time when myself and many of my friends were completely apolitical.  The great bureaucracies of the world succeeded in developing in me a sort of malaise.  I felt isolated, cynical, and (if ever there was a word to describe the 20th century) alienated.  The regression of the human race seemed almost preordained, and I felt like a leaf floating in a vast and powerful sea, subject to the whims of forces unseen, indeterminate, and powerful beyond measure.  Like many in my generation, I was subjected to a mass culture of nihilism, materialism, anti-intellectualism, and self indulgence, so that the most important thing was to discover oneself... by oneself.  To be strong was to be strong alone, without reference to anyone else.  But I see now that this way of thinking was taught to me by the instruments of shysters, salesmen, and power brokers.  I can see a new world breaking free of this by the simple realization that we are all connected, that our actions have consequence, and that the world as it is now was built upon a foundation cast in stone throughout the aeons of history.
It seems to me that the worst aspect of the modern age is the way we receive information.  With the modern news cycle being on a 24 hour basis it seems as if we are bombarded with stories of tyranny, oppression, degradation of values, and passionate discourse.  We are fed constant updates until we fear going to sleep at night because the world might change in the course of the six to eight hours we are disconnected!  The modern age comes at us so fast that the news has become a headline, a picture with a caption, and two paragraphs written by a "news service".  This is followed by a litany of opinions on the various social networks, spewed forth by an ignorant, uninformed audience, who are reacting to an initial soundbite they didn't experience for themselves.  If this initial news item is about something which is connected to the tax base or has to do with research grants or is about a certain person allegedly doing something illegal or amoral, suddenly the whole world has become judge, jury, and executioner, and lives are ruined, studies are lost, programs are de-funded, and the world loses insight into itself.  When the whole story is revealed, either nobody hears it, or they hear only what they want to hear and stick to their initial knee jerk reactions.  It isn't just a wheel spinning in mud, it is seven billion wheels spinning in small interconnected circles, bumping into each other and sending each other screaming off in a tangent to slam into another wheel, while the ground underneath becomes a sea of quicksand.
There was a moment when the vast machinery of political power and modern presidential campaigns became clarified for me.  Rick Perry was asked a question pertaining to his economic policies; I can't recall exactly how the line of questioning went; As he was answering, citing his tax reform ideas, how he would promote job growth, etc., he suddenly held out his hands as if he were holding a flagpole and exclaimed passionately, "We need to stick a flag in the ground that says, 'America is Open for Business Again!'"  The camera angle switched, a small number of the audience members applauded, and the moderator continued on to a different candidate.  Two things occurred to me at once... (1) Rick Perry can't distinguish between an intellectual debate and a political rally, and (2) these candidates have to speak in bold idealistic terms in order to incite the constituency to vote for them.  A campaign isn't about solving problems, about pragmatic approaches to governing... it's about highlighting ideals and promoting a kind of philosophical vision of the future.  These men must separate themselves from the pack and hold themselves upright in the bright spotlight of media attention, in order to convince others to place them at the head of all tables, in THE seat of power.  So they speak to us about America.  They speak of how they see this country, how they relate to the vast masses of people from the populous East, through the Heartland, out to the vast West.  They speak of their vision of Justice, Peace, and Freedom, as if they are commodities to be sold to us at the nearest pharmacy.  They tell us how they are the chosen, the deliverers, and their opponents will lead America down a dark and storm ravaged path... and not only will there be the loss of everything we now hold dear, but it will be a slow and tortuous loss.  This is what politics in America has become... maybe it's always been this way.  When they talk about America, I really wonder where this grand country is located.  Can we really look across this vast country and say that we all share a common set of core values?  Can I relate to a person who belongs to the Ku Klux Klan?  Does a corporate executive look at art the same way I do?  We are all scattered about in tribes.  We tread common ground with each other, but our communities are small, and our lives rarely venture outside the confines of our domestic circles.  To speak of a United America is to sell us something, to ask us to buy something, or buy into something.
It's all too much for me sometimes.  I don't have any answers.  Sometimes I swing from anarchist unpredictability to traditional values.  I've always had a leftist bent, like most of my generation, and for the past three elections I've voted Democrat.  But I can see value in ideas from both sides of the aisle.  Most intelligent people I know are intelligent because they carry many different values, and can see understanding and compromise as the only possible future.  Winston Churchill once said, if you aren't a liberal when you're young you have no heart... and if you aren't a conservative when you're old you have no head.  When I hear someone talk about their business, and they say liberals are wrong for creating a welfare state, that there have always been rich and poor people and the rich have always taken care of the poor, and that he shouldn't be penalized for working hard and becoming a productive member of society, I can't argue.  And when a social worker tries to argue for the rights of the homeless, and tries to battle for the voiceless,  reminding us that equality in America is a myth, I see that as truth, too.  Can these two truths coexist?  Will there always be a disparity between those who have and those who do not?  If a major change in the structure of our society occurs, will the new society be any different than the previous?  Or will the sides just switch ends of the playing field?  For the cynics out there, the answer is no.  They say we are all doomed and men will always kill each other for power.  They say that they don't care about the future, that people who are uneducated and lazy don't deserve our sympathy, and that this world is a winner take all melee and you have to get yours while you can.  Fools.  If they don't care about their brothers, why should their opinion count at all?  Maybe they should be told what to do, since they don't really want to hear our side of the story.  It's not that hard to be optimistic.  Television is not American Culture.  The internet is not the answer to democratic power.  Revolution is not spawned by looting neighborhood stores.  We have to go out and find culture.  We have to unlearn everything we think we know about how the world is and how it should be.  Most of our belief systems were taught to us through authority figures and peer groups, and true perspective takes time and work.  Revolution is a state of being, a paradigm shift.
Mostly I want people to realize how much power is really in our hands.  Every dollar we spend is surveyed. Every movie we watch, every TV show we see, every second we lose listening to some fool spouting off at us is calculated and used for advertising.  So what if we all decided to become activists?  Instead of complaining about the world what if we acted to change it?  Don't like how the garbage is piling up?  Recycle and organize community clean up programs.  Don't like how much food prices are going up?  Start a garden and go to farmers markets.  Don't like looking at bums every time you go to a baseball game downtown?  Volunteer at soup kitchens and food banks.  I was a little disappointed at Christmas.  For all the grand talk about Money and Power and Corruption, people still went out in droves and spent the night outside Best Buys over Thanksgiving to get the newest toys and gadgets.  What if for once nobody bought anything at Christmas?  What if we decided to exchange gifts we made ourselves?  What if we painted a picture for someone, or took a pottery class, or bought from a local antique shop?  What if for that week around Christmas, we read to our children... turned off the TV and learned something about the history of Christmas?  What if we communicated and contemplated the world around us... slowed down our lives for one week?  All the billions of dollars spent on advertising would be lost.  Companies who were struggling would crash, and the politicians and pundits would scream at us for weeks that we are ruining everything.  We are slaves to this system that we created.  We are locked into this consumptive lifestyle that separates us from each other and leaves us alienated.  Does it have to be this way?  It's a long conversation isn't it.
Until we meet again...

February 19, 2012: Sea Change

On land, the tuggings of the moons can somewhat safely be ignored my men, and left to the more pliant senses of women and seeds and an occasional warlock.  But at sea even males are victims of the rise and fall, the twice daily surge of the waters they float on, and willy-nilly the planetary rythm stirs them and all the other voyagers.
MFK Fisher


In the days, long past, when crossing an ocean was a true ordeal, perilous, expensive, and seemingly endless, people underwent an existential change.  On those massive ocean liners, powered by steam and the brawn of faceless nameless men, people would eat their steak and potatoes, drink draught beer, smoke lean cigars, talk listlessly to a compartment mate, then drift out onto the deck to try to gauge their location, their speed, their place in the world.  Was it the sea?  The vast unfettered night sky?  The movement of the ship rocking them into a dreamlike trance?  What was it that caused people to drift into a different consciousness?  With all the water around them, and the moon given free reign, no mineral laden lands to block it's magnetic thrust, I like to think that the moon created a neap and ebb tide out of the water in the voyagers' bodies, realigning them with the natural flow of the vast Earth.  In those days, families left their homelands with naught but a few scant coins, a duffel of clothes, and the hunger of memory and hope in their hearts.  The young leaned on the old, the men gathered daily to trade second hand knowledge like a commodity, and the women sang to their babies and convinced themselves that they would make it to a new world, succeed, and see their mothers and fathers again.  At the other end of the deck, artists and tradesmen would read newspapers, drink cognac, and pace impatiently, eager to reach the other side of the sea.  It would take over a week.  A week of drifting, of slowing, a week of staring out at the glint of steel grey sea under charcoal white sky, or the deep purple-blue-green unearthly glow on a hot sun drenched sky.  How the sea must have played tricks on them!  At times they must have looked out over the railing and thought the sea was higher than the boat deck.  Other times sounds and smells must have come to them from across the vast breaks.  With nothing else to occupy them, the sea must have claimed their souls for a time, shifting priorities, slowing down their gait, lifting them and setting them down over and again.

It was a burning hot June day in Athens, Ohio when I experienced a shift in time that I've tried my whole life to realign.  It was the day of my graduation from Ohio University, and I sat impatiently with my friends as the keynote speaker droned on about the ways in which technology would be changing the world.  When it was time, we walked to the stage, received our diplomas, listened as our names were called out, walked to the side of the stage, had our picture taken, and walked out a set of double doors into the stifling heat.  It was as if I was in a dream, or a movie where the protagonist is shown in slow motion - indicating a sudden revelation or realization - when I walked through those heavy doors into the world.  I looked for a familiar face, I looked for my friend who had gone before me, and I waited for my other friends to walk through the same doors, I listened for the applause of family, I looked for anyone to acknowledge the moment... only to find myself completely alone, pacing like a lost soul awaiting perdition.  A few people were scattered around, but their voices came to me as if through water, as if I was suspended halfway between the sea floor and the surface.  I waited in angst for someone to appear, and after a few minutes my sister found me and, smiling, pulled me out of the morass.  It was those few lost minutes I have been chasing for the entirety of my adult life.  That summer, I went to Idaho to work for my Uncle at his State Park, which had for two previous summers been a source of joy and exhilaration for me.  Not so that summer.  I walked around without any pleasure for those three months.  I had no desire to explore the canyon like I used to.  I only sat on an old lawn chair and read endlessly, or lay on my cot listening to music, wondering what I could possibly do to save myself, and I mourned the loss of the life I had known, the ease of it all.

I believe we all suffer from the same angst.  We have all become targets.  Our priorities are dictated to us, our desires are subverted from the original to live well and peacefully into a desire to overcome our brothers and conquer the living world.  We can agree now that we all love the money more than we love God, and at heart we know this is wrong.  All day we say to ourselves that those in power have it wrong, that the world is failing, that they are feeding us lies, and that somebody should do something to change it all. At the same time we've forgotten how to change ourselves.  We've become truly docile, domesticated, and subdued.  We're fed images of suffering around the world and in our own backyards, and at heart we feel we should be doing something to help our fellow children, but we have no ability to change the minds of the despots and oppressors.  So we say it's too late, our paths are set toward the inevitable end.  We have been offered the chance with every waking sun to seize control of our lives and the course of humanity and we have simply let it slip through our fingers because we have been sated by comforts and the idea that we are freer than most, and that's good enough.

But I'm through with that negative thought process.  I've undergone a grand Sea Change.  Like an old soldier coming home across the sea, I'm shaking off the heartbreaks of my youth and looking towards the horizon with a sense of optimism.  One can look at human history and see it as a downward spiral from the garden to the ash pile.  We can trace the arc of history like an arrow shot from the castle towers, and we can see ourselves at the apex, beginning the trend towards a terrific crash.  But I ask, how many times have we gone to the edge, compelled to jump into the abyss, only to pull back and change the forces that push us?  How many Kings, swept into the destructive vacuum of power struggle, have capitulated to the servants in order to preserve the race of men?  How many tyrants have battled against their own people only to realize there would be no future with the path they have chosen?  We have always overcome our destructive tendencies, and when the times are most dire, we have collectively awoken to shake off the dust of apathy, and followed the lighted path of righteousness.  For myself, I have already lived with boredom, with capitulation, and negativity.  I've played the role of the cynic and pessimist.  I can't wake up anymore, look at Anna, and justify being the child I once was.  It would be foolish to think that she would put up with a man whose heart was filled with venom, whose soul was all coal and ash.  I can see how foolish I was not to at least attempt to live.  Happiness is not hard to find, indeed it isn't a place or an object to be found.  It's simply a choice, like everything else in life, it's a decision one has to make to become happy.  For me, to keep learning is a joy.  To try something new is a joy.  To improve myself is a joy.  If we stop learning, if we've decided we have it all figured out, we might as well not lift ourselves out of bed in the morning.  Better to admit to ourselves that we know nothing at all, that the not knowing is the important thing, the best way to live.  Only then can we see the world from a fresh perspective, a hopeful one.  I owe her that much...
Until we meet again...

February 12, 2012: Blessings of the Father

Fathers and sons, histories of men, old knowledge compiled from experience and distilled through time, the thread of memory, I needed more time to learn.  I can feel my father pacing forth in a strange home, see him patting down his arms and his chest in front of a mirror, as if he's trying to remember if he's placed his keys in the breast pocket of his suit coat, when really he is trying to reconcile himself with the image of a man in front of him.  He sees the man in the mirror, knows the man resembles him, wonders how the man is able to mimic his actions so acutely, tries to fool the image by moving his raised arms slowly, unusually, in front of himself, then tries to make the man laugh.  Father, be at peace.  Forget what you have always known now and try to find wonder in the floating dust in the gold sunstreams.  Try to lose the memory of us completely, so that when we arrive you retain measures of comfort from us, unexplainable, unreasoned, but real.  Forget how this time was stolen from yourself and your wife, this time which was to be enjoyed more than every other time, this reward for a life of toil.  You were going to travel.  You would have been able to take longer trips than any you have thus taken, spending eternities on the road, seeing the great Glories of creation, wondering at the monuments time has created out of old soil and clay.  Try not to know how soon you will have grandchildren bringing back those old enthusiasms of childhood wonderment.  Forget how finding a flower in a field is a bit like a miracle to young eyes. 

I could talk to you.  I could sit you down in front of me and tell you of my gratitude, of my heartache, of my dreams... I could pour oaths and pledges and prayers from a litany of knowledge that would not have been realized without thy tenderness, but I know that you are living in a dreamworld where the past is a river stone, smoothed of it's edges and glistening under the slow light of a sleepy stream.  I know that to speak of my plans for the near and far future is to offer up a hopeful sacrifice of sweet smoke to a distant Lord.  In this dream present you must travel alone my old friend and teacher.  You must lead the way into that next land.  But you must try to be kind to us intruders along the way.  You must not be swallowed entirely by the dream.  For us, you must be a little bit stronger than you have been, to give us a bit of comfort along the way.  

If I was to be there in a moment of clarity, I would not speak.  I would only listen for as long as you can hold on.  If there is a moment of respite from this torment, use it to remind me of those times you let me eat the food from your plate, let me leap onto your back, of the times when you gave up your comfort to please a needy boy.  Speak comforts to me, let me know that you will recognize me before you go, tell me to tell your wife that you loved her above all others, even yourself.  This is the Bargain I offer to you.  I will listen if you choose to speak.  

Until we meet again...

February 5, 2012: Seven Months

This weekend Anna looked at me and said, "You know what today is? We're officially seven months away from our wedding day!"  The planning is starting to heat up.  Since I proposed in May, We have found a location, hired a retired Lutheran minister, found a photographer, taken engagement photos, and sent out save the dates.  She found a dress after two trips with her mother last fall.  In the summer, we took two trips to strangers' houses to pick up blue tinted mason jars and burlap runners that she will place lovingly on tables as decoration at the wedding.  The location of our wedding supplies the food, and works pretty much exclusively with one DJ so those things were taken care of rather easily.  We hired a distinguished and paternal looking retired Lutheran minister to do the ceremony.  She has set up a web site complete with photos of us, our wedding party, recommendations for entertainment in Traverse City, and links to hotels.  We have booked a large retreat where we will stay for the weekend along with some members of our family, and she has finally decided on her bridesmaids' dresses.  Recently we've registered for gifts at two different stores, booked room at a brewery/restaurant for a rehearsal dinner (no easy task in Traverse City during Labor Day weekend), and decided on the style for our invitations. She has logged hundreds of hours on the internet, finding wedding idea sites, looking at possible cake combinations, unique planning ideas, possible decoration and dress ideas, and menu options.  She found a honeymoon spot for us in Costa Rica, and we've picked our menus and four exciting activities we will participate in during that week.  Right now she is upstairs, and I assume she is talking on the phone with her mother about the things she registered for this morning.  Her mother and my mother have been active participants in this process, planning wedding showers, and posting ideas on pinterest.  I've had calls from several of my friends just this weekend trying to figure out if we can get together the Friday of that weekend for a boy's night out.  Soon we will be sending out invitations, and we still have to figure out the florist situation, shuttle service, find wedding picture locales, pick a menu, and find a cake.  We have to plan a social gathering for after the rehearsal dinner, and pick out something for me and my groomsmen to wear.  Along with all this is an effort to lose weight.  She has been waking up at 5:30 in the morning to go do an intense workout and we've both been trying to avoid fatty food.  I'm going to have to start testing skin care products to get rid of some splotchy patches on my face.  She has been growing her hair out so that when she styles it she can have more options.  We haven't even thought about what we're going to need to pack.

All this time she's putting in, all those long conversations we've had, the difficult choices we've made, all are leading to a day soaked in emotion. Along with all this planning, we have to consider the smallest details, like  bringing a handkerchief for tears, what kind of paper will we write our vows on, how the preacher's voice will sound as he pronounces us man and wife, how the light will shine as she walks down the aisle with her father.  It's not like planning a vacation where we pick a flight, find a hotel, and pack the proper clothing, we have to also consider the overall picture.  Anna has been working hard on the details so that on the day, we can enjoy each and every little moment without worry.  No matter how many details we work out, though, even if we plan it so minutely that nothing is left to chance, I still think I will be surprised at every turn.  I wish we could slow everything down so I could see every emotion on her face, and relish every smile surrounding us.  I wish that first kiss as man and wife could last forever.  I am worried that we will be barraged by friends and family, trying to talk to us all at once.  I fear that someone will not have a good time and that something will intrude on the magic of it all.  This only happens once in a lifetime and each minute that goes by will be singed with a bit of regret and bitterness, along with the happiness, because I know I don't want it to end.  It seems strange to me how much work goes into just a few hours of dining, dancing, and drinking.  We strive our whole lives to find the person that we will spend the rest of our lives with, we expend so much psychic energy on this one event, and it is over before we even know it.  A wedding should be a series of celebrations, I think.  We should have a week of family dinners, small parties, a grand celebration lasting from sunrise to sunrise, gift giving, games and contests like the old Romans and Greeks, and dancing until we collapse from utter exhaustion.  A wedding should not end until everyone has wandered home in delirium after a week of festivities.  Strangers should wander in and out, offering food, drink, or gifts.  Poems should be read by firelight and songs sung to toast the newly minted couple.  When it is over, everyone should feel like nothing was left out.  No one should walk away wishing they had gotten more time with the couple.  Wisdom should be handed down from everyone who has been through all stages of marriage.  People should wander into a corner of the room and sleep while the hardy ones carry on.  I say let's bring back the Festival of Bacchus, return to the old ways of paying homage to life changes.  We should endeavor to spend more time on these events than we do at work.  That way I could truly appreciate the magnitude of what Anna and I are undertaking.

Of course, Anna would have to do some more planning...

Until we meet again....