December 2010 Archives
Boxing Day. I arise and try to scare up some action. The truth is that I need inaction, as much as possible, but not much is possible. So in my compulsive way, in vain I invite the neighbors out to breakfast, roll out to wish the tenants a safe drive to Newport Beach, then decide to breakfast on my own. At Draeger's, my reliable home away from home. As I enter, a metal rack with stacks of pies blocks the usual display. Two for one, 50% off, these pies are. And it is a mark of my psycho-dementia that I briefly consider this possibility. Picking up a couple of, well, maybe some pecan pies. You know, eat one now, freeze the other. Or maybe give one to a friend. Or maybe give both to a friend, even a new friend. Maybe a friend who becomes a friend solely out of a love for pecans. Which, according to the morning news, are stimulating something of a boom in the Georgia economy, and not the one on the Black Sea, but the one with Jimmy Carter and Atlanta and Gone with the Wind...pecan capital of the world, all of which makes me glad. And makes me think that the soaring commodity prices of these particular nuts make these particular pies even more valuable, the deal even more irresistible...a sure sign that I badly need coffee. After which, on the way out, the rack of pies do not exert quite the same magnetic pull, but close enough. A sign that I need even more coffee. But too late, for I am headed home.
And I have one. It is mine, tbis home, one I often share, but still it is mine, my own place, things scattered about, disorganized, walls scuffed from my wheelchair, but mine all the same. The challenge, and this is a great one, is to discern the difference between quiet and abandonment.
By this evening, I predict the squeeze will be on. It is the squeeze that directs me in another slightly compulsive direction, toward packing and checking lists and printing out itineraries. We head for London, Jane and I do, on Tuesday. Time, the morning passing, my apartment empty, perhaps some blogging? Oh, eventually, but for now I go through the exercise...an empty one, and I know this before even starting...of seeing what is involved in upgrading my seat to Europe. First, I would not be upgrading once, but twice. Second, Jane is traveling with me, which makes all the difference, and really upgrading is not necessary. Last year, after Marlou's death, flying business class now and then made sense, or seemed to. Now it simply does not.
Still, I click my way through the United Airlines website, go as far as upgrading myself to the waitlist, then try to undo this. The results on the screen prove ambiguous. I have to actually phone the airline to make sure I haven't kicked myself off the plane altogether. No, no, not to worry, and the airline promises to refund all the miles that disappeared in the process. I don't believe them, of course so send an e-mail to the mileage people. If there are mileage people, which I seriously doubt. Any business that undertakes a billion-dollar effort to describe the skies as friendly clearly has something to cover up. And the latter could not be simpler. There are no skies, nothing is friendly, the mileage plan has no home, only a computer, so it's time to check out the external speaker options for my clock radio. None. That is the inevitable conclusion. There is no external speaker jack. Or Jill. But there is William Stafford, the elusively simple poet. Reading his evocations of loss and land, of time and human effort, well, the whole thing calms me down. Death and its unravelling occupy Stafford most of the time, in one way or another. He seems to have lost a son.
And damned if, just while I am considering this, I don't pour half the contents of my Heavenly Chef chili sauce onto the kitchen counter. There was great foresight involved here. I was finally using up the last of the cardboard containers of Tuesday's Chinese food, to wit, bok choy, chicken and rice...when it occurred to me, 'why not take the hot sauce out of the refrigerator and let it achieve room temperature.' Which is a wonderful sentiment, laden with self-care, an eye, or a taste bud, toward future enjoyment.... Problem is, many of these refrigerated jars are rarely used, the contents tending to drift to the bottom and solidify. So why not just knock the Heavenly Chef's chili seed mixture loose. Plop. A red mass, unworldly, appears on the counter. With the right angle, fancifully enlarged and in black and white, what I am eyeing could easily have menaced Manhattan in a low-budget 1950s science-fiction film. Never mind, it is here, on my counter and...well, I am still in William Stafford space.
The self denunciations that normally flow from my mind and mouth faster than Heavenly Chef hot sauce - these are simply not happening. Which establishes proof of concept better than anything in my Anger Management Handbook. Fuck it, I say. Who cares? I am alone on Boxing Day, but not really, and not even for long. In fact, I have to deal with the Chinese leftovers before dashing off to Peet's to meet a friend. I have discovered the secret of life. I am one Heavenly Chef.
And I have one. It is mine, tbis home, one I often share, but still it is mine, my own place, things scattered about, disorganized, walls scuffed from my wheelchair, but mine all the same. The challenge, and this is a great one, is to discern the difference between quiet and abandonment.
By this evening, I predict the squeeze will be on. It is the squeeze that directs me in another slightly compulsive direction, toward packing and checking lists and printing out itineraries. We head for London, Jane and I do, on Tuesday. Time, the morning passing, my apartment empty, perhaps some blogging? Oh, eventually, but for now I go through the exercise...an empty one, and I know this before even starting...of seeing what is involved in upgrading my seat to Europe. First, I would not be upgrading once, but twice. Second, Jane is traveling with me, which makes all the difference, and really upgrading is not necessary. Last year, after Marlou's death, flying business class now and then made sense, or seemed to. Now it simply does not.
Still, I click my way through the United Airlines website, go as far as upgrading myself to the waitlist, then try to undo this. The results on the screen prove ambiguous. I have to actually phone the airline to make sure I haven't kicked myself off the plane altogether. No, no, not to worry, and the airline promises to refund all the miles that disappeared in the process. I don't believe them, of course so send an e-mail to the mileage people. If there are mileage people, which I seriously doubt. Any business that undertakes a billion-dollar effort to describe the skies as friendly clearly has something to cover up. And the latter could not be simpler. There are no skies, nothing is friendly, the mileage plan has no home, only a computer, so it's time to check out the external speaker options for my clock radio. None. That is the inevitable conclusion. There is no external speaker jack. Or Jill. But there is William Stafford, the elusively simple poet. Reading his evocations of loss and land, of time and human effort, well, the whole thing calms me down. Death and its unravelling occupy Stafford most of the time, in one way or another. He seems to have lost a son.
And damned if, just while I am considering this, I don't pour half the contents of my Heavenly Chef chili sauce onto the kitchen counter. There was great foresight involved here. I was finally using up the last of the cardboard containers of Tuesday's Chinese food, to wit, bok choy, chicken and rice...when it occurred to me, 'why not take the hot sauce out of the refrigerator and let it achieve room temperature.' Which is a wonderful sentiment, laden with self-care, an eye, or a taste bud, toward future enjoyment.... Problem is, many of these refrigerated jars are rarely used, the contents tending to drift to the bottom and solidify. So why not just knock the Heavenly Chef's chili seed mixture loose. Plop. A red mass, unworldly, appears on the counter. With the right angle, fancifully enlarged and in black and white, what I am eyeing could easily have menaced Manhattan in a low-budget 1950s science-fiction film. Never mind, it is here, on my counter and...well, I am still in William Stafford space.
The self denunciations that normally flow from my mind and mouth faster than Heavenly Chef hot sauce - these are simply not happening. Which establishes proof of concept better than anything in my Anger Management Handbook. Fuck it, I say. Who cares? I am alone on Boxing Day, but not really, and not even for long. In fact, I have to deal with the Chinese leftovers before dashing off to Peet's to meet a friend. I have discovered the secret of life. I am one Heavenly Chef.
I had been thinking about it for some time, dropping my $20 bill in the tips jar at Peet's. What delayed me had to do with visibility. No one believes you really want to leave a $20 note in appreciation of service. Nor does anyone easily understand the reasoning. People there are most gracious and generous throughout the year. Coffees that others collect at a window get brought to my table, almost always by someone good-natured. And the daily leaving of tips requires, in my case, the repeated grabbing of coins or notes, then placing them in jars designed for the ambulatory. So why not accumulate the gratuities, drop them in condensed form over the lip of the glass canister and right into the hands of the help? A way of reminding myself that help is not to be taken for granted. They help me. I help them. Hardly very complicated.
The problem is doing this surreptitiously. Someone has to help me put the bill among the others. And on 24 December, time seeming to run out for traditional gestures of generosity, there was no getting around it. I asked the barista to stuff my twenty in his jar. Are you sure, he asked? Yes, I said brightly, beaming in fact, a wattage rarely seen on my face. And why not? I wanted him to know that this was a gift. That I appreciated him and all the others. I tried to assume adult, confident body posture, as much as one can in a wheelchair. Thank you, he said. The place was crowded, so I had to fight my way around the corner to where the espresso machines hissed and spat steam, while the patrons spat spit. And damned if the barista did not suddenly appear by my side, kneeling to achieve wheelchair height. Well, he said. Funny thing. My prepaid Peet's card did not quite cover the cappuccino. And did I want him to take the balance out of the $20 tip?
In such circumstances, religious people believe God is testing them. Did I really want to give the man the money? And by resisting the temptation to, what the hell, turn tips into coffee beans...well, a very high enlightened state results. Whereby on my way home a series of springs erupt in the sidewalk, Menlo Springs, they will be called for many years, eventually transformed into the Menlo Waters, their healing properties well known, thousands flocking to the site of the Miracle of the Wheels. Those coming to be healed picking up souvenir waterwheels, a sort of local trademark, some of them signed by my descendents and therefore priceless.
But for the time being I'm still waiting for my cappuccino. True, I have secured a table, no small feat in this Christmas-feverish espresso den. Having put $25 on my Peet's card, I not only have to put my MasterCard away but stash a chit for a free future cappuccino. If I was smart, all this would be occurring at my table. Precisely why I am parking here has to do with the self-deprecating sense that I must await the arrival of my cappuccino like everyone else. It simply isn't true. That's what the $20 was for, the year in, year out, delivery of coffees. But I can barely get to the tables, what with all these human butts in my face. This is the reality of living at wheelchair level. Everything occurs above one. Such as intelligence. Excuse me, excuse me, I say, Menlo Park's finest oblivious of my attempts to work my wheeled self through their knot of legs and hips and armpits. Sometimes, it is not easy to keep my ego flying high.
Sometimes, I realize that my mother really did have a zest for life. She liked to bite into things. Unfortunately, this included children. Never mind. Still, she bit what she could of experience. She was keen, energetic and zesty. Doubtless this is what attracted my father to her. My father stared existence in the face, looked blank, and thought about things. He rarely brightened. I can't recall what really enthused him, except the burning of weeds, his Fellini-esque pastime in the desert. In other words, I have inherited bits of each. Much of the time my outward demeanor resembles my father's, yet I can get enthused, and that is my mother's verve. It has taken me a lifetime to see the two of them as adult humans. And to see me, wheeling and aging, as someone who can in every important sense, stand tall.
I do not stand at the 10 PM service, the one held at Jane's church in honor of Christmas Eve. I am there in honor of Jane, of course, and sing the songs, some familiar from the Menlo Park Chorus. I am tired. Not as tired as Jane must be, running a sort of ecclesiastical marathon, but it is late, and my circadian rhythm is definitely on the down slope. It is a truly religious event, complete with bread and wine. I watch everyone doing this, kneeling to receive both. There is an unfortunate moment when a big robed guy comes at me me with a bowl of croutons, his helper following with wine. Actually, the latter sounds pretty good right now, but I thank them and shake my head. The big guy in the robe asks if he can bless me. Why not? People are quite warm and supportive in Jane's church, that is the important thing. By now, having observed several key moments in this Christmas marathon, I vaguely know them. And their value and worth becomes all the more apparent as I try to make my exit.
Naturally, or unnaturally, my van will not start. Only that evening I had bragged about how little I drove, how small my fuel bill has become. These are, I tell myself, the wages of stupidity. Jane and I have a tense exchange about how to remedy the dead battery. No, I do not want to leave my car at her church overnight. I want this stupid thing to go away. I want jumper cables, that is what I tell her. And being in the midst of a goodhearted community, this is what happens. John, his birthday recently celebrated with me in attendance, connects the cables, and I am on my way. Which is all one can hope for on any day. And with this I depart, batteries running low, spirits bright, oh what fun to laugh and sing a sleighing song tonight.
Jane's church is on a hill, a sand hill presumably. But I do not turn down Sand Hill Road, but turn northwest through the neighborhoods. Things seem still. Actually, they are not. A party is breaking up. A midnight mass seems in full swing. But there is a quality to this night, a sense that things have turned themselves over to the nocturnal, even if the rabbits and coyotes and possums are invisible. The dark has turned itself over to collective ritual. In a nation of frenzied, mercantile activity, a moment without goal or function, perplexingly quiet. Ceremonies concluded, a moment allowed to be a moment. And at a stop sign, things opening up as they do, a recollection of the afternoon of Marlou's funeral.
Tom, my landlord, did not want to go, said he wanted to remember Marlou as she was on the day of her arrival from Sacramento. She got to my apartment before the truck full of her possessions. But only slightly, for the movers were right behind. She was bright with optimism, delighted by the whole thing. I, of course, was doubting and disturbed, much like the Joad family after their home had been repossessed. Still, it was infectious, Marlou's spirit, so bright. This was the right thing, and she knew it, and it filled her. And the poignancy and the vulnerability of human hope, when we see it for all its fragile foolishness, well, it is enough to make one cry. Make one cry and make one live. Oh, holy night. Never mind the rest of the song. Oh, solstice night. When we can quiet down and give our rapacity a rest, we are not a bad species.
The problem is doing this surreptitiously. Someone has to help me put the bill among the others. And on 24 December, time seeming to run out for traditional gestures of generosity, there was no getting around it. I asked the barista to stuff my twenty in his jar. Are you sure, he asked? Yes, I said brightly, beaming in fact, a wattage rarely seen on my face. And why not? I wanted him to know that this was a gift. That I appreciated him and all the others. I tried to assume adult, confident body posture, as much as one can in a wheelchair. Thank you, he said. The place was crowded, so I had to fight my way around the corner to where the espresso machines hissed and spat steam, while the patrons spat spit. And damned if the barista did not suddenly appear by my side, kneeling to achieve wheelchair height. Well, he said. Funny thing. My prepaid Peet's card did not quite cover the cappuccino. And did I want him to take the balance out of the $20 tip?
In such circumstances, religious people believe God is testing them. Did I really want to give the man the money? And by resisting the temptation to, what the hell, turn tips into coffee beans...well, a very high enlightened state results. Whereby on my way home a series of springs erupt in the sidewalk, Menlo Springs, they will be called for many years, eventually transformed into the Menlo Waters, their healing properties well known, thousands flocking to the site of the Miracle of the Wheels. Those coming to be healed picking up souvenir waterwheels, a sort of local trademark, some of them signed by my descendents and therefore priceless.
But for the time being I'm still waiting for my cappuccino. True, I have secured a table, no small feat in this Christmas-feverish espresso den. Having put $25 on my Peet's card, I not only have to put my MasterCard away but stash a chit for a free future cappuccino. If I was smart, all this would be occurring at my table. Precisely why I am parking here has to do with the self-deprecating sense that I must await the arrival of my cappuccino like everyone else. It simply isn't true. That's what the $20 was for, the year in, year out, delivery of coffees. But I can barely get to the tables, what with all these human butts in my face. This is the reality of living at wheelchair level. Everything occurs above one. Such as intelligence. Excuse me, excuse me, I say, Menlo Park's finest oblivious of my attempts to work my wheeled self through their knot of legs and hips and armpits. Sometimes, it is not easy to keep my ego flying high.
Sometimes, I realize that my mother really did have a zest for life. She liked to bite into things. Unfortunately, this included children. Never mind. Still, she bit what she could of experience. She was keen, energetic and zesty. Doubtless this is what attracted my father to her. My father stared existence in the face, looked blank, and thought about things. He rarely brightened. I can't recall what really enthused him, except the burning of weeds, his Fellini-esque pastime in the desert. In other words, I have inherited bits of each. Much of the time my outward demeanor resembles my father's, yet I can get enthused, and that is my mother's verve. It has taken me a lifetime to see the two of them as adult humans. And to see me, wheeling and aging, as someone who can in every important sense, stand tall.
I do not stand at the 10 PM service, the one held at Jane's church in honor of Christmas Eve. I am there in honor of Jane, of course, and sing the songs, some familiar from the Menlo Park Chorus. I am tired. Not as tired as Jane must be, running a sort of ecclesiastical marathon, but it is late, and my circadian rhythm is definitely on the down slope. It is a truly religious event, complete with bread and wine. I watch everyone doing this, kneeling to receive both. There is an unfortunate moment when a big robed guy comes at me me with a bowl of croutons, his helper following with wine. Actually, the latter sounds pretty good right now, but I thank them and shake my head. The big guy in the robe asks if he can bless me. Why not? People are quite warm and supportive in Jane's church, that is the important thing. By now, having observed several key moments in this Christmas marathon, I vaguely know them. And their value and worth becomes all the more apparent as I try to make my exit.
Naturally, or unnaturally, my van will not start. Only that evening I had bragged about how little I drove, how small my fuel bill has become. These are, I tell myself, the wages of stupidity. Jane and I have a tense exchange about how to remedy the dead battery. No, I do not want to leave my car at her church overnight. I want this stupid thing to go away. I want jumper cables, that is what I tell her. And being in the midst of a goodhearted community, this is what happens. John, his birthday recently celebrated with me in attendance, connects the cables, and I am on my way. Which is all one can hope for on any day. And with this I depart, batteries running low, spirits bright, oh what fun to laugh and sing a sleighing song tonight.
Jane's church is on a hill, a sand hill presumably. But I do not turn down Sand Hill Road, but turn northwest through the neighborhoods. Things seem still. Actually, they are not. A party is breaking up. A midnight mass seems in full swing. But there is a quality to this night, a sense that things have turned themselves over to the nocturnal, even if the rabbits and coyotes and possums are invisible. The dark has turned itself over to collective ritual. In a nation of frenzied, mercantile activity, a moment without goal or function, perplexingly quiet. Ceremonies concluded, a moment allowed to be a moment. And at a stop sign, things opening up as they do, a recollection of the afternoon of Marlou's funeral.
Tom, my landlord, did not want to go, said he wanted to remember Marlou as she was on the day of her arrival from Sacramento. She got to my apartment before the truck full of her possessions. But only slightly, for the movers were right behind. She was bright with optimism, delighted by the whole thing. I, of course, was doubting and disturbed, much like the Joad family after their home had been repossessed. Still, it was infectious, Marlou's spirit, so bright. This was the right thing, and she knew it, and it filled her. And the poignancy and the vulnerability of human hope, when we see it for all its fragile foolishness, well, it is enough to make one cry. Make one cry and make one live. Oh, holy night. Never mind the rest of the song. Oh, solstice night. When we can quiet down and give our rapacity a rest, we are not a bad species.
Fortunately, later in the morning, National Public Radio is kind enough to counterbalance some of my waking impressions...as I sit up in the bed and feel, not a swooning, but a lessening, particularly of balance. All quite normal, the report explains, part of one's circadian rhythm. To everything there is a bodily season, every 24 hours, in fact, including a time to be coordinated and a time to be balanced. And I am not sure that the woozy sensation can be blamed for this, although I do not rule it out. What I actually do is sit up in the bed, stare at a book shelf of European history, realize I will never read half of this stuff and mutter the self denunciatory 'pig.' Enough of a psychic misdirection, not to mention a thorough failure in the anger-management department, to warrant a full review. A.k.a., blog.
Where was I? My friend Laurel was at the great Roseville 'Sing the Building into the Ground' social-network-inspired Christmas caroling event a few days ago, or tried to be. Note that in future centuries this sudden Twitter call to singers, with 5000 people so filled with song that they dangerously compressed the floor of a Sacramento area shopping mall...this story will be retold along the lines of the Walls of Jericho. Structural failure due to ram's horn blowing may not have much street cred these days, but that's because it did not happen in these days, but in mythic days. And if you have trouble seeing Roseville as a fabled citadel, stick around for another thousand years or so. Trust me.
No, don't. I am not trustworthy. Especially when I see all that I will not read, having run out of time. Thing is, I am deeply rooted in the myth of control. I understand that it is a primitive, infantile holdover, and yet I am a slave to this delusion. At work here, I believe, is the psychology of habituation. This became a pattern. The parents' marriage was going feral, their dissolution imminent. To counteract the child's sense of things falling apart, my ability to occasionally brighten or distract either parent became swollen, growing to absurd proportions, my capacity for fantasy being what it is.
Which brings me back to my shelves of European history. Most of these books were given to me by, you guessed it, Europeans. A.k.a., my British family, a.k.a., my German-Jewish family. All of them trying to educate/indoctrinate me in the way of things trans-Atlantic. More to the point, do I really want to read this stuff? Yes, I actually do, but there is so little time. But there always was so little time. And how much time is there, anyway? Since no one knows, where would I start?
Well, I might start by jettisoning everything I don't intend to read, don't want to read, in fact don't want to even see on my shelves. There is a fair amount of this sort of thing. Take British novelist Jane Gardam, who is beating a dead cultural horse, and why should I help her? Gone, her book is already gone, mentally shipped to the Friends of the Menlo Park Library for sale, shredding or whatever. Camellias. Marlou has a guide to them. Guess I really shouldn't throw this away, overburdened as I am in the Camellia department...shrubs having grown to trees in the five decades of my landlord's neglect. Okay, one never knows. Ah, here's a completely unexpected criterion. Print size. What about the teeny, tiny type in some of these books? Fuck them. If they are too small to read, they are too small to exist. Get big, or get out.
Leaving one with the brutal fact of life's end. Things run down. Time runs out. So, like Proust, the best course would be to shut the door and keep it shut. With the world muffled by cork-lined walls, I would be left with my books and my thoughts. The goal would be to read and discard the former. Record and preserve the latter. That is to say, making a very effective transition from the material to the immaterial. An excellent rehearsal for mortality.
Which, more or less, can be said for the airline experience. Even under optimal circumstances, man was not meant to fly. And conditions at Heathrow are not exactly optimal, are they? Actually, the airport is paralyzed by snow the way some of us get paralyzed by fear. A little sobering up wouldn't hurt. I mean, why should Stockholm corner the market on airport snowplows? An EU ministry has already pointed this out. But I am tired of ministry. So is Jane, I would guess, at least for a few days.
That's why we are heading through the woods, over the pole (north). And, yes, with a few books. A few is all we ever need. And the pressures of travel space and weight being what they are...I will have to choose. And I will have to choose carefully. For this trip is utterly nonessential, all about enjoyment. And having had my personal library swell by dint of birthday presents, doubtless holiday presents, and my own personal shopping surplus, the choices have expanded beyond the already excessive. Bringing one back to the 'pig.' Hogging so much print, wanting so much that cannot be...and was never intended to be. And will ultimately be lost, just like my airline baggage.
Where was I? My friend Laurel was at the great Roseville 'Sing the Building into the Ground' social-network-inspired Christmas caroling event a few days ago, or tried to be. Note that in future centuries this sudden Twitter call to singers, with 5000 people so filled with song that they dangerously compressed the floor of a Sacramento area shopping mall...this story will be retold along the lines of the Walls of Jericho. Structural failure due to ram's horn blowing may not have much street cred these days, but that's because it did not happen in these days, but in mythic days. And if you have trouble seeing Roseville as a fabled citadel, stick around for another thousand years or so. Trust me.
No, don't. I am not trustworthy. Especially when I see all that I will not read, having run out of time. Thing is, I am deeply rooted in the myth of control. I understand that it is a primitive, infantile holdover, and yet I am a slave to this delusion. At work here, I believe, is the psychology of habituation. This became a pattern. The parents' marriage was going feral, their dissolution imminent. To counteract the child's sense of things falling apart, my ability to occasionally brighten or distract either parent became swollen, growing to absurd proportions, my capacity for fantasy being what it is.
Which brings me back to my shelves of European history. Most of these books were given to me by, you guessed it, Europeans. A.k.a., my British family, a.k.a., my German-Jewish family. All of them trying to educate/indoctrinate me in the way of things trans-Atlantic. More to the point, do I really want to read this stuff? Yes, I actually do, but there is so little time. But there always was so little time. And how much time is there, anyway? Since no one knows, where would I start?
Well, I might start by jettisoning everything I don't intend to read, don't want to read, in fact don't want to even see on my shelves. There is a fair amount of this sort of thing. Take British novelist Jane Gardam, who is beating a dead cultural horse, and why should I help her? Gone, her book is already gone, mentally shipped to the Friends of the Menlo Park Library for sale, shredding or whatever. Camellias. Marlou has a guide to them. Guess I really shouldn't throw this away, overburdened as I am in the Camellia department...shrubs having grown to trees in the five decades of my landlord's neglect. Okay, one never knows. Ah, here's a completely unexpected criterion. Print size. What about the teeny, tiny type in some of these books? Fuck them. If they are too small to read, they are too small to exist. Get big, or get out.
Leaving one with the brutal fact of life's end. Things run down. Time runs out. So, like Proust, the best course would be to shut the door and keep it shut. With the world muffled by cork-lined walls, I would be left with my books and my thoughts. The goal would be to read and discard the former. Record and preserve the latter. That is to say, making a very effective transition from the material to the immaterial. An excellent rehearsal for mortality.
Which, more or less, can be said for the airline experience. Even under optimal circumstances, man was not meant to fly. And conditions at Heathrow are not exactly optimal, are they? Actually, the airport is paralyzed by snow the way some of us get paralyzed by fear. A little sobering up wouldn't hurt. I mean, why should Stockholm corner the market on airport snowplows? An EU ministry has already pointed this out. But I am tired of ministry. So is Jane, I would guess, at least for a few days.
That's why we are heading through the woods, over the pole (north). And, yes, with a few books. A few is all we ever need. And the pressures of travel space and weight being what they are...I will have to choose. And I will have to choose carefully. For this trip is utterly nonessential, all about enjoyment. And having had my personal library swell by dint of birthday presents, doubtless holiday presents, and my own personal shopping surplus, the choices have expanded beyond the already excessive. Bringing one back to the 'pig.' Hogging so much print, wanting so much that cannot be...and was never intended to be. And will ultimately be lost, just like my airline baggage.
I am extremely cautious these mornings, for currently my days begin alone. Jane is frantic with Christmas responsibilities, trying to squeeze in as much time with her visiting daughter. While Team Filipina is committed to helping Menlo Park's richest and finest get through the holidays. Tuning into the solstice allows me to let go of the rest. Holiday, schmoliday. But the holy day, 21 December, upon which the year pivots, it has come, and things have shifted. And now it is morning. I make sure that the bedside light is on before springing to my balance-compromised feet. Then I make tea.
The tea ceremony. The electric version does not amount to much. The kettle is generally plugged in, even filled, so there's little to do except hit the on switch. And wait. Naturally, I roll about the apartment and open both front and rear doors. On good days, this induces an air exchange, the rooms' nightly exhalations driven out by the incoming breeze of morn. The effect is a bit brisk, and no woman who has spent the night with me ever got very excited about this program. Which may be why I get mildly excited on my own, for this is one of those supremely idiosyncratic bachelor moments. Doing things the guy way. While the kettle boils. And it does. Soon there is tea. The brewing of which allows for a quick wheelchair roll back to the office to click the e-mail into action. Meanwhile, I have unlocked the front door. Rescuers may enter this way. Just in case I end up on the bathroom floor, kitchen floor, any floor. Problem is, if I am floored, I will also be chilled, such are the December conditions of my all-doors-open apartment. Still, I let the breezes blow as long as I can stand it. Which is not easy with my current attire, a T-shirt and nothing else. One of many reasons to be careful not to spill my tea. And a condition that does put me closer to the elements, particularly those blowing in through the outside door of my kitchen. I generally make it through tea time before deciding the place is sufficiently aired and closing all hatches.
There is a waning. Perhaps some 64-year-olds can deny it. My quadriplegic circumstances make this impossible. My balance and my strength and my confidence are not what they were. But now that I am an anger-management expert, things are so much clearer. Watch me get the cereal bowl. I stand up from my wheelchair, lean across the counter. Taking care not to slip on the linoleum, I grab the uppermost of five stacked bowls. The thing is heavy. It descends, as I do, with something of a thud, my bare feet, or more precisely my functioning foot, losing traction. This slaps me down into the wheelchair, the bowl smacking the counter, my arm sliding...and knocking something. Which proves to be a white Petri dish. Okay, so it isn't really a Petri dish, but a small white serving container, perhaps for olive oil. Which although it looks like something chic and gracious Marlou would have bought, might actually be my purchase. Whatever. I now use these Petri dishes to cover cups of brewing tea. Incredibly, the thing has fallen to the floor without breaking.
A major challenge to my equanimity. But having mastered anger control and all, well, I sort of see things as though for the first time. That I do everything one-handed. Not to mention one-legged. The getting of bowls is not easy. There is no superfluity of limbs for bracing myself during the process. And why hasn't the Petri dish broken? Perhaps because it slammed against the kitchen cabinets on the way down, or perhaps the gods intervened. Either way, I am grateful for once. The quality of mercy is never strained, though the tea always is. And so on.
I even go easy on myself during the blueberry maneuver. The latter come direct from Chile, packed in a plastic container with a snap-down lid. The question is, and the question always is, how to open such a thing with one hand? I do not linger over these matters, or really consider them, the mission being all. And the mission, the real one, is to pretend that everything is normal. Tasks will fall into place at the 'usual' pace, no setbacks, no single-handed, quadriplegic complications either...if I think about it, which I generally don't. Take this particular moment, when holding the blueberry plastic pack in my one working set of fingers, pulling up the top with my teeth, not turning and dumping the thing into my bowl of cereal, I run out of options.
For some reason, some subtle neuromuscular reason having to do with the pattern of damage to my nerve supply, reversing this process is remarkably difficult. I can turn the blueberry package over the bowl. But turning it back in the direction from which it came...well I don't quite have the manual wherewithal. The reverse movement destabilizes my hand. And I am watching this closely, watching my own attempt to twist the plastic box of blueberries in the air. It all hangs in the balance, the issue of whether I can accomplish this feat or not. Slowly slowly, a few berries tumbling unwanted into the bowl. Yet in the end I get the container turned around, placed on the counter, snapped shut. And back in the refrigerator. In short, the day has barely begun, but so much has happened...and happened with luck or fate on my side. And for once, I am grateful.
The tea ceremony. The electric version does not amount to much. The kettle is generally plugged in, even filled, so there's little to do except hit the on switch. And wait. Naturally, I roll about the apartment and open both front and rear doors. On good days, this induces an air exchange, the rooms' nightly exhalations driven out by the incoming breeze of morn. The effect is a bit brisk, and no woman who has spent the night with me ever got very excited about this program. Which may be why I get mildly excited on my own, for this is one of those supremely idiosyncratic bachelor moments. Doing things the guy way. While the kettle boils. And it does. Soon there is tea. The brewing of which allows for a quick wheelchair roll back to the office to click the e-mail into action. Meanwhile, I have unlocked the front door. Rescuers may enter this way. Just in case I end up on the bathroom floor, kitchen floor, any floor. Problem is, if I am floored, I will also be chilled, such are the December conditions of my all-doors-open apartment. Still, I let the breezes blow as long as I can stand it. Which is not easy with my current attire, a T-shirt and nothing else. One of many reasons to be careful not to spill my tea. And a condition that does put me closer to the elements, particularly those blowing in through the outside door of my kitchen. I generally make it through tea time before deciding the place is sufficiently aired and closing all hatches.
There is a waning. Perhaps some 64-year-olds can deny it. My quadriplegic circumstances make this impossible. My balance and my strength and my confidence are not what they were. But now that I am an anger-management expert, things are so much clearer. Watch me get the cereal bowl. I stand up from my wheelchair, lean across the counter. Taking care not to slip on the linoleum, I grab the uppermost of five stacked bowls. The thing is heavy. It descends, as I do, with something of a thud, my bare feet, or more precisely my functioning foot, losing traction. This slaps me down into the wheelchair, the bowl smacking the counter, my arm sliding...and knocking something. Which proves to be a white Petri dish. Okay, so it isn't really a Petri dish, but a small white serving container, perhaps for olive oil. Which although it looks like something chic and gracious Marlou would have bought, might actually be my purchase. Whatever. I now use these Petri dishes to cover cups of brewing tea. Incredibly, the thing has fallen to the floor without breaking.
A major challenge to my equanimity. But having mastered anger control and all, well, I sort of see things as though for the first time. That I do everything one-handed. Not to mention one-legged. The getting of bowls is not easy. There is no superfluity of limbs for bracing myself during the process. And why hasn't the Petri dish broken? Perhaps because it slammed against the kitchen cabinets on the way down, or perhaps the gods intervened. Either way, I am grateful for once. The quality of mercy is never strained, though the tea always is. And so on.
I even go easy on myself during the blueberry maneuver. The latter come direct from Chile, packed in a plastic container with a snap-down lid. The question is, and the question always is, how to open such a thing with one hand? I do not linger over these matters, or really consider them, the mission being all. And the mission, the real one, is to pretend that everything is normal. Tasks will fall into place at the 'usual' pace, no setbacks, no single-handed, quadriplegic complications either...if I think about it, which I generally don't. Take this particular moment, when holding the blueberry plastic pack in my one working set of fingers, pulling up the top with my teeth, not turning and dumping the thing into my bowl of cereal, I run out of options.
For some reason, some subtle neuromuscular reason having to do with the pattern of damage to my nerve supply, reversing this process is remarkably difficult. I can turn the blueberry package over the bowl. But turning it back in the direction from which it came...well I don't quite have the manual wherewithal. The reverse movement destabilizes my hand. And I am watching this closely, watching my own attempt to twist the plastic box of blueberries in the air. It all hangs in the balance, the issue of whether I can accomplish this feat or not. Slowly slowly, a few berries tumbling unwanted into the bowl. Yet in the end I get the container turned around, placed on the counter, snapped shut. And back in the refrigerator. In short, the day has barely begun, but so much has happened...and happened with luck or fate on my side. And for once, I am grateful.
There are dangers about. One, the Internet offers with absolute certainty. Rain, and thunder yet, 100% likely, according to Messrs. Weather Channel. The others...well, that I may be hit by a Christmas-crazed driver on the streets of Menlo Park. Likelihood? While there is no forecast clearly posted on the web, I can put the chance at + or -1%. This reckoning is based on 64% survival of 100 years, a statistic recently achieved, and nothing to sneer at. Unless you like sneering, and then go for it. Continuing down this track, if you are a betting person, where would you put your money on the following proposition? A vast emptiness will suck you into its maw, leaving you with a sense of drifting down the Styx, alone and forgotten, no one hearing you, no one caring. Odds, say, a million to one? Three billion to one? Whatever they are, count on estimates toward the high side.
Thing is, the latter possibility occurs to me several times a day. The problem is that it doesn't so much occur, as take over. For example, I sit down to write this blog, having only a vague sense of what to say. Behind which there is, of course, the possibility that what I am thinking about saying will soon lose force. Sending me back to the creative drawing board, as it were, or as it would be logically. Instead, the situation can easily send me into a panic. Oh, a quiet panic, to be sure, introverts being what we are. A secret panic, more accurate, the apparent lack of any cause or real 'reason' for anxiety inducing an added layer of shame. But it's real enough, this feeling, this panicky emptiness. The sense that there is no one inside me, or perhaps no one or nothing 'with' me. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...I damn well intend to fear, for there simply isn't a 'thou' with me much of the time. Which is my point, the day's lesson, item number one in the syllabus. Yes, the psychologist I happen to bump into Mondays at 11 AM said that anger management wasn't precisely my thing, the actual thing being somewhat indefinable, but looking an awful lot like anxiety. I'll go with that. Anxiety management will do.
Fight or flight? Duh. Flight, of course. That is why God invented Peet's. A journey there gets one out of one's house, out of one's thoughts, out of any real or imagined caffeine deficiency and into...well, the next thing. It is proof that there is a next thing. Which in one's secret panicky moments is called into basic question.
Suggesting that one is insecure. What does 'secure' look like? More to the point, what does security look like? How can there be a market for it, or them? And if securities are so secure, why is the nation's economy so insecure? Just watch the flight attendants 'securing' everything from doors to that excessively broad and generic class of 'personal items.' I have seen the sheer vibration of a 747 pounding aloft loosen and open the overhead bins, sending a rain of coats, handbags, satchels and books into the aisle. Thus the 'contents of the overhead bin may shift in flight' warning rendered ludicrous. A rain of actual toads could be predicted more accurately, that forecast actually turning up in the Torah, well maybe not exactly, but that second plague of Egypt was bad all the same. Where was I?
Oh, yes, flight. This is one response to the panicky emptiness feeling that afflicts me, that I must go out. As recently discussed in this blog space. There are so many other, more minor, fears. Only this afternoon my dear friends at United Parcel Service had placed a large carton of Land's End undershirts and blue jeans right at my front door. Cleverly blocking my attempted exit by wheelchair. And leading to the inevitable...call it paranoid if you wish...fear that I was trapped in my own apartment. Pinned, caught and cornered by a cardboard obstacle. Why would someone hang such a running-out-of-hope name on their underwear, socks and pullovers? Land's End. Wit's End, making much more sense. The whole thing probably pivoting on some snatch of something naughty someone said, which was censored, misunderstood or misrepresented, the likely original being 'Anne's End.' Okay, so I got out of my apartment, the real question being - did I get out of my anxiety? No and no and no.
For seconds later, wasn't I returning, my wheelchair footrests now pushing a containerized cardboard shipment from Wisconsin? And steering the thing, didn't I slightly run into the back of Marlou's designer sofa? Which, although I do not like to admit it, probably retains a certain charge, but in any case, makes me feel that I am out of control. And where did I ever get the sense that I was destined to drive a forklift or a bulldozer, particularly inside my own apartment? Ours is not to reason. Fuck it. Ours is to take a deep breath.
Which, much of my life, I would have described as wimpy advice. Remember encounter groups? Remember yelling and hitting pillows and so on to 'get it out?' Well, now that I have this anger management book and am well on my way to becoming an expert, forget it. Seems that such antics never worked, at least with my sort of spontaneous, rootless fears, that easily morph into anger. I kid you not. This anger management book has lots about breathing. As though respiration were optional. Never mind. There's something to it. Breathing fills you with, you guessed it, air. Stuff from outside. It increases the chest space, buys psychic time. Calms. Which turns out to be okay. There is nothing to 'get out' in terms of anger, when the underlying feeling is one of void. Getting something in, that's the remedy. Not to mention staying in, staying put. Getting out, say, to Peet's, proves to be just as good later.
Thing is, the latter possibility occurs to me several times a day. The problem is that it doesn't so much occur, as take over. For example, I sit down to write this blog, having only a vague sense of what to say. Behind which there is, of course, the possibility that what I am thinking about saying will soon lose force. Sending me back to the creative drawing board, as it were, or as it would be logically. Instead, the situation can easily send me into a panic. Oh, a quiet panic, to be sure, introverts being what we are. A secret panic, more accurate, the apparent lack of any cause or real 'reason' for anxiety inducing an added layer of shame. But it's real enough, this feeling, this panicky emptiness. The sense that there is no one inside me, or perhaps no one or nothing 'with' me. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...I damn well intend to fear, for there simply isn't a 'thou' with me much of the time. Which is my point, the day's lesson, item number one in the syllabus. Yes, the psychologist I happen to bump into Mondays at 11 AM said that anger management wasn't precisely my thing, the actual thing being somewhat indefinable, but looking an awful lot like anxiety. I'll go with that. Anxiety management will do.
Fight or flight? Duh. Flight, of course. That is why God invented Peet's. A journey there gets one out of one's house, out of one's thoughts, out of any real or imagined caffeine deficiency and into...well, the next thing. It is proof that there is a next thing. Which in one's secret panicky moments is called into basic question.
Suggesting that one is insecure. What does 'secure' look like? More to the point, what does security look like? How can there be a market for it, or them? And if securities are so secure, why is the nation's economy so insecure? Just watch the flight attendants 'securing' everything from doors to that excessively broad and generic class of 'personal items.' I have seen the sheer vibration of a 747 pounding aloft loosen and open the overhead bins, sending a rain of coats, handbags, satchels and books into the aisle. Thus the 'contents of the overhead bin may shift in flight' warning rendered ludicrous. A rain of actual toads could be predicted more accurately, that forecast actually turning up in the Torah, well maybe not exactly, but that second plague of Egypt was bad all the same. Where was I?
Oh, yes, flight. This is one response to the panicky emptiness feeling that afflicts me, that I must go out. As recently discussed in this blog space. There are so many other, more minor, fears. Only this afternoon my dear friends at United Parcel Service had placed a large carton of Land's End undershirts and blue jeans right at my front door. Cleverly blocking my attempted exit by wheelchair. And leading to the inevitable...call it paranoid if you wish...fear that I was trapped in my own apartment. Pinned, caught and cornered by a cardboard obstacle. Why would someone hang such a running-out-of-hope name on their underwear, socks and pullovers? Land's End. Wit's End, making much more sense. The whole thing probably pivoting on some snatch of something naughty someone said, which was censored, misunderstood or misrepresented, the likely original being 'Anne's End.' Okay, so I got out of my apartment, the real question being - did I get out of my anxiety? No and no and no.
For seconds later, wasn't I returning, my wheelchair footrests now pushing a containerized cardboard shipment from Wisconsin? And steering the thing, didn't I slightly run into the back of Marlou's designer sofa? Which, although I do not like to admit it, probably retains a certain charge, but in any case, makes me feel that I am out of control. And where did I ever get the sense that I was destined to drive a forklift or a bulldozer, particularly inside my own apartment? Ours is not to reason. Fuck it. Ours is to take a deep breath.
Which, much of my life, I would have described as wimpy advice. Remember encounter groups? Remember yelling and hitting pillows and so on to 'get it out?' Well, now that I have this anger management book and am well on my way to becoming an expert, forget it. Seems that such antics never worked, at least with my sort of spontaneous, rootless fears, that easily morph into anger. I kid you not. This anger management book has lots about breathing. As though respiration were optional. Never mind. There's something to it. Breathing fills you with, you guessed it, air. Stuff from outside. It increases the chest space, buys psychic time. Calms. Which turns out to be okay. There is nothing to 'get out' in terms of anger, when the underlying feeling is one of void. Getting something in, that's the remedy. Not to mention staying in, staying put. Getting out, say, to Peet's, proves to be just as good later.
What the hell, my brother suggests lights, and Trader Joe's has wreaths, so deck the halls and hit the decks, it is Christmas. So what is happening? Well, first of all, I think the lights are just splendid. Call them post-Chanukah lights. Call them electric lights. And the wreath? I thought it was pretty. Jane has remarked that she is not used to having no Christmas decor about. So I wanted to respect her traditions. After all, it was Jane who bought me my current menorah. But there's even more to it than that.
The winter solstice seems packed with reasons to celebrate. It is the year's hump, the point at which things, that is to say, days, stop contracting. Beyond this, things are on the ascendant. And while all this is perfectly reasonable, even more is going on, something about the heart of darkness, the darkness of cold, the depths of winter, the winter of our discontent. And what people do in response. Take the Christmas carol Sleigh Ride, given a breathless and atonal interpretation by at least one member of the bass section in the recent Menlo Park Chorus holiday concert. The essential shtick is coziness. It is so fucking cold out there, that in here...both locales being abstract and relative...we bundle up together. 'Like two birds of a feather...' jingle, jingle...well, forget that. Cozy sells, that is the point.
And marking the end of the first calendar year without Marlou...and I can be most thankful for Jane...to bundle up together when the days are darkest and coldest. Winter may be in its depth...but Jane and I are attending the Christmas party at the home of Farmer Gray...perfect ending to a perfect day...the perfection of anything being otherwise in doubt.
And with the waning of the sharpest sense of grief, death's lessons and its mark remain. There is that to celebrate too, the dying of things. The deadest part of the year. The least light, the most darkness. The end of the year and the traditional time to take stock. The Beatles said it best: and so this is Christmas, and what have you done?
Well in this deadest time, I have watched someone become dead. Clint's death essentially came without resistance. He resisted inactivity, Clint did, but not his own end. Seemingly total acceptance reigned. The end was coming, he saw it, he accepted. About 20 years ago I recall Clint, whom I had just met, talking about the death of Paul Sherlock, Phyllis' divorced husband. In a move that outwardly seemed unconventional, but was utterly true to the hearts of those involved, Paul died at Phyllis'...once their...home. She nursed him to the end. And at the end, Clint was there.
He told the men's group how it was. It taught him, Clint said, that he was not afraid of death. Clearly, he meant it. Clint lived and died that way. He never gave up putting all he had into living. And he understood that dying runs on automatic. The winter solstice. Time to celebrate the end, our end, and if we are to be renewed...this is unexpected, something extra, worthy of thanks.
And what have you done? The answer lies in my current personal avatar, Jane's dog Bixby. I continue to identify with Bixby. We are damaged souls, survivors of something fearsome. And just not the neuromuscular level in my case, but my childhood, its aftermath...and whatever is left. I have seen healing in Bixby and through Bixby and may even have contributed to it. We have bonded, we two wounded.
When petted, in the past Bixby never looked at me. Now, he lifts his head, sniffs, his eyes meet mine. What does he see? What do I project into him? Unanswerable, these questions. But he is acting more and more like an affectionate, fun-loving dog. Over the past year, I have seen him bound for the first time. He runs about playfully, lifting his paws like a majorette. Having grown up in some Oakland doggie hell house, 25 canines abandoned in someone's home...well, he has come a long way. Like the shellshocked, the battle fatigued, the traumatized, he may never fully recover. Just watch Bixby eat. A dash into my kitchen to grab some kibble, a dash out to the dining room to eat it, then back to the kitchen, dining room, kitchen. Thus, Bixby's childhood. And, by extension, mine.
It all converges somehow, death and its discipline of letting go, Bixby and his healing...brought together in ways that do not yet add up. But we are getting there, life and I.
About 30 years ago I had a bit of money saved, or inherited from my father, and either way, it was not much. A wealthy friend persuaded me that the best thing to invest such money in as...brace yourself...rugs. Yes, Persian carpets. Either she was dabbling in this business herself or simply liked carpets, it is hard to say. At this moment in American life, conventional savings and the stock market must have been unattractive. Whatever the impulse, I bought a Persian carpet. Actually, a Baluch. I have had it on various floors in various domiciles. It is currently in my front room. And it has become the favorite spot for the semi-house-broken Bixby to pee.
The thing is supposedly worth a few thousand bucks. And I will get it cleaned. But mostly what I like about all this is that I got it straight. We die. We say goodbye to our carpets. Cleaned, uncleaned, peed, whatever. Yes, I will protect my investment. But more important, I will protect Bixby. The dog is on a roll. Once cleaned, the old carpet will go in the closet, a cheaper one will replace it, and I will be happy about this. Yes, this is winter, and this I have done.
The winter solstice seems packed with reasons to celebrate. It is the year's hump, the point at which things, that is to say, days, stop contracting. Beyond this, things are on the ascendant. And while all this is perfectly reasonable, even more is going on, something about the heart of darkness, the darkness of cold, the depths of winter, the winter of our discontent. And what people do in response. Take the Christmas carol Sleigh Ride, given a breathless and atonal interpretation by at least one member of the bass section in the recent Menlo Park Chorus holiday concert. The essential shtick is coziness. It is so fucking cold out there, that in here...both locales being abstract and relative...we bundle up together. 'Like two birds of a feather...' jingle, jingle...well, forget that. Cozy sells, that is the point.
And marking the end of the first calendar year without Marlou...and I can be most thankful for Jane...to bundle up together when the days are darkest and coldest. Winter may be in its depth...but Jane and I are attending the Christmas party at the home of Farmer Gray...perfect ending to a perfect day...the perfection of anything being otherwise in doubt.
And with the waning of the sharpest sense of grief, death's lessons and its mark remain. There is that to celebrate too, the dying of things. The deadest part of the year. The least light, the most darkness. The end of the year and the traditional time to take stock. The Beatles said it best: and so this is Christmas, and what have you done?
Well in this deadest time, I have watched someone become dead. Clint's death essentially came without resistance. He resisted inactivity, Clint did, but not his own end. Seemingly total acceptance reigned. The end was coming, he saw it, he accepted. About 20 years ago I recall Clint, whom I had just met, talking about the death of Paul Sherlock, Phyllis' divorced husband. In a move that outwardly seemed unconventional, but was utterly true to the hearts of those involved, Paul died at Phyllis'...once their...home. She nursed him to the end. And at the end, Clint was there.
He told the men's group how it was. It taught him, Clint said, that he was not afraid of death. Clearly, he meant it. Clint lived and died that way. He never gave up putting all he had into living. And he understood that dying runs on automatic. The winter solstice. Time to celebrate the end, our end, and if we are to be renewed...this is unexpected, something extra, worthy of thanks.
And what have you done? The answer lies in my current personal avatar, Jane's dog Bixby. I continue to identify with Bixby. We are damaged souls, survivors of something fearsome. And just not the neuromuscular level in my case, but my childhood, its aftermath...and whatever is left. I have seen healing in Bixby and through Bixby and may even have contributed to it. We have bonded, we two wounded.
When petted, in the past Bixby never looked at me. Now, he lifts his head, sniffs, his eyes meet mine. What does he see? What do I project into him? Unanswerable, these questions. But he is acting more and more like an affectionate, fun-loving dog. Over the past year, I have seen him bound for the first time. He runs about playfully, lifting his paws like a majorette. Having grown up in some Oakland doggie hell house, 25 canines abandoned in someone's home...well, he has come a long way. Like the shellshocked, the battle fatigued, the traumatized, he may never fully recover. Just watch Bixby eat. A dash into my kitchen to grab some kibble, a dash out to the dining room to eat it, then back to the kitchen, dining room, kitchen. Thus, Bixby's childhood. And, by extension, mine.
It all converges somehow, death and its discipline of letting go, Bixby and his healing...brought together in ways that do not yet add up. But we are getting there, life and I.
About 30 years ago I had a bit of money saved, or inherited from my father, and either way, it was not much. A wealthy friend persuaded me that the best thing to invest such money in as...brace yourself...rugs. Yes, Persian carpets. Either she was dabbling in this business herself or simply liked carpets, it is hard to say. At this moment in American life, conventional savings and the stock market must have been unattractive. Whatever the impulse, I bought a Persian carpet. Actually, a Baluch. I have had it on various floors in various domiciles. It is currently in my front room. And it has become the favorite spot for the semi-house-broken Bixby to pee.
The thing is supposedly worth a few thousand bucks. And I will get it cleaned. But mostly what I like about all this is that I got it straight. We die. We say goodbye to our carpets. Cleaned, uncleaned, peed, whatever. Yes, I will protect my investment. But more important, I will protect Bixby. The dog is on a roll. Once cleaned, the old carpet will go in the closet, a cheaper one will replace it, and I will be happy about this. Yes, this is winter, and this I have done.
Winter light. The low slanting sun pries up thoughts, loosens memories. Which is why it is a good idea to sit outside at Café Borrone, even in December, or especially in December, cold be damned. Actually, with my back to the sun, the California morning's solar heating is enough to get me through an entire latté, sufficiently caffeinated to face anything. And what I'm facing for once is pleasantly mild. Something my friend Bruce, who reigns along with me on the Caltrain Advisory Committee, said regarding Eurostar, the London-Paris high-speed train. He had heard that the trip was not very interesting. No, no, no, I assured him.
Perhaps Bruce's friend had meant that the sub-Channel train ride was not particularly scenic. Not that it matters, though I would disagree even on that score. The experience is as unscenic as being launched into low earth orbit. The view may be confined to a tiny porthole and a bunch of dials, but there's a lot going on. And you know it. That is the thing.
First, there is the launch pad, London's refurbished, restored, and forgive me, re-visioned St. Pancras Station. An utterly mad Victorian folly of bricks and chimneys that looks like some Disney animator had jammed 100 small rowhouses into the vertical...spraying the result with patches of soot, just for shade and accent. Or that's the way it used to look before the century of smoke was steam cleaned from its brick exterior and, inside, from its vast glass and wrought iron arching canopy...repainted, the supporting metal work now revealing decorative curlicues. And looming above it all, the most dominant feature, even distracting from the shops and bakeries and restaurants beyond the tracks, the gently erotic statue of a couple kissing. It's a two-story sculpture, the woman's skirt tight across her bottom, the man's hand not quite touching there but seemingly about to, un-English in the way the station's signature piece should be...Continental and uninsular. Not to mention the normal sized statue of the portly John Betjeman, poet, journalist and savior of the station. Modern architecture being something of a national challenge in the UK, the wrecking ball often poised at the wrong times and at the wrong targets.
And that's just the start of the Eurostar experience...for moments after slipping out of London, there's Kent, an otherwise large and green English county that rolls on and on until the North Sea intervenes...but on this Paris-bound train, you miss the whole thing if you stare too long at your coffee. Which, by the way, is not sloshing on your quadriplegic lap, this rail experience being remarkably smooth. These 67 miles of Kent countryside disappear faster than the name, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Which was constructed...God only knows how...what with cost overruns and more archaeology than right-of-way. The latter is a fact. Stick a shovel into almost any section of English ground and you come up with history. Roman coins being so common that you would think that Hadrian's army had installed vending machines along the way.
Coming from a country whose infrastructure is crumbling, the soon-to-be-built 11-mile rail tunnel under East London seems just as astonishing...City of London banks and financial firms having agreed to a voluntary tax to support much of the construction. These days the very notion of a 'voluntary tax' being enough to throw much of America into cardiac arrest. Never mind, and no sense in thinking westward, while hurtling eastward. The green blur of Kent stops, of course, when the concrete and fluorescent blur of the Chunnel takes over. Yes, it's not very interesting. Unless you consider this uninteresting thing happening for 22 miles, the geological weight of several ice ages and drifting continents resting atop you like a sumo wrestler napping after sex. Which you may or may not be thinking about, the food service being so wonderful aboard Eurostar. A napkin on the lap, a breakfast cappuccino or lunch or dinner wine amplifying the omelette or filet of sole on your plate. And are the French known for fucking around with food?
No wonder you barely notice when the train blasts back into the open air, the free air of free France...all the barbed wire on the Continent side being there to prevent any more immigrants from stealing into Britain. Calais once being infamous for its camp of immigrant detainees. Not that you see any of this, or barely think about it, for the fields of northern France are blasting by. The train hits 186 mph somewhere around here, being 1/100,000th the speed of light, if you want to think about it, which you should. Better, you should think about the turn, the one you can't even see, so gradual it is. But this is required, Paris being slightly south, the train heading east. A 90° turn spread over something like 20 miles. And near the end of the 2 1/4 hours, barely enough time for a decent meal, here come the suburbs of Paris.
Scenic? Or cynic? That is the choice you have. Either marvel at the thing or get all jaded and declare it a bore. Any idea of what this trip used to involve? Rattling out of Victoria Station to Folkstone or Dover, getting off the train and schlepping some distance to a boat. Ferries? I guess that is technically what they are. In the same sense that the English Channel is technically a short sea passage. Actually, it is a watery hell cauldron, periodically smoothed for summer tourists, otherwise bashing away like an apprentice hurricane. A 90 minute voyage that can seem like days. Followed by another schlep to another train, this one bound for the Gare du Nord...whose platforms would drift into view six hours or so after you said goodbye to London. This happening now aboard Eurostar, six minutes after you said goodbye to your Beaujolais. And even better, there in some strange German Jewish mirror effect, is cousin Bob.
We look vaguely alike, that is the thing...have seen each other through thick and thin since our early 20s...and now in our 60s the thick predominates...but we are both still here, that is the other thing. And so are our neuroses, at least mine. Like someone truly filial, I can't help but compare myself to Bob. Early in life, he was a success. A big macher in the rarefied world of European economics, a sphere of involvement that has now spread to Asia Minor, the Middle East. And here I am, the wheelchair guy, now retired. And after hugs and a remarkable number of jokes in a small number of minutes...off to my hotel, to which Bob knows the way, having lived here for over 30 years.
Bob is an action guy, and the Gare du Nord is no place to linger. He's got my bag. I've got a plan. Bob does too, which has to do with the fact that we only see each other every year or two. And it's easy to forget that this is the motorized era of my life, the schlepping era long gone. No, my 80 kilo wheelchair cannot fit in Bob's Smart Car, although it is just possible that his Smart Car could be carried on my wheelchair.
So...we're fucked, Bendix, is that it, he asks? Actually Bob is indefatigably optimistic. Or so I have always thought. He frowns when I tell him my plan. The Paris transit website shows a wheelchair-accessible bus stop just in front of the station. Bob says he doubts this. Within minutes I doubt it to, for we have just stopped at the transit system's information kiosk, the lovely reception woman hasn't heard of such a thing. I am tired, travel being what it is, but I persevere. Let's ask someone else. Bob throws French around like the airport guys toss baggage. Better, he knows the indigenous politesse, approaching topics like this one with all the correct indirectness. The transit kiosk woman will summon a specialist. A typically French notion, Bob tells me. We prepare to wait. But here he is, the station's assistant manager, slightly rotund, bald and mustachioed like Hercule Poirot. A rapidfire exchange ensues. No, no, the man tells us, there is no such thing as a bus for wheelchairs. But the transit website? He waves this away. There is, in fact, only one thing to do. Charter a special wheelchair van, the phone number of which he can find, if we would kindly wait just a moment. How much? €75.
I thank him. Bob thanks him. The cousins must have a discussion now, and we may request his further assistance. Ah, yes, and he is gone. The hotel isn't that far, I tell Bob, it's summertime, and I'm not forking over more than $100 for a van. He can drive my bags to the hotel. We set off, me bouncing toward the Rue La Fayette, Bob in his car. But I don't get far. The blue wheelchair sign on the bus stop in front of the station says everything. The bus that stops there, the driver motioning with his hand that he is about to lower the ramp, says substantially more than anyone in the railway station. Perhaps I am hallucinating this disabled-accessible transit moment. Or perhaps I am a specialist myself, world expert in the maneuverings of the chaise roulante. At the hotel Bob seems astonished to see me there so soon. I smile mysteriously.
I have other fish to fry. The hotel was rather vague on the topic of wheelchairs, its website assuring travelers that the management was most sympathetic to disabled travelers. Which translates into a three-inch step into the place, just enough of an obstacle to make my spirits sag. Still, there have been efforts. Someone has beveled the leading edge of the step. And with a spine-jolting run at the thing, my wheelchair can jump it. Which I do, though everyone in the lobby is looking at me. Including Bob. This adds up to a moment of embarrassment, as always, unnecessary.
Which I come to understand soon enough, but first there is the hotel room, reached by one of those bird cage elevators that make one feel so European, not to mention panicked and claustrophobic. Bob takes the stairs, my wheelchair occupying the entire lift, and watches while I try to emerge from it. The narrow hallway demands several back-and-forth maneuvers. The room's narrow doorway requires the same. And inside? Friendly and misguided efforts at wheelchair accessibility. In the toilet, a grab bar oddly placed by the door. The bathtub, a high-rise invention designed for a pole vaulter, does have a grip handle built into the edge. I will be sponge-bathing from the sink. To hell with it, for Paris is outside, Bob rushing back to the office, and I am not going to waste a minute worrying about wheelchair access. For I am hungry.
But actually, hungry for this, the stuff that blossoms as I emerge onto the sidewalk. Arriving, my consciousness was blinkered by fear, the Paris street map gripping my brain and pulling me through intersections, up and down curbs, onward and onward, never mind the glorious and picturesque, such is the eternal vulnerability of the wheelchair traveler. But not now, for Bob will return soon. And the back of The Madeleine is right here. And what is it, this church that looks like the Parthenon? A sign promises concerts. A wedding has just ended. I just have to roll around the place, looking for possible wheelchair entry. Hopeless. I could ask the hotel's concierge, but never mind.
Hungry, I was hungry, so off...and around the block. And damned if life isn't worth it, after all, look at this. I am in Paris, old and crippled and widowed...or is it widowered...and who can say, and who could care? Just look at this neighborhood brasserie, the menu facing the street in a framed lighted holder. For a brief moment I try to convert euros, then roll away. This restaurant has three front steps. Someone runs in front of me, a guy with a dangling cigarette. I am desperately trying to grasp the simple words he has muttered, shamed by my schoolboy French, which is somewhat irrelevant now. For the real grasp involves this man's hands, not to mention those of his compatriot behind me. I am ascending, like an Indian pasha, turning in midair, as these guys carry me into the restaurant.
I should protest, really I should, but protest what? For this is at the core of disabled travel, maybe life itself. There's no guidebook for this. No map. You just roll down the street and...find that in the middle of this jammed, impersonal, tourist-packed city...people have an idea that we are all in this together. And dinner? I am hardly even alone for this. The guys who carried me in keep coming by and patting me on the shoulder, pouring me more wine. Is this a family-run restaurant or an actual family? And how much wine can I wisely drink, the toilets clearly down a narrow, curving flight of medieval stairs? Never mind, for the hotel is very close, I have had enough, and here's my credit card...and then everything tilts, an earthquake in progress, maybe the wine. No, my airborne exit, the guys unsummoned, smoking and grunting under the staggering weight of steel and lead batteries and me. I thank them profusely, or try to, and they wave lightly and rush back to TV soccer in the bar.
Is it just my wheelchair experience? After all, Americans have this thing about the French, how they are so rude and mean and won't take part in the coalition of the willing, and so on. And everywhere I go, it's the opposite. And by the way, how many American bus drivers, like the one I encounter the following morning, wear an ironed white shirt and tie? This one, the young man whose bus is heading in the general direction of the Musée d'Orsay. When we stop along the Seine, just across the river from the museum, he is very concerned. The bridge, he says, may not take wheelchairs.
I am touched, and try to tell him so, rolling from his bus to solid ground. This is the thing about the French, their intense focus on a narrow sphere of endeavor. Which is wonderful in the hands of a man like this one, going to pains to make sure I get off his bus safely. As for the bridge, well, he doesn't know. He isn't in the bridge department. No one else knows, of course. But I do. I don't know how I do, having no information on the Passerelle de Solférino. Except what is obvious, that this is a new bridge, constructed in the era of the EU. Rules and regulations and wheelchair access. It is a glorious, single-span design, leading right to the museum. Not only is its slope and general layout quite conducive to wheelchairs, but there is even a nonskid surface. In short, it bridges everything.
Perhaps Bruce's friend had meant that the sub-Channel train ride was not particularly scenic. Not that it matters, though I would disagree even on that score. The experience is as unscenic as being launched into low earth orbit. The view may be confined to a tiny porthole and a bunch of dials, but there's a lot going on. And you know it. That is the thing.
First, there is the launch pad, London's refurbished, restored, and forgive me, re-visioned St. Pancras Station. An utterly mad Victorian folly of bricks and chimneys that looks like some Disney animator had jammed 100 small rowhouses into the vertical...spraying the result with patches of soot, just for shade and accent. Or that's the way it used to look before the century of smoke was steam cleaned from its brick exterior and, inside, from its vast glass and wrought iron arching canopy...repainted, the supporting metal work now revealing decorative curlicues. And looming above it all, the most dominant feature, even distracting from the shops and bakeries and restaurants beyond the tracks, the gently erotic statue of a couple kissing. It's a two-story sculpture, the woman's skirt tight across her bottom, the man's hand not quite touching there but seemingly about to, un-English in the way the station's signature piece should be...Continental and uninsular. Not to mention the normal sized statue of the portly John Betjeman, poet, journalist and savior of the station. Modern architecture being something of a national challenge in the UK, the wrecking ball often poised at the wrong times and at the wrong targets.
And that's just the start of the Eurostar experience...for moments after slipping out of London, there's Kent, an otherwise large and green English county that rolls on and on until the North Sea intervenes...but on this Paris-bound train, you miss the whole thing if you stare too long at your coffee. Which, by the way, is not sloshing on your quadriplegic lap, this rail experience being remarkably smooth. These 67 miles of Kent countryside disappear faster than the name, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Which was constructed...God only knows how...what with cost overruns and more archaeology than right-of-way. The latter is a fact. Stick a shovel into almost any section of English ground and you come up with history. Roman coins being so common that you would think that Hadrian's army had installed vending machines along the way.
Coming from a country whose infrastructure is crumbling, the soon-to-be-built 11-mile rail tunnel under East London seems just as astonishing...City of London banks and financial firms having agreed to a voluntary tax to support much of the construction. These days the very notion of a 'voluntary tax' being enough to throw much of America into cardiac arrest. Never mind, and no sense in thinking westward, while hurtling eastward. The green blur of Kent stops, of course, when the concrete and fluorescent blur of the Chunnel takes over. Yes, it's not very interesting. Unless you consider this uninteresting thing happening for 22 miles, the geological weight of several ice ages and drifting continents resting atop you like a sumo wrestler napping after sex. Which you may or may not be thinking about, the food service being so wonderful aboard Eurostar. A napkin on the lap, a breakfast cappuccino or lunch or dinner wine amplifying the omelette or filet of sole on your plate. And are the French known for fucking around with food?
No wonder you barely notice when the train blasts back into the open air, the free air of free France...all the barbed wire on the Continent side being there to prevent any more immigrants from stealing into Britain. Calais once being infamous for its camp of immigrant detainees. Not that you see any of this, or barely think about it, for the fields of northern France are blasting by. The train hits 186 mph somewhere around here, being 1/100,000th the speed of light, if you want to think about it, which you should. Better, you should think about the turn, the one you can't even see, so gradual it is. But this is required, Paris being slightly south, the train heading east. A 90° turn spread over something like 20 miles. And near the end of the 2 1/4 hours, barely enough time for a decent meal, here come the suburbs of Paris.
Scenic? Or cynic? That is the choice you have. Either marvel at the thing or get all jaded and declare it a bore. Any idea of what this trip used to involve? Rattling out of Victoria Station to Folkstone or Dover, getting off the train and schlepping some distance to a boat. Ferries? I guess that is technically what they are. In the same sense that the English Channel is technically a short sea passage. Actually, it is a watery hell cauldron, periodically smoothed for summer tourists, otherwise bashing away like an apprentice hurricane. A 90 minute voyage that can seem like days. Followed by another schlep to another train, this one bound for the Gare du Nord...whose platforms would drift into view six hours or so after you said goodbye to London. This happening now aboard Eurostar, six minutes after you said goodbye to your Beaujolais. And even better, there in some strange German Jewish mirror effect, is cousin Bob.
We look vaguely alike, that is the thing...have seen each other through thick and thin since our early 20s...and now in our 60s the thick predominates...but we are both still here, that is the other thing. And so are our neuroses, at least mine. Like someone truly filial, I can't help but compare myself to Bob. Early in life, he was a success. A big macher in the rarefied world of European economics, a sphere of involvement that has now spread to Asia Minor, the Middle East. And here I am, the wheelchair guy, now retired. And after hugs and a remarkable number of jokes in a small number of minutes...off to my hotel, to which Bob knows the way, having lived here for over 30 years.
Bob is an action guy, and the Gare du Nord is no place to linger. He's got my bag. I've got a plan. Bob does too, which has to do with the fact that we only see each other every year or two. And it's easy to forget that this is the motorized era of my life, the schlepping era long gone. No, my 80 kilo wheelchair cannot fit in Bob's Smart Car, although it is just possible that his Smart Car could be carried on my wheelchair.
So...we're fucked, Bendix, is that it, he asks? Actually Bob is indefatigably optimistic. Or so I have always thought. He frowns when I tell him my plan. The Paris transit website shows a wheelchair-accessible bus stop just in front of the station. Bob says he doubts this. Within minutes I doubt it to, for we have just stopped at the transit system's information kiosk, the lovely reception woman hasn't heard of such a thing. I am tired, travel being what it is, but I persevere. Let's ask someone else. Bob throws French around like the airport guys toss baggage. Better, he knows the indigenous politesse, approaching topics like this one with all the correct indirectness. The transit kiosk woman will summon a specialist. A typically French notion, Bob tells me. We prepare to wait. But here he is, the station's assistant manager, slightly rotund, bald and mustachioed like Hercule Poirot. A rapidfire exchange ensues. No, no, the man tells us, there is no such thing as a bus for wheelchairs. But the transit website? He waves this away. There is, in fact, only one thing to do. Charter a special wheelchair van, the phone number of which he can find, if we would kindly wait just a moment. How much? €75.
I thank him. Bob thanks him. The cousins must have a discussion now, and we may request his further assistance. Ah, yes, and he is gone. The hotel isn't that far, I tell Bob, it's summertime, and I'm not forking over more than $100 for a van. He can drive my bags to the hotel. We set off, me bouncing toward the Rue La Fayette, Bob in his car. But I don't get far. The blue wheelchair sign on the bus stop in front of the station says everything. The bus that stops there, the driver motioning with his hand that he is about to lower the ramp, says substantially more than anyone in the railway station. Perhaps I am hallucinating this disabled-accessible transit moment. Or perhaps I am a specialist myself, world expert in the maneuverings of the chaise roulante. At the hotel Bob seems astonished to see me there so soon. I smile mysteriously.
I have other fish to fry. The hotel was rather vague on the topic of wheelchairs, its website assuring travelers that the management was most sympathetic to disabled travelers. Which translates into a three-inch step into the place, just enough of an obstacle to make my spirits sag. Still, there have been efforts. Someone has beveled the leading edge of the step. And with a spine-jolting run at the thing, my wheelchair can jump it. Which I do, though everyone in the lobby is looking at me. Including Bob. This adds up to a moment of embarrassment, as always, unnecessary.
Which I come to understand soon enough, but first there is the hotel room, reached by one of those bird cage elevators that make one feel so European, not to mention panicked and claustrophobic. Bob takes the stairs, my wheelchair occupying the entire lift, and watches while I try to emerge from it. The narrow hallway demands several back-and-forth maneuvers. The room's narrow doorway requires the same. And inside? Friendly and misguided efforts at wheelchair accessibility. In the toilet, a grab bar oddly placed by the door. The bathtub, a high-rise invention designed for a pole vaulter, does have a grip handle built into the edge. I will be sponge-bathing from the sink. To hell with it, for Paris is outside, Bob rushing back to the office, and I am not going to waste a minute worrying about wheelchair access. For I am hungry.
But actually, hungry for this, the stuff that blossoms as I emerge onto the sidewalk. Arriving, my consciousness was blinkered by fear, the Paris street map gripping my brain and pulling me through intersections, up and down curbs, onward and onward, never mind the glorious and picturesque, such is the eternal vulnerability of the wheelchair traveler. But not now, for Bob will return soon. And the back of The Madeleine is right here. And what is it, this church that looks like the Parthenon? A sign promises concerts. A wedding has just ended. I just have to roll around the place, looking for possible wheelchair entry. Hopeless. I could ask the hotel's concierge, but never mind.
Hungry, I was hungry, so off...and around the block. And damned if life isn't worth it, after all, look at this. I am in Paris, old and crippled and widowed...or is it widowered...and who can say, and who could care? Just look at this neighborhood brasserie, the menu facing the street in a framed lighted holder. For a brief moment I try to convert euros, then roll away. This restaurant has three front steps. Someone runs in front of me, a guy with a dangling cigarette. I am desperately trying to grasp the simple words he has muttered, shamed by my schoolboy French, which is somewhat irrelevant now. For the real grasp involves this man's hands, not to mention those of his compatriot behind me. I am ascending, like an Indian pasha, turning in midair, as these guys carry me into the restaurant.
I should protest, really I should, but protest what? For this is at the core of disabled travel, maybe life itself. There's no guidebook for this. No map. You just roll down the street and...find that in the middle of this jammed, impersonal, tourist-packed city...people have an idea that we are all in this together. And dinner? I am hardly even alone for this. The guys who carried me in keep coming by and patting me on the shoulder, pouring me more wine. Is this a family-run restaurant or an actual family? And how much wine can I wisely drink, the toilets clearly down a narrow, curving flight of medieval stairs? Never mind, for the hotel is very close, I have had enough, and here's my credit card...and then everything tilts, an earthquake in progress, maybe the wine. No, my airborne exit, the guys unsummoned, smoking and grunting under the staggering weight of steel and lead batteries and me. I thank them profusely, or try to, and they wave lightly and rush back to TV soccer in the bar.
Is it just my wheelchair experience? After all, Americans have this thing about the French, how they are so rude and mean and won't take part in the coalition of the willing, and so on. And everywhere I go, it's the opposite. And by the way, how many American bus drivers, like the one I encounter the following morning, wear an ironed white shirt and tie? This one, the young man whose bus is heading in the general direction of the Musée d'Orsay. When we stop along the Seine, just across the river from the museum, he is very concerned. The bridge, he says, may not take wheelchairs.
I am touched, and try to tell him so, rolling from his bus to solid ground. This is the thing about the French, their intense focus on a narrow sphere of endeavor. Which is wonderful in the hands of a man like this one, going to pains to make sure I get off his bus safely. As for the bridge, well, he doesn't know. He isn't in the bridge department. No one else knows, of course. But I do. I don't know how I do, having no information on the Passerelle de Solférino. Except what is obvious, that this is a new bridge, constructed in the era of the EU. Rules and regulations and wheelchair access. It is a glorious, single-span design, leading right to the museum. Not only is its slope and general layout quite conducive to wheelchairs, but there is even a nonskid surface. In short, it bridges everything.
At 4:30 in the afternoon a friend calls and asks me how to begin writing a book. At first, I assume he is kidding. But, no, this guy does not joke in this way. He is practical, straightforward and appreciates irony, but rarely initiates it. No, he means it. This guy wants to write a book, which he now explains will be a how-to manual of sorts. And where to begin? No, there is no need to search for irony. Except the cosmic variety. I have been trying to begin writing all day.
In the interest of full disclosure, let us acknowledge that the day began bleakly. I had some deep anxiety in the night, popped a couple of herbal sleeping pills and awoke dark and chamomile-sullen. Which was followed by the visit from Paul, volunteer from the Catholic Workers' House...which includes a bit of physiotherapeutic strolling in front of my apartment, then a quick run to the bank and a stop at Peet's. Followed by a haircut. Then a series of travel arrangements, involving e-mailing and phone calls, bringing one to the lunch hour and a nip over to the local sushi outlet to meet a friend. Naturally, this was promptly followed by the wheelchair repair guy. He arrived to fix a small plastic lens on one light, accompanied by an invoice for $160. Which, in my defense, I did not take lying down, or even sitting down. A call to his boss halved the charge, reducing the expense of the 10-minute visit from the outrageous to the merely preposterous. Followed by another communiqué or two regarding the movement of wheelchairs around the island of Oahu.
Retired people in Florida, many have observed, use visits to their doctors as a social outing. The idea is that there's not much to do. I am in no position to act superior. This day, all days, run away from me. That is to say, first things come first, not that they are necessarily first in priority, but first in psychic ease. Having progressed a long distance down the Spilkes Trail at night, I was not inclined to go there again during the day. This is, I believe, what kept me from writing...though not entirely. I took care of my body. In managing travel, I took care of a number of people. And I learned something about bargains.
With years of visits to Oahu, I have learned what it takes to get around in a wheelchair. Either a private company like 'InvaCabs of Honolulu' with charges in the $150 range, or the island's bus system. I had assumed that in the February trip to Hawaii I would be enjoying public transit. Which actually is quite enjoyable, full of folkloric island charm, remarkably scenic. But slow. A bus from Waikiki to the airport takes almost an hour. A bus from the airport around the island to the North Shore takes well over three hours. But what the hell. It's only time, right? No, it's also discomfort. And it's also unnecessary. This time, a travel agent undertook the arrangements, booking air and hotel in a package deal...which included ground transportation at a modest charge. With nothing extra for the wheelchair. Okay, so how do you start a book?
My question is much more personal. How do I start to work on the simple editing tasks that Eric, friend and editor, has already assigned me? How do I stop avoiding them? How do I start acting like I'm publishing a book?
In the interest of full disclosure, let us acknowledge that the day began bleakly. I had some deep anxiety in the night, popped a couple of herbal sleeping pills and awoke dark and chamomile-sullen. Which was followed by the visit from Paul, volunteer from the Catholic Workers' House...which includes a bit of physiotherapeutic strolling in front of my apartment, then a quick run to the bank and a stop at Peet's. Followed by a haircut. Then a series of travel arrangements, involving e-mailing and phone calls, bringing one to the lunch hour and a nip over to the local sushi outlet to meet a friend. Naturally, this was promptly followed by the wheelchair repair guy. He arrived to fix a small plastic lens on one light, accompanied by an invoice for $160. Which, in my defense, I did not take lying down, or even sitting down. A call to his boss halved the charge, reducing the expense of the 10-minute visit from the outrageous to the merely preposterous. Followed by another communiqué or two regarding the movement of wheelchairs around the island of Oahu.
Retired people in Florida, many have observed, use visits to their doctors as a social outing. The idea is that there's not much to do. I am in no position to act superior. This day, all days, run away from me. That is to say, first things come first, not that they are necessarily first in priority, but first in psychic ease. Having progressed a long distance down the Spilkes Trail at night, I was not inclined to go there again during the day. This is, I believe, what kept me from writing...though not entirely. I took care of my body. In managing travel, I took care of a number of people. And I learned something about bargains.
With years of visits to Oahu, I have learned what it takes to get around in a wheelchair. Either a private company like 'InvaCabs of Honolulu' with charges in the $150 range, or the island's bus system. I had assumed that in the February trip to Hawaii I would be enjoying public transit. Which actually is quite enjoyable, full of folkloric island charm, remarkably scenic. But slow. A bus from Waikiki to the airport takes almost an hour. A bus from the airport around the island to the North Shore takes well over three hours. But what the hell. It's only time, right? No, it's also discomfort. And it's also unnecessary. This time, a travel agent undertook the arrangements, booking air and hotel in a package deal...which included ground transportation at a modest charge. With nothing extra for the wheelchair. Okay, so how do you start a book?
My question is much more personal. How do I start to work on the simple editing tasks that Eric, friend and editor, has already assigned me? How do I stop avoiding them? How do I start acting like I'm publishing a book?
Funny how one moment I idly wander up a street in Berkeley and not only stumble into a guy with a gun, but hit the paralysis jackpot. And more than 42 years later I am wandering up another street in Berkeley and stumble into...an inverted and stripped-down version of the same thing...all the ingredients present, just chopped and sorted and arranged in what restaurants call a presentation. Definitely cooked, raw the first time, slow simmered the second.
Okay, so this time it's Addison Street, downtown Berkeley. Which is, and always has been, an urban center that is neither urban nor centered. That's why there is a Center Street to provide access to the BART underground station. Buildings in the 10-story range give an illusion of city to the district, with the presence of a couple of live theaters and a famous music nightspot tilting the impression in the same direction. But I don't buy it. There isn't enough street life. For decades the city's sidewalks were dominated by an afterimage of the 1960s, aggressive panhandlers and down-at-heel musicians invading one's personal space, block after block along Telegraph Avenue...while Shattuck Avenue downtown offered a feeble version of the same thing...time passed and Berkeley is Berkeley.
This time Jane and I are striding and rolling, respectively, toward dinner and a play. A middle-aged black guy heading the same direction asks if we aren't headed for the Berkeley Rep, and yes we are, and which play? Oh yes, 'Arabian Nights' is quite long, he says. Two and a half hours. Gosh, he laments, his car won't start. Just phoned AAA, got some operator in India who said his auto club membership was not up to date. And now he needs some cash for the BART ride to El Cerrito. By by this point, I have stiffened, even shoving the joystick on my folding wheelchair to the max, but feeling bad about this, for I am more or less leaving Jane behind. I recognize a scam. A pretty good one, this line, all ingredients holding together, except for the pacing. He had to get it all in before we reached Shattuck Avenue, and I could sense the rhythm picking up as the corner neared. That, and the bit about the auto club membership, the operator in India...borrowed bits and snatches of middle-class badinage.
He was astute, this guy, I will give him that. In that region between mild socio-pathology and salesmanship. Jane gave him a little money, said she didn't care one way or the other about being conned. He needed money, that was the point. I needed something too. I needed my openness to not be taken for granted. Given my history of encounters with black men on Berkeley streets, it takes effort to exchange pleasantries with such a stranger. And there is that other thing, being taken for a fool. If I had had the presence of mind, and the generosity of heart, and the nerve, things would have gone more like this. Thanks for the conversation, but to be perfectly frank, I don't buy your story. Still, it's a good story, and I am a good person and would like to give you some money. Here. Take it, and maybe the economy will improve. But I doubt it. Still, I hope there's a place for you in the world and you find it. Goodbye.
The truth. The fact that I know, and he knows that I know. But it's okay, no big moral lecture on Calvinist do's and don'ts vis-à-vis honest employment. Scam if you wish, I don't care. That sort of thing.
Why the big deal? I don't think I said much of anything to the guys on Cedar Street, that June night in 1968 when they asked if I had any money. Except 'no.' The sort of thing I said to panhandlers of that, and any other, era. Menace, being naïve, nearly dying of the combination, all this has made its mark.
I remember Michael Liebert, probably a year or two ahead of me at Berkeley, a big macher in the Drama Department. Who used his own trust fund money to start an off-campus theater troupe. Which has gone into this, a permanent home with two playhouses, but much more important, the sort of evening Jane and I had on Addison Street. 'The Arabian Nights,' an utterly fresh vision of another culture's humor and storytelling, ethos and foibles. Performed by a breathtaking cast. Constructed and paced so effortlessly that one doesn't even think about it. Heart opening, heart wrenching, and suddenly mind expanding, the political and humanitarian mind, incredibly. Leaving one to stumble back into the reality of Addison Street.
And another black guy, openly panhandling, this one, actually a relief. Wishing everyone a Christmas blessing, of a sort. That we all may get what we want. Truly American, with its crass good cheer, the irony lost...that Yiddish curse, may you get everything you ever wanted. Merry jingle. Jane and I headed south on Milvia Street. We had parked the car here. Jane had also assembled my wheelchair here, finishing just in time for the first black guy to idly walk by, perhaps having watched from a distance, waiting until the man was in his wheelchair and available for conversational bonding, being unwise to approach the woman first.
I know this town and don't know it. I know myself to the same degree. My idea in returning to the car together was that I'd watch as Jane hustled up the street, got in, then drove around the block to well lighted Addison Street. She could disassemble my wheelchair there in relative safety. All this happened as described, as planned. Except for the panhandler, who moved across the street and intermittently offered to help as Jane removed the wheelchair's batteries, folded its seat, lifted and stashed the thing in the car.
Which is where Phila comes in. Actually, she came in at the beginning of this tale, joining us both for dinner and the play. I insisted on following her down Addison Street to where she had parked. But not quite all the way. She waved me off at the corner, insisting that the parking lot was well lit. Phila has had a street crime experience herself, having gotten mugged and roughed up at the Emeryville Amtrak station a couple of years ago. I knew she meant it in sending me away. This would do. She had been handling herself quite well for more than 80 years. Besides, she said, if I get assaulted, my time has come. Which, as I get older, seems all there is to say.
Okay, so this time it's Addison Street, downtown Berkeley. Which is, and always has been, an urban center that is neither urban nor centered. That's why there is a Center Street to provide access to the BART underground station. Buildings in the 10-story range give an illusion of city to the district, with the presence of a couple of live theaters and a famous music nightspot tilting the impression in the same direction. But I don't buy it. There isn't enough street life. For decades the city's sidewalks were dominated by an afterimage of the 1960s, aggressive panhandlers and down-at-heel musicians invading one's personal space, block after block along Telegraph Avenue...while Shattuck Avenue downtown offered a feeble version of the same thing...time passed and Berkeley is Berkeley.
This time Jane and I are striding and rolling, respectively, toward dinner and a play. A middle-aged black guy heading the same direction asks if we aren't headed for the Berkeley Rep, and yes we are, and which play? Oh yes, 'Arabian Nights' is quite long, he says. Two and a half hours. Gosh, he laments, his car won't start. Just phoned AAA, got some operator in India who said his auto club membership was not up to date. And now he needs some cash for the BART ride to El Cerrito. By by this point, I have stiffened, even shoving the joystick on my folding wheelchair to the max, but feeling bad about this, for I am more or less leaving Jane behind. I recognize a scam. A pretty good one, this line, all ingredients holding together, except for the pacing. He had to get it all in before we reached Shattuck Avenue, and I could sense the rhythm picking up as the corner neared. That, and the bit about the auto club membership, the operator in India...borrowed bits and snatches of middle-class badinage.
He was astute, this guy, I will give him that. In that region between mild socio-pathology and salesmanship. Jane gave him a little money, said she didn't care one way or the other about being conned. He needed money, that was the point. I needed something too. I needed my openness to not be taken for granted. Given my history of encounters with black men on Berkeley streets, it takes effort to exchange pleasantries with such a stranger. And there is that other thing, being taken for a fool. If I had had the presence of mind, and the generosity of heart, and the nerve, things would have gone more like this. Thanks for the conversation, but to be perfectly frank, I don't buy your story. Still, it's a good story, and I am a good person and would like to give you some money. Here. Take it, and maybe the economy will improve. But I doubt it. Still, I hope there's a place for you in the world and you find it. Goodbye.
The truth. The fact that I know, and he knows that I know. But it's okay, no big moral lecture on Calvinist do's and don'ts vis-à-vis honest employment. Scam if you wish, I don't care. That sort of thing.
Why the big deal? I don't think I said much of anything to the guys on Cedar Street, that June night in 1968 when they asked if I had any money. Except 'no.' The sort of thing I said to panhandlers of that, and any other, era. Menace, being naïve, nearly dying of the combination, all this has made its mark.
I remember Michael Liebert, probably a year or two ahead of me at Berkeley, a big macher in the Drama Department. Who used his own trust fund money to start an off-campus theater troupe. Which has gone into this, a permanent home with two playhouses, but much more important, the sort of evening Jane and I had on Addison Street. 'The Arabian Nights,' an utterly fresh vision of another culture's humor and storytelling, ethos and foibles. Performed by a breathtaking cast. Constructed and paced so effortlessly that one doesn't even think about it. Heart opening, heart wrenching, and suddenly mind expanding, the political and humanitarian mind, incredibly. Leaving one to stumble back into the reality of Addison Street.
And another black guy, openly panhandling, this one, actually a relief. Wishing everyone a Christmas blessing, of a sort. That we all may get what we want. Truly American, with its crass good cheer, the irony lost...that Yiddish curse, may you get everything you ever wanted. Merry jingle. Jane and I headed south on Milvia Street. We had parked the car here. Jane had also assembled my wheelchair here, finishing just in time for the first black guy to idly walk by, perhaps having watched from a distance, waiting until the man was in his wheelchair and available for conversational bonding, being unwise to approach the woman first.
I know this town and don't know it. I know myself to the same degree. My idea in returning to the car together was that I'd watch as Jane hustled up the street, got in, then drove around the block to well lighted Addison Street. She could disassemble my wheelchair there in relative safety. All this happened as described, as planned. Except for the panhandler, who moved across the street and intermittently offered to help as Jane removed the wheelchair's batteries, folded its seat, lifted and stashed the thing in the car.
Which is where Phila comes in. Actually, she came in at the beginning of this tale, joining us both for dinner and the play. I insisted on following her down Addison Street to where she had parked. But not quite all the way. She waved me off at the corner, insisting that the parking lot was well lit. Phila has had a street crime experience herself, having gotten mugged and roughed up at the Emeryville Amtrak station a couple of years ago. I knew she meant it in sending me away. This would do. She had been handling herself quite well for more than 80 years. Besides, she said, if I get assaulted, my time has come. Which, as I get older, seems all there is to say.
Ding dong merrily the chimes.... They are chiming in my head this morning in the wake of the annual Menlo Park Chorus holiday concert. Which sounds like the end of the story but is only the beginning. For singing has been one big spilkes factory of late. Or from a more sanguine perspective, it is a lehrstück, the choral experience. Recent memories now settling into the realm of relief and the soon to be forgotten. Better listen to the chimes while they are still chiming in my head, signaling not just the repetition of rehearsals, but the 11th hour grasp of harmonies. Even rhythms. I do not read music, so it's largely intuitive, the experience of singing in a group. A certain chunk of my life is bound up in the chorus. And that's how it is. Ding dong merrily, indeed.
First, I must appreciate the women. The whole thing was Marlou's idea. Recently arrived in Menlo Park, she had seen a notice in the community education bulletin. Chorus. Why not join? Marlou was mild and tentative in making this suggestion. I am glad that I caught the tone, picked up on the idea just because it was hers. Secretly, the idea did not appeal. Not reading music, well, that was part of it. Not feeling I had a voice or good sing decently, that was another. But there was, and is, an overwhelming fact of exposure, being the guy in the wheelchair, obvious enough in rehearsals, prominent in performance. My mind rolled in this direction naturally, quite without batteries or joystick. Another reason to join the chorus, of course.
In retrospect, there were all sorts of good couple-building aspects to our choral involvement. New in town, and not robustly confident at the best of times, Marlou was at home with choruses. Here, she could take the lead in many ways. Good for her, good for us. It was also a place in which she could be annoyed, sardonic, impatient with bad organization and officiousness. Though naturally recessive, Marlou would often speak up at chorus rehearsals, particularly when announcements droned on and on. She was easy with the chorus experience. She had moved into my place, and in this small way I was moving into hers.
I kept attending chorus rehearsals right up until her death, only missing a few...and going through the excruciating public announcement of her terminal state...then the funeral. Much of the chorus turned up. April, our director, sang some Fauré, and unbeknownst to me, I met Jane. So I now share the chorus experience with another soprano. Having an advanced degree in music, Jane may not see the chorus as I do. But she turns up for a remarkable number of rehearsals, sang in last night's performance...and even offered her church. St. Bede's no longer has unpleasant associations. It's Jane's church, the chorus' occasional venue. And singing has moved from one relationship to another.
Along with everything that goes with it. Where was the mother-woman-comforter-nurturer yesterday when I needed to get my suit on, my pre-concert nerves rattling? Well, one was dead, the other trying to deal with her own holiday work overload...and my brother was around to do the dressing job, one he has done for years. So things worked out splendidly...but I felt the emotional charge behind the chorus experience.
Funny thing about the voice. The more you use it, the better it gets. Take today. Even nominal efforts at humming anything produced stunning vocal results. That's because of yesterday, the big concert night. Panicked at my impending disaster...and the demented word is 'my'...I had spent the last several days doing vocal exercises, up and down the scales, practicing my music online. The previous week, anxieties rising, my musician friend Tom had come over for a lesson.
Why the fuss? The answer is still coming into focus, but there are some interesting facts. For one, my ability to sing has improved. At first, following the bass line in a four-part arrangement challenged me. Gradually I began to not only hear, but maintain, my own notes without getting sucked into the melody, typically sung by the sopranos. This must be one of those mind-expanding, gray-cell-building exercises someone is always hyping on public television.
Still, I really don't practice in between chorus rehearsals. So my vocal range shrinks. I can't read the notes. I can't hit many of them. Whole passages remain either challenging or baffling. So my essential chorus experience, particularly as a performance date nears, is one of being lost. Not knowing what I'm doing, or not knowing well enough. And, in view of my lack of practice, my avoidance of vocal exercise, the fault is mine. My failure. My inadequacy. My, my, my.
Interestingly, about the time I sent a plea for help to my friend Tom, my vocal needs and musical ignorance seeming dire...there was something I had overlooked. The online scores. Okay, I did use them, but only for the last few days. Up until then, at the height of my panic in particular, I had forgotten about the digital music files on the chorus website. One can play 'Jingle Bell Variations' for the bass section only, the entire chorus, the chorus and the accompaniment...it is all there, and always was there. This is why a psychologist has me working on mood management, anger management, call it what you will. 'Dementia' works for me.
Also coming into focus...well, consider my wheelchair van. Thousands of dollars went into outfitting it, training me to drive it, certifying my competence to do so. At one point, I was driving the new van around the nether purlieus of Santa Clara with three observers on board, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, maybe even a state vehicle inspector.
There is a lesson here for a quadriplegic attempting to stay on top of multiple musical scores in a three ring binder. The chorus director's snappy admonition to move on to 'Christmas in the Gully' or whatever, well it's easy for her to say. For me, it marks the start of a frantic thumbing through 15 or 20 different pieces of music, some duplicated, some printed in small booklets, each of a different size, one hiding the other. It doesn't take a genius to realize that some special help would make sense here. Tabs, for example, labeled, say. One chorus member even sent everyone music titles in the Avery label format. Just print and stick. They seemed like a great idea at the time, these labels. I just didn't bother. Actually, last night minutes before our concert with the chorus director trying to jump from the musical kinks in this piece to the pitfalls in that one...I was lost, one-handed fumbling failing to get me near 'I Wonder As I Wander' in enough time to do my bass-section bit without guesswork.
Forty years ago, fairly freshly quadriplegic and riding a London bus home from my psychoanalyst in the West End, I chatted to a woman beside me. What was I doing, she asked? I blathered on, offering her some bullshit about being on the brink of work. As she got off the bus, the woman handed me her card, suggested I get in touch. She was a social worker for the Royal Borough. The experience left me deflated but sobered in a useful way. Who was I trying to fool? More important, why was I trying to fool anyone, principally myself? Everything was difficult for me. Finding work, included.
I fake it. Going to great lengths to pretend that I don't need help. Perhaps that I'm not really disabled, or just barely so. I have a hard time looking at myself in formal portraits of the Menlo Park Chorus. My neck is badly bent. My shoulders are not where they should be. Years with a disability have created deformities. This is who I am, what I have to work with, and it's all much more visible in the front row of the chorus.
First, I must appreciate the women. The whole thing was Marlou's idea. Recently arrived in Menlo Park, she had seen a notice in the community education bulletin. Chorus. Why not join? Marlou was mild and tentative in making this suggestion. I am glad that I caught the tone, picked up on the idea just because it was hers. Secretly, the idea did not appeal. Not reading music, well, that was part of it. Not feeling I had a voice or good sing decently, that was another. But there was, and is, an overwhelming fact of exposure, being the guy in the wheelchair, obvious enough in rehearsals, prominent in performance. My mind rolled in this direction naturally, quite without batteries or joystick. Another reason to join the chorus, of course.
In retrospect, there were all sorts of good couple-building aspects to our choral involvement. New in town, and not robustly confident at the best of times, Marlou was at home with choruses. Here, she could take the lead in many ways. Good for her, good for us. It was also a place in which she could be annoyed, sardonic, impatient with bad organization and officiousness. Though naturally recessive, Marlou would often speak up at chorus rehearsals, particularly when announcements droned on and on. She was easy with the chorus experience. She had moved into my place, and in this small way I was moving into hers.
I kept attending chorus rehearsals right up until her death, only missing a few...and going through the excruciating public announcement of her terminal state...then the funeral. Much of the chorus turned up. April, our director, sang some Fauré, and unbeknownst to me, I met Jane. So I now share the chorus experience with another soprano. Having an advanced degree in music, Jane may not see the chorus as I do. But she turns up for a remarkable number of rehearsals, sang in last night's performance...and even offered her church. St. Bede's no longer has unpleasant associations. It's Jane's church, the chorus' occasional venue. And singing has moved from one relationship to another.
Along with everything that goes with it. Where was the mother-woman-comforter-nurturer yesterday when I needed to get my suit on, my pre-concert nerves rattling? Well, one was dead, the other trying to deal with her own holiday work overload...and my brother was around to do the dressing job, one he has done for years. So things worked out splendidly...but I felt the emotional charge behind the chorus experience.
Funny thing about the voice. The more you use it, the better it gets. Take today. Even nominal efforts at humming anything produced stunning vocal results. That's because of yesterday, the big concert night. Panicked at my impending disaster...and the demented word is 'my'...I had spent the last several days doing vocal exercises, up and down the scales, practicing my music online. The previous week, anxieties rising, my musician friend Tom had come over for a lesson.
Why the fuss? The answer is still coming into focus, but there are some interesting facts. For one, my ability to sing has improved. At first, following the bass line in a four-part arrangement challenged me. Gradually I began to not only hear, but maintain, my own notes without getting sucked into the melody, typically sung by the sopranos. This must be one of those mind-expanding, gray-cell-building exercises someone is always hyping on public television.
Still, I really don't practice in between chorus rehearsals. So my vocal range shrinks. I can't read the notes. I can't hit many of them. Whole passages remain either challenging or baffling. So my essential chorus experience, particularly as a performance date nears, is one of being lost. Not knowing what I'm doing, or not knowing well enough. And, in view of my lack of practice, my avoidance of vocal exercise, the fault is mine. My failure. My inadequacy. My, my, my.
Interestingly, about the time I sent a plea for help to my friend Tom, my vocal needs and musical ignorance seeming dire...there was something I had overlooked. The online scores. Okay, I did use them, but only for the last few days. Up until then, at the height of my panic in particular, I had forgotten about the digital music files on the chorus website. One can play 'Jingle Bell Variations' for the bass section only, the entire chorus, the chorus and the accompaniment...it is all there, and always was there. This is why a psychologist has me working on mood management, anger management, call it what you will. 'Dementia' works for me.
Also coming into focus...well, consider my wheelchair van. Thousands of dollars went into outfitting it, training me to drive it, certifying my competence to do so. At one point, I was driving the new van around the nether purlieus of Santa Clara with three observers on board, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, maybe even a state vehicle inspector.
There is a lesson here for a quadriplegic attempting to stay on top of multiple musical scores in a three ring binder. The chorus director's snappy admonition to move on to 'Christmas in the Gully' or whatever, well it's easy for her to say. For me, it marks the start of a frantic thumbing through 15 or 20 different pieces of music, some duplicated, some printed in small booklets, each of a different size, one hiding the other. It doesn't take a genius to realize that some special help would make sense here. Tabs, for example, labeled, say. One chorus member even sent everyone music titles in the Avery label format. Just print and stick. They seemed like a great idea at the time, these labels. I just didn't bother. Actually, last night minutes before our concert with the chorus director trying to jump from the musical kinks in this piece to the pitfalls in that one...I was lost, one-handed fumbling failing to get me near 'I Wonder As I Wander' in enough time to do my bass-section bit without guesswork.
Forty years ago, fairly freshly quadriplegic and riding a London bus home from my psychoanalyst in the West End, I chatted to a woman beside me. What was I doing, she asked? I blathered on, offering her some bullshit about being on the brink of work. As she got off the bus, the woman handed me her card, suggested I get in touch. She was a social worker for the Royal Borough. The experience left me deflated but sobered in a useful way. Who was I trying to fool? More important, why was I trying to fool anyone, principally myself? Everything was difficult for me. Finding work, included.
I fake it. Going to great lengths to pretend that I don't need help. Perhaps that I'm not really disabled, or just barely so. I have a hard time looking at myself in formal portraits of the Menlo Park Chorus. My neck is badly bent. My shoulders are not where they should be. Years with a disability have created deformities. This is who I am, what I have to work with, and it's all much more visible in the front row of the chorus.
Homeland Security. That's my issue. And even without a Department, I'm going to work on enforcement.
The signs have been there for years. Furtive morning trips to cafés. Furtive afternoon trips to cafés. Even offers when Jane is staying with me to throw on my jeans, stuff feet into shoes and make a run to Peet's for a couple of morning lattes. And not even furtive, this offer, nor desperate. Just restless and habitual...and proceeding from the belief that more is needed. There is not enough in the home. And the sense of security is not strong enough to override whatever amusement comes with a couple of steaming coffees. No, homeland security is not strong. In fact, it is weak. And with my 64th year drawing to a close, I am finally getting a psychic handle on this. Jane helps. Her family experience may have been painful, but she seems to retain a good sense of home and hearth. Both of her parents cooked, and good things happened at home along with bad ones. We don't share the same restless urge to go out, which is good. It's time to come home.
I'm not sure what went so fundamentally wrong with my own childhood home life. Sure, the parents battled. Is this what made both of them want to get out of the house? For they did, in one form or another. My father worked, long hours, often gone at evenings to make house calls. But even when he was at home, he was out. Outside, working on his property in the early days. Then burning the surrounding weeds, his perennial mission always described as making a firebreak. And my mother? I suspect she was on the border regarding matters of the hearth. On coldish days of desert winter she made big pots of steaming vegetable soup. A beef bone simmered on the stove, condensation gathering on the kitchen windows. The soup's aromas permeated the house, a sense of oniony sustenance and materiality emanating from my mother's pot stirring. On other days she baked bread. My mother knew how to do this and did it well, the process always fascinating me, how a sticky paste could be set in the bottom of a pan, then swell, grow and fill itself out into a loaf. Coming home from school, my mother's baking under way, I watched as she sliced and buttered pieces of hot, white bread for me, the kitchen aromatic.
All this happened, but not very often. So, these memories tell me what I need to do now, today. I need to enjoy my own home. When I say that my mother may have been on the border regarding domesticity, I am thinking of my father. I wonder if he ever praised her homemaking. I do recall in the waning years of their marriage my father's verdict on her baking. When she got disturbed, he said, my mother set about baking bread. It was all a symptomology, according to him. I seem to have thought about this, reaching no insight, of course. Except that the hearth could be tainted, not the nurturing place it seemed.
And so in the mornings my first impulse is to get out of the house. After all, shortly I will begin writing. What if there's nothing to say? With my imagination and my memories absent, there would be nothing. What if there is nothing? A cappuccino at Peet's isn't nothing. A bowl of oatmeal at Café Borrone isn't nothing either. People saying hello and reminding me that they know my name, that is nothing either. So, there is the return to the home with its fears of emptiness. There is no one and no thing, no center to hold.
Do my sister and I share this propensity to go out more then my brother? Perhaps. Richard seems more comfortable with home life, which is a good thing. On the other hand, we all have bits and pieces, we siblings. My sister is a great cook. I am pretty good at soup, not to mention gardening, inspirations both inherited from our mother. I spent so much of my childhood, and secretly my adulthood, feeling the loss of home. Why perpetuate this into midlife? After all, mine is a nice home, this apartment where I have lived more than anywhere else in my 64 years. Marlou worked hard to make it pleasant during her life, redoubling efforts near the end, to decorate, carpet and generally set the place up for my life without her. The piles of unread or partially read books about the apartment could be seen as possibilities, a future source of enjoyment...not a reminder of things unfinished. Homemaking. Making a home. Perhaps just a small change in emphasis, a shift in focus. Healing, coming home.
The signs have been there for years. Furtive morning trips to cafés. Furtive afternoon trips to cafés. Even offers when Jane is staying with me to throw on my jeans, stuff feet into shoes and make a run to Peet's for a couple of morning lattes. And not even furtive, this offer, nor desperate. Just restless and habitual...and proceeding from the belief that more is needed. There is not enough in the home. And the sense of security is not strong enough to override whatever amusement comes with a couple of steaming coffees. No, homeland security is not strong. In fact, it is weak. And with my 64th year drawing to a close, I am finally getting a psychic handle on this. Jane helps. Her family experience may have been painful, but she seems to retain a good sense of home and hearth. Both of her parents cooked, and good things happened at home along with bad ones. We don't share the same restless urge to go out, which is good. It's time to come home.
I'm not sure what went so fundamentally wrong with my own childhood home life. Sure, the parents battled. Is this what made both of them want to get out of the house? For they did, in one form or another. My father worked, long hours, often gone at evenings to make house calls. But even when he was at home, he was out. Outside, working on his property in the early days. Then burning the surrounding weeds, his perennial mission always described as making a firebreak. And my mother? I suspect she was on the border regarding matters of the hearth. On coldish days of desert winter she made big pots of steaming vegetable soup. A beef bone simmered on the stove, condensation gathering on the kitchen windows. The soup's aromas permeated the house, a sense of oniony sustenance and materiality emanating from my mother's pot stirring. On other days she baked bread. My mother knew how to do this and did it well, the process always fascinating me, how a sticky paste could be set in the bottom of a pan, then swell, grow and fill itself out into a loaf. Coming home from school, my mother's baking under way, I watched as she sliced and buttered pieces of hot, white bread for me, the kitchen aromatic.
All this happened, but not very often. So, these memories tell me what I need to do now, today. I need to enjoy my own home. When I say that my mother may have been on the border regarding domesticity, I am thinking of my father. I wonder if he ever praised her homemaking. I do recall in the waning years of their marriage my father's verdict on her baking. When she got disturbed, he said, my mother set about baking bread. It was all a symptomology, according to him. I seem to have thought about this, reaching no insight, of course. Except that the hearth could be tainted, not the nurturing place it seemed.
And so in the mornings my first impulse is to get out of the house. After all, shortly I will begin writing. What if there's nothing to say? With my imagination and my memories absent, there would be nothing. What if there is nothing? A cappuccino at Peet's isn't nothing. A bowl of oatmeal at Café Borrone isn't nothing either. People saying hello and reminding me that they know my name, that is nothing either. So, there is the return to the home with its fears of emptiness. There is no one and no thing, no center to hold.
Do my sister and I share this propensity to go out more then my brother? Perhaps. Richard seems more comfortable with home life, which is a good thing. On the other hand, we all have bits and pieces, we siblings. My sister is a great cook. I am pretty good at soup, not to mention gardening, inspirations both inherited from our mother. I spent so much of my childhood, and secretly my adulthood, feeling the loss of home. Why perpetuate this into midlife? After all, mine is a nice home, this apartment where I have lived more than anywhere else in my 64 years. Marlou worked hard to make it pleasant during her life, redoubling efforts near the end, to decorate, carpet and generally set the place up for my life without her. The piles of unread or partially read books about the apartment could be seen as possibilities, a future source of enjoyment...not a reminder of things unfinished. Homemaking. Making a home. Perhaps just a small change in emphasis, a shift in focus. Healing, coming home.
I almost nod off during my morning session at Sky Nails, having failed at conversational attempts. We get through the weather, my manicurist and I, but we run afoul of openings and closings. Will they be working during the holidays? She nods, my nail worker, and coming from a much older culture than mine, it seems that she may know something the rest of us don't. Gently she raises my hand from its soak in a glass of milky colored water. My cuticles, to which I never give any thought, peel from my fingers. I knew the nails needed to be cut but am always oblivious to the rest. Doubtless the whole effect pleases someone. I submit quite happily to a Sky Nails massage, my forearms and wrists slathered in ointment. The woman smiles and nods, and it's over, and I'm off, having caffeinated fish to fry.
At Peet's, I search for an account of the big news. A date that shall live in infamy, 7 December, here in Menlo Park. The day of the bumper cars. I first got word of it from my neighbor Buffie, her face appearing at my office window before she rushed inside. She had driven into the center of town, just a few streets from our apartments. Menlo Park has had a go at its streets, a slow go it must be observed. The black asphalt, tar, or whatever it is that covers our roads stands ready. Machines have roughened it, crews have even installed new wheelchair ramps at a few strategic corners, one of them mine. They await the arrival of slurry. Hard to say what the latter is, but I have read the signs and know it is on the way. When is the question. Meanwhile the streets stand rough and ready, the approach to the wheelchair ramps not yet smooth. Hurry the slurry, I say, a bit too delighted at my own wit, even having the thought to offer this phrase to the local newspaper. I haven't been getting enough sleep. Chorus practice ran late last night, Team Filipina arrived even earlier than usual...and here I am.
And there Buffie was driving her car into the suburban center, hardly bustling these days. Although there are more constituents wandering about with shopping carts loaded with personal possessions, the economy being what it is, the American decline in full sprint. Which possibly explains why Buffie witnessed a tragicomic moment in our suburban life. One of downtown's side streets had been closed off for pavement roughening, or whatever stage of work...but a homeless woman had pushed her shopping trolley right through the barriers and into the work zone. No one seemed to know what to do with her. Horns honked, workmen ran around, and traffic backed up.
To someone who surveys the scene from a wheelchair, the whole thing would have seemed quite funny. I have a sense of who the homeless woman probably was. Mad Mary, my name for her. She is a pudgy cheeked woman, slightly younger than I, haircut in a pageboy, who propels the contents of a small truck over the downtown streets. She has a very robust look about her. Her cheeks are always dark and dirty. The effect is almost one of stagecraft, as though she is made up, everyone's idea of a mad street woman. And what is unreal about her is the incongruity, her wandering past a procession of Persian carpet shops, home decorator boutiques, haute couture fashion outlets, organic health emporia...an America that has shrunken and concentrated considerably. The workings of which, at least the road works, can be brought to a halt by the likes of Mad Mary.
So Buffie, you will recall, was driving downtown, heading for the local Walgreen pharmacy, one of a national chain. She turned behind the shop and was looking for a parking space, when a Mercedes shot backwards toward her. It was an older, boxy model. Buffie supplied this detail. The backing, hurtling Mercedes plowed into one car, bounced into another and pinned a hapless pedestrian between a Ford and a Lexus. The Mercedes carried on, attempting to round a corner into Menlo Park's main street, where the vehicle fishtailed into several others. I do identify with this portion of the story, my own wheelchair having done substantial damage to apartment walls with its rear wheels. Though this is a matter of scale, this degree of Destruction Derby action being rather rare in staid Menlo Park. Passersby pounded on the car, someone finally reaching inside after the driver had mounted the median barrier in the center of the street and grabbing the keys.
So much for the story, not looking all that significant when reduced to type in the morning edition of the Daily Post. The woman lived in wealthy Atherton, the next town north, and she was drunk, drunk as a proverbial skunk, and that's that. Except for Buffie's observation at the time that, the economy being bad, we could expect more of this sort of wildness. My neighbor had talked to people, heard the eyewitness accounts of locals. The woman was calm as could be, Buffie reported. Calm and drunk? Calm and homicidal? Suicidal?
Doubtless it's a sign of the times, but what times are these? Armageddon, apocalypse or just decline? What's certain is that the rich and the poor in America are both losing their minds. And they think they have nothing in common. Fate binds us, whether we like it or not. We need pavement. Hurry the slurry.
At Peet's, I search for an account of the big news. A date that shall live in infamy, 7 December, here in Menlo Park. The day of the bumper cars. I first got word of it from my neighbor Buffie, her face appearing at my office window before she rushed inside. She had driven into the center of town, just a few streets from our apartments. Menlo Park has had a go at its streets, a slow go it must be observed. The black asphalt, tar, or whatever it is that covers our roads stands ready. Machines have roughened it, crews have even installed new wheelchair ramps at a few strategic corners, one of them mine. They await the arrival of slurry. Hard to say what the latter is, but I have read the signs and know it is on the way. When is the question. Meanwhile the streets stand rough and ready, the approach to the wheelchair ramps not yet smooth. Hurry the slurry, I say, a bit too delighted at my own wit, even having the thought to offer this phrase to the local newspaper. I haven't been getting enough sleep. Chorus practice ran late last night, Team Filipina arrived even earlier than usual...and here I am.
And there Buffie was driving her car into the suburban center, hardly bustling these days. Although there are more constituents wandering about with shopping carts loaded with personal possessions, the economy being what it is, the American decline in full sprint. Which possibly explains why Buffie witnessed a tragicomic moment in our suburban life. One of downtown's side streets had been closed off for pavement roughening, or whatever stage of work...but a homeless woman had pushed her shopping trolley right through the barriers and into the work zone. No one seemed to know what to do with her. Horns honked, workmen ran around, and traffic backed up.
To someone who surveys the scene from a wheelchair, the whole thing would have seemed quite funny. I have a sense of who the homeless woman probably was. Mad Mary, my name for her. She is a pudgy cheeked woman, slightly younger than I, haircut in a pageboy, who propels the contents of a small truck over the downtown streets. She has a very robust look about her. Her cheeks are always dark and dirty. The effect is almost one of stagecraft, as though she is made up, everyone's idea of a mad street woman. And what is unreal about her is the incongruity, her wandering past a procession of Persian carpet shops, home decorator boutiques, haute couture fashion outlets, organic health emporia...an America that has shrunken and concentrated considerably. The workings of which, at least the road works, can be brought to a halt by the likes of Mad Mary.
So Buffie, you will recall, was driving downtown, heading for the local Walgreen pharmacy, one of a national chain. She turned behind the shop and was looking for a parking space, when a Mercedes shot backwards toward her. It was an older, boxy model. Buffie supplied this detail. The backing, hurtling Mercedes plowed into one car, bounced into another and pinned a hapless pedestrian between a Ford and a Lexus. The Mercedes carried on, attempting to round a corner into Menlo Park's main street, where the vehicle fishtailed into several others. I do identify with this portion of the story, my own wheelchair having done substantial damage to apartment walls with its rear wheels. Though this is a matter of scale, this degree of Destruction Derby action being rather rare in staid Menlo Park. Passersby pounded on the car, someone finally reaching inside after the driver had mounted the median barrier in the center of the street and grabbing the keys.
So much for the story, not looking all that significant when reduced to type in the morning edition of the Daily Post. The woman lived in wealthy Atherton, the next town north, and she was drunk, drunk as a proverbial skunk, and that's that. Except for Buffie's observation at the time that, the economy being bad, we could expect more of this sort of wildness. My neighbor had talked to people, heard the eyewitness accounts of locals. The woman was calm as could be, Buffie reported. Calm and drunk? Calm and homicidal? Suicidal?
Doubtless it's a sign of the times, but what times are these? Armageddon, apocalypse or just decline? What's certain is that the rich and the poor in America are both losing their minds. And they think they have nothing in common. Fate binds us, whether we like it or not. We need pavement. Hurry the slurry.
A small wet spot appears on my trousers before I can stop it. Though stop it, I do. 'Silly man,' I tell myself, hoping that this represents progress.
The psychologist I happen to bump into Mondays at 11 AM suggested having a go at anger management. She gave me a book. And to put a finer point on things, she did acknowledge that we were managing more than anger. Self-denunciation management, personal recrimination management, not being as catchy as the title of the book I spirited home: THE ANGER CONTROL WORKBOOK. The latter in red characters more than an inch tall, suggested the need for typography control. I turned the thing over before entering Trader Joe's. The local grocer does not need to know that my psyche is a raging bull.
Better to consider that the skull of a bull, a cow, or anything bovine looks exactly the same everywhere, whether on the Maasai lands of Kenya or on a shelf at Trader Joe's. The latter doesn't happen, and it isn't going to happen, and I should be content with this. But I'm not content. That is the point. And the point came to a point in a stolen moment experienced beside my raised beds. Never mind that the latter are raising nothing but grass and legumes, cover crop material, for what is important is that they reside in a sheltered spot, next to a fence where the sun shines bright. The reason for its shining has much to do with nature, but it was my landlord Tom who just this very morning suggested this might be my spot. He had seen me recline my wheelchair, tilting the Swedish mother back into the luxuriously supine, but always in a sunny location. Usually in the mornings, this time of year. And even if this isn't Hawaii, with a bit of shelter and direct sun exposure, 63°F is quite enough to warm the soul. Which I was trying to do, the chair tilted back in just the location Tom suggested when things urinary imposed themselves. I guess it was just the change of posture, the tilting of a water filled sac from vertical to lateral, that increased the pressure. I had to pee, and I had to pee at precisely the wrong moment, the relaxed moment, the time when mother sun....
Let us go behind the scenes, peek around the corner of the canvas sets and see what's happening on the wordprocessing stage...and damned if things aren't being controlled by voice...and while this recognition of voice-recognition will come as no surprise...the process is full of unfortunate surprises. Such as the very last phrase before this digression. 'Mother son,' my PC screen proclaimed. And the correction menu, which admittedly pops up quite easily, offered no alternatives. 'Mother's son, mother-son, mothered son' being the sort of options available. All of which infuriated me, offering as they did little grammatical variety and much Freudian perspicacity. And so from a pastoral impulse, equating solar warmth with maternal nurturance, damned if the psychic underpinnings don't pop up in the form of a technical error, forcing me to look at the root of all, mother-son. My disappointment, frustration and horror of the latter leading me in the worst of directions. An impulse to lie in the warming sun placing me in a position that I had to quickly abandon, bladder control being what it is. So I delayed the inevitable until just the last conceivable moment, which if I had been concentrating massively might not have come to a small disaster. But did. If one considers a small spot of overflowing pee a disaster. Which a wise person wouldn't. But I did. Silly man.
Where was I? Oh, yes, anger management. Actually, blame management is more the thing. Any casual observer would sense the logical anger target in 90% of my cases. Being piqued at 40 years of neuromuscular bladder weakness, for example. Instead, reflexively, I go for myself. My failings at facing reality, acknowledging when I have come to the end of the rope, sphincter-wise. And it keeps happening, this sort of blaming. In correcting 'son' for 'sun,' in another example, I made a mistake, producing 'soun' in the correction window, a mistake that gets stored in the voice-recognition software as a special case of a word. Unless I intervene. Requiring that I open the utility 'Vocabulary Editor,' finding the offending 'soun,' deleting it, and getting temporarily diverted by the vast store of nonsense in my constantly corrected list of spoken-then-written words. I got rid of that one. Then I scrolled up and found some others flagged by the system. 'Soul-sucking,' for example. I like that, so kept it. My vocabulary, after all. My rules.
And now that I am managing my anger so effectively, or at least trying, life gives me another shot at things. Such as solar napping. So within minutes I was back in the carport, this time, the winter sun having shifted in that direction, my wheelchair tilted back. And damned if I didn't fall into an actual snooze. This, the I-happen-to-bump-into-on-Mondays-at-11 psychologist assures me, is sort of the point. Getting anger out is something of a myth. The angry person isn't so much relieved as exhausted. The source of the anger goes nowhere. Just stays. So it would be nice to relieve myself of some of the disturbance behind these angry self denunciations. Very nice, in fact. Because there are other things, possibilities that open, given half a chance. Such as these dreamy thoughts about the Maasai and their cattle, how their cow's skulls must look just like those Georgia O'Keeffe painted. And the ones you will never find at Trader Joe's, reminding us as they do of death, for nothing ever dies, including the beef on display in the freezer, in cans on the shelves. But not now, with my anger better managed, I am thinking hard about cattle skulls, their universality and taking another nap in the sun.
The psychologist I happen to bump into Mondays at 11 AM suggested having a go at anger management. She gave me a book. And to put a finer point on things, she did acknowledge that we were managing more than anger. Self-denunciation management, personal recrimination management, not being as catchy as the title of the book I spirited home: THE ANGER CONTROL WORKBOOK. The latter in red characters more than an inch tall, suggested the need for typography control. I turned the thing over before entering Trader Joe's. The local grocer does not need to know that my psyche is a raging bull.
Better to consider that the skull of a bull, a cow, or anything bovine looks exactly the same everywhere, whether on the Maasai lands of Kenya or on a shelf at Trader Joe's. The latter doesn't happen, and it isn't going to happen, and I should be content with this. But I'm not content. That is the point. And the point came to a point in a stolen moment experienced beside my raised beds. Never mind that the latter are raising nothing but grass and legumes, cover crop material, for what is important is that they reside in a sheltered spot, next to a fence where the sun shines bright. The reason for its shining has much to do with nature, but it was my landlord Tom who just this very morning suggested this might be my spot. He had seen me recline my wheelchair, tilting the Swedish mother back into the luxuriously supine, but always in a sunny location. Usually in the mornings, this time of year. And even if this isn't Hawaii, with a bit of shelter and direct sun exposure, 63°F is quite enough to warm the soul. Which I was trying to do, the chair tilted back in just the location Tom suggested when things urinary imposed themselves. I guess it was just the change of posture, the tilting of a water filled sac from vertical to lateral, that increased the pressure. I had to pee, and I had to pee at precisely the wrong moment, the relaxed moment, the time when mother sun....
Let us go behind the scenes, peek around the corner of the canvas sets and see what's happening on the wordprocessing stage...and damned if things aren't being controlled by voice...and while this recognition of voice-recognition will come as no surprise...the process is full of unfortunate surprises. Such as the very last phrase before this digression. 'Mother son,' my PC screen proclaimed. And the correction menu, which admittedly pops up quite easily, offered no alternatives. 'Mother's son, mother-son, mothered son' being the sort of options available. All of which infuriated me, offering as they did little grammatical variety and much Freudian perspicacity. And so from a pastoral impulse, equating solar warmth with maternal nurturance, damned if the psychic underpinnings don't pop up in the form of a technical error, forcing me to look at the root of all, mother-son. My disappointment, frustration and horror of the latter leading me in the worst of directions. An impulse to lie in the warming sun placing me in a position that I had to quickly abandon, bladder control being what it is. So I delayed the inevitable until just the last conceivable moment, which if I had been concentrating massively might not have come to a small disaster. But did. If one considers a small spot of overflowing pee a disaster. Which a wise person wouldn't. But I did. Silly man.
Where was I? Oh, yes, anger management. Actually, blame management is more the thing. Any casual observer would sense the logical anger target in 90% of my cases. Being piqued at 40 years of neuromuscular bladder weakness, for example. Instead, reflexively, I go for myself. My failings at facing reality, acknowledging when I have come to the end of the rope, sphincter-wise. And it keeps happening, this sort of blaming. In correcting 'son' for 'sun,' in another example, I made a mistake, producing 'soun' in the correction window, a mistake that gets stored in the voice-recognition software as a special case of a word. Unless I intervene. Requiring that I open the utility 'Vocabulary Editor,' finding the offending 'soun,' deleting it, and getting temporarily diverted by the vast store of nonsense in my constantly corrected list of spoken-then-written words. I got rid of that one. Then I scrolled up and found some others flagged by the system. 'Soul-sucking,' for example. I like that, so kept it. My vocabulary, after all. My rules.
And now that I am managing my anger so effectively, or at least trying, life gives me another shot at things. Such as solar napping. So within minutes I was back in the carport, this time, the winter sun having shifted in that direction, my wheelchair tilted back. And damned if I didn't fall into an actual snooze. This, the I-happen-to-bump-into-on-Mondays-at-11 psychologist assures me, is sort of the point. Getting anger out is something of a myth. The angry person isn't so much relieved as exhausted. The source of the anger goes nowhere. Just stays. So it would be nice to relieve myself of some of the disturbance behind these angry self denunciations. Very nice, in fact. Because there are other things, possibilities that open, given half a chance. Such as these dreamy thoughts about the Maasai and their cattle, how their cow's skulls must look just like those Georgia O'Keeffe painted. And the ones you will never find at Trader Joe's, reminding us as they do of death, for nothing ever dies, including the beef on display in the freezer, in cans on the shelves. But not now, with my anger better managed, I am thinking hard about cattle skulls, their universality and taking another nap in the sun.
Women are supposed to get all atwitter over marriage details, how the ceremony will look, who will be there, and so on, but I have outdone many women, achieving a traditional level of fretting, and all because of Banning. That's my desert hometown, the place where I did or did not develop my social self, and the place I return to my dreams, like it or not...and if I am still alive in 2014, for my 50th high school reunion.
Okay, so I did not graduate from Banning Union High School. Not to worry, for I know almost everyone who did, our class being very small, and having moved with the same knot of baby boomer kids through the grammar and high school experience. Note the absence of a junior high school. That came after my time. My time culminating in 1964 when I emerged from the public school system in the county seat, Riverside. But there is no escaping Banning. What's the thing about the marriage ceremony? It was one of those milestones that loomed in my mind as soon as I was injured. How I would get married, limping and lurching down the aisle, in full view of everyone. And the 20th Banning High School reunion looked about the same, the full revelation of my crippled status to those who did not know what had happened to me, and most did not. Full exposure.
Which is why it was so important to attend my 20th reunion. Where was it? Somewhere near Ontario, California. Yes, there is such a place, best known for its regional airport. I flew in there one afternoon, having previously scanned the list of people providing rides for travelers and settled on Candy Kane. It was an awkward choice. Perhaps hers was the only name I recognized. Perhaps hers was the only name on the list. In any case, reluctantly, I called her up. The last time she had spoken to me was in a high school English class. And she wasn't so much speaking as sniping. Teacher's pet, being the thrust of her message. I was good in English, that was the thing. Candy did not like this and kept whispering nasty things, just out of earshot of our aging teacher. She was a nasty piece of work, let us be frank, much given to baton twirling. She took the latter very seriously, even excelled at the art, and I can see her face to this day, focused, humorless and intent as she twirled away, doubtless at football games. It says something about me that this detail is unclear.
In short, she was an adolescent enemy. And now on the brink of midlife she was someone with a car willing to drive to the Holiday Inn. When on the phone I explained about being crippled she seemed to suck in substantial breath. Seeing me, she was all concern. I hobbled out of the hotel, got in her car and tried to look past her stricken expression. On the way we chatted, if life stories and personal resumes can be called that. It is a zero landscape, the area around Ontario. There had been grapevines around at one point, but now none were evident. Just a procession of motels and airport cargo sheds and light manufacturing plants, interspersed with garages and the occasional Denny's coffee shop, followed by a Safeway distribution center, a.k.a. warehouse. God knows where the reunion was. A patio, probably attached to a restaurant. It was summer, hot, airless and blank. I hobbled up to a registration desk, tense as a G string, and feeling as though I was wearing one. Did someone at the reception desk recognize me? Or I them? I don't know. It was one of those excruciating moments, me glancing beyond the desk at a row of long tables. Lanterns were strung the width of the terrace, candles lighted on the tables. Now I had a nametag, and there was no going back, the time having come to wander in, mingle.
On the way over, Candy's life had sounded enviable. She was married. She had a kid or two. A life, the sort of thing I was still struggling to get together. What did I do? Well, at least I had a job, a serious one, high-tech writer. I was proud of this, though not enough to avoid feeling as though I was going to slip through the floor of her car. Still, it was what I had. And now I was leaning on my crutch, recognizing this person and that person. Mike Zavala. He was a lawyer now in Tucson. He was no longer a kindergartner with a cowboy shirt that I recall envying. He was also aloof and impersonal and had not only gone to Stanford but, I seem to recall, played football.
Carol Fahy embarrassed me by giving me a massive hug. Oh, oh, it was so good to see me. To see me like this, having come to this, and I was not always as she saw me now. From school days, I recall her exceptionally pretty face, then her exceptionally pretty face and breasts, either of which gave her a star quality. Was she a cheerleader, or did she just seem like one? She was certainly an extrovert, all poise and social cheer. And she was finally giving me a hug. An opportunity had finally arisen, a sort of boy's fantasy come true. Except that I felt so damaged and ruined, despite whatever social façade I managed for the evening, that even a warm embrace had a certain slant. Being hugged down to, something like that.
Doug Burson wandered into the reception on his own. I liked not being the only single person there. Actually, I wasn't all that single, have recently moved in with the woman who soon became my first wife. But she hadn't made this trip to Ontario, so I felt single enough. Singled out, of course. Not worthy of a mate, unlovable, all this doubtless echoing in the emotional background. In any case Doug sauntered in, saw me with my crutch and apparently thought nothing of it. I gave him a penetrating look, my antennae alert to signs of uncertainty, complexity, something. But there was nothing. This was who he was, a natural, openhearted guy. Who was now an airline pilot. Western Airlines? United? One of the big ones. We stood in the summer patio air, and I can't recall if I explained my disability or its source. Perhaps not. I was quite capable of leaving the elephant in the middle of the living room, letting sleeping dogs lie, not ratting on myself...the mammalian metaphors seem endless today. But only one seems right. The sleeping elephant.
Which brings me to Zandra Rhodes, the quirky British designer whose Aida delighted everyone at the San Francisco Opera House just yesterday afternoon. And what brings me here? The quiet knowledge that when I return to the 2014 Banning High School Class of' 64, 50th reunion, I will be the only person there who knows from Zandra. And will this matter? Not at all, if I am lucky. Let it be a quiet knowledge. Let me be noisy with my laughter, generous with my details, grateful that I am alive. By then this will be something of a competition, the prize going to those remaining, respiring and still pumping blood. I maybe even pumping iron, at least in the quadriplegic sense, my aerobic exercise requirements being what they are. Many of the class will be absent. All will be old. Everything will be forgotten, not forgiven, of course, but simply erased by the sheer loss of brain cells. I cannot talk my one remaining Banning friend Joe into accompanying me. I am resigned to this. There is no convincing Joe that this will be his victory lap, if he wants one, and even if he doesn't. I cannot assure him that there will be more of him left than anyone there, Joe's spirit, sense of humor and all the critical components being very much intact. We have survived and deserve to face the crowd in the Roman Colosseum, the ones who gave us the thumbs down. And now we are the only ones with thumbs. Go figure.
And I wish I really knew the story, or had ever known it, of Bobby or Johnny or whatever his name was. He was in third grade. Did he have trouble with his studies? Why did everyone think he was a loser? Who called him stupid? Pretty much everyone, as I recall. And does that include me? Probably not, and not because I was so goodhearted, but more recessive, a follower. So he was officially a loser and a dummy. And then he was dead. Our teacher told us. He had had an accident with a gun. Not true, Joe told me later. Joe's father ran the local newspaper, and had the inside line on what was happening. The kid had shot himself on purpose. Such, I imagine, was the weight of his grief. Or his sadness. Who knew? Whatever it is, the life burden can weigh a lot. In the end it drags us all down. But for now, I have more than the survivor's burden and guilt...I also have the knowledge. Which is why I'll be dragging myself to the 2014 reunion. Half a century of survival. Which matters because it absolutely doesn't.
Okay, so I did not graduate from Banning Union High School. Not to worry, for I know almost everyone who did, our class being very small, and having moved with the same knot of baby boomer kids through the grammar and high school experience. Note the absence of a junior high school. That came after my time. My time culminating in 1964 when I emerged from the public school system in the county seat, Riverside. But there is no escaping Banning. What's the thing about the marriage ceremony? It was one of those milestones that loomed in my mind as soon as I was injured. How I would get married, limping and lurching down the aisle, in full view of everyone. And the 20th Banning High School reunion looked about the same, the full revelation of my crippled status to those who did not know what had happened to me, and most did not. Full exposure.
Which is why it was so important to attend my 20th reunion. Where was it? Somewhere near Ontario, California. Yes, there is such a place, best known for its regional airport. I flew in there one afternoon, having previously scanned the list of people providing rides for travelers and settled on Candy Kane. It was an awkward choice. Perhaps hers was the only name I recognized. Perhaps hers was the only name on the list. In any case, reluctantly, I called her up. The last time she had spoken to me was in a high school English class. And she wasn't so much speaking as sniping. Teacher's pet, being the thrust of her message. I was good in English, that was the thing. Candy did not like this and kept whispering nasty things, just out of earshot of our aging teacher. She was a nasty piece of work, let us be frank, much given to baton twirling. She took the latter very seriously, even excelled at the art, and I can see her face to this day, focused, humorless and intent as she twirled away, doubtless at football games. It says something about me that this detail is unclear.
In short, she was an adolescent enemy. And now on the brink of midlife she was someone with a car willing to drive to the Holiday Inn. When on the phone I explained about being crippled she seemed to suck in substantial breath. Seeing me, she was all concern. I hobbled out of the hotel, got in her car and tried to look past her stricken expression. On the way we chatted, if life stories and personal resumes can be called that. It is a zero landscape, the area around Ontario. There had been grapevines around at one point, but now none were evident. Just a procession of motels and airport cargo sheds and light manufacturing plants, interspersed with garages and the occasional Denny's coffee shop, followed by a Safeway distribution center, a.k.a. warehouse. God knows where the reunion was. A patio, probably attached to a restaurant. It was summer, hot, airless and blank. I hobbled up to a registration desk, tense as a G string, and feeling as though I was wearing one. Did someone at the reception desk recognize me? Or I them? I don't know. It was one of those excruciating moments, me glancing beyond the desk at a row of long tables. Lanterns were strung the width of the terrace, candles lighted on the tables. Now I had a nametag, and there was no going back, the time having come to wander in, mingle.
On the way over, Candy's life had sounded enviable. She was married. She had a kid or two. A life, the sort of thing I was still struggling to get together. What did I do? Well, at least I had a job, a serious one, high-tech writer. I was proud of this, though not enough to avoid feeling as though I was going to slip through the floor of her car. Still, it was what I had. And now I was leaning on my crutch, recognizing this person and that person. Mike Zavala. He was a lawyer now in Tucson. He was no longer a kindergartner with a cowboy shirt that I recall envying. He was also aloof and impersonal and had not only gone to Stanford but, I seem to recall, played football.
Carol Fahy embarrassed me by giving me a massive hug. Oh, oh, it was so good to see me. To see me like this, having come to this, and I was not always as she saw me now. From school days, I recall her exceptionally pretty face, then her exceptionally pretty face and breasts, either of which gave her a star quality. Was she a cheerleader, or did she just seem like one? She was certainly an extrovert, all poise and social cheer. And she was finally giving me a hug. An opportunity had finally arisen, a sort of boy's fantasy come true. Except that I felt so damaged and ruined, despite whatever social façade I managed for the evening, that even a warm embrace had a certain slant. Being hugged down to, something like that.
Doug Burson wandered into the reception on his own. I liked not being the only single person there. Actually, I wasn't all that single, have recently moved in with the woman who soon became my first wife. But she hadn't made this trip to Ontario, so I felt single enough. Singled out, of course. Not worthy of a mate, unlovable, all this doubtless echoing in the emotional background. In any case Doug sauntered in, saw me with my crutch and apparently thought nothing of it. I gave him a penetrating look, my antennae alert to signs of uncertainty, complexity, something. But there was nothing. This was who he was, a natural, openhearted guy. Who was now an airline pilot. Western Airlines? United? One of the big ones. We stood in the summer patio air, and I can't recall if I explained my disability or its source. Perhaps not. I was quite capable of leaving the elephant in the middle of the living room, letting sleeping dogs lie, not ratting on myself...the mammalian metaphors seem endless today. But only one seems right. The sleeping elephant.
Which brings me to Zandra Rhodes, the quirky British designer whose Aida delighted everyone at the San Francisco Opera House just yesterday afternoon. And what brings me here? The quiet knowledge that when I return to the 2014 Banning High School Class of' 64, 50th reunion, I will be the only person there who knows from Zandra. And will this matter? Not at all, if I am lucky. Let it be a quiet knowledge. Let me be noisy with my laughter, generous with my details, grateful that I am alive. By then this will be something of a competition, the prize going to those remaining, respiring and still pumping blood. I maybe even pumping iron, at least in the quadriplegic sense, my aerobic exercise requirements being what they are. Many of the class will be absent. All will be old. Everything will be forgotten, not forgiven, of course, but simply erased by the sheer loss of brain cells. I cannot talk my one remaining Banning friend Joe into accompanying me. I am resigned to this. There is no convincing Joe that this will be his victory lap, if he wants one, and even if he doesn't. I cannot assure him that there will be more of him left than anyone there, Joe's spirit, sense of humor and all the critical components being very much intact. We have survived and deserve to face the crowd in the Roman Colosseum, the ones who gave us the thumbs down. And now we are the only ones with thumbs. Go figure.
And I wish I really knew the story, or had ever known it, of Bobby or Johnny or whatever his name was. He was in third grade. Did he have trouble with his studies? Why did everyone think he was a loser? Who called him stupid? Pretty much everyone, as I recall. And does that include me? Probably not, and not because I was so goodhearted, but more recessive, a follower. So he was officially a loser and a dummy. And then he was dead. Our teacher told us. He had had an accident with a gun. Not true, Joe told me later. Joe's father ran the local newspaper, and had the inside line on what was happening. The kid had shot himself on purpose. Such, I imagine, was the weight of his grief. Or his sadness. Who knew? Whatever it is, the life burden can weigh a lot. In the end it drags us all down. But for now, I have more than the survivor's burden and guilt...I also have the knowledge. Which is why I'll be dragging myself to the 2014 reunion. Half a century of survival. Which matters because it absolutely doesn't.
It would take an historian to sort out the matter, but I would like to get to the bottom of this, of whether as a gradeschool lad, probably in the range of six to eight years old, I took a short train ride from Banning, California. The milk train. I recall it being called that and, perhaps having boarded the thing, looking around for milk. My mother, I dimly recall, was one of the chaperones, someone who talked to a gradeschool teacher about how splendid it was for many of the unfortunate young Banningites to have an outing of this sort. What's interesting, and all that's interesting here, is that the memory lodges in my brain. Can I really see an old train stopped at what must have been the Banning station? Do I just imagine riding the thing to...was it Redlands? The milk train. Surely there was one, I must have ridden it, and what does all this say about the passage of time, things declining or improving or both?
What I do recall is steam engines. Driving to Palm Springs, tracks to the right of the highway, they charged eastward and westward, spewing noticeable smoke and emitting small sideways puffs of steam. Big wheels visible, the drive rods that pumped them a blur, yes, I do recall seeing these. Did they run on coal? When did they disappear in favor of diesel locomotives? And was I really present at my grandmother's arrival at West Palm Springs? The latter was one of those strange euphemisms applied to a shack in the sticks, though it would be generous to describe the desert scrubland vegetarian as sticks. The Southern Pacific tracks got this close to Palm Springs, that was the point. And in the middle of desert nowhere passengers alighted here, doubtless looking around and wondering where or why they had come. I am almost certain I recall a wooden water tower there. Everything seems to have been wooden, in fact.
But a bit of web research, and train history abounds on the Internet, shows that I was wrong. There was a small, but substantial station there, mission style with tile roof, a waiting room, and limousines meeting the eight trains a day that once stopped there with passengers for the resort. No, there was no shack. Only in my mind. And there may have been a water tower, with a shack nearby, perhaps with a sign that said West Palm Springs...enough to convince a child that this was the station. And here I would add the memory-shifting element of personality, family experience and inherent psychology...that I was ready to believe in the impoverishment and desiccation, which seemed more or less the same, of my surroundings. Or, another possibility, the station closed and was replaced by a shack. No, that would have come much later, after 1970 or so.
I think this is a look at me, my mind's filter, the perspective I bring to things. Even more curious, my grandmother arriving at West Palm Springs. Did I just hear about this? West Palm Springs would have been the closest major station to our Banning home at any point, and from the mid-1950s on, the only station. I think I see it, but may imagine it, and the difference having to do with memory...well, it is much more interesting than the facts.
Oddly, facts are staring me in the face. Although not active in them, I do belong to a couple of rail organizations - and someone in Palm Springs called me last month to ask for help in promoting train service there...which, if I recall correctly, includes Banning. Out of the blue. Back to my roots, sort of.
I don't know what I thought I was doing hanging around the Banning Airport. But for a while, after eighth grade, I would ride my bike down to the concrete strip and watch the occasional plane bump down from the clouds or roar skyward like a giant lawnmower. Ted Stanke ran the airport's repair shop. A young Jewish guy from Philadelphia was his mechanic. He let me hang out and watch him repair planes. I guess I wanted to fly places. Actually, this almost never happened. Perhaps I wanted to get out. Get out of Banning, and somehow this seemed the best shot. I even had an idea, one that even I could sense was impractical, to get Bonanza Airlines...there was such a thing...to to fly its F-27 turboprops into the Banning Airport. Naturally, I drafted a letter to the company. Even, for once, bothering to do a bit of research. I pointed out that the Deutsch Company flew a little plane in and out of the airport every day full of its electronic connectors. Cargo. People? Somehow, looking around the empty streets and tumbleweed lots of my hometown, I could not imagine many passengers. Only people leaving, one way, forever. But no toing and froing. Bonanza Airlines never wrote back.
Still there was useful information. One of the sons of Stanke, the airport manager, had been on a parts scavenging expedition in the San Bernardino Mountains. A plane had crashed up there, 10,000 feet above the airport. Father and sons went to the wreck and stripped it of almost everything, down to the nuts and bolts. As for the passengers, their bodies had been removed already. All three had been decapitated, the son told me. An interesting place, airport hangars. As for the mechanic, whose name has drifted out of my mind, he was a warm, human guy who listened to me. That is what I mostly recall. Surely it must have been hard for him having a kid standing in the hangar, doing nothing. He bustled about in blue overalls, doing this, turning that. Significantly, I had little interest in airplanes, engines or anything mechanical. I wanted to see the machines themselves fly. I wanted to fly with them. I want to be out of the house and so, here I was.
When a pilot wanted to land at Banning, he radioed, and a staticy voice burst from the roof of the airport shack. The latter was definitely just that, a minimal wooden structure, with an outdoor loudspeaker that enabled anyone, usually Mr. Stanke, to respond. This meant seizing the outdoor microphone, pressing a button, and having a glance at the fluttering windsock and the rotating cups of the anemometer on the roof. The response sounded very official, big-time air traffic control stuff about conditions. A few minutes later some little plane would come putt putting onto the concrete. Banning Airport.
With my mother living in Santa Barbara, from 13 years on, I journeyed there for visits. For some reason, I can't recall getting there, only returning. Generally things got off to a civilized start. My brother and I boarded the Southern Pacific Daylight in the late afternoon and rode softly down the coast. The train was at the end of its run and, unknown to me, at the end of its life. The cars were almost empty. As the journey began, the waves of the Pacific crashed and foamed , then retreated at Ventura. There were thousands of oaks at Thousand Oaks. The train dipped into some dark tunnels around Chatsworth, emerged in a channel of sandy bluffs. The city gathered itself around us, and Glendale signaled the end. At Union Station we got a cab to the Los Angeles Greyhound Depot.
The latter was seedy, crowded and a little frightening. It was also jammed, seats usually being unavailable. I knew I had to hang on to my bags and my brother. Tense and vigilant, I bought our tickets and waited. Once, someone tried to show me some pornographic playing cards. No, no, I said, alarmed at what this might mean, where it might lead. It was a place of foreigners, the LA Greyhound. Brown skinned people, the men often dressed like cowboys with straw hats and bandannas, sprawled across the cheap plastic seats, somehow at home in this impersonal place. Their possessions set before them, cardboard boxes tied with string, crowded the aisles. Theirs was a tough and sensual experience, I could tell. Their eyes often met mine, warmly bemused, seemingly without agenda. I avoided them. Human warmth was infrequent and threatening. Who knew where it might lead?
It was always a relief to hear the bus called for Indio. With any luck we had something like an express, a bus that stopped in Pomona, Redlands, then headed homeward. I can recall getting off the Greyhound in Banning on a Sunday evening, probably around 9 PM. The sound of trucks thundering along, exhausts farting, air brakes banging, blasted up from the sunken freeway. My brother and I headed up the mild slope to my father's office and apartment. The streets were empty, the town evacuated. It was a relief to be in a place that was not a bus or a bus station. Relatively safe, but only relatively. Not a home. But a hometown.
What I do recall is steam engines. Driving to Palm Springs, tracks to the right of the highway, they charged eastward and westward, spewing noticeable smoke and emitting small sideways puffs of steam. Big wheels visible, the drive rods that pumped them a blur, yes, I do recall seeing these. Did they run on coal? When did they disappear in favor of diesel locomotives? And was I really present at my grandmother's arrival at West Palm Springs? The latter was one of those strange euphemisms applied to a shack in the sticks, though it would be generous to describe the desert scrubland vegetarian as sticks. The Southern Pacific tracks got this close to Palm Springs, that was the point. And in the middle of desert nowhere passengers alighted here, doubtless looking around and wondering where or why they had come. I am almost certain I recall a wooden water tower there. Everything seems to have been wooden, in fact.
But a bit of web research, and train history abounds on the Internet, shows that I was wrong. There was a small, but substantial station there, mission style with tile roof, a waiting room, and limousines meeting the eight trains a day that once stopped there with passengers for the resort. No, there was no shack. Only in my mind. And there may have been a water tower, with a shack nearby, perhaps with a sign that said West Palm Springs...enough to convince a child that this was the station. And here I would add the memory-shifting element of personality, family experience and inherent psychology...that I was ready to believe in the impoverishment and desiccation, which seemed more or less the same, of my surroundings. Or, another possibility, the station closed and was replaced by a shack. No, that would have come much later, after 1970 or so.
I think this is a look at me, my mind's filter, the perspective I bring to things. Even more curious, my grandmother arriving at West Palm Springs. Did I just hear about this? West Palm Springs would have been the closest major station to our Banning home at any point, and from the mid-1950s on, the only station. I think I see it, but may imagine it, and the difference having to do with memory...well, it is much more interesting than the facts.
Oddly, facts are staring me in the face. Although not active in them, I do belong to a couple of rail organizations - and someone in Palm Springs called me last month to ask for help in promoting train service there...which, if I recall correctly, includes Banning. Out of the blue. Back to my roots, sort of.
I don't know what I thought I was doing hanging around the Banning Airport. But for a while, after eighth grade, I would ride my bike down to the concrete strip and watch the occasional plane bump down from the clouds or roar skyward like a giant lawnmower. Ted Stanke ran the airport's repair shop. A young Jewish guy from Philadelphia was his mechanic. He let me hang out and watch him repair planes. I guess I wanted to fly places. Actually, this almost never happened. Perhaps I wanted to get out. Get out of Banning, and somehow this seemed the best shot. I even had an idea, one that even I could sense was impractical, to get Bonanza Airlines...there was such a thing...to to fly its F-27 turboprops into the Banning Airport. Naturally, I drafted a letter to the company. Even, for once, bothering to do a bit of research. I pointed out that the Deutsch Company flew a little plane in and out of the airport every day full of its electronic connectors. Cargo. People? Somehow, looking around the empty streets and tumbleweed lots of my hometown, I could not imagine many passengers. Only people leaving, one way, forever. But no toing and froing. Bonanza Airlines never wrote back.
Still there was useful information. One of the sons of Stanke, the airport manager, had been on a parts scavenging expedition in the San Bernardino Mountains. A plane had crashed up there, 10,000 feet above the airport. Father and sons went to the wreck and stripped it of almost everything, down to the nuts and bolts. As for the passengers, their bodies had been removed already. All three had been decapitated, the son told me. An interesting place, airport hangars. As for the mechanic, whose name has drifted out of my mind, he was a warm, human guy who listened to me. That is what I mostly recall. Surely it must have been hard for him having a kid standing in the hangar, doing nothing. He bustled about in blue overalls, doing this, turning that. Significantly, I had little interest in airplanes, engines or anything mechanical. I wanted to see the machines themselves fly. I wanted to fly with them. I want to be out of the house and so, here I was.
When a pilot wanted to land at Banning, he radioed, and a staticy voice burst from the roof of the airport shack. The latter was definitely just that, a minimal wooden structure, with an outdoor loudspeaker that enabled anyone, usually Mr. Stanke, to respond. This meant seizing the outdoor microphone, pressing a button, and having a glance at the fluttering windsock and the rotating cups of the anemometer on the roof. The response sounded very official, big-time air traffic control stuff about conditions. A few minutes later some little plane would come putt putting onto the concrete. Banning Airport.
With my mother living in Santa Barbara, from 13 years on, I journeyed there for visits. For some reason, I can't recall getting there, only returning. Generally things got off to a civilized start. My brother and I boarded the Southern Pacific Daylight in the late afternoon and rode softly down the coast. The train was at the end of its run and, unknown to me, at the end of its life. The cars were almost empty. As the journey began, the waves of the Pacific crashed and foamed , then retreated at Ventura. There were thousands of oaks at Thousand Oaks. The train dipped into some dark tunnels around Chatsworth, emerged in a channel of sandy bluffs. The city gathered itself around us, and Glendale signaled the end. At Union Station we got a cab to the Los Angeles Greyhound Depot.
The latter was seedy, crowded and a little frightening. It was also jammed, seats usually being unavailable. I knew I had to hang on to my bags and my brother. Tense and vigilant, I bought our tickets and waited. Once, someone tried to show me some pornographic playing cards. No, no, I said, alarmed at what this might mean, where it might lead. It was a place of foreigners, the LA Greyhound. Brown skinned people, the men often dressed like cowboys with straw hats and bandannas, sprawled across the cheap plastic seats, somehow at home in this impersonal place. Their possessions set before them, cardboard boxes tied with string, crowded the aisles. Theirs was a tough and sensual experience, I could tell. Their eyes often met mine, warmly bemused, seemingly without agenda. I avoided them. Human warmth was infrequent and threatening. Who knew where it might lead?
It was always a relief to hear the bus called for Indio. With any luck we had something like an express, a bus that stopped in Pomona, Redlands, then headed homeward. I can recall getting off the Greyhound in Banning on a Sunday evening, probably around 9 PM. The sound of trucks thundering along, exhausts farting, air brakes banging, blasted up from the sunken freeway. My brother and I headed up the mild slope to my father's office and apartment. The streets were empty, the town evacuated. It was a relief to be in a place that was not a bus or a bus station. Relatively safe, but only relatively. Not a home. But a hometown.
It is that she doesn't see me, that is the thing that practically makes me run my wheelchair into this mobile-phone-wielding woman striding toward Peet's as I am rolling away. Her eyes are set on the sidewalk ahead, mind at the same angle as her jaw, gesturing with the free hand...and, no, there is little sense to be made of it. We are on a collision course because her course is single-minded and mine is freeform and wavering, quadriplegic antennae scanning the environment for dangers. Not that many are presumed to exist in the vicinity of upscale Draeger's supermarket. But for me they are always present. They can come in any form, including this career woman making her way up an otherwise empty sidewalk who appears to miss the large, opaque and not semipermeable object in her way, to wit, me. 'So sorry,' she says, making a slight slalom en route to caffeination. Good thing she said that, or I sensed she was going to say it, because running her down would have been messy. Thus satisfied, I bounce homeward, joystick pressed hard into 'go' position, pedal-to-the-metal in wheelchair terms. It is cold, relatively speaking, for California. I want to be home and heated.
I want to be home and heated and young. What is the latter, would I know it if I saw it, and what would I do with it? A trying day yesterday. Composed of composers. Whose music I am supposed to sing in only 10 days, the Menlo Park Chorus holiday concert looming, and desperation has driven me to Tom. He probably would have driven over from his coastside home and given me a voice lesson free of charge, but I insisted on paying. I needed to teach myself a moral lesson, or so went the internal dialogue.
The lesson being...well, here I founder. To practice my music more frequently? To practice at all? The latter would describe the situation more accurately, for I simply put the whole issue out of my mind, never bothering to stretch the vocal cords between weekly rehearsals. Which isn't a good idea at any age, but is an abysmal idea at my age. And stretching is good, as my physiotherapy assistant will attest. But I have this idea, itself an old idea, that I can somehow catch up quickly. That's why Tom drove over from Half Moon Bay. We did a few scales, launched into Christmas carols, and things vocal began to fall apart. Music I seemed on top of a couple of weeks ago was now giving me serious trouble. Yes, I had missed a rehearsal for our trip to Arizona. And now I was paying the price. Thus, my morality tale.
There is a psychologist I happen to bump into Mondays at 11 AM, and she was listening to my account of the Sedona Motel Incident. The conversation drifted toward other matters, but she steered it back to this one. She said she would like to look at it. Look at what happened around 1 AM one morning when I reached across the motel bedside table for a bottle of water. One easily gets parched in Sedona. The high-altitude Arizona air does unkind things to, say, an orange slice, the latter becoming part of a dried fruit collection within minutes. So I propped myself up in bed, or more likely, asked Jane to help me prop myself on my right side so that my left non-paralyzed arm could reach the water bottle on the table. Which it did, and it didn't, reaching too well or too far, and somehow knocking the open container on its side. Glug, glug, glug.
Water splashed from the bottle and right into the guts of the bedside radio-alarm clock. The digital numbers began spinning, from 1 AM to 2, 3, 4, a crazy spewing of time, or its representation, that made me think of the advanced stages of my father's brain tumor. Tumbling digits. And me in a rage, watching while Jane righted the bottle. Another fuck up. Another need for help. I stared at the angry ceiling. I stared at the dead, unplugged clock. My teeth clenched. Also my fists, or at least one. This was my life. This was me and my life getting older. Knocking and failing and...now not sleeping. Fucking up and not even getting sufficient rest to avoid more fucking up in the future. Disaster compounded with disaster. And now it must be 2 AM, but who knew?
And a psychologist wants to take a look. Stuff happens, she said, by way of another operating model for life experience. Well, la de da. Where was I?
Stuff happens. Well, I don't like the stuff that happens. I don't like much of the stuff that has happened to me. But it is difficult to let go of the notion that I could have done anything about it. I cling to that notion. It clings to me.
One of the fuck-up leitmotifs running through my life involves the wheelchair. Even after months of practice, the new Swedish model still wreaks havoc about my apartment. The problem is that with drive wheels in the front, the back of the thing swings out, and I never quite know what's happening behind me. Only this morning what was happening in the archway that leads from hall to sitting room involved an unfortunate interaction between rear tires and wooden molding. The back wheels had somehow caught the edge of the wood strip, cracking it and prying it free from the wall. How, I ask myself, can I do such things? With such regularity. Such things happening all the time. Black marks on the walls, this crunched, that scratched, as I go careening about in my wheelchair. And later in the carport, arriving greatly incensed from an afternoon screening of 'Inside Job,' an account of the worldwide economic meltdown, damned if I don't go about dropping everything I own. Naturally, in the interest of quadriplegic efficiency, I had attempted to scoop up the mail on my trajectory to the front door.
I drop two letters, pick them up, and in leaning over, drop a magazine. Now I must place the magazine somewhere safe, on the top of a closed rubbish bin...a careful, thoughtful process which seems to take years off my life. I manage this, but not without dropping my wallet, in a struggle to pry the front door key from my pocket.
Stuff happens. Yeah, well, easy for you to say. The question being, who is 'you?'
I want to be home and heated and young. What is the latter, would I know it if I saw it, and what would I do with it? A trying day yesterday. Composed of composers. Whose music I am supposed to sing in only 10 days, the Menlo Park Chorus holiday concert looming, and desperation has driven me to Tom. He probably would have driven over from his coastside home and given me a voice lesson free of charge, but I insisted on paying. I needed to teach myself a moral lesson, or so went the internal dialogue.
The lesson being...well, here I founder. To practice my music more frequently? To practice at all? The latter would describe the situation more accurately, for I simply put the whole issue out of my mind, never bothering to stretch the vocal cords between weekly rehearsals. Which isn't a good idea at any age, but is an abysmal idea at my age. And stretching is good, as my physiotherapy assistant will attest. But I have this idea, itself an old idea, that I can somehow catch up quickly. That's why Tom drove over from Half Moon Bay. We did a few scales, launched into Christmas carols, and things vocal began to fall apart. Music I seemed on top of a couple of weeks ago was now giving me serious trouble. Yes, I had missed a rehearsal for our trip to Arizona. And now I was paying the price. Thus, my morality tale.
There is a psychologist I happen to bump into Mondays at 11 AM, and she was listening to my account of the Sedona Motel Incident. The conversation drifted toward other matters, but she steered it back to this one. She said she would like to look at it. Look at what happened around 1 AM one morning when I reached across the motel bedside table for a bottle of water. One easily gets parched in Sedona. The high-altitude Arizona air does unkind things to, say, an orange slice, the latter becoming part of a dried fruit collection within minutes. So I propped myself up in bed, or more likely, asked Jane to help me prop myself on my right side so that my left non-paralyzed arm could reach the water bottle on the table. Which it did, and it didn't, reaching too well or too far, and somehow knocking the open container on its side. Glug, glug, glug.
Water splashed from the bottle and right into the guts of the bedside radio-alarm clock. The digital numbers began spinning, from 1 AM to 2, 3, 4, a crazy spewing of time, or its representation, that made me think of the advanced stages of my father's brain tumor. Tumbling digits. And me in a rage, watching while Jane righted the bottle. Another fuck up. Another need for help. I stared at the angry ceiling. I stared at the dead, unplugged clock. My teeth clenched. Also my fists, or at least one. This was my life. This was me and my life getting older. Knocking and failing and...now not sleeping. Fucking up and not even getting sufficient rest to avoid more fucking up in the future. Disaster compounded with disaster. And now it must be 2 AM, but who knew?
And a psychologist wants to take a look. Stuff happens, she said, by way of another operating model for life experience. Well, la de da. Where was I?
Stuff happens. Well, I don't like the stuff that happens. I don't like much of the stuff that has happened to me. But it is difficult to let go of the notion that I could have done anything about it. I cling to that notion. It clings to me.
One of the fuck-up leitmotifs running through my life involves the wheelchair. Even after months of practice, the new Swedish model still wreaks havoc about my apartment. The problem is that with drive wheels in the front, the back of the thing swings out, and I never quite know what's happening behind me. Only this morning what was happening in the archway that leads from hall to sitting room involved an unfortunate interaction between rear tires and wooden molding. The back wheels had somehow caught the edge of the wood strip, cracking it and prying it free from the wall. How, I ask myself, can I do such things? With such regularity. Such things happening all the time. Black marks on the walls, this crunched, that scratched, as I go careening about in my wheelchair. And later in the carport, arriving greatly incensed from an afternoon screening of 'Inside Job,' an account of the worldwide economic meltdown, damned if I don't go about dropping everything I own. Naturally, in the interest of quadriplegic efficiency, I had attempted to scoop up the mail on my trajectory to the front door.
I drop two letters, pick them up, and in leaning over, drop a magazine. Now I must place the magazine somewhere safe, on the top of a closed rubbish bin...a careful, thoughtful process which seems to take years off my life. I manage this, but not without dropping my wallet, in a struggle to pry the front door key from my pocket.
Stuff happens. Yeah, well, easy for you to say. The question being, who is 'you?'
