Times on A Well-Lit-Path

sun salute

Mon, 21 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Today in the northern hemisphere we have leaned about as far away from the sun as we are able, and the amount of light and warmth received is at its nadir; the moon races round us in a white-lit lunar descant, and we ourselves whirl on this earth’s surface at the speed of sleep to watch and make sense of it all. From a simple Amen of planetary mechanics, the poetic and spiritual voice of every race and probably every species composes its narrative of life and (so dark, so cold, so silent) death.

every which way

Fri, 26 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Thirty years of summers as we entered our middle years, our parents becoming grandparents, and our children, adults: their growth as imperceptible in the moment as the changing girth of trees, and as startling in retrospect as the forest that replaces thready saplings and threadbare underbrush.

We’ve grown every which way. At first in the same direction, though now, as each one finds their feet, in a more cavalier flight of seed and leaves, the roots in some shared soil (which one? where?) and reaching for the same sun (that one, there) but to the east and to the west. That’s the nature of Being, and the nature of beings. Take flight!

Canção Amiga

Sun, 15 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The year is 1990, and I am standing in a field in Glencoe, Minnesota. The horizon is wide here; the trees that rush from the east to greet the Mighty Mississippi seem hesitant to venture far from her safe waters, into the wide, wide prairies, and huddle here and there around farmsteads, brought two or three generations ago by the sodbusters who begged shelter from the merciless Alberta winds, even partially, even for a moment, that sped unimpeded from the Rockies to the Great Lakes.

5 – Lines and Circles

Thu, 22 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I do see how straight-ahead thinking gets you there, faster. I’m not convinced, however, that the destination to which the don’t-look-back, no-holds-barred train is heading is a place I really want to be.

So, no – lest you ask – I haven’t published my novel, because I haven’t written it (yet), and I haven’t pressed a CD because I haven’t filled one (yet), and I haven’t built my house in my dream property because the dream hasn’t ended, and I haven’t stopped spinning because there are too many jaw-droppingly incredible places to visit and languages to learn and people to embrace…

7 – Horizon, Illuminated

Mon, 19 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday’s ice storm was erased by the night, and my little portion of earth has rolled around into sunshine, clouds dispersed, streets cleared, warm.

My flight (flight away from…? flight toward…?) departs in seven days, one week into which I will pour as many tangible tasks as I am able: a last box of odds and ends to be packed, a shipment of our personal belongings to be negotiated and executed, a three-automotive albatross (one broken car, one damaged car, one motorcycle to be stored), a “last dance” or “parting dance” in Boston, a rented house to be cleaned cleaned cleaned of everything that was us and is me.

17 - Deconstruction

Fri, 09 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

It’s difficult to see how much the sense of self is tied to surroundings, until of course you begin the process of departure, whether it’s a trip, or travel, or a birth or a death. Family and friends most viscerally part of your stone and sinew; but structures and walkways, weather and seasons, even the most subtle of daily habits are all you, all me.

“The Moment Before Knowing” by Brooke @ DeviantArt.com

18 - Home, Away from Home

Thu, 08 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s the re-issue of a photo that looks like magazine copy, but is in fact an iPhone image I myself took in Poble Nou, residential neighborhood of Barcelona, which is soon to be home-away-from-home (or home-a-short-hop-from away-home Boston, or from away-away-home Minnesota, where my heart still resides): a landing pad for my kids and family whenever possible; a vital new life for Cata and me; and fertile soil for many new friendships and projects.

19 - Countdown

Wed, 07 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The ticket has been purchased, and phase one of my journey to Catalunya begins in 19 days. I’ll be meeting Catalina, who will already have arrived on the 15th of this month, and we’ll begin our search for new digs, new friends, and new living patterns. I’ll return April 15 for 2-3 months, to attend my daughter’s graduation, participate in a family vacation with my parents, and tie up any loose ends I haven’t been able to put in order in the next coupe of weeks. Then… whoosh!

habitation

Tue, 27 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The wind blew through new leaves, now completely unfurled, southwest to northeast. That is the direction of the sun. I sat with my daughter and thought: “How I will miss my mountainside, riverside seat.” And then I thought, better: “How much I have enjoyed my mountainside, riverside seat.” One thought closed the heart, the next opened it.

When the night had fully fallen, I cooked myself a meal: I was contented with the vegetable flavors and the tiny torch of habanero. I poured the last of that bottle of wine. With glass at eye level (dramatically, for an audience of none) I turned and saluted my rooms. They were as they had always been: Buddha in the corner and Bible in the bookcase; a banner for the Earth in the window, while a guitar dreamed against the sill; the successful house plantings overflowing their containers; and chairs set casually away from the table where visitors, late for their homes, had pushed them. What I have watered, I have been.

hay before rain

Wed, 14 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I am up late working, as is the case so often this year, when personal and business projects demand most everything I’ve got (and I give it). To make sure this tired self doesn’t oversleep, I set the alarm, so this daily cycle of which I am proud (and somewhat repulsed) to be champion might repeat, again, and again.

I see myself a very clever and determined machine. I know success to the right may be failure to the left. I know this is a passage, not a destination. I’ve got the muscle; I’ll climb this mountain.

A Topic of Leisure

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The branching of the Arne River is by this hill where its voice grows adult from upstream child, no longer rippling and eager to overflow in this course or that, but gravity-bound for the north and a great flooding finish, a heavy waterfall managed by Verlag dam; were you here to see the ages change? That stone, wider than the rest, severs left from right channel, seems to halve the river while leaving it quite complete, all rush, boiling to be one again; there’s the damage that makes the flow more determined, cuts the deep bed; later on, past three dry fields and under a county bridge, it joins again, but never with this spirit. I watched birds spinning over a pool; I was waiting for wind to blow loose leaves or seeds to turn several times in that water question then head downstream, as everything does. And, listening to a little water over a few stones I imagined a running child, the same light step, or myself in the water, or the water in me; there is sure to be a common language through these things. I would see the ages change, too. Let someone drop a paper boat up by the mill, and we know nothing of the act, but wrapped here in the autumn chill see it float, white and half-capsized, around that bend, over the spill of tangled logs, into the brief frame this view allows – then around again and out of sight forever. So we could be delighted and puzzled for a while, imagine our own fingers bending paper into that shape, how would it feel to be so young, or young-intentioned, and with such faith that two people involved with the current, away downstream would see the boat and know it for a careful gift. Well, someone may yet do that. Or, we may have to be content with sticks and other wood debris that weather slips into the river, a slight downward-casting scene down from treetops, down from hill heights, down the slope of the land, down to the sea.

Simple Mitt

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I was reminded of a man who brought me firewood last week. My neighbor had rented to him previously, and told me the wood he cut was good, seasoned, and at a good price. Still, not knowing him directly, and knowing how much green wood is cut and sold – how unregulated the market for firewood is: buyer beware, like in crazy Brazil, or like in America’s Banker’s Haven – I had this uneasiness as I waited for delivery. “I’m going to have to stack and measure the cord, to be sure I wasn’t slighted.” “I’ll need to see the checking on all the pieces to make sure they’ve been drying”… in short, I didn’t trust the guy.

roused by silence

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The mountain was covered with a veneer of snow

while I slept, while I didn’t sleep, the silver light of the moon filtered through leafless branches and lit the earth, shadow-spirits walking. Each time I woke, it was brighter outside, and the light spilled through a different window.

I was roused first by the silence after sound

as though something that had teetered on a shelf was undone by a mote of dust, had lost its balance and fallen with a single clatter into my dreams – and I startled as though someone called my name – so that apparently, without cause, there was effect. A ghost is nothing more than accumulated, unnoticed events; if you pay close attention to your life, there’s no such thing as a ghost. If you’re asleep, if your eyes are closed while they are open, you are constantly alarmed by everything you could not expect.

Longe das planícies

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Longe das planícies fúnebres onde contra o inverno cultivam grãos suas raízes ténues e fúteis frente ao frio iminente e a foice nas mãos tragei o ar inspirador do mar de tudo nascente.

Foi longe das planícies inmensuráveis as léguas ou as horas, os desejos… entre aquele passado e este presente quantas guerras quantas mortes acompanhando tréguas quantos enterros e flores de caixão quantas orações de despedida batizando vidas desviadas ou vias novas a chamar.

echo

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

“Switch it off!”

“What?” (Not ‘what do I switch off’; rather: ‘what are you talking about’.)

“Shhh!” All five fingers of the right hand spread wide, the first touching the lips, the hand a stop sign, the fingers stretched rigid, the hand surprised, the fingers an echo of surprise. Meanwhile, with the left, she reached over and unplugged the radio.

“What th…”

“SH!”

As there was no wind, there was no sound. It was night. The stovetop light from the kitchen was a warm glow that filtered onto the porch, where they sat side by side, on the top step. She was looking for something in the darkness, but couldn’t see. She was listening: her face said “What?”

my reflection in the photograph

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Several years ago I was “improving” my photo collection, which had become a wobbling tower of Kodachrome, balanced precariously and in no particular order in a hidden corner of my closet. Every time I saw it, I felt a vague intolerance; and each time I saw it, I felt that intolerance grow, until finally the intolerance was itself intolerable, and I furiously shoveled the concealing junk out of the way, and hooked those boxes and stacks out into the middle of my bedroom floor.

Seasons

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Love
my last and greatest companion
this heaviness will pass…
just a salt wind from the ocean
stale air before the storm
that seems can never break
will break

I thought once that the source of our creativity was the height of our joy – but then I found it difficult to write about joys without writing also of sorrows. I found it difficult to kiss without also feeling the tears, or dance without feeling the pull gravity somewhere in my heart. It slows, you know, the heart slows in its beating, as though it were in less and less of a hurry, has less somewhere to be, or less desire to be there. I found it difficult to smile without remembering…

My Story Yours

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

“I was born in a suburb outside of Pittsburgh, two blocks off the rail line - before it was abandoned, and then reclaimed for pedestrians and bicycles - so that the 7:45 and the 8:30 made audible bookends to my bedtime, first calling ahead, then calling behind, and finally the stuttered step of the cars over the crossing. We lived there five years, so I know that is one of my own memories, not just a story my mother…”

Will you marry, Charlotte?

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

A moment arrives and a moment passes, water through your fingers. Beautiful water: touch a drop to your lips, your thirst is lessened; touch a drop to your eyes, they are cleared; touch a drop to your forehead, you are baptized; touch a drop to the soil, the flower grows.

From the electric arc of that instant, a trail of Past streams out, like smoke from a sparkler spun through the air, or heat from a flame that burns and consumes itself as it gives light… like words on a page, a trail of markings left behind the hand, a narrative guide, a history, each word a nod to a line that began and continues to be written.

Distance, Health and the Life Virtual

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Three nights later, and I still have not returned to an east coastal sleep pattern. While it is “only” five time zones away, the body and the mind take in so much information in such travel that the consequences are deeper and broader than the meager mind would care to admit.

Some years ago I spent six months on the island of Java, in Indonesia. The island rests on the equator. My home town away from home was Yogyakarta, in the central Java, a city of some 600,000 at the time, snuggled at the feet of Mount Merapi, an active volcano. Every once in a while the ground shook, and my Midwestern mind reeled as it tried to assimilate moving earth vs twisting skies. On the equator, the sun rose and fell with complete regularity, weighed heavily at noon, was broken by a thundershower at 2pm, and set peacefully accompanied by an soft offshore breeze. Everyone was a foot shorter than I was.

Because you didn't ask

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The memories rise unbidden – they are always rising, bubbles of air surging from the depths to the surface of the sea; or stones borne skyward in similar offering, caught in the slow and seasonal currents of frost in farmer’s fields – as if by some anti-gravitational magic, the memories rise out of some ancient volume of a life and appear as a surprise, a bubble to burst, a stone weighing the open hands of the mind.

Water of Life

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The beauty of the subtropics – as I experienced them for years in Brazil, and on other journeys far and away…

… and now I understand that I was making a home of the Earth, not a home of

- Spencer, New York, where I was born at the foot of a minor tree-crowned mountain;
- or Ironwood, Michigan, where the winter snows drifted to the eaves of our house;
- or friendly Saint Paul, Minnesota, whose lakes were diamonds in the summer sun;
- or tiny Souris, North Dakota, an islet adrift in a sea of green;
- or jazzy Chicago, Illinois, its colors and its black and its white;
- or halus Yogayakarta, Java, its ancient gods and modern desires;
- or Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, where my adulthood was born;
- or Boston or Byfield, Massachusetts, where my affluence came and went;
- or Auroville, Tamil Nadu, whose galaxy of energies called as if by gravity…

A litany of grounds that received my footprint, but were places on a larger map, one with fewer constraints on patterns of thought, and which tries to cover a globe of human understanding, human reaching, and human almost-attaining…

Departure

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The traveler knows: departure is the front side of return. Those who stay behind see only the farewell; and hope for the wave hello.

For those who are here, on this side of the journey, I leave our travel information. My regrets to a couple of colleagues, to whom I gave an incorrect return date.

21 Oct - 21:05 British Airways BA 0214 from Boston to London
22 Oct - 14:05 British Airways BA 0119 from London to Bangalore