Stones... mud... stories

On the sand, I found two stones shaped like hearts, cracked and imperfect with a beauty and power only made real through a collision with the forces of the earth.

For two months, I couldn't wash the tundra mud off the boots I wore in Alaska.

I've never lived a year that felt as changed as this one.

Stories with beginnings but no end. Stories in search of an answer and a purpose.

These days, I see things differently. Or maybe I see different things. I think about choice and people and power and place. I think about joy and heartbreak. And I wonder if I can find where the real story lies. So for now, I'll return to my pens and paper to seek out the endings.

Thanks for reading along.

Reflections

A day without wind and rain is rare in the changeable atmosphere that is November on the Oregon coast. Yet, it seems as though the sun never fails to shine just when we’re scheduled to depart. 

This year, we arrived in the midst of a cycle of fierce storms that continually blew through from the south. Half way out to the horizon, a thick line sliced through the water, brown, muddy and churning with sand towards the shore, gunmetal grey out behind. Large squalls extinguished the usual sense of unending openness as they pounded rain sideways into the ground. The waves, accustomed to being in command, were pushed low by the strong winds as they toppled over each other, troubled and hunted. 

Just as abruptly as it began, each squall would suddenly dissipate into a circle of blue sky above, a tease, a question, an invitation to rush out and feel the strength of the wind and the waves for ourselves, to search for treasures tossed roughly from the sea, to be near the power of the forces of the earth. We only miscalculated once, and received a strong pelting by hail.

Today, finally expecting sun, we leapt from our beds into our boots and out to the chill as the soft light began to rise over the dark coastal mountains. The riffles of the waves glowed with a yellow hue. The glassy sand reflected the pale blue of the brightening sky above. As I searched for smooth, rounded stones, I continuously calculated how close I could get to the water and still outrun the sneaky winter waves that give rapid chase up towards the dunes.  

Then with rocks in my pocket as a reminder, I turned away with a twinge of regret, a desire for more of these stolen moments that replenish my spirit with equal parts serenity and exhilaration.

Falling

Perhaps on a day when the air is crisp and still
I'll float down in slow gentle circles
to rest on the path where others will walk.

Or maybe I'll flame out in crimson brilliance
ripped through the air by a sudden gust of wind
fading into fragility inside the dark pages of a book.

It's possible I'll hold on cracked brown and dry
all through the cold night forced to the ground
only by the undeniable exuberance of spring.

Lives

You can listen to this while you read.

This week, I've been fascinated by the idea of the life of Eliott Carter, a modernist composer who died on Monday at the age of 103. He was brilliant. He won Pulitzer Prizes. He won the National Medal of Honor. He taught at many prestigious universities. Most intriguing to me, is the fact that he never stopped writing. He published more than 50 works after the age of 90, and completed his most recent composition just two months ago.

His clearly intense passion for the act of creating music must have been a perfect match for his talent and skill, providing a singular, intrinsic motivation that never ceased. Yet lives like Carter's seem to be an anomaly in a world where most of us end up in spaces that don't measure up to our dreams. And so often, it seems that our only dream then, becomes one of a retirement of leisure where thinking, work, and the disappointment from unmet aspirations can be handily erased from our daily lives.

Maybe it's because the idea of a sunny and relaxing retirement doesn't resonate with me yet, that I wonder whether it was by fortune or circumstance that his life turned out as it did, or whether something deeper was at play. What would happen if we could all find, follow and nurture that one thing that inspired us until the day we die? It's an idealistic scenario that's obviously not readily available to the entire mass of humanity, but nonetheless, it begs the question of whether the world would be a better place, or whether it would simply become a cacophony of impracticality.

Carter's music is not easily understood. It's filled with demanding rhythms and tonalities. Much of it is boundary-breaking, created in a modern world where it was difficult to find still intact limits. Yet, it's not necessarily genius, that kind of inexplicable brilliance that seems to come from some otherworldly place. Rather it's studied, practiced, thoughtful, and perceptive. It's the result of hard work, discipline and rigorous thinking. It's often called intellectual, by critics and aficionados, yet at the same time, it's undeniable that it comes fully and freely from his soul.

He once said this. "As a young man, I harbored the populist idea of writing for the public.  I learned that the public didn't care. So I decided to write for myself.  Since then, people have gotten interested." There were years when his music was not accepted, he couldn't get published, and it was performed in lobbies and tiny venues where passers by could easily slink away with dissatisfaction. He must have experienced a crisis of meaning and purpose across those years. Yet something allowed him to retain the courage to continue to put his uncompromised ideas out into the world.

Maybe that's the difference. He arrived at a place where it didn't entirely matter what other people thought. And the reality is, 99.9% of the world hasn't heard of him, and wouldn't find that his work adds value to their lives. Yet ultimately, he didn't allow himself to be stopped by that idea. Rather, he resolutely maintained his true purpose and honored his identity. Whether his driving force ultimately was confidence, or humility, or desire, or something entirely different, his work added meaningful moments to the lives of the people who were ready to receive it. And he truly was never finished.

Signs

I'm not a big believer in signs -- in things that magically appear to guide us down the proper path. I think enchanting things exist everywhere, and we only notice them when we're ready to see them, when something has changed in our head or our heart. Maybe that change frightens us, so it's easier to find a symbol and call it a sign so we don't have to bear responsibility for the choices we make.  Maybe it's easier to believe in the sign than to truly believe in ourselves.

Last Sunday was gray.  Daylight savings time had come and gone, and I'd worked every day for the last six weeks.  Resigned to the situation, I quietly rose before the rest of the household to use my "fall back" hour to write an article as the light began to creep through the blinds. Outside the kitchen window, the squirrels were already chasing each other between the hemlock and the ash, and a hummingbird winged through the thinning branches in search of breakfast.

As the day wore on, filled mostly with mundane Sunday chores, I discovered that despite the clouds, the afternoon air felt practically like summer. This caused all work to cease abruptly, and I headed out to the back deck with my books, pens and chair. The deck needed sweeping, but I just sat and let my mind wander as the tiny migrating finches knocked the berries off the trees, leaving them strewn around along with curled yellow apple leaves and colorful dogwood splashes.

All of a sudden that little morning hummingbird flew right up to my face and just stopped still with it's wings whirring. It hovered there as though it had something important to say, then zipped away over the trees. And I realized at once that inside my crazy deadline-driven world of late, the rhythm of my days had been altered, so that the things I usually do in order to stumble across chance moments of surprise and delight like this, had been completely erased. And I simply hadn't noticed.

So on Wednesday, I arrived home early after a long lunch with a friend. Instead of firing up my computer, and getting back to my deadlines, I slid on my tennis shoes and headed to the wildlife refuge, where I'm always sure to find that rhythm of enchantment that sustains me. Once there, I kicked the giant maple leaves all the way down the path through the woods, despite the stern admonishment from my walking partner that my noise would chase the wildlife away.

Inside the woods, my favorite secret owl, missing all summer long, sat napping, camouflaged on his dark cedar branch. And on the ground, I found two fragile yet beautifully spotted little puff balls under the young oak trees that took me back to summers on my grandparents' farm, where giant orbs, larger than our hands would fall, and we'd delight in viciously stomping them open right there in the rocky field. The heron flew over. The sky turned pink. My hands were cold. It was wonderful.

Visions

Bound for Alaska on a Sunday evening, we rose up into the domain of sky high sunsets. Stunning in their intensity, thrilling in the way they linger as you barrel through the atmosphere, making believable for a brief moment the idea that a day could possibly last forever.  Alas, we never can seem to fly quite fast enough to overtake the darkness.

I sat next to a friendly Alaska Airlines pilot returning home from vacation in Oregon. He gave me his window seat, the one I so often give up to my children and favorite colleagues. We chatted. We looked at his special pilot maps on his Ipad. We talked about how fuel is stored in the wings, and how they have a "cookbook" of recipes to fix any mishap that might occur on the plane.

Yet, the real story was the ancient tale of the dying sun materializing outside the window. On this night, it streaked the sky with a brilliance of pure mythical quality, a vibrant contrast of color, blood orange rising up to meet a pale yellow that melted into the cool blue of the ceiling above. Mystical in the way it existed only in an ephemeral space, devoid of all texture, form and substance.

It felt like a sign, a symbol, an epic drama demanding unconditional attention. As the colors deepened, the scene took on an aura of violence, a primal scream, a bloody awakening, the afterglow of a savage underworld rebellion beneath the fathomless depths of the sea. It was as though a knife was pierced into the surface of the darkness, making real the foundations of the legends of old.

But stories, like daylight, cannot continue forever. And so the deep blue slowly continued to close down, leaving only red fading to brown, forcing the characters in this fantasy to gradually succumb to the draw of the powerful, black line of the ocean, where one lone fishing boat appeared in the vastness as though a star from below.

Then just before the end, the slightest hint of green glazed an ethereal swath across the horizon, as though a gentle dust of peace had been spread over the fire that came before, a resigned acceptance of the death of the day, for those who refuse to go lightly. And finally it faded out in one last, smoky gasp. And all color was removed from the world.

And then, came the stars.

Democracy in action

The Obama camp sends me emails every day. At this point, I consider them research for my work. Emily obsessively orders stickers and magnets from Teens for Obama. They're everywhere. My mom sends an email the morning of the debate saying she hopes Romney "screws up."

Ali helps hand out buttons for her friend's dad before the high school football game. He's running for State Representative. I look him up. He's a republican, fiscally and socially conservative. We talk about how everyone's entitled to their own point of view, but that she might want to refrain from talking about politics at their house. She says "I know mom, I'm not stupid."

Frank votes practically the moment the ballots arrive, then helpfully lets me know that he's left it unsealed in case I needed to check out how he voted.

I choose a quiet moment to sit on the floor of the living room and vote. All on my own. It's handy to be able to vote from home on a Sunday afternoon. Yet it doesn't feel quite as exceptional as it used to when we went to the local church, got our ballots from the senior citizen volunteers, and voted in the little booth next to our neighbors.

And there still aren't very many women's names on the ballot again this year.

Who we are

This weekend's parental assignment for Emily's Theory of Knowledge class is to write a piece "of relevant and useful length about who she is, with no help of any kind from her." All this as we embarked on our first official college visit, a surreal time that forces you to reconcile with letting your little creature set sail in the open world.

We visited the U of O where we sat in a few of my old classrooms and toured the very dorm I lived in so many years ago.  So much has changed. At the same time, nothing has changed. Although the fabulous new dining halls and the thought of endless possibility, made me want to move back in and stay.

Next up, University of Washington, followed by OSU. And then the applications. And then the decision. As you'll see from my completed homework assignment... we'll probably be the last to know.

Who is Emily Chinn? Emily is wholly connected to people, particularly those who have positive energy to offer the world.  She notices and remembers everything.  Her natural state is to be happy and sometimes even ecstatic about things that appeal to her.  She's earnest yet loves to find humor and joy in situations.  At the same time, she's intensely private, keeps her own counsel, makes decisions intuitively, and avoids conflict. She has a keen sense of style, dislikes letting people see her fail, and is fiercely determined to manage her life in her own way, even though her way is usually within the bounds of what people would expect.

Seems like she'll be ready to go.

Lessons

 I want to be Sarah Vowell.

But when it comes to nerdy celebrity worship, Ira Glass is where it's at. Yet I always approached him with a mix of thrill and trepidation that he might actually find out I didn't measure up to his prowess. His unconventional voice. His magical spinning and weaving of tales. His stories that stuck in your head. 

But then, there was the incident. Several years ago, when I worked at OPB, we booked Ira for a speaking engagement. It was right at the start of the fall theatre season in Portland. None of the traditional venues were available. So we opted for a large, local church where OPB had held a wide variety of events in the past -- Rick Steves and the like.

The morning after the tickets went on sale, the ruckus ensued. OPB was roundly blasted by a lesbian blogger for daring to host "their" beloved Ira Glass in a venue where they were "not welcome." This being the early days of the blogosphere, we did not realize the power of activist bloggers to stir the pot. And stir they did. Newspapers called. Talking and quoting ensued for days. My colleague John and I were alone on the front lines, with our communications team and bosses all conveniently out of town.

Turns out we did not know that Ira Glass belongs to the gays. And we did not know that this church had a reputation in some circles for being anti-gay. Can't we all get along? Isn't public broadcasting supposed to include everybody? No, said the bloggers, as John was outed in the Oregonian, and I became the "daughter of Satan" and he the "enemy of the gays." Even our own OPB news team filed a report on the issue and posted it online without bothering to talk to us.

We met with the bloggers.  We talked at length. We tried to understand each other. John made fine use of his empathetic son-of-a-preacher-man skills.  I received another harsh reminder that I have no poker face. The meeting went on and on until finally the CEO arrived and said something which I no longer recall. But it satisfied them, and saved us from ourselves and what we could not fix.

I think Ira had the best solution of all. "If the church really is anti-gay, wouldn't it be the best thing for them to sit their gay asses down in those pews?" But that, he did not say in public.  In the end, he became the hero. He declared a new venue should be sought and was hailed with a "Portland Bloggers Win!" headline. And the show went on amidst a flat, cold sea of chairs at the politically expedient and far more costly Oregon Convention Center.

For more than a year, the "daughter of Satan" comment was the first thing to pop up when my name was typed into google. At which point, you just have to laugh. Because you never, ever, wish for things like this to happen. And some of it, you forever wish you wouldn't have seen. As it turns out, Ira Glass is just a guy who happens to be really good at that one thing he does. And me, I got a thicker skin, which made me better at the things I do.

Luck

21 pelicans flew over my head
riding the air with practiced form
determined sentries of the shore.

A fisherman waits
at the churn of the edge
while surfers anticipate
the perfect crest.

Today the luck is mine.

All I wanted was
my toes in the sand.

Fall

As our days shorten towards the dark dream of winter, a fresh shine radiates from the changing leaves. Sparkles linger longer on the water, and flowers open more slowly in the crisp dew-filled mornings. Each day of sunshine feels like a siren call to abandon our work in favor of play, like an accidental affair that induces us to remain under the gaze of the sun until the last ounce of light is replaced by the twinkle of the stars above.

This year, the first day of fall was one of those days, filled with sunshine and clear blue skies, the hazy smoke from distant fires cleared by yesterday's rain. I warmed myself in the morning sun, then sadly concluded it was time to begin my least favored autumn task, the washing and storing of the patio chairs. It's always done with a significance that feels like defeat, in stages, as I cannot bear the thought of an empty deck surrounded by leafless trees, an unwelcome finale to the activities of summer.

But know I must begin because I will soon lose my hose privileges. For after many years together, I've reluctantly come to accept that I'm married to a persistent weather monitor, determined to keep the ravages of heat and cold away from our home. Even though we have yet to experience one frozen pipe, there will be a morning, not too long from now, when it's declared that the temperature hovers far too close to 32, and the hoses will be suddenly whisked away for the duration of winter, long before I'm prepared to cease my garden chores.

Amidst the cleaning, I only ran into one wayward spider, which made me jump and shudder. It was clearly not as large as the monster that caused a ruckus with the boys across the street as they yelled out "Giant spider! Look at that baby! Get the stick!"  I listened to their drama as I let the chairs dry, then flipped them over on top of my head, and carried them to the garage in the style of a woman from Africa. 

Just four chairs remain, not enough for a party, but enough for now, to maintain the illusion that the waning days of sunshine are not yet spent. As the day moved into evening, I sat in one of the chairs, and relished the light, ignoring the frequent inquiries about when exactly dinner would be served. It could wait.

Back to school night

The math teacher refers to his giant scientific calculator as a "thing of beauty."

The English teacher talks about how they'll analyze Sylvia Plath poetry and read Fitzgerald, while a fabric Virginia Woolf doll holds up the papers on her white board.

We greet the neighbors in the hallway as we search for each classroom, and think it's not possible that we look any older than when we sat in those tiny kindergarten chairs thirteen years ago.

The economics teacher requires everyone to watch The Newshour and explains, "You may be bored to death watching PBS, but it's the real story and it will always be there because they don't sell commercials."

And the history teacher is practically giddy about next week's debate on who really caused World War I.

Passionate and funky people.

Fortunate kids. They have no idea.

Circumstance

Daisies seem suited
to their accidental home
in the neglected ground
that sits between the road
and the fence line

hapless fortune tellers
callously discarded
by eager schoolgirls
who pluck them clean
petal by petal

in order to know
whether the object
of their desire
loves them
or not.

Labyrinthine days

Last Thursday, violent gusts of wind ripped through the gorge tearing still-green leaves from their branches. Apples, chestnuts and crimson mountain ash berries were dropped abruptly at the base of their trunks. The sound was of a winter storm on the coast, strangely misplaced on a late summer day. The brightness and depth of the upriver view was obscured by smoke from fire devouring the dry grassland and forests to the east.

I was here to do a communications training for The Climate Trust.  We talked about biogas digestors and carbon sequestration and climate mitigation. Then we talked about how people get inspired when the story actually has something to do with themselves.  So we turned the conversation to cows who create electricity for our homes, and farmers who preserve the beauty of birds in flight for everyone to see.

But the most brilliant part of the afternoon was after. The training was held at Camp Menucha, which houses a beautiful brick and stone labyrinth in the center of a rose garden inside its vast treed grounds that stand high above the Columbia River. Ever since I walked my first labyrinth earlier this year, which I wrote about here, I've wanted to try the labyrinth at Menucha.

When I arrived, two women were sitting on the grass in the garden. I wanted to do this alone, so I continued along the trail into the woods where I found a glossy deep green oak leaf with thin celery-colored veins.  Cut from the tree too soon, it was larger than my hand and beautiful in its simplicity. As I circled back, the women had gone and I began to walk through with my new found leaf in my hand.

I noticed how rare silence is. That even in a dense circle of trees on the plateau of a high stone cliff, the sound of cars and trains from far below shuttled up to where I stood. I noticed it was no easier to concentrate the second time around.  My feet hurt. My shoes weren't right for the uneven stone surface. I was hungry. And I still had to resist the desire to look ahead to see where the path turned next.

But something happened. A phrase started passing through my mind. "What does it mean that we come and go." I have no idea where it came from, why it came, or what it really means. Yet it didn't feel like a question in search of an answer. It felt more like an invitation to accept the difficulty in finding meaning, to gather solace from the mystery of the uncertain. At least that's how I chose to interpret it.

On my way home, the low light lit up the horses and farmhouses on the old highway. As I turned the final bend, a perfectly brilliant sunset, searing red, dropped behind the forested hills. Radiance created from the destruction of the faraway fires. At home, I closed my leaf inside a book, wondering what will happen to its color and shine in the weeks to come.

Sky

This morning in Oregon, the world woke to a crystal clear September sky.  As I pulled away from the driveway, the contrail of a jet flying north glowed pink from sunlight that had not yet reached the horizon.

It reminded me of the silence of the day after. A silence you could feel. A silence that burned emotion into you. A silence that forced reflection.

We worried about the children, and tried to hide the truth. We forgot that they see everything with wide open eyes, and that what we don't tell them, they tell each other.

In their new world, they spent their playground days telling tales of Osama Bin Laden hidden at the bottom of the dark stairs outside the old one-room school house that still stood next door. And one afternoon, they closed themselves in the bathroom at the neighbors' house to secretly look at the photos in Time Magazine as though they were sneaking a peek at naked boys.

By time I drove over the river this morning, the sun had become a glowing red ball, rising in the sky. Another jet passed high above, its contrail now a pure white streak across the blue. The normalcy of a new day.

School days

Forty one years ago, with that ubiquitous name tag dangling from my neck and little pink glasses on my face, I climbed aboard Mrs. Gassner's big yellow school bus to begin life at Uplands Elementary. For the next 13 years, I started my day on the bus she ran with an iron fist that was pure gold on the inside, allowing only the rarest attempts at wayward behavior.

From Uplands Elementary to the junior high up the hill, to the high school just across the road, this tiny corner of the world was filled with the stuff I love -- people, activity, and new things happening every day. Now, as I pass by on my way to and from work, its subtle presence fuels my certainty that it's still a magical place.

This week as the summer sun lingered, and teachers and kids returned to their fresh, welcoming classrooms, no one arrived at Uplands Elementary. The blinds in the windows remain drawn. After 50 years of existence, the school has closed.

It was built in 1961, a low one-story building crafted from long, thin, orange-hued bricks.  The playground and fields are surrounded by a deep woods of maple and fir, much denser and darker today than in my day, when even then, we were certain that incidents of woe and doom surely happened within. But the true magic was always outdoors.

Every day, about ten minutes in advance of recess freedom, the secret negotiation began. High, middle or low. Which bar would we stake our claim to. Who got it first.  Who would take over in the middle. This was followed by the torturously slow walk down the hall, the push on the solid double metal doors and the sprint towards our chosen apparatus of exhilaration.

We secretly wore shorts under our dresses so we could hang upside down by our knees for minutes on end, swinging back and forth as wide as we possibly could before we daringly flipped our feet back over onto the ground. Then we'd fold our skinny hips over the unyielding metal, encircling the back of our legs with our arms to spin rapidly, over and over and over, dozens and dozens of times in a row.

Last week I followed the curvy, tree-lined road right up to the school because I simply had to know whether this all still existed. Before I even got out of my car, I could see that they were still there after all these years, darkened with age, but not even leaning one tiny bit.

It was amusing to discover that the high bar is not very high, no taller than me.  And the field that seemed so vast when we were out running and playing, now feels quite small and rather contained by the bordering woods. But I imagine, still the perfect size for any grade schooler with a wild imagination.

It's wistful to contemplate that the wondrous days of growing up will no longer happen at Uplands Elementary School except in memory. But today's children will undoubtedly find marvelous experiences to connect them to the place they now belong, and they'll never know the difference.

Holding thoughts

Yesterday I wrote thirteen letters
Inside my head

Then I tore them all up
Inside my heart

In case it's true
What they claim

That some things
Are better left unsaid.

Evening wandering

My children think this blog is boring, that all I write about is nature.  They boldly declare that anyone who would want to read it must lead a life just as uneventful as mine. I can only hope that thirty years from now, they will feel differently.

Particularly in these waning days of summer, I notice how the outdoors has become more important to me. The openness and simplicity mirrors the unconfined feeling of clarity I long for, making it inevitable, it seems, that the places and spaces where I feel most grounded have become a prominent theme.

Last week, while missing my friends terribly, I needed more than the outdoors of the backyard.  I needed nature. Even a promise of frozen yogurt -- and that the adventure would be brief -- could not temp my family to accompany me, so I took the short drive to my favorite nature area and embarked on a solo sunset walk.

As I paused to pick a few blackberries, my narrow shadow stretched far down the path, tuned in to the rustle of tiny creatures below, betrayed only by the movement of tufts far above their heads. The first berry was bitter. But it reminded me to choose more carefully so they come off the vine sweet with the taste of my grandma's farm.

The sun receded further, transferring its glow to the wild grass and cottonwood, in reassurance that the presence of light would remain even as the source journeyed on. Tall fir trees blackened while splashes of orange, lavender and pink were sent into the small clouds that framed a pure white sickle moon. Far off over the Coast Range, the afterglow lit a thin line of clouds brilliantly on fire.

Just as I was thinking the only interesting wildlife I might see were the nutria tumbling around feeding on greens in the pond, two great white egrets swooped in together over the grassland in search of their evening roost.  Before they continued their passage, they performed a magical dance in the little valley, their color profoundly vivid against the fading world.

I still took my anti-nature family to frozen yogurt.  On the way back home, the moon was absolutely stunning in the dark.  I said, "Look at the crisp moon against the indigo sky!" Ali quipped from the back seat, "Who thinks like that.  It's just not normal." Maybe that's why I need the outdoors.

Once in a...

It's a blue moon tonight. 

It's quite possible that earlier this month, I saw the greatest moonrise I'll ever see. It was a cloudy evening. We were on the patio on the edge of the tropical sea listening to the unseen waves crash into the rocky shore.

A pale, nearly imperceptible glow appeared on the horizon, perhaps a fire from an ancient pirate ship scouring the depths for treasure. Moments later, the tiniest sliver of gold appeared from behind a cloud. In an instant, we knew it was the moon.

As it began to rise amidst the luminous clouds, the ocean formed a deep black line, a powerful frame to the ever-changing scene above. As it moved higher, it created an invitation to connect in the form of a brilliant reflective path on the water, direct from the horizon straight to the land.

There was absolutely nothing standing between us and the edge of the earth and the endless open sky. It was pure magic. And it was a lesson in the conflict of beauty, that even as we yearn for these unexpected moments to remain, their splendor exists only in the passing of time, and in what remains fixed in memory.

Even though tonight won't compare, I still can't wait to stand outside and watch the moon rise behind the giant fir trees, bright piercing white against the dark slate sky.

A summer sunday

Sitting in the afternoon breeze on the deck writing tiny little stories. The grapes are nearly ripe. A teenage boy stops to finish a cigarette at the bottom of our stone steps. If I knew him, I would lecture him.  Today, I just observe unseen, with amusement.

This is the story I like best so far:

The girl looked forlorn on the faded blue seat of the train. So out of character when measured against the usual inhabitants of this line -- the delusional espousing their grand visions, and the long-since-defeated mumbling under their breath with rage -- occurrences that might normally call forth alarm or pity, but when experienced on a daily basis, simply become routine.

It was a rainy day and her maroon hood still covered her head, grazing her brow to starkly define those dark, haunted eyes.  Maybe she'd had some sort of fall from grace.  Perhaps it was anticipation of a trial or tragedy to come. Or it could simply be that she had the heart of a dove and someone had cruelly sliced it in two. 

But what can you ever really know from a chance encounter with an unfamiliar pair of eyes? It all suddenly felt like I was being duped into telling a story that had no potential to do anything for her or myself. It could just be that she was simply born with veiled eyes permanently fixed in that reflective state. It could be that she was, in fact, the happiest person on that train.

Bukowski

on the anniversary of the birth

of Charles Bukowski

a friend posted

a poem of his

about a bluebird trapped

inside a heart.

I replied

“I love him!”

(meaning

the poet.)

he wrote back

“this I would not have guessed.”

which makes me wonder

why.

I know it started

with just one

poem.

it always does.

I look

in the usual places

and find no evidence.

at the library on Saturday

I check out

all

the Bukowski books

because

I need to know.

I sit on the back deck

and devour the pages

without pause.

there's a torn piece of pink Kleenex

left behind to

mark page

131

a poem called

heart in the cage.

I vow not

to leave my Women for Obama

sticker inside when

I’m finished.

in the end

I cannot find the one poem

that began it

all.

this I know

he writes

like a

man

a little like Hemingway.

about drinking and gambling and 

power

and I would say sex

but he calls it fucking.

and it’s all underlined

with

disappointment and 

hunger and pain.

maybe

that's what I like.

maybe

I want to know

what men really think.

or maybe

I already know

what they think.

and maybe

I just like

that he has the guts

to actually say it

like it is.

my friend is right.

these poems

are nothing like

me

on the outside

but

a little bit

like

us all

on the inside.

most of us have learned

to hide it

but Bukowski

he refused to look away.