Tending the Soil, Trusting the Season

Fragments I don't see relating, but want to put together anyway:



Sometime today there will be a procession through my mostly Dominican neighborhood, honoring Good Friday. There will be a priest on a megaphone, calling out lines in a musical chant, the congregants responding likewise. Actual songs will be interspersed through all this. To my no doubt unsophisticated ear, I always hear an echo of the Muslim call to prayer in all this, especially the priest's amplified chanting, but also in some of the hymns. I imagine the rituals of prayer coming down through the ages, starting in Moorish Spain, changing from Arabic to Spanish, Muslim to Christian, emigrating to the Caribbean, and ending up outside my doorstep in New York City, still retaining a bit of all those flavors. I may be completely off about the influences... but even so, I like the feeling it gives me that at the heart of true blessing, reverance and thanksgiving, we are more alike than not. At least that's how I see it today.



To answer a question from new friend Butch, the mask accompanying the post below is not the River Liffy, but the Green Man. This link is by no means the only place you can find information on him, he's an old fellow with lots of meanings. Put loosely, I understand him as the male energy of life, specifically a Celtic manifestation, a sort of Father Nature, and with particular ties to Pan, Dionysus, Herne the Hunter, and all the other male gods of Springtime. As such maybe he'd be a better accompaniment to today's post, but he seemed like the right image for my St. Paddy's Day post. Yeats, Ó Searcaigh, and I all connect with Pagan impulses in our own ways, I would say, and the idea of 'going back to sources' explored in both poems made me think of this guy. My sister and brother-in-law gave him to me a few years ago, and he hangs on my wall, across from my bed (one of the few guardian masks I didn't make myself), smiling down on me each morning as I wake up in my gritty urban fifth-floor walk-up.

I don't think St. Patrick would have minded.



By a funny coincidence though, I do have a small River Liffy mask, a gift from my mother a few years ago. Liffy hangs on the edge of the wall dividing the living room from the hallway. She's one of the first things I see when I walk through my front door, shrouded behind my exuberant golden pothos, twining itself around three of the walls. My sense of who she is to me is much more unformed (okay, just so Java's heart will go pitter-pat, I'll say 'inchoate'. Happy Easter, Dear). I'm always glad to see her though. And I do love Dublin. If you enlarge the lower photo, you'll also see that behind her hangs a beautifully calligraphed print of the Yeats poem that I copied out in the previous post, so while I didn't post her with the poem, she is close to it in my world. I don't know what all the lovely coincidences in Butch's question mean, if anything, but I liked them.



Years ago I heard a fantastic joke on TV, from Art Buchwald (yes, that takes you to Wikipedia, it was the most concise biography I could find; feel free to do your own search). I won't do justice to Buchwald's telling of it (it really loses something if you don't hear it told in his New York accent), but here it is.



A man decides that he wants to win the lottery, so he begins praying to God for this, every day. Years go by with the man making this prayer daily, all to know avail. After ten years of this increasingly frantic supplication one day he loses all patience and screams, "God, I've been a good man all these years, why won't you let me win the lottery?"



Suddenly, a voice booms from the heavens.



"Do me a favor! Buy a ticket!"



I fear I have spent a lot of my life being that man. One of the lessons I seem to have to relearn repeatedly is how to find the balance between taking action, and -for lack of a better description- going with the flow. The wellspring of joy and creativity in my life, particularly as it relates to performing, has felt very blocked for years now, and I haven't done much recently to address that (unless we include periodically moping about it on my blog). Spring is one of my favorite times of year, in part because of its reminder that life is reborn, growth occurs, rejuvenation does happen, it just happens according to its own time-table, not mine.



And yet... this doesn't mean I can just sit back. I still need to plant the seeds. For long stretches of time that may be all I do. I'm learning to trust fallow periods more as I age, trusting that just because I can't see it or measure it doesn't mean important growth is going on underground. But that doesn't let me off the hook for doing some work.



Sometimes the soil is sour, depleted or just unsuitable. Sometimes there hasn't been enough water. Sometimes the shoots come up, and it's my job to protect them from late frost and snow, careless feet, or hungry rabbits. Nature will take care of itself just fine without my help, but if I am hoping for specific results, flowers or vegetables say, rather than happy rodents or a rocky front yard, then I have to do some work. Yes, a balance is to be sought. Respect for the forces involved must be maintained. But I mustn't fall into the comfortable laziness (probably really a form of fear), of passivity.



Then there's the other side. Various people in my life are dealing with difficult issues right now, and various caretakers are watching them deal with those issues, trying to help, but often struggling with the recognition, and accompanying guilt, that there is nothing they can do. I feel badly for both people in the equation; both experience a feeling of helplessness, of being at the mercy of forces they can't control, even when they believe they should be able to. While I am reminding myself that I must do the things I can, THEN trust in other forces, many many of my loved ones might want to remind themselves that some things are beyond our power, and even when we do all the 'right' stuff, sometimes things still go wrong. Then we find what to do next. Feeling guilty for failing to protect a loved one is a burden many people subject themselves to understandably, but needlessly.

("Easy for you to say," mutters the chorus... I know, I know. I do it too, sometimes.)

So I hope each of you, in your own way, finds this season a time of rejuvenation, healing or just plain old joyous growth, in whatever way is best for you. Some of us may need to get our asses out there to plant seeds and pull weeds... but some of us may just need to trust that we've done all we can. Do you know which one you are? Are you sure?

Favorite Books:"The Tempered Blade in the Fantastic Silken Sheath"

Just to warn you: this is a long entry. A looooong entry. I do go on. I'm not sure why I wanted to write out what is essentially a book report, but it's been sitting with me for a few weeks, and wouldn't go away. Don't feel like you have to read it, I won't be offended. Come back when I'm babbling more succinctly about something else.

Rosemary Sutcliff is a children’s writer who had a significant influence on me as a kid. I don’t know if she’s now better known on this side of the pond, but the only reason I discovered her books was because we spent a year in London when I was ten. She introduced me to the Irish epic, Cuchulain and the heros of the Red Branch, and to the folk tales of Finn MacCool and the Fianna. She also wrote historical novels about Roman Britain. Many of them won literary awards and big kudos from historians for their detailed and uncannily accurate portraits of the time period. Sutcliff’s portrait of the Celtic world and it inhabitants definitely shaped mine. She was the first to admit that if the choice lay between telling a good story or being historically accurate, she would choose the story every time, so there is no doubt her characters (and thus my image) are at times romanticized. Other influences have interceded over the years, along with more rigorously historical reading and a fair amount of time in Ireland, but Sutcliff’s (with a little help from Yeats) passionate, mystic warrior/poet still lives at the root of my imagination.

When I went back to her books as an adult though, I began to wonder if she had influenced my imagination in other, more surprising ways. Her books stand up to adult scrutiny well; things are never sugar-coated though at times they may be left out. The characters are finely drawn, the stories exciting and well-told, and she’s unafraid to delve into difficult, even tragic terrain. Because so many of her characters are soldiers, warriors or gladiators, there is a lot of fighting, but also a lot of male bonding. Often the significant relationship in the story is between two men. When she’s retelling epics or traditional stories, this could easily be explained as her remaining true to the originals. Cuchulain really does love Ferdia, which is why their battle to the death is so horrifying. Many epics and traditional stories are full of what one of my Shakespeare teachers called “the passionate male friendship.” Arthur and Lancelot, Romeo and Mercutio, Frodo and Sam, if we want another example of a modern spin on the tradition, great love is expressed between these pairs without shame or embarrassment, because, well, there is nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. Their cultures had a place for these passionate yet sexless bonds.

But... then I looked at one of her books more closely. The Mark of the Horse Lord may be my favorite of all her books (though I recently discovered that there are probably about thirty more than I knew about; I’m very excited). The premise is this; Phaedrus is a half-Celt, half-Greek gladiator who manages to win his freedom at the beginning of the book. He meets a Celtic Prince, Midir, whom he resembles to a startling degree, and for reasons I won’t go into here, agrees to impersonate him, claim Midir’s throne, and depose his usurping aunt. Basically the Prince and the Pauper story, in other words, though Sutcliff manages to make it more plausible. The connection between the two men is passionate, confusing and important to them both, but clearly not romantic or sexual.

Naturally to be able to impersonate him, Phadreus has to learn everything about Midir, so they hole up for a month so Midir can tell his entire history, complete with detailed descriptions of all the people in his life. Midir is quizzing Phadreus at one point:

“‘Conory?’ said Midir’s voice behind him.

‘Conory was –is my cousin, born in the same summer to Iorwen, my father’s younger sister. I know him by his one eye set higher than the other, and a brown fleck in the apple of it.’ There were other things he knew about Conory, a great many other things, including some that Midir had never told him. But he did not recite them now. They had had to be learned, but though the arena years had hardened him to most things, he still disliked trampling more often than need be in another man’s private territory.” (p. 41)

Homosayswhatnow?

Okay, sure there’s no reason to assume the big unspoken secret between Conory and Midir is sexual in nature. Maybe they murdered a man together, were never caught, and now are the only ones who know the truth. Maybe one of them offended taboo in some way, and the other covered it up.

But come on. I mean, really.

I read this when I was ten, did I mention that? Sure the whole thing probably went over my head at the time, but, like, wow.

But wait, it gets better. You haven’t met Conory yet.

“And then behind the rest, with some kind of great fur collar round his neck, he saw a man holding back, taking his time, watching him out of eyes that seemed, even in the gloom beyond the torchlight, to be oddly set— one a little higher than the other...

Their gaze met, and Phaedrus saw in that intant that the fur collar had eyes too. A striped-grey-and-dark thing with eyes like green moons. The young man made a sound to it, and the thing rippled and arched itself into swift, sinuous life, became a wildcat, poised and swaying for an instant on his shoulder and leapt lightly to the floor, and advanced beside him with proudly upreared tail, as he came forward to take his place among the rest.

For an instant, as they came face to face, and the wildcat crouched at his foot, Phaedrus thought that this could not, after all, be the cousin born in the same summer, who had helped Midir to wash the blood from his back after that long-ago beating. Not this wasp-wasted creature with hair bleached to the silken paleness of ripe barley, who wore a wildcat for a collar, and went prinked out like a dancing-girl with crystal drops in his ears and his slender wrists chiming with bracelets of beads strung on gold wires! But one of the man’s eyes was certainly set higher than the other; and on the bright hazel iris was a brown fleck the shape of an arrow-head.

For a long moment they stood confronting each other, and Phaedrus knew that this was indeed the danger moment. He saw a flicker of doubt in the odd-set eyes, quickly veiled and something tensed in his stomach, waiting for what would happen next, while the men around him looked on.

The young man said, ‘Midir.’ Just the one word, and his hands came out. Phaedrus, with an unpleasant consciousness of the wildcat crouched with laid-back ears on the floor, followed his lead so instantly that the onlookers could scarcely have said which made the first move. But next instant their arms were round each other in a quick, hard embrace that looked like the reunion of long-parted brothers, but had actually nothing in it but a kind of testing, an enquiry, like the first grip of a wrestling-bout... ‘Conory— you have changed!’ It was the only thing that Phaedrus could think of to say, and it seemed safe.

‘Have I?’ Conory said. ‘So have you, Midir. So—have—you,’ and the doubt was still in his eyes; indeed, it had strengthened, Phaedrus thought, but it would not be there for anyone but himself to see. At any rate — not yet. What game was he playing? Or was he playing any game at all? Had he, Phaedrus, only imagined that flicker of doubt? It was gone now. Unless it was only veiled once more...

With Conory’s grip on his shoulders, he discovered that there was more strength in those slender wrists than anyone could have expected. He made another discovery, too. He did not know, looking into those oddly set eyes that were so silkily bright, whether he and Conory were going to be heart-friends or the bitterest of enemies, but he knew that it must be one or the other; something between them was too strong to end in mere indifference.” (pp. 64-65)

Good stuff, no? Let me share another view of Conory from another member of his tribe.

“Phaedrus took the mead-horn, grinning... ‘I was taking a look at (Conory).’

And an older man leaned across to him from the other side. ‘A good long look, then. Aye well, he’s worth looking at, and he knows it,’ he snorted, but there was a hint of admiration in the snort. ‘Ever since he came to manhood he’s been one that the women watch— aye, and men too, and there’s times I think he makes a sport of seeing just how far he can go. He only has to come out one day with his cloak caught in a particular fold, or a woman’s ear-ring in one ear, and the next day half the young braves of the tribe are doing the same. If he cut off a finger-tip tonight, the other half would lack a finger-tip tomorrow. Fools!” (p. 71)

There’s more, but I'll stop there. Oh, don’t get too excited; it is a children’s book, this is as explicit as anything gets. And again, this innuendo about Conory and his relationship with Midir doesn’t have to be sexual... but I repeat, come on.

The Celts, like lots of ancient cultures, were pretty relaxed about sexuality; bisexuality was probably the norm in more places than not. People like Conory would have existed, it's just surprising to find one in a children's book published in 1965. I can’t help but wonder how it got through editing. I wish I could write her a letter to ask how conscious Sutcliff was of this possible interpretation, but she died in 1992.

After rediscovering Conory though, I realized that while he may be the first, he wasn’t the only figure of this kind I read about as a kid. Sutcliff's subject matter and writing style proved to be a great introduction to the books of Mary Renault. Perhaps more than any other writer, Renault shaped my earliest dreams of what love between men could be. At her best, her writing is compelling, layered, witty, wise yet forgiving of human nature. I have talked about another her books before, and may talk about others later, but after rereading Horse Lord, I specifically sought outThe King Must Die. I remembered meeting another Conory, several in fact, here too.

This book is a marvelous retelling of the Theseus myth, specifically his time in the Labyrinth of Crete. Making use of what was then recent archeological discoveries (Knossos, and the labyrinth, had just been discovered), Renault pictured the Athenian tribute as dancers in the sacred bull dance. Theseus and the other Athenians have just been brought to the practice court of the bull dancers, where they meet the de facto leader. (Theseus is talking.)

“He was slight, smaller than I... he stood poised on the balls of his feet, like a dancer, then took a step back and looked us over. I had never seen such a youth as this. At first sight he could have been a mountebank. But his heavy gold necklaces, his arm-rings of jeweler’s work, the gems on his glittering belt and loin-guard, were not gilded shams; he was wearing a princes’s ransom. His light-brown hair hung down in long curled tresses, groomed as sleek as a girl’s and his eyes ere painted. But with all this frippery, he was like a young panther, lean and spare and hard. A thick red scar, like a long burn, curved round the ribs on his right side... He raised his brows again, and then walked round us, staring at each in turn. Many had stared at us that day; but this one saw us. I felt as if a fine sharp blade pricked me over, searching for flaws.” (p. 241)

We learn that this fellow (simply called the Corinthian because he is the only still living) is a superstar, one of the best bull-leapers in the court, rivaling even the old legendary figures. Theseus finds out what this means the first time he’s allowed to witness the bull dance.

...[T]he Corinthian ran round [the bull] to face him, and held out both arms; the circling [of the other dancers] stopped.

He ran smoothly up to the sullen, bull. It was the leap I had seen often in the Bull court. But that was a shadow; now, he had a living things to dance with. He grasped the horns, and swung up between them, going with the bull; then he soared free. The beast was too stupid to back and wait for him. It trotted on, when it felt him gone. He turned in the air, a curve as lovely as a bent bow’s, and on the broad back his slim feet touched down together; then they sprang up again. He seemed not to leap, but to hang above the bull, like a dragonfly over the reeds, while it ran out from under him. Then he came down to earth, feet still together, and lightly touched the catcher’s hands with his, like a civility; he had no need of steadying.... I stretched in secret my right hand earthwards, and whispered under all the noise, ‘Father Poseidon! Make me a bull-leaper!’” (p. 244)

Unlike Sutcliff, Renault is writing for adults, so she is free to let us know some men sleep with men in this world. Men who never sleep with men are the odd-balls, as Theseus comes to learn. Everyone in the Bull Court dresses like the Corinthian too. Theseus is portrayed as a back country prince; sexist, homophobic (to use modern terms as short-hand) with a bit of Napoleonic complex, he has his eyes opened in many ways in Crete, including how he sees women and 'Nancy boys'(though remaining a ‘man for women’ all his life), and is soon just as bejeweled and coiffed as anyone else.

But the Corinthian isn’t the only figure of this kind in the book. As Theseus begins to plot the downfall of the royal house, he is soon allied with some nobles from the ancient (Minyan) houses. Alektryon is a member of the guard, and a formidable warrior. One night he has a message for Theseus.

“But the next night, after supper, I heard laughter at the doors of the Bull court, and the chink of gold. It is not cheap, to buy your way in there after dark. In came Alektryon, swift and glittering, his kilt stitched with plaques of pearl and his hair stuck with jasmine. He had a necklace of striped sardonyx, and a rolled kid belt covered with leaf gold. He strode among the dancers, flirting with this youth or that, talking of the odds, and the newest bull, like any young blood who follows the ring. But I saw his seeking eyes, and went toward him.

‘Theseus!’ he said, making eyes at me and tossing back his hair. ‘I vow you are of all men, the most fickle. You have forgotten my feast and eaten in the Bull Court! You have crystal for a heart. Well, I will forgive you still, if you come now for the music. But hurry; the wine is poured out already.’

I begged his pardon and said I would come. ‘The wine is poured’ was a signal agreed on between us, for something that could not wait.

We went out into the Great Court, which, since it was still early, was full of lamplight, and of people with torches passing to and fro. He caught my eye, then leaned upon a column in a Cretan pose. As someone passed he said, ‘How can you be so cruel?’ and fingered my necklace and drew me near. The he said softly, ‘Minos has sent for you. The way is marked as before. You must go alone.’

He spoke as if he had learned it off. But I had never had word from the King, except from the Goddess. I stared, trying to read him. His Cretan looks, his finery, his foppish ways, all made him doubtful to me, once I began to doubt. I knew nothing of his standing among the warriors. My eyes met his. He took my by the arm, a grip tender to look at but strong and hard. ‘I have a token for you. Watch out, and take it like a love gift.’...as someone came past us [he said], ‘Wear it, my dear, and think of me’... He slipped it on my hand. Under his warning eye I smiled, turning it this way and that. I had seen it once before. So I leaned on his shoulder, as I had seen youths do in Crete, and whispered, ‘It is enough. What does he want?’ He put his arm around my waist and said, ‘He did not tell. It is something heavy.’ Then he looked past my shoulder and murmured swiftly, ‘One of Asterion’s people. We mustn’t look too well together. Quick, give me the slip.’ I shrugged him coyly off me, and went away. Though I felt a fool, I had no more doubts of him.” (pp. 324-5)

I read this book probably around age twelve, maybe thirteen.

I’m not sure what to call this figure I’m describing. The title of this entry is how Phaedrus comes to see Conory, and it’s a good summation of what I find compelling about him. That flashy, unapologetic androgyny, combined with surprising strength and formidable skills (even if only for acrobatics) was all part of it. I loved the idea of someone being feminine and dangerous, if anything dangerous in part because of his effeminacy. Not the most Quakerly of thoughts, of course, but I was in junior high at the time, as close to lord of the flies I ever hope to come. Don’t worry, I wasn’t actually bullied much. I had gotten very good at being invisible, so mostly people just ignored me. This creature though, he didn’t hide, he didn’t avoid people’s attention, he demanded it, knowing he deserved it, he was a delight to the eye, and could take care of himself if there was any trouble.

What would I have done if I had met such a person in real life? I would have fled screaming the other direction. I would have had nothing to do with this guy when I was a teenager, and was well into college before he wouldn’t have freaked me out. The men who came closest to this image at the time either seemed ridiculous (Elton John, Liberace), or scary (Bowie). (I never saw Mick Jagger this way for some reason.) Nor was there any way on God’s little green earth I was going to BE this person. I’d managed to win the two fights I couldn’t avoid (scuffles, really), but my invisibility policy was working even better, why mess with a good thing? I think I wanted to be him though, flashy, eye-catching, powerful, and dangerous.

By high school Boy George, Annie Lennox, Prince, Michael Jackson, and their imitators were on the scene. None of them scared me (though I thought most of them ridiculous), and I could even enjoy their music without repercussions. Androgyny was talked about more. I know their very existence still freaked a lot of people out, but I never saw any of them as having that dangerous power I found so compelling. Annie Lennox and Prince occasionally got close. All of them did help get me more comfortable with the gentler, less threatening face of this image, and that was good.

In college I finally met the great-granddaddy of these guys, Dionysus in Euripides The Bacchae. I had just come out months before, so this was my first time meeting the figure when I was free to enjoy him. Sure, I think he overdoes it with poor stupid Pentheus, but I still loved his combination of feminine sensuality and panther-like ferocity. Here was this creature turned force of nature, a natural and universal impulse we deny at our peril. Though I’ve never gotten to play him in The Bacchae, over the years he’s danced in and out of my life; some of the solo performing I’ve done has been in his guise as Bromios, and once or twice I’ve gotten to play Dionysian-like characters in other plays. Seeing as how this is the second entry I’ve written touching on androgyny, he’s clearly still a potent figure in my life, even if we’re not in touch presently. It was fun realizing where and when I actually met him.

Solstice Walk

On the solstice this year, I decided to take my old walk.   I wanted to visit some important personal sites, and do so in the order I always did as a kid. After reading Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines I wondered if this served a similar purpose in my life, but I think the concept of dinnesanchas comes much closer.  The term comes from Irish, and means something like 'the naming of place'; the idea as I understand it is that when a place has been inhabited for a long time by people with an unbroken narrative tradition, every rock, hummock, hill, stream, or creek has a name and a story.  Describing my little walk with this grand term is pompous, hanging far too much weight on it, but there is still something in the concept that resonates with me.  

I break with tradition almost immediately by starting from my sister's and brother-in-law's place, rather than my parents' home, but I realized that the distance between them never really had much of import for me.  The special places and the stories start later.  

First stop is the kicking post.  This was a gift to the college from the class of 1940, and is a simply a small menhir about my height, sitting right next to the main entrance to the campus.  I had always thought it was meant to be a way for Quaker students to vent their unseemly anger, but this time I actually read the sign posted on it, and realize that you are supposed to make a wish and kick it for good luck.  I'm somewhat surprised the class of 1940 would have been willing to offer such a superstitious, verging on pagan, monument, but I make a wish and kick the post, being something of a pagan myself.  Besides, I never turn down a chance to make a wish.      

The next stop is actually a recent addition, since my adulthood.  Boy for a trip down memory lane, I've already screwed it up.  If this were my Songlines, I'd be subject to the death penalty by now.  Okay, this stop is an enormous catalpa tree, with a trunk so wide that with our arms out-stretched my mom, dad, and I can only just barely touch fingers.  This is the tree friend my mom visits -and hugs-  each morning with the dog.  She has done so for at least twenty years, I believe.  Something about its presence calls to her, and feels welcoming.  An enormous pin oak has recently entered her life as well, but I think this catalpa is the only tree she visits every day.
Today I notice that one of its huge limbs has a bee hive in it.  It almost looks like the bulge in the branch has been created by the hive, since their entrance is right in the center of it.  It's worrisome that the bees are out and about, since it is December 23rd, but since it is almost 60 degrees F, I assume they knew what they're doing.  

I then walk along the west edge of the campus, which has a tall fence separating it from the cemetery next door.  The fence didn't completely separate the two places when I was a kid and college student; lots of students used to go study in the beautiful surroundings.  There was a gentle hazing tradition, maybe still is, where upper- class students would tell first-years to go find the Glass Tomb.  There really is one, once you figure out the joke.  

The cemetery never played heavily in my childhood fantasies though, so I don't mind the new fence (Mom does).  On this side, I'm walking through a windbreak of evergreens that are so tall and dense you can almost stay dry in a rain storm here.  An owl had a nest here for many years, but I can't tell if she's still here.  I stop to visit the tiny grave of Morton Bisp.  For reasons unknown to me, this little tombstone for a child who died before his sixth birthday (in 1953), is separated from the cemetery, one lone stone that didn't make it onto the other side of the fence.  I assume he was buried on college property on purpose.  

Now I'm at the top of the sledding hill, the place we always came as kids.  If you could see this shallow little valley with its two modest peaks, you'd realize just how midwestern my upbringing was.  I remember the rides down being quite satisfying, right up until I was thirteen or so, but when I look at it now, I laugh.  I know it's still used that way by faculty kids.  The family dog before I was born, the first Fang, loved riding on sleds.  We tried to get Lilly, the dog I grew up with, to try it but it never appealed to her; she liked running along side barking better.  This was also a good rolling hill in the Summer, and you could get some pretty good speed up for that.  Once after seeing me do it, Lilly gave it a try, but her legs kept getting in the way.  She learned that she liked the feeling however, so from then on her walks usually included rolling blissfully in very clean grass.  Dew-covered grass was her favorite, so we think she may have been bathing.  She always kept herself very clean.   

At the top of the other hill there is a bronze statue honoring Mary Dyer, a Quaker hanged on Boston Common for preaching in defiance of the Puritan authorities.  She's seated, looking at her hands.  As a kid, I would climb up to sit in her lap, but that no longer seems appropriate, since her hands would now be cupping my ass. Behind her is Stout Meetinghouse, where I went to Sunday meeting from birth through college.  I find the building quite beautiful (though that isn't supposed to matter to Quakers), with its white-washed walls, long dark wooden benches and windows looking out on grass and trees in three directions.  I check the holly bush on the east side.  I don't remember the actual superstition, but I have a vague recollection of it being beneficial to bring holly into the home on the Winter Solstice, so I've brought clippers and a plastic bag for the purpose.  This bush has no berries though, so I check out the one behind Stout to the south.  Much better in the berry department, but I'll have to come back; my walk is only just begun, and I'd rather not have to carry a bag of spikes for the next half hour.  

I sit down on Dan Kinsey's Bench, a granite monument to a former teacher and coach.  I still feel the lack of the old honey locust tree behind it, gone now for ten years.  It always kept this bench cool in the Summer, and I would spend hours lying here, looking up through the leaves.  

I had an epiphany once, sitting on this bench.  As a kid I was as dismissive of my hometown and its boring terrain as anyone; I only saw beauty in mountains, lakes, the ocean, at least some dramatic hills.  This flat land had nothing to recommend it, as far as I was concerned.  Then when I was fourteen, my family spent three months living in London, and traveling all around the UK and Ireland.  I wasn't all that fond of London (it made me feel claustrophobic), but I drank in the scenery of the Lake District, and the west coast of Ireland.  It felt like I got into a new habit of seeing, and when I got home this habit stayed with me.  I sat down on this bench soon after we got back, looked over the playing fields, the far side of the bowl that held the football field, the horse pasture and farmland off in the distance, the big, clear blue sky... and suddenly it was breath-taking to me.  It was as if I was seeing this view for the first time.  I still crave mountains, lakes, rivers, oceans, big hills, but since that day I feel an expansive sense of well-being whenever I'm in a Midwestern landscape.  Here in New York, I have to make sure I go someplace with a wide vista at least once a week, to regain a sense of calm.  

Moving on, I walk across the two playing fields (where Fang runs her joyous figure-eights), heading towards the old stables where I took horse-riding lessons as a teenager.  This was another of the perks of being a faculty brat.  This is my archetypal image of a horse stable.  It's low, painted red, with Dutch doors at the entrance.  Inside there is a row of stalls and two boxes for horses that needed more space or sequestering.  An open area once stored hay, and housed a dynasty of barn cats that helped keep the rat population down.  At the other end is the tack room.  I have vivid memories of being in there, cleaning my saddle and bridle along with my teacher and classmates, all of us glad to be huddled in the one warm room in the place.  In my memory it's alway snowy, rainy or dark when I'm here, which doesn't make any sense, since we took classes on Saturday mornings in the Fall and Spring... but the memory is still cozy, friendly, and for some reason makes me think of John Steinbeck.  

Having been replaced at a new location, these stables are no longer in use,  and are looking pretty decrepit, so I'm just as happy not to see inside.  Besides, I've arrived at the entrance to the real magic of this walk.  

The stables sit on the edge of a deep gorge that contains a small creek.  These are MY woods.  A set of beams carved out steps down into the magical place.  Walking here today, I'm struck for the first time by how perfect it was to have this path be so tucked away and hidden, flanked by the stables on one side, and the tree fence of the grave-yard on the other.  It couldn't look more like a secret entrance.  It makes perfect sense I turned this place into Narnia, Middle-Earth, Mowgli's jungle, and the hunting grounds of the Fianna.  

The steps have fallen out of use, so they're overgrown with brambles. The main path down now is the one that used to be only for the horses when we went on trail-rides.  For the sake of tradition though I force my way through the first bush, and realize the rest of the steps are still fairly clear.  At the foot of the steps, the path forks.  I take the right-hand path heading west.  I pass the old log where I could often find a six foot bull snake sunning itself on warm days.  I find it noteworthy that the log still seems to look the same, since it must have been decomposing for at least 30 years.  Looking at the trees on either side of me, I realize for the first time that they're mostly slender, and surrounded by undergrowth.  There are some grand old trees with massive trunks, but they are few and far between.  At an unconscious level, I think I always thought of this as the forest primeval, but recognize now that it must be less than 200 years old, perhaps much less.  I wonder how I'll be able to find out more about its history.  Europeans were settling and farming here in the early 1800s and would have farmed every inch of land they could clear.  This area was probably last choice, since it's so steep, rocky, and uneven, but it's unlikely it was left untouched.

When I was a kid, though, this was the great wilderness; the old memories take me over, and once again I am Finn MacCool, Cuchulain, Mowgli, Legolas and a Miami Indian Chief.  One of my great-grandfathers was American Indian, and as I kid I was absolutely fascinated by this.  We never learned what tribe or nation he belonged to, since one day he simply walked out on my great-grandmother; Dad says she was a bitch with oak cluster, which may have had something to do with it.  Like a lot of kids (and no few adults) I romanticized this man, desperately wishing at times that I could be ALL Indian -or at least look a little bit like one.  In my woods I would try to walk without being seen or heard by my animal quarry or any white men.   I occasionally found some arrowheads, which helped the fantasy.  I still have one of them sitting on my dresser.  I'm not sure we ever even knew this man's name, I'll have to ask Dad.  Maybe someday we'll learn something about him.  Dad's side of the family consists mostly of questions.  

The path forks again, and I take the upper one, which brings me out to a ledge overlooking the creek.  In front of me is a huge black pipe that stretches across the shallow water about twenty feet in the air.  This, and two other pipes in the woods, used to annoy me.  I'd be desperately trying to create the illusion of being far from civilization when boom, here'd be one of these damn reminders that I was still surrounded by it.  After I saw Planet of the Apes though, I'd pretend that these pipes were all that was left of an ancient culture that had destroyed itself, leaving the world to return to a state of wild beauty.  That helped.  It wasn't unusual to find grocery carts abandoned here, which was all the more mystifying since the closest store was a good half-hour's walk away, at least half the walk over grass and mud. I could never figure out why someone would work that hard to make something look so ugly, not yet being familiar with the concept of under-age drinking.   That's still the only explanation I'm able to come up with.  

The black pipe was also where I was more likely to run into other kids, not always friends, because crossing on it was a popular test of daring-do.  One kid broke his arm falling off it, but that's the only accident I can remember hearing about.  Some graffiti on the pipe lets me know it's still a fairly popular destination with someone.  Off to the southeast lies the white pipe, which is both wider and lower to the ground, so crossing it was less daunting.    

Standing on my ledge, I can survey pretty far.  I ignore the grave yard looming behind me, and look up and down Clear Creek.  When I was a kid, the name of this stream was distressingly ironic, since a local chemical company was dumping waste in it further upstream.  Along with giant pipes and grocery carts, I had to ignore dirty foam build-up and algae in the water.  That is one thing that has improved in recent years though, due partly to stricter enforcement but probably mostly from the company going out of business.  I still wouldn't drink this water, but I think it's doing less damage to the local fauna now.  A few years ago I saw a great blue heron here, winging its way silently when I startled it.  That was encouraging.  

I walk down the hill to the creek's edge, and head downstream.  The bed has changed a little since I was a kid, at least one ox-bow now being a straight channel, but over all it looks more or less the same to me.  In past winters I've been able to walk along the frozen creek itself, rejoicing in the musical burbling up from the air holes, but today is too warm for that.  What was a clear path when I was a kid is almost gone now.  At times I'm not sure if I'm following the old track or the previous bed of the creek.  I wonder why no one seems to wander down here any longer.  When my mom was a student at Earlham, she said no one ever came down here.  I was playing here unsupervised by the time I was six, if memory serves.  I'm at least a 30 minute walk from my parents' house, and out of sight of any other building or area where there are likely to be crowds.  As a kid this was one of the biggest draws of the place, but I wonder if people would see it as too dangerous now.  Or maybe fewer kids these days want to go bushwacking, preferring to stay glued to their computers and video games.  That just doesn't seem likely though.  Kids don't change that much; they still want to have secret hide-outs don't they?  Well, if they do, maybe they're finding them elsewhere.  

I come out at a fairly wide path.  This part of the woods is where the college biology department has been conducting a number of experiments.  When I was a kid, I could stand here and look across a fairly large space that had been planted with saplings.  Now I can only see about two feet in front of me, the saplings having become a tall forest.  Thirty some years, yup.  It's almost twenty since I graduated from college.  Yipe.  There are occasional pink ribbons tied to trees as markers for students, but I don't know what they signify.  The study is watching how forests form, seeing what changes and shows up as the place ages.  Though I can't remember when it happened, there was a point when the appearance of this robust forest took me by surprise.  Maybe I hadn't come this far into the woods for a few years, so the jump was more drastic.  That doesn't sit with my memories, but is the only logical explanation.  

Now I take the path that loops around and through this place.  I pass blackberry canes, now bare of leaves and fruit, glowing purply-white against the greys and browns of the rest of the woods.  Fang's immediate predecessor, Sybil, was fond of blackberries, and would even delicately pick them herself, though she found it much easier to beg them from Dad.  

In the spring the whole campus is blanketed with violets, one of my seasonal markers, and down here, just a few weeks after the purple ones come out, fields of white violets show up.  That has always been one of the reasons I found this place magical as a child.  Somehow those flowers felt like secrets, or evidence that unusual forces were at work.  

Up a short steep (for Indiana) incline, and I'm at another biology experiment, the big pond.  This went in my senior year of college, but it so captivated me that it got woven into my childhood fantasy seamlessly.  I've always loved water, have at times wished I were amphibious -when I wasn't wishing I was a wolf, a Miami Indian, or the half-Sidhe hero of Ulster.   This pond is particularly ripe for fantasy-making, since it was constructed with an island in it.  It sits at one end of the long thin pond, near a large gap in the trees that were created so birds like ducks and geese, which need a runway to take off, would be willing to land here.  Almost the minute the pond was finished, a pair of Canada Geese showed up, raised a brood, and took off again.  Each Spring I now wait for my family to tell me the geese have arrived, how many goslings they hatched, then what day they all disappeared.  We try not to think about how many of the goslings probably stayed behind, in the gullets of snapping turtles.   Turtles gotta eat too, I guess.  Today I startle a small creature of some kind as I come up.  I never get a really good look at it, but am pretty certain it's a muskrat.  This feels like an especially nice omen, since I've never seen one here before.  Where do these creatures come from?  

I swing around the pond, and come out between two more biology experiments; on one side is the meadow, on the other is the prairie.  It's astonishing how distinct they are from one another, separated only be a six-foot wide strip.  The prairie side gets burned every few years, so that probably helps.  In the summer this area is swarming with flocks of goldfinches, and butterflies. Tony the entomologist has taught Mary and me how to identify the sex of Monarchs, along with a lot of other fun information.  Who knew we'd all become so interested in bugs someday?  

At the edge of the meadow is the school observatory; Indiana is not a good place for serious star gazing, because it's hazy and rainy so much of the year, but when I took astronomy my first year, I got to see several planets in clear detail through this telescope.  Saturn was the most beautiful.  Across another set of playing fields is Brick City, a whole development of ugly single story red-brick buildings that are used as housing for visiting professors, grad students, and anyone else who chooses to live here.  Because of the observatory, all the streetlights nearest are shielded on this side, to cut down on the light pollution.  

Then I visit the smaller, older pond that went in sometime while I was in high school.  As with the larger one, fish, frogs and other animals simply showed up here almost as soon as the pond filled with water.  I believe their eggs were transported by bird guano, but there is still something magical about the apparent spontaneous generation of life that water causes.   

Now I'm on the paved road, looking at the old horse-pasture, and on the other side of the bowl, the back side of the college campus.  When I was a student here, whenever things seemed particularly overwhelming, I would take a walk out here and look at the school.  Somehow seeing it all from a distance like this helped me regain perspective most of the time.  Years later I found myself doing the same thing as I road the bus home to Jersey, and looked across the Hudson at Manhattan.  Seeing it all contained and distant like that, my blood-pressure would drop immediately.  

The former horse pasture now houses the ropes course and a huge community of voles.  My family calls it the heath, and Fang is fond of vole-hunting (and crunching) when we let her run here.  I cut diagonally through it and arrive at Firefly Lane.  This is the name my family gave this narrow corridor of greenspace that runs behind the backyards of College Avenue, alongside the heath.  It earned this name one summer when the firefly population was particularly huge, and all the trees here looked like they'd been festooned with Christmas lights.  After some attacks, safety required thinning out a lot of the trees to improve visibility, so the Christmas light effect has never been repeated, but the name stuck.  At either end it is blocked off by horizontal wooden beams, to dissuade anyone from driving a car through here.  In the early 80s, some students went joy-riding down this greenway, then back to their residence in Brick City.  I believe drinking may have been involved.  The next morning the head of security followed the black, muddy tracks to their door, and came in for a chat.  After a brief silence he started mildly "You boys lack discretion."  I know all this, having heard the story from the driver, now a good friend and a well-loved, tenured member of the faculty.  

Now I head up the bowl, returning to get my holly.  I make sure to leave some berries, while still getting enough for both Laceyland and Hazelthorne.  After this the walk is more or less complete,
the sites all visited.  I'm struck by how much things have actually changed since my childhood, and how little it bothers me.  Right after I graduated from college, I was more ruffled by such things.  On visits back I'd accompany Mom, Dad, and Sybil on the afternoon walk, and feel disgruntled at any change in the route.  It was like I was some cranky, hide-bound anthropologist telling the natives how they were supposed to observe their traditional rituals.  Now I'm much more pleased by the evidence of change in my school and my family; it shows that life goes on, and no one is getting frozen in place.  My sister is one of the senior faculty on campus now.  Dad is long since retired, and off saving the world in other settings.  Mom and Fange still take their two daily walks, visiting their tree friends and vole-hunting grounds.  Life keeps growing and changing.  It feels good.  I know this terrain is not to everyone's taste, and even if they like it, they don't see what I see.  My place is as much one of imagination as it is grass and trees.  I once showed Brian my walk and he was a very good sport about it, but he couldn't possibly have seen what I was seeing.  His secret havens, most of them in Cape Breton, are by objective standards spectacularly beautiful, so even if I wasn't seeing what he was, I still fell in love with the place.  This place is much more a cultivated taste, I know.  I know too though that this will always be home for me, in some primal, archetypal way.  

Remembering, Regretting, Releasing

For a number of reasons -some of which are no doubt obvious- I've been thinking about gratitude a lot for the past three days. I've also been thinking about my strange reluctance to accept gifts. Steven at Sooo-this-is-Me has me thinking about regret, self-recrimination, time and opportunity lost -and the dangers of losing myself in them. He also has me noticing how easily I still step out of life sometimes, in the mistaken belief that it will make things easier, if not better. Somewhere Joe and Cooper have me thinking about the ways in which remembered blessings can trigger present gratitude.


As these thoughts roil around in my head, I find myself looking again at a piece I wrote and performed a number of years ago. I performed it several times, sometimes by itself, sometimes as part of a larger piece. For at least four years however, I've felt no connection to it, or the character who performed it. Sometimes that just means the piece has served its purpose, and needs to be put aside. That certainly may be true with this piece. I think though that my lack of connection with the piece reflects a deep disconnection from simple yet significant truths in my life. So I'm re-examining the piece today. Maybe I'll find my way back to it, and the character, maybe not. I don't really know where any of these ideas are taking me. I'm not worried about that right now. Today I'm just remembering.

The Toasts of Bromios

I'd like to propose a toast... For cheese and chocolate, and good red wine, for fresh hot bread and garlic in olive oil, for sour apples and sweet grapes and the salt of a lover’s skin, for these tastes and more, praise, all praise.

I'd like to propose a toast...For lilac and roses, and fresh brewed coffee, for the air near a waterfall, or after a storm, for cedar, and cinnamon, and the first cut of a lemon, for these scents and more, praise, all praise.

I'd like to propose a toast...
For the wind through pine trees, and the crashing of water, for thunder and hailstorms and the silence that follows, for crickets and cellos, and the purring of cats, for cheering and birdsong and really hot dance music, for a lover’s moans and sigh of contentment, for these sounds and more, praise, all praise.

I'd like to propose a toast...
For violets and fireflies and windblown pasture, for horses and dogs and all creatures who dance, for lightening and ice storms and Spring-thaw rivers, for the light of a candle reflected in eyes, for the sprawl of a body sleeping tangled in sheets, for these sights and more, praise, all praise.

I'd like to propose a toast...
For the caress of silk and soft summer breezes, for dry towels after a hot bath or cold rain, for strong hands cradling your head and pulling your hair, for the crash of a wave that makes you gasp with cold, for the lover who knows where, when and just how hard to bite, for these touches and more, praise, all praise.

I'd like to propose a toast... For hard work and dancing and the good sleep that follows, for solitude and companionship and the shoulders of friends, for new sights and old homes, and the travel between them, for being surprised still, every once in a while, for growing old gracefully - or kicking and screaming every step of the way, for all of you here, each of you luscious as grapes, I give you praise, all praise.

Happy Samhain

Have a great time tonight, whatever you decide to do. I'm still debating...