Fortifications

The snow has come again.

We were warned, everyone of us. Fourteen to eighteen inches of the “white stuff”.

That honks me off. I assume people smart enough to discuss the weather on the air know it’s called “snow” and we can take it. We live in New England - some of us by choice - we can handle it.

Don’t call it “white stuff”.  Please.  Don't.

Still, schools were cancelled the night before, manic shopping was taking place in grocery stores.

So it was a perverse pleasure to wake up and see no curtains of flakes masking the houses of Doctor’s Row. In fact, no snow fell until well after 8 a.m.

Then the roof fell.

I took the bus to the Orchard. I’d rather have a big tires under me .

The Mall was deserted for most of the day. Our rule of thumb is that any people crazy enough to show up in circumstances like this are crazy enough to want to buy something.

It makes for very entertaining interaction with people who are both interested and interesting.

More so than the average visitor - and our average is pretty entertaining as well.

With folks on later shifts stranded at home I was asked to stick around, which I did. The bus ride home was quite direct - the snow had given way to sleet, pattering against its big windows like handfuls of BB’s thrown by angry Seventh graders. The bus would slip on hilly corners.

With meetings and baby sitting cancelled I found my way into Geno’s Bar, the jive dive classic rock bar across Bosnia from my front door.

There I found owner J.R. and Mike the bouncer engaged in a fierce game of Scrabble on the bar top - to the sound Tom Waits singing “The Eyeball Kid”.

It seemed like the perfect way to end such a day. A snifter of brandy - a little smoother than my usual single-malt and just as prohibitively expensive - to celebrate overcoming the demands of the weather and work.

The beauty of it all was having a warm, productive place to come home to. The fairy lights on Chief Soctoma were visible from the back door steps of Geno’s, calling out to me - and making navigation after a solid brandy much more secure.

With the new computer and software writing music has become much easier - I’ve written a new tango in just one day, from concept to posting. Perhaps I am slowly starving - well, it seems it, comparing last year’s paychecks to this year’s - but my soul seems to be well fed and there is room to “see” - really see - the connections around me.

I don’t know where it will lead. Today it led through intense weather and people.

Tomorrow? I can’t wait.

Watching for the Rozzers

No one ever said that living in Portland, Maine, would be dull.

I'm at the  NorthStar, waiting for the evening's tango events to eventualize, munching on a piece of cheese I found in my pocket.

Actually, it's from a larger slice that I bought at my favorite cheesemonger - K. Horton's, in the Market House.

Getting Mrs. Beadle out of the garage - it's just a little too cold to walk - I noticed that there were police cars flying all over downtown, heading East, toward Munjoy Hill (at whose foot the NorthStar is situated).  

Lot's of cop cars.  Lot's and lot's of cop cars.

I have a lot of respect for the police - both as a band and as a profession.  Just out of high school I got a job as a Special Deputy Sheriff in Tulsa County, working out of the offices of Dave Carpenter, Sr., whose son, (Dave Carpenter, Jr.) was my drum major during my first year in marching band at Central High School).

It was fun - when I wasn't having dogs (and we have BIG ass dogs in Oklahoma) turned out on me, or getting guns pulled by angry husbands ("Hey it wasn't ME that beat the crap out of your wife in a drunken fit...").

So I'm sympathetic to the police, even when knowing I was driving with an expired license (I'm legal now!  I'm legal!!) and I'm waving just to keep them from looking at my expired inspection sticker.

It's not their idea to come up with stupid laws - it's just their job to enforce them.

So it's kind of neat to see them on the run toward downtown and flying into Monument Square.

Apparently someone went to the bakery stand in the Market House and grabbed cash out of the till (this is what my favorite cheesemonger tells me - I love that word "Cheesemonger".  Somehow "fishmonger" isn't so romantic - but I don't know any tall, ice-blue-eyed fishmongers with long, long red hair - but I digress ...).

Bad idea, to grab cash and dash so close to the main downtown cop shop.  The rozzers were rolling from all over the peninsula and they seemed to have caught the guy.

How cool is that?

When the Orchard opened we had a chat about "loss prevention" and the attitude is that by being proactive - by giving good customer service, basically - we give people a chance to make a good decision about taking stuff that they don't intend to pay for.  I like that logic.

So there we go again.  The good guys win and maybe someone will have a chance to make better decisions.

Or not.

Chocolate Ice Cream in a Bowl of Tears

I love theatre and don't get out to watch as much as I should.

Which made a Facebook invite from the Artistic Director of the Children's Theatre especially interesting.  She was involved with the Mad Horse Theatre Company's production of "The Clean House", by Sarah Ruhl.

I have a lot of respect for AD's skill in building character and stage action, skills she brings out in all of the kids she works with.  So I went to this with a lot of expectation.

It was not disappointing.  In fact, it was great.

Cleaning house is a tender point with me.  My mom was a housekeeper for one of the Old Oil Money families in Tulsa.  She singlehandedly kept a huge Italianate mansion clean in the Old Oil Money section of town.  She wore a white "Hazel"-style dress, a white cap and squeaky white crepe-soled shoes.

But her care of the house - and its four occupants - was impeccable.  Other Old Oil Money Mansion owners were constantly trying to hire her away.  No dice.  She stayed put for all of her life.

She did take me along with her on her cleaning expeditions to other houses owned by the Family.  I learned how to turn a bed, run a vacuum, clean a window - just never quite got the hang of getting it done by having someone else do it (I didn't read "Tom Sawyer" until almost out of undergrad school).

But "The Clean House" isn't really about cleaning, except as a metaphor representing how messy life can be - and that some of the cleanest, most pure souls the on inside have the dirtiest, messiest lives on the outside.

Something like that.

I empathize with the sentiment because of losing Mary Flagg a few weeks ago, my own mother more than a decade ago (some things we never get over, just learn to live with and grow from) and my own insecurities about the direction my life has taken.

Which the play expressed beautifully and I recommend it to you.

Hence the chocolate ice-cream.  It ties into the play (and occupies a great moment) and, even for a diabetic, taken in moderation, can be a soul-feeder.

I just need to make sure that my soul doesn't get so full that it gets fat and selfish - I have to take responsibility for keeping it exercised and involved.

Des pas sur la neige

Winter nights call me to brave the cold, go out, look,

and see.

I follow a path between the buildings,

deceptively smooth, crooked;

blazed over mounds of snow covered snow,

a trail to lead home from a glass of good cheer,

as direct a line as good cheer can manage.

And yet ...

My curiosity demands I follow, just for the purpose of finding the end, lit by the streetlight, 

watched by the curious stars, who are indifferent but easily entertained

by a wanderer under their borrowed, icy glow.

The doors of wonder are slightly ajar

on winter nights under curious stars.

and paths lead to places that I do not know;

call me to follow the steps in the snow.

" ... Every Valley Shall Be Exalted".

What a magnificent whirlwind, both political and spiritual.

It was quite a scene at the Asylum yesterday.  A huge room full of like-minded people, liberals all (as far as I could tell) with high-def monitors on all the walls and full bar service.

I mean, is there any other way to be a witness to history?

Well, yes, I suppose there is.  Sometimes just walking around, helping a child learn, baking cookies for colleagues, being reminded by a homeless man's smile to look up at the new sunshine even on the coldest days - we are all witnesses to history all the time.

I was hoping to sneak down to DC for the Inauguration but as with so many things in my life the logistics defeated me - that and an invitation to work in the Orchard the day before it happened.  Such is my delight in - and loyalty to -  my job that it convinced me to stay.  I'm glad it did.

Unlike other elections I've been at the Empire for all of the major events - nominations, acceptances, debates, elections - the whole smash.  That's been very different.  It's not the same as being directly involved in making calls, knocking on doors, arguing ideas - and ideals.  Perhaps I'll start to rethink that.

As has been noted earlier I tend to cry very easily when rocked by strong emotions - and since most of my emotions are that way I need to carry Kleenex with me a lot - or wash my sleeves.  The implications of all these events had me sniffing all day.  

I love to see the good guys win, such moments have a deep resonance for me.   I've not always experienced myself as a "good guy", much less a "winner".  Perhaps I have a simplistic experience of myself - I'm certain I do.  Getting past this has been a major motivation in a lot of what has happened in the last year or so.

Seeing Obama be inaugurated was powerful.  I had seen him from the very beginning, followed the fight, the setbacks, mistakes and irrational hatred arising from his candidacy.  Even in my fifties I'm surprised that I can watch a man five years my junior succeed and think "That's what I want to be like.  That's the kind of person I can be and should be, more often."

It's a surprise - to acknowledge that one has the possibility of realizing one's potential, even if it's moving to a lesser degree of foolishness.

People of color - no matter the conditions that nurtured (or didn't) them have a bit more to get through.  Sometimes greater, sometimes less, sometimes external or internal, enobling or enabling.

But be that as it may I think, at this moment, we have moved into a place different from any we have been in in most of human history.  To quote a soldier from a black Union Army regiment during the Second Peninsular Campaign of the Civil War:  "Bottom rail on top, now".  It may not be a total change but it is the beginning of full change.

That, of course, will only come when change comes to all the hears of the county, freely and with unquenchable grace.

But change has come.

12:53

Bush is boarding Marine One.

Oh - it's not Marine One anymore - it's Marine One only when the Pres. is in it.

So, is it "Moron One"?

Oh - Executive One.

I think it's wonderful that they are going through so much trouble to show us Bush leaving.

This, I think, is the classic definition of the Greek theatrical term "catharsis".

Wolf Blitzer - Anderson Cooper - don't get cocky.  This moment happened in spite of you.

OK - I'm going to get out and take a look around - maybe get some food that's not based on Cheetos.

Things go on - the President is off to sign more papers - later on the parade.

12:40

It's over.  Guests are being introduced.  

We sang the SSB.  Incredible moment.  

The party is breaking up.  More accurately it's moving to other venues.  

There is a lot of conversation.  People are excited, the voices are bright.

I suppose that's the word that best sums up this moment.  

There are a lot of thoughts about the implications of the emotions and ideals this moment implies.  If Obama pulls this off - if he gets people as involved - as committed to the hard stuff to come - as he apparently seems to want then it will transform the American psyche for generations to come.

12:35

Help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate.

He's right - it is a mountaintop moment.  I hope a lot of people can process.  Tanks shall be beaten into tractors.

Oh man - I'm going to HIS church.

12:27

People's eyes are welling.  Brilliant eyes.  Focussed eyes.  Soft and shining and clear on both the past and the future.  Listening to the poet.

Taking in the moments both inside and outside.  Being a part of each other.

Taking in the words beyond the words that we are hearing.  Going to the place we need to be - not forever, but for long enough to get us there.

Joseph Lowry is giving the benediction.  Putting it into way more better perspective that Rick Warren ever though of.

Way more perspective.

11:22

These things are old - these things are true.

A new era of responsibility - we have duties to ourselves and our nation and the world.

How far have we come - how far have we travelled?  

12:16

Bush is so screwed.

We are willing to lead once more.

Not just missles and tanks - security comes from our example.

WE are the keepers of this legacy.  We can do this. 

WE have to believe because of what he have suffered.

We will extend a hand if you unclench your fist.

A willingness to find meaning is something greater than themselves.

12:07

This includes everyone - everyone.

Greatness is never a given.  No shortcuts.  No settling for less.

The risk takers.  The makers of things.  

They did it for us.  Bigger than the sum of our ambitions.

Look at the people.  

Science.  Transform

All this we can do.

All this we will do.

The ground has shifted beneath them.  The old arguments don't apply.

It isn't the size of government - it's how we govern.

12:05

taking the oath - kind of - Michelle is fighting hard not to crack up.

We are there.

Now we have to really work.

Obama is going to talk.

12:04

There is both tension and release in this music.  I think John nailed it.

Here we go.

Roberts has been introduced.

11:59

Ihtzaak Perlman, YoYo Ma.

John Williams arranged it.  Keep it simple.  Simple Gifts.

Obama is now president - at least technically.

STFU - they're playing real music.

This is cool - I think we're going into some new places here.  Maybe we're a place.

A Jew, an Oriental, an African-American, a woman.

Yeah - we're going to a different place.

 I can't wait.

11:57

Biden is taking the oath on a bible the size of Delaware.

This room is getting very intense.  

11:53

There will be words over Pastor Rick.

Aretha!  And she's looking good.

Just show the people - show the people.

If there is ever a moment to pour your soul into a performance - hell, into any moment of the seemingly endless number of moments we're given in our lives - this is it.

11:48

Rick is up - some hisses in the room - he'd better knock it out of the park.

"history is your story".

Spiritual context - 

"the respect that they deserve" - subtle irony here.

11:45

Feinstein is up to start things off.

The room is very quiet. 

"The world is watching today".

Amen.  

WHy is this so different.  I know I have my reasons - I'm going to have to think of this.

"The words from the Lincoln Memorial have finally reached the walls of the White House".

11:41

about to introduce Obama.

Everyone is getting more excited - but more quiet as well.

Very strange.

The army herald trumpets are playing a fanfare.

Here he is.

Flags, millions of flags on the mall.He's taking his time to greet people on his way to the podium.

In a moment - Pastor Rick Warren.

11:39

Biden is introduced.  Boy, what swagger.  I love it.

Shot of the crowds.  Endless, endless sea of people.

We can see Obama coming down the hallway to enter.

THe police guards are walking in step-time behind him.

Very,  very serious.

11:34

W. makes his entrance.  Not a lot of smiles.

The faces in the room are getting more serious.  All eyes are on the monitors.

Biden is in the hallway, accompanied by the Democratic leadership.  It is really getting intense.

The Congress leadership is out.

Now Obama appears.  Big applause.

11;32

Ben Kingsley?  WTF?  Ben Kingsley is preceding W. down the Capital interior steps.

No - I'm now informed that it's the minority whip.

Damn.  I was hoping for representation from the Gudjerati contingent.

This is really cool.

11:29

The space is filling up - lot's of people I know - lot's of smiling faces.

We can see the new first ladies coming in.  General comment is that they look lovely.  All eyes are on the monitors and big smiles are on the faces of everyone.  Even the bar staff pauses every few moments to look at the monitors, grab an orange slice, open a bottle, sneak a look again.

Inauguration Day - 11:21 am

LIve from the Democratic watch party at the Asylum.  Full of people, full of energy and a really good bar.

THe former presidents are being introduced.

Now the first kids and the first ladies.

Walking the Baby

We are in the grip of a dangerous, dangerous stretch of cold weather.

The lovely snow we got a few days ago has crystallized, become almost styrofoam.  It crunches firmly underfoot when you walk.  The air is so cold that there is a strange texture to each footstep; you don't slide or slip unless you hesitate and weight has a chance to melt your footing.

Otherwise you are strangely sure-footed.

This doesn't account for ice - formed and reformed in every sunny spot.  Now any you see has set into a hard glaze, a dangerous glaze.  The sun can melt it enough to make walking into skating - and then the shade will solidify it in place with a layer of water - forming a deadly surface.

It was in the middle of this when I headed over to the H's (Mary Flagg's grandkids by blood and marriage) to provide coverage for EH's chi gong class by watching their son TA (age 4) and the newborn girl, PC.

This happens on Wednesday.  This past Wednesday saw me rocketing home - well, riding home - on the METRO bus home from the Orchard.  

The trip had not started well, we had had to stop to pickup some folks stranded by a dead bus (as I had the Monday before).  Still, it was a straight-forward drive back until we picked up a long-faced man on the way in.

He had a face that looked liked skin spray-painted on a stalk of broccoli.  Very square and somewhat craggy.

He was pushing a walker/roller piled high with three big bags of what I hope was laundry, as well as wearing a backpack that looked similarly stuffed.

He remonstrated to the driver about the alacrity with which curves were being taken.  It was making his over-stuffed bags fall over.

This is something of a hallmark for a lot of people who take the bus as their only major mode of transport.  They try to move as much as possible - laundry, groceries, shopping, trying to use it the way someone else would use a trip in the car to move what they needed to.

Certain purchases or events are often outside the realm of possibility for them.

The driver was very professional, not engaging him antagonistically, even as the invective grew stronger.

This was the kind of obnoxious, unpredictable person that makes your butt tighten up just by how he gets money out of his pocket.  Very concerned with making sure all of knew how angry he was.

So this led to a real shock when he started talking about how he kept the runways clear at a closed airforce base and how a certain captain used to combat climb off the tarmac.

The driver kept stopping the bus to invite him to leave, basically calling him out for his behavior.  Of course, the guy would back down (actually) without giving an inch (in his mind).  The only problem with this was it made me later and later to get to the H's to cover the baby patrol.  I got several phone calls directing my attention to this fact.  I wound up taking a cab to get to the H's in time for EH to leave for his class.

TA - the four-year-old - and I have always gotten along very well.  For various reasons he as arrived at language very late and is quite small for his age.  With that said he is incredibly communicative, both in movement and, increasingly so, verbally.

His 3 month old sister, PC, however, is another order of complexity.  I'd had her placed in my arms once before and listened as she went completely wild.  Unlike all her sibs she didn't take to me at all - at least, that once.

So now here she was in my arms again as her father left for his chi gong lesson and I could feel this little, little girl begin to gather herself to belch out an ear-splitting wail in my ear.

The suggested therapy for this was to strap her into a battery-powered rocker, complete with electric lullabies and close the door, letting her cry herself to sleep.

I did as suggested.  Or tried to.  I couldn't leave her there to cry and figured there had to be something to being there with the child while she dealt with the strangeness of a new face and smell entering her new-made world.

Thus engaged I started my lonely peregrination of the first floor of the house - living room around the table, hallway by the piano, dining room by the sideboard, playroom by the rocker, back to the living room.

Around and around, with PC wailing in my ear, calming down only long enough to suck in another deep breath.

Pause by the mirror to look at ourselves.  Living room around the table, hallway by the piano, dining room by the sideboard, playroom by the rocker, back to the living room.

And finally she quieted down - after a few false attempts.  MH came home with the girls to find my sitting in the living room with a three-month old baby asleep on my chest.  MH had time to fix a nice dinner for the other three kids.

So that was that.  

I am struck by the polarity of life - helplessness, arrogance, dependance, acceptance, so many facets to both the young and the old.  I find them in my own life.  I took these risks, abandoned my own sense of professionalism as a teacher to have more time to write.  I owe it to my ex-students, administrators and parents to use the time to create and share.

Somehow walking a baby to sleep, watching an old man wrestle with life, all lead me to try harder.

Up In Smoke

So, I have to ask - why are people still smoking?

It's 17 degrees out there right now.  Looking out the bow windows onto Doctor's Row I see at least three people - one of them a housemate from upstairs - desperately puffing away against the snowbanks and wind.

I suppose it's a genuine addiction.  There are things I am compulsive about - genuine addictions, no. (well, maybe to writing - we'll see).

Perhaps it's the cold weather.  I walk along Congress Street to the library (downtown) or to the Fresh Approach Grocery (uptown) and I pass people on the sidewalks, smell smoke and look at clouds in the air, clouds of breath and cigarette smoke.

Perhaps it's a way to keep warm.  Of course, if they didn't have to go outside in 17 degree weather to smoke they may not need to light up in order to stand the cold of going outside to light up.

I could be over-thinking this, too.

When I was very young - say first grade - I stole cigarettes from my mother's purse, and matches.  Taking my ill-gotten booty to the other side of the hedge to the curbside I lit up and tried to smoke like my parents did.

Needless to say my body was wracked with a hacking, explosive coughing fit.  I remember getting dizzy and sick, feeling I'd throw up in a few more seconds.

This was nothing compared to the shock of feeling long fingernails digging deep into my shoulder, backed up by the incredible strength of a hand grown strong from long hours of scrubbing floors and washing dishes.  This irresistible force pulled me through the hedge, tossed me to the ground.

I then was kicked - kicked like a sinning soccer ball - all the way into the house, my mother yelling at me half in English, half in Cherokee - and to this day I couldn't tell you which one was scarier.

Correction like that makes a lasting impression on a kid.

Needless to say I never smoked tobacco again - though I do burn it as an offering at powwows.

Of course, it can also be said, to my parent's credit, that they were never seen smoking again, from that day onwards.

Love makes people do strange things.

Bebe, Es Exterior Frio!

The second and fourth Mondays of each month are tango nights at the NorthStar Music Cafe.  My friends Tango Mucha Labia are playing in three hours or so, a lesson starts at seven, DJ'd music at 8:00.

Now - at 6:20 - the chairs are still occupied by innocent diners and some kind of pop-based music is on the sound system.  

In less than forty minutes the chairs will all moved and a little bit of Buenos Aires will heat up this little corner at the foot of Munjoy Hill ("BA on Munjo", I suppose).

It was a nice walk over here.  I've spent the day mostly rewiring my apartment, cleaning and trying to make room for a new computer system.  Also to make the place more presentable - though, frankly, who I'd present it to is a complete mystery.

Maine has a reputation - exceeded only by Vermont - as a "lily-white" state and as stated earlier it does have its issues.

This reputation is belied - or denied - by those of us who live in Portland.  The largest city in the state also has the most diverse - well, mathematically diverse, anyway - population in the state.

My experience of this is based on hanging out with folks like the tango crew, very well-educated, very-unselfconciously-chic people who have experienced - and now insist on - having their lives spiced by hearing different languages, seeing different faces, thinking different thoughts.  They have a sense of self - be it style, personality or just habit - that is delighted by difference.

At the other end are the street people I run into - panhandlers, drunks - or the ethnic folks I know - Somalis, Natives - or married and semi-settled folks - the H's, the W's.  All of them are blazingly intelligent and frank and realistic, just like the tango crew.

And then the Orchard crew - dozens of the most diverse, interesting, intelligent folks I've ever seen gathered in one place here in the state of Maine.

So there I am, walking through the gathered darkness of the middle of a Maine Winter.  Twenty degrees, snow crunching underfoot.  Behind me I hear two women walking, sharing rapid words in Spanish.

I can catch a few, calore (warm), bueno (good) - too fast for me to tell.

Still, it's a comforting sound, musical (George Carlin used to recommend listening to a baseball game in Spanish to really enjoy the music and drama), warm and rich.  I think it's odd - both Spanish and Cherokees seem so out of place in the context of this cold place.  But, as has been observed before I really like it here - Winter always caught my imagination.

My ignorance is my anonymity.  The conversation continues, rich and animated, give and take, not so much an argument as a working out of something.  I can't tell.

Home is where you find it, or what you make of it.  

Where you are yourself, even if no-one else knows who you are while you are there.  As long as you know yourself, every smile has its own lingua franca.

I only know I cannot tell what is said, perhaps only what is felt.  Such a lovely feeling for such a cold night.

John Wayne Rescues the Indian

Not all incidents in my life are life and death, feast or famine, cherry or vanilla.

"'twere to consider too curiously, to consider so..."

Oh, I need a Horatio in my life - well, a full time one - to reel me back in, to talk me down.  Actually, between EH, the W's, C., my job and my left-hand mirror it looks like the job is covered.

Don't forget the damned cat as well.

One of the things that grounds me is having sushi at my local sushimat, namely "the King of the Roll".

It's located in Longfellow Square which is formed by the intersection of Congress and State streets.  The other notable occupant and the namesake of the place is a larger-than-life statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, reclining in a great chair and often sporting tasteful accessories that match the general season of the year - most recently a scarf and presents for the holidays.

The "King", as EH calls it, occupies a spot that has been a pancake place (I rather miss that), an Indian (sub-continental) restaurant, a home-cooking establishment and an empty mockery.  I think the current sushi place is doing the best of the lot.

It's run by a first-rate sushi chef bearing the improbable - but real - moniker of "John Wayne".

You can see the irony here, I think.

I tend to think of him as a sensei of the sushi variety.

The hospitality is genuine.  You can often be greeted by John himself behind the bar, with a bow and smile, a smartly clipped "Good evening" with just enough of a hint of an accent to both make you smile and promise a commanding display of the sushi arts.

Which he does.  The miso soup is always welcome, even on the warmest of Summer evenings.  He has a good solid sense of rice, its texture is such that getting it out of the bowl with chopsticks is a pleasure.

There is a patio for warmer weather that lets you watch all the activity in Longfellow Square, lets you call out to friends walking by and often leads to impromptu dinner parties as more delicious pieces of edible art get called to be shared.

EH, an Episcopal priest, will bring his sermons for me to look at - you really can't call it "editing".  His English is very good, my German is passable, at least enough for me to catch strange constructs that might leave his congregation a little dazed.

He's gotten much better.  Maybe it's the wasabe.  We'll have to keep going back.

Te amo, Oma

Here are bright lights in the city of Portland.  A local artist started putting them up around various parks.  Time went by, she got more money, and now they grace all the major public spaces in the town.

The specifics change from year to year - but the lights go up in early November and keep us company until the middle of January.

Then they come down.

The local Chamber of Commerce, the Portland Downtown District - all, all have waved pots of money in her face to keep the lights up.

But no.  Sometime after Epiphany - January 6, to be precise, though the real time varies - the pretty lights come down and we go back to regular dark - but entertaining - Portland.

The reason being that she wants to lights to remain special, to have a cachet to them, rather than being part of a more commercial wall of "visual background noise".

When I was a child in Tulsa all of the Christmas trees would be burned in a massive bonfire in one of the parks. Trees were stacked two stories high, set alight while the fire department stood by on all sides.  It was a wonderful, terrible sight - the Holidays were well and truly done, an almost Viking-like ending for the green tower of Christmas joy that only recently had graced our living room.

And so we come to saying goodbye to my friend Mary Flagg.  "Oma" to her great-grandchildren.

Actually, truth be told there is no Cherokee word for "goodbye".  We say "see you again", or "be well", something like that.  Leave it to the Dominant Culture to neatly wrap things up and tuck them away.

A worldview that breeds a pointless fear of death, of change, of growth, of clearing and planting and harvesting -  and feasting.  A Newtonian worldview (well, that's not really fair to the guy who invented differential calculus - but I digress) when Heisenberg and Einstein may have come closer to getting it right.

No matter (pardon the pun).  Today we acknowledged this transition in our experience of this great lady.  The service at St. Luke's was clearly planned - readings and hymns preselected, the 1928 Prayer Book Service, full of Thees and Thous and manifold sins - complete with choir.  She had taken care of everything years before - everything.

I was privileged to sit with the family - I'm frankly not sure where else I'd have sat.  A voice kept ringing in my head, in counterpoint to the deep feeling of the great hymns we sang - "A Mighty Fortress" - "Be Thou My Vision" - ringing and saying "Pay attention.  Pay attention.  Inside.  Outside.  Pay attention."

Mary did that for people.  She made us pay attention.  Whether or not we got anything was up to us, I think.

I spent most of the reception with her three-year old great-grandson in my arms, playing my alternate role of "horse" (my primary one being "mule").  He and I share a rich communicability - he's arrived at language late but arrive he has done - we get on well. 

This freed up his parents to circulate.

Later, over sushi, his father - Mary's grand-son-in-law (EH, my bestest friend) brought me up to speed on the internment, which happened earlier, in the late morning.

He said it was good, that a weight came off of him.  His wife had told me, earlier, that it was hard, in a good way.

I think the physicality of burial - the specific concrete act of digging, lowering, praying - in the Cherokee way, covering - can push you into acknowledging the finality and possibility of death.  I know that is strange, but bear with me for a moment more.

I'm not one for "pie in the sky by and by" - jury is out for me on actual, corporeal existence after death.  I think people who believe so are fooling themselves.  Being lulled with simplistic, rosy views of death can make it easier to be dismissive of the complexities and possibilities of life.  

It could also be that those with a frank, honest attitude about death think the same way about life.

I could be wrong both ways, of course - I'll get back to you after I've been dead awhile.

So E and M get it.  Tired from the sheer logistics of a funeral, tired from hosting, tired from explaining and tired from feeling - they still have the energy to get it.

And the children?

Perhaps this is the lesson - the next great-granddaughter, shuffling in big  circles next to the graveside as the service wore on, back and forth, around and around, intent, smiling, looking at her feet.

Her parents, ever concerned with decorum (I mean, they are Mary Flagg's grandchildren by blood and marriage) keep a watchful eye - until both figure out the meaning of a little girl's funereal shuffling dance.

There in the snow, to someday be melted and gone - perhaps with flowers springing up, strawberries, maybe - great big looping words ...

"Goodbye, Oma".

Done in snow, done with love, done because all of us live in each other's hearts and saints and poets know, some.

"All will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing will be well" - Julian of Norwich.

Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.

Recovery for a day

We are digging out.

It's bright afternoon, the kind of intense winter sun that reflects from the snow and makes you squint and smile simultaneously.  Sitting here at the NorthStar, watching folks walk by on Congress Street, most sporting sunglasses and windblown smiles against the cold.

Our old friend, the wind, seems more playful than vicious. 

At least, it seems so in the bright daylight.

The air is warmer.  This has several effects, two of them being 1) you want to get out and look around (well, I do, anyway) and 2) the structure of the snowflakes condenses and it gets heavier, harder to shovel and a little more dangerous to walk on.

Stores are using the break as a chance to resupply.  It might well be that they were going to restock anyway.  The snowbanks are wide, constricting all but the busiest streets.  Trucks park as tightly as they can against them and the passing traffic slows.  This encourages pedestrians to slip between the vehicles, which adds a whole new wild element to the mix.

Last night was a chance to head out into the cold, walking Chief the Wonderdog.  His mother was working another double shift and it fell to me to keep him warm, fed, watered, walked - and emptied out.  The weather for all of yesterday was a strange, strange patchwork of warmth, cold, wind, sunlight, grey clouds, a change every fifteen minutes - there was no time to welcome, adjust, enjoy, curse or even understand what was going on.  

The sky was the same way.  A friend I'd run into observed - after a scotch - that it was a "Maxfield Parrish" sort of sky.  And so it was, broad, brief strokes of clouds.  

But by the time we parted the sky had transformed into Van Gogh - clear and starry.  Glittering in beauty - terrible in cold.

Such contrasts match my general mood as Mary Flagg's funeral comes onto the radar screen for tomorrow.  Thankfully the bright sunshine of the moment provides a safe context, like a strong pedal point give you a place to bounce off of as you write dense counterpoint.

Not sure of what the texture will be when this is all finished.  I don't think it will ever be finished, just continuing on until someone else takes up my thread and weaves their own into it - just as we are weaving Mary's - and all our dear departeds - into our current pattern.

18 Degrees of Transportation

The snow has been falling.  So cold, so cold out that the street plows leave glassine marks of snow-compacted ice that cars have to skate more than drive over.

Twenty degrees out would have seemed almost tropical a week ago.  Tonight - not so much.  Our old Arctic friend the wind is racing between the buildings again, just as it did a week ago on New Year's Eve.

For myself - I'm in Geno's rock bar, nursing a Glenlivet, cauterizing the burns in my mouth caused by wolfing piping hot beef stew straight out of the crockpot.  My local coffee house is closed for a store meeting (we do these at the Orchard and they're a lot of fun).

The bus ride out to work happened moderately close to the start of the storm.  It was a quiet but very focussed shift - as was pointed out by our manager anyone who was coming out to the Mall in this weather was serious about buying - or at least looking at - the merchandise.  It was a very productive day.  A lot of recovery from the excesses of the Holidays.

Coming home I took the first bus that came by with "Downtown Portland" on the front.  It was run by the City of South Portland and came back to town by a totally different route.  Downtown Portland was obviously an afterthought of the route planners - mostly I took a tour of the main street of SoPo - our name for it, like in New York "SoHo" is short of "South of Houston" (they call it "HOW-ston"), and "Dumbo" is "Down Under Manhattan Beach Overpass".

Here in Portland, besides "SoPo" we have "Munjo" for "Munjoy Hill" and "Woodfo" for the "Mysterious Woodford's" area - though that last is only used by me and only in the last sentence.

SoPo is much more dense, it feels much more like the compact towns visible through the windows of the Downeaster as you pass the last thirty minutes or so into Boston.  There is a sense that they crowded together as time went along, like clams taking over a rock - as more people needed places to live that were more functional that palatial the spaces between the houses became smaller - though not more intimate.

A house, a driveway, a house, a driveway; on and on for blocks and blocks.  Businesses fronting the street, right off the curb - flower shops, martial arts studios, dance studios, pizza shops, car repair shops.

Until we come out by the Millcreek center and the Casco Bay Bridge opens a view of the lights and - well, not towers, but taller buildings of Portland.

On my way to being disappointed by the closure of my coffee shop - I'll have to brew a cup at home - I passed through Bosnia and saw another chair in the snow, shown in the first pic above.   It stands above big rocks torn from the foundation of the old Kotchsmar Theatre that used to occupy the space now known as Bosnia.  The rocks are over-piled with old snow and new snow.

I think if you sit in it you hear old movies - you can see the ghosts of every ball ever dropped on the stage by vaudeville jugglers dancing on the wind.  Somewhere is the sound of skinless hands applauding you as you take your seat in a private box with only a one-way door.

You smell popcorn.  The curtains are parted by a wind from the Bay.  Pretty girls in white tights kick their legs for you.  Dark men in tails and red ties wave from the stage.  White pigeons flutter in the wind.

What do you think happens when the chair is occupied?  Leave them in the comments.

Stay warm.

Even sitting is a journey

Later in the evening, after eight.  Walking though Congress Square where the Union Station clock is, across from the Museum, next to the Eastland Hotel.

I should be looking at the pretty colors of the Holiday light installations, watching the traffic, marking the change in the weather, clouds and the breathless feeling of oncoming snow.

Then there is a chair by the sandwich shop.  It looks perfectly fine, sitting in the light of a lamp in the wall, sharing the light with an air conditioner.

The chair is occupied but you can't see anyone in it.  

All of the ones currently occupying it can see the ancestors who accompany everyone who walks by.  

If you sit in it your shoelaces suddenly are undone when you rise.

People who sit in it lay their coats on the back because their blood becomes ice water and they don't feel the cold.

Whispers sound in your ears.  You hear the sound of stone wheels far under the pavement.

After a while the streets around you are deathly quiet, even though they are full of passing cars.

If you sit in it long enough it will become empty.

I was lucky to get a picture.  I'll never sit in it.  When I came back an hour later it was gone and half a bottle of cognac and a red rose were in its place.

Monday was smokin' ...

I'm making a thousand and one adjustments in my life.

Some are logistical, some are financial, most internal, a few are external.

If, like me, you are more a "process" than "product" type of person then there is a lot of potential there for growth.  It's enjoyable.

Still it's an interesting challenge, crafting a new life, a new career.  Not for the faint of heart, or for those who are uncomfortable with uncertainty.

More often than not I take the bus in to the Orchard.  There are incentives to use it, not all of them financial.

I've outlined some of the social ones in previous posts.  You hear conversations, you see people, you think about thoughts and conditions far from your own.

Case in point - I've only had one vehicle catch fire while I was on it - and even then I was just a passenger and it wasn't our fault.

Ah, but today, yes, today is a very special day.  It started off prosaically enough, with the alarm going off exactly as I set it, too early for how I felt but early enough to get me to the bus stop.

No, this particular adventure happened when we heading out by the Portland Transportation Center - the PTC, which includes the train and Concord Trailways.  As we drove along I noticed a  particularly strong smoky smell rose from under the Lady next to me.

I didn't want to say anything - I'm in no position to call the kettle black - or even stained a little bit.

It was when an active trail of smoke matched up with the acrid odor that I began to look around - discreetly but with growing alarm.  It was confirmed when one of the ladies on board asked my seatmate - who had boarded just a couple of stops before - asked her to move her bag.

An acrid smell and an active white cloud broke into the cabin.  There were calls to stop the bus, to open the window. 

I give the driver - whose name escaped me, sadly, as so many do - credit for not losing his head (or for having gone through this before, which is more likely).  He pulled us over by the Train Station, opened the front door and ordered us out.

It didn't take long.  The wait for a replacement bus was short and rather friendly.  Co-workers phoned ahead to warn of the delay (I had cleverly left my cell phone at home on the couch), a young couple put big furred booties on their little girl, then lit up cigarettes and smoke like chimneys.  I spoke to the drive about the effects of burning hydraulic fluid (it looked like the wheelchair anchor tiedowns had leaked fluid that had somehow overheated.

We boarded the replacement and went on our way.  

I can say that this experience colored the entire day, in that various problems that came up at the Orchard - even ones that would have given me the screaming fantods no more than a month ago seemed old hat and easy.  Conversations were personable and fun - as was the bus ride back.

There has been a lot of up and down the last seventy-two hours - Mary Flagg, financial news, professional news, all sorts of stuff.  I appreciate sadness, I celebrate joy.  But either one - or worse, both - in alternating intensity can really drain you, rob your sense of the colors in your life.

So it was nice to still see scarlet light in the sky, even walking home just now, at 5:15 in the Winter afternoon.  I love Winter, but a reminder of light and brightness means a lot.  

Sometimes it's just a color in the sky.

Sometimes it means everything.

Kittens into Lions, After Bread

First off, thank you to everyone for the expressions of affection, condolence and support that have appeared in my inbox.  We seem to be scissor-shaped, leaning on each other, gaining support by how well we hold each other up.

A perfect illustration of how a community of any kind is supposed to work, I guess.

There is a week to prepare for Mary Flagg's funeral, it happens next Saturday.  This is important.  I might even go out and buy a black suit, though EH advises me to dress as a Native - turquoise ribbon shirt, red scarves, the whole bit.

The weather may be really cold, I'll probably skip the breechclout and wear pants.

I'm sure I won't stand out - clergy and choir will all be wearing dresses, basically.  They'll have no right to complain - and I'd love to see them try....

Just as in Native circles there is a whole Greatest Generation that is passing away.  Lions, like Mary.

She was the first woman to be elevated to the National Committee of the Episcopal Church, back in the days when females all wore boiled wool and pearls (actually you still see that a lot today), were ferocious members of Sacristy teams (the folks who prepped all the hangings and linens used in services) and Flower guilds.

But real power?  Ordination? Vestry decision-making? Not a chance.

This was back when the Episcopal Church was a ruthless force for social stratification and identification - at least, it was so on the surface.

Case in point - St. Luke's has a lovely circular drive in front that leads to the tower entrance.  On Sundays before the turn of the 20th. Century you would see carriages dropping off all of the gentry from the West End, said gentry being greeted by ushers holding the doors.  

Unless you were obviously not part of the "carriage trade" - then you were advised that "perhaps St. Mark's down on Congress (now Joe's Smoke Shop) would be more comfortable for you".

Had I not been told this by a former dean of the Cathedral I would have believed it anyway.

When I met her, decades after that travail I could still see the ultra-practical personality that got her through it all. Her husband, Joe Flagg, had only recently passed away. Back in the Thirties (at least), in a raging snowstorm, he had driven home to Portland after insisting on driving her back to Boston.  He had hung out the window of his jalopy all the way up, against the wind.

The fever that then possessed him left him a palsied wreck and he offered to release Mary from their engagement.

They stayed married for at least fifty years.

All these thoughts were in my head this afternoon as I trooped about - Mrs. Beadle being still in the shop - fulfilling my other role in the H. family by providing sugared carbohydrates (i.e., "cookies and donuts" - especially Tony's) to the kids.

It wasn't a chance to sit shiva.  I suppose we'll do something like that - perhaps closer family members will.  Perhaps that's what these blog posts are to me.  Mostly it was talking about immediate practicalities and long, long term implications.

The old lions are leaving.  I suppose it makes sense that they do so.  In the meantime there are kittens who need to suddenly assume the head of the pride.  Kittens into new lions.  

And no one, I think, makes a conscious effort to do so (at least if they expect to stay sane).  It's more like we live our lives and come through for each other, support each other in X-shaped ways as much as we can.

In my case, at least today, it meant bringing over schnecken and bread, having a cup of chowder (Grandma's fish chowder) and just being there for a while.

Today I am a wobbly planet with a stable orbit.  Perhaps the stars really are as close as they look.

A World Without Mary

I wish a had a more apropos picture.  

It's the wrong snapshot, it's Schrodinger's Cat, the Heisenberg Indeterminancy Principal - in short, using a moment to explain a span of time - Christ, we don't even have word for it in English - using a moment to explain a "span of time" won't work.

As Emily asks in "Our Town" - "Does anybody realize what life is while they're living it - every, every minute?"

And of course, the Stage Manager replies, "No.  Saints and poets, maybe.  They do some."

In Cherokee, which I don't speak nearly as well as a lot of my friends speak French, there is a verb tense beyond present, past, future and future perfect.  In this "eternal" tense people become verbs rather than nouns and act in all times, past, present and future.  They are always with us and there just isn't a way to say it in one word in English.

So we are all reduced to using moments to represent how important we are to each other.  All we have are snapshots (if all we speak is English) that we fan together like a Mutoscope, those old crank handled picture viewers that flipped cards to simulate movement and life.

Tonight I have to remember my dear friend Mary Flagg that way.  She passed away - physically, at least - late this afternoon.  I was on the bus home from the Orchard when my friend EH told me on the phone.

It wasn't unexpected, of course.  I had chatted about this moment with Mary's granddaughter MH, EH's wife.  Both of them are as close to "best friends" as I will ever deserve in this life.  Mary was well into her 90's and had kind of left us in the last couple of years due to age and the effects of anesthesia following hip surgery.

Snapshots:

• Mary attending a musical I had a part in
• Regularly sharing meals in the Community of Sarah and Abraham
• Having tea and discussing Church political thinking patterns
• Her hosting a dinner for my parents with full embassy silver service
• Seeing her connect so quickly and deeply with my Mother
• Sharing a whiskey at her granddaughter's annual Christmas party
• Chatting about the early days of the Children's Theatre
• sneaking a flask of good single-malt scotch into her nursing home
• sitting with her in the garden with her great grandchildren on our laps
• Sitting in the infamous Sixth Pew at St. Luke's Cathedral

...and on, and on, and on - each snapshot brightly colored - but already showing sepia at the edges.

There is a great sadness in me that there will be no more snapshots of my dear, beloved friend Mary Flagg. There will be obituaries, probably a huge service at the Cathedral with national people in attendance to honor her shattering of the glass ceiling of national board membership in the Episcopal Church.

But no more living moments.  I sit here in the deepening cold of a Winter night, running these thoughts and many, many more through the Mutoscope in my head, stitching them together, fooling my mind's eye into the artificial comfort of life's movement.

As with the passing of my Mother I can take a strong comfort from knowing that Mary is no longer a noun - she is a verb, at least in the Cherokee way of thinking.  She lives in how I live, cares in how I care.

Loves in how I love.

So she is actively with me and, just as was said (literally said) at the graveside of my Mother, our experience of her will now be different.  Not ended - just different.

I understand that.  But oh dear God, tonight how it hurts to miss her and how I wish she was still here.

2009 Comes Out Swinging

Well, let's get the ironic bit out of the way first.

As indicated previously I love getting about and seeing things happen - occasionally being a part of them, making no claims to any kind of objectivity or reportorial detachment.

This compulsion led me out into the cold very close to Midnight and the change of the year.  The plan was to phone from the square as the numbers changed, saying "hello" to C.

Which would have worked had I remembered to bring my phone.  Obviously I was too concerned with getting my camera in my pocket to pocket my phone.

So the moment passed, as so many do.  

This did leave me free to wander around the center of town, behind the Art Museum to see its circle of magic stones, though the wrought-iron gate that only led me back onto the street and not to the usual strange places it has before.  Even magic portals (there are several in the city, which I'll write about at some point) seemed to be shut down because of the cold.

And thus back to Bosnia, the empty lot next to Geno's Rock Bar.  My intention was to brave the Usual Crowd of Smokers, stop in and wave at J.R., the owner, and a couple of the bouncers, big guys like me.

Us big guys need to stick together.

But the Usual Crowd of Smokers suddenly billowed out in front of me, flowing toward me along the icy sidewalk.  More came out of the door and we all gave room.  I tried to dash past but the footing was too risky, too many feet were mushing the snow into soup.

Then the doors flew open again and a couple of guys fell through, locked in combat, hugging with one arm, sucker-punching with the other.  They stood in the doorway for a moment, a violent tableaux and then dragged each other back into the warmth of Geno's foyer.

Hell, I'd hate to be bleeding in that kind of cold too.  I don't blame them for heading back inside.

I had to get across the street and barely made it before two cars full of PPD officers arrived, lights flashing.

Needless to say my first shot had a flash and I was instantly on the police radar - fortunately I managed to get my camera hidden and assume my best "no-one here but us chickens" face - not easy to do in a subzero windchill.  The next shot used the "underwater" setting and is posted above.

Oh, just like the end of "Casey At the Bat" I am aware that I had friends dancing delicious tangos in Montreal, enjoying the Winter Carnival in lovely surroundings.  Other friends were home with beloved animals and a cold beer.  Yet others were at hot jam sessions near the Empire Dine and Dance or home tucking grandchildren into bed after celebrating the New Year with them.

I was standing on a corner taking pictures of the outside of a bar fight.

So the immediate evidence suggests that in 2009 my life may well be the "wild Indian" saga that it's always been, that I'll wind up investigating magic doorways and gritty incidents rather than doing things that make other people feel safe with me.

Maybe the difference is that I'm not going to worry about it anymore.

At least, not for now.