celtic_writer

Ships

Off on another adventure tomorrow, with two Black Labbies along for the gallop. Destination: Ocracoke Island, a silent place on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a place accessible only by ferry, where the pirate Blackbeard hid his ships in not-easy-to-navigate inlets so he could count his dough and figure out his next move. It is said that a visit to the island brings on the "OcraComa," a disease where one forgets the day and time.

It's been a busy few months. Lots of programming and consulting going on. I am looking forward to camping next to a dune of sand, a quiet place where one only has to walk a short way to be on the beach. Labbie Marg has recovered for now, and Walt is still Jerry Lewis in a Dog Suit, and they will swim in the Atlantic and bark at seagulls and sandpipers, and use their Labbie charms to weasel snacks from fellow campers.

My friend Phyll gave me a quote the other day:

"A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for." - Shedd

It has been a time of not much travel and too little writing, a week where The Mighty Bug was rear-ended by a GMC Jimmy, and is soon to go to The Beetle Hospital for repairs. In the last few days I helped place the ashes of a dear friend in the Potomac River after her very long bout with cancer. A reminder comes through loud and clear: Adventures are life blood. You are still here. Don't wait.

So off we go tomorrow, the canines and I, to see what is south, and to remember what is real.

PHOTO: Wall Mural, Coffee Shop, Asheville, North Carolina

Creed

Back before many of us were born, there was a radio show hosted by Edward R. Murrow called This, I Believe.

The show featured both famous and common people reading essays about the principles that have guided their lives.

If you tuned in then, you would have heard Albert Einstein, or a woman from the hollers of Kentucky, recite their original thoughts into air, delivered to the eager ears of millions of radio listeners. The show has since been revitalized by National Public Radio. It is worth tuning in. There's a great essay by a fellow who believes life can be described by the marbling in a pastrami sandwich.

The last few days, I have been thinking about belief, and what it means to have a creed in one's life. What are the things I still believe at the age of 51? I've come up with a list.

I believe in dogs. These creatures are our teachers. They love us unconditionally. They are always happy to see us, no matter what. They do not judge us. They listen, and act like you are the most interesting person on the planet. They simply treat us the way we should all treat each other.

I believe in misfits. They are the hope for our society. They think for themselves, have loads of creativity, yet have never been told they are smart. They are unafraid to discover. And they don't like being told what to do. They are my students. Who they really are: my teachers.

I believe in something much bigger than I can ever be, and it is called nature. If we peer through the microscope, nothing is calm. All is chaos. And that's what fosters creativity. And that's what contributes to flow.

I believe in not knowing. Life can be a surprise, if we let it.

I believe in silence. We all need it. The unencumbered hour spent simply listening is food for the soul.

I believe in books written a very long time ago. It reminds me that many people who lived centuries back had it right in the first place.

I believe time is the most important thing we've got. It's not things and big houses and fame and all that petty nonsense. It is time, 'cause we can't get it back. Yeah, we can make more money next week, but we can't get back one millisecond of yesterday.

I believe our characters are set in stone at a very early age, and that we don't change very much. We physically grow bigger, and hopefully, we mature enough to understand that remembering childhood innocence helps us live a long time.   

I believe there are people in this life we outgrow, and it has nothing to do with loyalty. There is nothing more they can teach us or we can teach them, so we have to let each other go.

I believe you should only hang around with people who make your life better. Otherwise, it is a deplorable waste of time. You don't have to put up with the bossiness and guilt, judgement and ignorance, pride and dishonesty. You can simply say "good bye" with your silence. No other explanation is needed.

I believe in coffee. Caffeine fuels creativity.

I believe you can support yourself...emotionally, physically and financially if you just keep learning.

I believe you should live unafraid. It is never anyone else's call. It is up to you.

I believe in life...as well as death. I have held both in my arms, and know we cannot have one without the other. And one teaches us about the other.

And I know belief is tested, every day. So when that happens, I try to remember a time when I was around seven or so, sitting at the kitchen table after dinner, drawing horses on a clean, white sketch pad. My father came into the room, and sat in a chair beside me. He asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up, Mary?"

I continued to draw, and thought about the question. After a few minutes, I looked up at him, and replied, "I want to be a good person."

I did not understand then why his eyes watered up, and the reason he got up and left the room.

But now, I believe I do.

Damp Mysteries and Masterpieces

Niece Emma came by on this cool sunny afternoon to hang out with her old Aunt Mare.

She is a child who entertains herself.

After throwing Walt's toy Kong for him a multitude of times across the yard, she came into my office where I was working and informed me that, as a result of Walt's natural Labbie slobber, "you should wash your hands after picking up the Kong because it's very yucky."

Amen, sister. Pass the Dial soap.

Once she was again clean of hands, Emma placed the art supplies from her backpack on the kitchen table and politely asked for a cup of water. "I need that so I can paint with watercolors," she said.

You got it, kid.

So I left the artist to her work, and went down the hall to get back to programming. Soon I heard footsteps, and she was by my side with a damp masterpiece.

"This is us, Aunt Mare, having tea."

Cheez, the kid's got "The Eye."

"You have to let it dry now," she said. "If you leave it alone, it can be what it is supposed to be."

The painting was gladly accepted and placed on a flat surface so it could flatten to its final colors. Emma was off again, bounding down the stairs to the outside. I continued to work. Soon I heard her talking to someone. I walked down the hall to the top of the stairs and found her deep in conversation with Margaret on the front stoop.

"You're gonna feel so much better now, Marg," Emma told her.

Marg's had a tough time of it the last few weeks. She endured a six-hour surgery to have a fatty tumor removed from her shoulder, the procedure lengthened by the discovery of another mysterious mass inside the benign. When I took Marg back this a.m. to have the sutures removed, the vet surgeon informed me that the mystery is an aggressive cancer, and that Marg has between two to six months at most.

She spoke about oncology vet help available locally, and that chemo and radiation might help Marg live an additional 2-3 months. I listened, then simply said, "No. I'm gonna take her home."

Marg, so very happy to jump in the Bug once more, smiled with her pink tongue all the seven miles home. Walt was waiting for her. And this afternoon Emma sat with Marg on the cement stoop by the front door, and told her about school and how she is reading a book about a girl with a purple plastic purse, and how she still can't go completely across all the monkey bars on the playground, but that she would keep trying.

Raining Quotes

Was in Chicago earlier this week. Gave a talk at a conference. Had a geographically-challenged flight crew on the trip back. Just before we took off, a ditsy flight attendant announced, "This is Flight 622 bound for Washington-Dulles."

WHAT?

Lots of clucking going on back in coach.

"Oh, tee hee, I'm sorry. This flight is bound for Washington-Reagan National."

That's better.

When we landed at National, the pilot got on and joyfully spoke over the loud speaker (and I quote): "Welcome to Dulles-International Airport."

Yeah, whatever. I think everyone needed to get off that plane and simply go home.

Gray, damp cold evening here in the northern Virginia woods. Relentless rain. Full moon tonight hidden by clouds so heavy with weather. Am packing so I can go south to the beach tomorrow. Around the corner, down the hall from my office, the washing machine is grumbling its way through a spin cycle, and the dryer squeeks a little as it turns cheerfully, those square dryer sheets making the clothes smell fresh.

I like the beach most any time, but especially in the fall and winter. It feels different, not humid and greasy. It feels its opposite, as every natural thing is apt to do. And you can, as the Zen Dudes say, find an answer in the sound of water. And there are so few people there you have the chance to simply walk along some very long strand of sand and think.

This has been a day of quotes too. Read one attributed to the classical pianist Alfred Brendel:

"I like the fact that 'listen' is an anagram of 'silent'. Silence is not something that is there before the music begins and after it stops. It is the essence of the music itself, the vital ingredient that makes it possible for the music to exist at all."

Writers listen too. There is music in conversation if we take time to listen, the same way a painting talks to us if it is pondered long enough. Greek philosopher Epictetus said, "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak."

And another, from an interview with Jack Nicholson, who, at almost 70, is quoted in The Washington Post: "Where there's clarity, there is no choice; where there is choice, there is misery." That Zen sentence is from The Monkees' movie Head, the then-avant-garde screenplay Nicholson wrote back in 1968, just before he grabbed the tail of a comet called Easy Rider.

So I will make a turkey sandwich on pita bread in the a.m., throw a couple of bottles of water in the bag, and head south eight hours, stopping to contemplate the journey, in air that smells like ocean.

Painting:
Georges Seurat, View of Fort Samson, Grandcamp, 1885 (130 Kb); Oil on canvas, 25 5/8 x 32 in; The Hermitage, St. Petersburg; Formerly Collection of Bernhard Koehler, Berlin

The Very Inn of Happiness

There's a book called How to Achieve True Greatness written by an Italian, Baldesar Castiglione, during the Renaissance period. His story includes information about a house he calls "the very inn of happiness."

I love that phrase. An inn is a place where you rent space, a piece of room for a short time. The stay is never permanent. Our lives change, and we take our pattern of contentment with us wherever we roam.

In his book Stumbling On Happiness, Harvard University psychology professor Daniel Gilbert writes about the science of happiness, and reports that it's the human frontal lobe that helps cause emotional misery in this society. That our brain gear makes us think too much about the future. How we spend so much time imagining how things are going to turn out...good or bad...that we miss what's going on right now.

Happiness can be chemistry, but I think most of the time, it just kinda shows up. And it is never who, what, when or where we expect, and it's usually not the big things that cause us to feel real joy. The small, everyday occurrences are what meld this life plot together.

Case in point: my three-year-old nephew Peter, after a few years of silence and testing and preschool, is talking. I walked into my sister's home after being out of town for a couple of weeks to hear from the little lad's lips, "Hi Mare Mare."

Go, Pete! You're a man of words! Welcome to the chatterbox Irish clan.

Now he's a total blabbermouth. My sister, exhausted from the noise, looked at me and said, "I've been waiting for this for so long, I can't ask him to be quiet."

Of course not.

The American painter Arthur Dove wrote:

"We have not yet made shoes that fit like sand
Nor clothes that fit like water
Nor thoughts that fit like air,
There is much to be done--
Works of nature are abstract,
They do not lean on other things for meaning."

I suppose it all comes down to those unique seconds of joy we experience. From approaching life with affability, of being awake enough to notice, for there is no control ever, anywhere. And to accept that this is the way it is. There's a Swedish saying, "The things I hate to do, I do fast. The things I like to do, I do slow."

From the time we are young, women are told that "your wedding day is the happiest day of your life." Oh yeah? Uh uh. I no longer understand weddings, having participated in one of my own, as I feel a relationship so personal doesn't have to be put on public display in such a structured ceremony.

The day I remember, long ago, with Ken, was a single moment, many years before the day we got married.

We lived on Capitol Hill, in an absolute wreck of a rowhouse, that, at the time, was all we could afford. This home sported a back porch that had a rickety set of stairs affectionately called The Steps of Doom. You had to know exactly how to make your slow descent or ascent on these stairs, or you left yourself open to the possibility of crashing to the concrete in a sickening thud of protoplasm.

I drove an old bright yellow Beetle then, and had just returned from a road trip to Boston to visit my friend K. I parked in the driveway behind the house. When I looked out through the dirty windshield, I saw the back porch door open. Ken, looking every bit like as he always did, a Seattle Ernest Hemingway, rushed out the back door and made his way as hurriedly as he could down The Steps of Doom, dogs Casey and Shaman following behind. Ken made it safely to solid ground, and walked towards me, smiling. That's when I knew this thing was real, and that it doesn't come along very often.

I had been missed.

And so had he.

Painting:
Red Sun, 1935
Artist: Arthur G. Dove
The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

Story

There is a painting that hangs on the salmon-colored wall, above the books and guitars, in my living room.

It is called "Story."

My nephew James, who lived in my attic for a while and who is now a student at the University of New Mexico, gave it to me as a "thank you" for putting him up. It's an original painting created by a friend of his, a biker named Denver. It's called "Story" and I think it depicts what a story is, but also what life is all about. There is so much going on in it, as is true with all our experiences. I sit on the couch and look at it often, and I find something new in it every time I do.

Yes, life gets mangled sometimes, but it still has beauty. It has apples and vases and heart and fish and moon and bewilderment and stars and time. And I like the capital G in the top right-hand corner. It reminds one not to forget to be amazed.

That's what a story is. Yes, some say conflict is what makes a compelling story, and perhaps that is right. I think everyone finds what they need in a story told well, and that's why a story lives on. One can learn from art's experience.

Henry Miller wrote:

"What we all hope in reaching for a book, is to meet a man of our own heart, to experience tragedies and delights which we ourselves lack the courage to invite, to dream dreams which will render life more hallucinating, perhaps also to discover a philosophy of life which will make us more adequate in meeting the trials and ordeals which beset us. To merely add to our store of knowledge or improve our culture, whatever that may mean, seems worthless to me."

Tonight I walked two black dogs in the rain.

No dates, no curfews, no questions.

This is a remarkable life.

Loop

Life has certain commands one can't ignore.

There's a thing in programming called a for loop. This kind of computer chatter uses a counter, and in the code, you find a set of characters called i++. It means increment the value of i by 1.

This is a fact today, folks. Must add 1 to 50. At 3:30 p.m., I am 51.

Am currently editing the first draft of a book I've been writing for the last long while about a trip I took last summer across the United States and back. Exactly a year ago today I was in Flagstaff, Arizona. I left my rented room located in a reasonably seedy, smoke-smelling hotel at 6:30 a.m. and motored west on Rt. 40, then north on 64 to spend the day at the Grand Canyon.

And wrote:

"The Canyon is ahead. Can see a part of the bucket that holds its depth. I have a large coffee with cream contained in styrofoam, and I hold to my face, rest it against my cheek. Its warmth comforts me, for now, I am crying. I cannot believe that I have made it here, this long way, this 50, this far. I am not sad I have left the East, am away from everyone I have ever known. Back there some simply consider me a dead man's woman. I am so much more than that. Today I do not need a party, but to see the magnificence of something inexplicable. And I will get there in a small blue car."

At the Grand Canyon, I paid my admission fee, got a map and drove to the South Rim. I stopped, pulled the parking brake tight, and opened the door.

"I heard yapping. That incessant human blather. Men with camcorders ignoring their children, made-up women in capris talking about shopping, children fighting for the attention of the people who birthed them, those humans self-absorbed for their own sanity in other matters. I simply walked, only to be surrounded by the noise of others as we neared the fence of the South Rim."

"As soon as we saw it, everybody shut up. Even the babies stopped crying. We were in earth's church. Its hymn is silence."

I don't know how long I sat there, on that hard rock, in the 107 degree heat. Maybe it was a few minutes, or a couple of hours. I never looked at my watch. Eventually I walked back to the Bug, unlocked the door, turned the key, and motored out of the parking lot towards the East Rim.

"Along the way, I saw a coyote. He was running along the side of the road, looking back over his shoulder. He didn't look scared, but disgusted. Why are all these people here? I also saw a biker couple in argument, pulled off in a small turnabout. Face to face, their quarrel was a circle. She took a swing at him. He pulled back. She missed. He laughed."

I pulled into a turnoff uninhabited by others. I sat on a rock wall and contemplated this:

"I sat for a long time. There was no sound. In that place, I heard what it is like to feel empty, and it felt familiar. But the silence was broken by a caw and a black flash."

Raven.

"The Trickster. He flew past me, a few inches from my face, circled around and landed on the rock wall about a foot away from where I sat. He had yellow eyes, sharp beak, purple-black feathers. He wasn't afraid of me, and seemed curious. Perhaps he was looking for food. I had none to give him. He faced me and considered me for a while, then turned and looked at the Canyon. He stood there, and I continued to sit."

"Some think the raven to be a bird of death, toting only destruction and darkness. But in the spirit world he is the protector bird. His visit brings resolution of opposites. In dark there is light. Dying is necessary for rebirth, and renewal means something must be destroyed. Death can mean depth. Our actions can be ones that build idols, the experiences that never change or evolve. How many of us get caught in lives that have grown old, but we persist in protecting them, as we think it is truth and the only thing that can exist? "

So we simply sat there, the bird and I, and looked at the rock wonder, like two old friends sitting on a park bench, losing all track of time.

IMAGE: by Hopi artist Fred Kabotie. Part of mural located on interior wall of the Desert View Watchtower, East Rim, Grand Canyon.

Cultural Explanations

On this quiet Friday when the sun shone its smiley face all day, friend Quinn McDonald, artist and creativity coach, emailed a question used to help folks jumpstart creativity cells in their brains:

Pick six items in your house. How would you explain these items to a visitor from outer space who doesn’t understand our culture. Write down your answers.

Thankful George Dubya Bush doesn't live here, I looked for six things I could explain to the Martians, should their superior brains ever make the terrible decision of landing here in the yard in Mason Neck.

1) Walt: Black Lab. Canine. Male. 7 years of age. 80 pounds. Sweet, but magna cum laude graduate of Duh University. Walt is unafraid of alien visitors, except the garbage truck and vacuum cleaner. All guests from the outer reaches of the galaxy are forewarned they will be expected to throw Walt's kong toy for him 1.8 million times before they run screaming to their space ship to zoom off at light speed to get away from such earthling madness.

2) Margaret: Black Lab. Canine. Female. 12 years of age. 90 pounds, but don't tell her I told you. She is very sensitive. Never stops wagging tail, even in sleep. If Martians land and demand, "Take me to your leader!" Margaret would smile and bulldoze her big black head against their skinny Martian legs, knock their green bodies to the ground, then proceed to smooch their bulbous heads. She would then get a drink of water and take a nap.

3) Book. A written work printed on pages bound together so one can read and learn. There are hundreds in this house, but only good literature and thought-provoking essays are allowed. All other books get thrown across the room or against the nearest wall. Any Martian visitor would have to read such small tomes as Don Quixote, The Grapes of Wrath, Moby Dick, and other works that are at least 600 pages. Just ask The Ya Ya Sisterhood Book Club of Mason Neck. They want to send me to the moon every time I get my way with a "classic" suggestion for the reading list.

4) Guitar. A stringed musical instrument played with the fingers, or a guitar pick. The sound is produced by vibrating strings, which in turn resonate the body and neck. All alien visitors will be subjected and expected to politely listen to such trad favorites as "Haul Away Joe" and "What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor?" and should feel encouraged to participate in the splendid caterwauling. Please make note that Walt does not like the tune "Sweet Betsy from Pike." Methinks it is the reference to "the big yeller dog," but I am not sure.

5) CDs. A small optical disk on which data such as music, text, or graphic images is digitally encoded. There are probably close to 1000 such media in this house, due to music, archived programming jobs and movies. No, Mr. and Ms. Martian, you may not borrow the following music CDs: Sons of the Pioneers (featuring Roy Rogers), The Radiators (from New Orleans), Nat King Cole, any Van Morrison, or EmmyLou/Mark Knopfler. Clapton is also off limits. You always say you will bring them back, but you never do. Light years away. A likely story.

6) Coffee. Seeds that are dried, roasted, and ground to prepare a stimulating aromatic drink. Must be served so piping hot as to scald even the most hardy Martian tongue. Please add cream of the highest fat content. No decaf allowed. Wimps. Please note that my brother-in-law Dave roasts his own coffee, and shares it with family and friends. It is the best coffee I have ever consumed. He will never reveal the method, but the roasting process starts with an air popcorn popper. You didn't hear this from me.

So, all of you out there, what's in your house? The Martians want to know.

Graphic: The Sun by Emma Mary Mankin, age 7. Used with permission, in exchange for an apple fritter.

Night Rain at Omiya

Soaked.

Water, lightning, rumbles of thundergods that loiter, swirling in circles over northern Virginia. Downtown DC is flooded. Was scheduled to go to Silver Spring MD this a.m. to teach, but there is water and mud over so many roads, and it is difficult to journey out of the woods, then on to a place called civilization. So class is rescheduled, and I sit here among the trees, in the saturated night, and write.

Margaret senses when more thunder is due. She finds me, and burrows her big black head against my leg, and she shakes and whimpers a little until I put my hand on her side to comfort her. She then lays under my desk, puts her chin on my foot, and falls asleep.

This rain reminds me of a masterpiece. It is called "Night Rain at Omiya", and it was created in 1930 by a Japanese artist named Kawase Hasui. It is a woodblock print; ink and color on paper.

I first saw it in late 2004 as part of an exhibition called Dream Worlds: Modern Japanese Prints and Paintings from the Robert O. Muller Collection at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC. All the prints were made the "old way"...cherry wood, horsehair brushes, sharp steel knives to cut intricate blocks.

Hasui was part of the Shin Hanga movement. These artists merged traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques with European Impressionism. Standard subjects like landscapes, animals, and people were used, and particular attention was given to light and the depiction of individual moods. This collection of woodblock prints breathe.

It's a stunning piece of work. When I first encountered "Night Rain at Omiya" at the gallery, I looked at it for a very long time. I could feel others around me, competing for position to have a closer view. I stood still, and did not move. How'd that Zen dude make the rain, those beautiful reeds, that reflective water?

It continues to remind me that even when surrounded by darkness, solitude sheds a small light into the night. That it is possible to be warm and dry and happy in the silence.

As It Should Be

Friday night. What a week it has been.

This morning, before class, the Web server at the school was acting muddy, so I traversed from the fifth floor to the second to inquire about the box's health to the server administrator.

Anton looked tired. "I woke up this morning and had the horrible thought that it was still Thursday," he told me. "No, my friend," I assured him. "It is Friday." "Good thing," he replied. He restarted the server. Flow was established again.

So tonight, while rummaging through a box of old journals in search of some research I had done long ago, I opened a book and this picture floated to the floor.

What I know is the picture is 35 mm, and that Ken probably photographed it. What I don't know is the location. Where is this place? I have no idea.

But that smiley sun is urging us to have a good weekend, to have a nice life, to be kind to our neighbor, to be thankful for the silence, the relationships we have.

How often we forget.

I've kept a journal since I was 18. I have boxes and boxes of these writings. For what? I do find snippets in them, say way back in 1986 I saw something and wrote it down, so I have a record. I search for the thought, and it helps me state some recognition. 32 years. That's a long time to write memories to oneself.

My brother Kevin gives me gift certificates to Staples for Christmas. He knows what I like.

I buy accounting Record books. Created for numbers, I use them for this journaling. Hard-bound, with the word RECORD stamped in gold on the front. It is what these books hold for me...a record of life. They last through the years, and I write in them every day. So I am rich in lined paper, these unfilled books, just waiting for me to fatten them with words. And they do put on weight. Something about putting pen to their pages chubbs 'em. Lay a new record book and a fully journaled record book side by side. Compare the bottom of the books, the page depth. The journaled book is always plumper. It's full of life.

Looking back through these, I discover the fact that when I was younger, I wrote in pen. Now I write only in pencil, a Twist-Erase 0.9 Pentel to be exact. Life is not black and white, but differing shades of grey.

As it should be.