The "American Disease"

I did not grow up with guns - I used to tell my friends, ironically, that this was because I grew up in Connecticut. Now that joke leaves ashes on my tongue. But I did not grow up with guns and, in retrospect, that was probably a wise move on my parents' part. I did have a pellet gun - a Crossman 760 pump action. The instructions said to never pump it more than ten times but, before there was ever a Spinal Tap, I instinctively knew that pumping it to eleven was extreme. Ten was the highest? Then eleven was beyond.

Every songbird and squirrel in my neighborhood paid for my developing skills at marksmanship. We had a black-painted cast-iron mailbox at the end of our driveway that was the shame of the neighborhood due to the countless BB "pits" knocked into it. That mailbox was anything I needed it to be as I stalked it from the thicket across the street: Jap sentry, Kraut solider, gook, injun. It never suspected that across the street, lying low and moving soundlessly, a per-pubescent sniper was pumping that gun to eleven. From my second story window I could take it out consistently - pump, lean the gun on the sill, aim and fire. I could hear the satisfying "ping" of the copper BB hitting from eighty yards away. I recall one time, home sick from school, watching a neighbor coming home, swinging some sort of bag from his hand. As soon as he came even with my mailbox - my range! - I popped up, took aim and fired free hand. I heard the smack of the BB into his bag before I dropped to the floor. But I was a kid, so two seconds later I was peering over the sill, and he was staring back at me. I paid for that one when my parents took the gun away. And rightfully so . . .

I'm older now and own quite a few guns - rifles and shotguns, all for hunting. But not all the guns I own are hunting weapons, and these are the ones in retrospect I'm uneasy about. I have a pistol - a big, bulky single action .357 magnum cowboy gun. I have no illusions about hunting with that gun, though I'm a pretty good shot with it. I bought it to shoot at people in a Worst Case Scenario situation. The grim reality behind handguns is, though you can stretch the point with fringe hunters, pistols are made for killing people. So are assault rifles.

Years ago, when the Soviet Bloc fell apart, America - the Windfall Heaven of all Weaponry - became a clearing house for SKS assault rifles. We found them in our local hunting stores in crates stacked up like Christmas toys at Wal-Mart, all still shiny and redolent of the spicy reek of cosmoline packing grease. When they came to my hometown they were eighty bucks a piece. Eighty bucks! I later got mine for one-twenty but still!What a bargain!

I shot a lot of rounds through it at the local shooting range, but the first time it made an impression on me was at a Critter Hunt on a friend's hunting land. Anyone who hunts deer at a certain latitude in Georgia knows about armadillos. These tiny animals make noise way beyond their size - every armadillo sounds like a trophy buck striding through the underbrush. We've all seen the riverbanks dug up and plowed over, as if hogs two hundred pounds heavier had been at work. These animals are part of the larger environmental disaster perpetrated by human beings - they continue to spread north, beyond their original homerange, with no natural predators to keep them in check. So a hunt was called to eliminate these pests from the bottom lands along this particular section of the Flint River. I, of course, brought the SKS.

That first morning we saw no animals and I was eager to pull the trigger. Armadillo fever! Eventually I soothed the need by lining up the iron sights on a knot-hole on an oak tree and pulled the trigger - not once, but six times,emptying the clip as fast as I could pull that horrible trigger. And the trigger is horrible, too, it's too loose, breaks too far back to ensure accuracy. Still, when you have a semi-automatic assault rifle - I challenge you to pull the trigger just once on an open target.

I won't bore you with boasts of my accuracy; it's enough to say that I never missed the tree. All six bullets hit a tree that was roughly the circumference of a human body. It was when I walked around to the far side of the tree that I had my epiphany: every 7.62 round that hit that tree passed right through it, seemingly unopposed. There were six exit "wounds". Remember when you were a kid playing army, taking cover behind trees when the "enemy" opened fire? Nope. Not a reality. Anyone hiding behind that tree would have been hit by every bullet. I crouched there in the leaves on a beautiful autumn morning in middle Georgia and speculated what all this meant. Your average American house, built of faux wood, with faux plaster "sheet rock" separating the rooms - it's conceivable that my SKS could shoot through the house and kill someone on the other side. Six times . . . or thirty times if I bought one of the magazines available in any of my favorite hunting catalogs . . .

Immediately after the Newtown Massacre - and it was a Massacre, let's not play with terms like "tragedy" - I went to my son's elementary school to pick him up. All those lovely children wearing their "reindeer" antlers made out of craft materials, carrying "goody-bags" from Christmas parties. Those babies slaughtered at Sandy Hook were probably engaged in something similar that morning. I thought about that tree I shot up - everyone of those babies killed was hit more than once - some of them five times, because that's the nature of an assault rifle. Keep on pulling that trigger. It's hard not to.

What is the purpose of an assault rifle? It's to kill people. Some people make a case of using them for hunting, but you can use anything for hunting: a crossbow, a knife, a spear, a grenade. The design of an assault rifle is to simply, chillingly, kill people efficiently. And let's be honest here, when we talk of "assault rifles" we mean any weapon capable of semi-automatic fire, chambered for high velocity rounds and capable of mounting clips up to 30 rounds. If we banned every assault rifle and they all magically disappeared, it would not impact in any way our ability to honestly hunt deer. On the other hand, using a lever-action Marlin with a magazine capacity of maybe five would severely restrict your ability to perpetrate a massacre.

Why do we allow our citizens to have them besides the mania of gun lust that haunts our society? Why do you need one? Is it to "keep your family safe" as I hear from people? How many times in recent history has some god-fearing homeowner utilized his assault rifle to keep a pack of mad dog killers from breaking into his home and menacing his family? A simple pump action shot gun will suffice there and probably do a better job - that assault rifle, if you miss your target, will go through  your walls. How many times has a citizenry, armed with its culturally mandated right to keep an assault rifle, grabbed them up and run towards the sound of shooting to prevent a massacre from getting out of hand?

I'm afraid the odds are firmly on the Dark Side with this one, my friends. Massacres are perpetrated by crazy people who mostly buy their guns legally - not rapists and drug fiends. And let's go ahead and throw pistols in there too. I hear it from my friends on the Free Gun side all the time - the real problem is that not enough Americans are armed. That would solve everything. If most Americans were packing, these things wouldn't happen. Rep. Louie Gohmert on Fox Sunday had the temerity to say, "I wish to God she (Sandy Hook principal Hochsprung) had had an M4 in her office locked up so when she heard gun fire she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands, but she takes him out, takes his head off before he could kill those precious kids.”

I'm calling bullshit on all of that. I'm going to go ahead and speculate that at any one of the many gun-based massacres that have taken place in the last twenty years there were people present who were "packing". Enough of my friends and acquaintances carry guns to theaters, sporting events, etc. I'm willing to go out on a limb here and suggest that at the Aurora, Colorado shooting there was at least one person in the theater who was carrying a concealed weapon. But we'll never know because which one of them would admit that they were there, carrying a gun, and followed their very human instinct to duck, cover and run?

Because that's the reality - it takes law enforcement professionals and soldiers a tremendous amount of training, and "untraining" of natural instincts, to run towards the sound of gun fire. A disquieting ratio of soldiers under fire do not return fire, despite their training and the proximity of danger. How many of our citizens would have the wherewithal to lock and load and return fire? There is not one logical reason why we need more guns any more than there's a logical reason why we shouldn't manage and control guns - the way Australia did following the Port Arthur massacre, again perpetrated by a madman with an assault rifle.

Right now, even as I write this, the NRA will be funneling the millions of dollars at its disposal to kill the very idea of gun control, refurbishing the old myth that it's somehow enshrined in the Constitution, ignoring the words written by our God Fearing Founding Fathers - in accordance with a well-regulated militia. Well-regulated? Does that not mean  . . . well, regulation? Militias, of course, existed in the 18th century because America had a visceral suspicion of professional armies, but once the idea of professional armies took over, the days of the militia were gone . . . like horse-draw wagons and a blacksmith in every village.

Violent crime in America has been on a five year low. Murders, rapes, muggings, etc are all falling. This has nothing to do with an "over-armed" citizenry spoiling for a fight, ready to "Stand Their Ground".

". . . criminologists point to a variety of factors for the continuing decline in overall violence. They cite a more settled crack cocaine market, an increase in incarcerations, an aging population, data-driven policing, and changes in technology that include a big increase in surveillance cameras."

CNN

Note that there's no indication that violent crime is down due to the Average American carrying a Glock to the grocery store.  Note that by "violent crime" we don't mean massacres like the Newtown one. Those sorts of things are on the upswing  . . .

 And here's another thing on the upswing, the numbers of mentally unstable people who cannot get help or medication is on the rise. Hand in hand with our problems with gun control is our unspoken tragedy of untreated mentally ill citizens. Despite the shrieks of the Obamacare Haters, private health care options do not do enough to help those who are mentally ill seek treatment or afford medication. This trend towards ignoring the mental health crisis began in the 1970s and was enshrined in the Reagan Revolution of the Eighties. The problem, as Reagan told us with his loveable "Aw Shucks" manner, was Government. Take government out of the situation and private industry will solve the issues better and more economically.

Except it didn't and it can't. We currently live in a society where it's easier to buy an assault rifle and an extended magazine than to get medications for mental illness.

Take every single pistol and assault rifle out of the hands of untrained private citizens and violent crimes will not go up. We can hunt and protect our homes with average deer rifles and shot guns, weapons that are difficult to conceal and which have a low rate of fire.Think it won't work? It worked in Australia, a rugged nation of frontier individuals - conservative Prime Minister Howard, a good friend to George W. Bush said, "Let us not become victims of this American Disease" after an Australian opened fire on innocent civilians in 1996. He meant an overabundance of guns and a mania equating gun ownership with freedom allowing military human-killer weapons to fall into the hands of anyone, including the mentally ill.

Or at least let's have a serious, real debate about the issue. If our bridges were collapsing across this nation we'd have a debate about how to fix them and how to fund it; if our planes were crashing into each other in the skies above our national cities we'd have a debate on how to fix the situation. When terrorists used our airliners as weapons of mass destruction no one fought the idea that we needed a national debate on how to solve the problem.

Why can't we have a similar debate on gun control? Go ahead and look at the faces of the murdered children and tell me we can't or shouldn't have a debate on gun ownership. 

Part of my morning routine involves reading European news sites in order to get a broad view on world and economic events - I can't bring myself to do it this morning. I can't bring myself to read about the horror of the American Disease from the viewpoint of a continent that can't understand why we refuse to see the root cause of the problem. 

I'm ashamed. 

Saying Goodbye - the End

At the height of our success we were breaking apart - entropy in action! Last season had arguably been our finest, involving a bitter battle with a team that theatrically wore black and who played the role of vaudeville nemesis to our Hero. Though they beat us in the regular season, destroying the knee of one of my original players in the process, we ended up with a better record and finished the season as league champs. Another medal! Hollywood style vindication and justice! Cue the music . . .

It was the beginning of the end - we had been together since U13 at Classic V and now we were looking at going to U19 Classic II and the team was fading away even as we enjoyed the heady success of winning yet another championship. We just didn't know it yet.

Spring Season is referred to in soccer as "Short Season". Because so many boys play for their high schools in the winter and spring, the club season is truncated and involves independently set up games that don't count against your record - sort of like Pakistani arranged marriages. And often times the other team can't field a full squad on that day for one reason or another and more games are cancelled than are played.

Spencer was graduating high school and he would go on to play college at Southern Virginia; Decook switched loyalties so that he could play on a team that included his high school friends. Cason - another original! - followed him because this was a Big Club, with access to college scouts and a higher fewer ethnic minorities. He in turn was joined by Justin who spent the last season pouting because noone else on the team held him in the esteem he held for himself.

Jesus, our keeper,  left because he was a goal keeper and we couldn't seem to hang on to them. He just kind of faded away at the end of the season, claiming he didn't have a phone, a ride, a clue . . .

Patrick had been our number one goal-scorer for years - I had recruited him back in the U12 days when I was shameless about stealing your most talented player from your team with promises of glory. In the ensuing six years I had picked him up and taken him home twice a week - he lived miles away, in Braselton; I had fed him on away games and visited him in the hospital when he ruptured his spleen playing for us. He had never paid a penny towards any fees, never paid for any of the camps we held. Patrick's head was turned by a Big Club that saw his numbers and made him any number of promises, and so he left . . . only to try to return weeks later when the rosters were set and his position had been filled. No dice, Patrick. Despite everything we had done for you, you chose to leave and so no door was left unlocked with a candle in the window for your eventual return.

And so it goes - by summer recruiting time we had refilled our roster but it was like something from a Civil War novel: the proud boys who had joined the regiment in the glory days of Hope and Courage were gone, their spots filled by raw recruits who didn't know the culture and the history. Game enough to try to live up to the Iron Horse name but there were too many of them and we didn't have enough time to shape them: this was the last season for the team. We broke them in and threw them out there. Buncha FNG's .

Brian's son was graduating this year and he was opening his own business and so that would be that. Over the years I began to rely on Brian more and more. Iron Horse was so successful I could afford to turn my attention and worries over to my younger son's team, which always struggled. In time Iron Horse became, by default, Brian's team, and it was a good fit. My relevance began to fade as my attentions were called elsewhere. If Brian and I had a difference of opinion regarding formations or tactics, I began to defer to him. Gone was my old bluster and cockiness. I had found myself out and realized now, after years of experience, how little I actually knew. I'm glad I didn't know that in the beginning - I would have failed miserably.

Brian had coached his last game last Saturday, handed the equipment bag over, and now I was the last man standing, me and the Four Originals, and the  Second Generation players, the ones who flocked to us when we were unstoppable - like Victor, and Junior our other captain. Brian had told me, "We managed to bottle lightning there for a while."  We had both wanted to create a winning team around those who could play the game but were too poor to afford Big Club membership fees and in that we were more successful than we might have hoped for. Or maybe not, we were both full of hubris in those first days.

If only . . . if only we had kept the original crew, we would have dealt handily with this team in the gloaming of late Georgia Autumn. Our esprit and elan and speed would have kept these boys on their back-heels and Patrick or Manuel would have scored the final goal. But this group - there was not enough chemistry. Pieces were missing, we were patched up with tape and wire. The sounds across the street from the other complex were silent now and the cars driving past had their lights on. This field had no lights however and it was getting dark.

With five minutes to play, the refs called the game. It was too dark to see, they said. It was dangerous to play. The other coach looked at me and I shrugged. "I want to finish the game," I said. So did he, so did all the boys on the field - but we were vetoed by the referees. Game over. As ignominous an ending to years of success as you could possibly imagine.

I called the boys over and gave them a halting, disconnected speech regarding pride and joy. It was really dark now and people were fleeing for their cars the game was over, the season was over and the team was over. We had managed to bottle lightning there for awhile, but nothing lasts forever . . .

Saying Goodbye - Part Three

At U12 there were four teams that played each other in continuous rotation and I was already coveting their best players, a shameless poacher of talent - the green team had speed that I craved, the red team had one rotund Mexican kid who could score from any part of the field. And there was that other team that seemed to be where, by common consensus, you went to play if you lacked any sort of athletic ability at all. We'd play that team and I'd tell my boys: "I don't want you scoring more than five goals against them. If you get to five goals, pass it around. Or use your weak foot. I don't care - don't drive the score up." I didn't want anyone from that team.

By the end of the season the green coach - Brian - and I were already scheming like Arabs to build a select team that we were sure could compete with the best in the state. The best players from both our teams and open tryouts to fill in the rest and we'd be ready to go. We were gleeful and spoke confidently of formations and tactics and plans for tryouts. I remember these early conversations as being buoyed up by the flatulence of my own arrogance. Gawd, I was such an ass in those days. The very definition of "puffed up".

The trick to building a team is to be able to recognize talent in an artificial environment that lasts only a few days. We had clipboards and stopwatches and various stations with cones and flags where we tried to make sense of speed, ball control, passing ability. We collected stats and compiled numbers. My head spun with the science of it all. This was number crunching, this was the sort of thing actuarial did in cubicle hives set in glass towers across the corporate landscape. I wasn't much good at it. My ability to spot talent was mostly hit, with some obvious misses. Brian gave me enough rope to hang myself. He was quieter and more thoughtful in those days and so I think I had him fooled by my slick talk and my confident bluster. Later in our association he wouldn't hesitate to veto my more asinine ideas. He must have been baffled at some of the player choices I advocated but, to his credit, he remained circumspect.

You want your team name to reflect something of your local nuances and culture - by all means, you want to avoid the usual hyperbolic cartoon superhero names Americans like to attach to their sports teams: the Blast! The Rage! The Venom-spitting Cobras of Death! The town where we were based was your typical small Southern railroad town, bisected by the tracks which could tie up traffic for long periods of time in the middle of the day. We decided to call our team The Iron Horse Football Club to reflect the reality of where we were from. Plus, it sounded good - and Brian, an artist, designed the logo.

That logo and the team name got a lot of mileage over the years and now they were playing their last game. I stood on the sidelines clutching my dry erase board like Captain America's shield and made a mental tally: there were four men left from the original sixteen boys. Time works in two ways, as I've said before: very slowly and very quickly, both at the same time.

Yesterday we formed a team, today is six years later. That first year we won our first tournament, the Nike Triumph Cup. The boy who scored the winning goal is gone, as are several others either because they dropped out along the way or they were cut at the next round of tryouts. Names drop by the wayside and you wonder about them. Some go looking for greener pastures and, of those, a select few shake your hand and thank you for all you've done for them; others slink off and join other teams and you hear about it by a third party. Some lose their love for the game, some realize that the game left them behind, some just  . . . disappear.

Some improbably stick with you out of fierce loyalty despite recruiting efforts by Big Clubs, and one such now stood at the top of the center circle, waiting for kick-off. Victor came to us from Zimbabwe and in the early days when he joined our club he was notable for his joie de vivre, his smile and his inability to get anywhere on time. We'd be starting a match and Victor would be late but then - wait, here he was! You'd see him get out of his dad's car and amble across the fields towards us, in absolutely no hurry, flummoxed when we scolded him for his lack of haste, slowly putting on his cleats and shaking his head. For a long time we called him candy-cane due to an impromptu song he once sang in the back of my car while enjoying the minty freshness of a candy one of my sons had left on the seat. He pronounced the word "beach" like "bitch" and "sheet" like "shit" and the boys never ceased prodding him to answer questions where he couldn't avoid using those words. He told us that once, back home in Harrare, he had been menaced by a monkey and it seemed to have made an impression on him.

Victor had changed over the years, had developed a gravitas that seemed to be based on his role as elder brother in a house where a father was constantly absent, flying back and forth to Africa. He had two little brothers that he had to take care of while his mother worked and picked up classes at a local school His smile was still brilliant and his humor always ready but there was a distance in his eyes now as if he was peering into the future and weighing options. One option that he stuck with was playing for Iron Horse despite the recruiting of a variety of Big Clubs, despite the fact that he made the first and second cut at the IMG National soccer academy. Colleges were lining up for Victor now and he could go anywhere but, improbably, impossibly, he still wore the Iron Horse shirt, still lined up for us at kick off, the creative heart of our team.

Manuel was still with the team too, the chubby Mexican kid from the U12 Red team who could score from anywhere.His dad and sister used to call him "Chapparro" which means "shorty" in Spanish, or something like that, but now he was as tall as me and his young boy chubbiness was gone and now he was built like a kitchen appliance. Over all the years he stuck with us, scoring improbable goals, finding those long passes, harrying his own team mates until they wanted to drive a nail through his temple to keep him from talking all the damned time. Manuel was the youngest high scoring player in the Mexican Adult league and, as such, he was featured in the local Spanish papers. He always needed a ride to away games and, because he played every weekend all year long for his father's team in the Mexican leagues, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of where every soccer field in this part of Georgia was, a human GPS. If, on the way back from a game, we stopped at a fast food restaurant, Manuel would lean over the counter and call into the kitchen - "Hey, amigo!" Then he'd give specific instructions regarding his food in Spanish. "There's always a Hispanic back there," he once told us, confidently.

Manuel was in goal for us tonight because Iron Horse had Spinal Tap Drummer Syndrome when it came to goal keepers - they dropped away nearly every season for a variety of reasons. We couldn't seem to keep one.

But it wouldn't be a problem after tonight . . .

Saying Goodbye - Part Two

Seventeen years ago I used to drive past this very field on my way to church and look down at the games playing out in a mute frenzy of opposing colors and wonder, "Will my son play down there some day?" Sam was an infant then, bundled into his car-seat and wrapped in blankets against the November chill, but I was a young father and the future was ahead of us and I was comfortable contemplating chances of glory.


In those days I was the successful head coach of the boys' varsity team at my school, and full of my own abilities and potential. Before I took over the team had won two games in two years, but my first year as head coach saw us post our first ever winning season. I had the sense back then to let the boys find themselves as players, and developed their game around what they showed me - it was instinctive coaching rather than tactical. It was coaching by ear rather than scripting a game plan, but it was successful for several years and we went to the state playoffs twice before I was ready to step down, all full of myself as a keen tactical coach, a big game coach able to pull out wins, a player's-coach as they say in the business.

I was deluded by my own successes, but it didn't help that my son's youth teams were also wildly successful, even back during the U6 days when "winning" was an exercise in the theater of the absurd. Organize a U6 team correctly and they'll score dozens of goals per game if you have the right players. Those teams won and won and, by winning, attracted other players who also wanted to win. I saw the potential for building a dynasty.

The first in a wave of recruits arrived unceremoniously when a U8 a mother came up to me and told me that her sons were going to play on my team. You need to know the Hmong to understand how straightforward and without guile they are. She told me this very firmly and identified her two sons - one of whom was no taller than a marionette. The oldest was playing soccer in those days because he liked the snacks and juice-boxes the coaches handed out with largesse after the games, but the younger one played for the love of the game and they were tired of being on the losing end of playing against us. I knew their quality from having coached against them and I shamelessly allowed them to jump ship, to my team.

He was still out there this November day - the younger Hmong boy. He was sixteen now and still small but - again, you had to know the Hmong - an absolute warrior. In a game earlier in the season he had taken down a 19 year old player, big as a linebacker, after a dirty foul, and came up swinging. He had to be pulled away by two other players while his antagonist stumbled off bewildered and cowed but the older brother was gone now, joining a list of absent faces. He had once been the rock at the heart of our defense, the undisputed captain of the team, but something had soured in him when he turned sixteen and he became distant and hostile and no one knew why - this boy who had once played so he could get snacks, who would come off the field on a substitution and run over to his parents so he could hug the baby sister he adored. It all culminated with a fist fight between the two brothers, a sudden and quick affair that saw the younger brother humiliate the older one at a practice one day, and then he was gone. Off the team, never to return.The prodigal soccer player who did not come back . . .

We lost other players over the years, but that one was the first one to hurt my heart. Tonight I said goodbye to him too, one more time, as my boys huddled around and prepared their pre-game cheer: Iron Horse on three! One! Two! Three - IRON HORSE.

This was the last game of the season, and for many of us, the last game we would have together - yet somehow the cheer came out muted and lacked conviction. It trailed away and ended with scornful laughter as the boys pulled apart and the starters took their positions.

I looked at the other team but not with the usual scrutiny. There was nothing on the line for this one. Win or lose, both teams would remain in the middle of the table at Classic II.

Saying Goodbye - Part One.

It was another early November soccer game but this time there was nothing tangible on the line: no championship to be shooting for, no edgy adrenaline rush as we calculated points and tactics and overall strategy towards inevitable victory and another medal. After fourteen seasons of driving through the leagues from Classic V to Classic II, winning each league either flat out, or saving it till the last game . . . this one was anti-climactic. We were in the middle of the table with no chance to win the championship and add more hardware to the trophy cabinet and the glory of the team, but no threat of being relegated back down to Classic III either. The season was done after tonight, and so was I.

The sun was going down and the shadows were reaching across the pitch from the scrub behind me. There had been frost this morning and then enough sun by midday to scorch my nose, but these shadows had the feeling of winter in them, as if they had been hoarding their chill. We were on the only soccer pitch on this side of the street, surrounded by trees and evening shadows – across the street was a large modern complex of something like thirty fields and the last games of the evening were playing out over there, but the sounds were muted through some peculiarity of the landscape and I was put into mind of how I used to be able to hear the playground sounds at my elementary school when I’d stay home sick. We lived less than a mile from the school and the sounds of children would float disembodied through the trees, sounding near and far away at the same time. A melancholy sound . . .

The last time this team had played at the complex across the street we were fighting to remain at the top of the league and every game was do-or-die. In club soccer, only the league champion gets promoted to the next level, switching places with the last-place team in the bracket above. We were U16 then and at the top of the Classic IV table with ambitions to rise to the top league by the time our boys reached U19. In those days we mixed natural talent with organization and preparation and so we knew going into that game who the danger men were and what we had to do. We had studied their statistics and scouted their last game – in fact, we made sure they knew we were scouting them, arriving to watch that game wearing our uniforms so that they couldn’t miss us, hoping to squeeze that much more advantage out of the situation.

We ended up winning that game by a solitary goal scored in the final seconds of the game when our wing-back, playing heroically despite having the flu, drove into the box and slotted an unlikely shot from an unlikely angle – and then collapsed onto the pitch with nothing left to give. That’s who were in those days, dangerous until the final whistle blew, every boy playing like a man. Hero-stuff. We won the league that year and, when we were given our medals, I thought back to that game and how key that victory had been.

But this was a different year, a different league, and the boy who had scored that famous goal was gone now, graduated and playing in college. My co-coach was gone now too, he who had engineered the psy-war-ops scouting tactic; so many had come and gone and now this was my last game too, and the last time I would coach my oldest son and I stood there in the lengthening shadows feeling curiously displaced and inert as the boys stretched and taped their shinguards and tied their cleats with their special knots. I stood quietly and did not come out of myself to bark orders in preparation for this one game, this singular game, as I would have in the past. I found a folding camp chair and plopped down into it and waited for the referees to call for captains . . .

The Visitor

We've had our fair share of strange callers at our small home amidst the oaks on the edge of what could be called "downtown". Some of you might remember the story of the early morning peeping-tom who peered in our front window at Liz while she ironed, causing her to shriek in manner that was not quite human - and jolting me out of the bed to stand on the porch in my boxers, waving a cudgel and an (empty) pistol at the receding shadows of early morning, screaming invective while my adrenaline count threatened china-syndrome levels. Our caller had ridden his bike on his pervy route and I saw it lying at the foot of our driveway. My adrenaline finding a target for release, I beat the shit out of it with my cudgel - though that only did minimal damage to it. Those bikes are built pretty tough. I managed to smash off the plastic reflectors and, perhaps, dent a few spokes. When the cops arrived they expressed doubt that anyone could have ridden such a bike. I explained that it had been in better shape before they arrived . . .

Lately we've been haunted by Carolyn, whose dementia causes her to wander the neighborhood with a strange mission to "visit with" anyone she can corner. At any hour. The first time she arrived we were glad to meet her. She had a friendly face and she indicated that she had moved into the recently renovated Crack House on the corner. We were glad to see Nice People living there, and we told her so, but we realized right away that something was off-balance in Carolyn's demeanor. She tried to push past Liz and I and step into the living room with a proprietary air. Her smile faded and her expression became determined and . . . distant. The people in front of her had ceased to exist and she was compelled to move forward . . .

We sent her on her way, but she comes back from time to time to "visit with" us. Usually it's at the end of the evening when the kids are getting ready for bed. The dogs will go ballistic as they sense her presence coming silently up the driveway. Their barking hides the tread of her feet on our front steps and across the porch but we'll hear the doorbell.

This is the kids' cue to scatter and they do so quickly, like kids in a war zone hearing aircraft overhead. Liz scoots down the hall behind them and I go to the door, careful to only open it a crack. Carolyn will smile and say, "I've come to visit with you." Then the smile will go, and with it any semblance that I'm staring at a functioning member of society. The eyes unfocus and look inward at things I can't see. Her intentions are lost in her fog. I make my apologies and excuses: It's late, the kids are going to bed, etc. etc. She turns and lumbers off, disappearing into the inky shadows at the foot of our driveway to continue her restless wandering . . .

The owner of the house next door had his own Carolyn encounter last week when he had come home from New Hampshire to tend to his rental house. She had come to the door "to visit" with him as he pulled up carpet and trim. He pulled up a chair for her but she didn't stay for longer than a few minutes before drifting out the door without a word.

I'm reminded of Tove Jannson's character The Grok (illustration at the head of this post) who wanders restlessly through the Moomintroll world, unsettling everyone with her strange and dread-inspiring presence, and leaving icy patches where-ever she rests . . .

Crazy Carolyn - that's what we call her, and not without affection. Still, like The Grok, she's unsettling. She is a large woman and her face is doughy and lugubrious. Sometimes when I come home from soccer late at night I'll see her lumbering down our road with that particular side-to-side rocking motion large women have, rolling along like a sailor on deck. It's dark on our end of the street, where In-Town peters out and she comes out of the shadows into my headlights all of a sudden, her face telling a story of sorrows and heartbreaks and worry - the La Llorona of Winder. The Weeping Washer Woman. The Gray Lady of folklore. When I surge around her she fades into the shadows again. I get out of my car at the top of the driveway and look behind me with anxiety. Will she be there, just behind me, hoping for a visit? Will she try to follow me into the house?

In Tove Jannson's Moomintroll books the arrival of the Grok is preceded by a feeling of dread and a drop in temperature. Moominpapa opens the door and she's there, lurking just outside the pool of light that spills from the house.

Yesterday afternoon the dogs exploded again, the terrier spinning in circles and the dalmatian charging the front windows. Our personal Grok had arrived but when I opened the door she was not there. I walked to the foot of the driveway and looked both ways but she was not toddling off with her peculiar seaman's gait. She couldn't have disappeared that fast.

And of course she didn't. She was at our backyard gate, peering over the fence at the children playing there. "Carolyn, you can't do that," I told her. "You're frightening the children." She told me she just wanted to visit with the people in the yard but I sent her on her way and watched as she made slow, relentless progress down the road.

When I drove down the road an hour later she was on her front porch and she raised her hand to wave vaguely at me, and I gave her a quick salute. I drove on wondering who lives there with her, who watches her?

The Weekend that Was: Part One - Saturday

I have found that there are places in Georgia that are as lovely as any I've ever traveled to and the area around Oxford, Georgia is one of those. I like the rolling piedmont countryside, especially when it's not blighted with housing developments and suburban sprawl. Give me farmland and pastures divided by hardwood forests and homes that exist without supporting arteries of cul-de-sacs and pseudo rustic neighborhood names: The Oaks, Surrey Chase, Cascade Glen. I like to see houses standing solitary and proud in their vast expanse of green, not crowded fearfully together like quail.

I could live here, I thought - few neighbors, lots of greenery, almost no light pollution at night to thwart my star-gazing. There would be issues, of course - long distances to drive simply for basic shopping, questionable schools, only prepackaged American cheese slices available at the local marts . . . and there were those signs in the yards: Romney/Ryan. One of the truisms in American culture is the deeper you get into the countryside, the more smugly conservative the population. I'd be less concerned if I thought the people were delving into the issues and exploring them from a variety of view points, carefully coming to their conclusions - but I know from long experience that's not true. As far as most of these people are concerned, they listen to Sean Hannity who tells them what to think and why and that's good enough.

We had about two hours between soccer games so my wife and youngest son and I jetted off to find something to eat - so that Will could be sodden and heavy with food and unable to play up to his ability in the unseasonable October heat. Not a good plan, perhaps, but it's important to have a plan. We were looking for one of the big sandwich chains because that's what Will wanted to eat. Not me - I can't get behind paying for a sandwich. It's like going out and paying for toast. Here's something I can do pretty well at home . . .

But that's what we were looking for - a sandwich shoppe - and we had to drive a fair distance to find that sort of prefabricated architecture embedded in concrete roads and parking lots where such things dwell. First we had to drive out of Church Country and this took some time. I like best the churches that have marquees out front that advertise their piety through clever messages: God answers knee-mail! No God, no peace - Know God, know peace! It's a marketing technique and a good one. Mostly these are the smaller churches, the ones where you can usually be assured of a good old fashioned fire-and-brimstone sermon about hell, like the ones Jesus used to give. There were quite a few of these on our route, as well as a business with its own marquee telling the President, in no uncertain terms, "God built this business, Mr. Obama." I'm sure that whenever Mr. Obama drives by he'll see that marquee and squish down low in his seat, hiding from shame.

The Georgia countryside is also home to all-of-a-sudden, just when you least expect it, mega-churches: big modern buildings that look as if they could hold a congregation of thousands. Lots of glass and vast parking lots that would not be out of place at a strip mall. These churches usually sport esoteric names that seem more like advertising slogans or catch-phrases: Living Water! Rock of Ages! We passed one on our odyssey that was glassy and modular and boasted its own cafe inside! Just like Jesus planned.

 My wife was driving because on Soccer Saturdays I need to be clear-minded. I told her to stop! Right here! This church with its own cafe was having a BBQ and Jesus knows how much I love BBQ! This was the Loaves and the Fishes all over again, and I was saved from having to get a cold sandwich put together by some surly teen wearing plastic gloves. We whipped right in and I jumped out . . .

The gentlemen of the church were working together in harmony beneath a canopy to create a plate of pork BBQ with chips and drink for $5. The air was savory with the smell of the stuff - really, one of the few items of Southern Cuisine that I find not only palatable but also delicious. Being raised by an Italian mother has made me a tedious foody snob - but I'm a shameless BBQ epicure and this was just the kind I liked: cooked out-of-doors and prepared right there for you. Ideally it should be messy, sauce hemorrhaging from the sides, and piquant.

I walked up to the canopy with my five dollar bill in hand and asked for my BBQ prepared to order, to wit: laid open face over the buns and eaten with a fork. The fifty-something white guy at the smoker called out, "This man knows his BBQ!" and I smiled at the compliment, mainly because it's true. Another fifty-something white gentleman, standing behind one of the folding tables that separated customers from BBQ dealers, crinkled his eyes at me and leaned forward.

"Tell me, friend - do you have a church family?" My stomach lurched in a familiar way.

Yes, yes I do.

He nodded and radiated contentment. "Where do you go, friend?"

I told him.

He leaned even closer forward so that I could see the outsized pores on his nose and the way his teeth seem shellacked by tobacco or coffee or both. "And when did you realize you needed Jesus in your life?"

I wanted to say, "Right now, sir. Your BBQ did it. What did you put in the sauce?"

This is one of my biggest personal pitfalls in my attempt to adjust to live in The South, even after nearly thirty years of being Out of New England. I have never felt comfortable with people talking Jesus to me. The culture in which I grew up valued religion but saw it as something you keep to yourself, perhaps as a result of greater diversity for a longer period of time. We were Jews and Catholics and Unitarians. You knew if someone was a spiritual person based on their behavior, not from their constant protestations of religiosity. Deeds not words. Where I grew up people saw religion as something intimate and personal - like sex. I'm no more comfortable having someone Witness Unto Me than I am having some guy come up and say to me, "My wife and I really had some great sex last night!" I mean, it's great that you do it and you have every right under the law - both spiritual and temporal - but it embarrasses me to hear you talk about it. That's personal business and I prefer to be kept unaware.

All I wanted at this point was to buy a BBQ pork plate with chips and my choice of a drink but I couldn't get away from this guy who wanted to engage me spiritually.

"When did you realize you needed Jesus in your life?" I tried gently to disengage, feeling the rush of aggressiveness that seems to wash over me when I feel that someone is stepping over a cultural boundary into the Land of Taboo. I had a variety of responses, all of them smart-ass, but I kept them in check.

I mean, I wouldn't feel comfortable asking anyone about their religious habits, any more than I would ask about your sex life, or how often you floss, or whether you take your daily BM first thing in the morning or closer to lunch.

I told the guy that it was probably when I had kids, watching anxiously while a different guy wrapped my BBQ, sweating bullets and willing him to hurry along.

"Friend, me too!" And now we were linked indelibly by this connections. I feared more to come and was already back pedalling, trying to get into my car. Sorry, friend! Liberal Yankee here - I don't talk about religion in parking lots, not even church parking lots! Just wanted BBQ! Forgive me for I am a sinner!

"This is all for the kids," he told me, spreading his arms like unto Christ on the Cross.

Yes sir, I nodded.

"Do you need your car washed?"

No sir.

I got back into the truck and told me wife to drive, for the love of all that's holy! Drive, woman!

The BBQ was pretty good, though. It wasn't the best but at that point I was no longer qualified to judge . . .

The Best Part of My Day . . .

There is a certain amount of responsibility that comes with riding a motorcycle and, no, I don’t mean simply wearing a helmet and being hyper-aware at intersections. It goes deeper than that – or perhaps it goes wider, I’m not sure of the steps one takes in these philosophical waltzes . . .

The best part of my day comes at its working end, when I pull out of the parking lot of my own school and ride to my youngest son’s elementary school to pick him up and take him home. Whatever may have happened previous to that moment blows away in the wind as I ride away.

Consider the scene as I pull up to the elementary school: long lines of children pouring relentlessly out the doors while teachers and school staff ride herd on them, moving them along, guiding them to the proper buses. I roll along in the opposite direction of mothers in cars, giving me free rein to rumble my engines and cruise down the lane, hooking left into the forbidden parking lot where I have an assured parking spot in front of the dumpsters because motorcycles can, essentially, make their own parking spot.

I am a man who currently stands within rock-throwing distance of hitting fifty years old. My last fist fight was decades ago, right about the time I was sexually viable to the opposite sex, but none of that matters if you arrive somewhere on the motorcycle. People look at your differently. Black guys – the touchstone of male star power in this culture – give you the quick nod of recognition when you pull up somewhere and idle, even with your helmet off and your thin hair pressed to your skull from the contours of the helmet itself.

When children see you pull up in that fashion they put on the brakes and sag backwards, away from the hand of the adult who is moving them along. They look at you the way they would a robot or a professional athlete or an alien. Their eyes become large and their feet slow down.

This is where you owe them something – perhaps a quick couple of bursts of throttle while you’re idling so your engine roars. Maybe you haven’t parked yet – it’s your responsibility to make a wide, low-leaning half circle into your parking spot. Now you can throttle a couple of times, as if that’s absolutely necessary before parking. Pull your helmet off, run your free hand through your hair, and adjust your sunglasses – all done while still in the saddle. Finally, you make eye contact with the child, who is still reluctantly walking away, pulling back against the adult’s hand so he can take in this spectacle of an Olympian come down to earth. You give him a curt but friendly nod and he gets a hitch to his step and suddenly trots up to the hip of his adult handler, pointing back at you and sharing the news of your glory . . .

Generally I get to the school before the buses have all loaded and the kids have gotten used to seeing me standing out front, waiting for the flood of kids to abate so I can walk indoors. You can’t fight your way upstream against that tide. One time I made the mistake of sitting on one of the park benches beneath the portico. A tiny Hmong child no bigger than a hand puppet stood in front of me and gave me the eye. “I sit there,” he said. I apologized profusely and stood up and he took my place, his backpack between his dangling feet, his expression completely elsewhere.

Some of these kids know me through soccer and I give them a high-five as they troop past to their assigned buses, all of which are named after animals – an innovation this year. In the past kids had to remember their bus route numbers, all of which were complex and difficult.

Many kids don’t know me at all except as that guy who rides up on a motorcycle – or maybe they don’t even know that about me. It doesn’t matter – there is something in the sweetness of a child’s soul that tells them they should wave at me and smile, and they do. It always catches me off guard, but it affects me nonetheless.

My wife works at this school and there’s one particular young lady who is, herself, within rock-throwing distance of becoming a young lady. She’s a year or two away from wearing makeup but she already carries a purse as a necessity and not an affectation. She always gives me a knowing smile and then chides me: “You’re late! Your wife is waiting for you . . .”

And suddenly, just like that, the tide runs out and the halls are empty, or mostly empty and I can make my way down towards my wife’s classroom where my youngest son waits for me in his mother’s classroom

Now the protocol is reversed. When Will and I come out to the bike, if there are kids lingering around, or waiting for their buses to pull out, it is imperative that I throw my leg over the low saddle of the bike and pull my helmet on like a warrior suiting up for battle. The bike is cranked and I rev that engine vigorously, for effect. When Will and I are helmeted and ready, we have become transformed from mortals to riders, our faces and humanity obscured by helmets and tinted shades. Now I pull out slowly but implacably and reverse my half-circle as I navigate through the spaces between the idling buses. You can see the kids pressing their faces to the windows and waving – the ones who know Will call out his name and point and Will, well practiced at this, gives a lazy celebrity’s wave in response (though he’s aware of the impact he makes – often he wants me to take routes that are directly observable by his peers).

There’s no one to see us any more as we ride down the country lanes that circumvent school bus and mom-van traffic, but the vibe is different now. Now that you’re out of the range of diesel smoke from the buses you can smell the sweetness of the country air, that spice of autumn that rides the currents like something imported from some exotic locale. Farmland rolls away to either side, as lovely as anything I’ve seen anywhere in any country I’ve travelled to: rich and green and crisp in the October light, with livestock moving at livestock speed to graze. When your foodstuff can’t run away and lies in abundance as far as your eye can see, your concept of speed and time must be altered.

We wind around and past the farms with their cattle and goats and – in one case – herds of llamas. The trees are gorgeous with autumn colors and the air feels cleaner than that thick and muggy stuff we struggle with during Southern summers, when riding is less pleasant. Now the air carries hints of woodsmoke incense. We rumble past old homes set off the road and obscured by trees and we speculate about the abandoned homes that are slowly but relentlessly being devoured by the jungle.

There is one house in particular that we love to ride past – this one is on a narrow lane that goes through intown neighborhoods, not far from our own intown home. The architecture is typical Small Town Suburban but the garden off to the side boasts strange, exotic plants, arranged in a way that tells the careful observer that these are immigrants from a strange land and, indeed, as Will and I slow down to rumble past we usually see them on a warm afternoon dozing on a platform they have built next to their house, covered from the sun by a roof, their shoes lined up neatly in front. They may live and pay taxes in this small Southern town but they dwell far away, on the side of some mountain in Southeast Asia and when they recline on their sleeping platform they must dream of that faroff homeland . . .

Pilgrimage

When I do these late night hikes I always quarter off through the neighbor's wooded patch and then out through my sister-in-law's driveway. The trick is to avoid walking on concrete as much as possible. I always feel slightly "sneaky" and, well, sinister when I do it. I wouldn't want some female to peek out her back yard and think, "Who is that man in my yard?" That's why I jumped a little bit when the neighbor on the other side of my sister-in-law's house turned on her back yard light to let her dog out. I just assumed it was a female neighbor and so I sagged my shoulders somewhat and averted my gaze in a posture I hoped sent out the message that I was too affable to be a rapist.

Then I noticed that there was no neighbor and that was no dog. A fox had set off the motion detector light which threw the backyard into a soft glaze of lighting. The house had actually been empty for nearly a year, there was no neighbor, and this fox had come out of the woods to work efficiently through the grass, quartering and sniffing until he had investigated the entire yard for possible prey. The nature of the lighting - or perhaps the nature of the fox itself - kept the animal in shade so that I couldn't see whether it was a red fox or silver fox, though I could see everything else in the yard. Everywhere he went he brought his own shadowy cloak with him.

He was clearly a fox though - there was no missing that fluid motion, that serpentine neck supporting a sleek, almost cat-like head. He was no cat though, you cannot confuse a canine's body and motion for a feline. The shadow he moved in caused his profile to stand out in sharp relief so you couldn't miss the ears and the brush tail. I had stumbled across foxes before and this was the perfect fox shape, except without detail, like a fox-shape cut out of the night and animated.

It worked over the entire back yard and then it was gone in three minutes or less. In a few seconds the backyard light went off too . . .

Where You Going, Where Have You Been?

The earth is turning away from the sun again: the predawn air is cold and crisp and there's no hiding from it on my motorcycle. It may be hot in the afternoon when I ride home, but the there's no mistaking the light: golden like wine and just as intoxicating. Every morning I debate wearing a jacket for the ride in - it's cold enough to warrant one but I don't want to have to keep up with it, and I certainly don't need it at three thirty when the sun is out and there's no coolness to speak of.

But you can see it on the leaves of certain trees - the sycamores and the sweetgum - that are colored by the cool nights and sunny days. Autumn is coming. Another one.

The other morning, on my way to the office, I stopped by Ms. O's classroom to check on my oldest son's grade. Math is not his best subject and I handpicked my son's schedule, rearranging it, so he could have Ms. O. These are the little perks teachers get - they're not much more than the average parent can pull off if they agitate hard enough, but there it is. Like so much in teaching, the perceived perks are fragile and hollow.

Ms. O told me that my son was doing well. She smiled and said, "I remember you wore that beeper when your wife was pregnant with him so you'd know when she went into labor."

We both laughed at that - beepers for crying out loud! Technology of the past! Once upon a time they were all the rage, now consigned to the dustheap of laughable items like plow-shares and chamber pots.

I hurried on my way back to my classroom, but I thought about that Long Ago when I wore a beeper. The school has been rebuilt and renovated in those seventeen years since he was born, there's almost nothing of the old school left. There was a courtyard behind the school where we would eat a picnic lunch during soccer season when my wife brought him to school because I had a game to coach and couldn't come home. That was right about the time I got a tremendous splinter in my foot due to the substandard wood used by our hack contractor. My son was so upset at the vision of blood soaking the paper-towel that I held to my foot that he couldn't go to school the next day. Those were the sweet pre-school days, long before worrying about math scores and AP classes. He stayed home the next morning, haunted by the vision of his mortal and wounded father. He drew me a picture and hugged me when I came home, and you could see the tear tracks on his cheeks.

That courtyard is gone, and my son will graduate next year. Time rolls on in its relentless way. Every Autumn whispers to me and tells me that the universe turns and turns. I'm not old yet and never will be, not on the inside. But time rolls on.

Confessions of a Poor Wayfarer.

Massive thunderstorms played havoc with our flight from Atlanta to DC, which in turn threatened to put the kibosh on our flight to Shannon, Ireland. A rather large, rubbery and ineffective woman of Caribbean descent seemed to indicate that there was nothing anyone on this earth could do to help us. Perhaps we should just turn around and go home . . . ? Try again tomorrow? Stay in DC and take up squatter's rights?

We made phone calls, pulled strings. There was a shift change going on at the booking desk but these loud talking, brash Dominican women were willing to go the extra mile, bless their hearts. Perhaps there was some kind of friction between them and the Caribbean woman who was so useless. I told them that she said it was impossible, but they pounded the keyboards and booked us on a flight to Dublin where we'd meet a bus, which would take us across the Island to Shannon where we might or might not meet up with our luggage. It was a calculated risk and we jumped at it.

There is almost always turbulence over Newfoundland. The plane bucked and swayed and threatened to upset my dinner of vaguely chicken-like patties and colorless vegetables. There is almost always turbulence over Newfoundland and nearly always some form of turbulence in taking a group of students overseas. It's part of the adventure . . .

Skies were grey in Ireland the next day, as if we had landed in a mysterious island that lay beneath a pile of uncarded, oily wool. The georgian buildings were shiny with rain and puddles lay black on the streets. The bus rumbled on, going west beneath the rainy skies and I felt happy. Most of my travelers were comatose from jet-lag and the difficulty of resting fully while sitting up in economy airline seats, but I was wide awake. I can sleep in the hotel room - I never want to miss a second of being alive and conscious in a foreign country - and so I was alone on the bus, surrounded by the dead, and I was the only one to see the horseman.

The 21st century was all around us in Ireland but it didn't seem to matter to the horseman who came hacking along at a good clip on the sidewalk, pacing our bus briefly. He wore a traditional flatcap pulled low to the bridge of his nose and I could not see his face but I'm sure it was shining with the sheer joy of trotting his horse bareback along the suburban streets of Outer Limmerick with rain sifting down and no cars to speak of to belch poison into his air. He wore a white sweater and his pants were tucked into knee-high wellies, and he sat that horse the way you're supposed to, back straight and shoulders square. In one smooth motion he pulled his horse to the right and they floated up and over a low stone wall and, for a short time longer I could see them quartering away across a lawn and then they were gone.

In one form or another I see that Horseman every time I travel. He's part of the mosaic of haikus that I encounter each time I pack my carry-on and look backwards with a pang in my heart at another leavet-taking

 Last summer I was again awake while all those around me were sleeping as we took off on an early flight out of Rome towards Germany. The sun was coming up over the rumpled fabric of the Alps and you could see the Mediterranean like a streak of blue on the horizon. The pilot's voice came over the intercom, his German accent low and calm. We were coming over the Alps, he said, and would soon be passing the Zugspitze, Germany's highest peak. 

I had not found God in any of the churches we had visited that summer – not even in the elaborate cathedrals we were leaving behind in Italy, full of frescoes by various masters and the broken bone fragments of half-forgotten saints . . . but as we made that slow, timeless pirouette over the mountain I felt myself open up to the divine. The air outside was what overly excited outdoor writers describe as “crystal clear”: the mountain peak that seemed just beneath our wing was so sharply focused that it seemed to pulse. Everything I’d ever read about glaciers was written on that singular mountain, right up to and including the vast saucer shaped cirque at the very peak where a chalet and four wheel drive vehicles were clearly visible despite the fact that the valleys below were lost in the astigmatism of altitude. Who had driven that vehicle to the summit, where snow still piled up along the jagged edges? Who was blessed enough to breath in that hard, cold, sharp air? Hanging valleys carved the sides of the peak and silver braided rivers curved and recurved down the sides until they fed into valley lakes that were seafoam green. Turning my head I could see the Alps roll away back South to the sea like a vast herd of gigantic, primitive fauna . . .

I turned again, looking up and down the aisles, hoping to share this moment with someone who was as moved as I was. Only one person in our travel group was still away – he and I locked eyes and, from a distance, his eyebrows going up and down spoke volumes. This was The Mountain peak which holy men for eons have sought out to get closer to the Divine. This was The Mountain that the Priest wanted Frederick Henry to find in A Farewell to Arms. with someone who was as moved as I was. Only one person in our travel group was still away – he and I locked eyes and, from a distance, his eyebrows going up and down spoke volumes. This was The Mountain peak which holy men for eons have sought out to get closer to the Divine. This was The Mountain that the Priest wanted Frederick Henry to find in

The plane banked again and The Mountain pulled away as if it leaving us. Below the plane undifferentiated green hinted at detail that we were too high to make out clearly – but if I turned all the way around I could count the rivers that lovingly braided The Mountain like silver chains on a priestess. The plane banked once more and The Mountain was gone. I sat back in my seat knowing that I had been given a gift.



I lived on that high for weeks later the way some people do from religious retreats. From time to time I'd look away from whatever I was doing and the image of that mountain would fill my mind and I'd become strangely calm and happy.

These are the things that are difficult to photograph or capture on a hastily scrawled postcard. These are the moments I live for, like that time in Venice by the fountain . . .

Right off Piazza San Marco there is a little side piazza tucked in tight to the flank of the duomo itself. I figured I’d settle in there, where the sun was filtered. Children were loose in the piazza chasing the pigeons who allowed them to get just so close before rising as one and taking flight. The campanile tolled the hour as campanili do throughout Italy despite the fact that this is a culture that doesn’t recognize the tyranny of time. Asian travel groups moved in platoons and Americans spoke and laughed a little too loudly. The air was dense with decay . . .

Somewhere in the church of San Marco the legendary bones of the legendary Saint Mark were kept as trophies and medieval tourist attractions. My own bones pressed back against the shady side of the church as I decompressed and gave away all the Time that my American psyche was carefully hoarding, tallying, sharing out. Eventually I became aware of what I took to be a father and son sitting next to me. They were Asian of some type but they insisted on speaking together in heavily accented English for some reason. It was like listening to a Samurai film. The father was small and trim and wearing glasses; the son was in his twenties and fat. Something had come between them and the son’s voice, with its peculiar accent, was sour with pout.

“You NEVER let me touch it! I thought this time but no!”

The father did not raise his voice; his dignity was graceful despite the fact that he was on the defensive.

“Yes, yes. It is, of course, my fault. Mine. I made a mistake. Yes.”

“You never let me. You let HER but when I ask, you become angry.”

“You must . . . understand. I think of you . . . differently. Therefore I treat you differently. This is my . . . error. You are my son.”

“It’s embarrassing!”

“Come, come my son. Let us get some gelato. It is my error. Next time! Next time!”

I watched them walk to the gelateria knowing full well that I would never know where this conversation came from and where it ended, after the gelato. I didn’t want to know. Every summer I find myself in Europe and in every city I endeavor to lose my students on a gondola ride or a trip up the Eifel Tower so that I can be loose, the Poor Wayfarer – a mute witness to small objects and events that are avatars of god. Il dulce fa niente.

In Killarney, Ireland I once found myself in a pub just off the square where the horse carts are tethered. The rain whirled like steam and, despite the fact that it was July, it was chilly so I followed the sound of music into a smoky little public house where a trio sat upon chairs and played folk music while looking past and beyond each other – as if they were three individuals and their confluence here, at this time and place, within the framework of this song, was a strange coincidence. The air was thick and sweet with the smell of cigarette smoke and spilled beer and wet wool; a the faerie music whirled madly and sweetly like a hyperactive child, produced by a man with a guitar, a young lady with a fiddle and a third young lady with a concertina. It was the concertina girl I focused on. Her lovely wedge-heeled slingback kept time with the music and she played that odd instrument like someone who has made her peace with a difficult marriage. She looked away from all of us.

One year we were in Lucerne, Switzerland during a folk festival. White tents made up temporary beer gardens that were full of singing and heroic drinking. Sausages were for sale at every corner and mustard was de rigeur. For a while I made my way along the waterfront, visiting the junk vendors with several of my students. At one such I found a sheep bell on a deeply worn leather collar; when I shook it, the fey tone summoned a memory of another trip to Switzerland when we stayed at an inn at the foot of a mountain that was shrouded by high altitude weather. Sitting in the back garden you could hear the plaintive tolling of sheep bells in the clouds and I thought I’d never heard anything lovelier. 

I asked the price of this bell and the young, preteen beauty with her porcelain skin and clear eyes, put her palms together and smiled shyly at me. “So!” she said. It was a word to buy time. She raised her fingers to indicate four Swiss Francs. As we were walking away one of my students laughed at me for making the purchase but when I shook the bell it again brought me to that hill up in the Alps . . .

The streets of Lucerne were filled with people in folk costumes and from time to time a group would coalesce and then the air would still as their voices came together in harmony to sing old hymns a capella. Men with alpenhorns would come together in synchronicity to produce that low cetacean thrum that seemed to have the power of transportation. I again slipped away from my crowd and found a park where I could sit and watch young men stand with acumen, carefully arranging chess pieces the size of elementary school children on a board that was affixed to the ground. Chess creates its own time and now when I shake my shepherd’s bell I feel the mountain in the mist but also the diffusion of time that is chess played in a park on a July afternoon in Lucerne while alpenhorns moan theatrically in the distance . . .

Parks – why don’t we have parks like these in the States? Music again steered me to a trio, this time in a park in Dublin where the music wheeled and whirled capriciously while swans cruised like ships of the line on station. I lay on my back on a bench and watched a young couple make up from something or other. He held her hands in his and faced her, speaking softly and urgently; she looked dubious. 

One suitably rainy day I slipped away from my group and travelled through the tin-type weather to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris to walk the narrow lanes between the houses of the dead while rain drops slipped from the leaves of plane trees like tears. All alone I navigated among the bones of poets to find Jim Morrison’s grave tucked away in a fold of the land. There, to prevent desecration, a guard stood watch. We caught each other’s eyes and he smiled like a child found during Hide and Seek.

On another visit to Paris I sat alone outside the Louvre and watched young girls with the stage presence only young girls can have shrieking and laughing while chasing each other through the dour and dignified adults, spraying each other with condiments. Asian tourists stopped and watched woodenly – I would say, inscrutably – their women folk wearing bonnets like something out of a Ford Western to keep their skin lily white.

In Innsbruck I ate herring and listened to two American priests argue hotly over some matter of theology. On the island of Capri I watched a well dressed gentleman saunter casually over towards a wall near the harbor, away from the shops hawking brick a brack. Despite his elegant and philosophical air, I could see that he had unzipped and was peeing against someone’s garden wall while studying the turquoise water philosophically. In Athens a gentleman from Argentina was giving away fliers in the Plaka. He attempted to explain to me his idea for hovering airships that would enforce the law from above. He spoke in conspiratorial tones.

In Rome, alone again, the gypsies stalked me with the glacial insistence of lizards. You could find solace in the old Forum beneath the olive trees. You could also find solace among the ruins of the tower atop the hill of Assisi where the cultivated plains of Umbria roll away in feminine curves.  

In Amsterdam I watched the hotel staff unhurriedly pursue a man in his underwear who held his head and continuously called out in English, “You must call ze ambulance! You must call ze ambulance!” The hotel staff moved implacably toward him, herding him the way you might a chicken loose from the coop.

I could tell more: the stone stairways down the cliffs of Sorrento that lead to the beaches and the feral cats and the sound of conversation and laughter from young men and women drinking wine in the moonlight; the English dames on the train out of London who had nowhere to sit, and who spoke of me in the third person as someone who might move if I had a shred of decency; the cloying, mildewed smell of the ovens at Dachau . . .

I am the Poor Wayfarer. I’ve been a mute witness to ten thousand small things in cities where I am an alien. The natives look through me and the tourists bump me as they pass. I am as at home in these cities as I am in the town where my tiny house sits among the oak trees.

 

An Illustrated Generation

Not too long ago I made a remark on Facebook that caused all kinds of problems - no, not one of those comments where my moderate-liberal political views cause the Far Right to roll their eyes and mutter about socialism and class warfare. In a political climate that has seen the sudden rise of the Tea Party, anything left of Traditional Fiscal Conservatism mixed with Social Liberalism is seen as firebrand.

Nope - this time I made what I thought was an amusing remark on something I saw while motorcycling down Buena Vista (Bwayna Vista). There are deer on this in-town road - several years ago Liz hit one late at night that sounded like a bus full of nuns smashing into a walrus - so I keep a sharp peripheral eye peeled. There are deer and there are humans who will do what humans do from time to time, to wit: wander into the road for no reason. But the periphery is the dreamy edge of your vision and it creates its own realities sometimes.

That day, as I rumbled smoothly around the curve I caught up my handbrake sharply as my peripheral radar caught sight of two men standing in the yard - one fairly normal and the other covered in ghastly burns. But not, those weren't tragic burn scars at all, they were grotesque patches of hair growing in green-black fungoid patches on his body. An ape with the mange? Dressed in wife-beater and long shorts? Isn't there an ordinance against this sort of thing?

I craned my head around and got a better, more direct look: it was a man covered in tattoos. Ah, that explained it.

I've never seen the point in most tattoos - especially not the ones that are pieces of larger tapestry. If that's the correct description. On second thought, it's not - rarely do people put together a mosaic of pictures that complements the shape of their bodies, adding shading and nuance the way well-applied makeup does. If you have an awkward body it's not improved by five or six random splotches of green-black.

I'm especially baffled by the girls who get what I can only describe as a bib tattooed to their chest. I can't look at those without leaping to the conclusion that this woman has more chest hair than I have. The second glance does not reassure me, as I've already been ruined by my first impression. I'm forever ruined by the whispered suggestion of wooly chest hair on a girl.

I suppose a lot of my misgivings re: tattoos comes down to a generational thing. My entire "formative years", to use the term I hear Television Psychologists utter when they slide their glasses down the bridge of their noses to look blandly at their patients, were built around the premise that only certain kinds of people get tattoos. Mainly trashy ones - the kind that grow up in hovels, reheating casseroles and looking forward to a good night of bowling and then, perhaps, a boozy rutting in the back of a car somewhere. The type of people who can't read - proudly.

I think it was my generation, actually, who - in their college years - broke the class trend. Suddenly college kids in the upper middle classes were stepping through the doorways of tattoo parlors. The scions of middle management accountants were getting discreet designs here and there, always wary to put them somewhere that they could be hidden if necessary. Later, of course, there would be no need for discretion - once the cap was off this particular brand of narcissism you could expect young pre-lawyers to get neck tats, Russian gangster style. Future mothers of America were sporting barbed wire patterns around their biceps that suggested that they were dangerous animals that needed to be caged, or POWs who had escaped from a camp somewhere. Frankly, I'm not sure what those suggested, but it was anything but Clean Wholesome Mom.

What must it be like to look at Mom and Pop with their full sleeves and their neck tats and god-only-knows what's climbing around on their body beneath their clothes . . .

I'm baffled. Things change, of course. Time is fluid on its crash course towards . . . well, where-ever time rushes. In future generations, who knows what will be du jour and passe'?

I'm in the minority on this issue, as in so many others - so many, as a matter of fact that I've started to pretend that I'm a visitor on this planet from another dimension . . . but more on that later - when I made my statement on FB that I found tattoo culture to be, well, grotesque, many were angry and felt judged. Those the phrase one of my detractors used. He felt judged. Which I guess is true. If your body is covered in poor feng shui illustrations the color of mold or bruises I suppose people might judge you. It's self-inflicted unlike a hare-lip or glass eye. Anything you do to yourself and your demeanor that's not natural will provoke judgement, or commentary at the very least.

Oh well - time is fluid, but it loops back and forth in a serpentine manner not unlike old rivers so that it's possible to stand at the top of one loop and look simultaneously forwards and backwards. The faster time moves, the more of us find ourselves at that loop . . .