Season's Bleatings -- 2014

All I need for Christmas is a bib.  When you spend your waking hours in a recliner, as I do, odds are good you will drip various food substances on your shirt.  Last night, a forkful of Stroganoff wound up in my lap.  But it's happening, all this spillage, at an alarming rate.  The washing machine is going non-stop.

At least that's what Sue tells me, that I need a bib.  Let’s face it: A bib is just a few inexorable phases from a droning drool circle.  Now that I am officially SEMI-RETIRED, I must accept that my life as a spring chicken is over.  In the mirror, I see a molted rooster.  But think not that I mock old people.  When he was an old codger, my father went through a ream of bibs, and I loved him just the way he was.  I take heart that some of our greatest citizens wound up with colorful foodstuffs dribbling off their chins.  Groucho Marx, for example, wore a bib.

There’s more decrepitude:  I can't put a sock on my left foot without splaying on the floor.  That's because when I twist a certain way, the sciatic nerve on the left side of my butt screams bloody murder.  Coincidentally, Sue has screaming sciatica on her right side, so that when we both hobble around, we hobble with reciprocating limps.  We found that if we stand side by side, her on the left and me on the right, and bind together our sciatic legs with tight rounds of duct tape, we can walk three-legged without any pain at all.  Effective togetherness!

Sue creates beautiful quilts. Day after day, up to the sewing studio she climbs, where hour after hour she toils away with thread.  She could make a fortune on Ebay or at art fairs, but insists instead on GIVING HER TREASURES AWAY, like a thimbled Johnny Appleseed.  I urge her to practice the essence of the season -- make as much cash as you can!  But it's no use… the land is blanketed with her generosity.

Brendan and Jodi are thriving in Grand Rapids. Brendan is an investment banker at Fifth Third and Jodi looks after grants at Spectrum Health Center.  They thrived their way into buying a big old house on Hall Street which their two dogs have commandeered.  Brendan remains principle tuba for the Holland Symphony, with his dogs’ blessings of course.

Elizabeth continues to lasso stray cattle in Texas.  Which is to say, she is still in Austin working as a personal assistant to an heiress.  Which is to say, if Elizabeth plays her cards right, she could end up as a monarch for a small island nation.  Meanwhile, her dog likes to bolt out the door and launch like a rocket for the Austin city limits.  This, however, keeps our daughter in good physical shape.

My father took his last breath on June 28.  My sisters and I were there and beheld his exit out the bedroom window.  He was grateful to finally take his leave, and bestowed upon his family, his friends, and his students, lives with richer hearts. 

While I was crawling across the floor last night, I noticed a rubber bone under the sofa. It belonged to Darla, our sweet and beloved yellow Lab, who died in August.  Neighborhood squirrels now run amuck, cocky with their new-found freedom. We can't get used to coming home to an empty house, absent of the frenzied welcomes that spanned 12 human years.

So, we count our blessings -- heating pads, Ibuprofen, duct tape.  My fantasy football team, the Squatting Dachshunds, is in the league championship this weekend.  I'll be in my recliner, drooling without bib, egging them on.  Wish me luck and, by the way, Merry Christmas!

Post-Midterm Report -- The ABCs of a Disemboweled Liberal

A is for Appendicitis -- Behold the Republican horde.  Oh, how the pain pierces.  I have a bladder infection and my pyloric sphincter valve acts up.  My heart hurts.  The lungs hyperventilate and the pancreas won't pancreate.  My nose doesn't smell and the tongue is numb.  Don't be merciful -- disembowel me, draw and quarter me.  Deliver my body parts to the feeding trough of Fox News.  I am tarred and feathered and publicly humiliated.  The spleen is the worst.  It ruptures with anger.  Bring on a rusty scalpel, scrape it out, and lay it at the feet of Mitch McConnell.

B is for Bubonic Plague -- I was bitten by a flea that lived on a rat that infested right wing radio.  Stupid me, I tuned in.  I am coming down with a fever, my lymph nodes ache, and my rash resembles roseola.  The epidemic spreads through the bodies of liberals and is borne by alienation.  My doctor advised me to turn off the 24-hour news cycles, but the voices persist.  I have resorted to wearing a flea collar.

C is for Clone -- See the victors behind their Pepsodent smiles propped in a line behind a microphone.  Listen to their hollow paragraphs in their perfectly vetted sound bytes.  It's the well-worn party line uttered by plasticine faces in uniform ties.  Each head above its stuffed suit is interchangeable with the next.

D is for Demarkation -- The Berlin Wall was bound to fall.  The people on both sides longed for each other.  It was only a matter of time.  But the Wall which runs down the Congressional aisle is a mightier thing.  How unanimously opposed are the blue and the red regarding every proposed idea.  Each filibuster and obstruction solidifies the chasm and no one tunnels underneath to reach across.  Don't be deluded by all the back-slapping.  Knives are concealed in those palms.

E is for Elizabeth Warren -- There are a few brave and clear voices in the cacophony, two or three, like oases in the desert, that speak from the heart with common sense.  They are not afraid to say "corruption."  They are not afraid of hatchet men.  They do not prostitute themselves to corporate johns.  Elizabeth is an untarnished voice for fairness, as though fairness somehow matters.

F is for Father Knows Best -- What family homes need fundamentally are lovely staircases with lovely bannisters.  And wives and children should pause there with Father and exchange familial cheer.  Ozzie paused at the steps with Harriet,  Robert Young with Jane Wyatt, and Ward Cleaver with Wally.  Ward gave The Beaver some awful good counsel on those first few steps. I bet the dashing Ronald Reagan paused there too, set down his briefcase, and asked Nancy about her day.  Can't we just go back to TV's yesteryear, to a time when white fathers knew best, when everyone knew their place? 

G is for Gas -- Another of my ailments.  As my breakfast regurgitates, I bloat.  I've been bloated since November 4th.  I get by on massive handfuls of Tums and watching Stephen Colbert.  But if I chance upon a Limbaugh or a Hannity or an O'Reilly a-bloviating, I swell up like a balloon and require a puncturing.

H is for Hemorrhage -- About three years ago, I was working at the Antrim County Courthouse when a commotion erupted.  A middle-aged woman had fallen on the icy steps outside which caused a sizable gash on her forehead.  She was brought inside for some first-aid, but it was obvious as the blood streamed down her face that what she needed was an ambulance.  The noise escalated with her frantic protests. "I'm begging you!" she pleaded.  "Don't call an ambulance!  Please!  Please!  I don't have health insurance!  I don't have any money!  I can barely eat!  I'll be okay!  I'm begging you! Don't call an ambulance!"

I is for Involuntary Exorcism -- Former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, recently elected to the Colorado legislature, once performed a so-called exorcism of Barack Obama because the President was "possessed by demons."  In addition, the chaplain claims to have exorcised homosexuality from a lesbian on the Internet.  Klingenschmitt also said, “You know what, citizens, if you don’t have a gun, I’m telling you – as a Christian chaplain – sell your clothes and buy a gun. It’s time.”  The new state representative crushed his Democratic opponent by a score of 70 percent to 30. 

J is for Jesus -- Would Jesus want the poor to sell their clothes to buy guns?  Ask your nearest Navy chaplain.

K is for Koch --  Eighty individuals on this planet have more wealth than half of humanity. Each one has more stuff than 437,000,000 human beings combined.   What is wrong with these people?  Not the 80 freedom-loving job creators, but those ignorant masses who seem content to have nothing.  There are hundreds of self-help tutorials available in bookstores. 

L is for Lily Livered -- You've got to hand it to the Tea Partiers: they speak their minds and refuse to compromise. They don't kowtow. Democratic candidates should take a lesson.  Instead, they become master sell-out artists, tiptoeing through tough questions so as not to alienate voters. They distance themselves from an unpopular Obama, and take marching orders from the fickle trends of favorability polls. Talk your empty talk and sell your souls, you ballot whores!

M is for Money -- M is also for Monstrous, an apt word for the Supreme Court when it opened the financial floodgates to political influence. Such a sublime name:  "Citizens United". United against what?  Democracy?  Is money the root of all evil?  In American politics?  You bet your sweet ass, it is.

N is for No More Fish --  Republican James Imhofe will become chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  Imhofe believes climate change is a hoax with 99 percent of scientists conspiring.  Meanwhile, the Apocalypse has a new due date: 2048. That's when the world's oceans will be empty of fish, predicts an international team of ecologists and economists. The cause: the disappearance of species due to overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change. Imhofe must abhor sea bass. 

O is for Ostrich --  Our heads are immersed in sand.  Or to be exact, our heads are immersed in screens.  Listen, one in three incoming college freshmen can't identify the two sides who fought in the Civil War. Wow. Is it because they were never taught?  Is it because they never listened?  No, I think it's mainly that most students don't give a shit. And why should they?  In a world where smartphone messages saturate our discourse, the importance of Gettysburg gets suffocated by billions of instantaneous updates in our need for relationships.

P is for Person -- The Supreme Court decreed that corporations are people, too.  Just like you and me.  You know that panhandler down on the corner of Front and Park?  That's Enron trying to make a comeback.  When my daughter was little, she liked to have sleepovers.  She would never ask, "Daddy, can I have Exxon over to spend the night?" She knew the shareholders would never give permission.  While corporations are now bona fide human beings, they don't need to stand in a line to cast their votes.  They simply buy them.

Q is for Queasy Stomach -- I may be coming down with nausea-induced malaria. Or maybe my gut is giving me notice.  It's a feeling that I ride a mule train bound for the canyon's bottom, steered by a team that leads from fear.  It's a feeling that Ignorance and Greed are taking us down. Then again, it could be a tapeworm.

R is for Refugees -- Imagine that Quebec is overrun by a powerful drug cartel that commits atrocities on such a scale that families by the thousands flee to the borders of New York, Vermont, and Maine for refuge.  The Quebecois arrive with gruesome stories of rape, kidnapping, and deprivation. Unless they join the cartel, they will be killed.  Would we open our doors?  I think not. They have French accents. They are not our problem. Send in troops to secure the border.

S is for Sciatica -- I have two pains in my butt.  One pain radiates down my left side and into my leg. Ibuprofen helps. Another pain moves up my right side and into my gall bladder.  These pains have different sources. The one on the left is caused by an inflamed sciatic nerve.  The pain on the right is caused by corporate palm greasing and is known among liberals as The-Gall-of-it-All.  As we witness Congress getting an approval rating of 10 percent but still getting re-elected 90 percent of the time, the right side flares up.  A real pain in the ass. Ibuprofen is of no use.

T is for Twenty First Graders -- The Second Amendment was crafted, some 225 years ago, to ensure that citizens had the right to own a rifle.  But in those days, it took a shooter about 45 seconds to load a single, leaden ball.  I agree with the NRA that we should return to the gun-owning spirit of our founders. Let us return, then, to the Age of Muskets and its implicit rejection of modern gunnery.  It would be impossible for a wannabe mass murderer to expect much success.  For example, a psychopath in pursuit of first graders would have to deal with his ammo pouch, gunpowder, wadding, a lead ball, and his ramrod before he could begin his rampage.  His targets would be long gone by the time he pulled back the trigger.  And drive-by shootings would be a thing of the past. Imagine how cumbersome.  

U is for Umbilical Cord -- I used to have one, or should I say, my mother and I once shared one.  Even though the physical thing was buried in the back yard long ago, the figurative cord still survives.  I remember watching the Democratic National Convention in 1960 on our little black and white when my mother was a backer of Adlai Stevenson for President.  During the nominating, my mother sprang from the couch and cried, "Stevenson!  Stevenson!"  I was eight.  So I also rose and shouted, "Stevenson!"  Mom was always an enthusiastic liberal and I have absorbed her leanings through our umbilicus and right up to this day.  So blame her, not me.

V is for Virulent Disease -- Blessed are the heroic doctors who treat Ebola and initiate policies to contain the epidemic.  Vile are American politicians, with no medical credentials, who prey on public fears for personal gain and try to transform the crisis into us-versus-them  quicksand.   

W is for the War on Christmas -- My brother and I fought this war on Christmas morning in 1958.  Santa Claus brought me a rocket launcher that sprang rubber-tipped missiles in high arcs across the living room.  My brother and I took turns trying to knock the angel from atop our Christmas tree, and in our fun-filled exchange, a dozen ornaments shattered on the floor.  The real Santa was not amused.  Oh, how I wish there were a real war on Christmas.  We could fight to prohibit corporations from three months of product-hyping propaganda and keep right-wing idiots from spewing "War on Christmas" nonsense from their putrid pulpits.  To everyone else, happy holidays!

X is for Xcept One -- Every developed country in the world provides healthcare to all its citizens.  Thirty two countries. Universal coverage. The first was Norway in 1912.  The second was Belgium in 1945.  The most recent was Canada in 1994. Twenty years ago. To repeat, every single developed country provides healthcare to all its people, young and old, rich and poor, everyone.  All countries, of course, Xcept one.

Y is for "You lie!" --  For part of my childhood I grew up in the Jim Crow South with its segregated schools, segregated bathrooms, where bigotry was always in the air.   Fear of African-Americans was masked as hatred, and when a child is imprinted with these non-stop messages, deprogramming takes a long time.  It has taken me a long time.  When South Carolina representative Joe Wilson shouted, "You lie!" at President Obama in 2009, I fear his inner child raged from that Jim Crow imprint.  Racism can dance its way around points of policy and hide behind the economics of fear, all the time unaware of itself.  It's damn hard to pin it down.  But with Obama at the helm, bigotry rises and shows off its true colors in obvious and not so obvious ways.  Even though Republican Wilson was formally rebuked by the House of Representatives, the rebuke occurred along party lines.  

Z is for Zen -- Thank you for listening. I hope you didn’t mind. I feel much better. I really needed to lance the boil.  My double vision has unified. No more visits to the proctologist and no more Xanax. The bubonic plague continues to infect, of course, but I have withdrawn. It’s bad for the health, all this blaming and ranting and pumped up pride, to feel so wronged. I’m off to the ocean now to watch birds.  With waves at my feet, I love to watch pelicans as they bomb the water for fish and then arise to feast like a big-bellied family at Thanksgiving.  I must go down to the sea again. Time with pelicans may be short.

Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?

There are two mysteries in life which seem impossible to solve.  The first is, of course:  Who put the bop in the bop sh-bop sh-bop?  Many theories circulate, but the answer remains unknown.  The second puzzle is this:  At the conclusions of Cialis TV commercials, why are a silhouetted man and a silhouetted woman pictured side by side in separate bathtubs?

For the uninitiated, the medication Cialis can help a limp man restore the lead in his proverbial pencil.  The commercials depict various middle-aged couples in moments of shared activity, such as watching meteors together from their porch swing or watching a football game on TV from their couch.  Their collective eyes meet suddenly in a moment of unexpected rapture, and we imagine that they fall to the floorboards where he goes at her like a nail gun to a roof shingle.  Their happy interlude is made possible by their friends at Eli Lilly and Company.  The dude had talked to his doctor and, well, he was mighty ready "when the moment is right."

To drive his lead point home, the dude took some risks:  headache, indigestion, back pain, muscle aches, flushing, and stuffy or runny nose.  A hangnail could happen.  There's also a chance of vision or hearing loss, but when "the moment is right" the tool bag requires only certain tools, so to speak.  Men are advised to consult their doctors if they get an erection that lasts longer than four hours.  By extension, they should also be advised to stay away from public places.

Which brings to mind a story:  A film buff had been waiting weeks to see a renowned French film.  When the film finally premiered in his city, he rushed downtown and got in line to buy a ticket.  Now, the film buff was an unusual sort as he had a pet chicken who went everywhere with him, including, on this very day, to the movies.  Carrying his hen in his arms, he reached the ticket booth, but the ticket seller took one look and told the man he couldn't come into the theater with a chicken, of all things, and refused to let him in.

The film buff was crestfallen as he was so looking forward to seeing the movie.  But a bright idea dawned and he went around the corner and stuffed the chicken down his pants.  Back in line, he made his way to the ticket booth again and, after the ticket seller looked him up and down, he got a ticket and made his way in.  Our film buff waltzed happily into the crowded theater and took a seat next to two old women.

During the previews, the man's chicken, as you can imagine, started getting restless and made a quiet ruckus.  The film buff concluded that his chicken needed some air, so he unzipped his zipper and the chicken immediately poked his head out, now very content, happy to be getting oxygen.

A few minutes later, the woman next to the film buff turned to her friend and said, "You won't believe this, Martha, but the man next to me?  He has his thing sticking out."

To which Martha said, "Oh well, Agnes, if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all."

To which Agnes replied, "That may be so, Martha, but that guy's pecker is pecking away at my popcorn."

It's a mystery to me how people, after they hear this, can just sit there like a block of cement.  Not even a smile.  Listen, it's one of the great jokes of all time!  If you just sat there like a bag of sand, please see your doctor now.

Anyway, it's a safe bet the film buff had not taken Cialis as there would have been very limited space in his pants for a chicken.  It would be responsible for Eli Lilly and Company to add the caution that persons with an erection lasting longer then four hours should steer clear of bumping into members of an unsuspecting public.  Panic could ensue.

Which brings to mind something that happened to me in Ankara, Turkey, in 1968.  Then French president, Charles de Gaulle, was making a State visit to the Turkish capital, and would be arriving by open motorcade downtown in a great welcoming celebration.  So my high school buddies, Jay and Roger, and I decided to head down for a glimpse of the renowned general.  

There were thousands of people lining Ataturk Boulevard.  As I am a short guy, it was impossible for me to see de Gaulle's limousine behind several lines of street spectators as it slowly made its way along the parade route.  When I complained, Roger, who was a tall guy, invited me to jump on his back.  So I piggy-backed aboard where I got a clear view of de Gaulle as he waved to the throng from atop his back seat, decked out in his fine military attire and his signature French Legion cap.

In that instant, I became distracted by a hard and rhythmic thumping on my butt.  I turned my head and came face-to-face with a Turk who was grinning wildly at me, a Cheshire cat with upper and lower rows of gleaming golden teeth.  Hoisted up on Roger as I was, he had had a direct shot at me, and as everyone's eyes were trained on de Gaulle, he treated himself to an exhilarating and too-good-to-be-true humping.

I coughed forth a profane oath, dismounted Roger, shoved aside my perpetrator, and fled like a track star up the sidewalk.  Jay and Roger raced after me before Jay caught up and grabbed me by both shoulders. With bulging eyes, he stammered into my face, "You. Won't. Believe. What. Just. Happened. To. Me."  Oh, yes I did.  I knew precisely.  With a boner running amuck, panic had ensued.

That was long before erectile dysfunction medication.  I doubt if the gold-toothed humper would have had any need for Cialis.   He took full advantage when the moment was right:  in this instance, when young American tushes stuck out in the crowd like Charlie de Gaulle.  For his part, the unmolested Roger took great delight in what had happened to us there on Ataturk Boulevard, and when he would pass Jay or me in the high school halls, Roger would shout out, "Charlie's comin'! Watch out! Charlie's comin'!"

Think not that I mock those poor men (and their partners) who suffer from chronic limpness.  All lovers need to rub each other.  But back to the original question, what in the world do Cialis advertisers mean with those his and hers bathtubs? 

As we know all too well, medication users are advised to call their doctors if their erections last more than four hours.  And if they are at all socially responsible, they'll also stay home, as I've explained, to prevent public commotion.  But what about that guy whose four-hour clock has not yet chimed, the poor keyed-up sap, marooned at home with his lover, who must somehow manage three hours with his well-sharpened pencil?  What to do with the poor thing before it poops out?  Well, as they say, if the shoe fits…

The only conclusion is that the Cialis bathtubs provide therapy to over-used muscles.  After long and brutal football games, players ease themselves into ice baths to soothe their bruises and mangled muscles.  Football games run about three hours, three hours of punishing attacks and twisted acrobatics and contorted positions, over and over and over again.  Similar, I suppose, to lovers making a three-hour beast with two backs.

Those bathtubs, therefore, must be full of ice.  Case closed.  You're welcome.

Finding Oz

When I was 17, I went to Europe to find myself.  It worked.  I found myself lying in a gutter outside the Hofbrau Haus in Munich.  After draining three liters of beer, I had tried to smuggle out one of those world famous beer steins, and upon my escape, got busted by burly bar bouncers who launched me into the street like a bag of dirty laundry.

That marked the beginning, more or less, of a twenty year quest to find myself at the bottom of a beer bottle or the end of a joint.  I was disgusted with the self I found there:  jittery and sick, remorseful and afraid, and pushing relationships to the brink.  It's impossible to find yourself when the road you're on is the wrong road, a dark one-way tunnel with no exit, with the days passing with ever increasing momentum and dry-mouthed cravings for more.  As they say, I had self-will run riot.

When the whole mess finally came crashing down, the other self, my real self, surrendered to higher powers the abused and abusing impostor who had hijacked my life.  No more blackouts, no more puddles of vomit next to my bed.  No more public humiliations.  No more bouncing off the cobblestones of a foreign street.  One evening in my early recovery, I explained to my six-year-old son that I was going to meetings so that I wouldn't drink beer any more.  To which he responded, "Oh, back when you were mean to us?"  Yes, that's right, son.  No more.

That was twenty five years ago.  And, by the grace of the Source, there has been no more.  

Years ago also, the great spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, landed at his bottom.  A spiraling depression left him believing there was no escape -- he was about to commit suicide.  Eckhart said aloud to no one:  "I can't live with myself."  But this statement resonated within his true self, and proved to be revelation and his salvation.  The dualism in those words could not be denied:  Who was the "I" and who was the "myself"?  They were different selves.  He saw that his "I" could no longer co-exist with his false "self", his ego, that great fabricator of pride and emotional pain.  From that day forward, Eckhart let dissolve the slings and arrows of the false self by immersing his true self into the present moment and thus the flowering of consciousness.

About twenty years ago on an afternoon like any other, I was driving down the highway after doing some errands, alone and lost in thought as always.  Everything was quite ordinary when something quite extraordinary happened.  All thoughts in my mental churn ceased and all worries and concerns dissolved.  I landed like a feather into a state of simple observation.  No more expectancy, no more rehashing, no more grind.  As each moment unfolded I became a serene passenger in that unfolding, instead of bouncing mentally between future and past as I always had.  I felt as Dorothy must have felt when opening her door into the wonder of Oz.  I had long stopped using mind-altering chemicals, this was not a flashback, and without any external stimulus, and without even trying, I lived in the golden present for what must have been a full two hours.  I did not resist but moved through this enchanted time with calm intention.  I felt loved and loving.   My false self must have gotten locked in a closet with a sock in its mouth.  The ego, after all, abhors the present moment.

It doesn't really matter why or how this happened.  All I know is that my life of quiet desperation was given a brief reprieve from the voice in my head, the voice that insists I have serious things to worry about or harsh judgements to make.  Thoreau's famous line should be amended to:  "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation because they can't stop talking to themselves."

There were thousands of moments in my drinking and drugging years when The Buzz opened me to a golden place like Oz.  Moments free of fear, regret, and confusion.  Just me and The Buzz in a kind of holy matrimony.   This is the promise and, simultaneously, the great deception of addiction:  that it would render harmless and null the pain of the false self.  With a few drinks I became Somebody, ten feet tall and confident, a smooth dancer, a lover, a man among men.

But golden moments only lasted for precious minutes, of course, and withered to expose the fraud.  I couldn't live with my sober self, so would try to drink and drug my way back to that Oz of precious golden moments.  Snared in the addict's trap, I drank and drugged to erase the suffering caused by my drinking and drugging.

But here's the thing: sobriety by itself doesn't bring peace, although it now makes peace possible.  Whether I was high as a kite in my former life, or stone-cold sober in the present one, my mind becomes lost in thought and quick to judge.  Like every other person, there's a true me and a phony me.  The sin of the true me is the failure to make the distinction, of being blind to the fact that the highs and lows of fortune and misfortune are creations of ego.  The first step is to expose the impostor which comes with simple awareness.  And there are short stretches when I feel I'm in that Oz-like place, not lost in thought, but where each moment reveals itself in a kind of beholding.  

Sometimes I look back at that drunk teenager licking cobblestones and licking his wounds in Munich, and am grateful for the road he was about to take.  He was a thief for one blurry night, but also became a victim of his own robbery for more than twenty years.  And now, twenty five years since that last drink, I am no longer trying to find myself in all the wrong places.  You can’t find by searching.  You find by freeing.






  

Three Stones for Darla

We buried Darla, our devoted dog, at the back of our yard where the trail into the woods begins.  Daily our dog started an adventure there after spinning in excited circles at the question, "Go for a walk?" There are three stones that comprise the gravesite, three small slabs of flagstone which my daughter Betsy, home from Austin, and her best friend, Sarah, painted to commemorate our dog's life.   

Darla was the sweetest animal I have ever known.  She lived solely to be with us, partly, I suppose, because we let her lick our after-dinner plates.  My wife Sue remarked that this loss has hit her the hardest of the losses of our hounds.  I think it's because Darla became human, became one of us -- we understood her, and she understood us.  She is locked forever in our hearts where she found a home on Day One.

Day One occurred twelve years ago in Onekema when my wife Sue, 17 year-old Betsy, and I followed an ad for Labrador retriever puppies.  When we arrived, there was only one pup, eight weeks old, the last of eleven left unclaimed: a big-bellied yellow playing under the owner's mobile home.  She was the offspring of the owner's constant companion, a black female, and the father who was in a pen across the yard.  He was a muscular and intense fox-red Labrador (also referred to as a yellow), and when I walked up to his small pen, his eyes became crazed, his muscles twitched, and he sprang repeatedly straight up in the air, his paws four feet above the ground, like a canine pogo stick.  Our little prospect, meanwhile, was playing with a nearby litter of week-old beagles, chomping them at their necks and tossing them into the air like flipped pancakes. 

With her protruded belly, I worried that the little Lab had worms, but the owner assured us that she had just eaten a robust lunch.  After negotiating twenty five dollars off the asking price, we headed home to Beulah, when the owner's claim held true.  En route, little Darla let fly a massive eruption of mashed corn and, just like that, she lost half her weight and became streamlined.

A squirrel is painted on the top stone of Darla's gravesite.  Like most dogs and
all Labradors, she was an avid anti-squirrelist whose mission it was to eradicate said rodents from our yard and the world at large.  As we live in Michigan woods with succulent acorns, and dangle bird feeders from our deck, Darla was on constant alert.  I kept track of her squirrel conquests over the years as she would bolt out of the back door many times a day in hot pursuit.  According to my records, the final tally between the pursued and the pursuer is:  Squirrels - 4,361.5, Dog - 0.5.  Darla never conquered her adversary.  It was only once that I witnessed her catch a squirrel and hold it her mouth.  But she seemed so dumbfounded by this actual success that in a second she released the squirrel to its fellows.  This explains the .5 credited to each side.  These days, squirrels freely run amock in our back yard and seem to carry with them a new-found cockiness.  And a new population of skittering chipmunks has suddenly emerged across the yard and under the deck.

The bottom stone renders a landscape painting of the Empire Bluff as viewed from the Lake Michigan beach at the outlet of Otter Creek.  Darla loved going there, or to any body of water for that matter.  A retriever through and through, she would leap into the water to fetch a thrown stick or a tennis ball that bobbed twenty or thirty yards out.  She followed the standard drill of fetching, swimming it back to me, dropping the prize at my feet, and shaking out her coat before waiting for the next launch.  She could go on for hours like this. One summer afternoon there, a strong westerly wind drove great breakers into the shore.  Darla's game of fetch then became an acrobatic thing.  I will always treasure the mental video of this intrepid canine as she crashed through a tsunami and dog paddled through the froth, driven by a mysterious instinct and full devotion to recapture a stick.

During winter walks down our country road, Darla always wanted to play stick on the trek home.  She explored the low branches of pine trees, selected an impossibly long branch, and would yank and yank and yank the limb until it gave way.  She would then drag the thing over snowbanks, through drifts, and out into the street where she would prance the branch over to me.  I would then crack the limb over my knee several times until it was short enough to throw.

The middle stone is painted with the multicolored letters D-A-R-L-A, done up in psychedelic style for a one-of-a-kind personality.  Sometimes when getting home from work, Darla would blow her enthusiasm gasket and race in manic circles around the yard like a dog possessed.  When anyone came through the door, she would greet them with great squirms of hospitality, then ease between their legs so that they might provide a scratch above the tail.  This routine became known as the "butt dance", for as the scratcher scrubbed the butt of the scratchee, Darla would jump in rhythm from foot to foot, twitching and groaning in ecstasy.  When I sat in the living room, Darla would sit at my feet and face me, still as the Sphinx, patient as a predator.  We provided everything, of course, and she just stood there, for fifteen minutes if need be, waiting and waiting for the next thing to happen, whatever it might be.  It was hard to relax under that penetrating stare.

How did dogs become so sweet-natured and affectionate over the millennia of domestication?  Of course, there are owners who don't give a dog lick whether their animals love them, so long as they tear the flesh of intruders.  But most of us engender and cherish our reciprocal affections so that eye-to-eye and fur-to-skin moments matter most.  There was nothing unique about Darla in her canine ways or shenanigans among the masses of people-loving dogs.  Like most Labs, Darla, all seventy pounds of her, would gently climb aboard a couch that already seated three large humans, and somehow find a space to rest her head on a shoulder.  She was always welcomed because she was so irresistibly sweet.

In August, Betsy planned a visit from Texas, but when she learned that Darla only had days to live, she came early.  Darla's lung cancer had depleted her physically and she had no energy for squirrels or long walks.  She lost her appetite. But when long-lost Betsy walked through the door, Darla's love adrenalin kicked in, and she spun in excited circles, saturated Betsy's face with her tongue, and went through Betsy's legs for a sustained butt dance, groaning with ecstasy. Betsy was amazed and wondered if our dog was sick at all.

But in a week, Darla met her last day listless and panting.  Dog owners know when the time has come -- we just know.  At the vet's office, the techs shaved a front lower leg and inserted an IV port for inserting an overdose of anesthetics that would take her life.  The three of us -- Sue, Betsy, and I -- were given time alone with Darla in her last minutes.  She rested on a large pillow on a deck in a small courtyard outside.  We stroked her and rubbed our cheeks on her muzzle wet with our tears.  After a long while, the kind veterinarian arrived with the syringe. But in spite of her suffering, lying among our arms and as her final act, Darla gave this stranger a weak wag of her tail.






  



   

More Self Golfulation

I've had it.  I'm throwing in my golf towel.  This time, it's for good.   In the end, both my selves will be grateful.   My real self, actually, is thanking itself right now.   My false self is trying to regroup.

I had been a pretty good golfer.  I could launch straight and nicely arching drives from the tee box.  I could hit crisp and consistent irons that took toupee-sized divots.  I could pitch and chip short shots that mostly wound up near the hole.  And I was a great putter.  I could almost close my eyes.

But in golf, thine opponent is thyself.

Of course, there are the external challenges that lurk: the bunkers, the swamps, the woods, the ponds, the grasses, the humps, the dips, the mud, the rocks, the winds, the rains, the heat, the cold, the sun, the bugs, the crappy lies that befall unfairly.  Even alligators.  In Turkey, I had to watch out for wild dogs.

And there are two major man-made challenges.  The first is money.  It costs an arm to play and a leg to equip oneself.   Golfers fall, hook, line, and bank account, for the conspiracy that shiny new clubs and forty-five-dollars-a-dozen golf balls make some sort of difference.  They don't really.  The second is other human non-beings.  Not actual human beings, but golf-induced non-beings such as me.

At first, it can be hard to distinguish between human and non-human golfers.  I first saw the non-human variety in the form of my older brother when he was about 16 and I was 12.  I tagged along with him and my father on Saturday mornings at the Purdue University North Course.   My brother would become so enraged with his constant chunking and topping the ball, that with all his might, he would boomerang his golf club down the fairway.  One time after a lousy tee shot, he pounded the ground so hard with his driver that the shaft broke in half.

I know a guy we'll call Morton, who once couldn't get out of a bunker.  He kept chunking his ball about a foot in the air before it would roll back gently by his sand-immersed feet  After his last failed attempt, Morton hurled his sand wedge into a nearby pond.  This, of course, forever enshrined him in the local Golf Hall of Infamy.  A month later, a full four weeks later, someone in the pro shop teased Morton by asking him which brand of sand wedge he would recommend.  Morton recoiled like a shotgun, screamed a shrill expletive, and stormed out.

You can hear laughter on a golf course when regular people play the game.  They cheer at the flukish par and howl at the absurdities.  When an errant shot careens off a tree and plops back into water, they are overjoyed.  But I, like my non-human ilk, just simmer and stew below the boiling point.  I can't laugh at myself, the stubbed chip, the bladed wedge, or the fat iron shot that splashes like a breeching whale into a water hazard.  I may chuckle to dampen my embarrassment, but inside, and I hate to admit this, I whimper.

I know what you're thinking:  Dude, it's just a game.  Oh, how I wish this were true.  Those whose raucous belly laughs echo among the fairways surely feel the gameishness of it all.  Those who are enchanted by the carved landscapes, the lush greens, and the intermixing of waters and forests beneath blue skies can appreciate it as a man-made treasure in nature.  But as I've said:  In golf, at least in ego-driven golf, thine opponent is thyself.

One game, two selves.  There is that rare experience known as The Zone.  In that magical place, an effortless swing, without thought or expectation, finds the core of harmony.  The results speak on the scorecard in par after par after par.  In The Zone, the golfer finds himself in golf god gardens.  But enter into the mind a solitary judgement, for instance, "I am pretty darn good," and the synchronized love between club and ball becomes suddenly a strained thing.  The zen of golf is finding that freedom from the mind's golfishness.  If my mind is a simple and subservient tool, I'm golden.  When my mind takes over, I am a lost cause, and the result is bogey after double bogey after double bogey.

The final blow to ego arrived over the last few weeks on that biggest stage of golf masculinity:  the tee box.  When a man establishes himself as the longest driver, he owns virile superiority, becomes the big dog in the locker room.  While my foursome opponents continued to pound long and majestic drives down the fairway, I began to hook the ball:  low, left, and short.  I compensated by aiming to the right which caused the ball to stay to the right:  high, right, and in the swamp.  I began to strangle the grip when I swung which caused a worsening hook:  very low, very left, and very short.  I hit soft liners to third base.

I consulted the Internet, I scoured golf magazines, I sought the advice of friends, I went to the driving range.  Nothing made a difference.  My scores only ballooned.  As one friend diagnosed, I suffer from LOFT:  Lack Of Fucking Talent.  I could not think my way out.  Think, think, think, fail.  I think, therefore, I am not.

A black cloud infiltrated my world.   I became, inwardly at least, the locker room laughingstock.

The cure for my golf game, I'm afraid, is not to play it.  I must cease this ceaseless self-infliction of golf wounds.  I must snap at last this yoyo string of ego.   I must shrivel instead into the spaciousness of selflessness.  I must bury my golf clubs next to the septic tank.

Well, maybe not my driver.  My white-headed driver.  Call it Moby Duckhook.

 

Six Suggestions for the Traverse City Film Festival

Now that the Traverse City Film Festival has passed the 11-year mark, it's the right time for an astute onlooker to properly analyze what the festival has become and and properly surmise what the future may hold.  I, unfortunately, am not that person.  I don't do "proper" anything.   But after standing in line for about 60 hours over the past 10 years, I feel entitled to offer some recommendations.

1.   Distribute Bathing Caps.  At amusement parks, a person must be at least 54 inches tall to ride an R-rated roller coaster.  A ticket taker stands next to a measuring post to prohibit short people.   Similarly, at the Film Festival there should be a limit to how much space a person can occupy above their skull.  (It's no accident that film festivals began to appear only after the Afro lost its popularity.)  I happen to be a very short person, and many is the time I've been seated behind some big-headed person who eclipses my view.  I've had to imagine what's happening on the screen from the dialogue or swelling sound tracks.  As such, restrictions should apply. The first step: prohibit hats and sunglasses propped on top of heads.  Secondly, a humorless volunteer, a Hair Nazi if you will, should pace along the waiting line and single out any person whose hair might extend beyond a vertical limit, say, two and a quarter inches.  The volunteer would be equipped with a ruler to measure scalps, and if the ticket holder offends, he or she would be provided a mandatory bathing cap for the duration of the Festival.

2.  Purchase Wuerfel Park.  Let's face it: the Festival has grown too big for its britches.  Most movies sell out before the general public even gets a chance.  Poor, poor general public.  Michael Moore has a ton of money and could make an excellent offer for the venue and the Traverse City Beach Bums, the professional baseball team that plays there.   The players must be exhausted from working for minimum wages with lousy health insurance, and as such, they might want to campaign for Democratic candidates.   The new venue could be christened Sicko Stadium, and near the entrance a larger-than-life bronze statue of Michael could be erected, poised there in his State baseball cap, flinging free prescription pills to the masses like our very own Johnny Appleseed.  With Sicko Stadium's large seating capacity, it should be easy for the general public to get in, although tickets will go like lightning  for films such as Bulgarian documentaries about despair.

3.   Resurrect Drive-ins.  No reason to stop at free movies in the Open Space.  The Festival could arrange for giant inflatable screens at various parking lots across town like Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Meijer, and the Grand Traverse Mall. At sunset, motorists with pre-purchased headsets would park their cars for a night of, say, The Best of Steven Seagal or Shorts of the Greatest Movie Explosions Ever.  This expansion would bring a much-needed counterbalance to the Subaru-driving, bottled-water drinking, fanny-packers downtown.

4.  Bring On Personal Assistants.  Festival goers have witnessed over the years a steady increase in volunteers.  And these aren't your hardened criminal types.  These are genuine Traverse City folk whose mission apparently is to play out their codependency fantasies.  True, we love them for it.  There are so many helpers that the majority get stationed at ten yard intervals whose sole purpose is to exude warmth and hospitality.  (This year a volunteer noticed that my sneaker was untied, promptly knelt down and fixed it.)  In a few short years, the number of volunteers will exceed the number of ticket holders.  At that time, why not assign a volunteer to every movie goer so that valet services, in-line massages, and individualized tours of cherry packing plants or local wineries become part of the package?  

5.  Do the Conga Line.  Competition for good theater seats has grown to a fevered pitch, and ticket holders now realize that the only way to get the best view is to show up very, very early.  In this spirit, I arrived at the State Theater this year an hour before my show, and still wound up a half mile back.  Later, I was in need of chiropractic intervention from the constant neck-craning from my rotten seat.  Instead, let's provide some loud and snappy conga music for the serpentine line outside, and allow a dance to run a course down the sidewalks and alleys of Traverse City.  Once the doors open, the conga line, dancing to the beat, would snake and shimmy into the theater, and fill the rows, front to back, with appropriate Spanish exclamations erupting.  It would be unthinkable for dancers to break the chain as the collective Latin merriment would overwhelm any notions of cutting away.  Besides that, the bathing cappers in this rhythmic milieu would feel much less embarrassed about their attire.

6.  Sleeping Bear Cinema.  This summer, the Traverse City event added a new twist to film festival extremes:  Movies on a Boat.  Audiences of 60 were packed onto the deck chairs of the catamaran, Nauti Cat which was equipped with a projector and screen.  While spinnakers billowed above and carp slept below, a movie was shown with barf bags available.  The overall response was so enthusiastic that it now makes sense to expand the nautical theme to even greater heights.  Let's project a film onto the world's most natural and spectacular movie screen… the white face of the Sleeping Bear Dunes on Lake Michigan.  Just imagine the spectacle.  A massive projector aboard a Coast Guard cutter from the Port of Frankfort transmits the incredible visuals against all 400 vertical feet of the great sand dune.  For sound, enormous speakers will face the Manitou Islands with a sound track audible all the way to Green Bay.  And the audience, a historically massive flotilla of yachts, runabouts, and fishing vessels -- hundreds! nay, thousands! -- from harbors near and far, gather off Sleeping Bear Point to, well, watch a movie.  In keeping with the watery terrain, the inaugural film of Sleeping Bear Cinema could be that great American classic featuring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, "Beach Blanket Bingo."

Remembering My Father

(presented at Dad's memorial service, Community Unitarian Universalist Church of Brighton, August 16, 2014)

I am told I have nice hair.  It's wavy and thick and firmly rooted.   My barber, Judy, when first seeing it, ran her giddy fingers through my scalp and asked where I got it.  "I got it from my dad," I said.  Dad sported a reddish-blonde crop that he combed straight back.  But in his last years, as he spent about twenty hours a day sleeping on one side of his head or the other, his hair, now turned white, became a mini mohawk from the constant pillow pressure.

I don't really care whether my hair is one thing or another, although I would reject his cockatoo look.  My hair: I get it from my father.  But of some greater importance, he also gave me his world.  When I came of age, we lived in Turkey.  Together we stood on the walls of ancient Troy and cruised the Anatolian plateau for Hittite ruins. On the Black Sea, we watched Turkish women in rainbow bloomers rake hazelnuts on flat rooftops, and we shopped for hammered copper tables and Turkish carpets in old Ulus.  In Istanbul we stayed at the Tarabya Hotel on the Bosphorus where by day we got lost in the Grand Bazaar and at night dined on swordfish baked in a bag, shish kebab, and sweet white strawberries.  It seemed that in Europe, Mom and Dad dragged Julie and me to every cathedral and chapel they could, until, as Dad so loved to tell it, I shouted, "If I have to visit one more church, I'm going to convert!"  

While living in Indiana some years before, we floated down the Tippecanoe River on tippy canoes and cast Mepps spinners at smallmouth bass.  Once when he landed a feisty three-pounder, I pounded his back in celebration.  He would later share with me how prized a moment that was, not so much catching the fish, but the back slapping from his son.  From 1960 to 1968, we attended every home football and basketball game at Purdue University.  After a basketball game when I was 11, my coat fell to the ground under the bleachers, and as I was a small kid, I climbed the 10 feet down to retrieve it.  An enormous security guard approached in that no-man’s land, grabbed my shoulders, and shook me so hard my head bounced like a balloon on the end of a stick.  I'll never forget when Dad saw this attack, he reached a panicked arm down through the floorboards and screamed, “That’s my son!  That’s my son!"  When I was a very small child and ready for bed, he would hoist me over his shoulder and try to sell me as a sack of flour to my mother.  Then I would stand on his shoes as we walked down the hall before a story.  He taught me to ride a bicycle and to play chess, although at certain times, I can't forgive him for introducing me to golf. 

Dad never spanked, never squeezed an arm or slammed a door in anger.  I was never grounded or lost privileges.  And believe me, I was no angel.  I created a mountain of teenage mayhem and many a parent would have been right to chain me to the water heater.  But my father had not the heart or mind to control or shame others.  I remember that when dealing with one of my many bad choices, I shared how I hated to disappoint him.  Dad said that my disappointing him was impossible, that I never had, never could.  Confound, maybe, but never disappoint.

One night my brother Mark and his high school friends were apprehended by the West Lafayette Police Department for performing a so-called, Chinese Fire Drill.  While waiting at a red light in town, all six jumped out of the car and proceeded to race around the vehicle, screaming like madmen, until the light turned green.  Then just as quickly, they jumped back in and were on their way.  The arresting officer was not amused and the cops later called Dad in the wee hours to come pick up his son who waited with head hung low.  The ride home was stone silent until Dad couldn’t take it anymore.  He exploded.  With howls of laughter!  He could not have been prouder of his juvenile delinquent and loved to tell the story at the dinner table.

For more than 20 years I fought a non-stop battle with drugs and alcohol.  Dad, of course, was a powerless bystander, but a keen observer, and I exerted exhausting energy in trying to exhibit control.  Dad stayed out of the fray, but his mere presence in my twisted world served to compound the guilt.  One unforgettable day when loneliness had me cornered and my hands trembled from thirst, I let down my guard and shared an honest moment with my father.  I confessed that I was suffering, that alcohol had me by the throat.  And he responded in his gentle way, "I envy you."  Envy?  But Dad, how, of all feelings, could you possibly feel envy?  To which he said, "Because, son, you have a purpose."  And in that instant, while his comment seemed mysterious, my father gave me a ribbon of hope.  That purpose, as I would discover some years later, was to find the courage to surrender, and by surrendering, discover peace.

Whenever Dad met others, they got the genuine article.  In less than twenty seconds, they would greet a fellow pilgrim with the common stripe of humanity.  He never masqueraded with a fictitious sense of self, and as a Midwesterner and former Californian, despised arrogance and elitism.  Dad was a gifted storyteller and as children we often demanded that he tell again and again our family legends.  He developed this talent as a boy in Springfield, Illinois, during the Depression when he would return from a Saturday double feature and regale spellbound neighborhood children with the high dramas, children who could not get a dime for admission.  It's no wonder that Dr. Bohnhorst was such an effective and beloved teacher.  Whenever one of his students has learned that I am their teacher's son, they share how much he and his classes meant to them.  Dad may hold the record as the most hugged professor in Michigan State University history.

Dad liked his steaks very rare and would kindly send back an entree if the middle were not red enough.  He liked his ice cream chocolate and his pie cherry. Way back in the day, he preferred his martinis dry and savored a pipe tobacco called Amphora.  He loved Mozart and would exclaim, "My God, he wrote an entire symphony at the age of six. Age six!"  He loved Beethoven and would exclaim, "My God, he wrote the Ninth Symphony when he was stone cold deaf!  Do you hear me?  Totally deaf!"  He loved Laurence Olivier as Hamlet and Charlie Chaplin as the Little Tramp.   He believed Moby Dick was the greatest novel of all time, and Dad dubbed himself Ahab when playing bridge on the Internet.  And releasing my father into the great art museums of Europe was like unleashing a child on Christmas morning.  After moving through the Sistine Chapel, he said, "I can die happy now." 

My memories of Dad almost always include my mom.  Ben was not Dad, and Marie was not Mom without the other.  They had a fantastic marriage and were their own people.  Unfortunately, their only wedding photograph had them posing in front of the church, cut off at the neck.  She was the slightly better bridge player.  Dad worshipped her and they explored the world together.  Somehow, they felt comfortable with Unitarians.   After he retired, and with Mom rooting him on, Dad became a poet.  He found meaning in simple things, like feeding birds, and published, among others, a book of poems entitled "A Sermon on the Sufficiency of Feeding Finches."

My wife Sue and I had the privilege of taking care of Dad at home for about five years.  Mom had died and he remained diminished mentally from a stroke in 2001.  He was frail and slowly trailed his walker between rooms, marking his tiny steps with the words, "Putsa, putsa, putsa."   A few times every day while sitting in the living room, his blanket over his lap, out of the blue he would shout, "I have a question!"  To which I'd respond, "What's your question?"  And he would cry out, "What makes you such a sweetheart?"  Or he might shout, "I have a question! Why do I love you so much?"  After a while I suggested his persistent affection might be the result of indigestion.  He'd say, "Indigestion? Oh, bullshit!"  And so it would go.  Now and then he would end up in the hospital from this or that.  One basic conversation between nurses and patient always seemed to arise:

NURSE: How are you doing today, Ben?

DAD: I’m old! Old and decrepit!

NURSE: Decrepid?

DAD:  Decrepit. With a T.

NURSE: Oh, okay. Well, lay back down on your bed.

DAD: It’s lie back down, my dear. The verb is to lie.

Always the English teacher.  And even in his last year or two, with his memory vanished like the Model T, if you recited the first few words of a Shakepearean sonnet, say Sonnet 29, he could proceed without error or pause, and proclaim with a certain bravado:

"When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate."

When I was a boy of five or six, my father, the young professor at Oglethorpe College, would sometimes pace back and forth across the rooms at home, pipe in mouth, puzzling out life's predicaments.  I would fall in behind him, trying to keep pace, and strode those floors like my leader.  In a way, I always have.  As I've adjusted my bearings over 62 years, I have taken signals and learned lessons from the greatest teacher I have ever known.   In all this world, Dad is the person I admire most, in all the love that he has been.  From my back porch where I write, cardinals and goldfinches are having their frantic fill of sunflowers from my feeders.  This brings calm and a simple and loving purpose.  I must get it from my dad.