Fog

I was not happy to see fog this morning, I’m not going to lie.  Before I got up I could hear the cars sushing by on Polo, and groaned a little into the pillow.  The dripping maple outside my window accompanied teeth-brushing, and I resigned myself to dampness as I pulled on a fleece.

I’m a fog snob.  I like it in the mountains, when it has peaks and valleys to play with, and where it keeps you from seeing the top of a climb, where it forces you to live in the moment of each step up the hill.  But I’ve yet to love Winston-Salem fog.  This city does not wear it with much grace.  The buildings seem concerned about their hair.  My fellow students don rainjackets reluctantly.  It’s the third day of wet in a row, so even the pretty patterned rain boots are looking bedraggled.

And the people with curls are layering on the anti-frizz cream, and the fields are turning to minor marshlands while Canadian geese encamp on the intramural soccer pitch, and Shag on the Mag, Wake Forest’s sundresses-and-seersucker spring dance, looks like it will once again be Shag in the Mud.  And if it’s like last year, it will take them a solid six months to regrow the grass on the magnolia quad afterward.

But for all my grumping, fog and rain do a good job of bringing the world back down to earth.  They dirty things up to make them cleaner.  Colors blend together and harmonize beneath the fog.  People talk less, but the ground talks more, squelching a squooshing and soaking up life.  And every now and then you pass by a girl who embraces the whole scene with her hood down, and her hair happily poofy and laced with tiny droplets, and when the sun glances out for a moment and the angle’s just right, you find a crystal diadem sparkling and alive above her face.  And you smile, and she usually smiles back, and the sun fades out and the fog settles back, muffling the wet tread of your feet.

Sweat and Sunshine

There are some days when it’s not enough to just go for a run.  There are some days I have to leap, to bound.  This afternoon, starting out on the path was good.  But when an obliging wall offered itself, there was nothing to do but jump up and skip along that.  And then a park bench.  And then there were branches to bounce over on the trails behind Reynolda House.  And there was mud to dance around (I always end up pretending I’m Legolas when there’s mud or snow).  And rank upon rank of daffodils filling the woods.  One of those ocurrences you look at and know it didn’t happen naturally, but dear God it’s beautiful.  And you turn your face to the sun along with the flowers, and fling your arms wide, and keep on running, and you have a brief thought that maybe if you weren’t breathing hard, this is what heaven would feel like.  You know, C.S. Lewis’ heaven from The Last Battle.  The description that very much made me want to die when I first read it at the tender age of 9.  But then I wonder if maybe we’ll be breathing hard in heaven, too.  Maybe there will still be exertion and struggle.  Just not the kind tinged with despair.  The kind only filled with hope and with joy, and the beautiful pounding of your heart when it says “Yes, I am strong, and alive.”  Maybe that will still be there.  I hope so.  Days like this, days like this: they are why I run.

Hey y’all, I’m back…

So, the one thing guaranteed about a blog is that if the author stops writing, people will stop reading.  They may stop reading anyway, but unless you’ve been living Groundhog Day, you probably don’t have a reason to still be looking at Walk Softly.  That should be changing.  And this paragraph is an effort to elicit response from anybody’s who’s RSS’d this blog or set notifications or the like.  If you’re still around, ‘twould be good to know. Give a holler.

But why am I restarting?  Well, basically, because I’m happy again.  Because I don’t look around me and see darkness anymore.  Because I can feel again.  The mire became rather deep last semester, and I sank pretty low.  Low enough to stop writing.  Because for me writing isn’t a life raft.  It isn’t a help in the horribly dry, hard times.  If I feel spiritually dead, and alone, and empty, I can’t write.  It just isn’t there.  Attempts to publish or even journal feel like trying to squeeze toothpaste from an empty tube.  My writing is a reflection of what’s inside me at the moment.  If it’s craptastic, I’m probably having a crummy day – the ingrown, self-referential, groveling kind of crummy day.  If it’s good, I’m probably riding an epiphany or a new outpouring of grace.  There have even been days when I’ve gotten my face fully under the chocolate fountain of God’s love with my mouth open wide and been able to let it pour over my head and get stuck in my ears.  The writing from those days is amazing.  But when my writing is dull, or dead, or creepingly mediocre – when there’s a pasted-on veneer of art over an empty cardboard shell – that’s when things have gotten bad.  I look at unpublished poetry from last fall, and I see that.  This was some sucky stuff.  But I’m not there anymore.  The seasons change, and so do we.  Or perhaps I should say, the seasons are changed, and so are we.

Thank God.  

If you want to get caught up on the details of what’s been going on, give me a call.  I want to hear what’s up in your life, too.  I’ve disappeared from more circles than just blogging…  If there’s anyone reading who lacks my number, my apologies.  But the story should seep out over the next couple months, regardless.  Just bear with me as I get back up to speed.

Are you happy?

It was a three-by-five index card with thin blue lines and a thicker magenta header.  On the blank side someone had written “Are you happy?” in black calligraphy, slightly left of center.  I found the card resting on a chalkboard tray in Manchester 245.  Sitting in the room, waiting for statistics students who never showed, shuffling through Stephan Grappelli, Sound Tribe Sector 9, and Matisyahu while working problems for complex analysis, I convinced myself the answer was yes.  But I wasn’t sure. 

* * * * 

There’s a student who I first saw this summer, cruising back and forth from the library on an electric wheelchair.  He drove his wheelchair slowly, calmly, and wore his isolation like a crown.  With dignity, and pain.  He never smiled.  He was outside the caf the other evening, and I did a double take.  A girl behind his wheelchair was talking to him, but that wasn’t the odd part: what didn’t make sense was that she was moving twice as fast as the other walkers, while simultaneously arguing the merits of a particular fantasy card game, and with no apparent need to pause for breath.  And then I saw her feet, planted firmly on the back platform of his wheelchair, her hands gripping the seat as they whizzed by.  And he was still looking straight ahead, calmly, almost unmoving.  But the faintest thread of a smile was twitching at the corners of his mouth.  When I see him on campus, he’s not driving slowly anymore.  

* * * *

The Post Secret guy came to Wake Forest last night.  I’ve seen some of the books, but never followed the website.  We got there 15 minutes before the talk, and ended up standing in the back row of a crowd of more than 600 people.  He showed postcards that hadn’t been published in the books, and talked about the idea of secrets, and then invited people in the audience to share their own secrets.  And a girl in front stood up, and told about how she’d tried to kill herself the year before, and how her sister had saved her, and how she’d never told anyone that it was thanks to her sister she was still alive.  And then I realized I knew her.  That it was Nina.  We sing together in choir.  Her sister is my friend Becky.  We go to daily Mass together.  And I didn’t cry.  But I think my heart tried to turn inside-out.  I think I presume that I would be able to sense that kind of unhappiness.  Really, I just don’t know.

* * * *

I finally turned the romantic-relationship part of my life over to God two weeks ago.  20 years of being attracted to girls (yes, it started that early), and it’s taken me this long to give up.  Taken me this long to say “I don’t know what the crap’s going on here, I don’t know what I need, and if I’m perfectly honest I don’t know what I want.  I need you to show me these things.  I don’t care how long it takes, and I don’t care what needs to happen.”  Those are dangerous, scary, scary words.  I’m gritting my teeth right now.  I’m clenching them the way I did when I wanted to stay angry at my father as a four year-old.  When I desperately wanted and hated his hug simultaneously, when I would push away and hit at his arms before finally breaking down and crying in them.  And he would say “Did you really want to stay mad?  Did it really make you happy?”  And I’d squeeze my fists and say “YES!” and he’d smile sadly, sidewise, with eyes that seemed to look far beyond me, far away to a place I did not understand.  Then he’d look back, straight into my eyes, and say “Is this better?”  And I’d lose my grip and rest in his arms, and sob.  ”Yes,  this is better.”

The Little Red Hen

Tommy and I threw a cookout for the math grad students and post-docs last night, largely in an effort to build solidarity with the new first-years, but also because hey, it’s Labor Day weekend, and beer and hamburgers are fun.  The party was a smashing success.  Everyone had a great time, the food was delicious, and people are now excited about organizing more social events.  Apparently we set the bar. Score!

And I say we, but Tommy’s involvement was fairly limited.  He was kind enough to make a last minute run to Food Lion for ice, cheese and a two liter of Coke, and it’s entirely due to his suggestion that the post-docs were invited (I didn’t even think of it).  But the invitations, organization, alcohol provisioning, food purchasing, vegetable prepping, hamburger making and grilling fell to me.  Voluntarily, because I knew this party wouldn’t happen if I didn’t make it happen.  Voluntarily, because I didn’t want this to be another “byob and pay us back for the meat” event.  But then, when somebody disses your acquisition of Mike’s Hard Lemonade (even when he’s not helping pay for it), further comments that the Cottonwood Low Down Brown Ale you bought was a little too sweet for his taste (after drinking it), and finally drinks one of your (more expensive) bottles of Rogue instead of his own Sam Adams, it bites.

Do you remember The Little Red Hen?  In our Golden Book version there were a host of selfish and self-absorbed freeloading barnyard animals who refused to help in any part of the hen’s breadmaking.  

“Who will help me grind the wheat?” said the Little Red Hen.  “Not I,” said the Dog.  “Not I,” said the Cat.  “Not I,” said the Pig.  “Oh, not I,” said the Sheep.  And so the Little Red Hen ground the wheat into flower all by herself…

Naturally, at the end of story all the animals want to share in the loaf.  And the hen, a model social conservative, lets them smell the bread and then eats it – all by herself.  

As I kid, I loved that story.  My mom did, too, and I think I know why.  But the older I get, the more I wonder if the hen got indigestion.

What Tommy did makes me mad, but what am I going to do about it?  The only way to do anything is to compromise the hospitality and generosity I worked so hard to present last night.  And the only way to actually be generous, to not have simply put on a show, is to just let my resentment go.  What am I holding onto?  One beer?  A few hours of work and some money I could afford to spend?  

Or maybe I simply enjoy the righteous anger at having been ill-used.  Am I that petty?  Possibly.  But if that’s the case, I deserve a quote from Juliette: “Bitch, Puhleeze!”

That goes for you, too, Little Red Hen.

Wisdom

We have a new housemate, a girl named Juliette.  A first-year grad student in the clinical psychology program, formerly of Indiana University, Bloomington.  Someone who was abnormal enough to be interested in a non-air conditioned, crooked-door, green living room with mismatched furniture and bamboo roll-up shades, and two guys as housemates.  When her deposit check arrived back in June, we figured she must not be too up-tight.

Juliette provides great reminders of how to live more extensively.  The image of extension is the one I’m shooting for, because the past week has been a series of reminders of what there is to do outside of Wake Forest.  Of what there is to do outside of the doors of our house.  Like hiking at Pilot Mountain.  Like biking around downtown.  Like eating breakfast, lunch and dinner on the patio.  Because we’ve got a patio, by golly.  But after last fall, Tommy and I forgot how to use it.  We also forgot how to moderate the inevitable personality clashes aside from avoidance.  But with the third variable of Juliette added, our house dynamic becomes much more stable.  Nice.

Over breakfast Juliette wanted to know what my plans were for the day.  ”Eh, not much….run, do rock rings, eat, go listen to the freshman orientation pre-law talk.  That takes me up to 3 PM.”  ”How about after that?”  ”I don’t know.”  ”You should take a nap.”  I don’t think I showed it, but I was shocked.  I would never consider such a radical idea.  If you don’t know what to do, why not do….nothing.  Just switch off.  As opposed to dinking around on the internet, or poking at math you’re not focused on, why not just sleep?  I am so darn driven, the idea of taking a nap as a viable activity would never cross my mind.  

I was going to entitle this post something like “The wisdom of small children,” but that’s not accurate.  Because as a kid, I hated naps.  They were a maternally-generated obstacle to awesomeness.  Naps were not fun.  Naps were the anti-fun.  I knew kids who liked naps.  They also tended to enjoy sitting still and smiling and picking grass, as opposed to assembling arsenals of pine cones or building complex structures out of sticks and scrap steel.  I thought they were lame.

But Juliette is right, and while I’m still not napping (no, I’m writing this – I once again succeeded in finding something to do), she’s got an excellent point.  Hopefully I’ll take her advice this semester.  And I suspicion I’ll do well to listen to her advice on more points than just napping.

Recovering Lost Ground

The joints of my toes are swollen and painful enough that I’m walking like a duck.  We lost the game 6-0.  I re-opened a nasty, weeping skinned knee gained Monday in beach volleyball.  And I have grass stains on my Appalachian-beat-Michigan shirt.  This is fabulous.  Seriously.

Because this is the first time since high school that I’ve played ultimate without ankle pain.  And I was BAREFOOT.  I got pulled into a pick-up game while wearing flip flops.  Sprinting, cutting, diving, losing ignominiously on the upper quad in front of Wait Chapel, there was nothing but glory.  Even with easing back into running, I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to chase down a long intercept again.  But I did.  And the belief in my physical self that returned with that catch was amazing.  The belief in myself as whole person, not simply as sadder-but-wiser goods.  Such a little thing.  But so nice.    

Weird how confidence should be so tied to the physical.  Weird how the mending on that front should coincide with my research starting to look up, and overcoming house tensions with Tommy, and no longer being apologetic about getting through grad school in my own way.  I knew things were getting better when I stopped caring whether Dr. Berenhaut thought I understood things in our research – when I started shrugging and pausing discussions with “You know, I don’t have a clue why that’s true.  Could you re-explain it?”  When I stopped caring about whether I ended up with some flavor, any flavor of doctorate.  Because oh yes, that was definitely part of the drive to jump into a JD after AmeriCorps.  But no, I’m not going to do that.  I’m going to teach first.  Maybe sail around the world second.  I can’t know if I’ll help more people as a lawyer or as a teacher, but I know teaching will make me happy.  So I’ll try it.  Law will always be there.

All of these developments served on a platter of ultimate frisbee.  

And I need to say, to all of you, to God, Thank You.  I did not get here alone.

Failures in Honesty

When I was journaling about the Appalachian Trail I hit a point where I stopped writing about the bad stuff – about the unceasing pain, the loneliness, the absence of physical affection.  I would write about the exceptionally bad days, certainly.  They made good stories.  But I got good at keeping the baseline suckiness (and there was a lot of it) firmly under my hat.  And I didn’t choke on this unspoken sadness because I could vent in my stories about the bad days.  The bad days were dramatically bad.  Like waking up to find a river running through your tent, or being chased five miles by a cloud of rabid Massachusetts mosquitos.  Nothing boring about that!

But how do you make it into a good story when you come back to Winston-Salem from a weekend in Asheville and the shift is so depressing that you have a simultaneous flair-up of your dandruff and your (previously conquered) toenail fungus?  

I should have had some good things to say about Bele Chere.  It was wonderful.  As were my swing-dance-binge weekends earlier in July.  But my weekends are like being drunk: you’re happy while it’s happening, but the resulting hangover almost isn’t worth the escape.  Almost.  (N.B. I have never actually been hungover.  I attribute this to particularly good Italian and German genes.)

They are playing the Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez on WFDD 88.5 right now.  Some of the greatest guitar music in the world.  Even more enjoyable because we played it in Appalachian Chamber Orchestra two years ago.  Rodrigo writes the most stunningly sad, passionate central movement I’ve ever heard.  The beginning and closing allegros don’t develop the piece significantly.  You think the opening’s going to.  You’re all set for this to happen, and then you hear the second movement and you realize you’ve merely been given an idea of the heights from which you can fall.  And the ending – the ending’s more a recovery operation. It might be tempting to look for redemption in the ending, but Rodrigo’s sadness does not need a resolving endcap.  Peace is found internally, at the end of the central movement.  The final allegro stands as a restatement, a reminder of a shell wrapped about sadness that is not bitter, not killing, but that will find its rest only in death.  An overly dramatic interpretation?  Maybe.  But then, he’s Spanish, so maybe not…

I don’t need to be listening to Rodrigo right now.  Even if it’s radio, this still counts as groveling.  But, at least it’s very high-brow groveling.

And really, that’s all for now.  No good resolution, no self-revelatory development in the writing.  And now I’m leaving for another weekend in Asheville.  

These things will end soon enough.  And they’ll come clear in the end.  Just, right now, could you pray for an unhappy person?

Quote of the Day

Calvino, again:

We can prevent reading: but in the decree that forbids reading there will be still read something of the truth that we would wish never to be read…

“And Cain…dwelt in the in the land of Nod on the east of Eden”

This is a brief post and reminder: John Steinbeck is utterly amazing.  I finished East of Eden at 11 PM this evening after a five-hour binge, and I’m still reeling.  The book is so well crafted, so rich, so completely thought out.  Steinbeck doesn’t push the stylistic envelope with Eden; he uses intercalary chapters as a tool, but they’re never stream-of-conscience, and seem less self-conscious than some of his other work.  In Eden the parallel narrative simply moors his family history to the story line.  And he does this quietly, almost insignificantly.  Steinbeck gives the impression of writing substantially for his own gratification.  But he knows what he’s doing, and he’s ok with it.  Still, this and the nostalgia may take Eden down a notch in the eyes of critics.  Perhaps the greatest blow to Eden came before it was written, though.  For how, how is an author supposed to escape the shadow of his own “most discussed book of the century”?  The Grapes of Wrath is better known, but I don’t know if it deserves greater notoriety.  To be sure it’s younger, wilder, more political.  Comparisons with Grapes of Wrath are inevitable, but Eden is a much older book, written by a much older man – a man whose concern is communication rather than incitation, and whose communication bears the weight of all his years.  I’m left with the impression that Steinbeck wished Eden to be his greatest work.  I don’t know if it is.  But the passion is such, the wisdom is such that, in the end, I don’t care.  I’m just glad I got to hold them.