Linz, Austria (http://www.sternwarte.at) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6756468
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The Man at the Park
Clean-shaven, donning a safari hat, I see him each time I’m at Burgess Park with my young son, a couple blocks away from our apartment, inside the heart of a California liberal enclave. Square-jawed, wearing camo cargo pants, he sits on a bench and reads a newspaper, his index finger pointed like a gun aimed at photographs of politicians, firing off imaginary bullets. Broad-shouldered in a white t-shirt, his eyes shaded by aviator sunglasses, he swaggers around and grumbles aloud in an agitated way, refuting lies he swears the media has told us: “Obama did nothing to stop swine flu.” He says in a gravelly tone, his mouth free from a mask during Covid-19. “They threw away millions of votes for Trump.” Another statement to no one in sight. Insulated as I am, both by choice and by geography, from the world-view this man espouses, he is a rare source of my exposure to the narratives I only claim to know as right-wing talk. Here, I would bet he is an outlier, his rant beyond the span of most opinion, and I am relieved how his voice fades when he walks past us. Yet I understand in other neighborhoods he might not be so; he could be closer to the norm. Last month, hundreds of people impassioned as he is stormed the Capitol, either to threaten lawmakers or defend our country – it all depends on who you listen to.
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Windy Hill
The View from Windy Hill Like most vistas in preserves around here, this one looks east toward San Francisco Bay: surrounded by buildings, spanned by bridges, modern and sparkling in the distance. But if the bench atop this overlook instead faced west, it would view wild land. Conifers along the ridge (amazing how the eye can discern a single tree within a forest). Fields on the hillside – the wind pushes through tawny grass, flowers gone to fluffy seedpod, copses of oak. Hikers ogle the valley from high up, and a few of us turn the opposite direction to gaze at what is left untamed. -
Respect
(on the anniversary of Donald Trump’s election) When I was in fifth grade, I made my friends laugh by drawing funny pictures of George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle, two people l knew little about except what I overheard from my parents, who were decidedly unimpressed with them as leaders of our country - something to do with one’s surreptitious disregard for the rule of law and the other’s apparent lack of intelligence. I got in trouble when my teacher saw me making these unflattering caricatures. But rather than punish me in front of my peers, her rebuke took the form of lecturing us on how it’s important to show respect even for folks with whom we disagree. I bore out this reproof patiently, all the while confused why I should be expected to have any regard at all for politicians so obviously wrong, as evidenced by their poor reputation in my family and my classmates’ approval of my cartoons. Thirty years later I feel a twinge of wistfulness for the White House duo I mocked; they appear like prudent statesmen relative to the current occupant of our executive branch. For now we have a president who flouts a reasonable code of decency and is lauded for it by millions; it seems he is entitled to express derision without censure. I ask myself what my teacher back then would make of his conduct – would she think of her officious admonishment, how it might have been better saved up and used in earnest a few decades later against a man who is, for all practical purpose, the heir of those she defended from the playful insult of a ten-year-old kid?
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C.P.E. Bach
“J.S. Bach’s most successful son”, the classical radio host introduced him with confidence, and I wondered: by what standard does he merit this distinction above three musician brothers whose extant works also bring joy? They all survived to be adults, more than can be said for many – including some of their siblings. And what of J. S. Bach’s daughters? Regina and Elisabeth, for example, without entries of their own in Western canon; to each only an inscription within a vast family tree that grew during Enlightenment – its broad limbs full of composers performers, millers, and painters likely doing the best they could in the Germany of their time. Not to begrudge Emanuel’s vaunted position, how he swayed a genre through sheer cleverness – but to mention posterity can be fickle in assigning praise, subject to whim whenever tastes that prevail become altered.
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Everyday Saraband
Latkes for Hanukkah Dollops of grated potato ladled into a hot skillet slick with a sheen of cooking oil. No one can find the menorah, but it doesn’t seem to matter – my wife’s father lights a candle and recites a Hebrew prayer. Aunt Vi’s Cocoons A votive honoring Aunt Vi flickers on the kitchen island while K. bakes pecan cookies – one of her aunt’s famous recipes written by hand on index cards, then given as a wedding present in a little cedar box. Winter in Vermont Before College I wish I could reclaim the time we spent whole winter afternoons sledding the hill behind your house. When it started to get dark out one of our parents rang a bell at the back door, beckoning us in for dinner by the wood stove. Livre Sensuel Halfway through reading War & Peace, hundreds of pages behind her, she is reminded that a book – one in very physical form – excites lust: how it spreads open of its own weight on a table and offers itself up to you. Construction Crane At dusk, a construction crane stands dormant, though its hook seems to lift a star and place it in the sky. The polished metal block that hangs by cables off its latticed boom reflects the sunset, glowing bright, as if eager to do more work. Jump Rope After dinner, windows open, a whistling sound comes from next door: the neighbor uses a jump rope to work out on her patio – a high pitch as it slices air and rapid slaps against the ground with each brisk arc over her head.
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Little Messengers
Jasper toddles quickly down the hall in our second-floor apartment. He stops and listens to a sound: our neighbors’ kid below us, who also runs with stomping feet that send vibrations up the wall from how their steps pound the floorboards. He smiles before continuing his indoor sprint from room to room – a reply comes between pauses. Two of them a story apart thumping out playful messages back and forth in a kind of code which translated they know means joy. I wish we talked to each other more often as adults this way, in ciphers made of cheerful noise. I wish we trusted each other how Jasper seems to have faith in me when he puts his hand in mine and we walk downstairs together.
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Olympic Valley
The mountain seems firm in its position. By and large, within my life span, it is – assuming no tectonic upheaval or sudden volcanic eruption. I do not see myself so resolute as an ancient sierra, for instance; I am too easily influenced by features in the terrain around me. More akin to rivers, I meander – though surely follow a determined course from high lake, into valley, toward ocean. Being so, I commune among those peaks whose vantages appear immutable and in time, perhaps alter them, if only a bit.
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Time Capsule
No one remembers for sure where it is. Twelve of us ages six through eleven buried it more than thirty years ago where we went to school at Tamarack Brook, a place whose location we described in song as the belly button of Vermont. Was it by birch trees under the stone wall? What about at the north edge of the grounds? Or next to that big rock in the pasture behind the house: where we had snowball fights, played soccer, journaled, climbed a tall white pine up to higher branches with each ascent then back to ground, our hands sticky from pitch, unable to wash it off at the sink inside the barn where we were taught subjects such as Abenaki culture, Halley’s comet, and beaver dam ecology; the pond across the street a fine example? If we figure out where to dig it up – this trove of drawings and essays, clippings from newspapers and magazines, photos – we might for a moment be transported to a time when we saw the world as new, yearning for us to learn of its bounty.
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Labyrinth
For a data collection exercise at work, never mind what it was about, they asked me to walk slowly on a grid of many squares, each a meter per side, lingering in them as I strolled along. After a few minutes, my thoughts began to wander; it occurred to me this could be like the path of an ancient pilgrim who attains spiritual contemplation while he meanders a serpentine path defined by concentric zigzags that lead both inward and outward where they are laid on the stone floor of a cathedral’s nave, or bordered by winding topiary in the garden of a monastery. Although I cannot say why, my first wife entered consciousness, how she left suddenly without explanation, a mystery I have never been able to solve, only grasping the vague notion that we must have come to unreconcilable disagreement. At random intervals, years later, she still sends me a very occasional letter to let me know I have been on her mind. Her latest note is a fond recollection of a game I have enjoyed since childhood: a shifting labyrinth, walls in flux, where players race with each other to find treasure. For her, I assume, this memory was a point of shared connection. But what I recall, with amazement, from playing together is a board overturned, cards on the floor, and her storming away from the table when she thought the game was not going well.
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Zinfandel Trail
Family Hike at a Preserve Grand vistas from Zinfandel Trail. J’s babble morphs into a coo that could be an expression of awe. Shifting his weight in the carrier, he eats a midmorning snack and looks behind him at his mom. He seems to like our family hikes. Back under the cover of woods, a large hawk’s imposing shadow passes over the canopy. If we were in the Amazon, this could be a real threat: eagles with talons larger than bear claws able to pluck our son from my back. Though we are not part of a tribe who lives deep in the rainforest, even here close to suburbs mountain lions have a presence – and wild things do not always shun our encroachment of their domain. “If attacked, fight back!” a sign says. My mind considers our options: sticks, rocks, fists… humble arsenal. When did I stop packing a knife? Some loose gravel on a steep slope reminds me that the true danger to myself as well as to J is from slipping and falling down. I concentrate on my footing. Steadily, we descend a hill. No pumas emerge from the trees before we return to the car, though lizards in the underbrush scrabbling among twigs and leaves make noise enough to race my heart.
From the Firefly Galaxy 