Henry's Logbook

Just Because a Person Drinks Cheap Wine

2009-10-10T17:52:00.000-07:00

Just because a person drinks cheap wine doesn’t mean that he or she doesn’t have any standards, or isn’t discriminating. Poor people, and chronic cheapskates, like wine too, and I am announcing here that they no longer need to be ashamed. If this be blasphemy, make the most of it.

Don’t be alarmed if you don’t really “get” wine tasting in its supercilious form—all that sloshing the wine around in the glass, snuffling, slurping, and finally spitting out good wine into a damned bucket.

Don’t worry if you don’t really taste the currants, leather, Cuban cigars, Hungarian hedge-berries, or hints of cedar that are supposed to be present in the wine. At the amount of money you are willing to fork out (I’m talking about wine priced under $10), those flavors probably won’t be there, even if they really exist at all.

You have to live with a cheap wine for a while in order to judge it. A tiny sample that a vendor hands you in the grocery store is not enough. Unless the wine is fabulously bad, you have to get deep into the first glass, or perhaps into the second, before you can really decide what you think.

At least, this is the way it happens with me. I trust this judgment because it comes suddenly and without warning. I am sitting down after getting home from work—reading, or watching the latest world-horrors on the TV news, and suddenly I look down at my nearly-depleted wine glass and pronounce—usually out loud—my judgment upon it. These judgments inevitably fall into one of the 4 categories or levels below:

Level 1: Toxic

As in: “Yikes, this stuff is toxic—toxic !”

This is the baddest wine. It sends an immediate chill directly through my soul. It makes me duck my head and hunch up my body as if I am about to be beaten by military-police truncheons.

Perhaps a friend, who buys all his wine at the grocery outlet, gave me this as a gift. (“This is just as good as the best French wine, man, and it only cost $3.00!” I bought a whole case, man!).

Level 2: Drinkable

As in: “Well… I suppose this is drinkable…”

This is a wine that disappoints. I immediately regret my squandered $10, but I figure I can drink it. Somehow, the disappointing wine will ultimately merge with my other, multifarious disappointments as I plunge into the bottle’s contents, and at some point, in my unhappy consumption of this wine, I will no longer hold a grudge against it.

Level 3: Pretty Good

As in: “Okay—(small sigh of relief) it’s pretty good.”

This is the most populous wine level because most wine today, even wine under $10, is pretty good. There are lots of good, satisfactory wines from California, even from the largest wineries, as well as many predictably pretty good wines from South America, Australia, and Europe.

The important thing is that I get home from a long day of work and pop the cork on a new friend who pretends to understand me—that’s what a pretty good wine is.

Level 4: Winner

As in: “Wow, this is kind of a winner!”

Every once in a while I stumble onto a wine which is surprisingly good—if only I could define why! It could be a rare degree of smoothness—kind of like discovering a poet pulling on an oar among a slave-galley of ruffians.

Maybe it is unlikely to be “Complexity” at this price, but it might be Harmony. If I think about the way a wine’s taste unfolds from its starting, through its lasting, to its ending—it seems to tell a sort of story in episodes of tastes. With most cheap wine, the episodes have no harmony. They may even be said to be in disharmony—like a bunch of bickering politicians. Or they may refuse to look at, or talk to, each other—like passengers on a subway system. A “winner” can be a wine that turns out to have some real harmony, in which the episodes of taste seem to actually enjoy each other’s company.

But often, a winner will just be a beautifully-honest wine. Perhaps this wine may come, for example, from Puglia, around the Boot of Italy. Perhaps the grapes used will be Negroamaro, or the aptly named Primitivo. Primitive, simple, honest—these are the qualities that the modern world tries to take away from us, and that is why wines with these qualities are always “winners.” They may not taste of Cuban cigars, but they will taste of the soil, and of the dust from which we come and to which we will return.

So even cheapskates can have standards and be discriminating!

The Wake: written Friday Evening Sept. 18, 2009

2009-10-06T19:50:00.000-07:00

It is the anniversary of the death of my Great, Great, Great Grandfather—and tonight I’m holding a kind of Wake. He died 191 years ago today, on September 18, 1818, at Royalton, Vermont. He was only 32.

I have beer and whiskey, and I have music. And I have ineffable relics.

I know that my vast readership will be appalled at the absurdity of this Wake—but, okay—I have no readership, so there is no question but that everything is fully permissible.

The fact of the matter is that I can know more about a person from an ancient land record, a name in a census, a single mention in a county history, or a cloudy memory from a distant elderly relative—than I might ever know about a person I see and talk to every day, or one who might even live in my house!

Because language, the thing with which we are meant to communicate, is mostly used today for camouflage and protection, or to throw the metaphorical hunter off the metaphorical scent. Language is the flashing sword of our self-interest. This is modernity’s greatest achievement—our baroque language of concealment.

“He died suddenly from being overheated in getting in hay.”

The county history doesn’t mince words. It was cold tidings for his widow and five young boys, and soon that ice began to move slowly like a glacier down the DNA line, constantly renewing itself with fresh tragedies.

I was there that day, I tell you.

I was there.

The Man and the Boy

2009-09-21T07:28:00.000-07:00

       He wrote poems when he was young
Thinking (knowing!) they could not see
       What he saw—though just a lone kid,
Or so he thought¸ or so he thought to be.

       Poems about what? Loneliness
And his pride in it!—yet each precious song
       Was dark, too, and full of terror—
For a grief he had suffered—raw and wrong.

       His story’s not unique. Of course,
He knows that now! The grief within that churned
       Was common to this broken world—
To him it’s clear: his poems should be burned.

       But should an old man who judges
Condemn the boy and all he dreamed about?
       I’ve seen within this coarser man
The eyes of that boy looking strangely out …

       They walk together in the rain,
Sometimes, along the cemetery road.
       They drive ninety miles to get there
And return the same day to their abode.

       They take their scrapers and brushes,
Their cloths, water, and can of compressed air,
       And wash their ancestors’ gravestones
On a hill above the ocean down there.

       So—they unite in their mourning?
“I wipe away their too sad tears of loss,”
       Writes the boy. But not the old man:
He’ll only say he’s scrubbing off the moss.

Another Olive Barber Column from 1942

2009-09-13T07:39:00.000-07:00

This column takes a much different tone from the one I previously posted (see my remarks there). Instead of her usual wit and humor, here is a description of an "illness" that sounds a lot like depression, told in Olive Barber's honest, homespun style that I find such a pleasure to read.

To Be or Not is Held Little Question
When Illness Grasps One
by Olive Barber 1942

For the past week I have lived alone on an island with the river of life flowing around and about me but never carrying me along with it. I have not cared. As echoes from across a distant water, I would hear the man bring in the milk; would hear the little neighbor girl, doing service in the kitchen, ask him where she might find the strainer. I could have told them, but it never entered my head to do so. They and their affairs were of another world, and between their world and mine lay the dark and swirling stream of illness which made my isolation.

I see now that I have been able to have a jocular attitude toward my heaviness of body because I have been so free from heaviness of spirit. I have barged along, cumbersome but merry, with no jealousy of nobler or more graceful craft. I was taking my place in the river of life and if others passed me, well, perhaps I saw sights and savored fragrances their swifter pace denied them.

But now I was beached, as it were, and found myself indifferent that this was so. I knew vaguely that those about me ate and slept and went about their work. As for myself, I was finished with such. For food, I cared nothing. Sleep was a continual half-coma in which the rose vine rasping across the window pane loomed larger than the folk who gravitated about my bed. Sometimes the rose vine was comfort, its gentle swayings stroking my spirit as softly as a hand might soothe an aching head.

In more lucid moments, it came to me that I had heretofore been filled with a strange conceit. I had thought of myself as being an important factor in family activity. Yet now that I was removed, no one went hungry, the man got off to his logging on time; life seemed to go on much as usual. I could hear the young maid busy with the milk pans. I hoped she ran the skimmer around the edge of the pan to free the cream before running it off into a pitcher. Otherwise much of the cream would cling to the pan and be wasted. Then I thought, “What have I to do with cream! The world is full of cream. There was cream before I was born. There will be more of it after I’m dead.”

During the first few days of my illness, I continued to send off columns, though I well knew they were written with a heavy hand. Finally, I sent none at all. Let editors say I was on a vacation, as they did one time when I wasn’t. Besides, columns, like cream, would abound if I never wrote another. My own unimportance wrapped its cottony comfort about me and freed me.

To be or not to be, I now saw, was not a problem at all; just a matter of indifference.

Story Problem #3: How Many Kangaroos?

2009-08-29T21:31:00.000-07:00

There are 7,487 air miles from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia. The flight time varies, but for the purposes of this problem, let’s say that it takes 14 hours.

Now: you have one friend, and one friend only, going there—that is, to Australia. The one friend has one cat (notice the nice symmetry here).

The friend asks if you will take care of her cat while she is in Australia . She will be gone for 22 days.

The friend promises you a gift in exchange for taking the care of the cat which you will receive on her return if the cat is still alive. She is quite particular on that point—if the cat is still alive.

She says that she will bring back, for you, a kangaroo.

You consider the offer, but quickly detect a potential problem in regard to the deal. “But won’t,” you ask, “the kangaroo get lonely? Wouldn’t it be better if there were two kangaroos so that they could keep each other company?”

She sees the logic in this, and agreeing to two kangaroos, leaves for Australia.

On her return from Australia, you go over to her house and say “the cat is alive—where are the kangaroos”—knowing that there won’t be any kangaroos. She says “the kangaroos could not get visas. I tried, but there was nothing I could do.”

You and your friend both laugh.

The question therefore is: how many kangaroos are there?

The answer is two.

This is because after you and your friend have had your laugh, you are still looking for the kangaroos. The door to a bedroom is ajar. Are the Kangaroos in there? There are stairs going down darkly into the basement—perhaps …?

Even when you know something is impossible, and most things are, you hold out an absurd and insidious hope.

So there are those times that we try things we know will not work. I had this girlfriend recently. It was inconceivable that it would ever work, and it didn’t.

But still, the answer is two.

Two people gone. The door to the bedroom ajar . The stairs going down darkly into the basement.

A Lost World

2009-08-15T21:49:00.000-07:00

It was still pitch dark when my Grandfather started out to visit his Uncle. Let me explain that my Grandfather was not a grandfather then, and his Uncle was a man who entertained and charmed everyone he met—not someone who was dead and forgotten.

My Grandfather began by rowing across the Siuslaw River in his father’s skiff. Since the tidal flow was ebbing, he rowed upriver close to the shore for several hundred yards and then made his crossing, pulling hard on the oars and keeping his eye on the lantern light coming from the ferry dock on the other side. The night air that filled my Grandfather’s lungs was cool, moist, and almost shockingly fresh—rich, briny, and alive. The tide pushed the boat downstream, but my Grandfather had timed it perfectly, and landed the skiff on a small beach next to the ferry dock.

He secured the boat and taking his small pack began to walk toward the west. This time of day he always called “false daylight,” because a faint light was leaking over the eastern horizon from a sun that would not rise for a good hour yet. It was light sufficient to walk by, if you were careful and knew the way. Ahead of him he could see the great black mounds that were the Oregon Sand Dunes. As he walked, the sounds of the surf grew louder, and before long he had trudged over a series of smaller dunes and descended down onto the darkened beach and headed south.

The beach was perfect for walking and a fast walker could make good time. No headwind had developed as yet that morning, and above the fog there would suddenly appear patches of sparkling stars. It was a strange feeling to walk when all the landmarks were still obscured and with the ocean thundering in his ears. It was as if he were walking in place, or in suspension, hearing his own breathing and the rapid cadence of his steps.

My Grandfather covered ten miles of beach in less than three hours. Gradually, the ocean world took in more light in a slow process that seemed like a kind of seepage. He left the beach, finally, and turned inland, again over dunes, and then along an ancient Indian trail through the rough and rooted forest until he connected up with the muddy cart path leading to the north bank of the Umpqua River and the bustling little town of Gardiner, Oregon.

It was late morning now and folks were boarding the stern-wheeler Eva as my Grandfather arrived. The Eva would take the passengers downriver to catch the beach-going stagecoach to Coos Bay. Then the Eva would turn back and steam upriver to Scottsburg with its freight and mailbags. My Grandfather leaned against the railing to rest from his long walk, and noticed the pretty young women nearby who were waving to friends on the dock. But the pretty girls just filled him with sadness!

My Grandfather had much older half-sister whose name was Carrie—older enough, in fact, to almost have been his mother. She was the daughter of his father’s first wife who died giving her birth on a cold and merciless day at Alpena, Michigan so long ago. Now Carrie already had five daughters of her own, and they were only slightly younger than my Grandfather himself who was their half-Uncle. “Harry is here!” they would shout when my Grandfather came upriver to visit their farm, and as a boy he spent his whole summers there, helping out their father with the farm work. The girls adored my Grandfather and he loved them, and they grew to be young women.

Leaning against the rail of the Eva, my Grandfather felt the now-familiar despair. What was a half-Uncle? Why did there have to be half-uncles? Why did being this thing called a half-uncle have to ruin all his hopes? And there were five of them that he loved, and that meant that five times over he was ruined.

Later, my Grandfather would marry unhappily. He was a quiet man and a sweet man, without any trace of violence, and some people will take advantage of such a person. After two children—a girl and a boy—were born in fast succession, his wife demanded a separate bedroom, and forever after went there at bedtime and closed the door. She hated being pregnant and disliked its effect on her figure. As for my Grandfather, she treated him as if he were a man from whom nothing was expected. His daughter, too, adopted this attitude, learning it from her mother. His son saw how his father was treated and vowed to be the master of his own house when he should marry. Yet he, too, treated my Grandfather as if nothing was expected. But these reverses were still ahead of him, and thankfully, they were unanticipated.

When the Eva docked near the Umpqua Lighthouse, my Grandfather was the first one off the boat and he headed quickly for the beach, skirting the Barrett stagecoach that waited to take the passengers by way of the beach to Coos Bay—for the stage demanded an exorbitant fee of 7 dollars for the trip, an amount that was well beyond his means. Yet he kept a watch for the appearance of the stage, and he soon saw it coming briskly, pulled by four large horses. The canvas curtains were down on the ocean side, as he had expected they would be, in order to shield the passengers from the chill of the wind. That, then, was the blind side of the stagecoach. Walking along the surf line with his head down, he waited until the stage just passed him, and then with a few running steps he reached the stage and jumped up on the trunk rack.

Through the canvas curtains he could clearly hear the conversations of the passengers. They had seen him walking, of course, as they approached from behind, and one person was even talking about him now. “Well,” they said, “that young man sure has a long, long way to go,” and everyone laughed. My Grandfather smiled and looked out at the ocean from his secret perch on the stagecoach. A clearing sky was persuading the ocean to be blue. On the crests of the breakers, the wind combed the ocean foam and blew it back toward the sea in shocks of gleaming, silver hair. My Grandfather must have thought: it’s not over for me; it is only beginning. And so how could he be happier? He was young, and he was moving, and he lived in the most beautiful place in the world, and he had just committed a harmless larceny and gotten away with it!

About a mile before the stage reached Coos Bay, my Grandfather jumped down again to the sand. Best not to alert the driver to his tactics, because he might want to use them again. Besides, he was not going to cross over the bay because his Uncle lived on this side, at a place called Haynes Inlet. The rest of his journey involved more walking, a couple of cart rides, and the flagging down of a friendly boater to take him across the inlet to his Uncle’s house.

His uncle had written that he was getting married! Coming from a lifelong bachelor, this was quite a surprise. It was the lady next door, the one with the sullen brother. His Uncle wrote:

Your letter of the 15th was laid on the table. I bet yood a laughed when I put one of those owl cigars between my teeth and walked out. just as soon as I got out of the house it seemed liked all the big white owls was next, for they started to ask who—who—who—who—who. I thought they wanted to know who—who—who—who—who—who sent them to me?
Say there was two women just came in, and my new wife makes three, and they are talking. I try to keep track of what they are talking about and write too, I find imposable. The dog got tired of listening so he went out on the porch to scratch his flees.
So I married the woman next door and it appears her brother too. When you get old, Harry, the silence just gets silenter. I’m that old stiff you call, Uncle Bill.

It was early evening when my Grandfather approached his Uncle’s house. My Grandfather had made it all the way down there in one day. When he walked in they all said “Harry,” with expressions of the greatest pleasure—even the sullen brother was beaming. On the table were the White Owl cigars my Grandfather had mailed, and his Uncle’s collection of Indian arrowheads—for his Uncle was fascinated with Indian lore and had made a study of Indian woodsmanship. Another chair was quickly pulled to the table because they knew he must be tired. His Uncle said there was stew and biscuits for dinner, but first they must all have a round of hard cider in honor of Harry.

And so the evening was a happy one of talk and laughter around that table, within that house in a lost world.

Perhaps, later… they played at cards—I don’t know. I don’t know if they played cards… for there must be now some limit to my seeing.

There is a party starting up next door with loud music and I have no choice but to stop writing. I’ve looked out and seen a large group of people in the next yard. With the music that loud, how can they hear what each other is saying? And many are on cell phones, talking to people elsewhere. There are two young men who seem to be competing to see who has the loudest, and most insincere laugh. I suppose they are trying to impress the girls. But let them play. Let them play. Perhaps they are perfectly happy in their lost world, the one we call the Present.

Hello Freckleton, Goodbye Disfunctional America

2009-08-08T20:54:00.000-07:00

I see that Freckleton, England, has a proud tradition of the brass band which continues to this day. Too bad I had never heard of the place in 2004 when I went to England and visited my uncle in Kirkham, just a few miles away. It is also close to Blackpool, the silliest town in Britain. Freckleton experienced a great tragedy in 1944 when a military plane crashed into the school--I have read all about Freckleton online.

So here is my plan: I retire in a few years and book passage on a tramp steamer headed, eventually, to Cape Town, SA. I'm trying to make a comeback on the trumpet after not playing for many years, and I can practice my trumpet out on the deck—the wind and waves blowing away my broken notes and musical misfires. I've always wanted to go to Capetown, for some reason, and at any rate there will be no reason to get anywhere in a hurry. I'm going to need a lot of practice time. Then I'll look for a boat going to Madagascar so that I can see the lemurs, and in say about a year, disembark at Liverpool with a backpack, a trumpet case, and a lemur on my shoulder.

And then make my way straight to Freckleton. I will join the band--if I'm good enough, and if they accept Yanks. I will take my meals at "The Plough" or the "Coach and Horses," along with a pint, or two, or three. I suppose I will have to wear one of those blue blazers when the band performs.

Goodbye, America: you never listened to my advice, and now everything is all screwed up. My feeling are hurt, and Freckleton is calling, and so I'm leaving. Goodbye!

Olive Barber, an Oregon Writer

2009-08-01T18:36:00.000-07:00

Olive Barber of Coos Bay, Oregon wrote two books, The Lady and the Lumberjack (1952) and Meet Me in Juneau (1960) For years she also had a syndicated newspaper column which appeared around the Northwest, and a radio program. Below is a representative column from 1942. Her newspaper editor at this time insisted that she just write about everyday things and stay off the gloomy topic of the war, and she occasionally reminded her readers of the rules under which she wrote. I cannot help but enjoy her wit and humor, homespun style, and easy honesty. It reminds me of growing up on the Southwest Oregon coast, and the lives of the good, common people I knew there.

Lady Bass, Long and Comely
Seems to Lure Away her Man
by Olive Barber 1942

There are some trials a woman just can’t bear alone. That the man’s biggest fish didn’t get away is one of them. Why this one had to depart from the conventional behavior of biggest fish is more than I can understand. Just no respect for tradition, I guess. Maybe one of your strong, rugged individualists who feels rules are made to be broken.

I hope its mother is dead. Surely she must have instilled into its mind the traditional rule that all biggest fish get away. To see her child grow up and thus flip a fin at piscatorial good usage would no doubt have brought her scales of sorrow to the surface. For a biggest fish may be hooked, but it is legendary it must always escape. Maybe the fact that this bass was a lady fish had something to do with it. I have to remember with what ease the man landed me.

Cold in death and with her scales on, she weighed 44 pounds. Not a record breaker for you, maybe, but for the man, yes. Like most fishermen, he is no modest shrinking light, hiding his violet under a bushel. He called attention to her width and the plumpness of her midriff. He accounted these to be attributes divinely fair in her, yet he never composed sonnets over these same characteristics in his wife. Inconsistent, I call it.

He named her Mabel, saying he once had a girl friend by that name who had the same expression in her eye, the same lovely contours. He held a wake over her corpse; provided refreshment to those he could persuade to attend. He took her picture, then had me take some of him clasping Mabel in his arms. Even in death, Mabel was not without her woman’s wiles and kept slipping coyly out of his embrace so that unless he gripped her with a strong man’s passionate intensity, she fell swooning at his feet.

To me, there is something ghoulish about a man getting all flushed and excited over the cadaver of a departed lady; especially one I knew had been almost as cold in life as she was in death. When my lord could find no more pals to come and gaze upon Mabel, he took her to swing from an apple tree limb in the orchard. She was still in the shade of the old apple tree when night fell. Toward morning, a storm came up. Waking the man, I asked him whether he didn’t want to go out and see Mabel with the wind and rain in her hair. Now aren’t men fickle. It seemed he didn’t.

Henry’s Protégé

2009-05-02T12:12:00.000-07:00

I go down to Henry’s shack fairly often, but he never comes up to see me. I live on a hill with a good view for a workingman. I can see an expanse of that great river that has traveled all the way from Canada just to be here, as well as a tiny glimpse of the ocean far enough away to the West that no breakers or birds can be distinguished. Yet I can legitimately say, “the ocean is there,” and point toward a distant, hazy spot.

Henry could walk up here—he’s fit enough. He and his dog Hilda ramble over every beach, dune, and trail, and up every old logging road. Yet when I run into him somewhere, and I haven’t seen him for a while, he acts real hurt.

“Where the hell have you been,” he says, “You don’t want to become a worse recluse than me.” That way, apparently, madness lies.

In reality, Henry’s probably not that much of a recluse. The last time I was over there I found a young woman with Henry. After she had departed, Henry referred to her as his “protégé.” I can’t imagine what a protégé of Henry’s could be a protégé about, unless she aspires to be some kind of proto-curmudgeonette.

Her name is Andrea and just today I ran into her downtown. I really don’t want to make the mistake of describing her physical appearance without any previous preamble, but we could say the she might represent one of the few, but important, things that make an old man lament his lost youth.

But that’s a silly thing to say. I realized it as soon as I said it. There is a real pretense of delicacy in it, as well as a pretense of insouciance. Andrea is hot, okay? But that’s not a situation I can do anything about.

She produced a glorious smile without any effort, and said to me, “Don’t you think that Henry is brilliant?” Then, for what seemed like the longest time, I remained ridiculously unable to speak. Her smile began to change slowly into a look of curiosity. Finally, in order to help me out, she tried again: “How long have you known Henry?”

I had at last come to my senses. “The first time we met we fought over a trike.” And she laughed most merrily.

______________________________________

When I got home I had plenty of things to ruminate about while I looked out at the river and that distant patch of ocean nobody would know is ocean unless I pointed it out. First and foremost, why was I unable to speak?

I think I know why, and it’s pretty shameful: There was some book, or essay, or something, by a British writer that I must have read years ago. I can’t remember who the author was. I’ve tried, but I can’t. He was going on about his lust for American girls back in the days before Britain had the National Health Service. It seems that thoughts about American girls with their perfect teeth, expressed with gleaming smiles, and (he supposed) their easy willingness to give blowjobs, drove him to distraction and near-madness on pretty much a daily or even hourly basis. Let’s hope he recovered from this obsession with the end of WWII rationing and the beginning of NHS dental-care-for-all.

It was this tawdry literary reference I was searching for in the floodlight of Andrea’s smile. Was she sleeping with Henry? He’s about a million years older than her, but when a young woman thinks a man is “brilliant,” who knows what she will do? I’m about as knowledgeable about young women as I am about Latvian folk music.

Is Henry brilliant? I don’t know—how do you define it? Who can say? He knows a lot about some things, I guess, and is no doubt smart enough to keep to those subjects. As long as he keeps his wheels in the ruts, he won’t run off the road.

Henry has all those binders. I’ve watched the volumes grow year after year. The first says “Henry’s Logbook,” and on the other ones are written Book 2, Book 3, etc. Is that where Henry’s brilliance is hiding, the brilliance he’s been able to hide so successfully from me all these years? Does he open the binders for Andrea, and then she sleeps with him?

I’m fed up with my view of an indistinct ocean, so I’m going to drive out there. I want to listen to the breakers and see the seabirds, especially the pelicans. It will clear my head—it always does. While I am walking down the beach I will probably wonder why I bother to think about all these questions, to weigh the pros and cons, to sift through the evidence, to consider the possible alternates, when in the end I’ll only know nothing at all.

The Pipsqueak Syndrome

2009-04-25T12:15:00.000-07:00

Last evening, I walked down to Henry’s shack—I’m not quite sure how I should refer to the derelict place he calls home.

Nevertheless, there was a fire going in the wood stove and a computer screen gleamed in the corner. Henry was angry, which is normal, and finding him so, I registered no surprise.

“I call it the ‘Pipsqueak Syndrome’,” he shouted.

I was clearing books off the spare chair so I could sit down. “Do you?” I said. “Do you now?”

“Don’t sit down yet. Come over here, I want you to read something.”

Actually—I was already beginning to sit down by then, and, with my knees, I didn’t have much choice but to complete the act. But then I dutifully got back up, went to the computer and leaned over to read:

    I do find it perplexing that a bar would be named after Hemingway, a notorious alcoholic whose drinking hastened the slow burn of depression and led to his suicide. What’s next, the Hannibal Lecter Organic Café?

“Hmm,” I said, “the writer compares a real person to a fictional character. Do you think he knows the difference?”

“That’s not the point,” Henry said. “This is a blogger—in the New York Times, no less—sneering down on Hemingway from his pompous perch!”

“I like that,” I said. “Pompous perch—that’s pretty good.”

“And a few days ago there was another blogger—in the Guardian—saying that the writings of John Updike were ‘insipid’!”

“I can see why you’re upset. We need to stop these pipsqueaks before the pipsqueak squeaks again.”

Henry paced back and forth in the small room. His dog Hilda lay on her bed in the corner, gently snoring and twitching, lulled to sleep by the warmth of the soporific stove.

Henry moved back to the computer. “And here is something else he says about Hemingway. He refers to ‘the uncompromising machismo of his characters’.”

“That might be the worst kind of machismo,” I said.

Henry stared at me for a moment and then held out his arm and pointed at the computer. “Have you ever googled the words “Hemingway” and “Macho” together? Have you ever googled the phrase ‘the Hemingway Myth’?”

“No,” I said.

“Well then you’ve missed out on 14,000 smart-asses who think they have exposed the fly in the Hemingway ointment—that he was macho and yet he drank. How macho is it to be a drunk, right? And then they all pat themselves on the back for their brilliant afflatus.”

“What the hell is an afflatus? I said. “Is it like being flatulent?”

“It damn well is in this case. They completely miss the sensitivity in the writing. They miss what Hemingway is all about.”

“Well, I’m afraid I might just have to agree with you,” I said. “It’s like going to the beach and never noticing the ocean. But we’re old. We have a different beach and a different ocean from these young ones. And they naturally want to rise by slaying their elders.”

I thought back to growing up with a WW II father, in a neighborhood of WW II fathers, and I remembered how much they liked the image of the hard-drinking hero who could hold his liquor. They reserved their scorn for the drinker who supposedly couldn’t “hold it,” while conveniently forgetting their own occasional, or not so occasional, failings. And, yes, they liked to hunt and they liked to fish, and they liked boxing. Boxing was about the most popular sport in America at the time, and the names of Dempsey and Joe Louis were famous names. Hemingway didn’t invent this sort of character—they were all around him; machismo in no way distinguished Hemingway from the rest of them. What set him apart was that he found a way to turn his wounds into art.

It was time for me get on home. As I was leaving I said to Henry: “Here’s a little something for your Hemingway defense. Did you know that Hemingway and Marlene Dietrich were friends for decades and he never slept with her? That doesn’t exactly sound like uncompromising machismo, now does it?”

Later that night, I took down a book from my bookshelf, and thumbing through it, found this passage. The writing was not all that bad for a writer who at that time was at the height of his notorious-alcoholic-uncompromising-machismo stage:

    There was no more true elephant, only the gray wrinkled swelling     dead body and the huge great mottled brown and yellow tusks that     they had killed him for. The tusks were stained with the dry blood     and he scraped some of it off with his thumbnail like a dried piece     of sealing wax and put it in the pocket of his shirt. That was all he     took from the elephant except the beginning of the knowledge of     loneliness.
    After the butchery his father tried to talk to him that night by the     fire.
    “He was a murderer you know, Davey,” he had said. “Juma says     nobody knows how many people he has killed.”
    “They were all trying to kill him weren’t they?”
    “Naturally,” his father had said, “with that pair of tusks.”
    “How could he be a murderer then?”
    “Just as you like,” his father had said. “I’m sorry you got so mixed     up about him.”
    “I wish he’d killed Juma,” David had said.
    “I think that is carrying it a little far,” his father said. “Juma’s     your friend you know.”
    “Not anymore”
    “No need to tell him so.”

It’s morning now, and I’ve decided just to let Henry fight his own battles. In fact it’s Saturday, thank God, and I plan to drive up into the Palousie creek drainage. On an old map I found a symbol for a logging camp that would have long ago disappeared, and I’ve marked the spot on my topo map and drawn compass bearings from the nearest road junction. I believe I’ll take along my metal detector, and if the brush isn’t too thick, push through and try to locate the site. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll find something old and interesting.

Henry’s Favorite Word is Dog

2009-03-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

I guess I might think Henry’s favorite word would be something like parsimonious or flugelhorn, or, if he had any serious artistic pretensions, maybe a word like lithe or luminous. But the word is Dog.

To Henry, this word has the weight and substantiality of its rhyme-mate log, and sinks into his consciousness as if his consciousness were a receptive bog. Henry looks intently at his dog, Hilda, (who gets nervous being stared at) and pronounces the word Dog, his voice full and filled with significance.

They are on the beach, and Hilda looks wild from running and sand-excavation. The wind creates chaos in her wet, bedraggled fur.

I encountered them as I was walking the other way, returning from the jetty with the wind at my back and the rain coming steadily. I stopped for a moment to talk.

Henry had to show me Hilda, who stood there in her dishevelment and patiently accepted (as much as could be expected) this sacrifice to the Human-Dog relationship.

“Look,” said Henry, “the slenderness of these legs of Dog, the incredible tendons with such power to leap and run! Somewhere in the sinews of Dog is the discovery that will free us from our dependency on foreign oil!"

"Look at this nose, this masterful instrument, the very nerve center of enlightened Dog! Look at these teeth (pulling back Hilda’s lips), their white efficiency—for sometimes we have to show our teeth in this world, and when we do, they should gleam! Look at all this loose skin around her neck (grabbing a handful), so she might slip the grasp of an attacker!”

I could see the usefulness of that. For me, a substantial bank account would be my surplus neck skin. Then if people persisted in wanting me to work a 40-hour week until I’m old and gray, I would pull loose from their grasp and escape.

Henry summed it up, holding out an open-palmed hand toward Hilda. “Dog,” said Henry.

By this time, Hilda was trotting up the beach, sniffing every kelp and shell. She even put her nose into one of my big shoe prints and recorded its existence—and perhaps a whiff of my existence too.

We parted ways, and I walked on. The rain front was supposed to keep coming in for several more days. I could kind of sense the weight of it, stretching for miles out across the Pacific.

The Great Crow Roost

2009-03-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

None of the guidebooks to Portland direct us to go, just at dawn while it is still dark, to NE 9th Ave between the streets of Hancock and Schuyler. This is a shame, because an astonishing scene takes place here each morning, or at least in winter and spring.

There is a great roost of crows in the trees thereabouts—crows in the hundreds, perhaps at times in the thousands. They blacken every tree in that one block area, and at the time I pass by there, around 6am, they are making a terrible din, a vast chorus of Caw.

Even if I drive through there in my car I will begin to hear them a block away—with the motor running and all the windows rolled up. A little research tells me that crows have been doing roosting like this for thousand of years.

So they all gather together to spend the night, coming from who knows how far away, and then return to their preferred territory in the morning—although not before the most raucous socializing.

When I pass by again in the afternoon, I often do not see a single crow. This would be a good time for a real estate agent who might have a property in the area to bring through clients—hoping they don’t notice the crow-splattered sidewalks and car windows.

Crowded Dreams

2009-03-14T18:44:00.000-07:00

My dreams have a population-density that would make Hong Kong look like a ghost town. Cue the lone tumbleweed to roll down the street.

Why all these dream-people coming at me, and getting in the way of everything I want to do? Why do they ask me questions that would baffle Hume and reduce Spinoza to tears?

In dreams, I’m always trying to get somewhere via some mode of transportation: dream planes, dream trains, dream buses, dream John Deere tractors— you name it.

There is never anywhere to sit. All the seats are either taken, or being jealously guarded by large and sweltering dream-people.

It’s a wonder that I don’t wake up each morning more exhausted than when I went to sleep.

I’m not exactly asking for empty, verdant meadows filled with sunflowers, where downy, gentle fawns sniff noses with bunny rabbits.

Let me just dream-walk down a muddy road through an Oregon clearcut in peace. Or I’ll hang out in a vacant lot dreaming with the dandelions, if that’s all that is available. I need to get some rest.

I Miss Winter!

2008-05-04T19:06:00.000-07:00

What if all the people who are presently rushing into parks or playgrounds to play baseball or soccer, on this fine sunny morning, would instead assemble to demand affordable health care for all Americans?

Sounds simple, but will it ever happen? We Americans are so docile, and so accepting of our decline. The parking lots of the ball fields are filling up with our great gas-guzzling behemoths. Batter up!

In winter, I can walk nearly alone through the parks. The ducks recognize me (I believe they actually do) and come rushing over. I have been known to carry cracked corn in my pockets.

And I have admired the recent weather-- the unpredictability of it: Slashing hailstorms giving way to glorious skies. I miss the quiet of winter.

If only the noise of summer were that of America trying to reclaim its ancient promise, not just sound and fury, signifying nothing.

A Counterbalance, Perhaps. to Nostalgia

2008-01-20T12:37:00.000-08:00

There are the horrors of dropsy, consumption, cholera, and Bright’s disease. Bowels are being distinctly treasonous: Death by Inflammation of the bowels, Obstruction of the bowels, Paralysis of the bowels, Constriction of the bowels, Inaction of the bowels, and Strangulation of the bowels. Then, the deadly fevers arrive to extract their pound of flesh— scarlet, malarial, typhoid.

It seems God is on quite a recruiting drive for little Angels, and sends down Croup, diphtheria, measles, and plenty of Whooping Cough to enlist the little children, at 5 years old, 1 year and 3 months, seven days.

     1 year old girl congestion of lungs. whooping cough.
     dead before I got there.

Well, all this is from a database of Causes of Death in the 1880s, in a rural farming region of the Midwest. It is a beautiful place (I’ve been there) with rolling hills, and when perched on those hills, you look out on the quilted farms, grain silos, and church steeples. At every road junction is another Grover’s Corner.

La Grippe was there, and took the young and the old, without displaying any noticeable preference. And there is evidence of Despair in paradise: Suicide by hanging, suicide by gunshot, suicide by strychnia. Countless suicides.

     The contents of a loaded shotgun fired by his own hand.
     blowing out his brains. suicide.
     Body given to his wife and family.

Nostalgia is seductive, the irresistible dream of a better time and place.

     Too much whisky & froze to death
     some time between the hours of 7pm & 7 am
     on the night of the 20th Jan 1885

     uncertain & complicated. He took a heavy chill & died
     in it lasting 2 or 3 hr. He had only the one chill.
     It might be called congestive chill He had been
     drinking alcohol freely for 5 weeks

Maybe after a few drinks, folks could just not stay away from the railroad tracks, and the excitement that the train might bring in.

     Struck by engine. Thrown 80 ft. Picked up dead.
     Bones of legs, arms & shoulders all broken.

     Run over by the cars and cut into by the pelvis,
     both legs being cut off

And into this agricultural, Jeffersonian utopia, lots of good, traditional American violence:

     Drunk & killed by injuries inflicted by party or parties
     unknown. (Husband in pen.) brains beat out with
     a hammer & part of a nail murdered

     murder by being knocked down and jumped on

     some blunt instrument piercing his brain by one
     in the hands of Gerard Specht & Johnny Newman

In the march forward of highly dubious “progress,” for everything gained something is lost. And, let’s face it, vice versa:

  dysentery morphine habit of 40 years standing.
  blow on head from hay fork. kicked by a horse.
  run over by RR train No. 4 or struck by Engine & killed.
  suicide, shot himself with pistol.
  poison administered by his own hand.
  decay of nature from age.
  shot himself with a gun (& he died).
  tonsillitis tetanus coma & convulsions.
  Cut his throat When I found him with a razor.
  stuck with a club on right eye by hand of unknown person.
  poison, vegetable narcotic accidentally taken & name unknown.
  fell from flat car inside of track & run over by the cars.
  poison Took corrosive sublimate by mistake.
  burned by accidental explosion of blasting powder.
  Enteric peritonitis cause by violence. Gored by a cow.

  fell from flat car inside of track & run over by the car body

            given to her father & friends.

To a Blank Page

2008-01-05T18:04:00.000-08:00

Ah, Blank Page! Let’s have a couple of drinks,
   Old foe, just you and I! The amber shade
Of whiskey might suit your pleasure (methinks)
   And ease your awful whiteness, or persuade
A sound or two from out your void? Dear Sphinx,
   Why love this field of silence you have made?
But I see your point: we think ourselves clever,
And few of us are apt to shut up ever.

Blank Page, let’s have some laughs and lighter hues!
   Relax— that’s laughs, not laughable contentions.
Not arguments, not principles, not news--
   But comic words might slip through your preventions?
Or would you care to climb and see the views?
   The mountains here are vast in their dimensions.
We’ll clamber over rocks, and sticks, and clods,
And ne’er attempt to claim we know the Gods.

True, there is scarce to tempt you in our time.
   Page, you would retire, then nothing more?
You knew Milton, and Wordsworth in his prime--
   No wonder when I come you slam the door!
You glance suspiciously, as if a crime
   I‘ve committed. Then Page, what if I swore
To write only of life’s eddying surface
Without meaning, or some befuddled purpose?

Grant me then this space, provisionally?
   Page, you eye me blankly, wanting me gone,
Plan my destruction by setting me free,
   And so consent, all objections withdrawn!
Clever joke, Page! (with a hint of cruelty)--
   You give me a world to scratch upon
With my antique poetry, pale and wan,
In my suspect Spring and dubious dawn.

Damn, it’s lonely out here! Hello? Hello?
   It seems Blank Page pack’t up, then disappeared
As I made ruts and tracks in his pure snow,
   Clumsily, exactly what he disdained and feared!
And now You, Reader, gaping there to know
   What the hell I’m about--don’t stand so near!
You make me want to run from you, and hide
From this emptiness without--and inside.

The emptiness is inescapable.
   Yet rain seems to recite, wind to write music,
And the ocean is so seascapeable
   To the painter! Storms seem to howl in Gaelic
Or some tongue, lost, and yet unbreakable--
   Or is that of the mind, kill’t by a pinprick?
Over and over I feel hope, and then
My hope fails, and the page goes blank again.

Glaswegians on a Train

2008-01-01T09:53:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, on a trip to England, I was riding a British Rail train north from London to Penrith, where I intended to catch a bus to Keswick in the English Lake District. It was a simple itinerary, and therefore, unlikely to play itself out smoothly.

We had made it most of the way to Penrith when the train came to a stop—and there we sat, silent upon the rails. The local passengers rolled their eyes and shook their heads in a show of resigned, philosophic disgust. Eventually a PA system broke in, clotted with static, and something resembling a voice growled from the speakers. Deep within that unintelligible rasp, I thought I recognized the words “track troobles.”

The phrase left me with an funny image of unruly tracks bent on causing mischief. So why do tracks get troublesome? Are their grievances justified? When will their “troubles” be over so that we can continue our journey? The explanation “track troubles” can mean anything, and therefore means nothing. That makes it the perfect explanation to give to the public who for some reason still seem to half-heartedly expect an explanation in cases like this.

It was not long before the train started to move again, but then a noisy altercation broke out between rail cars—and I could see it all through the car door window. Several youths were suddenly there, berating another young man, shoving him, slapping him, roughing him up. All this was accompanied by a symphony of profanity beyond anything I had ever heard. I noticed, next, that my fellow passengers had become rather intensely interested in their fingernails, or in picking lint from their clothes, or in examining the dreary, track-side brambles through the windows of the moving train.

They young men were Glasgow toughs, no doubt, for Glasgow, Scotland, was where this rail line terminated. Their language was nearly indecipherable. The only words I really recognized were “fooken” this and “fooken” that. The ringleader was a near-emaciated Grotesque—all gnarly and tattooed, shrieking out curses and threats and performing (because it did seem like a performance) a towering rage, as if he were an obscene star-tenor in a hellish opera.

No doubt the poor victim had broken a code, probably some minor thing, but enough to trigger an insane rage within the Ringleader in whose world all this cruelty and madness undoubtedly made sense. It was tense and silent inside our rail car as the passengers worried that the toughs might turn their attention to us. There was no sign of any security people on the train, and minute after minute went by.

Then, finally, help arrived—not some crack security team with bulging guys in wraparound sunglasses. The help was not there to “defuse the situation,” or if that failed, to taser everyone in sight. It was just one man in a rail uniform, and he was not big, not tall, not strong—and he was not young. Nevertheless, he was pissed.

He waded in to those young men without hesitation, wagging his finger in their faces, and soon had them scattered to the winds. It was a miraculous display of courage and moral indignation: not on his train. Later, the little train man passed through our car gathering up litter and putting it into a plastic bag. Just another shift in the life of a worker who does his job.

I wish to hell I could afford to travel more. I like being in another country—a country not my own. I am just an observer then, and a bit of a ghost. It’s not my country, and I have no right, and limited inclination, to judge that country or it’s people. I am a step further detached from the raw scenes of human life. What a relief! What a beautiful thing it is—the anonymity, the witnessing of life at a remove.

Some will condemn this kind of attitude, but for me it is the only path to even a glimpse of transcendence. Sure, I will still help old ladies across the street, and do my part where it is needed. But I’ve seen the human race at work for more than a few decades now, and I know it goes on this way forever. I like to move among them, and hear their voices, and see their careening parade, but I keep my distance. It is distance, distance that I mean to honor here.

Zeitgeist Cantos: Alberto Gonzales

2007-04-25T19:39:00.000-07:00

Alberto Gonzales is such a nice guy,
Sincere--and respectful--though not very tall--
He swears that he never would tell us a lie!
Though there could be a few things he can’t ...uh ...recall--
But meetings are boring, spent twirling your tie,
Dreaming of Maui (or that girl down the hall).
So don’t act like Al is some Hannibal Lecter,
If he sticks in the craw of Senator Specter.

Now Senator Sessions is shaking his head!
Kennedy seems florid and about to faint--
His cheeks look like bags that are stuffed full of bread.
Don’t know the Geneva Conventions are quaint ?
Get thee to a military tribunal! Dead
Hitler, Stalin, Caligula--Al ain’t.
He’s just one more face in the culture’s decline,
Who can’t tell the truth, and will never resign.

The Literary Geese

2007-02-13T06:39:00.000-08:00

At SE Portland’s Westmoreland Park, the water birds cavort in a turmoil of flying, diving, dabbling, swimming, skittering, scudding, splashing-- not to mention various promiscuous shenanigans that would make Hugh Hefner blush! Yet--did you ever notice, at that park, a gaggle of geese that keeps mainly to itself, that comports itself in a more serious and, even, literary manner?

These are the Literary Geese of Westmoreland Park. They stand apart in a riparian clearing between the reeds and bushes. They stand apart from the querulous ducks, the opportunistic sea gulls, and the other foraging waterfowl.

Did you know that geese have a literary tradition as well as a literary canon?

It is in the oral tradition, of course. They flock together to repeat and memorize the great texts of Goosedom. This is what that gaggle of geese is doing at Westmoreland Park--the ones that stand off by themselves. They recite, in goose, the great works of their culture.

The venerable texts of antiquity are declaimed (needless to say), such as The Tower of Dabble. Yet it is perhaps in the novel form that Goose Literature reaches its highest achievement. One need only cite The Scarlet Feather, Fluttering Heights, The Old Goose and the Sea, Quiet Grows the Down, The Great Gooseby, and Wings of the Goose to indicate the literary riches here.

And then there is that mammoth tome--certainly a challenge to the oral tradition in itself-- War and Geese.

So next time you visit Westmoreland Park, you might enjoy observing, from a respectful distance, the Literary Geese who gather there.

Quote from Thoreau

2007-02-12T07:56:00.000-08:00

“It is desirable that a man...live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.”

In this jabbering, possession-seeking world, are there any Thoreauians around anymore?

Do Dreams Make Any Less Sense Than Life Itself (Part 2)

2007-02-11T16:37:00.000-08:00

Sure, in conscious life, things “seem” to happen. You show up for work at the usual time and see the usual people. Work is done. You grow older. Tangible things occasionally appear to have been accomplished that could never have been accomplished in dreams. Right?

Yet things are accomplished in dreams too. A castle built upon a lily pad! The Living sporting freely with the Dead! Try that in real life.

I don’t see any more evidence for one than I do the other.

Still, I can imagine some objector sitting across a table from me (someone who finds my ideas preposterous) pulling out a hatchet--and chopping off my little finger!

“There,” he would cry, “do you still think dreams are as real as conscious life.”?

And as the pain invades my body and my blood spurts out upon the table with every beat of my heart, I might need to concede that he had made, at least, a neat, rhetorical point, and had illustrated it effectively.

But convinced? Convinced?

Margaret's Letter from Ireland

2007-02-09T07:30:00.000-08:00

"I've adjusted easily to the reversed driving requirements and love the slow, lazy pace of walking incredibly small brick streets. Everyone here whistles, walks arm-in-arm and says 'Thanks a million' at the smallest kindness. Now that Broadband has arrived, I could imagine living here at least part time."

Today's Quote from The Brothers Karamazov

2006-12-29T11:51:00.000-08:00

"I've been sitting here now, and do you know what I was saying to myself? If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if I were struck even by all the horrors of human disillusionment--still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I've drunk it all!"

Ivan, Book 5, Chapter 3.

Dead Christmas

2006-12-04T18:25:00.000-08:00

Funny how so many Christmas songs are sung by people who are quite dead. Although they sound enthusiastic, they will not be experiencing any holiday cheer this season, since their season has passed.

Nat Cole will not be roasting any chestnuts. Mel Torme (who wrote that song) will not be roasting any either. Bing Crosby’s Christmas will not be white, or otherwise, and he will not be having either a merry little christmas or a large, dreadful one. “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” Andy Williams sings. He's not dead, but if he were there would be no year this year for Andy, and this time, no time.

No one ever actually asks us if we want to listen to Christmas music, do they? No poll is ever taken. It is assumed, irrationally, that we all want to hear Christmas music quite badly--and then it is rammed down our throats without mercy--on the radio, in stores, on the street, etc.

Grandma won’t be celebrating. She got run over by a reindeer.

And by now those folks from Mannheim may have been run over by a steamroller.

The chipmunks: they’re road kill.

At least Elvis was having a blue Christmas. He didn’t pretend to be happy.

“Christmas is the Real Day of the Dead,” She Said.

2006-11-25T15:32:00.000-08:00

This was spoken as she swung around on the bar stool, and I was caught somewhat off-guard with my face buried in the newspaper and my fingers playing along the rim of my whiskey glass.

“How so?” I said, straightening up and taking a sip from the glass. I wasn’t quite ready to look at the eyes that were boring into me.

“How so?” she mimiced. “Because ghosts come home, because home is fucking not there anymore, and the ghosts don’t know where to sit. They wander around wondering just where the fuck to sit. Don’t you get it?”

I took another drink. I had been reading an article about the recent downturn in the housing market, and I was only half finished. I looked down at the paper.

“I guess ghosts have issues,” I said.

She looked at me for a long time. Finally I turned and glanced at her. Not much there that could stand up to a high wind: thin branches reaching out from a defoiliated tree. Yet she had long, dark hair, running with beautiful veins of gray.

“Ghosts don’t have issues,” she said. “They’ve suffered quite enough. WE have fucking issues. I have fucking issues. YOU have fucking issues.”

“The difference is--I make an effort not to let mine get the best of me,” I said.

She stared at me intensely, and then her eyes seemed to moisten. She spun in her chair and crossed the room, sliding into a booth occupied by a group of people who were engrossed in conversation.

I finished my drink, put on my coat and hat, rolled up the newspaper, and stepped outside. A gust of wind blew my hat off and it went into the gutter as cars sped by on the wet road. “Dammit,” I said.

Sure. There was an Oregon town stained by mill smoke. I can’t prove it existed--just take my word for it, okay? The rain was a real power on earth, and men came home from work muddy and beat. I can’t even talk about the weight of the hills and the terrible denseness of the timber, or how fog could so easily smother everything and everywhere. “Work” was something quite different,then, than it is now--more of a struggle to conquer, or survive, and all entangled with the weather and the seasons, and the pathway of the sun, and its settings and its risings.

Sure. People seemed large then. A hero was someone who cut the most trees, loaded the most trucks, plowed the most acres. Heroes were people you knew--not some studied or preposterous image that flickers on a screen. And you should have seen the work the women did--longer hours and more work than was expected of any man.

You simply can’t remember without summoning all those ghosts and all they gave of themselves. The woman in the bar was right, or at least she spoke the truth of her heart’s disconsolations. Christmas is the day the ghosts are most apt to return. We should buy presents, presents of flowers, only for them.

Christmas, as they say, is for kids, or for new families, or for those others who can live in a simple and uncontaminated Present while rarely remembering anything.

For the rest of us, our hearts will be with the ghosts on Christmas Day. New Year’s Eve, we will have a few drinks, and New Year’s Day we will get up early in the gray dawn and move on.