“Karma owes you a talking puppy, wings, and an extra birthday.”
- a friend, October 2009

“Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness.”
- Dar Williams

photo credit: Jason Permenter

One day last fall a woman was waiting for me when I came home from walking with Sawyer. She used to be my neighbor but had moved away months prior, and we had seldom even exchanged pleasantries, though I did at one point jump-start her car. After an uncomfortably long stretch of small talk she asked if I’d drive with her to Raleigh to pick up a couch and bring it back to her new apartment. Right then. Now, I’m used to being asked to haul things in my truck, and I have trouble saying no when anyone asks for my help, but random and immediate solicitations by relative strangers pinged even my this-lady-might-be-crazy radar.

I declined, but offered to help on a day when this woman wasn’t showing up unannounced on my doorstep and making absurd requests. That’s how I found myself in a sketchy part of Durham at a perpetual yard sale, waiting on my former neighbor to show up (half an hour late), then waiting for her to pick a couch (the one she’d seen on Craigslist wasn’t up to snuff), then waiting for her to haggle in broken English (she borrowed the guy’s laptop to look for a better deal online), then watching her nearly walk away because she wasn’t sure she wanted any of the couches. I won’t say I was rewarded for my patience, but she did pop a button off her pants as we finally unloaded the couch at her apartment and tried for a comically long time to pretend nothing had happened. It’s hard, I noted, to hold up your end of a couch when one arm is preoccupied with holding your pants up.

When I tell this story, I am sometimes scolded for being too kind. It has been suggested, in jest and in earnest, that I am due some cosmic reward. I don’t like to think about karma because if there’s a Thumb on the scales I don’t want to end up resenting It. It’s hard enough figuring out the right thing to do without trying to keep an eye on a ledger that I have no hope of understanding. I don’t want to coast on the goodwill from good deeds any more than I want to ask “Why me?” when struck by random tragedy. Besides, by my own measure I tend to fall short of what it takes to be a decent human being, and that wouldn’t bode well for me in the karma department, would it?

Hold It High For Me

In January I applied for a job. The one I had was soul-crushing and had sapped just about all of the creative energy that I had to spare, and the one I applied for was forwarded to me by several friends, all saying how perfect a match I was for it. Even I had to admit that I was pretty amazingly qualified for it: the ideal candidate, according to the job description, “speaks geek as well as Chicago and is fond of both pencils and pixels.” I wrote a stirring cover letter, beginning a months-long courtship.

Four months, three interviews, two editorial tests, and about 5,000 words later, I was offered the job. It felt like winning the lottery. Like learning to fly. Like going to college all over again. Like I was in over my head. If there’s a jackpot, I hit it. Karma puppy has licked my face. I am lucky. I am blessed.

Maybe my last job took more out of me than I thought, or maybe The Sun puts something in the water, or maybe I was always deficient in certain vitamins of the spirit, but change is afoot beyond spending my days in a new office full of amazing people doing important work.

People say, “You look younger.” Or, “Have you met someone?” Or, “If you keep looking younger every time I see you it’s gonna get weird in a few years.” I don’t know what to tell them, except that it’s hard not to live a little more fully when you spend a lot of time with ideas that are begging you to do so. I don’t attribute this just to a change of workplace, however compelling; I don’t have a name for whatever else is at play, either. My engine was primed…there just wasn’t any gas in the tank.

I have always been, I think, the quiet, deliberative, self-effacing person you know (if you know me). The kind of engagement I crave has shaped the kinds of interactions I’m comfortable with–an intimate dinner party, yes; a rock concert, not so much. Establishing capital-R Relationships has also been tricky. I don’t go to church, and I find online dating a soulless prospect lacking the inherent mystery, beauty, and chaos of life (and of relationships). Nor am I going to approach someone in a bar: for one thing, it’s too loud to have a conversation; beyond that, I think the navigation of social expectations in that setting is lousy with the kind of potential misinterpretations that I find excruciating and excruciatingly boring. I resist putting people in a position where they have to say no to me. So I don’t ask for help a lot, or for things that I might really want. I can talk myself out of almost anything involving another person by persuading myself that there’s likely no reciprocity.

Of late, though, some of these anxieties have eased. I am more receptive to new opportunities than I’ve been since I started college in 1997. My life is joyous. It takes some getting used to. It’s discomfiting for an introvert to not find his inner workings familiar. With this comes a tremendous urge to share this energy, to be kinder to my friends, to share my happiness, to pay it forward, as they say. So I’ve been saying “yes” to every opportunity that’s offered–routine social engagements like dinner parties, or movies, or drinks with friends that I often felt too drained to participate in over the last couple years. All that activity feels like it’s a correction of balance, a restoration of equilibrium long out of whack. Like the mermaid sings, “I want to be where the people are.” It seems I’ve figured out how to short-circuit the habit of second-guessing myself that usually keeps me confined to a teensier box.

It is exhilarating, of course, but it also feels a little more unrestrained than I am typically comfortable with. I’m not really worried about myself–I’m due a few lumps, and to maintain balance this joy has to be leavened with some new pain. But because I have become somewhat unpredictable to myself, I worry that I might be more capable of doing or saying things that could harm other people. It’s foolproof to be the wallflower, always observing, never engaging; it’s risky to reach out and touch people without knowing how fragile they are or how a twitch of my finger might inflict unintentional harm.

I realize I’m describing the way humans interact as if it’s a new and unique condition: late-onset humanity, maybe. I’ll get used to it. For several weeks I suspected that this is all just the first blush of a new job, a new opportunity, and that I’d settle back into a routine, maybe a little perkier for my trouble but not significantly changed. But I’m beginning to think of it all as a pipe that got unclogged and now flows with a fiercely won, indomitable energy, not a box whose clasp got broken and could be re-sealed.

photo credit: darkmatter

I don’t know whether this is all a long-building wave of good intention that finally crested or just a random point in a random cycle. The thing about mystery is once you try to name it, it’s a little less magic. In my new boss’s office is a sign that says “Be Kinder Than Necessary.” If this is a wave, I’m trying to do my part to help the next person catch it. All I know is, it’s nice to see you again, world. I’ll try to keep my head above water.

Acoustic footnotes:

• My Friends by Dar Williams

• Lantern by Josh Ritter

• Part of Your World by Little Mermaid

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Note: Let’s call this one “by request,” sort of. Some people with whom I’ve been corresponding wanted to know how my brain works and how it got that way. My response is an attempted abbreviation. For a fuller account, I refer you to the complete archives and all future posts of this very blog.

Everything is broken. We have ravaged the planet in ways that all but assure our own demise. In case somehow our gluttony does not eradicate us and we sidestep the many small accidents that could crush our frail forms, we tirelessly invent new and exciting ways to kill each other on purpose. Our ability to communicate is hampered by a shortage of meaningful public discourse and a dwindling attention span. The few who can still find beauty and respond to it are crushed by the many who are held rapt by modern bread and circuses, who perceive any challenge to this unsustainable way of life as an absolute indictment. Every move we make is checkmate. Every conscientious act requires a battered but willful optimism. Cormac McCarthy describes this world beautifully in Blood Meridian: “The truth about the world…is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it from birth and thereby bled it of all its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a muddied field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.” My preoccupation is with how to live in such a world.

I am broken too. Empathy in the face of our precarious position feels like the only recourse, but it is crippling to expose myself to both the pain and the apathy of other people. Kurt Vonnegut seems to concur: “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind” (from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater). For those of us to whom the impulse toward kindness comes easily, the reward is a generative energy that smooths the bumpy road. Those of us who mistrust the motives of other people’s kindness carry a constant, taxing wariness. I need all the energy I can muster.

We cannot make our way alone, and I look to the companions in my life for many strengths. The songwriter Dar Williams says “I act like I have faith, and like that faith never ends, but I really just have friends.” I come from a large family, but I am not comfortable among them. Their fundamentalist world has no room for faith in anything other than God (or even other ways of worshiping the God they do accept), but I hold my friends as dear as any spiritual guide. Dar also says, in the same song, “Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness.” However well I may think I know myself, it is important to me that the people with whom I share my life also know me. We cannot give each other the solace of kindness until we have tried to understand ourselves and each other.

It is a kindness to share our stories, to help each other piece together our own meager truths. This is why we write. Annie Dillard warns us: ”[T]he impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.” This may be why we burrow into memory, not to hide in the sand, but for clues that tell us how we should live. We have nothing else to share.

Knowing each other isn’t as simple as sharing our stories. We get lost in the translation, as Marilynne Robinson observes in Gilead: “Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable—which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, intraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us.” Though perception is fallible, even with someone as articulate as Robinson telling the story, I choose to welcome my people ‘round my own sputtering campfire instead of holding them, suspect, at arm’s length.

Since misperception is inevitable, any of my actions can have any meaning, depending on who perceives them. What is truth to me might be anathema to someone else. This does not stop any of us from seeking universal answers to the big questions, often with results as absurd as the questions themselves. Douglas Adams had a particular flair for demonstrating this absurdity. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the answer to the great question of life, the universe, and everything is revealed to be “forty-two.” The problem, of course, is that we don’t know what the Great Question is.

Eric Taylor, a songwriter from Texas, thought the Great Question might be whether or not God exists, and he went looking for Him in the desert. Miles from civilization, alone and still godless at the end of his quest, one night he dug a fire pit and unearthed a baby blue Donald Duck diaper pin buried in the sand. Is the diaper pin God? He is unwilling to deny the possibility. I wouldn’t like to guess either. Eric is prone to exaggeration, and I’m not certain any part of his story ever even took place. It wouldn’t matter if it hadn’t. We still need fables, too. So much of the information I receive is deliberately misleading–processed through filters of advertising or partisan politics or false piety–that I think it becomes habitual to assume all information is misleading. Those who seek to share something true with me have to work around this almost unconscious suspiscion, skirting the facts, if there are such things, to make another kind of point. “Trust me,” pleads Jeanette Winterson in The Passion, “I’m telling you stories.” Like Eric, she then tells an absurd story in which the metaphorical becomes real—the narrator is asked to reclaim a lover’s heart, which is in a literal jar on a literal shelf in the home of a former lover. I trust stories that are as askew as our off-kilter world. I don’t trust anyone claiming to have access to absolute truth.

It doesn’t help that the answers don’t have to make any sense. Walt Whitman in “Song of Myself” issues this challenge: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; (I am large—I contain multitudes.)” I’d like to be so comfortable with contradictions. In many ways I am, but I wonder: if I were truly at peace with the multitudes, would I still be searching for answers? I think so—I think each new answer joins a chorus, which unlike those of Greek theater is unchoreographed and incoherent, some members juggling fire, some shouting Tourettic from the stage, and some sitting with their knees pulled to their chests and blankets over their heads, rocking back and forth under the nearest tree.

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For most of The Aughts I compiled my favorite songs onto CDs and gave them to a few friends as Christmas presents. My tastes skew sharply toward acoustic folk music so there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of anything that I like. A few of my people love it too, though, and they tend to be less diligent (obsessive) about finding the new stuff. That’s where I come in.

I claim no authority. These are just the songs that opened my eyes the widest from 2000-2009. Because I’d never stop if I didn’t impose some kind of limit, I have picked songs that fit on one CD (plus some honorable mentions).

If you like any of them, support the people who made them. And tell me what I missed!

Tanglewood Tree

but love is a light in the sky,
and an unspoken lie
and a half-whispered prayer

From Tanglewood Tree,
Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer
–Signature Sounds

Buy the Album

The Aughts are the Dave Carter years. I have written elsewhere about Dave and Tracy, and about this song in particular. Those who know me may be a little surprised to learn that it’s a love song. When I complain about sentimentality, this is what I have in mind as an alternative. Listen for the fierce truth of Dave Carter’s lyrics. Listen for Tracy Grammer’s beautiful harmonies and exultant violin. Listen for the whispered Hendrix lines at the end. Just listen; I can’t think of a better song, period.

Ironbound

Play Ironbound

I never liked me much but I tried for you
I never held my breath for anything good
so won’t you slow down.

From Time Spent Lost, Katie Sawicki

Buy the Album

“Ironbound” is in one respect another love song. It should be a testament to its greatness that I am willing to puncture my curmudgeonly reputation on its behalf. I love it because it acknowledges how riddled with self-doubt we can sometimes be, and how uplifting it can be to be believed in, whatever the context. Probably a happier song than “Tanglewood Tree,” but don’t get used to it.

Gentle Arms of Eden

this is my home, this is my only home
this is the only sacred ground that I have ever known

From Drum Hat Buddha, Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer
–Signature Sounds

Buy the Album

A creation story set to music that doesn’t require you to believe anything in particular–except that music has the power to create. In 3 minutes we go from an unpopulated universe to single-celled organisms to the industrial revolution to war. Like all of Dave Carter’s songs, it is reassuring and a little wistful.

Shirt

Play Shirt

and it’s the same old jar of car keys by the door
the same old scuffed up floor
the same old thirst for more until they put you in the dirt

From Kitchen Radio, Peter Mulvey
–Signature Sounds

Buy the Album

In Boston I attended a concert celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Signature Sounds record label, which is, um, well represented on this list. Peter Mulvey was one of several new discoveries that night. At one point I played “Shirt” so often that someone gave me my own corduroy shirt, which survived moving from Boston back to North Carolina but was no match for Sawyer’s teeth. The song is a cheerful account of a mid-life crisis, through which the smallest of comforts (like the familiarity of a well-worn shirt) are the only meaningful ones.

Oast Houses

Play “Oast Houses”

I could show you stuff ‘round here perchance might make you pause
I could take you walking
Show you certain things that move like wind upon the conifers
Hear the seasons whispering

From Broken Yellow, Jack Harris

Buy the Album

A few years ago the Dave Carter mailing list lit up with conversation about a young Welshman who was the hit of the Kerrville Folk Festival. He didn’t seem to have an album or a website though, so I promptly forgot all about him. Some time later I discovered that Jack did have a CD, and that Eric Taylor had produced it. The only way to order it was to send Jack’s mom (still in Wales) $23 by mail. “Oast Houses” is one of several songs on Broken Yellow that someone as young as Jack Harris had absolutely no business being able to write. Its language is exotic because Jack is from Wales and has a massive vocabulary. The acoustic guitar is like a slow-building thunderstorm. The lyrics are as much Annie Dillard as they are folk singer. Listen well.

Harrisburg

Some say that man is the root of all evil
Others say God’s a drunkard for pain
Me I believe that the Garden of Eden
Was burned to make way for a train

From Golden Age of Radio, Josh Ritter
–Signature Sounds

Buy the Album

I’d heard of Josh before I moved to his adopted home state of Massachusetts, but didn’t actually listen to him until Joan Baez covered his song “Wings” and I had to hear more. “Harrisburg” is as close as a song can get to being a train, Johnny Cash be damned. You listen to it and you think it has seeped as far into your brain as it can go, but then six months later it breaks through another barrier in your consciousness and you start walking to its beat for an entire summer.

Revelator

Queen of fakes and imitators
Time’s the revelator

From Time (The Revelator), Gillian Welch
–Acony Records

Buy the Album

In 2001 Gillian Welch opened an epic album called Time (The Revelator) with a song that I’ve been trying to unravel for lo these many years. It is full of history and ancient tones, and the songs are interwoven and essential to each other (and to you). “Revelator” is probably the most dense of these. I keep nibbling on it like my fourth slice of despair-flavored cheesecake.

Train Home

Now is what can be,
all the rest is wait and see,
those prophets never hear that cosmic laughter.

Train Home, Chris Smither
Hightone Records

Buy the Album

Chris Smither has made a career out of finding new ways to espouse his keen-eyed philosophy of having no idea what the world is really about (and being okay with that). He packs a lot of words into his songs, so you’ll probably want to read along as you listen. I moved to Boston just weeks after this CD came out and was lucky enough to attend an album release party. I might have hated living in that city but I found a lot of incredible music while I was there.

Northbound 35

It’s just flashes that we own

Little snapshots

Made from breath and from bone

And out on the darkling plain alone

They light up the sky

From Stripping Cane, Jeffrey Foucault<
–Signature Sounds

Buy the Album

Early in The Aughts I got an email from a guy from Paris who runs a mailing list I was on, suggesting that I go see Jeffrey Foucault since he was playing in North Carolina. He didn’t realize that the drive from Asheville to the coast would be about 7 hours. I skipped the show but ordered the CD, which was a fantastic debut. A couple years later, Jeffrey released another album, with “Northbound 35″ on it. Of all the songs on this list, this one would fare best if you had to strip away the performance and just read the text as poetry. It is line after line of insight.

Happy Endings

Play Happy Endings

Carl had a way with the cotton,
Mother had a way with words,

And I had my way with a red-haired Catholic girl
.

From Scuffletown, Eric Taylor

Buy the Album

Eric Taylor’s albums are as dense and rich as novels, full of broken people and compassion. This song might as well be a novel in its own right. At the very least, it’s a Raymond Carver short story with fingerpicked guitar for punctuation. I’ve been listening to “Happy Endings” since 2001 and it’s still unfolding for me.

Wisteria

Play “Wisteria”

If we turn off the radio
I’ve only to close my eyes
And the wind in the sycamores
Will carry me home

From Somewhere Near Paterson, Richard Shindell
–Signature Sounds

Buy the Album

“Wisteria” is a beautiful testament to the power of memory to become overwhelming. I want to curl up inside of Richard Shindell’s guitar and listen to him play this song over and over again until I die. And then I would like to buy Richard a puppy.

After All

And when I chose to live
There was no joy
It’s just a line I crossed
I wasn’t worth the pain my death would cost
So I was not lost or found

From The Green World, Dar Williams
–Razor & Tie

Buy the Album

There aren’t a lot of songs about a subject as taboo as the contemplation of suicide, which is a horrifying thought if music is something that helps you make sense of the world. This song is a frank argument against suicide for those who aren’t religious or who are childless. Dar Williams excels at a certain grim kind of empathy that acknowledges how truly dark and alone the world can get, but she always brings along breadcrumbs in case you want to follow her back into the light.

Mother, I Climbed

Play Mother, I Climbed

sticks and stones might break this body and words might wound my soul
and phantom visions fly me where the faithful fear to go
but when this story’s over and my sun is sinkin’ low
open up your gate, marianna

From Flower of Avalon, Tracy Grammer
–Signature Sounds

Buy the Album

This song is a prayer for grace. The speaker’s fruitless search for the comfort that is supposed to come once one finds something to believe is only half of this story–it is even more important that she never ceases looking for something to invest her faith in. This pilgrim, who has embraced as many kinds of religion as she knows how, and found them somehow incongruous with her spirit, is still hopeful, still open to mystery. I try to be mindful of this in my own frustrating encounters with those who claim to speak for higher powers.

Mercy of the Fallen

There’s the weak
And the strong
And the beds that have no answers
And that’s where I may rest my head tonight

From The Beauty of the Rain, Dar Williams
–Razor & Tie

Buy the Album

Dar Williams’ songs about humility and the importance of finding your people and keeping them in your life always seem to come just when I need a reminder. Sometimes what you need more than anything else is an honest acknowledgment that someone else has been as far down as you are, and that sometimes that’s where you need to be. I think it just makes it easier to live with confusion when you have something in your life that is up front about how the world doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Here’s to having, and trying to be, humble friends.

Transit

The merge from the turnpike was murder, but its never a cinch

It was Friday at five, and no one was giving an inch

They squeezed and they edged and they glared

Half them clearly impaired by rage or exhaustion

The rest were just touchy as hell

From Somewhere Near Paterson, Richard Shindell
–Signature Sounds

Buy the Album

I will now begin to extricate myself somewhat from this sequence of sad songs (remember how happy things were when we began?). “Transit” is an odyssey by Richard Shindell at his wry and acerbic finest. Not too shabby on the guitar, either.

Long Time Gone

They sound tired but they don’t sound Haggard
They got money but they don’t have Cash
They got junior but they don’t have Hank
I think, I think, I think the rest is a long time gone

From Real Time, Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott
–Full Light Records

Buy the Album

What do you sing at the top of your lungs, with the windows down in your U-Haul truck, when you are finally escaping from two long years in Boston to come home to North Carolina? This. Also? The mandolin is so good in this song that Darrell Scott sings along with it.

Wagon Wheel

Headed down south to the land of the pines
And I’m thumbin’ my way into North Caroline
Starin’ up the road
And pray to God I see headlights

From O.C.M.S., Old Crow Medicine Show
–Nettwerk Records

Buy the Album

“Wagon Wheel” is so self-evidently fantastic I don’t know what I might say to change your mind if you disagree. It began life as a chorus by Bob Dylan, who abandoned it. Almost 30 years later, Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show resurrected it from that inauspicious beginning. The finished song’s loose harmonies almost insist that you sing along. If you’ve ever in your life been homesick for the South, this will make you feel better. Promise.

Come Home

No matter what you bought or sold
The only thing you’ll have to hold
Is the love you’ve loved and the truth you’ve told
When you climb up on that train.

From Songs for a Hurricane, Kris Delmhorst
Signature Sounds

Buy the Album

I had never heard of Kris Delmhorst until the Signature Sounds 10th anniversary show, where she played two songs in pigtails and pajamas and was much in demand on other people’s sets. She has an amazing voice and an obsession with bad weather. She can make a banjo sound like wind chimes in a thunderstorm.

Honorable Mentions

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See? See what unspeakable damage the Twilight phenomenon is doing to kids (and more than a few adults, but let’s be honest: if an adult is susceptible to the kind of message embedded in Twilight, he or she is already an almost lost cause).

Emblematic of the cult surrounding Twilight, and therefore convenient target for my hate, are t-shirts that feature Edward Cullen’s enormous forehead (and, more recently, Jacob whatshisname as well). I am thankful that, since I do not frequent malls or Hot Topic, I have never encountered one of these shirts in real life.  They cross my periphery thanks to the all-seeing eye of my Google Reader feeds.

When New Moon was unleashed upon the swooning masses around Thanksgiving, a comic strip from HijiNKS Ensue turned the hysteria around and created an outlet for venting geeks. Replacing Edward Cullen with another Edward, no less worthy of idolatry in the eyes of many, was genius. Click that link and go buy your own. Team Edward James Olmos is worth every penny.

Once the notion of alternative Edwards is introduced, it’s easy to imagine an army of better Edwards, locked in a meta battle with the pale and sparkly Edward Cullens of pop culture. It’s also easy to make t-shirts. It is hard, however, to top a man who starred in both Blade Runner and Battlestar Galactica.

Evangelism is ineffective unless the audience can recognize the idols of the faith. Those who swoon over Edward Cullen are unlikely to know Edward James Olmos, but they probably know Johnny Depp, and thus Edward Scissorhands.

The internet is also full of Edward Norton photos, though unfortunately none were iconic enough for my t-shirt evangelism purposes.

I should at this point warn you of the dangers of blind web searches. I had in mind two other better Edwards, but I decided to use Google’s autocomplete search technology to discover other potential idols. Early on, I learned about the Edward Fortyhands drinking game. Disturbing, but innocuous. An indeterminate number of clicks later, however, I found the unspeakable horror that is Edward Penishands. Sometimes, the internet makes me proud.

Fans of the Edward Scissorhands aesthetic will probably appreciate the next better Edward: Edward Gorey. Gorey isn’t as widely recognized as Mr. Scissorhands, but his work is beloved by those who know it. In his self-portrait he wears a fur coat and tennis shoes.

It’s no great surprise to me that I have to explain these shirts to people. Most of the people I know have never heard of the Team Edward shirts, because they have the good sense to avoid things like that. It’s a little more disheartening, though not unexpected, that nobody recognizes Edward Gorey.

There is no excuse, however, for not knowing who Edward R. Murrow is. Even if your knowledge of World War II history is spottier than mine, even if you weren’t alive during McCarthyism, you could have watched George Clooney spoon feed you Murrow’s legacy in the film Good Night, and Good Luck. The final better Edward t-shirt is of David Strathairn, as Murrow, scowling through artfully photographed cigarette smoke. It brings to mind Murrow’s address to the Radio-Television News Directors Association:

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

I’ve met precisely one person who knew who Edward R. Murrow was and was also familiar with the Twilight t-shirts. (Thanks, incidentally, for preserving my faith in humanity.) The rest of you, use the box of wires and lights to which you are attached and edify yourselves.

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When I graduated from college, I wanted to get a cat to inaugurate my grownup life. I was going to get an apartment, find a job, and have pets, like people do. My cat was going to be long-haired and gray and answer to the name Ender. Adulthood was going to be awesome. It turns out that long-haired gray cats aren’t as prevalent at the local shelter as one might think, and so I was blessed with a scrawny gray and black tabby who loved to drink more than anything in the world. In light of this habit he was named after F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I was fine with calling him Scott for the time being. The woman who ran Asheville Pet Supply called him Scotty, as have several others who’ve met him over the years. My secret hope was that he would grow into a more stately name, Mr. Fitzgerald. This optimism was misplaced.

My partner Amy found Scott in a cage with his feral mother at Asheville Pet Supply (a fantastic shop that succeeds despite having no website even though it’s 2009). She was such a wild cat that oven mitts were required to feed her or, as was unfortunately necessary, to coax her into nursing her kittens. Scott was only 6 weeks old but the kind proprietor of Asheville Pet Supply felt it would be best if he was weaned a bit prematurely. Too soon or not, Scott was sent home with Amy.

By “home” I mean to say that Scott went to live in a college dorm, where he was kept hidden from me (because he was a surprise graduation gift) and from UNCA’s resident advisors. He spent finals week passing from one dorm to another, each inhabited by students somewhat frayed by the end-of-semester slog. The long-term implications of his time under the care of college students of questionable sanity cannot be accurately gauged, but I believe this was a formative week.

It soon became apparent that Scott’s mother had, in addition to physical malice, the enmity to withhold the basic life lessons one expects a cat to learn early in life. He knew that toys with colorful feathers were for killing, but his preferred method of attack was to sit on them and smother them. This became somewhat more effective in later years, when his bulk ensured he was capable of smothering anything smaller than a toddler, but as a kitten he just looked confused, but pleased with himself, when he tried.

Scott struggled a bit in our first apartment. For an entire year, he jumped every time the central air came on. He became overfascinated with a burning candle and spent a few weeks without the whiskers on one side of his face, during which he would only walk along the walls his good whiskers could touch. At one point he disappeared for an afternoon until we heard a muffled, plaintive mrreaw? that sounded like it was coming from the dishwasher. We found him in there, stuck under the bottom rack.

Now, I’m not great with geometry, so I can’t explain how a cat whose head is smaller than the spaces between the dishwasher rack wires could get his head stuck between them. I just know it took two people to rescue one very small kitten from the bowels of a dishwasher, and the operation involved lifting both Scott and the rack out of the dishwasher, then forcing his head into a position that allowed him to slip through the gap. Scott was lucky that this particular impasse wasn’t irreversible.

Kitties are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other

In our second apartment, Scott met and fell in love with two cats. First was a huge orange tomcat (Sherbet) who lived with our neighbor and could come and go as he pleased. Perhaps Scott envied Sherbet’s indoor-outdoor lifestyle, or perhaps he just found Sherbet’s mangy fur irresistible, but whatever the attraction, it was clearly unrequited. Sherbet would have nothing to do with Scott, and he eventually moved away, leaving Scott to mope on the front porch all day, staring down at Sherbet’s favorite step.

Eventually a new suitor showed up, and Scott forgot all about Sherbet. He was a flame point siamese, a stray, and for reasons I can no longer remember, his name was Blue. Scott and Blue were thick as thieves. They slept together. They groomed each other. They spent hours at a stretch just staring at each other’s impossibly long legs.

Blue was, however, a demon. He seemed to need to be an only child, despite his love for Scott. When he climbed onto the bed while I was reading, pawed at me to get my attention, then pissed in my lap while staring me down, I knew it was time for him to go. He lives on a farm somewhere in Raleigh now.

Not All Cats Are Meant to Live Outside

Scott wasn’t always hapless. There were a good few . . . weeks . . . when he could safely cavort in the little jungle behind our house, and (contrary to kitty nature), he always came running up to the sliding glass door whenever we called him. Eventually, though, it became clear that Scott’s time would be best spent inside.

The first time Mr. Scott ventured untended into the great wide world, he jumped from a moving car. I’ve forgotten why he was being transported, but I do remember the rear driver’s side window of the car had malfunctioned. The window was stuck not quite halfway down, and it had been sealed well enough, we supposed, to prevent any kitty hijinks. I wasn’t in the car at the time, but the report I got was that Scott made a break for it in the middle of a dirt road and ran into the nearby underbrush.

We’ll never know what he sought out there in the wild, or whether he found it. Ten minutes after he escaped, he scampered back to the car, soaking wet and smelling disgusting. A week later he was favoring one of his hind legs, so we took him to the vet. Evidently in that 10 minute excursion Scott had managed to find a festering swamp and get bitten by a nearby creature, and because he was Scott, the wound had abscessed.

The Big City Takes Its Toll

Scott followed me to grad school in Boston. We lived on the top floor of a brownstone not too far from the river. Scott was fond of my room, which featured a huge window where he could observe the mundane goings on below, but he especially loved my roommate’s room, because he was not allowed inside and because it had a window that opened onto the fire escape.

Scott wasn’t the most affectionate cat in the world but he did like to sleep on my bed, curled up behind my knees. I woke up one April morning and knew that he hadn’t slept there all night, the way you miss the warmth when your eyes are closed and clouds block the sun. He wasn’t in any of his usual hiding places.

At the bottom of the stairs was a sign: “Found, FAT gray cat” with a phone number. A couple in a nearby apartment was already on their way to the vet with the cat they’d found on the sidewalk the night before. He was pretty beat up, they said, and not very responsive. Since I didn’t have a vehicle in the city, they offered to swing by and pick me up. We were all relieved when I looked in their cardboard box and Scott immediately started purring.

It was easy in Boston to believe that everyone was too busy to think of other people, too focused on getting ahead to help out someone else. This couple, whose names I have forgotten, drove me to the vet with my cat, waited there with me to find out how he was doing, drove us to another vet when the first one confessed they weren’t equipped to help, and called to follow up every few days until Scott was better. And they weren’t even cat people.

Even vets evaluating trauma cannot resist making the obvious joke about how cats are supposed to land on their feet. It seemed clear from his injuries that Scott landed on his head. He could no longer see out of his right eye. His mouth wouldn’t close for a week after he fell. He got three different kinds of eye drops for a month, administered by me and a helpful roommate. He survived.

How To Tell Whether Your Already Hapless Cat Is Brain Damaged

One-eyed Scott was slower around the house, and less interested in playing with his toys, but he didn’t seem to be in any pain. His digestive system, never a marvel of efficiency, became the source of room-clearing, eye-watering visits to the litter box. And sometimes, just lying on the floor, Scott would start, as if he’d just fallen down.

His disposition became at once sweeter and more combative. He decided that he liked sitting next to people (but seldom directly on laps). He renewed an on-and-off battle with his kitty nemesis Ella. This time around, though, Scott had an unfair advantage: Ella wouldn’t fight back. Whether out of pity for the gimp or fear that Scott’s obvious ailments were contagious, Ella wouldn’t raise a paw against him.

Maybe He’s Just A Jumper

Last month, Scott decided he wasn’t going to eat anything anymore. Several trips to the vet were inconclusive, though we ruled out all the obvious stuff. Granted, he needed a diet, but it’s bad for cats to stop eating altogether, which is what he did just before Thanksgiving. His ribs and spine were much too visible beneath his flabby skin, and as the month wore on, he became weak and disoriented. He turned up his nose at every imaginable kind of food and beverage anyone could think to put in front of him.

We came home from the vet armed with a syringe and the most delicious puree of kitty food you’ve ever sniffed and gagged at the smell of, and for that Saturday morning I tried to coax him into eating something. I got more on the carpet than down his throat, but at least something was going in his belly.

It was the first sunny day in ages, so I thought we’d both like to sit out on the balcony for a while. Scott sniffed around the edges of the railing while I read a while. Then this cat, who was too weak to jump into a chair, leapt up 3 feet to the top of the railing, then down another 20 to the ground. Maybe he’d finally found something he wanted to eat. Maybe he caught wind of Blue’s scent, all the way from Raleigh. By the time I got down there, he had disappeared. I haven’t seen him since.

He was 8 and a half years old. He had the sad privilege of watching me muck my way through my entire adult life. I see him everywhere in shadows now, and I try to hope that another absurdly kind stranger has picked him up and dribbled something tasty into his confused little mouth and called him their own.

I know, in the quiet part of my brain, that I have been a good steward to such a small and bewildered creature. Still, there are days now when I think it might be better to hope that he found a warm hole to crawl down where he could go to sleep and never again wake to the starved and sightless world that was left to him in the end.

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The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it from birth and thereby bled it of all its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a muddied field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.

There are things against which I know I should not measure myself. I imagine McCarthy’s prose is high on that list. I haven’t thought of anything compelling to write here since I read those lines, though it may comfort you to know that I have been hacking away at a short story in the meantime. Funny how I can deem myself irrelevant in the face of words like those, but feel somehow more justified in spooling out some fiction.

Sometimes a truth stays ringing in my ears, hits my own personal resonance frequency, and I linger on it, taut and humming, until it fades. I’ll let you know when this one does.

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photo credit: Ian Hayhurst

Is the robust interior life that makes it so easy to open a book and pitch headlong into its pages also the thing that makes it hard for me to relate to the things that are going on outside my head? I may be socially functional now, but it was a slow-learned and hard-won skill. From the time I could read a narrative until pretty late in high school I had a lot of trouble giving a damn about anything that wasn’t happening in a book. I kept stacks of novels in my desk at school. I failed to notice when people spoke directly to me. When I learned to drive I had no idea how to navigate anywhere in my very small hometown because as a passenger my eyes had always been in a book rather than on the road.

There are few devout readers in my family, but they shine out in my memory. My mother, of whom I’ve written before, is an incurable sci-fi and fantasy addict. Her sister’s teenaged zeal and creativity were channeled into helping me learn to read and along the way learn to love words and the act of telling stories. Their father in a rocking chair of an evening with an inexhaustible supply of westerns. My own father reading only the newspaper, but reading it all the way through every time it came. His mother reading letters aloud to his father, who for reasons I don’t recall could not read them himself.

photo credit: natalia & gabriel

Whether for utility or leisure, each of these acts was accompanied by a hush I normally associated with church. Unlike the barely contained quiet of church (I could be a fidgety child, and wasn’t the only one), the hush of reading was a stillness, a thoughtful succumbing to the images forming in the head of the reader. Some of these were intimate moments I’d have observed in any family, but I don’t know many who had so many role models with such dedication to reading as I did.

I can’t remember anyone my own age who was enthusiastic about books. Reading is by nature a solitary act, but just as natural for me was the impulse to share what I was reading, and my excited overtures tended to fall on indifferent ears. I was a very shy child, and books were one of the few things I got excited enough about to try talking with other kids. It was easy to justify retreating back into my imagination when they failed to reciprocate. Even easier when there was mockery involved.

The reason I kept trying, though, is because I did have powerful proof that some kids were as into books as I was. When I was 6 or 7 years old, Reading Rainbow became a staple in my house. LeVar Burton became an enthusiastic tour guide through the world of books for legions of children, all of whom, like me, considered themselves part of his on-screen troupe. Even after I replaced other PBS fare with Thundercats, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Animaniacs, I’d still sneak in a bit of Reading Rainbow and revel in both the joyful explorations of wordscapes and the unabashed fun that was shown being had with books.

photo credit: nyki_m

That Reading Rainbow has recently departed the airwaves isn’t a surprise. The generations of potential benefactors raised on the show probably all found their way into low-paying careers like mine, unable to muster sustaining donations for even so potent a symbol of both literacy and, now, nostalgia. The rationale behind the lack of grant funding for the show–that it’s much more important to teach the mechanics of reading than it is to teach children to love to read–strikes me as short-sighted at best and a false dichotomy at worst.

Whatever the reasons behind Reading Rainbow’s cancellation, the result is the same: there’s a kid somewhere who loves to read so much he falls asleep still clutching his books, and now rather than learning to feel comfortable in the world as a book lover, he may instead withdraw from it further. I’ve got to find him before he’s gone. I’ve felt that loneliness and am thankful to have escaped it. Now I need to do the same for those who don’t have the “luxury” of Reading Rainbow.

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A Pair of Leaves

Like rivers flowing to the sea
To end in peaceful harmony
A pair of leaves drifted, treeless
To a quiet end of their world
But their attempted suicide
Was soon thwarted by a gusting
Well-meaning wind, who saved a life
Angry, old and withered, without
A compelling reason to live
The tree, at least, saw fit to thank
The breeze who saved a pair of leaves.

Spring

Winter succumbs to the cycle of life
Its severity replaced
By pleasantries of the eye.
Ears too rejoice, for the sounds of the
New season now fill the air,
Mingle with a scent, fresh and gently
Warm, like a kiss.
Take care, kind days, and be humbled;
Fear not, sweet surrendering
Winter, for tomorrow you too are reborn.

Why

The stars to us are just out of reach,
Yet lay unnoticed beneath immortal feet.
Why is it that for them we would fight,
While the gods ignore their heavenly light?
Why do they desire our sweet, simple life?
And why do we fill it with hatred and with strife?
We have all we need in love, a smile, a tear.
How can that compare to more wasted years?

Dancing with the Muse

When asked to write a page tonight
Those few words fill some with fright
They whine and say they have no time
But they do write, without the rhymes

And as I’m asked to sit and think
Call the muse, go out for drinks
Or dancing in the snow
As we drink and dance, I know

Do you know? I want to write
Something for special people, who might
Know what I mean, but others would be lost
And so I take chances despite the cost

I realize no one knows right now
They say I’m lost and don’t know how
To deal with someone like me
I would tell them and show them how easy

How perfectly simple to end the strife
And together understand this life
As well as can be understood
Compromise for collective good

When at last I coax the muse
Out of hiding so I might use
The powers only she can wield
And she peeks from behind my shield

She looks out into the rain
And sets about ending the pain
And confusion that everyone shares
Until one man, left standing there

Defiantly without pain, and she
Joins him, and they leave me
But I can at least know in my heart
The muse and I will never part

And so to end my tale and frame it all
To please picture-hangers great and small
With this message I depart
For those seeking something smart

I live now in padded cells
My last works were received not well
I still make a rhyme or three
But no sharp objects for me

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To the Reader:

As I begin gathering material for the first accumulated body of work that I have attempted, a thousand thoughts and questions flow through my mind. Never-ending armies of insecurities run in streams, but are dashed against an unseen wall, the certainty that I know what I am doing. Potential selections rise up to meet me from the past. Half-written stories that I never got around to finishing come back to me, asking if now is the time to complete the vision. I am compelled to bring them to life each time I write. They nag at me, gently tugging the shirt sleeve in the back of my mind. Do I include everything, since this is the first? Or do I embrace the new ideas that I have pitched around in my head but have been hesitant to start? I must consider my audience. My early writings I have buried, hidden from the rest of an unforgiving world. They are lost in the anonymity of the past, but I know where they are. I know how to find them. Do I risk bringing old ghosts back from the dead? At one point I wrote because I felt I was haunted. I wanted to slay my demons, the pen my only weapon against them. Those excerpts from my life, the beginning and learning process that my writing went through, do they remain unpolished, immature tidbits of a pretentious mind? Or should I taint them with a flair of my current mindset? They remain untouched, as they were written. There is something honest in them, something innocent, and I believed in them at the time. If that makes me unpolished or pretentious during those years of my life then so be it. I accept that as yet another difficult stage of my youth.

Now on to the greater topic at hand. Of the countless potential new compositions at my disposal, which ones do I feel compelled to compose? If I select something safe, simple, or in the same vein as some previous work, I fear I would not escape the notion that I had cheated myself and my audience. Therefore it is my hope that the few who are familiar with my writing will find something unexpected, a new style that I have not attempted before. I see this as an opportunity to experiment, not only in new realms of writing but in new thoughts as well. It is my hope that through these new writings I might discover something about myself previously hidden from my view, and I invite my audience to do the same. These are my thoughts as I begin this writing project. My work does not undergo major revision; rarely do I even read my own writings once they are finished. This keeps the idea fresh for me, for if the idea itself becomes stale, how could the execution of that idea be otherwise? Therefore the ideas and the content selected for this collection are as close to my original conception of them as possible. I submit this effort to the reader, and whether it is accepted or not I stand by it as I have all of my written work. You, the reader, will find everything you seek here, no matter how ambitious your quest.

Yours,

David E. Mahaffey

1996

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Imagine a heart. It has stopped beating and lays dormant in the chest of a dead man who lays on a table. Men and women surround the man and try to make his heart beat again. They want it to beat and they know it wants to beat again. The man is young and obviously has a full life ahead of him. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” the doctors all say. But the man isn’t listening. He doesn’t know if his heart should beat again.

Imagine two hearts, a tiny one beating along with a bigger, much stronger one. Imagine the security that baby heart feels, with Mother nearby. Follow the tiny heart as it grows up through the years. Soot it is strong, like the one who protects it. It no longer wants protection. When it wants to leave the sanctuary of home, the strong one doesn’t want to let it go. She doesn’t know how to let her child grow.

Imagine two hearts with the same wants and needs, the same hopes and dreams. They are drawn to each other in a way they can’t understand. What if they stay together? They could both recapture the old feeling of security. They could add to that feeling a new sensation, combining the past with the wonder and excitement they have discovered. These two have sought each other out, felt the thrill of discovery. What would that feel like? So easy to understand and virtually impossible to explain. Nobody knows how to express it.

Imagine a broken heart, abandoned by its mate and left to continue the journey of life alone. With nothing to keep it going. Living just to keep from dying. How could this heart go on, without a reason to feel, without a focus? Its wants and needs build up with no chance of release. Somewhere inside this broken heart there is a love that continues to burn. The flame flickers but never fades away, and this heart doesn’t know how to carry on.

Imagine a wounded heart, confused and unable to understand what has happened. Imagine watching helplessly as its love is torn from its side. Imagine again finding its mate, and finding there is no longer a connection between them. The time and distance between the two hearts has burned away the memory. Imagine trying to move on, and just when it begins to want to live again, it is damaged in another way.

Imagine a bleeding heart, bleeding from a bullet wound in the chest. Crimson tears flow from the pain of this wound and all of the old ones. All the healing, the will to live that was only recently regained, everything is undone.

Imagine again the heart of the dying man. Imagine his thoughts and feelings as his heart slowed its beating, giving up its grip on life and slowly slipping away. Along this journey, a heart blossoms and it wilts. The rose had just regained a whisper of a new bud when it began to die. The doctors know all hearts should beat. The man knows the voyage has been long. Will this heart beat again? Only it can know.

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