Category: No Name for It

I am typing this post from an internet cafe in Ithaca, New York where I’m visiting my dear friend, the poet David Weiss. Yesterday I spoke at my undergraduate alma mater, Hobart and William Smith Colleges,in Geneva, New York. This is the area of New York known as the Finger Lakes, and the first snow of the year has been falling during my visit here. Frost is now on the apple trees and patches of new snow are collecting in the dark grass. I can’t say for sure why this should be so, but I get wildly happy with the new snow. I want to dance in the fresh cold and then cook a massive and earnest winter stew and call all my friends into the house. The poet Charles Simic said poetry is like a bowl of hot soup on a cold winter’s day. Here’s to Charles Simic, our current poet laureate. Here’s to the soup of first snow and to a little Bach on the radio. Steam at the windows. Friends coming over because we still can.

S.K.

My wife Connie has been in Iowa City for the past four days, and together we have looked at houses for sale in the hope that we might find one that will serve as our new home. We’ve seen old houses, new houses, windows that face every direction, old neighborhoods and new. Connie is driving back to Ohio even as I type. Hi Honey! We’re about to find a new home!

What’s interesting about this process is that like so many other critical moments in life one is tempted to imagine that every detail, every thought is equal. In effect, one starts to believe that this business of buying a house is a completely defining moment. In turn, without fully realizing it, you begin to think that this house must be "everything"—as if a house was something more important than the people who will live within its four walls. We imagine ourselves as somehow having to live out the rest of our lives in these sample rooms that open before us. This strange "future superstition" is the same thing we do to ourselves when choosing a college, or a fork in the woods—even a career. We believe that these temporary gestures are everything. How does that begin and when? I can’t blame this on my elementary school teachers. I can’t blame this singular numbness on my college philosophy professor. In the end I’m forced to conclude that like so many other things this high minded seriousness derives just as Freud said all things derive—from our awareness of mortality.

When you leave home for the first time you think you might never make it back again. (This is in our collective unconscious or DNA, whatever you want to call it.) This is a good sensation to have because it can promote self awareness and due diligence. But just because something is useful that doesn’t make it true. We go to a college and it does or does not define our subsequent lives and careers. We take a job early and find ourselves in an entirely different occupation much later.

And now because we are in our middle age and we have seen some good friends pass away and we are "empty nesters", well, we’re tempted to imagine that this house is the last one, that these are the last rooms. We will have to pass through a profound stage of life in this room or this one. The subconscious you see is a terrible thing. It makes us all too serious.

I realized late this afternoon that this isn’t our "last" house. There is no such thing. A house just contains the loving-kindness of the people inside its walls. Love transcends décor or a neighborhood. Of course. How did I let the shape of a bathroom or a lighting fixture convince me that ordinary rooms matter overmuch.

Connie and I will find a good house and it won’t be our last and it won’t contain our love.

I know that if the dogs could type they would agree.

S.K.

What if the world was flat? Forget Columbus for a minute. Certainly you should forget Magellan.

In the flat world gravity would have a different effect so the people and animals and "things" would also have to be two dimensional. In effect, everyone would be like an upright, walking stingray. Or one of those card board cut out Bill Clinton or George W. Bush figurines that the tourist photographers always seem to have in plentiful supply in Washington, DC.

The flat world would have lots of problems: there wouldn’t be any airplanes and people would have to get around on the backs of flat donkeys.

Of course everybody in the flat world would be nostalgic for the 3D earth except for American school children who wouldn’t be affected. The blackboard would be the same. The teachers would still be there.

Since flat people can only move sideways Congress wouldn’t be affected.

Wars would be much harder to fight. Soldiers would have to throw razor blade Frisbees like that guy in the old James Bond film. And of course because people could only move sideways, throwing the Frisbee would be a matter of "blind luck".

As a creative writing teacher I sometimes tell my students that too much imagination can hurt a human being. In general we tend to opine that there isn’t enough imagination in our world.

But human imagination is often perilous. There are lots of bad ideas in the imagination’s house of horrors including eugenics, slavery, child labor, and the assembly line.

I’m no socialist. Don’t take me the wrong way. A flat world would likely have its own social inequities. In a flat world the really thin people would be the most powerful ones because they could get around faster. And there would be no incentive to develop your soul. (The soul is round according to all the world’s religions.)

There wouldn’t be any music in a flat world. If you need proof, Joseph Stalin’s favorite record was a 78 rpm recording of wolves.

Now I need more "roundness". I need to put my hands on a sculpture by Brancusi. I need to clutch a chestnut in my hand.

Stay balanced, my friends, stay balanced.

(Balance, by the way, is a requirement in both the flat world and in the round one.)

S.K.

The Week that Was

Flew east.

Flew west.

Bought bialys at College town Bagels in Ithaca, New York. (One of those places that smells of hot bread, even at night.)

Spoke at State U of New York at Oswego.

Spoke at Metropolitan Museum in New York, New York.

Saw my friend Karl who was teaching "The Elephant Man" and who was mildly affected by his students’ disaffection for the flick.

Saw my old friend Jim who has a new book of poems coming out soon.

Saw my pal Ira who is just home from a long sojourn in Thailand. Ira is the world’s largest Buddhist monk. Hands down.

Watched beloved New York Mets go down the drain.

Ate bacon with Clea who is studying all of Asia and cooking Middle Eastern street foods.

Talked with glass artist, Katherine who is trying to find a video camera fast enough to film breaking tempered glass.

Met fellow from MIT who believes above can be accomplished, maybe.

Talked to flight attendant who is scared of dogs. Told her Vidal’s most dangerous feature is his breath.

Ate glorious take out food from Zabar’s in Manhattan.

Talked about a poet’s recent suicide with my literary agent Irene. Talked about death with old friend David whose wife passed away almost one year ago.

Talked about living with David who is working gently at the art of light and breathing. They are the same art.

Talked to my wife Connie about starting a bell choir.

Talked to old dog Roscoe about the scent of love.

Talked to young dog Maggie about same.

Talked to my father in law Bill about miseries of selling the house.

Talked to my mother in law, Norma, about misery of selling hand made crafts in era of Chinese knock offs.

Talked to stepson Ross about his first college paper.

Tried on silly hat made from pine cones while dreaming.

Talked about human rights with fellow from South Africa whose car broke down in South Dakota. He was dropping off rental at airport.

Got back to Iowa City just in time for tornado sirens. It was a real tornado. It didn’t do significant damage except to say that it scared lots of creatures.

While the tornado was coming I put on my New York Mets warm-up jacket. I figured disaster had already struck the Mets so I’d be safe if I wore it.

Had a second dream about a hat made of pine cones. Suspect it might be my father checking in from the afterlife. Hi dad.

S.K.

Today is my father’s 86th birthday and if he was still with us he would be ecstatic about the recent fortunes of the Boston Red Sox, a baseball team whose luck was never good during his lifetime. (My dad passed away just two years shy of their improbable triumph over the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series).

My dad was a political scientist. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard and owing to his Finnish heritage he wrote his dissertation on Finnish foreign policy in the years that immediately followed World War II.

Although I miss watching the Red Sox with him, I miss even more our long walks together when we would talk about politics and world affairs.

I also miss his terrific laugh and his slightly impish sense of humor. I miss the way he used to dance in the kitchen with our family’s dogs. I miss his off key attempts at popular songs.

I miss his unflinching contempt for the Nixon administration. I can only imagine what he would think of the current state of our nation…

He would be delighted to know that my wife Connie and I are moving to Iowa City: he visited this uniquely diverse university town several times when I was here as a graduate student and he once said that if only the rest of America could be like Iowa City, why then we might have a chance at being a good country.

(Iowa City is the kind of place where you can see people wearing buttons that say: "Poetry-It’s good for the corn…")

Just before he passed away my dad learned how to get on the internet. He sent me a funny little poem that he wrote from his retirement community in Exeter, New Hampshire. I’ve lost the poem and regret the fact because it was irreverent and it had to do with his more conservative neighbors. I shall, however, attempt to reconstruct the poem in honor of Allan Kuusisto’s birthday:

"Hey there skinny,

We may be ninnies,

(O yes, we may be ninnies)

But by God, we’re good New Hampshire Republicans!"

SK

Alright, I admit it: I talk a lot. I wake up talking. I talk like a man who has had a gallon of Turkish coffee. (Note: when you’re in Greece don’t call it "Turkish coffee").

I woke this morning and said "bean sprout and Buddha" though I don’t know why. Then I said "winged chestnuts and garland of daisies".

I do not know why I say such things. I do not have Tourette’s and I can control my impulses to sing and dance for the most part, unless I have had too much of the grape.

The troubling thing is that I tend to wake up in a state of advanced good cheer. This is very annoying to the people who must share the kitchen with me. I’m talking right away about the kings of France and about the swell shoes they used to wear at Versailles.

I am, in short, full of exquisite dung. I am a minor character in Finnegan’s Wake.

Tuesday; walnut; hardware; ballet; ars moriendi; blow fish; spoon dropped in the snow…

I wake this way.

And sometimes I wish it might be otherwise.

On the bright side: I don’t have to fawn after the news for good cheer. I am glad that Alberto Gonzalez has resigned from the Justice Department. I am glad that the New York Mets are in first place in the National League East. I’m very glad that the Chicago Cubs are making a run for the Central Division.

I’m glad that genetic research is becoming a branch of linguistics.

I’m glad that autumn is coming and that college football will be returning this weekend.

I’m grateful to live on the same planet as Bishop Tutu.

But like Paul Simon, sometimes I feel like the only living boy in New York. I can get all the news I need from the weather report. I wake up saying "cake walk; la vie en rose; big bang; photo synthesis siblings…"

"Goodbye, Alberto. Goodbye grimy soap. Goodbye propeller hat. Goodbye walking catfish."

For those of you who may be new to this blog, "Vidal" is my guide dog who appears in the photo at the top of our site. He is a yellow labrador and he comes from Guiding Eyes for the Blind in Yorktown Heights, New York. He is ten years old and starting to think about his coming retirement. He’s thinking that as a retired guide dog in Iowa City that perhaps he might want to think about a literary life. The post below, "The Secrets of Nature" is his first ever effort at poetry. I think it looks a lot like the Finnish poet Arvo Turtianen: direct, elemental, but still philosophical…

SK

Went to the woods.

Met King of the Wild Turkeys.

He was having trouble with lice, but otherwise he was fit.

Said that the stump god told him of big festival upcoming:

"Jamboree of Decay"

Wild Turkeys not invited.

"Gotta be truly decayed for festival," Turkey King said.

"Whaddya gonna do?" I asked.

"First, we’re gonna boycott straw and hay," he said, wiggling his fancy red neck tie.

"When people think "Wild Turkey" they think "straw and hay"" he said.

"So we’re not going to do the wild dancing in decaying vegetative matter any more."

"Then what?" I asked.

"We will only dance on sand, which as you know is still friendly to turkeys and all other fowl."

"Will you spy on the Festival of Decaying Things?" I persisted.

"No," said Turkey King, "That’s how they trick you into being inanimate like them. You gotta keep your wits out here in nature."

Vidal

Alright. Mea Culpa. I have committed the age-old blunder of dull husbandry, namely I have asserted that I am privileged to be able to go alone to the woods for the purpose of writing. I knew (ever so dimly) that I was making a mistake when I typed that sticky little phrase.

I am now doomed. "Why don’t I just marry my dog?" writes one commentator. Yes, I appear to have been exulting about my Hemingway-esque "men without women" position here in the woods.

It does no good of course to try to extricate myself from this grievous blunder by means of mere rhetoric. There is no hope for me. If I told my readers that I fervently wish that my wife was able to be here with me, well, you know, as they like to say in Arkansas: "That dog won’t hunt."

So okay. We’re back to the dog thing. "The Queen" wants to know why I don’t just marry the dog.

The real answer of course is that if I married the dog then I would have to wear the dog’s harness. This should be fairly evident to any amateur student of marriage, no matter what kind of matrimonial view that student might hold. Everyone knows that "the one who is the husband" is "the one who wears the harness" and there’s a considerable amount of literature on this subject. I recommend Honore de Balzac’s famous "Manual of Marriage" but you could consult more contemporary sources if you like.

There’s only one harnessed creature in our nuclear family and it’s the dog. Things are going to stay that way.

As for protestations that I’d like to have Connie here with me, consider this: I bought the cottage and the wind surfer that’s sitting under the house solely for the mutual enjoyment of man and wife. Oh, but with teenagers at home it’s been ever so difficult for us to actually be here at the same time.

And as for the teenagers, who are lovely people, well they don’t really like to come here because "there’s nothing to do" which is of course the point of going to the woods in the first place.

And as for me: I know I’ll never get out from under the gravity of my flip and uncomprehending but mostly iddy biddy slip because as everyone knows, there are no iddy biddy slips in the game of matrimonial Scrabble.

I’m doomed alright.

"I will NOT wear that harness!"

SK