the lion, the boy, and the empty moat

The lions at the zoo, a male and two females, were kept on a small island surrounded by a deep and empty moat. Encircling the moat on the outside was a low wall that I leaned against, studying the ragged mane of the male. He lay comfortably on his haunches, a lazy and confident predator. A family with a young boy passed near me, and out of my peripheral vision I saw the boy start to run toward another exhibit. At that moment the entire body of the great cat flinched, and his eyes followed the child.

If he had leapt, he would have fallen in the moat. That's what's supposed to happen anyway. But not so long ago at the zoo in San Francisco, a tiger escaped a similar enclosure and attacked two men. But that's another story.

The day I watched the lion gird itself to leap I remember thinking there would be nothing I could do. If the lion got out I would just have to run. Now that I am forty, I have a different take. I just might try to grab that lion by the tail, or something equally preposterous, like kick it in the shins. No, the years haven't made me very brave and I hope haven't added to my already illustrious level of foolishness. But they have brought about a fierce protectiveness of children. The feeling has grown in me over many years, and now I am a father living with my tiny daughter. Children are our gift to the world. Each one an amazing wealth of possibilities and energies to be cherished and enlivened, to be buoyed and nourished.
But words pale. Once upon a time, this video would have bored me. Now I keep watching it with a silly grin on my face:

finding meaning

Sometimes I hear a song or a watch a scene in a movie and it changes everything. It never lasts though. It's like a flower that blooms once, and that by next morning is a crumpled bit of color on the nightstand.

I was driving once with my mother in Santa Fe New Mexico. The sun was beginning to go down, and it was a typical mind-blowing New Mexico evening. The clouds turned the color of burning coals, and the slanting light bathed the juniper and pinon in golden light, and I said something really profound like "Wow, that's pretty beautiful." And then something funny happened. My mother looked out the window and said "I can't really see beauty anymore. I can't feel it."

Well, that was an eye opener for me. She had lost touch with how to recognize beauty (this was many year ago, and she's found beauty again). It brought home a simple truth for me that I have to relearn all the time: you have to practice.

getting past go

For the past week I have been writing to amuse both you, dear reader, and myself. I have been writing in the light and easy tones of a typical blogger or newspaper columnist.

There may be some merit available in gently humorous description, but not a great deal. There is no grappling with what really matters. I'll leave "what really matters" open-ended for now.

And so let me begin with a short rant so commonplace as to be invisible: we have forgotten. No, let me begin again: I have forgotten what it means to deeply engage with the issues and challenges, the ideas and realities that fill the world outside my comfortable little nest.

Instead, I've become incredibly adept at entertainment. I have literally developed a thousand ways to amuse myself to death. What do I do? It doesn't matter, except to say that you don't need a television to waste time. I've spent more than a dozen voracious years consuming. And in doing so have embraced a shallow and vast dilletantism. If you'll excuse the obvious metaphor, over the years I have become not a deep and clear well of knowledge, but an endless mud puddle filled with disjointed snippets of news and culture.

I'm going to stop here for the evening, right at the very beginning. But before I go, let me ask you, are you doing all that you can to stand up for what you believe? When I ask myself that question, the answer is obvious and immediate and depressing.

-to be continued

Kirby comes calling. gets curbed.

Today a Tongan man named Vili tried very hard to sell me a chromed Kirby vacuum cleaner. Pleasure Point must attract the entire west coast horde of over eager door-to-door proselytizers, all the glued-on-smile con artists aghast that you can't live without more magazine subscriptions, and even a few standard old soft-sell artists, like today's Kirby dude.

The trouble was that I liked this guy, in part because he seemed so miscast in his role. His long hair was tied back and he smelled like he'd just put the bong away in his jacket. To top it off he was wearing checkered Vans. Later I learned this was his first month on the job. That explained why he was still possible to appreciate as a regular person. He had yet to attain a professional salesman's impenetrable affability.

20 minutes, he said, and I'll vacuum and shampoo your carpet and get the spots out. Normally I have a powerful urge to turn the garden hose on people that come to my door and wash them back into the street. But he caught me at a weak moment. And we have white carpets.
So he left, promising to be back in ten, and I went and googled "Kirby door to door". Hundreds of unhappy people who were talked into a expensive product they didn't want. Oh well, I knew I wasn't going to be buying anything.

So up rolls a beater minivan, and out pops Vili and another guy. Vili lugs the two Kirby boxes into our back room, and his "team leader" Chris tries to size me up. I ask him for his driver's license, and write down his name and number, just in case the going gets weird. Chris already has me reaching for the hose.

But he leaves, and as Alisabeth and Tavi are out for a walk in the Pogonip, it's just me and Vili. Tubes and bags, chrome bits and plastic attachments are assembled into a vacuum shape, and the dance begins. But I'm not really interested, and he isn't practiced enough to keep me on point. So we chat about his school, and, if you'll allow me a little poetic license, the blinding optimism and raging desolation that makes up the average day for a Kirby salesman.

I almost asked if he'd ever seen Glengarry Glen Ross, but thought better of it. Sometimes it's good not to know too much. Vili, and who would've expected it, didn't want to clean rugs, as much as sell me a really shiny Kirby for the low price of $2200.00. For a vacuum slash rug shampooer. Umm, not so much. So I cajoled him along, pointing out spots he'd missed, bringing him water and paper towels and letting him use my phone when his failed, and listening here and there to his comprehensively dull but good natured shpil about how each little part works.

Chris would stop by from time to time and see how the sale was going. He was the big guns, but I only had to explain twice that I never make major purchases without quite a bit of research, and wouldn't be buying a Kirby today. He pressed on, but I just nodded and stared and looked skeptical until he went away.

So the 20 minutes turned into an hour and a half as Vili lazily shampooed our rugs, then lovingly cleaned and housed his gleaming machine. When he could no longer stall for time in the fading hope that I'd come through with a massive check, he carried his huge boxes outside and stood at the end of our driveway waiting for Chris to pick him up.

Alisabeth and Tavi were back by now, and from time to time we'd glance out and there he was, trying to look happy. An hour later, after I had returned from a trip to Trader Joes, Alisabeth told me she had lent him her phone, and that he had finally unbottled at Chris on our porch "You're a f***ing idiot!" he yelled into the phone, unleashing a little of what hides in a door-to-door salesman. Soon after, the minivan pulled up sharp, and away he went.

Rest in Peace, Updike

In my middle teens I lived with my father in a house on the Rio Grande in Embudo New Mexico. There was no computer and the small tv had very poor reception. The house was between the main highway leading to Taos and the river. It was far from everything. But the land is beautiful, and I would frequently run up the steep hills and search for arrowheads, or climb down into deep cracks in the volcanic rock.

At night I was restless. My stepmother would watch tv, or talk on the phone, or sometimes read books that instilled in me a very rare desire to burn books (one about neuro-linguistic programming comes to mind). My father would always seem very busy even when just sitting there reading. I could feel his mind working. They had already said goodbye to each other in some essential, unspoken way, and I responded by backing into myself, becoming a stranger. I took refuge in his wall of books. I would wade through shelves of linguistics and poetics books looking for something that would bring me a more immediate pleasure.

Updike's books, especially his short stories, were one of my ways out. I read all of my father's books of his, and looked for his name in the weekly New Yorker. His prose was poetic, but not self-consciously so. His writing was accessible, cosmopolitan, aware. He wrote with a great fluidity, a fluency in expressing his own thoughts. He wasn't interested in expressing complex ideas, and yet in the space of a couple of sentences, he can lead you somewhere and show you something beautiful that is absolutely brand new to your experience. And it's all done without showing the wires, ever. He had the lightest touch, as if the words were just flowing on out, like a clear stream runs down a hill. At least, this is how I felt when I read his work.

At the time I became aware of his writing, in the mid 1980s, the prevailing current in the short stories I came across tended toward a heavy handed, sparse intensity. Writers like Raymond Carver, that carved stories out of the bodies of people whose lives were bad and getting worse. Updike, who seemed immortal, showed a way to write that didn't rely on showing the great heart of the writer, as much as showing a very active estate of the mind.

bounding beast and band-aid

Tavi went to bed at 10pm last night. Then was up from 1-2, from 3-4, and from 5:30 to 6:30. I was only awake for the last part and just lying there. And so Alisabeth is tuckered out today, and took a quick nap right after I emerged from a long day of barraging recruiters and applying for positions on the computer in "the cave" (my office/Tavi's room).

So I strapped Tavi in a front pack, and walked down to the water. The tide was very low, and a man was throwing tennis balls for his dog using one of those tennis ball throwing devices, a kind of modern day atlatl. I love that an act as easy and natural as throwing a ball has been made even easier, and probably made some company a ton of cash.

Anyway, the dog is a huge bounding beast--some kind of pitbull great dane hybrid--and when he leaps all his muscles emerge in stark relief until he lands, ball in mouth. Again, he returns the ball and again he runs and leaps, this time out on the tidal flats. He lands in a wide pool, and even with the sun gone and a cold wind, you can see he's ecstatic with the sweet relief from the heat of play. He drops the ball and crashes sideways into his bathtub, sending hermit crabs scrambling, and giving the sea anemones a very bad day. He proceeds to lull about, then finally rises, finds his ball, and gets back in the game.

It's too cold for a little girl, even against her father's chest. So we return for a jacket, then get back outside for a stroll down to a dead end lookout point. I walk toward the rail to find a college age guy with pink and green swirled scrub pants, a raggedy beard, and black slippers. He locks up his old 3-speed bike, and gingerly makes his way down to the short sandy beach and out on to the tide rocks, carrying what looks like an old full size portable tape recorder. Then he wanders about on the rock, looking like he needs to lower his meds. I wince thinking about all the life he is crushing under foot, but the sunset demands attention, and a young boy is galumphing about at a small pool, incensed that his mother refuses to come see what he has found. She is busy talking to a friend, then I hear her ask a passing stranger, "Do you have any band-aids?" He has a kleenex, which she accepts. I remember I have one in my wallet, and pull it out, and yell in to the wind "Excuse me, did you want a band-aid?" She looks up at my unshorn face under a watch cap, unsure of my intent. "Because I have one. Here, I'll drop it." Her wariness turns into a friendly smile. "Ohh, she says, I didn't see you had a baby up there." I drop the bandaid, which falls like an leaf, and she tries to catch it, moving her hand back and forth, saying "Yay!" then as she puts it on her boy's finger says to him "what do you say?" a small "thank you" floats up, and for a long second all is in harmony.

patterns of home and child

I search for patterns, trying to learn Octavia. I want to know what makes her feel good, what makes her feel safe, what I can do to see her astonishing, sweet smile again.

At dusk she's often upset--not tired or hungry or in need of a change, just upset. And I carry her against my chest or with her head resting on my shoulder and walk back and forth in our living room from the wall of books to the kitchen. Back and forth until at last she settles, as if she can feel the sun setting.

I search for patterns but can't really find any. She is so young and quick to change. Each day brings new expressions, new sounds. Yesterday her first real laugh! Alisabeth made silly faces and noises at Tavi while she lay on our couch, and up, like a spring, her bubbling laugh. We recorded it.

My wife Alisabeth lifts her out of her electric swing (her nest) and walks slow and smiling in to bed. I understand her smile. It's a new one that means "look at this sleeping beauty in my arms."

We've spent the evening sitting next to each other on the couch, each with a laptop. I've found a trove of eighties tunes, and Alisabeth reads blogs by photographers and artists.

She asks me to put my hand on her to keep her warm. I look at her profile, elegant, awake, beautiful, and put my hand on her neck. I am blessed.

Tavi's assumed names

Octavia.
Tavi.
Baby Ta.
Tavi Two Tone.
Tavi Terwilliger.
Little Berry.
Little Mountain Goat.
Little Tavi TuTu.
my little organic cotton kinigit.
miss O.
Cheerio.
Little Boo.

faster than a speeding billet

"In the winter dawn I will face

My fortieth year. Borne headlong

Towards the long shadows of sunset

By the headstrong, stubborn moments,

Life whirls past like drunken wildfire."

-- Tufu, (trans. Rexroth)

I am forty now. And tomorrow another winter dawn.

we will, we will, greet you

The coffee is nearly scalding, but the toast is cold and hard, and I try to time my bites so I'm not chewing when I pass anyone. Everyone but the most sea-minded surfer greets a man with a stroller walking in the half-light of dawn. We travel on, toward Capitola village. I practice beginning French lessons with the ipod "Je vous present ma fille. Elle s'appelle Octavia".
In the neighborhood there is no sidewalk, and giant gleaming trucks pass us, always too close and too fast. My arms tense, and I stare hard after them. But soon we're at the top of the hill leading down into the village, and I stop and take off my jacket and take in the morning. Far down the coast, fog pools in the wooded hills above Aptos. Seagulls whirl and bicker above the promenade beach. And people sit in their cars at the overlook parking lot, at least one always starting the day with loud classic rock.

pleasure point zombie society

After wheeling Tavi's stroller just a few yards down the street her eyelids grow heavy, and begin to flutter. By the end of the block she's asleep, and we're on the path along the worn cliffs of Pleasure Point. Today the sky is plastered with low dark clouds and a spot of orange where the sun will rise. The ocean is churned, and long, even waves curl toward the rocks. A stocky golden retreiver passes close, sniffing the verge of grass. This one growls and belongs to a small Asian woman with a puffy down jacket and a loud voice full of hard cheer. One of the regular early morning walkers. Almost all of them have dogs, except one older woman always dressed haphazardly in purple who shuffles along with the look of someone who is tired of almost everything. It took two months of me smiling before she began to force, almost imperceptibly, the edges of her mouth up.

idylling in dim light

In the Beginning: making coffee and toast before dawn, I try to move silently as my wife and baby daughter sleep in the next room. I measure out four heaping tablespoons of coffee into a cone and wait for the pot to whistle. Outside, a surfer in a wetsuit pads down the street toward the cold water, his board balanced on his head. His eyes, I imagine, begin to glow.

The window grows brighter, and I want to watch the sun crack above Moss Landing across the bay. So it's time to speed it up--spreading marmalade, tucking a midget pair of mittens into my back pocket, wrestling the fancy stroller out of the laundry room.

My wife lays tumbled across our bed, her long legs sneaking across the border onto my side. Her hair curls wild about her head and pillow, and I fight the tractor-beam pull to get back in, to forget the long walk. Forget everything. But there's Tavi, all three months of her asleep in her low crib pushed against the bed. The air whispering through her lips a kind of song to her parents.

The top of her head smells like soy sauce and honey. I bend and lift her up and out, cradling her head in my hand as a gaurd against my clumsiness. And soon she is tucked and strapped and almost disappeared and grunting a bit under blankets in her stroller, her head wrapped in a thick white fleece hat. Coffee, phone, ipod, sunglasses, and a cold piece of toast balanced on a paper towel. Tavi's awake now and watches me, serene yet expectant, through a clear plastic window in the stroller, as I navigate us out of the backyard and to the street.