Summer Update

A lot of changes have been happening in my life this summer, which means more living and less blogging. In June I moved from Michigan to Lincoln, Illinois. Some buddies came up, helped me load the Uhaul on a semi-cool morning, and then we drove the six hours back down to Illinois. On the way we saw a semi in the opposite lane that had clipped a minivan and small truck, before careening across a ditch and headlong into a field. From the looks of it, we guessed the driver of the semi had fallen asleep or had a major stroke. The truck was pretty buried. Traffic was backed up 5-6 miles, people were on their cell phones, kids were out of their vehicles playing baseball, and several dogs and cats were out by the side of the road "takin' care of bizness." My friend Rod and I looked at each other, grateful on the one hand that we weren't the ones driving through it, but also struck by how the actions of one or two individuals can have a dramatic impact on hundreds, even thousands of lives. And this was just one random individual, not a world leader, businessman or politician.

A couple days later I flew to Boise to see my aunt and uncle and some cousins whom I hadn't seen in 6-8 years. I don't keep track of time very well when I'm in school or teaching. A few days later I rented a PT Cruiser, and drove nine hours across Oregon to Noti--just west of Eugene--where my92-year old grandpa lives.

Before I go on, a little bit about my grandpa. Since Grandma passed away three years ago, Grandpa's lived on his own at the farm where he and grandma spent over 20-some years. There's a room there that used to be my dad's bedroom. Another one belongs to my uncle. My oldest uncle, Bruce, was out of the house when they built it so there's not a fourth bedroom that would have been his. I was conceived in that house, on a New Year's eve in 1974. Grandpa and Grandma used to have 100 acres of farmland, where they raised cows initially, and then sheep, goats, chickens and pigeons. The barn still stands, but has a rickety lean to it that shows that its best days are over. Later they sold off some of the land and kept a manageable 25 acres. Now Grandpa rents that out and cows once more roam the back fields, grazing and mooing into the night.

Even though he's 92, my grandpa still goes to the gym four days a week, eats out at a place called Dixie's where all the waitresses love him and he loves the attention, and he still has a sharp mind. The days I spent with him I felt like I was walking around with Bono. Everywhere he went people were saying hi to him, asking him how he was doing, taking care of him. Grandpa just said, "That's how people are here. They're good people." I looked at him and said, "That's how you are, Grandpa. You've left a legacy."
He thought about it a minute, then said, "I guess if you treat people well, then generally they'll treat you well too." It's certainly worked for my grandpa.

Grandma is buried on a hill just outside of a town called Veneta. From her gravestone you can look across a valley with a lake, and beyond that, the Cascade mountains. The morning we were there the sun was hanging low on the horizon and turned everything golden. I've rarely seen a view more beautiful. Every Saturday my grandpa brings roses to the grave site. First he pulls out the withered flowers from the week before, walks slowly to the trash bin to throw them away, dumps the old water from the vases, refills them with new water, cuts the bottom stems of the roses with a pocketknife, and arranges them back in the vase for another week. He stops for a moment to reflect, and on the morning I was there asked me tearfully if I'd say a prayer. I said sure. I thanked God for Grandma, for the life she'd lived and the ways she'd influenced her family and community. I prayed for Grandpa, for the loneliness he struggles with during the days. They were married over 60 years.

Their marriage wasn't always great, but it also wasn't always bad either, and over the span of 60 years there's going to be a heavy dose of both. But sixty years is a long time with one person, living, loving, fighting, and when they're gone a part of you goes with them. When it's all said and done, I know he loved her.

After the visit with Grandpa I drove back through Oregon, stopping to see my cousin Nate and his family, stayed a few more days in Boise to visit family, then flew back to Illinois, only to drive to Louisville, Kentucky the next day.

The last month I've been getting ready for school, at a new place, a new office, trying to get reconnected to the community, trying to get reacquainted with old friends and make new ones.

In Honor of J. Rob: A dream

I have a lot of dreams where I'm out at sea. It's not one of these calmly placid seas with a breathtaking sunset either, but dark, stormy, swirling, like a giant stomach with heartburn, or the Perfect Storm 20 minutes before it becomes the "perfect" storm. There are always sea creatures just below the surface, big ones. Take that back . . . HUGE! They're bumping against the boat, and the water's clear enough where we can see them. No one wants to go for a swim, and we hope we won't fall overboard.

In the dream last night the ship went down and we died, or at least one person died, and because they died the rest followed, kind of like in the Matrix where one of the other gets the plug pulled on them. Next, we all wake up in a room. We're all together, except for a few people, and they materialize soon after they've died. The world that was the one we were living in is now below us. We can't go back there because we can't breathe the air. It would be like diving below the water and breathing in a lungful of water. You couldn't do it and it would hurt if you tried. The air here was somehow better, and we were still us, but in a different place. And then the dying began again. Someone got shot in this new world, which meant that everyone else, one by one, would disappear only to reappear in the next world.

One thing I noticed about the group was there was tension between us. Conflicts that had been going on in one world followed us into the other. We had to talk out the problems, work them out, or else have to deal with them in the next world. I'm not a believer in karma or reincarnation, but if the first person who thought up that philosophy on life had a dream like I had, I can see why they would begin to believe that life is one big circle, and the issues we have in one lifetime follow us into the next (karma) as we follow the cycle, the wheel, through reincarnation until something changes. The people stay the same thought the venue changes. Kind of like one big pub crawl on a Friday night.

Mind Bender

Rough stages, but will post for now and see where it goes.

Calvin T had always lived mostly in his head. His friends had called him "The Daydreamer," and he often had things turn up where he hadn't put them, or couldn't find things that he had been carrying minutes before.

First, it was his keys. He left them on the dresser, his desk, even a keychain by the door, but when he'd need them, they'd be gone. He'd search the other places where he often left them, then in a panic because he was running late (he was ALWAYS running late), he'd tear apart the couch cushions, look in closets, his running shorts, jeans pockets, only to have them turn up back in the original spot.

But it didn't stop there. Years passed, people died, friends got married. It felt like a blur. Had he been in a coma? He didn't think so but he couldn't account for the gaps in time, in memory. "You live too much in your head," his girlfriend Stephanie said. Yes, maybe that was it.

He was riding his bike. To his right a red Volvo turned the corner 200 meters away. He turned away to check left, then looked right again, turning just as the Volvo swerved, squealing its tires and blared its horn. The rearview mirror nicked him, sending him into a ditch, and as he tumbled he saw blades of grass, still glistening with dew, brown clods of dirt kick up around him like a slow veil, and red packed clay rise up to meet him in a slow, crushing embrace. His helmet cracked and he heard the cross fibers split apart as the helmet took the damage instead of his skull. Where had the car come from?

The hundred mile "rails to trails" race was coming up, and Calvin had been training for months. The day of the race, Calvin hit a steady pace, and found himself in the midst of five to six bikers that were sticking closely together. The ten mile mark came up, the twenty, the twenty-five, and the others began pulling ahead. A few other bikers had come up from behind and passed him as well, and Calvin found himself biking across a flat stretch with no other bikers in sight. His mind began to wander.

Minutes later he looked around him and noticed the road ahead. It was sloping sharply down and he was accelerating, faster and faster. Calvin ratcheted the gears to the top speed and rounded a corner, to see the finish line a 300 meters in front, untorn, waiting for the first bicyclist to cross the line. In less then a minute he had crossed it, barely noticing the perplexed looks of the passersby as they glanced at their watches, then looked again more intently. He must have picked up the pace he had thought, passed the others without noticing.

When the final results were in Calvin had won first place, but not without contest. The judges would send the results to a review board for further review . . .

The headaches began, nothing more than a low buzz at first, but growing progressively stronger and louder. The doctors prescribed medication, ran EEGs, sent him to labs, to Mayos, to the top physicians and scientists in the world, but nothing worked. After a while they gave up. And then the headaches stopped. Calvin woke up at 7:04 to find his hair receding, rapidly. He had overslept and would be late for work. He showered, shaved, stared at himself and his receding hairline in the mirror, telling himself he'd buy some Rogaine on the way home, and left for work. The clock above the kitchen sink read 7:02.

Being Lex

Standing at the corner, hands stuffed deep in his trench coat. A Rollex peeks out between two lines of black. He's standing at the edge of tomorrow, having everything he can buy, grasping for the things he can't. Love. Family. Friendship.

He's standing at the edge of an abyss, peering over, wondering just how deep it goes, if he's destined to fall in. The height from here is dizzying, and he feels the vertigo begin to spin, clawingly close, until he steps back, afraid that the screams are his own.

He's standing. It's the crossroads. Will he turn back, continue reaching out for acceptance, for love, for forgiveness. To become a good man, a great man, to be told, "Good job, son. You did well." These are the things, the only things, he's ever wanted to hear. Or will he step forward, into blind ambition, secure in the walls of power, cloistered off in the folds of moves and countermoves, leaving pieces of human heart and flesh behind. One step closer takes him to the edge of the abyss. And then he's falling, falling. Who's gonna save him now?

Blindness

I haven't seen. I haven't seen in a long time. There was the day they took my eyes, said I wouldn't need them. I told them I did, but then they leaned in on me, leaned hard until I couldn't move, couldn't breathe. They stuck a cold metal device against my head until I felt it burrowing up against bone, and then a pop, and the milky white ball pulled out into that device and one side went blank. I could see the bridge of my nose, could see the device pulling away with that white marble inside as they deposited it in a plastic bag, and then saw the metal coming straight for the other eye, saw it enclose my socket like a bird in a cage, and then static, the kind you see right as the TV goes black.

They said they'd give my eyes to someone else. Whoever that was would be grateful to have my eyes. They'd use them for damn sure, get some good use out of them, see colors like they'd never seen before: the bluest of skies, deep greens, hard oranges and browns. They'd see and write songs and stories and poems about the world they could see. And me? I'd live in darkness.

They said it didn't matter. I'd get used to it eventually. Most people functioned just fine without seeing, and, since they couldn't see, they wouldn't know that I couldn't see either. We'd comfort ourselves and each other by groping in the dark, bumping into each other haphazardly until we learned how to navigate without seeing, and become quite comfortable in our soft gray coccoon. And this would be just fine.

Most days this IS enough, and I've forgotten what it was like when I could see. I didn't really use them. They grew weak, and those who took my eyes said the person who now has them knows how to use them and they have grown strong indeed. These eyes--my eyes--are doing so well!! On someone else!!

But there are the days when I want to see again. I don't know how to frame the pictures of what I remember in such a way to bring them into focus. I don't have the textures. The colors aren't right. I've forgotten how to create depth. It's days like these when my sockets ache, missing what they once had, knowing now like I'd never known these things then.

After a while the sockets begin to scar over, the tissue becomes hard, unreceptive to the white malleable orbs. The fluids that once flowed, lubricating the eyeball tissue dry up. It will take more than a couple new eyeballs to get me to see again. Some days I wonder if it would even be possible again, if the nerves would reconnect, the bed would become soft again, the fluid flow. It would take a miracle.

Years have passed, and though I can no longer see I've begun having dreams that I'm walking again in a world with texture and color and distance, and beauty. They say the world has changed since I last saw, that it is crumbling all around us because there are so few sighted left, that some things are better not to see. But I don't care. Sometimes in these dreams I even see myself flying, above this world, above green treetops and through blue space, above skyscrapers and farmers' fields, and I wonder if our dreams remind us of the things we could once do, but have forgotten.

The other day, it's only been whispered so I don't know if it's true, they said that someone, pitted sockets and all, had begun to see again. . .