The Buffalo Tavern

April 17th  a young singer/ songwriter/ poet moved into our B and B suite for  3 months. .  It has been so enjoyable to have her in the mix.  Last week she wanted to  watch “The Voice” on NBC.   That sounds like a simple enough  request, but since watching TV is not a priority around here, I had my doubts that the rabbit eared contraption would be able to deliver.  Both the wife and I would much rather read a good book, or spend time in deep conversation.

If you ever come to visit, bring a favorite book and read me a chapter

Below is one of my favorite stories from one of my favorite authors, Robert Fulghum:

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One Portion Of A Minister’s Lot concerns the dying and the dead.  The hospital room, the mortuary, the funeral service, the cemetery.  What I know of such things shapes my life elsewhere in particular ways.  What I know of such things explains why I don’t waste much life time mowing grass or washing cars or raking leaves or making beds or shining shoes or washing dishes.  It explains why I don’t honk at people who are slow to move at green lights.  And why I don’t kill spiders.  There isn’t time or need for all this.  What I know of cemeteries and such also explains why I sometimes visit the Buffalo Tavern.

     The Buffalo Tavern is, in essence, mongrel America.  Boiled down and stuffed into the Buffalo on a  Saturday night, the fundamental elements achieve a critcal mass around eleven.  The catalyst is the favorite house band, the Dynamic Volcanic Logs.  Eight freaks frozen in the amber vibes of the sixties.  Playing stomp-hell rockabilly with enough fervor to heal the lame and halt.  Mongrel America comes to the Buffalo to drink beer, shoot pool, and dance.  Above all, to dance.  To shake their tails and stomp frogs and get rowdy and holler and sweat and dance.  When it’s Saturday night and the Logs are rocking and the crowd is rolling, there’s no such thing as death.

     One such night the Buffalo was invaded by a motorcycle club, trying hard to look like the Hell’s Angels and doing pretty good at it too.  I don’t think these people were in costume for a movie.  And neither they nor their ladies smelled like soap-and-water was an important part of their lives on anything like a daily basis.  Following along behind them was an Indian-an older man, with braids, beaded vest, army surplus pants, and tennis shoes.  He was really ugly.  Now I’m fairly resourceful with words, and would give you a flashy description of this man’s face if it would help, but there is no way around it-he looked, in a word, ugly.  He sat working on his Budweiser for a long time.  When the Dynamic Logs ripped into a scream-out version of “Jailhouse Rock” he moved.  Shuffled over to one of the motorcycle mommas and invited her to dance.  Most ladies would have refused, but she was amused enough to shrug and get up.

     Well, I’ll not waste words.  This ugly, shuffling Indian ruin could dance.  I mean, he had the moves.  Nothing wild, just effortless action, subtle rhythm, the cool of the master.  He turned his partner every way but loose and made her look good at it.  The floor slowly cleared for them.  The band wound down and out, but the drummer held the beat.  The motorcycle club group rose up and shouted for the band to keep playing.  The band kept playing.  The Indian kept dancing.  the motorcycle momma finally blew a gasket and collapsed in someone’s lap.  The Indian danced alone.  The crowd clapped up the beat.  The Indian danced with a chair.  The crowd went crazy.  The band faded.  the crowd cheered.  The Indian held up his hands for silence as if to make a speech.  Looking at the band and then the crowd, the Indian said, “Well, what’re you waiting for? Let’s DANCE.”

     The band and the crowd went off like a bomb.  People were dancing all through the tables to the back of the room and behind the bar.  People were dancing in the restrooms and around the pool tables.  Dancing for themselves, for the Indian, for God and Mammon.  Dancing in the face of hospital rooms, mortuaries, funeral services, and cemeteries.  And for a while, nobody died.

    “Well,” said the Indian, “what’re you waiting for?  Let’s dance.”

Excerpt taken from the book All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergartenby Robert Fughum

“The length of our days is seventy years- or eighty, if we have the strength;  yet the span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass….so teach us to number  our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”  Psalm 90:10.12

Thursday and Friday night of this week  we stood in a funeral home receiving line to acknowledge the passing of two more people.   Combine that with my cousin Michelle’s unexpected passing and that makes for a busy month.   So, fellow bloggers and Internet surfers, make sure you are not just sitting on the side lines and watching life pass you by.  The Indian said it best.   “Let’s Dance! “

Conversation with a Zen Master

Like many Westerners in the late sixties, I wanted to be somewhere else in my religious journey.  Confusion reigned in the kingdom of my mind, and I yearned to construct a framework of understanding that seemed beyond my present cultural tools.  I couldn’t seem to get “there” from “here.”

Zen and its idea of enlightenment appealed to me.  That one might sit very still and empty one’s mind and suddenly be hit by a mighty wave of comprehension beyond words – well, that would do.  Hit me with the big news and let me walk away with a sense of “I get it!”

Took a leave of absence from my dailiness and went off to Japan to get Zenned properly.  Got connected to a temple and a master.  Shaved my head and face, put on the drab grey robe of novitiate, and stood in line to get enlightened.  Figured to become a pretty holy man in pretty short order, like in about six weeks, which was when my return ticket home expired. Right.

But of course it was not to be.  Sitting still gave me hallucinations and cramps, but not enlightenment.  The food gave me diarrhea.  Sleeping on a board gave me a backache.  And my fellow monks treated me like a Western fool, laughing at me behind my back.  It was one of those times when you know enough to realize there’s something everybody but you knows, but you don’t know enough to know exactly what it is you don’t know.

But I did know it was time to leave.

To my surprise, an invitation was extended for an interview with the master of the temple.  Which was like a stock boy being asked to have lunch with the president of the company.

Since it was largely because of his reputation that I had chosen this particular temple, and since he rarely spent time with tourists like me, the master’s invitation seemed a special honor.

Manabu Khohara, Ph. D. in economics from Tokyo University, solver of all Zen koans (mind puzzles) adviser to captains of industry, writer of books, speaker of seven foreign languages, a paradigm of the treat teacher.  Wise, good, respected, accomplished.  If he didn’t have “it” all figured out, then nobody did.

After I was ushered into his private study, we knelt on cushions and bowed our mutual respect.  He out of courtesy and I out of awe.  For a long time he looked at me and into me.

Very deliberately he shifted his weight to one knee, and just as deliberately reached for his backside and scratched himself in a way and in that place your mother told you was a no-no in public.

“I have hemorrhoids.  They hurt and itch.”

There was nothing in my mental manual as to how to reply to such an opening remark.  I kept my mouth shut and pretended to be thoughtful.

“The hemorrhoids come from stress, you know.  From worrying about tourists burning down this firetrap of a temple.  From worrying about trying to get enough funding from businessmen to keep it in repair.  From arguing with my wife and children, who are not as holy” – he smiled – as I am.  And from despairing over the quality of the lazy young fools who want to be priests nowadays.  Sometimes I think I would like to get a little place in Hawaii and just play golf for the rest of my life.”

He leaned to one side and scratched himself again.

“It was this way before I was “enlightened” you know.  And now it is the same after enlightenment.”

A long pause while he silently gave me time to consider his words and actions.

Rising, he motioned me to follow him to the entrance alcove of the temple, and we stood before an ancient scroll I had often passed.  He said it was time for me to go home, where he felt I had been a “thirsty man looking for a drink and all the while standing knee- deep in a flowing stream.”  Yes…..

from the book It was On Fire When I lay Down on it.  by Robert Fughum

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DM here   Grant Wood (artist of American Gothic fame)  grew up just a stones throw from where we live.  He traveled all over the world studying the masters of paint  and palate . Eventually he  returned home to Iowa, formed an artist colony and painted profusely until the day he died.

I love that line  “thirsty man looking for a drink and all the while standing knee- deep in a flowing stream.”

Someone once told me if I had to go somewhere else in order to be happy..it wouldn’t take long and I wouldn’t be happy there either.

We tend to take our baggage with us.

American Gothic  DM Style

Oatmeal days

Talking with a nice lady on the phone.  She had a case of the midwinter spiritual rot.  And a terminal cold she’s had since September 1.

“Well,”  rasps she, ‘you don’t ever get depressed, do you?”

“Listen,” says I, “I get lows it takes extension ladders to get out of.”

“So, what do you do?” asks she. “I mean, what DO YOU DO?”

Nobody ever pinned me down quite like that before.  They usually ask what I think they should do.

My solace is not religion or yoga or rum or even deep sleep.  It’s Beethoven.  As in Ludwig van.  He’s my ace in the hole.  I put his Ninth Symphony on the stereo, pull the earphones down tight, and lie down on the floor.  the music comes on like the first day of Creation.

And I think about old Mr B.  He knew a whole lot about depression and unhappiness.  He moved around from place to place, trying to find the right place.  His was a lousy love life, and he quarreled with his friends all the time.  A rotten nephew worried him deeply – a pianist.  He wanted to sing well, too.  But when still quite young, he began to lose his hearing.  Which is usually bad news for pianists and singers.  By 1818, when he was forty-eight, he was stone-cold deaf.  Which makes it all the more amazing that he finished his great Ninth Symphony five years later.  He never really heard it!  He just thought it!

So I lie there with my earphones on, wondering if it ever could have felt to Beethoven like it sounds in my head.  The crescendo rises, and my sternum starts to vibrate.  And by the time the final kettledrum drowns out all those big F’s, I’m on my feet, singing at the top of my lungs in gibberish German with the mighty choir, and jumping up and down as the legendary Fulghumowski directs the final awesome moments of the END OF THE WORLD AND THE COMING OF GOD AND ALL HIS ANGELS, HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! WWHHOOOOOOOOOOM-KABOOMBAM-BAAAAAAAA!

Uplifted, exalted, excited, affirmed, and overwhelmed am I MANALIVE!  Out of all that sorrow and trouble, out of all that frustration and disappointment, out of all that deep and permanent silence, came all that majesty-that outpouring of JOY and exaltation!  He defied his fate with jubilation!

And I never can resist all that truth and beauty.  I just can’t manage to continue to sitting around in my winter ash heap, wringing my hands and feeling sorry for myself, in the face of THAT MUSIC!  Not only does it wipe out spiritual rot, it probably cures colds, too.

So what’s all this noise about winter and rain and bills and taxes? says I to me.  So who needs all this talk about failure and confusion and frustration?  What’s all this noise about life and people being no damned good?

In the midst of oatmeal days, I find within Beethoven’s music an irresistible affirmation.  In deep, spiritual winter, I find inside myself the sun of summer.  And some day, some incredible December night when I am very rich, I am going to rent me a grand hall and a great choir and a mighty symphony orchestra, and stand on the podium and conduct the Ninth.  And I will personally play the kettledrum part all the way through to the glorious end, while simultaneously singing along at the very top of my lungs.  And in the awesome silence that follows, I will bless all-the-gods-that-be for Ludwig van Beethoven, for his Ninth, and his light.

MANALIVE!

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Mrs DM came home from a long day of working with disabled kids .  She looked tired.   , I suggested we retire to our old favorite stuffed chairs  and I would read,…

as in out loud,  while she sipped on a cup of blueberry tea.

I grabbed one of  Fulghum’s books off the shelf.

I periodically post excerpts of Fulghum’s books on my blog.  On the right hand side of the blog home page you’ll see  Robert Fulghum listed.

click it, it will take you to the archives.

Now if you want to know what I like to listen to on  my “oatmeal days,”  my sound of choice is U2.

Personal favorite Shake Rattle and Hu.

I’ll  watch the whole album.

Here’s a little teaser to wet your appetite:

DM

If you get bored….

“Now let me tell you about Larry Walters, my hero.  Walters is a truck driver, thirty-three years old.  He is sitting in his lawn chair in his backyard, wishing he could fly.  For as long as he could remember, he wanted to go up.  To be able to just rise right up in the air and see for a long way.  The time, money, education, and opportunity to be a pilot were not his.  Hang gliding was too dangerous, and any good place for gliding was too far away.  So he spent a lot of summer afternoons sitting in his backyard in his ordinary old aluminum lawn chair – the kind with webbing and rivets.  Just like the one you’ve got in your backyard.

The next chapter of this story is carried by newspapers and television.  There’s old Larry Walters up in the air over Los Angeles.  Flying at last.  Really getting UP there.  Still sitting in his aluminum lawn chair, but it’s hooked on to forty-five helium-filled surplus weather balloons.  Larry has a parachute on, a CB radio, a six-pack of beer, some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and a B B gun to pop some of the balloons to come down.  And instead of being just a couple of hundred feet over his neighborhood, he shot up eleven thousand feet, right through the approach corridor to the Los Angeles International Airport.

Walters is a taciturn man.  When asked by the press why he did it, he said; ” You can’t just sit there.”  When asked if he was scared, he answered; “Wonderfully so.”  When asked if he would do it again, he said ; “Nope.”  And asked if he was glad he did it, he grinned from ear to ear and said, “Oh, yes.”

The human race sits in its chair.  On the one hand is the message that says there is nothing left to do.  And the Larry Walterses of the earth are busy tying balloons to their chairs, directed by dreams and imagination to do their thing.

The human race sits in its chair.  On the one hand is the message that the human  situation is hopeless.  And the Larry Walteres of the earth soar upward knowing anything is possible, sending back the message from eleven thousand feet: “I did it, I really did it.  I’m FLYING!”

It’s the spirit here that counts.  The time may be long, the vehicle may be strange or unexpected.  But if the dream is held close to the heart, and imagination is applied to what there is close at hand, everything is still possible.

But wait!  Some cynic from the edge of the crowd insists that human beings still can’t really fly.  Not like birds, anyway.  True.  But somewhere in some little garage, some maniac with a gleam in his eye is scarfing vitamins and minerals supplements, and practicing flapping his arms faster and faster….”

From the book All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum

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We like many of you are in the middle of a killer heat wave.

Don’t feel like doing much of anything.  So, to pass the time, I will sometimes pick up Robert Fulghum and read a story or two from one of his books, out loud to my wife.

Thought it would be fun to share one of them with you tonight. DM

Players

That Sunday morning Lady is a player.

Definition:  Persons with enough nimbleness of mind to accept a surprise invitation to jump into a quick game of imagination.  People with loosey-goosey sense of mischief.  Players are also Laughers.  And you can’t tell  the Players by the way they appear on the outside.

Example:  Here’s a uniform city bus driver standing in the door of his vehicle, staring into the rain.  An invitation from me, passing by:  “OK, Here’s the deal:  I’ll pay for the gas, and you’ll drive us to California to the beach at Santa Monica.”

With a straight face he says, “OK, Meet me here at midnight.  It’s the end of my run and they won’t miss me or the bus until morning.  I’ll get some barbecue.”  He smiles.

A Player.

Consider this lady with a shopping car full of oddball stuff standing beside me in front of the cheese counter at the grocery store.  My invitation:  “I like the groceries in your cart better than mine.  Want to trade?  You take mine and I’ll take yours.  Could be interesting when we get home.”

She smiles.  Checks out my cart.  “You’ve got a deal,”  she says.   We take each other’s carts and roll away.

Later, she’s waiting for me at the check-out counter.  She knows and I know:  We weren’t really going to go through with it.  But those few moments of madness brought new meaning to “going to the store for a few things.”  And the lady knows the game.

A Player.

On the other hand:  There’s a tailor shop on Queen Anne Avenue.  Sign in the window says ALTERATIONS AND REPAIRS FOR MEN AND WOMEN.   The tailor is standing in the doorway.  I stop. ” I’d like to get altered and repaired, “ I say.

She looks at me cautiously.  Goes inside.  Closes the door.

Not a player.

Players may be discreet.  Here’s the charming woman who works at the sidewalk flower stand at the nearby market.  She called me “Babycakes” just before Thanksgiving Day,  but I haven’t seen her since.  Invitation:  “Do I still look like Babycakes to you?” I ask.

She looks at me shrewdly.  “Sir, it is the policy of the store that employees are not to get familiar with customers.”  Oh, too bad,” say I.  She’s no longer a player.  As I turn my back and walk away, she whispers, “Thanks for coming by Babycakes.”

She’s an undercover Player now.

Here’s me again, at a well-known company to pick up copies of a manuscript.  I am visibly annoyed – this is my third trip to get what was promised yesterday.  The anxious clerk, Miss Saucer-eyes, is obviously new to the herd behind the counter and doesn’t know what to do with me or for me.  The work is still not done, despite promises.  Getting mad won’t help.

“OK, I won’t make any trouble, “ I say, “Just give me a really clever, off- the wall creative excuse- the wildest thing you can think of.  Make me laugh and I’ll go away.”

Miss Saucer-eyes is mute.  This situation was not covered in training school last week.  “I’ll speak to my manager.”

Definitely not a Player.  But the story continues.

Miss Saucer-eyes retreats to the back of the shop and consults with her boss, a high-energy, sharply dressed woman, who marches briskly toward me with a steely look.   She leans over the counter and explains:

“Sir, you may not know this, but this store has been a front for the Irish Republican Army for years.  We’re supposed to be turning in our firearms, and it seems a bazooka is missing from the inventory.  When we find the bazooka things will get back to normal.  If I were you, I wouldn’t make any trouble.  just come back tomorrow, OK?”

A big league Player.

One final example:  A double whammy I didn’t see coming.

Clerk in a bookstore- older lady with dyed red hair.

    “Can I help you? she asks.

“Happy birthday,” I say.  (Always makes people smile- sometimes you’re early, sometimes late, but sometimes right on.  An invitation to play)

“Well, I hope you’re coming to my party.”  She says.  “We need someone to jump out of the cake.”

“I’m your man.”

“You’d be expected to go-go dance naked.”

     “Then I’m not your man.”

A Player….

A lady waiting in line behind me overheard this book store babble and drifted away from the counter and out the door.  She missed her chance.

Probably not a Player.

Later, as I walked by the sidewalk table at a nearby coffee-house, I spot the lady who fled the store.  “Sorry, Hope we didn’t annoy you,” I said.

She smiled.  “Oh no,”  she replied.  “It’s just that I jumped out of the cake last year.  It hurts my feelings to think they’re looking for a replacement.”

A Player after all.”

From Robert Fulghum’s book  What on Earth Have I done?

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How about you?

Are you ever  a “player”?

I (DM)  am, on occasion.

It  goes in streaks.

Some days I end up talking with Kris  @ the lumberyard several times.

Just to keep it interesting, I will tell her it’s the Johnson County Sheriff’s department calling.  She  likes to play along.

Think I’m one of the highlights in her day.

So tell me, what is one of the silliest things you’ve ever done?

Craving me some John Ploughman

   

      “In John Ploughman’s Talk I have tried to talk for ploughmen and common people. Hence refined taste and dainty words have been discarded for strong old proverbial expressions and homely phrases. I have aimed my blows at the vices of many, and tried to inculcate those moral virtues without which men are degraded and miserable. Much that needs to be said to the toiling masses would not suit well the pulpit and the Sabbath; these lowly pages may teach thrift and industry all the days of the week, in the cottage and the workshop: and if some learn these lessons I shall not repent the adoption of the rustic style.”
—Charles Spurgeon, from the Preface

      I (DM) went to bed last night craving me  some “John Ploughman”  

     Couldn’t lay my hand on the little antique  green leather bound book my wife had picked up @ our local Library fundraiser a few years ago, but this morning  I found it.

     John Ploughman’s talks were written by Charles  H. Spurgeon  in the mid/ late 1800′s.

     A series of short pithy modern day proverbs. 

    I personally love this sort of stuff.  Practical wisdom, on the order of Dale Carnegie  , Robert Fulghum or Chuck Swindoll

      Here’s what I read this morning :

      On Good nature and firmness

       Do not be all sugar or all the world will suck you down;  but do not be all vinegar, or the world will spit you out.

  There is a medium in all things:  only blockheads go to extremes. 

 We need not be all rock or all sand, all iron or all wax.  We should neither fawn upon  everybody like silly lap-dogs, nor fly at all persons like surly mastiffs. 

…others take fire as fast as tinder at the smallest offence, and are as dangerous as gunpowder. 

 To have a fellow going about the farm as cross with everybody as a bear with a sore head, with the temper as sour as vinegar and as sharp as a razor, looking as surly as a butcher’s dog, is a great nuisance, and yet there may be some good points about the man, so that he may be a man for all that; but poor soft Tommy, as green as grass and as ready to bend as a willow, is nobody’s money and everybody’s scorn. 

 A man must have  a backbone, or how is he to hold his head up?  but that backbone must bend, or he will knock his brow against the beam.

       A friend to everybody is often a friend to nobody, or else in his simplicity he robs his family to help strangers, and becomes a brother to the beggar.

  There is wisdom in generosity, as in everything else; and some had need to go to school to learn it.

  A kind-hearted soul may be very cruel to his own children, while he takes the bread out of their mouths to give to those who call him a generous fellow, but laugh as his folly. 

Very often he that his money lends loses both his gold and his friends, and he who is surety is never sure.  Take John Ploughman’s advice, and never be security (collateral) for more than you are quite willing to lose. 

      When we are injured, we are bound as Christians to bear it without malice; but we are not to pretend that we do not feel it, for this will but encourage our enemies to kick us again.  He who is cheated twice by the same man is half as bad as the rogue….

     With children we must mix gentleness with firmness; they must not always have their own way, but they must not always be thwarted.  Give to a pig when it grunts and to a child when it cries, and you will have a fine pig and a spoiled child…”

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     This was just what I (DM)  needed to hear.

Wanted to pass it on to you…especially if you’re the type that struggles with speaking up and being assertive in the right way.

More chickens.

I’m thinking about getting some more chickens.   

Right now we have 5….4 hens and a rooster.

The following story comes to mind every time I think about our little flock….

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Not Even Chickens by Robert Fulghum

      With all the recent seaside development, it is easy to forget that Crete and Cretans are fundamentally about the mountains – the steep places, the high and isolated villages that breed independent, self-sufficient people who have always been a rule unto themselves.  They still are.  The Mountain Cretans say they fear nothing and nobody, and would look at God, Himself, with hat on and eyes open.  Thus they look upon strangers with interest, not suspicion.

     One afternoon I parked my car and walked a narrow road that connects several small villages along a high mountain ridge.  A voice called out from the porch of a whitewashed house:

     “Ehla, ehlah, kahtheeseh!” (Come come, sit!)  An old man beckoned to me, pointing to the chair beside him.

      I went.  I sat.  On a small table were almonds, raisins, olives, and a bottle of tsikoudia (tsee-koo-di-ah)  the Cretan equivalent of white-lightening or grappa- the proffered sign of hospitality and welcome to a Cretan home.  He was expecting company -and anybody would do.

     “tho-kee-maseh” (Drink this, eat this!)  he said, handing me a glass of tsikoudia and filling a small plate with almonds, raisins, and olives.

      “Lee-pon.  Germanos?” (Well, then, are you German?)

       I was touched to know that the hospitality came first, even though I might be German- from a country that had brutalized Crete in WW II.

     “Oshee, Americanos.”  (No, American.)

       “Americanos!  Americanos!  He shouted into the house, and a younger man appeared.  They spoke high-gear Greek with a Cretan accent.  The look on my face tells them I cannot follow, so the younger man says in fine English, “My father is excited to meet you.  He has never met an American.  He hears that in America they have everything.  He would like to ask you some questions.”

     Fine.  With his son translating, the examination began.  How old was I?  How many children?  How much money do I make?  Very Cretan inquiries.  Then a harder question that led to even tougher scrutiny: “How often do you dance and sing and recite poetry?

      “Not very often.”

       The old man looked at me with narrowed eyes.

      “How many sheep and goats do you have?”

     “None.”

      The old man looked puzzled.

       “How many olive trees do you have and how much oil put away?”

      “None.”
    

      The old man frowned.

      ” How many vines do you have and how much wine put away?”

     “None.”

      The old man was nonplussed.  He raised his eyebrows.

      “Do you have any chickens?”

     “No.”

     The old man looked mildly outraged and fell into high-gear Greek again with his son.  The son was apologetic.  “Pardon me, but my father says that it is a lie that Americans have everything.  You have no sheep, no goats, no trees, no oil, no vines, no wine, not even chickens.  He asks,” What kind of life is that?  He says, “No wonder you don’t sing or dance or recite poetry very often.”  He is dismayed.”

     The old man peered at me with pity bordering on contempt.

      Shaking his head in disgust, he mumbles in English, as he rose and limped out into his garden, dismissing me from his mind:

“Nothing.  Not even chickens….”

Itsy Bitsy Spider

      I (DM)  came across this cool looking spider  a couple of weeks ago @ work.    We were reroofing an older home and when I peeled off the ridge vent, he came crawling out.  I did two things when I saw him..first I ran back down to my truck and grabbed the camera..It was so unusual I wanted to take a picture.  Second thing, which kind of left me mystified…I didn’t want to kill it.  Now, normally  I would have squashed it without a second thought, but there was something in me that didn’t want to.    Not sure why I reacted that way…although if you take the time to read the  Fulghum story at the end of this post, you’ll see I”m not the only one who has hesitated to kill a bug…

A marbled orb weaver

I (DM)  need your help again   

Anyone care to  translate a  poem by Walt Whitman  for me?  I know you probably think I’m kidding.     I have a  hunch he’s buried a pearl of wisdom in it , I’m just not what it is. 

 I remember  in 7th grade , Miss Burns had us  read Jonathan Livingston Seagull.   For the life of me, I did not  know what to do with that story.  

Here’s that poem:

By Walt Whitman

1819-1892

---

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to
connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

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I’ll close with this short meditation by Robert Fulghum .

“Meditation on the Death of a Fly”

         The first warm day of onrushing spring rallied the dormant bug population of my house.  As school locker rooms spill teams of amateur athletes onto practice fields at this season, the egg sacs in the darkest corners of my study burst forth legions of tiny spiders onto the floor and launch waves of minute flying midges onto the wall.  No cause for exterminating action for me.  Experience has taught me patience.  Within hours the baby bugs will be lunch for a small team of freshman lizards.

      On a slightly larger scale, the Dispersal Committee of the Housefly Commune has already assigned one juvenile fly to each room of my house.  These newly licensed pilots move with maniacal speed, zooming erratically here and there, practicing upside-down landings on the ceilings, crashing into the clear window glass, and corkscrewing through the air in acrobatic shows of skill- but seldom landing long enough for me to get a shot at them with my Great Yellow Swatter of Death.

      There are also a few tenacious survivors left over from the end of winter.  For two days now a fat, elderly fly has lived out his last hours on top of my desk.  His airborne adventures seem to have ended.  Slowly he walks from one end of the desk to another, pausing at the edge, and walking back again to the other end and another edge.  He does not bother me.   I do not bother him.  It is in his favor that he has lost the urge , the will, or the ability to launch himself into the air.  As long as he does not enter my No Fly Zone, I am content.

      Once he even heaved himself up onto the Great Yellow Swatter of Death, walked its length, tumbled off the end and walked on.  Fearless.  Dignified. Senile.

     This morning he is still present, though moving ever so slowly, a centimeter or two at a time.  At this moment he rests between me and the computer screen, scratching and patting his head with his two front feet.  Perhaps he is reflecting on the distance to the far away edge of the table.  He sighs and plods on.

     I worry about him.

      What is there for an old fly to eat or drink on the hard brown desert of my desk?  Will he fall off the edge the next time he gets there and break his neck?  Or try his wings one last desperate time before he nose-dived into the tile floor?  Do his children know where he is, or care?  Can he see me, the possible agent of his fate, and is he afraid?  Does he anticipate the coming of the Great Lizard, or is he comforted by knowing that, like mutton, he is too tough and stringy to be eaten now?

     I can’t ignore him-  there he is, creeping back and forth.

      I can’t push him off the table-  too cruel.

     And I can’t quite bring myself to smash him dead too easy.

     So I put a jar over him and peered at him through a magnifying glass.  Unlike other insects I’ve investigated, he did not panic- no mad rushing about or trying to escape.  He looks tired and gray.  Slowly he wrings his hands.  When I removed the jar, he resumed walking toward the edge again with great dignity and purpose.  Just before I turned off the light to go to bed, he was walking in circles, slowly, slowly, slowly….

      This morning I found him lying on his back.  Dead.

      With respect for his dignity and mine, I took him outside for burial.  With a teaspoon I dug a small grave for him beneath a weed that is just coming into bright red bloom.

      A unique event, however trivial.  This first fly funeral I had attended.  I pondered the sense of mercy that stayed my hand from the Great Yellow Swatter of Death.  What kept me from automatically smashing the life out of the vulnerable senior fly?  Soft-hearted folly or seasoned wisdom?

     Being culturally wired to detest flies and kill them at any opportunity, what got into me?  Briefly we were the only two living things in the room.  Struggling on as long as possible.  The spark of life in him and the spark of life in me was the same.  We were connected.  Live and let live.

       Now I understand what it means when people say: “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.” 

      That can happen.

Asbestos Gelos

       I have to warn you-  this post may be a little coarse for some of you.  Just to be clear, I didn’t write it, but it’s one of those stories that made me laugh so hard the first time I read it, I wanted to share it with a few of you.   One of my favorite activities around our home is to read  out loud to each other .  Not every day mind you, and not even every week.  It kind of goes in spurts…so if you were visiting  our home tonight  and you were one of those people in my life I can be 100% myself around, I might   pick up one of Robert Fulghum’s  books and read you a story .   This one comes from his book  What On Earth Have I Done. 

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Asbestos Gelos

 

    
“My Cretan connection began the summer I was wandering around Europe alone while waiting for my wife to finish her medical residency.  No particular agenda just doing what came next.  I went to Crete to see the famous archaeological digs at Knossos and to look in on a graduate school program at the Orthodox Academy of Crete.  When I was ready to step off the paths beaten down by tourists, I went to a small village at the western end of thee island- a fishing village at the end of the road: Kolymbari.

      I found a room for the night and rose before the sun the next morning to go running.  The day was already hot, so I dressed only in black running briefs and shoes.  (It’s relevant to the story to note there that my hair and beard were white even then.)  My route took me past the main kofeneion (coffeehouse) of the village where men sat outside socializing.  They ignored me.  I was surprised.  They seemed surly, hostile, and unwelcoming.

      Later, when I mentioned this to my landlord, he said, Oh no, Cretans are very welcoming to strangers- it is an old tradition – philoxenia.  But in your case the men at the kofeneion did not know what to make of you.  For one thing, your hair and beard make you look like a priest, but they have never seen a half-naked priest running through the village in what looks like his underwear at that our of the morning.”

       “Oh.”

     “No problem.  Smile, wave, say good morning in Greek: Kalimera- kah-lee-mare-ha.  You will find them friendly.”

     “Right.”"

(Pause.)

       See this from the point of view of the men at the Kofeneion.  They have been gathering here at down for years without disturbance or distraction.  SUddenly, without warning, a white-bearded, half-naked priest flashes by.

       “What the hell was that, Yorgos?”

     “Darned if I know.”

      “Tourists get weirder every year.”

      The next morning I set off running with goodwill toward men in my heart.  Ready to greet the villagers.  The men at the Kofeneion see me.

       ” Yorgos, Look, here he comes again.”

       Hold that moment.  As I said, my appearance was a bit of a surprise in the first place.  Then there is the fact of my miserable language skills.  During the night, my brain changed Kilmera (good morning) to calamari, which means “squid.”

     And then there was the problem of waving.  I did not know that Cretans wave with a gentle gesture of an upheld, closed-fingered hand, backside out, palm in.  I didn’t know that the All-American hearty wave- arm extended, fingers open- is equivalent to giving Cretans the finger- ”Up your!” in other words.

      To continue:  Here I come.  Running by the Kofeneion, I shouted, “Calamari, Calamari, Calamari,” and gave my most enthusiastic open-handed wave to all.

     The Cretans heard, “Squid, Squid, Squid” and saw “Up yours!” from the priest in the underpants.

       Well,  They fell out of their chairs laughing.  And shouted “Calamari, Calamari, Calamari” and enthusiastically waved  “Up yours!” back at me.  More than pleased, I ran on- thinking that these are truly friendly people after all- my kind of guys.

       The men in the kofeneion could hardly believe what had happened.  “What planet did he fall off of?” they wondered.  And of course they did what you and I would do next.  During the day they told their friends about the bizarre stranger’s dawn appearance.  And when their friends didn’t believe them, they said, “It’s true.  come see.  Have coffee in the morning.

      And sure enough, here I come again.  I did notice that there were quite a few more men having coffee than yesterday.

       “Look Demetri.  I told you.  HEre he comes.  Shout “squid” at him and give him the finger and see what he does.”  So they did and I did and so on.  Funny, rowdy laughter all around.

      As I ran on by, I turned and gave them the All- American sign for “OK” thumb and forefinger forming a circle.  They laughed even harder and gave me the “OK” sign back.

      Wonderful!

      Word gets around.

       “You’re kidding. No, come see.”  The next morning even women and children were there to greet me.

     But that same morning, just after I passed the coffee house, a middle-school English teacher stopped me in the street.  Serious young man, visibly upset.  “Excuse me,” mister, you are making a jackass of yourself, and those idiots at the kofeneion are helping you.  YOu should all be ashamed.  You are setting a bad example. What will the children think?”

     “What’s wrong? What have I done?”

      “In the first place, he said, no self-respecting Cretan man would ever go out of his house and into the village dressed as you are.  Immodest.”  He went on to distinguish between calamari and Kalimera, and explained the fine points of correct waving.

      Finally, he wanted me to know that the sign for “OK” in America was the sign Cretans use for telling someone to stick their head up their own rear end.  The road-rage gesture in Crete.  A serious provocation that could lead to shots being fired.  He conceded that good friends might use it as a perverse joke.  But strangers? Never!

     I felt bad.  I glanced back at the men at the kofeneion.  Sheepish grins.  Now they knew I knew.  And I knew they knew. And so, now what?  I walked away puzzled: Should I leave the village, find another running route, apologize, what?

     But I couldn’t ignore one unambiguous fact:  the laughter.

     What had happened was funny.  The laughter was real.

    Actually my best American friends and I would have reacted in the same way.  These Cretans still seemed like my kind of guys.

      During the night my brain sorted out the problem.

      At first light I was clear in my mind what to do.

      I donned my running shorts and added to my costume a T-shirt with the blue and white Greek flag on it.  Here I come.

      Solemnly, the coffee drinkers watched me approach.  No gestures.  As Impassive as the first morning.

      “Look, here he is again, Yorgos. What do you think he will do now?”

      Is he angry with us?”

      “Who knows?

      To prepare for this occasion, I had asked my landlord how to insult Cretan men in a way that’s permissible only among good friends- the grossest thing- trusting you know you are kidding…..

    Call them malackos….it is shall I say, a suggestion of masculine inadequacy….”

      As I got to the kofeneion, I slowed down.

     I stopped.  Faced them.

      A tense moment.  Friend or Foe?

      I smiled.  “Calamari.” Then I waved, American style: “Up your!”  and growled malackos at them, while slapping my palm against my wrist…. and stood there grinning, but with heart pounding- afraid I just might get the hell beat out of me.

     The kofeneion erupted with laughter and applause.  A chair was provided.  “Come, come. Sit.” Coffee, brandy, and a cigarette were offered. And with their minimal English and my feeble Greek we retold and reenacted the joke we had made together- from their point of view as well as mine.  Above all, they thought my way of handling the situation- the in-your-face-with-humor- had Cretan style.  Arrogant.  Only a true friend would be so audacious.

      I was, after all, their kind of guy- and they were mine.

      It seems there was an opening for the Village Idiot, and I filled it.

    That was the beginning.

     For a long time they knew little about me except that I was a fool and a laugher  who understood something about the humor and social courage of Cretan men.  To me they became friends with names like Yorgos, Manolis, Kostas, Nikos, Demetri, and Ioannis.  To them I became the Americanos, Kyrios Calamari-  the American, the honorable Mr. Squid.

      As I say, I have been going back for more than twenty years.  They have included me in  the life of the village- feasts, weddings, gossip, baptisms, wine-making, and olive harvest.  My clumsy Greek amuses them still.

      I return each year in part because I expect laughter- from their timeless jokes and stories that are often raw and reckless and wicked.  Jokes about old age, and sex and war and stupidity jokes that mask fear and failure and foolishness   Their laughter is not cautious.  Without this laughter the Cretans would hot have survived their travails and tragedies across the centuries.  Cretan laughter is fierce, defiant laughter  an “Up your!” to the forces of death and mystery and evil.

     They have a word for this laughter: Asbestos Gelos.

    (As-bes-tos yay-lohs)  A term used by Homer actually.

       It literally means “Fireproof laughter.”

     Unquenchable laugher.  Invincible laugher.

       And the Cretans say that he who laughs, lasts.

    And they have been around for a long, long time.

Making Love

      

 One of the wisest men I know, Alexander Papaderos, is the director of the Orthodox Academy of Crete.  Unfortunately for me, he lives ten time zones and thousands of miles away from Seattle.  Even when we are together, we are separated by the subtleties of language.  His English is far better than my Greek, but we are both seriously limited by lack of common cultural experience.  We get by in English on most mundane topics, but when we reach for deeper understandings, we must be careful, lest we assume we are communicating when in fact we are not.

      As 1992 became 1993, we spent the New Year holidays together.  For all the romantic images a summer trip to Greece may suggest, the island of Crete in winter is a cold, windy place.  A time to sit indoors by an olive-wood fire, drink raki and retsina, eat prok sausage with fresh bread soaked in new-pressed olive oil, and talk late into the night of weighty matters.

      One evening we spoke of marriage.

       In Crete the custom of arranged marriage continues.  Even when a marriage is not initiated by a family, the wisdom of family experience is brought to bear in a way Americans would find anachronistic.

     The Cretans think romance is nice enough when it happens, but it is not a particularly good basis for marriage.

      Papaderos had stumbled over a concept he had found in Western literature. “Making love.”  It confused him.  “What is this making love?”

       I explained it was a popular euphemism for having sex- going to bed…whether married or not.

    He replied that for Cretans, “making love,” is a serious notion summarizing the process of marriage and family.  When two families agree that a son and a daughter would suit one another, it is expected that over time the man and woman will work at becoming compatible partners in the same spirit one might work at achieving competence in a life’s vocation.  This is making love.

      Time and experience mistakes and difficulties- are all part of the equation whose sum is a lasting relationship.  Love is not something you fall into.  Love and marriage are “made.”

    Thus in Cretan terms, when a married couple have been overheard arguing or fighting, the Cretans smile knowingly and say, “Ah, they are making love.”

      During this same winter trip, Papaderos took my wife and me along as guests in the home of a Greek family on New Year’s Day.  Though I hate to admit it, I am a closet football fan, and this was the first time in memory I could not be spending the day watching representatives of American universities struggle to resolve the great human crisis of who is Number One.  Nor would I be in touch with the professional- football run-up to the Super Bowl.  I was vaguely anxious.

     My youth and early manhood were permanently affected by Vince Lombardi, the coach of the legendary Green Bay Packers football team.  Lombardi was about winning,  Fair and square and by the rules- but winning.  Winners worked harder and smarter.  Winners were never wimps- when knocked down, they got up again.  Winners played tough in the face of adversity, injury, and pain.  Winners played hurt.

     These thoughts floated in my mind as I coped with the unfamiliar traditions of a Cretan New Year meal.  The old customs of the mountain villages prevailed.  Instead of the Anglo-American whole roasted pig with an apple in its mouth, the Cretans celebrate with boiled sheeps’ heads.  Yes.

      Skinned, simmered, and served with eyeballs intact, the head is split, and the brains are scooped out with a spoon.  The tongues are sliced and eaten like Pate.  The delicacies are savored by the grandparents and other senior members of the family, but not by the younger generation of Greeks.

      I watched the grandmother as she ate.

      Eighy-eight years old.  Blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, and shriveled by time and a hard life.  She helped herself to each dish as it passed her way.  She ate carefully, thoughtfully, and with undisguised pleasure.

     I knew that she had survived mountain life, two world wars, the Greek civil war, and the repressions of the Dictatorship of the Colonels in the 1970′s.  Her husband was taken into the army.  She did not hear from him for almost seven years.  Her village was leveled by the Nazis, and she was imprisoned and beaten.  For two years she had lived in caves, eating roots and rabbits to stay alive.  No home, no job, no income, no medical care or insurance, no retirement plan or Social Security.  She had lived without electricity, running water, even without fire at times in her life.

      At the end of the meal, she challenged the “children” at the other end of the table to a singing contest.  The “children” were men and women of middle age- her nieces and nephews, cousins, and in-laws.  She and her equally ancient husband began the keening drone of a Cretan mountain song.  It worked like this:  The challenger makes up a four-line rhyming verse, then everyone sings the common chorus, then someone from the opposing team makes up a four-line verse responding to the verse of the challenger, and again the chorus, and so on.  It’s a can-you-top this contest in song.  Extemporaneously and fast, it ends when one team or another cannot come up with the verse without missing a beat.  Not easy.

      The old lady sang her opponents into exhaustion.  She literally left them speechless.  Her last verse contained a hope that this coming year would be even better than the last, and who knows, if the rest of them lived as well as she, they might be able to keep up with her in a singing contest, though she doubted it.  They doubted it too. And so did I.

      Never mind the bowl games.  This New Year’s Day I had seen a winner.

     If Lombardi had a backfield with her kind of stuff, the Green Bay Packers would still be winning. The lady was a champ.  A winner of a lifetime contest.  She had faithfully played her part despite injuries and sorrows. 

     She played hurt- every day of her life.

     Football is only a game.

      When the dinner was over, the old lady went into the kitchen insisting on helping with the dishes.  She came to the kitchen door with a bag of garbage and barked at her husband of sixty years.  He groaned up out of his chair to do his duty, and she barked at him some more and he groaned back some more.

      “What’s going on?” I asked Papaderos.

      “It seems her husband did not eat all of his salad and was singing off-key,” he explained.  “They are still making love- it takes forever.”

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That story is taken  from Robert Fulghum’s book  Maybe (Maybe Not)  If you would have stopped by our house tonight, you would have found us sitting in  our  cream colored comfortable stuffed chairs reading to each other from this book.  I would have invited you to pull up a chair and  join us.      G-nite.   DM