Longboarding in Fairmount.
He surfed the sidewalk
on wheels that mumbled
over asphalt imperfections,
past poor houses
with shades drawn
to hide the nicotine-stained wallpaper
and beige ovens
and plaid-clad couches,
past rich houses
with nude windows
baring bookshelves, darkly stained
with leather-bound unread editions,
dusted and polished by a woman who knows
few English words,
and a plasma TV that is larger than his home's
garage door, but
he does not take note nor look too long
for fear he'll raise suspicion
in his hoodie and his sagging jeans,
and a lone piece of gravel grabs his wheel.
His board stops,
he flies forward,
arms like a dying ibis,
bare hands and nipples and knees and his wiry-whiskered chin
hit pavement and taste the gritty grind of road rash,
but the rich woman sipping her vodka
decides not to call 911
when he steps back on his board,
rockets red spittle into her begonias,
and surfs onward.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Why Men Become Absentee Partners in Committed Relationships.
A Facebook friend whom I've never met posted an article written by some self-help writer or psychologist with a headline that read something like "Why Women Leave Men They Love." Out of curiosity, I had to read it, and I quickly responded to the post during my lunch break, though I tried not to sound defensive. I've seen the same article reposted, and I'm sure there are a number of women who have found satisfaction in the truths the writer expresses about why women leave men who are otherwise respectable partners.
First, the main argument of the article is that women will leave a marriage or a committed relationship when the man in the relationship is absent, emotionally, physically, spiritually, etc. The writer suggests that men must be present, paying attention to their women, or their women may very well leave them.
The post was especially poignant because I could hear my ex wife's voice as she complained that I had not given her my attention. I had made her feel less than first. She respected my devotion to our children, but she resented that even when I was physically present, I was often emotionally distant. She even quoted one of her life-long friends who told her that when our family photos appeared on her Facebook feed, it was clear by the look on my face that I had already "checked-out."
In all my confessional candor, I have to say that there were many times that she was right. The writer of the posted article claimed that the roles could be reversed, but it was clearly a one-sided argument that inspires me to ask, why would a man (or a woman) check out of a relationship while remaining committed to being there physically? Also, why do so many who leave a relationship seek justification for their leaving?
I harbor very little resentment towards my ex for doing what she felt was necessary for her personal happiness. I wish for things that can't happen now, like that we had actually gone to the marriage retreats we deemed were too expensive, or that we had committed to going to counseling before we started looking for happiness outside of our relationship. Resentment isn't the impetus for writing this response. Instead, I want to challenge those who post such one-sided articles to consider the complexity of a thing such as marriage and divorce more fully before they fire away and relax, satisfied that the truth has been made clear through the words of some blog.
The truth is, I can't explain why all men who become absent in a relationship do so. I can only speak from my experience, and I can offer caveats to those who care to read.
If your partner is checking out, do you have any responsibility in creating an environment that he or she should choose to avoid? At a certain low point in my relationship with my ex, I started tallying the number of positive things she said to me each day to compare to the number of negative. When it gets to the point where you are evaluating your relationship the way an accountant evaluates a budget, the environment is no longer conducive to those warm, loving feelings that inspire closeness and a desire to remain present.
There is much to be said for choosing your partners wisely. Sexual attraction may wane over time, but it is an important part of a love relationship. At least it was for me. When your partner makes you feel tired and old and boring, the flirtations outside of your committed relationship become more tempting. When, a couple of years before our split, I had contemplated asking for a divorce, I remember my closest friends telling me that the grass was not really greener on the other side of the fence. I knew they were right, but when your yard is barren and stubbled over with the stones of strife, even poison ivy can look like a rose bush. When it seems impossible to please the person who is supposed to be your better half, then checking out is a mechanism for "doing the right thing" for your family while numbing yourself to the negativity felt in the relationship.
At some point in my marriage, I lost the desire to please my wife. I no longer felt like her lover and friend, but felt like an employee whose manager was never satisfied. So, though I seldom went away on business trips or long weekends at the hunting lease, I did spend hours pedaling my bicycle as far as I could in a day. Though I came home from work to help with supper and to be there for the kids, I did stop being there emotionally for my wife. I can remember my internal arguments for working it out: the mathematical computations about the expense of divorce, the emotional images of my broken family, the thought of sleeping under a different roof than the one my sons would share. I figured that if I could just make it through the next bitter patch, there would be a good day that would refill the emotional spring from which I had been dipping.
There may have been a number of root causes, but there were two people responsible for the breakdown in our relationship. I don't blame the outside forces and distractions, but look inward and I would challenge anyone who is in a committed relationship to do the same thing. Don't look for solace or justification in some blogger's words, but instead, ask yourself if your relationship is a place where joy is being nourished, and if not, is it worth it to you to join your partner in finding that joy together or will you pack your things and chase the dubious promises of happiness that leaving will bring?
First, the main argument of the article is that women will leave a marriage or a committed relationship when the man in the relationship is absent, emotionally, physically, spiritually, etc. The writer suggests that men must be present, paying attention to their women, or their women may very well leave them.
The post was especially poignant because I could hear my ex wife's voice as she complained that I had not given her my attention. I had made her feel less than first. She respected my devotion to our children, but she resented that even when I was physically present, I was often emotionally distant. She even quoted one of her life-long friends who told her that when our family photos appeared on her Facebook feed, it was clear by the look on my face that I had already "checked-out."
In all my confessional candor, I have to say that there were many times that she was right. The writer of the posted article claimed that the roles could be reversed, but it was clearly a one-sided argument that inspires me to ask, why would a man (or a woman) check out of a relationship while remaining committed to being there physically? Also, why do so many who leave a relationship seek justification for their leaving?
I harbor very little resentment towards my ex for doing what she felt was necessary for her personal happiness. I wish for things that can't happen now, like that we had actually gone to the marriage retreats we deemed were too expensive, or that we had committed to going to counseling before we started looking for happiness outside of our relationship. Resentment isn't the impetus for writing this response. Instead, I want to challenge those who post such one-sided articles to consider the complexity of a thing such as marriage and divorce more fully before they fire away and relax, satisfied that the truth has been made clear through the words of some blog.
The truth is, I can't explain why all men who become absent in a relationship do so. I can only speak from my experience, and I can offer caveats to those who care to read.
If your partner is checking out, do you have any responsibility in creating an environment that he or she should choose to avoid? At a certain low point in my relationship with my ex, I started tallying the number of positive things she said to me each day to compare to the number of negative. When it gets to the point where you are evaluating your relationship the way an accountant evaluates a budget, the environment is no longer conducive to those warm, loving feelings that inspire closeness and a desire to remain present.
There is much to be said for choosing your partners wisely. Sexual attraction may wane over time, but it is an important part of a love relationship. At least it was for me. When your partner makes you feel tired and old and boring, the flirtations outside of your committed relationship become more tempting. When, a couple of years before our split, I had contemplated asking for a divorce, I remember my closest friends telling me that the grass was not really greener on the other side of the fence. I knew they were right, but when your yard is barren and stubbled over with the stones of strife, even poison ivy can look like a rose bush. When it seems impossible to please the person who is supposed to be your better half, then checking out is a mechanism for "doing the right thing" for your family while numbing yourself to the negativity felt in the relationship.
At some point in my marriage, I lost the desire to please my wife. I no longer felt like her lover and friend, but felt like an employee whose manager was never satisfied. So, though I seldom went away on business trips or long weekends at the hunting lease, I did spend hours pedaling my bicycle as far as I could in a day. Though I came home from work to help with supper and to be there for the kids, I did stop being there emotionally for my wife. I can remember my internal arguments for working it out: the mathematical computations about the expense of divorce, the emotional images of my broken family, the thought of sleeping under a different roof than the one my sons would share. I figured that if I could just make it through the next bitter patch, there would be a good day that would refill the emotional spring from which I had been dipping.
There may have been a number of root causes, but there were two people responsible for the breakdown in our relationship. I don't blame the outside forces and distractions, but look inward and I would challenge anyone who is in a committed relationship to do the same thing. Don't look for solace or justification in some blogger's words, but instead, ask yourself if your relationship is a place where joy is being nourished, and if not, is it worth it to you to join your partner in finding that joy together or will you pack your things and chase the dubious promises of happiness that leaving will bring?
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Turnip Greens and Garrison Keillor
I used to love his show, but it was easier to commit when I was single, and a drive towards Chapel Hill to get a better radio signal required only a couple bucks' sacrifice.
Today, he is doing what I like best, giving a poet the podium, and the musical guests are folksy, bluegrass...the music of nostalgia.
The poet reminds me of AP English IV, when I was the student, not the teacher, and Mrs. Williams explained that the speaker could be free to wander the hills of his youth, even while bound to his meaningless existence, a prisoner in a cell of his own making, and I eagerly raised my hand to participate, as was my habit, and I said, "but isn't that true for everyone? I mean, no offense, Mrs. Williams, but I'm often wandering the hills of my mind while you have us diagramming sentences..."
And she would crease her lips in that smiling smirk and sigh, and remove her glasses and put the stem in the corner of her mouth, and she would say, "you are special," and the class heard her sarcasm, and I embraced her approval.
The turnip greens are steaming my tiny kitchen, as the radio chats, an incessant voice like an old familiar friend who doesn't mind my checking in and out of our conversation as I think about poetry and remember that theology conference at Duke where a Harvard or Yale lecturer discussed the role of preacher as poet, bringing the divine to the vulgar because we cannot understand God without metaphor...And I think about my agnosticism. Someone said, "Agnostics are just atheists without guts," but I rather like believing that I could be wrong about my discoveries...I choose honesty when love and faith are at stake.
I remember when all it took to be a fake was the gentle sucking in of a girl's cheeks to feign dimpled beauty like a character from a Thomas Hardy novel. Before Tinder dates could steal someone else's Instagram images, before Botox injections could plump a lip, before reality T.V. taught us that to be famous for nothing was something...and I dream of a rustic hillside town with a single filling station and the smell of the corn in the air, and I imagine crossing paths with a country girl whose smile is a dream I am willing to lose myself in, twelve hundred miles away, and twenty years later...
The ham hocks at the bottom of my turnip greens have lured the tomcat from under my house, and he paces restlessly outside my window, aware of my antipathy, yet audacious and cold, and for a moment, as a Prairie Home Companion comes to an end, as my sons celebrate a living room triumph over a digital foe, I am where I want to be.
Today, he is doing what I like best, giving a poet the podium, and the musical guests are folksy, bluegrass...the music of nostalgia.
The poet reminds me of AP English IV, when I was the student, not the teacher, and Mrs. Williams explained that the speaker could be free to wander the hills of his youth, even while bound to his meaningless existence, a prisoner in a cell of his own making, and I eagerly raised my hand to participate, as was my habit, and I said, "but isn't that true for everyone? I mean, no offense, Mrs. Williams, but I'm often wandering the hills of my mind while you have us diagramming sentences..."
And she would crease her lips in that smiling smirk and sigh, and remove her glasses and put the stem in the corner of her mouth, and she would say, "you are special," and the class heard her sarcasm, and I embraced her approval.
The turnip greens are steaming my tiny kitchen, as the radio chats, an incessant voice like an old familiar friend who doesn't mind my checking in and out of our conversation as I think about poetry and remember that theology conference at Duke where a Harvard or Yale lecturer discussed the role of preacher as poet, bringing the divine to the vulgar because we cannot understand God without metaphor...And I think about my agnosticism. Someone said, "Agnostics are just atheists without guts," but I rather like believing that I could be wrong about my discoveries...I choose honesty when love and faith are at stake.
I remember when all it took to be a fake was the gentle sucking in of a girl's cheeks to feign dimpled beauty like a character from a Thomas Hardy novel. Before Tinder dates could steal someone else's Instagram images, before Botox injections could plump a lip, before reality T.V. taught us that to be famous for nothing was something...and I dream of a rustic hillside town with a single filling station and the smell of the corn in the air, and I imagine crossing paths with a country girl whose smile is a dream I am willing to lose myself in, twelve hundred miles away, and twenty years later...
The ham hocks at the bottom of my turnip greens have lured the tomcat from under my house, and he paces restlessly outside my window, aware of my antipathy, yet audacious and cold, and for a moment, as a Prairie Home Companion comes to an end, as my sons celebrate a living room triumph over a digital foe, I am where I want to be.
Listening to the Rain, a Facebook Status Update
Though I know it to be a blessing,
there's solemnity in this sound.
Inescapable.
Surrounding this house,
undermining the foundations of memories of cold nights
in leaking tents when the cold could not be kept
from the quilting of musky sleepy bodies bound in
musty sleeping bags, and the shivering ensues, soul-quaking,
conjuring images of those who
find kinship under bridges, the freeway overpasses...
edging their ground sheets from the paths of icy rivulets,
iridescent with motor oil...
Survive tonight and find the high ground is cleaner...
winter rye greener,
but the lowlands will bear the shameful flotsam...
debris of our careless lives left behind to be carried
on the shivering shoulders of muddy rain-flooded creeks.
So fall, rain.
Ahead lie dryer days and summer's oven-baked earth
cracking open like the dark gaps that grew between me and you.
there's solemnity in this sound.
Inescapable.
Surrounding this house,
undermining the foundations of memories of cold nights
in leaking tents when the cold could not be kept
from the quilting of musky sleepy bodies bound in
musty sleeping bags, and the shivering ensues, soul-quaking,
conjuring images of those who
find kinship under bridges, the freeway overpasses...
edging their ground sheets from the paths of icy rivulets,
iridescent with motor oil...
Survive tonight and find the high ground is cleaner...
winter rye greener,
but the lowlands will bear the shameful flotsam...
debris of our careless lives left behind to be carried
on the shivering shoulders of muddy rain-flooded creeks.
So fall, rain.
Ahead lie dryer days and summer's oven-baked earth
cracking open like the dark gaps that grew between me and you.
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Arctic Dance
Today, my sons are 6 and 13 years old. My oldest is a guitar-playing gymnast with a smile and a confident attitude that make him popular with the girls. What a contrast he is to the boy I was at his age.
I remember being in middle school in Alaska. My family moved there when the US Air Force sent my dad to Eielson Air Force Base, just a few miles from Fairbanks, in the heart of Alaska's interior. I remember vaguely a middle school dance at our rec center, and I remember showing up only to find that the boy to girl ratio was about 20 to 1. If there were three girls there, I don't remember the second nor the third. All I remember was the redhead from Missouri. She stood taller than her peers by six inches, and she had worn her arctic gear with as much grace as a middle school girl can muster. Golashes shed and parka neatly hung from a coat hook, now her white sneakers gleamed in the black light from the dance floor, as did her teeth when she smiled. I remember speculating with my peers about who would be man enough to walk over to the tiny group of girls and ask for a dance.
"I bet Barney will be first. He always gets the girls," suggested one spectator in a voice that was both reverent and envious at once, because he knew, as we all did, that Barney, the shortest kid in 7th grade, had some magical appeal to girls who hugged him and giggled whenever he smiled. I remember having no concrete imagery to illustrate what "getting girls" meant for us at the time, though there were tantalizing rumors that some girls used their tongues when they kissed.
"No, I bet Josh will, he's not afraid to look like a fool..." suggested another. Josh was a jock who seemed made for the Alaskan wilderness. He could throw a perfect spiral on the football field, or kill a moose with a single shot. I once walked in on him skinning a moose carcass in his dad's garage after a recent kill. It seemed that everyone on base hunted except for me and my family. Even though I started shaving at the age of 12, I questioned my own masculinity when compared to boys like Josh, whose broad shoulders and sinewy limbs seemed hewn from the spruce trees that spent nine months of the year bearing the weight of Alaska's frozen fury. Adolescence felt like a constant comparison chest hairs and bicep curls and other tests of manhood designed to embarrass the weak and the sensitive among us.
As I listened to the boys, I suddenly and impulsively took a step into the desolate space of the dance floor, ignoring the diamonds of light that flew like fairies around the floor and up the walls from the disco ball that spun radiantly over my head. In slow motion, I saw her friends look at me as I approached, her red hair fell in waves past her shoulder, and her smooth cheek was all I could see of her face as I slowly moved closer, one request poised in my mind, waiting for her to make eye contact so that the words could be released...hopefully without blunder, because if the first request failed, as I was certain it would, I would turn around and walk back, and then keep walking past my peers, down the carpeted hallway to the frost covered doors and back out into the arctic air, never to return.
Her friends froze in stupid shocked grins, waiting for my maneuver, and she turned. I distinctly remember her red hair seeming to fly in a silken arc that would sound like a cheesy shampoo commercial if I dared to describe it today, but then, I could imagine nothing more beautiful. Her eyes assayed my approach, and her lips smiled warmly, her freckles sandy on her pale skin.
“Hi, would you like to dance?” The words, surprisingly clear and strong considering their source, were received and accepted and she nodded, taking my hand and leaving her friends behind. We walked together towards the middle of the floor. Sadly, I can't remember the song that we danced to, nor can I remember all the details of our conversation, but I do remember feeling like a king. We were the only two kids to dance, and we danced three or four times, and for one night, I was envied and respected and even hated for my luck and my daring.
I think about that night sometimes, and wonder why I spent so many of my years shyly, lacking confidence, allowing opportunities to pass me by. Nothing became of that night. The redheaded girl and I talked only once more after that dance before her father was transferred to another base somewhere on the other side of the world. That was life in the military. Friendships often forged quickly, but were mostly short-lived. I spent my youth in transition, missing the idea of a hometown, of having roots, but learning lessons about life that are common to other military brats or children of missionaries.
In contrast, my sons have grown up in Fort Worth, connected to one place. My youngest seems more afflicted with the shyness I suffered than my eldest, who routinely performs in front of strangers, strumming his guitar with grace and poise. One of the blessings of fatherhood is the capacity for remembering...as I watch them mature, they take me back to my youth, and their struggles and victories become woven into my memories and we are connected, threaded through the unwritten narrative of my perception of now and then and what may be.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Golden Years
If tomorrow comes without me,
do not grieve about what could have been.
If you feel that business has been left unfinished,
take it up with the tax man.
If you love plants, visit my porch and take some aloe,
dig up the lavender, rosemary, and thyme.
If you save them, you may think of me when you snip a sprig for tea.
If not, no worries because I have lived, and no perennial memorial is required.
Tomorrow, if I am forgotten, know that today, I am a man.
I have been the student and
I have been the teacher and the sage and the fool.
I have done a hard day's work and
I have found pleasure and
I have found grace and
I have known redemption through toil and
I have been given gifts I never deserved and
I have seen treasures that
I have possessed, briefly, but that is enough, for true wealth will never abide in a
vault and
I have been loved and I have loved.
If tomorrow comes without me,
Don't let me hear you say life's taken me nowhere...
do not grieve about what could have been.
If you feel that business has been left unfinished,
take it up with the tax man.
If you love plants, visit my porch and take some aloe,
dig up the lavender, rosemary, and thyme.
If you save them, you may think of me when you snip a sprig for tea.
If not, no worries because I have lived, and no perennial memorial is required.
Tomorrow, if I am forgotten, know that today, I am a man.
I have been the student and
I have been the teacher and the sage and the fool.
I have done a hard day's work and
I have found pleasure and
I have found grace and
I have known redemption through toil and
I have been given gifts I never deserved and
I have seen treasures that
I have possessed, briefly, but that is enough, for true wealth will never abide in a
vault and
I have been loved and I have loved.
If tomorrow comes without me,
Don't let me hear you say life's taken me nowhere...
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Shine, sun.
Brille el sol
And set those clouds on fire
But only for an instant,
and then
The delight Is gone
like the flash
Of a wind-exposed thigh
Or a bemused grin
Granted just once
For you-
Unseen by the rest-
A hint of a heaven
Ephemeral.
And set those clouds on fire
But only for an instant,
and then
The delight Is gone
like the flash
Of a wind-exposed thigh
Or a bemused grin
Granted just once
For you-
Unseen by the rest-
A hint of a heaven
Ephemeral.
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