After one’s been writing thousands of words a week under the most stressing time management scenarios for a term, you’d think he could pop out a five hundred word editorial in an hour.
Not so. Continue reading
Strand of American flag lights? Fifty cents at your nearest flea-market.
Central Florida is heaven for your junk collectors, deal snatchers, and general social flea-marketers. Continue reading
The flight from London to Charlotte is nine hours long. Nine hours is a long time in an economy seat, especially when the person in front of you decides to recline her seat. But that’s nothing compared to the travels of the man sitting next to me. Ben (name changed) was flying from Afghanistan, via Kuwait, Dubai, and London, to Charlotte. What he was doing in Afghanistan I don’t know; he works with our armed forces, but he didn’t say more and I didn’t ask. (He probably couldn’t tell me if I did.) But he did tell me that he had only been home in the States for two weeks in the last two years. And that he has a thirteen-year-old daughter here.
Those of us who have been away for the one semester think we’ll have it rough coming back to our friends and family, for whom life has gone on without us. We have to readjust to driving on the right side of the road; to smiling at people on sidewalks (to saying “sidewalks” instead of “pavements”), and not cycling everywhere. Our friends’ lives have gone on, some have graduated, some have made new friends, and others have just changed. We see things differently, our opinions have changed, and we’ve made new friends. But it’s not anything like what people like Ben experience.
Ben is a quiet guy, but not antisocial. During the flight we talked about travelling, foreign currency, being away, coming home, and the differences between Here and There. This man has been everywhere across the Near and Middle East. Pulling out his billfold, he showed me currency from Taliban Afghanistan, current Afghanistan, old Iraq, new Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and five or ten other random countries. He is something of an amateur collector now; he brings back foreign monies for his daughter.
He talks to me about how different life is in Afghanistan. He’s going to have to reacclimatize to a place of rules. Even things like speed limits and stop signs. We comment on how we take such things for granted. Most Americans can’t even conceive of living without these structures. They are taken as having a real existence. Put an average person in Afghanistan, where the rule of law is not to be counted on, where life is lived much more by the seat of one’s pants, and they’d freeze out of inability to cope. Ben has lived there for at least two years, probably more. If those of us who have lived away for three months think it’s disconcerting coming back to America, Ben must be completely disoriented.
Most relationships are built on day-to-day interactions. Even good friends have little to speak of when they don’t have shared experiences. Coming back, most of us who have been away will have to rebuild relationships, try to fit in with our old friends and find new ones. But we’ve only been away three months, and most of us have FaceBook to keep us connected. Ben has only seen his daughter once in the last two years. The hard thing, for him, is that she doesn’t know anything different, while he knows how much is lost. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to be around her, without having the shared experience that is the basis of relationships. He’s going back to someone who probably barely knows him, who he barely knows.
We, Ben and myself and many others who are coming back from living in distant lands, are, to different degrees, strangers at home. Even as welcomed as we might be, and if we have jobs or school to reintegrate us into society, and no matter how long we’ve lived in the States before, coming back we are something of outsiders. Some might describe it as being a citizen of the world. Perhaps that is true for a few. For others, it is simply being other, different, again. From being strangers abroad, we become strangers at home.
Deafening Roar
the body of metal shakes
Green fields dotted with brown roofs fall away
before they fade into the cloud and mist
And then Brightness! we emerge
from a pillow of white fluff
as if from a dream
“You’re from the States, then? Our trains aren’t so big as yours.”
“No, but you have more of them.”
“Yes, and they’re faster, too.”
Rough brick, aged with use
lichen growth covered
As brambles, dark purples and
greens of winter creep and shade
the dry crackly gray leaves of last summer
And ivy, ever green, reaching out
to pull me into the texture of the earth
old regulars
The old regulars Sit Talk
in the bay window. Light
streams in from the moon
-lit night while in the dark
recess a long beard picks,
strums and in the corner
leaning I watch it all
going
knowledge drops like a weight in the pit
of my being. the end is near. prophets told it.
Names never before known, after seen
Life flat-lines as a heart meter
unplugged. and the memories are wheeled away
To live in the bliss of ignorance
that today is the last day. dream
of your curly hair of secrets
boisterous laughter of brown sugar
comic arrogance of sarcasm
wit, love, smarts, arts, life
that i’d never leave
Cloudy skies envelop the world
Like I wish your embrace would envelop me
Completely in a cocoon
Of slumber and purity
The clouds brush the hilltops
Like our noses would touch
Holding each other and blocking out the world
The cloudy world, forever
Until the sun comes out
Then gripping hands tightly
We’d race down the hills
Through the dewy meadows
Collapse in each other’s arms
Laughing with the sun
Most joyous in all the world
But until then
I wish I could envelop you in my arms
Like the clouds embrace the earth in a soft cocoon
Castle across from the town of Penzance
Hegel and I went to the sea
in a beautiful royal blue train.
We forgot to grab the PB&J
wrapped up in a paper towel.
I looked out at the landscape around
and read little Hegel
“O incomprehensible Hegel! O Hegel my nemesis,
what a thick writer you are,
You are,
You are!
what a thick writer you are!”
With apologies to Edward Lear.
Just outside Oxford
This was a pretty heavy week, and since I have a rail pass laying around needing used, I thought it would be the perfect time to take a trip to nowhere in particular just for the joy of riding the train and going to new places. So I picked the end of the line in Cornwall, Penzance. Its as far south west as one can go in England on the train. I left on the 10:00 train from Oxford, changed at Reading, and then it was a straight shot down. The sun came out as we pulled out from Oxford, highlighting the golden greens that make early autumn in England so beautiful. Continue reading
WWII Poster rediscovered in 2000
“Keep Calm and Carry On.” This slogan, from what I hear, is from a World War II poster, and was to be used in case of the invasion of Britain, but only saw limited distribution.
It’s easy enough to say. “Keep calm and carry on” just rolls off the tongue, setting a rather British attitude that implies strength and dignity under duress. Does this slogan really apply when things get really bad?
When tragedy strikes, it seems more than a bit trite. You can’t tell someone to keep calm, unless you are trying to ignore the reality of grief. Carrying on is something that only happens gradually, a slow reckoning with life.
Yet so often that is what we tell people in grief, or more painfully, are told by those well meaning people around us. Those are the words of people who are avoiding the real question. When you’re grieving, you know, during your more rational moments, that things will carry on. They just do. But you can’t tell someone that.
What can you say? Nothing really. To those right in the middle of it, almost anything seems trite, superfluous. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch.” If this is what Christ wanted from those closest to him when he was faced with the deepest grief ever borne, how can we offer more to those we love when they are in the shadow of death?
Thus much I’ve learned. There isn’t anything that you can do. When your loved ones are grieving, sit down and keep watch. Life will carry on. It always does, somehow, but that’s not important now. Don’t be scared by grief. We’re scared of silence. We’re scared of just sitting there, not doing anything. Don’t be. Grievers just want you to be there. When there’s nothing to be said, shut up. Silence is not awkward. Sometimes it’s poignantly appropriate. Don’t ask “how are you doing?” You know the answer. Just be there. “Keep Watch and Hold Me.” That’s the griever’s slogan.
