May 30, 2006
May Day, 4/4
A pickup truck pulled into the drive way.
My father and i were on the porch. The conversation had rolled like a steam engine down the tracks. We talked of politics, war, and religion. We talked about the middle east, and culture and conventions. I talked of travel and how living abroad should be mandatory for American leaders, and my children alike. We talked about ignorance- our own and other's.
As we talked, my mind began to split like the cracks in a windshield, spreading out in all directions. I was a nested folder, and marble in a bag. and i wanted not to be. i wanted to leave, and i wanted to see, and wanted not to be ignorant. My father spoke of a book he read of a man from ohio who walked around the world. I thought of those i know and where there were. I pictured their states and their countries and their continents. I tried to picture the sun and whose faces it was falling on right then. I was a puzzle piece. I wanted to see the puzzle.
The truck door opened. It was dave. He was soaking wet and smiling.
"We tipped our boat in the river" he said.
He and his brother go out in the summer evenings on a particular stretch of the hocking river a few miles from there. The set trotlines on tree limbs to catch catfish, and return in the early morning to pull in their catch.
"It was a rookie mistake." he said to my father, laughing out loud. "The boat hit a log between the rocks south of rt. 93. We should have jumped right then. but we leaned over and the boat began to fill up. Everything we had started floating down the river."
We stood in the twilight and laughed at his adventure. Dave has lived in that corner of the state his whole life. As he talked he got more excited and remembered stories of frog hunting, fishing, and hunting of his rookie years. he told wild tales of traveling the narrows, a remote stretch the salt creek, west of South Bloomingville, gigging frogs in the middle of the night. He painted pictures of biker camps, hippies, and hillbillies along the water as he reminisced about his adventures in his piece of the puzzle.
He spoke of an intimate familiarity of the area that he has lived his whole life. And we laughed as he stood in the dark soaking wet. Some need to travel the earth to see the world. Others walk through the woods to find what they need. Suddenly i realized how little i know, how i am ignorant, about both the fertile crescent and the banks of the salt creek. And there standing in the headlights of Dave's pickup truck, i saw my present and particular puzzle piece in vivid detail, deep in the woods in ohio.
I have been to many states, most all of them have been of mind.
[*footnote: The next morning. ]
May Day, 3/4
The sound of summer in the dark drifted in through the screen door. The incandescent light brought moths to the screens, like flocks of sheep or sun bathers on a beach. My father was asleep. I was in my bare feet. I sat alone. The floor boards creaked.
I had just put down the newspaper. I read of a car bomb in Tahariyat Square. It killed 40. I read about the 23 iraqi civilians dead and the murder investigation within USMC. I read about the bill passed by the president to ban protests and military funerals. There have been 2,500 in the past few years. The bill is call the "Respect For Fallen Heroes Act." People protesting in the article held signs that read: "God Hates Fags." and "God Bless our Troops, Defenders of Freedom, American Heroes". "Pray for our troops," a woman said.
That morning Kurt asked to if we could pray before we began staining the cabin. he asked for protection and safety and to do a good job. We finished painting the whole cabin in one day, and it looked great. Several times Kurt attributed our success to our prayer. We certainly did get what he asked for.
I put the paper down. the moths were collecting on the screen like a flock of sheep or sun bathers at the beach. I looked out into the darkness and felt a slow burn. I felt like a bather on a beach. I wondered how one prayer at one cabin on big pine road in hocking Co. Ohio can be answered, so not to fall off a ladder or spill a can of paint, and how the mass of a nation can pray for soldiers yet they die by the dozen each day.
"let the bucket spill." i thought to myself.
and let a mother not grieve.
I looked out into the darkness. I felt like a flock of sheep. I thought about who is blessed and who is hated. I wondered about those who claim to know the difference. I wondered about the evident inconstancy of prayer, and the criteria for its successful returns. Then, I wondered if god is answering the prayers. I shuttered at the thought.
Clearly, people are not understanding. Not the least of which, myself.
As the cabin dried in the damp night air, i thought hard.
I burned.
Then I turned out the light. The moths began to leave.
Clearly; i thought, man - and perhaps god- can stain a cabin in the woods. And certainly, man - if not god - can also stain a war.
May Day, 2/4
The sun had soaked into my back. My shoulders were sore. My hands were tired. My father sat shot gun. the windows were open. the gravel creaked and purred under he fenders as i drove through the evening.
And there on a back road under the hemlock trees, for just a moment, i did not think about god. i dod not think about war. I did not think about death, nor nuclear proliferation, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, nor IED;s. not refugees. not web 2.0 nor growing old. Not drying times for wood stain on cabin logs.
I did not do any time zone adjustments in my head. I was on this continent. I was in this life. I was in this body. I was in this time.
I drove ahead, and for a fleeting glimpse through the dusk sifting through the trees, and somewhere within track 12 of Josh Ritter's "The Animal Years", i felt the faint glimpse of peace.
May Day, 1/4
"What does a 65 year old retired marine and body builder, and me have in common?" I asked myself.
Besides the fact were both standing on the same ladder leaning over a 12/12 pitch on a cabin roof.
It was 10:00 in the morning. The sun had made it's way through 1000 km of atmosphere above us and had met the back of my neck. Below us sat 25 gallons of wood stain, and, via a 1/2 inch tube trailing from a bucket up the gun in Kurt's hand, was being vaporized and sprayed on the naked wood logs around us.
I surveyed the scene, or what i could through my mask and goggles. Kurt climbed around the roof. In his goggles and dual canister air filter mask, he looked more like a common house fly than a house painter.
To say that i am in the midst of a transition period would be an understatement, i thought to myself. The wood stain ran like blood down the logs, soaking in like ink into paper of a love letter. This scene had been played out in my mind for some time. but like everything and everyplace i seem to find myself in, there is part of me somewhere else. As it were, i was standing precariously on the 45 degree pitched roof of my father's cabin.
I looked out over the lake. I thought of eucalyptus trees and bright beaches by the sea. Not the bumble bees on my t-shirt sleeves. I thought of the people i have met and who have gone. I thought about where they are now and if they should ever wonder about me at the moment, they certainly would not guess Kurt and I would be on a roof in a cabin in the woods.
As the stain ran down the wood, i wondered where the reality is between choosing your own path through life, and destiny; between making due with you are given, and making your own life.
Standing on the edge of the roof, it felt like i was awkwardly, dangerously, walking the line inbetween.
May 29, 2006
Growing Pains (as felt on Rt. 50)
Religion, government, culture, business, and art are only romantic if they are the underdog. (source: written history)
From the Romans to Wal-mart; to become big in this world, you often must do bad things to small people. To stay big, you must sometimes do worse. It is always the minority who is loved; It is always the modest, the grassroots, the underground who is cheered. The dominant become decadent, deceitful, and ugly. There is an inverse correlation between integrity and dominance that i cannot find exception to.
And all things small work hard to become big.
To grow up in this world, i am afraid i will not make it. Not without sacrafice to creativity, to beauty, and truth.
I shall always struggle searching for balance between being true to myself, my work, and my beliefs - and finding success, or at the very least, sound sleep.
The answer, most certainly, will be somewhere in between.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to
your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because
that is according to my principles.
(Attributed by Harq al-Ada to one Louis Veuillot)
May 13, 2006
Stag
Dean Caven and I stood by the open doors of St. Mary's Church in Piqua Ohio. His niece was standing at the far end of the pews with her wedding party. Camera flashes and laughter bounced off the vaulted ceiling inside.
"What about you? Where's your date?" He asked me in the foyer. "You're still single huh?"
He asked me in earnest, but with a smirk on his face, awaiting my reply.
I nodded to my sister. "She's my date today" I replied.
"You Roeth's are always single." he said with a smile.
"I just don't have much time for that". Annie said to him, laughed and walked away.
The guests had almost all left the wedding and were leaving the for the reception. The church was nearly empty. Surprisingly, he turned to me and continued.
"You are always going in your own direction. I know how that goes. I have been there." he said assuredly.
You have no idea, I thought to myself.
I looked at his wife walking to the back of the pews toward us. "So how have you stayed there?" I asked.
He looked me straight in the eyes.
"I changed my direction." he said squarely, then turned with his wife and headed for the party.
May 07, 2006
May 05, 2006
The Aspen Effect
"Aspen is different than i remember" he said to my mother on the cell phone.
"It's bigger now than it used to be."
I drove north out of Aspen on county road 82. I listened to one side of the conversation between my parents as we left the edge of town.
My father is a smart man, but hearing his conversation in third person, i saw an amusing naiveté as he talked about Aspen. The last time he had been there was with my mother in the mid 1970's. To his apparent surprise, time- and the progression it yields- has turned the Aspen of his memory into something bigger. Time pulls, or sometimes pushes, all things, including city limits forward, for better; and for worse. Of all people, my father understands that.
As it were then though, he sat shotgun and continued to tell my mother in a surprising tone that things there had changed over time.
Everything changes.
A few miles up Hwy. 82 he hung up the phone. The call was not made by my father to express his surprise in real estate development in Pitken County Colorado. The call was made by my mother to to tell him of a death in the family. A heart attack, age 62. He was my father's cousin.
Highway 82 takes advantage of the work the Roaring Fork River has done during the latest epoch. The road follows the river along the valley the river is carving in the strata on its way north towards its confluence with the Colorado River.
As we drove along the river, we spoke of family, and lack thereof. We spoke of family dynamics, of growing old, of moving on, and just plain moving.
Everything changes.
As it were, I was moving, in every sense of the word. In the gloaming, the valley glowed with a steel gray vapor rising off of the ground. The valley curled up at it's edges like wet paper, it's torn edges wrapping up into into granite mountains frosted in snow. Pyramid peak sat up beside the Maroon Bells, crevices of snow trailing down between dark rock like burnt paper and ash, smoldering at the edges of a book i was writing that no one would read. If memory could ever manifest, it would look like the view out of the driver's side window while my father spoke to me. As it were, I was moving. Literally. Across the country. And though in my memory, where i was headed to was solid and still; it was not.
Everything changes.
The valley floor below us was getting deeper. People I know were growing older. The Mountain range was getting taller. I was moving.
Everything changes.
I saw my life. I saw the techtonic plates. I saw the polar ice flows. I saw the Roaring Fork River eroding the earth below. I saw the earth in it's solar system. I saw the galaxy moving farther away from everything else. I saw life and I saw me in it. And i saw it with amusing naiveté, and realized nothing ever stops changing.
I am being pushed. And I am being pulled. And like techtonic plates and ice flows, i am breaking apart. And somewhere else, I am coming together again. Like with gravity, thermal convection, and ocean currents, there are forces bigger than me that i cannot see that push me apart, and pull me together.
Everything changes.
As I traveled the continent with my father, I was finding my fault lines. I felt the trenches of separation. And I am witnessing the collisions, and the mountains they are forming.
The crescent moon hung above the valley. The light faded. The fog vanished. My father began to change the subject. My cell phone rang in my pocket. It was an unknown number. I shifted into fifth gear.
Everything changes.