June 27, 2006
First day in town (new kid on the block)
"There are good things, and there are bad things about this place." he replied.
"There are good things and there are bad things about every place." he then added as he sliced my roast beef behind the deli counter.
"How long have you run this grocery?" i asked him next.
"1876." he said without looking up.
"I am the fourth generation."
There has been some discussions which i have been engaged in this past year regarding community, lack of it, and finding it. Some experiences, including my own, proved california to regard the topic quite irreverently, and have led some to seek it elsewhere. In way, it was a large part of what led me to be standing there in Weber's Grocery on a Tuesday afternoon.
There is a sensibility among neighbors and stranger's alike in small midwest to near-east towns. I am sure it is other locations in the world, but i have not been privy to it elsewhere.
Regardless of any generalities, it was certainly there:
While pulling up carpet earlier that morning, i asked my father to go to the tool rental store - recommended by my landlord- across town and rent a vibrating floor sander. He was helping me restore the hardwood floor in my new apartment. The landlord was fine to accommodate my efforts and reimburse me by taking it off upcoming rent. She did, after all, live across the street and was well aware of my endeavor. No one it town knew me. I gave my father my credit card and my out of state driver's license. I hoped it would suffice for payment for the sander. He returned shortly with the sander, and stack of sandpaper, and handed my cards back to me.
"I forgot about how small towns operate." He said.
"I explained to him you were my son, and we are from out of town. He just wrote your name down on a clipboard. He gave me a stack of 3 grades of paper. He said to bring it all back when we are done. Whatever paper we don't use he won't charge us for."
After i ate my roast beef sandwich for lunch i walked into the campus library. I walked into the basement. I asked a guy shelf reading books to direct me to the IT office. He pulled his earbuds out and pointed to past the reference section. I walked over and knocked on the door. I was covered in sawdust, an old t-shirt, shorts and converse. The door opened.
"I'm Todd." i announced.
"Oh hi." the man replied. "Here is your laptop." he said. And pulled a box out from under his desk.
"There you go." He said. He asked me no questions.
And later in the day my neighbor leaned out over his back porch and introduced himself. His name is Eric and he informed me he is leaving for 12 days to Pennsylvania and New York, and when her returned he would invite me over and cook me dinner. He is a cook and the restaurant he works at is taking a summer break. As he loaded his son into his car, he opened the trunk and pulled out a wooden crate full of mushrooms. he reached into his car and filled a bag with lemons, grabbed a 3 lb. bag of spinach. he gave them all to me.
"I didn't want to waste all of this food, but we can' t eat it all." he said.
These incidents alone are not extraordinary to some. Perhaps my making mention of them only shows my lack similar experiences for quite some time. Times Square certainly never yielded such stories, neither did california. But here, in one day, i took notice of all of these events.
I sat on my front porch with my dad and took a break from the floor restoration. We would return the sander the next morning, and pay then for what we used. The catalpa and maple trees spread out over my street like old men stretching their limbs in early morning. The brick sat in the streets like crooked teeth, worn down into submission like stones in a riverbed. Eric left for his vacation. A bell rang through the treetops. The carry out drive through on the side of Weber's grocery began to get busy.
"There are good things, and there are surely some bad things about this place." i thought.
And like every other place i have ever sat and looked out over the street, i felt the both edges of the sword; and remembered how they both can cut.
i was aware of my mobility, and the consequences of it.
And i began trying to see through the cracks in the sidewalk.
June 24, 2006
Upstate of mind
Woody and I were sitting on the bow of the boat as we arrived at the dock in Hammondsport. His bare feet were propped upon the nose of the boat, covering the green starboard side light. It was a summer night, with sun tanned shoulders, and coors light, and the smell of wood-smoke rolled across the lake from fires burning along the stoney shoreline like sentries, keeping watch on the Lake as she lay peacefully in the bottom of the valley. Above us the constellations were masked in lavender clouds like a Dancer of the Seven Veils, staring elusively down at me. Below me, the dark water sat like ink in a well, waiting for someone to write me a letter to tell me all of their darkest secrets. Behind us were our four parents and my sister laughing in the dark.
We tied the boat off and walked into town. Nick was working behind the bar at Maloney's. He acknowledged his debt to Woody from last year's transaction. { Reference ] By the time we made it to the barstool from the dock, there were 3 whiskys on the rocks, waiting for us as we sat down. With our parent's beside us, the band began to play. People began to dance. The floorboards sighed. Mike Maloney gave Woody and I a shot, and thanked me again for a photograph I had given him of last year's visit. Our mother's sighed.
My blood began to thin to sound of mandolins and accordions. Woody handed his glass to Nick. Nick filled it up again. My father grinned. Woody's mother sat down beside me with a 7-up, and took a little tastes from my shots before the bottoms went up. I turned back and forth on my stool like a buoy bobbing on the lake. I was surrounded by my family and our friends.
Woody was renegotiating muscle fit tees for whisky.
My mother tasted her daughter's whisky. With a deadpan reply, she stated: "That tastes like college."
The fires burned out in the darkness, keeping watch over my night.
The bar lights soaked the air in a warm stain of neon and wood-grain. Outside the open window panes, the darkness cupped its hands around the pub. Inside, the noise clenched it's fist around me, holding us all together on a saturday night in upstate new york.
By the end of the night, our parents had returned to the house on the boat. Woody and Annie were dancing. I stepped out onto the edge of the porch. The stars were still veiled, and looking down at me. The whisky burned and my head felt like it was on a plate. I stood there alone and clenched my thoughts in my fist. I tried to keep my head on my shoulders, and my mind in new york state. I smiled for the closeness of my family. I laughed at the thought of woody stumbling back to the house and entering a heartfelt but slurred discussion with his mother as she cooked us nachos.
I stood on the street and finished my whisky before the stars could lead my mind elsewhere. I clenched my fists. I refused to make eye contact with the sky. I turned and headed back inside, as if secretly seeking cover; as if not to turn my back on what i already have; as if to cup my hands around eyes and forfeit to the distance and space and yearning of the world, and enjoy what is already more than i deserve. i sighed and i walked into bar. Woody handed me a drink. The band started it's second set. I found my little sister and we danced late into the night.
June 18, 2006
The Great Wide Open
Woody crunches numbers like i crunch wasabi peas at 4 am while writing emails that make me cringe when i send; to a beautiful girl on the other end, sleeping on the far side of the world.
"How many people do think are here?" I asked him.
We were at Germain Amphitheater in Columbus Ohio, standing in the lawn at a concert. It was a warm summer evening, and i was glad to be with a friend.
"15,000." Woody replied.
The girl to our right threw up on herself. Woody looked down at her as she knelt and wiped off her pants.
"Okay, so what is the average age of a person here?" I asked next.
Woody looked around the venue. It was a Tom Petty concert, and not withstanding the girl wiping off her pants beside us, the crowd was leaned a little north of your average Wednesday night rock n' roll concert.
"30." Woody replied.
"Okay, so how many cumulative man-years do we have here tonight?"
Woody looked up into the dark night for a half measure of "Into the Great Wide Open".
"450,000."
The man with the long white ponytail in front of us lit a joint.
"A half a million." he shrugged in resignation.
I looked around at the sea of swaying people. Mothers spinning in their dresses, eyes closed and smiling. Fathers singing along and getting stoned. I watched two teenagers made out on a blanket, beach balls bouncing like above the singing crowd like a karaoke ball bouncing over the lyrics scrolling across my summer evening. The stars sat high in the top edge of the sky, as if to keep their farthest distance from us; out of courtesy or offense, i could not tell.
According the american census bureau i was surrounded by 6,450 past or future divorces.
And yet everyone was dancing.
On an optimistic estimate, 7,500 past, current, or future broken hearts, perhaps another 7,500 sad stories. By some estimates, a total of $63,000 of credit card debt.
And yet everyone was clapping their hands.
I was among 262,974 hours of college education, hundreds of thousands of hours of shoveling dirt, taking orders, pushing papers and pulling files. Raising babies, teaching children, saying hello, crying goodbye, and the culmination of insight, experience and knowledge it brings.
But we were all separate. We were all inconsectutive. We were all self contained. We are alone. We only have 70 or 80 years on our own, to find our own peace, our own happiness, our own love.
There are schools of thought that approach life as one interconnected event. There are names for these ideas, names like "The theories of quantum consciousness", where one organism - a collective soul- shares all phenomenon; love, pain wisdom, misery, and Tom Petty concerts. I was sure the man with the long white hair in front of woody would have something to say to that. Woody was certainly hoping at least the smoke floating above the man's head would connect with him.
Perhaps, I thought, there is something. Something that - albeit temporary - can reveal the sameness of condition, of conscious, of emotion, which binds people together. Elusively, in-between our segregation, like Calder's mobiles swinging awkwardly, there are thin wires keeping some together, hanging precariously from a window pane in an attic above the street, a limb of a tree in summer breeze, or tears from a cheek, or swaying slowly to a concert on the green at Germain Amphitheater in Columbus Ohio.
Under the summer stars on the grass that night there was music. There can be a connection like a crown of daisies from a field, or string laid delicate across the green between the make-out blankets and the passed out girls, or around the world, made by the sharing the mind, sharing the burden of passion, the falling of tears, the revealing of heart. They can be made in a conversation while sitting on my professor's countertop in a kitchen at 3 a.m. They can be made in a ball point pen on a postcard from spokane washington. And they can be made in the middle of the night by thinking honestly, missing earnestly, eating wasabi peas, and staring out over rooftops and chimneys, trying to see into a bedroom window on the far side of the world.
