Over Virginia

Flying over Virginia
from Rome to Atlanta
at 36000 feet

from my seat in the middle
of the plane
I look out the window

and see only a portion
of a silver wing, a bit of a blue sky
and a few lonesome white clouds.

Turning my head,
I see highways
on the movie screen

as we hone in on
our destination.
Lots of noise from

conversations and
a roaring engine and
pungent smells from the

pizza with pesto
and the overused toilet
(just) a few feet away.

Many are now standing
with their toothbrushes
and combs

in line at the toilet
getting ready
for their plane's descent.

Soon they'll embrace thelr
loved ones, or noone—
but their cat or dog or turtle,

or they'll transfer to another
plane & postpone their homecoming
for a few more hours.

Drivel

(Note: After trying to read the Financial Times Magazine flying from Rome to St. Louis)

Countless drivel fills
magazine racks &
trash containers.

Drivel this and that,
using the most imaginable
pedestrian language

to describe
ideas, events,
discoveries and inventions.

But rarely is the subject
itself the cause
for the drivel

rather it is the treatment
and presentation of the same
that causes me such distress.

Ordinary reporters
never go
beyond the Five Ws (and one H),

while the gifted poet
makes the everyday
heavenly.

Rubics and Logic

I've been very suspicious of
rubrics and logic,
who may be first cousins.

Both are useful enough
when their powers are limited,
but neither gives us the truth.

We don't make
a lot of decisions
based on logic.

We are creatures
of subjective impressions
(is that redundant?).

We are drawn
to and from objects
for unknown reasons.

We conduct many (if not all)
facets of our lives
as if guided by a powerful spirit.

Our decisions are often
directed by a strong "intuition"
rather a large bag

of empirical evidence.
Rubrics are equally faulty
as a determinant of quality.

Yes, they make it easy
to give a low grade
on a student's paper

because the essay contained
four spelling errors,
included five grammatical errors,

lacked a topic sentence,
and more. But the rubric
didn't address whether

the author made the reader
"think and feel, and hopefully,
[took them] to a place

they hadn't been
(a definition of art from
one of the curators at MOMA).

Recently a teacher
gave a student a better grade
than their work deserved

because, even though
the student had fulfilled
the requirements of the rubric,

they had not understood
the content
of the course.

Ode to the Lovely One

It is always amazing to me
how good things
happen.

A job opens up, and someone
is lucky to
get an interview.

And when he goes for inspection,
he gives a talk, and in the front row,
is the lovely one.

And he gets the job
and they marry and she is the perfect
compliment, companion, compatriot for him.

And then is born the perfect prince with golden locks,
who knows exactly what he wants
and what he doesn't want.

And she and him, are perfect parents,
each with an extraordinary gift
to make beautiful stuff "from nothing."

They made the prince, not from
nothing, but from the lovely one,
who knows just what to do and just what to say,

and from him, who listens and records,
as if he is a siphon, taking in everything
around him in such a gentle way.

Advice to Marc Chagall

Coming back from a large Marc Chagall
exhibit in Roma, my son and I agreed
that Marc was not a great painter.

Surely, I said, he blows Norman Rockwell,
or Andrew Wyeth out of the water. My son
could not argue that point. But he said

that Marc just drew, and then filled in
his drawings with blue and red,
except for this one wall of beautiful colleges

that he did in 1970.
I said he was a great lyricist
and that even though painters

wouldn't look up to him for inspiration
a lyricist would.
I then imagined what

I might say to Marc,
should he, one dreary day,
be in a despondent mood about his art,

and decide to telephone me.
"What's wrong with my art?"
he would say

and I'd tell him that he should get
a new manager who doesn't want him
to illustrate so many bible stories

and that he should mix up his colors a bit,
and take the advice of one of my teachers
that every area in a painting should

include a little bit of every other color in the painting,
or a friend who said, always look at the
whole when you are working on the parts.

Or maybe I'd give him the
gold toothbrush of advice,
that one should "listen to everyone and believe no one."

But then I started wondering, what if
Marc really did take my advice,
then we wouldn't have

his spirit and paintings that
are so unique and so compelling,
especially he,

having lived through countless
wars and turmoil,
taught us such priceless lessons

about joy and love
and just doing something crazy
because it feels so good!

Correction

Walking down the street in Rome
yesterday, I realized that his name
wasn't Alfred, but rather Dr. Dolittle.

I wrote a piece about that, but
lost it as I transferred it to my
computer.

And then today, I realized that
his name was probably Alfred
Dolittle, though if I had to

swear on a stack of bibles, and (even)
if it truly was a formidable stack, then
I couldn't say for sure what I used to call him.

Which all makes me further suspect
history as a precise accounting of
what happened, one day, very very long ago.

If we can't even trust the horse's mouth,
How can we trust anything?
The journalist wants multiple sources,

even if one is very very good.
But here, I'm not sure if I ever
told anyone what his name was, or is.

I do remember that I did
want to befriend Dr./Alfred Dolittle,
because my speech wasn't good,

and I thought he would interpret
what I wanted to say
to my parents and friends.

Alfred

50 years ago I drew
Alfred in the margin
of my notes.

I was supposed to be
taking notes, something
I never learned to do.

Except in one class,
where the teacher
wrote the notes on the board.

Ben sat behind me and
drew Abe Lincoln or George
Washington—I can't remember.

He was the real artist and still
is. I was a "wantabe." I just
would have to learn to draw George or Abe.

I don't think my guy that I drew had a name
at first. But in French class, around the same
time, I learned that Kim was not a good name.

Bruce whispered to me "Alfred" and that became
my name in French class, and the name of my
guy, whom I've drawn for 50 years.

My high school art teacher laughed at my
funny drawings. I did one of a sadistic cow
and Alfred. He laughed and put it up in the hall.

He said that I could learn to draw.
In college, Mr. Savage said, anyone can
learn to draw, anyone, that is, except Kim.

My father could draw, and my wife
and son can draw. I think Alfred would
just look like Abe or George if I could draw.

Almost Gyped

Looking down

small hand reaching
for my wallet
hiding in my inside pocket.

It was a hand I did not know
sneaking, small, not one that
I knew.

I grabbed the hand and moved it
out and away from me, scratching
my neck with her fingernail.

Looking up at her I said damn you
and an odor came from her
or her baby.

She muttered something, rearranging
the babies' blanket
and quickly exited from the train.

From the platform, she
looked back at me and grinned,
holding up her hand

with two outside fingers
becoming a devil
extending to the sky.

Walt Disney

As I understand it, Walt Disney's goal was simply to make people happy. Coming from two world wars, what else matched Walt's creations in the way that they gave us a glimmer of hope.

I am much better at playing now than I was as a kid. I remember watching the kids next store playing cowboys and Indians, and I couldn't imagine myself as either. I was me.

Now I play with doing things like stapling, cutting, painting, drawing, or writing. Even walking is good, but I'm not a great fan of fantasy.

I guess it is because the infinite realm of possibilities is overwhelming, and because reality is so much more interesting too me. I'd rather read non-fiction than fiction for the same reason, though sometimes fiction is really the best way to communicate about the real world.

You'd think (after all this) that I'd go to Disneyland if given the opportunity. No, I'd only go if I could take a little kid. I staying in a hotel across the street and never had the slightest inkling to go. But for a kid——to watch a kid laugh——that would be worth it.

Peace of Mind

Edward Weston said that with “peace of mind and an hour’s time [he] could make great photographs.”

The jet lag is finally over, after a week here in Roma. I’m up early while everyone else is asleep. It is quiet and critical issues from work are fading from my mind.

Being a grandparent is more difficult in some respects than being a parent. I am trying to embrace someone else’s parenting methodology, which may not be my own.

Now I want to have my own children again so that I can see if what worked before will work again. And maybe I could do things correctly this time. But I realize that the result of great parenting may not be a guarantee for great kids. And would I miss the ability to spend a day by myself? Being busy doesn’t create either peace or time.

We are surrounded in Rome with great achievements. For the most part, I believe it was the men who did the buildings, aqueducts, art, literature, etc.? What about the woman? Whatever that was done with the children created a culture with great integrity, love of beauty, and discipline. I envision long days for the workman and the artisans. But what about the kids? Who tended to them? The women? I once heard that it took the average Parisian woman in 1900 fifteen hours a day to prepare food for her family. What would it take the average Roman woman 1000 years ago? And how did they take care of the kids?

In some third world countries, the kids are born and then, on that same day, the woman is back in the fields with the babe in a sling close to their mother. The Roman woman must have had to work day and night sweeping dust from the house, preparing meals, and tending for the sick and elderly. All of this was a critical, if secondary, role to enable the city to be built. Certainly the women were responsible for both feeding the workers, and for raising the future workers.

I imagine a very abbreviated childhood for the Roman youth. The boys were apprenticed early and their future was laid out for them. The girls took care of the younger kids until they had kids of their own. Today we say that kids grow up too fast. Compared to what? Ancient Rome?

Did anyone have peace of mind and an hour’s time back then?

Kim as Statute

Probably out of jealousy, or maybe from pity, I decided to become one more Roman statute.

Jealousy since I haven't made it to the ranks of stone, and pity because the stump looked sad having nothing to hold up.

As you can imagine, my pose was precarious and the next moment I was on the ground. Luckily my photographer missed that shot.

We finally got to the point in our baby sitting saga where we decided that Jasper was the one who was sitting us, or more accurately, had decided that he be pushed in his stroller from one Roman park to another. He did not want to spend any time entertaining himself.

Exhausted from two long trips to different parks in one day, we sat him on the floor with his toys and told him to play. He decided instead to cry...and cry...and cry.

Eventually his father came home and consoled him. I guess today it is back to the parks.

Conversation with a Stone Man

Note: I wrote this is my normal prose, and tried incorrectly to lower the photo and the whole page went into text heaven. I decided that was a message from the writing god that I should never write prose again because it all looks the same.

She said this is a beautiful place except for the dead people.

Who's dead? I asked. Are these tombs?

No, she said, they are just all dead.

Who's dead? I said.

My dad's death certificate said he's dead, yet he talks to me day and night.

Dead is when no one thinks about you.

I went up to the stone man to talk. I was surprised at how tall he was. I stood on a boulder, and then on my tip toes, looking at his stone face. I still didn't measure up, reminding me of when I was a short kid and they called me "mouse."

Some get bigger than life when they die that first death—the one that comes in old age, in battle, or when the scooter rounds the blind corner. Pow!

I tried to look in his eyes, but he was stone and didn't want to talk to me. Maybe he was dead, after all.

Success in Baby Steps?

Today we are soloing with our grandson, Jasper. His parents, Sarah and Josh, wanted to work in their studios, and so our job has begun. First he was crying and cranky, but then I held him, bouncing on an exercise ball and talking gibberish, and he finally fell asleep. Now my wife, Linda is holding him. He doesn't like his crib. Who would choose a crib when they could be held by a warm loving body?

I left to go on a walking tour that ended up at St. Peters. The group were all classicists except me. It was hard to figure out what the talk/walk was about, but I did get that it was all about constructing what went on in the Vatican area before it became the Christian mecca.

And now back to babysitting. Jasper slept for about ten minutes, which was a welcome relief from his crying. And now he's crying again. I put him in his stroller and wheeled him around the apartment, and then read some books to him. He then watched me cut and staple one of my heads. It occupied his attention for a (very) short time.

Success? There are times where you think he's going to never have another sad moment for the rest of his life, and then his cranky side comes back.

Progress, maybe, but no success.

Best Laid Plans

"Want to make God laugh? Make a plan." And so it goes. Sometimes plans go like clockwork, and other times like a ship in a storm.

Bush thought that we'd go in to Iraq and get rid of Saddam and the WMAs and then we'd be out of there before you could say "jack rabbit." And now he is asking for 30,000 more soldiers to reduce the chaos that he has caused.

Did he not have adequate information? Did he not listen to the experts? How did he go so wrong?

On the personal front, I planned with a friend for two years to take a walk tomorrow in Tuscany. Lo and behold, something happened and she was not able to come, and it wasn't a good time for me either.

I wonder if we should just say, "no plans, let's just be spontaneous." Events would not be publicized, but instead would (or wouldn't) spontaneously erupt. Calendars would be thrown out, or use for fodder by college artists. Restaurants would be open or closed depending on everything from the position of the stars to the whims of the cooks.

Hey, wait, that's no way to run the world. It would be utter chaos. But would it be any different that Iraq, my walk in Tuscany, or the result of any of our other best laid plans?

I've heard that you can't get lost if you don't know where you are going. Unfortunately, or fortunately, making plans is probably warranted, as long as we are accepting when they have to be tweaked and thrown aside (as they usually do). We certainly don't want God to laugh, do we?

Crying and Childrearing

Last night my son and his wife decided it was a good night for their six month son to cry himself to sleep. It was supposed to be discipline or something.

I thought sleeping through the night was good because then the parents could sleep too. But now it seems like it is something you do because the book tells you to do it.

I didn't mind the crying too much. He has a beautiful cry. He wasn't mad. He just cried and cried because he didn't want to be in bed. My theory was that he slept too much during the day, but their book said that the more a kid slept during the day the more he'd sleep during the night. Dr. Spock was wrong, you know. So I put my earphones on and watched a movie. Probably not what a good person would do.

Ok, to be honest, I have absolutely no idea about childrearing. I think our kids turned out great, but I don't know what we (an extended we) all did to contribute to their positive qualities.

How is it that we don't know any of the real secrets in life? We don't know what makes a good anything. Sure, we can talk about discipline, love, trust, and a host of similar words, but do we really know how to parent, how to teach, how to lead, how to do anything well?

Or do we just go by the seat of our pants and listen to our hearts (or to the book)?

So Jasper, our grandson, will grow up picking and choosing those myriad qualities that surround him. He'll find people and environments to support him. He'll decide at some point to raise his own progeny (however he will define that), and he'll give his best, only to one day also realize that the mysteries of life are mysterious and deep secrets.

CEO's Salary

My friend complains about CEOs who get paid too much. He laments, how can someone possibly earn 500 million a year? This stems from his liberal bend that believes that the bosses exploit the workers.

I'd certainly like that CEO job (the pay, not the responsibility), though I think it probably includes golf and ties, neither of which are my cup of tea.

I give him the same arguments each time:

1) Leadership is both a rare talent and a grueling task, and anyone who can do it is worth their weight in gold.

2) The stockholders should complain if their company is wasting money by paying more than they should (and need to) for leadership. Or they should sell their stock.

and

3) The alternative, that the government sets limits, has so many problems and is so contrary to a free society, that we should not touch that with a ten foot pole.

And I ask him how he'd solve the problem, to which he says that he doesn't know. He just says that it is wrong, obscene, and that justice will not come from the stockholders cries because the world is so corrupt and all these CEOs sit on each other boards.

One could say that anyone, like Atlas, willing to put the weight of the world on their shoulders, is deserving of such great compensation. Or perhaps that the solution might cause more problems than the problem.

Packing, Rushing and Stuff

In a few minutes we leave for Roma. There are so many things to do so we can leave for a few weeks.

And I think about what we leave behind, and how we manage without those things. I'm looking at a glass jar filled with a multitude of pencils and scissors. Then to my right, as my eyes pass over a computer printer, I see a bookshelf with six shelves of books. And the list goes on and on.

I never really believed that history was real until I went to Florence and stood in the footsteps of Leonardo. Events really did happen in the past, even if post-modernists minimize these events by allowing different readings of them.

One of my original thoughts was to have this blog be a diary, or "diaristic notations," as I once titled a course I taught. But no, I'm going to resist that because where I am in time or place is being a slave of the present. The Buddhist (given my sophomoric understanding) attempts to be here now (mindfulness). A good alternative would be to be everywhere at all times. To go to the Colosseum and watch the lion fights. To close my eyes in the airplane and fly to the closest inhabited planet.

It is not right that we invent time (and space?) and then we are bound by it's confines. Being human should be to have the ability to connect past, present, and future so that we are in all places at all times all at once.

A little challenge for the imagination.

Jan Nesser-Chu and the Art Rubric

Last night at St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley I was knocked off my feet by the powerful works of Jan Nesser-Chu. Because the works do not fit any rubric, they could easily be dismissed. Yet I woke up this morning still seeing (and feeling) the works as if they were permanently lodged in my heart and mind.

Wordsworth wrote "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recalled in tranquility." Jan, "in her grandmother's blood," creates a powerful environment where we visit her very private and very personal "inheritance," yet we also struck with the universal qualities of her narrative. Her voice is almost muted so her story becomes our voice telling our story. The new pictures force us to realize that we share the same planet as she. The lace dresses surrounded by dress patterns are in an intimate (sewing?) room by themselves, yet we can't touch them because of a spiderweb strung from one wall to another that creates a separation of both space and time.

Jan has put herself and her feelings "out there," displaying bromide prints of antique aprons like they were lingerie from Fredericks of Hollywood. They are images from her grandmother's era when women waited on men, and thankfully Jan has ended that era by hanging these aprons out to dry.

Bingo is another symbol of some of our mindless activities of her grandmother's generation, yet is reframed by Jan by the powerful emotive words that appear on each of the bingo cards. Another artwork talks about the meanings of names, and asks the audience to sign their names. Because each signature is so unique we hear many different voices .

I've often though and said that rubrics don't work too well for art. Good art may not get a good grade. The art hopefully will ruffle some feathers. It might be rough around the edges. It might break every rule in the book. It will, like Jan's work, open the door to the very soul of the artist. And we thank Jan for that exposure, for it lets us know some of our own secrets.

Bruce, Religion, and Death

When I was twelve, Bruce asked me to go to church with him. I remember that my mom said that I was too impressionable to go to church. She was an atheist (or so I believed) and was sure that I would be swept away by the currents of salvation.

I'm not sure what I did that Sunday (church or not), but before long I was an avid church goer. My favorite was the Catholic church, partly because of the wine and the wafers (I didn't know any better).

One Easter I went to four churches. I became known as the religious globe trotter. A few years later I joined a very liberal Baptist discussion group at the University of Chicago (I liked both the discussion and this cute blond) and even reconciled my disbelief in God with the minister's belief that God is only real because we believe in him.

My parents turned into agnostics after they left the University because (in my mind) they had many new friends who were believers. They never convinced me that their transformation (from atheist to agnostic) was authentic, but they were steadfast in their new belief that we just don't know whether God exists. My dad even denied that he had ever been an atheist.

Now that I'm at the top of a hill (and I hope, not the last hill) and am looking down at the rest of of my life, I'm wondering about the end, just beyond the farthest point that I can see. I certainly would like to be led by a beautiful angel into eternity, but know that hoping for something doesn't make it so.

Bruce (5 Jul 1945-15 Jun 1972) is gone. Life did not agree with him. I'm not sure what happened, but I knew Earth was not the right place for him. Will I see him again? I do not know.

Noises While Writing a Poem

Doors shutting, voices mumbling,
the scent of roofing tar shoots through my nose.

How much time is a little time before my next meeting?
Is there time to write something?

Another door shutting, now opening now closing.
More mumbling. Where is quiet?

The second hand creeps, feeling each number being passed.
Is there time for one more line?

Another voice in the hallway, mumbling.
Now a conversation.
Some words that I can recognize.

Oh, I need to run...