I remember most warmly an Updike story the New Yorker published in the eighties. In it, he described a New England weekend trip. Several apparently successful couples sharing a large country house. In the morning, he captured the tenuous space between the professional and the deeply personal by describing how, in spite of every doctor's best advice (at least one of these vacationers was, I seem to remember, a doctor), the house was filled with the illicit smell of bacon.
I love the image. My life, probably yours too, is punctuated with the illicit smell of bacon. We don't smoke except sometimes. We are, like the couples in Updike's story, generally faithful. We are kind, usually. Nothing unconditionally.
Life is conditional. Our balance beam is altogether too narrow, our feet occasionally insubstantial. We live until we die.
Bye, John. Delightful knowing you.
Yesterday's New York Times carried the following fitting requiem.
Requiem
It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!”
Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
“I thought he died a while ago.”
For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.
— JOHN UPDIKE
August 29, 2003, Dulles International Airport
Washington DC was a swamp before the federals built our nation’s capital city here. It remains a swamp today. In the last week of August, thunder punctuates the end of each steaming day and the torrential rains recharge the source of tomorrow’s mugginess. No one escapes the humidity or the counter measures put up to thwart it. Either sweat or surrender, captive within the soft hum of artificially de-humidified isolation. Choose one.
A walk down the block nearly guarantees that I’ll sweat through whatever I’m wearing. Shirt, Pants, Socks. Shoes. Knap-sack shoulder straps. Monte Christo fedora. The natives seem better able to move through this semi-solid atmosphere. Some wear suits without appearing to sweat. Their sweat glands must have long ago shut down from over-use, having produced their allotted lifetime’s volume. Nothing else explains it.
The city has changed since my last visit. 9/11 happened and, while the district was heavily secured on that last stop, it was wide open compared to the present state. Large cement planters ring every government building, and most of the buildings are government buildings. Homeland Security's response to terrorist threats created a delightful unintended outcome- flowers. Each planter holds a well-tended little garden, brightly blooming within the constant humidification. The planters are there, I suppose, to prevent attack from car bombings, but they, encroaching into the District's wide boulevards, silently disrupt the traffic flow. The sidewalks narrow and access to the usual vistas strictly limited, when entry is allowed at all. The Capitol building looks like it’s under siege, the once open parking lot surrounded by a seven foot metal wall, which fails to hide the cement plant behind it. Someone’s building something’s behind that wall; probably not planters.
Gardens and sculptures are obscured by traffic baffles. Walking is detour-ridden. I was surprised to find access to the two large fountains on either side of the National Gallery of Art open and empty at seven on a Thursday evening. A semi-cool, bubbling respite spot. There are few such spots left in DC. Most of the Capitol grounds, an arboretum with trees from every state, is cordoned off. Barricades block off access to that wonderful view overlooking the Mall from the front of the Capitol building on the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s I Have A Dream speech.
The White House has annexed another block on its Eastern side. The Stonewall Jackson memorial now stands behind crime scene tape. Planters block Pennsylvania Avenue at 15th. Only the street to the North of Layfayette Park carries traffic. Where planters and guard boxes do not limit access, small wire and cedar-slat fences and crime scene tape do.
Crime scene tape.
Most of downtown has been gentrified. New construction continues at a blazing rate, further narrowing many streets and creating moments of unbearable noise. The homeless are present in greater numbers than in San Francisco. The small parks L’Enfant designed as places for a moment out of the sun have become hobo camps. Enter these only if your heart is cold enough to deny a flurry of plaintive requests for money or food. The benches beneath the signs declaring sleeping illegal are homes for the homeless. Some still sleep.
Another crime scene.
The afternoon storms were extraordinary. On Tuesday afternoon, I took a wrong turn coming out of the Metro and found myself walking a few extra blocks. As I passed by Lafayette Park, I noticed a strange electricity in the air and a sudden puff of unanticipated wind. I had time to cross the street and take refuge in the doorway of St. John’s church [ editor’s note: the so-called Presidents’ Church, where this morning President-elect Obama attended services before his inaguration...] before a torrent of wind-driven rain arrived.
A small community huddled there; some homeless, some tourists, some natives on their way home from government jobs. The wind blew from the North, the wrong way down 16th street across Layfayette Park and into the face of the White House, while huge rain drops Kamikazes crashed into a swirling flood. Trees bent and broke under the assault. Lightening struck the buildings surrounding us. Thunder crashed terrifyingly. Still, some continued their hikes. A young mother pushing a stroller with two small children rushed by, kids soaked through and holding their hands over their faces. Some held futile umbrellas before them while the wind-driven rain soaked them anyway Every few minutes another group would wash up drenched under the church's overhang to huddle and stay or continue their upstream migration. I stayed put, watching, dry except for the unavoidable splash from the door jam above me.
The church’s doors were locked, though someone inside peeked out through the glass and nodded, acknowledging our presence. I imagined that he would invite us in out of the fury, but he sauntered back into the sanctuary, leaving the doors unopened. I imagined the storm to be retribution, an angry front pounding on the increasingly unreasonable administration, but the President was not home to answer the onslaught. We huddled, the homeless among us wondering whether their usual bedding spot would be habitable that night, the rest of us considering cabs. Some managed to flag taxis down. One group of six over-sized tourists crammed themselves into a single cab, soaking themselves while impossibly squeezing in like desperate clowns. Two young lovers stopped for a moment, shivering, saturated, before continuing their light jog into the maw.
I had met earlier with a colleague, retired Army, who delicately introduced the subject of the present administration. He fussed over the disrespect shown the departing head of the Army, who was co-opted by tenacious ideologues. The whole city, he explained, is hunkered down, afraid to do what they know is right, their leaders directing them toward irresponsible objectives. Fear and loathing reign. The government has become the exclusive property of a few. The day before, Amy called to report on her visit to a Howard Dean rally in Spokane, where a thousand people appeared to hear an eloquent speaker tell it like it is. Fifteen thousand showed up the night before in Seattle. While the President travels in closed circles, inviting a few wealthy supporters to gather and congratulate themselves, Howard Dean invites everyone and responds to their questions and concerns not with hollow promises but with open explanations and honest disagreement when he honestly disagrees.
Half of the present Federal workforce will be eligible for retirement in the next five years, and many can't wait to leave. The cost of service has become too high. The price of fulfilling policies they cannot in good conscience support has become too great. I suppose many of these jobs will be outsourced to third world countries where someone with fewer scruples than needs will gladly accept them. And the government of, by, and for the people will take another step away from its center, toward a government that simply exploits and oppresses while ignoring the legitimate interests of those who were supposed to be employing it as a means for owning their own destinies.
The homeless man huddled in that doorway with me looks like an honest citizen. The homeless woman next to him complains about having to walk across town to her storage locker to get dry clothes so she can go to work. None of us despaired within the storm. We huddled together, otherwise inappropriately close, staying as dry as we could, hoping for an early secession of hostilities. And the storm cleared, albeit begrudgingly. Pedestrians reappeared. Some soaked. Others dry. Office buildings emptied and the commute continued. The oppressive heat humbled for a few hours. The sky distantly grumbling like a stomach recovering from an over-rich meal.
I was here to research. Here to access the greatest store of knowledge in the world. To sit humbly in the Library of Congress’ Art-Deco reading rooms, fingering books. Gathering data. Considering deeply. The visit included more considering than research. There are only so many external sources of one’s own wisdom. Was I looking for confirmation more than information? I was seeking patterns, which arrived in their usual, well-performed forms. The cordoned walkways and flower-edged buildings were there expressly for my consideration. The long walks past parks cordoned with crime scene tape brought enough of the movie to life before my eyes. As always, plotline and purpose open to my own interpretation.
I leave with a pack filled with notes which I might not refer to again. I will most certainly not carefully reconstruct the facts I collected in my long library hours. I took notes and carefully captured sources, but such precision could not have been the purpose of my investigation. Such material can be at best the medium within which some understanding emerges. What understanding is that? Not an important question. Like the traveler who’s journey is more purposeful than his destination, the time spent huddled in a doorway considering this storm will become the real purpose of my research. The day spent visiting my book in bookstores reminded me what a very small world this continues to be- and how very well connected we are. I walked down K Street, sweating from my hike from Georgetown, and spotting a bookstore, enter to find that my book had been there, sold out, and is on re-order. The book buyer was delighted to order a few extra copies and take some promotional cards. All this reassures me.
We might imagine ourselves strangers, separated by unfathomable distances, or family, isolated only by the illusion of separation. Our choice. When the storm comes none of us will get to choose which doorway we take refuge in. We will take the one most convenient at the time. And that stranger beside us then will not seem so strange once you’ve survived together a close lightening strike or two, and successfully out-witted a determined wind. Class differences dissolve in these torrents, and every meaningful distinction that should collapse- does. The St. Regis hotel stood solidly across the street from my protecting doorway. It’s broad portico sheltering the taxis and their passengers as they arrived and departed untouched by the storm. I thought for a while that, had I been smart, I would have stepped into that glittering lobby and sat out the trouble in a brass and marble bar, but my feelings switched to deep gratitude for having avoided that indifferent isolation.
The storm burped back into being as I hurried back to my hotel, so I stepped into what I mistook for a neighborhood bar for a quick beer to avoid a drenching. The bartender wondered how I could be so dry. “I walked between the raindrops,” I replied, noticing only then that the small stage in the back held a naked young woman dancing by herself. In the soft, reddish light, her body looked featureless. Some men sat rapt before her, projecting details and soaking up something that no storm could provide them. I gulped the flat Guinness and left before I discovered the secret attracting them there.
Back into my tiny hotel room, I showered away the residue from my day's three full sweat drenchings. I had successfully avoided the external dousing, but had three times soaked myself from the inside out that day. I'd found much to consider. Sitting on top of my cool, dry bed, temporarily isolated within a dehumidifying hum and three stories above any crime scene, my considering continued.
david
First: Shovel your neighbor’s walk. If his car’s stuck, stop to help. If you’re neighbor’s out of town on garbage day, get his trash can to the curb and back.
Second: Return that grocery cart to the place provided for returning carts, never leaving it in the handicapped stall or half jacked up on the curb of the planter with a nearly-finished Big Gulp in the cup holder. When you see a lost cart, guide it to where it belongs.
Third: Whenever you see a kid selling lemonade from a sidewalk stand, stop and buy a glass. Even if you hate lemonade. Especially if you’re running late. Your quarter means nothing to you and everything to her.
Fourth: Give cuts in line. Hold doors for everyone, not just for women. Life is not a race. Never was. First one through the door should be saying, “Thank you.”
Fifth: Move your lips when you read. Spend some time every week reading out loud to someone you love. We each need story time.
Civil society requires personal civility. It might seem silly that our way of life relies more upon you returning an empty grocery cart than your willingness to bear arms, but consider the number of opportunities you have to defend our way of life. Few of them involve much more than shoveling your neighbor’s walk. So do that. Zealously, if you prefer.
Instead of waving a flag, wave your behavior. Together, with tiny generous acts, good citizens create and sustain a truly civil society.
A man who had a place for everything,
literally everything.
Who never 86ed a thing in his 85 year-long life.
Never gave up on nothing. And nobody.
I still haven't figured out the key
But maybe my difficulty could be that
There never was a key.
But if there was, it's escaped me.
I found the bits to that beautiful drill brace
Not near by, but in another room
Inside that heavy green tool box,
wrapped in a bit of old shirt fabric,
well-disguised.
Finding them was just a simple matter
of having sorted through everything there
and remembering exactly where
I'd seen what I was looking for before.
I found a partially petrified squirrel in the driveway there
this week.
Black and leathery, with little hand-like feet bones
protruding.
No fur, no fuzzy tail.
Either a squirrel or a small bat-like demon.
Dreaming headless in the leaves.
I also found a walnut,
one perhaps left by that same demon squirrel
who died trying to retrieve it
from that dusty, too-secure sanctuary.
Or, more probably, just forgot
where he'd stashed it.
That would explain why that walnut sat
unmolested for decades on that shelf.
I'd thought many times,
passing it through the years,
that the squirrel had out-smarted himself,
finding the perfect storage spot,
neglecting retrieval.
But now I think there's something there,
perhaps in the water,
in the well-spring silently seeping beneath the place,
That sticks stuff there.
The past has needed chiseling out of there
And the present remains awfully thick.
After sorting through every god-damned walnut
I'm sure and likely to kick another one
out from the baseboard today,
or in yet another impossibly over-looked cupboard,
stashed rather than trashed,
a cache of the past eternal.
How would you organize the place,
Other than how it just naturally
seemed to organize itself?
With fruit in the fruit room, sure,
But also Chlordane and curtain rods in there too.
And paint.
And simple repetition would eventually seize the fate.
With a certain place for everything
and each thing in that place.
A store ignoring organization
in favor of routine
Where every thing would have a place
but no one knew the scheme.
And here was a man who made his living
sorting like with kind,
little cards into Coke case chords,
memory versus time.
Who's home was a game of Husker Du,
As if organized by a squirrel's brain,
Walnuts remembered from year to year
But rarely retrieved again.
Who but us, who were born to this,
could possibly unwind
the tentacles tightly tethering
all those ties that bind?
Some days I feel like the prince
chopping Rose Red free
lip-deep in a thick thorn patch
that's out to puncture me.
Other times I'm almost eight
rediscovering mine
or yours or theirs or ours still there
from another time.
What am I to make of this?
Or do with this? Or do without?
The archive pile possesses far too many
pictures from the past
Still unlabeled, precious, specious,
Certain to outlast
The stories recalling who was whom
and what was certainly what.
Was that your grandmother's brother's wife
Or your grandpa's maiden aunt?
"We used to drive over to Bend back then
to visit Ed's brother there.
I remember that one of the daughters was Emily,
She's still alive somewhere."
The pencils didn't come to attention
when the old man would hold forth,
His memories were semi-unreliable
sharing stories more than truth.
We are a part of that mythos now
Each true to our roles
Weavers raveling, knotting, nattering
worried to our souls.
Unworthy, unable, incapable of
remembering what they entrusted to us.
Dusty, trending toward more dust,
Ashes to ashes, eighty-six the fuss.
Note from Vienna: "We started noticing it in December 2007." Note from NYC: "My wife and I are living off home equity lines of credit." Note from Seattle: "We feel lucky because my wife was chosen to be one of the transition team and is guaranteed double pay for the next year, then she'll lose her job." A note from Brooklyn: "I've stopped contributing to my 401(k), investing in freeze dried food and cases of booze, which will be liquid currency when the dollar gets revalued."
Five years ago, these people were at the top of their professional lives. Earning the big bucks. Contributing members of society. Today they're filing for bankruptcy, flunking food stamp tests, and falling back on survival tricks they learned twenty, thirty, or more years ago as undergraduates. The social safety net was constructed to see blue collar workers through a down season or a temporary transition, not to support a flood of white-collar service professionals who's skills are as indistinct as their future.
What, exactly, did they do? Well, they planned. Some coordinated. Others tracked. Quite a few controlled. Many managed. A few led. Some played strictly by the rules others shaved. None of them were responsible for their security slipping out from under them. Those who planned for their future were little better positioned than those who did not, because their future did not occur as planned. No retirement saving left now. No savings at all. No income, either. One by one the necessities of life distill into a startling few: Two meals a day. Park the second car, no need to license it that way. Coffee and wine, optional luxuries. Bread, a daily necessity, baked at home. Meat, as Jefferson suggested, better served as flavoring than main course. Maintaining spirit grows increasingly difficult when the work you relied upon to provide confirmation of your competence just isn't there anymore.
What will you do? What will you do?
You'll try to sell the house in a down market. You might borrow from family, perhaps old friends. You'll start selling your possessions. That second set of china. Some of your treasured books? You'll hold your breath, scream at the top of your lungs, and sometimes whimper, hoping no one else in the world will hear you.
You'll try to paint a bright face on it, but others will smell the stink of desperation on you. The kindest will offer introductions. The clueless will offer free advice on how to prosper, worth every damned cent they charged for it. While the government sends billions to bumbling banks and promises tax cuts to people who only dream they could once again make enough income to qualify to pay taxes.
And even the strongest wonder sometimes if anyone understands what's really going on out here.
Happy New Year!
