Seattle, Washington
Written in June, 2008

COUPLE QUANDRY

Do you do this: Stare in awe and wonder at a couple walking by - a couple of unlikely mis-matched ill-builts - and think, “What on Earth do they see in each other?” Yes?  Me, too. Nonstop. We examine the passing exhibition of the human species as if we were the judges in an ongoing State Fair livestock competition. Couples, especially. “Ohmygod, look at them!”

Many’s the time in the days when I was a parish minister when an appointment was made to discuss wedding plans and I would look up in astonishment at the couple when they came into my office and think, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

I had the same experience with the appearance of my teenagers’ first steady boyfriend or girlfriend. “What the hell . . . ?”

Fat with thin. Ugly with gorgeous. Old with young. Weird with straight.
Smart with stupid. Zebras with orangutans, a moose with a Jersey cow, a giraffe with a warthog. And on and on and on. You know. In fact, you may even be part of such a couple. (Though you’re probably the last to know it.)
It’s a mystery - the Couple Quandary.
Not only does love seem blind, but also deaf and dumb and stupid and twisted, and hopelessly hopeful as well. At least from the outside.

This profoundly original insight is a prelude to telling you of today’s sighting: A couple walked toward me on Queen Anne Avenue. About the same age - mid-thirties, maybe.  Holding hands. Laughing. One was at least six feet six inches tall, athletically healthy, short black hair, well dressed, and well-proportioned. The other was five feet tall at most, likewise in great physical shape, tanned, very fit, and quite handsomely dressed.

They seemed blissfully delighted to be in each other’s company, and walked at that casual pace people use to wander about in art galleries. No rush. No cell phones or I-Pods or dog or baby stroller. A couple. Together.

(You know I’m shamelessly leading you on. But wait for it . . . )
The big one - was a woman - very feminine - quite pretty.
The little one - was a man - very masculine - quite handsome.

My mind went wild.
What was he to her? Her lunch? Her jockey? Her substitute for a pet?
What was she to him? His bodyguard? His trained huntress? The other half of his circus act?
And, well, I admit it - I wondered what went on between them in bed. Who did what to whom and how? How could I not wonder that? Wouldn’t you?

So I turned around and stalked them - followed at a distance for awhile.

At times he let go of her hand and placed his arm around her shapely butt.
(It was as high as he could easily reach.) And she rested her hand on his shoulder or on the back of his muscular neck. And then they went back to holding hands. Always in touch. And the touching was always tender.

They window shopped.
They stopped to look at the flowers in front of the Metropolitan Market.
He picked orange roses. She picked some blue flowers I don’t know the name of. They had the clerk wrap the flowers together.
“Is this a gift,” the clerk asked. “No, just for us,” she said.
The man paid, but they took turns carrying the flowers as they wandered on down the avenue.

We - they, with me still tagging along - went into Café Ladro for coffee. They both ordered an iced latte - single shot - to go. She paid this time, while he held the flowers. They sat down in the chairs outside to drink their coffee and watch the world go by. Still holding hands. And I, sitting three chairs over, finally noticed the wedding rings on their fingers.
Really? Really.

I couldn’t hear what they said, but they laughed a lot. And once she picked up both their hands and kissed them both lightly in a wordless blessing.

I left.
I was afraid I would say something to them.
Something stupid.

Like I had been following them. Like asking them for their story - the rest of it. Like asking them how they saw each other beyond the cultural categories of Big Woman / Small Man. Like some sage comment on the mysterious nature of love. Like telling them the story they made for you and for me - the one I was going to write when I got home.

But, no.
Sometimes - not nearly often enough - but sometimes, I am wise enough to mind my own business. And sometimes I am also wise enough not to explain the obvious to those who read my journals. Like you don’t know the point of my telling you all this? I trust you can take it from here . . . 

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Seattle, Washington
Written June 1, 2008

ACCOUNTING

“What did you learn in school today?”
A question we ask children. Why are we surprised at the stock answer?
“Nothing.” or “I dunno.”

If we understand the interchange as a mere formality between adults and kids - like “Hey, how are you?” “OK.” - then the mission is accomplished - we’ve noticed each other. But if you really want information on what the kid learned in school, then you need to first understand that the kid’s suspicions are immediately aroused by what seems like an oncoming investigation: “Uh-Oh.”

Better you should be more specific and empathetic. For example: “When I was in fourth grade I learned about Chicago. I will never forget Chicago, even though I’ve never been. Do they still teach Chicago?” It’s an opening for a conversation. Little kids recognize that and will talk to you. Maybe not about Chicago, but about something. And isn’t it the conversation that you wanted in the first place, not an accounting of educational increase?

Somewhere along the way we quit asking “What did you learn in school today?” Never have I, as an adult, asked or been asked that - by a kid or another adult. But I was asked yesterday by a boy at a funeral. He was on the sidelines reading a book. The last Harry Potter one. I am also a reader, so I asked him about his book - one I had not read - and we talked.

As the conversation was winding down, he asked me, “Do you still learn stuff?” “Yes.” But he didn’t get to ask “Like what?” because some other people came over and interrupted our conversation.

I thought about his question all afternoon. And again this morning. Suppose I had to write a report. “What I Learned This Week - by Bobby Fulghum.”
Not all of it is consequential - as is often the case in education. Never the less, here is a partial list - things I learned, that you might want to know:

1. If you read in bed at night, and if you like noting important passages with a permanent yellow marker pen, and if you fall asleep with both the book and the marker still open, when you wake up in the morning in the dark and bumble down to the bathroom, you will see in the mirror that your skin has developed yellow blotches and you will think, for a moment, that you have a tropical disease. You will be wider awake than you want to be.

2. Permanent yellow marker cannot be removed from sheets and pillow cases. Not even with Goo Gone or its companion product, Goof Off.

3. Factoid: Hit at three miles an hour by the bumper of a car backing up, a large plastic recycle bin will travel thirty feet across a street. When it hits the curb, it will stop. And fall over. And spill its contents across the sidewalk. If this happens at the edge of a primary school playground where children are present, they will be massively entertained. You will not be. And you cannot say aloud what you are thinking because children are present.

4. If you have large scarlet-red oriental poppies blooming in your yard, and you want to cut some and bring them inside, even though you know they will not last the day, if you immediately burn the end of the cut stem with a candle flame before putting them into warm water in a vase, they will last a week. And if you let the petals fall and leave them where they are, the petals will last another three days in a beautiful scarlet-red ring around the vase.

5. If you have a birthday coming, but you don’t want to celebrate yourself, but what you would like is to be with a group of friends who are far away, you can send two of them a fish - a huge copper river Alaska King Salmon - by air express, knowing full well they will have to invite the rest of your friends to eat the thing. And they will all have a grand time and think well of you. And you don’t even have to be there to have them sing the song at you. This technique is called “Giving Away Your Birthday.”

6. If you have an older neighbor - one you see every day - and she dies and you go to the memorial service, you will learn amazing things about that neighbor that, had you known, you would have made a point of sitting down with her and getting her to tell you all about. And you would have had something really fascinating to answer if anybody asked you, “What did you learn today?”

7. Asking is usually a good thing. 

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Seattle, Washington
Written in late May, 2008

FOLK LIFE

On re-reading what I’ve been writing in this journal for the past few weeks, I recognize a trend. Fulghum has been going around in the world lately like Good Old Charley Brown in Peanuts - who lived out his existence between eternal Hope and inevitable Disappointment.

Sometimes I feel like a living, breathing cartoon figure - naïve, optimistic, and grateful for any sign of the Good, however small - despite knowing that the World will always break your heart if you let it.

That’s why I buy but do not read The New York Times daily. Usually I let the papers pile up and take a look all at once on Saturday. That way I get the reasons for despair over with all at once. Seldom is the good news in the paper - that must be read from the daily evidence closer by.

Example. For the past 37 years Seattle has celebrated Memorial Day weekend with the FolkLife Festival. At Seattle Center, which is a ten-block downhill walk from my house. In my neighborhood.

When I was a child Memorial Day meant a trip to the cemetery to remember and honor the dead. Now I avoid cemeteries. I know that folks die. And I remember. But I believe that I honor the dead best by getting involved with as much life as I can on this weekend.

Besides thousands and thousands of attendees, there were 7,000 performers over the four days of FolkLife this year. Musicians, jugglers, artisans, dancers, singers, poets - professionals as well as amateurs - young as well as old - and from just about any ethnic and cultural you can imagine. And while I did attend performances and exhibitions, the best part was sitting in one place and watching the crowd. Folks. Of every kind. Some you can imagine. Some you can’t. You have to be there.

For one thing, a great many of those passing by were carrying instrument cases, obviously containing guitars or fiddles or horns, but less obviously shaped to carry more exotic instruments. If I saw most of these people on the street I would never think “a musician” - but I saw them here and my impression was dramatically improved. Especially when I know that most are not professionals. Most just play for companionship and joy.

For another thing, the festival encourages busking - unscheduled offerings by anyone who wants to stake out a small space for awhile and perform. Many are young, not yet proficient, and a little fearful of what they’re doing. I try to stop and watch and listen - and make a donation - to as many as I can. Some come back year after year, having improved their acts and expertise. Their courage, their ambition, and their earnest dedication to their craft impress and inspire me.

My favorite busker this year was a very young woman - maybe 12. Long blond hair in a pony-tail. An unspectacular costume - black pants and beige sweater. She unfolded a small silver performance pad, placed a huge pink ball in the middle, and dropped a hula hoop over that. Then she took a fiddle out of its case, and tuned it.

And then - quicker than I can describe - she somehow was balanced atop the ball - rolling it forward and back - while keeping the hula hoop going - moving it up and down her body - while playing a lively tune on her fiddle and singing. Amazing!

None of her individual skills were extra-ordinary, but she had taken the things she could do and put them all together, and then had the courage to perform her act it in public. She did it very well.

The little girl came to mind later when I went to a workshop for people who wanted to learn palmas - the hand-clapping technique used in Flamenco music. Knowing I will never look like a Spanish gypsy or manage the guitar technique or the passionate dancing, I was excited that I might at least learn the secrets of Flamenco clapping. I can clap. I got rhythm.

So. Armed only with enthusiasm, I stepped into the trap of “How hard can this be?” and joined the group, sitting on the front row. Maybe fifty people, including a policeman. The only person who might be a gypsy was the teacher, Anna Montes.

There are two basic Flamenco claps - with both palms open, and with four fingers of one hand slapping the other. So far, so good.
Then comes clapping in threes, twos, and finally, in twelve beats. OK.
The beat of the foot was added next. And then counter-clapping on the off-beat in half measures and non-beats. Maybe.

Then doing all this in two groups without counting aloud. With the foot on the 3, the 6, and the 10. Then faster. And adding an Ole! or two now and then. Keeping the back straight - the body posed and dignified. Oh, sure.

All too soon Senor Fuljumero was flopping around barking like a seal begging for fish. Terribly enthusiastic, but way off beat. And not doing the foot and the hands at the same time. (Counter rhythms seem to be my specialty.)

Shouting Whooo-ha! instead of Ole! did not add to my image.

It was a relief to have the teacher explain as class ended that clapping is not done by the audience, but only by the performers. What a relief! But it is useful to know, as she pointed out, that the support of an informed audience is important to the dancers and musicians.

Still, like a performing seal, I was just happy to be there. If not fed with a fish, then at least nourished in spirit. Just there. In the afternoon sun with a truly random collection of other human beings in a random mood.
Clapping! Laughing! Folk! Life!

The little girl came to mind. Maybe I could do this if I worked on it. It could be my act. Imagine. Bob the Busker. Next year at the festival. Next to the little girl on the ball. What does he do? He . . . he claps. Quite well, actually. It’s a trained seal imitation. He’s not bad - if you think applause is a talent.

Well . . . it is.

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Seattle, Washington
Written in late May, 2008

GOO

I do not usually endorse consumer products, but this one is a winner.
GOO GONE.
I don’t know what’s in it - the label doesn’t say.
Though it does advise not to drink it, give it to children, use near fire, or rub on your body.
But I know what it does.
It removes basic irritation.
The kind that comes from trying to get goo off.

By goo I mean the residue of price stickers, crayon marks, candle wax, scuff marks on walls, tree sap, glue, tape, lipstick stains, grease, shoe polish, wet paint, rust, mildew, and even what’s left behind when you squash a bug on a dress shirt. Just about anything that makes you say, “I can’t get this damned goo off.” And it’s ruined your day. And you know it’s a trivial matter and that makes your irritation even worse because it’s petty.

Goo Gone is a happy ending in a bottle.
More than once it has saved the day.

How I wish I could get something like this for my existential needs - for the times when my spirit gets stained with the small marks of the cruddy goo of daily life.

There’s no product to deal with the big troubles, but it’s the little ones that drive me crazy, and send me to bed in a sour mood. And I hate me for that. “Put it down, lighten up,” I mutter. “Give it up - it’s not important.”

Perhaps this is how memory serves me - knowing I’ve been gooed-up before and life has gone on. Perhaps laughter at my own small-minded-ness is a kind of goo-gone. Knowing that this, too, will pass, and the goo will go.

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Seattle, Washington
Written in late May, 2008

QUESTION

“Why me?”

A question asked when life goes suddenly, seriously wrong. You’re diagnosed with cancer, you get fired, your spouse sues for divorce, a child drowns, your house catches fire, your troubled teenager runs away, your health insurance is canceled, or your life savings are lost in a bad investment. And so forth and so on and so forth and so on and . . . so.
Sometimes it’s not just one but several of these soul-blows at once.

“Why me?”

In the years when I was an active parish minister my counsel was often sought in these situations. “Why me? - I don’t deserve this!” people asked.
An ancient demand for clarity and justice. The Book of Job in the Bible is built around the same anguished cry. The underlying enigmatic question is “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

Hard to answer. Maybe it’s the wrong question to begin with.
It helps to know you are not really the special target of the forces of evil.
But not much.

Thick books have been written addressing the conundrum. Friends, family, psychiatrists, priests, social workers, and bartenders do what they can. We shake our fists at the gods and the fates and Lady Luck without results.

Most often, however, the question arises out of far less dramatic circumstances. A month of just one damned thing after another - the accumulation of the everlasting paper cuts of daily life, when things break or go wrong or turn sour and we say we just can’t win for losing. The scrambled egg of existence lurches out of the frying pan onto the floor.
Depressing. Disheartening. Frustrating. Irritating. Maddening.

“Why me?”

On the other hand.

There are those weeks, when the sun shines, an unexpected kindness comes our way, something truly amusing happens and we laugh ourselves silly, we get enough sleep, have sweet dreams, an old friend takes us away for an evening of music, a neighbor leaves a thank-you bottle of champagne in the fridge, a child gives you an unexpected hug, the wisteria suddenly blooms, you find a forgotten photograph of a lovely place and time you will never forget, and, and, and . . .

The world is “Yes” instead of “No.”
It’s not your birthday, but it feels like it - a rebirth of joy on a small scale.

There are those times, when for the very same uncontrollable reasons that the world seems to turn against us and every little thing goes wrong, that the world turns for us - and everything goes well for a spell. We’re ahead - on the plus side - a winner in the lottery of life.
And for a time it’s good to be so alive.

Happens.
When good things happen to good people.
And the question then might be, “Well, why not me?”

Odd that it’s actually more awkward to talk about ups than downs.
Nobody ever called me in the middle of the night to say they were happy.

But I just had one of those weeks.
I just wanted to tell somebody.
Why not you?

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Seattle, Washington
Written in mid-May, 2008

COULD BE

This is a secondary story. By that I mean it was told to me by a dear friend. But it contains a kind of elegant veracity that lodged so deeply in my mind that it feels like the memory of a personal experience. I can imagine it happening to me. I wish it had happened to me. And so, I tell it to you in first person as an exercise in creative non-fiction.

There is in Seattle a repository of the city’s past called the Museum of History and Industry. Seattle’s attic. A small institution, located out of the mainstream of traffic, un-flamboyant in its public presence, and more often visited by school children on field trips than tourists on vacation. It is also a standard stop on nursing home van tours. Or, as in my case, a surprise
re-discovery while out wandering around exploring the outer edges of Seattle on a spring afternoon.

A senior’s outing was underway as I arrived. Accompanied by attendants, the elderly and disabled - some in their wheelchairs - some using walkers or canes - were moving slowly up the entrance ramp ahead of me. One of their group, a skinny, spry old man still independently mobile, walked well ahead of his peers and into the museum with focused purpose.

Inside the museum, I carefully worked my way through the excursioneers and on up the stairs into a second floor gallery. One wall was covered with a photo-mural: The Pioneer Square area of downtown Seattle in 1908. Brick buildings, street cars, horse-drawn vehicles, early automobiles, and pedestrians in the attire of the time. Because of the enlargement process, the soft-edged grey-and-black-and- white image seemed more dream-like than photographic - the faded essence of a moment in time long past.

The only other person in the room was that old man I had seen going into the museum ahead of his group. He was standing close to the photo-mural, closely examining one corner of it. Sensing my presence, he turned to me, and motioned for me to join him.

“Come look,” he said.

“My mother and father lived in Pioneer Square when I was born. Next Sunday I will be one hundred years old. I was there in 1908. Look here. See the man and the woman pushing the little boy in the carriage?”

I looked. The couple were indeed there. Holding hands. Pushing a pram. And there was a baby in the carriage. A boy? Well . . . hard to tell.

“My father dressed just like that young man. I’ve seen other pictures. And my mother dressed just like that young woman. Seen the pictures. That baby there is me. Right there. One hundred years ago. What do you think?”

“Could be,” I said.

The old man bent over, and, eyes inches away, he stared hard at the image.
Standing back, he looked at the baby again, and turned to me.

“Could be - is good enough,” he said.

And smiling, he walked spryly away, back down the stairs to join his group.

“Happy birthday,” I thought. “May the possibilities be with you always.”

And then I, too, walked spryly away, down the stairs, and on out into the warm spring sunlight of a late afternoon in May 2008, repeating the mantra for the day:

“Could be - is good enough.”

May the possibilities be with me.
Always.

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Seattle, Washington
Written in the first week of May, 2008

(Fiction – This is a continuation of story—see April 03 journal entry and May 05 entry.

THE END OF WAITING
On his bathroom mirror he wrote with a piece of soap,
“Whatever became of me?”
Underneath he added a new line:
“What am I waiting for?”

*
On this Sunday morning, just after sunrise, once again he ritually set the kitchen table for breakfast - as carefully as an acolyte might prepare a church altar for a communion service.

On a pale blue tablecloth, he set out two of everything: square blue-and-white Chinese plates; orange-and-blue Japanese cereal bowls; blue Mexican glasses; antique silver spoons, and small white porcelain cups for espresso.

And flowers. There were always fresh flowers. From a friendly neighbor’s yard he had cut two tall purple irises, which he placed in a vase in front of one plate at the table - not as decoration, but as a kind of offering.

The menu did not vary: Fresh squeezed orange juice, croissants, butter, and lavender honey. Blueberries. Sugar and cream.

When he had finished setting the table, he stepped back, considered his work, pushed the play button on the stereo and sat down. The background music was always Mozart - the Clarinet Concerto in A.

For almost three years now he had laid out this Sunday breakfast for two. As lovely as he could make it. As he thought She would like it.
However. Only one person would be there.

He would be alone. There was no She.

His housekeeper, who always put away the unused table setting on Mondays, was the only other person who knew about the Sunday communion. She never asked about it, assuming the second place was set for his absent wife, She-Who-Went-Away.

The housekeeper thought his ritual was a sign of relentless sadness - a gesture of grief. She remembered the first year. He had left the back porch light on every night and placed a note on the table just inside the door:

“Welcome Home.”

For an entire year he did that. The housekeeper would turn off the light when she came each morning, set the note aside, and begin her day’s work in tears - especially on Mondays after the Sunday breakfast. She never spoke of this. She thought she knew and understood.

The housekeeper was right about the missing person the first year.
After that, someone else was on his mind.

While he did have a deep and sorrowful nostalgia for the love that had withered and died, She-Who-Went-Away had been on the verge of departing for years. It had taken twenty years for their companionship to wither and dry up. A ripe plum had become a stale prune.

He was not surprised that she finally left, only surprised that it took her so long. For the last ten years her hand had always been on the door knob. She exited his life like someone dying after a long terminal illness. By the time it happened, he was used to it. Nothing remained but a shadow.

Nobody’s fault, no obvious reasons - except that the ties that bind somehow fell away. Love is born, lives, and dies. That happens. It grieved him. But, if truth be told, he had to admit that she simply got to the exit before he did.

He found it easier to sorrow over her absence than her presence.
On the wall of her empty room he had written:

That was then – this is now.
That was that – this is this.
This is it – this will do.
And that is that.

Technically, they remained married - but only for legal and financial convenience - and would probably remain so until one or the other found another love. He expected that would happen for her soon. He sensed that a final settlement was not far away. He felt hopeful when he heard that she had a new companion.

And he was also expecting that might happen for him.
Thus the empty place at his Sunday breakfast table was for someone else - The One, who, despite his yearning, had not yet appeared.

Setting a place for her at his Sunday morning table was not unlike the act of lighting a votive candle in the private chapel of the church of his life.

His faith could be superb self-deception. He considered that. But he had come to rely on the power of his imagination, which arises in part from what it refuses to foresee. He imagined she would come. He waited.

Waiting contradicted his experience and personal style. Most of the finest things in his life had come to him because he had not only imagined them possible, but he had pursued them with all his heart and mind and resources.

He had always been willing to risk an improbable life and take the consequences. Luck and fortune and surprise seemed to pass through most people undetected, like neutrinos, but he sensed their presence, and reached out for them. Luck and fortune and surprise favor the alert, the open-eyed, and the prepared.

Some things cannot be found unless looked for. He always said that if you wanted to catch a train, one must first go to the station. If he wanted to win the lottery, he must first buy a ticket.

“Then, why,” he asked himself, “have I waited so long?”

However.
And it was this “however” – this “on the other hand” – this dark balance weight to his optimism - that had kept him waiting.
True, he yearned for love.
However. There was the other truth:
Most of what he believed about true love had proved to be crap.
There - that was the contradictory answer to his question.

It wasn’t love he wanted but something like love - something parallel to it - the same shape and form, but harmless in the end. He wanted everything love had to offer except being stretched out on the torture rack at the end.

It wasn’t Love or The One he wanted, but all the feelings that went with the journey of seeking and finding and exhausting that enterprise. The pulsing flow of blood that went with that emotion as it ran its course. The intensity it brought to life - joy, excitement, fear, pain, ecstasy, mystery.

But he did not want the responsibility for the inevitable consequences - not for himself - or for the other person involved. One morning he found himself thinking he wanted to experience love as theater. As a play with actors and actresses and scenery.

That thought was what brought him through the door of Waiting. A door that had not been locked - just closed. For no specific reason he could think of, the time had come.
The end of waiting.
This Sunday breakfast would be the last solitary communion.
“Enough,” he said to himself, “Time to get back out into the flow of the world.”

No more waiting.
He ate his breakfast, and cleared all of the dishes away. When the housekeeper arrived on Monday she would find the table empty.

The next day, the first Monday in April, fired by his idea, he would go out into the world to seek his fortune. He was going to hire an actress. Someone like that woman he had met in Santa Fe and then again yesterday. After that he was going to enroll in dancing class again - to refresh his ability to tango.

But first, he would invite the forces of magic and wishes and spells. Just to set his mind in the direction of surprise. On the now empty dining room table, he laid out his supplies. And put tango music on the player.

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Seattle, Washington
Written in the first week of May, 2008

Note: This story picks up where the April 03, 2008 journal entry left off. (Click here to link to the story and read it.) This is fiction. Another part of a small, new, novel-in-process.

SPELLS

About the man who returned the serape to its rightful owner:
He did own the antique shop - among other enterprises.
But Marisol Machado was right - she might not see him again.
She was focused on Fate. And he was relying on magic.

He did not believe in magic.
Not in the sense that he believed in the grocery store and that if he wanted milk he could go to the store and get milk.
But he did believe in retroactive magic.
In the sense that when he reviewed his life he could truly say there were events that only magic could explain.

He did not believe in wishes.
Not in the sense that he believed in coincidence as a rational explanation for surprising outcomes of desire.
But he did believe in retroactive wishes.
In the sense that, when he looked back, there were times when his wishes had come true.

He did not believe in spells.
Not in the sense that deliberately stacking the odds in his favor over another person often produced the desired results.
But he was beginning to believe in retroactive spells.
In the sense, that when he looked back, there were times when some small or peculiar conscious action seem to have directly affected success.

He had noticed that there seemed to be some truth in what was called the Second Law of Magic:
That which once directly affected someone or something continues to have an affect at a distance. This may not always be controlled, but often encouraged.

The consideration of casting spells seemed ludicrous to his rational mind. But he knew that his rational mind could be pleasantly distracted by the pursuit of some irrational enterprise.

And just now he badly needed to over-ride his intellectual obsession with a vexing conundrum: The tension between thinking of two distinct people: “She Who Went Away” and “She Who Is On The Way.”

And that is how he came to consult several books about casting spells - ranging from the ancient practices of the occult to the contemporary poetic manipulation of physical metaphors. Why not? It would occupy his mind and give him something interesting to do while the pool of his confusion settled and cleared.

He made a list of the components and ingredients he would need for constructing and casting spells:

A packet of needles of various sizes for various uses.

The heads of dandelions after they had seeded into puffy globes of white.

Several lengths of colored yarn - scarlet, sky blue, and black.

A small magnet.

Three wishbones - from free-range chickens.

Several kinds of special salt - from the sea, from deep in the earth, from far
away - in several colors - white, black, and saffron.

Thorns removed from a rose in bloom and still on the rose bush.

Five small spider webs.

Honey still in the comb - from summer flowers.

Smudges - small bundles of dried sweet grass and sage.

Sand - collected from ant hills, brought up from out of the earth.

Five small candles - one each black, white, red, blue, and yellow.

Several squares of small, handmade paper - ivory colored.

3 small bottle of ink - black, scarlet, and invisible.

5 small stones from a place where the tide meets the shore.

Some ashes from a fire made from dried weeds.

Incense - not sticks, but in bulk form - dragon’s blood, frankincense, pinyon

3 small bottles of water - from rain, snow, and morning dew

Several small plain muslin bags

Several lengths of colored ribbons - black, white, scarlet, and blue

Strands of hair from those one wishes to affect.

For some time he had been collecting these materials to use in casting spells.
Not that he intended to cast spells. Collecting was an amusing distraction.
But then, again, what harm if he did cast a few spells? What harm, indeed?

Some items proved easier to acquire than others. For example,“She Who Went Away” had left behind a hairbrush laced with strands of her long black hair still in it. And he had a hairbrush with strands of his own hair. But what about a strand of the hair of “She Who Is On The Way?” By virtue of the unknown being unobtainable, he had no way to get one.

He would have to rely on Magic and Wishes and Spells.

And so, one spring Sunday afternoon he allowed his temptation to flourish.

He was tired of waiting. 

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Seattle, Washington
Written Wednesday, April 30, 2008

SPITTING WITH BREAKFAST

Setting: A neighborhood café on a Sunday morning around ten o’clock.
Outside: Spring rain and wind and cold.
Inside: Bedlam - too many customers, too few waiters, and only one cook.
Players: A family of four. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
Mother and Father: Urban, middle-thirties, jeans-and-T-shirts-and-fleece.
Dog: Big brown Lab tied up outside, barking, barking, barking.

They are here because the father has decided to treat the family to a Sunday breakfast out. But nobody seems happy about it. The mother stares out the window. The father is absent-mindedly cleaning out his wallet. The daughter is grooming her hair. The little boy is wiggling, wiggling, wiggling.

The girl is in the 9-10 range, already pubescent, with mind focused on dangly earrings, lipstick, kitten heels, personal cell phone, perfume and a bra. She doesn’t have all of these things yet, but that’s where her mind is.

The little boy is in the 4-5 range, already in an energy-explosive state, like a bomb that’s primed, fused, and ready to blow. He should be taken to an open field and allowed to run in circles and scream. But he’s here. Wiggling. He should have been tied outside with the dog. Which is where his mind is.

Finally, the food arrives. The family eats in concentrated sullen silence.
The girl tidily finishes her eggs, and then starts being a Mommy, harassing the little boy to stop making a snowman out of his pancakes and bacon.

The little boy makes a face, sticks out his tongue, and spits on his sister.
She screams. As only pubescent sisters can at such moments.

Uncomfortable silence in the café. Everybody’s looking.

The father makes one of the cardinal parent mistakes: Making a threat you will not likely follow up on. “Stop it or I’ll kill you,” is an extreme example. But this father growls, “No spitting! If you do that again I’ll jerk you up and take you home and put you in your room!”
The girl sits smugly, knowing there will be a follow up move by somebody.
The mother looks out the window again, avoiding what’s coming.
The father - in an “I mean it” position - glares at the little boy.
The little boy grins.
His father has just handed him a golden ticket out of here. Spit. Go home.

He spits on his sister again. On cue, she screams again.

Now all eyes in the café are on the drama.

The father goes red in the face, and starts to get up.
The mother reaches out, catches his wrist, says, “John, John - look at me.”
He looks at her.
The mother makes a brilliant move.
The mother purses her lips and spits at him - a gesture without moisture.
And laughs.

John laughs and sits down.
The little boy hangs his head and giggles.
The sister does the complaint-whine, “Daddeeee . . .”
The father purses his lips in the spitting position aimed at the daughter.
And she laughs.
Bomb disarmed.
Time to go.
They leave. Laughing.
The knowing kind of laughter - when silliness is wisdom in disguise.

Alone at my table, I catch the eye of the mother at a family breakfast sitting across from me. She smiles. Laughs.
I return the laugh.
Her family knows why, and laughs.

Afterward, walking home in the rain, I realized a great opportunity was lost.

We should have given the spitters a standing ovation as they left.
Pancakes and bacon and spitting and laughter.
Great breakfast combo!

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Seattle, Washington
Written Sunday, April 27, 2008

Christos Ahnesti! If you were a Greek Orthodox Christian, you would reply:
Alithos Ahnesti!! An exchange of greetings on Easter Sunday - Pascha - which this is, due to ecclesiastical calendar complexities.

For the first time in fifteen years I have not been in Crete for Easter. Having described the experience in detail on this website and in my recent book of essays, “What On Earth Have I Done,” I’ll not indulge in nostalgia here. Still, because close friends are staying in my house in Crete, talking with them this morning puts me in a Cretan state of mind.

And I am feeling vaguely holy on this Sunday morning. For a weird reason.
The Dalai Lama was in Seattle recently. A local company did all the staging for the events. They know what they are doing, since they handle the big Microsoft events, The Rolling Stones, and the like. Last night I was at a party where I met the man who was in charge of the Dalai Lama’s chair.

The same one had to be used and moved from event to event. He was surprised to learn that he could not just grab the chair and carry it out to the next venue. Many people wanted to come to touch it or put their hats or coats or scarves on it. The chair was considered holy. So I touched the hands of the man who was in charge of the chair in which the Dalai Lama sat.

Did this add anything to my life? Who can say? But just in case . . . .

But I digress. I am also in the last stages of the technical tinkering on the English version of the manuscript of my novel, “Third Wish,” and today’s work was on the section set in Crete. The good news, by the way, continues. The novel may be available in print as early as September. The illustrations, music, cover design, and text are very close to being ready for the printer. More details in a few weeks - as the project unfolds.

Meanwhile, since Crete is where my heart and mind are today, I will share with you a new taste of Easter in Crete from the novel. While this is from a work of fiction, it contains substantial experiential truth. The two main characters involved are Alexandros Xenopouloudakis - called Alex - an older Greek man - and Max-Pol Millay, a young American physician.

RODOPOS

Alex has a genius for making friends who, in turn, want to introduce him to their friends. His personality is an oasis of enthusiasm in the middle of the desert of daily dullness.

On one of his snooping, wandering walks through the back streets of Hania, he stopped into the smallest and oldest church of the city to admire its icons. He sought out the parish priest to get some explanations of the paintings. And met Father John, who, coincidentally, was a Welsh Greek who had studied at Cambridge.

“Cambridge! Well, then.” (Alex was himself a student there long ago.)

A five-minute visit became a two-hour lunch. Father John brought along to the meal his closest colleague, Father Anthony, who is the parish priest in the village of Rodopos, and one thing led to another. It is the story of Alex’s life - it could be chiseled on his tombstone:

“For him, one thing always led to another.”

And now Alex and Max-Pol and their friend, Kostas, are all invited to attend Sunday service in the village church, and to get a tour of the Rodopos peninsula. Afterward, there will be lunch with Father Anthony and his family, joined by Father John and his family and any other family that happens by.  Invitations to such impromptu feasts are typical of the seasonal run-up to Easter in Crete. 

*

The Rodopos peninsula is one of the two long horns jutting north into the Aegean Sea from Crete’s western end. Twenty kilometers long, with peaks up to eight hundred meters high, it is not an incidental piece of topography. It forms one side of the Bay of Kissamos, and is so commanding in height it almost cuts off the far west from the rest of Crete.

Once, millions of years ago, it was a separate island in its own right. There are rocks and fossils here not found on the lowlands on either side. Its high places are frequently above the cloud and fog banks that form down closer to the sea, giving the Rodopos highlands an aura of mystery.

On the other hand, olive groves, orchards, and vegetable farms fill the peninsula’s lower valleys all the way up to the centrally situated village. As the land rises beyond the village, the vineyards take over in the rocky, less arable soil of the shallow gorges.

Farther on, the peninsula is so high and barren and rocky that its thin pasturage is given over entirely to sheep and goats. Herds of the long-haired traditional breeds roam the treeless landscape. Snow is not unknown here in winter. And wild orchids bloom in the areas around its springs in summer. Altogether a startling, enchanting landscape.

The village of Rodopos is the focus of life for about a thousand people who still carry on a more or less traditional way of life. It seems like a long way from anywhere, and in its churchyard is a surprising reference to the length of Rodopos’s place in history.

Here stands a round marble monument that looks like nothing so much as the stump of a weathered gray telephone pole. It bears a faded Latin inscription. A modern marble tablet explains that this memorial marks the completion of a road built in the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan between this village and the temple of Diktyna - goddess of nets - at the far end of the peninsula. 112 A.D. The road was paid for from donations to the temple. The same roadway is still in use. 

When asked about the marker, the villagers reply offhandedly, “Oh, that.” The church gardener usually hangs his coat and hat on this, one of the smallest of Trajan’s many columns, while he works.

In modern history, Rodopos is famous for its heavy red wine, its wildflower honey, its part in the resistance to the German occupation, and for the several members of one of its families active in Cretan politics. A bronze bust of the patriarch, Polychronis Polychronitis, looks sternly across the village square opposite the kafenion - as craggy in his face as the hillsides around him. All of the life that survives and thrives here is fiercely resilient.  It must be.

Alex is excited to be here. In the spirit of his cheese experience of yesterday, he points around him and shouts, “Now this, this is Crete!”

*

The church service is in progress when the visitors arrive. Not until they find their standing places and begin to look around do they notice that three of the five men leading the liturgical chanting of the service are in army uniform. Not just army. The elite of the army. Greek Special Forces from the paratroops battalion stationed at Maleme.

The young men obviously know the service. They sing with passionate authority. With the addition of the deeper voices of two older men and the mellow baritone of the priest, the service is surprisingly beautiful - not what you’d expect in a remote village church. St. John Chrysostom would be pleased to know his liturgy survives in such a place and is well served and well sung after more than sixteen hundred years.

The church itself is plain - a working church for a living community, not a tourist attraction. In contrast with the high elegance of the service, there is a comfortable informality in the usual coming and going of the villagers during the ceremony. It is not required that one stay all the way through - only that one should pay one’s respects for some time during the service.

After receiving the blessed bread from the hands of its priest, Father Anthony, the small congregation greets visitors warmly, as if they were an early-arriving contingent of the Diaspora come home for Easter. Afterward, the men of the village move more or less en masse to the kafenion across the street for tsikoudia and coffee and talk. The women return home to prepare lunch.

Max-Pol wants to know about the participation of the soldiers.

They speak English and are surprised that he asks. All three are twenty, and have had two years at technical universities. Yes, they are Special Forces paratroopers - commando trained - the first to go if there is war with the Turks. But they are citizen-soldiers, with an emphasis on the citizen. Every Greek man must serve two years. Service is a responsibility and an obligation of citizenship, rarely a profession.

These young men are from east Crete. They’ve grown up assisting in the service in their village churches, and they like being off-base and back in a village like home. So - they volunteer. Their commanding officer is also a singer and feels the same way about his roots. He would have come along with them today except his wife is expecting a baby this weekend. Mixing church and state and armed forces and family - it is and always has been the Cretan way. About such things they have no doubts whatsoever. To keep these traditions they will sacrifice their lives - or take yours.

*

Since lunch would not be served until two o’clock, excursions were organized. Kostas and the soldiers went off in a pickup truck out to the far end of the peninsula to see where the Germans had built emplacements for their coastal artillery during the war.

The two priests and four of their children went to pick wildflowers in the hills above the village. The women were glad to have the kitchen to themselves. 

Alex wanted to wander around the village and look at donkeys and donkey saddles. He has a fondness for donkeys, having tended and worked them when he was a child. The personalities of donkeys appeal to him. They are the most bloody-minded of creatures. It has been a long time since a donkey was seen in the streets of Hania. And while some are still in active use here in Rodopos, their days are as numbered as those of the older generation of villagers who keep them.

Max-Pol went along with Alex.

“Well, then,” began Alex. “The donkey - the gaidaros, or gaidoura, if female - is called the Cretan Volkswagen. It will carry almost anything almost anywhere - twice its own weight is common. It is very tough, very easy to keep, usually gentle, and lives a long time. And look, here is the very creature.”

Tied to a tree on the far side of a ditch, a small, slatternly lady donkey solemnly ate grass, paying no attention to her audience. Alex continued, “Donkeys don’t ‘do’ anything to entertain you and they do not demand attention or affection. They are a beast of burden. They are a live-and-let-live animal. You don’t bother them - they don’t bother you. They work very hard with very little complaint for a very long time. An admirable creature.”

Alex and Max-Pol crossed the ditch, inspected the unpretentious gray-brown animal, stroked its back, and petted its head. The donkey ignored them.
Alex observed, “Odd that such a small member of the horse family should have such a large head in proportion to the rest of its body. You wouldn’t call them handsome, nor is their singing beautiful.” Unfazed by insult and uninterested in company, the donkey went on single-mindedly eating grass. Live and let live.

Getting no response from the donkey, Alex and Max-Pol ambled along on a dirt track, out toward the edge of Rodopos where the vineyards began.  As one more sure sign of spring, the vines had been trimmed and the trimmings stacked for burning.

Sheep were near the vineyards, browsing on the lush flowery undergrowth around the trunks of the vines. The soft tones of the bells around their necks punctuated the silent feeding of the sheep. Bong, bung, bingle bingle, bang, bong-bong, bunk, bunk. The bells were a collective musical instrument, and some shepherds still bought them in tuned sets for the pleasure of the distant harmony.

The two men sat down on a stone wall.
Looking, breathing, listening - consuming the ageless tranquility of the scene before them.

The Cretans say that when Jesus does come back - he will come first to Crete - to such a place as this in spring.

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