each one of them

We downsized, you see. Things began to seem unnecessary, an abundance of material clutter and emotional baggage weighing down the boat, retarding maneuverability. At our age plenty of people say it isn't about maneuvering, it's about being who you are and being where you are and putting down anchor and watching with a resigned bewilderment as high-tide deposits yet more superfluous dross on the decks and well intentioned visitors leave behind mementos of their presence.

So we looked at you and the ship you run, party banners flying, sunscreen and frisbees and half-empty cocktail glasses knocking against your memories of who you used to hope to be, all corralled together by the expectations from others for your vacancy sign to stay lit: bring your self, bring your friends, bring your problems, stay awhile.

Oh, we tried living like that, for years. There was always a roast in the oven and a photo album on the table and no one used the doorbell because nothing was ever locked, and people would leave what they needed to leave and take what they needed to take, and it was a port of stability for so many wanderers.

I'm not sure anymore what started the change, if it was our cat walking away one day, taking his favorite toy with him, or if it was a well intentioned but hopelessly disorganized visitor who somehow used the dishwasher as a washing machine or if it was coming home to find our car filled the the emotional wreckage of our niece's divorce, torn photographs and mementos filling the seating area and the gas tank stuffed with the veil from her gown. It was just too much, us having to be the anchor in the storm for so many people. We weren't so much interested in wandering again, we just weren't satisfied taking on so many projections and expectations and needs. Plus, we missed our cat.

The first purge was the easiest, actually. Conventional wisdom would have the initial disposal be full of agonized decisions, hours of torment, rent shirts, torn hair, broken hearts. Conventional wisdom is wrong. We locked the doors, pulled open the closets, and in a panic-fueled state of glee began tossing things out of windows.

Half-dead poinsettias from five Christmases ago -- gone. Undergraduate textbooks, hopelessly out of date, for courses neither of us had any memory of having taken nor being interested in -- gone. Stretched, torn, faded cotton sweaters in insipid colors and unlikely sizes -- gone. Dead pens, old wall calendars, empty mayonnaise and baby food jars, baby teeth, report cards, letters from the gas company, metal dry cleaning hangers, empty shoe boxes, boots with broken laces, single earrings, inflatable globes, Young Scientist microscope sets -- all gone.

We hesitated over my great aunt's ashes and his grandfather's neckties, but at the critical moment the sun burst into the room and illuminated all that wasn't there. His fraternity sweater, my tap shoes, the bicycle that went nowhere quickly and the mannequin of indeterminate size and gender, the birdcage and the bird, the latter let free of the former, all the pencils that never held a point, the salt shaker that always clogged. With all this we felt the return of the weightlessness of youth, we shed the anticipation of death, the heartache of adulthood, the hunger of childhood. With the emptying of the closets we realized the disposal of ill-fitting dreams, undesired ambitions, unfounded hopes, baseless grudges, the sorrows of opportunities missed and the false promises of choices not made.

Perhaps we went too far, overboard in our enthusiasm to lighten the load, we should have remembered our mother working in a steamy kitchen or winning the prize in science fair for designing paper airplanes or what it felt like to lose our first love. Perhaps these are the very anchors which define and thus provide our identity, that without which we as concrete individuals cease to exist. But that is entirely the point. We were downsizing, we had no need to exist as the people we had allowed ourselves to become, as the projections defined by how we were remembered and treated by others. Rather, we wanted to get to the true essence of who we were underneath the burden of memory and expectation, and if in the process we ceased to exist: well, that was the price of discovery, which we were willing to pay.

Pressed flowers, poems neatly hand copied onto thick cotton paper, monogrammed handkerchiefs, and graduation watches all had to go. We never looked for and so were spared the burden of finding our car keys, eyeglasses, sunglasses, stamps for whatever the current fee is, the missing sock, a working pen, or a misfiled telephone number.

Oh, that is something we did fight over, though. We fought tooth and nail over the telephone, whether to keep it, and keep it activated, for emergencies and minor conveniences; or whether to toss it into the vast accumulation of interferences from a world we no longer acknowledged. Was ordering pizza worth the random collect calls of a third cousin having another nervous breakdown? Was being able to request an ambulance worth telemarketers and politicians calling at always inopportune moments? Around and around and around. One day, the phone solved itself, the line downed in a thunderstorm, and we acknowledged the superior wisdom of the gods, and the phone went the way of the ill-fitting argyle sweater and the incomplete china set and the empty flower pot and the old metal mixing bowls.

We started breathing more deeply, sleeping more soundly, eating more vigorously, exercising more joyfully, reading more intently. Our home was to all appearances an architectural shell. We were afraid to unlock the door, for fear of what detritus visitors might feel emboldened to deposit, and so for many, many weeks we did not unlock the doors, we used a window in a quiet corner to exit and return. Besides, we never looked for or found our keys, and while communal expectation would dictate an open and unlocked keyless existence, we embraced a world from which even we had the potential to be barred.

One day, a bright summer late morning, we opened the door, just to see what would happen. The cat was there, curled up purring on the mat, and entered the vacant house with the graceful calm of indifference, but otherwise, there was nothing. No one. No visitors, no mailman, no solicitors, no Girl Scouts, no census takers, no colleagues, no mothers, no invitations to reunions, to threats of lawsuits, no sob stories, no tragedies, no overblown melodramas, no lawn mowers. The void of our life created a force field of irrepressible quiet and calm, and we closed and relocked the door, and returned to using the window.

Perhaps we were the cause of some discomfort to our neighbors, perhaps stories, rumors, gossip circulated about a haunted house or a crazy house, perhaps we were held in fear and derision. It really isn't important: when we discarded our stories, we absented ourselves from being present in their stories, and that was our intention. You're the first visitor we've had in quite some time, and you'll pardon me for not inviting you in. We've downsized, you see, and we're afraid you can't be accommodated here at this time, but it was sweet of you to think of us.

---

reading
who knew there was an instruction manual?

weather
March approaches, which may or may not be a good thing

listen / present

Watch for a gap, the place where the sidewalk breaks open to reveal the beginnings of a wilderness, the light pouring through between branches of trees, the space between teeth bringing with it a slight lisp and a skill with whistling.

Watch for a gap, the moment after the hand of a clock slips into place and before the bells chime, the void left where there was the shadow of a person on the lawn, now called in to answer the phone or fetch lemonade, the silence between the lifting of a receiver and the beginning of a conversation.

Watch for a gap, two bushes not quite growing in alignment outlining the opening of a cave, a hole under a fence indicating a dog disappeared on a mission to a neighbor's yard, the empty space where a piano once played, the newspaper now left folded on the table, unread crossword unfinished.

Watch for a gap, where there were once five matching soup spoons and now there are four, a dishonest dinner guest or an inept helper in the kitchen, a missing jar of cinnamon next to a present jar of cilantro, a coat tree without the navy pea coat that hung in the recess of the entryway for so many years, its pockets stuffed with tissues and spare keys.

Watch for a gap, the space between call and response where there is room for questioning and doubt to enter the script, the hesitation in a conversation where promises are neither made nor broken, the pause when coins are tossed but not yet captured and letters are received but not opened.

Watch for a gap, the mismatched sock, the sweater missing a button, the processing of a payment at the grocery store, after the total is tallied but before payment is rendered.

Watch for a gap, after the strike-anywhere match is run against the brick and before the kindling catches fire, the click of the ignition before the engine catches, the vast openness of the sky after a storm has broken and the clouds still tussle for position on the horizon.

Watch for a gap, the distance between the thunder and the lightening, the tornado formed but not descended, the eye of the hurricane offering a respite from the cares about to return at full force, windows covered in plywood and cats and infants secured in hall closets.

Watch for a gap, when the engine runs out of gas but the car keeps moving, the vacuum cleaner unplugged but siphoning, the ball thrown, aloft, in flight before being caught and returned.

Watch for a gap, the momentary boundlessness of freedom from gravity when both feet leave the ground at the same time, the free fall after a slip and before the pavement, the in-breath before a sneeze.

Watch for a gap, the bus as it shudders to a stop and the pneumatic hiss has yet to release, the jerk before falling asleep, the gasp before a sob.

Watch for a gap, the wind whispering through an unsealed window, the water seeping into a basement, an uneven foundation providing a nest for a skunk.

Watch for a gap, the opportunity for a conversation to be started or saved, the king saved from checkmate, the sheen of light on the dew of a leaf undisturbed.

The gap is there, always there, the entry into the realm of the better thought, the foundling, the leprechaun, the glade in the wood where the earliest narcissus bloom. The gap is the left turn off the main road, the space for change, the shadow revealing all that could be: a potential for discoveries of warmer suns, sharper pencils, smoother paper, crisper champagne. Squeeze into a gap in the moment before it closes and there are perfect cups of tea, memories of mountains that were just like this one, covered in violets, books with pages as yet unread, smelling of ink and the promise of lands within.

The gap is the dusty attic where between lamps and Christmas decorations and old sports trophies and baby clothes lurk both mice and memories, the mice scattering at disturbances but the memories telling the stories they wish to recall from within the neatly labeled pages of photograph albums, carefully curated trips to Yellowstone or Italy or family holidays remembered not for spilled gravy and burnt turkey and cousins fighting over cheating at cards but instead preserved in a fading rendition of fugitive reds and improbable yellows the thought that once these people, too, had lives, loves, and stories, people who have since divorced or died or moved to Mexico, but once existed as clearly as you or I.

The gap is the opportunity to have the correct answer in the geography test, the place in the tree where a treehouse can be built, the freedom from failure and panic from a job undone or done badly.

The gap is where spirits meet to watch the movements of the Ouija board, the hidden doorway leading to the entrance to the elephants' cages, the unmarked exit ramp on the highway that provides a shortcut to the airport.

The gap is the moment of recognition in the eyes of a stranger, the decision in a hare's eyes whether to turn right or left when escaping from a coyote, the raised arm of the conductor prior to the start of the final symphonic performance before the end of his professional career.

The gap is the can in the cupboard which lost its label but still must contain something of nutritious value, the unmarked leftovers in the freezer, the day old pastries at the bakery.

Within the shadows of the gap are all the unused words from the dictionary, the Chinese fortune cookies never cracked and read, the books remaindered and pulped without ever being shipped from the warehouse, the minutes and hours and days of film footage left on the cutting room floor, to be swept up by a sleepy janitor and thrown into the dumpster at the end of the day.

Within the gap are all the moments where hesitation and action are together the only outcome, the eyes wide open and the unfolding galaxy spinning in such slow motion that all of the planets around all of the suns can be counted in their entirety. The gap enables friendships to withstand the burden of separation across time and distance, conversations to reflect the purest intentions of the participants, fortunes not to be lost at cards or in ill-considered ventures.

Step into the gap, where the wind stops and the air is heavy with promise, and inhale all of the choices jumbled together, all of the moments when evolution could have produced pink feathered alligators and brown reptilian flamingos, when Queen Elizabeth's uncle had declined to abdicate, when the Wright brothers died of childhood measles but FDR never contracted polio.

Breathe in the ambitions of the thousands of others who have awoken on summer mornings filled with the intoxication of the gold rush or the panic of a bank failure, watch blossoms open into the full bodied allure of rabid pink, and remember every detail of what it is like to be alive, present, and engaged, in the bright sharp colors of this world, the gloss on the icicle and the depth of a sigh and the slightly curdled smell of old milk, the engines of civilization hurtling us forward, ever faster, out of this moment where anything can and did happen, into the determined march of the future.

The gap closes, disappears into the darkness of half-remembered moments where potential was as yet unrealized; the moon rises and already it is tomorrow.

---

(re)reading
Casanova in Bolzano / Sándor Márai

weather
waxing gibbous

red

The fox twitched. It had been days now since the last real meal, a too-young malnourished rabbit, and there was nothing in sight that promised a certain future, a breakfast or a lunch or a dinner or a midnight snack. The last remaining chicken coop had been closed down over a year ago, the farmer moved into the city to take a job in sales, and the house sold to a relatively clueless couple who thought about keeping chickens while deciding to wait until the longer warmer days promised by the Farmer's Almanac for later in the season before ordering day old chicks for the coop. The fox knew how to break into the coop under any weather and without any light, but all it could do was watch, and wait, and grow thinner and weaker.

In the town, school children played tag and threw snowballs at opposing camps and were instructed to pay attention to the mysteries of adding and multiplying fractions, for if they failed to grasp the laws of fractions they would never be allowed to enter the hallowed halls of pre-algebra, much less algebra proper, where letters were used instead of numbers, but in their folly and in their wisdom they did not believe in the existence of algebra, they believed that letters were always and only letters and numbers were always and only numbers and manipulating fractions was much less compelling than aiming snowballs at the fire chief and waiting impatiently for the three o'clock bell.

Whether it was a colder than normal winter or more snow than normal or just the opposite, a warmer than usual forecast with a dearth of snowfall, they couldn't have really said. They listened to their parents listen to the news, and when jockeying for power at recess would emulate what their father or mother had said at breakfast that morning, but aside from listening with half an ear while eating scrambled eggs, and somberly repeating what they only partially understood, they really only knew that it was winter and they were trapped into an overheated classroom with a foul smelling radiator, struggling to pay attention instead of continuing the skirmish they had been entrenched in for their entire lives.

The alliances between enemies and allies shifted in an imperceptible but constant pattern, agreements and arguments forged and fought in the lunch room over bologna sandwiches and Oreo cookies re-establishing and redrawing alliances. The chicken pox decimated the ranks of one team, and when the remaining boys redrew boundaries to keep the game in play, they redistributed social agreements that had been in place since kindergarten. By the time that the flu season arrived and departed, old best friend status was replaced by an ad-hoc system of availability; and the old norms were only reformed in the desert of summer vacation, still three months away.

Spelling tests were taken, report cards issued, parent-teacher conferences scheduled, and through it all the icy grip of the snow held sway, and the children piled snowballs like cannon balls behind the walls of their trenches. At one point, the parents and teachers reached an agreement that having children unsupervised on the ice was the cause of too many broken collar bones and potential concussions, and all before-school activities were moved to the supervised gymnasium. A pile of backpacks and boots piled high along the far wall, but as the teachers assigned to this extra morning duty became more and more resentful, the children, less supervised, grew more rowdy, until they were sent back to the snow fields rather than be the cause of a teacher insurrection in the middle of a grading period.

The teachers were not merely issuing veiled threats and complaints as they had in the past; a new social studies teacher had been hired for the fifth grade, and his résumé had omitted five years spent as a labor activist in Cleveland, an omission that would normally have been caught by a background check in the hiring process, but was missed since his was an emergency appointment to replace a teacher on a long term leave of absence for bronchial pneumonia. As a result, he kept careful records of the terms of the teachers' contracts for the length of workday and mandatory breaks and rest periods, and when the supervisory tasks before and after the school day were added during a week of standardized testing, he took advantage of a building of exhausted, anxious teachers overdosed on cold medication and convinced them that now was the time to act to enforce the rights guaranteed them by their contracts.

To the other teachers, he was a charismatic messiah; the mothers swooned at the passion of his convictions; the principal was besieged from every angle, with arguments for teacher's rights and the developmental need for children to have unstructured play time, and the dangers of collar bones and concussions were forfeit to the very real fear of a school-wide shut down by the labor activist. The principal worked tirelessly to contain the unrest within the school, but schools are leaky systems and soon news of the agitation reached not only the other schools in the district, but was loud enough that even the school board heard what was happening among the teachers.

The school board consulted the state mandate for educational employees and districts, and hired their own lawyer to compare the state requirements and the wording of the teachers' contracts, but they were too late: school board meetings were drawn out longer and longer by vitriolic public discussions, and no resolution seemed possible for a discussion that had morphed beyond the appropriate oversight for recess activities in inclement weather and instead seemed to have become a heated argument about standardized testing and parental involvement and the length of the school day.

This was a standard enough discussion, inasmuch as the school board was constantly debating that very topic, but was hemmed in by state requirements; but now the fifth grade social studies teacher with a background in labor relations was quoting obscure town bylaws about the school district seceding from state oversight and forming its own governing corporation. The principal had no desire to be a part of a school corporation; the school board had neither the interest nor the knowledge to break with the state and form such a corporation, which they felt was scandalous and illegal at the very least; but the social studies teacher had inflamed the minds of his colleagues and the parents, and the passion of the crowd was a force the school board had never before faced.

The students were oblivious to the large scale warfare taking place around them, and continued their own earnest snow battles in the corners of the day when they weren't strenuously avoiding paying attention to lectures on the solar system and magnetism. The rules of their battlefield grew ever more labyrinthian and complicated, a system of causes and effects and agreements and negotiations so complex only the mental elasticity of the very young could hope to follow the rules, while the system of order the adults struggled to implement grew to include two teams of lawyers working full time and eventually even caught the attention of a largely absentee governor.

From the field behind the school, the fox watched the erratic actions of the humans, before skulking off in defeat to seek a promising site for a winter den in a more auspicious town.

---

reading
I've reached the stage where it's become difficult to refuse to read novels by first time authors who are younger than I am, which is all in all an awkward moment of staring mortality straight in the eye

weather
apparently some 40% of residential roads in neighboring cities haven't been ploughed once in this winter-of-snow, due to budget crises. How do the worthy workers manage?

in case of emergency

This is a picture of summer.

There's lots of winter. Far too much winter. Winter such that summer might consider returning again far too much effort. While the groundhog disagrees, he's a hibernating rodent, so ignore him.

We're staying in. Drink hot toddies. Hot chocolate. Scotch.

The pen doodles in circles and the snowbanks rise ever higher.