You Can Leave Your Hat On

Look babe, let me take care of some housekeeping. Clearly I have screwed up. I’m not going to ask for amnesty on that. I sure as hell won’t argue it down to a fake equality and pretend you are somehow just as bad. I’m tired of those childish tricks. They sound cheap and weak in my own ears. It seems like my pride has not been helpful throughout all of this, and I’d like to start this time by leaving it behind.

Trust. I know. Why would you? I’ve been weak and stupid plenty enough for both of us. But we can move forward provisionally; that is, I won’t put you in a position where you have to trust. We can talk, and keep talking. If more is needed, well, we can cross that bridge when we get to it.

I know that there are many voices, angry voices, squaring off over our issues. There is no shortage of younger people willing to fight about them and, it seems like we have our own memories of those same battles. You and I won't add much by wading back into it, but we could accomplish so much by leaving it behind. Maybe, maybe we can lead the way out of that. Let's you and I leave the young ‘uns to their angst. Let the kids fight while the adults go apart and talk.

“Seems I got to have a Change of Scene”

The road back to you, here and now, was a long and windy road. A point of fact: I didn’t think I’d even live this long, but here I am. And here you are.

You look tired. And why would you not? You put in your time. You marched and protested and brought important changes. You put a damper on alcoholism, a couple of times by my recollection. You improved health care and medical care. You supported the wars when there were no more men, and you continued to raise the kids. You kept a hold on family values and traditional values when everything seemed to be falling apart. And then, when you suggested equal pay, well you were scorned.

And I wasn’t around to back you up. I know.

So, No. I am not going to waltz back into town and expect everything to be like before. No, I’m just saying that I’m here now and, as I look around, I don’t see anyone else who actually knows you.

Sure, there are plenty of ‘fundamental” guys around, the ones who need to reduce you to the helpless hysterical burden they called you in the early 1900s. They’re like some kind of virus. There’s an equal number of “Father Knows Best” guys, who think that the 1950s just need a revival. They just want you to be happy as a housewife. And there’s “the boys”, all fine people- don’t get me wrong- but at whatever age you find them they just don’t get the part where you are seeking something important. They don’t know what you are saying, and can’t help. To them, everything else is just melodramatic.

As if they were not bad enough there are also the women out there who think all of the above is normal; That you are problematic if you want more. They don’t get you either. And the young ones. They don’t just seek out a man to complete them, but compete for the same men as they are able. They would rather enforce a tense isolation than let someone else “win”, whatever that means.

If it’s any consolation, those people don’t “get” me either. It seems like we may be in this together.

What they don’t get is that the relationship deepens, but doesn’t end. They think in categories. They think mechanically. Adults. Marriage. Kids, job, money, et cetera. Divorce. Men. Women. For them there are no gradations, no development to the dawn but only the snapshot of a sunrise; no visceral experience, but only a sound bite. For them a relationship is no more than a photo album resting in the ottoman, the second-hand recording of a concert, the momentous event reduced to a canned re-telling. They don’t get it. You can’t be crammed into a category.

It reminds me of something I wrote many years ago.

Beggar's Banquet

But all of the combined literature of western culture is

Less an

awe inspiring performance of nature.

Reading or writing we are not pilgrims,

Walking on our knees up some hallowed mountain.

Just

caterers and guests at a buffet that is,

we decide, for all.

So I can stand

at the edge of creation

stricken,

Perhaps relate it. But

These capers, these dubloons of inspiration

I bring

Will be little more than

Extra flavours

In this buffet

For mortals

A couple of times now I have had that feeling, the feeling that made me write that. The first time, I had followed a trail out past the fence at the edge of the Grand Canyon and stood on a rock that jutted right out into the giant space. It was night, and the stars were hard and real. It was as though the words were absorbed faster than they could take shape, or perhaps something about the gravid space spoke to me, suggesting that maybe the words were unnecessary. It put me in a funk for years because it is something I want to explain so badly, but there is no point. People will see it or they will not.

It happened again when my daughter was born. And then again when we swam one night in Arrow Lake with the stars so intense. It felt like the black water put me in the midst of the universe and said something, so important, that I would never be the same afterward.

To see, without words, as I see you now. I don’t want you to be my audience. I just want to see the universe in you.

“I Want You to Want Me”

Seeing you now after all of these years shows a contrast. Not a harsh contrast, but a difference that speaks to me. Before, you were soft through and through. Pliable. Now you are, not soft on the outside; soft is the wrong word, but there is a softness that belies the steel that has developed on the inside, as though you’ve been stopped in the middle of a task. You’ve got this “Get to the point” look in your eyes as if to say you are tired of wasting time. I know that you don’t need my help, but my help is here if you want.

But hang on: Rather than start hashing out issues, let’s get a Foch, or a Merlot or whatever you’re drinking these days, and check out what the younger ones are saying. We can have a few laughs at their expense, and who knows; Maybe they’ve said something original!

“She Came In Through the Bathroom Window”

Do you remember that time, back when we were barely out of high school? We left that party in your parents’ car so drunk that we could barely walk, but it made sense to drive. Big laughs, oh yes. The way the car weaved all over the road, up on to sidewalks, over peoples’ lawns, and then carefully into their actual driveway so we could get out without hitting any cars. Looking back, I’m not sure what is more amazing; that fact that we lived, or the fact that we didn’t hit anything.

I recall that at least two of our grad class died from driving like that before we graduated. It kind of feels like we were selected.

Or the time you and that guy you were with, and some friends, were “truck surfing” up on the trestles. Buddy slipped on the hood and only caught himself on the grill of the old Ford, but the driver wouldn’t stop. You said that the way he looked at you when he finally climbed back up over the cab into the back was enough to make you instantly sober.

There were a number of times back then, when you must have looked at me, probably doing something stupid, and realized that we were going separate ways. I tended to ignore thoughts like that, but you knew. Maybe it seemed like there was time. It felt like there was time.

And then there were kids, and work, and work and work. I don’t know how you saw it, but to me it seemed like everyone and their dog was offended by our little spot of happiness, like they were hell-bent on interfering. And then it was all done with. The idea that everybody had good intentions now just seems like a slap in the face.

I mean let’s look at it: Between the lawyers and the government Ministries, and the schools shucking the children for more funding, and medical fields using us and the kids to justify new drugs, it seems like everyone had a stake in any and all of our failures, no matter how small. It is worth wondering how those people and institutions would stand up under the same scrutiny that we have been held to as parents.

After all of that, and all of the years in between then and now being away, I feel like just the man to start asking the questions.

In Terms of the Ground

of stepping confidently,

With senses adapted to it stepping

lightly when it counts,

and also,

keeping a firm grasp

of what you have covered

The mother,

Cupping water in our life

so one might absorb

star light in summer nights

on the rim.

teaching of fecundity.

Predatory,

in nature a platform

from which one dives into the sea

The source,

a mad eye stripping pretense

as high desert sand takes your water.

great ranges, perspective.

of miles walked in bad shoes,

old highways, forgotten towns

cemetaries valued reminders resting,

The end.

To have walked in your weight

upon miles of artificial boundaries,

Steeping in dangerous paths trodden

Forging and running

watching listening feeling

in bouts of anger, pain, elation.

fulfillment.

your gravity increases,

and

The dark earth becomes you

With questions. It’s almost like we are back at the beginning, but here you are with so much more depth. It’s a world of shallowness and superficial demands, in which you have become deep and drenched with gravity without losing your humor or a sense of who you are, who you might yet become. To the faux and the fearful, you are a monster of possible futures demanding to be reckoned, excommunicated, exorcised.

You’ll understand if I disregard them.

Running With the Shadows of the Night

You have to know that the very second you or I assert ourselves, people are going to lose their minds. I mean, they are going to lose their minds in any case, but most especially if we disturb the crazy they have become comfortable with. If capital M “Men” want to form special groups and be collectively hostile toward women, well I suspect they will not hear a reasonable objection from me. Likewise, if capital F “Feminists” want to be equal, but only to a low-brow knuckle-dragging version of men, then it seems like your voice will fall on deaf ears. Standing apart and watching the carnage doesn’t seem especially productive, but what are we to do?

If there is a direction to go in then it looks like we may have to blaze the trail ourselves, break new ground. We may have to make our own light because the new territory is dark and unfamiliar. Because here we are now, the universe in front of us and everyone around us acting crazy. We can act crazy too, or step back and take stock of things.

We aren’t kids anymore. It seems like we could come up with a plan if we can keep talking. Build a bridge here and there, instead of burning them. Make a path, instead of being herded down one to places we already know well. We could take control of our narrative instead of letting those around us poison it for their own entertainment. It just seems as though all the people we listened to in the past are becoming like shadows of people they could have been, while we become more, more real. I think we can aspire to a kind of leadership in that regard.

And we can do it one conversation at a time, one Merlot at a time.

So how about it? If I go get another bottle, will you be here when I get back? Can we do this?