Something's Coming

"Michael," they said, "We've been thinking about this for a long time. We'd like to involve you as part of the Broadway Live family. Would you be interested in...."

And, after an initial "Yes, of course!" and subsequent conversations it comes to this:

I will be writing a new regular feature for the Broadway Live series here in Lexington.

Amazing.  The historic venue where I saw my first original Broadway tour calls me home to write about the magic yet to come.

They are calling it "Broadway Live Insider".

Incredible. 

Shall we dance?

Not a single day

"Thinking and sweating

And cursing and crying

And turning and reaching

And waking and dying" 

-Stephen Sondheim, Merrily We Roll Along, 1982

April 15, 2012

It is one year to the day that I was handed a "dismissal without cause" letter signed by the Commissioner of Education and Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and escorted from my corner office on the eighteenth floor of the Tower. Taken down. Stripped of my ID, my Tower Pass, my Company Phone.  In the light of day.  Some colleagues were there.  They saw it.  The system did not want that.  They asked I stay down in the HR office until the workers were gone so that my humiliation might not be witnessed by my colleagues, my friends. 

"Wait until after work hours," They said. "We'll give you until 6:00pm to clear the building."

 I said "no".  Take me now.  I want them to see this.

The next few days and weeks were horrifying for my partner Tom and I.  Thankfully, we were able to negotiate a somewhat feasible settlement with the Kentucky Retirement System.  There was an Angel at their office.  We sent her a kind card. 

Late spring and summer followed.  Tom was ever supportive.  I spent days at the pool while he went to work.  I slept.  A lot.  We cancelled long-planned trips to New York to see shows that we had paid for and to attend the coveted James Beard Awards that he had so looked forward to.  His first being a member of their Foundation.

I still don't know what happened, really. But I do know this:

A former colleague reached out. I have spent the past school year proudly serving as a leadership facilitator for an educational cooperative in eastern Kentucky hungry for support and growth.

At the recommendation of one of the most powerfully connected women in Lexington, I have been named to the Board of Directors of a center that serves special-needs infants and toddlers. 

People believe in me.  Tom believes in me.  My family. People like you who post comments here and otherwise.

I turned 50 in the midst of all of this and have never felt more alive.  Free, even.

Just an update, a year later.

"Till the days go by, till the days go by

Till the days go by, till the days go by."

How Is She?

Mom was admitted to the hospital on the Monday prior to Thanksgiving.

I visited.  Once. My sis Vicki could go home for the one hour that I was there. To take a shower and bring back Little Debbie snack cakes.

Mom didn't know me but she thought I was cute. She said as much as my Sis and I were hand feeding her the Little Debbies.

"You're cute," she said. With the Most Precious Eyes and all of Heaven shining up at me.

People ask "How is she?"

I say, "She's doing better."

She is back in the nursing home. There are Alzheimer's horror stories out there about eldercare, but we think Mom is being treated well. Vicki no longer has to sleep beside her hospital bed to ensure the night nurse tries to feed her pills.

But.

How Is She?

After chopping off all the arms that reached out to me;
after boarding up all the windows and doors;

after filling all the pits with poisoned water;
after building my house on the rock of a No
inaccessible to flattery and fear;

after cutting off my tongue and eating it;
after hurling handfuls of silence and monosyllables of scorn at my loves;

after forgetting my name
and the name of my birthplace
and the name of my race;

after judging and sentencing myself
to perpetual waiting
and perpetual loneliness, I heard
against the stones of my dungeon of syllogisms

the humid, tender, insistent
onset of spring.

-Octavio Paz

But maybe-

that's Me. 

Maybe that's the answer to the question seldom asked.

"How Are You?"

Grant that I might respond:  "The humid, tender, insistent onset of spring."

He Ain't Heavy: He's my Brother

Education is our family calling. 
Bred.  To care.  Baptist minister Grandfather. Taught school in a one-roomer and had spirit enough to care about the struggling country children. Long before the Appalachian label. Way before the Kennedy/Shrivers made us documentary barefoot fodder.  Papa Douglas Miller just... cared.   Became sort of a silent icon. Saintly Grandfather Superintendent.

Mom went to school at Eastern when it was a college for young women.  Back in the day when that was what young ladies of a certain age did:  become Teachers.  She and Dad moved to northern Kentucky.  She secured a teaching job. It remains a family mystery what angel must have opened that particular door for an Estill County girl to land a prime job in what was then, and in many ways still is, a rather elitist northern  district. Moving away from the cloudy misty homesafe of Irvine.  It was scandalous at the time, I reckon.  Janice Miller, eldest daughter of a potential oil fortune, moving away and following a dream. (escape?)

Her husband, having failed at regular schooling, procured a Barber College certificate of some sort and opened his own shop up there in the faraway. Dad had a shop within a few months with paying barbers.  Across from Ontario's Department Store and right next to the first Ponderosa Steak House in the region. Prime location. Salad bar!

Within a few years they gave birth to a son.  Me.  My memory of those days is a mixture of the large fish tanks in Dad's barbershop, Mom's particular pride of what I wore to "her" school on the first day, and lots of alone time, as a firstborn child. Alone. Time with myself.  Both parents working in an age when that was rare. There were Froot Loops and Batman. That was plenty.

Tonight, I got a call from my brother.  He is concerned about the test scores that are about to be released at the school where he is now Principal.

Calling me for advice, I suppose.  Or solace.  Or, "Hey Bro, what should I say to my staff when they get the news?"

I didn't have much to say, other than "that failed No Child Left Behind policy is bullcrap".

What I should have said is:

"Education is our family calling.  Tomorrow morning, find the first lonely child fresh off the bus and call her by name.  Ask her to breakfast in your office.  Tell your secretary to hold all calls.  You have a very important meeting with the most important person in the building."

To be of use

"The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls."

-Marge Piercy

On April 15, 2011, I was sent into dallying shallows. 

Almost out of sight.

The official letter, handed over to me in circumstances that I have chosen to get beyond said, simply: "Your services are no longer needed.  You are being dismissed without cause."

The first days weeks of this news were beyond understanding.  A career ended, it seemed.  Decades of dedication to public education erased like blackboards I had washed clean in late afternoons as a young teacher in my very first classroom.  Wanting everything to be fresh for the next day. But now: No dust of chalk. No blackboards. Things, it seemed, had changed. My services were no longer needed.

So. Be. It. 

A few weeks ago, I was contacted out of the blue by an innovative educator.  His vision is to provide direct one-on-one support to principals, teacher leaders, and superintendents in the most struggling schools in our state.  He heard that I was "available" and said to me, "I don't know what happened up there, but you know more about curriculum and teaching than anyone I know.  Folks in eastern Kentucky respect you. They know you are one of them. Would you be interested in working for us?  It would mean a lot to the kids in the region where you grew up. We need you to help make a diffierence." 

I said, "Yes."

And so, this coming school year, I'm going home.  To give what I can to the children of my homeland.

To say I am not terrified by this chance would be profoundly untrue.  Between now and then, I shall swim, read, re-create, and prepare for my recovery from the dallying shallows.

"We are, I am, you are

by cowardice or courage

the ones who find our way

back to this scene

carrying a knife, a camera

a book of myths

in which

our names do not appear."

-Adrienne Rich

i killed my kindle

"I see nobody on the road," said Alice.

"I only wish that I had such eyes," the King remarked in a fretful tone.  "To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too!  Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people, by this light."

-Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

I killed my Kindle today. 

At the pool. 

In the middle of a sentence of Karen Russell's brilliant Swamplandia!  I decide to go for a bottled water.  It was so hot.  At the pool.

Cool drink of water.  Sit down.  Refreshing.  Cold, even, on this very hot day.  Put in the iPhone earbugs for some Enrique.  Toes dancing.  God, it's hot.  "You're so damn priiiity.  If I had a type I know it'd be yuuuu...."    Nap.

Later:  Let's see what the Bigtrees are up to.

Reach into the beach bag.  No Kindle. 

I sat on it.  Dead.  I killed my Kindle today.

You learn a lot about yourself in moments like this. My first thought was not that I had killed my Kindle, but that I needed to know what happened to the Bigtree family in Swamplandia! and how they would survive without me knowing. Or without me with them. 

So, I go the the Lexington Central Public Library, wet swimsuit and all (very Swamplandia!, if you are familiar with the mid-chapters) and type in the title.

There is one copy available at the Tates Creek Branch.  The tidy librarian puts it on hold. For me.  Like magic. I drive out and retrieve it.

So, now I have Karen Russell's Swamplandia in hard copy at no charge.  And the Bigtrees can live.

I come home and find my place in the pages.  Kiwi is being shat upon by the pigeons, just like at the Pool, hours earlier.  Just like on Kindle.  But, better?

Holding a book in my hands again.  From a free public library. 

"Laundry is my last priority right now, V."

"Shit, I'd rethink that! Have you smelled you? I will, like sneak your laundry into my house, bro. My mom loves doing laundry, it's like this Immigrant Mother disorder? She uses Lluvia de las Montanas detergent--it's so badass.  You'll smell like Costa Rica!"

-swamplandia, the print edition (and maybe in eBook, i dont know)





Heaven

"Oh, thinking about all our younger years,

There was only you and me,

We were young and wild and free."

Today, precisely at nineteen minutes into the treadmill at Jefferson Fitness Center, I was slapped by a loving revelation.  Godsmacked.

I've been finding solace there recently, following my recent dismissal  transition.

I was a member of Jefferson Fitness Center a long time ago.  I would go there after work.  Escape from the stress of my "job".  And "life".  It is now owned by a wonderful woman who bought the place 12 years ago and has made it, once again, the go-to gym/fitness/rehab place in downtown.  No memberships, no commitments, they say.  And they mean it. 

But, there is one commitment I have made to this place:  Sanctuary.

Every single person there is in transition.  Every. Single. Person.

I swim alongside women who could be my Mom, if she were not confined to a nursing home in Richmond. Precious Mermaids, these Golden Girls, in baggy ill-formed swimwear.

I see Dad in every 50-ish man who is working on his weight and on meds that if Dad had access to (and a Holy place like this)  may have lived another decade or so.

And then, there's me.

Awaiting final paperwork for retirement, at age 49.  Blessed beyond belief.  Wondering what's next for me once the cloudy haze of what has happened brings a sunrise that not even Mom and Dad could imagine. 

Transition.  Sanctuary.

So, back to the treadmill revelation:

Pandora iPhone earbugs in.  DJ Sammy.  Closed my eyes and dragged the HELL out of:

"And love is all that I need

And I found it there in your heart.

It isn't too hard to see

We're in Heaven."

Revelation

"Sir, you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

My ex-employer the late Mr. Ashok's ex-wife, Pinky Madam, taught me one of these things;  and at 11:32am. today, which was about ten minutes ago, when the lady on All India Radio announced, "Premier Jiambo is coming to Bangalore next week," I said that thing at once.

In fact, each time when great men like you visit our country, I say it."

-The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga, Winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize

This, then, is an update from recent blogposts about events of the past two weeks, for all of you who have cared, asked, wondered, and prayed.  I will, if you will forgive, remain true to the "bullet points" used in the PowerPoint World of the American Education System. 

I have learned:

• Treat people well, every person. In the work place, on the street, and in your own family, find a wayplace to reward:  a hug, a tear, a card, a prayer. Take a chance and hug someone who may not know how to immediately deal with it.
• No matter what happens to YOU. Never compromise your beliefs. E.V.E.R.  Never, ever.
•  Love the people that led you to the place where you are and rely on them to support you in the darkness and brightness of Change. 
• Surprise yourself with dignity. 
• When someone says, "What can I do to help?"  Take it.  It will be the best "Thank you." you've ever said.

So many people from work have contacted us.  Longtime heroes.  Worried for me and my Tom.  All of you. People we've met only in the past year or so.  Friends from the recent past, with whom Tom and I have shared disimilar grief.  Old school roomies from college.  My brother and sister who know everything will work out okay, because that is what we Miller's do best: Overcome.

Tom and I are doing okay.  Treating each other well and working through this.  Thank you for your ongoing thoughts and prayers.

"Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a geniune, self-authenticating religious experience would be.  Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt?  If there were no room for doubt,

there would be no room for me." 

-Frederick Buechner



Too Much Power, Too Little Knowledge

-2011-

"Effective close of business April 15, 2011, your services as a KBE/KDE Division Director are no longer needed by the Kentucky Department of Education."

-Education Letterhead

Steven L. Beshear, Governor

Terry Holiday, Ph. D., Commissioner of Education

-1987-

"To my grandson, Michael J. Miller, who is a good teacher, an outstanding actor, and an excellent dancer.  He can go to the top if given the chance.  My hope and prayer for Michael is that the Movie industry or television systems or both will find him and give him a chance to show his talents to the world."

-Autographed Copy

Douglas F. Miller, Rain in the Lyle Hollow, his first published work

Superintendent of Estill County Schools for eighteen years

Community Leader of America Award, 1968

Integrity Award from Eastern Kentucky University

Special Recognition from the Crippled Children's Association for fifteen years of continuous service

As I transition from my now former position as a leader in public education at the state level for decades, I think I'll choose my late Grandfather's wisdom and choose to carry with me in a very weather-tight tote. And the overwhelming support of parents, students, family members and colleagues I have had the priviledge to serve with and alongside along the way.

Kentucky was, and will again be, a great place to teach and learn alongside our most precious resource:  the children.... of coal miners, immigrant workers, suburban soccer dads, NextGen families, homeless cramped victims of the American dream who want nothing less but the same opportunities that should be the birthright of every human being in a free society:  the will and support to question, learn, and explore the secrets of the future we adults preparing for their future cannot yet know.

"The trouble was the familiar one: too much power, too little knowledge.  The fault was mine."

-Wendell Berry, Damages

Born Again This Way

"Contemporary Christians tend to avoid complexity as being hazardous to their faith, and are thus unprepared to cope with complexity when it confronts them."

-Peter J. Gomes, Preacher to Harvard University

The recent passing of Peter Gomes left me empty. He was my never-met-in-person Brother-in-Arms.  During this season of Lent, I especially will miss his freshly-written "living" words, but need to share them with you, readers, as you see fit to find his compassionate, intellectual, freedom-speaking challenge.

"Treasure is knowing that you belong to God; treasure is knowing that therefore you are not alone.  You are not isolated, and you are not alone.  Treasure is in knowing that you are loved and that you love because you are loved, and that knowledge of self and relationship and purpose is what treasure is all about.  So that when you leave "everything," as we all most certainly will leave everything, you can take "it" with you, for it is the only thing you ever truly had, and that is the love of God."

As I write this, thousands of hungry parishioners have entered the Yum! Center in Louisville, bowing before the egg of Lady GaGa. Awaiting redemption and joyously dancing in the aisles to the latest anthem, Born This Way. 

Behind my house on Merino Street, a similarly numbered multitude stand on their broken, whitebread feet and raise hands in praise to the strains of Jesus Freak Rock. Even the most acidically broken among us cannot deny its power to bring joy.

I saw Les Miserables in Louisville today, reminded that a soaring production of a Broadway musical can often be more church than church itself.

Hear this:  Jesus Freaks, LittleGaGa Monsters, LesMiserites:  Rejoice!

"Treasure is in knowing that you are not alone."

To Do: Justice

Not much is known about the prophet Micah. 

To my knowledge, my Church of the Nazarene mother nor Southern Baptist father named me in his honor.  That missing "h" after the "c".  The "e" after the "a".  The "l" before the "h".  

Reborn into the spirit of understanding truth and welcomed questions of adulthood Micah has become my namesake.  I am not St. Michael.  I want to be Micah. I want to live Micah.

"Micah understood his task to be a preacher of truth- to expose injustice and inequity, to offer a word of hope and salvation, and to make known a vision of a new and transformed way of life for his community and his world."  - Harper's Study Bible

It would probably be easier to be Michael.  You know, Archangel and all. Superhero. Movie Deals!

I choose Micah.  He was the first to let me in.  As a freshly abused gay Southern Baptist, I discovered:

"What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God."

I love the "with" part by the way.  Hand in hand. 

Blessed Lenten journey travels, readers.

Don't require of yourselves any more than Micah's Lord.  That will be.  Enough. 

A Prayer

The following is a prayer I offer often.  One I find brings me back, when I lose my way, and in a lonely, quiet place, even when I have lost my faith.  I offer it to you, today, on this day of Thanksgiving, as an option at your table.  Or your couch.  Or your tailgait.  Even at my quiet table with my life partner Tom, I never get through it without tears.... But salty tears makes for incredibly lovely turkey.  Blessed Thanksgiving to you all.

A Prayer attributed to St. Francis, Book of Common Prayer, page 833.

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is discord, union;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

Grant that we may not so much seek to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.  Amen.

I Can Do That

I didn't see the original Broadway production of A Chorus Line.   I was, however, Hello Thirteen enough in 1976 when it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and nine Tony Awards. From a distance.

Lonely me-boys bought Original Broadway Cast Albums, back then. Broadway Baby theatre junkies. Misunderstood by others around us who were into 8-tracks of Eagles Greatest Hits.  No tribe, just Cassie, and the dream of a chance to dance.  For you.  When she belted "give me a chance", I sang along, in any narrow mirrow reflection I could find.

I saw this magic for the first time when the first national tour of A Chorus Line came to the Lexington Opera House during the Dick Pardy era. 

Spellbound. 

A few years later, I auditioned and became "Mike" in Lexington Musical Theatre's first regional production on the same stage.  He's the goy who taps his way into a place on the Line, and captures the heart of the audience with his sung-story of his sister's shoes.  Watching sis go pitter pat.  Me.  Are you kidding?  Me.

As the show comes back to the Opera House this week, in a tour based on the recent 2006 revival, there will be many in the audience who will experience it for the first time.  And, you know what, I will be in the audience, too, experiencing it for the first time.  Again.

I've stood on the Line.  I've been part of the 19 main characters who made "the cut". 

I can tell you this:  Being in the cast of A Chorus Line is grueling, satisfying work.  I might even go so far as to use the biblical sense of the word work:  worship.

You know that moment when the Line makes that perfect triangle of brilliance during the singular sensation during "One"?   Have you ever wondered if the cast on stage feels the self-same energy?  I have an answer for you, yes.  And yes, and yes.

The cheers from the audience, who I have now become a member again, come from within.  Yes.  And yes.  Cheers for the performers, but more-so for the heart of A Chorus Line that lives in all of us.

It is challenging, freeing, and celebratory.

God I hope they get it.

Purple.

A poem from my 13 year-old self, to the Man I am today:

When you are an adult, you shall wear purple
with a rainbow heart that matches completely, and suits you grandly.
And you shall spend your tension on Chardonnay and kid gloves
and Yankee Candles, and say you've no money for butter substitutes.
You shall sit down on the futon when you are tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press conservative buttons
and run your stick along public railings
and make up for the prison of your youth.
You shall wear Burberry in the rain
and pick flowers from your Partner's garden
and learn to shout.

You can wear fabulous shirts and grow whole
and eat three slices of bacon at a go
or only brioche and Pop Tarts for a week
and hoard ideas and promises and pistachios and things in bargain.

But now you must have causes that keep you hot
and pay your debts and say fuck in the street often
and set a better example for Their children.
You must have friends to theatre and read the Kindle.
But maybe you ought to perfect a little now?

So people who know you are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly you are golden, and start to share Purple.

1-Click and she was gone

I miss her already, but I know it was all for the best.  I probably should have consulted, at the very least, my Priest, if not my horoscope, but so be it.  She is gone.  I have given my first born over to a happy home, and I know it was the right thing to do.

I know that she is in more-than-capable hands.  And I also think her new Mother, who I'm told is relatively New Media savvy will probably read this, and maybe, just maybe, share it with her one day.  When she's old enough to TRY to understand, I'd like to think.  But that, of course is completely up to fate.  If she ever wants to contact me, when she's say, 13 and wants to know the truth.  I'll be willing to at least meet for a coffee.  I'll find five minutes.  Or so.  So, here it is:

Dear Kindle,

I loved you, and still do, but my circumstances prevented me from giving you the joy, love, and attention you deserve.  It breaks my heart, but I knew at the time that you would be better off in a more loving home.  

I filled you with Pat Conroy's marshy melodies the moment you came to me.  If you have a particular penchant for the low country, that's me.  That's you.  That's us.  I will never forget holding you in my hands and reading our stories.  YOUR stories became mine.  

But the time came for you to go.  For me to let you go.  I hope you understand.  I hope you have a good life with the lady I left you with.  You should have seen her face light up when she first saw you.  I knew then I had made the right decision.  For you.  For us.

And now the hard part:

Kindle:  you have a sister.  She looks so much like you, except, well, graphite.  And smaller.  I know you'll find this troubling and/or confusing, but know this much is true:  You were first.  

I let you go, but I never left you alone.  I pray you are happy.  I understand if you are angry, but should you choose to contact me at some point, well, that's up to you and your new family.  

Michael, your amazonDad.

xxoo

Will I Lose My Dignity?

I performed in the last season of Paul Greene's Wilderness Road at the Indian Fort Theatre in Berea KY in the summer of 1980.  A recent graduate of Estill County High School.  That tender place between high school and college.  Parents still caring and champions for the boy they couldn't believe had a driving license, much less a high school diploma.  Fresh from my World Champion Clogging Titles. Hee Haw and Grand Ol' Opry appearances (thank you, YouTube, for not coming along until years later).

Dad drove me to the audition at the Chapel at Berea College and at first they said, "No."  Dad, my champion, stepped in and said, "Give my boy one more chance."  

I took the stage (chapel) one more time and belted what I'm sure what must have been a Southern Baptist hymn that contradicted the whole notion of musical theatre, but what the closeted theatre liberals at this somewhat conservative production must have found cute and enchanting.  To this day, I don't know what my stage dad did behind the scenes, but it must have been a page from the Lorna Bell Bundy Playbook. (He may have even written that for her:  He's long dead, but he was first.) 

I was cast.

Two weeks later, mom and dad drove me to Berea for my seasonal stint as what still to this day I consider My Summer as a Chorus Girl. 

Last words from Dad, when he dropped me off at the Senior Dorm at Berea (which HE had negotiated--- Really Good Digs), before the Goodbye Hug.  "There are effeminate people in theater. That does not mean they are....he did not complete the sentence.  GAY."

These people took their historic place in Kentucky outdoor drama seriously.  I loved being around the cast that had, in some cases, been cast locally, and more times than not, from mysterious places from the hell of what was then summer casting just so you can put something on your resume.

You would think I would have come out of the closet that summer.  After all, I was the one in the Senior Berea Dorm that had the Evita White Album.  But I was afraid.

I was afraid of me.  I now understand that I was afraid of me.  Not dad, mom, conservative upbringing:  Me.

I did not come out that summer.  At all.  Even with the Evita album.  High Flying, Adored. Too afraid. Weak is different from terrified, to be clear.

As RENT plays this summer, in my own now-proclaimed hometown, I have chosen not to attend.  One could say it is because it is too damn hot to leave the house.  One could say I've seen the brilliant Pulitzer Prize, Tony Winner 9 times. Enough Already.  But there really is no excuse other than this:

It is simply too emotional of a theatrical experience for me to imagine outdoors, amongst the smuggled sangria and blankies and well-intended local theatre supporters.

No doubt, the audience will experience joy, pathos, and sing along (is there a RENT HEAD front row?).

I can't go.  But I sing the body electric for all of you who are there.  The various sponsors, including Ace Weekly, Joe Artz and the SummerFest Team.  The amazing director T. Bonner who I stood on the line with in A Chorus Line years ago in the Lexington Musical Theatre production when I performed the role of Mike.  "I Can Do That".  And truth:  I really couldn't.  But the applause was addicting.

So, I'm not going.  I've written One Last Song.

Remains of the Day

"Everyone tells you the trip to Europe is exhausting," I wrote in my journal on May 30, 1983, "and everything they say is true."

I've been hearing and thinking about "getting rid of" lately.  Trips to literal or figurative garages.  Basements (ew).  Snakes.  Really bad yearbook photos.  Toss.  Look through.  Remember.  Spiders.  Rotten potatoes.  Even, yes, something as fresh as yesterday's Big Fridge Clean Out that my Life Hope Tom does from time to time, in the chance of creating something extraordinary out of the odd swiveled carrot at the bottom of the veggie bin. Stone Soup.

For some unknown reason, I held on to something that may very well be the most succinct, tiny volumn of my early life that changed me for good.  Be careful what you toss, into a salad or otherwise.

I discovered it the other day.  In the attic of my the house Tom and I own. Not mom and dad's house. Ours. Readers younger than I reading this: You, too will some day have an attic.  At least, I grant that you will, because this is what I discovered.  And I feel 22 years old tonight.  Be careful what you purge.

Excerpts from this courdoroy-bound journal.  The spelling and grammar are mine, unedited from the remains of the days:

Battle Gear:  Eurail Youth Pass, International Student ID, International Youth Hostil ID, Personal ID Card

PFANDER:  Second day in Bregenz.  Climbed to the top of Pfander and viewed Alps.  One hour and a half climb. View spectacular!  Exhausting!!

Food I:  The Goldener Hirsch is our daily eating place.  Pork is delicious in barbecue sauce.  "Eis Krem" is delicious stands on Bondensee shore. Vanille and Erdherre.  Wiener Snitzel is a pork fillet served with lemon and was my very first Austrian meal.  Lasagna is good at most cafes and cost about $4.00.  Coup Danemark is a great chocolate ice cream dessert.  Pommes Frites are french fries and are served very often.

Munich:  Saturday night Jim, Anita, Jan and I decided to go somewhere other than the touristee Haufbrauhaus, so we went to what is similar to Times Square, Leopoldstrasse in search of a disco in Frommer's Guide called FLASH, but never found it.

Accomodations:  Haus International.  $10 a person, 5 in a room.  Indoor pool.

There is more to come from this journal.  I may or not post it here, but it sure felt good to write this much.  And you cannot believe how musky from your own attic smells better once you take a deep breath and start to read how young you were.  And are.  Journey on, all of us.

Stand Before Your God

Paul Watkins begins his memoir "I swear I thought I was going to a party."

How many of us grew up with similar literary soft, hard pillows:

"Mother's Younger Brother was in love with Evelyn Nesbit...He could no longer look at the silhouettes.  He wanted to pack his heart with gunpowder and blow it up."

"I'm stuck by the gap between romance and reality, between my fantasy even now of how such a conversation "ought" to have happened (violins, lit candles revolving in the sky) and the sadness that accompanies the real thing."

Here's Conroy:  "I was famous among my roomates for my mercurial mood-swings.  But they excepted my melancholy as some distorted mirror image of my own overwrought flights of euphoria."

I'm pretty sure Silas House wrote for me when he says, through Anneth, "All my life I've been looking for magic in all the wrong places."

And, yes, I too have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since that tire blew up and threw Newt Hardbine's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign. 

Now, on the eve of the weekend of the 26th anniversary of my Own Special Protagonist, my central character, the author our our life together, I write:

To be inspired is to be alive.

To get each other is to challenge beliefs and hardships.

To love is to prepare for less than and tingle when it happens and sting when sometimes it doesn't.

To count the days is more important than counting the years or decades.

To not understand that any time with a lover, friend, lifemate is a daily joy is a mistake.

The most important thing is to breathe.  One's own breathe.

My own breathe.

His.

In concert with his and ready to change the cadence, because individuals are marching their own lives.

But the band is ours.

The leader is the heart.

Marching, side by side, sometime

And others, marching with a different music.

But the same beat.

Our hearts.

The leader of the band oversees our every move.

And the breath.  To breathe.  

To be prepared to live the next parade.

To be inspired to be alive.

I love you, Tom.

  

WHAT ARE People FOR?

When I heard about the decision, these words of his came immediately to mind:

"There is a sense in which I no longer "go to work."  If I live in my place, which is my subject, then I am "at" work even when I am not working.  It is "my" work because I cannot escape it."

And so, tonight, here I am.  In my place. 

There (I hear) John Wall dances and people with t-shirts celebrating the NBA Draft.

There are tiny victories in the Come Together of the World Cup.  Now that USA is in, we are allowed to care.

There are too many "pink slips" to mention.  Good hearted teachers who will probably not get to work with the children they love next year.

There is Texas Tea exploding from the depths that I can no longer blame on the previous Administration. 

There are Words.

His words, in boxes at the flagship university of our state.  Our State.  He said:  You Shall Not Shelter.  My words under the umbrella of this legacy of filth.  No struggling, dying pretty little sea birds covered in oil for the pity of public opinion. 

Not you, this public U.  With your Coal friends.  My words will not live in the shadow of the death you support.  You can NOT keep them.  You shall not have them any longer. 

Standing by his word.  Unusual.

"In the country, meanwhile, there is work to be done."  -  Wendell Berry

When I Think of Home

Decoration Day 

Memories are buried
under flatstone.

Well-kempt cemetaries, once-a-year mowed by patriarchs in preparation.

Decoration.

Tended now by survivors, the left-behind women.
Unarmed by power mowers, but equally empowered by cans of Pledge and clean-as-Downy rags.

Spritz! Let the Shout be Heard!:

Shine!  They will make clear the dates again, some not So distant.

Women of the family tend to their husband's graves with well-armed Pledge and clean Downy rags.  Shine!  Amid the plastic flowers.

Wipe it off, once a year, now.

Dinner plates, nightly, then, when he was alive.  Scraps of taters, melon, maters.  Compost.

"Take it out to the compost, son, it will make our garden grow strong."

Amid the plastic flowers.

And now she is gone, too, with him below the facade.
under flatstone.

Memories are buried

Amid the plastic flowers.

And the children will not weep.  The weeds may grow.  And God will bless what is below.

God can NOT forget to grow,

Despite the plastic flowers.

And for those of you still here, gracious readers of this altogether sometimes disjointed blog, I leave you this powerul literary quote:

Fred Sandford:  Didn't you learn anything being my son?  Who do you think I'm doing this all for?

Lamont Sandford:  Yourself.

Fred:  Yeah, you learned something.

---Dedicated to the ones who have left us behind, both in military and civil service.  Who make this country great, and something to strive to fulfill their promise of an even greater America.  MJM  Memorial Day 2010