A Morning with Gilkey Creek

There's something I've been wanting to write about, something that's nudging at me, a bone in my throat, an agitation in my craw. (What is a craw, anyway? Note to self: Google "craw.")*

I begin with little winding Gilkey Creek, a feeder into the Flint River. It has been part of my life for about 25 years -- since my first husband, Danny, and I moved into our house on Seventh Street. Back then I started walking and jogging along the creek and over its three little foot bridges as part of a route through the neighborhood that has continued to this day.

Here's the thing: sometimes I am in denial about the huge chunk of my life that I've spent in Flint -- I don't know why, exactly, except that as I've said before in many other contexts, I never thought I'd stay this long, and sometimes it simply doesn't feel like "my kind of place" -- or the kind of place I thought I'd end up. Going there in my thinking dangerously leads to "it wasn't supposed to be like this," or, "I could have done better..." And thus to a tunnel of self-doubt if not outright self-recrimination, and nothing good comes of that.

But then, there's this little creek that I've been pausing to look at on its many curves and byways when it's crusted with ice in February and gushing with green life in early May; there are sometimes ducks noodling around under the bridge on Brookside. I've noted the way October leaves dapple the water in red and gold; I've delighted in the little rippling rapids at the footbridge by Kensington. This little creek has meandered its way into my daily life, and I've come to count on it. Maybe it's like an arranged marriage, where after years of just living one day after the other, you suddenly realize you've grown fond of the mate conjoined to you by fate.

There's passive aggression in keeping my feelings at bay about a place I've lived in much longer than the whole of my childhood, much longer than anyplace else I've ever lived, for that matter. It strikes me suddenly that one can take out one's individual resentment and disappointment on the land -- by withholding commitment, by ignoring its needs and travails. By simply refusing or failing to notice.

This dolorous line of reflection from individual circumstance leads me deeper: sometimes individual difficulties, unresolved baggage about ourselves, can become something bigger, taking a toll on Mother Earth. If we're not taking proper care of ourselves and unearthing (ohh...untentional but lucky slip...to "unearth" like digging potatoes out of the dirt, a gift, a consequence of our husbandry) thus, unearthing the meaning of our lives, perhaps we also stop paying attention to the natural world that sustains us.

So this is partly an argument for taking care of ourselves -- not just at the superficial "yes, I exercised today," but at the spiritual level -- "yes, I am finding a path to forgiveness, moving on from the griefs and disappointments of the past."

I woke up Saturday, in short, and decided to get up and go to Gilkey Creek, where good-hearted folks not as ambivalent or reclusive as me had organized a Flint River cleanup, including my little tributary. This new, uncharacteristic decisiveness, not without resistance or misanthropy, overall felt refreshing. I thoroughly enjoyed the morning, getting muddy on the banks while tugging out drenched plastic bags ("Toys 'r Us" being the predominant logo in my assigned stretch of creek), shards of styrofoam, candy wrappers -- the usual detritus of thoughtless humanity.

Hmm...that casual little reference just jarred me into insight -- "my little tributary" -- it IS my little creek, as it is all of ours. As I was arguing myself out of bed, dreading having to interact with "people" in my current not-quite-completed rehabilitative state, I thought "you don't have to make nice with the people. But you could care about the creek." That little creek in all its imperfections has given me many moments of pleasure. It's part of the land that was here before us and now, as always, is deserving of our love.

*Craw: a pouch in many birds and some lower animals that resembles a stomach for storage and preliminary maceration of food (wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn)

Mariachi Madness

All week a crew of 10 painters have been crawling over our apartment building and decks, starting at 7 a.m. They are a rowdy and happy bunch, singing and joking en espanol, whistling, wisecracking, laughing and shouting directions back and forth. They also have three boomboxes all tuned to the same Spanish station, so mariachi music echoes in stereo from the top, bottom and back of the apartment. They sing along.

Eight hours a day. My prime working time.

They covered all the windows with plastic, which gave me a horrible case of claustrophobia. I've become irrationally, passionately attached to looking out at the sweep of the harbor every day while working. Without it, I cower at my MacBook on the table in the odd milky light, sweating. Without the view, this feels like little more than an overpriced, humid cage. I begin to doubt myself and everything I stand for. I have nothing to say. I'm empty and insignificant.

And then... more mariachi music.

How can anybody be so CHEERFUL?

Isn't this a violation of the Geneva Convention?

I reach my limit at 3 p.m. when there's only an hour to go. The same time of day Hemingway nailed in Death in the Afternoon. Yesterday at that sickly bright hour, I found myself doing upper body dancing on my desk chair to accordion music.

I'm a puppet, trapped in a South of the Border Clockwork Orange (That's La Naranja Mecanica to you, Pancho) doing a mindless tarantela. I think the fumes are kicking in.

By the time they leave, I'm limp and the silence is insidious. I turn on CNN but can't stand anybody's nasal whine, even with Wolf Blitzer off for the day. I'm so shook up I wonder if Fox News would sound better. I scan HBO: finally! a rerun of Curb Your Enthusiasm is the only thing I can stand; Larry David trying to avoid giving Richard Lewis a kidney. Now THAT'S television. Phew...

Later I'll sit in a stupor and watch the tiny gymnasts fall off the barre and a huge Belgian volleyball player get "killed" repeatedly by Kerri and Misty. Will the beach volleyball never end? The swimmers in their laser suits, menacing goggles, thick necks and enormous shoulders look like monsters.

This insanity may possibly find its way into the syllabi I am intensely crafting. Maybe this will be my weirdest set of class preps ever. If I hear that one guy's maniacal laugh one more time, I swear I'll scream.

For the record, the apartment is looking very nice.

Bad Boy Poet

On the other hand, the Times featured "Bad Boy" San Francisco poet August Kleinzahler, crusty author of the collection Sleeping It Off in Rapid City in a "Column One" page one feature jumping to a long feature on A12 Link to Kleinzahler.

If you're tired of the academic establishment or academic poetry, the belligerent Kleinzahler's acerbic attitude will please you. As the article notes, he once called University writing programs "multi-million-dollar Ponzi schemes" in which, reporter John Glionna says, "Volvo driving poet-professors are too fearful of risking prizes or promotions to make waves."

Well, I don't know how to break it to Kleinzahler, but I've got an 11-year-old Honda and no tenure and I decided long ago that the joy of my sinecure, such as it is, is that there's not much to lose. I am grateful to the academy for being one of the few places that respects and values poetry. It's not perfect, but it's one place where I can find somebody to talk to about, say, the sweet satisfaction of a well-chosen line break, or a poem that grabs me by the neck.

Kleinzahler's chosen hangouts -- the dives of San Francisco and elsewhere -- are indeed rich mines for the pen -- they have been and probably always will be. I began my own performance career not in the academy but in the bar -- a beloved dump in downtown Flint that was long ago replaced by a parking lot. It was a good, rough, rowdy school and I cherish my memories of that time and that practical apprenticeship. But drunks aren't the only ones with insights about this world.

I like my sacramental quaffs of Irish and the occasional excesses of good red wine. But as my students will tell you, I have little patience for those who come to writing thinking it requires alcoholism and drugs as fuel. Writing takes a clear head and physical energy. So, in short, sitting on a hillside this morning not far from where Bukowski raged from barstool to barstool, I'm not convinced I need to read another misanthropic poem about a hangover. Nonetheless I'm glad he's prospering, even in light of his vitriol, because I think lots of poetry -- and lots of voices -- are good for the world. I bought the book and have it in front of me. Once I've put in my own hours of labor over the language, in whatever semblance of right mind I possess, I'll give him a chance to move me.

"A Hunger in Himself to Be More Serious"

A post by Gillian Swart about churches getting co-opted by modernists prompted me to look this old Philip Larkin poem up, one that I've always loved -- especially the wry "once I am sure there's nothing going on," and "I take off my cycle-clips in awkward reverence."

Searching for a good image of Larkin to post, I see some Irish blogger describes the late bad boy as "a miserible effing sod, useful as a bag of arses."
I rather like that. Could a poet hope for more?

Church Going

Philip Larkin

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
"Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation ?marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these ?for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Philip Larkin
(1922-1985)

Amusing shot from Photobucket.com: the same bike he used for churchgoing, perhaps?

In the Meantime

...eschewing the blog. This is part of the profession: those moments where one says, "I'm tired of examining my own experience." That's what writers do, in one way or another: one must be open, curious, willing to look at what's there, committed to the impulse to observe and reflect -- with the additional commitment to do so with style on the page, trusting that others might find it interesting. How that works out doesn't always butter other people's turnips, as Philip Larkin liked to say. At the moment I'm weary of the vulnerability and turning to private life. For now.