Farewell, Back Yard! I shall see you again in July, when the scalding sun sends me toward cover of the only shade this property owns. The ragged and weathered yet sturdy awning of aluminum will cover me from direct sun and occasional summer storm, but you deserve a break from my peering, watchful eyes.
I have observed this yard from cold to mold and through two seasons have seen it rotate like a carousel. One day it was wet and bogged down with the melt-away snow; on another it was arid in a sneak attack March heatwave. It has been barbed with ice and softened under a downy breeze, and all throughout these four months it has withstood the throes of passion that weather commands.
Perhaps I will return for July and just sit. The cold winter months forced me to stand, mobility my roving eye as I canvassed like a detective week after week. I traipsed the perimeter certain that a clue was left uncovered to reveal the mystery of nature. How did so much change so rapidly? A wind, a sunburst, a rainy night, all mutable. The evidence was abundant – a rusted spring of ivy laced through an aged fence; a clump of mud, smile-tossed by children during October’s fancy days of splendor; a slab of ice picked from a sled in February, reminiscent of snow so fast and sudden as to freeze slush into miniature ice rinks; the first green blade of spring returning. I witnessed the scene yet found no solution. I had no lab other than my mind and my words within which to process data, and really no crime had been committed. Proof pointed toward creeping motion, a prowler at large. While I slept or worked or watched the football play-offs, subtlety slid across this yard from day to day and altered from dawn to dusk and week to week the meaning of surroundings. I wonder if anyone else even noticed.
This yard is not much different than either of my neighbors’ to the east or to the west, and to these backyard sanctuaries we often retreat in singular pods of separate families. One has a statue fountain that no longer flows, the other a bare and thwarted hillside of dry dirt ready to flow for the next downpour. Both yards run flat in quarter-acre plots; without two fences and openly connected to my own yard, they would make a grand play area for kids of all ages. Yet we hardly know them, the neighbors. It is as if backyard has come to mean recluse.
It is possible to imagine that the backyard was the impetus for the denigration of community. Before housing developments and pre-dating the suburbs, families sat “out front” on long summer evenings. Whether to cool off, shoot the shit or watch passersby do their thing, people congregated on the stoops and steps of American homes. Now we isolate ourselves, as if reaching out were inconvenient, as if making friends were a chore. It’s funny that I invite friends from two boroughs over to have a cook-out in the yard behind my house, yet do not really know the people who live right next door to my home.
This yard that I have watched and studied will be a gathering place for dinners and card games and the occasional whiskey and cola, as well as swimming in a few months (it’s a cheap pool that won’t last ten years – don’t be impressed), but the safety of my neighborhood could be undermined as I avoid meeting new friends, getting to know old neighbors and keeping a watchful eye on all who come and go along my street.
You know what, Back Yard, I think I’ll need to take a rain check on that July visit. I’ll return for October instead, when all my neighbors begin to hibernate. Meanwhile, I’ll be in the front yard if you need me.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Chatham Nature Writing: Final Prompt Journal Post
To Blog, or Not to Blog?
No, really, that is the question.
There is an old saying that suggests that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. If an endeavor, be it building a house, starting a business or loving someone, has any intrinsic value, then it seems obvious that it is worth the time and effort and focus and concentration to complete the initiative effectively; in other words, to do it well.
Writing is no different, but the blog presents some interesting challenges. In the current reality of internet ramblings and social networking, the keeping of a blog doesn’t necessarily mean that something is written well. Anyone with a computer and internet access can put words together to formulate ideas that resemble a blog. The trick is in the credibility. Of course there are writers who possess amazing credibility. Likewise, there are unknown literary hacks who have quite a unique view to share and a lot of good verbal ideas to offer.
So, wherein lies the rub? It’s hidden in the content.
I was hesitant to “blog” at first, not wanting to add my name to a potential list of writers mistaken for social updaters. These are the people who feel it is necessary to tell us what they are doing with their lives as if a blog post is intended to replace a book status that resembles someone else’s face. These include people who spout their political views or religious ideals or music rants or sports opinions, whatever the subject might be, without having any real merit behind their point of view. They share little, express less and offer no insight for a reader to consider. These “writers” scared me away from the blogosphere for a number of years.
Then a trusted friend suggested I might revitalize a column I had written in college under the guise of a blog. The format took some getting used to but now, after a few years into the experiment, I am starting to get it. I understand the blog to be a forum for social commentary or humor, even the occasional rant when necessary. This has brought me no “outrageous fortune,” but it has yielded a few followers who generally like what I have to write.
When I returned to school to study creative writing and enrolled in a Nature Writing class, this blog served as a weekly journal to develop and express issues that are specific to the genre. The experience has been humbling, though hardly baring the whips and scorn of publishing. Nature is all around us, so finding inspiration was not difficult. Gaining a fresh perspective concerning the environment, however, was challenging. And then something happened. As weekly observation and contemplation continued at a concentrated level, perspective slid into focus; aligned with priority, the ability to reflect upon nature and respond accordingly became intensified.
What happened to me can be explained well by a song. I often quote from the rock band Rush because their philosophy has influenced me as an artist. Their lead singer, Geddy Lee, released a solo album with a song that echoes the experience I have had while expanding this blog into a temporary nature journal. The song goes like this:
No, really, that is the question.
There is an old saying that suggests that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. If an endeavor, be it building a house, starting a business or loving someone, has any intrinsic value, then it seems obvious that it is worth the time and effort and focus and concentration to complete the initiative effectively; in other words, to do it well.
Writing is no different, but the blog presents some interesting challenges. In the current reality of internet ramblings and social networking, the keeping of a blog doesn’t necessarily mean that something is written well. Anyone with a computer and internet access can put words together to formulate ideas that resemble a blog. The trick is in the credibility. Of course there are writers who possess amazing credibility. Likewise, there are unknown literary hacks who have quite a unique view to share and a lot of good verbal ideas to offer.
So, wherein lies the rub? It’s hidden in the content.
I was hesitant to “blog” at first, not wanting to add my name to a potential list of writers mistaken for social updaters. These are the people who feel it is necessary to tell us what they are doing with their lives as if a blog post is intended to replace a book status that resembles someone else’s face. These include people who spout their political views or religious ideals or music rants or sports opinions, whatever the subject might be, without having any real merit behind their point of view. They share little, express less and offer no insight for a reader to consider. These “writers” scared me away from the blogosphere for a number of years.
Then a trusted friend suggested I might revitalize a column I had written in college under the guise of a blog. The format took some getting used to but now, after a few years into the experiment, I am starting to get it. I understand the blog to be a forum for social commentary or humor, even the occasional rant when necessary. This has brought me no “outrageous fortune,” but it has yielded a few followers who generally like what I have to write.
When I returned to school to study creative writing and enrolled in a Nature Writing class, this blog served as a weekly journal to develop and express issues that are specific to the genre. The experience has been humbling, though hardly baring the whips and scorn of publishing. Nature is all around us, so finding inspiration was not difficult. Gaining a fresh perspective concerning the environment, however, was challenging. And then something happened. As weekly observation and contemplation continued at a concentrated level, perspective slid into focus; aligned with priority, the ability to reflect upon nature and respond accordingly became intensified.
What happened to me can be explained well by a song. I often quote from the rock band Rush because their philosophy has influenced me as an artist. Their lead singer, Geddy Lee, released a solo album with a song that echoes the experience I have had while expanding this blog into a temporary nature journal. The song goes like this:
“Something you said, it made me step outside the moment;
Eyes pan right and left around my world.
Open yourself up to the possibility,
Aware of some reality outside your world.”
(Geddy Lee, 2000)
I don’t think Geddy was talking about nature, yet his perspective expands into an understanding of how I now perceive the natural world. It has always been my world, as much as it is yours, hers, his or that other guy’s, but I now relate to it on a different plain. It is isn’t spiritual or tree-loving; it’s more of a rhythm with the spinning of the so-called third rock from the sun.
Somewhere in the writing prompts, I was able to step outside of myself and receive ideas and meaning from nature herself; as well, I recognized the possibilities that were presented to me. This is not to say that I was against writing within nature before. I had just never taken the time to really absorb the natural world so that it might inform my writing. I have often written poetry while being outside, which made sense on its own. This journal, however, has been more about finding new things to write about, as well as new ways to concentrate on the observational experience.
To comment further about these ideas might give credence to the genre of the blog, or it might just provide a reason to continue writing about nature. There are many columnists who now write blogs – very good writers writing very good material. The question, then, becomes, are readers reading the good stuff or are they trapped in a world of poor writing that is better left for social chatrooms?
Whether I continue to reflect on nature or add my own humorous rant (which I have been known to attempt), the writing of this blog will reflect heightened patience. When I am in nature I have no concept of time other than our Dear Old Sun. When time is all but removed from experience, one tends to see things with greater clarity. From that clarity I have learned to watch, to listen, to experience nature, and not just the places where I live but rather the entire context of our surroundings.
With a portion of integrity, a good self-editing eye, a reason to write and willingness to try new avenues (or in this case, dirt paths), the writing of any genre – whether it is stage plays or nature blogs – is worth doing well.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Chatham Nature Writing Blog: Prompt Entry #6
Time is a bridge between memories. One day you are walking to a store angry that your mother wanted Diet Pepsi and sent you on the errand. The next – though hardly the next because some 10,950 days have elapsed – you are a dad walking to the same store with your son to buy yet another Diet Pepsi so you can play with the silly stocking stuffer he gave you at Christmas. And in a single moment you realize that the passage of time is about letting go and a little bit of healing.
There is a slight track of land in our neighborhood that reminds me of everything I despised and worried about as a child. The street I walked then and now is called Prospect, a road that fronts the parking lot to a 7-11 convenience store. The lot and the road merge at a sloping angle through a tiny yard. For years it had been common for kids to cut the corner and make our own footpath along a beaten trail up the slope and into the parking lot. We didn't have the patience (or respect) to walk to the concrete and take a right angle as drivers do. The path urged into existence by short-cut teens was no more than fifty feet long and all of three feet wide, but it was trampled down to a dirt path like you might see on a hiking trail. It was a well-trodden path. It is now only a trace of its former self. The ridge is there but grass has grown in; it looks like a scar healed over.
The gift my son gave me is a tube designed to make a geyser from Mentos candy when dropped in diet soda. You attach the tube to a full bottle of pop laced with phenylalanine, drop the chewy treats down the tube, release the safety string so the candies plummet into the soda, and then watch a geyser of foam explode through the opening. It actually works! After a few seconds, the brown froth rises and erupts through the tube to shoot a sprout into the air almost two feet high. It is a complete waste of terrible soda and good candy, but the smile on Brian’s face is worth the three dollars we spent. Cost is nothing compared to a Christmas promise fulfilled. I had told him we would test the toy come spring time.
Years ago, I felt pressure boiling under my tension as I walked to the store, angry and still very confused about why my parents had divorced. I hadn't learned yet how to place blame or come to terms with problems of the adult world. When my mom asked me to walk to 7-11 to buy her a two-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi, I went but I was furious. I huffed and steamed the whole way there, grunting underbreath for the equivalent of four city blocks. The errand, it seemed to me, was no different than fetching my father's beer, the same cans of alcohol I was told had ruined my family.
I eventually moved away and then a decade later returned to that same neighborhood as an adult – long story short, that sort of thing – in order to raise my own family. I live two streets from where I spent my formative years and the 7-11 is still there. It has changed as has the neighborhood, but only in terms of who works there and who lives where, and the absence of busses that used to slide through the streets all day and all night.
I had first moved into the neighborhood as a ten-year-old boy; a striking irony now that Brian is also ten. As Brian and I walked to the store on a recent spring evening warm enough to make me wish I had worn shorts, I remembered that log-ago Diet Pepsi and realized how easy my life has been. I never witnessed a drive-by shooting, nor the atrocities that people from other countries have suffered. The scars of social and political injustice mark my neighbors as much as my emotional wounds have healed. After all, it was just a soft drink my mom wanted. But people have fled Burma and Serbia and Yugoslavia and Bosnia to find a better life, here, in a place I have long called home. The houses remain, though the addresses receive mail of different last names, some I cannot pronounce.
Where my friends and I used to traipse toward the store and stomp the land into a finely packed trail there now grows rejuvenated grass. It is as if scars from our minor disrespect have grown over with the fresh seeds of better-mannered kids. Or, do kids even walk to the store anymore? We ran up that slope in races! We shot our bikes toward the hill with no effort – we were ten, fifteen, and soon we drove there anyway. Maybe today's kids get dropped off to get their moms' Diet Pepsi. "Be back in an hour," a parent waves as they retreat in the family SUV or minivan. This generation is being raised by new absenteeism. Not my kids.
Our walk that evening was simple, the time-honored truth of quality over quantity. Brian asked about pirates of the high seas and whether a stick he had found could defend him against a swashbuckler with a sword. He wondered whether The Hulk could lift that car, that car, that one? “What about that truck?” he asked as we avoided the trail to enter the store. He proposed that maybe I was stronger than Hulk. It depends, but it’s doubtful, I thought. Can the Hulk heal scars as they grow invisible year after year?
There is a slight track of land in our neighborhood that reminds me of everything I despised and worried about as a child. The street I walked then and now is called Prospect, a road that fronts the parking lot to a 7-11 convenience store. The lot and the road merge at a sloping angle through a tiny yard. For years it had been common for kids to cut the corner and make our own footpath along a beaten trail up the slope and into the parking lot. We didn't have the patience (or respect) to walk to the concrete and take a right angle as drivers do. The path urged into existence by short-cut teens was no more than fifty feet long and all of three feet wide, but it was trampled down to a dirt path like you might see on a hiking trail. It was a well-trodden path. It is now only a trace of its former self. The ridge is there but grass has grown in; it looks like a scar healed over.
The gift my son gave me is a tube designed to make a geyser from Mentos candy when dropped in diet soda. You attach the tube to a full bottle of pop laced with phenylalanine, drop the chewy treats down the tube, release the safety string so the candies plummet into the soda, and then watch a geyser of foam explode through the opening. It actually works! After a few seconds, the brown froth rises and erupts through the tube to shoot a sprout into the air almost two feet high. It is a complete waste of terrible soda and good candy, but the smile on Brian’s face is worth the three dollars we spent. Cost is nothing compared to a Christmas promise fulfilled. I had told him we would test the toy come spring time.
Years ago, I felt pressure boiling under my tension as I walked to the store, angry and still very confused about why my parents had divorced. I hadn't learned yet how to place blame or come to terms with problems of the adult world. When my mom asked me to walk to 7-11 to buy her a two-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi, I went but I was furious. I huffed and steamed the whole way there, grunting underbreath for the equivalent of four city blocks. The errand, it seemed to me, was no different than fetching my father's beer, the same cans of alcohol I was told had ruined my family.
I eventually moved away and then a decade later returned to that same neighborhood as an adult – long story short, that sort of thing – in order to raise my own family. I live two streets from where I spent my formative years and the 7-11 is still there. It has changed as has the neighborhood, but only in terms of who works there and who lives where, and the absence of busses that used to slide through the streets all day and all night.
I had first moved into the neighborhood as a ten-year-old boy; a striking irony now that Brian is also ten. As Brian and I walked to the store on a recent spring evening warm enough to make me wish I had worn shorts, I remembered that log-ago Diet Pepsi and realized how easy my life has been. I never witnessed a drive-by shooting, nor the atrocities that people from other countries have suffered. The scars of social and political injustice mark my neighbors as much as my emotional wounds have healed. After all, it was just a soft drink my mom wanted. But people have fled Burma and Serbia and Yugoslavia and Bosnia to find a better life, here, in a place I have long called home. The houses remain, though the addresses receive mail of different last names, some I cannot pronounce.
Where my friends and I used to traipse toward the store and stomp the land into a finely packed trail there now grows rejuvenated grass. It is as if scars from our minor disrespect have grown over with the fresh seeds of better-mannered kids. Or, do kids even walk to the store anymore? We ran up that slope in races! We shot our bikes toward the hill with no effort – we were ten, fifteen, and soon we drove there anyway. Maybe today's kids get dropped off to get their moms' Diet Pepsi. "Be back in an hour," a parent waves as they retreat in the family SUV or minivan. This generation is being raised by new absenteeism. Not my kids.
Our walk that evening was simple, the time-honored truth of quality over quantity. Brian asked about pirates of the high seas and whether a stick he had found could defend him against a swashbuckler with a sword. He wondered whether The Hulk could lift that car, that car, that one? “What about that truck?” he asked as we avoided the trail to enter the store. He proposed that maybe I was stronger than Hulk. It depends, but it’s doubtful, I thought. Can the Hulk heal scars as they grow invisible year after year?
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Chatham Nature Writing Blog: Place Entry #6
In like a Lion, out like a Lamb. Equinox. April Fool’s Day. Easter. March. April. May. The words remind me of proper nouns, as if Spring holds a clarity unlike any other season. It is a time of Cliché, of Rebirth, of New Beginnings, even of Baseball. The Earth, I have long argued, is the ultimate proper noun. Perhaps in our language we should label it EARTH. Without Earth, where would we be? That type of rhetoric might lead to absurdist humor. We’d be nowhere, out in space, among the abyss. We wouldn’t be of course, but that is a topic for existentialists to consider on other platforms. I can only be in my own existence, and I have a messy yard to drain, grass to cut (if it dries), and the ever-pleasant task of cleaning up after the dogs.
My yard upon this Earth curls under an overcast day as if the clouds were at play with a saucy mixture from a cake recipe. The surface water swill from last night’s storm has flooded the yard again; flood being a relative term. Steps are sloshed and shoes muddied. There will be no playing for children here today. Somewhere, terror floods fields and farms, but that is in another nation whose capitalization I am not concerned with. Today, I only worry about a plot of land on Beryl Drive owned by the Kirks. A slight breeze slings the fresh-top grass blades in pulsating dance steps that swing against the wishes of the sunblock-generation-kids in my yard.
They want so badly to play. My youngest tries cartwheel kicks over by one dry patch as she continues to learn gymnastics. The older two chase and dart after each other in a game of tag, the rules not clear to me. I survey the yard not as an observer today, but rather as a dad who longs for these longer moments. A seasonal dip in the temperature has returned things to normal. The air hovers around forty and light jackets make our play cumbersome, yet we invent a game of almost-tennis over the failed ice rink. At least those borders were good for something! I win the first two matches and then lose three straight. Might that forecast another losing season for my beloved baseball Pirates? I hope not, hope to the point that Hope itself should also be a proper noun. Hope may be a thing, but it is a thing of beauty. So many other things of beauty get the shift key treatment when one is typing: Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, why not Hope?
My yard is not as wide as Arizona’s hole nor as damp as our natural border with Canada, yet it falls on this dad’s shoulders to maintain a certain suburban image and borough ordinance concerning yardwork. I hate yardwork, Hate it with a capital H. And what about Dad? What work and trouble with the yard will I encounter? The kids don’t seem to care that the grass is too high. It is common for people to refer to their own father as Dad, but to the general principle of parenting as the guy known as dad. It is a fair comparison. But what if Dad came to represent a status in our society? What if deadbeat dad deserves lower case and an honorable dude earned his Dad spelling? What if Father meant that this Dad is further removed from the dad who lives farther away and only calls on Father’s Day? Perhaps we could rid the world of fatherless homes if we gave merit to a Dad and a Father whose rank was worthy of such address.
But the yard will soon needed tended to, and I also happen to be lousy at yardwork. In that realm I would earn a D-minus if grades were being handed out; or worse, an F. My landscaping skills look as if a third grader had drawn them up in art class and magically transplanted the slanted and mismatched picture onto my property. I am no Dad of Grass-cutting either. Then again, I prefer less curb appeal and more memories. Yes, I declare that a good back yard ought to be one smudged with dandelions and divots where wrestled-down knees meet their match, spots where Tide earns its keep. I decree a rally cry for Better Dads and Who Cares Yards!
Oh well, tis time to play. My kids want to get out on the yard and really Play. There is so much for them to experience – Mud, Laughter, Dirt, Breath, Smiles – all as they traipse upon this Earth.
My yard upon this Earth curls under an overcast day as if the clouds were at play with a saucy mixture from a cake recipe. The surface water swill from last night’s storm has flooded the yard again; flood being a relative term. Steps are sloshed and shoes muddied. There will be no playing for children here today. Somewhere, terror floods fields and farms, but that is in another nation whose capitalization I am not concerned with. Today, I only worry about a plot of land on Beryl Drive owned by the Kirks. A slight breeze slings the fresh-top grass blades in pulsating dance steps that swing against the wishes of the sunblock-generation-kids in my yard.
They want so badly to play. My youngest tries cartwheel kicks over by one dry patch as she continues to learn gymnastics. The older two chase and dart after each other in a game of tag, the rules not clear to me. I survey the yard not as an observer today, but rather as a dad who longs for these longer moments. A seasonal dip in the temperature has returned things to normal. The air hovers around forty and light jackets make our play cumbersome, yet we invent a game of almost-tennis over the failed ice rink. At least those borders were good for something! I win the first two matches and then lose three straight. Might that forecast another losing season for my beloved baseball Pirates? I hope not, hope to the point that Hope itself should also be a proper noun. Hope may be a thing, but it is a thing of beauty. So many other things of beauty get the shift key treatment when one is typing: Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, why not Hope?
My yard is not as wide as Arizona’s hole nor as damp as our natural border with Canada, yet it falls on this dad’s shoulders to maintain a certain suburban image and borough ordinance concerning yardwork. I hate yardwork, Hate it with a capital H. And what about Dad? What work and trouble with the yard will I encounter? The kids don’t seem to care that the grass is too high. It is common for people to refer to their own father as Dad, but to the general principle of parenting as the guy known as dad. It is a fair comparison. But what if Dad came to represent a status in our society? What if deadbeat dad deserves lower case and an honorable dude earned his Dad spelling? What if Father meant that this Dad is further removed from the dad who lives farther away and only calls on Father’s Day? Perhaps we could rid the world of fatherless homes if we gave merit to a Dad and a Father whose rank was worthy of such address.
But the yard will soon needed tended to, and I also happen to be lousy at yardwork. In that realm I would earn a D-minus if grades were being handed out; or worse, an F. My landscaping skills look as if a third grader had drawn them up in art class and magically transplanted the slanted and mismatched picture onto my property. I am no Dad of Grass-cutting either. Then again, I prefer less curb appeal and more memories. Yes, I declare that a good back yard ought to be one smudged with dandelions and divots where wrestled-down knees meet their match, spots where Tide earns its keep. I decree a rally cry for Better Dads and Who Cares Yards!
Oh well, tis time to play. My kids want to get out on the yard and really Play. There is so much for them to experience – Mud, Laughter, Dirt, Breath, Smiles – all as they traipse upon this Earth.
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