Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Face First



As if we hadn’t been warned. As if we couldn’t just feel the party winding down. As if we couldn’t have guessed what a fifty degree drop in temperature might mean, still we got caught wearing thin outerwear, and large numbers of us crashed our cars on black ice coming home from work. All of us plunging face-first into winter.

Like most mornings of big change, this one was indistinct - without markers or warnings that most of us could read. I sat jacket-less on my second floor porch, letting the sun beat down on my head, hoping to coax my brain into the demands of day. I looked north, across a row of orderly rooftops, beyond the middle school parking lot, past the Tires Plus and the Home Depot, way up to the horizon, where a solid wall of arctic clouds had assembled itself on the northern plains. The top side of the cloud bank looked benign, if not festive, with whisps of white tossed up against bright blue. But the side facing us, the advancing front, was blurry gray and troubled. I guessed this was the thing the late night weather lady had been hyping for days. I pictured her in a little inset box in my sky, urgent red dress and printed scarves, gesturing broadly with little fingertip flourishes at the end of each sweep, like serifs.

Within the hour trash cans began tumbling up and down the alley. Lawn furniture slammed into privacy fences and cushions were sent flying into neighbor’s yards. The wind chimes on my front porch thrashed against the side of the house so vigorously that by the time I went out to investigate they had already chipped dozens of little gouges out of the siding. So winter is here, I thought.

Like anyone caught unprepared, my first responses were haphazard. I made a quick inventory of the garden plants still producing fruit. A handful of too-slow tomatoes, some pinkish raspberries, and a ground-cherry bush. Each had failed to get the memo that summer was over. I deemed each plant healthy enough to protect, and suddenly found myself spreading plastic sheeting over them, complicit in their folly, as if the sustained sub-freezing temperatures could be endured. As if the door to our protracted Indian summer could swing open again in a few days.

The weather lady insists we will lose another twenty degrees by tomorrow night. “A 70 degree drop in 72 hours,” she gleefully proclaims. And just like that my sudden reality-check goes completely surreal, so I poke around for some corroborating perspective. An App I use for mountaineering informs me that the current temperature on top of 14,443’ Mount Elbert, Colorado’s highest peak, is several degrees warmer than Denver, where I live. Then I check in on Barrow, Alaska, the northern-most city in America, on the shores of the Arctic ocean. Their current temperature is also several degrees warmer than where I live. So that pretty much settles it. Time to “winterize.”

The seasonal adjustments we are suddenly forced to make seem ill-timed and ugly, but all of that work is mundane and soon forgotten. We’ll move the long-johns up into the underwear drawer. The tire-pressure warning light will come on in our cars. We’ll change the furnace filter. None of these things are worth mentioning, save that they occasion the ancient and natural inward-turning of the human psyche. We are bio-chemical creatures, after all, mammals that respond physically and emotionally to the shorter days. We are driven indoors where we must create our own warmth. We invent rituals to commemorate our harvests, these passages from light to dark. Whether it’s Christmas or Festivus or just a Black Friday spending splurge, we seek - in terms both sacred and profane - to cope with the demands of a season of darkness.

The rose blooming by my front steps seems perfectly untouched by the deep freeze. I take my glove off to touch the flower, expecting that velvety, slightly waxy feel of the petals. Instead the flower breaks off and disassembles as it falls. The petals sound like potato chips tumbling down through the branches.

The conceit bubbling up in this meditation is that, at least here in Colorado, the sun is always about to pop out. Even after we dive down to a new record low temperature tomorrow night, the clouds will lift and reveal enough snow on the peaks to begin fueling the endless sporty diversions we need to get through our comparatively sunny winter. That’s just how it’ll be. It’s not that the winters here are easy, but they are maybe a little more purposeful - or we make them so, at least. As for me, those frozen flower petals are already in my freezer, like the others I picked over the summer. I’ll use them in a spiced wine I’ll be starting any day. Should be drinkable by next summer. In this way I can round off the corners between the seasons, carrying the fruits and labor of one season into the next, trying as I do every year, to make winter a useful time. To swallow it, rather than let it swallow me.


Friday, September 12, 2014

Limping Home


I wasn’t expecting the blur of fur and bared teeth that flashed past the corner of my eye.
I wasn’t expecting to be struggling in the wet grass to wedge myself between an aggressive hundred pound Malamute and the dog it had attacked - my dog, Roscoe. I knew about my neighbor’s dog. Sweet as sugar to humans, but a holy terror to other dogs, which is why she’s normally kept indoors or behind a 6 foot fence. Normally. Today was different. Someone left the door ajar and the Malamute seized her chance to put an end to my dog once and for all.

I’d seen this dog attack another dog, unprovoked, and knew her to be ferocious. Before I could think to react, Roscoe was pinned by his neck on the ground and I could sense the neighbor dog meant to kill him. What happened next was all gnashing and squealing and fur flying and me somehow in the middle of it with my hands around the Malamute’s neck. I squeezed hard. Harder. God damn you, God damn you! was all I could think to say as the dog finally capitulated and Roscoe limped off. A trail of blood marked his path up the sidewalk to a hedge near our house where he disappeared from view.

The sun was too bright. My head began to pound as I lay in the soggy lawn of our courtyard, still holding the Malamute by his mane. The dog’s owner, Sarah was suddenly standing over me frantically wondering how to help. She was dressed for work and looked lovely, completely at odds with the setting. I relinquished her marauding pet and she tugged it back into her yard. A jittery electric halo danced around them - the kind I see just before getting a full-on migraine. Really? I thought, This has to happen now? And why not, nothing was making any sense. One moment I’m walking my dogs and the next I’m laying on the ground with a torn shirt, bite marks on my arms, and a seriously injured dog bleeding under a bush. Why not top the whole event off with a migraine?

Roscoe looked warily out from his leafy refuge. He licked his lips and flattened his ears back as if he’d done something wrong, as if he had disappointed me. Most of the blood that I could see was oozing from puncture wounds in his left foot. He’s a pretty furry guy, and I wasn’t confident that my quick once-over had cataloged all his wounds, so I coaxed him into the car and headed to our vet. Halfway there, I realized I hadn’t called to let them know we were coming. At a traffic light I pulled up the Urban Vet Care number on my phone. My thumb shook wildly as I pressed the call button. I hadn’t yet seriously regarded the puncture wounds I’d taken in my right bicep. The rip in my shirt sleeve made a little window where I could peek at the damage. It was dark purple and brown, and it stung the way a cut does when it’s really dirty. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a tetanus shot.

When the pleasant voice on the phone asked how she could help me, I informed her that I was bringing an injured dog. This was not a request, it was a statement of fact. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes, I said. You can get away with this sort of behavior when you’ve spent over 8K in vet bills within a single year. Two knee-rebuilds on one dog, a tumor removal from a second dog, and dental surgery for a cat will grant you this sort of access if you don't abuse it. The pleasant voice cleared her throat and said, Yes mister Howell, we’ll see you in fifteen minutes.

Roscoe was whisked away by a familiar vet tech for an initial assessment of his injuries. I brushed off the grass still clinging to my wet knees and puzzled about the Malamute. I remembered screaming Why are you doing this? What’s wrong with you? as if it could answer in a way that I would understand. But those weren't real questions anyway - just padding in between my curses. Still, I'd like to know how a pet can suddenly become so profoundly unhinged. It’s hard to imagine how far off the mark we can be in understanding our closest non-human companions. Sure, we know not to anthropomorphize, and we’re reluctantly aware of the more disagreeable aspects of the Circle of Life, like animals disemboweling each other for sustenance. But it’s extra troubling when one neighbor’s dog turns murderous against another, because we assume that these creatures share a rudimentary behavioral code with us. They are pack animals, after all. They know social structure and obligation. We’ve “trained” our dogs to obey. How can we get them so wrong? Likewise, how have we managed to map our own genome and even glimpsed the edges of the universe without turning that same rigorous wonder upon our oldest evolutionary partners? After thirty thousand years of comradeship you'd think we'd have more to show for our  efforts than "sit, stay, rollover" and "shake."

Roscoe came home seven hours later, sedated, with big patches of fur shaved off to expose the multiple wounds I suspected were hiding under his thick coat. There was a gash above his right ear, a bite mark to the skull just behind his left eye, and a ragged gouge on his butt. The most serious damage was the bite to his left rear foot, which was torn open with an exposed tendon. Adding insult to injury, a tooth had come loose in the struggle and needed extraction. Roscoe looked like hell. It had been clear to me, in the moment, that the neighbor dog intended to kill him. The evidence now seemed to agree. The attack lasted no more than twenty seconds before I got them apart. I shiver to think what a few more seconds may have cost my dog.





If you’ve got a pet nearby, and it’s not sound asleep, do this quick experiment. Go look it in the eyes. What’s the very first thing you notice? A welcoming recognition. Then maybe a quickening of curiosity. Just by doing this you’ve started a little trans-species conversation. Each of you must interpret the others reactions. Your pet’s look may say, What do you want from me? What are we going to do? It’s up to you how you answer, but don’t suppose this conversation is driven by instinct or intuition alone. Your pet is working hard to understand you. The average dog can understand 165 words. How many words a cat can learn is more of a mystery. Cats don’t test well (which seems to suit their purposes). Even without words, we animals study each other for intent, and build bridges across the formidable barriers between our species. Even my dogs do this with the cat. The fact that these encounters result not just in cooperation but affection, loyalty and even empathy, is one of nature’s divine miracles, easy to overlook because it is so small and commonplace.

There are times - particularly when my dogs and I are doing the same activity, like playing or running or relaxing on the floor - when I can look in their eyes and suppose I know just what they are thinking. Other times those same eyes surrender no clues. Our animals may have joined us around the campfire, so to speak, but their home is deep, deep in the forest. The domesticated pet straddles two worlds. That’s easy to forget with an animal curled beside you. Our pets stumble awkwardly between the social geographies of the animal kingdom and the hyper-demanding structures of human civilization. It’s no wonder that once in a while a dog gets its signals crossed.

I walked the vet's bill over to Sarah’s house. She was expecting it. Her ten year old daughter opened the door, accompanied by the Malamute. The dog was easily twice the girl’s mass, but she had no trouble controlling it. The girl walked the paperwork into the kitchen, leaving me briefly in the entryway with the dog, who began compulsively licking my hands and nuzzling against me. I knew better than to suppose this submissive display was some sort of doggy apology, but clearly the dog wanted my approval. I relented. I felt all through her fur but could find no wounds. It seemed Roscoe hadn’t gotten in a single lick. It was hard to imagine only hours ago I had my hands around this dog’s neck, squeezing with all my might. I would have killed you, I said quietly.

The girl returned just then. I’m sorry my dog is so stupid. My mom is going to get her more behavior training, She said. Yes, "more" would be good, I said.

Later, on our truncated limp around the neighborhood, Roscoe insisted on passing the neighbor’s house by veering way out in the street instead of sticking to the sidewalk. I indulged him. We’d have time to work on being brave in days to come. I thought back to the time when Roscoe alerted me to a rattlesnake coiled ahead of us on a trail we were hiking. He froze with alarm and curiosity as we waited for the snake to move off into the brush. I'm sure he doesn't think he saved my life, but I do. Likewise, I have no idea whether he feels like I averted his demise today. He does not appear to be haunted by constant self-reflection. It's of no concern to him. The obligation we have to each other doesn't have to be discussed or analyzed. Looking out for each other isn't just part of the deal, it IS the deal. I reached down to pet him, my hand zig-zagging between the wounds on his head, like a car weaving cautiously through a construction zone. We’ll get through this together, buddy, I said, It's what we do.

Friday, June 27, 2014

A hike on the Divide (Confessions from an over-curated life)

It's all about the angle. This isn't as dicey as it looks.
Even my dogs made it to the summit of Mount Yale.

I am not the alpinist I want you to think I am. I am not as well-traveled, adventurous, or skilled in the arts of outdoorsmanship as I seem either. I never made eagle scout, and don’t know how to snare, skin, or roast a rabbit over an open fire. If you dropped me off in the woods with nothing but a knife I would pass out within a few hours from inability to maintain proper blood sugar levels. Helicopters would be looking for me in the morning.


Uncompahgre Peak, 14,321' Another walk-up with
a non-technical approach. Also done with dogs.
Don’t get me wrong, I know a thing or two about staying out of trouble in the wild. I can use a map and compass when the trails give out. I watch the clouds on the horizon. I bring more food and water than I think I’ll need. I put my phone in Airplane mode so it doesn’t roam the battery to death looking for a signal. I can start a fire without matches (by using a lighter). But none of this amounts to specialized knowledge. I am, by any definition, an amateur. An ardent and experienced one, but an amateur nonetheless. The perpetual stream of photos I post on Facebook of me on mountain tops and in other carefully cropped natural wonders results from a concerted effort to craft an image of myself that is more outdoorsy than I can ever live up to. I admit this without shame since I’m in such excellent company when it comes to the over-curated self-image. Like most everyone on social media, I am simply letting you know what what my passions are, and I’m trying to persuade you to share them. Also I’d happy if you thought I was just a tiny bit badass.

The relentless yet casual-seeming effort we put into the creation and maintenance of our virtual personas is something most folks don’t want to admit doing, yet we can all spot the behavior among our friends. Sure, not everyone bothers to be that fussy with their online appearance, and some are altogether careless about what they post, but even that becomes an expression of how they want to be perceived. Most of us seem happy with a slightly hyperbolic version of ourselves where we are more mindful or funny or politically engaged or skilled at spontaneously whipping up an amazing-looking meal from food we just happened to grow in our organic gardens. All of our passions and proclivities are in high relief, enthusiastically courting affirmation. We don’t just love science anymore, we F***ing Love Science.

All of this is good fun, but it’s helpful to recognize the gap between our constructed selves and the raw, un-enhanced, unplanned and often uninteresting version that is closer to who we likely are. Who hasn’t had the unexpected letdown of bumping into a good Facebook friend in the grocery store only to have an awkward conversation that made you question how well you really know each other. “Well, see you on Facebook,” we’d say in parting. And truly, we’ll be relieved to get back into that formatted social setting where the choreography of interaction is more familiar and witty.

Similarly, though we ought to know ourselves better, the gap between our public and private selves can be disappointingly wide. This morning I took a hike up in the mountains, and found myself spending much of the time in that gap.



When I hike alone I find the barrier between my thought-life and the world outside me to be surprisingly permeable. Those fancy Harvard-educated transcendentalist poets of the nineteenth century had a lot to say about the merging of the self with the natural world. Guys like Emerson and Thoreau spent a lot of time wandering around the New England countryside by themselves trying to define an authentic spirituality that was rooted in both nature and human individuality. Their efforts were in stark reaction to the industrial revolution and the turmoil it caused as American society reorganized itself around practices of efficiency, top-down organizational structure, mass production, and a life indoors. In that ethos, nature was primarily regarded as a resource to be exploited without regulation. Perhaps the words of those writers wouldn’t seem so romantic and effete today if we weren’t still largely under the spell of growth and efficiency as it was defined two hundred years ago. Nevertheless, even today, time spent utterly alone in nature - particularly on top of a mountain - will open you up to ideas of about “the sublime” whether you’re much into the topic or not. It just happens. And even if you aren’t exactly spiritual, you may find yourself having a numinous experience. If so, just go with it. You can decide what you believe about it later. 

Those are the kind of things I think about when I’m alone in nature. Sometimes. But this morning as I ascended the trail to the Continental Divide above Berthoud Pass in Colorado, I was really thinking about my body and how much it hurt. The trail is rated “easy,” but in Colorado that just means you don’t have to use your hands to help you climb. As the trees gave way to tundra, I could really feel the effects of my relative un-fitness, and the unwelcome heft of my over-wintered frame. I took a quick inventory of the specialized aches and pains my middle-aged anatomy had accumulated. Nothing new to speak of, thankfully. The sharp tightness in my lungs was because I wasn’t yet accustomed to the thin air. I would get there, as I had done in past seasons, but not on the first day. I reminded myself that this was a training hike, and that meant a little discomfort. But the secret pleasure of this particular workout, I knew from past visits, is that after about an hour of steady ascent you top out on the Divide and for hundreds of miles to the north and south it’s pure Sound of Music heavenliness, and relatively easy going. At that point I can forget about my body for a little while.



The final pitch just below the Divide is a steep one. The trail zigizags sharply up the last couple hundred vertical feet through blankets of tiny arctic wildflowers. On the trail above me I heard voices and looked up in time to see two guys and a dog disappear onto the ridge. Later, I met up with them sheltered on the lee side of a rock outcropping enjoying a fairly elaborate meal. They had real home-cooked breakfast items spread out in front of them in various Tupperware and tinfoil arrangements and were as relaxed as anyone I’ve ever seen on top of a mountain. I wasn’t completely surprised by the food. I’d seen it before. I once climbed a fourteener with a friend who pulled half a rotisserie chicken from her backpack when we reached the peak. Why make yourself miserable with energy bars and trail mix? If you’re going to do all that work to get to the summit, you might as well reward yourself right then and there.

Two guys and a dog
The guys had their mouths full but they waved me over. We greeted one another with the enthusiastic and congratulatory pleasantries that strangers exchange when their paths converge on top of the world. This trail sees dozens of hikers on any summer Sunday, but right now we were the only three souls for thousands of vertical feet and dozens of miles in any direction - a heady realization we were happy to relish. After a few moments I left them to their peace and pressed on toward a high saddle about a mile to the south where I figured I’d have a solo brunch of my own.

A little ways from the spot I’d chosen to take a break, I began to feel light-headed and depleted of energy. These are generally not good signs, especially at altitude, so I quickly ducked down off the ridge to get out of the wind and set to work getting my body chemistry back on track. I found myself spreading out my remaining food like those guys had done, but mine didn’t look like a sumptuous brunch. Just a bag of jerky, a little box of chocolate milk, an individually wrapped string cheese, and a small bag of dry dogfood left over from a hike I did last week - with dogs. I shifted some rocks to get more comfortable and poked a straw into my milk box.  I stretched my legs out onto the edge of an immense snow cornice still clinging to the lip of an ancient glacial cirque. The view before me was mind-bendingly beautiful. If I leaned way out I could see an arrangement of little ponds hundreds of feet below where the melt-water collected. A blanket of mixed conifers fanned out below the ponds and darkened the valley beyond. In the distance I could see a hairpin turn on the highway I came up, a bright ribbon of asphalt cleaving open the wilderness. I felt lucky. It took some effort, but I was doing something I love.

Brunch with a view
I’ve always been suspicious of the “Do What You Love” (DWYL) messages that seem to cycle through social media every couple of weeks in the form of inspirational jpgs. The sentiment often masks elitist assumptions about access and privilege. If we all get to do what we love, who will clean the toilets? Shouldn’t there be corresponding value for the jobs that are necessary but ugly, boring or dangerous? Furthermore, I feel like DWYL needs a big fat asterisk that adds the clause “but ONLY do it because you love it, not because you expect it to earn you a decent living, since it probably won’t.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for combining your passion and your career, but you better have a solid plan B for when becoming the next Steve Jobs doesn’t work out. DWYL are great words to live by if you can manage to de-couple them from a personalized capitalist agenda. Using financial success to validate effort spent on one’s passion is a precarious and misleading system of reward. Lean on your passion too hard for financial gain and it may collapse under the weight of your expectations, and become just another unlovable thing in your life.

I sat there for a while and let the nutrients work their way into my blood and soak into my muscles. My goal, Stanley Mountain, was about a half hour further to the south. I still had time to “bag” it before I’d need to head back to treeline and beat the afternoon storms. But hadn’t I changed my goal twice already on this hike? At first I told myself I’d be happy to reach the Divide. When that proved easier than expected I chose this group of rocks. And now I was considering Stanley? What narrative was I trying to create and for whom? No one was here. No one knew I was even doing this. I already had all the photos I’d need to make a satisfactory status update on Facebook. I thought about the breakfast the two strangers were enjoying a ways back. Wasn’t that a solidly respectable goal? I decided it would be mine as well, and I used my remaining time to enjoy my uninspiring food as best I could, and just sit there and practice being still and quiet.

A lot of folks are happy to repeat the popular mantra “The journey is the destination” as some sort of affirmation about how they want to live. Lying back on top of that cliff I was convinced that for me, at that moment, I would benefit more from staying put than either journey or destination could offer. So I did. And as usually happens under such conditions, I was overcome with awe at my surroundings and my good fortune to be there. Every time I try to describe this effect I sound like a like a pot head. I used to say it felt like the top of my skull had come unhinged and raw beauty was being poured directly onto my brain, or like my head was a funnel open to the sky and some sort of divine blessing was flowing down into me. Flaky, like I said, but plenty of better writers than me have tried to describe it, only to veer off into some idiosyncratic mysticism of their own creation. What I know for sure is that access to this experience is rooted in the letting go of ego (easier to do when you are completely alone) and being receptive to a beauty so present it seems to almost have dimension and mass. Yet in much the same way that smoke or clouds can imitate solid shapes, it is fleeting and incomprehensible. I can never decide whether this experience is fundamentally aesthetic or spiritual or just some sort of physical rush from all the negative ions up there. There’s no reason to think it isn’t all three, wrapped up together like some sort of gift package, because more than anything it feels like a gift. Whatever it is, I’m always thankful for it and vow to try and bring a remnant of it back with me, somehow.

Back down at the parking lot, I sat in my car with the doors open and checked the photos on my smart phone. The selfies all sucked, as usual, but I had a handful of interesting shots that hinted at the experiences I had up on the roof of America. Just then my phone’s battery ran out and the screen went black. Whatever magic was trapped in my camera’s memory, if any, would have to wait until I got home to recover it. I sat there for a minute considering whether there was maybe a story I could fashion from my day. Probably not. Nothing actually happened, except for some guys eating eggs and waffles up on the Divide. Yet just that act of wondering triggered a process, both creative and destructive, as I set to work trimming away non-essential details from the narrative framework of my day. Maybe there was something there, maybe not. Already I was editing my own memory. This is just how it goes if you want stories.

I started the car and coasted most of the 78 miles back to my home, back to the part of my day that I traded in return for a little DWYL time. From here on out the afternoon would be ordinary, un-photogenic and even a little boring. I was perfectly okay with that. I had done something I loved and asked nothing more from it. For the time being at least, there was nothing more to want, except maybe to hear that pleasant little Facebook chime when people comment on my photos. There’s always that to look forward to.

Stanley Mountain, 12,521'

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Natural Selection


The Judgement of Paris, Anton Raphael Mengs

“Please make sure to mute your phones, or turn them off altogether. They can be incredibly distracting to the presenters.”

We shouldn’t have needed to be reminded of this. We were all adults. All professionals. I looked around the conference room as the others fumbled their devices into the mute mode. Most of us positioned our phones close by, angled in such a way that we could steal little glances at them, to monitor the flow of "messaging” that demands our near-constant attention - none of it remotely related to the reason we were gathered together in this all-purpose meeting room.

So here we were finally, landscape architects, park planners, local government representatives, arts organizers and administrators, a handful of designated citizen-advisors, and me, the one artist on the panel. We were assembled for the purpose of reviewing final proposals for a public art installation in one of Denver’s neighborhood parks. This was the culmination of a five month selection process. By the end our meeting we would recommend one of three artist-finalists for a project that boasted a budget well into the six figures. It was heady business, at least for me, and I was thrilled to be on this selection committee. When I was asked to join this panel, I was given a packet detailing the qualifying guidelines for the various positions. Among other things, the description for “Artist” said the panelist should have strong peer-recognition. I know it’s a cheap thrill to let yourself feel like a so-and-so over something like this, but given that the practice of being an artist involves long hermetic stretches of self-doubt and no feedback whatsoever, to suddenly have a piece of paper in front of you that confirms your status among peers, well, it felt good. It just did.

A few minutes into one of the presentations my iPhone screen blinked on and I squinted down at it without moving my head, so as not to distract the speaker. I read the first line of an incoming email that began, “Dear applicant, we regret to inform you that your artwork was not chosen…” The message was from an art publication I’ve been submitting to every year for the past seven years. I’ve never gotten in. Each year the juror changes, as does the work I submit, yet after seven tries I still can’t seem to match my work to the juror. I have no idea how close I’ve come, whether I’ve been eliminated in the first round by a grad school intern, or whether some fancy curator agonized over my exclusion in the final moments. The process of jurying is necessarily opaque.

I reached out and powered off my screen. Prickly heat ran up the back of my neck as I felt a quick flush of humiliation. A dark pit opened up and beckoned me inside, but I’ve had plenty of practice avoiding that pit, so I took three deep breaths and returned my attention to the meeting. Total elapsed time of my crushing “fail” was about 45 seconds. I doubt anyone noticed my mini-crisis. Other rejections have hurt more. This one I’m getting used to.

The presenter in front of the room was struggling with momentum. His proposal was likable, but wasn’t blowing anyone away, and you could feel it. This was his big moment and he wasn’t selling us. I felt a pang of guilt for harboring a vote that would not go in his favor. He was probably the nicest of the presenters we saw that day, and I pictured myself having a beer with him. His work was solid, but it didn’t generate the right kind of excitement among the twelve people in the room. And so it was that nearly half a year after the process began, a process which saw nearly 200 qualified applicants narrowed down to this final three, this artist would be eliminated in the last few minutes of our final meeting.






Rejection isn’t a thing. Or it doesn’t need to be. This is what I told myself the other day as I juried an open-call show at a local gallery. The idea I was trying out was that I would select the work that I found strongly compelling, rather than singling out things to reject. That was my intention anyway. And while the net effect would be the same either way, I wanted to curate from a perspective of positivity. Probably I did this because I knew feelings were going to be hurt, and I wanted an out. These are the sorts of ethical gymnastics you practice when you are the one doing the exclusion. This is why rejection letters, like the one I deleted the other day without reading, always take a passive stance. Most say something like “regretfully, your art wasn’t included” rather than “regretfully, your art was excluded.” This is all they can do to soften the news.

For my part, I wanted to be as blind to bias as possible in my selection process. I went out of my way not to see the names of the applicants. But there is nothing you can do when the work is well known to you, except to try to adhere strictly to an aesthetic or thematic framework. Curating a themed exhibit isn’t simply about picking what you like, it’s about building a cohesive story of some sort. That was the challenge I was excited about, anyway. Naively, I figured I could pull it off and somehow avoid any ugly emotional fallout from my choices. This error was unpleasantly clear to me as I held a small artwork in my hands and regarded it closely, knowing it was done by a friend, and that it wasn’t right for this show.


Expulsion from Eden, Michelangelo

According to evolutionary psychologists, the intense feelings that accompany rejection are useful for our survival. In the days of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, the thinking goes, rejection was akin to a death sentence, since to be ostracized from the tribe meant we would have to fend for ourselves in the wild. Interestingly, it is also known that the pain of rejection activates the same neurological areas in the brain that are associated with physical pain, therefore: “Evolutionary psychologists assume the brain developed an early warning system to alert us when we were at risk for ostracism. Because it was so important to get our attention—those who experienced rejection as more painful (i.e., because rejection mimicked physical pain in their brain) gained an evolutionary advantage—they were more likely to correct their behavior and consequently, more likely to remain in the tribe." citation

Some of my creative friends and colleagues flat out refuse to jury local art shows. For them, there is too much potential for wounded friendships and ill-will as a result. I know one Denver gallery owner who still gets creepy emails from a guy whose work he rejected more than five years ago. And as for the applicants, juried shows threaten the possibility of soul-crushing self doubt. Even the toughest of us have survived the initial shock of non-inclusion, only to be thrown into a tailspin later when we see the artwork that was selected. Most of my artist friends who are well established in their careers pooh-pooh the very thought of entering work into a juried show. Why subject yourself to the whims of someone you don’t fully respect, who has nowhere near your level of experience, or whose gallery isn’t critically regarded? And yet these same artists routinely risk exclusion by applying for fellowships, residencies, or public art commissions. It seems that no matter what level of success we achieve, we continually subject ourselves to the possibility that someone whose favor we seek will simply give us a big thumbs down.

So if rejection is so bad for us, in terms of the survival of our species, then why do we engage it so regularly? From that person you'd like to mate with who rebuffs your best attempt at charm to the roomful of muckety-mucks at your job who give a collective “meh” to your best thinking, each of us exposes ourselves to negation fairly frequently. There’s no avoiding it if you want to achieve a level of self-respect, not to mention success. No risk, no reward, as the saying goes.

As for juried shows, I’ll continue to accept invitations to curate. I’m trying to get better at it, and I’m convinced that the local art scene can benefit from more thoughtful, rigorous and challenging exhibitions that are self-produced. Juried shows are also a good venue to showcase emerging talent and can help those artists establish an exhibition record. I can’t think of a better way to get traction in an art community that relies so heavily on DIY methods for career growth.

And the art publication I keep failing to impress? I’m already working on a new body of work I intend to finish in time for next year’s entry deadline. Eighth time’s the charm. Don’t they say that somewhere? China, maybe? In any case, should I find my work vetoed yet again, I already have a plan. Take three deep breaths. Slowly, and as deep as I can make them.


Monday, April 14, 2014

Who am I? Where am I? And where did these pancakes come from?



I am not normally one to jump on social media to talk about a recent medical procedure - unless it involves a funny drug story.

The background is simple. I’ve been having difficulty swallowing lately. That’s the long and short of it. For weeks it was more of an ongoing annoyance than a cause for freaking out. I figured I could finally lose that ten extra pounds I put on over the holidays while waiting to see if my condition changed at all. My next step, when the pain got worse, was to jump on Google and begin some ad-hoc self-diagnosis. It didn’t make sense to visit my doctor unprepared to steer him toward my own conclusions.

The list of maladies associated with difficulty swallowing is long and contains no pleasant surprises. Down at the ugly end of the scale are tumors caused by HPV. Yup fellas, we can get that too. I have a friend who’s dad - a high-rolling, heterosexual business man - is undergoing elaborate and painful treatments for throat cancer right now due to years of unprotected oral sex with strangers. Or so goes the family lore. The fact that his adult children can acknowledge his lusty prowess (hundreds of women!) while heeding the tale’s cautionary conclusion seems straight out of a Greek tragedy. Though my own much less-worldly history would suggest looking elsewhere for causes, don’t think I haven’t found a way to worry about HPV. The human mind is capable of assembling rickety narratives for the purpose of preparing ourselves for all manner of doom.

In my case the culprit is actually likely to be much more mundane. So mundane that most of us grew up watching our favorite TV shows get interrupted with commercials about it. Acid indigestion. I’ll spare you the mechanics, but simply considering the words “acid and “in-digestion” together suggests it’s not something that should be happening in your throat. Unchecked, the acid can scar the esophagus and damage the muscles responsible for swallowing, and all of this can happen without a person knowing about it. That was the scary bit for me. I always figured the warning signs would be pretty obvious, but it turns out not everyone experiences heartburn. And thus I found myself with an IV in my arm signing papers this morning to allow a camera down my throat so a specialist could “have a look around.” Oh, and there was the part about biopsies they might take, and a balloon they might inflate to help dilate my esophagus “a little.”

So where’s the funny drug story, Howell?

The short-circuiting of thoughts and language is what gives the stupefied mind it’s comedic potential. I imagine anesthesiologists must crack up all the time at the funny things their patients say. At least I hope they do. It’s sad to think all that unhinged nonsense would be wasted on humorless technicians. In my case, I never run out of things I suddenly need to say, even when my conscious mind is tumbling far away from my body into narcotic depths. This is why I asked the doctor if he didn’t wan’t to know my birthday, just as I slipped under his spell. “You've already told me your birthday, mister Howell. We’ll see you in a little bit.” Since I arrived at the hospital I had been asked multiple times what my name and date of birth were. It was the password that opened all the doors. It was the password for the drugs that took me under. I wondered if I’d need it to wake up. That was the last thought I remember having until I realized at some point during my endoscopy that someone was building a Lego castle in my throat. “It’s too big,” I struggled to say. “The castle in my throat is too big. Take some of the pieces out.” This is what I was trying to tell them. It seems that my mind was a good ways away from the lego castle and the discomfort it was causing, but still I needed to let them know there was a problem. What I heard back from above the surface was, “Just relax, mister Howell. We’ll need you to swallow. Just try and swallow.” I made my throat have a little feeling - something like what they seemed to be asking for, but I wasn’t sure what “swallow” was supposed to feel like from such a great distance. Just then a chorus of voices sang “Very good, mister Howell. Very good.” and suddenly the Lego castle was gone, and I fell backward slowly into nothingness.

The best damn glass of ice water of all time was being held out to me by a nurse. I blessed her like I thought I was a priest. I had to stop talking to take a drink. It seems I was partway through telling her a story as I began to regain consciousness. Apparently what I had thought was a Lego castle tuned out to be a Lionel train set. I was telling this to the nurse as if it were a critical plot twist in my adventure. “Can you believe it? A train set was in my throat,” I said. Meanwhile, Kae was helping me to get dressed. Her well-practiced patience masked a resolve to get us both the hell out of there. “Let’s just concentrate on getting your pants on” she said. And that’s when I felt blessed by a moment of earthly perfection - a moment so subtle it could easily have been missed. The person who’s been helping me out of my pants for all those years was there to help me put them on when I finally needed it. What more could anyone ever want, I wondered. I don’t know whether I said any of that out loud, but I do remember saying “Let’s go to Old Country Buffet.”

I imagine most of us have a place of regressive, almost infantile comfort, where we dare not often go. Mine is Old Country Buffet. If the wheels ever do come off my little wagon, you will find me in an Old Country Buffet. With two desserts. “How about Udi’s instead,” Kae suggested. “They have pancakes. We can get them to-go.”  Being of sound mind, she wasn’t about to sit across from an opiated brunch companion who thinks he had people playing with toys in his throat. And the truth was, round two (or was it three by now?) of the drug’s after-effects were pulling me back down into incoherence. 

A short while later I was at my own kitchen table staring down into a to-go carton of blueberry pancakes. I couldn’t possibly eat them. Not that I was in any pain from my procedure. It was more a matter of my wobbly and tenuous version of reality giving out on me again. Still I thought, I’ll sit here in front of my pancakes, pretending to eat until Kae goes off to work. Hadn’t I insisted she buy this breakfast?  Just then I found myself being led upstairs by the hand, and into the guest bedroom which was darker and cozier than my own bed, or so I thought. Kae was still in the kitchen. I never did get a clear look at the person who led me up the stairs, but her name was Versed Fentanyl and she had the whole afternoon planned out for me in the nether regions of narcosis.

I opened my eyes to see both dogs sitting nearby in the rays of late afternoon sun. Both were staring at me, panting. The cat, also wide awake, sat beside me on the bed and regarded me with somewhat less concern. I had returned finally - with my own Greek chorus of pets wooing me back into their realm. And so it was I found the floor perfectly solid under my feet, and the handrail on the stairs altogether unyielding. From here it seemed my world would be less magical but a lot more trustworthy, and I was happy for that. I remembered a book I read a while ago about a Carmelite nun who experienced intense mystical visions that were accompanied by debilitating headaches which turn out to be caused by epilepsy. The book is called Lying Awake, by Mark Salzman. He gives his character the choice between medical intervention that will save her life, or continued religious ecstasy which will plunge her into mental illness. The novel is not a simple tale of science-versus-religion, rather it finds its meaning exploring the existential nuances of a life of faith and questions what it is that makes experience authentic.  Like the author, I suspect many of these big conundrums are false dichotomies. What is essential is that we seek to make meaning and relevance of our experiences. This is what I was thinking when I remembered my pancakes. A wave of anxiety washed over me as I considered they may not have been real, but only a concoction of a junked-up brain. I needed them to be real, not only for reasons having to do with mental continuity, but because I was extraordinarily hungry. I hadn’t eaten in almost a full day. So I made my way to the kitchen and paused to steel myself just before opening the refrigerator. But there they were, as truthful and reassuring as leftover pancakes can be - which, it turns out, is quite reassuring. I devoured them like a pothead takes to a bag of chips, but not so quickly that I couldn’t taste that they were genuinely delicious, as leftovers go. What’s more, for the first time in weeks my throat didn’t hurt. Not even a little. It could have been the drugs, or the throat dilation, I didn’t care. For the time being, that alone was worth celebrating.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Gently down the stream



Me, Late Pearl Jam Era

I don’t remember whose idea it was, but one fall day in ’96 my buddy John Dzielski and I set out to canoe a forlorn stretch of creek that ran under the highway near the office park where we worked in suburban Chicago. We were into exploring urban wildlands - those forgotten places you see at the edges of the built-world where nature flourishes in the cracks of the municipal infrastructure. It took some research to learn this creek had a name, the East Branch of the DuPage River.

The morning was crisp and bright as we slipped our borrowed canoe into the stream, with no real foreshadowing of the absurdities about to unfold. The East Branch is more of a creek than a river, and in several heavily-engineered sections it’s more of a glorified drainage ditch. It runs south through back yards, under toll roads, behind strip malls, and at one point it snakes - in a very planned way -  through the Western Acres Golf Club. If you ever canoe through a golf course, let me strongly suggest you bring a helmet. Putting greens are often located near water features, referred to as “hazards,” to make the game more challenging. I’ve done a lot of canoeing over the years - many hundreds of miles in all kinds of conditions, and I can assure you that paddling through a bunch of novice golfers is right up there with being stuck on open water during an electrical storm - much to be avoided. I can still see the stunned looks of the golfers as we rounded a bend alongside their fairway. “Mornin, fellas!” we hollered as we drifted past. They said nothing back, just stared, slack-jawed. The trick to pulling off absurdist behavior is to do it with utter confidence, like Bugs Bunny or civil war re-enactors. It was our challenge to make the colored-pants men feel like they were the ones who didn't belong. John and I choked back our giggles for several long minutes until we were out of earshot.

East Branch of the DuPage River

In several places the creek was choked with fallen trees and floating wads of plastic debris. Aquafina and Pennzoil bottles, Starbucks cups, sticks and leaves and pieces of fence, a baseball cap, KFC buckets, six-pack rings and tampon applicators. On and on it went, in places so dense we had to take the canoe out of the water and portage around the clogs. It was clear that beavers had something to do with some of these stretches, though it was hard to tell whether the junk was simply snagged in their dams or whether the beavers had actually incorporated trash into the structures. Nature’s little engineers being above all, practical. But the most surreal surprise of the day was just beyond the golf course, where the river fanned out into a marsh. The tea colored water was only a few inches deep at this point, and I kept seeing these round whitish things on the bottom that I figured were some sort of eggs, except many had algae on them. Finally I reached down and scooped one up. It was a golf ball. So this is where they came to rest. In the slow waters of the marsh they settled out among the cattails by the hundreds, maybe thousands, to degrade in whatever way that golfballs do in six inches of tannic midwestern bog water.


John Dzielski

Further downstream the river became wide and shallow and we began to scrape bottom. The old canoe had been lent to us by a friend who warned us that it’s days were few. The fiberglass was worn and cracked along the keel and with each scrape and bump we began to take on more water. Finally we pulled ashore to assess our options. When we flipped the boat over we were dismayed at the ragged state of our hull. John and I hiked up the steep bank to take a look around. We were thrilled to see a Target less than half a mile away. I was hoping to find some sort of fiberglass patch, maybe in their camping or automotive departments, but that proved a fool’s errand. Instead we made due with duct tape. Lots of it. We made our way back to the boat which was left hull-side up to dry in the sun, but the frayed fiberglass was still water-logged. The tape wouldn’t stick to the damaged areas, so we extended it way up onto the sides of the boat for increased gripping power. It worked. For a while we were thrilled with our ingenuity and continued on. But eventually, as all half-ass duct tape solutions go, our patches failed and we were forced ashore again. By this time it was getting dark and we were cold and wet and the hilarity of our misadventure had dimmed considerably. We had a pretty good idea where we were since most of the bridges were labelled with street names on their undersides, for some odd reason. I figured we were a mile or so from where we’d left the second car, but walking along suburban highways at night would have been idiotic, so instead we crunched our way across a dry cornfield toward the lights of a middle school that I figured backed up to the forest preserve we had parked on the far side of. Bingo!

Back at the car, I rummaged my backpack in the waning light for my keys. A plastic shopping bag caught high in a nearby tree flapped in a stiff breeze and made a disconcerting buzzing sound. Nature had made a wind instrument of trash and was blowing a hellish protest tune. For a second I wished I could photograph the bag, but then I thought of all those tiresome trash-in-nature photos you see in Beginning Photography classes, and thought better of it. It seems no matter how startling the juxtaposition of garbage in nature, there is rarely a photo created that can disarm the cynicism by which we regard such images as hackneyed, preachy or naive. So commonplace is the degradation of the natural world we live closest to, that if we were to see its wounds, abuses and insults as they truly are we'd find that world unlivable. The creative challenge, which I did not feel up for, would have been to find something ineffable, haunted, or elegiac in the buzzing plastic bag, and thereby restore its irony. But instead I just drove home. There would be other days to make art about such things.

Wet and bone-tired, I pulled the car to a stop in front of my house and turned the engine off. Rivulets of water from the battered canoe on the roof ran down the windshield. After collecting my thoughts in preparation for my return to the normalcy I craved, I went inside to a dinner already in progress. In a little while I’d make the call to let my friend know about his boat’s last voyage, but for the moment I was deeply content to enjoy the sweet disorientation of being home with my loved ones on an otherwise ordinary evening. I was happy for the experience of seeing my world from a jarringly different angle, the details and texture of my strange day already settling into a tale.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

In Clover


Photo by Mike Sheridan

No one could hit the ball into the outfield. The balls that did make it out there were all grounders. I was in third grade gym class learning to play for-real softball. During the warm up drills it was quickly determined that I couldn't catch, so I was banished to the outfield with the other sports flunkies. My loser status wasn't based solely on athletic shortcomings, it was already well-known that I spent more time in daydreams than in the real world, so in most activities that required alertness, I was a pure liability. In the outfield, I was instructed to throw any ball that came into my vicinity to the nearest base ahead of a runner - provided the runners hadn't already cleared the bases. During one inauspicious game, as I stood in right field waiting for the inning to end, a pair of bugs began fluttering around my head. I was busy waving them off when the ball hopped out past me. The jeers of my classmates dogged me as I chased the ball past the edge of our field and into the next ball diamond where another game was underway. Some kid from that game got to my ball first and hurled it over my head back to our infield. Above the shrill mayhem of my classmates my gym teacher roared at me for "Chasing butterflies like a girl." Later on the bench, I explained that I was trying to shoo the bugs away, and besides, they weren't even butterflies, they were two dragonflies stuck together. I was hoping this clarification would somehow clear me of shame, but it wasn't to be. The kids were having too much fun imitating me waving limp wrists at imaginary butterflies, like a girl – or worse.

I'm certain no one present that day, even the gym teacher, troubled themselves long afterward with the unpleasant memory of taunting an awkward kid. Most of them would have forgotten it later that day. But for me the memory lives on vividly in whatever brain cells are set aside for the task of self-loathing. I can recall it in detail whenever I want to, as if it had happened to me just now. And in this way, the trivial events of an ordinary life can become monuments of dread in the minds of those given to shame.

By that point in my school career I was already marked as easy pickings by the bullies. Each fall term offered the renewed hope that I could reset my classmate's expectations, but every new tormentor that came along was hardwired to sniff me out. And so it was that the following year one particular kid began taunting me for acting like I was "too smart." My glasses seemed to set him off, as if I was wearing them just to piss him off. One day he challenged me to meet him after school on the south lawn over by the buses. He promised to wipe my stupid glasses off my stupid face. So later that day when I made the long trek across the bare grass to my demise, it wasn't bravery or self-respect that caused me to do it, it was simple obedience. I knew If I didn't show up, that things could get way worse in days to come. Perhaps I thought he would be impressed and think me courageous, and that maybe we would talk it out. Whatever "it" was. So with utter dread I met my oppressor after school, and as promised, he beat me up. It only took one punch to the stomach, but my glasses actually did fly off and hit the sidewalk some feet away, while I fell to the ground unable to breathe. Some kids I didn't know stood close around laughing in their pre-pubescent falsettos as I gasped and heaved, crawling over to where my glasses lay blankly staring back at me. Suddenly I hated them too. When I regained my feet I was surprised and thankful that the bully didn't strike again. Instead he issued a stern warning to "never let me catch you looking at me again." That was it. I was never to look at him. That was something I could do. I ran off to catch my bus, where I was quizzed about why I was crying. I made clear it wasn't because I had been punched, but because my glasses were broken and I knew my dad would be furious. I couldn't own the humiliation of letting a bully punch me for no good reason. I had to make it about the glasses, which weren't broken, but I kept them hidden in my pocket. Later I taped them up and wore them to school that way for a week just to prove a point.

To my great fortune, a miraculous growth spurt occurred that summer which cleared me from the radar of most subsequent mean kids. Also I'd learned to catch balls well enough to get me through the prescribed number of gym classes in following seasons. Baseball stopped haunting me. In fact, by the time I was twelve I actually began to enjoy it. It wasn't a matter of suddenly "discovering" the game. It had always been there, spread out against the background of each summer. It was simply a matter of choosing to play. So that year I scraped enough kids together from our new subdivision to have two bush league teams that could play one another. Though our neighborhood was small, there were plenty of kids since none of the parents much believed in birth control in that part of the Bible Belt back in the 60's. One family even had exchange students, so with additional conscripts from England and Kenya, I was guaranteed to not be the worst player on the field. The trouble of not having a place to play was solved when one kid prevailed upon his farmer-grandfather to surrender an acre of cornfield next to our development for use as a ball field. The farmer plowed the corn stalks under, graded the parcel, and replanted it with clover -  a perfect playing surface for us, but also a useful crop that he was able to harvest for hay at the end of our season. It was a true win-win deal. Next, I made myself manager of both teams, as it was my job to schedule the games when no one had a TV show they needed to watch. So with nearly everyone's participation, including girls and way-too-young kids who ended up getting hurt a lot, we bumbled through a season of mostly-completed games, and succeeded in convincing the farmer it was worth his trouble to set aside that swatch of clover for our use the next season as well. When enough of us outgrew the game, such as it was, the farmer still had his crop.

It would have been beyond impossible back then to imagine that only a few years later I would be paid to eject bullies from a National League ball park, yet in the strangest convergence of skills and interests that my life has yet presented me, I was able to parlay a series of crappy security guard jobs into a position where I was managing crowd control for the Chicago Cubs. It made perfect sense. Only a few years out of college, I had been trying to make a go of it as an artist in Chicago, without a clear career path. I worked two double shifts as a security guard on the weekends, which left me all week to paint in my studio. In the summer this meant I had plenty of time for baseball, and since I was living literally in the shadow of Wrigley Field at the time, I fell hard for the Cubs. I'd spend mornings in the studio, and afternoons in the bleachers. Not everyday, but often enough that it distracted me hugely from my fuzzy goals as an artist.

As the 1986 season approached, I received a tip that the Cubs were going to be hiring seasonal "Protection Services" staff. I applied, took some tests, shook some hands, and before I knew it I was being fitted with the official blue and white security uniform of the Chicago Cubs. Thankfully, that was the year management switched the uniforms from the traditional rent-a-cop outfits to sporty warm-up suits, complete with baseball caps and starter jackets. It was the first and only work-wear I ever felt proud to be seen in.



On our first day at Wrigley Field, the new employees were taken out onto the diamond as part of our orientation. We strolled around the flawlessly engineered infield grass and were regaled with facts and figures about Wrigley's history. We were meant to be awestruck with the grandeur of the place. And thus we were. I had wanted to work in the park so I could see some ball, even if just occasionally, but any position within sight of the field was a plum assignment, not for the new guy. Instead I found myself stationed on the main concourse by the Cubs front office. My official title was "Crowd Control Specialist." It was my job to escort broadcast announcer Harry Carey, and any of the front office personnel across the public areas of the concourse to the employee elevator and up to the broadcast booth. Harry never said much to me. "Nice job, kid" was his standard line. It was about as boring a job as you could have in a major league ballpark. I didn't see any games that year. I could hear the crowd roar when something happened, but I wasn't stationed near enough to any of the TV monitors to get any sense of the action. That wasn't part of my job. My job was to help keep order on the concourse, and the concourse was, by design, pretty orderly.

Plenty of fans are troublesome in the ballpark, but few actually get ejected from the stadium. The ones who do are always over-served quarrelsome men who pick fights with their neighbors and yell obscenities at the umps.  Whatever it is about the game that triggers that kind of behavior, it's easy to imagine those guys suffer from some sort of undealt-with rage caused by things that happened to them outside the ballpark, and probably long ago. If a visit from Protection Services staff didn't help them see the error of their ways, then we quickly called in the real Chicago cops who made easy work of removing them from the stadium to a nearby police station. It was a regular part of our business to make this happen efficiently and with minimal fuss. Disorderly conduct was the usual charge. A special punishment for the worse offenders was banishment from Wrigley Field for life. Though it was all but unenforceable, we were regularly given photocopied mug shots of people to be denied entry to the park. The irony that I was being paid to help rid baseball of bullies was not lost on me. And though I couldn't say it was my calling, I was plenty proud to help make it happen.

The one bright spot in my time with the Cubs was Marla Collins, the ball girl. She was the first ball girl hired by any National League team, and it was my job to escort her through the public areas of the park when she went on or off the field. It took about ten minutes, twice a day, and it was pretty much the only thing I looked forward to. Marla and I barely knew each other. It was my job to protect her, not chat her up. The year I worked there she got in big trouble. She blew her whole career in fact. Marla was immensely popular and had dated a succession of ball players and entertainment types. Eventually it all went to her head and she said yes to the publishers of Playboy magazine when they asked if she could take her clothes off for their cameras. They promised her the pictures would be tasteful, but apparently they weren't tasteful enough for Cubs management. Word about the Playboy shoot was on the streets and people were suddenly incensed. Letters to the editors of both Chicago newspapers and local talk radio callers were demanding her removal. And still she came to work every day and tried to make it normal. The part of her job that she did with my help was in stark contrast to all the furor. At the end of each game she would autograph game-day balls (those used during play that day) for people in various states of physical and mental decline. Old people in wheel chairs, Make-A-Wish kids, anyone with special-needs could line up outside the front office and one by one she would greet them, smile and laugh and have her picture taken with them, and make each person feel the right kind of "special" for a change.  She would do this even as fans badgered her with insults and cat calls. After half a season of this distraction, management called her in. It seemed the front office was okay with dressing her in short shorts, and allowing Harry to blabber on-air about how she was "All grown up in all the right places," but when it came right down to it, Cubs management would rather enable their fans to mentally undress Marla every day than have her expose herself for real. So the Cubs balked, and fired her for violating the "family-oriented spirit" of their organization.

Marla Collins

Bullied by a bad decision, Marla was fired a week after the All-Star break. Her big story was over. She would go on to reinvent herself as a suburban mom, interior decorator, and more recently as an electrocardiogram specialist. Whether or not any of us endures a similar career crash-and-burn, most of us will bravely make ourselves over at least once in our lives, or at least quietly tweak our fate at key moments. Kids will grit their teeth through harassment to be rewarded with growth spurts.  Balls will bounce into and out of gloves. The Cubs will continue to hire and fire their way toward some workable combination of talent that they hope will lead them to a World Series win after more than a century of striving. Each of us indulges the the hope of renewal, the promise of a better version of ourselves "next year." It's natural and fitting to consider these things in spring, as the earth begins to warm and life in all its forms resumes competing and cooperating in varying degrees. And the future - whatever will be made of it - spreads itself out, like a field of clover sewn for one purpose, but perfectly useful for another.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Momento Vivere


Len and Tessa

It's a really strange thing to lose track of friends these days, especially given the over-exposure we indulge via social media. But it happens right under our noses all the time. Last night I was thinking about Len, a friend from North Carolina I hadn't heard from in a while, so I Googled him. I suppose it was only a matter of time before I'd learn unwelcome news by pointing search engines at old friends, but I wasn't prepared for the dozens of results detailing Len's brutal murder, and it's aftermath in the little town where we were neighbors. Did Google get the wrong Len Willson? Did I forget the double "L" in his last name?  A fresh search reaffirmed his death with precision. It happened just over three years ago during a home invasion. Len was beaten to death with a shovel and a pitch fork by a teenage boy he'd been mentoring. He was 53. The assumption I had that he was still out there, available for me to reconnect with was betrayed by ugly facts on my screen. But there it was. Three and a half years had passed since my friend was killed, but for me, Len died last night. Somehow none of our friends from that little town had mentioned it.  Was it such big news they had assumed I knew? Or was the burden of repeating the story to someone who moved away not worth the emotional investment?

In corralling these thoughts into something of a eulogy, I sought more information about Len's background, but mostly what I kept finding were details about the young men charged with his murder. I can sympathize with the rage that survivors of psychopaths and mass shooters feel when they see so much attention given to the perpetrators. It perpetuates the power they hold over our imaginations. Instead I want this to be about Len, but I'm left with little besides my own anecdotes and fading memories to build you a picture.

Fate double-crossed Len a long time ago. For starters he was wheelchair-bound by the time we met, paralyzed from the waist down by an auto accident when he was 22. Determined to live on his own, Len bought a historic fixer-upper on the waterfront in Bath, North Carolina, just across the street from Kae and I. We got to know each other while walking our dogs. Occasionally I would go over to Len's place to hang out since he couldn't negotiate the stairs to get into our house. The first couple of times I visited I was disoriented by the look of his home. What first appeared a cluttered mess turned out to be an efficient system for negotiating his belongings. Everything was low to the ground and arranged by function, with wide areas of access for his wheelchair. Nothing was put away in a cabinet or closet. Cookware, cups and plates were all set out on the countertops for ease of access. It took a while for the order of it all to become apparent to me.

The strongest impression Len made on those he knew, and even among many he didn't know well, was the intentionality and self-reliance with which he lived his life – more so than most able-bodied people I know. While his lower half was all but useless to him, his upper body took up the slack. He gardened, fished, cooked all his own meals, read voraciously, and biked all over the backroads of Beaufort County on his hand-cranked recumbent bicycle. When I asked why he never wore a helmet he squinted at me for a moment, and then with the slightest smile said "Because I'm already paralyzed." 

Whatever frustrations Len endured as a paraplegic, much of that energy got refocused on external causes. He taught English as a Second Language at the local community college and was an active member on the town's Board of Adjustments. He also mentored youth in the community. At home, he was endlessly figuring out how to do things by himself. When his companion dog Tessa developed advanced hip dysplasia, Len fixed the old Belgian Shepherd up with a wheeled harness for her back legs so the two of them could still go on "walks" together. The image of them out rolling around the streets of Bath was a curiosity to some, but to me it expressed a kind of sacred love and perfection between two wounded companions. The kind of sacred that will nonetheless make you smile.

Sometime after 10 pm on the night of October 5, 2010, two teenage boys broke into Len Willson's residence while he was home. One of them was a sixteen year old with a troubled history whom Len had mentored and employed doing odd jobs. They met through the boy's mother, when Len taught her English. She thought that maybe Len could help straighten her son out. The boy saw things differently and eventually decided to rob Len. Whatever the intruders intended when they broke in that night, things got nightmarishly out of control. The 16 year old set to work beating Len to death with nearby garden tools. He later confessed that he did it because he "needed to put Willson to sleep." And while it would be a small comfort to hope Len died quickly, the medical examiner's report indicated that was not the case. Len fought to defend himself, but he was a middle aged man in a wheelchair. An easy target. His cause of death was blunt trauma to the head. The local District Attorney said it was the most brutal beating he had ever seen in his 23 year career.

Vexed. It's an old-fashioned word, but it comes closest to describing the mess of emotional and cognitive chaos I feel when trying to wring any meaning out of this. Vexation refers to a type of distressing puzzlement, a harassment of the soul. It forces unanswerable questions. Why did this kid turn on the man who reached out to him? Why didn't any of the neighbors hear? How could a loving god, or a benign 'universe" have failed to step in on Len's behalf? Having grown up in the evangelical Christian church during the Kumbaya era, I have this lingering image of a deity who takes a personal interest in the minutest of details in the lives of his followers, and in particular, their successes. This version of God is the one that football players point to in the end zone and actors thank when they win fancy awards. But this all-powerful being seems strangely absent when whole villages get swept away in floods or your friend is getting hit over the head with a shovel. There's another, older and less popular version of this same divine creature that identifies more directly with human suffering. Evangelicals abandoned it a long time ago. This is the Jesus depicted in old catholic churches, betrayed, broken and dying. If you can see past the kitschy trappings and creepy statues, this image of a dying god seems more authentic and meaningful in light of the wounds humans perpetually visit upon one another. But regardless of whether you have faith in this god or any other, it's hard to shake the notion that fate alone owes each of us a fair shake. Or put more simply, that the law of averages wouldn't at least have offered Len Willson a break. But that wasn't to be. Lightning often does strike the same place twice.

The last time I heard from Len was in 2006 when he came out to Colorado to receive a controversial treatment to stop his increasingly severe leg spasms that were making it impossible to even sleep through the night. The out-patient procedure would mean intentionally severing even more nerves - not something many neurosurgeons care to specialize in. The choice to have it done meant any future breakthroughs in the treatment of spinal injuries would be out of the question for him. But after waiting a quarter of a century for some new therapy to come along, and with the spasms taking over his life, Len flew out to Denver for the surgery. The treatment ended up not offering much relief. The doctors said he'd need another round, where they'd cut still more nerves. Len was confused, depressed and out of money. He needed some space to figure things out, so he flew home to North Carolina instead of heading up into the mountains to pal around with me as we had planned. Thus we began to fall out of touch. The last I heard he was doing better and was teaching English at the local community college. I kept thinking we should get caught up.

Grief can creep further into the psyche than we imagine, and the time it takes us to work through it is incremental at best. As I begin to surface from the raw brutality and loss at the center of this story to join the rest of Len's family, friends and neighbors in coming to terms with his death, I'm clear on one thing. Each time a light like his is forced out the world gets a little darker. We can either let our eyes adjust to that darkness or burn a little hotter to make up the difference. Whether he died in vain is a choice the rest of us make. While he was alive, Len Willson was the kind of guy who reminded you to quit your whining. Not because he was so much worse off than you, but because he lived his life with more purpose and grace. So that's the lesson I'm choosing to take away - to live mindfully, and to look for places to seed kindness in this world. It's a goal anyway. And if Len's life was any indication, with practice I know that way of living becomes second nature. Seamless. Transparent.

Rest in peace
Leonard Alfred Willson III
1957-2010

Bath Creek, North Carolina