Astronaut

Astronaut - Colored pencil, acrylic and gel transfer on wood panel, 45″ x 55″

Sometimes you make a thing - a painting, a song, or whatnot - and it goes nowhere. You may think it’s one of your better pieces, but it gathers no momentum. It doesn’t get shared or reposted. It doesn’t sell. This may leave you flummoxed because you’re pretty sure it’s actually quite good. But you have no way of knowing for certain, since you’re the one who made it.

In a recent review of Layers of Existence, Ray Rinaldi writes about a painting I did back in 2013 called Astronaut that was a last minute addition to the current show, chosen by the gallery. What’s funny is that Astronaut was one of those paintings that originally went nowhere. I figured the subject matter probably came off as a little dark, or confusing or just plain odd, and that this is not the kind of art most people want over their couch. I suspected this at the time I was painting it, which is partly why I painted a gaudy couch in the painting, as if to preemptively acknowledging the act of sabotage that a “difficult” painting might prove to be. But I also felt like there was something really human and honest about the painting, like I’d stumbled upon a sort of existential pathos that I would never have dared to approach directly as a subject. At the time, I had mostly been concerned with juxtaposing various cultural references. I was new to figurative realism, so I was intentionally taking it easy with emotional content, not wanting to get in over my head and end up doing something cliché or sentimental. But as is often the case, the restrained impulse expresses itself one way or another, and somewhere in its making the painting acquired a haunting aspect that felt pretty authentic. So when Astronaut went into storage after the show six years ago, I kind of felt like I must have missed the mark. Maybe the ideas I was exploring in it weren't actually that relatable. This is an ordinary disappointment that all creative people have to deal with when they least expect it, but it's part of the game.

I was surprised to learn the gallery added Astronaut to my latest group of paintings, but it made perfect sense, given that the theme of identity is what the exhibit is built around. I was again surprised that Rinaldi mentioned it in writing. He picked up on the Pieta reference, which I was happy about, since I’ve had to explain that one a lot - cultural literacy being what it is these days. He also picked up on the contradictions that are at the core of questions of identity. So for me this was a win. I’ve always thought Astronaut was a positive painting. The central figure is strong and confident and stares straight ahead at the viewer. The version of himself that he holds on his lap has his eyes wide open, lost in some sort of reverie or waking dream, not necessarily dead. That’s what I was thinking anyway. I was also aware that the Pieta reference could prompt an interpretation having to do with the death of ego, or something along those lines. Either way, I knew this image was "loaded," which is another way of saying hard to sell. But there it is. Sometimes a piece of art just wants to be made. Astronaut may have spent a good deal of its life in storage, but right now it’s having a little moment. And I still like it.

Making Friends

Animus Mixed media on panel, 144" x 90" Mark Penner-Howell ©2018

“We’re not here to make friends.”

That was one of those stupid catch phrases you might have heard in the corporate world a few years ago, when we were all beginning to “do more with less.” During the shakeout of the dot com bust, I was the Creative Director of a digital marketing team at a large ad agency in Chicago. It was a schizophrenic time -  planning for growth while managing loss - as the clients came and went. Layoffs were always around the corner, and we all tried to be brave. Tough talk from management was routine, but whenever I heard it, I could feel insecurity telegraphing through the words.

One day a blue-chip client dropped a bomb on us. An assignment we thought we had in the bag had instead gone to a competitor. The client kept us on in a support role to help manage some aspects of production, and explicitly asked us to “play nice” with the winning agency. This was surely a test. Agencies never play nice. Everyone knows that. If we simply stayed in our corners, we weren’t doing our best work. So in a subsequent brainstorm where we tried to figure a way to both overdeliver and upstage our competitor, the phrase, “We’re not here to make friends” was once again shouted into the room. This time by a middle manager I knew to be long on bravado and short on ideas. The guy grabbed a marker and went to the whiteboard. There is a rule of thumb in the corporate world: Be the one with the pen. If you’re the one with the pen, you can write all the ideas down as people fire them off, reiterating and commenting as you go, so that you look like you are leading. “Any other ideas?” the person with the pen might ask. That day I was not the one with the pen.

I rolled that phrase over in my mind, and questioned the resolve it stood for, and the path it seemed to suggest. Ruthlessness, indifference, selfishness, isolationism. All very workable as business principles, but increasingly at odds with everything I thought I stood for. In my personal life, which I kept very separate from work, I was a part of a group of creative friends that had become quite close. We were mostly visual artists, writers and musicians - and even an actor or two - who had fallen in with each other in a loose sort of community. Some of us had day jobs, but all were dedicated to creative exploration, and we collaborated with each other in various combinations. If it had been the sixties and we were hippies, it would have made more sense. As it was, we were just random creative souls that became each other’s emotional and spiritual refuge. We were family. Still are.

I wish I could say that when my wife and I quit our corporate careers and moved across country that some sort of high-minded ideals were at work. Instead, we were simply burned out and needed something new. We found a gorgeous B&B for sale in a quaint historic town on the water in North Carolina that we could just barely afford, and we went all in. Mostly the B&B just needed a solid marketing plan, an updated brand, and for some of the corny pirate themed decor and frilly window treatments to find their way to a thrift store. We weren’t trying to reinvent ourselves - though we did spend a lot more time barefoot - we just wanted to live a little more authentically, and to try our hand at running our own business. Cliché, for sure.

In the story of my life, I often leave out the B&B part, because, like a wrong turn down a pretty road that dead-ends in a cul de sac, it doesn’t serve the main narrative. It was, however, a way to explore a business that was entirely about making friends. In fact, as an innkeeper, your success isn’t just a matter of acting friendly and providing a pleasant service. You are dead in the water without real friends, both among other local business owners, and with your customers. We weren’t consciously seeking the opposite to our experience in the corporate marketplace, but we stumbled into it nonetheless.

________________

There is a photo in my Facebook feed that I am not able to extract from my thoughts. My uncle Jack lies in a hospice bed, his frail arms folded across his chest. He seems to float among the white sheets. He is lingering. Around him are his wife, children, their spouses, and grandchildren. Some look gravely concerned, because it is that kind of photo. Some are happy and smiling, because it is also that kind of photo. All are touching one another in some manner. A hand on a shoulder. A hug. It is equal parts awkward, complex and charming. I could post this picture, but I want you to make it up for yourself.

Jack’s daughter, my cousin Sharon, had the good sense to ask Jack’s friends on Facebook to post pictures and stories about his life, while he is still with us, while he can see and hear and feel the things of this earth. Jack is a retired Presbyterian minister in the Bay Area. His church community is diverse and inclusive. The posts that flooded his Facebook page paint a picture of a man who is attentive, emotionally available, and caring. A true friend. The depth of love and support he enjoys is astonishing.

________________

Sometimes I wish I could I go back to that conference room, at the start of the brainstorm, and challenge that trope. But I have long since left the corporate world with its lexicon of small minded catch-phrases and self-justifying behavior, and though the art world has its own mean practices, friendship - real friendship - is an asset, a thing of great value, not to be ridiculed.

Last year, on my sixtieth birthday, a bunch of friends toasted me. Eulogized me, really. It was like being at my own wake - in a good way. This generous boost to my ego was immediately followed by an awareness that the most urgent thing I can do in this life is to give back to my friends and family, and to keep myself available to them. You could make an argument that plenty of other things are more important, but for me, being present and involved in the lives of my family/friends/and immediate community is foundational. Every other positive impulse is rooted there. It’s not always easy, but that’s the difference between having friends and being a friend. I’ve been thinking about this for twenty years. I suppose I could go on Linked In and seek out that guy from the meeting to thank him for the silly thing he said, the thing that made him feel strong, which he promptly forgot, but which I reacted to viscerally, taking apart in my mind, ruminating on for two decades. The idea that morphed from a simple notion - slowly - to being at the center of my self-identity. I could thank him for that, but it would be super awkward, to say the least. Yes, I am here to make friends. I am certain of it now. It is the only path that makes sense for me. I see where it goes, and I will stay on it.


For Uncle Jack Buckley

Walking with it

Grief is a wholly unattractive subject. No one wants to read about it, or even think much about it, until they are in its throes. It’s like getting a flat tire on a highway at night. You rummage through your glovebox in the darkness, desperate for your driver’s manual, or a roadside assistance brochure. You need information. You need a plan. You need your car back on the road. Until then, why read a manual? 


The vet that came by the house to euthanize our old dog Roscoe was gentle and quiet. Her manner was priest-like. Few words were spoken. Roscoe lay asleep in the dappled light beneath his favorite tree. After he passed, my wife and I sobbed ourselves dry into the thick fur around his neck, then helped ease his thirteen year old body onto a stretcher. The vet covered him with a clean white sheet, and tucked a rolled up towel under his head for a pillow. We carried Roscoe together, like pall bearers, and put him in the back of her SUV, then wept again at the sight of that car driving away. Thirteen years of companionship and adventure, affection and routine - a lifetime - had come to an end, like a dream we were not ready to wake from.

The vet left us a little booklet called When Your Pet Dies, A Guide to Mourning, Remembering, and Healing. The cover has a photo collage of all kinds of pets. I figured the information in it would be generic, yet I was anxious to read it, in case it contained something useful that I didn’t already think I knew, or that maybe I had missed during the months of preparation I'd had after learning about the paralysis that would eventually take our dog's life. At the heart of the book was a simple, provocative claim; that in order to lessen the power of pain and sadness, we should move toward it, engage it, incorporate it into our life’s story, rather than fleeing or suppressing it. We should “sit with” grief, because it has things to teach us, and in any case, it will not be ignored. This felt true to me and the thought quickly took root. I would commit to this path. But with one exception. I knew I needed to walk with grief, rather than sit with it.

As it happens, everything on the trail to Herman lake reminds me of my dog. The little streams a dog could drink from. Rocks and roots that need careful navigating. Footbridges across bogs that my dog would avoid in favor of trudging through the muck below. Intermittent snow fields he would dive into and roll around in. I had chosen a trail familiar to Roscoe. This hike was going to be a sort of memorial.

At the top of this steep gulch sits an alpine lake that we’d visited several times, one of Colorado's many icy tarns that delight human eyes with their stark beauty and provide canine companions a welcome plunge. But today I would travel up beyond the lake, to a peak on the Continental Divide that I’d long had my eye on, Pettingell Peak, a rocky indistinct lump from the south, or a menacing beauty from the north. It’s not technically challenging from the approach I am taking, but at 13,553’ the views from its summit are unmatched. And for someone enchanted by rugged isolation, the utter lack of maintained trails on Pettingell makes the climb extra appealing.

I understand solo alpine trekking is a tough sell to the world at large, but for me, the journey up a lonesome mountain serves a dual purpose. It provides a backdrop for a journey inward. There is no one to talk to except yourself. You can go as deep inside as you dare. And outwardly, in the realm of flesh and bone and rock, there are enough challenges to keep you on your toes, so to speak. The boundaries between these parallel journeys becomes fluid, and much is revealed in the liminal space between them. I can’t speak for others, but this is why I do it.

The slog up to Pettingell's peak starts at the lake and follows a series of streams and rivulets coming down from ice cornices up on the Continental Divide. Alternating talus slopes and grassy benches ascend to a saddle at about 13’300.’ Above, the ridge to the summit offers an unexpected challenge. I must decide whether to traverse a boulder field below it, which involves a rugged but direct route to the summit, or ascend to the ridge in favor of firmer footing, but which clearly will require time consuming down-climbing in a couple of spots. As I’m considering my options, I notice a low roar coming from behind the ridge. It sounds like a jet engine, but it isn’t going anywhere. I realize with dismay this is the wind raking itself against the north face of the peak I’m on. I opt to stay low on the boulders and out of its reach. The rocks are loose and tippy. I test each step before putting my full weight down. The going is slow.

North face of Pettingell Peak

On the scale of losses that humans can endure, some are clearly worse than others. It’s tempting to rank them according to the tragedy of their circumstances. Even the accidental death of a pet would seem to be worse than the one who is euthanized in old age. Or so you might think. But grief isn’t proportional to the degree of tragedy that frames it. Instead it is defined by the depth of affection and attachment to the one who is lost. The greater the love, the greater the sorrow. Grief makes no distinctions according to species, or any other empirical gradations of value. When a beloved pet dies, it isn’t like losing family member, it is losing a family member.

At the summit there is a little rock shelter just big enough for one or two people to hunker down out of the wind. These structures seem to be on every peak in Colorado, no matter how homely or insignificant the mountain. I settle in to rest for a few moments. The air is thin and the sun feels close, despite the 40 degree temperature.

I’m startled by a vigorous flapping sound. I look up to see another solo climber has joined me. The sound is coming from the ear flaps on his hat. I hadn’t seen him coming, and am momentarily annoyed that I no longer have the mountain to myself. Yet I know chances are good that if you meet another person on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, you’re going to have a lot in common. We try to chat but he can’t hear for the flapping. I gesture for him to join me in the rock shelter out of the wind. And so it is that within moments the climber named Mike and I are swapping tales of high country adventures. What endears me to him is his admission that he hikes alone because no one can stand how slow he is, and that he is slow because he’s distracted by beauty. “I just get lost in it. And I take a lot of pictures.” I ask if he’s a photographer. “No, I just take pictures,” he says. I like that Mike knows the difference. After a few minutes I leave him to his reverie. Everyone who bothers to wander alone deserves some time to themselves on top of a mountain.

Roscoe on the Continental Divide at Berthoud Pass

From time to time, randomly, I get a little pang of sorrow for my dog. It comes out of nowhere, or is triggered by something beneath the threshold of my awareness. But there it is. And when it happens, I stop what I’m doing and put my hand on my heart. It has no specific meaning, or it didn’t at first. It just feels appropriate, like I need a gesture. I think of all the times that Roscoe would jump on me, leaving dirty paw prints on my chest. Dogs have few ways of expressing their exuberance. Most of these involve their tongue, or jumping, yet these are the behaviors humans work hard to suppress. I was always a little lenient with the jumping. We each have our blind spots. I decide I’m putting a paw print on my heart with my hand. That’s what the gesture will mean. It may or may not make sense, but it’s a thing to do. And when you’re grieving, you need things to do.

We had plenty of warning about Roscoe’s demise. The slow march of paralysis in his hind quarters, brought on by a spinal disorder, had a known progression of symptoms, plateaus and setbacks. We would adjust to them little by little. We picked up Roscoe when he fell. We moved our bedroom into my art studio on the main level of the house so he wouldn’t have to climb stairs. I altered my social activities outside the home so I could look after him more vigilantly. We even put boots on his hind feet so he wouldn’t injure them when they began to drag. When neighbors saw us out walking together they would invariably comment on his cute boots. They were cute. And so the incremental adjustments went, until the day Roscoe could no longer stand up from a sitting or lying position.


The trip down the mountain is uneventful, as it should be. Descending on these old knees presents the usual challenges, and as always, gravity works harder to help me than I want. At the last pitch above the lake I relax beside a stream to have a sandwich. Columbine cling to the rocks all around me and moss grows vigorously beside the stream. The wind whips little clouds of spray up from the water and I enjoy the unlikely humidity of this micro climate. A few feet away in any direction it is unforgivingly arid. Below me I see a dozen brightly attired day hikers spread out on the boulders around the lake. Most don’t have backpacks. These are the folks you see hiking in gym shoes with just a plastic water bottle in one hand. Overconfident midwesterners, I always think. They do not go beyond the lake.

Herman Lake from Pettingell Peak

Back at the water’s edge where the trail picks up, I run into a steady stream of hikers still coming up the trail despite the lateness of the day. The sky is intermittently cloudy, with no real intent of storming, and yet it’s reassuring to descend back below treeline. The forest offers a comfort which is palpable, maybe even ancestral, I imagine. Around a switchback in dense trees a little red retriever-ish dog bounds up the trail ahead of her human. She sniffs my hand but moves on quickly, determined to get somewhere. What kind of dog is this? I ask the human. “A Toller Duck Dog,” she says. “From Nova Scotia. Everyone thinks she’s an Irish Setter, but they aren’t related at all.” The lady, older than me and kind of matronly, is thrilled by the uniqueness of her dog. All dog people are, even when over-breeding makes that uniqueness questionable.

“Do you have a dog?” She asks. “Well up until two days ago I did.” I manage to get this out in a matter-of-fact way, but suddenly feel I’m on shakier ground than I was up on the boulder field. “Oh my goodness, you’re heartbroken,” The lady says.  Not, “You must be heartbroken,” like I might have expected, but, “You are heartbroken.” As if it is an observable fact. The lady then asks if she can give me a hug. I should have seen this whole thing coming. Should have known not to start the dog conversation, but it’s too late. I nod yes, and immediately come unglued in the arms of this total stranger, in the middle of a trail, on the side of a mountain. My tears falls onto her blue fleece jacket and I watch them sink into the fabric and disappear. I hope she doesn't notice. Hikers pass by, excusing themselves politely as they step around us. Overwhelmed with self-consciousness, I struggle to pull myself together, but the lady cautions me to not worry about what others think. “This is your time to grieve,” she says, as if I might need to be told. I begin to suspect she may be a therapist or counselor. She has all the right language, but I don’t ask. Her Toller Duck Dog has curled up beneath a tree nearby to wait out this inexplicable delay. Little spots of sunlight jump all around her where she lays.

A voice in my head urges me to “man up” and move on. This voice has been with me my whole life, but it is not mine. It was put in my head to do the bidding of others. Even as a kid, the idea of manliness I grew up with seemed ridiculous to me, but I dared not laugh openly about it. I didn’t trust the whole practice. It was a contrivance. A made up thing that involved posturing and pretense. I pictured cowboys and firemen and soldiers. Something that might require tools or a costume. I wasn’t headed toward being any of those things. I cried plenty as a child, which led to the usual bullying and “poundings,” at school, and then to still more crying. But it never made me question my “manhood.” That was other people’s preoccupation.

I thank the lady for her compassion and her time, and she seems equally grateful to have helped. I smooth out my shirt, adjust the straps on my pack, and resume my trek. Just ahead of me I see a young couple who have stepped off the trail, waiting for whatever crisis intervention they had stumbled upon to play out. I nod hello to them, as if everything is okay. No big deal. They eye me curiously. Wordlessly. I imagine they are hoping that whatever had me so shook up won’t happen to them.

The book about grieving has a lot to say about the solace of memory. I’ve had my share of friends and relatives die over the years, and at each funeral the eulogy winds around to the idea that the dead can live on in our memories. I used to feel like this was a hollow condolence. A poetic notion that felt good during a funeral, and was meant to ward off despair in a ceremonial sort of way, but was a crummy consolation for a missing loved one. I now feel that the present may simply be the engine of memory. The present is fleeting and chaotic, and needs recollection to give it context. Each moment that passes is comprehensible only as a direct function of remembrance. And so this is now where Roscoe will live - not in some imaginary spot in the vicinity of my heart, but in the active, living tissue of my memory, which helps me make sense of things.

I never did get that woman’s name. It wouldn’t have mattered, but I’d like to thank her again. I recognize what happened as a moment of grace. A blessing. It was unexpected, and the circumstance was altogether strange, not to mention awkward, but it was a blessing nonetheless.

Ahead of me the trail bends into a grove of aspen that seems to glow from within. I hear the rush of cars on the highway and realize I’m nearing the trailhead. The other world I belong to beckons me back. At the car I unfold the map I’d had with me but never consulted. It is marked up with routes for other off-trail hikes that I’ve drawn on it, not for navigational purposes, but as a reminder of where I’ve been. Pettingell peak can now be inked in. Poring over the map, I realize there are almost no trails in this whole part of the state I haven’t walked with my dogs. Memories live in all these places, like ghosts that only I can see. I vow to nurture each one as best I can. This is the work that grieving requires. A commitment to memories, and a heart big enough that the important sorrows will always be at home. I’m only starting to walk with this new grief, and just like with walking, there is effort. But after thirteen years of exploring the world together, I imagine that Roscoe pretty much knows his way around these parts, so maybe I can let him lead for a while. I’m not even sure what that means. It’s simply a thought I like, because I feel like maybe he’s nearby, but off-leash, and up ahead just a little ways.

Making the right pictures

I leaned my new paintings against the fresh white walls and began arranging them for maximum effect. The front doors of the gallery opened wide to the street. It was a flawless blue sky morning. Perfect for hanging an art show. Perfect for national elections.

The mood among the staff and other artists at the gallery was upbeat. Each of us had already voted. We offered one another assurance of our good chances - as progressives - of having the elections go our way.

Over the summer I had created a series of paintings that were all loose explorations on coming of-age themes, depicting young people at odds with their surroundings. These children were partially cloaked or hidden by a variety of coping strategies ranging from too-much makeup, to masks and helmets. Each painting had its subject situated in non-literal spaces that were crowded with conflicting messages, diagrams devoid of context, and disintegrating letter-forms intended as a sort of Rorschach prompt to be interpreted any number of ways. My primary interest was in depicting the bravery, wariness, defiance and resoluteness that young people often possess in situations of uncertainty. To my thinking, a nuanced and unsentimental coming of-age story was a fresh area of creative endeavor. But as I looked around the gallery at the completed work I was all at once struck with the idea that I had painted the wrong paintings. For all their bravery, my characters were stuck in an existentially dystrophic middle ground, and seemed to not relate directly to the world as it now promised to unfold.

In the next room an artist friend was laying out her new work. I quickly noticed how joyful her paintings seemed to be, and felt a little pain, because joy is not something I’ve spent a lot of time pursuing in my work. It seemed like a subject I hadn’t found my way into honestly. Not directly. Not yet. I told myself joy didn’t need to be depicted, or otherwise captured in the work, but that it could be the result of someone’s experience of the work. I’m not sure what I meant by that, but it gave me license to explore darker themes in hopes that practice would result in some kind of catharsis or insight.

It’s often true that you need to spend time away from a creative project - putting it completely out of mind - in order to really apprehend it’s true form. Other times that clarity catches you off guard while you are knee deep in the work, with no apparent perspective. By simply setting up my paintings in a new space I had instantly re-framed my view of the work, in a much more critical way. Had I listened to too much NPR while working? Was it the dystopian Decline of the West podcasts? Too much time with fear-fueled Facebook rants? Were these portraits relevant? If I don’t engage difficult subjects during difficult times, when will I? The faces I made stared back with the exact expressions I had given them, and offered no new insight. I did notice that one painting needed the skin tones warmed up a bit, so I took it home and obsessed over it a little more, knowing in the back of my mind, I was simply trying to address my own ambivalence about the show.

By the end of the day a darker, more unseemly narrative emerged about the next cycle of executive leadership in our country. I hunkered down in my studio and attended to the tweaking of that one last painting, while Trump’s aspirations were made manifest. In the morning my Facebook feed was filled with stories of children under great duress. One daughter of a friend woke up screaming because she was worried about being deported. Other friends who are educators described the stony silence and obvious depression among their students. The kids needed answers, and the adults weren’t yet up to the task.

I went back to the gallery to hang my final painting. At last the show made great sense to me. The work seemed strong. Not because Trump’s immanent reign validated my fears, but because every day is a passage into uncertainty. Coming-of-age is an ongoing state. We are all composites of all the developmental stages we have lived, and each stage has required its own surrender and loss. The accumulated versions of each self overlay one another like a palimpsest of scribbles performed over and over on the same sheet of paper. Whatever innocence or open-heartedness we posses must be nurtured and fiercely protected. That’s what I think my new paintings are about, anyway. If some of that comes across on its own, then I’ll be happy.


Juxtaposed opens at Walker Fine Art in Denver, Friday November 11, 2016. The show runs through January 7, 2017.

The Off Ramp

The three-wheeled motorcycle passed me on the shoulder of the off ramp, careened dangerously up onto the grass bank, then somehow regained control and sped away northbound on Wadsworth Avenue. Its rider wore no helmet. Before my adrenaline could kick in, a monster pickup truck roared up behind me, jerked its wheel within inches of colliding, and came up along side me on two wheels in a cloud of dirt and grass. As I slammed to a halt, the truck tumbled several times into the oncoming lane of an adjacent ramp. I caught a glimpse of the driver, backlit, as he hunkered down for the impact. Glass exploded from the windshield as the truck pancaked down on it’s roof. The driver was dead. He had to be. By some miracle no other cars were involved. I was the sole witness. I shut off my car and called 911. Eternal seconds passed. “911, what is your emergency?”

“A guy just rolled his truck and I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”

I gave the voice my location and waited many minutes in desperate and eerie silence. I walked part ways toward the truck before reconsidering. I didn’t want to look in the cab. I knew the human psyche can come unglued by the sight of dissembled bodies. I chose not to be imprinted with the gruesome visuals.

I called my wife.

“Hi. Listen, I'm going to explain this quickly, but I can't talk long. I need you to pick up that take-out you ordered. And also walk the dogs later. A guy just crashed his truck and I think he's dead. I’m the only one here. I called 911, and they need me to wait here. I’m freaking out a little. Sorry. Yeah, I’m OK. I'll call you back as soon as I can”

A middle-aged woman in a Subaru pulled up behind me. She was on her phone to the police. We got out of our cars and stood beside each other, shaking. Several other cars had come along, but seeing us with smartphones in hand, figured we had it under control, so they weren’t obliged to stop. Or maybe it was clear this was a fatal crash, and there was nothing they could do except slowly rubberneck past.

The sun had just set behind dirty clouds and the sky was a bright nickel color. A cold breeze crept in from the foothills. “He’s gotta be dead,” said the woman. We agreed there was nothing to do except wait for the police, but I wondered if we were cowards justifying our moral inertia. “Did you see the three-wheeler?” The woman asked. “This was a road rage thing. The truck was chasing the bike all the way from the King Soopers over on Sheridan. All kinds of cars were run off the road. I’ve been following them for miles.” She explained that she and her husband are big bikers. “I called 911 to report the chase. The cops told me not to follow, but I did anyway. Bikers look out for each other.” She described the truck’s driver as shirtless, bald and covered with tattoos. The biker, by contrast, was small and dark skinned, possibly black or Hispanic. I immediately wondered what sort of biases were bubbling in her narrative. But who was I to say? She had witnessed the rage. I, its conclusion.

 More minutes crawled by. Still no emergency responders. I went to sit in my car. I replayed the crash in my mind. One detail that kept presenting itself was how quiet it had been. No squealing tires or horns. Just a sort of soft crunching as the truck rolled through dirt and grass, then skidded to a stop on it's roof.

Finally the parade of whirling lights and sirens descended upon the intersection. Cops sealed off the ramps and firefighters cautiously explored the wreck. A too-young-looking officer came up to my car. “Mister Howell? You are our only witness to the crash. We need you to be patient and work with us. You probably realize this was a fatality. Several people are going to want to talk to you. I don’t want to mislead you, we’ll be here awhile. Are you willing to help us put the story together?” A strange choice of words, I thought. “You mean like Humpty Dumpty?” I wanted to ask.

 What I said instead was, “Where’s your jacket? Aren’t you freezing?” He was not. “Exactly what happened?” he asked. I pointed to the little Y where the two off ramps merged. The concrete curb around the point where they came together was shattered in chunks all over the pavement. “The guy was merging behind me on my right, but swerved to miss me and ended up on my left, tumbling along beside me. The truck was probably going 70 when he hit that ramp. He actually passed me rolling.” Just then the thought entered my head that the driver had died trying to avoid me. It wasn’t my fault, but he was dead because I was in his way. I said this to the cop, who seemed unfazed. He was trained to tease the facts from wobbly, personal narratives. “You’re not responsible for any of this,” he said, “in fact, you are fortunate. If you had been a second slower he would have t-boned you at highway speed.” This was meant to get my head out of the spiral I was in; to make me feel lucky, I guessed. My shivering increased and my voice was shaky and unfamiliar to me. “Yeah, I suppose,” I said. The young cop nervously clicked his pen. “Why don’t you go sit in your car and warm up.” 

In my side mirror I could see they had pulled the body from the wreck. It was zipped into some sort of bright white vinyl bag and lying on the gravel shoulder. The Ambulance had turned off it’s lights. I noted that the officer had quizzed me with my back to the scene. Good technique, I thought. In a few moments he came over again to my window with a police report for me to fill out. “We need you to write as exact a description of what happened as you can, Mister Howell. Please feel free to use both sides of the page if you need.” I hadn’t been offered both sides of a page since grade school, and it struck me as generous in that insignificant way. I didn’t need both sides. I left out the dirty sunset and the eerie stillness. Also the way it seemed to happen in slow motion. And I left out the cold. The story was the worst kind. A blunt and ugly accounting of speed, position and direction. “Perfect’” said the cop.

Next I was asked to hang on just a while longer for the State Highway Patrol Investigator to come interview me. The fresh-faced cop and I tried some small talk while we waited. I knew he was assigned to me, and that one of his duties was to make sure I remained on the scene. We watched as the ambulance hauled its sad cargo up onto the ramp and pulled away without fanfare. A lone female officer in black uniform photographed the smashed truck from multiple angles. “Look how the truck lights are still on,” I said. “Don’t you turn them off?” “Why would we?” the officer wondered. “This is just weird,” I said. “I mean you look at that truck, and you think somebody is probably waiting at home for that guy, but he’s on his way to the morgue instead.” The cop advised me to stop feeling sorry for the driver, that he probably “wasn’t a very good guy.” I wondered how he could be so sure. “Alright,” he said. “You didn’t hear this from me, but he is an exact match to the description of a man who assaulted a woman in Denver a couple of hours ago. We know this is our guy. He’s been raging for hours. This is just the last in a series of bad decisions he made today,” said the officer. “But you didn’t hear that from me. The investigation’s ongoing.”

The young policeman held up one finger and disappeared into a different conversation. It used to be that if a cop had an incoming call, you’d hear the crackle and hiss of the other voice on a two-way radio. Nowadays they wear an earpiece, so when a call comes in, you never know if they’re talking to you or to somebody else. “Not a problem. Great. We’ll thank him for his help,” the officer said into the air. And just like that I was free to go home. It turned out the Highway Patrol Investigator thought my written report was good enough and he didn’t need to interview me. “Just one more thing,” said the cop. “Our Victims Advocacy Department offers crisis counseling. It’s free. You should probably talk to them. They can be here in a few minutes. We recommend you talk to them tonight.” And so I waited for one last public employee to attend to me. I liked that it was free, though I wasn’t expecting much of the visit. The cop then thanked me for my good citizenship and stuck out his hand. He suddenly seemed like a kid trying out a big word. “Citizenship” wasn’t something I was feeling, but I knew what he meant. I thanked him for his service as well. Shaking hands at a fatal crash site was memorably awkward, but we needed some sort of concluding gesture. It’s what people do.

The woman from the Subaru was back at my window with a lot to say. We had been separated by the police for our interviews, so we wouldn’t influence each other's stories. Now it was over. “Listen, they just let me go so I’m gonna get out of here. I’ve really gotta pee. This whole thing sucks. They told you he died on impact, right? I mean, he was obviously an asshole, but you gotta have some pity, right? I just said a little prayer to God to have mercy on his soul. Maybe you should too. You seem like a nice man. Are you OK to drive?”

It had gotten dark and quite chilly. Nearly three hours had passed. I had to pee too. The Subaru drove off and I settled in into the ugly, unsolvable existential implications of the crash.  What causes a man to come so undone with rage? A day of bad decisions, or a whole lifetime? Was mental illness a factor? Unmitigated traumas of his own? Chemical dependency? It was impossible to know, and not my responsibility to unravel, I knew this. Yet I also knew that not colliding with me was the last decision this man made, and for me, it was a good one. So I said the prayer the woman had urged me to say. There was no feeling in it. Feelings were swirling contradictions at that point. The words would have to suffice. The cop was right. I was fortunate. So I tried to make myself feel lucky, or thankful. But it was hard to know how to direct that thankfulness. To God? Blind luck? To the “Universe?” A lot of my friends use that sort of language. It’s like having a god without the challenge of things like worship, specific beliefs or obligations. Regardless, the problem for me isn’t what to call it. It’s how this power can involve itself in human lives in such an abstruse manner, and the seemingly capricious way certain people are spared tragedy, while others are not. To what end? I wondered. If God is Love, as I was taught, then it’s an incomprehensible and maddening love, for sure. I had just watched the silhouette of a man as his life was snuffed out, and in that same moment I was spared. What was I to do with that? It was absurd, but tempting to imagine a move had just been made in some cosmic chess game. The big picture was utterly impossible to apprehend. I wanted to throw my hands in the air. Instead I looked down at them, heavy and inert in my lap, and decided the dramatic relief wouldn't be worth the effort. My brain was awash in the chemistry of shock. I knew this. I remembered something about wrapping myself in a blanket, and maybe elevating my feet, or drinking electrolytes, or some such things. Instead I sat quietly and willed myself back into my body. The thought gently haunted me that whatever happened next, the decision was mine to make. And wasn’t I genuinely thankful for that?

Two women walked up the ramp toward my car. Both wore official looking IDs on lanyards that indicated they belonged behind the ropes at a tragedy. The older one, my age, was bundled up against the cold. The younger one, my daughter’s age, wore no coat, and shuffled up to the car with her arms wrapped tight around her sides. “Where is your coat?” I asked. At my age, I have earned the right to demand that of young people. “I’m OK,” the girl said. The older woman did most of the talking. She concentrated on the “next steps” after witnessing a violent death. Like how I would be preoccupied with searching for "meanings."  It was natural, she said. I was informed that the accident would replay repeatedly in my waking imagination and in my dreams, at least at for a while. And that fear might catch me by surprise. Like at intersections that resemble this one, or when big pickup trucks come up behind me quickly. All of this was a normal part of coping with the experience, she said, “unless you get stuck and find you can’t move past the memory.” There was a sort of scripted flow to her advice. The younger woman said “Yeah” and nodded her head a lot at what the older woman said. They encouraged me to talk about my experience, but it was clear they were looking for clues as to whether I was safe to drive myself home. The younger one offered me a mental health services brochure. I thanked her, and as they walked away I tossed it on the passenger side floor of my car, where it remains still. It’s there if I need it. 

All of the police and emergency vehicles were gone now except for one at the base of the ramp guarding the barricade. The truck was still on its roof with its lights on. I was light-headed with relief but exhausted from the emotional effort of coping with all of this. I laughed a little, finally, at my good fortune, but there was a bitter sadness tinting all my senses that would last for days. I thought I knew complex emotions, but this was something new. It was time for those next steps. Time to rejoin the living. So with all the intentionality and focus of a kid taking his first driving test, I put my hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel, took a deep breath, and headed down the ramp, past the barricade, and into Tuesday evening traffic. Homeward.  

Christmas Wishes From a West Virginia Tollbooth

photo: Kae Penner-Howell

The tollbooth lady wants to know if our dogs would like a holiday treat.
“Pardon?”
It’s late at night on a spooky stretch of interstate in the Appalachian Mountains. We’ve just driven eleven hours, with three more to go. We’re not particularly alert.
“Your dogs, would they like a treat?”
“Oh sure. Yeah.”
The tollbooth lady peels the lid off a blue plastic tub and quickly hands us two dog treats, along with our change from the toll.
Merry Christmases are exchanged.
The dog treats are clearly made by hand. Each one a flattened cylinder of grainy brown dough, bent at one end to resemble a candy cane. Halfway along their length the treats are perforated with fork marks, to make them easy to break in half. A practical touch.

We’re on our way to the east coast where my wife’s family live, and I’m preoccupied with preparing myself for the upcoming visit. Wondering how - or if - I can help keep things simple, or if I should just lie low. Over the next few days, millions of us who celebrate this holiday will engage in some manner of role-playing. Each must deliver a convincing individual performance in order to make it a success. You’d think we’d get better at it by the time we reach adulthood, but no other well-rehearsed day can come off the rails quite like Christmas. No day brings the “crazy” like Christmas. None other offers as many triggers for anxiety and depression, or sets the stage for family drama.

At my in-law’s home, the holidays are shaded with a heavy yearning - the echo of events eight decades old. Back in the Great Depression, my wife’s mom, Laura, was abandoned by her mother just before Christmas. This woman had disappeared with her eldest daughter and was never heard from again by the family. She had reached some sort of breaking point, the details of which are lost to another time. The little girl Laura, along with her father and several siblings, were left to ride out the depression by themselves. The dad tried to keep the family together for a while, but eventually had to surrender some of his children into foster care. He kept the older ones, since they could help run the family business. The three youngest ones, including Laura, were sent to live in a series of foster homes. Fractured households, abandonment and adoption were commonplace in the wake of the Depression, and the repercussions still ripple through many of those families. There’s much more to this story which isn’t mine to tell, but suffice to say that old wounds are real wounds nonetheless, and in this family Christmas remains forever complicated.

The traffic around us swells dramatically as we hit the Blue Ridge Parkway. The right lane is a blur of trucks hurrying the goods of the season to the brick-and-mortars of the mid-Atlantic. The left lane is crowded with impatient holiday travelers headed to their ancestral home towns. I imagine many of the cars around me are filled with families bucking up to the demands of the next few days, reviewing the ground rules for behavior, and coaching each other about forbidden topics. Many of these pilgrims have left their chosen tribes of friends and lovers, only to intentionally spend time among the people with whom they may have the least in common - their own extended families. They are vowing various things. To not act passive-aggressive this year. To let things go. To be patient. Some of these people even have it in mind to be deliberately kind. And they will try.

I picture the lady in the tollbooth rolling out her dog treats with the heels of her hands, twisting each into a cane, then toasting them on non-stick baking sheets in her West Virginia home. She’ll do this for days ahead of time, to make enough for the hundreds of dogs headed east in the way-backs of SUVs. I picture her peering into each car, looking for dogs who need treats. I wonder if her supervisors approve, or if the WVDOT has a policy provision for such idiosyncratic generosity among its employees. I imagine she does this because she loves dogs, and also to stave off the mind-numbing boredom of working at a tollbooth. On a day like today thousands of cars pass under her watch. She has only a few seconds contact with each driver. There is no time for chit chat, let alone a conversation. She uses these brief moments to reach out to travelers by way of home-made dog treats. For a gesture so tiny - trivial, in fact - it is remarkably effective at creating a sense of welcome. It strikes me as a kind of drive-thru Eucharist for dogs. She had asked if our dogs wanted a treat, but in a way, what I heard was, "Take this. It is real. The first real thing you’ve been offered in days. Share it now with your dog, and go in peace.”

For many of us, the holidays will always remain difficult, but they're rarely only difficult. They may also be a thousand other things. Some intrusion of ridiculousness and frivolity will break the tedium of ingrained patterns. Drunken board games and ugly sweater parties will do their best to keep us from taking ourselves too seriously. We may even get brief glimpses of joy, or some of the other things mentioned in carols. If someone drags us to a house of worship, or even if we are left to our own thoughts for a few moments, we may connect with deeper currents of meaning available for contemplation in this dark season. The emptying out of events on our calendars. The long pause as the natural world holds its breath until spring. The glimmers of hope and renewal as the days begin to lengthen. The persistent and seemingly preposterous theme of redemption.

Up ahead the traffic funnels down into one lane around a work zone. I’ve been staring almost exclusively at tail lights for two solid days. Drivers slow down to let each other into the one remaining lane. And so it begins: the small kindnesses and temporary civility that will crescendo over the next couple of days. Like children on their best behavior, these social niceties are awkward and theatrical. Doors will be held open longer, tipping will briefly increase in restaurants, greetings with strangers will be bravely exchanged. Small gestures will lead to bigger gestures until finally, exhausted from all the effort, we will collapse back into our individual comfort zones and life will return to normal. Old familiar fears and small-mindedness will slowly be restored. But we will have spent some small measure of time being the best version of our selves, and briefly abiding our own beliefs, which is its own kind of holiday miracle. Is it not?

Lord, Bless These Hands

Gordon walks toward me with a bottle of wine protruding from the pocket of his cargo shorts. I ask, “Is that a bottle of booze in your pants, or are you happy to see me?” He doesn’t get the joke. Gordon’s an older guy and should know that tired groaner, but somehow it’s elluded him. That, or he's just distracted. I know Gordon from an advanced winemaking class we took together at a local winery. He’s here at the Denver County Fair to enter a bottle of his pride-and-joy in the amateur winemaking contest. It’s a show-off-y blend of french grapes from a certain region known for its sophisticated soil and nuanced weather (or maybe it’s the other way around). It’s a wine anyone would be proud to have made, yet as I walk with him over to the competition entry table, Gordon hesitates, suddenly shy. It’s a big deal to submit a hand-made thing for judgement, even if it’s just at a county fair.

Gordon tells me the most discouraging thought is that his wine might not even get drunk. “I don’t care if I don’t win a ribbon. I just can’t stand the thought of my wine being poured down a drain. I hope someone at least enjoys it.” Those words stick in my mind when I finally bring my own fermented experiments over to the judges. The county fair staff are encouraged to enter competitions as long as we’re not directly involved in judging, and since I am managing the art gallery, there is no conflict of interest entering my homemade hard cider and rose petal wine. I too dread the moment I retrieve my bottles only to discover them half full of the libations I’ve been babying for almost a year. So at the last possible moment, I resolve that the risk of rejection is worth the potential affirmation, and I surrender my creations for evaluation.


At church potlucks, and other places religious folks gather for meals, it’s common to hear a prayer of thanks that blesses the hands of the people who prepared the meal. The Christian version goes something like this: “Lord, we give you thanks for this meal, (etc, etc), And we ask that you bless the hands that made this food. May it strengthen us so that we may better serve you. In Jesus name, amen.”  As a kid who spent a lot of time at church picnics, the blessing of hands seemed curious to me. I always pictured ladies hands because cooking was pretty much women’s work back then. I imagined their hands had an invisible, sacred aura that got re-charged every time someone prayed for them, and that this somehow enabled them to be amazing cooks. It is no wonder the hands that create food are set apart for special recognition. Food is among the most fundamental sources of sensual joy we can experience, since it is basic to our survival. I can’t recall any prayers of blessing specific to other types of work, except maybe surgeons. Their hands were routinely busy patching up the old people in our church. But there were no blessings for the hands that prepared tax documents or did data entry or took away our garbage.


My favorite moment at the Denver County Fair happens on the last day, at the very end, after everyone goes home. This is when the call goes out over our walkie talkies to come divvy up the leftovers from the food and drink competitions. Don’t for a second imagine that stuff gets tossed in a dumpster. Some of us have been eyeing those cupcakes and lattice-topped pies all weekend. Generally, the creators of these dilectables don’t bother to circle back at closing time to claim the remains of their labor. This is good news for the staff. Most of us are dead on our feet by this point, so we summon what civility we have left to bargain over half eaten pies that have been sitting in display cases all weekend, and random bottles of home-brew (beer contestants are required to submit 2 bottles, one is for the judges, the second is a “backup.” These are rarely opened). My own haul after this year’s fair included various ambitiously-hopped beers with the word “imperial” in their titles. I also loaded up with several perfect slices of strawberry-rhubarb pie that were seemingly beamed down from heaven by someone’s righteous great grandmother, and an apple pie labeled “3 Sheets to the Wind Bourbon Apple Pie,” whose sugary spell I am under as I write.

I have no idea who made any of the things I’m nibbling on now. For the purpose of blind judging, each entry has an item number and a title, but nothing to indicate the identity of its creator. I suppose if I were especially determined I could track these people down, but it would take some serious poking around in an Excel spreadsheet I don’t have access to anymore. I’m not even sure what the point would be. I’m not a food critic or some sort of culinary talent scout. I’m just a random dude that ended up with county fair leftovers. The thing is, I’m really thankful for these things, despite their idiosyncrasies and technical flaws, or maybe because of them. What often gets labeled a flaw is just a departure from the expectations of the judges anyway. Most of what I’ve brought home is pretty delightful, and none of it is bad. So in the late summer night quiet of my back porch, I savor each edible creation, wishing I could thank each baker or brewer for the gift they didn’t know they gave me.

I ended up taking third place for both of my booze entries. The judges were unallied. Their remarks were contradictory and blunt, but somehow seemed fair. One said my cider had a sophisticated flavor profile, but lacked correct aroma. Another said it lacked complexity but was still drinkable. A third judge said it was nicely done and very drinkable, with hints of gardenia and honey. I’m still trying to parse all their comments. Coming from the art world - and before that a long career in advertising - I am prepared to triangulate this sort of messy feedback. Still, after nearly forty years of exposing myself to such critiques, I have yet to develop much immunity to their souring effects on my emotions. Anyone entering a contest like this must first battle their own self-doubt before they can offer up their talents to the world. After that we learn to take our lumps in a give-and-take process that hopefully leads to some sort of validation of our efforts. This is the bumpy path of the “third place” creative endeavor, and there is no shame in it. The trick is to buck-up, process the criticism, and move forward. This may be the single hardest thing any creative person has to do on a regular basis.

As we clear the last few items from the cooler it is evident that Gordon’s bottle is not among the sad, unconvincing wines left on the back of the shelf. Instead, I find it in a box of empties headed for recycling. I recognize it by it’s distinctive tapered shape, the kind normally used for light-bodied wines. As I pull it from the box I am relieved to see about a half inch of sediment sloshing around the bottom of the bottle - evidence the wine was drunk, and possibly enjoyed, but not poured out. Though his wine didn’t win a ribbon, I assume Gordon is tenacious enough to give it a try again next year, as will I. In the meantime I say a quick prayer of blessing for his hands, and then for my own. I don’t know if that’s how it’s supposed to work, but it’s worth a shot.