Running After My Hat

Important Thanksgiving Week Message

November 25, 2008 by John 2 Comments

…no, not important to you. (Er, not to denigrate your importance.) This is important to me.

See, I’ve got this one recipe I cook once, sometimes twice every year. It’s a recipe for Sour Cream Pumpkin Pie. I’ve made it every year since first finding it in a “holiday recipes” brochure from an actual God-do-they-still-exist? A&P grocery store in Clinton, NJ, in 1986 or so. So you’d think I’d have committed it to memory by now.

You would think wrong. (Er, not to denigrate your intelligence.) After all (I tell myself, by way of excuses), I make it only once a year.

In any case, every year around now I go through the same torture of not having the recipe on hand. After, oh, eight years or so, the brochure started to fall apart. Eventually that specific page did become separated from the others, and for a few years it managed to get lost in a stack of recipes (mostly culled by The Missus) from newspapers and magazines — whence I would excavate it, after a half-hour or more of feverish fieldwork.

Finally, worried that I might lose it altogether, I typed it up and made about a dozen copies, which I then proceeded to secure in various locations around the house where I might think to look for them every year: inside other cookbooks, in various pantries and cupboards, even upstairs on the shelf over my computer. “Just in case,” you see, and a good thing too because as far as I know I am now down to my last copy. (It’s the one I found just this morning — the day of the Thanksgiving-grocery-shopping excursion — on the shelf over my computer.)

So this is for me: a permanent place for me to find the recipe every year.

[Read more…]

I Can Has Library?

November 24, 2008 by John 8 Comments

I Can Has Library? (small dog in big library)

Somewhere within the last few weeks, I read a description of a dog’s-eye (or rather, -nose) view of the world. It went something like this: As a dog crosses the living room, it is reading the Doggy Daily News.

Pretty funny.

But since I’ve now had a few months’ practice walking a very olfactorily-oriented dog up and down the street, and around the yard, I think I’ve got to sharpen the analogy a little.

Here’s the way these walks go:

Trot out front door.
Sniff exploratorily at front porch.
Canter briskly up the sidewalk or, if the mood strikes you, detour across the shortcut to the driveway.
Trot up the driveway to the street.
Stop. Sniff the air. Look left, look right, turn around so as to look over your shoulder, turn around again.
Toss a doggy coin and face left or right, accordingly.
Apply nose to ground.
Go.

[Read more…]

How It Was: Rake’s Progress

November 22, 2008 by John 2 Comments

The number of reasons people start up blogs probably verges on uncountable. But the most common reason — wanna bet? — is surely, “Ummm… I don’t know.” If you dig deeper, you’ll probably get something like this: “Well, I didn’t know at first. But as it’s worked out, I’m actually blogging mostly about X.”

With Running After My Hat, I sort of reversed that process.

As of today, as you can tell just by lurking for a few days, the blog is pretty much about… umm… well…

*crickets*

But when I started it up in the spring, I had a grand vision of what I would accomplish. I meant to launch an experiment in electronic publishing — not that no one else had never done the same thing, but that I hadn’t.

Specifically, I wanted to introduce to some portion of the world a series of booklets which I wrote over a few years in the early 1990s. Collectively, the series goes by the title How It Was. (Several variants have popped up from time to time, the most durable being Jersey Boy: How It Was.) Each booklet is a quasi-memoir of growing up in a particular small town in a particular corner of southern New Jersey in a particular decade of the mid-20th century.

The protagonist of How It Was, identified only as The Boy, has an entirely secret inner life which he superimposes on his daily activities. A bicycle becomes a World War II bomber, for instance; and, for another instance, he views (many of) his teachers with a baffled but stubborn suspicion utterly at odds with his compliant exterior.

And yet, for all his self-fantasies as (alternately) a hero and a villain and a vacillating sprinter between those two extremes, The Boy remains consistently (and unconsciously) a soft-hearted romantic, touched with nostalgia decades before he deserves it.

Each booklet in the How It Was series describes events in a particular season of a single year — seasons as The Boy recognizes them: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Christmas. Actual, “true” events interleave with ones which never happened, or happened much later; The actual Boy ranged in age from around eight to around twelve, while The fictional Boy ages no more than a year — he may be ten, plus or minus a year.

Early readers of the book (those outside The (actual) Boy’s family) sometimes are put off by what one once described as the “arch” tone. But The (actual) Boy is gratified by how easily they seem to get sucked in as they read along.

I posted an excerpt (a long one) from the Spring booklet early in RAMH‘s (so far) short life, but since then I’ve pretty much ignored the whole subject (and ignored electronic publishing, for that matter). Yet at this time of year, even (or especially) with North Florida temperatures dropping overnight into the 20s, I can’t help thinking of New Jersey in the fall, 40-odd years ago. And so now feels the right time to revisit How It Was, with an excerpt (a much shorter one) from the Autumn booklet.

This is a brief portion of the section called “Rake’s Progress.” By this time in the Autumn storyline, The Boy has successfully negotiated the first few months of the school year. He’s gotten through Halloween, triumphantly (in his own eyes).

And that secret inner life is running in high gear: trying, desperately, to justify the annual torture of raking up the leaves from the front yard, shifting them from the yard to the street, along the curb, where they will soon be burned. (More innocent times, those. Sigh.)

Enjoy.

Senses, Seeing Yourself, and the Voices of Angels

November 21, 2008 by John 10 Comments

From whiskey river:

Remember
That to have the eyes of an artist,
That can be enough,
The ear of a poet,
That can be enough.
The soul of a human
just pointed
in the direction of the divine,
that can be more than enough.
I tell you this to remind myself.
Every gesture is an act of creation.
Even empty spaces and silence
can be the wings and voices of angels.

(Michele Linfante)

Not from whiskey river:

Salthouse

When we walked up the hill above Salthouse
and saw, looking down where we’d been

ourselves on the beach waving back —
we were here and there and no-place

coming and going at once, perceiving
the speckled clouds as sleeping seals,

as we dipped our toes in the breeze
and watched from the hill’s shoreline

a kestrel come in with the tide,
and hold his stillness open

over the ship weathervane
of a church that was floating and drowned,

his shadow on the ground beneath him
the anchor that kept him aloft.

(by Charles Bennett)

And:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

(T.S. Eliot, from Four Quartets: Little Gidding)

Finally, speaking of empty space and the voices of angels…

[Read more…]

Flange: The Gargoyle’s Back Story

November 20, 2008 by John 3 Comments

Flange, contemplating topics for first post [I introduced you to my new co-blogger, a gargoyle named (well, his name is pronounced this way) Flange, just the other day. In this, his inaugural post, Flange wanted to give you some idea how he got where he is, i.e., as a professional gargoyle. When and if needed, I’ll interject brief commentary and/or supply footnotes.]

Was born, me, a small granite child. Parents, mine, were three, very common among people, my: mother, father, bother. Please, not to insert “r” that word, in. “Bother,” just.

Humans not know, no they not, about habits, mating of people Flj, such as. Flj explain. Try to:

Mother, father, you know, same with you. Join together, sacred mating ritual But “bother” how pronounced, third parent type—

John: Flange, Flange, Flange — for crissake, this is painful to watch! Aside from which, you’re beating the hell out of my keyboard. Why don’t we do this — why don’t you just tell me what you want to say and I’ll key it in for you? Maybe translate a little as I go along—

Flange: That kay with Flj. Not change meaning, you, no? Flj’s voice, unique, preserve, you, right? Flj have pride, authorial, too! Kay. Your way, have it. The human, you are. “Boss,” ha ha ha.

[Read more…]

Attach Imagination to Mouth. Turn Ignition. GO.

November 19, 2008 by John 5 Comments

When my niece was a couple-three years old, she went through this engaging stretch of weeks, maybe months, during which she improvised neverending stories. For some reason these tended to involve creatures like the Frankenstein monster, Dracula, and so on. (That may have been attributable to my sister’s macabre sensibilities.)

For instance, a story (told, and told, and told… from the back seat of a car) might go something like this:

Once upon a time Frankenstein was walking through the woods AND THEN it started to rain AND THEN Dracula flew down and got Frankenstein AND THEN Dracula and Frankenstein went to a party and monsters were all there AND THEN the sun came out and it was like Sesame Street…

And so on, and on, and on, all the AND THENs providing the transitional links between hundreds of what might otherwise seem, to my unimaginative adult mind, to be discontinuous stories. (They also, and perhaps by unconscious intent, made the plot as a whole uninterruptible.)

I loved that.

This urge to free-associate stories seems a common phase which kids go through — not all kids, but many of them. Should you need evidence I offer, first, this brief and enormously popular (over nine million views and counting!) video from earlier this year: a three-year-old little girl summarizes the plot of Star Wars, Episode IV (this was the original film in the franchise, remember, first released in 1977 simply as Star Wars).

More recently, along came the next one — likewise destined for online-video classic status. (I encountered it the other day, among the weekly 7-Imp’s 7 Kicks entries.) The monologue (a little over four minutes long) is in French, but the clip also includes English subtitles. Some of the characters will be familiar (vaguely) to anyone who’s been around little kids in recent decades. But as far as I know the plot is based on nothing at all other than what emerged, spontaneously and moment-by-moment, from the storyteller’s mind.

Knock me over with a feather. Plucked from the wings of a hippopotamus — in HEAVEN.

Ear Job (3): Tinnitus

November 18, 2008 by John 3 Comments

[This is the next installment in what appears to be a series of ongoing posts about my experiences with ears, hearing aids, and hearing in general. If you missed the earlier bits, feel free to backtrack to Part 2 (on hearing aids); there’s a link there to the first part.]

While preparing to write this post, I went back and read the previous two on the same topic. Lo and behold, I couldn’t help noticing what was, for me, a classic evasion. To wit:

If you were to write a shorthand transcript of my hearing-aid experiences based on nothing but those two posts — and you knew nothing about shorthand, but maybe just enough about HTML and such to be clever, if not outright dangerous — it might read something like this:

stuff leading up to first hearing aid
FIRST HEARING AID
mumblemumblemumblemumble
FIRST WHIZ-BANG HEARING AID
etc.

I’ve gotta clear up that mumblemumble stuff, if I’m to be honest here (with you and with myself).

[Read more…]

Meet the Co-Blogger

November 17, 2008 by John 14 Comments

So, all right — I didn’t post an entry yesterday.

Well, let’s just say that after last week, when I posted not one but TWO entries on not one but TWO separate days*, I thought, y’know, I could afford to relax.

As those of you who (like me) try to post something every day already know, the world sometimes gets in the way. Family must be attended to. Bills must be paid and, uh, well, wages must be earned with which to pay them — we’re not just talking about writing checks here. Meals must be prepared. And yes, sadly, sleep must be had. To say nothing of writer’s block and the occasional drying-up of the well of draft posts.

None of that was responsible for my absence yesterday. No, yesterday my blogtime was given over entirely to training an helpmeet, as the expression goes — someone to stand in for me when Things Happen. In today’s post, I simply introduce him to you.

[Read more…]

Aging Gracefully, and Otherwise

November 15, 2008 by John 8 Comments

The Methuselah Tree, White Mountains CA: oldest known living tree (4800+ years old) At least in the drafts I’ve done so far, the work-in-progress, Grail, uses a rotating point of view from mostly elderly characters. Because I’m not elderly yet myself (though I will be if I don’t work on it faster!), and knock on wood still fairly healthy, it’s tricky to tell the stories from inside the heads of people whose experiences I can’t yet report first-hand.

Not that I’m looking forward to any of these psychological and physical experiences, but I’m forced to wonder: What does it feel like to have a stroke or heart attack, to start losing one’s memory, or to fall, be unable to get up, and have no little LifeCall pendant to summon aid? How does it feel to long for the company of not just one or two, but a lot of people who’ve passed on before you? How easy or difficult is it to shed preconceived notions you’ve clung to for sixty or seventy years — do you even know you still cling to them?

(The hardest characters to write are the ones you’ve never experienced from the inside. Which is why most writers start out with protagonists of the same sex and cultural background as the authors’ own, of no greater age. Disaffected adolescents, anybody?)

In the course of looking around for information — anecdotal as well as scientific and medical — about the experience of growing old, I came across an article on Slate from this past May, headlined Forever Young; the subtitle spells it out for us: Books and Web sites about how to avoid getting old, or at least looking old. The author, Emily Yoffe, describes a “two-prong strategy for trying to stop time. The first is to find the right combination of food, exercise, supplements, and medical interventions to extend your life into triple digits.”

[Read more…]

On the Inside, Looking Out

November 14, 2008 by John 6 Comments

From whiskey river:

Stone

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash his teeth inside a tiger.
I am happy with a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle;
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river-bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen with eyes of dead roosters.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed.
So perhaps, it is not dark inside after all.
Perhaps, there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as behind a hill;
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.

(by Charles Simic)

Not from whiskey river:

I Often Contradict Myself

I often contradict myself.
Oh no, I never do.
I argue with me day and night.
That simply isnt true.

Oh yes it is. Oh no it’s not.
I do this all day long.
Oh no I don’t. Oh yes I do.
That’s right. No way! It’s wrong.

I’m really quite agreeable.
I argue night and day.
I love to be around myself.
I wish I’d go away.

So if you see me arguing,
it’s certain that you won’t.
I like to contradict myself.
I promise you I don’t.

(by children’s poet Kenn Nesbitt)

Finally: The Missus and I saw the group Celtic Woman on tour a couple-three years ago. Although their voices are almost unbearably sweet, one of my favorite numbers — actually a back-to-back pair of numbers — was instrumental: “Ashoken Farewell” and “Contradiction.” Of those two, the first really sang to me; if you remember the PBS/Ken Burns The Civil War series, you’ll probably recognize the tune.

Again, this is an instrumental performance. (It’s by fiddler Máiréad Nesbitt of Celtic Woman — through most of the show, a manic dancing dervish of a leprechaun-like presence, but not here… not at all.) Nonetheless, the piece does have lyrics (added some time after the tune itself was composed), and these appear below the video.

Ashokan (or Ashoken) Farewell
(music by Jay Ungar, lyrics by Grian McGregor)

The sun is sinking low in the sky above Ashokan,
The pines and the willows know soon we will part.
There’s a whisper in the wind of promises unspoken,
And a love that will always remain in my heart.

My thoughts will return to the sound of your laughter,
The magic of moving as one.
And a time we’ll remember long ever after
The moonlight and music and dancing are done.

Will we climb the hills once more?
Will we walk the woods together?
Will I feel you holding me close once again?
Will every song we’ve sung stay with us forever?
Will you dance in my dreams or my arms until then?

Under the moon the mountains lie sleeping,
Over the lake the stars shine.
They wonder if you and I will be keeping,
The magic and music, or leave them behind.

From an interview (at the PBS site linked above) with Jay Ungar, who wrote the music:

“Ashokan Farewell” is a tune that I wrote unintentionally, really. It was a moment of deep emotion after the summer camps at Ashokan had ended. It was the third summer, and it was an experiment every summer, you know, pulling this together. And it had been such a deeply moving experience and the community of people and the feeling of unity that we had had through music, and being away from the regular world was so important to me that when I’d gotten home, I had a sense of loss and longing; and I was looking for a Scottish lament, you know, that would express how I felt. And I couldn’t think of one, so I just started playing, and this tune came out. And it brought me to tears. And every time I played the beginning of it, for months afterward, I was brought to tears.