"What the Smoke Makes Clear"

What the Smoke Makes Clear

My eyes were burning, my throat scratched like a deeply marred record, my nose is caked with dried mucus.

There was (and is) smoke in Portland. There are tremendous fires — killing some of those who try to stop them; burning homes, towns? (Does Troy, where I ended my three day trip down the Grande Rhonde two years ago still exist?); and dramatically altering the landscape of hundreds of thousands of acres — burning across the Pacific North West. Yesterday the winds shifted and blew the debris of this destruction down the Columbia Gorge and over the Cascade Range into the Willamette Valley blanketing us here in Portland.

It is less bad today, this time yesterday, two hours after sunrise, the early morning sun was a deep orange-red; today it is just a a pale amber. It is less bad today than it was yesterday, but the amelioration has nothing to do with me.

I have had struggles this summer; painful bouts with disappointments, loss, and grief. I have battered my head against disappointment, unwelcome surprise, and my impotence to affect or even ameliorate my own suffering.

August 22nd, looking North on Mississippi Ave. Normally

one clearly sees the high rises of downtown Portland.

Living and breathing inside this blanket of smoke is irritating and uncomfortable. The air has been declared unhealthy, and I worry about my partner breathing it, I want her happy and healthy; my own health, the lungs of most of my friends are being harmed, too. But there is nothing that I can do in the face of the west burning. My home is safe. My lungs will not be scarred, but still I struggle with my impotence. For years I engaged with every obstacle as an adversary. I worked to vanquish every foe, and to conquer each objective. The word disaster comes to mind. Some events are beyond our control. One day in the next week or two centuries, the Cascadia Subduction Zone will slip, and we will bounce up and down for a couple of minutes, we will be crushed and burned, and much of our urban comfort will be shaken apart. Today we just breathe less easy, our eyes feel the itch of of fire, today I hear the universe say, “There are some things you can not control. There are some things you must accept.”

What Comes from Not Speaking

Dudley: In Which the Narrator Discovers that the World Pokes Us for a Reason or “If the universe really is taking care of me, then the universe really is taking care of me.”

Dudley: In Which the Narrator Discovers that the World Pokes Us for a Reason

 or

 “If the universe really is taking care of me, then the universe really is taking care of me.”

       With only a couple of disconcertingly painful exceptions, the universe has been taking very good care of me. At a time and place when the real estate market has been crazy, I found the house of my dreams the first day I was looking. I have wonderful friends, a loving and supportive partner. My puppy speaks both Greek and Latin (though she can only read Latin)… Ok, so that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

       So much is so good in my life that I must acknowledge that I’m being helped.

       So what’s up with the exceptions? A incredibly challenging teaching year, a brutal divorce, a challenging crises with a best friend? Yesterday provided me with an answer.

      

       Mr Sparkles, my puppy, needed a vigorous evening walk. We headed to the park, where I can let her run to the end of the flex-leash so that she bounds and prances, and generally expends her bountiful puppy energy safely.

      As we neared the park, she was excited, and I was perhaps a bit distracted by two attractive young women walking across the grass. And then there was an unleashed husky mix bounding across the park right at Mr Sparkles! I couldn’t see the owner, but the husky didn’t look to be in predator mode, so I waited for Sparkles to greet the strange dog.

       Mr Sparkles didn’t see things quite the same way and she bolted (Mr. Sparkles is a female; the pronoun may seem confusing at first, but that is a topic of an essay for another day.)

       Mr Sparkles went so hard and so fast I lost my grip, and the husky tore after her. Next I knew, Mr Sparkles was running out of park, and she dashed into the street, her retractable leash alternatingly trailing and catching up with her as the husky bore down on her like a cheetah on the nature channel. Sparkles’ screams were such that people were coming out of their houses and yards, but her fear couldn’t propel my feet fast enough to catch up with the dogs.

       Then Mr Sparkles ran into a car and out of room, and she turned to face her antagonist. The husky was right on her, the long blue cord and handle of her leash trailed far behind. I could see her in the jaws of the bigger dog, I could imagine the leash crashing into her small body. I was terrified and helplessly far away. The husky and the retracting leash were closing. And then the handle of the leash hit the curb, and bounced and hit the husky in the head!

       And I got to Mr Sparkles, and grabbed her up, and then we cowered on the other side of the street. The two young women arrived, and leashed their husky, asking if my dog was ok. I wasn’t, but she seemed to be. Then I realized we HAD to go back to the park so she could see it wasn’t a bad place.

       And here begins the REAL story.

       We walked tentatively again in the park.

       A man, about my age, one of the people who came out of their houses at the sounds, walked across the street into the park with a small white dog trotting along side. They came like angels to make sure that Mr Sparkles had a good memory, and frankly, I think to show me that I wasn’t a bad owner, that I hadn’t failed in my duty to Mr. Sparkles, that the attack hadn’t harmed us, and that the universe is in fact, taking care.

       Dudley is a mature and mellow half poodle half schnauzer; and SO well mannered. The man had Dudley just lay there so Sparkles could sniff him, and the man, was GREAT. He crouched down and drew Mr. Sparkles to him with love and with calm. I don’t remember the man’s name. But I can feel his energy dancing throughout me still.

         So, the husky chase was terrifying, painful. But maybe it’s not that the universe had abandoned me just then, maybe the universe couldn’t send Sparkles and me the angel and Dudley without the chase having happened first. I’m trying to believe that as much as the universe has been taking care of me; even the unpleasant bits like the divorce which liberated me, and the even the painful difficulties with my friend are good.

All Things Old Get New Again (We Hope)

All Things Old Get New Again (We Hope)

The summer of 1983 I turned 17 and spent my last summer at “camp.” My parents used to send my brother and me away in order to enjoy the New England island where we lived and others came to for summer vacations. Climbing was not yet wide spread, but I spent a summer, in a van climbing rocks and mountains discovering I did not like heights; it was a glorious trip.

I went west for college, in no small part, to the glories I experienced in the North Cascades and Yosemite (and ok, yes, there was a girl involved, too). My college had a break in October, and I had enough cash to buy a rope, climbing shoes, and a harness. My new friend Eric and I were headed for the mountains to climb.

But my tendonitis came back with a vengeance. Even the thousands and thousands of milligrams of ibuprofen that had gotten me through much of high school wouldn’t put out the fire. I went to a specialist, and he put me in a brace, I’d be on crutches for months. I sold Eric the rope so he could go, and the next spring my still unused shoes were someone else’s great deal.

I went through two bouts with my knees in college, the struggle to be mobile, the struggle to let the inflammation subside, and the inevitable fight to regain strength after months of immobility. I broke my leg telemarking at age 24, and got most of my strength and stamina back after that fall as well.

Then I went to grad school and got a professional job. I’m nearly 50 (ok, I’ll be 49 in a month), and for most of the last decade I spent both the principal and interest a jocks youth deposited in my body, and I went into debt. I worked two professional jobs, one to earn a living, to provide health care for my wife and for me; and one as a leader of a social justice movement. Every time I didn’t go to the gym I thought, “next time”, and called on my reserves.

I left leading the movement. The toll five years of 60-80 hour weeks was too much. And then I left my marriage. Some folk would be driven to the gym. I struggled through an epic divorce, and though I often took long walks to drain the anger from my body, I haven’t lifted weights or worked my body to exhaustion in too long to remember.

Two days ago at dinner my friend Risa told me I had to go to the climbing gym with her. I said sure, confident that it was a date for the “future.” Yesterday she told me we were going today.

I hate doing things I’m not good at. I’m a gone soft nearly 50 year old man, who once stood on top of a glacier, one of the Needles in South Dakota, a rock face in Yosemite, and on top of an arch in Utah. But who now prides himself on taking two or three flights of stairs rather than the elevator.

The idea of trying to press, pull, and lift myself up a wall of artificial rocks alongside lean and lithe young men and women felt uncomfortable. 

I signed the waiver, then Risa said, “at our age we ALWAYS start with stretching,” and we did.

Then she put herself up on the multicolored holds and did a traverse across twelve or fifteen feet of wall. Then I followed her. And again. And then up a wall.

Risa was applauding a gorgeous lithe, toned woman who was practicing a cartwheel without hands on the soft pads beneath the walls. We ended up talking, and when she went back to her practice I saw her focus was on where she wanted her head NOT to end up, rather than on her feet which needed to shot skyward in order to make the maneuver strong. 

I tentatively offered her the observation, and Liz’s next attempt was much stronger. I explained what my Kung Fu teacher has explained to me about a kick thirty years ago, proud that I remembered, proud that I could see what Liz wasn’t doing.

As we all moved about the gym we bumped into one another and kept talking. I resisted (as much as I could) being deprecating, and Liz was very encouraging. 

Much of how to move on the rock came back to me. But when Risa explained why one particular route was laid out the way it was, it was as if she were speaking Sanskrit. I don’t think we knew those things in 1984.

Risa and I are not young; she has been keeping herself fit on the rock for a while now, and though she is like me a bit wider than we might like, less strong than we once were she seems smoother and more fluid on the “rock” than I am.

Liz, is long and lithe, and moves with a confidence and grace I never achieved as I climbed rock faces in mountaineering boots in the 80s. But even Liz seemed clunky next to a 8 year old girl who moved up the walls as smoothly as an octopus gliding through the sea. Her four limbs,  small hands, tiny feet lifted, pushed, and balanced her from floor to roof as if the only work her body did was to breathe.

It took two days for my muscles to remind me that the work I had done at the Rock Gym was new and difficult. But I have a vision of being like the little girl, or at least a bit more more like Liz, or maybe Risa.

I haven’t bought a new pair of climbing shoes, it’s only been a few hours since I left the gym. But I think I might.

The Rat and the Murder of Crows

The Rat and the Murder of Crows

Last week Gaby noticed large crumbs of insulation in a pile underneath the siding at the base of the foundation. A few days later I saw a tail disappear up under the siding, and two nights ago, during dinner outside, I saw the rat run across the back steps into a bin of firewood. We found something club like, and began moving chairs and tables away from the bin. Then I started lifting the chunks of wood out. Suddenly the rat leapt out, and was under a chair, then off across the patio into the shrubs. That evening after our puppy’s last pee of the night, Gaby set a large plastic rat trap with peanut butter. 

I woke in the middle of the night, not to our puppy pawing her crate to go out pee, but to the scratching and knocking of the rat in the trap on the patio. It was painful to see half of a body of a living thing thrashing in the spring loaded jaws. I grabbed one of the firewood scraps, but there was no clear way to give a decisive coup de gras. I did the best that I could, taking the scrap of 2x6 and quickly and firmly crushing as much of the rat beneath it as I could. It twitched once, and I hurt for it; it twitched twice and I began to panic, and mercifully it spasmed and I knew it was dead.

There is a crow in my neighborhood. The morning after our rat invader was expelled I saw it on my walk with the puppy. Mr Sparkles was, as most 12 week old puppies are of everything new, frightened by it as it walked along the road next to us. The dog, did not recognize the wing held cock-eyed, and the failure of the crow to take to the sky at our approach.

There are many semi-feral cats in our neighborhood. A month or two back as I walked out the front door to leave for work a coyote sauntered up the street. As I walked with our puppy, trying to help it have the experiences that would let it learn not to freeze and cower every time a car backfires or a crow caws, I took solace in imagining that the crow would be gone soon. Something would recognize its weakness and take advantage of it’s misfortune.

It’s four days later. On our walk this morning Mr Sparkles only froze once (ok, twice, but for large, barking dogs both times). Coming back home I saw the crow with the broken wing, just as I have for the last four days. And just as one has every day, as I approached the corner where the broken winged crow walks another crow up on a wire, or in a tree caw’d caw’ caw’d, warning of our approach.

There is a major rookery in the park two blocks away. The crows come from miles every evening at sundown to roost together. In the morning they disperse to forage and feed across the city. But there is always a crow in over watch of the injured bird. The murder won’t leave their fellow on it’s own.

How a society treats its wounded, it’s dying, it’s vulnerable says so much. Let us take our cues from a murder of crows.

Epilogue: The crow with the broken wing lived for four days.

Fermenting.

Fermenting.

To ferment is to alter the structure of something. To transform. To transmute. Sometimes the universe offers us something. This week the universe offered me fermentation.

Last week, I was having lunch with a dear, dear friend, someone who brings out the best of me, and isn’t afraid to call me on my shit. She mentioned kombucha, and I made fun of hipsters and their refrigerators full of jars of tea with globs of yeast and bacteria floating like turgid ghosts at their surface. 

It turns out, kombucha is tasty. Yesterday I drank my first glass, I was meeting a new friend and Yves, who is an avid fermenter, picked a place that serves kombucha. I figured in for an inch. Yves and I feed our dogs raw food.. Soon I expect to be feeding my dear mr sparkles Yves’ “Scoby Snacks” fermented vegetables that are part of feeding a dog a raw food diet. Her dog is named Scoby; Scoby is also the name for the gelatinous, symbiotic mass that turns sweetened tea into delicious, fizzy, vinegary kombucha.

Yesterday a new acquaintance told me that she ferments kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, yogurt, and honey wine. I love sauerkraut, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it was fermented (I thought that it was simply soaked in vinegar (itself the product of fermentation). What other surprises does fermentation hold for me?

What is the universe offering me? It is time for transformation. I am returning to the world of making. I am becoming a teacher of making. This fall I become a student again, a beginner. This week my brain worked liked a designer. I began with an idea; I moved to express that idea in a concrete form, and I was bounded by the materials at hand. Exploring the intersection of the materials and the idea a new thing emerged. I began with sadness, and added a block of Oregon Myrtle wood. What came forth was a box in Koyaanisqatsi, a form in disequilibrium to express “What Comes from Not Speaking”.

There is a small fountain in our back yard. Water is pumped up six feet and then swirls down seven red funnels. The humming birds often came to look for a sip of water. Last summer the uppermost funnel overflowed, and I reached in to remove the clog. Rather than rotting leaves I removed a drowned humming bird plug, and the water began it’s spiral dance again. This year when the hummers returned, we added a small pot to the topmost funnel, I have yet to see a hummer touch it’s long, long tongue to the water that it can now reach without danger of drowning. We also added a ceramic bird bath below the lowest funnel, propped on top of a large, upside down terra cotta pot, the bath this moment has it’s first visitor a juvenile Scrub Jay. The fountain which has always provided lovely sounds, and positive ions now provides for others as well.

I am nearly 50, and starting some things fresh. I will be buying a new home this summer, and I will be sharing it with my mate, my partner, my love. The land we will have will be fallow, and raw, and the first thing will be to add compost. Isn’t compost fermented? Not literally, no alcohol is provided by the squirmies and worms that break apart the chunks and bits changing shit and dead to nourishment and richness. But it is the transformed product of tiny things digesting one thing and their waste being a resource for something else.

Fermentation is change. Change is not loss. Sugar becomes alcohol and CO2. Nothing goes away, but where there was sweetness there is the bite and transforming power of alcohol. Fermentation has made it different. I have been feeling a tremendous sense of loss lately: home; career aspirations; fiscal wealth; a decade old garden; friends each aren't the way they were before. Divorce is a kind of death. All relationships change. Gardens grow and decompose in endless cycles. Cash is only one kind of fuel.

Fermentation is yeast eating fuel to change the fuel into another kind of fuel; fermentation has products. Some of these products we call “by products.” The CO₂ that yeast create in making beer and wine and wort is released by the brewers, a five gallon carboy will burp and belch through a tube submerged in a bucket of water. Of course the barely malt is the product of a plant eating CO₂ and sunlight. 

The gurgling of CO₂ happens because the bucket of water acting is used as a one way valve to keep the “good” microbes in and the “bad” ones out of the brewing carboy. The scoby on the top of a fermenting jar of kombucha is also a valve; the mat of yeast and microbes acts as a kind of lid protecting the process inside the jar.

When you know that you want beer or wine or kombucha, you know what yeast you want in, and so you know that you want all the other yeasts to stay out. When we know what we want in our life we think we know what to let in and what to keep out. 

Except, except even when you know what you want, sometimes you must be open. Belgian Lambic is the product of luck, and trust, and the universe providing. The brewers in the Zenne valley allow wild yeast and microbes into their wort and deliciousness ensues.

If I open my wort to the universe, what will dive in?