Welcome

THE WOMAN IN THE CORNER

There I am. Sitting in the corner, comfortable in a tattered ecru brocade upholstered armchair, with a latté grandé and an orange currant scone placed carefully amid the books and magazines on the round mahogany table beside me, I did not intend to be here. Well, I had every intention of being here, in The Tattered Cover Bookstore, but none whatsoever of being here in the first floor café, although it is one of my favorite spots, listening to, and finally participating in, the Wednesday evening political salon.

I come to Tattered Cover to do research for a book I’m writing, or rather planning to write. I dropped into the café for a snack … really to delay the inevitable. My favorite chair, by the large window with a view of the courtyard, is empty. This augers well for a lovely sit-down, but augers ill for the research. Happily I put down my half-dozen treasures for perusal, books on Buddhist thought, “Scientific American” special issue on cosmology, and the current issues of “Poets and Writers” and “MacWorld”.  I walk to the counter and place my order, forgetting yet again that here a latté grandé comes not in those huge round fiesta-ware mugs I so enjoy, but in a tall clear glass. Collecting my comestibles I thread my way among the sparsely occupied tables and chairs scattered haphazardly across the hardwood floor. I sit, knowing I have an hour before the political salon begins. I’ll be long gone … or is that thought I keep trying to ignore dictating that I am here now precisely to attend the salon, a thing I have never done before.

The hour is passing; I sip, I nibble. I decide that all those new Macs and gadgets I enjoy reading about, I can enjoy living without. Ah, good … that’s $5,232.00, that I do not have, that I do not need to spend. The “Scientific American” issue on cosmology asks me to spend nothing but mental energy, and I burn off the scone calories trying to grok the multiple universe theory. I ignore the man in the baseball cap who is setting up the mike system just on the other side of the round table beside me. I am, can’t you see, otherwise occupied. More people arrive, in ones and two and threes.  They chat with each other; clearly some of them are “regulars”.  I don’t exactly decide to stay, but curiosity roots in my chair.

The fellow with the baseball cap isn’t only the sound man; he’s the moderator. He picks up the mike and says, “Welcome to The Tattered Cover’s Political Salon”.  He introduces the topic and the ground rules: the mike is the “talking stick”, whoever has it has the floor, please keep comments to about two minutes,  no side remarks, no interruptions, no private conversations.  Something in me that has known it all along tells me that I am here for the evening.

At first, little is said. Slowly the action ratchets up, begins ticking along with the energy of a metronome.  The “left” outnumbers the “right”, but the “right”, trained as it is by Rush Limbaugh University, pontificates with its dander up.

Great heat but no light is generated. “End affirmative action, get out of the U.N.”  “Get out of Iraq, end corporate welfare.”  One bright Limbaugh alumnus sits jiggling in his seat, thumping his leg in a vibrating tattoo, tapping and bouncing his pencil on the table, tossing and shaking his head like a spring-necked car ornament. Every time he gets the mike his voice booms so that the MC has to lower the volume. He quotes and misquotes Aristotle, whose Nicomachean Ethics he keeps waving at us, the Constitution, Buddha, and English common law, all with great and ringing authority. He’s the only one whose name I learn; so many people groan, quietly so as not to raise the ire of the MC for violating the rules, “Oh, no, Mark”.

For an hour and a half I listen.  I wonder how we will address the world’s problems when folks who want to understand and get along with each other make no headway toward rapprochement; but at least they tolerate each other in peace.  So, having made a few notes, as had, I noticed, everyone who spoke, I raise my hand and am given the talking stick. ……

AND ON WE WILL GO … welcome to Leila’s Whaledrum, where who knows what notions will evolve.

The Dwindles

I don’t remember exactly when the  dwindles  began,  but I remember when I didn’t know they existed. In my bright, now dim past, tethered only by Newton, I went careening on my bicycle down serpentine hills adrenalin pumping. Years later, anxiety pumping, I rode the downside of mountain passes with squealing brakes.  Now, cycling two flat easy miles to the village, I get nervous when a Honda toots past  my shoulder.

Nothing used to creak; all my parts were well oiled, fluid in motion, muscles instantly at the ready.  I’d squat on my haunches, or sit on the sand for hours; then simply stand up. Now I need to kneel or push off with my hands.  My muscles are all flacciding out, of their own, and gravity’s accord.

Another thing: I don’t bound anymore.  I sometimes trot, occasionally run, but  bounding, which used to be automatic, is beyond me. Used to be, every morning I bounded  out of bed. Bounded  up stairs and  hills. My heart rate never went into the red zone. When I was a bounder I never considered red zones.  I was at the health club recently, a place of torture and self-righteousness I feel compelled to frequent occasionally, propelled there by an amalgam of fear and trembling, guilt, and longing.  I was on that infernal machine, the Stairmaster.  I thought I was doing fine, keeping up with the program. Then the heart-rate monitor started flashing red!  Convinced I was about to burst an artery, I  got off, dejected.  I have never gotten on again. Red zones are only for dwindlers; time to push the panic button.

I never used to fell asleep reading in bed.  I read until I was sleepy, then put down the book and turned out the light.  Now I find myself startled awake when the  book drops onto my chest. (Maybe I’d sleep right through the night if I read paperbacks).

And what happened to my gums? The periodontist says I need a five-thousand dollar oral cut-and-paste job. And then I’ll need dental implants to replace teeth I’ll lose to a dwinding jawbone.   Did dentists invent periodontics to close the parentheses: orthodontics for the young, periodontics for the dwindlers. Then there are endodontists.  I don’t know what they do, but I’m sure my periodontist will refer me to one soon.

As for my hearing I say, “Huh?” or  “What did you say”?,  a lot lately. I complain, “Don’t mumble, I can’t hear you when the water’s running”, when the water isn’t running. And I know for a fact that the sound level and quality was much better on those old heavy black telephones of my childhood than on these computerized gadgets?  But I certainly do I appreciate speed dialing!

People in their thirties now offer me the front seat.  Since when did that happen? I remember when I used to offer the front seat, feeling, “what a good girl am I”.  I also felt resentful; I hated to sit in the back.  But I enjoyed the sanctimony of knowing I was pleasing them, impressing them; the elders.  But did they feel pleasure or was it surprise and chagrin?  All those years I coveted the front seat, never knowing how, having attained it, and loving the medium, I’d hate the message.  “Be careful what you wish for you may get it”.

Until  recently I watched others age and dwindle while I matured and mellowed, gained in wisdom and thought in universal terms. Looking at old photographs, images of a black-haired, wrinkle-free me, I saw differences.  But they were visual only, nothing essential or existential had altered, except for my increasing sage-ness and perspective.  Certainly nothing had diminished!  My emotional-intellectual-humanistic qualities had widened, my physical capabilities held firm.  I looked around at my family.  Closer in age to my nieces and nephews than to my sisters,  my inclinations and physical capacities have been more aligned with that younger generation. This fed a precious fantasy; I am exempt. I will bound boundlessly into my nineties and die in a skydiving accident!!

Now I  understand the dwindles. I listen to youngsters speaking with that certainty of immortality I remember so well.  But it’s only a memory. I  no longer believe in it. I know there is something over my shoulder, and it’s not just a speeding Honda.

To be continued, from an altered perspective…

Who Sees The River

Never mind that I understand the rotation of the planet, I always see magic in the sunrise.  Seldom am I awake  early enough to go to an inviting vantage point for the experience.  But the morning after an overnight sleep study, having been awakened by the technician at 5AM, I found the perfect opportunity. Wide awake, on very little sleep,  I drive in the pre-dawn darkness to the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru for a large coffee. Heading east, scanning the dark sky for hints of lightness, I make a bee-line for the river.

When I arrive at the River Ferry Park I can barely see, in the paling darkness of pre-dawn, the bank, the river, the silhouette of the treetops on the far shore.  I park the car close to the bank, take my coffee and walk to the water’s edge.

An Interstate highway crosses the river a mile and several bends north of where I stand.  From the bridge the towns behind and before are invisible, and, looking downstream, it’s the iconic old New England scene: winding, slow-moving river flowing between forested banks.  Crossing the bridge at 60 miles an hour, a passenger gets a ten-second view. From where I stand the bridge is invisible, inaudible, non-existent. I stand, my feet inches from the water; watch, listen, breathe, wait.  Daylight is hinted in shades of gray, the sun soon will break the horizon.

Fish see the river from the inside out. I hear their heavy splashes as they jump for insects on and above the surface. I’m not quick enough to turn to the sound and see them, but my ears tell me it’s a hearty breakfast. Hoping for a better chance to see them, and get a closer look at the family of mallards I spy paddling around, I walk out to the end of the old floating dock.  Really, I walk out there for a hair’s-breadth more intimacy, to be surrounded by the river.

If I had stood here one sunrise in 1655, I could have witnessed the inaugural trip of the oldest ferry in continuous use in what is now the United States of America. The single-lane road to the boat ramp today is barely wider than the wagon track originally was. The ferry, a barge that can hold about four cars and miscellaneous foot-passengers, these days is muscled across by a tiny one-man tugboat.  But now the barge is tied fast, all is silent, the little tug is absent; it is hours until the ferry runs.

If I had stood here even long before there was a  ferry, I could have seen the Wangunk Indian people as they fished.

And long, long before the Indians, 200 million years before humans evolved, dinosaurs wandered New England; their fossilized tracks let us walk in their footsteps. But they didn’t see the river; dinosaurs were here and gone eons before the river formed about 10 million years ago.

Dawn is expanding now as the sky inhales sunlight. The gulls are squawking and wheeling, a couple of ring-bills circle above me, the mallards congregate to see if I’m a source of food. We watch each other for a while, each with our own interests and curiosities, then they go on their way.  I continue my morning’s journey standing still. The sun climbs; light expands.

The songbirds have begun the morning chorus.  I scan for a glimpse, but they are as cryptic in the trees as the fish are in the river.  The quality of light is changing now toward yellow and  bright. The mist is  thick upriver, at the northern extent of my view.  In front of me, directly across the river, the sun climbs, warms and dissolves the mist into wispy tendrils drifting with the current inches above the river. Above,  a great blue heron patrols on slow wide wings, then disappears downstream around the bend.

Minutes pass.  Now the sun is above the treetops. Coffee left in my travel mug has cooled and I have warmed. I turn my back to the river and, full of morning, head for home.