WWJD?

Bell bottoms, leggings, skinny jeans, Tevas, mom top pants. They all had their second chances. It's time for the resurgence of the WWJD bracelet.

We need a simple, fun, apolitical reminder of whats OK and what's not. What would Jesus do? Most people who know his story are able to intuitively apply the correct answer to this question given many life situations. Should I share my kit-kat? This person is really bugging me, should I call them names? I think I'm right, should I argue or try to listen? Love or hate? etc. etc. etc. 

Not every question can be answered definitively. There can be conflicting right answers from many perspectives, particularly in politics. Should we levy a school tax this year? How much of the state budget should go towards fixing our roads? Do we need a light rail for our city? What is the best way to deliver healthcare? Jesus might not weigh in as heavily. I imagine he would have encouraged healthy dialogue in situations where both sides have different approaches to achieving a greater good. 

It shakes me to my core that hurtful and destructive rhetoric has crept its way into acceptance, has become political, polarizing, a catalyst for chaos. The gentle yet definitive message from the 1990's bracelet fad is too frequently overlooked. Should peaceful protesters be teargassed? Is it OK to mock the disabled? Cooperate or dominate? Human or illegal? Respect and listen or insult and argue? Love or fear? etc, etc, etc.

I was moved to tears recently when I read about a simple and powerful gesture from a policeman during a protest against police brutality. He took a knee. The humble acknowledgement that change starts with the individual, that he can do better, and that he is listening. Peace comes when leaders listen, when the marginalized have a voice, and when your own perspective and life experience is not the only one you try to understand. Martin Luther King Jr. said "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." Jesus, light, love, take your pick and use it as your guide. If it helps, wear it as a colorful reminder on your wrist.

It's fun. It's simple. It's apolitical. And it's time. WWJD? 

How to start a fire

A couple years ago, on the eve of the longest and most treacherous hiking trip I have ever attempted (and also the first), I came to the realization that I could not start a fire. I had a stack of dry newspaper, a bundle of dry pine firewood, plenty of kindling, matches, and even a gas lighter. It was going to be the simplest easiest fastest campfire ever. But it never happened. Match after match, the promising flames that bloomed from my endless reams of newspaper would fizzle out into delicate ashes of smoking memory. With every failure my hope dwindled, and I desperately added more kindling and wood. None of the kindling took, and the pine was never so much as scorched. That night, we went to sleep with the sunset.

The next morning, as we were shuttled to the trailhead in a van full of seasoned hiking survivors, my hope was restored as every passenger gave me detailed instructions on how to get a fire going. Everyone had a different way of doing it. But the message was all basically the same. Armed with their wisdom and a new understanding about the nature and needs of fire, I set out into the wilderness.

There are two things you need to understand about a fire before getting one started. It cannot be rushed. And it needs a good place to grow from. That means that you need to approach the job with patience and a good foundation. You also need faith that the fire will catch. No faith in the fire leads to desperation and smothering.

Almost every fire I have started with a single match began with the Lincoln Log method. You start with a piece of newspaper bunched up, or any other quick catching material (lint, wood shavings, dry pine needles, etc.) Surrounding this nugget of volatile stuff you build a little hut in the Lincoln Log style with thin twigs. Above the mini hut, you arrange a couple of larger in diameter twigs and branches that will catch the flames from the hut. Fire moves up, so put the stuff you want to burn next on top. Not too many logs at once; add branches at the pace the young flames consume them. Once the fire takes, trust your intuition to keep it burning strong.

There are many starting methods that will get you to a good fire. Some people swear by the teepee. The best thing to do is get out there and try it for yourself; I can assure you that sitting here and reading about making fire will not keep you warm. I found a way that works for me. With a patience, a good foundation, and faith in the flames, I'm sure you will find your fire too.

Who is Flint?

In the past year, I've taken a liking to this place. The cozy little yoga studio where I teach, the bright airy farmers market where everybody knows everybody, the monthly art gallery parties downtown. Even the soup kitchen feels more like a big, loud family reunion than a meal for the poor. When I moved here, Flint's reputation had me crippled with fear. Yet the more I became exposed to the quirky and gentrified downtown, the more those concerns faded away and were replaced by another sort of blind satisfaction with this place.

Then a different side of Flint began to seep into my periphery. One of my patients told me he needed his hip to work for him because he couldn't walk outside in a compromised physical condition. Not because of pain or his inability to walk long distances, but because if he was jumped on the streets he wouldn't be able to get away. "It's a ferocious world out there," he told me, in a very manner-of-fact way.

One of my jobs is reading surveys given to people at the farmers market about their satisfaction with the new location. They are all resoundingly positive, and everyone is thrilled with the new community hub. Last week, the enthusiasm for the market came with a dark undertone. "It is like an island here," one survey read. "I feel like I am in a different universe. Everyone is so happy and nice." Most surveys mention that it feels like a safe place. I get monthly email notifications about shootings that occur at the bus station right across the street, so I never walk on that side. I started to realize that I live on the Flint island, and I have never even set foot on the beach.

Yesterday, I met Flint. She was a scrappy just-over middle aged woman wearing pajama pants and a jean jacket. She was the kind of person who looked tired and full of energy at the same time, bright, alert eyes framed by dark circles. She is an artist and a dancer and works for Walmart, and she has big plans for the city. She is writing a grant to turn an old warehouse into artist studio space. In the fall, she was going to buy a big house and convert it into an art studio/bed and breakfast, but her partner backed out on her at the last minute so she bought a house at the tax auction for 300 dollars instead. When you buy a house that way, she told me, you inherit all of it's problems. Without running water or a stove, she has been urban camping in this place ever since. She has a membership at the Y, where they have hot showers and coffee and snacks and a comfy leather couch where she can sit and read the paper. This was a great comfort to her during a rough patch after she had been attacked by two pit bulls, her car had broken down, and she was terrified to walk outside. Two years of constant loss, she told me. Two years of nothing going her way. Even Robin Williams died, she said. But on that sunny spring morning, she believed things would change. The next two years are going to be good, she told me, because we are due for it.  

Exhausted and full of energy. Beaten down and full of hope. I'm still not sure what Flint is, but I know it's never what I expect.





 

it will bee ok

The sun was fading quickly behind a stormcloud and the air was thick with bees. Flying in every direction at once. Electric with anticipation,  I opened up the hive with fidgety hands. It was roaring. In the green light that only glows during an evening summer storm hiatus, I searched the dark, glistening combs for the queen.

Frame after frame I searched. Resisting the urge to swat for fear of mistaking a bee for a mosquito, I let my blood for the thirsty hoards. The bees crawled curiously over my fingertips, palms, the crease of my elbow with a firm, sticky grip. Frame after frame of workers, drones, young fuzzy bees, old tattered ones, juicy white larvae. One newborn struggling out of her waxy womb. I saw everyone but the queen. 

My mind is crawling with bees, their hum blocks out all other thoughts. I know, before I even turn out the light, that they will dominate my dreams.  

It would have been nice to find the queen, to carry out my plan to make a neat hive split and mold the force of nature to my tidy square boxes and orderly frames. But nature cannot always be coaxed to my will.

In fact, nature has been asserting her dominance over me all month. The bees are doing their own thing in spite of my interference. The tendrils of my cucuzza squash are reaching for everything but their intended trellis. My kombucha mother is converting sugar water in ways I cannot predict or influence. My houseplants shrivel in the meticulously ideal conditions I have created for them.

Despite (or because of) my insignificance in the natural order of all my hobbies, they worked themselves out. The bees are making their own queens. The squash tendrils found a sunflower to grow up. The symbiotic mama ended up making some nice bubbly sweet tea. And the houseplants are still dying, which may be for the best. Things don't always go my way, but they always bee ok.  

  

potholes

Today I found myself sitting next to a man who was crouched next to a pothole on the service drive to the freeway, sifting through the asphalt crumbles with an arthritic knuckle. He was searching for cigarette butts that had a little white at the tip, the ones with a drag or two of life leftover. A growing parabola of urine stained the front of his grey sweat pants. He had on a pair of black leather shoes, slightly too big but laces neatly tied in a bow.

I was sitting in a black leather seat in the back of a new Ford Focus, listening to satellite radio with the air conditioning blowing over my face, thinking about what I would eat for dinner when we rolled to a stop next to him. I looked up to scope out the area, the way I always do when I come to a stop light in Flint. Someone in the car mumbled something about how we should leave the city by 7, and it was 7:05.

The car was silent for the duration of the light. The driver fiddled with the radio and then started to tap the steering wheel with her thumbs. We were anxious to get back to the suburbs, where the grass was mown and the potholes were filled and the cigarettes were either brand new or in the garbage and all the apartments looked the same and all the people in them were predictable and tidy and comfortable.

I kept thinking about his shoes, and what it must have been like the moment he was tying them.

Its a bumpy ride home. Here, potholes and highways mark the boundary between heartbreak and sterility.

Highest Aim

When I was little, one of my favorite ways to spend a Sunday evening in the summer was at my Great Grandma Padalino’s home in East Detroit. We wouldn’t go inside- but straight back to the yard where she was invariably doing something in the garden. She would lead all of the kids into her cobwebby garage, walls lined with jars of seeds from gardens past and crusty tools whose wooden handles were soft from decades of use. Above the workbench was strung the most marvelous collection of sun bonnets I have ever come across. There were bonnets with ribbons, bonnets with flashy artificial flowers stuck to the brim, scratchy bonnets made of straw. She would let us each choose one, and then we would all head to the garden to water and pick and play and explore. I admired these bonnets, and the time I spent in them. When I sat down to think about my ‘highest aim’, the bonnets were the first thing that came to mind. And then the jars of seed. And the soft-handled tools. And the long summer evenings in the garden with the people I loved. The essence of these evenings is my highest aim. 

It’s not really an impressive bonnet collection that I want. It’s not a collection of seeds and tools (although I wouldn’t say no!). To me, the bonnets represent a lifetime of colorful experiences, a tangible reflection of a lifetime of living, and the ability to share that life experience with others. The seeds represent a direct connection to the past and the future, that exist perfectly contented and patient in the present moment. And the tools with the soft handles represent work. Hard work, a relentless struggle to begin, to grow, to survive. And when the time comes, to rust with acceptance, knowing that I used myself up. 

Those long evenings, sitting with my family under the open garage door in lawn chairs, that was love. Listening to the crickets chirp the night in as the sun sunk lower and oranger into the horizon, that was love. Perfect, contented love. And that is my highest aim.

Seeing Pickerel Lake

what does water look like? I wondered, as I watched it.
It was brown and silvery and purple and smooth.
But it was more than color, texture, shine.
It could not be drawn with my sharpie.

I looked harder and saw less, until I saw nothing at all.
I stopped searching, my eyes relaxed, my attention shifted
A frog burp in the arroweed, the soft whip of the casted line,
The honk of a billed bird, the plop of a snacking bluegill

Suddenly the surface revealed itself to me.
A reed line and tree line and skyline.
The underworld so real
rustled by wind and by ripples.

Sunlight and coffee and love

Yesterday was grey, and I spent my day looking down. Down at my boots on the salty concrete, over cigarette butts and spit and billowing chemical smoke that slowed under my wide black hood, turning stale. Agitated, broken, empty young men huddled side by side on a plastic bench spat curses and insults at each other as I stood by, too overwhelmed to continue my peace efforts. I was in over my boots, in way over my head.

They passed the time with porn and sleep and energy drinks and smoke, with nothing better to talk about than the asses of every girl who walked by. They barked in the hallway at passing staff, imitated the more severely brain damaged clients, and asked the girls to sit across from them so they could not-so-subtlety rub themselves in the commons area over conversations about the weather.

That day, I left exactly 8 minutes after I was told to get the f--- out of his room, and the eight minutes of tormented yelling and swearing was almost more than I could bear. The end of my shift and I escaped over the crunchy salt and butts and spit, face stung by the bitter cold and fat sad flakes of snow. Relief did not come with escape. I was free, but he was stuck in there. He couldn't escape from himself. I cried on the way home.

This morning, the dormant dread of this hellish workplace pulsed back to life with the electric shriek of my alarm clock.

I brushed my teeth. I brewed some coffee. I packed my lunch and ate a bowl of steaming oatmeal while reading my favorite cookbook. I drove to work and took the shortcut through the neighborhood and past the park. The open field gave me a glimpse of the perfect orange-blue gradation of the morning sky, promising a sunny day. I thought about all the love I have for the people in my life, and I the love they have for me. The sunshine and coffee and love was starting to thaw the dread.

I was warmed so deep that I saw sparks of life in people, not dying embers. I saw people anguished and in pain, but surrounding each of them, a team of people there to comfort and strengthen and heal. They may have been miserable, low, but we were doing what we could to dig them out of rock bottom. This is not what I'm cut out for, it's not what I'm good at, but it's what I'm doing now. And now, just a moment drowned in infinity, is all I have.

I missed the sunset, but I was there for the afterglow

Nestled in the supple comfort of an old leather chair and sipping a glass of watered-down scotch, I looked at the light catching the bare trees along Forest Avenue. It was only six-thirty, but the colors that I saw told me the day would not last much longer. Weariness from a day of tree climbing and dune hiking and wood piling melted into the chair and held my limp body there like glue. A restless tug, coming from a place somewhere between my head and my heart, beckoned me towards the shore and the setting sun, and I was caught in limbo.  

Time has been relentless. It slips away so quickly that I forget to live in the moment. I lay out my future in the cluttered pages of my planner, and in the present I become a robotical thespian, bound to the calendar script I live by. The present is clouded by my constant awareness of the past and the future. Where is my heart when my head is talking? Where is my head to translate what my heart keeps trying to tell it? A part of my conscious always seems to be drifting around somewhere else.

That day, I missed the sunset. But, with the help of some friends, I made it there for the afterglow. The clouds were purple, the sky was orange, and the waves crashed black and cold against the pier. 

Why I wear a helmet now (and why you should, too)

"Have you ever heard the adage 'You are as old as you feel?'" 'Timmy' asked me from behind the prescription sunglasses that he had recently popped one of the lenses out of by accident. He was wearing a tuxedo-printed t-shirt, and the fake rose screen-printed to the fake vest pocket had a blob of yolk on it from a miscalculated bite into a deviled egg. The blue-raz flavored slurpy he was drinking had enhanced his smile by clown-like proportions, and his purple-stained lips gaped open in a half smile as he waited for my nod. "Because I feel like I'm 101." This was the last thing I had expected to hear from a man who had been requesting to see "The Smurfs" since the first previews for it came out, and whose childish personality had changed very little from the time he hit his head while riding his bike forty years earlier.

 But very few situations have gone 'as expected' since taking a job at a brain trauma rehab facility a few weeks ago. I never would have expected to find myself in a bathroom having a debate with a very large, very naked man over whether or not he should put his socks on before taking a shower. I never would have expected to spend hours walking through the mall with someone who was begging so desperately for a free phone at every cell phone store, that he was eventually lectured on the fundamentals of capitalism by one confused employee.

I may be wiping people's butts and risking strangulation on a daily basis, but what I get out of this job is a lot more than the eleven dollars an hour they are paying me to be there. Besides the colorful conversations with people like Timmy, and the amusement of being in completely novel situations in public, I get to hear some truly incredible stories, about how these people got to where they are and how they survived against all odds, and how some of them are taking recovery into their own hands, and rebuilding a life for themselves despite the constant struggles they face. I have a new appreciation for the homeostasis my body systems can maintain on their own, and for the (relative) clarity with which my brain can function. These people have taught me how quickly everything in life can change. One minute, you may be riding your bike to work like you always do, and the next, you are in a several month coma and nothing will never be as it was. It has given me a little more gratitude for every moment. And now I wear a helmet when I ride my bike. You should, too.

Sparty

Sparty, an MD wanna B who likes to use his initials 'MDS' as a vague allusion to his brief stint as a med-school dropout, is a self-proclaimed 'professor' of Anatomy and Physiology at Wayne State University. In reality, he has fewer credentials to teach the class than the majority of the students taking it, but he was blessed with an overconfidence that makes even the dean cower away from the idea of questioning his authority.

From day one, I knew that having Sparty as a teacher was going to be a much different experience from the classical university learning situations I was accustomed to. When explaining a concept, he likes to contradict facts at random to keep us on our toes. After one student expressed concern over this method, Sparty clearly justified himself by explaining that he 'said it right at least as many times as he said it wrong'. All we have to do is Wikipedia it to figure out what he really meant.

Except one day, Wikipedia was down. There was a worldwide blackout to prove how important Wikipedia really was, and, needless to say, it worked. I may be paying over two thousand dollars to be hassled bi-weekly by Sparty, but everything I had to know was on the internet. When it was shut off, and Sparty claimed it was absolutley ridiculous that cytosol was occasionally used interchangably with the word cytoplasm, I felt compelled to consult him because the internet didn't have my back. And I had been using these two terms interchangeably since middle school. I ran up to the front after lecture, and was second in line. The girl who was first in line was fumbling through her notes, so I asked Sparty if I could ask him a quick question. "No, actually, she was in line first," he said, with a look on his face like I had just suggested killing a kitten. We both looked at her, and she, like a deer caught in the headlights, insisted that I ask my question. "OK, how quick is your question?" he asked me skeptically. Little did I know Wikipedia would be up and running the next day, or I would have walked away right then.

I had hoped I would never have to communicate with Sparty in person ever again. But that was wishful thinking. A few weeks later, Sparty announced we would have a quiz to a half-filled lecture hall, five minutes before lecture began. When I came into class on time, I would not have known there was a quiz except that my sister told me there was. (Note: A quiz consists of writing your name and ID number on a blank scantron. Nothing else.) With shaky hands, I frantically searched for my scantron form and ID in my backpack. By the time I had the thing filled out, Sparty was starting to verbally abuse the people who were turning in their quizzes for being 'late'. Based on a previous situation where Sparty derailed a student who was late for attempting to sit in the front half of the lecture hall, I decided to wait to turn it in until after class. But I had a gut feeling this would be a problem.

Again, I found myself running to the front of the lecture with my quiz and a written up challenge to what I thought was a faulty exam question. Someone beat me there. He was turning in a quiz late too. Sparty smelled trouble. "Why are you turning that in late?" he demanded. The student gave hims some type of reasonable response, but Sparty wasn't having any of it until he saw the mess of papers at his feet. "OK, if you arrange these papers into a nice neat pile, I will let you turn in your exam." The kid instantly dropped to his hands and knees and began sweeping the mess up with his hands. Then he turned to me, and saw the quiz in my hand. "Why didn't you turn YOURS in??!" he asked, the annoyance in his tone audibly escalating. "I didn't want to walk in front of you" I said. "I find that hard to believe" he said, and soon he was surrounded by a crowd of kids trying to turn in their quizzes. "OK, THAT'S IT. THERE ARE JUST TOO MANY OF YOU. I AM NOT ACCEPTING ANY MORE QUIZZES!" He was now just standing there watching the kid on his hands and knees like a hawk, making sure no one slipped their quiz in. I was just standing there watching my grade slip from an A to a B for no reason.

I was very mad, but I had my exam question to challenge so I stood my ground. Sparty was waiting for the quizzes to be cleaned up before he took any questions, and this process was taking an awkwardly long time. So I just stared right into his eyes to pass the time. He avoided my gaze. I took in a deep breath trying to regain my inner peace when he finally looked at me. "I can tell you are getting frustrated," he said, and I nodded, smiling. For once, we understood each other. "If you are so frustrated, maybe I cant answer your question. Maybe you should just leave."

I didn't just leave, but I wish I could have. I stood my ground and waited for him to accept my challenge, never breaking eye contact with that indifferent gaze.

WSU

There is one (and only one) thing that I love about Wayne State University: the graffiti. Specifically, the graffiti etched, paint-penned, sharpied, and penciled all over the inside stalls of the girls bathrooms. Where you might expect obscenities, ridicule, and just plain stupid stuff, at Wayne you find inspiration. Everything I have ever read on a stall on campus has been uplifting, hopeful, encouraging. One common tag, done in bubbly letters with a silver sharpie, reads "It Gets Better" with a little heart next to it. Sometimes people will affirm these statements or even add a bit to them, like "it really does, I promise!" and "you are amazing!" At first, I thought all of the inspiration was sort of over-done. It seemed to me that these young humanists were being dramatic. How tough could their lives really be?

As the weeks wore on, this attitude began to shift. With each passing day, things got harder. I started to mix up my vectors in physics and confuse bits of the skull in anatomy. I was slipping behind, even though I spent (nearly) every moment studying or dreaming about what I had studied. Despite my efforts, I was faced with the threat of failure, something that I rarely have the guts to challenge myself to come anywhere near.

I was reading the graffiti with less critique every day. After reading, I would think to myself, that's nice! in an "I'm not so sure if I am being sarcastic or genuine" sort of way. I was beginning to relate to the writers. On one particularly miserable day, I found myself hoping the silver-pen girl was telling the truth.

Sure, there are some downsides to going to school here. But there is a sort of solidarity that emanates from the bathroom stalls as people go in, downtrodden, and come out knowing that they are not alone in their struggle, and that someone out there cares enough to tell them so.

Digging deep

Yesterday, I found myself in a headfirst dive position at the bottom of the 'Five for a Dollar' book bin at the Salvation Army. Half of my body was submerged in the bin, my feet had left the ground, and ma was holding back an avalanche of books that would surely suffocate me or knock me out if she were to let go. We had both broken a sweat several minutes before. My arms were covered in bits of torn up book covers, and the mildewy book dust had my sinuses caught up in that uncomfortable limbo before a sneeze. I strained my left arm in an awkward twist under an old macroeconomics textbook and tried to free a promising-looking small book that was wedged under a heavy car repair manual from the 80's. I finally had the book freed; another romance novel (The Right Moves).

This all started when I was helping ma stuff six brand new used couch cushions into two shopping carts. The cushions happened to be next to the five for a dollar book bin, so I casually picked up an old orange hardback book. It was called 'To See the Word in A Grain of Sand,' and it was a collection of inspirational poems and sayings. This was just the type of thing I like to read to my dog after dinner, so I decided to get it. The next thing I new, ma was beside me, shuffling around the top layer of books. There was a copy of 'The Little Prince' in mint condition! And a Dictionary of American Slang! And a book of Polish Trivia! A field guide to tropical fruits! We were finding so many good books with so little effort. Before I knew it, the pile of books I had cradled in my arms was getting close to my chin. And ma didn't show any signs of stopping. Soon, it became apparent that she intended to dig all the way to the bottom.

Not many people have made it to the bottom of the five for a dollar bin. It is a physical and mental challenge, and should never be undertaken by the lone book-hunter. The bin itself is made of sturdy cardboard, five feet wide and about that deep, and is wrapped in burgundy paper. It probably once held watermelons at a fruit market. Now, it was full to the brim with books. The deeper you got into the bin, the more haggard the books became. Covers were missing, pages bent, some books were even torn in half. Because of our previous successes, our search was fueled by a sort of blind hope that the best book was still in there. But the reality was, the deeper we got, the worse the books became. Finds were fewer and farther between. When I came up from my last dive with 'The Right Moves' we both knew the search was coming to an end. Maybe we had to dig deep and find nothing just to realize that we had what we wanted all along.

fall buzz

Sheltered from the strong midday autumn sun, I stand under the old wooden pavillion by the bay and look at the large sunflower heads, baskets of homemade lavendar soap, pie pumpkins, spotted pears, and apples arranged on the picnic table before me. The market is humming with activity; nearby a baker trades a loaf of zuccinin bread for a pumpkin, and two figures huddle over the largest turnip I have ever seen, negociating a price.

Fishing around in the heavy bag slung over my left forearm, I come up with a ginger crisp apple. After the satisfying first chomp, the sweet juice runs down my wrist. Almost immediately, a bee is perched on my apple, hungrily lapping up the sugars in the exposed part that I bit. I do a little dance there, spinning and blowing and gently waving the apple about, hoping that this wild ride would make the bee less interested. But no, he was loving it. The more I danced, the more it seemed that he was relishing my apple.

I knew that this bee would not sting me. Even though my epi pen was over a mile away across the bay, I did not take any further measures to rid myself of this unwelcome companion.

Then I went home and thought about the situation and wrote this poem:

On the Contentedness of Bees in Autumn

in spring when there is nothing but the melting snow and the bare brown twigs and life ready to exhale

there is no flower for the bee to buzz in so he comes after me and I puff up

the summer makes them greedy with blooms to fight over and nests to gaurd and I tend to my own business

they sting me anyway for being and i puff up

summer days get shorter and blackberries ripen and i gather heavy friuts and the branches bounce back and there are the bees consumed in their work

this time i am stung only by thorns

finally autumn comes and i bite into that first crispy apple and juice runs down my wrist and my hands are sticky and sweet and bees come wildly swarming around me like a halo

and we are happily drunk with the joy of autumn together

My Crazyass Badass Aunt

"You know what really burns my ass?" This is one of the common curveballs thrown by Aunt Patty that gets us every time. "A flame, this high." and she signals with her hand that the flame would have to be about 2 and a half feet to burn her ass. She is a badass aunt, almost 60 years old still blowing through the country on a Harley, and a crazy-ass aunt who keeps things loud and wild wherever she goes. You never know what is going to be said or done when Aunt Patty is in the room, so you have to be ready for anything. Sometimes ridiculous, sometimes obscene, refreshingly random, and always genuine, Aunt Patty never passes up a chance to take a flame to the volatile.

Like the time David was sick, for example. This sickness of Davids could have passed like all of the others, him watching TV quietly and peacefully until he recovered. But everyone was busy with the preparations for Grandma Mancini's funeral, God rest her soul, and none of us could care for Davie. Aunt Patty had, however, just arrived and gracefully offered to babysit david (a high-school senior at this point). Aunt Laura had just delivered a forty sanwich tray of Mr. Pita to feed the funeral goers. As Aunt Patty was putting it into the fridge, the thin plastic tray carrying the mountain of pita rolls collapsed. The sanwiches went flying, splattering tomatoes and lettuce all over the floor. This did not phase her. "David, get me a mop and bucket" she said. David fetched her the mop and bucket. After mopping it up, she plunges five gallons of water into the sink with a drain of about 2" diameter. SHIT. water is everywhere. David didnt know what to do, he thinks she said dont tell your ma (nothing is a secret in this fambily). He dried up the cleaning job with a few large bath towels. It wasnt all hard for Davie, though. She made him about 7 oranges worth of hand squeezed orange juice, so he got better quite quickly.

Aunt Patty taught us to dance, I remember doing the mashed potato with her in the kitchen on Christmas. And I remember her saying that if someone had a messy room, they were interesting and probably quite intelligent. When she said that, I ran up to my room to scatter things around and ruffle up the bed I had made hours before. When I came back downstairs, I told her my room was pretty messy, would she like to come see. Then she told me that she meant messy as in a clutter of many differnt things that meant you were interested in everything and too busy to clean up before moving to the next thing. This explaination was the seed to the the clutter-philosophy I live by to this day.

Last year she and Uncle Barry came to the small town of Grayling, Michigan where I was living at the time. I had been waiting for them to arrive when I recieved a message on my phone from my aunt, proclaiming that they had arrived in Grayling. I called the number back and to my surprise, found myself talking to the waitstaff at BigBoys. "I am looking for my aunt," I say "I think she just called from your phone." The waitress was a bit confused for a minute and then remembered "Oh, does your aunt drive a motorcycle?" Hell, yeah. "She's in the parking lot."

Facebook has now made it possible to hear from Aunt Patty on a regular basis, and hear what is on her mind, whenever I want to. Her status updates are quite possibly my favorite quotes on the web, for some reason they always sound like poems to me:

"it is kind of strange, after hearing about my moms friend passing, I heard one of my dads best friends passed also... they are all sitting around with coffee cake and coffee, probably bitching about something"-PV

"this morning I found one of those chocolates wrapped in gold foil in my purse, and I have NO idea how it got there!"-PV

The stories are endless. Everyone who knows her has them. I will never tire of hearing them, and I look forward to the stories to come.

Happy birthday Aunt Patty. I know I have been telling you this every year on your birthday, but in the past, dad told me to say this. Now I can say, independently and for certain, that you really are older than most of the trees in our backyard. And we have a lot of shade back there.

Selected Poems

Ma took advantage of my presence this weekend and told me to sort through my junk. Amongst the birthday cards and photographs and school papers, I came across a few old poems, from the year that JD and I slammed almost every day.

Friends
I met a scraggly goose yesterday
it asked to be my friend
I tucked it up under my arm
and we were together until the end.
8-9-08

The old sock
I gave you my old sock
to wipe away the tears
to get over the year

You dabbed your nose
and said "dear friend
is this really the end?"
I brought you tea
I brought you soup
again another verbal loop
dear friend
dear friend
can this really be
the end
8-2-08

Superman
It's time to go
but I wanna move slow
I want to drag this moment on

I'll take a double scoop of superman
To the shore of Lake Michigan
Watch the blue green waves crash wildly
This is where I want to be

But it won't last because
Superman melts so damn fast

Poison Ivy
I'm itchy everywhere
but really I don't care
'cause the airs so sweet
and the cricket's song
won't last long
summer's
almost
gone.

Highway
concrete speed
white dash dash dash dash dash
signs read Jesus John 3:3
160 miles to cincinati
148 miles to cincinatti 150 miles to cincinatti
dash dash dash concrete concrete
I have lost my creativity the highway
has sucked it from me
i see only sterile ruins of what was once great and beautiful
but is now trash on the side of the road
void of spirit or character
Where am I? Who am I? What am I? What have we become? Why have we made life into such an inorganic jungle of cold fear desperation hollowness? Why have we destroyed what we were given and created a jail?
A mental physical jail where we have all become strangers. We are foreigners in our own land
we dont know where we came from we dont know where we are going
but we just keep going and going and going will the highway ever end? it won't because we will continue to build it faster than we can drive
faster than the fast food we eat along the way

Thaw misleadin' freeze

A winters-worth of oil flows down the alley, and I splash through rainbow puddles on my way to the beach. It is March 1st, and the snow is shining. The promise of spring has given me such energy that I ran to the top of the watershed and back, just high enough to see the south edge of Crystal Lake, the ice below looking thin and blue. I ran back down, against the wind, while the beech trees creaked and groaned in the wind and large branches that had fallen in gusts past threaten a splintered fate should I loiter too long, taking in the view of the backside of the Elberta dunes.

The elberta dune is covered in hardwood forest, naked for the winter. The hill is like the balding head of a young man or old woman, sparse hair can’t quite hide the scalp, though it strives to. So do the thin trees reveal the summer-hidden contours of the hill.

The sky glows pink and orange and purple all at once and the cedars lining the alley are finally giving off the green smells of spring.

One week later, IPR warns me of a winter storm before I am even awake, and in less than an hour I am back down to my 35 mph commute along the icy coastal highway, wipers squeaking against the wet snow. Until the next thaw, smells return to their frozen cloister in the cedar boughs.

no knead to need

Following a friends simple directions, I mix my first batch of no-knead bread. The recipe is simple:

1 cup wheat flour,
2 1/2 cups white flour
Some salt (about a teaspoon)
Some starter (about a tablespoon)
1 5/8 (or so) cups warm water.

You mix it up a bit and let it just sit there for a day or two. All of the ingredients are approximations, you dont even really need to measure. Then you cook it for 45 minutes at 350.

The bread is perfect, every time. One day, a baking genious blogs about the no knead method and the next day, hundreds of people drop hundreds of years of tradition for a smart, trendy, and in style of baking. I am thrilled by it, but also uneasy. No kneading felt like cheating.

I knead to sift the fine flour through my fingers, like my great great grandpa used to do so long ago, at the bottom of a dusty chute in Sicily.

I need to pick up where grandma padalino left off, filling the kitchen with energy and warmth and fresh crusty loaves.

I kneed to push a days worth of racing thoughts into the soft dough that absorbs it all.

The no-knead method yields delicious, fluffy loaves that required no sweat, no shortness of breath, no high risk of failure. I will admit that I am among the masses who have adopted the no knead method. It is too easy not too. But every once in a while I will give the dough an extra push, for old time's sake.

If not for the bubbles, then for the therapy: I need to knead.

regulars

Along with the town gamer, walker, grinner, and researcher, I have become one of the Frankfort library regulars.

The gamer wears a denim flame do-rag and a light blue denim coat and sits tensley in front of his large screen laptop on which he plays various video games. Most of the time he guides his alter ego (a winged creature that hovers at the center of his screen,) through a maze of karsty hills and foggy forests. Sometimes I like to take a break from my work and look over his shoulder at the mystical world he is in, and think 'wouldnt it be fun to be him, and fly at the library?'

I consider the walker a regular, even though her visits are very brief. She is primarily known through town as the walker of the streets, but I have never been through a library visit without seeing her. She speedwalks through the library doors, arms still swinging wildly, straight to the magazine section, and then straight to the 'Health' magazine, where she lifts the lid of the magazine display to check for health magazine extras. All of this happens within about five seconds. Whether or not she finds what she is looking for, she turns around and speedwalks out with perfect form; at least one foot on the ground at all times, arms pumping, and all at a breakneck speed that would probably be hard to keep up with if you were running.

The grinner has become my role model. He is an older man with short white hair and a trim beard and a pointy nose and red cheeks. He sits at the window overlooking the bay with the latest copy of the Traverse City Record Eagle and reads it for hours. With a grin that never fades. Despite the news, his smile shines on like the reflections from the bay, and his apparent joy is contagious.

The researcher and I have quite a lot in common. He sits in quiet concentration behind his small laptop with a frown across his brow that makes you think he is really getting to the bottom of something. On the back of his laptop is a bumper sticker that says "Point Betsie," a lighthouse and nature preserve that is actively managed for invasive species. This is why I suppose we have a lot in common, because I have to assume that he is researching Pointe Betsie, and hence invasive species control, which is exactly what I do.

As you can see, I am in good company. Like they say, Having fun isn't hard when you've got a library card.

nothing ever changes and it is never the same

At Christmas, nothing ever changes, but it is never the same. This year was no exception.

Heavily rooted in culinary tradition, our family very rarely strays from the ravioli, squid, and octopus dinner that is synonymous with Christmas to our palates. Upon entering Uncle Steves house, we are greeted with that undeniable smell of squid that I so hated as a child. The smell has not changed, but it's not so bad anymore.

Uncle Steve is bent over the stove, lost in a cloud of steam, and when his face appears over a pot of boiling water he smiles and says "Merry Christmas!" and laughs and you know his smile is real because of the wrinkels that form around his eyes.

Grandma Padalino is sitting at the table with her walker, which, as always, is outfitted with helium balloons and stuffed animals and beads and countless crafts that change every time we see her. "Hi Kids" she always says as we enter, and she is referring to both generations of her grandchildren. She pats us with a hand heavily adorned with colorful plastic jewelry and painted nails.

Granny isn't here to greet us, nor has she been for several years. There is no small, skinny, curly haired, large-eyed, shivvering woman to reach up and hook her hand around the back of your neck, and draw your face in close to hers so that she can gaze into your eyes to tell you ever so slowly, ever so shakily, how much she loves you. And then smile. For a long time. And your face is still so close. No one even seems to notice how long David's eyelashes are, now that Granny isn't around to remind us.

For the first time, Grandma Mancini was not here. The nucleus of the gathering, she was always the one to organize the buying of the 'rav's' (slang for ravioli) and canolies, matters of utmost importance on Christmas. She knew all the family gossip and would speak freely on all of the latest topics. Her greeting was similar to Granny's, but rather than hook her hand around your neck she would wrap her arm around your waist and draw you into a warm plump hug. Then she would gaze up at you (in later years she was literally looking straight up, so you were compelled to lean down, though not by force) and say 'now, who do I have here?' This was a sincere question, because she could not see well. "It's me Grandma." is what I would usually answer, and she would know.

For the past 23 years (at least) there has always been a serious, recurring argument after Christmas dinner. When it is time to boil the octopus. This is the most exciting moment of Christmas day, and there is possibly more anticipation for the moment that the octoupus is dunked into boiling water as there is for the opening of gifts Christmas morning.

First, Grandma Padalino ties a cotton string around the floppy grey head of the octopus. Her loose jewelry swings freely with the long tentacled legs as she waves the creature around for the 'kids' (everyone) to see. The brave among us touch it, and it feels just as slimy as it looks. And then, the dunking. Once, twice, three times Grandma dunks the octopus, and with each duncking the creature's tentacles curl up into tighter and tighter spirals, and change color, and what was once a grey slimy mass is now curly and bright.

This is when the argument starts. Grandma Padalino says it must boil for at least 10 minutes, but you don't want to let it get too soft. Grandma Mancini would insist that it needs to boil for at least an hour or it will be too chewy. This chewy/soft argument would go on and on, although it never seemed that Grandma Padalino could hear Grandma Mancinis arguments, and the octopus would come out after about 20 minutes. Always too chewy for grandma Mancini, sometimes too soft for Grandma Padalino.

We are still grappling with how long to boil the octopus, and I do not think that will change for the next 23 years at least. And a Christmas will never pass where everyone is satisfied with its consistency. But never before would Grandma Padalino herself admit that the mollusk was too chewy, until this year. Because Grandma Mancini was not here to say it. It was then that I realized Christmas would never be the same again.