Nate of Las Vegas - Part I

Nate of Las Vegas - Part I

I met Nate after breakfast.  He sauntered towards my camp.   

“Are you alone?”

I stalled in response.  After last night debacle I was weary and apprehensive.  I had been awakened by the sillouhette of a man’s face peering into my tent. 

Las Vegas, New Mexico

"Heeey, want to party with me?”

Four in the morning, 4^th of July weekend, Las Vegas, New Mexico. 

I shot straight up, and grabbed the ax.  Shocked it wasn’t clear to him that I was sleeping, and horrified that I could hear his breath without seeing his body.  I stammered,

“I don’t party, go away.”

He scurried away, and somehow I found a few more hours of rest.  I looked back to Nate.

“So, do you mind if I have breakfast?”  

I scanned over his gangling limbs, down to his bare feet.  His skin was pale and milky; it matched his white-blond hair.  I could see the youth in him.

“I don’t see why I would.”

He sat down on the ground and dumped out a dirty back pack.  Spoons clanked, paper fluttered and out spilled several small jars, a canister of oats, and two bowls.  He turned a bowl over, wiped out the hollow with the corner of his stained shirt and reached over me to grab a gallon jug of water I had set out next to my camp cook area.  The liquid made a generous glug and splashed, overfilling the dish.  He poured dry oats into the cold water and fished through the mess to find a spoon.   He opened the peanut butter jar scooped out a mound, licked it, and crammed the spoon into the open jelly jar.

“Oats are the best breakfast.” 

I watched him shovel heaping spoonfuls into his mouth.  Not knowing what to say, I waited while he ate until he slammed the bowl down on the earth, spilling most of what was left.  He jumped to his feet, turned his back, and struggled to rip off his shirt.  Instead of taking it off over his head, he tore it down the center and cast the shirt aside to reveal a body full of poorly tattooed stars, and a crooked goat carcass.

“Look!”

There was no way I could not look. His thin frame swayed to and fro, blocking the early morning sun. 

What do I make of this?

He leaned forward and came to face me sitting on his knees and closed his eyes.

“I want to create all that I see… there are not enough stars in the sky, so I make them, on me.”

He opened his eyes and twisted his torso.

“See here… well, actually my girlfriend’s daughter helped me with these….she is about nine…she is really great at things like this.”

I nodded and listened.  He continued picking out patches of stars to show me on his body, and then snaked around to towards an unreachable area of his mid-lower left back.  The stars in this area were extra dense and dotted.

“I couldn’t see very good when I was giving myself these.”

 

I could tell.

 

He snaked his body back around, then pushed himself up and lowered his body to sit facing me knee to knee and whisked up what was left of his bowl of oats.  He began chewing, and then asked me, through a full mouth,

 

“Where you from?”

 

“Indiana.” 

 

It was all I managed before he started speaking again. 

 
He raised the centers of both eyebrows, and nodded.   

“Oh yeah, Indiana…I’ve been there, northern though.”

His gesture felt loaded, I waited, he watched me.

“…on a skateboard tour…”

I was now the one making the nod of recognition, raising my eyebrows in the center, and bobbing back and forth. 

“Oh yeah, skateboarding…I’ve been around people who are into that, not me though.” 

He looked off into the distance and while looking away added,

“Yeah, hmmm..Indiana… that’s that state full of all those bar-hopping mystics.”

His eyes re-centered on mine to see if the attribution caused any noticeable change in my manner.   My expression didn’t change.

“Well… Indiana talks about you… me, I consider myself a Vegan-Republican-Skateboarding Boxer from Colorado Springs.  I plan to build a log cabin in the woods one day.” 

He finished scraping the bowl of oats, licked the spoon and offered me his dish.

“Want some”

“No.”

I had already eaten.  He threw me an orange and continued to talk.

“Do you realize the nutritive value of purely raw foods?”

“Well, I have….”

Nate turned away after I said the word “have” and pointed to the mountain range behind us.

“You know there is a castle up there.”

 And then he came in close to my ear and in a confident, more direct tone he said,

 “you know... you can’t swim nude up there.”

 I shifted my posture and stood up to collect the remainder of my breakfast supplies.  I was ready to go.  I took my cooking utensils to the spiget near the bathhouse to wash them, and turned around to notice that Nate had taken down my tent, rolled it up and placed into the bag.  It was the first time the tent fit properly.  I walked back with my utensils and he waited, propping himself on my car holding the tent.

“Pop the trunk.”

I went around the driver’s side and pulled the trunk release.  He threw the tent in, and with his skateboard in arms he jumped in the front seat signaling me to get in and drive.  I stood outside my own car looking in the back window, his white hair standing up just above the passenger seat.  He poked his head out looking for me, and with a lazy grin, he pointed towards the distant gravel road,

 “there’s the castle…it’s where we are going.”

I followed his finger, pointing to the mountain squinted my eyes, and then looked back at him.

“…but before we go there, I want to give you a present, just up the road.”

I stood for a minute looking at him, my car, the mountain, and back to him.  And then walked around the backside, and jumped in the driver’s seat.  We inched out of the campground and passed a school bus turned into a semi-permanent RV camper.  Nate leaned halfway out the window and shouted,

“Hey Jake, I’m going to town, be back.”

Jake didn’t look happy.  I didn’t stop long enough to find out why.  Nate told me anyhow,

“I owe him some money.”

“Huh.”

Just outside of the camp he said,

“okay turn here, just down the road turn right…at that mailbox up there”

The mailbox was leaning into the street, I pulled into the gravel drive and parked.  We stopped in front white shack with a few small sheds.  Nate jumped out then leaned his head back in the open window,

“I store my stuff in that shed, and I know I have something for you, wait here”

He ran barefoot on the gravel and went through the rickety shed door.  I thought,

If I was going to drive off, I’d do it now.

-- End. Part I - Allison Distler

Remembering Uncle Fritz

Blond, blue-eyed boy in a sepia toned photo from the 40’s…shirtless, baggy khakis belted crookedly around a muscled middle.  His leggy little sister, with the million dollar smile is balanced on his shoulders. Summer time.  Middletown, Ohio. Goofing around. Even in black and white, they seem to glow.

                        Nature’s first green is gold

                           Her hardest hue to hold.

His bicycle clatters along the Devil’s Backbone…Middletown to Grandad’s Preble County Farm. Haying.  The horses he loved.

The raft he made broke on the levee of the Miami River the afternoon he ran away the first time.

Indianapolis Bus Station—another time—he’s returned to Ohio by a friendly driver when he couldn’t pay the fare out west.  

 Optimist yearbook 1952…on a diving board, in tennis whites, a god on the starting blocks. The town made a grass court for him to practice on when he made Jr.  Tennis Nationals back then.  Summertime, all the kids came running when word got out Fritz was diving at the town pool.

                             Her early leaf’s a flower;

                             But only so an hour.

Black leather jacket to balance something in him out…motorcycle, a cigarette hangs off the corner of his mouth.  James Dean before James Dean was discovered. 

Army greens.   Bar Fight Korea.   The other guy passed out first but not before he cut a slice across my Uncle’s throat with a broken bottle, leaving a memorable scar for many barroom yarns to come.  The point was always that the other guy passed out first.

White Tux.   He cuts a wedding cake with Aunt Linda in her Mother’s fine lace wedding dress.  They could be magazine models.  Movie Stars.  He makes his way west with her at last.  They leave their fancy duds behind.

He leans against the helicopter, outfitted for adventure.  The fire service calls.  He jumps.

White t-shirt….Wrangler jeans.   Windblown hair…work gloves, lasso.

A mixed herd: One, two, three, four, five…tow headed children…sheep, cows and horses. In cowboy boots, hat, flannels, chaps, he shoes the horses, castrates sheep, runs hunters up into the wilderness mountains behind his place in Colorado.

Comes up over the rise, backlit, brown-skinned, sure hands on the reins and the signature cigarette.  Someone says the Marlborough People approached him to be their Man one time.  Naw, he said.  I’m not yer man.

                     Then leaf subsides to leaf.

Years and years and years go by.  His hands freeze up, his back stiffens.  There at the treeline, the man in the worn hat saddles up his mule, peers over the beast’s neck, eyes still steely blue under bushy brows, and says without saying it, quit foolin’ around, we gotta head back.  Storm’s coming.

Cancer works its way to his bones.  Puts him to rest at the foot of the mountain at last, but not without another good fight, a fireside tale, and one of his favorite poems:

                   So Eden sank to grief,

                   So dawn goes down to day.

                   Nothing gold can stay. 

Remembering my Uncle Fritz Foutz   1936-2012.  Enigmatic Uncle, storyteller, mandolin player, horseman. May he be looking down from the mountain satisfied to have lived the dream of his childhood imagination, having left his unique mark on all he encountered.

“Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost

BLR For the Poplar Grove Muse, August, 2012

Rifles in the Woods

A little over a week ago, my oldest had her wisdom teeth out. The next day, she went on a scavenger hunt all over town and had a blast. (We are tough women in this house when faced with pain and physical adversity. Perhaps not so much existential adversity, but that’s another topic….)

The second day, she went shooting in the woods with her fellow “viper assassins,” as their beloved Tae Kwan Do teacher and mentor likes to call this girl cohort of spectacular teen martial artists—two black belts, four red-black belts approaching that milestone.

The teacher is a Marine, a grizzled martial arts and self-defense expert who mixes his dedicated teaching with standup comedy (a combination that goes over extremely well with the under-18 crowd), a voracious reader, and a flaming political progressive. When he asked me if my daughter could go, I felt it was in part a test of me and my biases, and I have to admit that I quailed a bit, inside, at the thought of sending my child out into the woods with guns.

However, I immediately and pseudo-confidently gave my public permission, and decided I could think it over on my own time. Who knew, maybe her father would veto it?

He did not.

However, in my conversations with several friends, a number of them did. Veto it, I mean. I am firmly against gun ownership and use, despite having grown up in the Midwest with shotguns in the house (I never had the slightest interest in them, and steadfastly refused the occasional duck, pheasant, or deer flesh that landed on our table). But aside from my initial hesitation (largely due to the unexamined safety issues), I didn’t see that learning a little bit about gun use necessarily went against my opposition to private gun ownership.   

One friend, whom I respect deeply, was shocked and expressed the fear “what if she really likes it?”

I have been thinking a lot about this decision, and its implications, and how we make these incremental, sensitive, potentially consequential decisions. Many emotional responses come into play in doing so, without our even being fully conscious of them: fear is a big one—of the unknown, of tangible dangers, of exposure to who-knows-what; unfamiliarity and its evil twin, avoidance of displaying one’s ignorance–I suffer a lot from this, especially in meeting international acquaintances, as I am mortified that my knowledge of so many cultures is woefully superficial; self-consciousness—political, moral, socio-economic (as I made clear, this one conditioned my immediate response in this instance); the list is long. 

However, in my life, I am trying increasingly to allow a desire for new experiences that will stretch me and my loved ones to govern my decision-making.  As I look back on my life, my adventurous choices are the ones I remember best, treasure most deeply, and learned the most from. The moments  (surprisingly, more than a few, in my previous incarnations) where someone asked me to do something because they knew I was a risk-taker, or would be open-minded, or was someone who was up to an adventure, carry a special glow in how I conceive of myself. The moments where I allowed myself to quail, or focused on the inconvenience or difficulty a challenge might present, rather than the possibilities it might offer, are those that I still occasionally struggle to put into perspective.

As for the guns in the woods…. No one was injured. Everyone had a great time. My daughter didn’t think she was up to the kick of the shotgun after the oral surgery, and didn’t try it. She preferred the slim, easily handled .22 and its low recoil.  Followed by the AK. The Glock was attractive but hard to stabilize.                                                                   

 A bold  addition to the metaphorical arsenal of her life experiences, and by extension, mine.

Mary for the Poplar Grove Muse

The Traveling Journal

The Traveling Journal

Iona                                                                                       

May 13, 2012

 

Someone said the weather is very passionate today. Aye, that it is, wind and rain, wave erasing wave. I like dramatic weather, as long as no one gets hurt, so I don’t think it’s the weather that’s causing me to feel unsettled, not sure what it is. I feel like the heron gull, totally controlled by the wind, buffeted this way and that, not able to make headway, find direction, not really able to focus. I want to be like the guillemot, who sees her target beneath the water, dislocates her shoulders, locking her wings against her body, she dives like a needle between the waves, spears her prey and heads for the surface. As they say in Scotland, done and dusted. 

Everyone in our group is so excited to be here, rushing around outside in gale force winds, happy ducks in a blustery puddle. I seem to be quite content to sit here in the sunroom at the Argyll Hotel and stare at the constantly changing water.  I don’t feel like writing or being productive. It’s been a hard winter and I think my body is telling me to Sit Down for Pete’s sake. Don’t feel guilty. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to be constantly productive. I’m finding it hard to stop the momentum of the last nine months. I’ve spent nearly every day coordinating this writing retreat on Iona, sort of like a gestation period. I’ve given birth, the baby is healthy and now it’s time to let it thrive on its own. 

When I get home, I will start organizing my move toward retirement, so maybe my brain, body and gut are telling me I had better rest up while I have the chance.

My world has changed forever with the losses death created this winter. I need to stop minimizing that and not move out of the grief too quickly. Iona is just the place for that. She lifts her veil and removes all boundaries, requiring you to be who you truly are, where you truly are. So I’m just going to sit here for however long it takes and let Iona work her magic. Give her time. Give her time.

Rebekah for the Poplar Grove Muse

Rituals

Rituals

I don’t understand rituals.  I don’t get the need for them or the pleasure received from them.  Somehow I feel cheated.   Maybe a better word would be puzzled.   Does that make me non-spiritual if I don’t feel the spiritual ritual? Does that make me non-patriotic if I don’t feel the patriotic ceremony?

 Why don’t I feel the need or not recognize the need for an outward expression of an inward conclusion?    Is it that I have cut my living, my life, so close to the emotional bone that I am unable to experience the centering that is anticipated with the repetition of ritual?

 

I can see the peace and settling that comes to those who use ritual.  They see it for the symbol that it is and feel its power.   It is evident that it gives them strength.  Yet I don’t feel a connection with rituals.   

Could it be that I do have rituals and ceremony in my life I just don’t recognize them as such because they are mine?  Is such a simple thing as always putting your left sock on first, a ritual?  Does it bring steadiness, peace to you?  Maybe it  does, maybe it gives you a feeling of control over your day.   If that is the case then the use of ritual to stabilize our lives is not only the big gesture but the small and everyday gesture.  The always wearing Mom’s ring on your pointing finger and the making sure you give three good-bye kisses not two or four are rituals as important as saying “I do” at the end of a wedding ceremony.

Are these then our unconscious rituals that we use incessantly to keep us centered and connected?  If that is so, then I do have rituals that guide me, they are my personal, comfortable, unconscious ones.

 

Does this mean that conscious rituals are a learned behavior and by repetition of the act and the conviction the power of the ritual is felt?   Is that the secret of the ritual?

Diana, for the Poplar Grove Muse  

People Like Us- a movie review

     PEOPLE LIKE US is under the radar. It’s just a little movie but with recognizable actors. Unadvertised, no media blitz for this modest film, but what a bittersweet tale of family ties, secrets and betrayal. We need more small movies like this low-key tale of redemption. The movie is based loosely on writer/director Alex Kurtzman’s real life story that brings a heads up quality to the action.

     The tale begins with a RAIN MAN like scene of a fast taking businessman, Sam (Chris Pine). He is making things happen at various goods production factories where non-selling items are remarketed to make some sort of monetary return on poor performers. Unfortunately his expired soup explodes in an unrefrigerated train on its way to potential Mexican buyers. While negotiating around his boss's less than happy ultimatum on these losing results, he keeps declining his mother’s unusual cell phone interruptions.

      Upon returning to his NY home, his paramour, the understanding but no fool Olivia Wilde tells him the sad news of his dad's death. Sam tries to invent many reasons not to attend the funeral in LA but finally he arrives at his mother’s (Michelle Pfeiffer) home intentionally late enough to miss the service only to be greeted with a well-deserved slap on the face.

     The father’s lawyer later tells him that Sam is bequeathed only the record producing father's LP collection. At the same time, he is given his Dad’s shaving kit filled with  $150,000 and a note to deliver it to a name and address with an added sentence to "watch over them".

     It now gets messy. Sam discovers, at this address, a beautiful although skanky-ish  single mother Frankie ( Elizabeth Banks) and her prepubescent  borderline JD son (Michael Hall D'Addari). Sam learns (while following the young woman conveniently to her neighborhood AA meeting) of her fury at her non-existence by reading aloud her exclusion from her/ their father’s obituary. It gets complicated as Chris Pine ensconces himself in their lives while never claiming his identity. 

     Bar scenes with his not yet acknowledged half-sister reveal parts of her life with their common Dad while Sam’s independent interactions with the 11 ‘in years almost 25 in sophistication’ nephew whose love of music matches Sam’s, links them genetically to the dead father/grandfather. The mutual anger of his half sister's desertion by their father by age 8 as well as Sam’s own rage at a father never being there for him culminating with no inheritance swim over the two siblings. The story meanders with interspersed confrontations with his mother and her overdue admittance that she insisted the egocentric rock music producer husband/father chose between the two families.

     Genetically similar distancing skills and irresponsible tendencies include using ‘the system’ for their own selfish benefit permeate the brother and sister’s interactions. The undercurrent of incest between the two until the truth is told is always present but happily chaste, for the audience's sake. The siblings need unconditional love more than romantic love anyway.

     As one can imagine in a Hollywood movie, everyone comes out ok in the end but this reviewer was left with a sadness of parental poor choices and secrets soiling the next generation for many years if not an entire lifetime.

     It’s worth seeing but it will not be. There are too many heavily advertised movies this summer and many with 3 D enticements. But some night at home around 10:15pm or 2 am as your remote lingers on the title; watch it and you will be in for an unexpected treat. Or plunk down the cash now at AMC or eventually Netflix.  It might make some of us happy we grew up in the homes we did or remind others of us that secrets seldom serve the righteous and typically each player suffers as a result.

carole

..excerpts from The Girl Swinging Into The Sky...a work in progress.

--December 1994
It is almost Christmas.  I started writing poetry yesterday.  I am keeping it hidden, in my own binder so no one looks at it.  I made a blue binder and painted the front with all the paints that I had and then made a collage on the back.  Mostly of band pictures, musicians that I like and some outer space stuff.  The first poems were easy to write, like they were already there.  I think I am going to number them and see how many I can write.  

Dad deleted all my writing I had on the computer.  But first he read it all.  He called mom on the car phone on our way to Metamora for the women’s holiday shopping trip.   I could tell something was wrong when she picked up, mom’s face frowned really hard, and then she glared at me and said,

“Okay I’ll tell her.”

“Your father found your writing” she said.

It felt like the blood in my body turned cold.  Mom only uses the word father when there is something bad about to happen.

“And he saw that you talked about drugs,”

I also talked about how I hated them.  I wonder if he saw that.  It was hard to walk around Christmas town and shop all day with the women and know that I was really in trouble when I got home.  I don’t know how mad dad is going to be, or if he will just not talk to me for a while.  

--February 1995
Mom was crying in the doorway of the den.  Something was wrong with her.  Dad was sitting in his recliner facing the tv.

She saw me,

“Your father has been asked to leave the soccer club.”

Dad didn’t say anything, he turned the TV volume up.

“Everything is falling apart, this is our whole life, and now it is gone!”

Mom started breathing heavy.

“Don’t you even care, Dave?”

Dad flipped to another station.

“Am , I the only one in this family who cares?”

“Who is going to be our coach?”  I ask.

“It was that stupid Rick Mann, who reported your father, I know it.”

Mom put her fingers in her mouth and started pacing.

“Who’s going to be our coach?”

“Your father never liked Rick Mann, he should have cut Jenny from the team.”

She put her arms in the air and walked in a circle.  I went to the fridge and found the ½ full soda can from lunch, walked through the sitting room back upstairs.  Eric was playing world wrestling federation in the Nintendo room.  I went to my room, shut and locked the door.

--March 1995

“I found a new team for you to play on.”

Mom was waiting for me on the porch when I got off the bus.  I sat in the wicker chair next to her.  

“It will just be until you can try out for Dynamo, but their tryouts for next season aren’t until May so until then, I found a team for you.”

She was holding the cordless phone and staring at me.

“What team?”

“It is an all boys team in Perry and the coach’s name is Len, they said they will take you right away, you don’t have to try out.”

“If it is all boys how come I am going to play on it?”

“Because you are better than all the girl players in that county, they have a terrible soccer program.”

She continued,

“I told them where you were from and they said they’d take you right away and then I said that I would bring you over to practice tomorrow night, your first game is this Saturday.”

Allison 07/02/12