After the open house for David’s retirement from National City, Dana and I had dinner at Freddie’s with David, Lee, Gary, and Trish. Afterwards we regrouped at the Town House for dessert, so I opened the 1997 bottle of Nichelini Cabernet, which had been waiting patiently for a celebration. My goodness, it was even better than I was expecting. RWB certainly knows his wine. We all enjoyed a welcome break from recent tensions. David asked me to show Gary and Trish my first wood engraving, and so I made my typical awkward attempt at juggling personal pride and sincere humility. You’d think that by now I’d feel more natural when it came to discussing my art.
Archive for the ‘Family’ Category
A visit to the cellar
Monday, January 24th, 2005Cold fear
Sunday, January 23rd, 2005This morning I decided to go out to the Jackson farm before sunrise to run some of the cross-country trails before friends gathered around the wood fire in the cabin for “shared silence.” I suppose I’ve run in more frigid conditions, but not recently. The raw intensity of these workouts are impossible for me to verbally capture, but they come loaded with rich sensory moments, like the crunch of refrozen thaw under foot, the visual pattern of animal tracks in the dusty snow, the sound of startled ducks temporarily fleeing the nearby wetland, and the massive heads of the horses as they surround and nudge me, wondering, perhaps, if I’ve come to deliver their overdue ration of hay.
It goes without saying that these stimuli make me feel very close to nature, and her power. I can’t say I particularly enjoy the cold. I realize I don’t have the same resilience as my father had. I know that, because I spent too many hours shivering, watching the steam of his breath, as he repaired rabbit pens or some other winter task, when I desperately wanted to seek the warmth. On mornings like today I think about whether he might have had similar experiences as mine, moving through nature on his cold, all-night ‘coon hunts (ventures that I was never equipped to endure at the time).
Years ago I came upon the words of Robert W. Service and shared them with Dadbo at Christmas, but we never got to talk about those poems of the Yukon. I just knew it was his life-long dream to visit the far North Woods. He never did, but I like to think that my gift enabled the same vicarious experience that Service provides for me with lines like these:
"The winter! the brightness that blinds you,
The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fear that follows and finds you,
The silence that bludgeons you dumb…"
On mornings like today I think about my friend Mack, the man who created the trails. As he confronts the foe of cancer, much too far from his cabin, I run them in the bitter wind for him, because I can.
Because I must.
Vic Vega vs Napoleon Solo
Saturday, January 22nd, 2005My grandson Marty has discovered Quentin Tarantino, so first of all he screened Kill Bill: Vol.1 for me and then Reservoir Dogs. I didn’t know what to expect, since I’d never seen one of his films, not even Pulp Fiction. Marty has watched an alarming array of violent action flicks, beginning too many years ago, and now, at the age of thirteen, he can calmly dissect and critique motion pictures that have trailers I might not be able to handle so well. I’m not quite sure what to make of Tarantino. Marty finds his work more complex and intriguing than the typical fare he’s been used to, and I don’t doubt that’s true. For me, his movies mesh artistry with depravity like the teeth of a rusty zipper. A generation ago they said the same thing about Peckinpah, I suppose. Good Lord, when I was thirteen I had my hands full with The Wild Wild West and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Various & Sundry, part one
Friday, January 21st, 2005— I’ve gotten a week into this experiment and have yet to properly thank Brendan, my undaunted sponsor and kind host. So far so good. I managed to solve most of the anomalies I was experiencing by updating the firmware on our Netgear firewall/router. Although I began my first private journal in 1971 and have maintained regular entries for the past 20 years or so, this online record of thoughts is a new and stimulating venture. In time I’ll gain a better sense of how its public nature affects the tone and quality of my postings.
— Last weekend our family gathered at Kelley Ridge for a mighty demonstration of Clan-Power to achieve as much physical transformation as possible. Uncle James mused that it was the kind of event that could inspire Clan legend. With the bitter wind knifing through us as we split and stacked firewood at the edge of the ridge, Seth replied, “You won’t ever hear me talking about this day.”
— There hasn’t been much of a downside to my accepting an invitation to join the Rotary Club ten years ago, but I am beginning to notice something. One of the serious drawbacks to building relationships of affection with a bunch of great old guys pushing 80 is to witness their failing health. What have I gotten myself into?
— As true as it is that there’s no greater love than to lay down one’s life for another, I want Josh to accomplish in Iraq what he was trained to do and then safely return to his family. That is my simple prayer. I’m not precisely sure what he was trained to do, but I know that living and working each day in harm’s way is a given. I’m reminded of the closing line in The Bridges at Toko-Ri, “Where do we get such men?” The answer to that question is the same with every generation, and, as far as I’m concerned, no poet has described this vital breed more eloquently than Katharine Lee Bates when she wrote, “Oh beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life!”
Deep sigh
Tuesday, January 18th, 2005Today’s Anacrusis story made me think of seeing Ben Shahn’s work for the first time as a callow teenager, when I took the Famous Artists School’s home-study Course for Talented Young People and discovered the concept of creating artwork in service to the advancement of social justice. The whole idea seemed so phlegmatically self-evident at the time.