last one

OK, here's my final anniversary post, so you should be pretty much caught up now. Guess I gotta get back to fresh entries, lazy time's up...

a heavy rain
originally posted September 1, 2006
The early-morning fog lifted from the road, the sound of my sneakers scratching gravel suddenly louder. The light was clean, fresh, rose-colored. But it soon revealed a road punctuated with dead frogs, some as flat as shadows, others smushed into the shape of coin purses, splayed legs for handles. Several frogs were intact. One lay on its back, arm laid across pudgy white belly as if snoozing after a meal. This is not the first time I’ve come across a scattering of dead frogs on my morning run. I craned my neck skyward but it looked perfectly clear, not a frog in sight, no plague moving in. I just hope the Christian Right never finds this place.

clinton air

click here for my latest vermont public radio commentary -- on bill clinton's speech at the middlebury college graduation last sunday (thanks a mil for the hook-up, sue). scroll down to the sunday post for a couple of excellent bill pics by trent campbell. and you can watch the video of his address here.

my power to heal

originally posted August 29, 2006
On my morning run I spied a dead bird ahead, on the side of the gravel road, yellow and brown wings folded tight at its sides. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing its tiny beak and flat, dry little eyes. When I got closer I saw that it was but a fallen leaf curled upon itself. Driving back from work later, I saw in the near distance the crumpled, water-logged body of a raccoon or woodchuck in the road. Its pink guts mashed, fur absent of luster, hindquarters repeatedly run over. As I veered to the right, I saw that it was just an old wet red-and-blue sweater. Right then, I decided I wouldn’t go home but instead drive toward all the local cemeteries and roadside memorials to see what I could do. Who knows how long this would last.

trent pics no. 9 & 10

Check out these great shots of Bill Clinton at Middlebury College's commencement this morning, taken by this blog's favorite photographer Trent Campbell. Click to enlarge. I'm working on a related VPR commentary, slated to air next week. Stay tuned.

the brain of last night’s crowd at the saratoga performing arts center

originally posted August 14, 2006
Fifteen thousand cloudy and pickled minds, thirty thousand hands, thirty thousand feet, spoiling for a fight, spoiling for pussy, pissing in corners, pissing in sinks, pissing in janitor’s buckets, frenzied, wailing, stomping, falling, pushing, shoving, eyes on the zipper of your backpack, the zipper of your 14-year-old daughter’s jeans. We paid money for this, to stand on our feet, on concrete, on guard, for six hours in the sloping lawn section above the pavilion. At last a weathered blond musician took the stage, and within minutes had the crowd soothed, had them singing, not unpleasantly, almost every line from every song, with heartfelt sincerity. For a few moments, I almost felt affection for the stinking mob. I love that Tom Petty.

the blink of an eye

originally posted August 11, 2006
Went to City Hall Park, to read during lunch. When I looked up from my book, I noticed a pale blond woman in black pants and sleeveless blouse, sitting on the stone ledge ringing the fountain. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, her crossed arms holding them in place. She looked mid-twenties. Her head hung down a little and she had a faraway look in her eyes. I considered her a moment, wondering if she was sad, but couldn’t tell. I went back to my story. A few minutes later, I checked the time. The woman was gone, just another radar blip. But when I looked up at the end of the next chapter, I saw she had settled on the back steps of City Hall – in the precise same pose, as if grief was a suitcase she dragged behind her. Ten minutes later, she was hugging her knees in the alley between City Hall and the Firehouse Gallery. Five minutes after that -- back on the steps, same hunched-over pose. Each time, the first place I looked there she was. As if each blink of my eye had picked her up and placed her in a different spot. As I closed my book and stood to go, she turned her head in my direction. Was she hoping I’d at last do the right thing before I left and blink her to a happier place?

trent pic no. 8

Long grass weighed down by morning dew. Trent Campbell. Click to enlarge.

a flower misread

originally posted August 7, 2006
A young, stringy-haired transient with a backpack plucked a purple flower at the corner of Burlington’s City Hall Park. He walked by my bench talking to it, and without breaking his stride or saying a word, placed the flower next to a young blond eating her lunch on a neighboring bench. The woman, startled at first, picked up and inspected the flower, then put it down with a bemused look. The man continued toward the lower green without looking back. She watched him for a moment then returned to her fork and plastic container. I watched the guy wriggle from his knapsack, strip off his shirt, spread it on the grass, then lay on his stomach. That dude is totally hoping to get lucky, I thought, she sees through that flower shit. The woman made a couple cell calls and plucked berries from a tinfoil wrap. The sky started to cloud over and the guy sat up and put his shirt back on. Then stood and left the park. Fifteen minutes later, the woman threw out her napkins and wrappers and headed out of the park as well, cupping the small purple flower – as delicate as a bird – in her hand.

i can hear my mother whistling underground (by chris d.)

I'm skipping slightly ahead for this re-post (below), because Chris just finished a painting inspired by it (will return to sequence tomorrow). Enjoy.

burdens let go
originally posted August 23, 2006
I was one of four pallbearers at my mother-in-law’s funeral on Tuesday. The sun was brilliant. Beyond the cemetery trees, the boys sat in their heavy equipment, waiting their turn, to earn their pay, chiding the guy in the bitch seat. Dorothy's pine casket was an awkward, heavy load, my free arm swinging wildly to keep balance as we shuffled from the hearse -- ants carrying a comrade. Inside, on a ruffled mattress, the woman who sent us corny supermarket greeting cards for every ocassion, who sang “Happy Birthday” to each of us on the phone or answering machine, who was so devoted to her youngest daughter that she became trapped by her mental illness. We slid the coffin onto the green belt straps over the hole and listened one last time to the Scottish priest with the diabetes-ravaged leg. The casket was not lowered until we left the cemetery, but this morning I believe I can hear her – 130 miles away – whistling beneath the earth. Something I never heard her do when she was alive. Rest in peace, Dorothy.

our roadside bedroom

originally posted Aug. 2, 2006
The people across the street are moving. We strolled past their house early this morning with our dogs. They’d put a bunch of free stuff by the side of the road, including a mess of books. Quite a few treasures among them – two Cormac McCarthy novels, Wolf by Jim Harrison, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, two Barbara Kingsolvers, Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon and several artist’s sketch pads. There was also a bedside table with two water glasses, and a pair of pants draped over a chair. Chris and I sat on the grass, me reading, her flipping through sketch pages, the dogs curled at our sides. To the passing traffic, we must have resembled some sort of museum diorama -- The Modern Couple. After a few minutes, I reached over and switched off the light, listening to the trucks rumble through our bedroom.

a nation of yes men

originally posted July 29, 2006
In the check-out line at Hannaford’s, I swiped my debit card and followed the instructions as usual. Do you want cash back? Is this amount correct? I pressed the digital "yes" box on the screen. But it was hard to see clearly. That square inch or so of display had been rubbed dull by so many agreeable fingers. It was almost opaque. I checked the other card screens on the way out. Same thing. The "yes" side was worn down; the "no" side gleaming. I think that may be part of our problem. Not enough people saying no.

my gentle mall inquisitor

originally posted July 21, 2006
Once a month or so -- as I walk through the ground level of the Burlington Town Center to the parking garage after work -- I’m confronted by a short, plump woman, with close-cropped black hair, wearing a knapsack. She stands in the same spot, just in front of a trashcan near the jewelry store, and waits to ask me the same question: “Do you know what time it is?” She's always alone and appears developmentally disabled. I answer the same each time, give or take a couple of minutes. I’ve become part of her routine and she mine. Déjà vu without the swooning sensation. But whenever I look back, she stares after me as if I’ve given a disappointing or misleading response. And she's resolved to question me again until I get it right.

an old man chasing rabbits

originally posted July 11, 2006
Went to visit Chris' father again in Massachusetts. He’s been in the hospital two weeks now with a severely infected foot. There’s been talk of amputation. He’s 85, a nursing home resident the past three years after a bad stroke. He’s morbidly depressed and wants to die. He hardly speaks and has stopped eating. He was sleeping when we entered the room. Though pale and weary-looking, he is still a bull. Breaking down that body will be no small task. There is solid meat and bone under that skin. His head a stone resting on a starched white pillow, his cheeks smooth, almost full. Chris stroked her father's arm until his eyes fluttered open. They were entirely black, all pupil. Richard raised his fingers hello, said he was “alright” when asked, then instantly retreated, staring at Chris with silent pleading eyes that spoke volumes. Richard was a Depression-era kid, the last of three brothers, a World War II vet, a door-to-door salesman peddling everything from vacuums to donuts. He lived on the road. “He has the heart of a stray dog,” Chris has said of her father. “Always on the move.” Richard closed his eyes again, his long-fingernailed hands twitching, his jaw and lips shifting, murmuring. Both Chris and I were thinking the same thing: hoping he might go deep enough this time to find lasting peace, to chase those rabbits into a soft, endless field.

my clawed heels and second bellybutton

originally posted July 5, 2006
Yesterday I told my straight-arrow stepdaughter, 14, I'd been kicked out of high school. I’d already told her about the drinking but copped for the first time to drug use, too. She listened with fascination. Then today when I showed her a pair of shiny blisters on my heel from running, she cried, in all seriousness, “Oh my God, are those toe nails?" When I assured her they were just fresh blisters, we both laughed at the grotesque absurdity of her comment. I later studied the blisters -- two glistening sacs, swollen and transluscent, one on top of the other, running the width of my Achilles Heel. And wondered, for a long moment, whether my stepdaughter now saw me in a different, somewhat monstrous light. When she later mistook a small shadow on my stomach for a second belly button, that all but sealed it.

white pants

Her heart burned down in my hand
like a cigarette. I watched the ash curl
until it toppled, smashing silently on my thigh.
I was glad for my white pants.

a news item drowning me in a flood of unspoken details

originally posted July 2, 2006
The Burlington Free Press ran a brief today about a Morrisville teenager sentenced to prison and psychiatric treatment for breaking into a cemetery tomb last year and hacking the head off a corpse. He also stole eyeglasses and bow tie from the coffin. Word was the kid planned to fashion a bong from the skull. Holy shit. My mind didn’t know where to begin – with the actual construction of the bong, the boring of holes, the fitting of the bowl; or with the reality of removing a head with a hacksaw; or whether the bow tie and glasses would be incorporated somehow; or with the first time the kid sat around with his buddies unrolling a bag of shitty dope, and saying, “wait a minute, let me grab my bong;” or with the passing of the smoking skull – somebody’s dead brother or son – to the wide-eyed girl sitting cross-legged next to him? The details conjured by this three-inch story were entirely overwhelming, stretching my thoughts into deep, dark pockets. I remember the pride kids at my high school took in making homemade pipes – from tobacco tins and Bic pens, Coke cans, an apple. Prison-like, beat-the-institution mechanics. But this was mind-blowing. Literally.

a bug insurgency

originally posted June 25, 2006
The gravel road was perfectly soft after a middle-of-the-night thunder storm. But it was already muggy again at 6 a.m., the air moist and foggy. And the bugs were out – horse flies, mosquitoes, no-see’ums. My run takes me past several fields, a horse farm, a dog kennel, a dairy farm, and into a swamp. It can get pretty bad during the warm weather. Bugs bump against my temples, buzz my ears, swoop at my mouth. They circle my head so furiousy that together we resemble the atomic energy symbol. I tighten my lips into a slit, making the smallest opening possible, but I can’t last long like that. The smaller CO2-loving bugs sometimes make it in, into the stomach, into the lungs. I picture them banging around in there and then popping out with a tale for their friends. Some of the bigger ones land in my sweaty hair and travel the road a spell. When I brush them away, it’s like sweeping morsels from a wet counter. But they’re back within seconds. This is their territory. An insurgency. Several of the more daring ones get behind my glasses. I wipe them away and accidentally knock my frames to the ground. I’m forced to stop, taking several stooped-over moments to find them. Just enough time for a band of deer flies to swoop in and put out my eyes.

the curious doings of three horses

originally posted June 15, 2006
As I passed the Eddy Farm on my run this morning, I saw three horses gathered around a low rusty pick-up parked in the corner of a field, peering into the windows. I wondered what had piqued their interest – a passed-out farm hand? A couple making out? A dead body? On the way back, the horses were lined up in the opposite direction, like train carriages, snout to haunches. As if they’d seen too much. When I mentioned this to my wife, she said, “you mean the hay feeder? A lot of farmers do that with their old trucks.” I stared at her. My imagination was crushed – that little guy in overalls, standing on the edge of my tongue shoveling gulpfuls of air into my gaping mouth.

trent pic no. 7

Silo City by Trent Campbell (originally published in The Addison Independent). The silos sit on two separate farms, about a mile apart on Route 17 in Addison.

common ground air

click here to listen to my piece from last month's vpr commentators brunch.

wild-mail

Received this cool handmade card in the mail from S.R. Wild. In return I sent him a little something – in the first of what I hope is many postal exchanges. The Burlington-based artist and graphic designer encourages trade by mail. It’s a fun idea that revives the spirit of pen-palling and old-fashioned bartering – stressing human touch over keystrokes, emotional value over monetary. Visit his site and drop him a line for his address. Send him something, anything nifty, and he’ll pop something in the mail to you; who knows, he may even incorporate your item into his next piece.

a parent-child soccer game enjoyed from a quiet and still place

originally posted June 10, 2006
The other evening, Chris and I watched the parent-child soccer game on the muddy field behind the middle school. We’ve gone to every one of our daughter’s games. But parents I didn’t recognize were playing – galloping, bumping, gleefully harassing their kids and each other. Maybe they were just out of context in their wet shorts and quick movements and faux-determination, and only seemed like strangers. Clusters of other parents cheered and laughed and chatted on the sidelines. Chris and I stood by ourselves. There was talk of wonderful kids, the virtues of the college, the wet weather and how funny dogs are about food. I try to be polite and always clap at fine play, but I cringe at small talk and often retreat into silence. On the page, tepid, neutral and superfluous words are to be avoided like skin infections, and I suppose that spills into my daily dealings. At one point, a mom shouted for all of us to play, “come on, parents, everybody swarm the field.” Few times have I felt more awkward. Chris and I have never been one for groups or clubs and tend to go it alone. At halftime, all the muddy parents gathered about, joking and back-slapping and cajoling those of us with improper footwear. Perhaps it was all somehow reminiscent of high school, the pressure to chit-chat, to include yourself, to be seen “with” friends. Sometimes that took a lot of energy to finesse; and skill, too, which I always felt I lacked. As an adult, I have no problem standing alone, and in fact, usually prefer it. At this age, to operate otherwise seems wasteful and unnatural. The price is occasionally noticing the shot looks, the whispers. The lot of the loner: we can’t really hold conventions or mixers. Best we can do is marry each other.

an infestation of new yorker magazines

originally posted June 3, 2006
My mom gave me a subscription to The New Yorker last Christmas. She got a free gift for signing someone up. As soon as I received the card in the mail, I groaned. The pressure she’d suddenly placed on her only son, and for what – a tote bag emblazoned with an Ed Koren cartoon? I’d been through this before, and am still finding random New Yorkers from the late-’90s, the last time I was a subscriber. They arrive so frequently, are so densely packed. At first, I’d set aside certain issues with compelling-looking articles. But I quickly fell behind, cringing every time I saw another magazine rolled up in the mailbox. Soon, I only had time to scan the table of contents to make sure it didn’t contain the byline of anyone I knew in graduate school. Now, I barely get around to the cover. But it seems wasteful to toss them straight into the recycling bin. So the magazines lay scattered around my house – piled on the counters, on the coffee table, on the stairs, on the toilet tank, in the car. There are always more. I’ve tried giving them away but I’d need to hire an intern just to make sure they left the house in a timely fashion. And when the magazines get moved for cleaning or vacuuming, they always leave behind one or two subscription cards, like some kind of magazine eggs. I’m convinced they spawn new issues at night. In the mornings, I see covers I don’t recognize. The house is completely overrun, like forest tent caterpillars dropping from the ceiling. Perhaps these really are The End Times – frogs, locusts and New Yorker magazines. Is that The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloping on the horizon? And is that last summer’s Fiction Issue sticking out of Pestilence's saddlebag?

the struggle between truman capote and charles bukowski

originally posted May 30, 2006
Every couple days on my lunch hour, I head over to Borders bookstore on Church Street, to the “B” section in fiction and pull out Post Office by Charles Bukowski, his first novel. I read ten or fifteen pages and put it back. I keep a bookmark in it. But the last time I was there, I couldn’t get but a few paragraphs in before I got distracted by Truman Capote, glaring at me from the cover of his short story collection in the “C” section. He was dressed in fire-red pants and blue caftan, sitting on a rattan couch and stroking a bulldog. Nearby, his silver-screen impressionist Philip Seymour Hoffman watched me, too, from the cover of Gerald Clarke’s biography Capote. They were pissed. I knew what this was about.

My night table is usually stacked five or six books high, and I tend to juggle two or three titles at once. Recently, the top spot had been occupied by Clarke’s Capote. I’d picked it up after seeing the Bennett Miller film of the same name and reviewing the audiobook version of In Cold Blood for Publishers Weekly. Capote is a beautiful writer, master storyteller, a vessel of agonizing writerly dilemma and childhood trauma.

But every time I lifted Capote off, there was that flash of yellow underneath, that rough cover of Ham on Rye, with the yearbook picture of Bukowski highlighted. Ham on Rye is a hardly-veiled memoir of Bukowski’s rough and oft-brutal 1930s childhood in Los Angeles. That boil-covered and whipped kid grew into an extraordinary drunk and an extraordinary writer, as blunt and unadorned as seems possible, perhaps the opposite of Truman Capote save the booze. As Bukowski put it in a new documentary about his life (highly recommended) Born Into This, “When you have the shit beat out of you long enough and long enough and long enough, you have a tendency to say what you mean... I had the pretense beat out of me.”

With its quick chapters and raw prose, Bukowski soon began putting me to bed, too. For a while, I tried to juggle the two writers and brought them on a recent trip to California. They refused to sit together. I had to keep Capote in the seat pocket and Bukowski in the overhead rack. After watching Born Into This, I turned exclusively to Bukowski, digging out his titles I’d bought in college. I left Truman an effervescent young writer, charming and quick-witted, small and effeminate and pouty, starting his social and literary climb in New York City.

In Borders bookstore, he had aged without me, still thin, but now perhaps in his late thirties. Capote was known to hold grudges, to turn on friends and admirers. And I could see in his stare that I was no different. As for Bukowski, Truman wouldn’t even look at him, they were like oil and water. For now, the two are being kept apart on the shelves by Anthony Burgess, William Burroughs, Italo Calvino and Albert Camus. But who knows how long those arms will hold. The two still snipe at each other I’m sure, when the last employee’s left and the lights are turned low. Fighting for my affections.

memoir air, ywp

click here to find my latest vermont public radio commentary; regular visitors will recognize the incorporation of this march post.

and here for my essay on radio-writing for the young writers project -- via today's burlington free press, rutland herald, brattleboro reformer and times argus.

a dog spreading the news

originally posted May 20, 2006
The white mutt halted every few moments to sniff a tree, a bush, a planter. These were popular stops for local dogs. Here, they’d catch up on the latest neighborhood news, sniff the air for distant events, tree trunks for upcoming ones. The dog cocked his leg on a sapling, adding his own two cents, then kicked the dirt around, spreading the word. At one point, he kicked several clumps of sod back, hitting the man holding the leash and a cup of coffee. This I took to be a telegram: Fuck you. Stop. You’re not the boss of me. Stop. There’s plenty you don’t know. Stop.

untitled by chris d.

click to enlarge

the aftermath of a fight in a bookstore

originally posted May 10, 2006
A co-worker met me in Borders bookstore at lunch. “You see that fight?” I hadn’t. “Two dudes wailing on each in the entryway, really going at it!” I wished I’d seen it. Excited store employees, headsets dangling, were gathered by the entrance. The foyer is only about four feet by eight, and usually hosts shelves of discounted items, cook books and reference books. I imagined bodies slamming into the racks, cursing and tussling, teeth loosened and noses bloodied. All over whose favorite author turned the better phrase.

lap one

Today marks the one-year anniversary of this blog – 161 posts to date. My inaugural post is below. I started what i saw today with no real sense of direction or purpose. I figured I’d try it for a year, see what happens. For the first several months, I posted in Dreamweaver, with no hyperlinks, feeds or means to comment. Basically a thrice-weekly cry in the wilderness. Switching to blogging software last fall made all the difference. It’s been a great experiment, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know my visitors and other Vermont bloggers. My gratitude to those who deemed what i saw today blogroll-worthy.

Anyway, for the remainder of the month, I plan to re-post lesser-known entries from my early days. For freshness’ sake, I’m avoiding any that turned into VPR commentaries or that the devoted Vermont blogosphere champion Cathy Resmer picked for her linkdumps/weekly posts at 802online (thanks again for the traffic boosts, Cathy). To those of you with me since the beginning, please pardon the repetition (though now you can comment about what a bullshit move you think it is). And many thanks to everyone who’s taken a few moments to visit. Stop by anytime.

a woman who'd lost her way
Friday, May 5, 2006
It was a bright, sunny day, one of the first of the season. I was on lunch break, people-watching at the top of Church Street. There were no benches free, so I sat on the edge of the stone wading pool.

I heard her before I saw her, a loud, gruff voice going on about a fight. I didn’t turn my head. Before I knew it, someone had slid in next to me, our shoulders almost touching like we’d planned to meet here. She looked mid-forties and was dressed in blue hospital scrubs, white aerobics sneakers. She had thick arms and thighs, doughy face, and short greasy blond hair. For a moment, I mistook her for an orderly but I knew it was the woman that went with the voice. She was missing teeth and dried lip stick smeared the corner of her mouth. “You gotta help me out.” She asked if I had change, she needed to call some clinic. “You see I got an abortion yesterday. I’m bleeding still. Well, it was actually more like a half miscarriage, half abortion.” She took a slow draw on her cigarette, and looked around, perfectly patient for my response. I patted my pockets even though I knew I had no change.

She reeked of booze, Soviet style. My breath used to stink that bad at this hour, and issued forth my own desperate, convoluted stories, mostly to sad girlfriends. She said she’d been arrested yesterday. Then they took her to the hospital and wouldn’t let her out of til this morning. I remember being brought to the same hospital and sneaking out halfway through an alcohol intake. I wondered if she’d grabbed some scrubs from a closet and slipped off. Though they fit well. “OK, let me use your phone then,” she said, spying my cell, “I need to call that clinic, you know the one? Up there on Winooski.” I saw myself chasing her down Church Street as she ranted on my phone, maybe even slamming it on the brown paving stones. I might have to grab her by the elbow, touch her cold fleshy arm. She’d look at me like some piss-ant stranger and tell me to fuck off. I’d lose my phone. I told her I was over my minutes. She accepted this lie.

A couple Canadian tourists walked by, and she shouted at them, “Hey, you know how to get to the central clinic?” After a few tries, she turned to me, like we were in this together. “You believe it used to cost 10 cents to make phone call. A quarter? Bullshit. Thirty-five cents, fifty cents.” I suggested she go to Brooks pharmacy and ask about the clinic. “You kidding me,” she said, looking at me like I’d suggested we get married, “I can’t go in there. They threw me outta there. Three bottles of wine, you know, the guy made me get out.” People were staring. I wasn’t like her anymore, I couldn’t relate, and that scared me. The trench I’d dug between today and yesterday had been filled in deep, but nothing in there seemed of much use right now.

She stopped a guy and asked him over, a businessman without his jacket on. I wondered if he thought we were together. She told him she needed to make a call. He dug into his pants the same way I had, “Sorry, don’t have anything.” She persisted. “I gotta call that clinic, come on.” He pulled out his cell phone and flipped the cover. What’s the number? “I don’t fuckin’ know.” He told her to ask for a phonebook in a store or something, and walked off. I said I had to move on, too. I wished her luck. “But what store should I try?” she called after me. “Try Borders,” I said. From behind me, “What? A quarter? What do you mean? Oh, a bar? Yeah, OK, I’ll try a bar.” I didn’t look back but pictured her staggering into Halversons, and wondered what the lunch hour crowd would make of her. I was ashamed for us both. I wish I knew her name.

trent pic no. 6

The latest from Trent Campbell -- a Clydesdale and trainer at Apple Ridge Farms in Shoreham. Click to enlarge.

addicted

It was embarassing. 30 shopping bags filled with empties. Got a few stares at the redemption center. But I just took my money and bought another 12-pack. Every night I pound glass after glass, ripping off burps, running to the bathroom every half hour. If I don’t get my fill, I’m irritable, unsettled. I love seltzer. The way I loved beer. I pop gum the way I smoked butts. I see straight instead of not at all.