Painting in "Plein Air"

Since we became part-time residents of the Finger Lakes region of western New York, Ponczka has become part of the arts community there. In particular, she has become a regular participant in a couple of “Plein Air” festivals, which celebrate the practice of painting in nature, out of the immediate experience of a time and place. Plein air painting requires an element of surrender to the elements, however they might manifest, and challenges the artist to convert an experience directly to canvas.

This week, Ponczka and I have been in Geneva, on the northwestern shore of Seneca Lake, where the Seneca Lake Plein Air Painting Festival is drawing to a close. It’s a great time for the two of us, who have come to regard this region as part of “God’s backyard”, to borrow a Polish expression. It also feels more and more like home, like the place we’ll be coming to when working for a living is not so much our focus, and when what we do will be measured more by the satisfaction it brings than by the size of a paycheck. Painting is what Ponczka is likely to be doing when that time comes; I aim to be writing.

And this Plein Air painting festival offers a tantalizing glimpse into the potential of such a future. First – it’s astonishing to see what gets produced in a mere two days, by a bunch of artists enduring sun, wind and rain for two days, trying to capture scenes despite constantly shifting light and shadows, and with the challenge of managing easels and paints, heat and cold, distractions, tiring eyes and muscles, transportation, the need to eat and sleep, uncertainty and self-doubt, and the relentless passage of time, which transforms the subject of the painting between every brushstroke.

It’s dazzling and inspiring to see the range of conversations that take place between artist and environment – how this one speaks to the vegetation, that one to the hills, one to the waters, another to the rich earth; one communes with buildings, another with the sky; this one catches the movement, another the deep, solemn stillness underlying all movement. Some paintings aim to capture a single moment, while others are steeped in timelessness. Some dance with color and light; others forego all sparkle or shine and emerge from some weighty place, singing the language of gravity, transcending life and death. So much beauty, seemingly from nothing. But that they exist at all says so much about the fertility of that apparent nothingness.

It’s a fun and exhausting and thrilling and fearful two days. Ponczka is studiously attentive to what she sees and transposes to canvas. But her painting – to my eye – can seem almost aimless and without care. It’s fascinating to watch her quick hand, swiping and stabbing the brush almost recklessly it can seem, while her eye darts from subject to canvas. I sometimes cringe inwardly as she smears on dabs of color – “NO, not that! Not There!” I’m thinking, as she gets it all wrong. But of course, I’m not seeing what she’s seeing.

So I turn away, or wander off for an hour or two, find a place for a beer, or sit and write for awhile. And when I come back, there are no more dabs of paint on a canvas, but instead, three dimensional life. But not exactly life, because... well, there’s so much on the canvas that it calls me to look again at that street scene she’s painted. It doesn’t look quite the same anymore. I see more now, feel more, want more. Connect more…? Something. There is something more now, between me and this street, that I draw from this canvas that has her eyes and her energy all mixed in with it, and with the brick and the grass, and that wall rising up, and that window, and that vague walking figure.

And everyone sees something different. In every painting. At the gala this evening, the awards are given out, and all the works are up for silent auction. Many pieces are sold, most to a solitary bidder. But others are hotly contested. And quite a few get no bids at all. One of the top prize winners has no bids on her work, but it is rich and detailed and evocative of time and memory, and the awards are clearly deserved. And while no one has yet bid to have one of the works adorn a wall in a home, one of the awards comes from a musical association that will use her work to style its programs and announcements for the coming year. And Ponczka gets no bid on her piece that both she and I like best, but another is purchased by the same couple that bought her work last year, and who happen to be the festival organizers.

It’s Art. And every eye, every taste is unique unto itself. And, as Ponczka likes to say – every painting has its rightful owner, but it can take mere moments or many years for the two to find one another.
 

That German Thing

     Don't know about you, but watching the German soccer team do its thing on the pitch impresses the hell out of me. And this isn't because of the drubbing they laid on Brazil the other day. For me, it was equally evident in their 2-2 tie with Ghana awhile back. It's the discipline and order with which they play. When I watch soccer - not being a regular viewer of the sport - it often strikes me as pretty random. I fail to perceive any plan or rhythm to the action. It seems that players are kicking the ball forward with nothing more than a vague hope of it arriving where directed, and it's as likely to end up at the feet of an opposing player as at a teammate's.

     Not so with Germany! That's a team that's clearly playing with a plan, with intention, and with the ability to execute. As is suggested so often, when talking with others about this team, it operates like a well oiled machine!

     But it's not just a soccer thing. I spent a few days in Berlin recently, and I absolutely fell in love with that city. Ponczka did too.  Both of us lived in Berlin for a time - she, as a young adult in 1980 or so, and I, as a child in the early sixties. And while we both had decent enough memories, it never occurred to us as a destination of choice. But after passing through a couple of times during our recent Europe/Israel vacation, we were so taken by it that we rearranged our schedules to spend our last day and a half there. It's a clean, tight, vibrant, well-ordered, stimulating, varied and welcoming Metropolis. And here's the thing: Berlin functions like the German soccer team plays!

     I'm drifting into a kind of national stereotyping that's generally rejected these days. It's very often me that's rejecting it, because the down side of it - assigning negative characteristics to a nation and its people - can be so devastatingly oppressive. But I can't help but acknowledge, and admire, this something-something about Germany that makes it so impressive.

     Let me get specific. You see very little litter and mess in Germany. The public transit system in Berlin runs beautifully, and on the honor system. There are no ticket gates to navigate; you simply enter a train station, board a bus or street tram, and buy and validate your own ticket. Apparently, there are monitors who will lay heavy fines on cheaters who are caught, but just the fact that trust is the default says a lot. People don't jaywalk in Berlin (as kids, my brother and I - coming from the upper west side of Manhattan, where dodging moving cars was a taken-for-granted survival skill, found it laughable that adults would stand at a street corner devoid of traffic, and wouldn't cross the street until the light changed! Now, my appraisal is more respectful).

     To top it off, Germany offers one of the best driving experiences a driver could ask for: no one on the roads and highways is being an idiot! Streets are clearly marked, directions to attractions and city centres are abundant. And drivers drive with a degree of patience and consideration rare in most places. I drove on the autobahn and was amazed to see that even the muscle cars blazing by at 200 kph moved out of the passing lanes as soon as they overtook you.

     Of course all of this raises the question of German "ordnung", the pre-disposition of a people to do as instructed, which unavoidably brings to mind the spectre of the WWII death camps. Yes, order and obedience have their downsides. Short of all that, it's simply intimidating to the rest of us that a country can operate so well, with such an apparent sense of common purpose. For goodness' sakes, Germany suffered two of the most complete slapdowns of modern history in just the last hundred years, and yet, it's already well established as a world leader in virtually every respect. That's a little scary!

     But it's also beautiful, impressive, and even inspiring to see how East Berlin has been rebuilt into the dynamic center it is, to witness a united Berlin that - to my eyes - is surprisingly diverse, and to find the citizens of that city so friendly and welcoming and helpful at every turn.

     When I discussed this with a friend, from Austria, she reflected on the phenomenon in two ways, each confirming the other, but carrying contrasting, implicit judgements. On the one hand, she said, Germans seem to require strong leaders, and plans, to which they are capable of responding with vigor and with relatively little dissent. She said this almost apologetically, because it suggests a nation of followers, executing orders with no creative (or moral) input. But then she recalled the words of John F. Kennedy, who admonished Americans to, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." This is a lesson, she suggested, that Americans and much of the rest of the world have yet to take to heart, but which the Germans have mastered. That puts a very different spin on that German thing, doesn't it?

Old Jerusalem

We climb the highway from the Dead Sea, into the steep and dusty crags leading to the ancient city. We pass a sign carved into the rock that marks sea level and we keep climbing. The terrain is dry and sandy, an almost uniform beige, with hardly a sprig of green. We pass two arabs, herding a flock of goats just off the highway. Just beyond them, tucked between the slopes and ridges of rock and sand is a collection of roughly assembled shanties.

We continue to ascend into the hills and begin to see housing developments clustered on the sides and tops of the peaks. Some are perched above long banks of stone wall that is all that prevents them from tumbling into the valleys below. Others seemed to be carved out of the very rock.

Jerusalem rises out of the dessert mountains as we wind our way into its heart. We are seeking the old, walled city, but it is wrapped in another, modern version. We pass massive hotels, a university, the Knesset – centre of government. Even the YMCA is housed in a structure that might pass for some ancient temple.

We reach the walled city and see towers and domes rising from within. Signs point to the Damascus Gate in one direction, the Jaffa gate in the other. We are entering a realm of both history and myth, and soon we are walking narrow winding paths of smooth but uneven, cobbled stone. In North America, we marvel at places that are four hundred years old, but here we’re talking four thousand and some. And it feels that ancient, despite the long streets of vendors selling cheap tourist goods, with all the same, stupid t-shirts, mugs and keychains as any other tourist destination.

We walk past the Tower of King David and, referencing a map, head for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It’s obviously the centre of attention, so we enter and meander through it, but none of us has done enough research to realize its full significance until we’ve left and browsed through the pamphlets we’ve collected. We saw and touched the stone slab that Yeshua’s body was reputedly laid out on, and we saw the crowd waiting to see his tomb, but the literature tells us that the church is erected over the very spot where he was raised and died on the cross. “The actual spot?” I wonder. “Do they know, or was it an educated guess?”  I imagine that, at the time, and for decades after, it wasn’t a spot of particular note.

But what really strikes me is how open and accessible the church is. We meander freely, in and out of chambers and halls, witnessing various devotional rituals as we pass them. The walls are covered in classic paintings of Christ, but there isn’t a rope, a pane of bullet-proof glass or a “Do not Touch” sign to be seen, anywhere. Amazing.

Another huge surprise comes when we enter the Muslim Quarter of the Old City (the others are Christian, Jewish and...Armenian?) and find that it’s populated. Families are living in these houses that must be many hundreds (or thousands?) of years old. But unlike in the ancient port of Jaffa that we visited while touring Tel Aviv, there are no luxury condos here. These are poor families; the kids running over the cobblestones are in well-worn clothing, and the old men sitting together in front of a tiny coffee shop wear faces as much carved by time and wear as the arched doorways.

It’s in the Jewish quarter where we encounter our only substantial security presence. The Wailing Wall is barricaded, we pass through metal detectors and there are soldiers everywhere. It is the eve of the Israeli national holiday, and ceremonies are to take place, but it all accents the striking differences among the zones.

Exiting the Old City, then the modern, thriving metropolis, amounts to a descent back into the desert. You fall out of Jerusalem into the forbidding wasteland. It’s a realm of stunning contrast. A city of the desert rising up to the Heavens; a place that figures as much in the daily headlines as in the texts of antiquity. And resting virtually on the border of the long-contested West Bank.

I like this place more than I ever thought I would. It is beautiful and haunted. I recall that the most poignant scene of one of my favorite novels, The Master & Margarita, takes place here – that curious reconstruction of Pilate’s interview with Yeshua, that almost convinces you that a previously unknown witness was in the room.

I can’t imagine having the name Jerusalem in my mailing address. But wouldn’t I love to spend a season here, tasting all of these flavors more deeply! The desert is so silent and dark as we drive north toward Tiberias. There’s a full moon rising over the Jordan River. Doesn’t that name bring back memories – those voices rising up in song in my grandfather’s Baptist church in Detroit, almost half a world away and a lifetime ago. “Roll, Jordan, Roll!” Image that!

Cloud Spring

Last time on Cloud, we could see and feel the handprint of Winter across the face of our land.
The ground had shifted. The waters had carved new channels in the earth, collecting on our back lawn this year, where they had water-logged the driveway the year before.

A gate was broken and fallen. The outhouse leaned where the ground underneath it had buckled. Limbs had fallen from old trees.

Some of the trees I transplanted last year were dead, but others held a deep color in them that somehow shone through, and sported tiny buds, seeming to promise rebirth. And paths that I cut with the mower in the fall revealed themselves with a faint shimmer of green.

It was humbling and reassuring at once, all this evidence of the force of the Winter that was endured, and of the Life that impossibly survives its harsh dominance. We spent a day slogging in mud, pulling dead growth from the garden and the planters, pressing sunflower seeds into the moist soil, hoping that when we return weeks later, they will have pushed their sprouts sunward.

We set up the rain barrels, hopeful there will be no more deep freezes to crack them. Already there is the high pitched croaking of the tiny frogs that will soon overrun the place. It is dirty, beautiful, beyond us, yet welcoming, in almost every way. A beautiful Spring day on Cloud.

A Perfect Hour

We went to say goodbye to Cape Croker. At least I did. It's been a special place for me. It's somewhere to go to stretch myself open, to see what's rumbling around inside. I play my sax there. I make pancakes on a little burner in the mornings - my fruit inside, hers on top. I float in the hammock. I meditate. I read, I write. We have sex, great meals. We drink too much wine probably. We watch the thick river of stars in the black sky, and the embers dancing up off the fire. Me meet people who are easy to meet, they being as relaxed and happy as we are. I sometimes, but not always, climb up into the thick woods on top of the escarpment. More often, I just move along the beach a little ways from the camp site, where the sand and rocks have squeezed out all but the hardiest vegetation. I listen for the sounds of the birds and the insects.

I say that this is my spiritual place. And it is - me, without any formal practice, but with a wandering and wondering something inside me that needs a home. There's a meeting here, between that yearning and that destination. There's a knitting, resolving kind of energy that I find, or that finds me, seeping up out of the rocky, patient earth, thrashing about on the moody winds.

I went with a goodbye to say because next week we may take possession of Cloud. And Cloud is a place we will own - which isn't of course the right word for it. How to own land which will be here long after me; which will never come to me, but always draw me toward it, which will harbor and rest me...nourish me in ways I am already dreaming about. No ownership here. Let's say that we are stepping more deeply into a relationship with a place. And that relationship will involve centering and orienting and balancing, and whatever other things one can do with a place.

It can't ever, of course, but it will, in some ways, replace what Cape Croker has been to me. It's a place to which we intend to bring out creativity, and the parts of us that are reaching for space and for the simple rhythms of being. We will come back to Cape Croker - as early as next month for the Pow Wow. And we expect to come at least once a year. But who knows? And even so, there will be Cloud, and so less will be brought here, less will be sought here.

So now, about the perfect hour. It was our last one there. We never leave Cape Croker when others are gathering up to beat the traffic. Our favorite times are always when the weekenders have left and the place is near empty. Some week-long campers will come in and settle down. But Sunday afternoons and evenings are always quiet and calm; the weather is always perfect. And so on Sunday.

I had wanted to be on the road by six, but at five we weren't even close to ready. I said we should get going and eat on the way. Ponczka wanted to cook the sausages she'd bought from the Polish store. But that will keep us too long, I protested. Work tomorrow. So we hustled for a bit. But, well...she really didn't want to settle for fast food, and so Ponczka cooked the sausage after all. And there was green tomato salad, great crusty bread with seeds, some mustard, grilled peppers from the night before. And there were two bottles of cold, cold beer that we'd forgotten about.

It was one of those times when the food you are eating seems to be the only food possible to eat. How could there be any other? We sat under the glowing sky, almost packed, ate and drank and were happy.

When we were ready to go, we gathered a few rocks to carry to Cloud. And while we stood looking out at the bay, Ponczka said what a perfect time it would be to go in the water. We were sticky and we had the road ahead of us - three or four hours. Why not? We parked away from where we'd camped, close to the road heading out, peeled off our clothes, dug out our damp swim gear, and stepped out into the cool water. It was so shallow in this end that twenty steps in we were only thigh deep. The sun was just hovering over the bluff, in its pool of red light. The water sparkled and the air whistled softly. We lay ourselves upon the water and floated. The water was so still, everything so perfectly balanced and tranquil that we closed our eyes and let the water hold us. I remembered the mantra from yoga class, the invitation to keep relaxing more, and I let go of my hold on my muscles and felt my body softening, progressively, a bit more with every other faint outward breath.

If a place can embrace a person, and kiss every portion and particle of him, that's what Cape Croker did to me. Ponczka and I came up out of the water feeling our every pore had been flushed through, every muscle and tendril wiped clean. All was right with the world. I can't imagine the possibility of feeling better. It was a perfect hour.

Walking Cloud

It’s nine acres, in the western hills of the Finger Lakes, New York state.

Ponczka, the fiercely creative woman that I share this life adventure with, had one of her frequent brilliant inspirations. She got it in mind that we ought to buy one of the fantastically affordable getaways somewhere in those hills. We love the area already, from driving through on our trips to the City, and from our stay at the Millay Colony this winter. And I, also from further back, when my brother lived in Rochester for all those years, and I drove there along route 20 a few times.

Ponczka had attuned all her revived nesting energy into dreams for a schoolhouse, built in 1880, tucked just off a winding road on Canandaigua Lake. We saw that when driving through from my reunion a month ago. But she’d found other interesting properties, and so we looked at them too, almost as a formality. And the last of them captured us before we knew we’d been caught.

It’s inhabited by Shadow Hill, artist and therapist, who had the small cabin built by Amish neighbors, and who has tended the grounds, the small pond, the workshop and paddock, the beautiful outhouse (yes, it’s one of many special, inviting spots on the grounds) with an embracing care. Shadow is Cherokee and she says it’s been a spiritual home for her, and a healing place, and that the goodness of her neighbors is in the wood they built with. Shadow is a practitioner of “fallen art”. She merges found, fallen objects into sculptural and totemic tools of living: scepters and dream-catchers and smudging fans. And the imprint of her is on the place, giving it depth and story, and a welcoming energy.

Ponczka was instantly drawn to this vibrant place, but emotionally, she’d already moved into the schoolhouse. She’d planned the sleeping loft to be built off of the single, large schoolroom, had visualized a gazebo for the yard, and a small roadside gallery for displaying her paintings.

We slept and talked and emailed and dreamt and phoned about it for a couple of days. Then, on what happened to be solstice, the first day of summer, we drove down again in the late afternoon, and spent an hour and a half, strolling and lounging, looking and feeling the place.

And suddenly, possibilities begin to rain down. There’s an awareness of the space, room to stretch out into. I’m recognizing all sorts of choices, a sense of play welling up, and of freedom, qualities I’m reminded are always in reach, despite that I so rarely really embrace them. What I’ve been feeling was a narrowing that I’m groping my way into suddenly spouts corridors, and walls mist away. (Of course, it’s never so simple. But so much of life is in the eyes, after all. So, so much to see. And what do I choose to see?)

After awhile, Ponczka too begins to see us there and feel us there. She will have her painting gear in the workshop, and I’ll be on the shady side of the house, writing. She can feel the cold of winter pounding the walls and the metal roof, while the little wood-stove radiates its heat. And she sees herself plunging into the pond on a summer morning, just as it’s getting hot.

There will be lots to do, from mowing the grass, to chopping wood, to lugging water and fuel for the small generator – no water, no electricity. A different life and world to get to know. Shocks to absorb. Oh, man! What changes are ahead. Hopefully, we have only a few, minor illusions to be shown our way clear of. It will take time.

As we are leaving, I ask Shadow if the place has any kind of name. She says that someone once called it Cloud Nine. We will drop the nine.

Cloud.

Perfect.

What Home Is

            I’ve been meditating on the subject of home, what it is, what allows a place to grow into that designation. I’ve lived in quite a few places, for varying lengths of time. The places I’ve lived for five years or more number 5, and together count for all but about 10 of my 57 years. There are another 2 places I lived for two years or more. Another 3 where I lived six months to a year or so, and a few others where I spent a month or more. That’s quite a few addresses; lots of different places that served the purposes of home in one way or another. But really, when I think about it, only 4 of those places became home for me.

            I started out in Detroit and lived there my first five years or so. But I don’t think I would’ve considered it home if that was the end of it. Those were my formative years, sure, but in the early memories I call up, there’s hardly any sense of ‘place’ beyond the house I was born into, and those domiciles of relatives that were interchangeable with my own. But Detroit was home in my consciousness for a long, long time, and there was pride in that before I knew any other place. Because I was born there, and my mother was born there, because it’s the place my father adopted as home when he ran away from his birth place on the night of his high school graduation. And it’s the place I returned to for long stays, summer after summer during my teens, when my growth was marked in large part by the changes I saw in my cousins, and that uncles and aunts saw in me. And whatever other places have taken Detroit’s place as home, it is forever the place I’m from; it remains a part of me, and I part of it. And it’s the place my family roots begin.

           New York City was my next home, both in the sense that I spent the next chunk of my life there, and that it claimed me and I came to identify myself as a New Yorker. My individuality developed in those years. New York was the place I began to know myself, to make independent and life-changing choices, where I began to see myself in the broader contexts of community, calling, and the world. New York was the first place I made the conscious choice to leave, and from then on, my destinations were largely my own choice.

            But then came a span of a dozen years, during which I lived in lots of places – some that I loved. But the bar had been raised, so far as what it took to make a place my home. And the next place to meet the standard was Seattle.

            This matter of home has much to do with the simple passage of time. But when choice is figured in, time spent in a place is no longer a simple thing; it can be a measure of commitment, or of hope. I lived in Seattle long enough for it to grow into home. It was there that I began to recognize that part of what home represents to me is the richness and personal resonance a place develops, from the layering of experience that comes with time. Like the difference between a short story and a novel, that between a place merely lived in, and a place that was home, is time and the blossoming of growth and change, including growth in attachment to and relationship with a place.

             A particular nugget about how and why Seattle was home is that I watched others grow there. The person in my life who came closest to being a child of mine was ten years old when I came to Seattle. And by the time I’d left, she was an adult who’d travelled the world and was attending an out-of-state university. Similarly, I did social work there long enough that I began to encounter young adults who were settled into jobs and relationships, or graduating university, or serving long-term sentences in prison, whom I’d first met as traumatized pre-teens in a group home. Some of my most substantial romantic partnerships took place there, and my first writings to see print were composed there. Perhaps the best way to sum it up is to say that the “I” that moved to Seattle wasn’t the same “I” that left there twelve years later. I didn’t even go by the same name.

            But finally, home became Toronto. I said earlier that I chose my cities of residence after New York. But, in fact, on more than one occasion that place was determined in partnership with a woman in my life, and that’s the case with Toronto. In fact, if not for the woman I married and came here to live with, it would have been inconceivable to me that I move to Toronto. It’s not that I had anything against the city. In fact, I’d never been here before the week I was married, and knew little about it. But I was – and still am, really – in love with Montreal, a place I spent large chunks of two magical summers in my university days. Yes, I love Montreal, like I Love San Francisco, and love Paris. But my time in these cities was transient, and my love had more to do with a time in my life, a freedom and sense of possibility, and with a romance of circumstance and mood and chemistry, than it had to do with growing in and knowing a place.

            Toronto is my home in ways that transcend my love for such other places. I was first attracted to Toronto because it holds in its streets the rhythms and accents of so much of the world. But what I came to love is a city of neighbourhoods, where each feels open to all others. It’s not just a busy city, but also an alive city, in which movement and art, invention and expression serve the broadly shared purpose of good living.

There are also the ways in which my personal life has intersected with the life of this city. I’ve been blessed to experience Toronto through so many of its cultural and social facets. And in the course of that, I’ve transitioned through entire phases of life. I even contemplate the possibility of my last life phase ending here.

But all of this has me reconsidering my initial premise: that places become home by meeting particular, time related standards. Yes, it’s so...in part. But maybe this makes for only a difference in degree, rather than a difference in kind. I remember another place I felt a sense of home, but in an oddly concentrated way, and for a very short while. It was my grandmother’s house, in rural Indiana. I went there to stay with her, in the ninety-fourth year of her life, after my grandfather had died. I went there to be company to her, to take care of errands and some house-keeping (not much, mind you; grandma was incredibly able and active at ninety-three, and didn’t relish turning over her routine so that she could sit and waste).

I didn’t much like the tiny town of Shelburn and environs. The landscape was ragged and stingy, and the weather oppressive. I found the inhabitants mostly as alien as they undoubtedly found me, and there was little culturally or socially that interested me. So why do I include this reminiscence, then? Why does this memory well up so unaccountably? I guess to reveal something to me, to form a lesson, broaden a meaning, to break down an artificial delineation

            Because there was home there in Shelburn. It resided in tiny doses, in the artifacts of family: in sepia photos folded in albums, in the biscuit dough that grandma worked by hand in the huge mixing bowl on the kitchen table, in the odors that lingered in the crumbling barn and the long-unused chicken coop, and in my grandpa’s Illinois railroad watch that she dug out of a drawer and presented to me one afternoon. And mostly, it resided in the single personage of that old woman, her tongue loosened for the first time in my memory, giving her over to sharing memories of my Dad and my aunt as kids, her marriage to grandpa, and their struggle with the local white folks when they became the first blacks to move into the community, even of her first time seeing an airplane, circling overhead at a county fair when she was twenty-one. Home resided in all that, and in watching her unwind her cascade of white hair every night, to comb it, then roll it up again, while she shared her wisdom, much of it to do with the faults and blessings of being a male member of my line.

             It’s a feeling and memory of home that brings things almost full circle, like a psychic return to Detroit, but through a different portal. Home embodied in small, personal details, and almost disconnected from the broader environment. Suggesting to me that home is something carried inside, and released in those places that call it forth, that allow it to open and breathe, places where my inner reality somehow finds resonance.

Which takes me one step further now. Wasn’t that a little bit of home in Atlanta that summer, taking evening walks in Piedmont Park, and in the music building at Exeter, where I’d go at lonely times to pick at the keys of a piano? Don’t those love affairs with San Francisco and Paris and Montreal all contain a little bit of home, of the self expanded, of kinship spread thin but amplified, of love circulating out, then back again?

The Transient Village

    They spring up every weekend between late May and early September - temporary encampments, of people who have travelled from the cities and suburbs and the small towns, to enjoy a couple or three days close to nature. The campgrounds begin to swell with new-comers on Friday afternoon, and by Saturday the congregation reaches its peak. The village is formed.

    Cars and pick-up trucks park on the individual campsites, and tents of various kinds spring up between them. Others bring trailers of various types, and yet others come in small or full-sized recreational vehicles that are like small mobile homes.

     Most campers are couples, families with their children, or small pockets of friends. But often there are gatherings of large groups. They might be sprawling, extended families, associations of friends or neighbors, or groups gathering to celebrate some occassion or anniversary.

    These temporary communities spill over with children, splashing in the lakes, running in packs along the paths, rediscovering and inventing ancient and new games. Adults make their own fun, going on excursions to hike in woods, to kayak or powerboat on the waterways, driving into the nearby towns or exploring the countryside. There is occassional music to compete with the sounds of the birds and insects, made with instruments and voices, or blaring from car radios. The beer and wine begin to flow by mid afternoon, and they animate the camp fires that spring up at dusk and burn until the early morning.

    On a Saturday evening, these appear as entrenched little villages. Hammocks swing between the trees, cook stations sit on picnic tables, and camp chairs form circles around the fire pits. Clothes hang to dry and tarps are strung up as protection against the rain that is never so predictable.

    On Sunday - or Monday, if it's a long weekend - the camps begin to be broken down. There are always the few who begin packing up right after breakfast, perhaps because they've come furthest, or are simply anxious for the highway or for home. By mid-afternoon, the village no longer exists. There remain only a few occupied campsites, and they are scattered. Some of these are merely lingering, waiting for the rush of campers homeward to diminish, or just stretching the getaway for as long as possible. There are the privileged few who are here for another day or two, maybe a week. Occassionally, a family that is hopping cross country, park by park, camp by camp.

    It feels like part of an ancient process, this springing up and subsequent dismantling of villages. Neighbors for a day or two go their separate ways. A home is erected or inflated out of a trailer or the back of a car, only to be collapsed back into it later, leaving no trace that it ever was. The transient community that forms under the stars might be a modern counterpart of a nomadic tribe, except that the bonds between us are more abstract and far flung. We'll never come together in just this combination again. 

In STONE

I read a tombstone in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery this evening.

Today was one of our first Spring days. It warmed to above plus ten, and in the late afternoon the clouds came apart into pieces that soon dissipated, leaving the day suddenly and unexpectedly bright.

Equinox is less than a week away. The patios are about to explode into life.
My bike will be out tomorrow for the first time this year.

And Mt. Pleasant is the first cemetery I ever came to love. I lived three blocks away for nine years and it became a favorite place to walk, and later on, when I began to take back my body, it was the first place I jogged in almost a decade.

It feels wide and open for the city - spacious and well tended, curved and rolling, inviting in the sky. And it’s also the place at-long-last teaching me the names of trees, because each of its dozens of varieties are tagged with its name, both latinate and anglicized.

It’s a peaceful place. Not morbid or depressing at all. Restful, reassuring. I never connected a sense of peace or of wellbeing with burials until I came to know this place. This place has taught me the reasonableness of a common ground for the dead and the living to meet, in memory, thanks, longing and grief, for yesterdays to be measured against now, for the reshaping of histories and relationships outside of the tyranny of time.

I happened to be passing, just when my long, complex and emotional day had worked itself through, and I steered the car in along a path, then slowed and parked. Eventually, I went to where I knew I’d find my name engraved in stone, in deep and clean block letters.

KIRBY

Not relatives of mine, that I know of. Just the sharing of a name. No, not morbid at all... Anchoring. Seeing it raises a smile to my lips. I imagine myself on both sides of the impassable border, and the gift glows warm inside me, balanced with that other gift I can only imagine.

And then, the rest of the inscription, in squat, even letters.

What it says is:

In loving memory of

CHRISTOPHER KIRBY

1833 – 1915

MARY ELLIS HIS WIFE

1842 – 1914

EDWARD CHRISTOPHER THEIR SON

1868 - 1932

DAISY ELIZABETH THEIR DAUGHTER

1877 – 1935

LILLIAN MARY THEIR DAUGHTER

1874 - 1946

So much story in so few lines.

Being Good, Being Happy

Travelling by train in the deep night. It evokes a sense of timelessness, and brings back memories, many of which aren’t even my own, but borrowed from classic books and old black and white movies starring Greta Garbo.

Our vacation begins. Ponczka is my perfect travelling partner, a happy baby, I call her. She thrills at every small triumph, like crossing the border on an expired passport, or smuggling our homemade wine in pop bottles. For her, the train awakens memories of travelling back and forth between Gubin, her hometown, and Poznan, where she escaped to Art High School when she was fourteen, and discovered her independence. For me, it’s travelling through Germany when I was a kid, following our show biz mom from Berlin to Leipzig to Frankfurt and back, eating dinners in the restaurants that stood in the atria of the glorious old stations. And too, my travels back and forth between Seattle and Chicago – two solid days each way – when I worked the summer sales circuit with Encyclopaedia Britannica in the early ninties.

Vacations are to dream about. We dream of what they will be in the preceding weeks or months. And we dream them again afterward, knitting together what actually happened with what might have, so that, in that wonderful freestyle replay of memory, even the ordinary, disappointing moments ultimately grow into our expectation of them, however long after the fact.

I wonder if what I experience is universal, this tug, as the vacation nears, to have it be a transformative experience, the expectation of returning a different man than when I left. I somehow anticipate that, during my vacation, I will rid myself of every vice and shed every excess pound. I’ll read a few books, pen a couple of short stories, and improve my French and tarot reading. I expect I will return home refreshed, enlightened and even galvanized, ready to make manifest whatever ambitions have lain dormant in the cradle of my spirit.

I never expect so much out of fourteen short days, as when I’m on vacation. But it’s a delicious expectation. There’s a vibrant tension between the desire to indulge and luxuriate in freedom and ease, and the desire to make the most of time that feels to be more wholly my own. A balanced tension between wanting to be happy and wanting to be good. And there’s a sought after sweet spot of comfortable exertion, of invigorating effort, that satisfies both wants.

When we exit the train in New York the balancing act will begin. To lounge over drinks with old friends, or hit up the exhibits at the Guggenheim. And when we’re aboard the cruise ship, heading to the warm Caribbean seas, will we be more diligent about visiting the onboard gym or the midnight buffets? And in Old San Juan, will we dutifully explore the historic Fort, attending to every anecdote of our tour guide, or will we stake out a spot on a beach and luxuriate as the sun works its magic?

Vacation time is upon us.

Old City Hall

I was in Toronto’s Old City Hall today.

It’s a glorious building, richly decorated and stately. From the outside, the towers, peaks and projections, with their gargoyles and various window embellishments, are varied, so that each section is a bit different than any other. Inside, there are historical mosaics on the walls, telling the story of the region (from the view of its European settlers) and engravings of names and dates reflecting important moments in the city and province’s history. The halls of this massive building are floored with thousands of tiny tiles, irregularly shaped, and less than one inch square, forming a decorative pattern that includes winding vines with flowers and leaves. My mind numbs at the notion that these tiles were set one by one, by human craftsmen. The manpower to accomplish this seems incalculable. The lower parts of the walls are sheets of marble, aligned in the order in which they were sliced from whatever quarry wall, so that the grain markings of every sheet match and mirror to varying degrees those of its neighbouring panels on both sides.

This is perhaps the first building in Toronto to capture my imagination and affection, long before I noticed these details I recite. At the time, I appreciated it’s 19^th century stylings, and the contrast it made with the still futuristic New City Hall next door. Its main significance to me though, had to do with the fact that I was married there, one week and a day after coming to this city for the first time, and several months before I took up residence here.

Today I was there to accompany one of my clients to court. Some of the courtrooms and offices in the building are as ornate and grand as what I’ve already described, with impressive columns and polished wood railings and benches. But other rooms, like courtroom 114, where my client was scheduled today, are more ordinary. They lack the finer detailing, and what embellishments remain have dulled and grayed from daily use and cursory cleaning. One of the courtrooms, which I’ve visited several times, now has plexiglass barriers, to isolate prisoners who are brought in, still handcuffed and in their jailhouse orange jumpers, directly from one of the jails.

A dull and demoralizing atmosphere prevails in this old building. I’m always reminded, when I go there, that crimes against persons and property are primarily committed by and against the poor. As much as our moralizing may state otherwise, robbery, burglary, theft and assault are crimes most often committed by the needy and the desperate, and against targets of opportunity. You don’t break into a car for a stereo that will net you maybe twenty bucks unless that twenty bucks is going to make a difference in your perceived quality of life over the next twenty-four hours. Which just doesn’t fit the bill for those of us who are home owners or who have – or are confident of being able to get – decent paying jobs. And these realities are sadly visible here in Old City Hall. Folks here for trial dates, or disclosures or to enter a plea, are mostly either casually dressed, wearing clothes suited for manual work, or, if they’re looking to impress the judge, look like they’re on their way to the club. The homeless, with whom I work, show up in whatever they have on, or can pull out of a backpack that’s a bit less soiled. Those who look like they might belong in an office are generally lawyers or other courthouse staff. There’s lots of waiting. Often, the accused come and spend several hours, only to get another date on which to return and do it all over again. It seems as though there’s an assumption that no one has anywhere important to be, and this waiting is a mere appetizer to the fines, probation or jail time that may well lie ahead.

I used to arrive at these court dates anticipating an air of anxious hopefulness. Shouldn’t an appointment with the administrators of justice provoke a little of that? Even if one is guilty, the chance to explain things from one’s own point of view is at least a window into possibility. But there’s little of that sense here. Instead, resignation, boredom, suppressed anger. And, despite the numbers of people packed into the courtrooms, there’s a sense of loneliness, the almost palpable feeling of being small and of little importance. Get it done. Say your piece and make way. Don’t waste the court’s time.

To my knowledge, civil marriages are no longer performed on the second floor. My ceremony here, many years ago, was as perfunctory as the proceedings in the courtrooms. But it didn’t matter so much. There was my bride, members of her family there to support us, and our own optimism about the future. The solemnity of the surroundings, the sour faced, all business Justice of the Peace didn’t diminish the event for us. The building itself, with its sense of weighty time, and of consequence, was enough for us to know we’d made an important passage with our exchange of a few simple words.

Not then, but now – today – I think about the labourers and craftsmen who constructed this building. They couldn’t have known, or even suspected, all the life that would transpire between the walls they raised, all the living souls with their troubles and hope and lack of hope who would walk upon their expertly assembled tile floors. But of course, they had their own hopes, their own time, their own lives to live, that are unimaginable to me. The Tao te Ching has a passage in it that has always resonated with a strange power for me. From one translation: We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable. Amen to that! And yet...that wood.... If nothing else, it leads us to where that inner space is. The walls of this building guided my client here today, a step in the process of facing a charge: assault against a police officer. From his perspective, he was trying not to go back to jail. He’s already spent too much of his young life imprisoned. I don’t think he notices the building he came to, all its fine detail. He’s in that inner space. As was I when I came here with my bride.

The marriage didn’t last...not forever. And yet, for a time it had a weightiness and endurance about it, like these marble walls and the ever patient gargoyles. She and I had a laugh, when we came here to buy our license three days before the ceremony. There was a huge painting on the wall of the office to which we were sent. It depicted a confrontation between a pirate ship and a vessel it had come upon. It showed the ships side by side, the pirates clambering onto the deck of the victim ship, and a pitched battle taking place, with blood and swords and all the rest. What an image to have on the wall of the office where they issue marriage licenses, we laughed! A warning. And an accurate one.

These buildings and spaces we live in and pass through...they are markers, and signifiers. They can be beautiful and ugly in their own right. But whatever those qualities, they come to carry the flavour and the essence of all that passes inside. Memories too, and the experiences they mark, can be heavy like stone, or transparent as glass, as grimy as untended floors, as beautiful as a work of art put into the shape of a building. And this particular building has a strange mix of memories and energies, of odd beauties for me now. And I love it still.

Cape Croker

I’ve been going to Cape Croker for eight years. It’s a camp site on an Ojibway Reserve, just north of Wiarton, in the Purple Valley, on the east side of the Bruce Peninsula. I’ve come to feel about the place that it’s one of my spiritual grounding spots. It’s a place I go to for stripping down, to becoming a more basic me. I carry and practice some indulgences there, but I also find ways to release my grip on situations, problems and obsessions that imprison me in my day-to-day life.

I started coming here with Ponczka, the year after we met, a short time after we bought our house and began living together.

My previous history of camping had been insubstantial, but meaningful. I used to make excursions to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. I approached it then with a city dweller’s spontaneous indulgence, venturing out with no equipment but an old sleeping bag, a few items from my kitchen, some canned food, bread, peanut butter and juice. The coastline was a graveyard of old timber, and one of the chief pleasures of these excursions was to set myself a roaring fire and keep it going throughout the two or three evenings and nights. The other highlight was the upward-looking hope for skies clear enough to reveal the thick-with-stars band of the Milky Way. On some trips I enjoyed the stars every night; on others, not at all; such was the ambivalence of a Washington coast sky.

This bit of the Peninsula, over which shone the ever rotating beacon of the lighthouse on Destruction Isle, and where grey waves crashed and roared constantly, yet in different moods and intensities, became a spirit grounding place for me. Not the first or only such place; there have been many: the castle lake in Central Park, the bridge over the Charles in Cambridge. Lots of parks. And other places, too. The top of the Health Service hospital in Seattle, from where on early mornings I could not distinguish the snow on the peaks of the Cascades from wisps of morning cloud.

Lots of places have been invitations, to plug in, to settle, to release.... There are many metaphors and images to use. It strikes one in so many different ways, to be lifted up out of the everyday and given a glimpse of oneself removed from the fleeting cares and habits, to stand a bit more naked, to others, but mainly to oneself. Images arise of treasures that have come my way, in the form of people, places and experiences. I recall faces I thought I had forgotten, along with the names and the particulars of our brief encounters. I remember driving around in the middle of the night, at the end of my first day in San Francisco, with Rose, a woman I met while shooting pool in a bar. There was the bunch of guys sitting around a camp fire together in New Orleans, right where the Mississippi empties out into the Gulf of Mexico, on the night of Mardi Gras, with the revellers prancing and parading just a block away. There was the room in the barn outside of Austerlitz, New York, quiet and heavy with creative concentration and the coming on of Spring. There were the long moments of stillness on remote highways, moments that would’ve been lonely without all that space spreading everything out, so that loneliness became something entirely else, and waiting for that car to come over the horizon was like planting seeds you know will only come up when you are long gone.

Cape Croker is the inheritor of all my expectations and wants of spiritual places. And yet, its free of any claims I might have. I am happy when I go there, regardless of anything that might go wrong, or the discomforts brought on by mosquitos, storms and cold, blowing air. Peace and contentment emanate out of every stone and tree. It’s a place that relieves me of any sense of hurry or expectation bound by a clock. Time feels so abundant there that it’s impossible to feel that there could not be enough. And though I am aware of having felt that way, just a day before, and that I will surely feel that way again, while in those moments of tranquility, none of that matters. I slow down, until the gliding of the clouds across the sky becomes a ballet, and I note the change in the tide when it happens, and silence reveals itself for the constant chorus of life that it is.

We usually travel to Cape Croker on a Friday night, leaving a little after 9, and arriving in Cape Croker well after midnight. By that time, Ponczka is always asleep, and I have the pleasure of setting up tent and air mattress by myself in the dark, trying not to make noise or use the flashlight any more than necessary. Sometimes I’ll start a fire. Other nights, if it’s clear, and especially if it’s the first trip of the year, and my first opportunity in months to see a star-filled sky, I’ll take a few minutes to gaze upward. Sometimes the glow of the moon is all the light that’s wanted.

There’s always a shift after the first twenty-four hours at Cape Croker. During the first day, tarps and gazebo go up, the hammock is slung between the trees; there comes the first dip into the sound, then the second. The kitchen area comes into being as food is prepared. And whatever is cooked comes with a flavour as though offered up directly by the nature all around us.

After a night’s sleep, I always awaken with a sense of being home, of belonging in this place where the rhythms invade and take me over, until I am myself in a way I haven’t been in awhile, if only because I haven’t taken the moments to feel and to know it. I play my sax, and l practice Tai Chi, and meditate, partly because these are good things to do, but more because the place invites me to move my body and spirit, to stretch and open. I make music because I feel the music waiting to come out, and I WANT to play. And my sax will play me, to the extent that I release myself to it. I find and live a different shading of myself, I breathe deeper.

The earth all through Purple Valley is thick with rocks. Escarpments to the north and south of the camping beach form cliffs of craggy formations, eroding slowly in geological time, years passing between rock falls. It’s an area of small ranches with weather beaten sheds, with cows and horses grazing between the clumps of stone. Ponczka and I watch the slow decay of two buildings we’d love to live in: a mansion on the main street in Wiarton, with thick panes of bowed glass framing the main room, a dumbwaiter and separate servant’s stairwell. The other is a school on the edge of the reserve. We dream of living there, our lives rooted in such a place, where weeks and months pass slowly, where growing old would not seem unnatural. We would start an Art Colony, where painters, writers and musicians would come to experience their spirit's release.

A Month at Millay

Ten years ago this month, I was a resident at the Millay Colony for the Arts, an arts retreat near the town of, Austerlitz, in the eastern mountain country of New York State. I often refer to that month of Millay as being the first time in my life when I lived as a writer.

The Colony is located on the estate of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, she of the bohemian, “my candle burns at both ends” aesthetic of the early 20^th century. The colony was founded several years after the poet’s death by her surviving sister, to be an open, creative space to which artists could retreat for a month at a time, to work, play, rest or merely exist, away from distraction or demand. Millay occupies a beautiful setting. There are fields and forests, and a mountainous state park a short walk away, and lots of gravel roads cutting through the steep and robust stands of trees.

At the start of each month, six artists - writers, musicians or visual artists - are welcomed to the colony, provided cozy bedrooms and spacious studios, a well-stocked kitchen, a prepared dinner every evening – and lots of quiet. During my month, four of us occupied a roughly converted barn, with bedrooms on the ground floor, and huge, corresponding studios above. There was lots of bare timber, uneven floors and mismatched furniture – rough and plain. I felt I was entering a space that had been cleared for me, and was ready to absorb and feed back my energies over the coming weeks. I bought along my 1940’s era, cast iron, Royal office typewriter, and when Gail, our hostess and manager, heard me clanging away on the first afternoon, she said it had been years since she’d experienced that sound, and she welcomed my noise with the same respect and accommodation with which all or our actions and requests were met.

It wasn’t merely that I lived as a writer for four week; I was treated as one, as one doing meaningful work. There’d been an application process, which included samples of work, a loose proposal as to how I expected the residency to further my artistic goals, and I’d needed a reference letter, which a more successful, writer friend had provided. But otherwise, not before, during or after the experience, was there ever an expectation to show work, to report on progress, defend ones worthiness or even to pretend to be working if one wasn’t. We were invited and expected to do with time and the universe as we pleased, and every time I said a thank you to anyone, it was returned, with a declaration that they were the ones honoured, by my presence there.

I settled into a rhythm of days that was dictated solely by my artistic pace, which I hadn’t known until then. I found that I naturally woke between nine and ten, feeling alive and ready to move. I’d immediately climb the narrow stair to my studio and do my morning stretches on my Royal beast. There was hot water on hand for hot chocolate, and I postponed my first cup of coffee for the kitchen. I’d do some stream of consciousness writing, look over my previous day’s pages, and jot some notes and ideas for future work. And by the time I took the walk for breakfast, I’d be into my day with purpose.

Breakfast was oatmeal or eggs or pancakes, but also a chance to chat briefly with whoever else was a late morning eater. Some of the others I rarely saw before dinner. Liz, one of our two painters, rose at about 5, and I sometimes met her improvising a lunch while I started my breakfast, she with anyone else’s full day’s work already behind her.

I’d get back to work after eating, and would go for two to three hours. This session was always an attack on a new chapter or section, churning out fresh material, pushing myself into the unknowns, and daring myself to take pathways that were confronting for reasons I didn’t generally know. This was always the most exhausting, and also the most exhilarating of the day’s work. By the time I finished, I was ready for a snack and a walk.

Upon returning to my studio, physically tired, but emotionally recharged by the outing, I put in another hour or two, generally augmenting and editing the early afternoon work, before keeping the solitary appointment of the day – dinner with my fellow residents.

We had a great crew that month. The six of us – 4 writers, 2 painters; 3 women, 3 men – philosophised and laughed together, shared about the progress and the hurdles of the day, drank wine and rejoiced in this time we knew was so special, even as we counted down the weeks, then days. I didn’t keep up with the others for very long, but Liz and I became lasting friends, and she’s remained an inspiration for her work ethic as well as her artistry.

After dinner, I’d write a bit more, but without agenda, letting my ideas dart about, small inspirations spark from the work and exploration of the day. And I’d usually have another short walk, into the night, to study the sky and stars. And it was a time to read. I’d bought along a stack of books that I got part way through, but the real reading pleasures were two-fold. First, my discovery of George Perec and his amazing novel, Life: a User’s Manual, that I found in the small library and sampled, morsels at a time.

Then there were the collective journals, in which residents over the decades had reflected on their stay, and on their artistic lives, often on their doubts and fears. The journal writers – and generally there were only one or two residents journaling during any given month – sometimes wrote about the workaday lives and families they’d left behind and would shortly return to, using the distance to see with fresh eyes how they were situated in life. I remember one writer’s entries, written in the dead of winter, comparing the quiet, mountain roads of the area to the city streets he walked at home. Another reflected on his isolation at home, and not quite understanding it. And he wondered at being now thrust into this very temporary family of kindred folk for four short weeks.

And yet another wrote about the joblessness, poverty and rootlessness waiting at home, and all the stresses that came with it, which would threaten to overwhelm the vision of the project that was then underway, with such a sense of accomplishment, zeal and purpose. “What will it be like to get off the bus at the downtown terminal, of a Tuesday afternoon, and not know what I’m going to eat for dinner?”, paraphrases one of his premonitions.

I’d have been devastated if told that ten years later my novel would still be unpublished, un-represented, and only barely finished. But – and I console myself – I’d have been proud of the feeling I have about the novel I have produced, with a beginning and an end, and 120,000 words in between, with characters who live and inhabit a breathing world.

That month helped bring Bursting about. It’s where the name finally came to me. I’d started the book three years before, and it would be another eight before it was done – a journey I’d never have imagined. At Millay – taking up from Rob, another of the writers – I’d begun to tape outlines and character notes, tentative chapter titles and poems, to the thick, wooden walls. It gave the world I was slowly scripting a dimensionality it hadn’t had before. Each of the days stretched long enough that I could dive into the book several times, and have slow, drifting ascents back into my quiet, barn loft studio. I took lots of walks into the hills and fields, while I let the story and characters take me over and reveal themselves. It was so much like what I’d imagined a writing life to be, and yet so different. I hadn’t known, for example, that five to six hours was the most I could manage, sitting at my beast and writing fresh material. But I also hadn’t known how my mind, mood and spirit would so wrap themselves in the work, that I was constantly working it, shaping it, feeling my way through it. The work filled me up, I carried it in my limbs and it overflowed my skull and brain.

I did finally finish my novel. There is some disappointment about it, flowing from the teeming mass of details of my created world that do not survive on the pages of the manuscript. And from how short it falls of the brilliance I have aspired for it to be. And doubt keeps me yet from sinking fully into a second novel that will test what I think I’ve learned.

But I continue to write. And that time at Millay left its imprint on me. I now know the rhythms that work for me. I’ve felt the scope of the creative dimension I can inhabit when I am focused and engaged. And when I find my creative zone, sitting on the second or third level of the Toronto Reference Library most likely, or in the window seat before my desk on Sproat Avenue, I know the place, and I am at home.