Saturday, October 10, 2020

Texas notes: Island life

  



     Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey shifts her gaze to the Caribbean. 

     She was over a decade older than me and infinitely more fit. She invited me to her home and we went swimming in her front yard— the North Atlantic Ocean. I watched her dive in and out of the placid blue—she soared through the shallow water without creating a ripple on the surface. I’d never seen a human move like this.
     Her name, Doon, is that of a river in Scotland and also a tree in Sri Lanka. She wasn’t the kind of person I felt I wanted to question, so I never found out why her parents picked that name. She was spellbinding and elicited a sense of mystery that made me want to be close to her and experience a sliver of life as she lived it. Words, and especially questions, would have ruined it.
     We were on tiny Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas where I was teaching yoga, and she invited me to be her guest for the day. Her multi-level property included a round house and elegantly simple guest quarters. A balcony overlooked turquoise water rolling endlessly towards the horizon. Looking out, I could see how some perceive this line as delineating the end of the earth.
     Doon had built her home with her own two hands and the help of friends many years back when her children were young. Once when I looked at her strong, tan bare feet and silently marveled at the definition and strength of her well defined frog-like toes, she noticed and commented that she’s worn shoes rarely in her life.
     After she glided through the water and I floated and enjoyed the sun, she invited me inside for dinner. Around her home, she had planted so many trees and flowering plants that it was a veritable botanic garden. We ate outside on a veranda overlooking the water— fish that Doon had speared, and heaps of green sautéed seasoned vegetables. As the sun went down I basked in this magical paradise, which was just another day for the much wiser woman sitting across from me.
     How did I end up here? A series of fortunate events. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a yoga retreat on Paradise Island near Nassaua Bahamas a couple of times. Once I camped for weeks on the sand and spent my days snorkeling and practicing meditation. Another time I upgraded to a tiny house of my own and left the real world far behind. It was on that trip, as I sat alone on a dock, when a tall tattooed lady from California sat down and said “I think the surfers on a little island would like you.” Subsequently I was invited to travel to a smaller island where I met my ocean host. I have been lucky enough to call that island home for a couple of months of my life. It seems like such a pipe dream now, even getting on a plane.
     When I’m there life feels 100% worth living, exactly as it is. Everyone goes to sleep at sundown. Internet is patchy at best. We arise when the sun comes up and tells us it’s time. The residents live in geodesic dome and other solar powered houses. The man who lives nearest the ocean— a retired North American who surfs and sun gazes his golden years away— starts phoning others at the break of day to report whether or not the surf is up.
     If it is and the waves are not tsunami-sized, everyone gets to the shore as soon as they can. I’d sit and watch men, women and children on their boards for a while (too timid to try it myself after a near-drowning experience when I was younger). I’d then venture down to the Secret Beach and collect sea glass along the way. We’d get home before dark, and decide if it was a night to eat at a local restaurant or rustle something up in the kitchen. We’d laugh and talk and play backgammon, worn out from a long day at the beach.
     Island life as a guest takes effort. You have to get your feet accustomed to rocky paths leading through low hanging trees and vines.  You have to learn to say hello to the scorpions and reptiles along the way, and you have to be won into the pack of island dogs, many of whom have been adopted by locals. Once you’re in with them they become your friends and protectors. You have to bear the heat and dust and the island brush to get to the ocean, which calls every single day.
     It also takes know-how to secure fresh fish or produce from a local garden. Even if a farmer invites you over to share a ripe papaya the size of a football, it may or may not be edible. Everyone gathers around and watches as the soft orange flesh is cut open. Have the wasps gotten to it yet? If so, they’ve laid their eggs in the stringy flesh and we have to sacrifice our thirst of this juicy fruit to the ecosystem as it is. If not, a feast ensues.
     Island life reminds one to be patient, to share, to accept the climate on its terms. No one sits around complaining that it’s too hot or too cold. Hurricanes are borne together— neighbors gathering in the strongest concrete dome when necessary. Islanders go with the flow and show you that you have no choice but to do the same. It’s such a relief, and a far cry from the highly intellectual intensity I’m used to.
     Recalling my island memories has given me a feeling of excitement and hope. I could have written about the bleak zeitgeist of the moment; instead I wanted to give us a break. There will be life (for many of us, thank goodness) after the height of COVID. There will be life (for many or hopefully most of us) even until then. Better yet, one day I will return to the island and maybe you can too— Doon’s place Casuarina Bay is there for us: https://www.casuarinabay.net/







Friday, October 9, 2020

Nobelist Louise Glück’s poetry offers fierce beauty

 


                                                Hydra and Kali, by Damien Hirst

     You know how they give out the Nobel Prize in literature and it always seems to be some Icelandic novelist you never heard of? And you think, “Oh, I must pick up one of his books”? Then you never do.
      At least that’s my us
ual reaction. But not this year. Thursday it was announced the 2020 honor goes to Louise Glück, “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” 
     My reaction, “Wow! Louise Glück rocks!”   
     I’ve read all of Glück’s poetry, some poems many times. Sometimes in public, from a stage. I’ve not only talked with her on the phone but bargained with her and, ultimately, paid her money for her poems.      
     Where to begin? Something utterly ordinary, like the setting of a Glück poem — a room, with a table, a chair — only in this case, a newspaper, where lots of books arrive daily unsolicited. Unread books piled on tables, to be disposed of at “book sales,” where the staff snaps them up for two dollars each, the money going to charity.
     I see this fat book and am drawn — wait for it — by the pretty dark orange stripe running across the bottom and the blurry photograph of Saturn — I love dark orange! I love Saturn! The title, “Louise Glück: Poems 1962-2012” means nothing. She was poet laureate of the United States, yes, but who keeps track of those?

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Thursday, October 8, 2020

Flashback 2000: Free sidewalk advice well worth the price

Photo for the Chicago Sun-Times by John H. White


     Travis Hugh Culley friended me on Facebook last week. And suddenly it was 2000 again, and a colleague was telling me about the man downstairs sitting at the base of the Wrigley Building, dispensing free advice. 
     A newspaper columnist is always looking for the extraordinary, and this was enough to send me hurrying to take a look. This column followed, as well as the review I wrote about his book, which I'll run Sunday. I'll also update you on Culley today.

     Travis Hugh Culley, a handsome young man in shorts, black T-shirt and sandals, sat cross-legged on the sidewalk at the base of the Wrigley Building on a beautiful late-summer day. His bicycle was parked beside him. Lunchtime pedestrians on Michigan Avenue hurried by. Culley was not begging, or protesting, or resting, or selling.
     Set before him was a brown cardboard sign, weighted by a pair of books. The neat hand-lettering read, "Advice: $0.00."
     Curiosity got the better of me.
     "OK, I'll bite," I said. "Performance art or creative beggary?"
     "I believe mankind is best in the service of another," he said.
     Has anyone sought advice? He said yes, some have.
     "But I'm accomplishing what I came here for, even if nobody stops," he continued. "Opening up public discourse helps to purify democracy. I believe in making public space something to go to, not just go through."
     Two young women stopped. A tall blond with her hair in twists, and her shorter friend, who began talking about her job.
     "I don't hate my job. I don't want to go back to school, but I want to get into something else," she said. "I majored in education. I'm a creative person. I thought I might be a teacher."
     Culley said this: "We choose our careers around what will make us money, not what our service to the world is." He told the woman she didn't need to change jobs to be a teacher. "You can be an educator in your office. The problem with democracy is that we expect to be paid for the service that we do. Part of being a free country is that we have to take on duties we aren't paid for. Take on things you want to be within your own context."
     The women seemed reluctant to leave. But people were lining up. A shabby-looking man holding a cane and wearing a vest with a hospital visitor's pass stuck on it launched into a protracted complaint.
     "I went to the patient advocate at the VA. . . ." he began.
     Culley listened as intently to the older man as he had to the two young women. When the man finally finished, Culley said: "The VA hospital is built to operate. It doesn't operate well. You have to force it to operate. . . . If you give up now, you give up too easily. The thing that's supposed to work should work. Stand up until it works. Push."
     The man finally shambled away. A pasty, entirely bald fellow stepped up, casting a glare of distaste at the departing man. "Certain people should be gassed," he said. "The worst substance abuse is kindness."
     As the man spewed out hate, Culley gazed at him calmly. When he stopped, Culley said: "You're turning into a poor man, emotionally."
     I watched Culley talk for two hours. At times, a dozen people stood in a semicircle around him. They ranged from a petite elderly lady in an elegant summer outfit to a janitor to a boisterous group of Irish tourists, one of whom was considering marrying a woman he didn't love to get at her family's land ("Don't," said Culley. "She'll know.")
     Old, young, black, white—all stopped. The trolley to Navy Pier paused on Michigan, and the driver yelled a question about a man constantly trying to bum a lift ("I'd say give the guy a ride," said Culley).
     Finally the cops arrived: a lone bicycle policeman, about Culley's age. "Technically, you're peddling," he said, halfheartedly. The officer looked around at the people gathered, then shrugged. "Does he give good advice?" he asked a woman, who had just posed her young daughter with Culley and taken their picture. He left.
     The questions kept coming. A college student wondered whether he should make a special trip home to put his ailing dog to sleep or let his parents handle the chore. ("I'd go home and take responsibility for your dog," said Culley. "Clean up after yourself.") A man in a Spike O'Dell T-shirt, carefully smoking the stub of a cigarette, asked Culley what he thought of David Duke ("I would not take his points seriously," said Culley. "You cannot live in a free country and be exclusive.")
     He told me he grew up in Miami, where he began his street dialogues, inspired by a towering Hassidic Jew named Simcha Zev. Culley is 27 years old and works as a bicycle messenger and writer.
     A successful writer. His first book, The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power, a mix of political tract and autobiography, is being published in March by Villard.
     For a moment I thought I had finally put my finger on it. This was a book publishing stunt. But if a book publishing stunt, it was an odd and subtle one. Most people went away never hearing about the book, and Culley didn't mention it to me until I asked what kind of work he did, almost an hour after I showed up. "Book stunt" didn't seem to fit him any more than "Communist" or "Jesus freak" or "Blissed-Out Cultist" or any of the other labels I tried to slap on him.
     He was an image out of ancient Greece: the philosopher in the street.
     "I have very strong ideas about the automobile," he said. "Bit by bit, we're destroying the public space that makes us a democracy. The problem is that the whole shape of the American city doesn't bring us together as a people at all. It limits our capacity for random interaction. We are not in a dialogue."
     "Exactly," said a man in a suit and red tie. "We've moved the model of the suburbs into the city."
     I had trouble tearing myself away. Partly because of his magnetic personality, partly because of what he had to say, partly because of the fact that people on the street responded.
     They stopped. They talked. They laughed. They gave advice of their own.
     Taking one long last look, I headed toward the newspaper, convinced in my heart we have not heard the last of Travis Hugh Culley. "I want to have an impact on America," he said. As improbable as it sounds, he might.
              —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 10, 2000

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Can’t explore a coral reef? Try a discount fabric store

 


     One big benefit of never going anywhere is that when you finally do go somewhere, it’s really cool. I probably would have been happy just to enter an interior space and be surrounded by walls other than my own. And here I was, wandering this incredible brilliant soft world of fabric in Pilsen. And not just cloth: spools of ribbon and thread, buttons and glittery fringe. But mostly fabric, in big log-like bolts, in scraps on the floor, pulled out in dizzying sheets for inspection. 
     I wish I could say that I went because of my relentless journalistic curiosity, exploring every corner of the city, seeking out the new and fantastic. But you don’t need to go anywhere for that: a firehose of the incredible — mostly incredibly bad news from Washington — hits you in the face every day. Hard.
     The reason is ordinary. Many are remodeling the homes they’ve been stuck in for six months and will remain stuck in for God knows how long. My wife and I, despite my pretensions to the contrary, are ordinary suburban folks. We’re remodeling the TV room, which has the same grim white linoleum floor and mournful blue walls it had when we bought the place 20 years ago.
     Over the past half year, we finally took a good look at the two sofas the boys spent 15 years jumping on and squirting juice boxes over. One had to go immediately. When I dragged it to the street, and saw its tears and stains in daylight, I was sincerely ashamed, embarrassed to have it sit on the curb, evidence of our unseen interior lives. I worried that the neighbors would think less of us. “Look what the Steinbergs had in their house!” We North Shore types can be so judgmental, and no judgment is more welcome than one confirming superiority over somebody else.

To continue reading, click here.





Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Don't Fear the Reaper

The line in Latin is Ecclesiastes, 12:1: " Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the time of affliction comes."

     "Don’t be afraid of Covid," President Donald Trump tweeted shortly before he left Walter Reed Medical Center Monday. "Don’t let it dominate your life."     
     Silly us. And here we were doing exactly that, being afraid of COVID, letting it dominate our lives. When all we had to do was simply the opposite. Not be afraid; don't let it dominate us.
    We feel sorta silly, now, with all our habitually wearing masks and avoiding enclosed spaces and such, as if our lives depended on it.
     Maybe our lives did. There are those 209.000 Americans who died since Valentine's Day.
    Old, right? They were old, half of them anyway. Practically begging for death. And the rest with all sorts of pre-existing conditions, diabetes and whatever. Which doesn't exactly make their lives forfeit. But really, if they didn't want to die of COVID-19 they should have taken better care of themselves, or at least been born more recently.
     Like Donald Trump. Honestly, while my friends were imagining his getting sick and dying, I had dismissed that along with winning the lottery, and focused on this: his striding out of the hospital and doing a France-has-fallen jig. Which is exactly what happened. Declaring himself "an invincible hero."
     Does the fact that he was quoting some groveling sycophant at the New York Post lessen the sting of that? I don't think so. 
      "An ... invincible ... hero." The vengeful God of Deuteronomy must be busy, must be distracted, perhaps molding distant galaxies, or otherwise there would have been a smoldering spot of grease where he stood on the White House balcony, whipping off his mask for his photo op. Maybe that's coming. 
   "Don't be afraid of COVID."
    There's so much packed into that sentence. 
No, I'm not linking to her site.
    Oh heck, we've got time on our hands. What's anybody doing but checking Twitter every two minutes and waiting for the next godawful shoe to drop. Let's unpack it.
 
  "Don't..."—a directive, from your leader. From your king, to some. Have you seen the "Trump is my king" t-shirts that weaponry wacko Kaitlan Bennett, the pride of Kent State University, is selling? Ooo, you must. 
   "...be afraid..." which is funny, because being afraid is what Donald Trump has sold so successfully, the central operating principle behind all of this—fear of minorities was only the start. Of science. Of change. Of anybody other than themselves, and I would imagine, push come to shove, they'd be pretty afraid of each other if there was no one else around left to demonize.
   Afraid of everything but the stuff they should be afraid of. Like COVID-19. Which if it isn't about to scythe through the Trump administration ... well, let's say we won't be surprised.
   In their defense, sometimes Democrats seem to be not afraid enough. If I hear one more person speculating that, gosh, these drugs might affect Trump's judgment, that we have no way of knowing now if he is fit to be president I'm going to scream.
    "...of COVID." Heck, at least he said it. That implies he figures it's real. Maybe that's the epiphany Trump had at Walter Reed: "Oh, this IS a disease, and a discerning and exclusive one, since it picked me!!!"
     Although he did declare himself ... what was the term ... "Maybe I'm immune, I don't know." Modest, as always.
     Altogether, "Don't be afraid of COVID."
    Not if doing so keeps you from going to work and restaurants, to movie theaters and bars, so the economy gets jacked back up in three weeks and Trump wins.
Catacombs, Paris, 2017
    Have I got it right? I believe I do. 
    As for the dying people ... the dying people ... well, they're dying out of sight, and you can't bake a big American is Great cake without cracking a few eggs. Am I right here? Of course I am.
    There was more of course. There is always more with Trump. He babbles like a brook.
     "Don't let it dominate your life."
     I guess wearing a mask counts as domination. These are the same sort of people who fought against seat belts because they rumple your tie. Who declared that, without smoking being permitted, restaurants would all go out of business. Do not submit to the yoke of the mask, Trump implies. I didn't and look at me. "I feel better than I did 20 years ago," he tweeted.
    Live the best life you can, by contracting COVID. I'm surprised Donald Trump hasn't figured out a way to charge people for getting it. Oh right, he has—pay $250,000 to attend a fundraiser and breath in his virus-laden droplets. I wonder how those people are feeling today? I wonder how Trump will feel once those drugs wear off? I wonder how many times he'll go back to Walter Reed? I wonder if Nov. 3 will ever arrive.

Monday, October 5, 2020

Don't fight monsters by becoming them.

 


     Most folks don’t proofread remarks tossed up on Facebook. But this was Nietzsche, and I didn’t want to get Nietzsche wrong, lest the forces of darkness he dabbled in come flapping out of a fissure in the earth and get me.
     I had posted my Saturday column about Donald Trump coming down with COVID-19. It skewed toward kindness. Sorry, I had to work quick, and find decency a handy default position, particularly now. You rarely regret kindness. Rarely slap yourself on the forehead the next morning and wonder, “How could I have been so decent?!?”
     Yes, it bothers some. “We’re showing him more empathy than he’s shown us,” complained an assistant professor at Loyola. “He has never called for any kind of remembrance of coronavirus victims or personally sought to console survivors.“
     True enough. But since when did Donald Trump become our moral pole star?
     “That’s how it should be,” I replied. “‘When battling monsters,’ Nietzsche tells us, ‘make sure that you do not become a monster.’”
     Quotes have a way of being distorted. So I checked the source, “Beyond Good and Evil.” Easy enough to find, aphorism No. 146: ”Whoever fights with monsters should make sure not to become a monster in the process.” 

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Sunday, October 4, 2020

Hope is the thing with feathers



     Wishing on a star doesn't do anything. Maybe remind yourself what you are hoping for.  And a little contact high, a whiff of the thing you want and probably won't get.
     Hope certainly does not exert control over the world. It says something about you, probably something you already know. But that's it.
     In the two days since it was learned that Donald Trump has COVID-19, a lot of my friends, in the living world and on social media, have either expressed their hopes for his recovery, sincere or half-hearted, or spoken aloud their hopes for his suffering or worse, sometimes then castigating themselves for those hopes.
     I've tried to sidestep that exercise in futility. Not that it matters, but I hope he gets his ass kicked Nov. 3 and slinks off to prison in shame. But like any other hope, that doesn't make the related possibility any more real. Truthfully, I try not to even do that. Maybe, after writing eight books, the shine has gone off hope. Maybe because it seems so weak. Hope, Emily Dickinson wrote, is the thing with feathers. That's sweet and maybe sometimes true. To me, hope is the last coin in our pocket when all the money's gone. 
     Maybe because I'm less optimism driven, more fear oriented. What I fear is that the president will shake off his virus tomorrow, or later today. as can happen, and bounce back into the White House, potching his palms together and announcing that thanks to his iron constitution—a superman, really—and the overblown assessment of so-called "doctors," he has flicked the virus away, crushed it like a rock in his large and powerful hands, and is now ready to spread his wings and fly in his second term, as soon as the hopelessly corrupted and illegitimate election is put behind us.
     I can see that happening. Hope is a dim, distant star compared to that. Hope is a splash of feathers on the lawn where there used to be a bird.
     What I couldn't see—what most people didn't seem to see—was Trump getting sick in the first place, and I want to talk about that, because that's amazing, and speaks to the power of deceit. We all know—well, half of us anyway—that COVID-19 has killed more than a million people worldwide. And we know that 208,000 of those were Americans. And we could see that Trump didn't wear a mask and went around in maskless groups, rallies and meeting and rope lines. Day after day, in general disdain of self-preservation as weak and timid and girly and beneath his massive manliness. And while we didn't think it true, the fact was that he hadn't gotten sick, up to now, and speaking personally I just sort of assumed ... I'm not sure what. That it was all a show, that his minions and underlings—the United States government, remember—had created this antiseptic bubble around him. The president's daring was an illusion, a magic trick, and he was really as safe as a newborn swaddled in an incubator behind glass in a nursery.
    See? That's why he lies. Because lying works. Even among the vigilant and the skeptical. That's why there are so many lies. Lie after lie after lie. It wears us away like water over a stone. That's how I feel lately. Worn away.
     The lies get past our defenses, like the virus itself. Just as COVID-19 tricks the body, the president's lies trick the mind. Even though a person is stained as a liar, with 20,000 certified lies over the past four years, it is just so hard to accept. We keep forgetting. We keep insisting this is the new normal then going back to the old normal to sit in the ruins and sift the ashes. The media still asks him questions, provoking more lies, and nobody ever yells, "Stop! Why bother? Because he isn't telling the truth, ever." If Trump does die, you know it'll be two hours after his doctors have a press conference and give him a clean bill of health. Not only someone who lies, but someone who encourages deceit in others.
     The weekend—if we can call it that—was strange, a sort of waiting, ear cocked, for a sound that might not come, compulsively checking the news even more than usual, which is really saying something. Staring in silence at our phones, scanning the skies for a sign, a portend, a wonder. Waiting, hope stuck in our throats.