Saturday, December 22, 2012

Lakes


Nothing is as Still as a Lake

Nothing is as still as a lake,
fog poking the stark green pine trees
around the edges of the water and whispering
up the great nobs of mountains
like a lithe gray cat.

Our dock creaks as little waves,
driven by the old loose breeze,
splash themselves up the side. Amber
lights from the houses across the lake

spill dimly out of the windows.
This could be the last time I ever
see this. I could take the outboard out,
listen to the dull crow of the engine

taking me around our point of land
and out away from home.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Once again. . .

. . . I am writing a travel-based essay. I call it Mountains, but you may call it what you wish. So without further adieu,


Mountains

     “Fat bulges of mountains,
     barely visible whales in the fog
     of smoke-- the burning
     of their cousins'
     barnacles.”
    
     Last summer, fire swept through the open spaces of Montana. The smoke blew clear down to Utah, and probably beyond. It’s makes for a lousy summer day, when you can’t see your own mountains, even when you live in a small valley. It does make for unearthly sunrises though. The haze takes away the familiarity of the landscape, hiding mountains, trees, and buildings. And it glows golden, shimmering as the dawn crescendos into normal, bright day.
     I drove through Montana with my parents that summer, clunking along in our massive brown Dodge Ram van that’s about thirty years old. The fire was somewhere close, if the smoke was any indication. The setting sun shattered its rays through the smoke, and everything outside glowed red. We could even look at the sun, it was so dimmed by the smoke. But the strangest things were the mountains. Black in the fading light, they seemed to swim through the shrouds of smog like whales through water. They seemed majestic, immovable creatures, covered with barnacles of trees and rocks. Their cousins, where the fire was, probably had all those barnacles burned off. Kind of like cosmetic surgery, only for fat bulges of land smashed upward out of the ground.
     I wondered how the sun rose on the destruction of whales, and set on the small towns in the valleys, so absolutely neutral above the clouds of smoke that keeps us invisible to it. But seeing as the answer was confusing, all I did was write about it. There is nothing new under the sun, and where there’s smoke, there’s fire, just like there’s always been.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Because I haven't been here in so long, here is a short poem.

One hour's difference is
the theme of winter,
the earlier streetlamps
illuminating
the old brown leaves of fall.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Solitude


     I have never suffered solitude.  
     My mom and her sisters own a small cabin with a sloping tin roof in far northern Idaho that sits just into the pines off the shore of Priest Lake. It’s a log cabin, built by a friend of my grandfather, which my grandfather later purchased himself. By floating logs down the lake in his spare time, he also built a three-room bunkhouse and a shed. It’s been around for fifty years now in my family. It’s history, and I’ve been going there every year of all of my life.
     My parents have driven up there so many times now that I nearly know the route from Logan Utah up to the cabin by heart. And after six hundred miles, the first glimpse of the blue water through the dense pines is always a relief. The dirt road crunches under the massive Dodge Ram van we’ve always driven on this trip; built in the 80s, it almost seems possible that it will keep running up to the end of the world. The gravel road ends, and the last twenty feet are paved in pine needles.
     I have never been to a place more peaceful. All of nature there is tangled up in brush and undergrowth and thousands of pines all striving for the same sun. But there are a few open places. Those are what you look for when you search for huckleberries, the spaces in the trees, especially where the logging trucks have come and gone, carting off the forests. It can be terrifying sometimes to drive up their roads, potholed almost to the point of not being a road. But the berries are worth it. Intensely tart, they taste like the air under the trees, high ground and the color of the dry grass growing around them. Some years we’ve picked nearly twelve gallons.
     Storms on the Lake are breathtaking. Sometimes you can see dark clouds forming ahead of time for days, shadowing the gray-blue water. Then again, sometimes they wake you by surprise, smashing the quiet in rolls of thunder. Rain pours over the tin roofs of the cabin and bunkhouse, snare drums keeping time from stopping. One year, waves fought with the long wooden dock, attempting to capture and capsize it, immense waves crashing past the rocking dock and raising the waterline on the beach by several feet. But the dock didn’t break. It’s Grandfather’s work, built stronger by his sons-in-law.
     It would be hard to find a place where you can see more stars. The darkness makes slowly makes you aware that there are stars behind the brighter ones, and galaxies beyond those. I sat out on the end of the dock with my cousin, and we talked and watched for shooting stars. The water was completely dark, and when I dipped my hand in, I couldn’t even tell it was there. It slid through my fingers like the sky itself.
     Before one storm, I took our small grass-green outboard out onto the Lake with my brother and a friend, and we soaked ourselves sliding up and down the whitecaps caused by the wind. We took turns driving, tried bouncing the boat off the waves. Sometimes it seemed like we were about to capsize, adrenaline rushing into our veins. But boats are stable; they don’t flip so easily. We fought our way back to the cabin, went in for dinner.
     I say I haven’t suffered solitude, because I have always, even on a dock with my cousin, felt the stillness and the detachedness that being in the midst of the pine trees away from the rest of the world brings. Sitting under the midnight sky, nothing from outside ever really seems to be real. Sitting on a log makes you aware of how still all things are. I have never suffered solitude––I quite enjoy it. 

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Hello, St. Theobald

     I work at a library. I wish I was a librarian, doing interesting things like shelving books and reading them while surrounded by the intricate smell of aging tomes and new, light paper. But that's probably not how that all works. I'm not a librarian anyway, I'm part of the custodial crew. To sound less glorified, I'm a janitor; to sound even less glorified than that (which is already so not swimming in exaltation), I clean things. Like glass (this library is practically made of it). And I vacuum and dust and detail (pretty much dusting and glass) and empty sad, old wastepaper baskets. Actually, they're only sad because it is summer at the moment and there aren't any students to fill them up with trash. But never mind.
     I cleaned a lot of glass today. The panes remind me of art sometimes, when the sun shines through them just right, because they look like van Gogh smudged them with his paintbrush. Plus, paint might be just as hard to clean off. I think some aspiring talent sneaks in to practice his finger-painting. Oh well, I guess it is job security. As long as there is glass to clean, there will be me, waving my paper towels across the handprints.
     And then I discovered that I have a patron saint, and now I feel. . . just the same, actually, only a little more excited than before, because who knows what miracle might go off while I'm vacuuming? St. Theobald, patron saint of janitors. Attributed to him is this command: "Thou shalt not pass through glass doors by pressing upon the glass to open or close, thereupon to defile the door with thine handprints."Yes, I wrote and attributed that, but I think it is the sort of thing most janitors (those who clean glass, at least) would agree with.
     Don't touch the glass, and you will receive your reward.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Kingdoms by the sea. Kudos to you if you know the reference (if you don't know, go find it out). But there is more to the name than allusion. When I write (or you, for that matter), we create something, a kingdom of words written into an epic story or a poignant poem or a technical manual––whatever it ends up being. But it's all there, put down in words––something to hold on to, to fight for (take that, plagiarists!), and to make a home in. A small country where your thoughts can reside and have nationalistic feelings. That is what this blog is for––to create new city-states of words and thoughts. It is to practice being a writer. 


But what is with the sea part of the title? I still find it a little confusing. The sea is a picture of everything. It creates, it destroys, contains most of life, vast amounts of death but in the end is completely, intractably mysterious. Plus, it's got a plethora of small kingdoms of its own, separated by water's pressure. The ocean is the least-known place on Earth; as such it draws me, as it always has, and, I suspect, always will. Sailing the deep is a lot like writing: you can get lost pretty easily. I've done it (though not on a physical boat), and it is a relief to finally get back on course, finding some landmark mountain peak knobbing out of the waves. Sometimes you only find it by keeping your sails taut and not doubling back and changing course. 


So, that's what I'm here for. Writing, and learning how to become a better writer. Practice makes something (if not perfection, then hopefully some still-intriguing stuff). Some of what I post may be brief thoughts, some may be stories, and I will certainly be writing poetry. Stay awhile and read.