caught in the web

My essays, two of them anyway, as well as my book reviews, are now available, free, to anyone who might want to read them. A year ago, I would have refused to "sell out" this way, but it feels good. The essays have pictures that enhance the ideas; the book reviews are there for anyone who looks; my blog gives a little glimpse into the chaotic, Zerrissenheit-ridden mind of this writer.

It feels good.

I hope somebody finds my little nuggets and sees them as gold. Or fool's gold. Or gilt. Just as long as my words find a home and a reader or two or three!

so this is christmas...

...the seventh without Andy.

When we were young and full of hope but empty of bank account, I used to give the kids a special little giftie to open on the first Sunday of Advent. One year, I bought crayons and made stencils, which Andy treasured. Years later, he wanted to share the traditions of his own childhood (from the oh-so-mature perspective of middle school) with his sisters. He made a careful, detailed picture using those stencils, colored with bright markers, now framed. On the mantel we have three matching stockings, embroidered with the names "Tom", "Lauren", and "Andy", that I made in 1982, the fall semester I took off from graduate school, just after Andy was born. His little manger scene, a gift from my mother. The red cedar creche that Andy helped me choose. The pieces are beautiful, hand carved by "Mr. Ben" (Ben Atkinson, a Tennessee artisan), purchased at the rate of $40/year until Mr. Ben ran out of ideas. My creche is amazing--I even have a pig! --as well as the requisite wise men, angels, shepherds, sheep, a cow, drummer boy and girl, camels, a horse, a cat, and some chickens. The cedar smells like every Christmas tree we ever cut from the Shawnee National Forest--more Andy memories, first as a little guy and then a toddler, riding in the frame backpack we used for such purposes, finally as a strapping boy with his own opinions about the perfect Christmas tree. Wrapping presents in Andy's room, going through the old cards and tags, I see with a start his handwriting. His favorite Christmas albums--Nat King Cole, Alabama, Amy Grant. The off-color jokes he and Tom shared about Amy in her various sexy poses....

The ghosts are friendlier as the years pass, perhaps. This year, for the first time, Andy's tree is pretty much fully decorated. That means he's been dead long enough to accumulate a full memorial tree, with ornaments from my sister and the mother of one of his good friends. His is the only real tree we put up now, and I don't intend to change that. My sister thinks I am nuts--Andy was practical, and would have eventually caved in to the convenience of an artificial tree. Maybe she's right.

Who would my son be now? He'd be 26. Would he be here for Christmas? Would we be creating new traditions to accommodate a daughter-in-law, maybe even grandchildren? Would I be a cool young granny? Would his wife like me? Would he be a lawyer? A businessman? A teacher? A stay-at-home dad?

Who would Andy be? We'll never know. "Aye, there's the rub."

Mourning Meditation: Verbs
Living, Losing, Loving

I set out to find myself a hero and found instead a calm inlet of words, protected by Loving that transcends losing and fosters living. Or maybe I just like to paddle around in other people’s ponds.

A hauntingly apt illustration from a novel about a delightfully prickly woman:

[T]he wounds closed up and scarred over, but only in that way that an oak struck by lightning heals itself by twisting and bending around the wound: it is still recognizably a tree, it still lives as a tree, it still puts out its leaves and acorns, but its center, hidden deep within the curtain of green, remains empty and splintered where it hasn't been grotesquely scarred over. We are happy the tree hasn't died, and from the proper angle we can look on it and suppose that it is the same tree as it ever was, but it is not and never will be.
(Robert Hicks, from The Widow of the South)


You take in nutrition, walk a million miles, nod and smile. People care, and feel, and regret; and in the end, turn awkwardly, silently away, vulnerable and shy. Words, like swords and phalluses, can shape destiny. Or become flaccid.

They had all seen nothing, Hugh knew, only grief’s gestures, sorrow’s affectations: True grief, he saw with the last glimpse of his son in the oak-paneled room, was a secret that defied divulging.
(Brett Lott, from Reed’s Beach)

And yet, losing is universal. Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain, he of the acerbic, winsome wit, poignantly shares his pain in a letter to his friend, the Rev. Joseph Twitchell (Congregationalist pastor), a few months after Twain’s 24 year old daughter died from meningitis. I rather relish the connection with a writer I admire, a man of profound, questioning spirit, who sought solace, as I do, in the arms of a human shepherd; we need human hands on the crook that drags us back from the abyss.[i]

Do I want you to write to me? Indeed I do…. The others break my heart but you will not. You have a something divine in you that is not in other men. You have the touch that heals, not lacerates. And you know the secret places of our hearts. You know our life—the outside of it—as the others do—and the inside of it—which they do not. You have seen our whole voyage. You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail, and the flag at the peak. And you see us now, chartless, adrift—derelicts, battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone. For it is gone. And there is nothing in its place. The vanity of life was all we had, and there is no more vanity left in us. We are even ashamed of that we had, ashamed that we trusted the promises of life and builded high—to come to this!

… I did not know what she was. To me she was but treasure in the bank, the amount known, the need to look at it daily, handle it, weigh, it, count it, realize it, not necessary. And now that I would do it, it is too late. They tell me it is not there, has vanished away in a night, the bank is broken, my fortune is gone, I am a pauper. How am I to comprehend this? How am I to have it? Why am I robbed, and who is benefited?
(Mark Twain, The Selected Letters)

The living, the losing, the loving—shot through with murky, indistinct, creepy shadows—pile on one another until the borders blur. In this villanelle, among the more stylized of verse forms, I fancy that Elizabeth Bishop attempts to reel in the unruly children—Living, Losing, and Loving—disciplining them with careful rigor:

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones, And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (write it!) like disaster.

(qtd. in Cheryl Walker, God and Elizabeth Bishop: Meditations on Religion and Poetry, 2005)

A hero? Maybe I’ll settle for a life jacket.

Lord, how are they increased that trouble me!
Many are they that rise up against me.
Many there be which say of my soul, “There is no help for him in God.”

But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me;
my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.
I cried unto the Lord with my voice,
and he heard me out of his holy hill.

I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me.
(Psalm 3:1-5)

[i] Henry Van Dyke and Joseph Twitchell spoke at Samuel Clemens’ funeral. The only decoration on the altar was a floral wreath fashioned by Dan Beard, another friend of Twain’s. I love the description of the mourning friends, who, as pastors, were called upon to speak what defies words: “For a quarter of an hour the two ministers sat silent, their heads bowed in prayer. No sound was heard through the dark old edifice save a muffled sob. Dr. Twitchell, Twain's oldest and dearest friend, was convulsed with tears. His massive frame shook as he brushed the white locks from his forehead and gazed down into the face of his dead friend. Then Dr. Van Dyke rose and read the beautiful funeral service of the Presbyterian faith. At its conclusion he spoke briefly of Samuel L. Clemens, his friend, not Mark Twain, the author.”
(Associated Press, April 24, 1910)