Chris mailed me three Anna Quindlen articles, two of which are included in Quindlenís new book “Loud and Clear.” I read the first “Oh, Godot” to Helen this morning. It reminds me of the speech Malcolm Clarke gave to Charlie’s graduating Deerfield class, because it, too, is a commencement speech. Clarke’s much longer narrative might be summed up as – follow your passion. Quindlen’s might be – find you, be you.

The last two paragraphs:

“Vladimir and Estragon: they just wait and wait for some formless enormous something. And sadly enough, that’s what some of us wind up doing in our lives: waiting for the promotion, or the mate, or the bonus, or the honor, or the children, that will somehow make us real to our own selves. “You see me, didn’t you?” Vladimir asks Godot’s messenger, as though he doesn’t exist unless he registers in other eyes, as though his soul is made of smoke instead of steel.

That is his despair. That is his torment. Learn from him. You are only real if you can see yourself, see yourself clear and true in the mirror of your soul and smile upon the reflection. Samuel Butler once said, “Life is like playing a violin solo in public, and learning the instrument as one goes on.” That sounds terrifying, doesn’t it, and difficult, too. But that way lies music. Look in the mirror. Who is that man? Who is that woman? She is the work of your life; he is its greatest glory, too. Do not dare to dis them by dressing them up in someone’s else’s spiritual clothing. Pick up your violin. Lift your bow. And play. Play your heart out.”

Chris suggested I post the entire article, but I canít find it online and I’m not home to scan it. Plus, scanning sucks compared to typed text. Iííve decided to post a couple more lines that Helen oohed over:

“…too unformed, too fantastic to understand that you were supposed to take on the protective coloration of the expectations of those around you.”

“Whether you are twenty-four or fifty-four, begin today to say no to the Greek chorus that thinks it knows the parameters of a happy life when all it knows is the homogenization of human experience.”

‘We parents have forgotten our way sometimes, too. When you were first born, each of you, our great glory was in thinking you absolutely distinct from every baby who had ever been born before. You were a miracle of singularity, and we knew it in every fiber of our being. You shouted “Dog.” You lurched across the playground. You put a scrawl of red paint next to a squiggle of green and we put it on the fridge and said, “Ohmigod, ohmigod, you are a painter a poet a prodigy a genius,”

To which Helen said, “My parents did the same thing – went ga ga over the most trivial accomplishment. My grandmother would say to my mother, ‘What did you expect? A moron?”

If you look down the long slope of Locust Hill Cemetery, past the ordered grave stones, you’ll see Holiday Retirement Village. On the outside it pales in comparison to the “posh hotel” which is Concord Park. However, once you walk in the door, you feel like you’re back in West Concord. The reception area is a bit larger and more formal, but the dining room is just as elegant with linen table cloths and a view, not to woodsy paths, but to a man-made pond. Water tinted blue for some reason. The piano room, instead of being part of the main sitting area, is a space all to itself. There is also a library, a fitness room, and a meeting room where bible classes are held. That is where the inside similarity ends.

The apartments are far superior. Each has a separate bedroom, a full working kitchen and a living room. The bathroom is just as spacious with a sit down shower-although, get this, eight of the units have bathtubs! (I can’t wait to tell Flo.**) Susan, imagine Flo’s apartment after you cleaned it and Matt’s friends were finished painting. Oh, and add new appliances, and even an above and below washer and dryer. I’m not sure this arrangement would have settled Flo entirely, but the move would have been far more seamless. And, with assisted and independent folk living together, she would have more people to talk to.

** Note to Diane and Susan. I am joking.

I’ll post photos later when Chris’s image editing gift arrives. My Retirement Village gallery looks like I was standing on my head or drunk.

I drove down by the river, past Ellis Park where they race horses, and then under both bridges which cross into Kentucky. I wanted to see in the daylight, what I could only vaguely see in the dark, last year, when I missed my right turn onto Bellemeade. Less mysterious in the light of day, but also people barren, except for an occasional car driving into or away from the closed Park.

After a fashion, I drove to Pennylane , the down-the-street coffee cafe. Pennylane is much like The Continental Cafe in West Acton. Walls with photos for sale; coffee, pastry and a bit more. While I was writing this entry, my mother called me on my cell phone to warn me of an impending thunderstorm. Two of the worst storms to hit the area had both arrived on the 8th of June. The first in 1982 and the second in 1995. She wanted me to come home where I’d be safe.

“Did you think I just talked the tree into that shape?”


I’d helped my father trim the lower branches of the Persian Locust in his front yard and we were returning his long handled limb pruner to the garage. This tree is in the corner of the backyard. Behind it , in another yard, is a similar tree, but one which was never trimmed.

“It’s eighteen feet tall. How do you get up that high?”

“I use a ten or twelve foot tall step ladder”

Add seven feet , the length of the pruner, limit the distance he can hold the pruner’s weight, and you fall well short of the top of the tree. Let’s not even factor his ninety years, his height which used to be six feet but whose head I can now look over. But that has always been my father – doing the unimaginable. Incidentally, he planted the tree in the front yard twenty-one years ago.

Cutting the neighbors lawn in ninety-three degree heat. He pauses ever few feet, scratches his head, looks like he’ll never start up again, but then continues. As his son, it is sad to watch.

Yesterday, Jeffrey and I stopped by The Shoe Carnival after we failed to find RAM for his iMac at Best Buy. I mean, failed to find it at a reasonable price. He’d been running his G3 350 on the original 128 MB’s – running Panther too. I thought that was impossible, and after his description of typing in Word where heíd have to wait for the letters to appear, I suggested we add some. Last night I ordered 512 from Crucial.com.

Anyway, I knew I needed walking around shoes and that’s why I browsed the aisles. I don’t believe Jeff had any intention of buying shoes, but after thirty minutes we had three pairs between us. Every time I picked up a pair, tried them on and said, “This’ll do,” he’d say, “You’re easy.” Then he’d drag me to another aisle and Iíd test another pair and he’d say, “You’re easy.” Before we shuffled over to checkout, Jeff walked up to the manager and said, “We came in here for a single pair of shoes but we’re walking out with three. Is there something you can do for us?” That got us another ten bucks off.

“Mike, let me make you a decent drink. I told Peter when you were here last you’d stumble in, make something awful then stumble out.”

“How about a rain check, Jeff. I need a day to dry out.”

Helen, Mack and I returned six items, mostly books on tape, to the downtown library. It’s brand new, and unlike so many buildings you see in our area,it blended in so well you could hardly tell it was new. Before we settled up, I picked up a movie ( to continue Peter’s spirit) and another book on tape. The first movie I grabbed, with Anthony Hopkins, Helen had seen. What were the chances? The second, a movie I thought I might watch with her, the tragic opera, Dido and Aeneas. However, those six items were only half of what was due, including a book by Nora Roberts that has been missing for a month. They won’t give up Dido until we give them Nora.

Before my father cut the neighbor’s grass, I changed the oil in my truck. I dropped the heavy metal skid plate that prevents access to the oil filter onto the pavement near the front of the truck. When it came time to replace it, it was too hot to touch. Ah, I thought, I’m back in Evansville.

Tomorrow: My visit to Concord Park West.

Captain, Captive

Captain, captive
Of your fate
Fast asleep
On the bed you made
Dream away
Wake up late.

Samuel Menashe

I don’t have a photo editing program so for once I have to post exactly what I’ve snapped, and without an editor, I have to post what I write, and without anything dramatic happening …well, you know where I’m going.

My bed

Out back

The review of The Letters of Robert Lowell is compelling read. I was drawn in by the length of this sentence in the opening paragraph.
“The publication two years ago of Frank Bidart and David Gewanter’s massive edition of the Collected Poems did much to restore his work to public and critical view, but even now Lowell’s poems are, I would guess, less widely read, taught, and anthologized than those of his two friends and contemporaries Elizabeth Bishop and John Berrymanóa judgment, if that is what it is, that would have astonished serious readers of poetry between the 1950s and the 1970s.”

I finished my vidalia onion, ham and cheese sandwich and as I stood up to get my mother more Coke, I said,

“The good news is I don’t have to be here and the bad news is that I am here. Now what do I do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Friday, you called me because you couldn’t turn on the computer. Then you couldn’t turn it off or force quit an application. All the while Mack is screaming at you because you can’t print his portfolio. I’d repeated command, option, escape so many times, to force quit AOL, I turned to Diane and whispered, command, option, suicide. Then Mack asks me how to open a CD jewel case so you can watch Duck Soup on the computer, except that it’s not a jewel case because it’s a tape, not a CD. I thought I’d get here and find two people in need of spoon feeding. Instead I find both of you looking better than you have in months.”

I raced myself to Evansville. On my last visit, I’d made it to Cincinnati in thirteen hours and forty-five minutes – a personal best, exceeding my previous record by two hours. This time I approached the valley with modest skyscrapers in thirteen hours and thirty minutes, and that included two half hour naps. (Btw, Adam, at no time did I drive as fast as I do on 128.) By 7:30 PM I was sitting at Sully’s in Louisville, eating chicken fingers and listening to a single performer hitting all the high notes.

I’d brought the perfect assortment of CD’s which included new radio shows downloaded from rusc.com, Devils and Dust and a Hank Williams collection sent to me by shinydome. I played Hank when I got to southern Ohio, where even the locals were complaining about the heat.

Unfortunately, I was in too much of self-imposed hurry and I missed three photo ops. The first, a toll taker in New York, who was all of seventeen and looked as pretty as any of Matt’s friends. Think about that for a moment. In between tolls she studied from a Spanish book on her lap. As I drove away I had to have an imaginary conversation with her about how my own son went to Nicaragua last year, and this year he’s going to Spain, and that she, too, should leave the country.

The second missed op – a couple who walked up to me outside of Sully’s. He, young, dark, with a vacant stare.. She, much older, weather beaten, with long stringy blonde hair.

“Is there a pub around here?” she asked.

Behind me were four in a row, but I automatically began answering the question with, “I don’t live here,” except that before I could say it, she repeated, “Are there any pubs around here?”

I turned, pointed and said, “Sully’s is good.”

She looked hard at me and said, “That’s all we wuz asking.”

That response wiped the smile right off my face, but before I could follow up in kind, her friend held up plastic credit card looking thing.

“See, we have a card.”

Then they walked away.

The third missed op is what I saw the last time I drove through Ohio. In New England, our road kill consists of squirrels and other small mammals. In Ohio, deer litter the roads. I counted seven, and those are the ones that lay freshly dead, on their side, cloven hooves pointing towards traffic.

Sully’s in Louisville.

Bigger Picture

It’s 4 AM, I must be on my way to Evansville.

Happy 45th Birthday, Adam.

Saturday, we dropped in for lunch.

After the roast beef.

Photo Gallery

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The Phantom of the Opera, which we saw with Matt and Debbie, was a Christmas present to me from Diane. Desire Under The Elms was my gift to her. I highly recommend this kind of delayed gratification gift giving. You have all the hub bub of Christmas but then you get to “open” your present months later. I believe Susan pioneered this years ago (1997?) when she gave Diane and me Riverdance. Her under the tree treat that we didn’t “open” until maybe September.

We loved last night’s Desire Under The Elms.

The first row of seats at the American Repertory Theatre are almost part of the set. Stretch your legs and you can put your feet on the gravel which represents the hard scrabble farm fought over in the play. Our seats were third row, dead center.

The play ran an hour and fifty minutes with no intermission, and , as an Anthony Quinn/Zorba the Greek-looking man standing in the lobby said afterwards, “That O’Neill, he grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go for a second.”

I clapped hard at end but I was relieved to walk out into the fresh night’s air, away from the gritty set and away from the domineering father, his tortured wife and sons.

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I have two hundred of these to sort through…give me time and you won’t be disappointed.