Book journeys--pages of 2013

"As the pen rises from the page between words, 

so the walker's feet rise and fall between pages, ....."

Some of the best books are those discovered by accident, and the first book of the year for me is one of those, found in the travel section at Barnes & Noble while searching for something else.
Did you know there is ancient kinship between the words "narrative" or "story," and "way" or "path"? I didn't either, but this book by a foot-traveler and fellow at Cambridge took me on many journeys in the past two weeks.

The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane is just that, a record of his walking in England, Scotland, and elsewhere, as he covers hundreds of miles in physical geography and more in mental geography, writing of the relationship of landscape and self. I know the relationship of place to self most strongly in New Mexico.
I don't know how I've missed this author, so the discovery is double sweet. He's written  Mountains of the Mind, about  climbing, and The Wild Places also. I will find and read those.
It's my kind of journalism, going back to the original meanings of that word, though his work is often poetic and deeply spiritual in the oldest of ways.
He's fortunate to live in England where he can take off and walk the footpaths, which is almost impossible in automobile-ridden Oklahoma and America. Maybe that's why I like Hafer park so much, or Martin Park. Having tread the old paths at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico though, I deeply connect with the self discovery you find when walking. Who does not stop if briefly when crossing a path and wonder where it leads?

"The eye is enticed by a path, and the mind's eye too."

My copy of the book is now marked and underlined, key words, strong phrases, fresh imagery, powerful verbs,  or new words circled  for more discovery, and new history and geography and people and language met around the bend of every path on every page. I only wish the book came with maps, because I had to go to Google to find the places I'd never heard of, but maybe that was his intention, since going on paths is self discovery. Thus I think I was meant to find this book, to attack my winter cabin fever, and to set me back on the paths of reading, and reawakening this blog, after semi-hibernation this winter.

Poetry of time

A tattoo of time on the arm of one of my favorite students, Lauren Vargas, taken at coffee this holiday season. This is living poetry.

The touch of a pen on paper sends messages both ways.

When you paint a copy of art, 

you begin to understand what the artist went through in creation.

Is this true in writing? In music?

Age means your feet hurt after walking on brick streets for hours.

How do you cheat age?

• Make love to a beautiful woman
• Exercise and eat well
• Spend money on grandchildren
• Play ring a-round-the-Rosie with grandchildren
• Read
• Travel someplace new
• Watch the backyard birds

When bad things happen--the antidotes:

Do something good to reassure yourself of humanity.

Remember your loves.

Watch children have fun.

I find much poetry depressing.

It stretches the mind.

I keep wondering how did the poets write it.

I'd like to be inside their heads. 

But then the words come from inside their souls.

My bare footprints vanish 

when the next wave washes up on the beach

Be sure to feel the sand 

between your toes

 and enjoy your footprint.

A woman's delicate

 barefoot print

 in wet sand

 breathes of mystery and sex

Maybe writing poetry is a child of being

 alone

…and in love

I must write to be who I am.

Four hawks at year's end

"Hawks do not share," wrote Hemingway in A Moveable Feast of Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of Scott Fitzgerald.
I thought about those words this week when three hawks in three days crossed my paths, but then I came home to study another one, carved of wood just inside my doorway.
The first three hawks were wild red tails, and their appearances within a mile of the house could not have been coincidence, now that I think about it. I was walking in the almost vacant woods of Hafer Park in the afternoon, when the first one spooked me as I rounded a bend.  It launched from an oak tree behind a cedar tree, and I saw the broad tail as its long wings lifted it up. I must have interrupted dinner, as it disappeared into other distant trees, away from my sight.
As I was driving home from work the second day amid light traffic, another hawk swooped from the trees in Hafer Park, landed in the middle of four-lane Bryant Ave. 50 yards ahead of me. Its talons grasped a recently road-killed squirrel, and in seconds its powerful grey wings grabbed the air, lifting it to safety and dinner.
Yesterday I was rounding another bend in the park, and I saw the tips of grey wings lifting up out of the creek bottom, 100 feet ahead. I was downwind and watched the raptor perch on a bridge railing. I just stopped and watched as it turned its almost red breast into the warming sun and sat. Moving gingerly between the trees, I got to within about 25 feet. Without camera, I just watched, silently,  before moving on. I figured it had snared a mouse down by the water and had finished dinner. I didn't want to interrupt.
No, I thought, they don't share food or company, though they've adapted to urban growth better perhaps than humans. They're quiet predators who literally earn their living every day. I'm glad they're present so close to home, in the trees of a suburban park.
When I walked in the door, I saw the  sculpture of the red tail from Indian artist Earl Eder I bought a few years ago in Santa Fe. It's remarkable for they way the bird matches the grain of the wood. But this bird shares with me, and now I know the others do too--a spirit of being free and aware of the little things in life.
I thought about those hawks, walking in the park again today, of how their spirits, their sharing awakened this almost dormant blog and the end of another year.

Hafer Park--The path to the spirit of hawks

Thanksgiving glue

I sat in the Santa Fe apartment one Thanksgiving a decade ago, watching out the window as the gray skies turned white with snow obscuring the Sangre de Cristos.
It had been a dark year and I'd retreated to my Uncle Mike's home, where it was warm and friendly, if lonely. I yearned most for phone calls from my far away children, and the conversations, while brief, added to my Thanksgiving for a sanctuary, for hope, for acceptance.
Isn't it strange the images and memories that come to us on Thanksgiving? While I remember few as a child growing up, I have an aquifer of them from the time I began my own family...and most are joyful, though tinged with sorrows and regrets as the years pass.
Each of you have similar memories...I can recite a few, because they run together the more there are. One, in the rolling corn-stubble fields of eastern Iowa, my wife and first born son dined on a pheasant I'd shot that day. It was stringy meat. The decorations in the big two-story farm house and love were wonderful.
Another, the entire family, including in-laws and more, packed up and rented a cabin, kitchen and all,  at Red River New Mexico, splitting the costs, dining while snow fell outside.
For several years my brother, wife, and his children trekked from West Texas to visit and play games and dine. The cousins played and laughed.
When those visits ceased, Thanksgiving lost some of its splendor for me. It would become a day of sadness and thoughts of time passing.
Later, our southern Oklahoma home became the center for gathering around a round oak table, and photos were always taken, a big smiling crowd of all ages. But we didn't take enough, because as some died, we wished we'd taken group photos every year.
I don't know the memories my children have of the gatherings, but I'm sure they are richer than mine, and I cherish what they have. Now their families are making their own memories, of which I'm a small part, as scattered as they are. I also cherish the brief moments I have with them on these holidays, remembering the earlier ones.
Now as I gather in other in-laws' homes, and the family prayer is said, naming people I don't know, I garner new memories of graciousness and joy. And one year, the prayer included petition for my first-born son who was then serving in Iraq.
But I miss my trips to Santa Fe, visiting with my uncle. Now the falling snow will be on his grave in the National Cemetery across from the window where I watched not so long ago.
Thanksgiving and its memories are a glue that holds me together. I am thankful for much, and especially the memories.

Secession Senility, or if Texas secedes

I'm a Southerner and a Texan and believe in secession. The Constitution doesn't prohibit it. Texas may have a right to secede.
But.
Grant's armies were the answer to secession in the 1800s.
Today, these narrow-minded knee-jerk sore election losers in several states petitioning for secession should be granted their wish...one that they'd immediately regret. Oklahoma and others would benefit.
Suppose Texas--or any other state--were to secede and we let them go?
Take Texas, for instance. The effects there would dwarf the damage to those petty states that don't have its resources.
All US military bases in Texas would be moved to Oklahoma and elsewhere...San Antonio would be one-fourth its size. El Paso would be a suburb of Juarez. The list goes on.
It would also save Social Security and Medicare, because Texans would no longer be citizens of the US, and they'd forfeit their benefits which the rest of us would inherit. It would  streamline the US government by requiring fewer politicians in the House and Senate and the serving bureaucrats.

"There's no telling what would be in that tamale."

 Texas, now without a state income tax, would have to institute an income tax to finance a military and road repairs, schools and subsidies to its farmers, if nothing else.
Texas would no longer be protected by the US military, which means Mexico would invade, beginning at the Juarez suburb of El Paso, and control at least half of the country before the remainder could raise an Army. Texas would be flooded with more drugs than now, because the US Coast Guard would not be in the Gulf.
The airports (DFW, Houston, etc)would have to shut down until Texas developed its own FAA and trained air traffic controllers. Thousands of teachers and hundreds of schools and universities would have to be cut because of the loss of federal aid. The population would shrink because thousands of federal workers would flee the state to keep their jobs.
Sure, Texas has enough oil to finance a government, but before it got the structure in place, roads would crumble, no aircraft could land. Prescription drugs would not be protected until Texas initiated its own FDA. Without the agriculture department, meat and vegetables and other food would not be regulated, so there's no telling what would be in that tamale. And all those bank deposits wouldn't be insured by the FDIC.
And if Texans did figure all this out, what would happen when part of the state decided to secede itself...the right of partition being a part of the current Texas Constitution?
Texans couldn't travel to what remained of the USA until its government issued passports, and the US recognized it as a separate country. If the US didn't recognize it, we'd build a border fence around it, and blow all the bridges across the Red River, setting up security checkpoints, guarded by the US Army.
Without recognition, all college and pro teams would spend the entire seasons playing each other. How many games could Houston and Dallas play each other each year and still keep an audience? Talk about income loss. OU would never lose to Texas again, or the Thunder to the Mavs.
Say, this is starting to sound pretty good.