Month: November 2003

Slip Slidin’ Away

While eating breakfast and discussing poetry this morning, Mike suggested that with my philosophy I would probably fit in perfectly in Norway. Do you think that would explain why my favorite Paul Simon song, at least of his solo songs, is “Slip Slidin’ Away.”

Personally, I’d always attributed my love for the song to its bluesy sound (Do Norwegians love the Blues?) and it’s right-on analysis of life’s problems. Or to the fact that this is the song that I used to sing to myself in the morning as I packed my lunch and got ready for a long day teaching school while the rest of the family slept upstairs.

Personally, I find it difficult to find a stanza that doesn’t somehow describe a part of my life:

SLIP SLIDIN’ AWAY

Slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away

I know a man
He came from my home town
He wore his passion for his woman
Like a thorny crown
He said delores
I live in fear
My love for you’s so overpowering
I’m afraid that I will disappear

Slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away

I know a woman
Became a wife
These are the very words she uses
To describe her life
She said a good day
Ain’t got no rain
She said a bad day’s when I lie in bed
And think of things that might have been

Slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away

And I know a father
Who had a son
He longed to tell him all the reasons
For the things he’d done
He came a long way
Just to explain
He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping
Then he turned around and headed home again

Slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away

God only knows
God makes his plan
The information’s unavailable
To the mortal man
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we’re gliding down the highway
When in fact we’re slip slidin’ away

Slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away

Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away
Mmm…

Now I’m not sure what Paul Simon meant by “destination,” though I have my suspicions, but I sure as hell know what he means by “slip slidin’ away.” I’ve worn my passion for a woman “like a thorny crown” more than once in my life, forgetting my true self in an attempt to be what she wanted me to be. Turns out it don’t get you nowhere but lost. Though I ain’t never been a wife, I’ve laid in bed and thought of things that might have been more than once.

As a divorced father, I’ve certainly longed to tell my son (and daughter) all the reasons for the things I’ve done, only to end up turning around and making that long trip home, leaving them with nothing more of me than a kiss.

If God has a plan, he’s never made me privilege to it. Every time I’ve felt like I’m glidiing down the highway of life, I’ve found myself slppin’ and slidin,’ until I find myself standing beside the road wondering what the hell had just happened.

If it sometimes seems like I’m paying too much attention to the dark side of the road, it’s probably “cause I’ve ended up in the ditch once too often and don’t want to end up there again until I’ve reached my final destination.

Excuses, Excuses, and More Excuses

It’s been a hectic, if rather non-productive, week here at In a Dark Time. Luckily, there were more good reasons for being busy than negative ones, though it didn’t always feel that way.

We had some glorious weather here in the Pacific Northwest with crisp, yet sunny days. I’ve lived in the rainy northwest far too long to let such days go by without getting out and taking advantage of them. I took some of the longest walks I’ve taken since moving here to Tacoma.

I also got more chances than usual to spend time with kids and grandkids. Dawn had me over for dinner Monday to celebrate Veterans Day, and she came over with Gavin last night and we spent the night making hum bow, a delicious, if time-consuming, treat. Dawn’s pregnant and has been craving them since before Halloween, so it was great to send her home with an extra dozen after dinner.

Not all went quite so well this week, however. I found out why I’ve spent much time telling kids they couldn’t have drinks around my computer keyboard. Turns out that coffee is also a drink. I discovered it’s harmful effects the next day when the computer started doing strange things. At first, I blamed it on the new OS X update, but then I remembered that I had spilled coffee on the keyboard the night before. When the keyboard wouldn’t run at all, no matter what system I was running, I began to suspect it wasn’t the newly updated system. I finally knew it had to be the keyboard when it started typing the number repeatedly until I shut down the whole system.

My first thought was to simply replace the keyboard. After checking prices, I decided that perhaps I would try to fix my old keyboard first. Needless to say, repairs did not go smoothly. After finding and sorting through three different sets of metric and American allen wrench sets, I still was unable to find one small enough to turn the screws on the Apple keyboard. After a trip to Radio Shack, I’m the proud owner of 17 new allen wrenches that I’ll never need again. Still, by the end of long day my keyboard seemed to be working better than ever, and I had also scooped out several month’s accumulation of long, silver hair (either mine or Skye’s) from under the keys.

Finally, I’ve been fighting a flare up with my back. Surprisingly, it turns out that bending over an inverted keyboard half of the day doesn’t really help your back much. As a result, I’ve returned to my back exercises, roughly the equivalent of shutting the barn door. It’s helped, but it, too, has eaten into my time.

I’m sure the long walks would help my back more if Skye didn’t feel like he had to defend me from every dog that appears within two hundred yards. Unfortunately, the sun brought out more walkers than usual and I’ve had to drag him away from more dogs than usual. If the damn mutt wasn’t so loyal and so enthusiastic when I headed out the door I’d leave him home.

Finally, I had some problems writing this week’s environmental article for Open Source Politics which should be posted on Sunday as usual. Of course, I knew when I took on the obligation that it would cut into my writing here, but sometimes your conscience drives you to do things you know you’ll regret. The article was due today and I finally finished my article late in the morning and then, and only then, took off for the day’s walk.

Depending on what’s on TV tonight, and what we’re doing for dinner, I’m hoping to write one or two more entries on Kunitz this weekend.

Kunitz’s “from The Testing-Tree 1971”

“Robin Redbreast” isn’t my favorite poem in “from The Testing-Tree 1971,” nor the most important for understanding Kunitz, but it’s Veterans Day, and, as usual, I have little to say about that holiday nor about the war I fought in. Some memories are so vivid that I still can’t put them into words, while names are so faded that even the semantic web couldn’t revive them.

For today at least, “Robin Redbreast” is my favorite poem in this section because it comes close to reflecting my own feelings about that time, while still reflecting feelings I have most of the time:

ROBIN REDBREAST

It was the dingiest bird
you ever saw, all the color
washed from him, as if
he had been standing in the rain,
friendless and stiff and cold,
since Eden went wrong.
In the house marked FOR SALE,
where nobody made a sound,
in the room where I lived
with an empty page, I had heard
the squawking of the jays
under the wild persimmons
tormenting him.
So I scooped him up
after they knocked him down,
in league with that ounce of heart
pounding in my palm,
that dumb beak gaping.
Poor thing! Poor foolish life!
without sense enough to stop
running in desperate circles,
needing my lucky help
to toss him back into his element.
But when I held him high,
fear clutched my hand,
for through the hole in his head,
cut whistle-clean . .
through the old dried wound
where the hunter’s brand
had tunneled out his wits
I caught the cold flash of the blue
Unappeasable sky.

If nothing else, that dingy bird, with all the color washed out of him, reminds me of the old Polaroids I have from Vietnam, pictures of comrades I no longer remember trying to survive in an “Eden went wrong.”

No matter what we did, no matter how hard we fought, we could never recapture the innocence we lost there, nor could we bring back to life comrades we lost there.

Sometimes I think if you catch me in just the right light you can still see that old dried wound where that war has tunneled out my wits.

Perhaps not, but even today when I look back I see, and feel somewhere in my heart, “the cold flash of the blue/ unappeasable sky.”