This insubstantial pageant

 

On a very lovely Indian summer morning my aunt was sitting in her rocking chair by the window knitting  when a bird flew into the house.  Someone had opened the screen door to sweep out the dust, being too lazy to fetch a dustpan, and then forgot to close it.  We shooed it out after a merry chase, vowing vengeance on whoever had left the door open (it's possible it was me...).

"You know," my aunt said when the bird had flown, "the old folks considered a wild bird flying into the house a very bad sign.  It meant someone was going to die soon."

That afternoon, my aunt collapsed.  We rushed her to the hospital where, despite a series of tests, doctors could not determine what was wrong with her, other than a fever of 104.8.  Four days later she died.  Gone. Just like that. The event was so unexpected, so sudden, so final, that we stood around stunned, unable to say anything.  Her knitting basket still rests on the table by her rocker where she set it down. No one can bring herself to put it away.  It seems as if she has just gone out for a minute and will soon be back.

I miss you, Aunt Donna!  I do miss you so.

The Good Times Express

 Enlightenment comes in two ways, that which we are told and that which we discover. The second way is the best.

 I would so love to board the Good Times Express and get off in 1937.  Oh, so much.

I only know that I'm here and I want to stay here.  This is what I want.  You won't take it from me!  It's the most wonderful time in the world.

"The Good Times Express," first broadcast by CBS Radio Mystery Theater on June 30, 1978.  The story wanders one way and then another before ending up in a very unexpected place.  Where the Express goes depends on what we really want.

On Veteran's Day

 This may be my favorite scene from They Were Expendable, the John Ford movie about the hopeless defense of Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines during the Pacific War.  It's not often that an American movie explores the nobility of defeat, the dignity of a fighting retreat when there is no place to retreat to, but this film does so, and achieves its own dignity in doing so.

 

Exhausted American soldiers await another attack from Chinese forces, Korea, 1950.  Note the grenades at the ready.

A Marine combat outpost in Afghanistan in 2010.  An attack, including suicide bombers, may come at any time.

 

In the gloaming

 A cold, rainy day, a knife-sharp wind from the north keeping the temperature in the thirties all day, and then toward sunset as the temperature dropped came sleet mixed with flakes of snow which quickly covered the ground.  Now as I look out the back door the porch light shows whirling snow and the porch covered with about an inch and mini drifts around the glider, broom and my galoshes.  In the snow are the tracks of our outdoor cat -- he's not really ours, he just showed up one day -- and the tracks of a possum, probably Matilda, as I call her, who lives under the garden shed.  Funny, I've named that possum but not the cat.  Well, when the cat wants me to know his name, he'll let me know.

I went out in the morning for a couple  of hours to take care of some chores.  I was cold at first, but as I worked I warmed up, as I knew I would, and it was actually rather pleasant, especially among the trees and out of the wind.  There were deer lying under the cedars and junipers, snug and safe from the weather.  They watched me but did not move.  I pretended I didn't see them; if they knew I'd seen them they would have left.

In the afternoon, I went out again, thinking to take a walk, but the wind had picked up considerably and was colder.  There were puddles edged with ice all along the path and the tree branches hung low, heavy with the wet. Some of the water drops on the needles had frozen. Still, I stuck it out for about an hour, keeping close to the trees and avoiding open field and meadow.

  When I got back home, I made a cup of strong coffee, adding some Irish Cream, and started a fire in the fireplace.  I sat by the window sipping the coffee, looking out at the weather, listening to the hissing rumble of the fire and the silence of the house.  Everyone was away for the weekend or out somewhere, so there was just me.  Without realizing it, I dozed off and when I awoke it was dark outside.  The fire had burned down so I added more logs, going out on the porch to fetch them from the wood box, not bothering to put on a coat.  I could see my breath and the footing was slippery with the wet snow.  But the logs were well-seasoned, light and dry.  They would burn brightly, without snapping and crackling.

After a while, thinking about things that I really should not have, I grew gloomy, so I thought I'd listen to some music. I could have picked some of my favorite classical; in fact, I almost selected Borodin's String Quartet No.2, a perennial favorite, especially the third movement.  Who cannot get lost in such beauty? But I felt too...too...ya know? Sometimes you can't handle something so exquisite. Then I thought about going over to the piano and playing something, maybe a bit of Ray  Noble -- no, no, he's good at what he did, and easy to play.  So I sat down at the keyboard and began to finger By the Fireside, softly singing, "In the gloaming by the fireside with you, I'll be content...,"  but I was not in the mood and my hands were cold.  When I crossed my arms and held them in my armpits they felt like ice.  So finally I began listening to some old love songs.  I'm a sucker for that stuff.  Always have been.  So I made an Irish coffee, settled into my chair by the fire and, looking out at the falling snow, drifted into a melancholy reverie, kind of wistfully happy but also kind of pensively sad.   It can be that way sometimes.

 

Wariness

 One rainy day my mother was rummaging around in some old boxes of junk that had been stored away for decades and found this souvenir of her trip across what was then the Soviet Union in September, 1973.  Apparently, it is a vodka pocket flask.  It's never been used as my mother doesn't drink, and looks brand new.  When she found it, she looked around for other items she knew she had brought back -- a package of Soviet cigarettes with a picture of that dog they sent into space; I guess that was the brand, what she called a Dr. Zhivago hat, a small bust of Lenin, etc.  But those she could not find.  Maybe they are in another box.

Here are some photos she took on the trip.  The shot from inside a bus is at some city in the Soviet Far East but she can't remember which one.  The steam locomotive photo was snapped from the Trans-Siberian Express somewhere along the way, and the car photo was taken in Moscow. She says the car reminded her of a 1956 Lincoln her mother (my grandmother) had.

When she was showing me the flask and reminiscing about the trip, she recalled that she had gotten to chatting with one of the band members on the ship she took from Yokohama to Vladivostok -- yes, the ship had a small dance band that played generic foxtrot tunes -- and as Chile was then in political turmoil -- the Chilean president, Salvador Allende, was overthrown on Sept. 11 -- she asked him what he thought of the situation.  To her, she was just making conversation about an event in the news.  But the musician looked uneasy and merely said in response, "I am a musician."  Not quite understanding why he would respond that way, she persisted, giving her opinion, and asking what his was.  But he merely repeated, "I am a musician."  And he excused himself and left.  And then she got it.  She was aboard a Soviet ship headed for the Soviet Union, a land without freedom of speech, with a gulag for political prisoners. Merely by asking her question, she may have put this man at risk, perhaps even herself.  As it turned out, nothing happened to her, but she never knew if that were so for the musician.

Thinking about what she said, I considered that what was once true of the Soviet Union is true or becoming true of this country.  There are things I won't say, certainly won't write, out of...caution.  I'm no firebrand and my politics are basically, "Can't we all just get along?" which I know gets a big horse laugh from all sides, but still it's what I wonder and wish for.  But, of course, I have reactions to current events, am not happy about so much of what has been happening and if I were living in my mother's youthful era, when cars had bumper stickers saying "Question authority," I would probably express my thoughts.  But in this day and age, in these times, I will not. I just turn away and direct my life and thoughts to the private and personal, my family, my work, my goals.  If anyone were to ask my opinion about politics or current affairs, I would respond with the equivalent of, "I am a musician."  And say no more.