soulmailing

Come back, Dad. I’m not ready to let you go.
I know you were ready to go for some time. About six months, probably, ever since Mom went. I’d say life lost its thrill for you the moment she slipped away in her sleep early that Sunday morning. You had been with her for more than 70 years. You had done everything else you set out to do, and done it well. What was the point?
But we three needed you – Maureen, Mike and I. We needed you more than ever, without Mom there to guide us and nag us and laugh like a delighted child.
And so you stayed, for us. The ball game was over as far as you were concerned, but we needed you to keep playing.
I needed you to keep talking to me about good books and your life’s adventures and baseball. It had been a long time since we could play catch like we used to in the side yard, when you taught me the curve ball and how to keep the ball low. Since you coached me and watched me strike guys out with that big bender.
But we could still talk baseball, remember the delectable smell of Lakeland in spring and the pop of the gloves as the Tigers warmed up. We sat there, you and I, on a Friday evening as the game was about to begin, and life was as perfect as it could possibly be.
Although it’s hard to get as perfect as it was back in Grand Rapids, when you tossed the Frisbee back and forth with Maureen in the driveway. When you knocked the Ping Pong ball back and forth with Mike in the basement. When you wrestled all three of us at once on the living room floor, grappling Mike and Maureen with a hand each and pinning me to the floor with just your leg.
Perfect too was the way you held me on a Friday night, watching our favorite shows. I cleverly covered up your watch with my hand so you wouldn’t notice it was bedtime. It worked. I got to watch “Wagon Train” with you that night, and somehow Mom missed the rules violation.
Perfect in their way were those later Friday nights, me in my early teens, you fully in mid-stride. Driving up 127 through the tunnel of snow, stopping at Open Hamburgers in Clare for the most delicious meals I’ve ever eaten, burger and fries and a Coke in the little diner damp with snow melting off everyone’s jeans.
Then deep into the forest, trudging through the deep snow into the woodland retreat, opening the door and feeling the coldest cold ever. Turning on the lights. Climbing into the well pit to turn on the water. Stoking the wood stove and standing there as you unpacked, my back to the flames, my front still shivering.
You were not a perfect man, Dad, no one is; but in love and fatherhood, you aced it.
You encouraged us, always. You picked up the phone and always welcomed our voices with such good cheer. “Well Charles H!” “Well Tilda!” “Well Mickel!” You made us feel special, precious, loved through and through.
And all through the years, from the summer you went out West to fight fires, to flying through shrapnel over the South Pacific, to starting your family in a Memphis chicken coop, to building your career and sweating out meetings and nearly losing it until you found your place in the sun at MSU – you loved Mom.
You danced with her on New Year’s Eve in Grandma and Grampa’s basement. You took long trips with her, to California, Alaska, Quebec. You sat and listened to her expound with a glass of wine, withstanding her mountainous opinions and patiently letting her have the floor, always. After all, she was your dark-haired beauty, the catch of McKenzie High. Always.
So you’d almost drowned in the war, taken savage hits in hockey and football, felt your nerves fry through interminable planning commission hearings. But when Mom went, it was just too much.
Yeah, you took it with grace. You showed us kids how to grieve with dignity. But man, did you grieve, day after day. The love of your life, the candle in your window, she was gone. She came to you in a vision of fluttering colorful curtains, and you felt her plant a soft kiss on your cheek.
From then on, it was just a matter of time for you.
And your body took you to her. The day your legs went out from under you, you were on your way. We thought you’d pull through, as you always had before. And for awhile you did, with the care of wonderful doctors and nurses and therapists and dear friends.
We had one last summer and autumn with you, talking over so many things. You read good books and took solitary walks with your walker. You basked in the sun at Clark on Keller Lake, looked out at the ducks and Canada geese under a canopy of brilliant leaves. I still see your beautiful, noble face, eyes closed, drinking in the life-giving sun like a wise Indian.
We watched the Tigers one more time, your beloved boys since Greenberg, Gehringer and Schoolboy Rowe. They didn’t make the Series, but they beat the damn Yankees.
We had one more Thanksgiving, one more Christmas, one more New Year’s, together. Mom’s chair sat empty. Still, she was with us though uncharacteristically quiet. You filled the void with stories. Man, we didn’t know you could talk so much. Mom never gave you the chance.
You kept saying, “I’ll make it to 90, and then we’ll see.” And that’s just what you did.
Finally, your body said, enough. You’ve lived a glorious, full life, Keith Honey, but the light of your life has gone out. You miss her so. It’s time.
You kept fighting to stay in the game, for us, but suddenly it just got to be too hard to live. First it was this, then it was that, and finally there were too many for you. Even such a strong, incredibly youthful man can only do so much.
And so, having pitched a near-perfect game, you finally came out. The manager walked slowly to the mound, while the hushed crowd watched. You handed him the ball and walked off the diamond. Everyone cried and cheered. You tipped your cap, a gentleman to the end, took one last look at the sky, then disappeared into the dugout.
You walked straight out of the ballpark into the field beyond, where Mom awaited you with open arms.

The problem with Christmas is doing it. That is, doing all the things you think you need to do in order to make Christmas happen. Frequently, doing these things creates trouble.
Take yesterday, Dec. 23, for example. The trouble began with my trying to upload music to iTunes in order to burn a special CD for Karen, sister to my very significant other, Andrea (said VSO was also in line for her own specially burned disc). Never had a problem with this before, but yesterday my laptop’s CD drive started to whir, click and shudder like a triple-caffeinated squirrel on a treadwheel.
Not only would the thing not upload, it wouldn’t stop whirring even when I shut the laptop down. The screen went nuclear-attack black. Couldn’t eject it. Had the feeling an alien life form had entered my home ingeniously disguised as a Best Buy writable CD.
I abandoned that gift project and decided to buy food for the night’s festivities, which were to include Andrea and I exchanging gifts, toasts and longing gazes.
Then the alien took it up a notch. On my way from the grocery to the wine store my battery light came on. “Indicates battery is not charging properly. Get engine serviced.” Suddenly the NPR narrator cut out like someone was strangling him, then the lights went off. I kept the engine running, thinking I could run in for that special Bowers Harbor wine for Andrea and make it home before the thing conked out.
Not so. It conked out as soon as I tried to leave the parking lot. Got one guy to jump me; it conked again; another young guy jumped me and we let the engine run while we talked about MSU because he had a Spartans sweatshirt on. Kind of a nice Christmas moment there.
Made it to about two blocks from the house and it conked again. Rolling down the road on momentum, nothing working whatsoever. Rolled up in front of the curb and looked around. What the hell do I do now? Too late for a tow because no sane mechanic is open after 5 p.m. on Dec. 23. Asked another guy across the street for another jump.
Another nice conversation, this one about the local elementary school where his kids go and mine went. We discussed the problems of local public schooling while his car poured more juice into mine. Probably the alternator, he said, you’re just running off the battery and that’s why the car keeps breaking down. Good to know. He followed me to my house to make sure I made it this time. Told me the name of a friend mechanic who won’t rip you off. Give him my name, he said. I wrote it down.
The nature of the evening was changing radically. I called Andrea who said she could come get me later, even though the window on our romantic pre-Christmas was closing rapidly. I decided to wrap presents, make myself a cranberry cocktail and put on Sarah McLachlan’s Christmas album. However, for the first time ever, the amplifier did not turn on. It too, kid you not, had conked.
This was the point where I went from the idea of aliens to the idea of God. Really. God was thwarting me at every turn here. You will not be doing technology tonight, Charley, is what he was telling me. Nor will you be going to Andrea’s. Time is running out, you see. I want you to stay put and be quiet and know that I am God. Even though Sarah McLachlan might sound like it at times, she is not God. I am.
So I finished wrapping, Andrea and I rescheduled pre-Christmas romance for sometime during actual Christmas, and I sat in my chair. You know, the one that props up like a lazy boy where I read every morning and every night and sometimes fall asleep in the middle of the night, and which is decorated much like the favorite chair of Frasier’s father, Martin. I just sat there for a minute, and up jumped Melita, my second kitten who routinely drives me insane but sometimes cuddles up to me like she’s Andrea or something.
So we sat there, Melita and I, her purring, me thinking. I several times thought of getting up to do something, or at least start reading, but I did not. I simply sat and thought, about all the Christmas doing I was not doing, and all the lovely silence that was simply there for me to sit inside.
At length I did rise, got a little something to eat and tried the CD uploading one more time. This time it worked. Finished my special CD for Karen and made another one for Andrea. I decided not to try the stereo, however; why push your luck?
Slept well in anticipation of a full Christmas Eve day, somehow rested in the knowledge that I totally did not get to do what I set out to do. As if God said, “Well done busy boy. With you I am well pleased.”
This morning, the TV’s on the fritz.

When I was a boy, maybe 8 or 9 or 10 or so, I came home from school one day and headed right to the typewriter. Hopped up on the chair and curled my feet under me so I could be high enough to see the paper. Started right in typing a story.
Apparently I was so excited about writing this story that I didn’t even bother to stop by the fridge and pick up an apple. Maybe I was working on that novel about my crush on Mary Lueck.
I have my Aunt Lucille to thank for this image. She told me about it yesterday as we were chatting on the phone. I don’t remember it at all, but Aunt Lucille assured me it really happened. I’m glad to know that. It tells me how far back my passion for writing goes. Although I remember writing many hours on that old Underwood, Aunt Lucille captured my eagerness for the game to which I later devoted my career.
I suppose that’s why I’m writing at this very moment. Many people would rather be fishing, crunching numbers at the stock exchange or working on their science text like the Grand Valley students nearby in this campus coffeeshop. Most of my GVSU Life Journey students can’t stand writing. I love it. Why? Who’s to say? It gives me pleasure. I find it interesting. It makes me feel useful. Add whatever you like here.
It also prompts me to notice things. Or maybe I write because I notice things. For instance, the guy I just ran into who is sort of an acquaintance. I said hello and he said hi back, looking at my pocket. I asked him if he was teaching here. No, I work here all the time, 9 to 5 every day, he said, looking at my pocket. Are you teaching communications? he asked, looking at my pocket. No, Life Journey, I said, looking at his eyes. He drifted off with his Starbucks without a word.
Now why did he not look at me directly? I wonder. Is it because he is shy, or because he is fascinated with the white Papermate pen in my pocket, or does have a bit of an issue with me? The last one occurred to me first, of course, me being overly insecure about what others think of me, what I may have done or wrong, etc. It’s a drag to be this way, by the way. Friends of mine go through life never seeming to worry about any of that. I envy them, which is another way of thinking less of myself. During trivia games, I lack the self-confidence to pipe up with the first thing that pops into my mind. I fear being wrong and looking really stupid. But about half the time, it’s the right answer.
Anyway, back to the writing. Did I just write about that encounter with the eyes-on-my-pocket guy because I find it interesting, or just to have something to write about? Or did I notice it to a degree that I feel merits writing about because I am by nature a writer? Why is it that I feel most of the things I write about are worth writing about? Why do I write this, right now, with the confidence that anyone in the world will find it worth reading?
This seems to me an arrogance on the part of those who write. We believe what we write is worth someone else’s time to read. It’s the arrogance of the singer-songwriter sitting alone on stage in a noisy bar. Hey, listen to me! I have something to say! Something you should hear! Why aren’t you listening?
When he was a boy, Jeff Beck made a guitar out of a hunk of wood and some wire. He strapped it to his back and rode around on his bicycle like that. It was just something he wanted to do, without even thinking why. Maybe he had to do it. Maybe Hank Greenberg had to go to the sandlot every day all summer long and swing the bat about 100 times. Maybe some people have it in them to do certain things, and they don’t have much of a choice about it.
Maybe I had to hop up on the chair after school and start banging away on the Underwood. Maybe it was in my nature. Maybe God made me that way. Created me to be a writer, so I could create stories for others to read.
If so, I gladly accept God’s will. I’d much rather be writing than working in the stock exchange. Especially these days.

When death got personal, I couldn’t turn away the questions.
Where are you, mom?
Can you hear me?
Can you speak to me?
How are you doing?
I ask the questions often, while going about my daily life. Sometimes I’ll be in the car. Sometimes meditating. Sometimes in the shower. I just want to know. Even knowing that I can’t know.
Can you give me a sign, mom? Something to go on? A whisper of your soul?
Interestingly, I generally do hear from her. “I’m here, Char. I’m fine. Things will be okay. Take care of your dad.”
Do these thoughts just arise from my own thinking? Not really from mom at all? How would I know the difference? Does the difference matter?
Traditional ideas of afterlife would help here. Unfortunately, I don’t hold to those. I do believe in something more, the continuation of the soul, the continuity of life and death. I just would like to know more about what it is.
When my daughter Emily was born, for the first few days it looked like she might not make it. Blessedly she survived and thrived. But what if she had not? Had she passed back into the void rather than continued in this world, where would she have gone? Just nowhere? Three days on earth and that’s it, the end of Emily forever?
This does not compute for me, that a soul would come and go so quickly, leaving no mark whatsoever save for a few fragile memories. It just doesn’t figure that a life so miraculously conceived would so casually cease.
So it is with mom. Nearly 90 years on this earth, and then she is just gone? Nowhere ever again? Surely there is more to her than that, more to this life than that. Mom could hold her own conversation for an hour without breaking a sweat. She’s not going to stop talking just because her body is through.
Yet I don’t delude myself that it’s not possible. Maybe life is just that way, playing out its part for as long as the spotlights are on, then no more.
Out, out, brief candle! as Shakespeare had it. Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.
Powerful image, but no, it doesn’t compute. The flame of mom is not so easily extinguished. She burned too brightly, with such intensity, with such a joyfully dancing flame, to go dark entirely.
Her soul burns still, somewhere. She speaks to me still, somehow. She lives still, in some way that I do not understand. Probably never will.
Until, perhaps, we shine together, out there in the mysterious vastness that surrounds this little stage we call life.

So about the title of this series. When I was a kid I often went to the Collins Memorial Pool in Williamston, named after a local boy who had drowned in the gravel pit. Some fearless people like my brother continued to swim in the pit east of town, but sensible people like me opted for the pool. It was a choice place to perform cannonballs and lie on the hot cement deck, shivering while the sun slowly baked you dry.
If I had been a smarter young boy, I would have feigned drowning like the spectacled nerd, “Squints” Palledorous, in that childhood baseball classic “The Sandlot.” Driven to distraction by the alluring lifeguard Wendy Peffercorn, Squints lets himself drift to the bottom of the pool. Wendy alertly dives in, fishes him out and performs mouth-to-mouth while his friends gather around, aghast. A sly wink gives him away, however, and an outraged Wendy tosses him out yelling “You little pervert!” A sly little smile gives her away, however. They later produce nine children.
I bring this up now only because a) I wish I had been as clever as Squints at creatively channeling my horny boy nature; b) I wish there had been a Wendy Peffercorn at our pool; c) I wish I had learned how to swim better.
Oh I took lessons and all but just enough to keep me afloat in the deep end. I never learned a proper stroke, how to dive nor how to float like a jellfyish; in fact I sank like a rock or Squints. At least I could tread water so I thought I was safe. One day I found out I was not.
Having dived in with my usual awkward posture I found myself underneath someone in an inner tube. I tried to swim away from the tube but still it hovered overhead, keeping me from the surface. It didn’t take long before I panicked with the realization that I was running out of breath. Also the instinctive insight that the non-Wendy Peffercorn-like lifeguard probably couldn’t see me beneath the inner tube. I thrashed this way and that until I somehow escaped its deadly circumference and broke through the surface.
This shook me considerably not only because I did not want to die at age 8, but also because the formerly carefree pool suddenly had become dangerous. All that laughing and splashing concealed the water’s potentially fatal power. It was only a benevolent element if you knew what you were doing in it.
The experience reinforced an earlier incident at Rice’s Resort in northern Michigan. In that case I had not yet had swimming lessons but was standing on a raft in deep water, having been carried there in a dinghy. Another kid, not knowing I was more rock than swimmer, pushed me into the drink where I proceeded to thrash and scream. Fortunately my brother or sister dived in and brought me back to the raft, where I gasped desperately like a fish.
I tried to make up for my deficiency by taking a swimming course in college. There I learned I have no natural bouyancy. “Man, you really sink like a rock,” the instructor told me, helpfully. I got a C.
None of this put me off water, mind you; in fact I love large bodies of it to this day. But I never learned to swim properly so I enter Lake Michigan and lesser lakes with utmost respect. Also I occasionally swim laps at the Y for conditioning purposes but not for pleasure. In fact it is the most boring activity I can imagine. I always practice the backstroke thinking this is how I would survive a sunken ship or fallen airplane. Very unlikely.
Why have I never learned to swim well? Because I can get by without it unless I am in a plane crash. In a similar way I have not learned to do other things well, such as create Web sites or large Twitter followings. Consequently I feel under-qualified to stay afloat in the choppy waters of the Post-Clinton Economy.
This is the economy, you’ll recall, where jobs float away like lifeboats that can’t take on any more people. It’s the classic sink-or-swim situation. If you haven’t learned the requisite skills you can easily picture yourself sinking like the boy Benjamin Braddock after being pitched into the pool in “The Graduate.” Like Squints, Benjamin just allowed himself to sink limply to the bottom.
I have no inention of doing so. I fight gamely to stay afloat. Yet doing so takes twice the energy that would be needed if I knew how to swim well.
Shouldn’t I be doing an easy freestyle by now, getting in my daily laps, climbing out onto the deck and sunning myself while the little children play?
Apparently not yet. I’ve much to learn later in life than I wanted to. Still, learning is an adventure and life is a pleasure. It’s just a matter of finding the right stroke.

This is not an ideal way to work. I’m sitting in a McDonald’s having just bought a latte (small) to justify setting up the laptop here. The reason I am here is the Starbucks just across the way doesn’t have Internet access today. The nice girls there don’t know why, it just hasn’t been connected. I told one of them that I would be there a lot if the wireless worked, because I have real work to do plus I like Starbucks a lot. She got kind of a bruised look on her face and said she’d tell the manager. I felt like a put a dent in her day.
So I come over here to the McDonald’s and set up at a four-person table with stationary swivel seats to try to get some work done. Sitting straight across from me are three guys having lunch. They’re wearing cutoff jeans, baseball caps and t-shirts. The one guy has a ginger goatee, a Detroit Tigers cap and a t-shirt that reads “Dublin your Pleasure” with an “Irish Ale 77” logo. I think it must mean Dublin, Michigan, where the Dublin General Store has the famous profusion of jerky.
Anyway these guys must work for KDL Concrete, LLC because that’s on one of their caps and one of their t-shirts. The one guy with the t-shirt half turned around and glanced at me because of the clacking of my keyboard. I don’t have the idea that he particularly likes me doing this. I wouldn’t either if I were on lunch break from a hot dusty concrete job, wearing high-topped boots and cutoffs while this egghead in cargo shorts bangs away on his goddamn computer. Can’t he do that at home? What does he need to come to McDonald’s for? Doesn’t he know he is being annoying? What is so fucking important about what he’s writing anyway?
This is what you come up against when the world is your office. You look for the places with the good connection, decent coffee and a tolerant attitude. My friend Ruth says you need to buy at least $5 an hour of stuff to justify taking up that space. I say if they don’t want me sitting here they shouldn’t have Wi-Fi. They know the financial plusses and minuses of letting me take up this space. For me a cup of coffee and a refill is sufficient rent. I’ll refer my friends here too.
The other day I was at an Urban Mill downtown and the office-less work force was out in full force. I sat on the deck when up comes a guy and sets up his laptop. Pretty soon along comes another one wearing cargo shorts and a Tom Petty concert shirt. “I’m unemployed,” he says cheerfully. “I can dress like this all the time.” You can sound really professional over the phone even in a Tom Petty t-shirt.
Then along came a third guy, yakking on a headset and toting his laptop as he walked from the parking lot. “He owes it to you after yesterday to get a resolution on this,” he said in his most no-nonsense tone. “OK let’s get it done. We’re just futzin’ around.” Then he took up residence with his two coworkers at their outdoor work station. A clear blue sky was our neon ceiling. Not bad considering none of us is making half of what we did when we worked in non-virtual offices.
Inside, three more guys were plugged into laptops: just another day in post-office America.
Do I feel OK about using other people’s coffee shops for my office? I don’t know if I do or not. Sometimes I feel like the good soldier, hammering out my thoughts on important social and religious matters while the college girl nearby dawdles on Facebook and the young dudes play World of Warcraft. Here I am keeping the fire alive any way I can two years after taking the buyout. We reporters can write anywhere, from press boxes, bunkers or rooftops depending on the need. So to come into a cozy coffeeshop with a soft alt-folk audio mix is really a luxury.
But there’s also this sense of living off others’ indulgence. Here at McDonald’s I am on the Web courtesy of AT&T. Does that make me indebted to them as a kind of freelance lacky? Not to mention the valuable McDonald’s customer space I am taking up for a mere $2.22 cup of mediocre latte. That’s essentially borrowed time courtesy of corporate largesse.
Meanwhile, two tow-headed boys at the next table dig into Chicken McNuggets and suck on chocolate milk, while across from me a 20-something guy works on both his laptop and smart phone. I wonder if he is making any money or just killing time. In post-office America, it’s hard to tell the difference.

The forces that bring men together socially are limited. Usually they involve large bags of chips of some sort, something to dip them into, a great quantity of beer and a big-ass screen on which to watch other men fling balls around or crash into each other at high speed. I find absolutely nothing wrong with this. However, its passivity is not exactly healthy in the long run.
Which brings us to the more physically demanding activities that bring men together: they themselves flinging balls around and getting into loud-mouthed arguments about fouls in full-court basketball; crashing into each other at high speed and cursing a good deal on the ice; or bashing slowly pitched softballs with metal bats and trying to catch screaming line drives without becoming disabled. These are healthier social activities but a good deal more dangerous than the televised versions.
Time was, however, that men played another game: a game of skill and cunning; a game requiring lightning reflexes, uncanny hand-eye coordination and, again, great quantities of beer. This game has gone out of fashion, and with it a certain special kind of male camaraderie. Which is really too damn bad, for what a game it was.
They called it foosball.
A short history of foosball shows it to be a strangely compelling game. The reason is simple: Nothing sounds, nay feels as good as the metallic THOCK of the hard plastic ball hitting the back wall of the goal behind the helpless goaltender whose master simply wasn’t supernaturally quick enough to stop it.
These days foosball seems mostly to be favored among church youth groups, set up in musty hang-out rooms with sloppy cushions strewn about for the vaguely interested teen offspring of liberal mainline Protestants, or arrayed in high-tech evangelical gathering halls with the front ends of classic cars jutting from the walls and a state-of-the-art soundstage where neatly but hiply attired Christian pop-punk bands pound out “Jesus, you are the savior of my soul! Hey hey hey!” while pumping their fists.
Occasionally you will find a foosball table at the back end of a dark bar, one of those trendy pub-like numbers where they serve 40 kinds of draft beer and the young up-and-comers gather after work to bitch playfully about the idiots they work for and get gloriously ripped before heading home to the renovated-warehouse condo with a perfect view of the river. They never even get close to the foosball table, nor do all the young dudes shooting pool nearby.
But back in the day, circa 1973, foosball was the game of choice anywhere young men (rarely women) gathered to flex their wrists of steel while pounding pitchers of Bud. Other young men (sometimes women) would gather round to watch the battle joined of long-haired titans and slap down piles of quarters to let the winners know who next would challenge them.
One such gathering spot was Dooley’s, a veritable behemoth of a bar where packaging and pre-med majors at Michigan State University met up to check each other out, dance to Doobie Brothers covers and get gloriously ripped on their way to vaguely interesting upper-middle-income careers.
In my case, this is where the paint crew splattered with splotches of Hint O’ Mint and Snowberry got together after a day of glossing over the cracked walls of student ghetto housing in order to shake off the shame of working for a slumlord by furiously pursuing the delectable THOCK. It was cathartic after having stuffed a loaf of bread into a gaping hole in the wall, spackling it and lathering it with Snowberry rather than properly patching it.
Here was the birthplace of the once-famous Krebs Maneuver, named after the affable paint crew leader who was much too smart for the work he was doing. I think Krebs studied political science at MSU. The Krebs Maneuver was when he controlled the ball with his defenseman, flipped it backward to his goalie and with an extra-sharp crack of the left wrist sent it screaming the length of the table into the opposing goal. THOCK.
Here also was born The Sauce. The Sauce was when you were trying to clear the ball out of your backcourt but your opponent’s center intercepted the ball and jammed it back into your goal with emasculating ferocity. The defender-turned-killer followed his score with a triumphant flourish of hands and tableside shouts of “The Sauce!” as in, “Take that, with sauce on it!”
A second favored venue was The Alley Eye, a basement dance club. Here foosball was not so much a marquee event as a sideshow played out in the back while lithe young women and men boogied to “China Grove” and “Suffragette City.” But frequently small crowds gathered to witness titanic class struggles between young white men controlling little plastic men.
The Alley Eye’s foosball tables were dominated by hotshots with shag haircuts wearing batting gloves. The hotshots were unsmiling and methodical and did their work with ruthless efficiency. They set up their shots with elaborate care, paused, stood back and wiped their gloved hands on their jeans while the spectators took a deep breath. They then unleased the shot with blinding speed. Like a Major League batter trying to hit Randy Johnson, the defender could stop such shots only by instinct, a sixth sense as to where the ball should be because there was no possible way to actually see it. The usual result was a sickening THOCK and smug hotshot attitude that he was just better than you.
Occasionally however the hotshots were dethroned by musicians on break with a beguiling combination of irreverence and junk. Cheerfully refusing to be intimidated, they disarmed the gloved assassins with their annoying banter and pesky shots that glanced off walls or dribbled between furiously flailing defenders experiencing what was known as “vapor lock.” Sometimes the mocking musicians unleashed a pelting profusion of shots on goal affectionately dubbed “a volley of salvos.” It was immensely satisfying to see future marketing executives taken down in such disrespectful fashion.
In time the foosball tables fell silent as the masters of the game got serious about studies and life. Some went on to successful careers in sales, insurance and what have you. Others fought the good fight in mildly successful bar bands, playing Springsteen covers at weddings and upscale clubs where ambitious thirtysomethings gathered to unwind after a hard day at the cubicle. Here the musicians’ break was better suited to a gentlemanly game of darts than the frantic tomfoolery of foosball.
Still, here and there a past master happens upon a dusty foosball table in a dark corner of a pub-like bar. His eyes meet a former hotshot wearing suspenders and tie. They slap down quarters, order one of the 40 beers on tap and resume their quest for the delectable THOCK.
It is the sound of laughing men, crashing into each other at high speed.

As an intermittent meditator for more than 30 years, I occasionally look for
strategies to help me resume a regular practice. Lately I have taken to
meditating while holding a cup of coffee. This may seem reckless and
anti-meditative, since it requires focus to hold the cup so it doesn’t spill
and scald me, which would quickly put an end to the meditative state. However,
it actually works pretty well.

Holding the cup
serves as a physical adjunct to the mental mantra. It helps keep my body still
and at a mild point of attentiveness. Just as the mantra brings my mind back
home, the coffee cup brings my body back to itself. It brings comfort to my
hands in the same way holding a baseball does. Its shape, solidity and warmth
are soothing. And the occasional sip doesn’t hurt, since I dearly love coffee.

I owe this new
variation on meditation to my mom. She religiously meditated each morning in
her corner chair while holding a cup of coffee. Hers was no TM-style mantra
however. She would sit, Buddha-like, coffee cup poised on a saucer, brows
slightly furrowed as her mind covered the gamut of whatever was on it that day.

Usually she was
mulling over various family issues, such as what to do about keeping the cats
off my writing desk (this was not a problem to me but seemed so to mom). Other
times it could be political issues such as conflicts of interest on the Williamston
school board. Mom’s mind was much too mercurial to sit on one phrase or follow
her breath. It took her all over the world, and she did her best to solve every
problem in it.

The other morning
I let my coffee meditation take me to the previous night’s experience of seeing
Steve Earle at Grand Rapids’ Intersection
night club. As neatly documented here
by my friend and bandmate John Sinkevics, it was a memorable display of Earle’s
musical prowess and political passions. All gravel-voiced and scrub-bearded,
Earle took us on a tour of his unusually wide musical universe – country, folk,
bluegrass, rollicking Celtic and growling rock – while railing against war, coal-mine
rape, anti-immigration fervor and anti-union mania.

It was an artist
at his best: Saying just what he wanted to say from a lifetime of drug addiction,
failed marriages, pursuit of justice and devotion to his art. Unafraid to tell
it like it is or should be, refusing to back down from what he believes
regardless of how hopeless it seems. Introducing his stirring hymn “Jerusalem,”
he said, “I’m a
recovering heroin addict. I can’t afford to think of anything as a hopeless
case or a lost cause.”

Mom would not have loved the music but would have
appreciated the spirit. She too loved music and pursued justice fearlessly, no
matter how much it inconvenienced or annoyed. From her I inherited both those
passions.

Listening to Earle preach his fiery gospel and sing his
heart out, it occurred to me this was a kind of legacy. In my
love of music and pursuit of the just, mom’s spirit burns bright, and clangs noisily
in the hard strum of a scratched-up acoustic guitar.

Bono captured at Spartan Stadium by Darren Breen of GR Press

Running through John Ball Park on an exquisite June
morning with sonic ecstasy hammering in my ears. With an iPod you can take the
full rock experience anywhere, and I do. Dialed up the first mix I made for
Andrea at the tender beginning of our blessed relationship. As John Cusack put
it in “High Fidelity,” a mixtape is a work of art, lovingly tailored in pacing,
theme and tune for just one dearly adored person in the world.

First , Fountains of Wayne playing “I-95,”
a lovely story about a dude driving nine
hours to see his baby described with vivid journalistic detail: “Constellations blinking in the sky/ the road
is open wide/it feels so cinematic till a van/driven by an elderly
gentleman/cuts right in front of me/from then on that’s all I see.”  Feel myself driving down that road at night,
radio cutting in and out, foot on the pedal and heart full of longing as I run
by Sacred Heart Church hard by the park.

Now The New
Pornographers’ “Bleeding Heart Show,” among the more glorious tunes of the
latter-day pop pantheon, moving with orchestral majesty from sober contemplation
to boundless euphoria, all scattershot imagery, soaring vocals and pulsing
rhythm. “Hey-la, hey-la, hey-la,  hey-laaaa” they sing with the rapturous
joy of a secular Pentecostal choir.

Now to Garbage and “Why
Do You Love Me?,” Shirley Manson’s guitar-driven, maddening query to a guy
who insists on loving her despite her mistakes and “ugly things.” “Why do you love me? Why do you love me? It’s
driving me crazy,” she keeps asking the presumably faithless lover, but she
could ask the same of God. “I get back up
and I do it again,” day after day, presumably after failing miserably the
previous day.

Nothing works me through a failed or promising day like
music pumping in my ears as my body runs through the park. It’s the most direct
route I have found to the pulsing heart of creation, which I choose to call
God. Every time I fall it lifts me back up again and takes me there on a rocket
of turbocharged Les Pauls and drums that batter every obstacle in their way.

Still riding that rocket three days after experiencing U2
at Spartan Stadium, among the more extraordinary concerts of my long concert-going
career. As well described here
by my Honeytones bandmate and Grand Rapids Press colleague John Sinkevics, it
was a singular event on a splendid summer evening. Under a wide blue sky and a
gargantuan, War of the Worlds-ish stage called “The
Claw,” Bono sang prophet-like to 65,000 faithful, “It’s a beautiful day/don’t let it get away.”

With spectacle and passion — and help from a video
appearance by Archbishop Desmond Tutu — Bono and band celebrated the glory of
life and railed against its injustices. In the name of love, their songs
speared the summer air, poured through our bodies and pierced our hearts.

God was there in the throng, pulling us toward the
pulsing heart of all as Bono sang, “she
moves in mysterious ways.” Indeed he does.

our garden's plucky first fruits

The idea took root a year ago: plant a garden in our backyard. A vegetable garden. Grow green leafy things to nourish our bodies right from home. High on a hill on Grand Rapids’ West Side, it seemed an inviting foray into urban farming.
The idea was proposed by Max, my restlessly creative son. When he is not learning to speak Chinese at Grand Valley State University, he brings home bags overflowing with great green things and stuffs them into the fridge. This is life with a college student who works at a health food store and is vigilant about every thing he puts in his body.
So sure, let’s do the garden because I don’t need to mow the lower lawn down there by the pear tree anyway. Although it may interfere with my bocce court. No matter. Garden it would be, for body and soul and making this little patch of the world a little more self-sufficient.
This would be our bit in the urban farming movement, a hopeful trend for greening up our healthy cities and reviving struggling ones like Detroit. Also it would provide cheap fresh food for our table. How much better to get it from the yard a few steps away than to drive to the grocery store which had it driven in from a few hundred miles away.
It took a year because most things do around my house. But after much planning, diagramming, buying of seeds and really heavy bags of gooey black stuff, we went at it. Max went at it first, digging out the grass aided by his friends Cang and Tim, Tim being way more comfortable shredding riffs in Max’s band than excavating clods of dirt.
Max and I framed it in with 6- and 11-foot lengths of 2 by 6’s. Looked nice and orderly there at the bottom of the yard, a little human organization imposed on the wilderness. Then came the kneading in of the peat and compost and top soil as if we were folding together flour and such for bread. Remove more clumps of grass, rake out the soil till it’s a delicious black.
At last, then, time to plant the seeds. Max chose lettuce, kale, spinach and cucumbers, a fine mix for summer salads and industrial strength smoothies. He dropped the seeds in thoughtfully, carefully, smoothing the dirt over them with his hand not unlike a Buddhist monk creating a mandala. Watered it down. Looked it over. Lovely. Garden planted, now let nature rock.
Just a few days later, nature did rock. Sprouted, rather. Yielded up a fetching bright green row of little lettuce nibbles, which upon spotting them made me smile with delight. Really, already? Way to go, earth! You’re such an efficient food factory!
As I showed this to Max, he also spied tiny sprigs of spinach and coy cucumber petals poking up in circles. He laughed with joy. Wow, amazing! You just plant the stuff and a few days later up it comes. No chemical applications required. No major machinery. Just a good hard digging of the earth and planting of the seeds and anointing all with water. Dirt does the rest.
It’s a sacred process, really, tending to the good earth that was created to feed us. Miraculously, it does so with remarkably little coaxing, even after all the abuse we have inflicted on it. All it takes is paying a little attention to it, gently kneading it and lovingly watering it. So little work for such a generous bounty. It calls for a hymn of grateful praise.
Now comes the weeding. It’s the least we can do.