Ten minutes on February 21, 2008
Ten minutes on February 21, 2008
Rain, rain rain. Rain so constant it feels like the rain is being rained on as it rains. Across from my table, through the window, I can see it hit the wild assortment of flowers in Elisa’s garden. Against the gray day, the gray blue of the house, the dark brown of the deck, the long spears of two massive plants thrust impossibly green, rain shaking the spears like a defiant vegetative tribe.
Inside, warm. Light; table; coffee; cocoa almonds; tunes. Remain in Light: “take a look at these hand, they’re passing in between us; take a look at these hands; I don’t have to mentions it…hands, the hands of a government man.” Eno and Byrne, the beat goes on where the hand has been. Electricity is everywhere: computer, iPod, CD player and tuner, numbers on clocks on appliances, energy saving lights beaming, refrigerator humming. A space ship right now, and outside cold and rain and not weather for walking a dog.
Find a little space, so we move in between…this little space between all the work I must do, writing an article grading papers sending attachments managing online students responding to email which pours into my Inbox, a monsoon of messages, not all of which promise me ten inches of pussy pleasing power. So much writing and thinking happen between, in between, on the edges, in liminal space. After the presentation; before the presentation; in the corridor, not in the auditorium. In the kitchen at the party, not on the dance floor. Outside where the smokers are; on the fire escape, the back porch, half hanging from windows. We need to be in between and away to do certain kinds of thinking, talking, sensing.
Since I last wrote: the ski trip. Kate Bailey Margann and I beat the traffic on Friday, Margann gets asthma or something like it and we then burn all our time at an Urgent Care in Grass Valley, get to Claire Tappaan right at dinner, and then ski like demons for three days. Skiing with Margann, something I haven’t really done since we started a lifetime ago on Crystal Mountain in the 90s in Washington State. Black diamonds, speed, the energy of big ten year olds trying to squeeze every bit of fun out of it all, pleading for one last run keep the lift open for us wouldya?
Skiing is also Kathy Kelly finding a way to get time to ski the back side, Ravi learning to like it all and then surviving illness, Claire skiing for a day and Kevin not getting to, kids bailing on skiing early and adults complaining about kids bailing on skiing early, logistics occasionally overwhelming our brilliant minds’ abilities ot manage fun and responsibility, Jen getting to ski alone on Monday and rocking her joy so that she literally beams when she gets off the lift. Gorgeous mountain snow air and at times all the kids in the lodge all on their phones, texting each other and the tiny photons making their faces glow a little like the light in Kubrick’s 2001, unearthly. Kate loves to ski by herself and so she does, all day, and laughs about telling her friends what fun skiing is when you schlep so much stuff out of rooms into bags into cars onto racks drive drive drive and then lug stuff up icy slippery inclines to the lodge and stuff it in tiny cubicles and then get up early lug stuff down icy slippery inclines to the cars load stuff into cars on racks drive then unload stuff lug it to lodge…and you pay for all this!
Ok my minutes are up but I must tell you: up lift one to the top of Donner Ski Ranch and you see Donner Lake the mountains ringing the horizon snow capped and magnificent Sugarbowl to the West I 80 to the east and south the whole bowl of snowscape and trees and mountain…and you are up there about to begin the controlled falling that is skiing fast down steeps, the air cold clean rare at 7200 feet a crow or raven hits an updraft and sails effortlessly by the jet contrails make a curious code of white ideograms in the sky cold shaping you your body until you are yourself for a perfect set of moments, leaning over skis looking out over the Face not able to see what is next that first commitment to the inevitable looking down at your gear skis boots poles a sort of cyborg human and machine integrated and about to do something impossible for human or machine alone the future is fast but manageable, full of excitement, challenge, physical as your muscles, mental as the decision to point skis down a 25 degree slope and not pull out, soulful as you can make it.
Everything we do, anything we do, all we do, the possibility of grace, and the world gives us the constant feedback: fall, crash, don’t crash, maneuver, turn, turn again, fly, fly, fly.
Rain, rain rain. Rain so constant it feels like the rain is being rained on as it rains. Across from my table, through the window, I can see it hit the wild assortment of flowers in Elisa’s garden. Against the gray day, the gray blue of the house, the dark brown of the deck, the long spears of two massive plants thrust impossibly green, rain shaking the spears like a defiant vegetative tribe.
Inside, warm. Light; table; coffee; cocoa almonds; tunes. Remain in Light: “take a look at these hand, they’re passing in between us; take a look at these hands; I don’t have to mentions it…hands, the hands of a government man.” Eno and Byrne, the beat goes on where the hand has been. Electricity is everywhere: computer, iPod, CD player and tuner, numbers on clocks on appliances, energy saving lights beaming, refrigerator humming. A space ship right now, and outside cold and rain and not weather for walking a dog.
Find a little space, so we move in between…this little space between all the work I must do, writing an article grading papers sending attachments managing online students responding to email which pours into my Inbox, a monsoon of messages, not all of which promise me ten inches of pussy pleasing power. So much writing and thinking happen between, in between, on the edges, in liminal space. After the presentation; before the presentation; in the corridor, not in the auditorium. In the kitchen at the party, not on the dance floor. Outside where the smokers are; on the fire escape, the back porch, half hanging from windows. We need to be in between and away to do certain kinds of thinking, talking, sensing.
Since I last wrote: the ski trip. Kate Bailey Margann and I beat the traffic on Friday, Margann gets asthma or something like it and we then burn all our time at an Urgent Care in Grass Valley, get to Claire Tappaan right at dinner, and then ski like demons for three days. Skiing with Margann, something I haven’t really done since we started a lifetime ago on Crystal Mountain in the 90s in Washington State. Black diamonds, speed, the energy of big ten year olds trying to squeeze every bit of fun out of it all, pleading for one last run keep the lift open for us wouldya?
Skiing is also Kathy Kelly finding a way to get time to ski the back side, Ravi learning to like it all and then surviving illness, Claire skiing for a day and Kevin not getting to, kids bailing on skiing early and adults complaining about kids bailing on skiing early, logistics occasionally overwhelming our brilliant minds’ abilities ot manage fun and responsibility, Jen getting to ski alone on Monday and rocking her joy so that she literally beams when she gets off the lift. Gorgeous mountain snow air and at times all the kids in the lodge all on their phones, texting each other and the tiny photons making their faces glow a little like the light in Kubrick’s 2001, unearthly. Kate loves to ski by herself and so she does, all day, and laughs about telling her friends what fun skiing is when you schlep so much stuff out of rooms into bags into cars onto racks drive drive drive and then lug stuff up icy slippery inclines to the lodge and stuff it in tiny cubicles and then get up early lug stuff down icy slippery inclines to the cars load stuff into cars on racks drive then unload stuff lug it to lodge…and you pay for all this!
Ok my minutes are up but I must tell you: up lift one to the top of Donner Ski Ranch and you see Donner Lake the mountains ringing the horizon snow capped and magnificent Sugarbowl to the West I 80 to the east and south the whole bowl of snowscape and trees and mountain…and you are up there about to begin the controlled falling that is skiing fast down steeps, the air cold clean rare at 7200 feet a crow or raven hits an updraft and sails effortlessly by the jet contrails make a curious code of white ideograms in the sky cold shaping you your body until you are yourself for a perfect set of moments, leaning over skis looking out over the Face not able to see what is next that first commitment to the inevitable looking down at your gear skis boots poles a sort of cyborg human and machine integrated and about to do something impossible for human or machine alone the future is fast but manageable, full of excitement, challenge, physical as your muscles, mental as the decision to point skis down a 25 degree slope and not pull out, soulful as you can make it.
Everything we do, anything we do, all we do, the possibility of grace, and the world gives us the constant feedback: fall, crash, don’t crash, maneuver, turn, turn again, fly, fly, fly.
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