And a writer is good and lucky and a talent if he can lodge something, land something, find something and place it just so carefully into that great collective unconscious.
For me now, this is Twain, as I reinvent my own life, with his great adventure of Huck and Jim along the river. Along the river with all its majesty, its cautions, its dangers, its ever-changing night and day and weather and channel... of which I bite off a modest sample in my fear, my great unaccustomed partial fright coming back along the towpath in darkness of night, the sounds of the river off to my right, a near full moon above the trees...
How many times that book comes back to me... How much truth it has to offer of our condition...
How many times that book comes back to me... How much truth it has to offer of our condition...
Then the surprising horror, the shock of speeding lights way up ahead, floating in space, above the darkened tow path which has frighted me in its own way, in equal parts to the feeling of belonging somewhere again... The Beltway, the raised highway leading to the American Legion Bridge, built over an old lock, its gate forgotten in the darkness. Speeding cars and trucks zooming along not bound to this dank earth I am riding wearily upon, careful of smooshing tiny toads and small frogs.
But these things, which are a channel to the realm of the deeps of consciousness, they come only, and naturally, from renunciation... Renunciation, to many of the species a completely baffling thing. Not, denunciation, but a retreat from self-importance...
Get on a bike and cycle up any back road in NW DC and you will find the unending plethora of mansions of all shapes and styles and sizes. Me, I read Richard Scarry, What Do People Do All Day, and there was Huck the cat, looking out an upper window, as if he could afford it, trying out the profession of "poet."
On the third day off from work, I am finally up at a reasonable hour, somewhere around 10:30 in the morning, not bad for an old dog barman circus elephant. I go down and open the front door of the small apartment building to see what the weather is like. The new slate flagstones, on a slight downhill incline, between two functionally similar buildings... why not... it's quiet, and no one to pass nor gawk at me as I try to unroll myself into a few good easy yoga poses. And after that, I need a walk, another long one, down to the river, down to the towpath. The yoga has been very good, lotus pose a little strain on the lower part of legs, but some form of perspective encountered...
Down along the towpath, and the sun comes out more now from the clouds, which have begun to be humid. I'm wearing a backpack, but I trot myself into a jog pace, though that too hurts like lotus pose... And I make my way, slowly but surely, out under Chain Bridge, and then to the cut off path cut through the rock slabs, paved, to the narrows above, and there's my friend from before, with his old blue bicycle. I wave to him, and go sit out on some rocks above the cement platform where he stands looking over the parapet, and he waves back, though I wonder if he remembers me, as we all do. I sit for a while, look through my back pack, look at a text of pictures my aunt has sent me from Rockport, idly shoot another iPhone video of the grand river and its current over the rocks...
Well, on my way back, who knows where I'm headed, I go up on the parapet. You have your fishing pole with you today. It's tied along the top tube of his old blue bicycle with black line. He had an old red backpack today, and like last time, his tee-shirt, different, has a small hole or two in it up around the neckline. His chinos, not the blue work pants he had on last time weeks ago, are impeccably clean, a light fabric.
We watch a young Asian man pull in a small fish. "Shad," my friend tells me. "Too many bones." There's the guy taking the fish on a rock, to clean it. He slices off a filet-like cut, not very big. Then he cuts it half, and now he's using it for bait, and back into the water with a hook.
The spawning will be over soon, my friend tells me. His beard is white, and it's hard to hear him perfectly over the sound of the river now. Too choppy to fish today, he tells me. I was out, biked up to Great Falls and back, I tell him, but I forget the peepers and the Copperhead and coming back at dark. The river was high, about all I managed to tell him.
When I take my leave, splicing that in the watching of the man catch the fish, clean it, use it for bait, before I go on my way, he reaches out to shake my hand, which I wanted to do anyway. Ted, I say. Tommy, he says, and I step carefully back down past the Central American family with their two ladies and the two boys swimming in the safe channel the kayakers use to get back onto land, and the small tide seems to be going out so I can get back to the towpath, but who cares if I get my hiking sneakers wet at this point.
I try some jogging, coming back in toward the bridge overpass of the Capitol Crescent Trail, back to the boat house, and it is a long slog. I'm wearing the UVA Cavaliers hat someone left at work, to cover my balding head, and a young fellow with a black diamond mountain bike offers a related term. He's putting on sunscreen lotion as I go into the men's room and come back to top off my water bottle at the fountain there. We chat a bit. Nice kid. He reaches out his hand and I shake it too, passing on his sunscreen. Finally back up on MacArthur I have an expensive cup of coffee and try to write my thoughts out, but they aren't so easy to be found.
Get on a bike and cycle up any back road in NW DC and you will find the unending plethora of mansions of all shapes and styles and sizes. Me, I read Richard Scarry, What Do People Do All Day, and there was Huck the cat, looking out an upper window, as if he could afford it, trying out the profession of "poet."
On the third day off from work, I am finally up at a reasonable hour, somewhere around 10:30 in the morning, not bad for an old dog barman circus elephant. I go down and open the front door of the small apartment building to see what the weather is like. The new slate flagstones, on a slight downhill incline, between two functionally similar buildings... why not... it's quiet, and no one to pass nor gawk at me as I try to unroll myself into a few good easy yoga poses. And after that, I need a walk, another long one, down to the river, down to the towpath. The yoga has been very good, lotus pose a little strain on the lower part of legs, but some form of perspective encountered...
Down along the towpath, and the sun comes out more now from the clouds, which have begun to be humid. I'm wearing a backpack, but I trot myself into a jog pace, though that too hurts like lotus pose... And I make my way, slowly but surely, out under Chain Bridge, and then to the cut off path cut through the rock slabs, paved, to the narrows above, and there's my friend from before, with his old blue bicycle. I wave to him, and go sit out on some rocks above the cement platform where he stands looking over the parapet, and he waves back, though I wonder if he remembers me, as we all do. I sit for a while, look through my back pack, look at a text of pictures my aunt has sent me from Rockport, idly shoot another iPhone video of the grand river and its current over the rocks...
Well, on my way back, who knows where I'm headed, I go up on the parapet. You have your fishing pole with you today. It's tied along the top tube of his old blue bicycle with black line. He had an old red backpack today, and like last time, his tee-shirt, different, has a small hole or two in it up around the neckline. His chinos, not the blue work pants he had on last time weeks ago, are impeccably clean, a light fabric.
We watch a young Asian man pull in a small fish. "Shad," my friend tells me. "Too many bones." There's the guy taking the fish on a rock, to clean it. He slices off a filet-like cut, not very big. Then he cuts it half, and now he's using it for bait, and back into the water with a hook.
The spawning will be over soon, my friend tells me. His beard is white, and it's hard to hear him perfectly over the sound of the river now. Too choppy to fish today, he tells me. I was out, biked up to Great Falls and back, I tell him, but I forget the peepers and the Copperhead and coming back at dark. The river was high, about all I managed to tell him.
When I take my leave, splicing that in the watching of the man catch the fish, clean it, use it for bait, before I go on my way, he reaches out to shake my hand, which I wanted to do anyway. Ted, I say. Tommy, he says, and I step carefully back down past the Central American family with their two ladies and the two boys swimming in the safe channel the kayakers use to get back onto land, and the small tide seems to be going out so I can get back to the towpath, but who cares if I get my hiking sneakers wet at this point.
I try some jogging, coming back in toward the bridge overpass of the Capitol Crescent Trail, back to the boat house, and it is a long slog. I'm wearing the UVA Cavaliers hat someone left at work, to cover my balding head, and a young fellow with a black diamond mountain bike offers a related term. He's putting on sunscreen lotion as I go into the men's room and come back to top off my water bottle at the fountain there. We chat a bit. Nice kid. He reaches out his hand and I shake it too, passing on his sunscreen. Finally back up on MacArthur I have an expensive cup of coffee and try to write my thoughts out, but they aren't so easy to be found.
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