NOTHING ELSE MATTERS

I don’t like fiddling with my clock radio, it’s set for 6:00 AM which is where I want it on the weekend. On weekdays I need to be up early to be in the swimming pool at 6:00 so I set my smart phone for 5:30. I am not very alert then but I have the routine down and it works. Today it wasn’t until I got to the community center that I noticed it was really dark and there were no cars in the parking lot. I checked my phone and it was 4:47. On the way to bed last night I missed the 5:30 toggle on my alarm setting by one notch, and there I was. I let the seat back, reset my phone and dozed off.

The transition in summer into the water is really simple; not much to take off, not much to put on, lock the locker, ear plugs in, set my kitchen timer at the end of my lane and step off into 9’ of calm water. This morning I was the first person in at 5:40, no one had made a ripple since the night before. The water was wall to wall, end to end, slick and smooth without a blemish. In the old days pools had gutters on the vertical side wall, several inches below the lip. Modern pools now have a horizontal gutter with a grate on the deck, just beyond the lip. This way the pool fills to the very top. Waves that wash up go over the top and down through the grate; there is no vertical surface to reflect waves or backwash back into the pool. It may not sound like much to folks who play in the water but swimmers appreciate it. 

The feet first plunge to the bottom and the short ride back up is a refreshing, second stage part of the wake-up. I hang on the wall for a few seconds and service my goggles. If you don’t want them to fog up you lubricate them with something that does not condensate as easily as water. Body heat plus moisture equals condensation inside the lens. Saliva works very well so I spit in one lens and then the other, use my tongue like a brush to apply it evenly and seat them in place, push off the wall and follow the black line on the bottom of the pool. After several laps things begin to kick in, I think about my stroke; thumbs down on the catch, pull all the way through to the hips, kick all the way from the hips. Pretty soon the wake-up continues as you remember something from the other day or start connecting information and ideas in ways you hadn’t done before. I play with words, couplets, rhyme and verse, formatting songs that haven’t been written yet. I think about big questions, big ideas; why are we here? Are we on our own or are we in this together? One thing leads to another and before you know it the timer on the deck has gone off and my hour in the water is finished. 

The way a person reconciles information with meaning can be quite different than that of their friends and contemporaries. I can’t think of a better way to get myself grounded and attentive than my morning swim. It’s sort of like meditation only it requires motion rather than pause. I am a visual, kinesthetic learner. I understand how that works now. When I was a kid, who’d a thunk, who cared? Everything was linear, verbal and quantitative. For me it was just words and they didn’t mean much if I couldn’t visualize the process. When I drummed my pencil or bobbed and wiggled in my chair, my teacher poked me and gave me the evil eye. Images and metaphors serve me well and I move as I must now that I'm the teacher.

In the water this morning I thought about a movie I saw recently, about some old people who went to India, to a dilapidated hotel where they all dealt with life’s decline and the disillusion that comes with it. They all had different situations but the specter of either poor health, loneliness or irrelevance had been thrust upon them. Two quotes from the movie stayed with me as I stroked my mile and a quarter this morning. The first was a young man who faced a seemingly hopeless confliction between the logic of tradition and his feelings. He said, “It will all work out in the end; and if it doesn’t, then it isn’t the end.” The other was by an elderly woman who had watched her cohorts as they all struggled with their demons. “The only real failure is the failure to try, and the measure of success is how we cope with disappointment. We get up in the morning, do our best and nothing else matters.”

SHUTTER BUG

For my 10th birthday I got a Brownie Hawkeye camera, with three rolls of Kodak 620, Black & White film; 12 frames to a roll. We’ve come a long way Baby. Now I shoot with a Canon 60D, doesn’t need film and will take photographs as long as the battery holds up. I headed south out of Michigan this morning, on my way to catch a plane in Chicago. I’ll be in Pennsylvania tomorrow and I’ll have my camera. I used to take pictures with my Hawkeye like I spent my money; if I had a nickel I had to find something to spend it on. If I had film in the camera I’d take pictures, of anything, until it was spent. Then I could wind the roll up, take it out of the camera and give it to my mom. Looking at the print was never as much fun as tripping the shutter. I still take plenty of pictures but I am a lot more selective about where I point it and when I trip the shutter. I know for sure what doesn’t photograph well and I don’t waste my time on dead ends. They seemed like good ideas at the time and I kept trying but sooner or later, you learn and you move on. 

I’ve had two really good days behind the lens. One was early in the morning at the High Meadow, first light. Yesterday it was early evening, on the beach in Grand Haven, Michigan. I like to catch the setting sun, on or near the water with the lighthouse in the mix. The atmosphere was so clear the sun stayed brilliant right down to the water line. When it’s muted by a hazy sky you get a wonderful array of color and you can see details, silhouettes in front of the sun itself. Yesterday everything was clear and searing. I got there with a couple of hours to spare. The pier always has people and people do the coolest things. I got a good shot of a little boy with his rod and reel, maybe 4 or 5, silhouetted against the sun’s glare on the water, trying to untangle his line. Last year I got a great shot of teenagers jumping off the pier into the surf and I made a mental note, always be looking for kids jumping. As the sun was sinking I noticed a quartet of 12-13 year-olds, jumping, showing off for the girls, for little old ladies and for bragging rights. They saw me with the camera up and took it as a challenge. I zoomed in and caught them suspended, moments frozen in time. I walked away then thought, 'One more'. I caught one kid stretched out in a pose that belonged on a ballet stage. Sometimes you get good and sometimes you get lucky. I don’t know where I’ll be taking photos next but I'll be looking for kids, jumping. 

I’ll miss Coast Guard Festival in Grand Haven this year. It’s the most civilized festival in the world; 100,000 people down town and on the waterfront, families with strollers, college kids and every Coast Guard member from coast to coast who can get time off. The fireworks on Sat. night are awesome and it takes several hours for this small, lakeshore community to empty out. The rowdies keep it in the bar and nobody, nobody starts trouble. I should feel good that I can’t squeeze everything I want into my calendar. That’s a lot better than the other way. If you see me with my camera, don’t look my way, don’t smile; I’d rather catch you picking your nose.

HOME SWEET HOME

Coming home, something about the idea of coming home that makes people feel, one way or another. Home for me was where my family lived when I was a child. By today’s standards, my youth was wild, unstructured and unsupervised. They had some idea of where I was and who I was with but I marched pretty much to my own drum. There was a surplus of love and respect but you had to entertain yourself and you had the latitude to follow your own compass. People can’t do that now, it would make parents guilty of neglect or worse. Home was more than just a house on a road, it was the center of my orb; family, friends, bicycle, music, baseball and more. That’s where I went when I was tired or hungry, when I was out of money. When I joined the army the Frankosphere expanded rapidly. Duty assignments took me to Arkansas, North Carolina, the far East and then I came home, whatever that meant. But things change and so did I. I lived with my parents but it wasn’t home anymore. Home had been a place in time and times had changed. It felt more like a new assignment than coming home. That’s the story of my life. 

When you retire, powers that be require you to have a home address, where you can receive mail and be scrutinized. Over the years, across the jobs, I learned how the world works; gravity, photosynthesis, the speed of light, systems and energy budgets. I realized that ‘Home’ is the tiny blue boat, floating in a stellar abyss. I live there with over seven billion of my relatives, and I resist the urge to 'Tribalize'. I am an American citizen but I can’t take credit for that. Life there has been good too me and mine and I have no reason to change but it’s just a way of organizing more people than the planet was meant to sustain. Seems to be comforting to discriminate between us and them and to take sides if you must but that path goes in circles, repeating the same mistakes again and again.

So now, looking back, where do you go when you go home? I was trying to be clever recently and spoke up, “Home is where the feet is.” If I have friends and good memories there, then I'm at home. Right now I’m at home in Michigan, with my clothes in the closet and my car parked by the barn. This is where the government sends my mail but I’m only here a few weeks, several times a year. We are in our second year of establishing a blueberry patch. With about 2500 plants in the ground and 7000 to go, it will take several years. Those pesky little whips from last fall are bearing fruit already. The new babies are well rooted in their gallon containers, so anxious to live and bear fruit that they can’t contain themselves. They won’t be planted for couple of months but most of them have a few juicy berries, begging to be picked. If I don’t get them the deer will. I feel right at home. Next month I will be making sawdust in the basement work shop of a house I own in Missouri. I’ll take photographs of my grandchildren playing soccer and I’ll feel right at home. The month after that, I’ll be with my daughter, rafting down the Grand Canyon; we will sleep on beaches I’ve slept on before, I’ll tell her about the last time I was there, and the time before that when we were up on the rim together, and I’ll be right at home. Home, ". . . that mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.”  

FIRST LIGHT

Sometimes I ask myself, why would anyone get up at 2:00 a.m., drive three hours in the dark then wade through dew laden, tall grass, soaked to the thighs, just to take a photograph. I don’t dwell on it, don’t really have an answer; it doesn’t matter. I do it; I just do it. On M22, up the shore from Glen Arbor, Michigan you pass old farms that date back to the 1850’s, restored and maintained by the Sleeping Bear National Lake Shore. It’s like a National Park with Park Rangers and Visitors Center, more like a National Monument in that it doesn’t require an act of congress to create one. The Dechow Farm sits less than a mile from Lake Michigan on the south side of the two-lane with sloping meadows that rise up to the south. I discovered it in 1997, been going back with my camera ever since.

The farm house is used to house seasonal employees through the summer then closed in winter. On several occasions I have been invited inside to sleep on the sofa; I didn’t have to get up so early those times or drive so far. So why such a fuss? First Light is an astronomical term that has to do with telescopes but artists and photographers in particular refer to the time of day when gray on the horizon uncovers a darkened landscape, shortly followed by day break and sunshine. Just before and shortly after daybreak the low angle of light splays on the sides of things rather than shining down. It gives everything a different look, one that is treasured by people with cameras. So I want to be exactly where I need to be to get that first light/daybreak view of the meadow. You have to get the shots and move quickly, up to a quarter mile to get the next, best shot; then you keep moving until you’ve done all you can do. It doesn’t last long, maybe three quarters of an hour. The flash of sun light on tree tops while the grass is still covered with haze and mist, it only lasts a few minutes. The fact that you are soaked from the waist down and your mosquito repellent will lose its punch before you finish might dampen the spirit but it is a choice you make and I choose. It comes as close to prayer as I can manage. If there really is a God, I believe this must be where he throws his feet out of bed in the morning, over the drumlins and eskers to the east, illuminating the high meadow first, then the lower meadow and the old barn. Some people go to church, I come here. This morning my feet squished like sponges; I listend to loons waking up in the backwater across the highway and figured, 'If that's not God speaking to me then he doesn't speak at all.' In translation it comes out, 'You are exactly where you are supposed to be.'

This morning was perfect; a few high, citrus clouds and plenty of sky. A little after eight o’clock, Art’s Tavern in Glen Arbor, I ordered eggs and toast along with tourists who had just risen for the day. I changed from soaked jeans and tennis shoes to shorts and sandals in the men’s room and went back to my table where my food was waiting. Outside, everything had turned dark. Pennants stretched across the street and flags over store fronts were straight out in the wind and giant rain drops began to pelt the windows. It lasted half an hour, torrents were running in the gutters and everyone in town thought Art’s was the only dry spot. I gave up my table shortly and waited by the door. Couldn’t help thinking how lucky I was. The weather report had mentioned, possible chance of showers but this was a frog strangler.  I got my work done before the squall blew in off the lake. Good fortune has favored me recently. I was back in Grand Rapids early afternoon with a couple of hundred photos to sort, cull and edit. My first shot of the day may be the best. 

DON'T GET ME STARTED

I have always been fascinated by body functions. I know; nobody wants to go there but I can’t help myself. I am a spitter, have always been a spitter. My mother never really cared as long as I kept it outside and away from others. My male role models were spitters. Some spat tobacco and others spat seeds, some spat whatever rolled up on their tongue. I don’t think about it as a rule but it’s too complex to ignore. Like responsible gun owners, there is an unspoken principle that if you shoot, you need be accurate. Bullet or spat, you take aim and put it exactly where you want it. Consider the volume, shape of the mouth and all the parts that grow there. When your mouth is closed, there is no unoccupied space in there. The way teeth close together, lips press back against the teeth, tongue presses up against the palate, there’s just no space for vagrant objects. A stowaway seed or build up of saliva require some kind of resolution. 

We marvel at the dexterity of hands and fingers with opposed thumbs but the tongue and lower jaw are equally nimble, crowded, confined, with tolerances that offer no margin for error . Nourishment is reduced to an unthinkable mass of stuff that might taste good but revolting to look at. At best, it’s just passing through, like grass through the lawn mower. As I’m chewing I try to visualize the working of jaw and tongue, moving morsels to the perfect spot between upper and lower gainers, or lined up under choppers as the jaw shreds and tears. Then it senses where the finished parts are and what needs to be realigned and shredded again. It moves everything to the best alignment  for the next, seamless jaw-cycle without a hitch or delay. The slightest error in location or timing and the sensitive edge of the tongue or cheek flesh come alive in a painful, mind numbing jolt that stops everything. You curse internally and moan a moan that is usually reserved for a hammer/thumb collision or a sharp blow to the shin bone. You catch yourself after five or ten seconds and silently think, ‘Whatever I have to do to not do that again, I will surely do.’ Then you try to move your tongue and cheek so it doesn’t hurt so bad but that doesn’t usually help. For the rest of the meal you slow down, pay particular attention to those normally automatic, motor functions. You know that the insulted flesh will swell, sizing down those tight tolerances between teeth and tongue and you'll likely bite yourself again before the swelling goes down.'Why did I do that?'

This morning I dressed in the dark, no problem. I stopped for breakfast at the Morning Star Cafe in Grand Haven, MI. After my blueberries with oatmeal and a cup of hazelnut decaf, I went to the men’s room. The discovery was not alarming, just unexpected. I had put my underwear on wrong side out and backwards. Some clothing brands now sew their label on boxer shorts on the outside/front of the waist band. The mistake is understandable but I take full responsibility for dressing myself. After some maneuvering I was able to finish my task without incident. At the coffee shop, two hours later, I needed to go again and was ready for the inconvenience. To undress and realign my boxers was unnecessary. Body functions, not appropriate for some conversations but never irrelevant. As I stood there I was overwhelmed by the smell of diarrhea. You can not mistake it. As I did my business I determined that the source was inside the first commode stall, behind a closed door. I saw blue jeans in a heap on the floor with empty tennis shoes and socks pushed off to the side. It was sort of like religion, a revelation; the poor soul didn’t make it to the toilet in time. There he was in a public rest room, undone by bodily function gone awry. His condition left him unacceptably compromised. There was nothing anybody could do. How to egress without offending, grossing out any and everyone who might be in proximity. The smell is a universal message that the IG tract is in revolt over something you brought upon yourself or a rogue virus that has no sympathy at all. 

In college, Human Anatomy & Physiology was one of my few major courses where I made an A. I was a solid B student but this class was awesome, with a great professor. Somewhere in that journey I learned that we should, if not study, at least look closely at what we leave behind. Its color, texture and volume tell us volumes about our immediate health and well being. In this man’s case you didn’t need to look, you knew from a distance. As I rearranged my boxers and made for the door there was a feeling that meld a helpless sympathy for a pitiful stranger, gratitude for my own good health and a timely escape. The body works even when it malfunctions. Body functions, what can you do? Don’t get me started on perspiration and pheromones. 

RANT

By definition, a ‘Rant’ is speaking or writing in an angry or emotionally charged manner. I don’t know if I’m angry or emotional but I am worn out from rants that glorify the ‘Good Old Days’ at the expense of the ‘Good New Days.’ Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of rant worthy flaws in the ways people behave but the cheap shots are just that. 

Some of my FaceBook friends have nothing better to do than search the internet for clever or biased points of view and post them on FB. ‘Aunty Acid’ is a cartoon character from greeting cards and the internet who turns up on my FB page frequently. Her caustic wit is consistent with an underlying message that lauds old ways and faults whatever is current. She is the perfect example of ‘Displaced Aggression.’ She is angry because she is old and takes it out on the young. There is a famous quote that surfaces from time to time denouncing youth; “Children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” It is attributed to Socrates, over 2500 years ago. Times change, our toys change, our tools change, we wrinkle up and slow down but remain stuck in an old rut, with a comfort zone the size of a postage stamp.

I really liked the ‘Old Days’, they weren’t better but I was. If I wanted the perfect apple from the highest branch I could monkey myself up the tree, hang on with one hand and pluck the fruit with the other. Whatever I aspired to I had a future with plenty of time to succeed, or to fail and begin again. Now I have in its place a ‘History', a long story instead of far reaching possibility. Thirty years from now, these new days will be my grandchildren’s ‘Good Old Days.’ They may go nostalgic over ‘Rap’ music, ‘Twitter’ and Taco Bell. Yesterday a friend in Argentina posted another Aunty A. cartoon. Aunty ranted that when she was young people played outside instead of texting, that you ate what Mom prepared or went hungry; that she missed those simpler times. I replied with a comment; “When I was young we lived under a tree. Mom didn’t cook anything because fire hadn’t been invented yet so we ate dead squirrels and bony fish, raw, and played with the bones. I miss those simpler days.” That was my little rant. I don’t miss the electric motor with belts and pulleys on my dentist’s drill or the big needle and the maybe-yes maybe-no novocaine from 1960. I don’t miss AM radio or tobacco smoke in every room and I prefer people who earn my respect rather than demanding it, just because of an age gradient. 

It’s early on a Monday morning; I have the attic fan going with the windows open and I can hear wrens chattering in my back yard. My mother used to chatter with the wrens through her kitchen window. I miss my Mom but the wren/chatter is just as sweet now as then. The banana and blue berries I had for breakfast please me as much as Mom’s cooking. My GPS and Bluetooth telephone in my dashboard make driving nice; but then I’m not looking for adventure behind the wheel. I’lll take the ‘Good New Day’ with a grin and not squabble over the ones we left behind. 

HACK

Last week I was shopping at a Cabela’s store in Kansas City, Kansas for some things I will need for a float trip later in the summer, things like nylon underwear that dry quickly and a wide brim hat. My cell phone started its ‘Ahooga. . .Ahooga’ warning that someone wanted to speak to me. I don’t get that many phone calls, my smart phone is really smart but someone on the other end has to push my button or it’s just another gadget, the next generation wrist watch-camera-weather report-flash light-calculator, more so than telephone. I didn’t recognize the number and the lady on the other end wanted to know if she could speak to me. I told her that I was me, expecting a marketing pitch or admonition for something I’d done wrong, or not at all. She was calling from the security division of my credit union. “In the past few hours we’ve noticed some suspicious activity on your debit card account. Did you make a $67 purchase at Fine Wines liquor store in Detroit, Michigan this morning?” “No” I said, “I did not.” She continued, “How about Marathon Fuel Stop in Detroit; and White Castle restaurant in Southfield?” I said no and no again. I got the message and the interruption had gained my undivided attention. I stepped inside an unoccupied fitting room and closed the door. We talked, I asked several questions and she gave me good answers. My account was canceled after about $125 had been charged to it and I was instructed to destroy that debit card. Next week, when I get back to Grand Rapids I will have to do some paperwork at my credit union to get those charges off my account. In the end, it won’t cost me any dollars, only the inconvenience. 

I called them back yesterday and talked to another security specialist. He suggested that when I do a debit transaction away from home or in a business where I don’t usually do business, to use it as a credit card; sign for it rather than punch in the pin number. He also said it probably didn’t matter. All hackers need is your card number. They have machines to make their own bogus cards and sell them with directions to use them as credit cards at business that do not ask for identification. I guess I really do need to check my credit card activity on the credit union website, every night. I am truly impressed that my guys were good at recognizing the fraud and getting it stopped so fast. They must have algorithms that profile your purchase patterns and when a couple of unlikely transactions pop up, a red flag goes up and a trained specialist takes over. It happened once, several years ago. The security specialist challenged a purchase at a restaurant in Buenos Aries, Argentina. We canceled that card and ordered a new one but I didn’t really see myself as a target. 

I try to identify with the cyber thief, whatever it is that makes us alike. I think there is a bit of a thief in all of us. The easier it is to profit from someone else’s loss and the less likely you get caught, you give it more thought, tempted to go there. Who knows, under the right circumstance maybe you do go there. Being so physically removed from the victim, it’s easy to rationalize you are just doing what someone else will do, if you don’t. I think that is the underlying logic of free market capitalism. If we compete and we want to have winners, there are going to be losers and that’s part of the equation. How many day traders make a good living selling short? I imagine all reputable businessmen would cringe at my rationale and take me to task. They don’t see themselves as human on human predators, as if we don’t feel the pull of a darker side. They say you can't buy respectability but we (all of us) we pour a lot of money down that hole. I’m not going to be angry and despise hackers or even their Johns who buy the bogus cards but I will be more cautious with my own business.