A Few Kind Words for Tedium

It is a Saturday, late afternoon, and I sit with my decompression burrito after the prison writing workshops. I try not to spill salsa on my prison pants. They are the only pants I own that the Arizona Department of Correction’s State Prison, Tucson Complex, will allow inside the yard, through the fence topped with concertina wire, past the drug sniffing dogs. I don’t like them. They are stiff khakis, not my usual blue jeans, not the comfortable cotton of leisure and laid back living of Tucson.

After the grime and cracked plastic, the overuse and overcrowding of the prison, I need to sit and think and make the transition back. It is quiet enough to sit and listen to the inmate’s voices before they get washed away in the incessant noise of streaming entertainment that is part of twenty-first century living.

Those voices fade soon after the bus ride to the gate, the passing through the sally port, the music-filled car commute back into the “free world.” There is so much noise out here that I have to listen hard to remember what they said, how they said it, and let those voices settle into my mind before I can forget them.

There is J., the San Francisco heroin addict who writes sonnets and villanelles, and M. the armed robber making sense out of his gangster past in bilingual free verse, and W. the skinhead and spiritual philosopher who struggles with finding telling details to ground his abstract musings. Each of them has a story, has a voice that rises out of, and recognizes, the disaster of his life.

Many of them write better than my students at the university. Sons and daughters of privilege, the students often can’t find time to read required material, much less expend effort arranging words that will best express a thought.

In the prison, even the tables we use in the writing class have begun to delaminate and the stubs of pencils and cheap pens the inmates use to write infuriate their large hands. The need for finesse plus too much power equals frustration.

I have the rest of the day. Time. The inmates say they have too much time. Maybe that is why the writing is often so good, why the learning curve is so steep, why the improvement can be so dramatic. Boredom, mixed with some fear, violence, and avoiding trouble, to be sure, but boredom and a quiet tedium pervade the place. They have fewer distractions – no cell phones, computers, I pods, very little television. Their lives slow-cook in routine, deprivation.

Tedium, paired with opportunities like the writing workshops, can be the catalyst for writing. Maybe the two together are necessary. When focus and opportunity intersect, a chemical reaction between the two can join hunch with expression. Here is what I see:  if the intention, opportunity, practice, and support are combined with reflection and collaboration even semi literate writers can produce art. A corollary to this is that absorbing work like writing can be an antidote for anxiety, medicine for despair.

Any art requires discipline and surrender. Steady effort, focus, and work, I find, are out of style, and in short supply. I forget that writing requires commitment as well as inspiration. I want to pay attention, have made the choice to attend to the work, but need reminders to do so.

I think about my own opportunities – laptop at the ready, printers, copy machines, projectors, the amount of information at my command on line and in the library – and notice that, rather than write, I opt for email or surfing the web for the best deals on whatever I feel I need at the time. Small talk, consumption, and sound-bites litter my days. I produce little because I am free to be perpetually distracted. I choose it.

Maybe this craving for distraction is a human trait; maybe it is a fatal flaw. Maybe we need to learn to listen again for those voices, that way of thinking that arises from a need to pay attention and to consider ways to say what needs to be said, to solve problems, even if doing so feels slow, a little tedious, and uncomfortable.

Watching Ravens

I pass the sign warning that anyone beyond this point should be prepared to be searched, or, in Spanish, “revisado.” I like that idea better. I should be prepared to be revised. First drafts only up to this point. From here on, you need to focus and figure out what the hell it is you want to say, to do, and to act for a reason. Nobody except students writes for no reason other than his or her own.

The tubs are heavy with writing pads, pens, some magazines, a few books of poetry, copies of inmate drafts that we will discuss. I set the clear tubs down on the steel table so the guard can go through and check for contraband. All of it is contraband, really, but usually the guard just sifts through the pads, shuffles a few pages of the books to make sure they are not hollowed out. He has no interest and likely thinks this stuff is worthless, harmless, and a bit eccentric, if not insane. Why would anyone, including inmates want to sit down and write only to have others critique it? The best outcome is that the work might show up in an obscure journal somewhere, just another crazy poem or story that weirdos would read.

Or at least that’s what I think when I look at his face. I see a faint disgust mixed with bewilderment. Normally, he replaces the lids, and I walk through the metal detector to pick up the tubs on the other side. From here I have only to pass through the sally port and then I am in. I go through this every Saturday, and watch but keep my thoughts to myself. I am lucky and familiar enough that all of this protocol is routine. I see myself on the other side already, under the roof, next to the shoe-shine station, waiting for my ride.

There I will catch a bus and head on over to the Rincon Unit, a two minute ride from the main gate. I will hear the electronic locks snap open, like a bullet being chambered. I will show my badge through the half-inch thick, mirrored security glass and the invisible guard on the other side will open the sliding electric door, clearing my path to the yard and the Education Building.

Musing on my near future, I wait, ready to move the tubs, to feel my fingernails bend under the weight of them. When the guard signals me to lift the lids and stand back, I do, before unloading my pockets of glasses, pen, clip-on badge that allows me clearance, car keys, and any loose change. I am ready to go through the metal detector when he asks me for the memo. I am snapped out of reverie.

“What memo?” I ask.

“Your personal property memo that lists everything you are taking in to the units.”

I don’t have this.

“I have never been asked for a memo before. This is for the creative writing workshops. We’ve been running them for a long time.”

“You can’t take anything in that is not accounted for, and you need to bring it all back out with you.”

“They need paper and pens to write during the week so we can workshop on Saturdays. I have to leave them pads and folders.”

“Nothing is allowed in that doesn’t come back out.”

I think this is some kind of glitch, so ask to see a supervisor. The guard says she will contact the sergeant, before re-entering the control room. She points to a bench that looks like some detention site. This is where the drug sniffing dogs usually wait between checking visitors for drugs.

I wait forty five minutes. The sergeant, a blonde, heavy set woman, emerges from a gray office complex, and walks, with a slight swagger, toward me. I can see a trace of irritation in her face. I explain that the materials are for the writing workshop and that I take them in every week and leave them with the inmates.

“I’m sorry. But you cannot leave anything with the inmates.” She looks at me, but doesn’t look at me, and is reciting policy. It’s her job.

“You can’t go in with anything not on your list. You won’t be able to go in today.”

I can tell she is hoping that I will give up, go back to the car with my tubs, and go home. I decide to bargain, and ask if I can take in a file with copies of a poem by Sandra Alcosser, a poet who is coming in as a guest speaker in a couple of weeks.

“We need to read samples of her work,” I say matter-of-factly. Both of them look at me and each other. I keep going and offer to take the tubs back to the car as a concession, going in with only my fig leaf of a file folder.

They consent. “But only this once,” as a way of winning this battle, of teaching me to submit.

So I take my contraband back to the car, lock it up, and return for my revision. I pass through the metal detector and the electric doors of the sally port and enter the yard. I will have to figure this one out.

I count thirty-two ravens in a cottonwood tree over the DA, the Dining Area, as I walk from the gate to the Education Building in the Rincon Unit. Ravens whistle above me as they negotiate the gusty breezes. They seem to like the razor wire and the dead trees, the military lettering of the buildings – HU5 – the strafed austerity of the recreation area. I like them. They mock us humans and our folly even as they benefit from our trash and discards. They are not proud and take none of this seriously. OK, I say to myself, so that’s the way it is. Fly high enough not to get caught and keep your eyes on the cottonwood. If you’re lucky, no one will shoot you down.

Prison Writing Workshop

Eleven ravens roost

in a winter cottonwood

wind slices through

my jacket as the lock

snaps shut

fingers strain at the weight

of papers and books

and pens and notepads

and other dangerous characters

as a man lights his cigarette

on an electrical coil

wired to a steel post

a bare grey stump

bleaches in the sun

mute now

no breeze can stir the leaves

it used to offer as shade

and here in this

clear unforgiving

light

no one

can hide or run

but a man can refuse

square one of

a new year

a blank page waits

for the story

that will mark the passing

of steps in hopeless time

snow shimmers on the mountain

far beyond the confining wire

one by one the ravens

lift into the wind and are carried

on the words

thrown down like dice

in this the last and

only chance to

harvest new truths

born of an

impossible heart.

The Truck Drug

I had been working hard – teaching extra classes and summer school – for quite a few years. With all that discretionary money burning my pockets, I started jonesing, craving, hungering for something special, like a pickup truck. I wanted it bad, had the fever, needed a fix -- even if I needed to fix it. But it had to be cheap.

I found one for sale by a guy named Ricardo who agreed to meet me at a westside park with the truck. Ricardo spoke only Spanish and had some trouble with one of his eyes. It squinted at me. I love Spanish, have lived in Mexico and South America and sometimes have trouble with my eyes too. All of this was perfectly exciting, haggling, and biligualing -- all part of getting the deal of a lifetime. I have paid my dues. I deserve this thing. We spoke Spanish and agreed on a price.

Ricardo literally ran out of the bank after I gave him the money. I saw him enter an alley and keep going. Nothing strange about that I said to myself. But I had to think hard to remember if I had ever run out a bank and into an alley before. Oh well, never mind. I had it, the machine of my emerging manhood.

The truck fit something missing in myself, some need to be mobile with manly style, a ticket to outdoorsman cred. Those truck ads between news spots in the morning had done spun their spell. I wanted to lift a bulldozer engine-block high above the truck with a crane and then drop it in the bed. Slow-mo video would show the springs absorbing the crushing load while some gravelly voice said "Truck Month."

My new truck was waiting for me outside, and only one of the tires was going flat. Hmmm. I didn’t notice that before. And when I put the key in the ignition it would not stop beeping. It must need gas I thought.

After gas and tires and a few days driving around listening the beeps, various rattles, and creaks, I let my wife drive it. She said that her father had told her that the most important part of making cars last was keeping the oil changed. She then asked me if I had bothered to change the oil of my new prized but squeaky possession.

I decided to get the oil changed.

OK, so it all started with that simple refresher of life-giving lube – not even a fully necessary lube job in my eyes. But, given the wife had been driving the truck, I suspected she had been out drag racing while I was sleeping.

Speedway Boulevard, down the road from our quiet little house, does that to late middle-aged women. They motor down there on a Saturday night, and a vehicle like a Ford Ranger pickup truck with a 3.0 V6 engine becomes a whip to dominate prepubescent boys driving nitro-charged Mitsubishis.

So, anyway, the wife had been driving the truck and it likely needed an oil change – if not primal scream or electro shock therapy.

First thing in the morning I dropped the key off in the secret slot at the shop. I went to a coffee shop to wait and think about my life. Mainly I stared off into space and thanked my lucky stars that I had a job, two legs, six fingers, and working bowels. These are hard times after all.

I sat that way (semi comatose) for about half an hour when I got the first call. “Yes, this is he. Did I know that the oil pan gasket was leaking? No. Is it bad? It's THAT bad?? And the right wheel bearing is about to go out, making it likely that the front wheel will fly off in traffic at a high speed while I am surrounded by semis during rush hour in central Los Angeles? And the fitting on the radiator is bad too?”

He goes on to mention something about a condenser, a sensor, disforbibulating microtizer, and a couple of other simple parts that he just happens to have in stock. Just for good measure he asks if the truck was ever raced on the NASCAR circuit or if it had been in a wreck, oh, and, why the seats are so ugly.

Also, he wondered why there had been so much welding underneath the truck, like compartments had been added and then removed.

“What was this thing used for?” he asked.

Exactly.

My craving for the truck drug had landed me a drug truck.

No problem. I can handle it all. Oil! Gas! Mobility! Broadcasting a manly image!

My attempt to frenzy my way to clarity soon fizzled.

So I just sat there and attempted to digest the news.That didn't work so well either because it just made juices bubble down in the pelvic region.

Rather than digest, I decided to block it out and go to my inner quiet place and say yes, yes to repairs, to mechanical optimism, to Allah.

MMMM I think to myself. I am here now in the open euphoria of truck present. It is time to release, to let go. I will let go of my attachments, even my garments if that is necessary, the shirt off my back.

Then I get the next call. The radiator it seems has joined the rest of the car in full frontal rebellion. Each part had decided to take the day off, go on strike, call in sick and generally retire. Only the radio soldiers on. It plays Mexican polkas and nothing else. OK, well I can sit and simmer under the Arizona sun in my dead, serene, peaceful pickup and listen to polkas as long as the battery lasts.

I wonder how to pay for all of this. The voice says they will consider collateral or payments that extend into the next millennium. He worked with me, was creative with collateral, quick with number crunching, perspicacious with the big financial picture.

“My Mother?”

“No, she is dead...”

“Wife?”

“Only in her mid 50s.”

I hear some talk in back and something about that should cover part of the radiator.

“Dogs?”

“Nope, no dogs.”

“ Kids?”

“Yes. Two. That’ll cover the rest of the radiator? Good, we’re getting somewhere.”

We go back and forth about my real estate holdings and retirement plans before haggling some over the value of my soul. Eventually we settle on indentured servitude for the remainder of my days, along with a payment plan that will be passed in perpetuity to all my heirs, their heirs, and so on.

“That should work,” I say.

You might think this is a high price to pay just to burn up non-renewable fossil fuels as the planet slides into decay, but hey, when you think of the millions that can be made betting on drag races, it’s a ganga neighbor.

One of Those Things

Things defy the laws of physics when swept up in summer floods like the one that roared through Aravaipa Canyon after a monster monsoon. A "gauge" -- an 18" steel culvert containing delicate instruments bolted to solid bedrock -- that measures the amount of water flowing through the Aravaipa meander washed away, ripped from its anchors before the water crested. It is estimated, therefore, that the flow reached 80,000 to 100,000 cubic feet per minute, which is roughly the flow of the Colorado River.

Granite boulders – in an avalanche of partial suspension, freed from the effects of gravity – tumbled like marbles down the stream bed, clacking against each other in a thunderous free fall. Stately cottonwoods and thick-skinned walnuts bent down like hair combed into rows as neat as corduroy. 

The trees left standing in the streambed have no leaves, no branches, not even bark. Their trunks are all pointing to something that came from that way, upstream. Steel fence posts wrapped around trunks like spaghetti, and roots were woven into mats tighter than Navajo rugs. Trucks looked like aluminum cans pounded by pile drivers into rock banks. Corrugated roofing suggested tin foil, rolled and tucked neatly around the trunks of trees still standing. 

All of this mess was in a hurry somewhere and forgot what it used to be before the floodwaters awakened sleeping traits.

Back before the floods, David Rychener bought a ranch along the creek and set it up to be a retreat center, a place for people to rejuvenate themselves, to rediscover old passions and excitements. He had fixed the place up on a shoestring. David’s one extravagance was the metal patio furniture that he and Joyce bought so that visitors could sit and see the wash next to the big house. It was nice stuff. Iron. Stylish. Expensive. 

Then the first floodwater rose, entered the house, and carried the patio furniture into the orchard. David saw the table in a pile of debris and stood it upright, planning to come back later and move it up to the porch. The second flood came and tore out the tool shed, made tinker toys out of dumptruck, jeep, and tractors, undercut and then slapped down the suspension bridge, buried years of work, erased green, standing trees from the meander plain, and took the patio table away. 

It seemed that the table was lost forever, along with other prized possessions of those who live along the stream. Even if it were to be found, it would likely be good only as some tortured mangle of rusted sculpture.

One night, Jumbo, a friend and ranch hand, was out looking for his flood-stolen pick-up truck and his nickel-plated pistol under a full moon. (Some things can only be found at night, under the moon.) His flashlight played across a metal leg of something buried beneath tons of trees, silt, matted branches, prickly pear pads, roots, more sand, rocks – all it overlaid with a monstrous, hundred-year-old cottonwood tree trunk. Yes it was our iron-legged, reluctant wanderer, upside down. 

Two weeks later we were standing at the perimeter of the mess with every hope to exhume the itinerant mesa. With chainsaws, shovels, pry-bars, a front-end loader with a logging chain on the bucket, and pure doggedness, we began to dig. We worked our way from the outside, cutting away mesquite branches that had been dropped by the final wave of flood. Layer by layer, we undid what the flood had deposited. We tunneled into the congealed chaos, prying back the vines, the roots, the green branches – all fingers holding the table captive. Daedalus and his labyrinth held nothing over the maze we navigated. 

Then came the dusty work of yanking silt-impregnated willow whips, roots, and cacti off of the inner layer of the knot the floods had tied. Then more chain-sawing as the giant toothpick pile and stripped trees were extracted, one by one. Then came the dirt: several feet of it littered with more dismembered cottonwood boughs, rocks, and tree trunks. 

The legs began to emerge, one, then another, a fourth, a general shape. The table was down in there somewhere. We dug and swept and revealed. More trees. We cut out a box in the earth, reversing the purpose of a grave, leaving cross-sections of sycamore exposed in the sides of the excavation. Down. Down. Then Will hit the mesh with his shovel. The bottom. Or the top, depending on your perspective. Gradually we found the edges of the table’s mesh top. There it lay, revealed, undressed, born back into the light and air, in its entirety, still intact, flat as a Kansas horizon, unbent. 

When we lifted it out from beneath the last of the trunks, we could not believe it. It was as if the table had been placed in bed of the stream, then packed with protective padding, and tenderly wrapped with tons of debris and tree trunks before being left for us to find and open, a scavenger hunt surprise. 

What a thing. 

We lifted it from its temporary resting place. It was a table reborn, a treasure recovered, a prodigal patio accessory come home. I thought David would burst from delight and gratitude. We carefully carried it to the tractor, where we bungee corded it to the bucket for its trip back upstream. David took it slow. He was in no hurry now. The table would be restored to its place with ceremony. Will and I rode alongside in the Mule, an informal procession. The hunters returned with the spoils and bounty of the river. We waved at the passing pecan trees, the croaking ravens, the chuckling stream, the clouds bowing overhead. 

That night we sat beneath the half moon and ate together at the wrought iron table none of us believed we would ever see again. We toasted the second life of a friend thought lost forever, swept away by the floods of time and change, a refugee from irrepressible impermanence of all things, from oblivion mercurial as the whispering waters.