Murmuration

J. talked about the race riots as we drove away from the half-way house. It was his first day out on his own. He had a place now and would sleep in if he wanted, come and go without having to check in, could get a cell phone, a camera, stay out late. The state said he could not drink. The Feds said he could.

"I'll go with the Feds," he said as we drove east, toward the sun and his new place.

"If you're white -- or brown, or black, or whatever the wrong color is in that moment -- and in the way, you'll get it," he said. "They don't care what you think in those moments. Like I'm an independent. It doesn't matter to them."

He talked more prison politics. He was open about it. Even though he was out and likely done with it, he still worked at it, let it out.

"The shot callers make you do things." 

He had a few plastic bags of clothes and a red electric guitar, China Girl, because it was red, real red, like high-gloss Chinese enamel.

"You're just in it," he said. "The riots are like a tornado or a wild fire. One instant it's all happening over there, and then, Bam!, it's right next to you, right in your face. And you gotta act. No choice, man."

As J. talked, I thought of starlings, hundreds of thousands of starlings, in flight, in a flock, winding and shifting, and breathing like a giant organism made up in coordinated individuals. They are subject to the group movements, the group whims, thoughts and decisions and forces bigger than single members of the flock.

Ornithologists call these gatherings murmurations, perhaps for the whispering sounds they make and wings beat in unison.

Yet, no birds drop from the sky, beaten and damaged from those murmurations. Race riots leave bodies broken and bleeding on the yard. Property gets trashed.

Starlings move according to some ancient urgings. The shots get called somehow, but they work to get the flock home to roost, to follow wind currents that make migration more efficient.

Humans play by rules too. The flock rules are more about beliefs than air currents. We live in swirling abstractions that we construct and enforce. Individuals play along or pay the price being exposed and alone.

Which tribe do you belong to? How much do you make? What do you do? Are you wi me or agin me?

We aren't a flock trying to survive the elements, we are tribes vying for advantage over each other.

But we admire the starlings, post videos of their fluid clouds of changing shapes, the governing rules of wind currents, and dancing grace, of choreography and shared vision.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/88UVJpQGi88

J. knows how the human flock can move, how it can be a steamroller that crushes its own kind. He has no illusions. He is re-entering the stream, playing a new game. The rules, contrary to what the starlings deal with, are malleable, can be revised.

Starlings roost rather than crash and burn. I guess you gotta know where you want to end up.

I hope J. gets to run with starlings now that he is out of the pen. We'll fly, crazy busy, but watching the wings and sensing the changes in the wind. 

The Volunteer

He is tall. We see him heading downtown on his tall bicycle in a T-shirt, shorts, reflective vest. It is 46 degrees, and the sun has not yet popped over the horizon.

Cars, however, have swarmed the roads heading into town, making it something of a slalom through parked vehicles when he approaches the stoplights. They are turning and have blocked the bike lane. No matter.

He will wend his way through miles of streets, dozens of stoplights like this one. He is on his way to help others who can't afford the help. He will install toilets, water heaters, replace leaky gas lines, crawl under double-wides to locate sewage leaks.

Some of the houses will be tidy, their residents grateful for his work. Others will be neglected and filthy. Some of those people will nag him about doing a better, faster, more thorough job. They will bitch. They will offer him food.

He is a young man, only eighteen, recently out of high school, living away from home, finding his way, making connections.

He is not in it for money or recognition or credit. Nobody told him to do this. He listens to a voice only he can hear.

But he is learning how to do things, how to read people, to see the range of what some people do with their lives, their triumphs, their failures, their wounds. He is getting an education.

And he watches. He is recording. Not much is lost to a young man paying attention, his mind still clear, somewhat less cluttered than it might be. He does not seek distraction, but a good story or movie or soccer game makes for a break from the grind of having to be "on."

What will he do with this time, this volunteer? And what will he make of it when he is older, looking back on how he pulled the bills from his wallet of allotted time? What will he gain for those precious days laid down on the counter of experience?

What does any of us gain from our actions done in days that show up before we are fully ready for them to pass?

I guess it depends on what you, he, or I do with the change left after the accounts are tallied.

The Story That Heals

There are times when the heart beats like wings of quail scared into flight by a pursuing hawk.

Those are the times when a story is trying to be born.

It is gestating in the steamy folds of flesh at the core of you. It is what you have wanted all  your life, a heart's desire both powerful and fragile. It refuses to die, even when locked away in solitary for a lifetime. It is the message that we carry into this life, the words we are supposed to find and utter to the ones we love, and to the ones we don't.

The story can explode in a fit of rage and exhaustion that threaten to bring down empires of habit. It can exhale in a whisper after making love. It is made of the words that expose and lay bare and liberate.

The words terrify. You don't want others to know what they are. Your life depends on letting others know what they are.

The words are there, but have to be earned. They are wild horses that must be drawn down from the mountains by handfuls of sweet grass. The grass is grown by you over years patience and cultivation and faith.

They come snorting mist in the chill of morning. They whisper I forgive you. They pull you to your feet and call you home to the woods, to the words that wait for you to give them breath and life.

It is what you want the world to see of you, the you that is true, that is your birthright, your destiny.

And it is right in front of you, visible when you have the eyes to see it, the silence to hear it, and the willingness, the presence of mind, to remember. What are they? The wild, skittish, and beautiful words?

The Black Dog

The black dog was back again. It was not the first time and was not even much of a surprise. But this time he was heavier than before, and the dog seemed darker, deeper.

The dog followed him, plodding along, persistent as night, and had a way of sapping attention, energy, hope even. The messages were always the same. His sad eyes said no and it's not worth it and why bother.

The worst part was that he would sit on the man and weigh him down, make it hard to move, to rise, to carry any load.

The dog put up a blockade: nothing in, nothing out. It did not matter that the sun shone or that friends stopped by. The man could not see it, was not really there to take it in. And the thoughts went round and round and spiraled down to the aching bone at the heart of him.

The dog didn't care,but seemed to like the disconnect, seemed to feed on it. It grew heavier, closer.

The man tried to outrun the dog and would speed away on his bicycle or his running shoes or in a car. The dog would fade into the distance sometimes, but would always catch up when the man had to rest.

Every once in a while the man hid in a fog of drink or he wrapped himself in the blanket of love's comforts. But the dog was stronger than all of it, and he was there, waiting, patient, hungry.

The man wondered how long the dog would stay this time, how he would hold off the heaviness. The dog would leave eventually. It always had in the past. But it showed no signs of being in a hurry this time.

It was time again to take his friend to the desk, to the canvas, to the music. The only way to shake the dog was to give to something bigger than himself, to turn darkness into something of beauty, as much as his ability would allow. The nagging anchor of the dark night lightened a bit when he found a phrase, or a line, or the right note, so he sang, and tried to dance.

This time, maybe, the dog might outlast the flickers of hope that managed to glow in the dark.

Maybe too the dance might push though the night, leaving the dog a distant shadow when the sun burst over the ridge.

Sultan

They call him Curly. He has no hair. Most of his front teeth are gone too.

But he has dentures that he puts in for the workshop. He smiles often. Talks a lot.

He has a mind of his own, and holds up a hand-written sign that says "I refuse" when I ask him to do an assignment. He wants to write about his religion, about perseverance, overcoming odds, acceptance, taking the hard path rather than the garden variety of drugs, hookers, and violence.

Most often, the writing comes across as religious jargon, but lately he has been infusing his spiritual message with image. "Your life is not a problem/ hiding behind limousine/ tinted windows," one poem begins. "Wow!" I say. "If life is not a problem hiding behind tinted limousine windows, what is it?"

He is working at answering that one.

The change has been a long slog. We wrangle about his poems almost every Saturday. He is confident in what he has to say, but not so confident in how he says it. He doesn't want to listen to some university-trained white guy critique his street poetry, especially if that white guy's first name is Norman. That just doesn't fly.

We have known each other for about five years now, and I have spent more time with him than with many of my closest friends or even family. He has become a friend of sorts. I find myself thinking about him during my work week, and he has written letters about writing to the students in my classes, especially the ones who are struggling, who are first generation college students, students who come from some of the same parts of town as he did, who face the same challenges, the same temptations.

When I taught high school, a very bright student once asked me, in all sincerity "Why should I listen to what you have to say about writing and stuff, when I can make twice what you make dealing with my homies?"

I answered that money was not the only part of success and that prison was likely part of the gang and drug equation. I suspect that I did not have much cred, cred that Sultan likely would have had.

He shrugged, crossed his arms, and dropped out a few days later.

So, here is Sultan, the man on the other end on that road, learning to write poetry. He has time, lots of time. And he reads. I brought him in an anthology of Rumi's poetry, along with some Hafiz and some critical essays. He reads these books and applies their messages.

He sits at my side in the workshop. He laughs hard and often, sometimes with teeth, sometimes without. He listens to the other men in the workshop read. He listens more closely than I do, and he is learning how to respond in ways that they might hear. He tries not to offend or to alienate, but to reach and connect.

He applies his spiritual beliefs.

Sometimes he takes what he calls "a hiatus." These breaks can last a month or a year. I can't expect that he will ever come back, and I don't know know what function these breaks from the workshop fulfill.

I suspect that he assimilates, broods, ruminates. He sits with his demons for all I know. I feel the same way sometimes, but do not have the will to break away and take the time let the swirling debris of my mind and my life settle.

When Sultan returns, he brings his usual fire, but now writes with more depth and clarity. He has taken the insights into how to live a step further. I can see it in the ideas. He is becoming a teacher, a minister, and in a less flattering sense, a preacher.

It's too bad that preaching and poetry do not mix well, so we butt heads, again. 

He does not want to be told what to do and still holds up his hand-written sign, usually with a toothy smile: "I refuse."

Mr. Many Goats

Well, it happened again.

I heard a good story, saw the possibilities, and reached into my pocket.

It has to be said, that these characters come in all races, ages, genders, and body types. I hope I am not picking on anyone in particular. 

This time it was a Navajo guy, M. Many Goats, a great name. He was weathered in a way that only the open skies of northern New Mexico can weather a man. He was toasted a dark brown, cracked and wrinkled. His lips had a black layer of toughness over them, leathery. He had good eyes. 

And he had a good story. His parents had perished from alcoholism, as had several of his siblings, and he was going to turn that tide. His was the role of witness, voice, story-teller, and he was going to talk to the young people, to testify.

Now, this is good. I liked this guy, and wanted to help with this cause. So I gave him the twenty bucks he needed to get a bus ticket to Flagstaff.

He was even going to email me when he got there, to let me know he had made it safely.

Two days later, I saw him again, hanging around the same spot, looking as lost as he was before.

"Yeah, the buses only run every three days or so," he told me. "I will catch it tonight. But in the meantime, I have this wound from a spider bite and I need some sterile bandages."

He showed me the cardboard patch over the pink flesh, the swollen leg.

"I know a little about that kind of thing," I said, before giving him another five dollars for some gauze.

When I told my friend Randi about the guy, she said, "Oh, him... He's been panhandling around here for quite a while. He's usually down on Fourth Avenue hitting up the tourists with his story."

Oh well, taken again.

One could get bitter with this kind of knowledge, but I am not going to do that.

I'm going to trust M. until he is trust-worthy.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

Heat

I don't know why or how it was that he came to knock on my door, but he did. When I looked through the screen at a younger me, he turned around and ran.

He was faster, lighter, and younger, so I had to go extra hard to keep him in sight. I yelled at him to slow down because I had things I needed to tell him about women, work, and money. He slowed just enough to be able to hear me, but not enough to let me get close, to reason with him.

I was out of breath.

"Don't give up your soul for comfort," I shouted.

He cocked his head and thought about that. I noticed his jeans were worn at the seat and that he was skinnier than I remember being. There was something very sad in his eyes.

I wanted to tell him things about being a man. That he should get better organized, not be in such a hurry, so desperate, so needy. I wanted to tell him about pain, about being with pain, learning to study it, to breathe in it, even though part of you is panicking to end it, get it over, take painkillers. There was also the stuff about our father, how he would forgive.

But he picked up his pace until he saw a young woman running toward us. An older one was chasing her, as desperately as I was, more winded even, but tougher too.

The young ones met and ducked into an alley before speeding off in  a car I sold thirty years ago. I didn't get a chance to tell him that I wrecked that car.

A familiar face looked into mine from the face of an old woman, more or less my age. She shook her head and looped her arms around my neck.

She cried softly as my old car sped past in the other direction, into an unknown future.