Where I'm At

School is closed. Most of the city, county, and state too. The snow is ridiculous. I've shoveled twice so far. Eight inches have fallen in about six hours. Syracuse, New York in February. 

My neighbor and I took a break from shoveling to talk across the street. "I had the choice to have lunch or shovel. Some choice," he said, leaning on his shovel. He's even more fastidious about hid driveway than I am but nowhere near happy about it. Snow is a bother. The cold too. The driving through all of it. Ugh. 

Our snowblower died and both to save money and be green I decided not to replace it. I've been shoveling and, aside from a bit of soreness, it has been fine. During these storms, I go out often. I'll be out there again within the hour. 

About now, someone says I'm crazy to live here. I understand, but it's not the snow that's toughest. It's the grey skies which I've seen drive people out of their happiness. Still, even under grey skies and feet of snow, I'm happy where I am. 

Really. 

I love snow days and generally like snow even though I don't ski and no longer snow blow (my favorite winter activity). I've begun to enjoy shoveling. The snow is beautiful and I like crazy weather that doesn't involve hurricane winds ripping off the roof or earth suddenly shifting beneath the foundation. Syracuse has tough snow but no disasters. I can deal with tough but try to avoid disaster. 

This is where I have lived. I went away for college and a job, but there was no question where we would raise our children. This is a place where strangers smile when I say hello. They respond, have a good one. And so I have.  

I've chosen where I live, who I am, where I'm going. I chose this city, this life, these friends, this family, this act of writing. I chose all of it and it I've chosen well. When I look closely, I see that it is good. It feels good too. I feel good. 

Friends can't wait until they move to Florida, Arizona, the Carolinas, out of Syracuse. Some sound happy about where they want to go. Others are just sound angry about where they are. I listen and nod. They ask, "where will you go?" I shrug, smile, and say that I'm good here. They ask, really? And I nod. There's not much to say and I've no reason to convince them to stay. It is enough that this is and has been the place for me. 

All of this has less to do with Syracuse, New York than it does with Brian G. Fay. The best thing about getting old is the settling down. As a kid I thought that would be depressing part, but being settled opens doors within me. Knowing where I am, I know better who I am and who I might become. 

It's about time I went out and scraped the driveway again. The snow is still coming hard, another two inches in the driveway. I'll do my neighbors' sidewalks to either side. We help each other out. If someone else is out there shoveling or just walking by, I'll say hello and listen to what they have to say about the storm. I'll smile because I'm standing in my driveway, outside my home, smack dab in the middle of where I want to be. I'll smile because I know where I am right now and it is good. Let it snow. I'll keep shoveling. 

Carry On

On the turntable CSN&Y's "Carry On" is spinning and it seems apropos to the day. 

“One morning I woke up and I knew
You were really gone
A new day, a new way, I knew
I should see it along
Go your way, I’ll go mine
And carry on”

Today is the third anniversary of my dad's death. At breakfast, Mom asked, "can you believe it has been three years?" I felt bad saying yeah, but that's exactly what it feels like. I have no problem placing that day in my history or remembering who I was and who I have become. I'm not clearheaded on all matters, but in this I know what's what. Like the song says, a morning came when I woke up and knew he was gone. He went his way and I go mine. We carry on. 

Shortly after he died, a friend invited me to drink bourbon and hang out. We drank two-thirds of a bottle of Basil Hayden. About an hour into the bottle, he said, "tell me about your dad." I paused a moment, then told stories. Good ones. The kind that made Dad almost present in the room with us. The whiskey helped, but mostly it was a friend indulging my grieving and healing. 

“The sky is clearing and the night
Has gone out
The sun, he come, the world
Is all full of love
Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice
But to carry on”

I still find myself conflicted some, but mostly over what others need. The cemetery is a good example. There's nothing there for me. It's a place of solace for others, but for me there's no one there. I worked there as a kid, cutting grass, trimming trees, watching the backhoe dig and fill graves. Dad was a funeral director. I was around the dead and the grieving often. Because of that, I don't find Dad at the cemetery nor do I need him to be there. I have no choice but to carry on and it becomes easier each day to rejoice, rejoice as I accept the sky, the night, the sun, and the love in my world. 

The record has moved onto Neil Young's "Helpless." I'm shaking my head. I like the song, but it's not how I feel. Dad rarely seemed helpless and that was the thing I most wanted to learn from him. The car breaks down miles from home? Fix it. There isn't enough money in the bank? Make more. Dad died suddenly? Carry on. 

“Where are you going now, my love?
Where will you be tomorrow?
Will you bring me happiness?
Will you bring me sorrow?”

Carrying on is asking and trying to answer such questions. I wonder where I'm going, where I'll be tomorrow. I'm curious but not worried because the answer to the questions about happiness and sorrow have obvious answers. I've already found a vein of happiness and am mining it for all its worth. 

I find myself often reminded of the man and smiling a little. Then I say, "hey, Dad," and I carry on. 

Extra Ordinary

Yesterday I had an idea for a short essay about school. I scratched a note on a post-it and went back to teaching. At lunch, I took fifteen minutes to knock out a rough 850-word draft, then began editing and revising down toward 600. Halfway through, I was called to a meeting which lasted an hour. Back from that, I picked up where I had left off and made it through to the end. I read it through again and posted 560 words to the world. 

No big deal. I write like this all the time. It's the most ordinary of things. 

Last night, I was at a party where one of the hosts played electric guitar in a four-piece band. They played a tight instrumental rendition of Steely Dan's "Peg" which I love. I watched him as the song wound toward the solo and wondered how he would handle something Becker and Fagen tried with dozens of guitar players. He hit the first note and moved into a solo that nodded at the recorded version but which he made his own. 

I love watching musicians perform and studied him. It seemed extraordinary to me, as musical performance often does, but when we talked about it, he shrugged like he had just written a short essay and posted it to his blog. No big deal. He does this all the time. 

Earlier that day I tweeted that "I can't be the only one who has this feeling that anything I'm able to do can't possibly be extraordinary." I was thinking then about my writing. I could have written it of my friend's work with the guitar. So many things are extraordinary until we do them. 

One thing that remains extraordinary for me is the prose poem. I wrote one this week, February Fifth, and it surprises me. It began with a line in my head and the approaching anniversary of my dad's unexpected death. "It always snows on the fifth of February even when it doesn't." That stuck with me for a day before I typed it and let the other words come through me. I revised the hell out of it and posted it, waiting for reactions. There weren't many.

My wife says that it's tough to know what to say about poetry. At first this wasn't enough for me. Then I thought of my friend Chris's photography. 

Chris began as a nature/landscape photographer. (Actually, he began as a fertilized egg, but I'll skip ahead.) He has moved on to fine art photography. He'll forgive me for saying that he produces fewer pretty pictures and iconic shots of obvious majesty. He's onto something far less ordinary, a world in which he largely has to decide what is good because fewer people can follow him there. A shot of pine needles on snow confuses many because it is extraordinary. 

I say that word in exploded fashion: extra ordinary. Out of and beyond the ordinary. 

There is something to be said for going beyond what we are used to, for reaching toward the extraordinary. There is a lot to be said too for the things that we have made ordinary: my friend on guitar, Chris creating photographs, me writing essays. Taking on the extraordinary and coming to feel them as natural doesn't diminish them, but it does leave me wanting to reach beyond. I love writing essays such as this and enjoy the comfort with which I can compose and polish them. I also love reaching for something more even when I don't yet know what it is.

I came into this not knowing what I wanted to say. I come to the end not knowing much more of what it's all about, but feeling sure that this is the way to go, the ideas to ponder. I'm creating something. What it is, I don't know. And that, in and of itself, feels extraordinary. 

Walking Out Of Class

I walked out of my class today. It wasn't anything bad. No one was bleeding. There was no smoke bomb or stink bomb. I walked out for a simple reason: I had to pee. 

Ours is a school filled with at-risk kids. That crowd can get out of hand fast. I've had it happen in my class a couple dozen times a year. This is why the usual thing is to get the hall monitor to watch the class while we are gone, but I don't usually bother. It depends on the group, the day, my mood, the phase of the moon. Today, I wasn't worried about it. 

In the hall, another staff member was talking to the hall monitor. "Oh," she said to him, "I guess you have to go watch Brian's class." I waved them off. Don't worry about it. I don't take long to pee. On the way back to class, the staff member was looking at my class. "They're all reading," she said, amazed. I shrugged. Of course they are. "How do you keep them working when you're not there?"

I don't think of what we do as drudge-work and I've engineered things to work this way. 

The first part is crucial. There's not much I want to do more than write and read. I project the idea that writing and reading is the best kind of work. It's not drudgery. We get to write. We get to read. What could be better? They don't love writing and reading as much as I do, but enough of my enthusiasm rubs off. 

The second part goes back to a lesson I was taught in my first year of teaching by my friend Faith who might not remember and hopefully won't mind me telling. 

"Every so often," she said, "walk out of class. Stand around the corner by the lockers and listen. Then come back." There was no need to say anything. Just go back to conducting class. 

I tried it the next day with ninth graders as they were reading. I put down my book, walked out, and stood around the corner. I listened. After a few moments, someone said something. I waited until they were quiet again and went back, picked up my book, took my seat, and kept reading. It was like I had just been given fire by the gods. 

There's more to it of course than just walking out and walking back in, but not much more.  The big part is trusting not just in them but in what I have done with them. The fear is that they will go nuts behind my back. I have to get over that fear. My experience has been that they go nuttiest when I'm there. It's performance art and no good without me there to react. 

When I leave, they mostly do what we've been doing. They'll look at their phones some, but we do that when I'm there. I teach them how to balance phone stuff and school stuff because that's important to learn.  

By this point in the year, they hardly notice me leaving or coming back which is good. Who really wants to think about me having a pee? Better to reading or writing. If I do class right, I'm not important enough to notice that much.