Dialing Dad's Number

I just watched an old MASH episode in which Hawkeye is listed by the Army as dead. Hawkeye's dad tries to get through to B. J. Hunnicutt but the call fails. Hawkeye, once he figures out that he's dead and that his dad believes he's dead, is desperate to get in touch with his dad but the lines are down because Eisenhower is coming to Korea. Hawkeye can't get paid, can't get mail, and can't reach his dad, but in the end can't leave Korea and go home either.

The end of the episode has Hawkeye finally on the phone with his father, laughing and enjoying himself. Then he says, "Dad? Dad?" as if he's going to say something important, but it's the line gone dead again. Hawkeye tosses the handset and sits back satisfied that his dad knows he's alive but beyond sad to be so far away from his father, to be so disconnected.

On my phone I still have dad listed in my favorites. I always will. Every so often I place a call to him. It never goes through. I listen to the tones telling me the number is no longer active or valid or whatever the phone companies call it. The line is dead. There's no getting through. And I can't even blame it on Eisenhower.

Someday Dad's number will be assigned to someone else. I imagine that call. Me saying, hello? The other person asking, who is this? Do I tell that person this was my dad's number and that I miss him? If I do, I wonder how the other person will react. I know how I would answer that call from some stranger. I'd ask, how long has he been gone? I would say, tell me a story about him and you. Then I would listen.

Well, there was this one time. It was ordinary. Nothing special. He drove over to my house and parked his truck on the street. I went out to meet him. He asked, You ready? I said, I am. The night was cold and dry, clear all the way up to the heavens. We got in the car, me in the driver's seat, Dad lowering himself into the passenger's seat slowly, slamming the door.

I'd ask, Where were you going?

Up to the Carrier Dome. See, Dad and I had season tickets to the Syracuse Women's Basketball games. We sat in row G, mid court, and Dad talked with the ticket takers, the fans who sat nearby, and me. We cheeredas when the women won and even if they lost because it wasn't about the games. It was about Dad and me.

I'd say, that sounds good.

It was good. It really was.

Then we'd both listen to the sounds of memory, the silence of our dead fathers.

Maybe the person at the other end would ask if I was still there.

And I would say, yeah, I'm still here. We're both still here. It's okay. We're both still here.

Where Books Come From

When I'm really reading, when I read for days and weeks and it's so good I don't ever want to stop, the books come and come to me. Where they come from is no real mystery. They come from out of the blue. Out of the radio and newspaper. Out of one book and into another. Out of the library. Out of the mouths of friends. Books I've ordered arrive in the mail. A friend leaves one in the mailbox. The note says something like, this made me think of you. Books stacked on my wife's desk have titles that call to me. At coffee a friend has a book I really must read. Books arrive from the past because space is curved and all things return after we read them. Reading one book I try not to think of others. I write quotes on sticky notes, in my notebook, between dates on my planner's pages. I dog-ear library books, God help me, and leave pencil dots near quotes that whispered to me. You see, I know where books come from. It's all magic. A trick in which a magician reaches into a dark place that isn't her hat, and pulls out something not quite a rabbit. The ears seem like pages and the magician's fingers are stained in ink. I stand and applaud, hoping she will hand it to me and I can begin to read.

Faint

Vision narrows. The mind lets go of the duties of the body. Things such as breathing, beating the heart, making words. Yet a part of the mind is still wide awake. It turns on the silent alarm. The flashing light atop the ship's bridge. We are going down. Mayday. Abandon ship. That small part of the brain, buried in our evolutionary past like some fossil, triggers a little language. I say, I not good. You hear, uh-nuh-guh. Then even that small part of my mind comes to a stop. Your eyes widen, your heart beats a moment sooner, your brain synapses fire lightning without thunder. You reach for me. Catch me, maybe. Help me down to ground. I won't know. You'll have to tell me all this later when I return to the world. My vision coming back. As I look up into the light of concern, a candle flickering in the breeze of my returning breath.

with apologies to Stephen Kuusisto

Survival Mode

I'm a fan of low-bar goals I get over easily. Usually, I clear the bar with room to spare. I've set a goal to do ten push-ups a day. Totally easy. There, I just did them. Goal met. Here's the thing: I'll likely do ten more because it's so easy. If the bar is set at one hundred push-ups a day, I'll probably end up doing none.

Your mileage may vary.

My goal on the job is to survive. I'm not a fan of that. Survival is the sort of thing that should be taken for granted. I'm trying to stay afloat as the water rises over my head. I have to survive because this is the job that pays the bills.

Maybe your job is similar.

I talk to students about the difference between a job and work drawing the picture I've posted up top. We do a job for pay and health insurance, the necessities. Work is the stuff we need to do. Not doing our work leaves us empty. My job is teaching high school. My work is writing. The sweet spot is a job doing good work, what Donald Hall calls Life Work.

Students ask if teaching is my job or my work. I say, I'm a teacher who writes but wish I was a writer who maybe teaches. I close my eyes, sigh, and say, that's my wish.

To speak up is not about speaking louder, it is about feeling entitled to voice a wish. We always hesitate when we wish for something. In my theater I like to show the hesitation and not to conceal it. A hesitation is not the same as a pause. It is an attempt to defeat the wish and put it in to language, then you can whisper but the audience will always hear you.

-- Zofia Kalinska, qtd in Things I Don't Want To Know by Deborah Levy, page 10

I don't wish to survive. I wish to write, but I don't know how to do that yet so I do both work and a job. I don't see how the work can pay the bills. I fail to believe I can pull that off.

Deborah Levy has figured it out. She is also a spectacular and brave writer. Here is how her book Things I Don't Want To Know begins and ends:

That spring when life was very hard and I was at war with my lot and simply couldn't see where there was to get to, I seemed to cry most on escalators at train stations. (page 1)

I rearranged the chair and sat at the desk. And then I looked at the walls to check out the power points so I could plug in my laptop. The hole in the wall nearest to the desk was placed above the basin, a precarious socket for a gentleman's electric razor. That spring in Majorca, when life was very hard and I simply could not see where there was to get to, it occurred to me that where I had to get to was that socket. Even more useful to a writer than a room of her own is an extension lead and a variety of adapters for Europe, Asia and Africa. (Page 111)

I don't have it figured out and I'm not yet especially spectacular or brave. I don't have a book that begins or ends other than the one I'm writing one essay, poem, and story at a time. I need a good extension lead, a hole in the wall, and just the right adapter for whatever powers me. Then I have to keep doing good work regardless of my job. It's that simple and yet I can't yet even imagine where I might get to. The bar seems far, far too high.

---

A few other quotes from the book:

If I thought I was not thinking about the past, the past was thinking about me. (110)

This strange memory in turn reminded me of a line from a poem by Apollinaire....'The widow opens like an orange.' .... I did not know how to get the work, my writing into the world. I did no know how to open the window like an orange. If anything, the window had closed like an axe on my tongue. If this was to be my reality, I did not know what to do with it. (109)

...but I couldn't work out what I was trying to say. I knew I wanted to be a writer more than anything else in the world, but I was overwhelmed by everything and didn't know where to start. (101)