MLK Jr. Day: Let Freedom Ring

... by banging resonant rocks at Ringing Rocks County Park. That's right, a County Park. I've never heard of one of those either. Nor have I ever heard rocks that ring like bells when struck with a hammer.

If I had a hammer... I'd hammer out danger. I'd hammer out warning... all over this land. And that's what I did. Climbing over the field of resonant rocks hammering to see which ones were most resonant.


And then hammering some more when we got the hang of it.

Maybe you can't see it, but I'm using a nice floral-print hammer courtesy of Kristen's sister, Emily.

Makes you other rocks seem pretty lame.

Yeah, I'm talking to you, non-ringy rocks!

And as usual...

New York, New York

New York. Amidst its uniquely offensive smells, while biking along pot-holed roads with the constant threat of being hit by cars and accompanied by their honking refrain, I thought of the relative ills and beauties of this metropolis and kept thinking of how its name conjures one of Basho’s lesser-known haiku about the limestone islands of Matsushima bay. Because, supposedly, he couldn’t conjure the actual beauty of the experience he simply wrote:

Matsushima

Ah, Matsushima

Matsushima

Perhaps I was only told this to further sell me on the tour I was taking, but even that, I think, can be appropriate to New York: home of Capitalisms most holy of holies, Times Square, and the endless, 3D multi-media marketing blitz invading your senses at every angle. My most socialist friend has only lived there 6 months and is already softening to Capitalism under New York’s insistent charms.

New York transforms. It took the torn-edged mountains of my mountain home and the jagged pine-topped hills surrounding my current home and replaced them with squared, even, and endless horizons of cement and steel. The tiny valleys, dales, and canyons of the city were labyrinthine. Every time my sister or a friend took me to a great diner or chocolatier or bakery I asked them how they ever found it. I don’t know that they ever answered me, but maybe it was the same way I found the fanciest food shop I’ve ever seen or how I stumbled upon The Strand bookstore unexpectedly, they just went walking. Still it seems a miracle to know where anything is in a city so large and unwieldy. I loved biking down to the beach, watching the dense city slowly lose its grip on the earth and air till it receded into the background, a more distant noise to the wind and waves.

But they do find these places. And that contributes to my next wonder at New York. So many people in such a complicated and multifarious concatenation of walkers, runners, bikers, drivers, bussers, and taxis, that the mostly fluid execution of so many independent minds, thoughts, and actions not bringing it all down in rubble or at least to a screeching halt is a marvel. Sure, the dance is accompanied by the honks, roar, and stink of the city, but take a step back into Central or Prospect park and the tones soften and take on a certain rhythm and beat that a large portion of the earth is stepping to.

Because I can't resist.

I don’t know if it was this unexpected pleasure of finding anything that inspired me, but I felt almost certain I’d run into some old friend I’d lost contact with at some point during my visit. No one in particular, but it seemed, with so many people, I’d have to run into someone I knew sooner or later. Maybe I needed to sit and wait for it. But it did mean that instead of encountering a faceless horde reflecting how dehumanizing and devouring masses are of individuals, I was always looking out for someone I knew, half-expecting to run into them. In New York such an impossibility seems nigh inevitable.

And the languages. Riding a bus there was Spanish, Italian, and Russian being spoken in the bus while we passed stores with Arabic and Greek on the signs. It’s incredible. It is a world metropolis where languages, cultures, and people abut to create an endlessly fascinating mosaic.

In the end, I decided that just as you shouldn’t trust a man who has no enemies (quotation unknown and probably non-existent), the fact that a city as vibrant, magical, messy, and transcendent as New York exists without a dystopian nightmare future, is miraculous.

Be seeing you soon.

Plying our Manly Oars

Here's me and Brant leisurely winning our first canoe race--on the Susquehanna no less... love that name. We didn't get the mid part where we have another quick spurt to catch up to the leaders, you get a pretty good sense of the chaos and the sweet, sweet victory.

Falling Water

The school was going, so I went a long to Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water near Mill Run, PA. This is my second visit to the the home that was to Wright's career exactly what Xanadu wasn't to Gene Kelly's. No, this was Wright's Batman Begins, injecting new life into what everyone thought was a career that had seen its peak. But now Falling Water is on a list of 12 places that will change your life, 28 places to see before you die, and the top 50 places to blah blah blah. It even made my mother not begrudge the conservation society its "outrageous" entrance fee. And in that, it is one of a kind.

It's also beautiful, the home, and harmoniously built for its environment. My first visit to the house didn't leave me wondering about just how harmonious art deco right angles and geometric patterns were with the lines of nature. Where were the really organic lines of a Gaudi or a Ghery? In the rough hewn lines of the floor and wall stones, I suppose, but still, there was something that was making me buy less this, "harmony with nature" aesthetic it was selling. Though the spot on the wall where the water from a local spring seeped through the masonry, ran through a channel in the stone, then through a crack in the floor to continue to the river was fairly harmonious with its surroundings as were the beveled, mold-less windows that allowed outer walls to become inner and vice versa. The light and dark of the house echoing the light and dark spaces of the waterfall was a nice tough as well. And the family of lady bugs crawling on the cieling of the guest room. Nice touch, Wright. Very nice.

So, while I accepted less readily the "harmonious with nature" line they were peddling, due to its multitude of sharp lines, the house does integrate the setting--which is gorgeous--with its construction and abstracts, very successfully, the natural features of the land to achieve a home that really is a work of art and one which, just like it did 12 years ago when I first saw it, make me cry that I will never be able to live there. I try to comfort myself with the idea that it would be possible to live in an equally beautiful house.

But I doubt that's possible. Honestly.

Oh, and Dad, that's me at Falling Water in the fall. Eat your heart out.

Liza Lou

I was read to as a child. I attribute my continued love of reading to that fact. One of the most memorable childhood stories was “Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp,” by Mercer Mayer. My dad marshaled a host of voices to enliven the episodic adventures of a young bayou girl who’s daily errands took her into the Yeller Belly swamp which was also the haunt of witches, ghosts, ghouls, devils, and trolls. Good child fare. She uses her wits to get the better of them and keep her and her little opossum safe.

A possum. It reminds me of another being-read-to-as-a-child story. My parents had a British friend who came and read me a story about an Opossum. I don’t remember the story, but I remember how odd I thought it was that some people—British ones—put an O in front of possum. Opossum. Seemed unwieldy with the extra letter/vowel/syllable. Sadly the internet wasn’t around to instantly assuage my curiosities at the time. Still, opossum or possum, they were adorable fare for childhood picture books.

So, it was with no small delight that I found there were often opossums prowling about my new neighborhood (ie. Pennsylvania). My first night, dazed and bleary-eyed, driving into town, a white critter appeared in my headlights. On many nights, on many suburban streets, I’ve seen similar specimens of North America’s only native marsupial and it was with no little dismay last week when I turned one into road kill.

Distraught, I called any and everyone I could think of to vent—yes, while still driving, but, no, I didn’t hit another. It was horrifying. A hyper-real horror where, rather than the actual possum I’d just hit and who’s body heft I’d felt filtered through galvanized rubber and steel, I kept seeing Liza Lou’s possum looking startled with it’s big eyes at me, the reader/driver child/man, after sauntering away from Liza Lou’s side while she was telling the swamp devil that she had the parson’s soul in her molasses jar.

But before he could say, “a chicken crossed the road, frogs’ll cross it too, if you’re not real quick, you’ll end up in a stew,” the car shuddered, the darkness took the possum, and I was on my way, a slightly sadder man.

Finding a Home

There are a couple of flash back blogs I'll do of my last days in Provo this summer, but I wanted to post some pictures of a dreamy neighborhood here in South Harrisburg I went through while trying to find a home. It's right along the river and was the a place the man who owned the local lumber mill made for his workers to live. It's the first place to flood in Harrisburg--which it did a couple years ago so some of the new homes are built with only a garage on the first floor with a latticed wood garage door and balcony and living room on the first floor with arched floor to ceiling windows and fine bricks. It would be heaven to live there, I think.

And let's go back to that word "home." I think that's why I'm having such a hard time finding a place to settle in. I can never get all of the pieces together. It'll be a good price but really run down, it'll be in a great place but my front balcony is a smoking nook for other tenants, it'll be not too far, but only one shared bedroom, it'll be in a lovely neighborhood but with an extra $500 tax--should I worry about this one?--it'll be in a lovely neighborhood with a place for a canoe near the river, but it won't actually exist... that's a real sad one.

I do get hopeful every time. There was a studio apartment I wasn't too thrilled about, but after sleeping on a couch and having nothing but a small suitcase to live out of for more than a week, I was going to take it. No year lease, just sweet freedom and paying for what I get. But no laundry. Kind of lame. But livable. We'll see. And the shared room... also perhaps livable. We'll see. Still looking and having an okay time doing it. And if that canoe heaven turns out to be real... it's far from campus, but oh, man, that'd be the life!

Namers Ltd.

The other day, don’t know why, I was told that my perfect job was to name things. A namer, I suppose. At the time I had maybe made up a punny nick name for some thing or other, but the next day, walking around the tree streets I started thinking of the names of trees. Hawthorne. Osier. Weeping Willow. Beech. Oak. Sycamore. Rowan. Mountain Ash.

Then I started thinking about how “intuitive” these names are. Weeping Willow is an easy one since it has all those drooping branches like one who might be weeping. Actually it works on many levels. The drooping branches can also be falling tears, or perhaps, in summer, its concealed interior is a perfect place to cry.

But what about the willow part? It perhaps relates to Willows, but that just leads to another association. But what about Osier, is there something there that indicates its wispy branches? Is there something sinuous and strong inherent in Beech? Howthorne’s do have a thorniness to them, but do they have a haw-ness? Doubtful, though I’m sure one could be instructed.

Then I did some thinking of the names of birds, or even the names, sky, moon, morning. I loved testing the sound and feel of the names—mainly of trees—and wondering about how they related to that which they named. I spent a lovely walking doing this, and I think I could spend a lovely life doing the same.

Sadly, most everything’s named already. How lovely must it have been for Adam, God bringing him various creatures, plants and animals, mutable and new, and invited him to attach a name. A certain collection of oral movements, expelled breath, and vibrations of the vocal chords. Eden, where the connections between thing named and name were new and known.

So, if anyone needs anything named, let me know. I’d like to start building up a resume. And, speaking of expelled breath, I’m looking for the word/name for when one expels breath quickly out of the nose or mouth as if in disgust. Similar to a pshaw, but not so heavy handed.

PS. My favorite tree is the Magnolia—again, where’d that name come from? Though I do like that it has a combination feel of broad, delicate, and strong. But that’s probably just what I associate it with because of my feelings about the tree. And that’s another thing I’d love about naming, thinking of what feel certain collections of consonants and vowels would take on through association with thing named. Anyway, they’re in bloom right now. Go find one to sit under right now; the blooms don’t last.