I just went out for a very late night walk with Benji. The moon was so bright, a brazen beacon up there, like some alternate version of the sun, and it is so warm, like nights I remember from technicolor teenagehood, and the smell of grass, always the smell of grass, and tonight the tiny insects that swarmed Benji and I even seemed pleased, seemed to be telling us their happiest secrets. Barely midnight and already dew droplets leapt from the ground with each step we took, Benji looking for the perfect place to pee, different every time we come out but always perfect. I was bathing in the moonlight like it was sunlight, turning my face toward it and soaking it in, staring at the gray ball, stunned as I often am by the thought that there’s a world there, that I’m looking at another world and it’s there right now, the surface of the moon, sitting there waiting for something, or maybe not waiting at all but just happy all alone, its craters and mountains just perfect, silent and airless and pockmarked, goddamn what a beautiful night with the insects and Benji looking back over his shoulder at me, his big black eyes pleading something, something I can’t know and can never know , and tucked inside our little air conditioned house my Love sleeps, her of the fine features and deep understanding, she sleeps in there like the surface of the moon and she has chosen me and aint it grand, aint it grand indeed. Tomorrow we’ll wake up without an alarm and have mango and basmati rice for breakfast, and a pot of coffee, too, and maybe Schubert on the stereo. Oh, life is probably pointless, ultimately, just atoms and electrons and consciousness happening by accident, the whole damned scene just one ludicrous accident, but who can argue with this, with the moon so serious and luminous and the dog looking over his shoulder and the air conditioning inside and basmati rice tomorrow, who would ever want to call any of it an accident? Oh Karla I love you so much!
Archive for life’s brevity
Our Dewey Walk
Posted in Prose, Uncategorized with tags benji, Karla, life's brevity, love, prose, relationships, walking on June 11, 2017 by sethdellingerDays of Everything
Posted in Memoir, real life, Uncategorized with tags eating, harrisburg, Karla, life, life's brevity, memoir, sports, spring, the boy, veganism, vegetarianism on March 16, 2017 by sethdellingerIt was a cold night, but not too cold, which was fortunate, because we had to park very far away from the arena. I unbuckled Boy from his car seat and heaved him into the air, bringing him next to my cheek to give him a kiss in the crisp evening air. “This soccer game?” He asked. “Yes,” I told him. “This is the big building I told you about.” I sat him down and stuck out my hand for him to grab, as we strolled quickly through the immense parking lot together. He had lots of questions. He kept calling it football, which was interesting, I thought, since most of the world referred to soccer as football, but he couldn’t possibly know that, could he? Most of his questions weren’t really about the sport we were about to go watch, but the building it was in. How could a building be so big that you could play soccer inside of it? How tall was it, was it taller than the telephone poles? Taller than our house? Will there be snacks? Soft pretzels? I’ve become accustomed to the constant barrage of questions at this point, pulling from deep within me a patience I honestly did not think I possessed. Not that this patience is without limits—but at any rate, I seem to have more than I thought. I suspect a toddler will prove this to be true of most anyone.
I was surprised by the patience he displayed as we waited in a long line to buy tickets. It seems every day, he is making leaps and bounds, growing in things like patience, understanding, and empathy. Which is not to say he’s still not a little ball of emotions that doesn’t know how to act, just maybe a little less so than a few months ago or a year ago. He’s becoming much more of a companion as opposed to a force of nature to wrangle and watch. While for the most part, time with Boy is still all about teaching, there are moments now of truly just being. And “just being” with a little guy like boy is more magic than I’m accustomed to.
Finally, tickets procured, we entered the concourse, looking for our section. I hadn’t studied the arena map extensively, and had chosen seats in the section on the complete opposite side of the concourse, so we had to walk past countless souvenir stands and snack bars, him wanting desperately to stop at each, and also wanting to enter into each section as we passed, with me constantly trying to tell him that it wasn’t much farther, not much farther. But through it all, he didn’t freak out or melt down or cry, just implored me strongly. Finally we came upon our entrance to the arena, and I picked him up because I knew the stairs were going to be steep and he was probably going to be shocked by the sight of walking into the big room. Carrying him on my side, we entered the arena proper, and although an indoor soccer field lacks the nebulous breathtaking quality of a baseball field, the sudden shock of green and the expanse of a sudden cavernous room had its desired effect on the countencance of Boy, which is to say, it produced a certain amount of awe. After pausing to allow him to soak it in, we climbed up the steep steps, to find our seats. We were all alone in our section, something I had to ask the ticket man to do, in case it did not go very well. Boy was beyond excited to sit here. He was very into his seat, enamored with the idea that the number on it matched the number on his ticket, and in this enormous room, this seat was his and his alone. He was not restless as I had feared, his eyes trained on the action on the field. I would steal sidelong glances at him, see his eyes glued to the action, his head swiveling as the ball bounced back and forth, his complete concentration and immersion something only possible in the earliest years of life, and during a first exposure to things; the sights and sounds meshing with dawning understanding, realization writ large across his face. He would sometimes stop his concentration to ask questions about the goalies, which he called The Goal Guys, their different colored jerseys causing him no end of confusion. Later, as he was able to again float back into our world, he would watch me for cues whenever the arena sound system would play the tropes of modern sporting events: the “Charge!” song, the “De-Fense!” chant, and on and on. He saw and understood there was an audience participation element and he wanted to learn. I would raise my fist and yell “Charge!”, glancing over to see him mimic it, his tiny voice bursting forth its own “Charge!” This moment, especially, nearly crippled me with emotion.
He paid close attention to the game and stayed quite interested for well over an hour and a half when he started to fall asleep on my shoulder. I told him I thought it was time to go, and he protested quite strongly, saying he didn’t want to miss anything. And I kept giving in, saying we could stay, and then he kept falling asleep again, until eventually I picked him up, went up the stairs to the upper concourse, and told him he should get down and walk around and look at all the empty chairs, all the sections without anybody in them. The arena was quite empty, in fact, especially once one got up to the upper reaches. We got to a very high section, a corner section so high up you could almost touch the roof in a few of the spots, and as we emerged into it, it became clear that it had not even been cleaned out or looked at after the preceding weekend’s Motocross event in the arena. Everywhere there was trash, even half-eaten food and some beer cans on their sides. It was an astonishing array of trash and smells to walk into amid what appeared to be an otherwise normal arena. It was immediately too late for me to backtrack and take him out of this section, he was much too interested in the hows or whys this could have happened. I explained as best I could that they assumed they would not sell any tickets in this section for the soccer game, so they must be waiting to clean up from the Motocross. He did not want to walk around the section, but he also didn’t want to leave. I picked him up and we watched the soccer from way high up near the ceiling, looking down on all that old trash and beer cans, until he looked at me and told me he was ready to go home. I felt that I had a companion here, a little guy who I could teach and learn from, who was now going to be interested in things, who was present with me.
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My love and I put on our light spring jackets and walked into the crisp evening. Just the two of us, we interlocked our hands, and headed down the street toward Midtown. It is one of the benefits of living where we do, that usually, given the right weather and the right child care situation, we can walk to some of the places that we like to spend time together. This night it was simple: we were going out to eat. It was one of the last walkable nights of the year, and we knew it. The cold was setting in, soon we would be driving everywhere and stuck inside like prisoners. So tonight, we knew, was a walking night. There was a very popular and artsy restaurant in the middle of Midtown, which somehow we still had not made it to. Recently they had started serving a very popular veggie burger, that all of our friends were talking about, and we still hadn’t tried. It had been on our list for weeks.
The thing about taking a somewhat lengthy walk with the person that you love is that it forces conversation you don’t normally have inside the house or perhaps in a moving car. You see things that you don’t normally see, are reminded of things you might only see or think of by yourself, you’re moving at an interesting pace, a different speed. I love holding hands and walking with my love. I love the way her hand feels, I love being connected to her physically in that way, I love being able to look at her face from the side so often. I love being able to point out things, and have her point out things to me, elements of our neighborhood that we only see when we are walking the dog by ourselves. I love kissing her outside. Many people spend most of their lives in relationships and begin to take things like this for granted, maybe even very early on in life, they assume they will have a companion in this form. Having spent so long single, small things like holding hands, walking down the street, these things never seem anything other than magical to me. My love thrills me. Literally every single thing about her. It’s electric.
Twenty minutes later we found ourselves the only customers in the artsy eating establishment, it being only five o’clock. We were talking about the art on the wall, the interesting sculptures, the funny man who kept looking at us askance from inside the kitchen. We talked about the interesting ordering system the restaurant used, the haphazard way salt was placed on some of the tables but not others, we talked about our days, we held hands and looked at each other. Sometimes we didn’t say anything and that was lovely in its own way. When you know someone is your true partner, being in their presence is a constant salve.
The food came and it was delicious, just as delicious as everyone says it is was, and it was fantastic to share a meal with someone who shares so many of my worldviews, who has the compassion in the same places I do, love and freedom in the same proportions, to share a meal with a woman who has taught me so much. As I was finishing off my Diet Pepsi, stealing glances at this woman, I kept thinking some of the same thoughts I come back to all the time. How I waited so long to find her. How, when I did find her, I couldn’t and still can’t believe how perfect she is. How my journey to find her wasn’t about me, or even the journey, but it was about her, about us. How I still learn about her every day and she’s such a delicious mystery. How she fits so well. I looked at her as I sat there, finishing my Diet Pepsi, and I said to her the only thing one can say, given the unbearable weight of the world: I can’t believe you’re finally here.
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The days, good or bad, really do just stretch out like deserts, uncountable deserts, again and again and again. Some, you find, contain nothing: plodding marches under a bored sun. But sometimes, they are filled up, filled with everything you ever dreamed, brazen neon signs of days, confetti and love love love. I don’t know about you, but I’m trying to figure out how to keep them filled up. I want the days of everything, forever.
If My Feet Were Spears
Posted in My Poetry, Uncategorized with tags life, life's brevity, poetry, wildlife on December 29, 2016 by sethdellingerThe urge is strong to be a tiny bird
upon a tiny limb, maybe
a LeConte’s Sparrow
standing on its spidery feet,
instead of a rotund guy who falls
with a resounding thump,
who bruises, who scrapes on sidewalks
and car doors,
who sinks in river mud
to the waist.
If my feet were spears
I’d sink all the way through the mud
into one of the tumultuous underground rivers
that are everywhere,
earthborn by the black current.
When a child I thought I’d die in my twenties
like some of the greatest poets
but now at thirty-eight I see this hasn’t happened.
Still, I am gentle with my poems and birds.
Birds are poems I haven’t caught yet.
The Moon is Down
Posted in Prose, Uncategorized with tags death, harrisburg, life, life's brevity, prose, walking on April 24, 2016 by sethdellingerRivers of items pour into the thrift store. Hats and golf clubs and rusty saws; side tables and lamps with no cords and plush prairie dogs and embroidered pillows. All day long these pieces of lives slide into the thrift store, glimpses past your neighbors window, views into the locked houses. Sometimes it’s collections; thirty John Wayne movies, complete sets of Alex Haley figurines, fifteen Danielle Steele hardcovers. It’s when you see the large collections of things that you know–you know someone died. Dad died and the kids might have looked over his stuff, piled in the deepest corners of the den and stacked like waffles in the garage, and just not known what to do with it all. Do you want this? they asked each other, nobody wanting to say no, not wanting to seem careless, but he made them watch “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” ten times as kids and they can’t imagine keeping it, even if they did love Dad. These collections terrify me when I see them. I have collections. I have lots of collections. The ability of someone else’s–some poor dead someone else–amassed material goods to bring me face to face with the abyss seems unfair. There are so many other ways to find yourself face to face with the abyss, to have Danielle Steele novels from 1982 do the trick makes me think I’m getting too easy. I like to be near water. Any body of water will do. Oceans, rivers, lakes, creeks or rivulets, what-have-you. There’s something about depths. Fathoms. Great distances and quantities unknowable. My mind can fixate for hours on the questions of depth. It must be so dark down below so much water, it must be so muddy, so briny, so devoid of light and life. And yet things do live down there. Organisms thrive. Little creatures scurry about amidst all the pressure, never knowing sunlight. I currently live very close to a river. Not a huge river but it’s a river. I like to ride my bicycle across a nearby bridge onto an island that is smack center in the river. I ride out to the tip of the island where the water is spliced, diverted to either side. I watch the river roll toward me in vast sheets, then split in two and slide past. It is best to do in the summer. The boats are out. Fishermen in tiny outboards, their high-pitched whine echoing off the banks. The heat of the summer makes the sound pungent. Pungent whiny motor sound bouncing off river banks, and the sky above can get so blue, so blue. Then there are river birds, usually. Some white egrets off in the distance, a heron or two swooping by occasionally. They call out to one another and their calls mix with boats, the lapping of the water, my own measured, shallow breaths. It’s enormous things that get me, see? The enormity of the river–it doesn’t care about me. It doesn’t know who I am or even acknowledge my life. It is benign but it is still a faceless monster. It doesn’t feel but it will keep sliding past this island long after I am gone. There is comfort in my littleness. The river is pure and elemental and outside of time. The river is not nearly as big as the ocean but it might as well be, next to me. I take my boy to playgrounds. We go to playgrounds frequently, almost daily in the summer. We walk there through the humid city streets. He likes to point at things and name the ones he knows–like house and truck–and ask questions about the ones he doesn’t know yet. I tell him how water comes down the spouts when it rains. He can say rain, but not water, not yet. We get to the playgrounds hoping other kids are there for him to play with, but usually there aren’t. I play with him as much as I can on the tiny kids playground equipment. It is fun. It is not at all a task or a burden. Just a few months ago the little guy was all burbles and gurgles and now here he is holding conversations with me. It’s electric. It’s just as elemental as the river. Often I end up putting him in the little kid swing–the one that looks like a vinyl diaper. I push him and make faces and he giggles. It’s usually early evening and he sees the sun starting to nuzzle the horizon. Sun down? he asks. He doesn’t want the sun to go down because he knows that means we have to go home. Is it down yet? I ask him. No, he says, moon down. That’s right. The sun is up, the moon is down, all is well with the world. Often on my days off–while my love is at work and our boy at the sitter–I like to take walks by myself. It’s astonishing how few people are out, physically, in the world during the day. Actually walking on sidewalks. There seems to be very little need for it any more, even in a city. I walk mostly alone from block to block, neighborhood to neighborhood. In the hot summer months it feels even more deliciously lonesome, the hot, heavy air pushing in on everything. The abandoned tricycle on the street corner seems pressurized by the hot air, more solitary but more graceful. The squirrels in the dogwoods seem to know me, turning their nuts over in their hands like airborne otters, they seem to say It is hot and pressurized and we know you, we are out here, too. I look at all the houses–so many of them!–with all the windows dark in the middle of the day, and everything so quiet. I wonder about all the dark quiet houses. Where are the people? At their jobs, working to pay for the houses we rarely get to be in, and the cars to get them there (and keep them from having to walk on sidewalks). Life doesn’t happen here, in the houses, but elsewhere. Life happens on the move, in transit, on vinyl swings, we swing, we swing, we swing. I walk until I get sweaty and thirsty and I turn around and head back home. I turn the air conditioning up and pull the blinds and turn on the television. Everything out there is so big and elemental and universal and here on the screen everything is so small and incomplete and digestible. I suppose we need the small to balance out the large. The massive iron oceanliner swaying in a distant harbor at night, the moonlight on its riveted hull. Things so huge, if you think about them hard enough, just the thought will crush you.
Audio Poem: “Upon My Birthday”
Posted in My Poetry with tags death, life, life's brevity, poetry, sex, time on April 3, 2011 by sethdellingerYear Written: 2006
Collection: The Salt Flats
Click the gray arrow to hear me read this poem.
Upon My Birthday
I’ve spoken at length with you about years rolling by unhinged
like breathless wagons drawn by crazed stallions;
I’ve sat with you in the hushed cellars of our
toilsome peers devising machines of immortality;
I have calmly stepped with you through the doorways of hospitals and morgues,
scoffing at the gall of centuries to lay claim to my soul;
I have laid upon you, dear, halfnaked in dawn’s presence,
sucking sweetly through my nose the air you just breathed out,
heaving my breath in time to yours,
and even then, dear,
(even then!)
I did not feel as truly alive as I do now
upon my birthday,
this day with the earth in a precise arc in it’s trembling orbit
which somehow belongs to me,
this day swinging stubbornly around once a calendar year
so that I may live with true vigor and purpose these scant hours,
and be reminded there was a time
I was not even alive!
Audio Poem: “The Slow Leaving is So Fast”
Posted in My Poetry with tags animals, death, life's brevity, poetry on March 13, 2011 by sethdellingerMy second favorite of my poems. And possibly my actual best. I could probably publish this one. If I do say so myself.
Year written: 2006
Collection: The Salt Flats
The Slow Leaving is So Fast
The goats in that backyard
are slowly dying,
their hunched backs,
the matted fur,
their mudcovered
sorrowed eyes
belie the loud crushing
screams they used to make
mating in the dark
under mooney wide skies.
What dreams they have now
with sleep are slow
intangible wisps;
slouching shadow structures
(light playing on eyelids).
Years ago we used to get drunk
and feed them unripe apples,
imagine them galloping across the field
their fluffy gray hair
billowing in the wind like capes.