GK: The story of my life: revised version
The column: 09.22.21
I’ve bought many copies of Mary Oliver’s poems, Devotions, and on Friday I gave away the last so now I’m ordering more. I gave it to a friend whose description of brushing his dogs’ teeth reminded me of Oliver’s description of a grasshopper sitting in her hand and eating sugar, the jaws moving side to side, not up and down.
He said he uses a finger pad with bristles and a beef-flavored toothpaste and the dogs tolerate it well and the brushing spares them dental miseries so it made sense. Oliver carefully describes the grasshopper chewing and washing its face and flying away and then —
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention … how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Paying attention is what Oliver does in her poetry, it’s what her poems are about, walking out in the natural world and seeing what’s there. Unlike most poets working today, she doesn’t write about her own troubles. She writes:
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on … Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.
I came across an Oliveresque passage in a journal of mine from when I was 12, standing one September evening after dishes were done, behind our house, under my dad’s apple trees, and my mother at the piano playing “Abide with me” and I wrote:
Abide with me, another autumn day.
Night falls, the sky fills with the Milky Way.
An old piano, golden apples and
Dishes are done, my dog's nose in my hand.It’s a sweet little souvenir of a September evening in 1954, north of Minneapolis, and a boy wanting to preserve the wonder of concurrence, the hymn, the stars, the apples, the dog’s cold wet nose. He declined to draw any conclusion or to bring himself into the poem. Below the poem he notes that the word “racecar” is the same forward or backward.
Years later, I’m sitting in a steakhouse, hearing about brushing dogs’ teeth and thinking about Mary Oliver’s grasshopper while ten feet away eight drunks in their twenties sit around a table, having a wonderful time being stupid and very loud.
I don’t think I’ve been loud often in my life, but I’ve certainly been stupid. Once I got myself a cabin in the woods of Wisconsin with a separate workroom, 10x15, on stilts, with a stove and a big window looking into the trees, no house or road in sight. I sat at a table looking out the window and it was startling, when a deer walked out of the underbrush or a bird flew by. Shocking once, when a porcupine stopped and looked up at me.
I am not Mary Oliver, however, and don’t have the patience to think about a porcupine and design a poem around him (or her, I also don’t recognize gender except for deer), and I am not a birdwatcher. I was working on a book, The Book of Guys, and none of the guys was a hunter or hermit or forest ranger. And after a year I concluded that peace and quiet made me uneasy. A porcupine is interesting for a few minutes and maybe if I were looking up at the stars and smelling apples as someone played the piano and a porcupine put his nose in my hand, I could get a poem out of it, but poetry isn’t my line. Sorry, I’m a money writer.
And then I met my friend who became my lover and she was a New Yorker and I abandoned the cabin and workroom and we married in 1995. She is a daily walker but prefers Central Park with its great variety of humanity. Out of mistakes comes happiness. We gain good judgment by exercising bad. Had I made the enormous mistake of buying myself a dog, I might’ve been comfortable in isolation and I’d still be there today, a cranky bachelor, unvaccinated, not brushing its teeth or my own, listening to Fox, with twenty “Keep Out” signs posted, a pile of hundreds of empty Jack Daniels bottles, and a couple of loaded AK-47s by the door. I much prefer talking to you than listening for intruders. Thank you for that.
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I love your poem: "Abide with me!" I was also laying claim to a dozen years of life when our family had the opportunity to drive, coast to coast, one summer. At one point, we went to the east coast of Lake Michigan and took a car ferry across on the way to visit a former boss of my Dad's in Minneapolis. I know I was almost 12 years old, because Dad joked that it would be the last time he could get me "in for free" on the "children under twelve" provision. I recall practically nothing of that Minneapolis visit, except that the boss's suburban house was on a hill that had street parking, requiring folks to hike up. Steeply up!
Once we got "out west", we visited Dad's cousin Louis William at his farm in Oregon. The irrigation ditch was voluminous enough that we had to be warned not to fall in, even if we thought we could swim.
But, what reminded me of that visit was the poem: "Abide with me... An old piano ... There weren't any kids at Louis WIlliam's place, and the "Do you remember when our families were driving out west together, and your Dad had to back up into Yosemite National Park, because the way the fuel tank was placed, it wouldn't deliver gas if it was on too steep an angle?" Or the "remember when we were on Route 66 in California, and the local police ushered us in caravans once the sun had set, from Needles to Barstow? Even with bags of water in front of our engines, the heat of the day was too much for our motors, so the desert crossing had to be made at night."
Dad and Louis William reveled in their memories, but as an almost-teenager, I was bored. I began poking around, and found "An old piano" - really!! - with chipped keys and a felt or two missing, maybe it even smelled a bit like chicken poop, the very picture of neglect! I was taking piano lessons, and had learned "Fur Elise" by heart. Out in the barn, I played my heart out. I think it was the first time I really appreciated the music as something that could stir the soul, rather than just something I struggled with in order to please Mrs. Bricker, my piano teacher! When the time came, I didn't want to come in. I had been "creating something", and in a way, it had become mine, there on that old piano in the barn. I guess it was the first time I really found joy in the music I created, rather than seeing it as some sort of 6 a.m. obligation "because we're paying for your lessons!"
In my mind's ear, I recall some Prairie Home monologues in which you stand in choir, behind a young lady who interests you. It almost seems as if you might have had a "musical discovery" moment then, too! Perhaps it was that one? Or perhaps, something else. It's fun to remember, isn't it?
Was it an "either or choice?" A choice between having a wife or a dog. I know that in New York a dog would probably be unhandy but you will never have a better friend than an dog. I know that in my household, the dog is the one who is always glad to see me; that cannot be said about others who have changes in mood.
Ben Franklin says that " an old man has three faithful friends; an old wife, an old dog, and ready money."
"We learn good judgement by exercising bad judgement." Some people say that we should read and thereby learn from other peoples' mistakes. But at some point we have make our own decisions and make our own mistakes. Fortunately, so far I have made lots of small mistakes but have not made a whopper.
When I was little a relative told me that life and the world would teach me a lot if I would pay attention as I went along. We learn a lot by just living a long time. if we pay attention to what is happening.
Thanks and best wishes.