seems to have hit a couple ruts in the road, if my inbox is any sort of
tranquility meter between the "status quolies" and the "let's move the
community furniture around to suit ourselves" bunch. This is the sort of
confrontation I could give lessons on. My wife of 56 years has taught me a
lot more about it than I ever wanted to know, that's for dang sure. I even
wrote a piece about it some years ago in one of Tom Centolella's writing
classes at the Redwoods. One of my fellow students, I think it was Bob
Levy, was sharp enough to perceive it for what it is and tell us all,
"It's a love song!" I transcribe it here as a testimmony that opposites
needn't necessarily cut each others' throats to coexist in the same space.
I beg the reader's indulgence that the transciption is in simple, Plain
Text:
Some Blossoms of Jottings From a Driftwood Stool At Tennessee Beach One
Morning (asterisk, footnote: "Tennessee Beach - A secluded spot at trail's
end in a steep Pacifc headland, within hiking distance of a small town.")
When the theme of Wilderness arises in our living room in one of its
occasional incarnations, my Viennese wife automatically arises with it
fully armed and passionately defending cosmopolitan life – culture, as she
calls it – its theaters, its broad boulevards, apartment houses, tramways,
clangor; its delicatessens, cathedrals, chic boutiques; its operas, its
crowds, its universities; its symphonies, museums, hospitals, libraries.
And in the warm summer shade of tranquil old chestnut trees, its park
benches and tulip gardens.
Granted, she has a point. But then, too, she believes the reward for
walking up a mountain should be a coffee house on top of it !!
She may shun wilderness, but strolling along a path in the marsh near
home, the sight of a great blue heron standing there nearly as tall as
herself disengages her breath for a moment, an instant that reveals a
curiously concealed and clever paradox of human nature: the heart knows
it's connection to wild things, even if the mind does not.
But she's a wonderful cook, and wonderfully wise about Asian greengrocers.
And
Mozart
and
Shakespeare,
and
Yves
St.
Laurent.
And not least among her many distinguishing qualities is an estimable
tolerance for a capricious husband.
Time to go, I'm afraid. The sea is restless this morning. I love to sit
and watch it, mindlessly and forever. But if I get hung up waiting for the
next perfect wave to crash over the rock in its final, suicidal assault on
the face of the cliff, its snowy soul exploding brilliantly upward, upward
still, until exhausted and spent, …
. . . . . . . . . . . . I'll be late for lunch!
Recap the water bottle, stuff it in, retie the daypack's thong; one arm
through the shoulder straps, then the other. About face, into the sun;
give the old Donegal hat a fond ritual crush, and follow the beacon –
- - home.
That was twelve years ago, and we and our marriage are still intact. But
not without significant compromises by both of us. My wife is from a
European capital city and I'm an Idaho hillbilly. We were born into
different worlds and grew to adulthood with differently formatted hard
drives which, it seems to me is the fundamental difficulty made manifest
here in Homestead.
For the 40 years I've lived on Homestead Blvd I've been sandwiched between
two elementary schools within walking distance, which in the vicissitudes
of time were privatized: Mount Tamalpais School at 100 Harvard (old Marin
Terrace School) and Marin Horizon School at 305 Montford (old Homestead
School.) There isn't a person living or dead who can point to benefits
that have accrued to my quality of life on account of that privatization.
As a matter of fact, traffic has become an abomination and the number of
coyote sightings has skyrocketed.
I don't count myself among those who admire that situation, and when I
think that there is actually a stratum of humanity that does, and who
measure their quality of life by the hours per week they wait for
stoplights, I just reach for the antacids and carry on the best I can.
Ray Cook
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