see beyond

“We must accept finite disappointment,
but never lose infinite hope.”

~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1968

This time of the year is especially conducive for outdoor writing. Perching on the sunwarmed granite front stoop to write and read has been consoling for many years. But now with the inevitability of losing my housing, even benign routines have become tainted with mournful tones. Necessity and survival demand that I force myself to see beyond these liminal times. While I witness the steady evacuations of my neighbors, as we are all anticipating the “redevelopment” by the next landlords, I am also wildly scouring the grounds for a place to call home. Yet, still, the stately Victorian architecture remains, as do roses, leafy trees, and ants scurrying across the stone steps. Occasionally, an ant will run right at my book, realize it’s an obstruction, and either climb over it or scramble around it. Then I’ll stand the book up, to see how it tries to figure out how to navigate, determined to hold its direction. Not wanting to antagonize the poor thing, I remove the barrier and let it scamper on. Like these small creatures, I am also trying to make sense of setbacks. Most of us have them; sometimes the hardships are compounded. Job hunting, apartment searching, seeking grace- all look the same, all pursued with the same desperation. Perhaps it’s all too similar, and this will require some thoughtful parsing. In crisis mode, too many things seem alike. All the begging, scraping, and strenuous attempting to impress are amounting to levels of humiliation unusual even to me. Yet the fight must not cease, neither should the refinements of my pitches. There is surely much more to lose by clutching a status quo, than in making a move.

Another annual summer reminder is my memory of arriving in Portland. After my hardworked endurance of the New York City school system, I graduated from the High School of Art and Design. Commencement was at nearby Carnegie Hall, and the speaker was alumnus Ralph Bakshi. I had saved my money to travel back to Paris so that I could spend the summer with family. I had missed everyone very, very much- especially my grandmother- and there was nothing I wanted more than to be there. It was undoubtedly a great decision in every way. By Labor Day weekend, with a great many thoughts and ambitions, I arrived in Maine. The building containing my first apartment is down the street from the place I will have to leave. Through eight different apartments, I remained close the center of the city.

I remember very well how desolate it was to be a seventeen-year-old stranger in town- even after beginning at Maine College of Art. I’ve since been active in numerous community efforts- creating, befriending, giving, serving, teaching, and working- but this housing crisis has me no less on the ropes than when I first arrived. A stranger in my own town. Maine is a wilderness at multiple levels: Yes there are thick and endless woods, as the state is mostly rural, with beautiful landscape. But it is also a hard culture. Somehow I wound up fitting in among kindred spirits, especially as I got more involved in civic and artistic life. The cultural differences surface as I seek advice and help from among the hundreds of people I know. A city person like me prefers to communicate directly and unabashedly (but with the best of manners). The stereotypic Yankee mindset is to go about things indirectly and laconically. People tell me about this-and-that empty apartment across the street from them, but they can’t tell me who owns the place because they either never speak- or the owner is an “avowed enemy.” I’ve heard that latter expression many times. Social media is well suited for such personalities, because they can suspiciously snoop around without directly communicating. I’d like to think I’ve evolved over the years, but never into that. My purpose in life is to be a doer, not a spectator. As much as I inhabit this world, I am not of it. Still, try making any progress with housing or employment without help from others- especially those “in the know,” and the “gatekeepers.” Even if you ask politely. Even if they know you.

I’m reminded of a Maine College of Art memory; a very subtle one that I somehow remember. I had written a paper for a literature course, and my professor wrote an interesting reflection after my last paragraph. Professor Aldrich concluded his positive comments with confessing there was something he couldn’t quite agree with, and then wrote “but maybe it’s just the mood I’m in today.” His candor was commendable enough, but the admission also taught me something about context. We tend to perceive according to our circumstances. The covid era is now 29 months running. We can look back across 2½ years of world-altering plague. While we all heard daily about fatality numbers and immunization, both the housing and job markets spiraled into merciless stratification. Before realizing how different everything became, everything began to look different. Like many others, I kept on working- setting up a remote space at my dining table with an extra laptop computer I had purchased, when not pitching in for various departments on-site. The imperative has been to keep on working. While I witnessed furloughs, layoffs, and countless voluntary departures- I kept on working. Lunch hours became isolated twenty-minute breaks, and vacations became impossible. All was subsumed for the causes of relevance and productivity. And survival. The mood I’m in today is that I’ve kept on working, obstacles notwithstanding.

One of my colleagues recently said to me, while discussing what we’ve been able to accomplish in the past fiscal year, “We’ve all been through a lot.” Stopping and looking up, I replied, “We have, indeed.” The covid era has weatherbeaten and accelerated the aging of most of us across all the generations. Ambitions held so preciously in the depths of our lockets, tenaciously carried through our school years, collide at the compromising crossroads of plague. The imperative is to survive, but what are the rewards of survival? Like the ants on the front stoop, it would be good to know that I’m scurrying to something better in this life. I seem to have met many of the descendants of the friends of the biblical character Job; they like to tell me I’m being tested, and that my life is a trial. And it’s much more than being on the brink of losing my home. Well, if this is indeed a protracted spiritual test, there isn’t much else I can do but to stick to my scruples. It means to believe without seeing, to pray insistently into the opacity, and to forgive all the tin-eared people from whom I’ve asked for help. Speaking with a wise friend, I mentioned the weight of some kind of bewildering punishment. He told me to do all in my power “not to go there,” and to be reminded of Divine compassion. Going further, he told me to be sure of that. Perhaps if this is a test, it’s about how I perceive God. Purposes are often discovered amidst struggles.

Maybe I’m not being punished. Maybe I’ve heard the expressions no-cause and at-will a few too many times to be reminded of my own humanity. Everything looks very different now. But while I continue straining to perceive through cluttered apartments and dilapidated buildings, my self-prescribed imperative is to see beyond reticent neighbors, see beyond this smallminded culture, see beyond constant setbacks, see beyond roadblocks and rejections, see beyond exclusivity, and see beyond all that tells me to just give up. Seeing and proceeding beyond limits may lead to a clearing, a pasture, a wellspring. That inner locket is still where it has always been, with me since my school years when I was thrashed around by bullies who outweighed and outnumbered me. It’s still kept safe, and the preserved spirit of forgiveness and devotion will repel the tarnish of these times.

musical chairs

“Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!

With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?

Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.”

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Work Without Hope.

“Musical Chairs” is an old-fashioned children’s social game which I recall from such occasions as birthday parties and indoor recess times in grammar school. A line of chairs would be situated at the center of a large room. There must be one chair fewer than the number of participants. A moderator would operate a music-playing device, and while the music played, the group would process around the chairs- moving along while carefully eyeing the shortened supply of seats. Without warning, the moderator suddenly stops the music, at which instant each person must seat themselves in one of the chairs. Inevitably one person is left unseated, causing them to leave the game. With each subsequent round, one chair gets removed, the music recommences, and with another surprise halt, the diminishing group scrambles for an incrementally shorter supply of seats. There are always too few chairs for one-too-many people, and thus the game of elimination continues, right down until there are two people and just one chair.

The dynamic gets interesting when the game pares down to something like five chairs for six people. Those precious, remaining seats receive an intensifying, hawkeyed, hovering treatment. With each turn around that diminished set of places, the sense of urgency increases. As the group of contenders decreases, always with one-too-few corresponding possibilities, the game becomes increasingly competitive. As a children’s game, we can say the ramifications are very low, of momentary note, and quite forgettable. Some of you might remember the schoolyard song that ends with “the cheese stands alone.” Well, “alone” lasted barely a minute, long enough to move on to another game. The “cheese” might later wind up hitting a home run, or scoring a goal. Such situations had no enduring memory, broadly speaking.

Schoolyard at my grammar school, P.S. 13, in New York City.
Below: Seeing the P.S. 13 schoolyard, as a visitor with adult's eyes.

Then there are those among us who remember in sharp detail. Whether beneficial or not, we are able to see metaphors in things as trivial as children’s games. In the thick of New York City, playgrounds and schoolyards are paved like streets and sidewalks; all were interchangeable and seamless to us. My friends and I invented games, or we imposed our own usable rules upon known popular street games. Assembling to play “ring-a-leevio,” which combines hide-and-seek and tag (and sometimes running bases), we’d start by setting geographic perimeters. We did with our odd mutations of baseball and football, too. What is acceptable, and what is out-of-bounds? We didn’t dislike the kids who couldn’t exceed at batting, fielding, running, or throwing; we didn’t like the kids who refused to play by the rules. We didn’t know many “grownup” words, but we had our own version of “inclusion.” Ramon’s little brother Jorge had to play with us, because he was Ramon’s brother. Luis was with us, because he lived on the same block. Madhavan was with us, because he was with us in school. Such things went without question, and well they should.

Corona, in New York City.
Below: Schoolyard at my junior high school, I.S. 61, in New York City.

Departing from those childhood instances of mutually-accepted rules, time revealed more of the rigid variety- implied in “musical chairs.” Particularly when there is no infraction of the rules (or laws, or etiquette), exclusion can be a terribly negative force. Turning aside the rose-colored glasses, the same kids that called “do-overs,” and would add a 4th strike to allow for a more interesting ballgame, were also among those who ostracized other kids. We naturally know how to shun and leave others out, and such adolescent behaviors that reach adulthood and middle age practice subtle and effective ways to accomplish their ends. Sending a fellow child to the sidelines looks quite direct and overt, compared to how adults blackball each other from behind closed doors. There is also a bullying dimension to neighborhood gentrification, especially as landlords imitate their lesser peers who gouge residents and squeeze them out of their homes. As with schoolyard, workplace, and political bullies, if they can get away with it, they will. But conscientious people do notice. What seems as elusively opaque as boardroom doors is an equally elusive notion of the downtrodden transcending exclusion.

As some are either content or resigned to be overlooked, many are not. The latter can echo Coleridge, in the quoted Work Without Hope, stupefied and mystified at exclusion from fulfilling a vocation. The amaranth flowers of his poem bloom for those who have successfully reached and taken their brass rings. These blossoms adorn that last seat and its fortunate occupant. Indeed, the plight of the job hunter continues the legacy of musical chairs. But the adversity is much more complex, and life sustenance is in play. The rules appear simple: an individual makes inquiries and represents their abilities and accomplishments, aspiring to be able to demonstrate their qualifications in person. Honest play for honest gain, or at least it should be so.

Alas, as it was during childhood, there are innocence-threatening realizations to be made. Of course there are exceptions; at least I continue to resist succumbing to cynicism. In too many instances, hiring procedures tend to be woefully rigged and disingenuous, amounting to one of the last bastions of permissible bigotry. Many of us naively face the job market with high hopes that blend together hard-earned degrees, gainful employment histories, achievements, and adventurous can-do pluck.

Below: From the abyss of automated online applications.

We bravely and dutifully endure demeaning online procedures. Some of these strangely demand typing in such things like the name of our junior high school. Succinctly worded résumés and crafted letters, targeted to the position, are absorbed into data-dissecting web applications along mazes of pigeonhole questionnaires. These reside in a cloudy culture that belongs to the virtual world of passively choosing from formulated lists and thumbnails, like shopping, social media, news, and even dating. But for the job hunter, the genres are oddly enmeshed. The perfect impression is sought, to draw attention. Applicants are challenged to be personal and specialized, yet the process is vague and uncommunicative. Often, rejection notices are eschewed; there is merely silence with the assumption that somebody else got the musical chair. On the other side of the virtual curtain, many a search committee will hand the coveted position to a crony- regardless of experience or credentials. Insiders play their own private version of musical chairs. After all, we dwell against a fear-based culture; unknowns are distrusted and prejudices remain unquestioned. And many of us are astonished at our own naivete and purist expectations. There are those who would rather not play games. Despite all of this, stouthearted searchers continue on. Somewhere out there is a chair that will not be whisked away.

waterways and written words

“Fair the land lies, full of August,
Meadow island, shingly bar,
Open barns and breezy twilight,
Peace and the mild evening star.

Gently now this gentlest country
The old habitude takes on,
But my wintry heart is outbound
With the great ships of Saint John.”

~ Bliss Carman, The Ships of Saint John



Is it that we notice the time, or might it be that time notices us? In both senses, we catch ourselves noticing hours and seasons. Over recent years, I’ve come to redub the days around Labor Day my Arrival Weekend. This marks the time I left home at 17 to begin art college in Portland. Right at this time of year, all physical and instinctive signs bring me to remember new school years and arriving in strangely compelling new environments. Ever looking for familiarity to balance out the unknown- at least until the new became comfortable. I was once taught to ladle a few measures of the acclimated water from an aquarium into the new and inert water, lest the goldfish endure shock. For my senses, it is the light and air that annually manifest just as August becomes September. The urgency of the return to school always accompanied by the sudden effects of ragweed allergens produced a combination committed to memory.

I didn’t always like this time of the year- particularly in adolescence. Much later, in graduate school, it occurred to me how exciting and enjoyable the season- and learning- had become. It took years of concerted toil to get that far in my education, and I had the rewarding freedom to choose my field of study at that level. The experience itself became a conduit for new strength. I’d make notes to this effect in my journals, even recording some of the posted hallway mottos such as, “Major in the Rest of your Life,” and “The Joy is in the Journey.” My workload was such that I could scarcely savor the other seasons of the year, while in constant transit between Maine and Boston- with coursework, employment, teaching, and field work. For those three years, the recurring season of arrival and new beginnings left the profoundest impressions. When I stop to consider the grander picture of living as pilgrimage, these time periods become chapters- or stages- along a voyage of a breadth I cannot know. The French word étape describes it well- being a marker, a waystation, a portion of a progressing journey.

As I mentioned in the previous essay, a recent week of travels along the Saint John River was an occasion for respite. The towns and sites along the river were tangible étapes to savor the way. Travelling from the source in Maine through its widening in New Brunswick is always a peaceful exploration.

The capitol city of Fredericton, popularly referred to as the cradle of Canadian poetry, is the birthplace of three major poets whose influence continues today. On one of my visits I followed a trail that began at Poets’ Corner (in front of the University of New Brunswick library) and proceeded to the downtown homes of Bliss Carman, Francis Sherman, and Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, and then finally to their graves at the Forest Hill Cemetery. With their words, a heritage of wilderness is blended with that of writing. Hiking along the river, connecting all these locations, brought to mind waterways and written words. And the poets’ trails were added to my own.

Sir Charles G.D. Roberts' home, Fredericton.

Bliss Carman's lectern-like grave, at Forest Hill Cemetery.

The winding Saint John was greatly fascinating to me. Accustomed to the ocean panorama of home, the change of scenery was something to enjoy. The river’s surface reflects finely-hatched textures, demonstrating direction of current. In French, un sens: a sense for the way. A transition in perception occurs when an observing of the waterway from a distance becomes a participation in its path. It is a living stream, possessing transitions of its own, revealing terrain, vegetation, settlements, and nearing the ocean an increasing sweetgrass aroma. Watching Maliseet craftsmen create a birchbark canoe, it was amazing to see how much water is needed to fashion the contours. And eventually the finished vessel becomes an ideal means for navigating the waters.

Watching watercraft from a bridge, I noticed each one travelling in a specific direction. At times we are borne upon the rapids, at other times we must portage with the resources and strength we can find. Catching a glimpse of the Fredericton lighthouse beacon, my steps reached the other side of the bridge. This week, the conduits I travel are trafficked avenues, paved spaces, and office corridors. Yet the experience of filling my sights with the Saint John remains. Revisiting photographs from the journey reminds me of the brilliant skies that will surely continue to captivate my thoughts when short winter days take hold as our accustomed reality. Now looking to the coast at home, my musings turn to the idea of coastal rivers channeling their waters to infinities of oceanic expanse. From edges and shores transitions can be observed; joining the paths is participating in the unfolding way. In constant motion, the waters are liminal in essence; they are not earthbound, but unfinished and ongoing.

Typing and tea, New Brunswick, Canada.

June 30th

“We have saved our days the whole year.
We will wear our summer clothes.
Walk for miles in the sun
and remember every one,
and say we know this place,
we know.”

~ The Innocence Mission, Geranium Lake


Growing up in New York City, June 30th always had the connotation as being the last possible day of school. It was so liberating, despite the nervousness of report cards and averages. Today’s sundrenched cool air reminds me of those annual sendoffs from homeroom (and even the earlier elementary days when all subjects were covered in one room). All that was necessary, on June 30th, was to show up. There was no more homework left to cough up.

We’d report in for the last day of school sans heavy book bags. School itself- the institutional hallways, the grey window-filtered diffracted light, and even the vague acquaintances outside predictable circles of friends- all suddenly endeared. It’s when one steps onto the docks of terra firma that the decrepit old boat gathers fondness. During the traversal and those endless stretches of distance, abundance is ascribed to curses and divisions among the crew. Many of us see similar templates far into our adult working lives. We’ve always known we can’t influence much of anything beyond our reach, but we rarely give up trying. June 30th of this year, yet another calendar’s round-trip away from asphalt schoolyards left behind, hasn’t got the air of ammonia-scrubbed floors and desks but instead the aromas of my Atlantic harbor home.

One thing of which I never grow weary is to write in the openness of fresh air. Even in winter. Sounds of seagulls and scents of the ocean precisely call to mind where I am. The old things are past, and behold- this morning all things are become new.