A Tumble of Sweet Things to Come My WayI’m not religious in any ordinary sense, though I do sometimes make my way to Mass and occasionally feel something like religion—usually while staring up at oak trees, or reading a new poem, or tuning into the sounds of the world: children’s voices, birds, even the trains here in Memphis offer up their own sort of song. With all the buzz about Obama’s singing Al Green at a fundraiser this past week, and my own delight at a President who opened himself to a few words of 1970s soul (it’ so humanizing), I’m more aware than ever of just how powerful sound and music can be. And, of course, I welcome any chance to praise the Rev. Green, who is, for me, the very sound of Memphis, and his songs, their own sort of church.
Memphis was recently named the third saddest city in the country. Just after Detroit, and some place in Florida.
I’m not going to lie, as a newcomer, I have noticed some sad things about Memphis. But there are sad things in other places too—every place probably. But the endearing (and challenging) thing about Memphis is the way it refuses to hide the poverty, crime, and corruption. And the hitsory! So rich, but still tender. And good Lord, what about all those people driving their old model cars ever so s-l-o-w-l-y and without turn signals along Poplar Avenue with its tiny fourth lane! Now that tiny lane is sad. Speaking of Poplar, all of Memphis seemed to at Macy’s at Oak Court today, where the music annoyed me coming as it did in the form of different songs (1980s music streaming from accessories, hip hop blaring from juniors), two gigantic waves of sound colliding in my head. But at least it wasn’t Mariah Carey screeching out Christmas songs, so why the heck was I so grumpy? Probably because besides the collision of music, it was still shopping, after all. But mostly it was a party. Workers handed out treats on trays. But even that I could be grumpy about—imaging how a team of marketers probably recommended the party atmosphere to boost sales and shouldn’t they be ashamed, given how small local incomes—the way those marketers would dare to inflict good music on good people in an effort to sell their Chinese-made tunics and knee-high boots!
But on my way out of the store (grasping a bag containing my own Chinese-made tunic), I nearly fell over a woman and the cleaning cart she’d parked mid-aisle. Damn, I thought. But then I saw she was leaning on the cart for support because she was that tired and that old, so she’d set her stomach against it as she probably had for years, so that the cart looked like it had become part of the woman. But that was only her mid-section, that meeting of cart and cleaning lady. The rest of her?
In flight.
Arms raised, hands snapping high over her head, eyes closed, legs making smooth circles from the hip…the woman was having herself a little party between racks of tunics and the counters of this season’s shades of eyeshadow.
It’s true. Sometimes Memphis is sad. But it is also many other things, including real honesty and soul and pockets of spirit; such things that rarely make it onto polls and city lists.
Who are these children, and why is it okay for Wednesday to be so full of woe? And all those others so painfully sunny. I can’t even look at Monday straight on. Isn’t Wednesday’s grief enough to make that silly girl pry her eyes from her mirror and into the sound of Wednesday’s crying?
A highland cow, hairy coo, and highland views. The highlands are gorgeous and green, with swaths of purple where the heather blooms. So much history and so many lochs and ruins, and most surprising of all; foxglove and scotch broom growing in such wild and windswept places.
About a year ago, I had been thinking of writing a poem about boys with sticks as there was a pack of them behind me on the trail at Mendon Ponds. I could hear them as they beat back the bushes, yelping and running after each other. I began to think about little boys and sticks and the poem started to write itself as I walked; I may have even scratched out a few lines once I got to the car. But there the poem was abandoned. Anyway, a year and all these miles later in Edinburgh, I watched people watching the Queen. I was interested because as an American, the Queen of England means something to me (good and bad) and I watched especially the faces of the older Scots lining the street as she presided over the military ceremony (presenting new colours) to the Royal Regiment. I watched their faces as the bagpipes played, watched them waiting for the Queen, and watched them as they watched her pass by, wondering what they felt, the men and women in this place which seems so proud and closer than ever to independence. And then I backed onto the hill and watched a boy in the field, playing with a stick while his parents waited for a final view of the Queen. And I didn’t feel like writing a poem so much as snapping a photo; which may be what a poem aims to do anyway. So here finally, is ”Boys with Sticks”—
Sun & Snow
It’s been a while since I posted. It’s been a busy time, learning a new job, a new city; and the really important things like how to find the bridge to Mud Island without a map and where the best cupcakes are. Having my friend Greg visit these past two weeks has been great though, because it forced me to “visit” the city like I meant it, and while he was disappointed by the snow (it is 65 degrees today, sorry Manly), I was impressed. It was 103 degrees when I first drove through Memphis this past July, the earth literally cracked and dusty. I never would have believed there could be snowdays and snowmen, or moments like this, surprised by flurries outside of Sun Studios, the sweet sound of the Prisonaires still in my head.
It’s just like the song says, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Sometimes though, if you’re lucky, or especially evolved, you can know what you’ve got while you still have it. That must be as close to heaven as we can get; loving the things we have hold of. All of which is just to say that I miss the fire of autumn leaves! Maple and catalpa, oak and ash, and especially the mitten-shaped sassafras Jim and I pass under at the park on fall walks—when we first met, Jim showed me how to poke eyes into them and make them into little red ghosts. I miss walks. I miss Jim. I miss cattails and sassafras and the ponds out at Mendon. But here’s what I have: a gigantic old magnolia out front, with leaves so leathery they dry hard and heavy and sound like plastic forks clattering onto the sidewalk when they drop. I am learning to love raking them up, because let’s face it; how many more Octobers will I spend raking up magnolia leaves? And something else. When her bloom comes this spring in great swaths of fragrance and flower, I will feel a part of it all. By then, Memphis will be something like home, and who knows, in a few years, walking under the sassafras and maples out at Deep Pond, I may long for the sound of the magnolia leaves rattling under my rake.
I have just finished teach iambic pentameter to tired college students, and honestly, I feel as though I have scaled a mountain. A really big mountain. Everyone thinks writers must have been English majors, which isn’t true. Writing = writing. Literature = reading. Of course, there’s overlap. Of course. Still, I have always felt sort of insecure about Shakespeare and Spenser, and don’t even get me started on Milton. Or Dante. So getting the iambs and meter and feet across felt fantastic, but my favorite part of the lesson was talking about that oh so famous stalker Petrarch and his love for the fair-footed Laura, the way he spied her at Mass, on Good Friday, then wrote her all those poems. Who was she? What moved him so? And everyone knows (well Catholics do anyway..) that Good Friday Mass is the deadliest, so was poor Francesco just bored? Or was she something special? Either way, the man wrote 365 little songs (sonnets) to Laura. And that is something I could talk about for hours.
I could describe the Cooper-Young Festival, named for the revitalized city neighborhood in which I live, how proud they are of their zip code (they even sell 38104 t-shirts) and the pomegranate punch that knocked my socks off and the way they sold catfish sandwiches and 12 inch corn dogs, or I could mull over what happened at the Thai restaurant, why the woman who served us turned unfriendly after a whispered interaction with a overweight burkaed woman and her double-sized mate over dessert options, and why I was happy to see an oversized posed photograph of the Queen of Thailand instead of the same old Buddha/lotus/temple scenes, and how that tofu peanut sauce dish I ordered was so good and why when Jim didn’t like his whole wheat tofu (which isn’t actually tofu) with mushrooms and I tried to eat it, knowing I would hate how earthy it tasted, knowing I haven’t the makings for food martyrdom. Instead, I’ll just show the bridge over the Mississippi, one of several in Memphis, this one shines at night and is named for the explorer who is said to be buried in that same river. I’ll just stop writing and let the bridge stand in for words.
Memphis #3 - Camp Set
My favorite thing about the bungalow on Felix Avenue is the old camp set on the back porch. The table and chairs belong to the owners, and came from an old family cabin in Maine. In fact, though I enjoy the porch swing and the writing room with a view of the gigantic magnolia tree out front; it is the screened in porch with its hammock, faded wicker chair with sun-softened cushion, and the old camp set that seems most like home. Maybe that will change. Of course, it will change. But for now, there’s the watergreen table which holds newspapers, a red flower in a blue coffee mug, and meals shared when Jim visited this past week..here’s a painting he made of the set.
Memphis #2—Extended Stay
So after talking all that smack about Elphie, I’ve dumped him in my office, on top of an old file cabinet where there’s no natural sunlight (the office is purple, by the way, formerly inhabited by the equivalent of a writing rock star (she was on the Cobert Report, need I say more?) so I find myself touching things in her old desk, looking for clues to her literary success, but finding no more than a blackberry charger, a few bent paperclips, a broken desk pull complete with screws, and a business card for a marketing firm in NY..). I’m not sure what all this means, but I’ve decided to hold onto the business card. Back to Elphie. I did find him a friend, a grey elephant teapot from Pier One, which I will fill with water and use as a vase. I also bought an elephant pillow (to be fair, it features monkeys and viney-things too..). I could look into the symbolism of elephants and see what’s going on a level so deep I don’t even have access to it, or I can simply tell myself that I have to furnish an empty house; that I’m trying to make a home of a new place. Speaking of which, I will miss the smokers and lobby-congregators at the Extended Stay—there’s a whole culture of extended stayers; all tired around the eyes and wrinkled (though the Extended Stay does supply irons..) all ordering Chinese takeout and stretching their legs as they chat up the newly admitted and try to nab anyone who walks by -‘you there, with the new york plates’ so they can tell their stories of divorce, new jobs, and mainly, of waiting for something to come to them to make it so they can leave. I asked the woman at the desk what’s the longest anyone has stayed the Extended Stay, and she raised her brows, ’about as long as we’ve been open’—well, how long is that, I say. Five years, give or take.
But not me. And my elephants. We’re out of here.
Memphis #1
This is Elphie. I bought him at Whole Foods this afternoon for several reasons. One, because I needed a plant in this room with its traces of old cigarettes and Chinese takeout, and lucky bamboo with its symbolism and the fact that I just left some with my sister and mother-in-law made it seem right somehow. Two, because my old counselor collected elephants, whole ceramic herds of them, and though I found them tacky and even threatening at times, they now just remind me of him; the importance of quiet acceptance and of challenging ourselves. Finally, because Whole Foods with it’s bags of organic apples and seven kinds of prepared tofu made me happy, and in fact, when I saw him sitting on his shelf of plants, I was sure that Elphie was smiling at me. In a city of strange license plates (which look oddly like New Hampshire’s) and trees I don’t know the names of and women half my age who call me “girl”, I have my own green elephant…now, if in two months, it’s just me and Elphie, and we’re wearing matching t-shirts, you can start to worry. But for now, know that I have something smiling and green in front of me, and sometimes that’s enough.
Young men playing old time Mexican music in the Jardin. Sitting there listening to these guys (one of them did the Mexican equivalent of yodeling!), watching people walk by, relaxing for awhile in the sun; that was enough.
San Miguel sunset, the camera never captures the pink, but it comes close.
I have been busy here, but what a place to be busy! On Saturday, I went to three churches in search for a St. Joseph statue, but found only weddings! Here a flower girl plays with bubbles blown in the plaza near Calle San Francisco.
