Heart-Shaped Bones

My nephew Owen is six, and a budding geologist -- full of facts and replete with treasures to show and tell. When I visit them in the countryside west of London, Owen and his younger brother Rhys greet me in the mornings; we lie on my bed and talk while I wake up. Owen informed me this morning that the fastest a six year old can run is 15 miles per hour; the fastest man, 23. Through my young nephews, I’ve received an introductory education about several subjects of general inquiry – animals, fast cars, obscure Japanese toys. . . they are versed on several topics of wonder. While other kids like to be lions and tigers, Rhys is fond of hanging from bars and pretending he is a sloth. I’m constantly reminded of where there are holes in my body of knowledge. I read up a bit on meerkats – one of the boys’ favorite animals -- and have discovered that the meerkat and I actually have a lot in common: We are long-limbed mammals with broad peripheral vision and are partially immune to certain types of venom. We are known to engage in social behavior such as wrestling matches and foot races. Furthermore, meerkats are commonly misclassified, so we share that mishegoss. Really, we are more similar than we are different. It’s easy to forget these things.

The boys have a trampoline in their backyard, which I guess is the big trend for kids around Reading this summer. I can’t resist a trampoline. I also remember being smaller and the distinct thrill of an adult who was willing to play. It’s easy to forget what it feels like exist in a world that is limited and yet to be vast in imagination. It almost seems that this relationship inverts as we get older – the outer world of relationships and experience becomes vast but the imagination more limited. We get stuck in ways of being and both forget what it was like before, as well as failing to imagine what it could be like down the road.

I’ve been to Paris several times, and in the last three years have been visiting at the end of each summer with a dear friend. We roam through winding streets, across bridges and through regal gardens from one loosely defined destination to the next, discovering some little or big thing of beauty everywhere we look. To add to the elevated aesthetics of their environment, Parisians themselves seem to have a preternatural talent for effortless glamour. Forays into Parisian pharmacies have confirmed my suspicion that the women spend a lot of time and money on skin care -- and I have taken note, made my investments. . . but I also marvel at how a sulky greasy-haired girl wearing a neck scarf and smoking a cigarette can look like Coco Chanel's grandaughter.

One of the great things about returning regularly to a strange place that is familiar -- as Paris has become for me -- is that it becomes a way of charting your own shifts in perspective, your own transformations and achievements, firmly rooted patterns and neurotic compulsions – and and I usually return home from it all with something new to wear. My friend and I spend time taking stock of things, charting course for the months until we’ll meet up next. Even the way I relate to Paris is a study in old habits versus new discoveries – I find myself wanting to return to places we’d been and to honor certain established traditions and rituals, while also being eager to discover something new. We eat escargot and steak, drink wine, sit talking in cafes for hours, visit our favorite works of art, shop for shoes and lingerie. Sometimes we meet interesting characters. I was visiting a friend in a popular bar the other night and was approached by a man from Bordeaux who identified himself as the Archangel Emmanuel, and then proceeded to tell me pretty much his unabridged life philosophy, followed by an animated recitation of Rage Against the Machine lyrics. I seem to attract eccentric creatures in all parts of the world.

The problem with new things is that you don’t know whether you’re going to like them or not, while at least with something that’s familiar, you know what you’re getting. It is a distinct certainty that Paris will be attractive and charming, expensive and filled with hotels bearing lame cramped bathrooms. Sometimes my friend and I make up stories about monuments whose history we don’t know. I’m pretty sure some of our stories are more entertaining than the ones we could read in a guide book. It’s sort of like when Owen tells me about a dream he had, in which he was visited by aliens on a river in the sky. Who knows – in other people’s stories or in the stories we tell ourselves -- where embellishment might overshadow truth, or where embellishment and imagination might reflect truth of another kind.

Another benefit of returning to the same place is in noticing things that might have always been there but that for whatever reason, to which I was blind. We see things when we’re ready. I’m pretty sure the Seine has always run right through the center of Paris from east to west, but it was only last week that I understood this orientation. I guess before I embraced maps as one way of finding my way around, I relied heavily on an instinctual sense of direction, archangels and gas station attendants. . . and now meerkats.

Among my findings on the inquiry is that this member of the mongoose family is also known in some parts of Africa as the ‘sun angel,’ for its protection of villages from the ‘moon devil’ or werewolf – which is believed to attack stray cattle, or lone tribesmen. As such, I bury the albatross, keep the monkeys off my back and a meerkat on my shoulder.

Will and Testament, Poetry and Prose

My dad is a lawyer.  Among other things, he helps people decide what to do with their stuff when they die.  As I learned, he also helps them decide what should be done with their bodies, should they reach a state where decisions about living or dying are necessary.  I started thinking about this in the last few days – never before.  I’ve never had anything of significance to give away, so writing a will hasn’t been of great concern, and I’ve always kind of hoped my body would just dematerialize after it was raided for useable organs.  I embrace a little bit of chaos with regard to my dying, although I realize this is selfish.  The main things I’ve considered have been of a more egotistical nature -- who would be sad, who would miss me, who would regret not having cast me as Reno Sweeney in “Anything Goes” in 1992, who would cry, who would want to read my journals.  . . that sort of thing.

Visiting my 93 year-old grandparents in Seattle last weekend gave me pause for a couple of reasons -- it made me realize that while everyone around me is at work populating the planet with people who will care about them when they get old (ie, their children), there are still a few who don’t now and may never have anyone like that who offers the promise of being looked after in old age.  Of course, one could argue that people who don’t get married and breed don’t usually live as long as those who do, so maybe these considerations will simply be irrelevant – wouldn’t that be nice!  Honestly, I wouldn’t mind dying younger, less decrepit and less hideous-feeling than my familied brethren might.  We never know for sure how things are going to work out.  In case I do live to be old, I’ve made arrangements with my younger cousin and some of my former babysitting charges.

Another manifestation of my reflective state has been my re-reading of Hamlet, which I haven’t read since high school.   A friend is fond of offering Shakespearean analyses of the dramas and conflicts I am wont to lay at her feet – she is a scholar, while I read the Spark Notes for various works of literature the way a passenger in a burning airplane would scan the emergency landing instructions.  There is need.  I need to know that someone has been grappling with the vagaries of human nature long before I have, that someone has learned something from it all, and exactly what that thing is.  I had a love/nemesis in film school whose self-awareness unfortunately didn’t detract from his recklessness in matters of the heart, but who at least acknowledged that he was ‘playing Hamlet --’ referring to the old ‘no delay, no play’ aspect of the prince’s character.  The duality of his hesitation and his impulsiveness made Hamlet a dynamic if vexing character – and of course the conflict created by this duality is part of what made the drama we know and love.

Shakespearean drama aside, Portland is a shockingly pleasant place.  Even though I grew up here and visit a couple times a year, I always find myself surprised by how friendly everyone is, how easy it is to get around and get things done, how often I find myself using the word ‘nice’ to describe people I meet and places I visit.  What other North American city has a chain called ‘Clogs n’ More?’  That kind of says it all.  Its ease leaves me feeling a little on edge – waiting for someone to make a biting sarcastic remark or to be assaulted by some deafening noise, demand or movement.  No such assault is forthcoming – just mellow people with beards, great coffee, vintage Mercedes running on vegetable oil, and the progressive politics of a large liberal arts college campus.

This leads me back to Hamlet and the subject of will.   When things come too easily, is there a danger in not knowing how to want?  What motivates a character who doesn’t acknowledge or hasn’t grappled with his/her own desires?  How does truth, when uncovered, necessitate change?  To add to his complexity, Hamlet was a man who feigned insanity in order to leave those around him confused about his motives.  If I didn’t know otherwise, I would assume he had been trained in the evasion techniques of U.S. Military operatives.

I went to a poetry reading/musical performance last night in the Wieden and Kennedy building, where my friend Willy played a few songs between recitations from The Burnside Reader, a long hallowed poetry anthology.  We concluded that poetry is a tough medium, and we chased the event with a large fully-comped meal at Nel Centro, where my friend Lee is the pastry chef.  I remembered how good it is to be in the restaurant business and the three of us had a meaty panel discussion on the death (and perhaps imminent rebirth?) of the music industry.  Although its ease has been somewhat of a detracting factor for me for fear I would be lulled into sleepiness, Lee and Willy are fine examples of productive people who live in Puddletown and open restaurants, put out records and publish novels.  .  . along with quilting, raising horses and other cool Oregon stuff.

Perhaps after all, it’s too early to draw conclusions about what motivates people in their decisions – either in life or in death.