Knock, knock.

It seems to me that all I do on this blog is apologize for my long absences.

Each time I come back, I feel like a traveling salesman returning to his wife after a long business trip. Please accept this vegetable brush and this bouquet of roses, by way of consolation. And while you are finding forgiveness in your big brunette heart, and an appropriate vase in the kitchen, I will be removing my coat and hat, and a long blonde hair from my cheaply tailored shoulder.

...

The hair would probably belong to the younger Auden, with whom I have been boozing it up alot lately--along with Ovid, Pope, and to a lesser extent Virgil. None of these lads is exactly the party animal he once was, but then none of us really is, or ever was.

After 40 years, I take a kind of comfort in the fact that the person I am and the person I think I would like to be are maybe not so far apart as they once appeared. While I doubt that I will ever meet the mysterious fellow behind my dreams (except, where all things meet, mathematically speaking, at infinity) every now I catch sight of him in the window of the 9:07pm Express: weary, but not worn out.

Life is hard. It is always much harder in the winter--especially when, resting your head against a cool window pane on a crowded train, you try to wring something warm and human out of an icy and dejected looking New England landscape.

But I always like to set aside one or two things for the Future--to look forward to when I get home: a Kurosawa movie waiting from Amazon, Mahler, grilled sausages, Auden, you. A slightly used winter kimono I almost passed on purchasing in Asakusa, for 9,000 yen, two years ago.

Nuts.

Well, she certainly seems to be having fun; but as you can tell from the portrait on the left, the flowers have not yet begun their riot of color, not in our corner of Connecticut. And yet I feel certain that the reds, the blues, the oranges, purples, and even the whites, are about ready to pop: the forsythia have already hung inflammatory banners over the wall, as a warning. May Day is coming. All nature awaits a sign.

Even within me, your humble correspondent, I can feel a surge of sap returning to my limbs from hitherto frozen lakes and unfriendly ground. It is a nice feeling. I find myself walking more, swimming more, writing more, smiling more at strangers. It is the smiling, I think, which feels the best. Life is returning to life. It began in Japan, a few weeks ago.

During the past week, when I haven't been at the gym, or going to job interviews (more about THAT later) I have been spending an awful lot of the time on the porch, laptop on my lap, staring at squirrels, listening to lawn mowers, dreamily attempting to tap out a new poem.

...

On Thursday night, while visiting a friend in New Haven, we happened to drive past a very ominous, gray Gothic building. On our left is the edifice where the secret, Satanic rites of the Yale Skull and Bones Society are carried out. I have no idea what these rites are, or their relation to the Spring, but now I am aware of where they take place. No knowledge I acquire is ever wasted.

We happened to be discussing writing classes--words in general--what our favorite words were. He told me about an assignment in a college writing course where he had to pick out his favorite words in English and incorporate them into a story. One of the words he chose was brouhaha, which is a pretty hilarious word when you think about it, containing as it does the very seeds of laughter.

As for me, I was kind of caught off guard when he asked me what my favorite words were. I know I should not have been, but perhaps I was distracted by the radio display, shifting gears, or something else in the car. The only two words that immediately occurred to me were adjectives: the words anthropophagic and celestial.

The stars I need not explain. But I have no idea from what chthonic depths the word anthropophagic arose; except that I can remember feeling kind of hungry, and maybe slightly cranky as a result. I do know that the word celestial occurred to me first, which I find rather re-assuring. And it was the one I uttered.

...

Later, after we said goodbye, and I caught the 11:18pm local back to Stamford, I went back to the white wicker rocker on the porch. I flipped open my laptop, and I began to piece together the evening. I had had a good time.

I don't often seem to talk shop with other writers, no matter how garroulous I appear on the subject here. The word celestial kept ringing in my ears. And the forthcoming brouhaha among the flowers--especially the syllables ha and ha. And suddenly, as I sat sipping a tall glass of orange juice (my nightcap of choice), everything seemed to slip into place in my subconscious: the Spring, the sky, the lawn, the laughter, the squirrels, you and I.

I know it's extremely unusual, but isn't it nice when things work out perfectly?

It certainly is for me.


The Squirrels
For A.T.

They act a lot like we do, in a way.

Once, while I was studying some porn
I had discovered in an old suitcase,
I came across a slightly cracked acorn.
I can remember thinking, “What a place
To store your nuts.” Don’t attics get too warm?
And is an old suitcase the ideal space
For storing nutrients—like nut protein?
No wonder all those squirrels look so lean…

This was my thinking at the time, okay;
I probably had missed my morning nap,
Or something similar. I cannot say
I was delirious. Or curious. The crap
I do—I did—astonishes me today:
I had a dozen lovelies in my lap,
And far from having a hard-on, or stroke,
I ran outside to plant myself an oak.

While nothing very shady was forthcoming,
I lay there, on my stomach, with my spade,
Yawning, pelting birds, and maybe humming—
My other activities all seem to fade
Into oblivion. I am running
Over some details of this escapade:
The time, position of the sun, my age.
To Time alone, I have devoted page—

Page—page—well, I can’t seem to find it.
I’m sorry. It was remarkable—a classic
Piece of metaphysics. I designed it
First to entertain—which is the basic
Premise of this poem. And behind it
Lies no philosophy—no specific
School of thinking that I can remember.
This doesn’t mean those moments I surrender

To retrospection—in my reverie—
The sharper edges of the Past will soften.
My spade does not get duller, although we
Do get dirty in the garden. And, often,
We dig up buried treasures. Do you see
That bloke behind the oak—the hard to love one
Who could use a slightly closer shave?
That’s you. (I would pull up my pants, and wave.)

The New Year Approaches...

...but with great gilded coaches, or battalions of roaches?

At this stage--on December 28th--it is pretty hard to tell. The rumbling of the future always sounds the same to me, no matter what is coming--blood, thunder, or just the usual cast of idiots, committing the usual blunders.

All I will say is that things seem satisfactory today. My cholesterol is low. I have been averaging about 1000 calories worth of cardio work at the YMCA, 3x per week. I have not been bombed today. I could be a bit taller, perhaps, and thinner. But then, who couldn't be?

Generally speaking, plans are proceeding according to plan--which is a nice thing for plans to do. I have scheduled a move to Japan for 2007. Probably to teach English, also to learn Japanese, but more than anything to secretly settle down with my friend Takaaki--to see if we can establish some kind of existence for ourselves.

In September, I donated most of my life to charity, reducing the volume of my possessions to two cartons of letters, a few photographs, a cedar box marked with the legend ‘Dad’ (it used to belong to my grandfather), a red calf-skin bound Bible from the Lighthouse Baptist Church, North Tonawanda, NY, and a kidney-shaped, evergreen ashtray I put together in 7th grade ceramics class. And my white Apple laptop. And the first 60 episodes of Bleach.

“Simplify, simplify,” was Thoreau's most transcendental advice. And I think I have tried to follow it to the best of my abilities. Simplification is not for everyone, but it does seem to agree with me. Perhaps being a simpleton helps. It certainly doesn't hurt. That is, unless you have 2,000 kanji to learn...

We’ll see how things go in Japan. All I am certain about today is that a bachelor’s cabin on a lake in Massachusetts is not for me. Nor is the Lake Shore Limited--not anymore, anyway.

Not after being seduced by the Shinkansen, anyway.

I think I am totally in love.

…



The Heron and the Crab


Are you enjoying Minneapolis?
I sit here typing on a purple train
Which has stalled outside of Beverly,
Massachusetts. And it looks like rain.

The ghostly fingers of a hurricane
Are creeping up this section of the coast.
If we were home—back in Manhattan—we
Might see lightning buttering our toast.

This morning, for my breakfast, all I had
Was twenty Tylenol. How do I feel
About you moving back to Tokyo?
The damage it will do will be unreal.

I rest my temple on the window pane.
A heron daintily devours a crab
Abandoned by the surf in that salt-marsh
Out there. I love that bird. I am so glad

I noticed him. You know, if you were here
I’d say, “I bet that bird is Japanese—
He’s having one of your weird breakfasts.” He
Tears that crabby heart apart with ease.