Category Archives: Nebraska

Living in a Quiet Place

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August 27, 2004

I’ve been eating at the Subway near my office once a week for about five years now. I don’t always get the same sandwich, but nearly always. Today I got a turkey and ham, though usually I get a plain turkey.

If that sounds boring, well, it is. But I’ve found that while I’m always interested in new ideas in art, music, philosophy, etc., and I’m fascinated with new people, places and events, the truth is I’m happy with rut-like routines for the more mechanical aspects of day to day living.

With respect to wardrobe, I am far from a “dandy,” though I try not to be slovenly or wear clothes too far out of style. Occasionally at the office we have a “casual day,” which I usually opt out of. I have a good standard set of boring work clothes–khakis, black slacks, oxfords, and polo shirts from the local mid-value retailer–and the effort required to think up something more “casual” to wear (but not too casual) sort of negates any pleasure I might have in wearing jeans or shorts to work. Plus, I don’t even have that many casual clothes, so I don’t want to “use them up” before the weekend arrives. The whole thing just screws up my monk-like routine.

My last car was an Acura, but it got pretty old, so I traded it in–for another Acura. Hey, they’re just good cars.

It’s simple living, and I no longer find simple to be synonymous with bland or commonplace. Quite the contrary: as the whole population seems to strive for a life of some deeper significance, I accept life as inherently significant, and life’s simple acts as acts of faith in that belief.

My weekdays are filled with routine, though I like to break things up on the weekends. I’m happy to work, come home, work out or mow the lawn if it needs it, read the paper, eat dinner, walk the dog and read to my daughter with my wife, watch TV for an hour, and then hit the sack, where I sleep quite soundly. I look forward to each familiar component of these evenings as others might look forward to a coming change. There is a quietness to these days, a rhythm that is in tune with my life’s rhythm, at least for now. My earlier life was so frenetic, unpredictable, often dangerous. I’m happy to be in this new stage, one where I might plan a long-term personal project without the need for a deadline. I can plant a tree, and say to myself in earnest, “Well, that will be looking just great in about five years or so.”

I can still contemplate the old days, the lessons they taught me. This old life lives on in my mind, a spirit life of some lone gypsy obsessed with finding meaning, searching for people who knew about living, expecting to find significance lurking nearby like a wino in an alley. He eventually stopped wandering and found meaning–in a child’s eyes, a swept porch, a Saturday morning kiss, a dog’s soft ear, a garden of wild lilacs and daisies. The necessary thing was to stop looking.

And now, waves of meaning wash over each morning shave and mirror stare. Who am I today? How will I change to face events, and how will events change me without my knowing? How far away am I from that naïve child who felt so apart from everyone else? How much closer am I now, and will I move closer still, to those I love?

It is the exquisite, almost painful beauty of the world as seen from a quiet place, with room and time to observe the day’s passing, that I crave. And I find it so often, I am approaching a contentment I never knew was possible.

I wrote a bad poem some time ago, about the sun as an indifferent ball of fire careening dumbly through space. I thought it was a poem about alienation and the loss of significance in the face of the death of God, etc.–a riff on the current Zeitgeist. Now I know it was just a poem about loneliness. And that’s what most angst must be about. The inability, if even for a while, to move from separate lonely spaces to a common warm, quiet place of belonging and acceptance. To come home.

Storm Center

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Today is my birthday, and here I notice that I’ve kept this log for about a year. My first items–from the mental backlog–sprang forth last spring, and here we are again, enjoying spring on the plains. Another year older, but not much smarter. The Iconoclastic Dog is a year older too, yet she remains the same, eschewing labels. Give me green grass and a hint of rabbit ‘neath the firs, and I’m happy, she avers.

And, as always, I agree. Say what you want about her, she is not one to over-analyze. And while I may not be able to emulate such a philosophy, I do admire it.

It was a wet May. Out here the weather patterns tend to set themselves for a while, offering calm or violence as is the gods’ wont, then abruptly shift to something new. To a Midwesterner, it’s a kind of weather roulette. Folks in San Diego wouldn’t understand, but we enjoy the challenge.

So May offered weekend storm after storm, followed by strangely calm work weeks (feeding rumors that the weather pattern is somehow tied to the Dow Jones). One Saturday was particularly spectacular, offering up 18 twisters in a single night for Nebraska, flash floods in Iowa, and massive storms in Kansas, Oklahoma  and elsewhere. The little town of Hallam, in south-central Nebraska, was destroyed. Less than 10 percent of the buildings were left standing, and the entire town has been condemned, its homes unlivable. People joke about it, but this was actually one of those Level 4 storms that had folks spotting cattle flying through the air. Not funny when you’re the cow, or the owner of the cow.

Dozens of the town’s residents broke into the bank and huddled in a vault as the tornado swallowed up their homes. They say the sound is almost unbearable, and this one took a slow saunter through town, finishing the place off with a businesslike thoroughness. The brick bank building, like most others, actually collapsed. But the people, who are at least as important as currency but not always so well-housed, were safe in the vault. One woman died in her home, struck by debris before she could reach her basement stairway, but that was the total mortality. Mostly these people lost their past and present, and the future doesn’t look so bright either. But they live.

Our experience in the city has been less dramatic, but we’ve had our share of excitement. On the Saturday following the destruction the storms were back, and this time they hit the city pretty hard. We were having a dinner party and at times had to shout over the thunder. Our guests exhibited that nervousness we sometimes feel when experiencing a cataclysm away from our familiar homes. It was a celebration of electricity and raw power, without regard for the plans of the men and women. The point was not lost on us.

We cling deftly but precariously to the exposed surface of this world, which at any time might be swept clean of us or our neighbors by indifferent nature. Yet we cling, and we hope that today’s storm will pass us by, and we try not to think of what realms it will cleanse instead.

We live in the sometimes violent plains, but no one is safe from the storms, which take so many awesome and terrible forms these days. And there is no preparing now, no safe haven really, if there ever was, from what may come. All we can do is keep our grip, and remind each other of how wonderful, how beautiful it all has been. And will be.

Close to Home

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I generally take the same route each time I walk the dog. It’s a circuitous route around the neighborhood, chosen for its flatness mainly, and its relative lack of yard dogs.

There is one black dog who never barks at us. I’ve been walking Emma by him for too long. He just stands and stares at us. Not a friend, really, but a neutral party anyway.

It’s a comfort, this wind of familiar streets and sidewalks in the evening. Nothing exciting, but at least I know where I’m going. And the black dog knows me.

I bought a camera recently, an older Japanese SLR – super manual. Got it pretty cheap. I’ve been trying to learn how to use it, taking a roll of shots pretty indiscriminately, testing shutter speeds and apertures in different light.

Of course you get a nice camera and you think you’re going to become the next Ansel Adams. Then you start looking at your daily world through the lens and realize it’s not very compelling subject matter.

But I do go places. We actually have quite a large collection of snapshots from our travels, our celebrations, and such. In about a month we’re going to Italy, which is one reason I decided to try to make the jump to a better camera.

I want a better chronicle of my life. That’s also the reason for this site.
But it’s been, the past few weeks, one of those periods where not much happens. We had Halloween, and my daughter chose to be something “scary” (vampire’s wife) for the first time. It was quite fun, with a pizza and, later in the evening, old horror movies with a few friends.

And of course the world keeps falling apart, nothing new there. The best lack all conviction, etc. They keep picking off our boys in Iraq, one or two a day like there’s a quota. The other day they blew up a bunch of Italians, just for good measure. George Bush is going to London this week. Our only remaining “ally” is beefing up police presence for the visit, bracing for “the biggest mass protest in modern history,” as they are predicting it. It must be great to be completely oblivious to condemnation from the entire rest of the world.

I’ve been suffering through a new ailment, a bum foot. I can not tell you what happened, only that all of a sudden it became very painful to walk. It’s been getting better with some care in walking (Maybe another reason my life is slowed down these weeks – can’t walk too far.)

Maybe this weekend we’ll drive out to the small town we visit each fall . It’s a quaint little place, with apple orchards and a fine old park with ancient trees and an old mansion you can tour through. Maybe we’ll get a good shot of my daughter in the colorful leaves for the old Christmas card.

A man could do worse.

Niobrara Nights

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You may have noticed that I let the whole month of September go by without a word.

Not without reason. Like Eliot’s April, I find September the cruelest month. By September I’ve about had it with the Plains version of summer–a sort of relentless boiling–but no, summer will not pass. Around mid-September you start to think it should begin cooling down, but it doesn’t. It just keeps on, in the 90s or better, every day. And the rains stop. No rain. Just hot, humid, sweltering dog days.

And here’s the clincher – they close the pools in August. Early August. So no relief there. We went all the way to Niobrara in September just to get to a pool that was open.
And it was delightful.

niobr2bMy wife’s father and stepmother, in a flash of brilliance and spending, purchased a massive chunk of land in the Niobrara river valley a few years ago. Then (and this was a years-long ordeal worthy of Hercules, or at least his contractor) they plopped a big house down on top of a ridge overlooking the river itself. It’s a wonder. After driving all day from our city, ever deeper into farm territory and then, in the valley itself, ranch territory, then up a never-ending gravel drive to the lonely ridge, you find it (unless it’s dark – then you drive right by it). It sits alone on the ridge, with no other sign of civilization in sight.

Beyond the ridge is the valley and the river.

The first time we visited was a bit odd. The three of us just piled in the car and drove up there one hot August day. It was as if we were visiting a three-masted schooner in the middle of a squall. Because they had built on the high point of the ridge, they got the full fury of the ranging wind. And that night was outrageously windy. You had to yell at someone just a few feet away — and I’m talking about inside the house. We had to crack the windows (no air conditioning), so the wind came in whistling and flapping the blinds all night. And yes, it was hot.

But they got the air conditioning in (a necessity in this place, not a luxury), and about a month ago they had the deck put on. The deck! We came up in early September with some friends, planning a mild weekend in the country. We arrived at night–I was in horrible shape. It had been a crushing day. I had been crushed. But when we arrived, we grabbed a cold beer and we went out on the deck. And the sky exploded.

I imagine there are people in the city, plenty of them, even in my city of the Plains, who have never seen the galaxy they live in. I myself had not seen it for some time, given that I, like most, spend my days locked in a straight-ahead stare at responsibility, tasks and the specter of tomorrow. Oh, you’ll step out on the patio at night and detect a few stars in the glare–look, I think that’s the Big Dipper! But in the dark of that lonely valley, we walked out on that deck and looked up, and we didn’t go back in until bedtime.

The stars, the stardust, the Milky Way, and Mars himself–they all were there for us, stretched across that impossibly wide and cloudless black bowl, to gaze on and to get to know again.

How wonderful to feel infinitely small and large again.

Stern Nature

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I’ve let half of July expire. Well, good riddance.

The real storm came amidst the storm inside me. Holiday weekend, the fifth of July, we raced home from Niobrara after only about 24 hours in that lovely country. We had been visiting the family homestead, perched atop a promontory above the confluence of the Niobrara and Missouri rivers. It was a peaceful visit. About three and a half hours driving home (love that Lewis and Clarke rest stop near Sioux City), then quick get ready to join more friends and family at one of our signature Italian steakhouses.

It was not an unpleasant evening. But somehow my insides were rebelling from all the activity, the stress and strain of fast travel and holiday fun mingled with workplace chaos. I had been feeling sick, for weeks, from some unknown cause, and I was tired of it. My sister was among our party, visiting from Atlanta with her husband, and her presence also puts me on edge these days.

After the restaurant we gathered at our home for some congenial conversation, but my stomach and head would have none of it. It’s really too bad, to have a holiday weekend–and the first time off from the job in months–spoiled by a queasiness and uneasiness that won’t dissipate.

About midnight I drove a friend visiting from California back to his hotel downtown. It was just another calm, humid summer evening on the Plains. But on my way back the wind came up. That’s not so strange, but then I noticed the small trees blowing across the streets and the traffic lights swinging to horizontal. Lightning, torrential rain followed.

I made it home, and the button on my garage remote told me the power was out. I parked and ran up to the front door. My wife was relieved to see me. Then I looked out the back window to see the reason the power was out–our mature Bartlett Pear had been split by lightning, and half of its venerable body lay across the power lines. The main line carrying power had snapped. All was darkness and fury.

We were without power only for a couple of days. We kept staring out the window at our yard, now exposed to the neighborhood. My wife’s brother brought over the chain saw and we proceeded to autopsy our fallen friend. Half of him still stands, but not for long. This winter, when he’s bare of leaves, we’ll take the rest of him down.

We kept coming up with “bright sides” during this time. “Well, at least we won’t have to pay to have the whole tree taken down,” or “Well, at least it didn’t fall on the house.”

I still felt sick, now sick at heart. It was like the death of a family member. We mourned that tree.

We’ve planted others; in fact a small young pear tree stands beside the dead trunk, waiting to grow into the new sunlight exposed by its absence. We planted it knowing the old one would not last forever. It had been struck before, probably by the early snowstorm of 1997, and was ailing already.

I’m feeling better now. Let re-growth begin.