Monday, September 26, 2011
Two Apples Can't Make Love, Sorry
What I like about photography is the unexpected. If you shoot lots of pictures, as I do, sometimes you get a surprise. I wasn't trying to capture apples, actually.
It's the same with words. You don't always know what you might be able to do with words when you're writing them. First, you don't know who will read them. Second, you don't know what they will draw from them if they do read them. Third, you don't know, really, what you want to happen.
It is an act of faith every single time that you write, especially in this era, with blogging. For all we know, this will turn out to have been an interlude, and blogs will be replaced with other forms -- if so, hopefully more lucrative, which would not be difficult when your financial reward is precisely...zero.
But the emotional reward can be significant from writing, on blogs or elsewhere. Just knowing that your words touch somebody, move them, brighten their day, is magic.
Most of my career I was an investigative reporter. In that phase, my words were more likely to wound or injure than to inspire or heal. I still have the capability to act as an investigator. Once you acquire that skill set, you never really lose it.
Investigators can find out pretty much anything we what to find out about anybody anywhere -- except, of course, what matters most.
Because no amount of investigative reporting will ever reveal the inner secrets of the human heart or untangle the web of human emotions.
You can gather all of the facts you may wish but they do not add up to a narrative. They do not add up to a story. And most certainly, they will never add up to the ultimate, which would be a love story.
-30-
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Letter to Someone
Look up, look up, the sky is open.
Look down, look down, your footsteps leave no trace here.
Under cover of darkness, all manner of secrets find refuge. In distant places, new thoughts take root, and old stories find new chapters. Driving through the rain, threading your way between two huge tractor-trailers, the image forms of what would happen if you slipped a bit left or a bit right. Sudden death = release.
How did it happen? The voices would ask.
Back in the City, walking alone until suddenly you have a companion. Where did you come from? Is this a dream? Is anyone watching us? Does anyone know you're here? The rain closes around you protectively, keeping all the rest of the world at length. This is your place, just you two, making amends.
"This never happened," she breathes into your ear, stepping on her tiptoes to do so.
Once a writer poured his heart out, not onto paper but into cyberspace, a keystroke at a time. There is nothing remarkable about this; people post to blogs all the time, and much of the content is so intensely personal that it would freak us all out if we decided to listen.
How can it be that a man can be alone in his house, writing, when he suddenly senses a new presence? Someone new is listening; she may be close or she may be far away, but she is there, he knows it, just as you are now.
Suddenly it is as if this invisible presence has taken over his hands, his fingers, willing him to say things he otherwise might not have said, not like this, not here, not now.
It's a spooky sensation, as if he, the writer, no longer controls his story. Then again, maybe that isn't so strange; writers often don't know where their writing is going until it gets there.
Still, this time was special. His unseen visitor is encouraging the words to tumble out of him. "Tell me, I'm listening," she whispers on the eastern wind. "Do not fear, I will appear in the flesh," she whispers from the west.
He looks up; he looks down. There is nothing, not even a shadow. But the words begin. "I'm sharing my secrets with only you. I know you are there, reading them, reading me. You see me as no one else has ever seen me."
He waits for her answer. It comes in the form of a whisper from the north: "I know, I know. Just keep telling me. I'm waiting."
Her eyes big as moons but dark as the night, hiding as much as they show. But nobody saw. So nobody knows.
Look down, look down, your footsteps leave no trace here.
Under cover of darkness, all manner of secrets find refuge. In distant places, new thoughts take root, and old stories find new chapters. Driving through the rain, threading your way between two huge tractor-trailers, the image forms of what would happen if you slipped a bit left or a bit right. Sudden death = release.
How did it happen? The voices would ask.
Back in the City, walking alone until suddenly you have a companion. Where did you come from? Is this a dream? Is anyone watching us? Does anyone know you're here? The rain closes around you protectively, keeping all the rest of the world at length. This is your place, just you two, making amends.
"This never happened," she breathes into your ear, stepping on her tiptoes to do so.
Once a writer poured his heart out, not onto paper but into cyberspace, a keystroke at a time. There is nothing remarkable about this; people post to blogs all the time, and much of the content is so intensely personal that it would freak us all out if we decided to listen.
How can it be that a man can be alone in his house, writing, when he suddenly senses a new presence? Someone new is listening; she may be close or she may be far away, but she is there, he knows it, just as you are now.
Suddenly it is as if this invisible presence has taken over his hands, his fingers, willing him to say things he otherwise might not have said, not like this, not here, not now.
It's a spooky sensation, as if he, the writer, no longer controls his story. Then again, maybe that isn't so strange; writers often don't know where their writing is going until it gets there.
Still, this time was special. His unseen visitor is encouraging the words to tumble out of him. "Tell me, I'm listening," she whispers on the eastern wind. "Do not fear, I will appear in the flesh," she whispers from the west.
He looks up; he looks down. There is nothing, not even a shadow. But the words begin. "I'm sharing my secrets with only you. I know you are there, reading them, reading me. You see me as no one else has ever seen me."
He waits for her answer. It comes in the form of a whisper from the north: "I know, I know. Just keep telling me. I'm waiting."
Her eyes big as moons but dark as the night, hiding as much as they show. But nobody saw. So nobody knows.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
The Day That Was
Fog coated our city, we knew the heat couldn't last. Out to the Presidio we went, and I watched as my 17-year-old coached his third game this fall. His 12 and 13 year old girls played their hearts out, implementing his game plan to perfection.
His little sister played her part very well.
By halftime, they had the lead, and he explained to them how they should play the second half to keep it.
They listened. And they won 2-0.
Victors! Big brother coach and little sister player.
Then he and I headed south to Hayward, for his game in one of the State Cup matches with his club team, the Seals.
He played very well but in a losing effort, 0-3.
That's how it goes in sports. You win one. You lose one. One minute you are up top and smiling; the next you are down and out.
Think about it. Sports are probably the best metaphor for life. I only wish I had been healthy enough as a kid to have competed myself, because if so, everything subsequently might have turned out differently.
As I drove him home after his club team's loss, the winning coach still felt good about his day. Very good, actually.
That you win some and lose some is something he knows.
But I don't.
-30-
Friday, September 23, 2011
Weekend Preview
The heat continues here; old-timers call it "earthquake weather." Let's hope not. Friday nights are practice nights for this U-13 girls team and their young coach.
Saturdays are game days. Tomorrow's game will be in the Presidio at noon. After that, the coach will don his uniform for the drive south to Hayward, where he'll compete in a State Cup game with his club team.
I've always loved back-lit photographs this time of year. The angle of the sun in late afternoon brings out details and colors that remain obscured much of the year, or from other angles.
If we could back-light our own lives, maybe everything would look a little better than it does in the harsh glare of everyday reality. Or maybe we'd be even more captive to the illusions that trap most of us into believing that we know anything at all.
Anything at all.
-30-
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Wakeful Dreamings
Summer is here while most people experience fall, but that's San Francisco for you. It was 95 the other day when I was in Palo Alto; 80-something yesterday in downtown SF. This morning's fog was cool but burned off quickly enough for sunbathing by those so inclined (there are a few around here) by late morning.
But I was writing and watching over my sick child, who called not long after being dropped at school at 7, having thrown up. So, back across town and back home again. After a day of rest, hopefully, tomorrow will be a day to get back to school and catch up.
I've been gathering the apples that fall in great volume in my backyard. They're not really edible, unless you are starving, but letting them lie there only leads to a rotten experience underfoot.
Still, I found one large green one that was pretty good today. Maybe I should gather up a bushel and try cooking something with them.
So many meetings, so many posts to write. So many stories to try and tell, few of which are my own. The best I can do on a blog like this is hint around at the things that really bother me, or inspire me, or visit me in the night.
There is one persistent dream that puzzles me. Someone is still with me who for quite a while has not been. Yet there she is. I don't get it; I don't understand why these dreams keep happening.
What am I supposed to do with this information? How I am to react?
As long, fitful bouts of sleep give way to the darkness of morning (no early sunrises any longer, now the seasonal pivot has occurred), I awake in confusion as to what and who is real or ever was, as opposed to who or what is fake and always was.
Or maybe that's a false choice, too absolute. Maybe, all was and will be gray, cloaked in illusion, much as the city is when it's bathed in fog. You cannot see very far, and what you do see is hazy -- more like an outline than anything tangible or real.
Grasping for pith from shadows is most certainly a dangerous exercise. What, for example, if there was something or someone there after all?
-30-
But I was writing and watching over my sick child, who called not long after being dropped at school at 7, having thrown up. So, back across town and back home again. After a day of rest, hopefully, tomorrow will be a day to get back to school and catch up.
I've been gathering the apples that fall in great volume in my backyard. They're not really edible, unless you are starving, but letting them lie there only leads to a rotten experience underfoot.
Still, I found one large green one that was pretty good today. Maybe I should gather up a bushel and try cooking something with them.
So many meetings, so many posts to write. So many stories to try and tell, few of which are my own. The best I can do on a blog like this is hint around at the things that really bother me, or inspire me, or visit me in the night.
There is one persistent dream that puzzles me. Someone is still with me who for quite a while has not been. Yet there she is. I don't get it; I don't understand why these dreams keep happening.
What am I supposed to do with this information? How I am to react?
As long, fitful bouts of sleep give way to the darkness of morning (no early sunrises any longer, now the seasonal pivot has occurred), I awake in confusion as to what and who is real or ever was, as opposed to who or what is fake and always was.
Or maybe that's a false choice, too absolute. Maybe, all was and will be gray, cloaked in illusion, much as the city is when it's bathed in fog. You cannot see very far, and what you do see is hazy -- more like an outline than anything tangible or real.
Grasping for pith from shadows is most certainly a dangerous exercise. What, for example, if there was something or someone there after all?
-30-
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)