Home

The man came home but it wasn’t quite home anymore.

This was not an unexpected turn of events so the man just shrugged and dumped his bags on the floor and reached for the light switch.

The light didn’t make much of a difference.

The man stood in the doorway looking around, the familiar touching off only the vaguest feelings of belonging in him. Time and circumstance had done what they could to make this a place of ghosts and they had, in large measure, succeeded admirably.

The man closed the door and paused for a long moment as though waiting for something…was though waiting for someone to come out of the kitchen…out of the bedroom…out of the office…and then, when nothing happened at all, he picked up his bags and moved towards the bedroom door.

He thought he caught echoes of life…a child’s unapologetic laugh, a woman’s casual song, a man’s rueful grunting…but he dismissed them as indulgent, foolish memories and pushed them aside brusquely.

The bedroom… the still air perfumed with stubborn whispers of jasmine and Chanel No. 5, of Right Guard and Secret and that godawful musk cologne he used to think made him smell sexy…stirred little in the man either.

The man undid his tie and tossed it aside. He fell on the bed…the quilt he had dreamed under and wrestled upon and copulated under was there was there having seemingly waited patiently for his return…and looked up at the ceiling.

In the coolness of the bedroom, the man took deep breaths…taking in the air and its defiantly lingering perfumes as he tried to will himself to remember when this place meant something powerful and undeniable, something gloriously bittersweet and compelling, to him. He closed his eyes, laughing silently at his own hubris, and let his mind go quiet.

The night was what it was and the place was what it was. It was home but it wasn’t quite home anymore.

The Big One

April 18th is the 100th anniversary of the "great San Francisco quake" and they're talking about it a lot this weekend of course.

For me, the "big one" happened in 1971 when the greater Los Angeles area was shook up something fierce. I was sleeping at the time (soon enough I would have to be up to face another day at Louis Pasteur Junior High) and for the first couple of instants I just incorporated the earthquake into the dream I was having.

And then I woke up...and I rode it out under my blanket. My brother, sleeping in the bed across the room, did likewise.

My mother, an early riser, had leapt up out of bed and ran down the hall telling us not to panic. She needn't have bothered...neither my brother nor I came up from under our blankets until we were sure the shaking was over. Outside I could hear the crackling of downed powerlines and the combined murmuring of people who had run outside their houses and were now recounting the experience.

Parts of the city were heavily damaged but we, our little house apparently located in a hardy part of the sprawling metropolis, had nothing much to complain about (one drinking glass fell off a kitchen counter and broke and a small crack appeared in our driveway.)

I grew up here in Southern California and I've experienced a good number of quakes...I don't take them for granted but neither do I sit around waiting for "the big one" to turn us into the island state of California (most of us who've lived here for any good length of time tend not to think about quakes much...at least until one large enough to actually get our attention strikes...)

One day the next "big one" will indeed strike (the slumbering giant that is the San Andreas Fault will wake up sooner or later, there's no getting around that) but until it does life goes on (knock on wood :-)

The Audience

She regaled us with a symphony of sighs which, though she was uninvited and free to leave anytime she chose to, was her way of letting us all know how utterly bored she was with our company and our conversations.

We did our best to ignore her.

She redoubled her efforts to bend the room to her will by adding flourishes of deep hacking coughs and sneezes like banshee wailing.

“Bless you,” we said, each in our turn, before turning back to pick up the threads of conversations.

Undaunted she continued her campaign to draw the spotlights in the room…all of the spotlights in the room…to her. The theatrics of practiced sighs and stage-whisper coughs and throat-clearings rising until a crescendo until, at last, we surrender.

“So what’s going on with you?” Someone asked her.

She cleared her throat…demurely this time…and smiled ever so slightly. She gazed…contentedly, a little contemptuously…at her audience and nodded with satisfaction. “Well, as a matter of fact…” she began.

She happily held court for the better part of the next two hours.

of missing persons

Like most people (or at least so I presume) I don't like funerals. I honestly haven't been to that many but it still seems like too many (especially the ones for my brother and my favorite uncle far too many years gone now.)

For the second year in a row I'll be attending a funeral for one of my mother's sisters (my mother was the fourth of six children...she's now the eldest surviving sibling after the deaths of her older brother and two older sisters.)

My Aunt Sarah and I weren't especially close during the past couple of decades...we were closer when I was a child but we drifted apart when she wouldn't...or couldn't...stop trying to keep me in a child's space long after I was past the age of majority...and her passing wasn't a surprise (she's been fading for some months)...but it is still sobering and sad that we will be burying her on Thursday.

Perhaps she's found the peace on the other side of the light that she never seemed able to find here during her nearly eighty year journey on this bittersweet Earth of ours. I certainly hope she has.

Pictures on the nightstand, TV’s on in the den
Your house is waiting, your house is waiting
For you to walk in, for you to walk in
But you’re missing, when I shut out the lights
You’re missing, when I close my eyes
You’re missing, when I see the sun rise
You’re missing...

"You're Missing"
words and music by Bruce Springsteen

Dancing Just for the Sake of Dancing

The music was loud…far too loud to permit any kind of meaningful conversation to take root and bloom…and so we danced. Almost all of us…in the cocoon of shadows and flashing lights, of sweat and body heat and primal expectations, of energy sparked and stoked by lust, loneliness, alcohol and recreational drugs…dancing the night away because the alternative was too much to bear.

At some point my companions…fellow seekers of things we didn’t really want to give voice to…melted into the throbbing throng and I was dancing alone…dancing with random partners…dancing just for the sake of dancing.

Then, suddenly and amazingly, random partners became one specific partner. We smiled…obliquely, sizing each other up, drawing close without getting too close, looking into each other eyes to see if what we thought we needed was to be found there…and the crowd fell out of our perception. The crowd fell away and we were dancing…alone, together…maybe a prelude to something wonderful…maybe a prelude to something fleeting but thrilling for that magical moment…maybe a prelude to nothing at all.

In the middle of the invisible crowd…in the midst of the booming music…we danced…alone, together…letting furtive, pregnant glances speak where words could not. Fleetingly we touched…sweet electric contact of skin on skin, body on body…and then, inevitably, the crowd surged back into our perception and we were driven, inexorably, apart to the jealous, all-consuming beat of the never-ending music.

The music and the resurgent crowd brought me back to my companions…still dancing, still seeking something we really didn’t want to give voice to…and my attempts to locate my specific partner in the crowd came to nothing. And so we danced…we danced until we were tired of dancing and looking for something we really didn’t want to give voice to…and then we pushed our way back to the cool openness of the night.

We…my companions and I…shared some self-conscious small talk before we drifted off to our personal vehicles. Feeling for my keys, I found a piece of paper…a piece of paper with seven numbers and a name scribbled on it. My specific partner’s hands apparently having been quicker than my besotted eyes.

Maybe it was the prelude to something wonderful…maybe a prelude to nothing at all…maybe it was just a prelude to dancing just for the sake of dancing.

Many Happy Returns

Today is my favorite nephew's 11th birthday. It seems like he was a baby just a little while ago...seems like it hasn't been that long since I held him up to a warm summer night's sky and told him, in the vein of the somewhat corny but still meaningful scene from "Roots", to "behold the only thing greater than yourself" (yes, I really did this and I'm only slightly chagrined by my hubris...he just gurgled happily [babies trust me...don't why but they always have] and it was all good.)

I will spare you (and myself) the cliches about time "flying" and the like ...

Springtime weather slipped in here while I wasn't looking. Walking in the breezy sunshine is a grand way to recharge the creative and emotional batteries and that too is all good.

Enjoy the day.

Namaste, y'all.

a prologue

The novel I’m currently tweaking and editing…Soul Deep… is about a boy living in Los Angeles who turns 12 in a tumultuous year (1968). This is the prologue from that novel (which may or may not make the final cut):

* * * * *

My childhood was a series of shadows…shadows eluded and shadows embraced with all the strength one little black boy could muster. Sometimes I thought the whole world was lost in shadows. Sometimes the shadows were just fine with me…they were just something to dance with…to scream into…something to keep the rest of the world at bay.

Sometimes I would imagine, in the way the only children can imagine, that the whole world revolved around me. I knew all too well that this wasn’t the case but that didn’t stop me from wondering, more idly at some times than others, if (and indeed how) people really moved and did things when I wasn’t around to see them. Imagination was one thing I had in abundance.

Imagination and childish ambition…at one point I wanted to be a fireman, at another point I wanted to be policeman. In years to come I wanted to be a hero…a super-hero if possible…and I had more than enough imagination to make it all seem like something I could easily do.

I had plenty of imagination…given free reign in pictures and words (in books and comics and wherever I could find them), and in music and fanciful ideas…and so many memories.

One of my earliest memories is a painful one. We were living on the East Coast at that time; it was a cold, autumn morning and storm clouds were gathering purposefully overhead. But I didn’t care. My daddy was coming to spend the whole day with me. Only me. I was three.

I waited, bundled from head to toe, at the gate in front of my mother’s little rented house straining to catch a glimpse of his car coming up the quiet street. Daddy loved big cars and I knew that I would be able to see him coming from far down the street. The icy breeze cut through me from time to time despite the coat and scarf and button-down cap Mama made me put on…but I didn’t care.

My sister Amanda, six years my senior, was pouting in her bedroom because she wasn’t invited to come along with Daddy and I (I didn’t care about that either…she’d spent the whole previous weekend with him and now it was my turn.)

There was music playing, my mother often had the radio on while she was doing housework or just trying to relax, though I don’t remember exactly what songs there were.

Behind me in the doorway, my mother stood fuming silently. Her eyes were filled with hot, stinging tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks every time I craned my neck at the sound of a car engine only to slump down dejectedly when it wasn’t my daddy’s car engine.

“Bastard,” she hissed as she spun on her heels and stormed towards the telephone. She stopped herself and took a deep breath. She lit a cigarette and made a concerted effort to calm herself before she picked up the phone.

Mama drew a measure of pungent smoke into her lungs and exhaled it slowly. She dialed the number she wanted and waited. It rang once…twice…thrice…twelve times in all. She dropped the receiver back onto its cradle. He wasn’t in his apartment. And he wasn’t, she was sure, on his way to pick up his son.

I stood at the gate for nearly an hour, crestfallen and hopeful at the same time. I waited until the clouds finally opened and the rain began to fall. I turned, my face wet with both raindrops and my own quiet tears, walked back up the path and up the stairs into the house.

Mama took my coat and scarf and cap and hugged me for what seemed like a million years. She said something about daddy but I don’t remember what it was. Amanda slipped out of her bedroom and asked me if I wanted to play Monopoly; I declined with a shrug and shake of my head. I went into my bedroom and flopped down onto the bed. I closed my eyes and slipped away to my garden…the quiet place in my head where the world was right and my mother was always happy and I was the sunshine of my father’s life. I spent a lot of time in the garden way back then; it was a world I felt safest in until I discovered the many safe havens to be found in books and comics and rock ‘n’ roll music.

Daddy showed up two days later. It was a bright day…cool and crisp and sunny. He was perplexed by the reception he got at first…even Amanda, who loved Daddy more than anybody, was chilly…and then it dawned on him what he had done. He had forgotten. “Sorry ‘bout that, boy,” he said in that happy-go-lucky, undeniably charming way of his. He chucked my chin and smiled. “Think you can forgive your old man?” he said flashing his most disarming grin.

I nodded. And I forgave him. But I never forgot the lesson he taught me on the cold autumn morning. My name is Malcolm Eli Hunter and this is part of my story.

Important Birthday Questions...

When I get older, losing my hair,
many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a Valentine,
birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out 'till quarter to three,
would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm 64?

I could be handy, mending a fuse,
when your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside,
Sunday mornings, go for a ride.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
when I'm 64?

Every summer we can rent a cottage
in the Isle of Wight if it's not to dear.
We shall scrimp and save.
Ah, grandchildren on your knee:
Vera, Chuck, and Dave.

Send me a postcard, drop me a line stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say,
yours sincerely wasting away.
Give me your answer, fill in a form, mine forever more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
when I'm 64?

Today is my birthday…I’m still a ways away from 64 but it never hurts to start getting your ducks in a row as early as possible :-)

Namaste, y’all.

“When I’m 64”
words and music by John Lennon & Paul McCartney

Maude

My grandmother…Maude Brooks Willis…was born on the fourth of July in 1888. She died on the nineteenth of July in 1983. In between those two dates she lived a life filled with all of the bittersweet ups and downs that all of us walking the path from the birth to the light leading to eternity with our eyes and hearts open should and will experience.

My grandmother…who was funny, feisty, active (even tending to a large vegetable garden in her yard every day), and unflappable into her nineties…gave birth to ten children over the course of twenty-eight years (her youngest son, the ninth of those ten children, was my father), a few of whom (including a daughter who died at age 15 a month of so before my father was born) I hadn’t known about until the start of a very recent effort to collect family information into one collection. That effort has brought her into the forefront of my thoughts…fondly, indelibly…lately.

My grandmother lived in a grand old house in a very tiny town just outside of Philadelphia. I last saw her in 1978 having taking my vacation time (I was toiling in the administrative bowels of a major cosmetics company in Hollywood…its initials, MF, having more than one meaning for those of us working there… at the time) flown across the country on the occasion of her 90th birthday (every year the 4th of July parade in town stopped in front of her house so that the marching band could serenade her with an affectionate rendition of “Happy Birthday”.)

In quiet times, I would sit at her kitchen table while she puttered about…she seemed to have an endless supply of energy…and listen with fascination as she talked about her life…her family…her world. She never dwelled on anger or regret…life was too short to fret overmuch about that which could not be changed…but rather with an appreciation of all of the wonders (both amazing and mundane) that had filled her long life. She was filled with homespun wisdom, gently acerbic humor, abounding love, and, if you listened in the right way, echoes of the melancholy that is part and parcel of any life fully lived.

Every once in a while she would make a cogent point by putting her hand over mine, looking me straight in the eye, and saying “Buddy, you should always remember…” (My father’s nickname is Bud and I, by extension, was “Buddy”…but it was an appellation used only by her and though I’ve never been big on nicknames…though I accumulated a few over the years just the same…I never minded being “Buddy” to her.)

My grandmother (I’m positive she wouldn’t mind me putting it this way) was a grand old gal.

To Touch a Star (the tomorrow song)

Aurora smiled her shy, beguiling smile and looked up. The great dragon instantly knew her fondest desire and, with casually majestic grace, her unfurled his great, golden wings and took to the azure sky.

Aurora whooped with delight as she held on to the mighty creature's leathery neck undaunted and, most certainly, unafraid. The sky was hers. The golden dragon was, by his own choice, hers as well. The world below…the mundane workaday world she had known when she lay down to sleep…it was falling away swiftly left to fend without her participation for a wondrous while.

Up they flew, higher and higher in the sparkling, cloudless sky. Suddenly, naturally, a lilting melody came to the dragon's mouth; a melody as ancient as the universe itself...a melody as timeless and enchanting in its unmistakable soulfulness and undeniable power. The dragon, caught up in the joy of the moment, was singing the fabled "tomorrow song".

Down below, the grey land-dwellers cast grey, envious eyes upon the bright-eyed, raven-haired beauty and her shining, singing dragon soaring in carefree abandon in wide, swooping arcs above the fields of sweat and workaday suffering. If they could they would slay the great golden dragon and force Aurora to toil again with them in the endless grey fields forever and a day.

But they could not.

And Aurora flew higher still upon the sturdy pack of her friend, the dragon. Together they threw off the shackles of the world and reached for the boundless, star-flecked heavens.

To touch a star, Aurora thought with awe, if only to touch a star if only for a brilliant moment. The dragon, knowing full well his friend's wish, soared through the ebon expanse towards the brightest, most wonderful star of all.

Aurora reached out her hand eager to catch the star, just for that single, amazing moment, and then let it continue on its appointed journey. Her smile was dazzling...a rival to the radiance of the proudest star itself...as she reached out for a fleeting celestial flicker of light...

And then, almost as a matter of course, the incessant whine of a digital clock abruptly brought Aurora back to the world. She sat up with a disappointed start and, irritably, wiped the sleep from her eyes and glanced over at the clock. She sighed wistfully...it was, of course, only a dream.

She sat on the edge of her bed and looked out her bedroom window. The sun was newly-risen and the world was waking to reluctantly face another day.

And she listened. The house about her also began to stir with reluctant activity as her family…her husband in the shower, her sons half-heartedly indulging their first squabble of the day in their own room…began readying themselves for the new day.

And she listened. Outside her window, the birds roused themselves from peaceful, dreamless sleep and began to add their sweet songs to the symphony of the morning.

And she listened. For a fleeting moment, she put off dwelling on the mundane demands of her day…of her husband, of her children, of her co-workers…that would soon gather all of her attention and energy unto itself.

And she listened. And faintly, but distinctly, she could hear it...a haunting, eternal melody...a song for dreamers who would try to touch stars. Aurora smiled her shy, beguiling smiled and hummed along...filled suddenly with a glow of contentment and purpose...with the dragon's immortal "tomorrow song" as she rose, undaunted and inspired, to meet her day.

- for Tracey -

Okay, So I Couldn't Stay Away...

Yes I freely admit that I missed updating this blog. Bread and Roses was…and hopefully will be again…a great place for me to exercise my writing muscles…to publish pieces that were too short or too offbeat or too whatever to market…and to interact with other writers.

In the two months since I stopped updating this site, I haven’t found an agent but I have completed most of the principal writing on my most personal novel to date and that’s all good (and a good week before my self-imposed deadline of March 13th.) But there are stories and thoughts and vignettes that come into my head and I haven’t had a place to work them out.

And thus I return to this blog (maybe not by “popular demand” but what’re you gonna do? :-)

Multi-tasking is the key. I’ve always been good at that and I’m anxious to get Bread and Roses back into the flow of that.

So ready or not, Bread and Roses is going back online with semi-regular updates.

Perseverence furthers (or so I’m told anyway.)

Hail and Farewell

The year was off to a promising start…quiet, relaxed, filled with the promise of new creative avenues to explore and new horizons to reach for…and then the water heater sprang a leak…

Okay, it’s not that big a deal (well, the unexpected cost of replacing the water heater…more than 10 years old…with a new one was not welcome...those puppies are expensive...but what are you gonna do?) but it made me realize that something’s got to give.

I need to redouble my efforts to find an agent and/or to get published more often (and with more reward…I write because I need to and because I have to but my creditors can’t convert my passion into anything worth their while :-) or, failing that, seek other ways to keep the home fires stoked and the tax man at bay. I need to focus a bit more on the many things I have to do and something’s got to give.

I love this incarnation of Bread and Roses (a scant few of you will know that there was a self-published, subscription-based, pamphlet version of B&R some years ago) but something’s got to give and this blog unfortunately falls into that category.

Time and circumstance are not friends of mine right now and so Bread and Roses is done for the nonce (updates had become increasingly sporadic as it was...)

I can’t begin to tell those of you who have been regular (or semi-regular or even casual readers) of this blog how much I appreciate your kind attention, your comments (positive, negative, or in-between), your positive energy, and, most importantly, the gift of discovering your own writing, observations, and slices of life through your blogs (of course, that includes all of the great sites on the blogroll on the left…all HIGHLY recommended…and many, many more besides.)

I started this blog on July 5, 2004 and I'm putting it on hiatus on January 5, 2006...not a terrrible run and I've had a ball doing it.

Namaste, y’all,
Michael

p.s.- I’m not abandoning the blogosphere completely…my pop culture blog, Neverending Rainbow, will continue to be updated on a semi-regular basis.

Karen

It had been a while since my thoughts lingered on Karen but for some reason she came into my mind often during the holidays that just ended. Karen was (and presumably still is) a remarkable human being…a beautiful girl, inside and out, who had absolutely no idea that she was beautiful (she thought of herself as a "girl" even though she was 23 when I first met her.)

Too many years ago we worked together, worker bees in the very hive-like administrative offices of a major cosmetics company in Hollywood (I was not long out of college…Business Administration degree, earned and awarded, ready to be taken out for a spin in the real world.)

Karen was sometimes a rueful, self-deprecating soul…quick to rundown her supposed awkwardness and lack of attractiveness as a shield against others doing so first…and I always found that to be the strangest thing.

I found it strange because the Karen I knew apparently wasn’t the person she apparently saw in the mirror. The Karen I knew was a gentle, trusting, warm-hearted woman with a shy, disarming, endearingly goofy smile, and undeniable, sly wit and wisdom. The Karen I knew was a striking…and when she wasn’t over-thinking things, casually and yet regally graceful…woman with pale delicate features, crystal blue eyes, and a flowing halo of soft red hair.

As she revealed in conversations over the years, one of the root causes of her low self-esteem came from the fact that she was very tall for a woman and had been, much to her chagrin, tall for a girl while growing up. When she stood tall (and often she did not, slouching instead to try to better fit in a world she felt outsized in) she was a good 6’1…she was slender and willowy and yet, despite that, she never seemed physically fragile. She was, simply, a stunning woman.

(An aside: we were walking down Hollywood Boulevard one afternoon…on our way to lunch at a small Italian restaurant frequented by people from our offices…and Karen was lost in conversation and, as she was wont do when she wasn’t looking inward, she was walking with her shoulders squared, her head held high, and her hair flowing in the gentle summer’s breeze. As we walked and talked I noticed two bicyclists…both young men…far down the block and across the street, coming towards each other from different directions…both were transfixed, gazing appreciatively, by my lunch companion…so transfixed that they crashed into each other and tumbled to the ground. When I could see that neither was hurt, I smiled. Karen refused to believe that the accident had happened because the guys had been awestruck by her.)

Karen’s one glaring flaw was that she often gravitated towards men who coveted her beauty, eagerness to please, and gentle humor but who also knew how to exploit her negative self-image in ways that kept her cowed and in thrall. They would abuse her…emotionally and occasionally physically…until they got bored and moved on. Karen would swear to never let it happen again…and then it would happen again.

I loved Karen as a sister (my passions were tied up in a hopeless cause all my own at the time…a "love" that would eventually...and unsurprisingly...go unrequited) and I kept hoping that she would break free of the cycle of heartache and find someone who would recognize…and treasure…the Karen I knew.

Karen left the cosmetics company a couple of years before I did but we kept in touch (we were both part of a group of friends working in the company who had bonded together as affable anarchists using humor and collective youthful vigor to stave off the mind-numbing drudgery of our thankless, underpaid toil…the group maintained connections for a while after we’d gone off in different directions.)

Eventually Karen got tired of that circle of heartache and she broke free. She married a man who seemed to see the Karen I knew…she got pregnant (a fond dream of hers)…and moved far away from the city to a new, happier life.

I quit the city…Los Angeles…for my current hometown not long after and we lost touch with each other (and with the others as well…we belonged to each other during our shared experience and belonged to each others’ memories once that time and place had ceased to be part of our everyday lives.) When last I heard from her, she was happy still and pregnant again.

I like to think of Karen as still being happy…with her clear eyed man and her bright-eyed children to care for; and her wit and wisdom…her delightfully matured beauty and grace…continuing to walk with her as she goes. I like to think that she looks in the mirror and sees the current incarnation of the radiant Karen I knew.

Happy New Year

Everywhere in our bright, blue, bittersweet world,
we are surrounded and blessed by angels,
kept warm by abounding love, light, and laughter…
we celebrate the New Year, we embrace the gentle season...

Everywhere in our bright, blue, bountiful world,
we share love with our brethren, kinsmen and strangers alike,
giving thanks for the amazing grace of the Universe…
celebrating the New Year, embracing the gentle season…

Everywhere in our bright, blue, beautiful world,
we love and are loved, serve and are served,
appreciate and are appreciated, pray and are kept in soft prayers…
we celebrate a bright New Year, we embrace the gentle season…

Thank you for visiting Bread and Roses. I hope that each and every one of you have a bright and beautiful...peaceful and bountiful...New Year filled by peace, joy, love, passion, laughter (and however much rabble rousing and howling at the moon you might need to keep it...and you...frisky :-).

dance in the light, y'all,
Michael K. Willis

Hey Mister...

Driving through driving rain, Christopher Ryan has no idea where he’s going. He had only the vaguest idea about where he’s been…he’s sober despite half-hearted attempts to be otherwise…not at all able to pretend that he was feeling no pain. He’s driving…running…from no place in an unfocused hurry to get someplace else. Christopher likes to run.

I won’t be here forever, someone gentle had told him, but you know where to find me when you’re ready…

Ready? Ready for what? Christopher also likes to pretend that he didn’t understand when the questions demanded more than he wanted to give and the answers made him too uncomfortable. A plaintive song comes on the radio and Christopher resists the urge to change the station…

…hey mister, that’s me up on the jukebox,
I’m the one singing the sad song,
and I cry every time you slip in one more dime
and play me singing that sad one one more time…

Christopher allows himself a rueful smile as turns the car off the highway. He parks close by a gnarled old tree but he leaves the engine running and the radio going. He sits back and stares into the cold liquid darkness.

Beth…Elizabeth…her love is so bright and welcoming that it’s terrifying. Christopher shudders, knowing himself to be a fool and a coward, and wonders how the rain got through the roof and onto his cheeks.

…southern California, that’s as blue as boy can be,
blue as the deep blue sea,
won’t you listen to me know?
I need your golden gated cities like a hole in my head,
just like a hole in my head, I’m free…

Christopher looks back at the rain-swept highway…love will let you down, he thinks…the road never will…love is too fickle…it hurts too much…better to be a coward than a victim. Christopher takes a deep breath and nods. Not again. He looks at the highway again and steals himself to disappear into the dark night, safe from heartache…safe from love. Running away was something Christopher knew how to do all too well.

…I do believe I’m headed home,
hey mister, can’t you see that I’m dry as a bone?
I think I’ll spend some time alone,
unless you’ve found a way of squeezing
water from a stone…

“Not again,” Christopher mutters aloud. He puts the car in gear and pulls back onto the liquid highway.

…let the doctor and the lawyer
do as much as they can,
let the springtime begins,
let the boy become a man…

Christopher drives hard straight and true to what he knows, his fear notwithstanding, is the safest haven he could possibly find. The porch light is on. The rain gives way to a gentle drizzle. Christopher gets out of the car and trudges up to the door. Standing in the creamy golden glow of the porch light, he knocks three times and waits.

…I have wasted too much time
just to sing you this sad song,
I have been this lonesome picker
just a little too long…

After a seeming eternity, a light goes on inside and the door opens warily. Beth, stifling a yawn and ensconced in the warmth of her favorite terrycloth robe, stands there, a wary but unsurprised at once. Then a smile softens her face. “Hey mister,” she says with a wink, “it took you long enough…” She holds her arms open.

Christopher surges into her embrace and snuggles in tightly. “I do love you,” he sighs nuzzling his damp head against her shoulder.

Beth strokes his head and smiles patiently. “Silly man,” she coos soothingly, “I always knew that. You were the one who needed convincing.” She leads him into the house and closes the door behind them.

“Hey Mister, That’s Me Up on the Jukebox”
words and music by James Taylor
©1972 Blackwood Music (BMI)

Three Questions

This morning on an NPR program entitled To the Best of Our Knowledge they explored “The Meaning of Life” (not too grand a topic to try to encapsulate in one hour of radio time :-). Part of the broadcast featured people being asked three provocative questions:

What do you live for?
What would you die for?
What would kill for?

The answers to these questions can be guilelessly simple…and incredibly complicated. We can answer with broad generalities…I live for love, I would die for my country, I would kill to stop war…or with utterly personal truths…I live to make my lover happy, I would die to save my child’s life, I would kill only in self-defense…and none of our replies would be “wrong”.

The people on the program had a wide array of responses…from nervous jokes to plain-spoken, heartfelt sincerity…and, of course, it made stop and think how I would respond.

What do I live for?
I live to love and be loved by those in the close circles of family and friendship I belong to (and to make some kind of positive impact, however small, on their lives.) I live to learn…life is, ultimately, about learning from its very beginning to its very end. I live to be as happy as I can be. I live to write because that is what I’m called to do. I live to be of positive value, however small, to those I encounter in this life.

What would I die for?
I would die to save the lives of those closest to my heart and soul (it is, if I’m being perfectly honest, not as long a list as I might intellectually hope it might be…about 12 people whom I’m relatively sure I would take a bullet for without hesitation; another dozen or so I MIGHT do so for with varying degrees of hesitation.)

Despite my mother’s objections, I was willing to go to Vietnam (and fight and possibly die) when I was younger (that war ended before I reached the age of majority) and I’d like to think that I would still be willing to die for my country and I would willing to die rather than lose the freedom my forebears endured chains of slavery for, fought for, and died for. I won’t know for sure about these until it becomes a real choice I need to make.

What would I kill for?
The glib, off the cuff answer is that I would not kill for anything…but that’s not true (however much I might want it to be.) I would not ever want to kill but, that said, I know that I would very probably kill someone trying to kill somebody I loved…and I would kill if that was the only way to stop someone from killing me.

Three simple, complicated, thought-provoking, belief-challenging questions:

What do you live for?
What would you die for?
What would kill for?

The Moment (Falling in Love)

Joshua smiled shyly, the leathery creases in his face softening into tender curves and soft crevices, and waited for the next move to be made. The old man’s courtly manner, masculine and awkward, touched Kathy in ways that she was at a loss to even try to explain in the limited universe of spoken words.

Joshua, a casually graceful bear of man...tall and burly, hirsute and stoic...was comfortable with the years that he spent on Earth. Sixty-two summers ain’t that many, he would say with quiet conviction. Coyness not being a companion of his, he meant that totally without irony. He had made more than his share of mistakes…what man who was truly living could say that he had not?…but he learned from the ones he could and made his peace with the ones he could not and lived his life as the best man he could be.

Kathy, with her unruly auburn curls and her sober green eyes, the weight of her thirty-eight years having settled in full, unapologetic womanly curves on her sun-kissed frame, was enormously charmed and the gulf of years between her age and his faded into meaninglessness without her consciously realizing it. She had been a willing fool for love more than she cared to remember…old heartaches notwithstanding, she never stopped hoping to be that fool at least one more time.

Joshua touched Kathy’s face, with shy, devastating tenderness, and the moment…and their foolish, hopeful, brave hearts…took flight. The subsequent kiss…as humidly, magically passionate at it indeed was…merely reinforced what those hearts already knew.

one year ago...

One year ago…the Indian Ocean was disturbed from its usual ebbs and flows by an earthquake and, with scant little warning, a tsunami rose and swept across far-flung shores. Not with malice. Not with forethought. Nature doesn’t have animosity or caprice, it simply is and it simply does.

A tsunami rose and swept across far-flung shores…and more than 200,000 souls fell before its awful, undeniable, humbling power, dwelling from that moment on in the arms of the welcoming universe and in the warm-lit, summer-soft realms of the memories of those who fiercely loved the departed but were blessed and cursed to be left behind here in the mortal world.

One year ago…a small eternity ago…a tsunami seized our collective heart…our collective compassion…our collective fear of mortality taken in one sudden, terrible swoop…and shuddered as the toll of the dead rose with each subsequent news report. We sent prayers…we sent money…we sent our guilty relief that it wasn’t us…we sent soldiers of compassion and planeloads of donated goods.

And then…as we do because life and human nature moves us…we began to move on. Everyday life consumed us again. Wars large and small…nature moving in devastating ways (earthquakes, hurricanes, floods) in other parts of the world…matters of real human import and matters of trivial import…drew our attention; the world rolled on and we, running as fast as we can to keep up, rolled with it.

We didn’t forget…we just stopped remembering to remember because life took us…because it made us sad…because we understood that suffering is a part of life and there’s only so much we can do about it…because it was too painful…too overwhelming…too far away…to think about for too long.

One year ago…a heartbeat ago…a tsunami rose and swept across far-flung shores…and, for a moment at least, we pause to remember…

Happy Christmas

And one angel cried…
and his tears flowed like diamonds
sparkling bright in the never-ending sky;
and his tears flowed like rain
sweeping through the generous beings
of all the gentle folk resting sure
in the arms of a blessed Christmas morn.

And one angel sang…
and her song flowed like thunder
gentle and proud on an ebon night;
and her song flowed like a symphony
echoing through to the hearts of babies
still near enough to heaven
to know that song of a sweet Christmas morn.

And one angel danced…
and his steps flowed like sunlight
on a crisp and clear winter’s daybreak;
and his dance flowed like magic
keeping warm all of the immortal souls
waltzing with the rhythm of the eternal
and the music of a wondrous Christmas morn.

And one angel cried…
and her father lifted her up…
and her mother held her tight…
and her tears ran like honey and wine,
soft and sweet and sure as the sunlight,
soft and sweet and sure as the promise of love
come true in the dawning of another Christmas morn.

Thank you for visiting Bread and Roses. I hope that you all have a very Happy Christmas and a bright and peaceful New Year filled with love, light, and laughter.

peace and joy,
Michael

Neverending Rainbow
Christmas Annex 2005

Mr. Robinson

In my neighborhood the “boogie man” had nothing on old Mr. Robinson. Well at least that was the opinion held by my friends and I (ranging in age from 9 to 12 at the time.) Mr. Robinson stayed in his quiet blue house, with the drapes drawn and the windows shut tight, only venturing out to cut the lawn or to run errands in his big black tank of a car, a 1958 Cadillac that didn’t make as much noise as you might have expected something that big to make.

Nobody knew how long Mr. Robinson had lived in the neighborhood…he had been there as long as anybody, child or adult, could remember…and indeed nobody was exactly sure how old Mr. Robinson was (his skin, the color of rich pecans, was clear and relatively smooth but his hair, always neatly trimmed, was white as downy cotton.)

His wife, a chubby golden brown woman with perpetually smiling eyes, had always seemed to have a special place in her heart for all of the boisterous (and sometimes downright annoying) kids on the block. She would sit on her porch in her rocking chair knitting contentedly as we played baseball in the street or ran screaming like merry banshees during games of hide and seek that wove in and about all of the houses on the street; she would gently chastise us if tempers flared and fights seemed to be in the offing and that would be all that was needed to defuse the situation; she would bake wonderful treats to give away on Halloween and give us little candy hearts on Valentine’s Day. Some of us kids made her Valentines on Valentine’s Day and gave her little Christmas cards on the last day of school before Christmas vacation (we always brought Christmas cards to share with classmates and some of us saved an extra one to bring to Mrs. Robinson) and she always seemed to be delighted by them.

Mrs. Robinson (and yes she knew and liked the song, though she would have replaced Joe DiMaggio with Jackie Robinson in it if she had her druthers) made her house a welcoming place for us kids. Mr. Robinson, even then, was a sullen, mysterious figure who came and went paying little attention to the kids. We often wondered how it was that two such different people got together…and stayed together.

We never knew exactly how Mrs. Robinson died. One day an ambulance came and took her away while Mr. Robinson, dark blue and green suspenders (not sure why I remember that so vividly) holding up his brown trousers, watched from his porch. My mother and Lloyd West’s mother went over and spoke with him briefly; he nodded and he offered them a grateful little smile (none of us had seen Mr. Robinson smile before and we never would again) before disappearing back into his house.

From that day forward the kids in the neighborhood learned that the Robinson house was no longer a welcoming place. If by chance a ballgame or a round of hide-and-seek accidentally found its way into his yard, Mr. Robinson would explode through his door bellowing “you little hoodlums stay offa my grass!” and we would scatter. Our parents told us to respect Mr. Robinson’s wishes and, for the most part, we did.

On the last day of school before Christmas vacation I saved a Christmas card even though Mrs. Robinson had been gone for months by then. I signed it and put it in my jacket pocket. Walking home from school, after my friends had gone into their houses to change out of their school clothes, I paused in front of Mr. Robinson’s house. I thought about Mrs. Robinson and I smiled. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the little card and, my heart in my throat, I walked up the walkway to the front door. I was just about to put the card on the porch next to the door when the door swung open and Mr. Robinson, his face as stern as ever, loomed over me.

“What’ve you got there?” he said gruffly. I couldn’t find any words so I just held out the card. With an annoyed sigh he took the little envelope from my hand and opened it. He read the card and then looked at me, his face softening just a bit. “Thank you,” he said. “My Abby kept alla these things you little hoodlums gave her. Couldn’t understand why.”

“You’re welcome,” I said in a small voice, backing away from the door and down the porch stairs.

“Hey boy,” he called out to me as I got to the sidewalk. I turned and looked up at him. “Tell your little hoodlum friends to keep offa my grass,” he said but he winked and almost, but not quite, smiled as he said it.

“Merry Christmas, Mr. Robinson,” I said as I crossed the street and headed towards my house.

Mr. Robinson still yelled at us when we happened onto his lawn but I never took it quite as seriously again.