a good place to be

It’s been a few weeks since I wrote anything, much less posted it on the web. Ever since I mercifully sedated Northography, I’ve focused on work and household, as I said I would. For those of you not familiar with the Northography project, please tune your browsers to www.Northography.com. Come back here to learn more if you’re interested.

The long Memorial Day weekend has been an active one for me. My wife, Peg, and I are preparing for my step-daughter’s high-school graduation next Saturday. This means removing piles of rubbish that have festered on our property for several years, freeing household relics of dust, archiving them in esthetically pleasing arrays, and taking several deep breaths after each item on the list has been circled as “done.” Now is the time to take out the trash. With no snowstorms or brain-freezing lows to thwart us, we strive to sculpt our very humble Lower-North-Mankato lot into an Upper-Midwestern economy Versailles. After eight years of work, it’s finally starting to look like a place where I could live. That’s good, because I live here, and I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.

As I write, I am aware of nagging pain in my hands, feet, back, buttocks, legs, arms and neck. Fortunately, the rest of me is ok. There is no dizziness, nausea or spasmodic twitching. What discomfort I feel is my own doing. I choose to weed-eat the yard with military precision, move dense piles of twigs, and spread bales of straw in the garden. The weather has been ideal for mild sunburn. I’ve been drinking lots of water and other stuff. This is far better than hanging out at some crowded campground, grilling hot dogs and getting to know people I already know even better. This is home, and I know where the bathroom is. I have refrigerators and freezers full of cool things. The windows open and close, there is a breeze, and the cats are staring through the screens at meaty birds. This could almost be somewhere else, like the Italian Riviera or the Austrian Alps. It’s not, though. It’s really not.

My body aches for another reason - the workout I put myself through at the gym this morning. I try to do this at least three times a week, alternating days with low-impact cardio exercises like long, brisk walks, bicycling and installing Point-Of-Sale computer systems in retail stores. The entire process takes under an hour, from when I walk into the gym until I leave. First, I lift weights on six resistance machines, concentrating mostly on upper-body strength. I find that thirty repetitions of over 90 pounds hurt just enough, with the exception of the abdominal machines, which require a lot more weight for any result. The music I listen to on my iPod helps. After the weights, I jump on a treadmill and push “quick-start” at 3.6 miles per hour. After a minute, I raise the speed to 5.2, and gradually increase it until I’m running at 6 miles per hours after twenty minutes. At some point, I always have to make a decision to finish the task, despite the pain and discomfort involved. It helps to have been diagnosed with asthma as a child, and with diabetes as an adult, and to have a father and uncle who have had strokes. And, as I said, the music on my iPod helps as well.

Today, while running on the treadmill, I listen to a long recording of throat-singing chants by Tibetan monks. I can’t say whether the music is beneficial to my exercise, although the element of breath is strong and seems to somehow support the cause. I enjoy it much more when I end the run, drink some water, wash off my face and walk outside into the stiff breeze. I sit in my 1999 Chevy Cavalier and roll down the windows. The car faces a brick wall, the backside of the Mankato Salvation Army building. Two ornamental fir trees frame the area in between what used to be large windows, bricked solidly for whatever reason. Still listening to the monks, I begin to notice patterns in the wall. The top row of bricks is laid in a short-long-long-short pattern. Below it, all bricks in the row are long. This is also true for the next three rows, until the fifth, which is, once again, the short-long pattern. The entire wall, with the exception of the bricked-in windows, is constructed in this fashion. For some reason, this seems remarkable, and I wonder why I had never noticed it before.

While I’m consumed in chants and mortar, a man walks around the corner of the building, partially obscured by the fir trees. He carries a plastic bag, which he sets down on the grass against the wall. It appears to contain a few bottles. Apparently unaware that I’m watching him, he unzips his pants and begins to pee. He is facing me, but his face is hidden. It’s not a very discreet location for relieving oneself, and I think the guy might be drunk. A car pulls up next to me, and the driver, clothed in stylish workout attire, steps out towards the gym entrance. He doesn’t notice the pisser, but turns around quickly and pushes the button on his keychain to lock his car. It honks to acknowledge security.

The man behind the tree finishes the job and zips up his pants. He manages, slowly, to pick up the plastic bag, and walks out towards the parking lot. As he passes my car window, he stops and says something. I pull the buds out of my ears to say - “What?” He asks me -

“Wuz you honking at me?” I understand his southern accent, as drunk as he is, a long way from home. His hair might be red, cut very short, and he is clean-shaven. What, I think, had brought him to this? “No - the guy next to me just locked his car.” He looks at me seriously, says, “aw-ite,” and staggers off. As I drive away, he stands on a curb, confronting his destiny, a point in space, chanting a mantra known only to him.

Highway 14

My day begins at 6:30, in the Call Center on Highway 14, checking email and job tickets. Everything loooks good. I load up the Jeep according to my mental checklist (god, let’s hope it’s right) and pack up my two laptops, their bags stuffed with printed documents, extra cables, power supplies and a new Blackberry. I throw them and a box of retail barcode scanners in the passenger side, jam my liter of tea in one of the holes between the seats, and go, sometime after seven.

This will be a round trip, arriving back in Mankato by midnight. First stop, Winona. KMSU Shuffle Function, the politely irreverent local morning show, massages me into the day with peppy music and cheeky banter. BBC comes on, the station scatters in the ionosphere, and a forward search evokes National Public Radio, airing  quiet analysis of global pandemics and border incursions.

As I take highway 43 north from Interstate 90 towards Winona, driving downwards in a wooded valley that will eventually open up to the Mississippi flood plain, frequency modulation becomes more selective, and I switch to the station transmitting from Winona State University. Jennifer, the announcer, gives us a weather report at 9:55. It is 55 degrees, with no precipitation, and wind from the north at zero miles an hour.  

Zero miles an hour, from the north. In other words, no wind. But if there were wind, it would come from the north. Perhaps the last time the wind blew, it came from the north. Or maybe meteorologists have proclaimed that the wind will arrive from the north on its next visit. Nevertheless, I am still nagged by the concept of something with no speed having a direction. A thing can be motionless, yet have potential. In physics, there are equations to describe this, but do they apply to everything which has direction, but is not moving? What is the speed of life? It might seem that you are breaking the speed limit, yet going nowhere. So, whether you are going somewhere, purpose means everything. You are writing a book, but not actually producing much in the way of chapters. Yet the intent is there. Wind at zero, out of the north.

Chong’s Noodle House

The retail store at Winona has few problems. We reboot a retail machine a few times until the check scanner on the receipt printer starts working. The bill pay kiosk and broadband demo laptop test out good. Otherwise, the manager is just happy to see me and chat a while. Another manager is there to help him out, and they tell me I could join them for lunch after the interview they are going to do in about an hour. I thank them for the invitation, but have other things on my mind. There is a lot of day ahead of me.

I leave the cell phone store, and park at a used book store, Paperbacks and Pieces. I look through the poetry section, which is, as normal, about 1/20 of the bookshelf-space of the store, and pick out the following:

“The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, Second Edition” edited by J.D. McClatchy, Vintage Books

“Four Quartets”  T.S. Eliot, Harcourt, Inc.

“33 Minnesota Poets”  Edited by Monica and Emilio DeGrazia– This book was printed by Nodin Press in 2000. I buy it because it includes people I know and love. Mary Kay Rummel. Linda Back McKay. Norita Dittberner-Jax. Kathleen Heideman is in there, too. I’ve met and read a few of the others, but never engaged with them.

I’m hungry. The coffee shop across the street from the store is great, but I want something different. The Asian restaurant a few doors down is ok, but nothing special. I figure I’ll drive back to Rochester and have a late lunch, something light as not to interfere with the evening meal, whatever that was going to be. So I take a scenic drive down fourth street, saying goodbye to Winona until the next time, until I pass Chong’s Noodle Shop, across the street from St. Stanislaus, the oldest Catholic church in Winona. With its onion dome and slavic name, the church proclaims Polish presence in the area.  I’m interested, though, in the little shop across the street.

The sign over the front has the magic words - “Special Pho.”  I park on the side street and walk in what looks to be the entrance. One half of the plain, unassuming establishment is a small Asian grocery store. A young man stands up from the cash counter and says, “Here for lunch?” I am. I’m the only customer for the entire time I’m there, although a couple of people come in for goods from the grocery store during my stay. I take out one of the books I had just purchased, and begin reading an introduction, that is, a scholar’s opinions.

After a few minutes, a young woman walks up to my table with the prerequisite pen and notepad. I order the Jumbo Combination Pho, notated in parentheses on the menu as “Fawm.” She wants to make sure I know that I’m ordering soup. I assure her I know it is, and asked her if the family that owns the restaurant is Vietnamese. She said no. She knew the original recipe for Pho was probably Vietnamese, but, she said, “We are Hmong.” I looked at her, thought about the name, looked at the tapestries on the walls, and realized this was a good place to be.  

While I wait for my soup, I walk about and look at the tapestries hanging from the walls. There are three of them, very exquisite, colorful and detailed.  They tell stories. The human figures, dressed in black, expertly stitched, carry out tasks of life. Farming, buying and selling, playing. One of the tapestries, though,  tells a different story. Some of the people have machines guns. Others cross a river, the Mekong. I know about this story, and to see it sewn so well brings tears. As it should. I sit down and wait for my meal.

She brings out the Jumbo Combo Pho. It looks like the whole pot, a huge bowl of noodles and goods slooshing and steaming from rim to rim. Ah….heaven. Still, I’m the only one here. I take chopsticks in the left hand, spoon in the right, and go to work. The soup is a world unto itself’. Nuggets representing the entire cow swim in a sargasso sea of noodles. Not wanting to appear rude, I finish the monstrosity. Ok, I’m a bit of a glutton. I can’t wait to go back.

My stomach distended, I waddle through the grocery section. I recognize a few things, and some of them interest me. I don’t plan on buying anything, though, until I spot the dried squid for $1.99 a pack. I’ve been looking for this since I was stationed in northern California in 1982. I buy three packs, and promise I’ll be back. I will. And so will you.

The title of this blog may catch your attention, and you’re wondering how it came about. The first title I thought of was “Above Zero.” The grass and trees recently turned green in southern Minnesota, a result of warmer temperatures, gentle rains, and generous sunlight. This is a particularly dramatic event, arriving as it does on the heels of a long, cold winter.  There is unique beauty in deep winter; peace and stillness that nurtures the quiet in us. There is also darkness, painful fingers, and cars that refuse to start. In defiance, I drive north to sleep in a fish-house on Upper Red Lake, as if fried walleye somehow provides a cure for cabin fever. It does - temporarily. Modern life goes on. We have lights and computers and televisions to keep us awake. We survive. When the temperature rises above zero, life in t-shirt and shorts calls from the temporal distance. When the highs finally hover in the low 60s, squirrels harass dogs, night crawlers cover the ground on a rainy night, and we realize life beyond zero.

It hasn’t escaped me that life begins at the age of zero, or that standing still is the speed of zero. The zen concept of nothingness, with no beginning or end, also presents itself. Philosophers and theologians have stated that something cannot come from nothing, but our perception nonetheless tells us otherwise. From no mind, no memories, floating in a state of ignorant bliss, we emerge with heart beating, moving from here to there, growing older and watching the clock tick. We seek warmth. Hot baths, pizza straight from the oven, a lover’s embrace. It’s a movement away from zero that inevitably goes full circle and returns to the starting point. It’s a good thing, life.