Walking Song

   1

Lately my life revolves around a dog
Who knows whose leash it is and whose routine
We follow, stretching thin the line between
Our independent wills. I see the dog
As one who needs a master, while the dog
Sees one who needs a friend, and if I’ve been
One caught up on commands the dog has seen
Me listening now and then.
    So man and dog
Since time began have tugged upon this leash
And traveled down the trails of this routine
As if it were the purpose of their walk.
    Man and dog,
Unequally assigned, but side by side
Man walks the dog, dog walks the man, and each
One seems to keep the other satisfied.

    2

I am the man. This is my dog
What would I hear if my dog could talk?
What would I want to say if I were the dog?
What would I think? What would I know?
Where would I run to? How far would I go?
And would I run away if I were the dog?

Let me stretch this leash from here to heaven,
Let me sometimes think I know the way
But let me take the paths that I’ve been given
And learn what I should say.

I am the man. This is my dog.
I try to listen whenever we walk.
But what can there be to say when you’re a dog?

    3

Sometimes I find myself spinning around
And chasing after things that aren’t there,
Entangling the one whose leash I share
And losing sight of where we might be bound.
I think it’s good to have someone around
To take my side, to set the pace, to bear
The distance and to gently lead me where
I know I need to go,
    But I have found
Myself spinning around things I don’t know.
I’m leaping after birds up in the air
And tracking common scents into the ground,
    But I have found
The one whose leash I share at every turn
Keeps telling me the things I ought to know
But giving me the time I need to learn.

    4

God is the man. I am the dog.
I’m not the man I once thought I was.
He seems so far away. I am the dog.
Prayer is the leash. This is my prayer,
Drawing me close to the man up there.
I don’t have words to say. I am the dog.

But I’ll stretch this leash from here to heaven,
And sometimes I’ll think I know the way,
But I’ll take the paths that I’ve been given
And learn what I should say.

God is the man, but I am the one
Who walks with him when the day is done
And with each breaking dawn. I am the dog.

   5

Lately my mind has turned the metaphor
Of man and dog, the leash and the routine
Upon its head. What can these verses mean
If I’m still learning what the walking’s for?
And can there even be a metaphor
Sufficient for the poetry I’ve seen
Along the way, when every step has been
Part of a song I’ve never sung before?
    All the more,
 I will walk, and in my walking sing,
And with my singing cherish the routine
And through routine embrace each metaphor
    all the more
Of God and man, of learning how to pray,
Of never understanding everything
About this life but walking anyway.

    6

And I’ll stretch this leash from here to heaven,
And sometimes I’ll think I know the way,
But I’ll take the paths that I’ve been given.
I’m learning how to pray.

Prayer is the leash. This is my prayer,
Keeping me close to the man up there,
And he’s not so far away. I am the dog.

Back to the Bloog

Dan, I enjoyed your last poem, and wonder if we shouldn’t be submitting our extra-bloogular commentary to the symposium.  I suppose that’s up to each email’s author, though.  As for my own comments, regarding allusions, I wanted to at least add this to the mix: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a great poem in part because of its extensive use of allusions - and yet, by its rhythm and repetition and rich imagery, it is also a great example of a poem that can be appreciated on many levels, even if we don’t “get” all the references.  If anyone is interested, check out http://www.thirtybirdspoetry.com/2011/03/social-creatures.html for my own Prufrock allusions.  Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Anyway, here’s my latest one or two efforts.  I’ve alluded to these in those extra-bloogular exchanges and in recent phone calls with Mom, but these are otherwise allusion free.  Maybe that makes these less “great,” but this is where I’m at.  It is still a walking poem, the whole thing being composed and revised in my head while dogwalking.  Dan, you may be interested in knowing that I also had some acoustic guitar in my head for the second part, and if it were a song, Johnny Cash would have to sing it the way he did in covering Petty’s I Won’t Back Down. There, will that make up for the lack of allusion?

heaven's gravity

In a J. Alfred mind (Prufrock is there—

etherized, we know, sequestering the dare)

I measure out life not with coffee spoons

but by the bloogs blowing by, the three moons

of Na-Nupp, which like Jupiter’s orbs should

have names: Jonathan, Joshua and Anne, good

shepherds of inertia—the shantiest

of all great theorems, and still Newton’s best:

that bodies in motion (or not) remain

always so, spoofing the legerdemain

of less-than-familial forces. We will

remain in such celestial space and still

(like Lear’s storm, still) avail our naked souls

to weather out residual, bedlam shoals

—those we know we should not leap. Yes, we know

too well the law and the prophets, and so

we adumbrate their future relevance

in all we hope to do, in circumstance

beyond our vain control. Christ, where are we

without the course of heaven’s gravity?

[Knitting] On the Road

As we pack for our trip out west, exchanging everyday tedium for road trip periphanalia, our settings slowly recalibrate to vacation mode. Thoughts of dish detergent turn instead to, “How many books should I pack for two days through Kansas?” (Inhale.) In our pantry, practical Crock Pot ingredients are shoved aside for bright boxes brimming with gummi-somethings. Glass cleaner is forgotten and sunscreen takes its place.

(Exhale.)

I pack my clothes along with the bags of general family sundries that someone has to pack: calamine lotion and paper plates. I pack up my toddlers’ clothes (who, left to their own devices, would pack eight pounds of picture books, three swimsuits and a clutch of Legos).

And I pack my knitting projects for the road.

I am only a little embarrassed to admit that I put more energy into the planning and gathering of knitting projects than all other trip components combined. There is a science to picking the perfect knitting-on-road-trip projects. The projects must offer difficult elements to challenge my ablilities (when else do I have the luxury of undivided knitting time anyway?) and lots of straight stockinette to knit blindly as I gaze at the changing scenery. The yarn must be beautiful and the pattern must produce a finished project that will be a worthy vacation souvenir.

As I knit on the road, each tidy stitch falling into place, I feel myself realign.

On the road I can breathe, my lungs fill with renewal and hope and optimism.

Out the window the changing landscape excites my imagination and a fresh person awakens within me. Ideas of new worlds enter my brain, mutating my DNA. (As I pass a creek in Wyoming named Old Woman Creek I know beyond any doubt that this will be the name of the winery I’ll open when I am old, and ready to settle down again.)

On the road I slip out of my old soul, unfettered by past sins and present failings, a snake skin shed. I am freed from the person I am known to be. I am free to improve.

Around the bend I am sweet and charitable.


Over the next hill I am who I want to be.

Cutbank, MT

"Don't take your kids to the Terrace Motel," said
the man at the Plaza, who didn't have room,
and the Super 8 boss who didn't like kids.

Our door at the Terrace was guarded by Duke,
a sleepy old dog that had nothing to prove--
he and Nkeesa, a door further down.

These ne'r-do-well doors of the Terrace Motel
had paintings of Tweety Bird, Ernie and Bert,
Bugs Bunny and Wily and--you name the rest:

the owner one day let his daughter range free
and cheer up the joint for Nkeesa and Duke
and anyone else closing doors on the place.

He told us "Nkeesa is Blackfoot for friend."
We pet her and left our kids sleeping inside,
then ventured to Main Street and down to the 'Den'

where tiny credentials lent drinks on the house--
ours just being strangers and paused passers-by
who wanted to burrow a night in this town.

Some players at pool sidled shots and themselves
and slid, when all done, to the dark to drink more;
my wife and I racked a new table of balls

and lanced through the fun of seventy-five cents
and wondered a little how little kids slept
(obeying the oldest and wisest, we hoped).

Stealthily, somebody put three quarters down
followed soon after by another three coins--
the promise of winners to claim table rule,

indigenous right to itinerant gains.
We learned that "Oki Nikskani" launched each game:
the greeting of Blackfeet that made us new friends,

"quite like the dog attending our kids," but this
was a sign to get back to base, the Terrace
in Cutbank--a beautiful dive to be inn.

House

This is our new house, same as the old house,
Where we once lived before moving away
Into the next house, the house before this house
Ran out of room for a family to stay.
We thought the next house might be the last house
To live out our days in an ambient way
But this is the next house after the last house,
Where we once lived before moving away.

We thought the last house might be the best house,
And it was nice for a year and a day:
It was a new house, a nothing-to-do house,
All we could want for the price we could pay,
And it was a big house, a two story tall house,
A dream house for those who like dreaming that way;
At least it was newer and bigger than this house,
And it was nice for a year and a day,

But we missed our old house, our used-to-be-cold house,
And found our way back to a place we can say:
"A house that is old is a house that’s well settled
A house that is small can be comfortably warm,
And the house that is ours at the end of the day
Is the house we return to, the house we call home."
This is a good house, the house we’ll remember.
We’ve found our way back to a place we can stay.

A Very Full Month

Dear Symposians,

July was a very full month.  It would have been full enough with the wonderful weekend in New Glarus and at the farm (thanks Mom & Dick!), the two night visit from the Prague Lamkens (thanks Dan and Katrina and kids), the extra time Andrew could spend with Joey (thanks Joey!), the Pecatonica fan club at Suessical (thanks everyone).  It also would have been full enough with the introduction of Yoshi to our family (kids, you can say thanks Dad here).  But as good as all that has been, what made this month the fullest is that it was the month we returned to our old digs here at 1192 Griffith, following another full month in June of preparation.  We have painted walls, installed floors, replaced ceiling fans, had a tub painted, paid a plumber to fix our toilet (expensive, but not as much as the extra running water had costs us over the years) moved out junk and moved furniture from one house to the next, and, most recently, put up a new fence around our patio (thanks Yoshi).  But we are moved in now!

So now you know why I have not had much time to add to the Symposia.  Dan, I enjoyed reading Bud Jako Bach - I kind of wished you hadn’t told me the ending before I read it, but it was a compelling read all the same.  And Josh, I am only now realizing that that whole best album discussion was at one point tagged to be a Symposium topic.  Please, do contribute directly, and let Dan’s finally figuring out the system inspire you all.  Bud Jako Dan!

Anyway, being all moved in now, I can finally sit down and write another poem.  It will, of course, be about the house, and, after one rip-off from the Who, it is unavoidably Seussical.

Bud' jako Bach

Pavel’s grandmother didn’t like to talk about his origins, and only did so when a ridiculous assignment at school forced the issue. ‘Bring in a memento of your folks’ usually launched the instructions, and never did any other kindergartener come with a final postcard of his mother, or a fragment from her favorite poet, Wislawa Syzemborksa—written well before anybody’s recognition of her as a Nobel Prize laureate. Pavel was born in 1972, the year the Polish poet published (to whatever extent the government allowed) a collection entitled Could Have, and Pavel’s Polish mother convinced his Moravian father to drive up to Krakow to hear a spring reading.

They were engaged but not yet married: Martyna had been studying literature and Jaromir music theory at Masaryk University in Brno, an hour south of Olomouc, where they dropped off the baby to spend two nights with the less-than-approving grandmother. ‘Why not bring him with you, this Pah-whel of yours? You obviously have your heart set there, even more than on my son.’ ‘Oh, Babi,’ Martyna said with a giggle, ‘bud’ spokojni!’ Jaro blushed at his girlfriend’s familiar use of Russian—easy enough for any Slav to decipher but a fretful precursor as to how they might raise their son. ‘Be at ease, Mama,’ he whispered in Czech as he kissed her and the sleeping baby good-bye.

The recital was among several events they attended in the festive atmosphere of Krakow; college students were everywhere, burning candles on all ends, cramming fun before their looming exams. Perhaps, Martyna posed to Jaro on their return drive, it would be good to keep Pawel in Olomouc until the term is over. Yes, maybe, Jaro groggily replied, tapping the steering wheel to stay awake…. Among the gleanable objects in the ensuing crash were the scribbled lines of “Theatre Impressions”:

For me the tragedy’s most important act is the sixth:
the raising of the dead from the stage’s battlegrounds,
the straightening of wigs and fancy gowns,
removing knives from stricken breasts,
taking nooses from lifeless necks,
lining up among the living
to face the audience.

So this was what the grandmother harbored and pulled out for a kindergarten display. The postcard, for the record, was salt to the wound: ‘Dearest Paw-Paw (the baby was barely a year old, so Babicka would have to read it to him so), Do you see the trumpet-player high in the tower? That’s going to be you someday. Your daddy and I will see you soon.’

Independent of such elementary needs for catharsis, his grandma raised Pavel well, if shrouding him from the culture staked in Krakow. Every afternoon the phonograph played Janecek, Smetana, Mahler, Mozart and, occasionally, some sub-Alpian masters. The grandmother hummed to these as she cooked dumpling dinners, while the boy played with toy trucks and his own, quiet sense of regimented traffic.

When Pavel was an impressionable and precocious boy of sixteen, and when pimples didn’t get the most of him, he loved performing the sole bassoon part in his gymnasium orchestra. There wasn’t much pressure in the preparations, even as his conductor forthrightly assumed a demeanor of austerity, preoccupied always on his greater responsibilities for the junior national philharmonic, which drew from conservatories all over the country. Despite such leadership, Pavel’s gymnasium was simply adequate, not altogether dedicated to the art. Probably eight or nine bassoonists nationwide would qualify ahead of Pavel, especially since the conductor already knew his flaws: technical lapses and the tendency to daydream about the non-instrumental lives of the flautists or the harpist or, more directly, Magdalena, whose part he liked to think was most Shakespearean—the ‘hautboy’, he mused, of high, mournful oblivion. Magda also wouldn’t make it beyond their present level, but when she played the small fugal descant in the chorale ‘Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme’—“Sleepers, Awake” (he imagined his conductor tossing his baton at his drifting reverie)—no one, nothing, not even the composition itself was more beautiful. But how was that? Magda only plugged into the major fifth and sixth as any faithful button-pusher would. And Pavel’s steady contrapunt to the light melody was written to rebuff her syncopated entrances and keep a Clydesdale’s beat to the requirements of the entire, unsung hymn. Her part and his were the sum function of about eighteen pipes in the preferred varhala, the one-man instrument that Bach understood as the closest channel to spiritual ecstasy.

But for modern sensitivities, that notion was too cathedral. For Pavel, all religion was in the form of Magda, the back of her sweater swaying serenely just centimeters from his knee rising to keep beat—all ligaments and connections beyond the banalities of even the practice sessions for this very moment affirmed that there was nothing he’d rather do than play bassoon for…, well—even his own funeral, as thoughts would so tumble. After all, he had never been at one, even if he could fully imagine…

In which case, it would be the Air from Suite #3 in D major, which precluded any wind instruments: he’d have to learn cello and picture Magda playing viola. Yes, that composition, and then—mutely mincing the matter—a line or two from Syzmborska.

All death and adolescence aside, a quarter-century later, Pavel was now a computer programmer, not particularly versed in musical software like Ovation or Magix, the applications his ten-year old son was fond of tooling with. A bit concerned about the twenty-first century in general, Pavel took his son and little daughter to Bach’s homeland, the Thuringer province of eastern Germany, the insular shell of the sturm and dram environs of Weimar. He had been there several times before, wiggling through the cobwebs of failed communism in burgher cities like his own Olomouc and the ludicrous Karl-Marx-Stadt, that now had the equally abominable name of ‘Chemnitz’: it might have designated some stony stream of ancient importance, or the historic hand-off of one Lutheran Martin to another, but Pavel envisioned a culture of chemical potions, mass-produced to try to sterilize the foibles of any outmoded, well-intended design for sociological rectification.

Instead of the more logical route through Silesia (where Bach’s family purportedly served a small exile) and onward to Dresden-based Saxony, Pavel honored his daughter’s wish to see the white tigers at the Liberec zoo—indeed a curiosity that would help make the trip palatable for all concerned. His son Lukas was a burgeoning hockey fan who appreciated the context of this esoteric mascot of the Liberec team, so he too began to imagine the outing as relevant to him. At any rate, beyond his predilections, he silently honored what his father needed to do.

For there was something driving this journey beyond the ennui of glass-encaged tigers or the rendition of baroque music: Lukas remotely recalled his dad’s account of first slogging to Leipzig alone, getting caught in a snow squall that almost ran him off the road at the mountain pass between borders. He stumbled into a Lenten service at St Nikolas church, where bas relief palm fronds topped each towering column and a varhala chorale bid sleepers to awake, as if naïve to the private circumstances of the listeners—beguiling and almost insidiously exquisite; the late winter storm still beat against the building, but Pavel melted in the nostalgic warmth within, a puddle to pool in the surrender of his senses.

That was the mid-nineties, and Lukas must have been four, barely conscious that his native Czechoslokavia had devolved into Czech Republic. Pavel and his wife conceived a second baby at the behest of the new nation: only a handful of countries in the world were under the unusual threat of losing population by the year 2025, and while Bulgarians and Ukrainians and Czechs could see such an exclusive reality as auspicious, there were among them some restless politicians who knew that replacement labor or (less vocalized) immigration quotas would not favor their long view. The Czechs had an emerging business sense and decided to attack the problem with a billboard campaign, to create a vision of the ‘big picture’; then, adding ingenuity to a figure of genius, they exploited a somewhat archaic idiom that passers-by had to puzzle out:

NEDAVEJTE SI BACHA, BUD’TE JAKO BACH.

Don’t be too careful, be like Bach. The first clause only coincidently brushed upon the composer’s name, but the second implored a sexual revolution, throwing familial caution to the wind as Bach did, even if half his twenty children died before they were school-aged. The visual comprised of a large standing figure of the prolific father and twenty pint-sized children looking just like him, regardless if they were boys or girls. Neither of their mothers made the editors’ cut, perhaps because the billboard was cluttered enough. When their little girl was born, Pavel suggested to his wife the name Johana to show the nation they had done their duty, and although he was joking and they were loathe to play out such a throwback to imposed patriotism, the name indeed fit their curly-haired baby.

Now, the three of them (Mom staying home to work) made their way chronologically through the great composer’s life, bee-lining from Liberec to Eisenach for the humble origins, Weimar for the coming-of-age context, then Leipzig for the fullness of effect. “Though fullness had its fulsome qualities as well,” Pavel explained to his less-than-half-listening back seat. The Leipzig diocese paid relatively little for his labors, then axed him without compunction after an eye surgery gone wrong, forcing an early and anxious retirement…; the understated funeral and obscurity that followed…; the irony of Mendelssohn extending a Jewish hand to resuscitate the interred music of the Reformation. Lukas asked a few questions but was just as eager to count with Johana all the modern windmills they passed.

In Leipzig both Cathedrals were rather dormant, and the museum of Bach’s house was being refurbished. ‘Great,’ thought Pavel—‘the trip sort of amounts to nothing.’ There was a free concert on Thomaskirche square, as menial as that was, and this by an undistinguished Polish quartet that called itself ‘Xerxes’. They were Krakow natives, the playbill detailed, all in their early twenties. The only one pictured making eye contact with the camera was the woman who would play cello, a sort of invitation to the wavering Pavel, who would otherwise relent to the alternative of a water park outside the city. Waiting in the hot square for two hours would test the children’s patience, but…bud’ jako Bach, he tacitly insisted. “Bud’te”, he pluralized for his kids.

They ate a soup and sandwich lunch nearby the square, then ice cream cones precariously in the press of people jockeying for a spot close to the small platform beneath the stature of Bach. A German woman among the throng pointed out to Pavel’s kids little plastic chairs front and center, with courtesy bags of crayons and flipbooks and lollipops—perfect for Johana and (a little old for this) tolerable for Lukas. Pavel thanked the woman and wiggled his way to the far side of the statue, less for his optimal view of the performers and more for the angle to mouth ‘shush’ to his chattering kids, when the time would inevitably come.

A grand entrance by the master of ceremonies anticipated such a shush, though his booming voice through his microphone compelled everyone’s attention. He was Günter somebody—Übermensch flashed into Pavel’s brain as the man stepped onto the platform and off, engendering instant delight to the majority assembled, flourishing his urbane words of welcome with efficient jokes that the heaviest patrons in the front lines of folding chairs encouraged with throaty laughter. Xerxes waited behind the statue, pressing ears to their instruments in subtle, nervous fidgets. They apparently knew German, as no one was beside them to cue in Günter’s swaggering set-up. Pavel looked at his kids sizing up to the barrel-chested man, wondering how they were making sense of the bombast, any better than himself.

The quartet, announced with due epithets and ebullient applause, took their twenty steps from behind the statue to their chairs. They adjusted music into their stands and did a final tuning, as if for show, and the violinist said something self-deprecating, in fragmented German, to further please the crowd. Pavel watched them from the side, but had a more direct view of his children, who had diverted their attention to their coloring books.

They began with Beethoven’s Pastoral from Symphony #6 in F Major, followed by an obligatory Bach—slyly challenging the halcyon occasion with ‘O Man, Bemoan thy Grievous Sins’ from St Matthew’s Passion. Then, to introduce a composer from their homeland, they played a fragment from Krzesimir Debski’s double concerto for violin and viola. Pavel remotely remembered this composer from a ‘Taniec Sudecki’ effort he played at Masaryk University: the dance of the Sudetens would perhaps be ill-received here in the loose-thread associations of ‘Sudenland’, as none of its modern, southern inhabitants referred to the range.

In between pieces Günter would wield his craft, his gift for gab. Naturally there would be some playing to the crowd, assembled here this beautiful afternoon, all the way from München—what, not yet in the mood for Oktoberfest?—to Koningsberg—yes, that little (cough) Russian (cough) enclave that still boasted Kant over Kalinin. Pavel wondered whether the little critters in the front row would receive Günter’s attention: there were a half dozen more installed next to Lukas and Johana, oblivious, like them, to the banter.

But after the penultimate piece Günter acknowledged their presence. With ‘gross magnanimity’, Pavel thought he heard, we should hear what the least of these are hearing today: “Wie heisst du?” Günter posed, and leveled the mic to Lukas’ face. Pavel half mimicked his son’s instinctive whiplash: he wanted nothing of this parlance. On cue, Günter flipped the mic upwards and into his ready quip, which set the audience laughing, then deadpanned another question to Lukas, who mumbled something in no language Pavel could decipher. Günter probably made the same observation back into the mic, along with some kind of ‘kinders say the darnedest things’, which this time, with the guffawing crowd, set himself on an amplified ‘Ha, Ha, Ha!’ Lukas looked at his dad, who offered little commiseration if self-evident consternation. “Nevadí,” Pavel mouthed—“don’t worry.” Xerxes started the strains of a modified version of Zarathustra, and Günter slipped into the shade behind the statue, to enjoy a well-earned smoke.

Now Pavel wanted to jam the cigarette down his throat. What nerve to assume a little kid from Olomouc—never willingly part of any reich—would necessarily know what to say to this grandstanding guy. How would his majesty fare with the same verbal challenge in Olomouc? And would he deign to hear Xerxes there, at a venue that might stand more to reason? Or in Krakow, preserved in principle during Nazi occupation but geographically smack between the smog of Auschwitz and Majdanek? Pavel was not the type to act on such ire—hostility wasn’t in his weltanschauung—but just as he stepped in the direction of the unsuspecting charge d’affaires, Lukas stirred from his little chair and scampered toward his father. He’d been writhing in embarrassment, red-cheeked and blurry-eyed, and Pavel had to hold him, even if that did little to satisfy.

‘Feel like clocking him?’ Pavel wanted to say. ‘Imperial pigs—it starts in little stages. The smallness of self-aggrandizement, the ignorance of what Othello calls “the cause. It is the cause, my soul. / Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!” Or what Syzmborska crops in “Hitler’s First Photograph”:

No one hears howling dogs, or fate’s footsteps.
A history teacher loosens his collar
and yawns over homework.

That, son, is from People on the Bridge—what we are, not people on any itinerary of our own drafting. We can only ‘sin boldly’, as Luther observed, and that must mean making goddamn Günter eat his cigarette. You surely see the difference: he sins like a coward, above and below reproach. And Lukas—’

“Dad,” he broke into what seemed like furious silence, “I want to go home.”

Then Pavel looked over to Johana, watching Xerxes as intently as any of the adults behind her. Maybe she hadn’t even noticed her brother’s escape. Her curly head bobbed ever so slightly to the strokes of the cellist and she could have sat there into the evening. Provided, of course, she knew she was not abandoned. “Lukas, I know it may not settle the shame—and I mean this jerk’s shame, not yours—but you’d be the best big brother in the world if you went back to sit with Johana. I’ll stay here, and afterwards we’ll leave.”

Lukas demurred, shifted his weight away from the whole scene, but then, upon hearing his dad’s cheerier whisper—‘nedavej si bacha’—pursed a knowing smile and walked toward Johana.

Nothing worth rationalizing, Pavel melted anew.

Meditations of a Waiting Room

Today we meditated: father, son
And waited on a Wednesday afternoon
To see the doctor of attention spans
Whom we had hoped to meet at four pm
But found her overbooked and in demand.
We found ourselves within a waiting room
Of fellow patients of psychiatry
(And those of us along for the support)
For two full hours, and ironically
Amid the stacks of social magazines
And with a background television on,
Among a sampling of the population
Listening to hear their names be called,
We meditated. Unexpectedly

My son, the one who never could sit still,
Is starting to mature before my eyes.
He’s waiting here more patiently than me,
And I begin to wonder anymore
If he’d been diagnosed with ADD
A bit to hastily back in the day
When he was acting all of eight years old
And telegraphing his apparent need
For Adderol, if we have come this far
Again to have his old prescription filled
More out of habit than necessity,
And if there isn’t better therapy
In meditations of a waiting room
Than medications of amphetamine.

Today we meditated: everyone
Who waited with us had a different need,
A different habit, if their trials be told,
And yet we seem to be so much the same,
At least as far as anyone reveals.
I don’t begrudge the doctor for her role
In getting us to recognize ourselves
And realize how simple life can be,
How we all need this opportunity
Of time, however given, to reflect
On simple things, like having empathy
Or understanding our maturity
Or sitting in positions of support
Or being patient in a waiting room.

My father once was in a waiting room
For me. The wait was relatively short
And our trial was a different one to tell,
A different diagnosis, but the same
Prognosis: Give it time, give it time.
The doctor didn’t specify these words
Or scribble his prescription b.i.d.,
But as he had my father wait outside
He talked to me a while, and then he asked
If I played chess. This took me by surprise,
But I said yes, and so the troubled teen
And the Psy.D. played chess while the old man
Was waiting in the hall, more patiently
Than I appreciated, until now.

Here's Another

Here’s another for the symposium.  I do know how a month can fly by easily, so certainly no excuses required for the rest of you - but I’d love to get back to that initial burst of our sympositional experiment!

Anne, thank you for inviting and sharing with me, already a month ago, this year’s Ebert Fest movie selection, Louder Than a Bomb. That film has stuck with me quite a bit, even as I have had no time to write my due appreciation. Dan, you will like this one, about poetry slamming, teenagers discovering their identity and creativity and an inter-school system that “tricks” students into cheering for poetry.

Mom, thanks for orchestrating Andrew’s twelfth birthday scavenger hunt. You’ve got a great tradition going, and now just seven or eight more to go! A flexible count only because I don’t know if you’ll have Kevin and Josey look for clues together. Will they, as a team, be the first not to rely on their dad to help them solve the clues?

Josh, one of these days I’d like to come for one of your sermons, but in the mean time I’m happy to see you going in this direction. It would probably be a bit daunting, never mind the logistical unlikelihood, if our whole weekend gathering followed you home for your July 12 sermon, but do let me know if I can slip into the Trinity pews some other Sunday morning.

And Dan, we are looking forward to seeing you, and you all, in July. I haven’t decided on any nominations for your top ten album list yet, but Kirsten suggests Vampire Weekend, Contra as number 9 and Talking Heads ‘77 as number 4. I’m more in tune with her second choice.

Anyway, here is my symposial offering, a true story poem based on an experience Andrew and I had just last week. One or two editorial explanations: Adenol did not start until last year, but the diagnosis preceded it by several years. And we’re not ready yet to say no more, but the thought has crossed my mind.

Decidedly, without a doubt...

I posted Mid-Term Memory too hasti-
ly and got the format all messed up.
It is now corrected. Sorry, Dan.

And by the way, bro, you are registered through isp.cz@gtempaccount.com.
Post notices will still be emailed to you at your yahoo address. If you want to try it again, I will send the invite to the yahoo address, but see if it will work the other way.

Meanwhile, to all of you, Mom helped me figure out that you can get to a postable blogsite by signing on at blogger.com, where you will find a dashboard that will have Stillwater Symposia on it. Josh, you still need to accept the invitation, which I will send yet again.

This can be done!

Another Invitation

Sometimes we do need
to read the poetry of
another language.

National Poetry Month

Who knew? We are in
National Poetry month
And for the Czechs too?

The Blogsite Takes Flight

Inauguration Day 2011? The full-grown blogsite? Not sure what to call this posting, but it is the first being posted directly to our Stillwater Symposia site and automatically sent from there to each of you. And each of you can now do the same! With just one holdout (name begins with Josh), you are all registered authors on the site. Meanwhile, Josh and anyone else, if you'd rather just keep sending emails, I will be happy to post these for you, but please, give it a try!

In compiling what we've got so far, I gave myself just two rules: emails to or from less than all of you are not posted, and emails that didn't seem intended for a symposium are not posted. Not much fell into that last category ---a more personal prayer request, one more general newsletter ---but let me know if I've over- or understepped on this. Better, from here on out, each of you as authors can choose for yourself what is postable.

There are no other rules, as far as I'm concerned, but take note of a few format guidelines. First, as noted already, the titles. No more strings of emails with recycled subject lines, now you've gotta name your posting.

Second, and more trickier, using the pages. It took me some time (and no instructions from Blogger!), but I figured out how to link the categorizable posts through the different pages. I'm happy to do this for you, but to make it easier, please post what would have been your attachments as separate postings, in order to give them their own linkable address. And if you want to figure out how to do the page links yourself, just copy the linkable address, press the edit (the pencil) button on the page getting the link, use the Edit HTML tab and follow a prior example on that page.

Third, and least importantly, follow your font (Dan=Georgia, Mom and Dick=Times, Josh=Trebuchet and Anne=Verdana), post your name in the Labels section and give your more creative postings the full-justified blue-grey font I've chosen to set them apart.

Finally, and most importantly, post away! Anne, we've got two handmade postings from you ---they are fun to read, please send more! Dick, one Arizona picture inspired a week's worth of postings ---how about one from Wisconsin? Dan, we're ready for Act Two! Mom, feel free at any time to turn us back to our faith base! And Josh, no excuses!

As for myself, I will, at Dan's prompting, eventually post Mathematics, and I'd like to share a little more of my Walled Gardens project with you all, especially as it is probably my most faith-based set of poems. But let me know what you think of what you've seen so far.

Apart from the Symposia, also at Dan's prompting, I've started adding the third party poems to my Thirty Birds site, not within the blogtext itself but as comments after each poem. This is actually just a trick to avoid having to get permissions (although most of what I've posted are public domain poems), but I've also, on the opening page of the site, offered a general invitation for anyone to add their own favorite bird poems in the comment sections. Dan, in that spirit, feel free to add Havranci as a comment to my Raven poem.

See you all Saturday,

love, Jon

On My Father's Side

This is for all the 12-year-olds and those who have already been and those who will be.

Emmanuel! Love, Mom

Click here: YouTube - On My Father's Side by The Born Again Gang

Earthworm Theology

God knows what depths and shallows
each soul can navigate,
the draught of every creature. God creates...
                  – Sanai, tr. Coleman Barks

...and through this sacred rhythm
I come to appreciate
that everything is sacred. God creates

and bestows each godly wisdom
within. There is no mind.
Another knowing lives outside of time,

beyond the basic neurons
that spark our mortal fire,
above the carnal pulse of our desire;

nor can I have desire
of such capacity
to wish for all that God has given me.

Before this altar silence
becomes my eloquence
and emptiness my path to sustenance,

and I will find tomorrow
connected to today,
and I will learn to celebrate the way

that God has set before me,
this day, my daily earth,
the life I live, the wisdom I am worth.

Random Wisdom from Andrew

Dear fellow sentimentalists,

Random wisdom from Andrew today, unaware of Dan’s email and I think unprompted by the 40th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight. “It’s funny. Most kids want to grow up to be astronauts and train conductors, and almost none of them succeed.” Actually I don’t have any idea what prompted this, as he just said it an hour ago as I dropped him off at fencing class, and now I won’t see him for two more hours. Could they have commemorated Gagarin in an American middle school today? I’m guessing not. More likely Andrew had just seen the conductor in a passing Metra train.

I did not know it was the first spaceflight anniversary until Dan brought it up, but I was prompted to check out Wikipedia to learn more. Interesting stuff, especially given Dan’s suggested context of the Soviet “spin” to his singular orbit. He was apparently later quoted by Kruschev as having said “I don’t see any God up here,” but others claimed he more likely said “Someone who never met God on earth would never meet Him in space.” Or could that have been in response to Kruschev? Three years later, after visiting a monastery he said to a friend, “Just think on these words, ‘who art in heaven.’”

Neither Gagarin nor Kruschev will have the last word on God in heaven, but Gagarin will always be the first human in space —and he was apparently well favored for the task. Wikipedia reports that the cosmonaut candidates were asked to vote anonymously on their own choice for “first to fly,” and 17 of 20 voted for Yuri.

So here’s to Yuri, and sentimentalism, and all kids wanting to be Astronauts, and any one of them succeeding.

Meanwhile, back on earth, again prompted by Dan but also, I hope, in the spirit of Matthew 4: 5-11 (and 1 Corinthians 2:10-14, and, interestingly enough, Yuri’s thoughts), here’s my Earthworm Theology:

http://walledgardenpoetry.blogspot.com/2011/03/earthworm-theology.html

Now, isn’t that much easier than attachments? This was inspired by the opening rhythm of an otherwise blank-versed Coleman Barks poem. I took the liberty of rewriting it, but I tried to make it my own poem too. I do not have a copy of the Barks’ poem where I am writing this (it’s at home, I’m at the office), but if anyone is interested I’ll send it later.

(Dan, I have no answers on what to do to sign in as a blog author, but if you or anyone else has continuing difficulties, I will be happy to post your pieces for you until we figure it out. I also do not use my gmail address for anything else, but I guess that’s the trend - AT&T now wants me to have another email address just to check my voice mails.)

love to all, Jon

...

Next Day Postscript

I meant 50th anniversary. Old math.

Coleman Barks' original poem is now posted as a comment on the same link.

Andrew's inspiration, it turns out, was the conversation we were having about Scott Kuntz, my colleague, who is driving to Pennsylvania today for a model train convention.

Enjoy your days!

Mid-Term Memory

Decidedly, without a doubt the ele-
phant within the fishbowl wanted out: not
because the curvature was cramped or that

the oxygen was scant—her snorkel took care
of that—and not because she was alone:
while dreams of pachyderms at home preoc-
cupied her most reflective hours, the tickle
of her funny bone was only sometimes dour:

the bowl was filled with someone else, a
goldfish swimming (as it were) ‘tween folds of flesh,
forgetting seconds past for present tasks and
minding business own against what fatso’d ask
which resonated thus: ‘Remind me, golden friend,
how came we to this end: my memory renowned
is worthless here, as nothing—see—is worth
remembering. How on earth do you go on?’

Said goldfish feint, without much thought:
‘I remember naught but how to eat—your trainers
call that instinct and I might stop at that, to
think through nothing else but what is here, not
to dwell on what is not. I get the umpteen
screeds on what-and-how I soon forget; if
so, I’d always never know I’m bound in glass…
alas, I always am—my seconds never pass.

I won’t and can’t recall your fate; I vaguely
know you don’t relate to this milieu. I feel
quite bad for you; if pity fades and flits I’m
glad you’re in it here, with me—or so I try to think.’
‘Don’t bother,’ elephant rejoined: her power
to objectively employ a reasonable riposte
was wrapped beyond a prayer to what she all-
too-clear remembered then and there:

The plummet in to present fate (tsunami years
ago) crushed goldy’s mate and stuffed the hole
that would have lured him to a senseless search,
a flip book look for what was lost, a blurred
and lurid chase: the elephant knew that
nothing old or no one new would matter here
and now. The pair was cut. A mutant mix—
Decidedly, a shared mnemonic shut.

Havranci (little ravens)

Veteran's Day, the armistice of killing time with
apple-picking cheer against the chill and
pallor... Meanwhile, I'm Weeping more of late,
I'm less old than I am if Frost cannot rub the
strangeness from his sight, daft to think I can.

Black crows have come back to stakehold leafless trees
and caw the closed penultima and brashly animate the
freeze.
'Nevermore' belies the constance of their mob— a
fledgling plague Ukraine expels for virgin winter
wheat to rob.

Then I hear a 'kraa kraa' in an aping pitch,
naive and fresh, familiar, bright… my frosty
eye begins to twitch:
Advent Emma's turning two—November now
extends the warmth of autumn (the sole
season to remember)

Go Gagarin

Dear all,

Forever sentimental, I'm celebrating Gagarin's universal (not strictly Soviet) venture into space. Of course the poor man was a propaganda pawn, of course the ubiquitous 'microregions' of Turkmenistan and everywhere else I managed to spy into during the early-mid 90's named in honor of this man were wrapped up in the larger-than-life zeitgeist of the moment-beyond-the-passing-days of the 1960's. In fact, I never once thought of that precursory decade while I walked around dilapidated Turkmenistan. Gagarin was probably just a dude who wanted to leave a personal legacy; I wonder what he really though of the subtle sabotage that followed.

We're in it for less demagogic gain. I love what Jon has done and want to leave things temporarily at that. I'm still having some log-in struggles on these lines: blogspot.com always converts to a Czech line of instructions I usually understand, but they get cross-wired when they pose ultimata like, 'Do you want to change your log-in from [my school-issued gmail] to another gmail account?' [I don't even administrate my gmail account!!] or less clear questions whether I am signing in to an existing account, new account, create-an-account, etc (all in Czech). In other words, I'm still rather stupid/stupefied by the labyrinth we may be in.

But--positive forces unite!--the spirit is working where the web as we know it is weak! I thought I had tapped into Jon's 30 Birds but I guess I was at his Walled Garden site--still couldn't 'post a comment' there, despite trying to sign in (as a 'Follower'? I'm in over my head). Read that whole site--you can link into it if you type Jon's "About Me"--and see specifically the poems I most wanted to comment on, "Mathematics", "The Elephant" (which Jon shared after I wrote "Mid-Term Memory", attached) and "Earthworm Theology". I'm rather into slimy creatures, for whatever reason!

Go further to the Calendrums site--I was, by coincidence, thinking of penning a Palm Sunday poem this year, and "March" is a wonderful impetus. I think I like lower-case "gray" as a better poem, however. Another eBlogger (the other name for blogspot.com) site Jon has created is March to December, a wonderful double entendre. Read the Beckett/Pirandello-inspired "Story" or the more plot-apparent "Disappearance of Walter Herring"--again, I wanted to 'comment' to these entries but couldn't figure out the cyber-keys.

Finally, alas, the Thirty Birds that I took to heart poem-by-poem when they were written in the summer of 2008 (yes?). I hope these poems on this site will have their companions from renowned poets, doubling the 30 to 60 with names like Ted Hughes, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, et al. My favorites in that collection are "At the Bus Stop", "Social Creatures" and "Hawk Diode".

Anyway, this is everything I would have hoped by now and more. A la Greg Loftness, I was hoping we'd have a repository, a family legacy, an internship for whomever interested. As a 19th-century man, compelled to teach Web 2.0-sort-of-things, I don't much care about the confines of cyberspace. But I do love the spirit that both complements and prevails over the ether. In that sense, go Gagarin--not for jingoistic glory but for the metaphor that space cannot confine the aesthetic endeavor to touch the stars and return to earth unharmed. What's deeper in our pursuit, we have Matthew 4: 5-11.

love,
Dan

Somewhat Reluctantly, a Designer

Hey Dan, and all,

I’ll send the invites out again to hopefully allow you to sign in as an author. So far just Josh and Anne are called “followers,” which I think is something different than authors, and I wonder, were you, Dan, also unable to sign in as a follower, too? And Josh, Anne, did you also have difficulty accepting author invitations? For that matter, I don’t even know what a follower is, as distinct from an author or someone who simply looks at the site without being a follower or author, as apparently you did, Dan. Mom, too. You are, it seems, iconless “visitors.”

Meanwhile, I don’t even know how one gets an icon, if that’s even the right name for it. All I know is what my kids did to Josh on my smart phone. Any time Josh calls, a picture slightly different than his symposian icon pops up, and any time I want to call him, I have to scroll past the J’s and the L’s to O, for Old Man Lamken. I swear, Josh, I’d change that if I knew how to. Guess I need Smart Phones for Dummies. Or less clownish kids.

So there would seem to be authors, followers, visitors. And, somewhat reluctantly, a designer. For the record, I don’t mind being an even keeled co-author, or symposian visitor, or, yes, a fellow follower of Christ, but designer? What? Wait... Oh, okay.

According to the design page – how do I let others into the design page? — I am currently the only author. It seems, if we are bashing our bosses and bringing up personal stuff, we ought to limit the site to authors only, but until you guys get signed in as authors or direct me otherwise, I will have to keep this as an open access blog. No, wait, I can limit the site to “only people I choose.” Which means there are authors, followers, visitors and then ...the chosen. However, I can only choose people with gmail addresses, so, until you all get on board, we’re back to an “anyone” site.

Not that anyone else is looking. There are stats on the design page that indicate only two countries, US and Czech, have signed in to this site so far. By comparison, my Thirty Birds site somehow has people looking in from the Phillippines, India, Germany (but not, by the way, Czech). I’m guessing this is because I gave it a registered domain name.

Anyway, for now, I don’t mind doing the posting of our first couple months of sympofied emails. If ever we get into multiple authorship, though, I propose a few rules. First, to allow us to keep the more personal stuff to the side, no posts unless they are directed to all. I wouldn’t mind sharing what I sent to Mom for her birthday, or talking Dan into sharing a poem or two he has sent to me separately, but I’ll let the authors do the sharing first. Second... Oh, heck, there is no second.

In the mean time, if there wasn’t already enough for a designer to think about, I am trying to give you all separate fonts. The blog only gives seven options, so I started going in alpha order by age. I’m Ariel, Dan’s Georgia, Josh is Trebuchet and Anne’s Verdana. Except I forgot Mom, so I guess she will get Courier. If there are any objections, please speak up, although your only other options are Helvetica and Times.

For now,

Designer Jon

The Woebegone Feel

Hello family,

My first online IB workshop is over--whew! A lot more work than the face2face workshops, and not more cash on the contract. What's rewarding is that I'm among the first to teach a new IB literature course online, and it went swimmingly (not belly up, as did a few pilots before mine). Had I known this would be an eventuality, I would not have signed into the Paris workshop, but that one will be big, with a different type of networking, so I shant regret it too much. At any rate, thanks for taking in Katerina and the kids a full five days before I can get there.

Jon, a belated thank you for the site--I like how you've stylized it as a chronicle, and the ducks and reeds in the background casts a wonderful mood. I tried to subscribe as a "follower" several times but I'm being rebuffed; the way I had subscribers for my erstwhile "Lamken's Philology Central" (same eBlogger platform, still accessible) was to type in their emails in an 'invite' box. As the sole editor, only I could post articles for subscribers' comments, only I could control the gate who was in or out (and 100 people max, at that), so unless the settings on this one are different, we won't necessarily have discernible 'surf' traffic. But that's a detail that can be sorted later. I'm just so appreciative of the archive and possibilities to keep writing.

I liked re-reading the letters among our other writings, and perhaps some content therein can be excised--I refer to my ISP boss unflatteringly, for instance! But the lovely part of it is the Woebegon feel, the notion that this is an effort to leave (in part) to the generation(s) that follow. I guess I'm thinking in those terms because I was asked to speak at graduation again--I begged to do the less formal 'Senior Banquet' on graduation eve, as being the main speaker twice in three years wouldn't be comfortable. I like this senior class quite a bit, and recently we've been workshopping poetry. I want to write something on the theme of 'walking to run', a bit because no less than 20% of the senior class came out for cross-country, including the 1st and 3rd place finishers in the conference. I also liked hearing an interview on The Daily Show of an Argentinian brain researcher who is working on synapse technology by which paralyzed people can 'think' themselves back to a walking status (real medicine, not hokus-pokus). Of course Jesus with the paralytic comes to mind--I'll craftily work that in! And something about passing a baton--a relay whether in a fast race or deliberate saunter (walks for cancer research come to mind--our annual Breast Cancer Walk is this Saturday). So if y'all have any ideas toward this theme, send 'em my way; eventually Stillwater Symposia may feature a message board or wiki space, I imagine... For now, let's celebrate this launch along with 30 Birds, the work that goes into avocations and the relaxation that may result in our vocations.

love,
Dan 

GOOD to be Home

Hi - Thanks for the reminder - and all the early-hour work - of getting in to the blog.  Loved reading through it this morning, and I had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get into your blog, Anne - now I can.  Again I ask, do you want me to transfer over en masse the emails and writings which I arbitrarily put into a file called "Birthday 2011"?  How do I do that?  Is that what g-mail is all about?  And how much purging can you do once it is passed on?  Actually, I have the feeling that you have kept pretty much everything that I did, so I'll just let it ride and wait as you continue your blogwork.  Of course, the ancient history (1988+) is precious to read, too.

   It is SO GOOD to be home.  We slaved on the land one day, cleaning up after Wayne the patrolman on the Loyalty bank below our house.  That's when we came up and sat on the porch swing and talked to you, Josh and Anne, and watched bluebirds build next in our birdhouses.

   So catching up with friends, and getting into church music and an actual wedding I have for April 30, and doing women's club stuff, and modifying our southwest-US basement corner,  has delighted us.  Dick's knees hurt, and they didn't in Arizona.  Phooey.  It has been rainy the last few days, so that adds to it, for some reason.  Today we're going in to Verona to pick up the two bikes Ken (Dick's brother) gave us that Anne and Eric and Jon tried out and they had some problems.  Hopefully problems are gone.

   Really looking forward to Easter Saturday and seeing all but Prague branch.  Excited that that will happen come summer!  

   Meanwhile, Jon, Andrew's 12th is coming up, and since we can't duplicate his sister's treasure hunt, we have some other expanded ideas that involve a whole weekend.  Any chance you can come up near his birthday???

   Hugs to all of you.  Mom

Easter Invitation

Jon, thank you so much for pulling this blog together!  I am away from home today, but I will feast on literary genius tonight. 

Please come celebrate Easter at our house on Saturday, April 23nd.  Come around noon and we'll have dinner at around 2.  Email me if you want to bring something, but no pressure at all.

I can't wait to see EVERYBODY soon!


Take care,
Annie

www.handmadebyannepotter.etsy.com
50% of all proceeds go towards missions

The Fledgling Blogsite

Hello family -

After 9 days, The Stillwater Symposia blogsite I tried to start has gained one "follower" (Thanks Josh) and no comments from the symposian gallery other than in a non-group email (thanks Dan). I have never tried my hand at this blogging stuff, though, and I suppose the gmail hurdle is daunting. And yes, we are all allowed to be busy with other priorities, as I have been myself. But check it out, all, and please, any suggestions on how to do this right are welcome.

Actually, if you had checked it out before today, the site has been sitting empty. But tonight I started posting the emails beginning in mid January when Dan first came up with this idea. I spent about an hour on this, and it is a little bit of work sorting through old emails and attachments, and there is at least one post that is certainly too long (my 1990 Dostoevsky final, which I had shared before we roped the rest of you into this project). But overall I think it will be nice to see this come together. So far, I'm just at the point where Dan first opened it up to all with his turtle poem. I haven't even gotten to the duck photo and the haikus, not to mention the point when we came up with the name. But take a look - and feel free to help me post some of the older emails (just be sure to time/date stampt them on the post-options). Again, the address is http://stillwatersymposia.blogspot.com/

In fact, blogspot.com is itself pretty easy to work with. And it is not hard to give yourself a gmail address. I told you I had first tested this with one of my poetry books; I have since put all three of my poetry books into blog format, and for one of them, yes the bird book, I went even further, populating it with photos and giving it a separate non-blogspot domain, which means you do not need gmail to check this one out: www.thirtybirdspoetry.com

See you all in two weeks. Anne, what time should we show up?

Love, jon

A Blogsite!

Ok, all, I couldn't resist. I started the bare bones of a blogsite for Stillwater Symposia through Google's blogger service. And to show how easy this is to work with, take a look at a separate blog I put together in about two hours this morning, which contains all 29 poems of my Walled Gardens collection. (I don't always have two hours to spend, but KC's on her band trip this week, Andrew was at Bensenville and the house was eerily quiet. Andrew's back home tonight, though, so I have Call of Duty Playstation sounds in the background. Peaceful!)

The sites:

http://stillwatersymposia.blogspot.com/

http://walledgardenpoetry.blogspot.com/

Nothing is in the Stillwater site yet, but everyone will be free to contribute through your current email addresses. I will send the invites out shortly. You will be asked to set up a Google account with a different email address, but this is easy and you don't have to use the gmail address for anything else.

You are also free to object, or propose a better site, or stick with searching back through our various old emails. But I kinda like the thought of having a single place to go to, rather than having to remember where that old email with the newt haiku was. And of course we can have links, too ---handmadebyanne, for instance... And Scrabble scores. And if anyone can figure it out, how about Dick's duck photo as a background?

- Jon

Last Word?

How are you all doing?  I miss it when we don't hear for a few days!

I promise this will be the very last word on Stillwater for the symposium, but as this was our last Sunday in Mesa, and we really have enjoyed - yeah, that's the word! - worship at St. Timothys - where we often go out clapping and singing to this Matt Maher 2003 song:

 

YOUR GRACE IS ENOUGH

Great is Your faithfulness, O God of Jacob.

You wrestle with the sinner's restless heart.

You lead me by still waters into mercy,

Where nothing can keep us apart.

 

So remember Your people, remember Your children,

Remember Your promise, O God.

 

For Your grace is enough, Your grace is enough,

Your grace is enough for me.

 

Great is Your love and justice, God of Jacob.

You use the weak to lead the strong.

You lead us in the song of Heaven's victory,

And all Your people sing along.

 

 

Oh, Ok, just one more - not related to the 23rd Psalm, but this struck me forcibly during communion today:

 

ABOVE ALL (1999 Lenny LeBlanc/Paul Baloche Integrity's Hosanna! Music

 

Above all powers, above all kings,

Above all nature and all created things.

Above all wisdom and all the ways of man,

You were here before the world began.

 

Above all kingdoms, above all thrones,

Above all wonders the world has ever known.

Above all wealth and treasures of the earth,

There's no way to measure what You're worth.

 

Crucified, laid behind a stone,

You lived to die, rejected and alone.

Like a rose trampled on the ground,

You took the fall and thought of me above all.

 

and in conclusion,

DUCKlings

 

Today biking on

The Western Canal

We saw eleven ducklings

Learning to turn tail.

 

Fluff balls they were

Still close to their mom,

Yet climbed the steep bank

As we pedaled along.

 

How many times

Were you blessed today?

Swimming spring ducklings

Caused "Hey, thanks!" on our way.

Codex Orange, Act I

Codex Orange

Dramatis Personae

Lillian Farmworth—school board chair

Rhea Smith—a school board member

Jon Tiosook—a school board member

Helmand Dostune—high school guidance counselor

Dr James Bourban—district 27 superintendent

Mary-Alice Springer—high school principal

Lou Vestral—high school teacher

Erin Kryzinski—high school teacher

Petra Green—school nurse

Sheriff Bohumil Slucha—Golden Valley Police Department

Duputy Phillip Porter—GVPD

Officer Sharon Simmons—GVPD

Officer Timothy Racine—GVPD

Officer Claude van Erdal—GVPD

Officer Gustavo Marrot—GVPD

Detective Soledad Bream--GVPD

Cole Barnadine—a local drunk

Terry Brandiwine—his girlfriend

Ted O’Shea—a locksmith

Father Faye—a priest

Antony Serentino—a basketball coach

Beth King—a standout player

Gavin Tate—a standout player

other players, standout or otherwise

Scene: Golden Valley, Minnesota

Ii—after a run

Iii—sizing up the school

Iiii—poking the drunks

Iiv—school board meeting

IIi—GVPD pre-brief

IIii—fight on the court

IIiii—Dostune’s office

IIiv—drunks poke back

IIIi—School Board at GVPD

IIIii—planning revenge

IIIiii—after midweek mass

IIIiv—after a run

IVi—sizing up the school

IVii—informing the school community

IViii—pub humor

IViv—Dostune held up

Vi—GVPD lock-down

Vii—Father Faye’s message

Viii—drunken plan at basketball

Viv—after all, said and done

Ii: A school gymnasium with un-pulled bleachers on one side and a curtained stage area on the other; walls are decked in old bunting and banners of conference and regional accolades. Eight adults merge together, slapping hands to cap the final game of pick-up. Lights high above illuminate the scene, windows equally as high are black with the night sky to the north and the second-floor corridor to the south. Nothing else fills the space.

TIOSOOK:  Getting too old for this—who called the win-by-two?

SERENTINO:  No one has to call it, dummy; your team threw away the lead.

TIOSOOK:  And then clung to desperation. We would have more wisely lost it by one, some seven points and fifteen minutes ago.

MARROT:  See, that’s your old guys’ problem, needing two minutes for each point—

SERENTINO:  Oh, and your academy youth did anything to help us tilt the balance? A dozen shots you took beyond the arc and how many actually landed? I thought you were a sharp-shooter! Next week bring your rifle site!

MARROT:  (sniffs out) Reminds me of something, not sure I’m supposed to say…

SERENTINO:  Say what?

MARROT:  Not authorized as yet. At least I think not, right Jon?

TIOSOOK:  What am I supposed to do with it? It’s not my call, really,… but might as well, seeing that it’s a closed circle at this point.

DOSTUNE:  (leaning in, quietly) Wait a second ‘til Gavin and Beth leave—you never know with new alums….

SERENTINO:  (contrastingly) Hey! See you two—good run tonight. Don’t shower together!

KING:  (offstage) You neither. Next week we’re on?

SERENTINO:  Next week!

MARROT:  Next week may be called off. That’s all.

SERENTINO:  Cut the cryptic, Gus: what’s going on?

MARROT:  Nothing cryptic when it comes to it, just a little hard to couch.

SERENTINO:  Man, I’ve got practices to run, games Tuesday and Friday—why not try to fill me in.

DOSTUNE: It’s a good point—I’ve been struggling with,… well, how all this might be received—

SERENTINO:  All what?

MARROT:  All the shooting and screaming and silence that will be going on—

TIOSOOK:  Hey, now, say it better—

SERENTINO:  Say it straight—you goons planning on doin’ something?

MARROT:  A terrorism simulation.

SERENTINO:  Get outta here—

MARROT:  Beslan, full blown. Just actors and us, a camera crew to take it all in, a school board review—the whole measure.

SERENTINO:  What? And we were supposed to know about this—when?

TIOSOOK:  Well, that was the tricky point. Monday is Presidents’ Day, kind of inconspicuous and we’ve always had a ‘spring cleaning’ crew come in to wax floors and such—they’ll still do that, only in the middle of the night, when the simulation is declared over.

DOSTUNE: What worries me isn’t actually the fake blood…

MARROT:  We’re going to have to run the whole gamut of a facility lock-down: when to crash in, when to shoot, how to negotiate through silence and noise. The whole gamut.

TIOSOOK:  The community will know what’s going on, but not too early—it’s decidedly not going to meet a debate—and the school campus will be cordoned off, off-limits completely. At least, I think that’s been established.

SERENTINO:  So, to be clear, you were eventually going to deign to tell… me, for instance, to stay clear of my own gym on Presidents’ Day so as to let paintball-by-grown-ups run amock?

TIOSOOK: Eventually, yeah. We were going to fill you in. Like, maybe now.

SERENTINO:  You sons of bitches—it’s gonna be a joke that turns on yourselves.

DOSTUNE:  No, no—there’s no joke or no turning—it’s nothing like that. It’s just a sensitive situation with all the annoying innuendo, y’know?

MARROT: Annoying: Al Qaida raids middle America—that’s hardly simulation stock. It’s more likely to be Columbine in most folks’ memories.

SERENTINO: So which is it? Which one are you simulating?

TIOSOOK: Well, that’s why we didn’t want to debate it. The fact is we can’t be reduced to the two prototypes. Terrorism defies any easy model.

SERENTINO:  Easy? No one said anything about ‘easy’.  I’ll just be god-damned if any of this is half as thought out as you think.

TIOSOOK:  C’mon, Tony, don’t get glazed over in this. It’s practical, it’s theoretical—but not the stuff of knee-jerk debate. It’ll be a tempest in a teapot, at best. It won’t involve students or teachers or anybody but actors and cops. It will be a troubleshooting exercise.

SERENTINO:  It will be whatever you don’t want it to be. It will define itself as an inchoate beast, lacking purpose and lapping up misgivings. You’re saying there wouldn’t be a place for debate, when time will tell and an arbitrary debate starts to unfold in colors you hadn’t contracted or comic-booked for. The stir of the night will not be the simulated fright of actors. The blood won’t be fake that courses through each cordon-buster, body and brain. You see, even if it goes without a hitch, the unannounced plan, when known, won’t ever be the same.

TIOSOOK: No, I s’pose not—now that you rhapsodized it. And you, good servant of the law, exposed it.

MARROT: As you allowed me to. No harm done: I said it only for the good.

SERENTINO:  (harrumphing) …only for the good…

TIOSOOK:  Good riddance—please keep in under your hat for a day or two, ‘til we figure out a disclosure method.

SERENTINO:  What hat? I’ll need to borrow goofy Gus’s and practice my DOOM.

DOSTUNE: That video game is long on the outs—a cyber-generation ago... Unfortunately, there’s a whole lot worse if you want to see a widening gyre—

SERENTINO: I want to see more of us putting this orange thing through a bushel basket, again and again and again and again…

Iii: The next morning, several members of the Golden Valley Police Department mill around the receptionist desk of the school. The first bell has rung and most students are in their classrooms, although some stragglers go to their lockers, cast glances toward the officers and shuffle toward the closed doors of their classrooms. When corridors are completely clear, the group walks slowly, loosely in a group, some jotting down particulars on clipboards. The pantomime starts and stops serendipitously, with random looks into trophy cases and pencil taps to the casings of fire alarms. The mumble of voices eventually defers to the principal’s attempt to gather them to a central spot on the stage, marked by the school’s coat of arms under their feet. None of them look that far down; instead, heads swivel mostly to the sky lights and the scribbles on their clipboards. 

SPRINGER:  And this is the junction between the academic wings and the ‘common area’—

PORTER:  ‘Common’ meaning what, exactly?

SPRINGER: Well, ‘common’. Not sure what else that can mean—

BOURBAN:  Kids would be prone to hang out here. We also might have informal gatherings and such.

PORTER:  But the big stuff happens in the gym…

BOURBAN:  Naturally. From the theatre platform—that’s right, isn’t it, Mary?

SPRINGER: (nodding, mumbling) Alice… Mary-Alice, so that these gentlemen know…

PORTER:  Okay, so we’d want to know the various ways from this common area to the theatre—any secret passageways, Alice, in the basement, maybe?

SPRINGER:  No—Mary-Alice, together-like.

BOURBAN:  Didn’t we already send you blueprints of the facility?

PORTER: Apologies. Left them at the station. But I do recall something about…

SPRINGER: Yes, we do have a basement—generally locked.

BOURBAN:  From the inside, though? I thought they were lock-release…

SPRINGER: Well, why don’t we go check…

PORTER: We’ll do that, all in good time. For now, pace us through a typical school day. Let’s say kids are in the academic… ah… wings and they want to go common.  Or, wait, let’s pretend it’s a, what d’ya call it—assembly, or a basketball game, and kids are going from this common…

SPRINGER:  If it’s a basketball game, we lock the doors to the common area and the academic wings.

BOURBAN:  Mind you, they’re release-lock, from the inside—

SPRINGER:  A school assembly, however, is a very different occasion—day from night, literally. Which begs the question: what exactly is the premise of this simulation?

BOURBAN:  Mary, we’ve been over this time and again: we’re not here to debate the premise. The occasion could be anything, from a single lunatic to an orchestrated campaign—

MARROT:  Belsan, full blown.

SPRINGER:  That’s not what I meant—I get the purpose, but what exactly is the premise you want? A middle-of-day event, or something in the evening? When kids are coming, or going, spread out in classrooms or assembled in a large place?

PORTER:  Yes. All of the above.

SIMMONS:  With due respect, sir, Mary-Alice is asking a pertinent question. What are we imagining for our roles this Wednesday?

PORTER:  We’re imagining being caught off-guard. So, whatever happens, it’s ‘situation fluid’—and that means now, tomorrow, this Monday—every day thereafter.

BOURBAN:  Well put. That’s the premise and the purpose.

SIMMONS:  Here’s my idea, for sake of efficiency: one of us keeps an eye out for the small spaces—washrooms, classrooms, nooks and crannies—another sizes up the common areas—

PORTER: Just one common area, I thought—

SIMMONS:  Not if we include the gym, the cafeteria, the foyer...

MARROT: I’ll take them. I know the gym inside and out.

PORTER:  The point is we all gotta know what we don’t know. Everybody has to be ‘small space’ and ‘big space’, familiar and unfamiliar. Gus, you want gym duty ‘cause you imagine this will be some kinda Beslan? Sharon, you want classrooms ‘cause you got good grades in school? Hell, I almost dropped out—was looking for any chance to get high—so should I take one of these, what did’ya call ‘em, ‘crannies’?

SIMMONS:  Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m saying.

SPRINGER:  Listen, the bell is going to ring soon—I think we need to proceed with the tour and get relatively out-of-sight when kids pass to their next classes—

BOURBAN: They shouldn’t be affected by authorities checking out the school.

SPRINGER:  And our talking Beslan, lunatics, and crannies to get high?

PORTER: Now, Mary, that’s not fair.

SPRINGER: (sighing) I think I’ll leave you to sort that out. Dr Jim, I trust you know the ins and outs and how each lock releases.

BOURBAN: No room for sarcasm, Mary-Alice. This is supposed to be your chance to lead the school through a code-red scenario; there’s nothing more important than what we’re doing right now.

SPRINGER: I don’t disagree, but the bell will ring and students will see us in muddle-mode, not the picture of confidence in code-red.

MARROT: Maybe it’s ‘code orange’ anyway.

PORTER: I always wanted to keep it ‘code x’—neither black or white or any other set color… Fact is, most of these situations wouldn’t care if the code were anticipated or not. Code green is just a trip-wire away from code-red..,

SPRINGER:  I don’t understand what we’re discussing in the middle of the common area as students are about to tumble our way…

BOURBAN:  I can’t understand why you can’t understand.

Iiii Near the Golden Valley train station, under leafless trees. Though the sun is high, a women shuffles in with a sleeping bag over her shoulder and spreads it across a bench as a makeshift bed. Behind her, downstage, a man stops at a message-board pillar and reads what appears to be fine print. With some effort he pulls off a plank of posters—glued one over another—and holds it as a heavy, open newspaper.

BRANDIWINE:  C’mon, Cole, come and make me warm.

BARNADINE: The sun will do that by itself. Anyway, it’s noon, fer God’s sakes—why don’t you get up finally and get some exercise?

BRANDIWINE:  Come in here with me and exercise you’self.

BARNADINE:  There was a time, no foolin’, I was a damn decent spor’sman.  Look here at what’s coming to the Target Center—the Harlem Globetrowers…

BRANDIWINE: What kind of trousers?

BARNADINE:  I said Globetrowchers—trow..trollers—shit, you know what I mean.

BRANDIWINE:  No, what do you mean?

BARNADINE:  They’re trick ball-players that travel the globe—there: Globetrav’lers, no, trow… damn!—doesn’t matter.

BRANDIWINE: Well just read it, if you’re not too pissed.

BARNADINE: ‘Trotters’. Of course. ‘the One and Only’—that’s a sly cover for ‘the Original’!

BRANDIWINE:  Wha’s so special about ‘em?

BARNADINE: They beat every team they face, if all for show.  I saw them in Chicago at the ol’ Ampitheatre, big barn that was. Back before everything turned into ‘Target Centers’—

BRANDIWINE: They got Target in Chicago?

BARNADINE: Something more like a Delta Center or United Airlines—something in honor of ‘His Airness’.  I los’ interest before all that racket.

BRANDIWINE: No, they got Target stores in Chicago?

BARNADINE: Well who gives a damn? Target’s everywhere by now, I think.

BRANDIWINE: Tell me why you left again. Come snuggle in, ‘least lean agains’ my legs.

BARNADINE:  Well, I wasn’t no Clyde Marrow run outta town, but I wore out my welcome too many places. Hard to disappear anywhere, even midst millions o’ people. I worked Steinmetz High School on the near north side for a couple years—

BRANDIWINE: Janitor.

BARNADINE: yeah, but more to the point I sold pot. Lots, and the place became a bit’uva mecca.

BRANDIWINE: but you didn’t get rich.

BARNADINE: you can’t get rich like that—gotta go harder core, then you get killed more likely than get rich. Anyway, I didn’t care for that kinda life. I wanted to coach, y’know, or just even assist some team in city league. But I’m a janitor, right? Who’s that? Can’t know his X’s and O’s or how to lace up shoes, let alone jump to the moon. I got involved in a midnight league, pick-up all night long if kids showed up. Paid me nothin’ but a little room to sleep in, right next to the locker room. Drug trade there was worse than Steinmetz, and, y’know, reputation follows a guy and so I was kicked out, no questions about it. I’d been through a lot’a temp jobs and hoped to get hired back at a book warehouse, where I played three-on-three every lunch hour and coffee break.  Andre Battle, Derek Mays, Nikita Walker—good guys, y’know, who played at Simeon and King and Loyola Academy, some to go on to Division I, but most sputtering out, like me. So then there’s nowhere to go but stackin’ boxes o’ books, and selling dope to make a dent, and… fas’ forward to Golden Valley…

BRANDIWINE: Wha’s the song we like, ‘Erase an’ Rewind’?

BARNADINE: But there’s nothin’ to go back to. May’s well go to the frickin’ Globetrotters game at Target—

BRANDIWINE:  O, can we? I’d like us to see a sure win…

BARNADINE: all scripted out—not a game at all. More like a shopping trip, I guess, if you got the cash… Target gets its customers one way or ‘nother.

The two settle in to a slumber, with the plank of posters serving more a sun shield than a blanket. Two police officers come by.

VAN ERDAL:  What’dya say, Tim, now or next go’ round?

RACINE: Looks like they just settled in for a long winter’s nap—hard to argue against hibernation instinct, huh?

VAN ERDAL: Not hard at all. Especially since they’re three months late for bear behavior. Let’s rouse ‘em.

RACINE:  Claude, we don’t have Dorothy Day available ‘til 4; that’s a bunch of hours to push these two from bench to bench, in and out of the train station.

VAN ERDAL:  ‘s their problem more than mine. Simple law: no loitering. Nothing I need to interpret, really.

RACINE: Okay, but what if you had to negotiate? We’re supposed to go through that simulation next week, at the school…

VAN ERDAL: With a couple o’ drunks? That would be easy. I’d let my billy club do the talking. ‘Never talk to a drunk’, my grandpa used to say. Nothing you can do to squeeze out sobriety.

RACINE: Well that’s what we might encounter: the equivalent of drunks. Terrorists whipped up by their own witches’ brew, not looking to unvex the situation with methods of reason, much less with clear-and-simple adherence to rules, and much much less with billy clubs.

VAN ERDAL: Listen, I’ll let Monday unfold how it will: it’s training, for heaven’s sakes. Today is ‘trained’—cops on the beat, rousing drunks, ticketing cars, seeing and being seen. Shouldn’t second-guess what we’re here to do.

RACINE:  You’re Rambo, man, when it’s easy pickins’. I think you’ll shit your pants on Monday, the way they’re talking ‘realism’.

VAN ERDAL: Pardon my boredom, boy scout—Hey! You two, get up! Rise and shine and give God your story, story—just don’t tell me, and don’t let me see you lounging these benches again—they’re tax-payer property.

BARNADINE:  Huh? Whe—(coughs) Where we at now?

RACINE: Sir, you’re outside the Golden Valley railway stop. Do you have a residence you can return to for a more appropriate sleep?

BARNADINE:  We’re here with the Target Center show—

BRANDIWINE: We’re on the team that always get beat…

VAN ERDAL:  Don’t tempt me with that inviting sarcasm.

BRANDIWINE: Maybe I seys what’s true—you ain’t a judge and you can’t push us around like that. Rodney King—we all saw that police brutality.

VAN ERDAL: You got ten seconds to move your asses! Or maybe you want a couple nights in jail—I wouldn’t blame ya—but what you can’t do is loiter.

BARNADINE: Come on, girl, I got an idea anyway.

VAN ERDAL: What’re thinking of doing?

BARNADINE: None of you damned business—we’re leavin’ your ape-shit city furniture and you can’t do nothin’ more. Freedom o’ speech an’ assembly, and freedom to keep you out o’ ours.

RACINE: Sir, the Dorothy Day Center, down this road three blocks, opens at 4, if you need their services.

BRANDIWINE: And Target is open righ’ now—we gonna go an get beat.

VAN ERDAL: Whatever, just not on my beat, if you catch my drift.

BARNADINE:  I smell your pig methane…

RACINE: It’s enough.

BARNADINE:  More than enough. Girl, I done dreamed up an idea!

Iiv Evening, at the high school library, a meeting of the school board in a conspicuously small space between reference shelves and computer terminals.  Coats are still on, as the building is somewhat chilly. Lights are off except directly above. In the shadows are an array of books on display, student art, a mezzanine balcony and study carrels.

FARMWORTH:  Appreciate your attendance here tonight—extraordinary meetings may happen at the discretion of any board member, and—

TIOSOOK:  Point of semantics, Lillian: extraordinary or ‘extemporaneous’?

SMITH: Is there a difference?

TIOSOOK:  Sure—worlds, really. I mean with ‘extraordinary’ we’d still need to publish its taking place, its minutes—all in accordance with the by-laws: did you mean for that to happen tonight?

FARMWORTH:  No. Indeed this is an extraordinary extemporaneous meeting—really no reason to Roberts Rules it.

DOSTUNE:  Sorry, I don’t understand that reference—the ex’s I get, but who is Robert?

BOURBAN:  Before you Westernized, Helmand—a sometimes fuddy protocol that requires recognition from the chair, motions and seconds and other ‘Rules of Order’.

FARMWORTH:  Well, I wouldn’t say ‘fuddy’ or ‘duddy’ or anything disparaging—it keeps contentious issues civil.

SPRINGER: And sometimes ushers in a civil war.

BOURBAN: I wouldn’t say protocol does that any more than chaos theory.

SPRINGER: Energy can be channeled any which way, toward civility or corruption; entropy is your chaos theory, and those molecules just go their own way—don’t look to clash.

DOSTUNE: Okay, I get it. In honor of my remaining friends in Afghanistan, let’s hope for civil entropy.

TIOSOOK: The question remains, though: are we meeting in an official capacity? You called some of us, not all, and drew poor Helmand away from his…

DOSTUNE: Harem?

TIOSOOK: Don’t get me in trouble! I assume you have one lady friend that your courting…

DOSTUNE: One, and counting..

SMITH: Gentlemen! Can we get to business? The courted of us have kids at home being babysat by the TV.

FARMWORTH:  Indeed, I want this to be quick, candid, off-the-record, troubleshooting—

SPRINGER: How apropos. This will be a great opportunity to shoot our troubles away.

BOURBAN: I think we’re painting devils on a process that remains a training event, and that by the GVPD. It’s not really our business—not in our interest, I’d even suggest—to trouble-shoot anything. Monday comes, the actors assemble themselves as the police have pre-arranged, they do their thing, tape it for their internal use, share it for our internal use—maybe an ‘extraordinary meeting’  opens it up to comply with the Public Information Act—

SPRINGER: Maybe WikiLeaks beats us to it…

BOURBAN: Is that a threat? Mary-Alice, whose side are you on here?

SPRINGER: Is that a paraphrase of George W?

FARMWORTH:  Folks, listen. I think, civil or otherwise, these are exactly the questions that we are trying to troubleshoot. And… I’ve been scratching my head since last week… I don’t know exactly how this simulation is supposed to meet the public.

BOURBAN: I don’t think it needs to, exactly.

TIOSOOK: But Jim, the campus cordoned off, dozens of police cars and S.W.A.T personnel, I understand ambulances need to rush to and from—this isn’t something we can hide, Presidents’ Day or Fourth of July.

BOURBAN: We’re not hiding anything. We’re following the express mandate of the Golden Valley Police Department—that on the advice of Homeland Security—to have them put this event on and clean it all up. We don’t have to answer for anything.

DOSTUNE: But sir, all due respect to that point-of-view—and I assume this is the reason the board asked me to be here tonight—there will invariably be some counseling ramifications, kids painting chimeras, wondering if the hypothetical is more immanent…

SMITH: Yes, that is precisely the concern. And talking it through will definitely be your area of expertise, but in a way, we haven’t talked through anything for ourselves. I mean, this event never came to a vote—arguably, it’s not sanctioned, no matter who holds the guns.

BOURBAN: Again, I think you’re being too provocative—presumptuous, even.

FARMWORTH: Funny. I always hoped, from 5^th grade student council ‘til now, for discussions like this.

TIOSOOK:  On the record, or off?

FARMWORTH: Well, that’s just it—no yes or no. It’s like this library. Some meetings I wish the whole place were filled, listeners swinging legs through the balcony railings, speakers sticking enough to an agenda but enough off the cuff to keep it interesting. Maybe someone fetches a book to ‘check the record’ or some words of wisdom—something Lincoln might say about houses divided or angels of our better nature. Lights would be on, passers-by would wonder what’s going on and perhaps envy, nostalgically: the school’s in healthy shape—it wants to be peopled off-hours. The learning doesn’t end in the classrooms, with any kind of final exam. There’s your extemporaneous, Jon—we have to maneuver as we go, a bit like Star Trek maybe.

SMITH: I think the kids understand The Matrix better…

DOSTUNE: I don’t know what they understand. There’s a scene from Bowling for Columbine where—

BOURBAN:  Oh, please!

FARMWORTH:  No, go on:

DOSTUNE: Well, not to be suggestive here, but… Michael Moore interviews Marilyn Manson

BOURBAN:  (mock-screeching) “I’m not a sl—ave to a g—od that doesn’t exist!”

SPRINGER: Jim, quit it! Helmand, say more.

DOSTUNE: Yeah, that song is in the background, but then there’s a quiet moment, when Moore asks Manson, who was scheduled to do a concert in Denver that spring, what would he say to kids wondering about all that happened at their school. And his response was, ‘I wouldn’t say anything, I’d just listen.’

BOURBAN: Pro-found. Is this a role model of yours?

TIOSOOK: It’s a reality of ours.

FARMWORTH: I feel like adjourning on that note.

SPRINGER: If only. For once I want us to keep going—

FARMWORTH: Of course, I’m being facetious. We haven’t hashed out anything yet.

SMITH: But a purpose to listen. And not just to the sirens on simulation day.

BOURBAN:  Okay, so. Brass tacks: we post on the schoolnet an innocent message that the campus will not be accessible Monday for—keeping it simple—a police-coordinated training exercise. Nothing about its scale or target, nothing even indicating that Tuesday will be any different for the activity that passed. We put the same brief message around the cordon—a firm-but-gentle ‘stay out’—and that’s that. The police will need to watch the cordon—

TIOSOOK:  Shouldn’t our school security do that? They’re all supposed to be present, but what are their responsibilities?

BOURBAN: I’ll find that out. Good point.

SPRINGER: And another thing that we’ll probably need to anticipate is—

Outside the library, but clearly inside the building, a tumbling of what sounds like stacked furniture.

TIOSOOK:  What was that?

FARMWORTH: No one’s supposed to be here, right? Speaking of security?

DOSTUNE:  I’ll check it out. Could be just said security.

BOURBAN:  or a Gremlin.

SMITH: one of us!...

SPRINGER: I was just about to say, at least it’s not one of us…