Lucky and Pro - a story

 

In high school John Lucky and Tony Premo effortlessly established their reputations as assholes. When they weren’t drunk or stoned, they drove like idiots, shop-lifted at Walmart and menaced their girlfriends. Lucky was pretty sure the only reason they graduated was that their teachers couldn’t stand to have them around anymore.

His daughter, sixteen-year-old Serena Lucky, had no idea just how big an asshole he had been. And he intended to keep it that way. Because even though she wasn’t any more of a star pupil than he had been, she was a good girl--gentle and sweet, the kind of girl he and Pro would have tormented in high school.

On top of that, Lucky figured that, in spite of the ways he had fucked up and the ways his family had fucked him up, he’d done okay. He’d gone to community college and become an X-ray technician. He’d married MaryRose, who got pregnant and didn’t tell him until it was too late. They stayed together till Serena was seven. Eventually, he even became a pretty good father.

The first few years after the divorce he saw Serena only when he wanted to and on his terms. He’d take her to movies so they wouldn’t have to talk. Or they’d watch TV. For a while he dated somebody with a daughter the same age. The two girls would play together, leaving Lucky and his girlfriend free of parenting responsibilities for a few hours.

But when Serena was ten, MaryRose re-married. She told Lucky ‘joint custody’ had to start meaning something now. He really was supposed to take Serena half-time.

He explained to MaryRose that he’d never wanted to be a father, wasn’t a good father, that he’d fight her in court.

MaryRose didn’t care. She told him he’d have to step up to the plate.

            He would have to give up the high life, she said. Good-bye parties. Good-bye, girls. What she didn’t know was that the parties were few and the girls--well, mostly the girls were on stage at a strip club so there was little hope of one of them ever waking him with a morning blow job or bringing him a plate of scrambled eggs in bed.

            Sure, he could probably have bought a blowjob. But he didn’t have the money or the heart for it. As for breakfast, you got good value at Friendly’s.

Once Serena was living with him more-or-less half-time, he realized that you got good value at Friendly’s for dinner, too. Kid’s meals. They were cheap and came with an ice cream sundae at the end. He’d never need to learn to cook.

This was at the beginning of real ‘joint custody,’ when he was looking for simple solutions.

Over time he discovered that fatherhood was not an exact science. Given his high school science grades, this might have been good news. Unfortunately, fatherhood was more like English class where the only thing you could count on was being both bored and confused at the same time. 

A villanelle for my mother, since a letter won't do

My beta-blocker sends me dreams of my mother,
Dead thirteen years—well, there’s humor in numbers!

And of course I would dream of her before others,

by Margaret MacDonald MacKintosh

Which is what she would have as her absolute druthers—

Top-billed in the cast-list of her last daughter’s slumbers.

My beta-blocker sends me dreams of my mother.

She’s reasonable, affable, no kind of bother,

She breathes without oxygen, just with port in a tumbler

And of course I would dream of her before others.

Why not? Now she’s easy, past baffling-wonder.

I no longer need fear that red-headed rumbler.

I welcome the dreams of my red-headed mother.

We spar or we quarrel and we mostly just putter,

As daft as ever, neither kinder nor humbler.

And of course I would dream of her before others.

Because I have lived my whole life as her daughter, 

Her blessings and burdens entwine to encumber

The beta-block dreams I have of my mother.

--And of course I would dream of her before others.  

Faith Comes From What is Heard

Okay, so there are two poems I can no longer bear to read aloud. One I used to read at the end of yoga classes sometimes. It's by Rainer Maria Rilke, that overly-sensitive 19th-century German poet I'm somehow kin to, I guess. And the other I used to read around All Saints' Day at the evening alternative service when I was a parish pastor. That one is by Robinson Jeffers, an under-valued, mid-twentieth-century treasure of a poet.

Now my voice breaks when I try to read them. So read them aloud for me. It's worthwhile work.

Here's the Rilke. It's probably not even a good translation. I wouldn't know the difference. Still, it makes me cry. Do join in:

God speaks to each of us as God makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall;

go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like a flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

                                      

You want to read the other one, too? (You do, you do.) It's more of a love poem. Here it is, thanks to Robinson Jeffers:

Blue Gentians

       Cremation 


       It nearly cancels my fear of death, my dearest said,
       when I think of cremation. To rot in the earth
       is a loathsome end, but to roar up in flame--
       besides, I am used to it,
       I have flamed with love or fury so often in my life.
       No wonder my body is tired, no wonder it is dying.
       We had great joy of my body. Scatter the ashes.



So what is making me so weepy?

Well, tomorrow night I'm going to hear a performance of the Tchaikovsky 5th Symphony. Anybody who has seen the Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy screwball comedy, "Adam's Rib," might remember that the love interest/composer pens a little love-ditty to Hepburn called "Farewell, Amanda," outright stealing Tchaikovsky's main motif from his 5th. And yet, watch the film, you'll laugh; hear the symphony, you'll cry. Who says two things can't be true? Only damn fools. Ignore them.

(And don't forget to read the poems aloud. That's all for now!) 

That is, unless you want to listen up:

 

From the Novel...in which Milly's mother thinks she is dating Beethoven

In the Gloaming

  

Milly always dreaded the Arts in the Schools programs when regional visual artists or dancers or musicians would come in and either perform in the small, stuffy auditorium—the students bored to tears, furtively texting. Or the artists might visit a few classrooms, encouraging questions, which were usually inane, though mercifully few. Milly would feel sorry for the earnest visitors, trying to spark interest in disaffected students dumb as bricks. And then she would feel sorry for her own students, many of whom were not dumb as bricks. It’s just that most of the class was not college-bound and the smart kids were easily intimidated by them. In this rural, working class school district, it was athletics, not art, that scored points with the student body.

            The only time Milly could remember an Arts in the School program that went well was when Chinese-American poet Da Chen did a presentation on writing and drawing ideographs. He was funny and bold, assuring them that for Chinese poets it was all about the drinking—about getting drunk and writing a better poem than your buddy had just written. He cursed in front of them. He played Chinese flute. The kids were rapt. And when he asked for questions at the end, one student—a student best known for picking fights and ditching classes—raised his hand immediately.

            “Can I have that?” he asked, referring to the completed ideograph Da Chen had painted on newsprint. Wordlessly and dramatically, Da Chen peeled off the sheet of paper, rolled it up and handed it to the kid.

            “Now you write a poem and send it back to me,” he said, “Your teacher’s got my email address.”

            “I don’t write poems. I write rap,” the kid said.

            “What? You don’t think rap’s poetry?” Da Chen asked, “Send me some.”

            And the kid nodded. Milly wondered if he had ever followed through.

            Today’s artist was the conductor of region’s professional orchestra. Turns out the Hudson Valley Orchestra was a well-regarded group and also well-funded, so they were able to hire a fairly high-profile conductor. But despite his strengths at the podium Anders Lanski was no match for high school students. He was known to do brilliant children’s concerts, getting the little kids to tap out rhythms or dance or sing along. But the high schoolers weren’t about to tap or whistle or anything remotely interactive. And though he played bits of very famous music—“Greensleeves,” the opening bars of “The Nutcracker” and Beethoven’s 5^th,  the majority of the students didn’t seem to recognize any of it. Then he played a UTube clip of one of the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s concerts, trying to get the students to join with the audience in the clapping parts of “The Radetzy March.” But the goofy-looking old white guy conducting a theater full of well-dressed Europeans just made them laugh. He hit Pause.

            He explained that this was a traditional New Year’s concert performed annually in Vienna since before WWII. “The Radetzy March” was always played as an encore and people loved it. It was tradition. The students’ blank faces didn’t seem to register any importance in that.

            “It’s like reading “Twas the Night Before Christmas” on the night before Christmas,” he said and Milly had a sense of dread over what was coming next.

            Casey Wiley, home-schooled through eighth grade, raised her hand, “In our house we read from the Gospel of Luke on Christmas Eve.”

            And yes, she said it with an attitude.

            “Look, the point is,” Anders Lanski said, clearly exasperated, “Musicians and conductors don’t always like what they have to play or conduct. I don’t like “The Radetzy March,” he went on, “And yeah, maybe those people clapping look old and stupid to you. But sometimes you have to play things people want to hear so they’ll continue to support the orchestra.”

            Milly smiled to herself. She admired his honesty. Music is art. But if you want to play, it also has to be a business.

            Anders must have struck a nerve with the students because they were mildly more polite after that. And when it came time for Q & A, they actually had questions. Not terribly intelligent ones. But questions, nonetheless. One girl—a student in Milly’s sixth period English class--even asked what his early musical influences were.

            “Like most of you, I listened to what was on the radio. I was in a band--.”

            “What’d you play?” a boy called out.

            “Oh, I played keyboards. My mom had made me take piano lessons from the time I was really young. She made me practice. I figured getting into a band in high school was a good way to get even. We rehearsed in our basement. She really hated it.”

            The same boy called out, “I mean songs. What songs did you play?”

            Anders laughed, “What do you think? Loud ones. You’re probably too young to know them,” he said, and burst into a pretty good Jim Morrison: “Come on, come on, come on, come on, touch me baby…Can’t you see that I am not afraid?”

            The teachers all laughed, the students just seemed shocked. This guy was supposed to be a boring snob.

            Then he channeled Joe Cocker, “Ain’t it high time we went, ain’t it high time we went?” flailing his arms and shaking his head. And he finished up his medley with a spot-on Robert Plant, “And she’s buy-uy-ing a stair-air-way to heh-von.”

            The teachers began clapping and, confused, the students joined in.

            Another girl raised her hand, “So why did you stop playing rock?”

The Body at Rest. And in Motion.

"And if my life is like the dust--oooh,
that hides the glow of the rose,
what good am I?
Heaven only knows."



Thank you, always, Wendy Whelan! (And thanks also to Christopher Wheeldon and Dinah Washington--and also for its most poignant placement in "Shutter Island).

With Linnea in the South of France

The wind blew hot today; it blew my skirt—

it whipped my skirt, but not as at Les Baux.

Back then the denim flapped a furious code

into the Val d’Enfer, those craggy

Les Baux-de-Provences

hills, a giant’s rotted teeth.

Linnea stood atop the highest battlement

nearly windborne,

all of fifteen.

The wind blew hot in

Bezier and we slept naked

on the floor, ignorant of scorpions,

me filled with local wine.

We’d spent the day at the menhir

near Minerve, along Canal du Midi.

Arles and Olargues, Sommeil

and Nimes, Aigue Morte—all towns

of consonants and dissonance, all

chalk-white in the southern sun,

so hot the wind,

no fans to be found.

And in St. Remy, where Van Gogh

slept in his madness at the Saint Paul hosptial

and among the Roman

ruins, the wind blew hot.

Mountainous Landscape Behind the Saint-Paul Hospital

As today, before the storm, bringing intimations

of lost time--

Linnea, framed against the dark blue sky.

I think of Eliot, childless, writing “Marina,”

writing what he could not know:

This form, this face, this life.

What images return,

O my daughter.

For the full text of "Marina,"

Breathing and Singing

The last thing I want to do after hearing a few hours of speeches from the DNC--or the RNC--is to be told what to think by the commentators just waiting to keep me from using the bathroom once the speeches end.

This all stems from my experience in yoga classes, both as a teacher and a student (oh, I'm always being a student). What happens is, you finish the active poses, the asanas. They're intense. They're supposed to be. They work on your brain and on your body and also, if you're inclined to believe in one, on your soul. Then you get into savasana which translates as 'corpse pose.' You lie there for a good ten minutes as some kind of non-melodic music un-scripts the non-stop narrative your brain creates.

Et voila! You get up after that mini-hiatus a good deal more awake than you were when you first lay your body down, your mind generally clearer and also more aware that you have a whole being beneath your neck. Yoga is like sex in a lot of ways. But that is a post for another day.

My impatience with the immediate-pundit-response to the DNC and RNC also has to do with my experience with worship services, both as a pastor and as a participant. If you're fortunate enough to hear a good sermon, the last thing you need is to be herded into those dreadful scripted prayers that denominational publishing houses print out so that pastors don't need to write their own.

What you need to do after a decent sermon (what you should do after a bad one is leave the sanctuary) is sing. Yes, sing. One of those florid, minor-key dramatic hymns that are hard-to-follow, but leave your brain on a relaxed, other-worldly plane. The 18th and 19th-century German hymn writers excelled at this. On the other hand, so did all those chanting medieval monks. Sometimes the brain just needs a break so that we can really figure something out.