GODZILLA IN MY BASEMENT

The oak stood 85 feet tall, older than anyone in town, had been growing alongside the house for time out of mind. It had to be removed. Would we want the wood? Sure.

So it was that my husband and I spent several days last fall cutting, rolling, stacking huge logs. We later returned with a log splitter. With a long trailer last month.

Marvelous things, log splitters. Roll the log under, stand it up, hold it fast, drop the lever, watch the maul chomp down, hear the wood crack, see it split, make sure a chunk breaks loose, bump the lever up, watch the maul lift, stop its rise. Turn the log, repeat. Split and split until the pieces will fit into the wood stove. Steady work. 

What amazes me is the number of solid-looking logs that house insects. We uncover sluggish colonies of black ants with a few winged queenly-looking members, smaller groups of big carpenter ants. A colony of winged ants. Black beetles. Brown ones. Wee white worms that bore wire-thin tunnels. White corkscrew worms—I imagine they twist and turn their way through the world. Then—and “hyre be monsters”—a den of gargantuan black beetles. 

However, most dramatic are also the first found: huge white grubs with orange-yellow faces and greasy grey butts. Godzilla-like cousins of the dainty cutworms I find in garden soil. These are coiled under the bark, encased in powdery mulch-like sawdust. I save the first one we find, determined to winter it in our basement, see what develops come spring. 

At first they are a novelty. By late in the day I’ve seen so many of these terrors they lose their power to amaze. When one falls out beside the splitter I don’t bother to move it. A few minutes later white gut grits spackle the ground. 

I came out to myself as a gay man 13 years ago this month. At the time I was snuggled in a sawdust of my own making, married to a woman, every day father to three young children, working for a conservative religious-based organization. Coming out, I lost marriage, children, job. My world was mauled open. I imagined my guts spattered the walls. Indeed, prolonged custody hearings put on public display certain greasy grubs hidden in my character.

I continue to learn that I am riddled with hidden recesses in which lurk unknown energies—some twisted, some beetle-black, some bearing queen energy, some in the process of becoming. Becoming what, that’s the question. With the poet Czeslaw Milosz, I wonder, 

Will it be a bright butterfly soaring over the earth,

Or a moth, dirty tribe of night?

Won’t be long now before the behemoth slumbering in our basement arises. Time, that natural ally of change and transformation, will play its part. So, too, the warming rays of the sun. Given the bottomless basement of the human heart, what might unfurl its wings this year in me? In you?

This essay first appeared in The Letter, March 2008

FINAL SEEN

“This was the world’s edge. So long as he was here, Noburu was in contact with the naked universe. No matter how far you ran, escape beyond this point was impossible.”

-- Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea

I stand under our back porch, look up to the rafters, and suddenly I am on the edge of the world. A dying grasshopper takes me there. A spider several sizes his junior cradles his head in her arms, appears to kiss his brow. I’m not fooled. She is sucking the life from her paralyzed prey. 

The grasshopper stares at the world around. Does he see? If so, what? And for how much longer? How did a creature of pasture and field meet his fate so high above the earth? How did he of such long legs, strong thighs and powerful kicks fall prey to so spindly a captor? 

The spider eyes me with what looks like suspicion, then pulls her prize upwards towards her web in the corner. I admire her strength, cunning, determination. I wonder what I would say should she invite me to dine with her.

Judging by his size and appearance, her meal is leeward of middle age. He was a graduate student, I imagine. Hopper U. Theatre major. Liked the limelight. Copped a thrill from being up on stage, having all eyes on him. Assumed that others saw himself the way he did. Never considered that some eyes fastened on his body for reasons other than his art or physique. That there were those who saw him as dinner waiting to happen. A protein-rich meal to be taken in, chewed up, shat out. 

Too late for him the lesson he teaches me: not justice, but fate is blind. The universe beneficent? Tell that to this aspiring actor, bound and hanging upside down, one leg pulled away from his body at what seems an obscenely painful angle.

Arachne’s daughter doesn’t care that her catch has a family, a home, a history. A favorite song. A little sister. A future that once stretched ahead of him further than he could jump. Comrades who even now expect him to join them any minute.

Here in miniature is spun the destiny of us all. The fates who spin, weave and snip the threads of history do so without regard for any one individual. “We want historians to confirm our belief that the present rests upon profound intentions and necessities,” says Foucault. “But the true historical sense confirms our existence among countless lost events without a landmark or a point of reference.”

Ask the immigrant. Ask the exile. Ask the reject of society. Ask the bereft mother howling in the war-torn heartland. Ask my friend Jim, diagnosed with cancer the day after he turned 40. 

I eye the grasshopper. Life is tragic. I watch the spider wrestle with her super-sized meal. Absurdly comical. I stare into unseeing eyes. A tragicomedy in all too few acts. 

How to live in such a world? How to embrace “what is” when it is happening to me? I hope the grasshopper had moments of bliss, from time to time soared on wings of joy. Tasted dew. Made love. Felt the sun warm on his back. 

To savor the moment. To feel into pain. To somehow choose hope over despair in defiance of all the facts. To say yes. 

Able to offer the dying actor nothing more than this, I keep my eyes on him during his final scene.

This essay appeared in The Letter, February 2008

IT ISN'T ONLY MEN I FIND PERPLEXING

Riddle: A box without hinges, key or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid. What am I?

Reply: You are a metaphor for life.  You sometimes arrive at my house spattered and dirty.

When our hens climb into the nests with muddy feet or feathers they soil the day's offerings. Hence I wash eggs before using them. I'm doing this now. I handle each egg carefully, examine it closely for the least little spot of dirt.

I like eggs, and not just the way they taste. Our hens lay in sepia tones that range from caramel to tan to beige to, well, eggshell. Some eggs arrive freckled, some splotchy, some bumpy, most smooth. And the shapes! Here's one with a ridge that spirals round its center; another about as rectangular as eggs come. I once read about an ad agency's struggle to find a dozen perfect eggs for use in a television commercial. They bought carton after carton of eggs. In the end they used styrofoam eggs.

If I could, I would keep every egg that catches my eye. That way I could hold and appreciate each egg anytime I wish. But there are limits to what a person can do. So I wash these eggs, set them in the dish drainer, then pick them up one by one. I turn each in my hands, admire its color, shape, individual style. Then I strike it against the edge of a stainless steel bowl. Crack.

How can I marvel at an egg one moment, break it open the next? Perhaps this is what it is to play God. To love life, cradle it in one's palm, then serve as agent of its destruction. Or transformation. 

I cannot save eggs--or anything, anyone--from their fate. All things hurry towards dissolution, change. They don't need my help. Things are what they are. And we are eggs, all of us--with something so magnificent, so golden as life encased in a fragile shell. 

I run my fingers along the beige egg with the spiral ridge, imagine a dancer twirling an orange scarf about her. "Beautiful," I say. "Amazing." Crack.  

"Come here, little speckled freckled Brownie. Thank you for giving yourself." Crack. 

"And you, Square Egg in a Round Body. You hold gold within. Thank you." Crack. 

Yesterday I was outside when I witnessed something new in the night sky. First I heard the croaking and purring, the calling one to another. Then a huge flock of cranes--a hundred or more--passed overhead in several vees. I've seen Canada geese before, yes. And ducks go by, yes. But these were cranes. They were magnificent. I wanted to hold onto the moment. All I could do was watch, notice, appreciate. Say thank you. Say good bye. 

How to stay open, aware, attuned to life? How to say to all that comes my way, "I notice you. Thank you." How to let go? It's a tough riddle to crack. 'Guess I'll keep practicing on eggs.

This essay appeared in The Letter, January 2008

LEMONS AND LIGHTS

This time of year you don't see the cracks in the mortar. They're still there. They jag their way from above the cast iron fireplace insert to under the pine board mantel. Whoever laid the bricks didn't count on the extra weight to make the floor sag, the mortar crack. It did. Actions have consequences. Not that you'll notice, however. Not this time of year.

Step into our living room and your eye is drawn to the holiday decorations atop the mantel. Two green wreaths on either side, an angel in the middle. Shiny red balls, little white lights, bright yellow lemons, pine garland, reindeer, glistening glass. Beautiful—and fraught with meaning. Have a look. 

Two evergreen wreaths adorn the wall, apt symbols of two men whose lives have circled 'round though joy and heartbreak to a sense of wholeness and love. My husband Dave and I marked our eleventh anniversary as a couple this year. Coming out and living as gay men in rural America is a sweet-sour enterprise; lemons nestle with frosted red berries and ribbons amongst the pine bough wreaths. 

Loss and gain, fullness and emptiness. The tension between these poles recurs as a theme in our lives, and is reflected in the antique cut glass bowl propped on edge at the center of the display. Behind it, small white lights cord a pine garland that runs the length of the mantel. Extra lights gathered behind the bowl illuminate it, cause it to shine. Were the bowl full the effect would be lost. Out of the emptiness shines the light. 

Peer long enough into the bowl and you may see faces of the dead peering back: my father, Dave's mother, his firstborn son, friends and relatives. And the living: our former wives, my teenaged sons, Dave’s two siblings and one of mine—brothers by blood who severed ties with their gay kin—and a host of people we once called friends. The refracted light serves notice that even in their absence these persons are present to us; bearers of light all. 

To the right of the bowl stand three hurricane globes graduated in size. A ruby-red heart-red glass ball appears to float in the center of each. Look closely and you'll see the ornaments are suspended from nylon fishing line. It is not always easy to see the threads that tie us one to another. These glass globes represent Dave's three adult children and their spouses. 

On the left, three red balls represent my estranged sons. Twin reindeer each carry a rose-red ornament in honor of my twin sons; a crystal vase cradles the third red globe. Making of loss, beauty. Perhaps an answer to poet Stanley Kunitz, "how shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?"

 

Against the wall between the wreaths lean seven long cinnamon sticks. Squint your eyes and you might be looking at the oaken slats on the side of a crib. A crib that has been the focus of Dave's attention for hours on end this year. That has come into being through his effort. That represents the first realization of his desire to build fine furniture. 

A crib that will cradle our first grandson, born halfway around the world this past July. He should arrive home to his parents next month. He was named Angel Gabriel at birth, re-christened Noah Andrew Gabriel long-distance from Ohio. We've been cooing over photographs of him. What a bundle of hope and promise swaths any infant! As a reminder of this, above the mantel, above the cut glass bowl, above the red balls, the lemons, the wreaths hovers a carved wooden angel with wings widespread.  

There. Did you notice the crack in the masonry? Probably not. But it's there nonetheless. We live in a world that feels flawed, in which there is pain, loss, cracking up. But at the same time there is hope, there is color, there is light. Isn't this the message implicit in Hanukkah, Christmas and Winter Solstice celebrations? In the time of great darkness comes the light.

In this new year may we all be sustained by such hope. And light.

And love.

This essay appeared in The Letter, December 2007

I ALWAYS DID HAVE A THING FOR SPIDERMAN

Out hiking, I turn a corner and come upon two harvestmen tumbling about on the woodland path, a tangle of legs and bodies, rolling, rollicking back and forth. What is going on here? Are they fighting? Making love? Kissing? Killing each other? I haven’t a clue. Should I interrupt, separate them? Rescue the smaller one? I choose to watch instead. Comes now a break in the action. They lay still awhile, leg-locked, mouths pressed together. Suddenly the larger one ups and makes a dash for freedom, only to be pursued, caught and wrassled about once more. Then another long lip-locked pause. Four times they repeat this dash and capture, resist-desist sequence. At last the larger one gets away, hides out in the undergrowth, eludes detection. For them, the contest is over. For me, the questions remain.

What did I just witness? What sense to make of it? Was a life lesson offered me?

I want to know more, anything. I open volume one of my 1965 Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary. Harvestmen, I learn, are not spiders but arachnids, members of a family that includes spiders, mites, scorpions and harvestmen—or daddy longlegs, as they are commonly called. Alas, aside from a note that they eat insects, nothing here about the lives and habits of these small creatures.

  

So I replay the scene in my mind. What do I notice? I make a list:

(1) There is much about life I do not know, do not understand, even when it plays itself out under my very nose.

(2) How difficult it is to do good! Should I have  intervened? On whose behalf? Should I act without knowing the full story? And when am I ever privy to that? 

(3) In the end, I stood back, watched without emotional investment or entanglement in the outcome. I let happen what would happen. Can I view my own life from similar perspective?

(4) The harvestmen were entirely wrapped up in themselves, intent upon their own actions—these two small beings whom I could have crushed with my thumb. Of what real import their struggles? Of what real import mine?

(5) Am I of any more cosmic significance than a daddy longlegs? Would I not appear as ludicrous to any gargantuan force that might peer down at my little wrestlings with others?
 

(6) Surely a spider knows nothing of the wider human world. Surely such creatures ought to be grateful they have instinct, knowledge and awareness enough to make their way in their own world, and leave it at that. What makes me think I can grasp anything beyond human ken? Am I not arrogant to believe a given religious dogma or scientific doctrine explains the mysteries of the universe?

(7) What does it mean to be alive? To be a human? A harvestman? Are we not all somehow spider-men? Perhaps I have more in common with the creepy-crawlies of the world than I imagine. Surely I can learn from them. 

(8) Will I?

This essay appeared in The Letter, November 2007

HOLLOW MEN

Looks like it would make a mighty fine walking stick. It’s about five feet tall, just the right size ‘round. As my husband and I walk  through our woods I spot it alongside the trail. I pick it up, am surprised to find it’s hollow, light as lemon meringue. Dotted with holes where woodpeckers once drilled for insects. Knock all you want, but nobody’s home. 

I once felt like that, empty as all git out, and I couldn’t understand why. I was doing everything right, everything church, society, family told me to do. I married, had kids, a house, a dog. Served as a church leader, worked for a religious-affiliated nonprofit, always used my turn signal. Yet found my self, my whole world, hollow inside. Was there nothing more than nothing at the heart of it all? Good people were supposed to be happy, I thought. Was I missing something? 

In a word, yes. And I didn’t have a clue how big it was. Or if I did, I repressed, ignored, denied any hint of it. I couldn’t be gay. It was unthinkable, impossible. I believed what I’d been taught by church, family, society: gay people were hell-bound sinners, misled, misbegotten, mistaken. These sex-crazed creatures were objects of pity, destined to be much less happy than, say, me. 

No way I could be one of them. No way, I say. No, not that. Anything but that, but them. Not me. 

Bless marriage, middle age, mortality for finally waking me up to life, to the realization that my lifelong attraction to men was more than passing fancy. To my unhappiness, to the fact I was sharing it with those about me. To the news that this wasn’t going away.

After I came out to myself and others as a gay man, my wife and I separated, divorced. Loss beset me on all sides: children, family, friends, church, employer, landlord, legal system. I learned the hard way I could not rely on any external source of help.            

When others turned me out, I turned within—pushed open the door of loss, grief, pain and stood amazed at what lay behind. A path led down into depths, into dark. Shaken, shaking, I took tentative steps into myself.

Along the way I lit several little candles: I recorded the events of my days, dreams of my nights, my reflections on each. I learned about and practiced active imagination. I meditated. I read books, various authors’ call to nurture one’s inner life. By these actions I cast light on the self I’d been afraid to face. 

I found more substance in that supposedly hollow space than I could shake a stick at. And I understood that when wrapped in my robes of self-righteous comfort, I’d been the one who was misinformed, misled, mistaken, an object of pity. Then came life, rapping at my door, insistent, probing, inviting, “Empty yourself. Come in, come down. Of all the space in the universe, this is your true home.”

This essay first appeared in The Letter, October, 2007

TO TELL THE TRUTH

Virginia (not her real name) would die with in 36 hours. She didn’t know it. I didn’t know it. Newest arrival to the nursing home, she’d been placed on the bed beside my grandmother’s. Virginia was distraught, wild-eyed. restless. “What do you think I should I do?” Her voice ran to the high side of throaty. Her tone was earnest, laden with emotion. Her question very human: “What should I do? Oh, what should I do?”

My own throat tightened. What should you do about what? Doesn’t look like you can do much of anything. And how should I know? I don’t have the answers. I felt relieved when her minister and granddaughter soon arrived. 

“Virginia?”

“Grandma?”

 “Oh good! Maybe you can help me. What should I do? I don’t know what I should do.” 

“Rest,” said the granddaughter. “You’ve had a big day. You were transferred from the hospital this morning, remember? You’re here now, but you’re tired out. You need to relax, and get some rest.”

“I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what should I do.” She caught her breath. “Am I dying?” 

Ah, that’s her real question. 

“You’re tired,” the minister said. “You’ve had a big day. You need rest. You need to let your body rest.”

“Is that it, then? I’m tired out? Oh, good. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I’ve been worrying myself sick.”

“Try to relax, Grandma. Just lay back and relax.”

By the next evening Virginia was dead. Didn’t her minister and granddaughter know she was dying? Or did they know but feel uncomfortable talking about it? Did they choose to protect her from the truth?

I don't know. But I do know I don't want the same thing to happen to me. If and when I am dying, don’t tell me I’m merely tired. I want the truth. 

This represents a sea change for me. I spent years not wanting to know, suppressing my attraction to men. I didn’t want to be gay, didn’t want to consider that I might be. I was afraid of this truth. Life changed for me when I turned and faced what was. Possibilities opened up. Awareness set in. No way I want to go back. 

When I am dying I want to know it, and to use the hours and energy left me to prepare for my final passage into Mystery. I'd rather do this than go to bed early and catch up on my rest. Those around me, if they're willing to be honest, able to overcome their own fears about the subject, may be able to offer me a heads up. As I have opportunity, I'd like to make use of my time. Yet that time, that opportunity is now, isn’t it? I need now to be surrounding myself with truth-tellers, using my time to honor, further and tell truth. I need now to be living into what is, learning to stay aware of those facets of truth I already know. 

This I know: I am dying. You are dying. We all of us received a sentence of mortality when we were born. Virginia was no braver than me. No smarter. No stronger. No different, really. Her death, when it came, came with a rush. She navigated this ultimate passage with eyes closed. Me, I want mightily to keep them open wide.

An earlier version of this essay appeared in The Letter, September 2007.