I AM WRITING THIS as your birthday approaches, in order to give you some idea of who your Grandfather is and what I have and have not learned along the way in my rather elongated life; and ask only that your Mother, my Daughter, will keep it in a safe place for you and give it to you to read when she believes the time is right...
For many years now, I have worked at the writing trade, which has allowed me to travel into my own mind and provided me with a ringside seat into who I actually am, permitted me to delve into the brightest and darkest sides of my own personality; and I cannot imagine what my life would be without it. Although I have not produced an uninterrupted series of amazement's, have written words that made me wince, the first thing I learned about this trade was that I needed to refine each and every word in rhythm and tone.
There was a jazz drummer by the name of Gene Krupa in the Benny Goodman band when I was about the age that you now are. And he was asked a simple question: How did he keep time? His answer was that he kept chanting to himself one simple phrase: "lyonnaise potatoes and some pork chops." He would drag the word "lyonnaise"and emphasize the "some" to insure that the beat wouldn't become too mechanical. So in those first years, I often sat at a IBM typewriter, writing about this or that, all the while humming under my breath, "lyyyyy-oh- naise-p'taytas an' some pork chops, Yeah - lyyyyy-oh-naise-p'tatas an' some pork chops," keeping time with my left foot, as if using a pedal on a bass drum. I wanted that rhythm in my sentences, I wanted to add some gaudy word to serve for a splash on the cymbals.
Even now, I chant Krupa's mantra. From that, I learned that what I had written was a a public diary of my personal history; my ignorance then forced me to learn, to engage in crash courses of books and newspaper articles and the blues. Gradually, I began to make connections among a variety of other subjects; stories of Martin Luther King and Stokely Charmichael which would lead me into the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s, where I witnessed innocent people being hung on a tree, due to the color of their skin; to also be informed by a knowledge of Faulkner and the the majesty of jazz, and into the history of Sparta and the drawings of George Grosz.
I learned the importance of understanding my own rhythm and tone, as well as listening to the rhythm and tone of others who I met along the way. I wanted to hear their music. I remember who I was when I wrote them, the homes I lived in, the people I loved, my large stupidities and small triumphs. Which is not a bad way to live a life, Grandson, because it led me into other places, as well. One such place was in Mexico...
It was dusk in Puerto Vallarta, and I was in a restaurant called El Panorama, dining with my girlfriend, Barbara, and a Mexican woman we'd met that afternoon. The restaurant was on the top floor of the Hotel La Siesta, rising seven precarious stories above the ground on a hill overlooking the town, while mariachis played the aching old songs of love and betrayal, we could see the panorama of cobble stoned streets glistening after a frail afternoon rain. We saw the terra-cotta patterns of a thousand tiled rooftops, along with church steeples and flagpoles, palm trees and small green yards, and little girls eating ice-cream cones. The aroma of the Mexican evening rose around us: charcoal fires frying beans, fish baking in stone stoves. Over to the left in the distance was the dense green thicket where the Rio Cuale rumbled from the fierce mountains of the interior. And beyond all of this, stretching away to the hard blue line of the horizon, there was the sea, the vast and placid Pacific.
"This is so beautiful," the Mexican woman said, gesturing toward the sea. The woman's face trembled as she talked about her husband and her son. They had died within six months of each other, the husband of a heart attack, the son in a senseless shooting at a party in Mexico City. "When those things happened," the Mexican woman said, "I couldn't live anymore. I didn't want to. I sat a home in the dark." She sipped her drink. "My daughter was the one who told me to come to Vallarta. She said I had to learn to heal myself. I had to go away and get well. And she was right. Beauty heals. Don't ever forget that. Beauty heals. I hurt still. But I am healed."
On the following morning, I strolled along the beaches, pausing on the one called Los Muertos (The Dead), named for a group of silver miners who were murdered by pirates long ago. The sea was clear and translucent, and I saw a lean tan horse tethered to a lone palme tree on a spit of shore, waiting for riders. Mexican men contentedly sold blankets and hats. "I have the best job in the world," said a brown-skinned man named Hector Valasquez, who was 54. "I come on my horse in the morning from there, up by Nayarit. I give people rides. They pay me. Then I go home." He smiled broadly. "All the day while I am working I am in a beautiful place." I had met two people, who in a few words, taught me the elements of melodrama and beauty and redemption.
My life has led me through playing professional baseball when I was not much older than you now are, into a small career as a Lutheran Minister, and eventually to attempting to put words on paper. All of which would never had happened if I had not listened to my own rhythm and tone, and gambled on the roll of the dice to take me to those places I needed to be, and taught me not to worry about my own relative misdemeanors. All of which allowed me to know the difference between compassion and indifference, to be aware of the difference between generosity and meanness, the obvious arc between liberalism and conservatism and back, as the pendulum of life cut its inexorable arc in the air...
For good or ill, we remain human. That is to say, imperfect. The question we must always ask ourselves is this: How can I live a life with a modicum of grace? The answer is quite simple: Learn to know your own rhythm and tone as early as you possibly can and go with the roll of the dice...
I love you, Grandson.
For many years now, I have worked at the writing trade, which has allowed me to travel into my own mind and provided me with a ringside seat into who I actually am, permitted me to delve into the brightest and darkest sides of my own personality; and I cannot imagine what my life would be without it. Although I have not produced an uninterrupted series of amazement's, have written words that made me wince, the first thing I learned about this trade was that I needed to refine each and every word in rhythm and tone.
There was a jazz drummer by the name of Gene Krupa in the Benny Goodman band when I was about the age that you now are. And he was asked a simple question: How did he keep time? His answer was that he kept chanting to himself one simple phrase: "lyonnaise potatoes and some pork chops." He would drag the word "lyonnaise"and emphasize the "some" to insure that the beat wouldn't become too mechanical. So in those first years, I often sat at a IBM typewriter, writing about this or that, all the while humming under my breath, "lyyyyy-oh- naise-p'taytas an' some pork chops, Yeah - lyyyyy-oh-naise-p'tatas an' some pork chops," keeping time with my left foot, as if using a pedal on a bass drum. I wanted that rhythm in my sentences, I wanted to add some gaudy word to serve for a splash on the cymbals.
Even now, I chant Krupa's mantra. From that, I learned that what I had written was a a public diary of my personal history; my ignorance then forced me to learn, to engage in crash courses of books and newspaper articles and the blues. Gradually, I began to make connections among a variety of other subjects; stories of Martin Luther King and Stokely Charmichael which would lead me into the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s, where I witnessed innocent people being hung on a tree, due to the color of their skin; to also be informed by a knowledge of Faulkner and the the majesty of jazz, and into the history of Sparta and the drawings of George Grosz.
I learned the importance of understanding my own rhythm and tone, as well as listening to the rhythm and tone of others who I met along the way. I wanted to hear their music. I remember who I was when I wrote them, the homes I lived in, the people I loved, my large stupidities and small triumphs. Which is not a bad way to live a life, Grandson, because it led me into other places, as well. One such place was in Mexico...
It was dusk in Puerto Vallarta, and I was in a restaurant called El Panorama, dining with my girlfriend, Barbara, and a Mexican woman we'd met that afternoon. The restaurant was on the top floor of the Hotel La Siesta, rising seven precarious stories above the ground on a hill overlooking the town, while mariachis played the aching old songs of love and betrayal, we could see the panorama of cobble stoned streets glistening after a frail afternoon rain. We saw the terra-cotta patterns of a thousand tiled rooftops, along with church steeples and flagpoles, palm trees and small green yards, and little girls eating ice-cream cones. The aroma of the Mexican evening rose around us: charcoal fires frying beans, fish baking in stone stoves. Over to the left in the distance was the dense green thicket where the Rio Cuale rumbled from the fierce mountains of the interior. And beyond all of this, stretching away to the hard blue line of the horizon, there was the sea, the vast and placid Pacific.
"This is so beautiful," the Mexican woman said, gesturing toward the sea. The woman's face trembled as she talked about her husband and her son. They had died within six months of each other, the husband of a heart attack, the son in a senseless shooting at a party in Mexico City. "When those things happened," the Mexican woman said, "I couldn't live anymore. I didn't want to. I sat a home in the dark." She sipped her drink. "My daughter was the one who told me to come to Vallarta. She said I had to learn to heal myself. I had to go away and get well. And she was right. Beauty heals. Don't ever forget that. Beauty heals. I hurt still. But I am healed."
On the following morning, I strolled along the beaches, pausing on the one called Los Muertos (The Dead), named for a group of silver miners who were murdered by pirates long ago. The sea was clear and translucent, and I saw a lean tan horse tethered to a lone palme tree on a spit of shore, waiting for riders. Mexican men contentedly sold blankets and hats. "I have the best job in the world," said a brown-skinned man named Hector Valasquez, who was 54. "I come on my horse in the morning from there, up by Nayarit. I give people rides. They pay me. Then I go home." He smiled broadly. "All the day while I am working I am in a beautiful place." I had met two people, who in a few words, taught me the elements of melodrama and beauty and redemption.
My life has led me through playing professional baseball when I was not much older than you now are, into a small career as a Lutheran Minister, and eventually to attempting to put words on paper. All of which would never had happened if I had not listened to my own rhythm and tone, and gambled on the roll of the dice to take me to those places I needed to be, and taught me not to worry about my own relative misdemeanors. All of which allowed me to know the difference between compassion and indifference, to be aware of the difference between generosity and meanness, the obvious arc between liberalism and conservatism and back, as the pendulum of life cut its inexorable arc in the air...
For good or ill, we remain human. That is to say, imperfect. The question we must always ask ourselves is this: How can I live a life with a modicum of grace? The answer is quite simple: Learn to know your own rhythm and tone as early as you possibly can and go with the roll of the dice...
I love you, Grandson.
No comments:
Post a Comment