One shot poetry attempt - version ?8?

In this moment my fingers are semi-conscious.

They track across keys slow and deliberate.

Booze opens the spirit, the soul, the mind.

But it surely slows the body.

It opens truths not wanted by my fully conscious self.

Is my fully conscious self really me?

It's a question I am not prepared to answer, or advance.

It's a question I cannot learn.

I don't understand the things I know and don't.

It's a question learned in full.

I am not with others. I am not in full. I dance on the edge of production.

I move on the edge of complete.

I am betwixt and between, to steal a famous line,

But, I am not in a liminal space. I am here with you, and me and us.

But, I am not sure how to make them all come together.

I am betwixt and between my inner and outer selves.

I may never learn the bridge.

I may never know the touch.

Good day sweet daylight, misrememberer of  dark connections.

Good night sweet moon, lover of dark conceits.

This is gibberish now.

Maybe it always was.

Maybe that's all it was supposed to be.

I tried, and failed, and will try again anew.

Once

Once, I didn't know

Once, I tried to learn

Once, I understood.

Once, realized

once, i died and misunderstood

once i cried

and cried.

I don't know

I really know very little.

I know very isn't a good modifier.

But that means I really know little.

I guess really isn't good either.

I know little.

It isn't sexy.

It isn't inspiring.

But, fuck me it's true.

I know little.

And that's okay.

It's how we start and how we end and in the middle we fuck it all up.

Where do I go from here?

The world stopped looking forward,

and so did I.

I wanted to be welcomed, to be wondered about, to be recognized.

Instead,

I got questions.

Who the fuck are you? Why aren't you more interesting and compelling and engaging?

Who the fuck are you?

I am you.

I am you - the best of you - the worst of you. I am you, half cut with a smoke and wandering around hoping the pretty neighbour will notice. I am you, half asleep and sober with hope and love thinking the pretty neighbour will notice.

I am you.

You are both here and there and everywhere as well.

I am you.

I am you, but trying. I try to be the one. I try to be the only one. I try to be the only one who cares.

Maybe I care too much. Maybe I look forward too much. Maybe I wander too much.

Maybe not.

I am you. I am me. I am us.

We are in this together and I understand. We are not apart. We are a part of the whole, big beautiful thing.

The world stopped looking forward, but I could not.

I see you here, and there and everywhere as well.

Love never stops

Love is hard and never stops.

It's an endless game.

Love mean opeing to your past, present and future and trying to figure how someone else fits in all of those times and places.

Love is a negotiation and renegotiation.

Love is hard.

Love does NOT stop. 

Expertise, Blue Collar Work and How to Drive a Zamboni

I've driven a Zamboni for nearly two decades. It is a source of income and pride and amusement and frustration.

Many blue collar jobs are like this.

And, like many blue collar jobs driving a Zamboni is easy to learn and hard to be great at. I'm pretty good. I'm not great.

My lead hand Bill is great.

I'd like to be as good as him, but I don't know the difference. This is another thing about many blue collar jobs - the quality and expertise of performance is not a simple set of rules. I can follow Bill and do the same pattern, cut the same amount, take the same amount of time and lay down the same amount of water and somehow his clean is just a little better than mine.

It is fucking maddening and I don't know how to bridge the gap.

However, that is not all I'm here to write about. Like most jobs, I face occasional flurries of people talking about how I could do my job better. And, like most jobs, those flurries are made of bullshit and bad ideas instead of understanding and wisdom.

I'd like to dispel some myths and explain, in relatively simple terms, how a Zamboni (or any ice resurfacer) works.

First, in our scenario the ice is in good shape. It is flat and level. It doesn't need to be edged or chipped, and we don't need to fuck around with the board wash or worry about the corners being high or the middle being low. It's a perfect starting sheet of carved up ice.

To begin, you need to start your machine....no shit right. It's just like starting your car. In fact, in most arenas the keys are just left in the machine - if you ever want to steal one. Your machine could be a factory electric, or a converted electric, or a propane machine, or even one of the old, old gas powered resurfacers. All of them start basically the same. But, it needs to be full of hot ice making water, and luke warm wash water. (Each arena and operator tend to have their own preferences about water temps. But this is a good combination).

Once your surface is clear of skaters you (usually) back out onto the ice. Each operator has a different starting point, but I start about half way up the boards (near the red line) on the side nearest the exit, or 'pit' as the place we store our machines is often called. I turn my machine up (increase the RPMs) and start to drive forward. I drop the conditioner - lower it hydraulically using the second lever of the four that sit beside me. The conditioner is the business end of the machine. It turns that old frosty, rut filled, snow covered pond into a shiny and smoothly shimmering ice surface.

The conditioner is the magical part you stare at as the machine goes around and around. It houses the blade which cuts the ice, the horizontal auger which brings the snow to the vertical auger which send it into the bucket at the front of the machine. Inside the conditioner is also the place that wash water shoots down and is vacuumed up and the very end (on the outside) is where the ice making water cascades out and the rag helps evenly distribute that water and smooths the surface a little bit more.

After the conditioner is flat on the ice I turn on the vertical and horizontal augers. These are the first and third of the levers sitting directly to my right. These augers carry the snow to the bucket, which takes up most of the machine. If it isn't already set, I turn the wheel adjustment and set my blade to cut. The amount I cut depends on a myriad of factors. They all take time and practice and repeated screwing up to figure out. As I implied, this isn't a job with an easy to follow guide book. And training is usually limited to the most basic requirements. As soon as I set my blade I turn the wash water valve full open - it's the farther of the two water handles on the machine. I also turn the ice making water open, but not too far. My sensei, Glenn Collier, told me you should never have full water on the first pass around the ice. The conditioner doesn't (and shouldn't) touch the boards. The blade is tapered, which means the last few inches don't cut as much as the rest. This means between four and six inches from the boards can't be cut as hard. (That is the 'edging' I mentioned. Every day, or so, you need to take a special machine to cut down the outside edge of the rink). If you put water on full during your first pass you will send water out to the boards and build up ice you can't cut during the day. It makes the edges higher much faster and that means you can't cut properly the first two passes. This leads to the high corners and low middle we don't have in our near perfect starting scenario.

Now, I make sure my board brush is on so I can take the snow built up against the edges and spin it under the conditioner. And, within a quarter of a lap I turn on my wash water pump to suck up the wash water I am using to clean the ice a little.The wash water has a couple of purposes. As the name suggests it literally cleans the ice. It picks up dirt and debris and removes it with the vacuum which continually recirculates the wash water through the pump and a filter, which catches the debris. The wash water also softens the ice slightly, making it easier for the blade to cut the ice. Every Zamboni operator has had the experience of learning to use wash water and realizing they are suddenly cutting fifty percent more when it is on. In addition, the wash water, because it is under the main part of the conditioner, mixes with the accumulating snow to form a slush. This slush helps fill the ruts in the ice.

This is the important bit. The blade cuts the ruts out. Each time a skate carves the ice a rut is left. The size of the rut depends on the skaters ability, and size and ice conditions. But, let's ignore those for now. The blade can take a 1/4 inch rut and turn it into a 1/8 inch rut - for example. Then the snow that is accumulating from the blade cutting ice and the snow that is all over the used ice fills the ruts a little bit. Wash water turns the snow into slush, which holds up better to the ice making water at the back end of the conditioner. Essentially, snow mixed with hot water tends to melt into water. Slush, mixed with hot water tends to stay slush. And slush freezes much quicker than water.

I continue cutting the ice, laying down water for eight laps. My pattern of ice resurfacing is two laps around the outside and then I drive up the middle of the ice (slightly to the left side of the crease the first time). I drive up the middle and then down the side and then slightly farther to the left up the middle and down the side another Zamboni width out until my pattern is done. Like I said, it takes eight laps, although the final lap is not a full width of used ice. And, every Zamboni operator has their own pattern. And many of us get pretty bored and change them up to amuse ourselves.

This is the basic story of many blue collar jobs. The description is not overly complicated, but it isn't simple. The results looks simple when done well. But the journey from description to competence is long and twisted and involves many mistakes. It is a journey of embodied expertise and semi-conscious understanding. And every operator I know describes it a little different.

I don't know if it is a metaphor for life, or expertise or what.

Mostly, I wish I knew why Bill was so fucking good.

A Very Short Post to My Younger Self

All that fear will become laughter.

All that embarrassment will become character.

All our mistakes become stories.

All our regrets stay the same.

So try.

First, know yourself. Try really hard to figure us out.

Then, put aside our fragile ego, the laughter of others, your fear of embarrassment and say hello to those regrets.

The end......except for the part where this still applies today.

Thank You Keith

Being a teacher is strange.

I suppose much of life is. But being a teacher is strange in specific ways.

Right now I'm thinking about the profound and lasting effect a teacher can have, even if we too rarely let them know.

I owe Keith Harrison a debt.

Keith is gone. I can't say thank you to his face, and I never could.

I shouldn't be surprised. I met Keith at a time when I was young and insecure and beaten down by high school and the anxieties of adolescence. I was just starting my university and adult life. I was taking calculus and drawing and anthropology and Keith's English course.

I was trying to figure out who I was without any idea what the trajectory of my life might be. My childish dreams of professional hockey player and/or space-ninja were gone. Like a poorly trained space-ninja I was adrift.

I met Keith at a point when his kindness and his time were a balm for my ego and for all my childhood baggage. He stood before me in class with presence and calmness and competency.  He was all the things I wanted to be and wasn't. I was caught up in constant catharsis. I listened to too much Tool and Korn and Ministry and I was angry all the time for no particular reason. In contrast, Keith stood before me when I visited him outside of class with an undeniable presence and interest and expertise in life and learning and communication.

I was not good at any of those.

Plus, Keith was a writer. And I didn't know much, but I knew I liked to pour myself into words. I didn't have the craft. I still can't compare myself to Keith as a writer. I doubt I ever will. But, writing seemed like a place to articulate things I was too shit scared to say to anyone else. And he was one of the first people I showed my clumsy attempts at poetry to. He didn't laugh. He didn't praise total garbage. He read my words carefully and picked out the strengths and gave me ideas to help with the weaknesses.

Keith showed me possibilities.

Thankfully, I never became a poet. I still dabble in awful, drunken poetic bursts. But I don't have the discipline or desire to really pursue it. Yet, poetry gave me insight into my inner life that I never had before. Keith helped me realize this.

He became one of my first guides. He was a sensei. He was one who had gone before.

Looking back I have no doubt Keith struggled with making his lived experience and intellectual ability commensurate. Keith had an extraordinary intellect. It was his most predominant feature. That, and the eyebrows.

I think a lot of university instructors struggle with this disconnect between their scholarly abilities and their practical life skills. The best of us find connection and closure and see every student as part of our journey of acceptance. The worst of us find disconnection and discontent and see too many students as a challenging reminder of past pains.

Keith was the best of us.

He was central to my journey of acceptance. He let me discover who I was, and who I might become.

And I never told him.

I was young and scared and rarely present. I lived in a world of fantastical possibilities and near delusion. In the face to face conversations of importance I usually said, "Oh, okay".

I've heard those same words, or similar, a hundred times in my office or in a quick conversation after class. I always try to remind myself that the student isn't necessarily dismissing me, or ignoring what I say. I am reminded that my words carry weight across time, not just in the space we are in.

Thank you Keith.

Thank you for being present and brilliant and kind and competent and caring and everything I aspire to be.

Thank you.

You encouraged me when I was vulnerable and pushed me when I was coasting and always showed me what I could be.

I wish I could have said this to your face, but that space has been created on this page in no small part because of you.

Thank you Keith, for now, for then and forever.

Comma Chameleon

Once, under the sun

I laughed.

Once under the sun

I didn't laugh.

It was fucking hot.

Commas are important.

I'm not always sure how to use them, though.

My Friends

It's a little awkward being friends with a woman.

To be clear, I'm not great at being friends with a man.

Sexual possibilities are the background of so much of our social existence. They may not be probabilities, likelihoods or eventualities but they are, at least, possibilities. Our species' continuous drive for sex is the weird interloper in every adult relationship.

I hate to give Freud any credit but sex is a big deal - at least initially.

Luckily I'm not aggressive nor is my memory erased by beer and loneliness. Still, it is a reality I've negotiated at times. At times I put aside the here and now for the what-might-be.

Fantasy is almost always better in our minds.

In reality it is awkward and misunderstood.

I'm not saying they are a test. I'm not placing the burden upon them.

Being friends with a woman is awkward.

Being friends with a woman is grand.

Random Poetry - Valentine's Day edition

In my youth I knew beauty.

In my youth I knew love.

In my youth I knew strangers and victims and the power of undecided lust.

At my beginning I wanted skin.

At my start I needed sin.

At the emergence of it all I wanted closure.

All of this is silly. All of this is kin. All of this is trying. All of this is whinging.

In my fullness I know so much that is beautiful.

In the stretch I know more than lustful thoughts.

In the shadows I know secrets truths and undiscovered loves.

At the end I wanted closeness.

At the end I wanted touch.

At the end I wanted restfulness and the beauty of your rust.

Random poetry - Thursday night edition

The eyes always know,
except when don't.

Life is like that.

It is a paradox,
except when it isn't.

The truth. The real you emerges:

in pain;
in sadness;
in happiness;
in triumph.

The truth is hard to capture.

The truth is hard to see.

The eyes sometimes know,
except when they do.

When

I was asked by a friend when I would stop letting my children come to me for comfort.

I thought long and answered honestly:

When?

When they stop asking.

When?

When the need goes away.

When?

When the strength falls from my arms to hug and cuddle and grasp.

When?

When my breath fails.

When?

Until the very end.

When?

Until the present becomes the past and past becomes the future and all time is wrapped in the eternal present of a parent's death.

When?

Until I hold them enough, until I cuddle them enough, until I snuggle them enough until I am with them forever.

When?

Until the end, and beyond.

When?

Always