The end…eventually?

I don’t usually snap photos while driving between Massachusetts and New Hampshire…but who can resist a truck that makes perfectly clear THE END is near? (For the record, I wasn’t tailgating: this is a zoomed and cropped shot.)

I would have thought The End of Winter was near now that a small cluster of snowdrops are blooming in their accustomed spot here in Keene…and yet, the forecast calls for some six inches of snow to drop on southwestern New Hampshire by tomorrow afternoon. Luckily I’m heading back down to Massachusetts, where nothing worse than a little wintry mix–not exactly The End of the World–is forecast for tonight. The End of Winter will arrive even in Keene…eventually.

 

Single shot

When I first moved to the Boston area in the early 1990s, my understanding of the city and its outlying areas was completely T-dependent. I knew the individual subway and trolley stops I used on my way from Malden to Chestnut Hill, for instance, but I didn’t know how these places connected above ground. When I started graduate classes at Northeastern, for instance, I’d take the Green Line from my Beacon Hill apartment to the aptly named “Northeastern” stop that let me off in front of campus…but it took my slow-witted self about a semester or so to realize the Orange Line “Ruggles” stop let me off on the side of campus where my office was located. It came as a silly surprise to realize a stop on the Orange Line could be so close to a stop on the Green: just one side of campus to the other! It was a realization I had to come to on-foot, leaving the safety of train or trolley to explore the neighborhood (and possibly get lost) on my own.

If you’ve been visiting Hoarded Ordinaries for a while, you’ve gotten some individual blog-stop views of the greater Boston area…but unless you’ve been to Boston, you might not understand how these individual blog-stations connect. So when I described Cambridge’s vintage Shell sign and freeway revolt mural as both being located at the intersection of Memorial Drive and Magazine Street, you might not have realized that these two landmarks really are so close to one another, you can shoot them both in a single shot.

 

Watch out for children…and graffiti

When I imagine ways of defacing a “Children” sign, I picture possibilities more playful than political. This sign near Newton’s Richardson Field (shown in all its spring-muddy, pre-Little-League glory at the top of this post) still shows the freeze-dried residue of a Halloween encounter with some anonymous child(ren) armed with Silly String. No matter what the season, kids will be kids.

I’m not quite as clear about the meaning of this stencil-adorned “Children” sign, also spotted in Newton.

Perhaps in Newton, you need to be on the lookout for children who play guitar and have SARS? Or is it children (not drivers) who’d better be wary of guitarists with respiratory diseases?

I’m not sure, but this much I know: I’m back in Keene now that my spring break in Newton is over, and tomorrow I’ll be headed back to teach at Keene State. Do you think any of my students will be armed with SARS, guitars, or Silly String?

 

Isn’t it ironic?

Something tells me that the person responsible for this child-unfriendly sign is her- or himself a child, at least if we include mischievous teenagers in the category of “children.” Apparently nobody’s taught the Unknown Scrawler that a corollary to “keep your laws off my body” is “keep your markers off our signs.”

 

Watch your step

Soon on the heels of arriving back in New England after visiting my family in Ohio, I’m leaving again, this time for a weekend wedding in Los Angeles. Although I’ll be taking my laptop to keep in touch with my online classes, I’ll once again be out of the loop when it comes to blogging. I’ll see you when I return from the Left Coast; in the meantime, watch your step and beware of falling ice.

 

While you can

The vintage Shell gasoline sign at the corner of Magazine Street and Memorial Drive in Cambridge is (like the freeway revolt mural near the same corner) something I’ve passed countless times, both when I lived at the Cambridge Zen Center a decade ago and now whenever I return to Newton after practicing in Cambridge. When I lived at CZC a decade ago, I didn’t have a hungry blog to feed, nor did I carry a camera with me. But now that I’ve been staying in Newton every weekend, driving to and from the Zen Center a couple times a month, and perpetually looking for quirky, blog-worthy sights, I’ve been meaning to stop and take a picture of this sign.

When people think of landmark Boston signs, they immediately think of the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square, which is visible over the outfield at Fenway Park (and thus known and loved by Red Sox fans around the world). But the Cambridge Shell sign is something only a Cantabrigian would know and love. And only the People’s Republic of Cambridge (as citizens of my once fair city are wont to call her) would officially declare an old gas station sign a historic landmark even though during one point in its poorly maintained past, the sign read HELL after the neon bulbs in its initial letter burnt out.

Knowing this sign is not simply interesting to look at but actually historic–and knowing my personal history of having passed it so often–I’ve been meaning for a long time to stop and photograph it. And yet, every time I pass it, I have some reason or another not to stop. Usually I’m in a hurry to get back to Newton, or I have other errands to run, or the weather is bad for shutter-snapping. On Sunday, however, the weather was picture-perfect: bitterly cold, yes, but with a crisp, blue sky that makes a perfect backdrop for a yellow and red sign. As I started to pass the Shell station on Magazine Street on my way to turn onto Memorial Drive, an Inner Voice (my muse?) urged me to stop. “There’s no time like the present,” this metaphoric voice suggested. “If you don’t stop and take a picture on a clear, blue-skied day, what exactly are you waiting for?”

On Sunday, I’d gone to the Zen Center to give consulting interviews–a chance for me to meet one-on-one with newer practitioners and answer whatever questions they have about their practice. Consulting interviews are an optional thing. Although on retreat you’re expected to have kong’an (koan) interviews with the Zen Master, during Sunday mid-morning practice, consulting interviews with senior teachers are optional: you can opt in, or you can literally bow out.

When I lived at the Zen Center a decade ago, I often skipped going to consulting and even kong’an interviews. When you live in a Zen Center, you have countless opportunities to interact with teachers, sit retreats, and otherwise immerse yourself in Everything Zen, 24/7. What need is there, you ask yourself, to go to an interview to ask questions of a senior teacher who is invariably going to tell you to practice more, keep a “don’t know” mind, and figure things out for yourself? Only after I moved out of the Zen Center did I realize how precious those (often missed) opportunities really were. When I’m in Keene, the Zen Center and the people who practice there are an hour and a half away; even when I’m in Newton, the Zen Center is a half hour away by car (and about twice that far away by T). How much easier it was, I sometimes think, when I lived in the Zen Center and could literally roll out of bed and find myself face-to-face with a Zen Master!

Nowadays, I find myself in a funny position, the meditation cushions having turned. When I was sitting in the student seat, I put off going to interviews, figuring I’d have more time some other time. Now that I’m just as busy as ever (albeit with different things), I now find myself sitting in the teacher’s seat, wondering why more practitioners don’t make the time to practice, go to consulting interviews, and ask more (and more insistent) questions. If there’s one thing I’d go back and tell my younger self–if there’s one thing I’d tell the folks living and practicing at the Zen Center now who don’t think they “need” to go to interviews–it would be this: practice as much as you can while you can. Unlike a certain gasoline sign in Cambridge, your Current Condition isn’t a protected historic monument: instead, you never know when your Current Condition will change, you’ll move away, and your easy access to a thriving practice community will become much more complicated. If you knew that the picture-perfect conditions of Today were going to change Tomorrow, would you make a point to do all the things you’ve been putting off? Impermanence surrounds us, protected landmarks notwithstanding. If we don’t take pictures, go to practice, or ask questions now, what exactly are we waiting for?

 

Root, root, root for the home…guy

You might remember me mentioning that Red Sox catcher and captain Jason Varitek lives in Waban, the village of Newton, Massachusetts where I spend my long weekends. Although the fan-edited sign that re-named Varick Street “Varitek Street” is now gone, Varitek’s fans and neighbors here in Waban have transformed the Beacon Street bridge over the T tracks into a sort of shrine covered with encouraging signs. Whether or not the Sox sweep the Rockies in tonight’s World Series game, we know that Tek will be in his usual place behind the plate earning his stripes as the captain, and his fans here in Newton (yours truly included) will scream ourselves hoarse in the meantime.

Elsewhere in Waban, Red Sox Mania is reflected in the breakfast specials at Barry’s Village Deli, where this morning I did my loyal duty by ordering an optimistically named “World Series Winner Special”: two eggs, bacon, sausage, home fries, and two slices of challah French toast.

Call me superstitious, but I’m a big believer in Wishful Eating, especially in a deli where the walls are covered with Red Sox and Patriots memorabilia, and one of our regular waitresses was wearing (of course) a Jason Varitek T-shirt. With signs and omens like these, things are looking good for our beloved Sox…fingers crossed.

Click here for a photo set of the Jason Varitek/Boston Red Sox fan signs on the Beacon Street bridge.

 

The weight of words

It’s the fifth week of the semester at Keene State, the fourth week of the semester for SNHU Online, and the third week of the semester at Granite State. In other words, this week I’m feeling the full brunt of being a multi-institutional adjunct instructor, burning the proverbial candle at both ends to keep all my juggled balls aloft and moving.

I’m tempted to say that like Mother Hubbard, my blog-cupboard is bare, but that’s not true. It’s not that I don’t have things to say, pictures to share, or ideas for blog-posts: there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do it all.

At times like these, I feel more like a bricklayer than I do a writer. While my poet friends concern themselves with the crafting of fine delicate trinkets–the work of literary watchmakers or jewelers–I’m daunted by the sheer weight of words as I try to keep on top of a perpetually renewing paper-pile. There’s no time to help my students craft fine delicate sentences; instead, we’re in the business, my students and I, of building weighty walls of prose, and that means schlepping a lot of words.

It’s tiring work, this building with words, brick by brick. At the end of one of my marathon teaching days, my feet ache with the weight of language, and I come home wanting nothing more than to sit on my couch and say nothing. On grading days when I’m home with dog, laptop, and the ever-present paper-pile, my head and neck feel the weight of words like a yoke as I plow, ox-like, through the furrows of other people’s prose, pen in hand.

At this point in the semester–the simultaneous fifth week, fourth week, and third–I ask myself why I require my students to write so damn much, a question I’m sure they’re each individually asking. The answer, unfortunately, is always the same. If you want to become a bricklayer yourself, you have to lay your own wall, brick by brick; if you want the benefit of learning from an older, more experience bricklayer, she needs to watch and oversee your progress. It’s long, grueling work, and there are no shortcuts. By week seven, six, and five, we all will be stronger and more callused, my students and I. Between now and then, though, all we feel is the slow grind of a heavy haul.

 

On staying home

I suppose it makes sense to encourage sick folks not to board crowded subway cars. At times, simply being in a subway car is enough to make an otherwise healthy person feel queasy, and the sign is right when it says station workers can help an infirm person better than subway drivers can. Still, I had to chuckle when I saw this sign in an MTA subway car headed into Manhattan several weekends ago. I guess a terse “Sicko, stay away” is one version of New Yorkers’ famed “directness.”

Today I won’t be taking my sick self onto any New York subway cars. This morning I woke to a spinning room: vertigo, the head-swimming nausea I sometimes experience when allergic sinusitis settles into my inner ear. Today’s case has been mild: I’m able to sit up and even stand if I don’t move around much, unlike past cases where I’ve been able to lie on one side but not the other, the simple act of rolling over causing my head to whirl. Still, if sitting up and standing in one place, carefully, is all you can muster, teaching is pretty much out of the question, so I canceled today’s classes and have spent the day napping, lying still, and trying to grade papers as I’ve been able.  With the help of decongestants, my head is slowly clearing, but in the meantime, I won’t be taking any whirls other than the ones I’m currently feeling between my ears.

 

Here’s your sign

In case you’ve ever wondered whether the Big Guy wants you to study Kabbalah, here’s a clear indication.