Gather ye rosebuds while ye may

This morning, in the aftermath of Robin Williams’ death, I watched the Grand Central Station scene from The Fisher King: one of my all-time favorite cinematic moments. Williams plays a mentally troubled homeless man watching the woman of his dreams walk through a busy train terminal, and for the two minutes she’s passing through, the chaotic crowds coalesce into a grand, beautiful waltz befitting the high-vaulted splendor that is Grand Central Station. It’s a magical, perfectly choreographed moment where hundreds of strangers move to the step of one man’s love: a scene where Williams doesn’t say a single word, his expressive face speaking volumes.

When a special person passes through even the most ordinary place, the mundane becomes magical, at least for a moment, until they disappear in the crowd and the music reverts to hubbub again. That’s what it feels like this morning after Williams’ death: the waltz has ended, the crowds are no longer choreographed, and the sunbeams no longer scintillate with stardust.

It would not be an exaggeration to say I grew up watching Robin Williams. I was nine years old when Mork and Mindy premiered, and it was one of my favorite TV shows. As a brown-haired tomboy, I wanted to be Mindy, a free-spirited, Jeep-driving girl living in a city that sounded both outdoorsy and cool. When Mork moved into Mindy’s attic, Mindy didn’t lose an ounce of her independence: Mork wasn’t a boyfriend, after all, but an alien. Long before we learned that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, I learned from Mork and Mindy that the best way to relate to the opposite sex is through humor and an open acknowledgement that men really are from another planet.

Years later, Dead Poets Society came out when I was halfway through my undergraduate English studies, and it gave me a new role model in Mr. Keating, a renegade teacher who encourages his buttoned-up students to think for themselves. I can’t say Dead Poets Society made me want to be an English teacher, as I was already long along that path, but it did stoke the fire of my enthusiasm by invoking two of my favorite authors: Walt Whitman, whose image hangs on Mr. Keating’s classroom wall, and Henry David Thoreau, whose commitment to live deliberately served as the Dead Poets’ motto.

I wonder how many English majors have watched Dead Poets Society time and again, as I have, wishing they could be a Mr. Keating in some student’s life? Mr. Keating wants to change the lives of his students, and he does indeed succeed, but he learns too late that sometimes changes happens for the worse, not the better. Dead Poets Society is a tragedy that ends in death…but then again, so is life. Dead Poets Society is deeply romantic in its suggestion that a passionate teacher can inspire students, and as an undergrad English major, I drank that idea deeply, like a drug.

By the time Williams appeared as the working-class community college professor Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting, I was a graduate student living in Boston, where the film was set. By then, my Dead Poets Society dreams had been tempered by the reality of teaching actual first-year college students, none of whom stood on their desks and hailed me as “O captain, my captain!”

In my dreams, I wanted to be Mr. Keating, but in reality, I was more like Maguire, who in the movie teaches a course on “Dying and Bereavement” to a nearly comatose class of indifferent students. While his college roommate has become a revered professor at MIT, Maguire teaches at Bunker Hill Community College, where his talents are clearly going to waste. Most fans of Good Will Hunting remember the funny scenes where Matt Damon wins Minnie Driver’s heart by schooling snobby Harvard boys with his smartass wit, but what I remember from the movie was the awkward moment of recognition as I watched Maguire try to engage his students. George Carlin once said a cynic is nothing more than a disappointed idealist, and Williams captured that truth perfectly in his portrayal of a tender-hearted but tired professor who has weathered many heartaches.

Robin Williams is remembered and beloved as a comic, but what always resonated with me was the way he captured the vulnerable, serious, and (yes) sorrowful side of his characters. Yesterday when I heard of Williams’ suicide, my first thought was, “Didn’t he know how many lives he touched?” I sometimes think being a teacher is a lot like being a stand-up comic: there’s nothing like the thrill of connecting with your audience, but there’s nothing worse than the sensation of crashing and burning when your material falls flat. When the laughter and applause subside, there’s nothing left but the nagging question, “But was I good enough, really?”

I understand mental illness well enough to know that no number of fan letters, awards, and accolades can lift the shroud of depression: depression is, after all, a bug in the brain that makes it impossible to believe such affirmations. Still, I find myself wishing that at the split second before he slipped from this station to the next, Robin Williams fully realized the joy, wonder, and delight he inspired in so many of us.

The title of today’s post comes from Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to make much of Time,” which features memorably in a scene from Dead Poets Society. The photos illustrating today’s posts show some of the roses and rosebuds I’ve gathered (digitally) over the years. Rest in peace, Robin Williams, and thank you for so many years of laughter, life, and joy.

 

First fruits

I always forget each year how quickly the semester gets busy, as if the school year were a circus act where students and instructors alike are shot out of a cannon to achieve maximum velocity almost instantly: kaboom! It’s already the third week of the semester at Keene State, and already I have my Creative Nonfiction students starting their research projects, and my Thinking & Writing students aren’t far behind. Knowing how much time and effort it takes to climb the mountain of a sustained writing project, I know the first step toward success is getting an early start.

Autumn is the season when time speeds up — suddenly the lazy days of summer are gone, gone, gone, and each day seems in an increasing hurry to hasten toward sunset. There never are enough hours in the day, and this always comes as a sudden shock each September, as if I could have forgotten such a dire truism. Tonight when I arrived in Keene for another week of face-to-face classes, the town felt noticeably quieter than it did two weeks ago when I arrived to re-inhabit my apartment the night before my first classes began. Two weeks ago, students were hanging out and relaxing with their neighbors, not yet swamped with homework on their first day of classes. Tonight, on the other hand, there was less traffic and fewer pedestrians, as if a noticeable number of students were hunkered down at home with homework or with the tiring task of procrastination.

In the meantime, Nature has gotten an early start on a sustained project of her own, revising her first green drafts into something riper and more mature. Every year, I wish I had the time and discipline to learn the names of the myriad berries that ripen in fall — the hordes of honeysuckle and various viburnums — and each year I push it off until next year. In the meantime, I greet the fruit and berries of autumn as foggily familiar neighbors I see only in passing each year, but never long enough to exchange names. “Oh, yes,” I smile and nod, searching my mental archives for a name that never surfaces. “You!” The greeting is heartfelt if not entirely personalized, the first fruits of autumn realizing at the center of their cells that their existence is essentially an anonymous, perishable one.

Click here for the latest installment of Dave Bonta’s Woodrat podcast, which features a conversation with me on far-flung topics such as blogging, journal-keeping, pilgrims, hermits, and Buddhism. Enjoy!

 

Sometime soon

Today I’m having lunch with my friend B. I see B almost every time I go to the Cambridge Zen Center, which means I don’t see her often enough. Often, B is leaving the Zen Center just as I’m arriving, so we have five minute chats that always end with some version of “We should do lunch sometime soon.” We’re both perpetually busy: B has her work at the Zen Center, and her teaching, and the demands of living in a full house. I have my teaching, and a fiancee, and the demands of living in two states. It’s not that B and I want to procrastinate our friendship: it’s just that “Sometime Soon” is a slippery thing.

Last night, I reached the chapter in Karen Maezen Miller’s Hand Wash Cold where her daughter, Georgia, asks “What day is tomorrow?” It’s a brilliant question, even if it initially inspires a “who’s on first” kind of misunderstanding. Young Georgia isn’t looking for the name of the day that comes after Thursday; she wants to know when at long last the Promised Land of “Tomorrow” will bring all the things the grown up world has been putting off. If “Tomorrow” (or “Sometime Soon,” or “Maybe, Eventually”) is when we’ll have ice cream, or feed the ducks at the lake, or get a puppy, or go to Disneyland, when indeed will this promised “Tomorrow” ever arrive?

“We should do lunch sometime soon” is a sad-sounding promise, like something from the song “Cat’s in the Cradle,” which always chokes me up whenever I hear it. The father in the song isn’t a bad dad: he doesn’t neglect his son because he’s out drinking, womanizing, or causing trouble. It’s tough to support a family: there’s never enough time. It’s easy enough to talk about keeping one’s priorities straight, but life perpetually gets in the way: jobs are always a hassle, kids always have the flu, and Time is always elusive. It’s easy to be so busy making a living, you forget to live a little.

Today my friend B and I are having lunch: at long last, “Sometime soon” has become today. When I asked B where she’d like to go, she mentioned a restaurant she’s been meaning to try, which offers grilled food served hot on their patio, weather permitting. “Maybe it’s too fancy,” B immediately second-guessed, “or maybe too hot.” How easy it is to talk oneself out of doing that thing you’ve been meaning to try!

“Fancy is perfect,” I responded, and so is Too Hot: if Someday Soon arrives at long last during the summertime, you just have to weather the heat. I’ll wear a sundress just in case the patio is both fancy and hot, and both B and I will enjoy the chance to sit down over a meal, finally at long last.

 

Without ceasing

“I don’t get it,” a passerby outside Timoleon’s Restaurant in downtown Keene remarked upon seeing me shooting pictures in a sunny alley intersecting Main Street. “What do you see up there?” I was in Keene for a meeting on campus yesterday, and the man caught me on my way to the bank and other errands afterward. “Up there,” I pointed. “The fire escape is casting slanted shadows on the brick, and above that, there are prayer flags.” The man looked where I’d pointed, looked back at me, and shrugged. “Okay,” he said in a nonchalant tone, then walked away.

Apparently he’d expected something more newsworthy: who in their right mind, after all, stops on their way to the bank to photograph shadows? As much as the anonymous passerby was unimpressed by the sight of sun on brick, I was equally undaunted by his dismissal. As many times as I’ve passed this particular alley, I don’t ever recall these fire-escape shadows looking precisely this crisp and neatly demarcated, and I’ve certainly never noticed the prayer flags. Could it be the sight of thin-sliced shadows slanting just so was all it took to make me look up?

The purpose of prayer flags, of course, it to harness the wind so it will pray without ceasing. For Christians, ceaseless prayer is something encouraged in the Pauline epistles: a meditative act that requires both concentration and devotion. For Tibetan Buddhists, praying without ceasing is as simple as stringing a clothesline. The Himalayas are pummeled by wind, so flags printed with prayers will flap their petitions incessantly, prayer-wheels that spin without need for human hands.

Still, ceaseless prayer, like sun-slanted shadows, is hardly a newsworthy event: that nonplussed passerby was right about that. After I’d finished my errands in Keene and drove back to Newton last night, I’d find something much more in line with what I think he was looking for. After I’d settled in with Reggie, my laptop, and an online quiz I was preparing, J came into the room with a concerned look. “Do you hear that?” he asked, and at first I thought he was referring to a Carolina wren singing loudly in the front yard. “The helicopters are circling: there’s been a crash on the green line.”

Checking online, I saw what the commotion was about: soon, we heard sirens along with the roar of news helicopters. Two MBTA two-car trolleys had collided on the green “D” line not far from the stop J and I take whenever we take the T into town. Soon we both were planted in front of the TV watching live coverage from the helicopters buzzing overhead. Although the trolleys hadn’t collided in our own backyard, the accident was close enough that we could recognize the precise spot of the collision, down the tracks from a local landmark we call Varitek Bridge.

Although J and I don’t take the T on a daily basis, we take it every time we go into Boston to explore or attend sporting events. On our way home from San Francisco on Monday, for instance, we’d taken the T from the airport, thanking our conductor when he let us off at “our” stop: a common courtesy. Had we had tickets to last night’s Celtics game, J and I would have been waiting for an inbound train right around the time the two outbound trolleys collided. From our stop, would we have heard the metallic screech of an impending collision down the line, would we have felt the seismic tremor of impact reverberating through the rails, or would we have stood there, wondering at the delay, while T workers hurriedly arranged shuttle-buses for re-routed traffic?

J and I spent much of last night checking live coverage while going about our other tasks, the normal evening routine of getting the dogs settled, preparing and eating dinner, and switching between the Celtics and Red Sox games on TV being accompanied by the incessant sound of helicopters. Initial reports said one of the trolley conductors was seriously injured and trapped in the wreckage; whenever we switched to the news, we watched firefighters trying to pry and cut their way into the crushed and mangled trolley. Around 10:30, after the major networks had returned to their normally scheduled programs, we could still hear helicopters circling. “If that conductor is seriously injured and it’s taking them this long to get her out,” I started to say, and J completed the thought for me. “It doesn’t look good.”

A few months ago, a green line conductor had yelled at J and me for darting in front of her inbound train on our way to board. “Never run in front of the train,” she scolded as if we were rambunctious teenagers. “If either one of you had slipped, I can’t stop the train quickly.” Duly chastened even though, from our perspective, we’d crossed well before the approaching train, we apologized: she was right. It’s never wise to cross in front of a moving train, and ever since we’ve made a conscious point of stopping before oncoming trolleys, making eye contact with the conductor, and gesturing if we want her or him to hold the train while we cross either in front or behind.

“Do you think it was the woman who yelled at us,” I asked J when we learned that the trapped conductor was female. There was no way, then, of knowing, but that statement “I can’t stop the train quickly” seemed particularly ominous. This morning, we learned that MBTA operator Terrese Edmonds, age 24, was not the 40-something woman who’d scolded us; we also learned that Edmonds was probably already dead by the time J and I had remarked last night that things didn’t look good. Still, this morning both J and I looked at pictures of Edmonds and tried to remember if we’d ever ridden with her–do we remember ever thanking her–on the countless times we’ve relied upon the T to get us from here to there.

Past midnight, after both we and the circling helicopters had turned in for the night, I stated the obvious to J: “We could have been on that train.” Although the accident occurred past our stop, it could have occurred anywhere, and although we don’t recall ever riding with the conductor who was killed, it could have been anyone. Last night, presumably inspired by those ceaselessly circling helicopters, I dreamed J and I saw paramedics running down our street with bandaged bodies on stretchers even though most of the crash victims left both trains under their own power, some even walking themselves to a nearby hospital.

Life is short, and even your next moment isn’t guaranteed. Last night as we switched between the Celtics and Red Sox games on TV, the sound of helicopters buzzing incessantly overhead reminded me again and again to pray for everyone on those trains, for the firefighters trying to help them, and for all the fragile, imminently mortal passersby with whom I share this planet. Life is short, and even your next moment isn’t guaranteed. Never cross in front of trains, always thank your conductor, and never pass up an opportunity to pray.

 

Not the rainbow bridge

When Leslee, a mutual friend, and I decided to explore Hemlock Gorge on Sunday, I initially thought I’d ask if they’d mind my bringing Reggie, but I quickly reconsidered. Even if we’d figured out a way to carpool three women and a squirmy dog to the Gorge, there’d be the Echo Bridge steps to navigate.

Reggie has never been fond of steps: even when I adopted him in 1998, he was reluctant to climb stairs. When my then-husband and I owned a two-story house in Hillsboro, NH, Reggie could climb the carpeted steps, but he did so only reluctantly. At my parents’ house, it’s something of a production to get Reggie to climb the slick linoleum stairs to the basement apartment that serves as their guest room, and on the handful of times over the years I’ve tried to lure Reggie up open stairs–the kind with horizontal steps but no vertical step-backs, a style common at motels with outdoor stairways leading from one level to the next–he’s balked and downright refused. At dog-eye level, open steps look like no steps at all, and who but the most enthusiastic dog would actually believe you could climb from one level to another on thin air?

In the past few years, now that Reggie has resolutely aged into the double-digits, stairs have become even more of a problem. Although glucosamine and chondroitin supplements have minimized his overall creakiness, it still takes a while to coax him up the slippery hardwood steps in J’s house, where a dog’s attention is as likely to be distracted by passing cats as it is to be focused on the scary steps at hand. Slowly, slowly, slowly Reggie and I climb the steps after every walk and bathroom outing–and now that Reggie is older, the frequency (and, sometimes, urgency) of bathroom outings has increased. But learning to respond gracefully to an inevitably aging dog offers many lessons in how to respond gracefully to an inevitably aging self, with neither one of us getting any younger. If climbing from one floor to another takes longer than it used to, well then, what really is the rush?

J and I have an ongoing tongue-in-cheek joke about the “Rainbow Bridge,” the otherworldly place where dearly departed pets presumably go to wait for their eventually mortal owners. Although Reggie is my first dog, J’s already weathered the passings of a dog and several cats, so he knows from experience it takes more than a warm and fuzzy poem about heavenly reunions to quiet the sting of pet loss. Reggie’s not ready to cross the Rainbow Bridge, but I have no illusions about his lifespan, either. Already, we’ve crossed the dietary Rubicon toward “Active Maturity” dog food, and once those glucosamine and chondroitin supplements aren’t enough for increasingly creaky joints, I’ll learn how to administer stronger medications: it seems the least I can do. But in the meantime while Reggie and I both have our wits and relative health about us, we’d both prefer to explore actual rather than rainbow bridges, our time together being precious exactly because it is (eventually) finite.

One recent reminder of Reggie’s eventual mortality involved an incontinence scare where several housebreaking accidents had me convinced that Reggie was suffering from diabetes, kidney failure, or worse. A vet visit and subsequent blood-work proved my imagination is more active than Reggie’s bladder. According to test results, Reggie’s kidneys, liver, and other necessary internals are normal and healthy, which means a handful of inside leg-lifts really were the result of an Old Dog being confused by the New Trick of J’s house with its feline distractions (and an Old Owner’s slow realization that a senior dog’s request to go “out” really means “now,” not later).

I know death is a passing we all make eventually, and lifespans suggest Reggie will cross that bridge before I do. But really, what’s the rush? During that vet visit where I described Reggie’s recent housebreaking accidents, the vet’s subsequent questions pointed to how youthful and (relatively) healthy Reggie still is. “Does he still remember where the front door is,” the vet asked, “or does he try to out ‘outside’ through the closet?” Yes, Reggie still has his wits about him; he still knows the sound of my laptop powering down means “Walk!” “Can he see well enough to recognize you across the room,” the vet continued, “and can he hear well enough to respond to his name?” Again, I answered yes, twice: the way I find my car in a crowded parking lot is to look for the bushy tail that starts wagging in the backseat as soon as Reggie spots me across multiple car-lengths, and although he’s in the habit of ignoring my calls when he wants to, Reggie’s sense of hearing is still acute enough to recognize the sound of a treat-bag being opened.

So Reggie, it seems, is as ready to cross the Rainbow Bridge as he is eager to climb a whole story’s steps to get to the top of Echo Bridge, and that’s just fine. Now that Leslee, our mutual friend, and I have done our advance scouting at Hemlock Gorge, I now know the precise parking lot I should head to the next time I want to walk Reggie on that side of the Charles River rather than this: no bridge-crossing or step-climbing necessary. Saving my best four-legged friend from the indignity of having to struggle up steps a boisterous puppy would take in leaps and bounds is a small price to pay for companionship. It seems the least I can do.

Click here for Leslee’s account of our dog-free outing at Hemlock Gorge, or click here for my complete photo-set of images. Enjoy!