Bite Me

I am mosquito bait.  Put me in a 3000-square-foot house, add 20 other human beings, introduce one mosquito.  The mosquito will locate me, bite me, and nobody else in the house will have seen nor heard the mosquito.  In fact, those 20 individuals will think I’m crazy.  “There are no mosquitoes in here!” they’ll proclaim.  “Then how’d I get these bites?” I’ll ask, pointing to my shins, my arms, my neck. 

They’ll squint, they’ll tilt their heads to the side.  They’re assessing my sanity. 

“Maybe you already had them when you came indoors,” one will say.

“Could you have gotten them yesterday, and only noticed them just now?” another will wonder.

“Maybe they’re hives,” another will say.

I’m accustomed to this reaction, and have learned not to engage in further discussion.  There’s no use in saying I SAW the mosquito, tried in vain to kill it.  Conversely, there’s no point in meekly holding my hand out and showing that I DID kill it…after it had bitten me four times.  (It’s a bit distasteful, apparently, to offer the broken bits of a smashed mosquito as evidence.  And I’ve learned that nobody wants to see the smear of blood on my leg after I’ve slapped a mosquito in the process of biting me.) 

It’s not just mosquitoes, either.  Black flies and deer flies single me out.  When Leigh and I take a walk together – something we do at least once a day – she is part companion, part protector.  We’ll be ambling along, chatting and enjoying the sunshine, and I’ll suddenly begin contorting.  I wave my arms, I duck, I dodge, I slap at my own head like an imbecile.  “Just stand still and I’ll get it,” she’ll say.  My choice, at that point, is a painful deer fly bite or a smack from Leigh.  I tend to choose the latter.  She’s fast, she has excellent aim, and usually after one slap the fly is dead. 

The problem, of course, is that it’s not just one fly.  This happens over and over and over.  I can get bitten five or six times over the course of a couple of miles, or I can get slapped an equal number of times.  It’s a weird kind of trade-off, requiring an “I’m doing this for your own good” benevolence on Leigh’s part, and an “I’ll take this kind of pain instead of that kind of pain” acquiescence from me.   Since I’d rather endure the 2-second sting of a slap over the 5-day maddening itch of a bite, it is, I suppose, an easy decision. 

There are all sorts of theories as to why some people are magnets for biting insects and others are not.  Some have to do with carbon dioxide, or lactic acid, or cholesterol.  Some believe that movement and body heat attract mosquitoes, although I am just as much a magnet – in fact, much MORE of a magnet – when I am sitting still.  Last summer, for instance, I went to a nice restaurant with four friends.  We had a choice – dine outside or indoors.  It was a balmy evening, summer had barely begun.  I wasn’t yet, in other words, in full mosquito-alert mode.  When the others unanimously voted for the outdoor seating, I agreed. 

            Before we were even served, I noticed a couple of mosquitoes.  “Oh, I’m going to get bit,” I said.

            “What are you talking about?  There aren’t any mosquitoes,” one companion said.

            “Don’t worry – mosquitoes LOVE me,” another said.  “I guarantee they’ll bite me and not you.” 

            This was very noble of companion number 2, and I agreed to stay outside.  I recalled taking long walks with Leigh’s dog, Fan, when I’d be mercifully spared of mosquito or deer fly pestering because all of the biters would go for the dog.  I’d walk her up and down our road feeling both unusually free and terribly guilty.  Fan was being sacrificed, essentially, for my comfort.  Those were some of the best walks of my life.

            I also recalled, however, a party I’d attended.  It was an outdoor affair and roughly 50 guests were there.  I didn’t notice any mosquitoes and was happily socializing.  At one point, Leigh and I strolled across the wide lawn to look at the nearby lake.  Again, there were no mosquitoes, and I had a wonderful time.

            When I arrived at home, however, my ankles began itching.  All up and down my legs were tiny red bumps.  The itch was wicked, but I could tell they weren’t mosquito bites because of the clustered arrangement and the size.  “What the heck bit me?” I asked Leigh.

            “Oh,” she said, looking grave.  “They look like chigger bites.”

            I appreciated Leigh’s solemnity.  Since for her, I’m the equivalent of Fan – the sacrificial companion – she virtually never gets bit.  She does, however, have to live with me and my tendency to be driven to desperation when I’m covered with bites.  She treads, in other words, lightly.

I had never heard of chiggers, but I was momentarily halted from my scratching frenzy by the prospect of a new word and a new insect.  I immediately looked them up and learned that chiggers apparently like grasses and areas near lakes.  Bingo – lakes, grasses… and me.  Not one other person I subsequently asked – including Leigh, who had been standing right next to me in the grass next to the lake – had received a single bite.

           

Back at the restaurant, it soon became apparent that Noble Companion had nothing to worry about.  The mosquitoes came for me and me alone.  While everyone else enjoyed their bruschetta and pasta, I spent the evening on high alert, taking a mouthful of food then sitting back in my chair, waiting, watching.  I employed an oft-used method of attack – er, to be accurate, counter-attack – allowing the mosquito to land on me and begin to pierce my skin, then slapping it.  This tactic slightly raises the likelihood of killing the mosquito, as it takes a split second longer for it to dart away.  I ended up with half-a-dozen bites and slightly fewer kills.  My dinner companions – including Mr. Noble – received exactly no bites.

Sometimes I pretend that I’m some kind of rare delicacy to these insects, the most savored of desserts or after-dinner liqueurs.  To mosquitoes, I’m Drambuie, I’m flan, I’m the sweetest apricot mousse.  But when I’m lying in a darkened room, in the middle of the night, and one determined mosquito is planning its attack on whatever centimeter of exposed skin it can alight upon, I’m not thinking about my good blood.  I’m strategizing with the stealth and steadiness of a professional assassin.  I’m trying to save my own skin.

Hummers and Snappers

Every season seems to bring with it an obsession.  One year it was a rogue sunflower seed that had become embedded in a cut log.  Rather than dying, it sprouted a shoot right out the side of the wood.  One summer it was fresh peaches, which were so delectable I almost didn’t want to eat anything but.  Last year it was art, or my version of art.  I took a class, set up a second desk for my non-writing work.  I tried to make things.  I had fun being bad at it.

This year, starting in late spring and continuing to date, my attention is split.  On the ground, I’m in love with snapping turtles.  In the air, hummingbirds have invaded my consciousness.

These aren’t new interests, exactly.  I’ve loved turtles since I was small, and started being interested in hummingbirds when I lived in Arizona.  But this year both the birds and the turtles are more there.  I don’t know why the snappers have suddenly materialized, but I spot one almost every day.  In previous years I’d be lucky to see just one – more often, it’d be none at all.  The hummers have been ever-present since Leigh bought me a canister-style feeder which she hung outside my study.  Each May a couple of birds adopt the feeder as their own.  This year, however, we have four birds.  I don’t know if they’ve paired up, but they are fierce.  One will zip in, begin to drink.  Another will zoom close, buzz the first, and hover.  It appears to be a challenge, and sometimes the first bird will ignore the challenger and fly away.  Other times, however, the two will go breast to breast, appear to almost bounce off each other.  I can hear their wings tangle, and then they retreat.

The turtles are significantly less flashy.  I’ve observed two primary behaviors: lumbering (moving) and waiting (not moving).   The ones I’ve encountered close up have been rather large – imagine the biggest dinner plate you’ve ever seen, then extend it by a few inches.  A friend recently came across one in a pond; she said it was two feet across.  She doesn’t tend to embellish, so she may have been lucky enough to see a turtle that was quite old. 

For all practical purposes, I leave the hummers alone.  About every 3 days, I fill the feeder with a sugar/water mixture and then listen to them battle and court one another.  All day, every day, I hear their buzz through the open window as I sit at my desk.  They’re so close it sounds like an active beehive.  Once in a while I swivel around and watch them for a few minutes.  Sometimes all four are trying to get their licks in, but more often it’s just two.  I see them in the yard, as well, darting their long tongues into a flower or just speeding from one resting site to another.  Sometimes one will execute a series of deep, swooping arcs – part of their courtship ritual.  I watch, I marvel, but I don’t talk to the hummers, don’t attempt to interact, nor interfere with their antics. 

I don’t bother the turtles, either, in large part because I take their name seriously.  They can snap, and I don’t want to get snapped at or on.  I’ve read that they will latch onto a finger or hand and hold tight.  Even if they’re not attempting to take a piece of me as a souvenir, I don’t like pain and would prefer not to mess with a snapping turtle jaw. 

What I do, with the snapping turtles, is usher.  I have become a turtle crossing guard.  Whenever I see one in the road, I stop my car, get out, and direct approaching vehicles around the turtle until it has safely reached the other side.  It gives me a certain amount of pleasure to be a good Samaritan in the turtle realm, but I mostly do it to avoid the alternative: dead turtles.  So far this year I’ve encountered four, all hit by cars.  One morning, right down our road, I saw a big snapper. I stopped, made sure it crossed okay.  That evening, as I headed out for dinner with friends, I saw it on the side of the road, quite near where I’d earlier observed it.  It looked like it was resting.  On my return trip, it was in the same spot and I realized it wasn’t resting.  I felt broken-hearted --- I’d enjoyed that turtle.  We’d spoken a bit, as I waited there in the road for her (him?) to make the journey from one side of the road to the other.  That morning, she’d decided to pause mid-way, settling down to think or rest or just see what this human was up to…  After a few minutes she grew bored with me and headed west, into a swampy and wooded area.

I don’t know if she ever made it to her destination or if she was, perhaps, making a return trip when she was hit.  I do know that the road is flat and straight, and any driver paying the slightest degree of attention would have spotted the turtle at some distance and could have easily driven around her.  When there’s something in the road here, you notice it.  It’s almost always an animal – a snake, a frog, a darting chipmunk.  Every once in a while a squirrel will do what I call a suicide run – dash halfway across the road and stop, then suddenly change direction.  I’ve accidentally hit more than one – just about anyone who does a lot of driving out here will say the same.  Deer sometimes leap across the road, too, and again, if I asked thirty people, I’d probably find at least one who’s had a vehicle/deer collision.  They can be dangerous, even deadly. 

But there are reasons those animals are hit.  Snakes and frogs can be almost invisible; chipmunks and squirrels and deer are fast and unpredictable.  They flash out of the brush and are in your path in an instant.

Turtles are visible.

Their movement is so slow as to be nearly 100% predictable. 

They are easy to drive around.

We live in a rural area; there is virtually no traffic. 

So why do snapping turtles end up crushed in the road?

Because some drivers think it’s fun to run over them.  Something about the prospect of a crushed carapace turns them on, or maybe they like the bump beneath the tires that a 40-pound turtle would cause.

This might be a good place to say that I don’t understand many things that lots of other people think are fun.  Farcical comedy, excessive alcohol consumption, getting a tattoo, high-risk activities like skydiving, low-risk activities like golf.  The list goes on…

But I really, REALLY don’t understand what could be fun about getting behind the wheel of a motor vehicle and intentionally hitting a snapping turtle. 

A friend – the same one who saw the giant snapper in the pond – recounted a story from her childhood.  She was riding her bike down the road and saw a snapping turtle.  She stopped to admire it, made sure it traversed the road safely.  When it was just about all the way across, she headed off.  A pick-up truck passed her a minute later.  She stopped her bike and looked back down the road, wanting to make sure the driver went around the turtle.  He didn’t.  The truck swerved toward the shoulder, hit the turtle, sped off.

That was over forty years ago.  She hasn’t forgotten.  I won’t forget this summer’s turtles either. 

Right now, however, I am preoccupied with wings – wings nourished, at least in part, by sugar I’ve stirred into boiling water, cooled, carefully poured into canisters and hung.  The hummers’ throats are alit, they flash ruby-feathered brilliance in my eyes which yes, tear up with happiness.

                                                                                                                                               --for MB

33-29

It’s the morning after the New York State Senate passed what is widely referred to as the “gay marriage bill.”  I’m hoping that we can cease referring to “gay marriage” now and simply call it “marriage.”  I’m hoping, to paraphrase Governor Cuomo, that when the term “marriage equality” is used, fewer people get hung up on the concept of marriage, in its traditional sense, and focus instead on the word “equality.”

I’m also hoping that this belated but historic legislation makes an impression on all the teenagers who have felt bereft and alone.  As I watched the vote – which seemed to take forever – I thought of Matthew Shephard, whose murder, in 1998, led to the passage of federal hate crime legislation over a decade later.  I thought of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who jumped off a bridge, one of five teens who took their own lives in the fall of 2010.  Those suicides directly led to an outpouring of support highlighted, most publicly, by the It Gets Better campaign (www.itgetsbetter.org).

I thought of my students, most of them heterosexual, whose easygoing acceptance of homosexuality will, I believe, change the world. 

Happy Gay Pride Week, New Yorkers.  Celebrate, and remember.

Preparing for Class

I’m getting a kind of lesson plan together, something with poetry, aiming to be insightful and sensitive. Downstairs Leigh’s frustrated, trying to negotiate with the roofer who over-charged precisely when she’s feeling broke. No lie, there are at least three feet of snow on the ground, and so when I hear the robins I’m slow to react. Dozens of them in the bare trees. The birds are almost silent. When have we last seen robins in winter? Would you believe never? The sun or what passes for sun around here is visiting for a stretch, so I take off the screen and crank a window open, try to photograph orange breast against snow. They’re not skittish, don’t stir much when I head outside and scatter seed. But the flutter of wings as they roost is audible, like the whoosh of shaken fabric, or a racket stunned against a dusty rug. They poke at berries and ignore the seed, shudder and alight, knock clusters of snow from branches. Half a dozen rush the house then veer away; through binoculars they’re beautiful, heaving and composed. By lunch they’ve gone, but all afternoon I hear, over my shoulder, a promise of return.

Tucson 2011

Because I teach, I tend to divide the calendar into semesters. At the start of this past semester, the big story in the news was “gay suicides.” What that meant: at least five gay teens took their lives. Story after story appeared about how each of them had been bullied, called names, harassed for being who they were.

Anyone who teaches and, in fact, anyone who has regular contact with individuals under the age of 30, probably hears the word “gay” bantered around in a joshing, informal manner on a regular basis. It’s used to label homosexual individuals, but it’s also used as a synonym for stupid, for lame, for effeminate, for sentimental, for tender-hearted, even for a certain brand of kindness. Young men use it as frequently as they use the word “the,” and young women use it as well. “That’s so gay,” or “Eww, that’s gay,” is ubiquitous in both junior high classrooms and on college campuses. Spend 10 minutes on Facebook and you’ll find at least one post using the word in this manner.

If you were to ask the user of the word why they’d chosen it, they’d be quick to proclaim no ill intent. “I was just kidding around,” they’d say. “It doesn’t have anything to do with gay people,” they’d claim. “It’s a joke. It’s just how we talk.”

Fast forward to January; I’m preparing for a new semester. Another group of people are dead, others seriously injured. It is widely suggested that language has again played a role in this tragedy, only this time it isn’t a word or two, but rather an atmosphere of vitriol, an environment of blame, and the regular, widespread use of careless and inflammatory rhetoric.

This language might start with politicians and the media – I’m not sure, honestly, if it matters where it begins – but it does not end there. Incivility, proclamations of outrage, and verbal abuse of every degree is rampant in many areas of public discourse. Facebook and Twitter light up when something newsworthy is first reported. The New York Times and other newspapers’ reader responses fill with accusatory comments and staunch position statements: I believe this, and nothing anyone says will make me reconsider.

I am not against passionate beliefs and I am not advocating for censorship. But I find it profoundly disturbing when rage meets ignorance and immediacy. Why do we feel the need to comment instantly and emotionally to everything? I lived in Tucson for six years and knew it to be a complex city, yes, with many difficult problems… but it is also a home to many artists, many reasonable political activists, many intelligent and compassionate individuals. For the last year or so, however, the city and the state of Arizona have been held up as models of intolerance, a kind of geographic aberration, as though the rest of the country does not have similar, if perhaps occasionally less public, problems. Shortly after Jared Lee Loughner opened fire on the corner of Ina and Oracle, some of my Facebook contacts opened fire verbally. The immediate response seemed to be something like this: some nut in Arizona – surely a Republican – just killed a Congresswoman, a Democrat. Tributaries of this initial reaction included blame of, in no particular order, Sarah Palin, Republicans, the Tea Party, the state of Arizona, the city of Tucson, the contentious state of immigration policies, the recent ruling on Mexican-American studies, Washington politics, John McCain, and gun control policies.

It’s not unreasonable to question all of these elements; my point has nothing to do with having an opinion, making serious inquiry into contributing factors, or feeling anger about these kinds of events. It has to do with reactionary expressions of outrage, including overt or subtle intimations of violence, often based on circumstances with which the speaker/writer has little familiarity.

It takes effort to pause, and even more effort to think. That’s what I’m advocating for: thinking. Considering. Doing a little research, gathering some facts. Formulating an opinion that advances discussion rather than shuts it down. Simply posting an inflammatory headline or a knee-jerk response does nothing to promote conversation, even of a cyber nature. On Saturday, for a good hour or so on Facebook, Representative Giffords was pronounced dead over and over again. You can argue that this was simply a way of sharing information and, in fact, a way that has become one of the easiest and most popular ways of doing so. You can argue that it was a widespread expression of concern, even grief. But I think it can also be argued that a rush to post that particular information was, at least in part, an expression of reactionary outrage based on no factual evidence.

Some of my students – college students, in their early 20’s – still banter the word “gay” around; many of my acquaintances are quick to condemn the Republican party at any opportunity. I, too, have been guilty of blaming an entire party for some of the ills of our current political and cultural state. I can’t say, with any degree of honesty, that it would pain me to see Sarah Palin fade from the national scene; I found her “target” poster truly horrifying, although only one example in a fairly steady stream of appalling comments coming from her.

But Sarah Palin did not single-handedly create our woes, in Tucson or nationally. Nor did the Republicans or the Tea Partiers. Everyone who responds with hot-headed and righteous anger, everyone who speaks without thinking, anyone who naively believes there is a right and a wrong answer on any given political issue, anyone who gets off on fanning the flames… All are culpable.

As I finish writing this, the nation has just held a moment of silence for the shooting victims. Let’s take that seriously – the idea of pausing to reflect – and keep in mind that words and symbols have power. We don’t have to censor ourselves or others, we don’t have to spin what we really believe – but maybe we can consider using language in a more responsible, dignified and productive manner – a manner that contributes something authentic and substantive. Maybe we can start by recognizing this: despite that childhood rhyme, it’s been proven, many times over, that words can hurt. Proceed accordingly.

Here's to 2011

High points of 2010, in no real order:

Trip to Texas and Arizona last January. Saw my family in TX, saw my friends in AZ. Lots of sunshine – great way to start the year.

Several close friends survived, and thrived, after serious illnesses. What could be better?

I learned that Susan Rogers’ book would be published. Yahoooooooo!

Landed the tenure-track position at SUNY Oswego. (Giant sigh of relief, still exhaling.)

And, although I said these were in no order, this one outranks everything: my brother came home from Iraq.

Books

Fiction: Well, I didn’t read a LOT of fiction, but I really enjoyed a novel called The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen, which I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who a) likes graphic novels; b) loves maps; c) likes intelligent and quirky narrators. I’m not sure it’s rightly called a graphic novel – it’s just a very creative and charming novel. So yeah – that’d be my favorite of the year, although like Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, below, I wouldn’t have expected to like it so much.

Poetry: My favorite poems this year were written by my students. What would have been my favorite book was Nox by Anne Carson. Unfortunately, my copy was lost in transit, so I’m deferring my utter enjoyment of this book until 2011.

Nonfiction: Generally I read a lot of good nonfiction, so in no particular order:

Zeitoun, Dave Eggers

Reality Hunger, David Shields

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

About a Mountain, John D’Agata

Vanishing Point, Ander Monson

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, Amy Krouse

Best American Essays 2010 (special mention to Ryan Van Meter’s essay, “First”)

Movies: I don’t see a lot of first-run movies, but the one movie I adored this year, and recommend to all artists, is The Beaches of Agnes, a documentary by and about Agnes Varda, the French filmmaker, and so much more. Loved it from start to finish and can’t wait to view it again.

(On a related note: I felt a couple of widely-praised movies were really over-rated. 1) The Kids Are All Right; and 2) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Good performances, yes… but beyond that?? If anyone cares to explain, please do.)

TV I enjoyed: Men of a Certain Age, Damages, Friday Night Lights, and Modern Family. And although I usually fall asleep in the middle of it, and couldn’t explain the show if I had to, I’ve really come to like Fringe a lot.

Last but not least: High Points of Facebook: It’s actually hard to choose – I have a lot of writer friends and a lot of friends who don’t post about their endless fatigue, break-ups, hangovers, random whininess, etc., but here are some that stood out:

• Susan Rogers’ posts from Tasmania and Wyoming;
• All of Kimi Eisele’s blog posts and gratitude posts;
• A short video featuring my nephews’ home-made game, the infamous “Sting Pong.” I rarely get a kick out of stupidity, but that one made me laugh.

If you have any year-end high points of your own, please feel free to comment here or on Facebook. And thank you, sincerely, to anyone who’s been reading these blog posts. I really appreciate it.

Sliding & Spinning

Early December brought our first significant snowfall accumulation. That phrase – “significant accumulation” – is subjective. Around here, anything less than 7 or 8 inches is usually shrugged off. We’re accustomed to regular – one might say unending – snowfall, and it’s typical that we receive at least a few inches a day when the season really gets rolling. To grab our attention, a good foot or more of snow is required, and some of us can ignore the onslaught until it’s measured in upper-body terms: up to my waist, my chest, my shoulder… Over my head.

Sometimes, it’s not inches or feet by which we measure a storm, but other factors, like wind chill, wind speed, and consistency of snow. The first two are self-explanatory – even a trace of snow, if accompanied by a wind chill factor in the single digits or below zero, will hurt. If you have to be outdoors when the wind chill dips that low, you get so cold that the slightest dusting of snow on exposed skin feels painful – more like hot than cold; even the lightest touch can burn. Wind comes off the lake and can literally knock you off your feet. Combine those gusts with slippery surfaces or walkways that are not shoveled, and getting from point A to point B can be an unpleasant adventure. Even my car, a small sedan, has been rocked on its wheels; a good body blow to the driver’s side has made me flinch as though being struck on more than one occasion.

What’s a little harder to explain is snow’s consistency. Everyone knows there’s a difference between powdery snow and wet snow. We get both here, sometimes during the same storm. There’s a whole spectrum of consistency that exists between those edge points, as well – snow isn’t just wet or dry, heavy or fluffy. There’s one particular kind of snow that locals refer to as greasy, and it’s as unpleasant as it sounds. I don’t think it falls from the sky in its greasy form or, rather, I’m not sure if its vertical form is entirely responsible for its horizontal slickness. I’ve heard that the phrase refers to snow that’s dense, almost slushy, and occurs when temperatures are right around freezing. It’s more slippery than other kinds of snow, and can make both walking and driving rather treacherous.

That’s what happened yesterday, and most of us were unprepared. By “most of us,” I mean everyone. The plows weren’t sent out early, drivers weren’t warned about the conditions, and my students, who walk to school, were taken aback by the deceptive intensity of the weather. It looked so pretty and, because it was the first real snowfall of the year, initially caused considerable delight. Delight, that is, for the indoor observer. Those who had to engage with the snow quickly felt their joy diminish.

When I headed out in the morning, we appeared to be enjoying one of those stereotypical picture-perfect snowfalls. The flakes were large, no wind was discernable and, although it felt cold, there was no bite to the air. It was just a nice winter day. As is my habit when I leave home during the winter, I always test my brakes. I want to see if the road is slippery and, if so, gauge how far I’ll slide if I have to stop suddenly. We have lots of deer in the woods surrounding the house, as well as darting squirrels, chipmunks, and a whole menagerie of slower critters I could conceivably encounter in my path. My tires are good, and usually I’ll slide very briefly if at all. Yesterday, however, although the roads looked fine – just an inch or so of snow – I slid and fishtailed when braking at a very low speed. Odd, I thought. I guess it’s more slippery than it looks.

I intended to take my time getting to school and was, in fact, forced to do so almost immediately because I hit a white-out. White-out conditions are my least favorite and I try to avoid them whenever possible. Given where we live, however, it’s inevitable that several times a year I’m going to have to keep driving when I can’t see.

Driving in a white-out requires two things: experience, and faith. I mean faith literally – you have to believe, fervently, that some benevolent force in the universe is going to assist you in your travels. Maybe it’s comparable to the faith some must feel when getting on a plane or stepping into a church. You aren’t entirely sure how that machine stays in the air, you aren’t able to explain, really, who or what or why you believe in whatever religion draws you… Driving in a whiteout is like that: it seems impossible that all over town individuals are at the wheels of two-ton vehicles, maneuvering them blindly towards and away from one another with little mechanical or technological guidance. It seems, honestly, like a miracle every time I get out of the car after driving through the density and chaos of a whiteout.

As for experience, generally speaking, pulling over and waiting out a storm of this kind is not an option. For one thing, you can’t see where to pull over. Where we live, there’s often no shoulder and even if there were, it may not be safe to stop. Approaching drivers can’t see your taillights and you could be at as much risk while parked as you’d be in motion. So you learn to seek out potential markers – either actual landmarks that will indicate your location and help keep you on track, or moving targets, so to speak – other cars. I often feel relieved when I see another vehicle’s taillights or headlights, because they tend to mean I’m still on the road. It doesn’t always indicate that, however – I’ve watched one car follow another car’s lights into a ditch or into a field, unaware that the road had curved.

That didn’t happen yesterday. The ride to school is only seven miles, and I thought that the worst-case scenario meant seven miles of low to no visibility. That’s plenty – even a hundred yards of driving when you can’t see is frightening, no matter how many times you’ve done it. But I had a feeling that the white-outs would be intermittent, and they were. Although there were stretches where I couldn’t see the road at all, the closer I got to the college, the better the visibility became. I thought the worst of the drive was over as I approached the school’s entrance.

The entrance, which would be for me a left turn, is on a sloping road. When conditions are clear and dry, you’d barely notice the slope. Walking up it would require little more exertion than strolling on a flat surface. Even so, I’ve learned, over the years, that the road near the entrance tends to be slippery in winter; I always slow to a crawl on the approach. Yesterday, crawling was too fast. As I began to turn, I also began to slide. I quickly realized I couldn’t complete the turn and so continued straight, downhill, preparing to turn around and take another crack at the entrance. Because it was early, not many other cars were around. As I saw my first opportunity to reverse my course on a side street, I also spotted a mother and her school-age son walking in the street. I knew if I made that particular turn, I might slide directly toward them. I passed up that street and came to a second opportunity. No cars, no humans, no obstacles. I inched around the turn, pulled into a driveway, made my way back onto the main road. This time I was going uphill, just slightly, and could feel my car – all-wheel drive – slip just a tad. That was my second indication that the road was incredibly slick -- normally I’d have had no trouble. I took it slow and turned into the college. I was now on a minor decline that segued into a fairly tight turn. Way ahead of me, a car stopped, waiting to pull into a parking spot. I pumped my brakes, well in advance, I thought, of having to stop. My car began to spin.

I should mention, here, that I’ve been driving for over 34 years. I’ve been pretty lucky, but I’ve also been rear-ended by a preoccupied student; I’ve slid on black ice; I’ve cried after surviving an hour-long white-out; I’ve driven too fast and paid the price; I’ve had the misfortune of hitting squirrels and birds; I crushed my own taillight once when backing up in an unfamiliar parking lot. And, because I live where I live, I’ve spun out before. The last time was on a busy road, two nights before Christmas, and my car came to a rest after narrowly avoiding half a dozen other vehicles, nose to nose with another skidding driver. Our front ends were within an inch of each other; we smiled weakly, waved, and maneuvered back into our respective lanes.

Yesterday, although the road was lined with parked cars, there were no oncoming drivers and nobody was behind me. I was effectively alone, on my own college campus, two minutes away from my office. Although it hadn’t yet fully registered with me, the snow was greasy and, in addition, may have concealed a layer of black ice. I don’t know, to be honest, what was happening beneath my car’s tires; I only know what wasn’t happening. The wheels were not gaining traction, and so my car executed a graceful slow motion spin, sliding as it spun further down the hill. I concentrated on minimizing my panic, tried to assess my surroundings and guard, as best I could, against hitting anything. Eventually the car just stopped, as though it had thrown a sudden tantrum and grown weary of its own misbehavior. I drove back out the entrance – I was now facing the wrong way and the road was too narrow and too slippery to right myself – and went through the whole procedure one more time. I made sure, on attempt number 3, that no cars were around, no students were walking, and took the entrance super slowly. I lucked out this time, as a snowplow preceded me and apparently scraped enough of the surface to allow me to inch to a parking lot without further incident. I then did what every other person who drove to school did: repeated and relived my adventure roughly 30 times, and in return heard other slightly harrowing narratives of other early-morning treks to school. In that manner I learned that at least six vehicles had gone off the road where I’d spun out and the unfortunate drivers had had to wait for hours for tow trucks to assist them in getting on track. I guess, in retrospect, I was lucky.

At the end of the day I was fortunate to have clean roads and clear traveling all the way home. Our driveway, although it had been plowed, had one last surprise in store for me. Although I’ve never hit anything stationary, bar one rear bumper after aforesaid black ice incident twenty years ago, my car slid at the bottom of the driveway – another slope, another curve – and before I could make the turn, rammed the passenger side up against a tree and rock wall that border the pavement. I absorbed the hit, heard the crunch, heard something shatter. I was fine, but a door was dented and a taillight busted.

Today I’m just the tiniest bit sore and more than a tiny bit worried. I’m not looking forward to driving in the snow again, something I’ll have to do today or tomorrow and every day for the next four months. I don’t want to navigate the route to school when the snow blinds me, or feel my car bashed by the wind, or fear that I’ll slide into another vehicle or a tree or a ditch. None of that is fun to contemplate. I won’t dwell on it for long, but since I’m still in the 24-48 hour range, I’m allowing the anxiety to take its toll and then, hopefully, it’ll dissipate and allow me to function normally.

In the meantime, I’m thinking about sliding, about spinning, about losing control of something tangible, like a car. Although it’s not fun, quite, there’s a built-in undercurrent that many might identify as a thrill. It’s thrilling to slide, to spin out, to wonder, in a concentrated and fleeting way, what’s going to happen next. It was so, admittedly, because I could assess, instantly, that the danger level was low. The worst thing that could have happened at school was I’d have hit another car. A bummer and a huge expense, to be sure, but had I gotten hurt it’d have been only mildly due to my exceedingly slow speed. And I probably could have taken out part of a fence at home, maybe some steps, if the car hadn’t hit exactly where it did. I could have crumpled my bumper but there, too, the potential for major damage or injury was low. I was free, in other words, to feel that momentary thrill. It didn’t translate into danger; had there been other moving vehicles or individuals, my reaction in retrospect would be considerably more sober. As it is, I don’t feel any residual elation. I feel low-grade fear and low-grade dread. There’s a dose of resentment, too, because I know I can’t indulge these feelings – I have to get through them, deal with them, tamp them down, shuffle them into the denial folder of my brain. You can’t be scared to drive here. If you are, you’re doomed. You’d have to leave this place, find a safer spot to set down roots. Danger’s part of the package and although I don’t like that aspect of my small town life, I accept it. I accept it the way I accept the blasts of the shots I hear as I type this – hunters stalking deer in posted (no hunting) areas that are, in effect, right outside my door. I accept it the way I accept the bitter cold and the battering wind. These things are facts of life, and there’s little to be done to mitigate or alter them. They’re the reasons for faith, perhaps. But I don’t mean faith in a god, or faith in the good will of human beings, or even faith in myself.

The kind of faith I’m talking about is, maybe, a faith in what I’ll call the sacredness of living -- a secular faith in our collective willingness to set out, day after day, on our individual quests for things we don’t often bother to properly define. “Why do we live here?” people ask, every winter, laughing in bewilderment after hearing or relaying yet another story of near misses on the road or superhuman feats of snow removal or unbelievable narratives of spending a week without electricity or having a tree land on your roof after an ice storm or watching a squirrel contemplate, with the focus of a physicist, exactly where to land after it leapt, blindly, from the third floor of a house to the drifting snow below.

“The heart never fits the journey. Always one ends first.” So wrote the poet Jack Gilbert and, although I think he’s onto something lovely and true, I also think that maybe he’s brushed up sideways against a definition of the kind of faith I know. It’s a faith of refusal – refusal to believe in that inequality. Maybe, despite all evidence to the contrary, the heart is a match for the truest, longest journey, and these beating, love-struck emblems of our very lives are up to the challenge of surviving every last ineffable and unimaginable feat along the way. If we come out with a few dents and bruises along the way, so be it. Part of the ride, part of the thrill of it all is the slipping, the spinning, the long slide towards something we know so little of… We drive in the dark, all of us, don’t we – even though it might look like light, even though we pray, this way or that, to come to a stop in one piece.

Thankful for (in no particular order):

Geese squawking overhead

The endless scribble of tree branches

Sunshine in winter

The sky, the lake

Green apples

Thai food

Sweatshirts and jeans

Newspapers

Poetry

Best American Essays

Writers

Breakfast

Photographs

Fargo, the cat

Shells and stones and bones

Anyone who makes me laugh

My students, colleagues, college, and education in general

Fleece

Leather (sorry)

My 16-year-old car

Bruce

The ability to daydream

Blue. And green.

Post its, paper clips, binder clips (colors!), narrow-lined paper, gel pens, pencils

Being old enough to have learned to type on a manual typewriter

Growing up in New Jersey (my family, the beach, ice skating)

Living in Arizona (the desert, the mountains, UA, Pima)

Life in New York (Leigh. Syracuse. Everything.)

Anne Carson

Autumn

My grandmother’s ring*

Memory

And my friends, who should be at the top of this list or, rather, should have each their own pages, with photos and quotations and video and long, beautiful anecdotes and plenty of sentiment. Je t’adore.

*That's my grandmother, in the photo.

True Loves

If the sensory world – the world we see, smell, hear, touch and taste – is a wondrous story, and each element of that story-world the equivalent of a word, then the first word I fell in love with was water.

It wasn’t the word itself – my infatuation predated my vocabulary – it was the tangible liquid I encountered in creeks, swimming pools, hoses, spigots, the Atlantic Ocean, even bathtubs. In subsequent years I’d fall for tulips, deer, moths, clouds, trees, wind, waves, snow, fields, mountains, geckos… but the first love and, therefore, a defining love, was water.

The way my love manifested itself was simple: I wanted to be in it. Where there was water, my body wandered. I walked in the creek behind my childhood home, noticing how the light played below the surface of the water, how it created moving splotches that sparkled on the silt. I observed but did not understand the phenomenon of refraction when I saw that my leg seemed to shift at the ankle, precisely where it entered the water, as though I were a puzzle that didn’t fit quite right. We had no swimming pool, but I begged neighbors to let me swim in theirs, unashamed of my need, willing to use big eyes and a winsome smile to get my way. I later became embarrassed of my desire, but I learned to swim at 5 and needed – yes, needed – to be submerged. I needed to be not just in the water, but under the water. I wanted to be a fish. I wanted gills and fins. I wanted to live beneath the surface of the sea.

I learned that if the world is a wondrous story, and if an element of that story is the word love, and if desire is a component of love, then a component of desire is unrequitedness.

I would never be a fish. I would never be able to filter oxygen from water, I’d never have a two-chambered heart, never spend my days swimming rather than walking. I would not make a home in a coral reef, would never learn to look up at the light from my perch below the surface. But I’d learn to hold my breath for long minutes, scaring my mother when I’d dart under the ocean waves and surface, too long after, yards from where I’d submerged. I’d learn to dive from a dead stand, or from a ledge, or from my father’s shoulders -- from any solid plane. I’d spend hours in any body of water I could – a pond, a pool, a last-resort tub. Each summer weekend my family would go to the beach, a sandy strip of Jersey shore that felt like home, and I’d enter the water in the morning and exit at sunset. I’d cut my feet on crab shells and have my calf stung by a jellyfish; I’d swallow sea water and I’d tumble in the surf of more than one dangerous undertow. Twice I’d be pulled from the depths, seconds from succumbing to a fantasy of deep-sea life. I remember being held, at 6, in the arms of an uncle while my aunt tried to rinse the weight of sand and seaweed from my hair after I’d been thrashed by the undercurrent. I couldn’t hold my own head up; it was heavy with sand-laden dreadlocks, my swimsuit bulging with pockets of scratchy sand. It was like the sea had tried to claim me; it was like part of me was left behind.

The physical world is a wondrous story, and part of that story is loss. Loneliness is a recurrent theme; loneliness and loss are currents, like desire, like love. Fins filter what we need to breathe; lungs work in conjunction with the heart; dividing lines blur; water erodes even rock to smoothness.

*

Autumn leaves.

Yes, it does. It arrives full of sophisticated glamour and giddy flamboyance, it makes an entrance, it demands attention. Autumn feels, year after year, like I’ve found my soul mate. Year after year I pledge my undying affection, and every time, every time, my heart gets broken.

An unambitious elementary school art teacher introduced me to the art of preserving autumn leaves. We never learned about perspective or the color wheel or the difference between a shade and a tone. But we did iron leaves. All it took was one sheet of waxed paper, which we called “wax paper,” shiny side up. An assortment of colorful leaves –usually maple, some oak, some cherry – was arranged on top, followed by another layer of paper. It was important that the waxy side touched the leaves – the shiny side of the paper had to be facing in, the duller side facing out. Once it was all just right – a wax paper and leaf sandwich – a single page of newsprint was laid across the top, and then a warm iron run over the newspaper. This melted the wax and preserved the leaves. The effect was a somewhat duller version of a stained glass window, but to my kindergarten self it was high art and I never tired of creating the simple compositions. The process engaged me physically, emotionally and even intellectually or, I guess, as intellectually as a 5-year old can be engaged. I was enamored of the idea of preservation, of saving something that might otherwise be lost. For me, the process was absolute – I thought that my pile of art projects would be stored with the care a Smithsonian curator might store rare dinosaur bones. That they ended up on my mother’s refrigerator or, at best, in her hope chest, was sufficient to my understanding of permanence. Those translucent panes of art were forever. They were my first attempts to unite nature and art by my own hand, and they became, in a way, another version of submersion: immersion. Rapture was possible via art. I was five, but I was a poet.

*

What happens when you mix water and autumn leaves? The leaves become saturated or, to say it more simply, their colors explode. During October, the wooden steps leading to our front door are strewn with leaves. On a crisp fall day, the leaves are yellow, orange, red. Still-green leaves are in the mix as well, and sometimes a precocious leaf or two is already brown. When a breeze blows, the brown ones skitter across the stairs like crabs. Close up, most of the leaves are mottled; one color fades into the next, much the way an apple isn’t uniformly red or green but some appealing blend of colors. The leaves are dappled, they’re veined, they’re dead. When they cover the lawn in great drifts, there’s something both baptismal and shroud-like about them. Baptismal, I think, because they beg to be entered, they beckon a body to jump into them, to lie down in them, to be surrounded by a halo of color. Shroud-like because they can feel just as somber as they do festive. Fallen leaves are one of the great metaphors of death. Autumn, we learn in grade school, is the prelude to winter, one segues into the next, and in the catechism of elementary symbolism, neither season leaves much room for kicking up one’s heels. Maybe that’s why we find a pile of leaves irresistible though – it’s temptation, pure and simple. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light and all that. Autumn leaves are seductive and for a little while each year they make my few acres of the world more beautiful.

When it rains on those leaves, their colors don’t change, but they become more vivid. It’s like being inside the Wizard of Oz when the film changes to Technicolor from sepia-toned black and white. The leaves seem more dimensional, revitalized. It’s a little like they are coming back to life.

*

If under some imaginary cosmic regime I were allowed only three great love affairs during my immersion in this wondrous story called the world, I’d start with water, move on to fallen leaves, and end with the calls of geese. Their calls fill me with longing in a way that no other sound or sight ever has. What I long for is not clear; I don’t analyze the feeling nor wish it away nor encourage it. The calls of the geese in their sloppy V formations each fall, each spring, sound funny to some. Sometimes they sound like a pack of barking dogs, sometimes they sound too literal: there are a bunch of big, fat, awkward birds squawking in the sky. But usually, for me, when they’re making their trek from north to south, south to north, criss-crossing right over my house in the woods, sometimes ten or twenty groups a day, usually, then, they seem to speak to me in an inexplicable language, a vocabulary that I understand not intellectually but in my blood, in my bones. Do I want to leave with them? I do. Do I want to fly? I do. Do I want to navigate by unknown means to unknown places? What do those calls say to me, how can I explain why they move me so? I don’t know. I am drawn to the depths of the sea and the heights of the sky. That sounds extravagant, overly dramatic… but I am extravagant and dramatic about the things I love.

No love, perhaps, is ever quite requited enough. Maybe that’s what it’s all about: to see how far we can love, how deep, how much, how often, how long. To push it. To see what we can endure when the love returned is not exactly the love we had in mind. To learn how to persevere when our love is not returned at all.

The tide goes out, the geese depart, autumn leaves.

And the tide rises, the geese return, spring pings its way into buds and blossoms. It’s like the world’s story cannot be contained, sometimes. Like when you walk out of the water on a summer day and feel the sting of salt tightening your skin. Break out of your body, break out of your body…

Some things can’t be contained. Some puzzles take a lifetime.

Five

The first time I kissed a girl I was in college. I was pretty naïve for even a freshman; there had been no openly gay kids in high school and, in the late 70’s, there were considerably fewer representations of the “gay lifestyle” in popular culture. I had thought, for the first 18 years of my life, that I was straight. I liked boys, I’d had plenty of crushes, had fallen in love in that particularly passionate way that teenagers do. The guy I loved in high school was a little older than me, smoked cigarettes, had long blond hair that he always had to brush out of his eyes. We got into most of the kinds of trouble that teenagers tend to get into. I had no inkling – not a spark, not a sign, not a clue – that my attraction to boys would morph into an attraction to girls.

But so it did, and even then I was slow to catch on. I thought it was just this one girl, this one summer, thought it was just a phase… But then there was a second girl. And a third. And to my surprise I eventually realized that I was a girl who liked girls.

I’ve been pretty lucky over the last 30 years. Nobody ever physically hurt me, nobody singled me out for bullying. Sure, once I was walking near Syracuse University, happily smitten and holding my girlfriend’s hand, and someone yelled out “faggot!” And there was a brief period of time where I’d get anonymous phone calls from someone who would hiss the word fag! and hang up. A woman I once considered a friend told me she didn’t mind that I was gay, but she probably wouldn’t let me babysit her kids. All of those were difficult experiences – upsetting, rattle-me-to-the-core experiences – but overall, I was spared the merciless taunting and harassment that so many kids and teenagers endure.

This contemporary version of harassment puzzles me a bit, in part because I teach in a college and I’ve witnessed attitudes change radically in the last decade or so. Students today are often very supportive of their gay and lesbian classmates. This is true in many high schools as well. Young people are, in general, more educated about homosexuality, more open, and more accepting.

At the same time, it’s almost impossible to walk down the halls of any middle school, high school or even college and not hear someone use the word “gay” in what is considered, often, a joking manner. “That’s so gay.” “You’re gay, dude.” “Quit it; that’s gay.”

If I asked anyone using the word in the above manner what they meant by it, here’s what they’d say: it has nothing to do with being gay. It’s just the way we talk. We’re just kidding around. Everybody says it.

I believe them.

I also believe that they should stop using the word in that way. Why?

Because it carries within it an insult. The insult might be subtle, it might be meant as a joke, it might even be said with affection, but gay – used in this way – equals less. Less cool, less important, less macho, less desirable, less accepted, less good, less normal. Less than everyone who’s not called gay. Just less.

And guess what? We hear you. We – all of us who are gay, whether happily so, or confusedly so, or newly so, or proudly so, or enduringly so – we hear you. We hear you mock us, laugh at us, trivialize us, intimidate us, bully us, demean us… we hear you. Even when you don’t know we’re listening. Even when you don’t know we’re gay. Even when you’d swear up and down that you didn’t mean anything by it. We hear you.

And, to be blunt, it hurts.

The words you think are funny – just stupid, meaningless jokes – are hurtful. We – your sisters and brothers, your cousins, your classmates, your neighbors and colleagues, your coworkers – get our feelings hurt just like you do and sometimes, for some of us, it’s hard to get over it.

When you’re a 13-year-old boy and teased relentlessly for being WHO YOU ARE, it’s hard to get over it.

When you’re a lonely 15-year-old girl who’s harassed relentlessly for being WHO YOU ARE, it’s hard to get over it.

When you’re an 18-year-old boy who’s videotaped and mocked for being WHO YOU ARE, it’s hard to get over it.

And so what, right? Everyone gets their feelings hurt, everyone has to learn to toughen up, everyone has to navigate a whole architecture of social constructs and social pressures and social cues and isn’t that what growing up is? Don’t we all have to deal with situations like this, where someone makes fun of us and we have to figure out how to get through it?

I guess so. Sure. Okay, yeah, lots of us go through it.

But for a significant number of gay and lesbian kids and teenagers and young adults, the difference is that they see no end to their struggle. They can’t imagine that it will get better. Plenty of adults, after all, are homophobic. It’s not uncommon to hear an adult mutter “faggot” or “homo” or to warn their kids that they better not turn out to be gay when they grow up. How can these kids imagine that it’ll get better, when grown-ups seem just as bad, or worse, than their peers? The adult world, in their eyes, doesn’t appear too promising.

I don’t know if I could have withstood being mocked or harassed or teased or bullied. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have. I’m pretty sure I would have become withdrawn and depressed and maybe even suicidal. I know I wouldn’t have been able to talk to my parents about it. Whether I could have confided in a friend or not, I don’t know. I don’t remember everything about my 14-year- old self, or my 18-year-old self, or even my 25-year-old self. But I’m pretty sure I wasn’t resilient enough to endure what some kids endure these days.

It seems like it takes a tragedy to wake people up. We have to hit bottom before we can find ways to improve. Well, five teenagers are dead this fall, all suicides, all gay. That seems like the bottom to me.

I don’t think it’s enough to reassure a depressed or frightened kid that it will get better. I believe it will – I know it will – and I love the campaign that celebrities have begun to support gay youth by telling their own stories and affirming that it does, indeed, get better. We have to do more than that though. We have to change our ways.

So I wonder… How hard would it be to start changing on the level of language? Would it hurt anyone to stop using the word “gay” in a derogatory or joking manner? Would it hurt anyone to stop calling people fags or queer? Would anyone’s life be diminished by taking that one baby step?

I’d appreciate it, from the bottom of my heart, if you could try.