Author: Bill Hudson (Page 2 of 3)

Sidewalk-Creep.

You know what it is, though you may not have heard the proper name for it.

There is nothing quite so savage, as those tufts of grass that grow up along the edges of our our sidewalks, slowly moving towards the center…threatening to reclaim domestic footpaths for “The Wild”.

Kind of leaves you wishing that Uncle Gary and Aunt Linda had gotten you that edger for Christmas doesn’t it; instead of that fuzzy pair of socks and 30 bucks to your favorite restaurant?

Why do we seek absolute comfort and perfection and trim back the wildness, with such disdain?

Recently, I left running from the cover of my front porch on the morning of a steady rain. A part of me opted to return to the house, get in my car, and use the treadmill at my father in law’s house.

Why does it feel like such a primal thing to go running in the rain?

Here, I met another kind of Sidewalk-creep that I adore; the kind that comes up along the “edges” of my soul.

This morning I started down the street, my mind a blank slate; ready to receive from my surroundings, as I felt each drop of rain against my face.

At first there was only the quiet,
voices too timid to be heard.
Or, I too timid to hear them?

I heard only the beats of my feet.
I turned left, right, then left again.
Passing the factory-sized bakery at the one mile mark (though I did not bring a device to beep off my mileage)-yet another way I have become a savage! I ran down Broadway and rounded the corner, glancing up at the backside of the city water tower, as I turned into the wind and rain that moved down Main Street, in a slant.

Next was the brick crypt before the Baptist Church, dedicated to a man called Jack who shares my Surname-though as far as I know-I am the first of my kin in this area I still wondered about his story.

I passed two antique stores and a gift boutique. Two not yet open for the day and one open by appointment only. I reminded myself to stop in and buy that lamp I have been eyeballing, and took notice of the stained-glass shutters in the darkness of the third shoppe.

Moving past the bay window, and the last of the storefronts, my thoughts became more lines of poetry, though the lines were not orderly framed within words. At the same time I was aware that I was no longer having to will my feet forward; I drifted in a numbness of ease along the iron fence of the cemetery, welcoming the soft morning light. And bowing a head to the concrete angel, and memory other names around-Blackburn, Staniford, and Weber. Who were they to you?

Another left.
Halfway down Mountgomery now.

The small, painted, yellow-brick house.
Modest with oversized porch lights, holding three candle bulbs each; not closed into square glass encasements, but shining through numerous, polygonic plates refracting light into the still, brightening of morning.

Not last of all the stone house,
chimney affront,
front door just to the left.

I have often felt my soul wish to inhabit this place. In, through the blue door, beneath the red leaves of two Japanese Maples.

The stone white.
The house small.
My soul, wishing to be simple.

Before she knew us
Safely, we had arrived
Into the circle of her prayer

Daily she sends out, these
Her little ships of prayer

Quiet, eyes closed
She sits with palms overlapping

One thumb,
Resting against the other;
A centering, of her prayer

Our chairs, gathered close
Sweet smells dwell in the room
A formality of introduction

We meet a woman—Mary
Her voice, a distant shore
Prayers, mixed in among the flour
As her hands, had kneaded the dough

Our hands resting here,
Her spirit, outside of time

Our minds, adrift
Upon turbulent seas
Awaiting the days ahead

Sending us away, this evening
With a Sister’s blessing:
Her prayers for us, yesterday
Baked into bread, for today

Little triangles, of lemon-raisin scents
These, the sails of our ships;
For stormy days ahead

Ships of blessing,
Fit to travel the midst of un-calm seas

I walk the gallery of things forgotten.

Brushing past the curved back of a maple chair,
sliding a withered hand over the smooth, worn surface of a wooden desk;
a desk holding an empty photo frame.

I trace the smoke, lines of birch wood.
My fingers led to grip an object…slim and red with enameled handle;
fanned bristles at one end.

I have lost the word.
A man I know, used one well…and used one often.

I cannot tell. Are the bristles damp to the touch?
Was it years ago he painted flowers for me,
or has he only just rinsed the paint…?

Even when I forget the name of ‘flower’,
will I remember how much I have loved them?
Will I be able to receive their healing fragrances,
even when I have forgotten how to act towards them?

I am afraid. Soon all the words will go,
like the face vanished from the photo frame.

The picture, removed. Now only rivets;
holding against the folding rest, of the frame.
I am afraid of when the frame will go.

Then, I feel a familiar hand on my shoulder.
Now a familiar voice.

It no longer matters, what photo, the rivets had pushed against;
what round imprints were made against a face,
for which I have lost the name.

Soon, the wooden desk will be reduced
to just a desk, and then something less;
something far from resembling a tree.

I am unafraid that the last things I shall know,
are tree, and rock, and water. And flower;
long after I have lost their names.

Long after the names have gone,
Will be a calming voice:
You are my rock and my guiding light.

By his words, he still paints pictures for me.
And when the last names go,
he will be someone who still remembers…
the path, to the fountain, at Hahn Circle.

How I love the movement of the trees,
how I love the fragrance of the flowers,
and the sound of water sweeping over rock.

I am beautiful.
And he, is my frame.

As I fall, again, into repose, I become aware;
that all things must come to rest.

The push to the summit, perilous;
there are those that will refuse to kneel.

Rest, for them, will not come at the top;
for those bent on conquering another hill.

The mountain, stands
that I may learn to kneel.

In repose, I gain strength
and a mountain rises up within me;
a mountain, to match the mountain.

From repose, I rise.

At the end of my life, I will remember this day; a day that I took a few moments to be still.

A Tuesday that was not just a box between two other boxes, on a calendar. Putting my finger down against the glossy, white paper my finger is a break-water between the tumultuous waves of the future and the placid stillness of the past.  A friend of mine set the path, and I left the way open.

Taking a break from the over-scheduled days of a busy work week, we planned to carry our lunches in a pack and travel to a place among the clouds.

Just a couple days before our trip my friend’s wife was involved in a car accident. Thankfully no one was severely injured, but the experience was not a pleasant one! The car-on the road in front of her-had run a red light, was struck by a large truck, and spun around full-circle smashing into her car’s front.

So, here we were, a couple days later: two guys that usually take our road trips riding up high in the cab of a truck, riding near the ground in a small silver sedan; a rental car that we would never occupy again, embarking on a trip that would live on in memory… never to be duplicated. The “new car smell” put things into a more clear perspective for me that our routines are indeed not really routine, and that second-to-second none of our experiences are ever, really, duplicated. Though the events of our days often share common traits, no day, or trip, or experience is ever truly repeated. Each day is new.

As I looked the car over we began discussing plans for the day. We were both on tight timelines; having to be back to the city with enough time to pick-up our sons from school in the early afternoon. Still, the road stretched out generously in front of us, as the new day awakened in a colorful bouquet of possibility.

“Where do you want to go?” my friend asked taking a sip from his stainless, steel coffee cup-a quality in his voice framed the question as if we had all the time in the world.

“Let’s make the hike out to Cloud Splitter.” I followed, “Isn’t that the place you mentioned we should go the next time we were out?”

And so, in 5 seconds we had formulated the full extent of our plan for the day:

We would hike out to a cliff face called ‘Cloud Splitter’… a place far from being able to touch any actual clouds, but one of the highest elevations in the Red River Gorge; and a place that-I would come to find-has a great view of the clouds and a place where even on a calm day we would not have to stand still to feel wind against our faces.

In the stillness though, we would feel the wind in a different way.

Moving down the ramp, towards the Mountain Parkway, we could feel the wind pushing on the tiny sedan from its side as we traveled east along a stretch of road that we both knew with overwhelming familiarity. Quietly I speculated-though, I never actually put words around it-that in that moment we were both reveling in our first few moments of true freedom in probably weeks. Life is so fast you often have to be speedily moving away from it, before the feeling of it sweeping past you leaves you free to consider it.

Each time we step out into these woods… the trees, the hills, and the clouds always remind me of the depths of their novelty-and in their stillness everything is made new.

The unplanned details of each trip are always the most treasured: the interesting strings of conversation, the ideas of grand epiphany, and the last-second: “How about we check this out real-quick?” Certainly, this trip offered no exception!!

Finishing our drive, we put miles-and-miles between us and the city as we started up a few strands of conversation. My friend-being a musician-we had often enjoyed discussing the inspiration for a few of his songs on our drives through the hills and the trees. On this particular trip my questions reached a bit further than usual: to the depths of his family heritage and came back around, to the surface, into some wild tale-of-a-song that he had written in his younger years, inspired by a young, adolescent adventure in which he “left his home in a terrible way”. A few of the verses of his song had me grinning ear-to-ear shaking my head at the memory of some of the things I had done.

We were all a little wild once… were we not? I found myself thinking, as his crazy story continued.

There is definitely some untamed part in the youth of our souls… and into the wildness my friend and I were now returning. The energy of youth and the raw vigor that we find in nature have their roots in the same, fertile ground.

My friend had a great idea for this relatively “warm” day in January-the river still ice-cold (by any standard.) So, up over the hill he sent me with two green, glass bottles in hand. I placed a couple Kentucky soft drinks down into the cool of the river bank; setting them up next to a tree branch emerging from the river silt. I twisted them by their bottle necks back-and-forth anchoring them down into the silt (so that they would not be carried off downstream), and then positioned another branch to run along the front and hem them in. Then, turning back to the steepness of the riverbank, I carefully picked my steps away from the mud streaks that had just about shot me down face-first into to water… and worked my way back up over the rise.

“Those will go down quite smoothly after our return hike.” My friend commented, as I crested the hill and stopped short of the gravel parking lot. I breathed into my nostrils the fresh, crisp air and closed my eyes… feeling the absolute freedom of not being behind a desk working, on a day when I was supposed to be behind a desk working. I felt a few pounds lighter in weight, in spite of the back-pack that I pulled from the trunk of the car and up around the curve of my shoulder-surely the back-pack weighed at least as much as my laptop bag, but it certainly didn’t seem so.

Crossing the gravel lot and leaving the trail head we hiked down along the river and both marveled at how green the water appeared on this January day; how green the river looked in the deeper pools… while the shallows took on the brownish tint of the river bottom below. I wasted no time turning our conversation, bending it right along with the river-as we had much more to discuss-and asking how “the book” was going. In addition to his musical talents, my friend has written a few plays… and has been working on writing his first novel.

Snapping a few pictures of my author friend down by the river side (or often times starring out into the distance of some breathtakingly beautiful, scenic overlook) it has been my typical joke that I have just captured the “perfect image” for his book cover!

My friend did give me some “Photo Cred” for the Christmas card that he sent of his family this past year-even if the photo credit was only handwritten onto the card that was addressed to my family alone! Ha!! This is the way friendships are supposed to be: lots of laughs but with the wholeness of sincerity too, adding a brilliance of color that will always surprise you and in the presence of true friendships it is easy to believe that the most unimaginable things are simply: possible.

I am nowhere near as ambitious as my friend, but all the while as we have been walking I turn over-and-over in my head what my next writing projects will be. I do tell him a few of the ideas that I have perculating; but the rest are locked away in the depths, and for a short time there is a bit of silence, that we both entertain; where not a word is being said.

For a few minutes the “quiet” sounds of the natural world wash over us; and they infuse our spirits with the healing of non-agenda. My friend and I have become travelers, but travelers that get only small glimpses of where we may be going.

After moving past the quiet, and those few moments of my consideration of “what our journey may be all about,” I try to remember a quote and share a snippet from a podcast that I had recently listened to; words from an interview with author, Pico Iyer; an author that I have made plans to read more of in the coming year. Pico is a writer with a strong sentiment, and his most recent publication explores the mystery of stillness:

“Now, the great adventure is the inner world.”

“Anybody who travels knows that you’re not really doing so to move around; you’re traveling in order to be moved. And really what you are seeing is not just the Grand Canyon or The Great Wall, but some moods, or intimations, or places inside yourself that you never ordinarily see when you’re sleepwalking through your daily life.”^[1]

Following my comment, our “navigator” sends me on an excursion up a trail that forks to our left, away from the stream that we had run up against and then up along-side the foundations of a cliff face reaching far above. This path-I eventually discover-comes around the rise and back across and down more challenging terrain, to meet back up with the very same stream. This put me right, back behind my friend who had continued down the main trail; knowing that I eventually would catch-up.

Only a few minutes later, as I looked up from the base a humongous pine tree, we were again discussing the navigation of our outer world and attempted to confirm our directional heading.

“I can’t remember”, my friend says, “It might be up this way.”

He reminded me that it had been several years or so since he had been out this way and, personally, I had never been out to this particular point-of-interest… So, he again sent me on another excursion to scout things out while he returned into the variant shades of green on his well-worn, topological map. He held the paper delicately from below, as he moved his finger along the places of highest elevation and over the torn folds and creases of the map.

Coming down off the ridge, I told him that I could see a more substantial elevation in-and-around the next bend. Looking up from the map he agreed and we pressed-on; following the trail about a half mile further. And there it was, a signpost of sorts-right there, etched into the bark of a pine tree-an arrow pointing to higher ground. I could have told you then… and will say the same now: that in most aspects of life there are certainly always higher paths to follow. No exception here, as our boots carried us upward.

Walking past a rude arrow carved into the tree, would-on this trip and all trips to follow-serve as a marker and a reminder of this day and the story that follows.

C-S, two letters, (one letter positioned just over the other; and then an arrow below them) pointing us up the hill… and leading us closer to our destination. Cloud Splitter was near!

How had I been hiking the Gorge all these years and never know this formation was right here? I had (more times than I could count) been hiking not 3 miles from this very spot. Yet, here we stood starring 30ft up at a solemn tree, against a gray, clouded sky and beginning of our accent of Cloud Splitter.

We began climbing a narrow crack-between two mammoth rocks-that ran, in a vein, all the way up between the stones to the base of a tiny, lonely tree high above. Against the abstract of the clouds the small tree was a strikingly profound image. We used a dead, tree truck about halfway up as a pivot point for the climb-a climb that would have otherwise been quite dangerous without the assistance of a rope.

Finally, the haze of the over-cast sky seemed to lessen a bit as we pulled ourselves-up by our hands-overtop the two hard stones and glanced up into the sky, a fleece of dinged cotton stretched far above our heads. The sky looked like the batting of a dim quilt; a bright expanse swathed in a blanket of gray, cotton clouds that held in them a network of thin veins. Beautiful, bright, veiled branches where the light could almost pass through.

Both of us leaning over the edge, I commented on our total reliance for the tiny tree growing up, and curving out, through the center of the crack… after a moment of looking back we both turned to look ahead; revealing that we had just climbed the tip of the “ice burg” that was Cloud Splitter. How could I have not known this was here?!!

I stood in the cold wind, while my friend walked on. I watched as his shirt-tail whipped in the wind gusts that raged against my back… and he appeared as a tiny miniature person; inspecting, what I assumed to be, the gigantic “split” of Cloud Splitter: a huge boulder of mega-monolithic proportions, split right down the middle into two distinct halves!

My friend chose the larger, left hemisphere of the dome-shaped monolith (as this appeared to be the only plausible path to the summit). Standing back in awe, while my companion walked up the lesser grade, he continued to ascend what was still a 60 degree climb of one of the most gigantic rock formations that I had ever visited in the Gorge. And glancing down at my hand I thought of how small my friend appeared-and though, his head stands five-to-six inches higher than my own and though he has a more substantial build-, he looked about as small as an insect would look crawling up the back of my hand towards a knuckle. In paradox, on this great rock we were tiny, little men climbing up what looked like the rounded back of a giant beetle. The two halves of the boulder (that are split in a hard black line, down the middle) flare out, narrowly to the sides, like the wings of a humongous insect preparing to take flight. The wind we felt in gusts, sweeping furiously past us, ready to lift the insect into flight.

Minding the wind, I begin carefully walking along the left of the split. From what I could see, the split began at a width of 3 feet or so and then narrowed towards the top, where the wings of the gargantuan beetle finally came together. Leaning over and placing my hands on the other side of the split I could feel the wind shooting powerfully up-and-over the back of the beetle-shaped formation. And looking down through the narrow crevice it appeared that the split, between the wings, closed up tightly into blackness below. I could only see straight down about 10 feet or so, until the light faded into darkness…

A few minutes earlier, when I was standing at the start of the massive split, I had noticed that each of the walls of the “split” were only 5/6 feet high and I had debated on jumping down on the dirt ledge and following the crack on through; in order to see how far into Cloud Splitter I could travel before getting wedged into the rock. Another thought had swooped in however, and in sensing the passing of time-as the sun had moved over head-and as I noticed my friend disappearing over the rise… I decided there was simply not enough time.

Grabbing the shoulder straps of my back pack and pulling my thumbs together over my chest, I quickened my pace and with a growl in my stomach, I thought: about time for lunch.

Catching up to my fellow hiker I found him 300 yards up the trail that snaked around almost 90 degrees from the head of the summit… he had stopped under a small group of evergreen trees, and was pulling his pack off his shoulder. He placed a portable gas stove in a low point between patches of rock and dirt, in a place that offered only minimal shelter from the noise and exposure of the wind.

As lunch time had been approaching, my amigo had told me along the way about some “Health food” that he had brought along for us… and next to the stove he unloaded a mound of individually-wrapped, packets of food. All the bare essentials: 2 small canisters of potato chips, 2 Styrofoam pales of freeze-dried noodles and a single box of peanut-butter cookies for us to share.

While waiting for the water to boil, I cut the sandwich I had brought in my pack down the middle and offered one half to my friend who graciously accepted the half, and then over-graciously offered me back the tomatoes from his half.

Pouring the first pot of steaming water into one of the noodle pails, we covered it with the lid from my sandwich container and waited for the noodles to “soften”.-Another boiling pot of water later… we would be all-set for the main course and in anticipation, with the remaining few bites of my sandwich in hand, I walked out from among the tree cover and took in the desolate, bleak, winter beauty of our phenomenal, clifftop view.

Moving my toes towards the highest edge of the cliff face, in awe, I noticed this was quite a spot to be eating lunch!! We had hiked up along the road, which ran in parallel to the river, but all I could see now was the blue of the river! Stretching-out directly from the line of where my feet were planted (and where the rocks fell away from the horizon), at a perfect perpendicular… the river snaked out into a distant view of scrubby, leaf-less trees that lined it’s banks. From this height the dark branches of the trees distorted the image of most everything below; save for the sparkling sapphire of the river. The depths of the green river we had seen earlier this day had now taken on the color of sky, even while the sky was still covered and the sun had not graced us all the day. The wind, now, had actually picked-up a bit even from its previous strength, with gusts violent enough to threaten turning over our noodle cups… so we grabbed our noodle pails and stepped down the cliff face a little ways, towards the river, settling down about 20 paces from the summit to a small bench of rock that offered a very small, but welcome shelter from the wind.

Sitting on that low bench, high above the world… our feet were stretched out in front of us. And as we finished our noodles and the warm broth my friend had fired on the stove, we wrapped up a few conversations we had started throughout the day. My good friend attempted to put words around what he had been thinking along our trek. Not caring how the words might sound, he spoke of his desire to be tied into a more “organic form of spirituality”. A presence of a spirit that is small and natural but, allowing him to sense that we are only small parts in the incomprehensible largeness-that is this life.

Just as the words escaped his mouth, the wind that had been whipping around the cliff side died down and we had a perfect view of two, great blankets of cloud that parted ways. In that moment, the warmth of the sun hit our faces and the absence of wind was the absence of sound. Neither of us were looking around; neither of us looking at this visual spectacle. In the brightness our eyes were closed, and while I cannot speak for my friend… I was moved to my very depths, on this day!!

Opening my eyes and seeing his still closed, I can look back now and see this truth…

I realize now, that there was all along access to a more organic spirituality, and that we did not have to climb a mountainside to find it-in the stillness, we found it there.

Pico Iyer shares his idea of stillness (in going to a place called “Nowhere”)

“[Nowhere is] probably ‘the wilderness’ and the wilderness is probably the place where one finds illumination. But, the reason I came up with that funny formulation is that I noticed when I began traveling a lot, 30 years ago, I would talk about going to Cuba or going to Tibet and peoples’ eyes would light up with excitement and now-a-days I notice that peoples’ eyes light most in excitement when I talk about going nowhere or going ‘offline’ and I think that a lot of us have the sense that we are living at the speed of light (at a pace determined by machines) and that we’ve lost the ability to live at the speed of life.”

“And so whoever you are, whether you’re a mother raising kids or someone going into the office you know that [really] you’re extracting the meaning only when you’re away from it… and I sometimes think we are living so close to our lives that we can’t make sense of them. And that’s why people like me go on retreat, or some people meditate or do Yoga, or other people go for runs. Each person-I think now-has to take a conscious measure to separate ourselves from experience just to be able to do justice to experience and to process and understand what is going on in [our lives and direct ourselves.]”

“A lot of us have gotten caught up in this cycle [racing from one text to the next, to the appointment, to the cell phone, to the emails] that we don’t know how to stop and isn’t sustaining us in the deepest way. And I think we all know that our outer lives are only as good as our inner lives… so to neglect our inner lives is really to incapacitate our outer lives; so we don’t have so much to give to other people or the world, or our job, or our kids.”^[2]

I did not share all these words with my friend, right then, but I think we both felt the stillness of the moment… and we felt the hand behind that moment; a hand strong enough to still the wind, still our minds, and split the clouds.

Sitting on a shelf, high above the world is not a place that you can stay forever, and any of the words that I or my friend could write are not able to hold a candle flame to the depth of such a moment, but it is in these moments that we must gather our strength.

The cold chill of the wind, as it picked back up directly, had quickly closed the gap in the clouds and was finally enough to prod us back into motion. While standing and packing our things my mind stirred again with the tasks that beckoned from the other end of our day. Packing up our lunch containers and wrappers, we took our last sips of water and proceeded back the way we had come.

Looking down at the clock on my mobile phone, I realized that we had to make the trip back to the car in double-time if we were wanting to make it back into the city with enough time to manage the pick-up line at the elementary school, and I became set on that notion…

But, then come those words from my friend:

HOW ABOUT WE CHECK THIS OUT REAL QUICK!?

As we were descending back down the giant beetle’s back, he had thrown off his pack and dropped down into the dirt landing of the split. He waited for me there at the opening and let me go in front as he asked me what I thought…

Taking a few steps back into the crevice the wings of the beetle soared higher and higher above my head. Reaching the place where I could have looked straight up and seen myself looking down-not an hour ago-from this horizontal vantage point, I could see that the darkness gave way back to the light.

I saw that the split in the rock ran back 100 feet or so where a glimmer of light shined directly back through the passage in this truly, spectacular rock formation; the light illuminated the inner walls of this formation and met the wind as it howled past us, up over our shoulders and across our necks.

“It looks like we may be able to climb up and over and all the way through!!” I say, as I am looking back and see my friend’s eyes get as big around as silver dollars.

We are both young at heart, and the very thought of this mystery ignites something deep within us… it may be GRAND to go Nowhere but, today we are going Somewhere, and Somewhere greater still!!!

Climbing up a sturdy, log branch, wedged into the passage, and up through where the wind tunnel got the tightest, even myself (with a smaller frame) had to turn my shoulders sideways and squirm through the diamond-shaped portal of light.

On our journey through the heart of the earth we saw that hanging down along-side of the branch was a thick, worn braided rope. We knew that we were not the first two guys to have discovered this alternate dimension, but you could not have discerned this from any change in our level of excitement!!

Working my way through the small opening and looking back at the way we had come was an amazing sight to behold. And in dropping myself down the other side and hollering back through for my friend, he wanted a full report of my findings-even as he anxiously had already begun his own ascent.

The narrow passage finally opened-up to a sizeable cavern on the other end of Cloud Splitter somewhere down below the high bench that we had been reclining on. The side of the cave opened up in a sizable balcony that allowed us to step out and see the path back home. We were a couple kids on Christmas morning! Sweet Christmas, this was an amazing day that would live on in memory!!

A true friend reminded me that we must make time for the unimaginable! We both gathered strength on this day, and recognized that the strength we gathered flowed from something that was awakened, deep within us, not from external places that can only be found by the few.

In reading a small volume from Pico entitled “The Art of Stillness”, I agree that many people are afraid of stillness because that is where we confront our beasts… but the beasts from the wilderness will surely devour our outer worlds if we ignore them; leaving them to roam free, the landscapes of our inner worlds.

A last quote from The Art of Stillness, leaves us on higher ground still:

“It takes courage, of course, to step out of the fray, as it takes courage to do anything that’s necessary, whether tending to a loved one on her deathbed or turning away from the sugar coated doughnut. And with billions of global neighbors in crying need, with so much in every life that has to be done, it can sound selfish to take a break or go off to a quiet place. But as soon as you do sit still, you find that it actually brings you closer to others, in both understanding and sympathy. As the meditative video artist Bill Viola notes, it’s the man that steps away from the world whose sleeve is wet with tears for it.

In any case, few of us have the chance to step out of our daily lives often, or for very long; Nowhere has to become somewhere we visit in the corners of our lives by taking a daily run or going fishing or just sitting quietly for 30 minutes every morning (a mere 3 percent of our waking hours). The point of gathering stillness is not to enrich the sanctuary or mountaintop but to bring that calm into the motion, the commotion of the world.”^[3]

[1] Krista Tippet, “The Art of Stillness”, Interview with Pico Iyer, 2015

[2] Krista Tippet, “The Art of Stillness”, Interview with Pico Iyer, 2015

[3] Iyer, Pico. The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere. New York: TED Books Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2014

What field has flattened your way,
Clouded your minds horizon, made silent the whispers of your ambition?

A tremendous project at work?
The uprooting of your family?
The wellness of one that you love?

What two bright, peaks can you see in the distance? You must see them; for we do not travel an endless plain.

Name them, and they will rise up before you.

They are all the same, though their frames are different.
Silver, red, blue and black… a line of cars sit in a row,
as their drivers speak into a speaker and listen to garbled tones.

At the window will be a drink made-to-order.
A custom cup served up with a smile,
steaming-hot or chilled on ice, but steeped in attention no less.

Me in my in plaid blue shirt, the one with the pocket once torn.
Thoughtfully this shirt was mended for me; I cannot escape that stream of affection.
And I grin when thinking of the little foot that did the tearing.

Caught up in today’s rush torn garments are of little value,
they are discarded without a second thought;
with little regard for the hands capable of mending.

I consider the careful fingers able to do the stitching…
somehow their care makes it into the weave, I have a feeling.
The few stiches over my chest give me a full suit of armor.

Perhaps the hands that serve our tea offer the same kinds of blessing;
hands attending to battered hearts and words to tired minds.
We are line of wounded persons being steeped in careful attention.

True, I do not “get out” much these days, but I do know an interesting conversation when I enter one!

Having two kids and one on the way it is not often that my wife and I get an afternoon away to entertain new ideas or even have the opportunity to cross paths with new people. Ironic we should have met a new person in an antique store, but less and less strange as we discovered that this gentleman belonged in there.

It had been a spontaneous decision to stop off at the store for a minute… as Aunt Kimmie had offered to watch the kids for a few hours and we were only driving through town to drop off the water bill and return some library books. Parking behind the city park, like so many times before, this time I did not offer up lip service saying “I would like to go in there sometime.” Instead there was no reason keeping us from stopping in: no busy hands to break things, no little tummies that were hungry, and no promises of ice cream treats to stain little cheeks. So…when my wife said “Oh look, the antique store. Do you want to go in for a bit?” I stood there strangely pondering and found it bizarre that I actually had a choice in the matter on this particular morning! It took me a while to answer, but finally “Yes…yes I think I do!” was my reply.

I loved absolutely everything about our visit. The old brick that welcomed us was more than facade, it led on among four walls of times forgotten with thick, heavy rafters running overhead. Each beam appeared to be a single cut log, tree trunks really, that had noticeably been shored up with hand tools; tool marks and lines of imperfection gave each beam a certain individuality and they stole my attention for some time. We walked down the right side of the store admiring aged cherry and mahogany desks, looking in all their secret compartments and asking questions about little knick-knacks that were displayed on each and every shelf and surface.

The kind lady that worked the right half of the store, explained that she ran the “furniture-part” of the store and that this building once operated as an ice house. Today the building held in its’ frame antique furniture (some from roughly the same time period as the building itself) and the other half of the store was a custom framing operation for portraits and prints. For a minute I sat, reclined, in an old Quaker rocking chair that I was afraid was going to drop me, but it sure enough did not. Just after poking my head around the wall that divided the two halves of the store, I saw that the other side had only fabrics and framing materials… and its’ few employees, I presumed, standing up toward the front.

I sat for a moment in a replica of a corner chair before my wife Mel and I scooted-off up the thick cut, timber stairs that curled up the back wall to the loft of the ice house. We could feel how old the wood was beneath our feet as the darkness of the stair well opened to the brightness of the upper floor. There were not many things up top, so I walked toward a front window and was pleased to discover some old soda bottles, and I am glad I did but not solely because I am a collector.

When I made my way back down the stairs, with an arm full of glass treasures, another lady working the desk on the framing-side of the store began wrapping each bottle and nestling it down into a brown paper bag branded “Ice House Oddities”. About that time I heard a raspy but, exuberant voice ask me “Ya ever go bottle digg’in!?” I informed the man behind the voice that I would not know where to look.

So we began in what I thought would be a two phrase exchange. Again, I am glad that it was not.

A gray haired man in a pair of bi-focal glasses and with a button-up, pocket shirt continued in his advice, that if I were to locate an old outhouse that I could dig up plenty of bottles. Fifty years ago, I suppose, that would have been a pretty grotesque endeavor but, now-a-days I would only be digging through fertile soil… that did much to change my image of the scene. The man further explained that back when indoor plumbing was introduced that folks began using the outhouses as garbage dumps and how those times were long before concerns of “The Environment” were so very prolific.

Not yet finished in our exchange over the subject of outhouses, he had mentioned that every so often the outhouses would have to be dug-out (i.e. cleaned out) and this old timer went on to educate me on a few new terms. A gully he said was just a valley where two good sized hills settled into a ditch (being a country boy myself, I was savvy on this term) and a washer he said was when a torrent of rain would come through and send a “Gully Washer” down through the trench. The washer term was one that I had never before heard of being applied to a down-pouring of rain.

Now, a clever friend of his had positioned his outhouse just at the mouth of a gully and so every few months when a Gully Washer would come through, the cleaning of his friend’s outhouse was naturally automatic. Sending me into a wry smile and a few chuckles I had commented that this brought on a whole new meaning to the term “Gully WASHER” and danged if this old man didn’t miss a single beat and exclaim, “Yeah, how about a Gully FLUSHER?”

We all three broke into a fit of laughter and I could not help but offer up my hand to congratulate my new friend on his comedic success.

After shaking my hand he began to ready himself to leave. He had been standing at a hind counter, pen in hand, over an index card. A black and white pattern had caught my eye and now I had the comfortable grounds on which to intrude. “What do you have there?” I asked, thinking that he was scribbling some words on a pre-printed card stock, the design was so bold and intricate that I thought for sure he couldn’t possibly have drawn it; the design being so very fine.

“Just doodling.” he had said in an un-presuming tone. “It’s yours if want it.” That is when I realized I was talking to an artist. The card held an imaginative work of art, how could I possibly? “Well, I don’t want to take this, if it could be used as inspiration for another piece someday.” For a moment the paper switched back to his hand and I am sure he had thought maybe I did not want the clutter. Snatching a pen off the counter I said, “Well…you will have to at least sign it!” His eyes lit up a bit as I assumed he could tell how much I did like the design. “Let me use my good pen” he retorted as he pulled it from his shirt pocket. ‘Wm. Tippie’ was the name that he signed.

He seemed pleased that I liked it so much and he proceeded to show me a few more of his “doodles”, that he had captured as images, on his phone. We flipped through three or four doodles as I could tell that the one I held in my hand was not his best or even a finished work, though I liked it the same. “Here is my card, if you wish to come see some of my other art. A few of my pieces used to be displayed in some galleries around town but they have all recently been closed.”

I am sure many people consider themselves to be artists and it is a shame that they cannot vouch for their own work matter of factly in a commonplace conversation, but I have the feeling that a true artist would not do so even if they had reason to boast. Perhaps the best artists, just as the best people, do not know just how good they are.

Our last words we shared were those concerning his health, he explained to me about how his blood pressure had been all “out of whack” until he began doodling; how he had tried five different medications and how none of them had seemed to work. But, when he had begun “doodling” his blood pressure magically normalized! In this context, “A doodle a day keeps the doctor away” it seems. This did amaze me…but not quite so much as the beautiful abstract that I glanced down at on card-stock. How it did change my day!

Pointing to the branding on my paper bag, Mr. Tippie inquired “You know why they let me hang out in here don’t you? It’s that last word in there.” I laughed, thinking to myself that was about right, though he was not what I would call “odd” as the word odd has a stigma attached to it, he was indeed “an oddity”! And an oddity that my wife and I had thoroughly enjoyed that morning.

As I swung my bag by the handles, exiting the store, I heard someone say “Later, Bill.” Not to me, but to Bill Tippie as he thanked them for letting him camp out for a few hours on a Saturday morning. From one Bill to another I could have told him right then that I would definitely be calling him later. Perhaps he had already figured that much.

After two weeks had passed I had serendipitously been finishing up a piece of writing that had not been written regarding a soda bottleas main subject, but that had included a soda bottle from my youth as a supporting image, that I remembered seeing in my grandparents’ garage when I was young. Recently, my grandparents had given me an old six-pack of special addition RC Cola bottles with faded orange and blue paint from the seventies (old for me but not so old for my new friend). The subject matter of my writing piece was the coincidental thing though…the title I selected was “Digging Down“, and in it I was surmising that we should all cut busyness and agenda in order to share time with the important individuals of our lives. And so with the overwhelming feeling that an important person had entered my life I called up Mr. Tippie and told him “This is the other Bill speaking.” I was pleased that he did remember our conversation and I caught a chuckle from him as I assumed he was remembering our gully flusher exchange.

So, when I showed up to his home not knowing what to expect, he led me up the stairs in his two bedroom home, to his “gallery”.

As two of the three galleries containing his art had been closed, he confessed that he did not know just how much art he had accumulated until he was forced to consolidate it. His main “gallery” now doubling as his guest bedroom, was impressively covered, surface upon surface, with art. His word “accumulation” I thought very odd though, as that is a word that suggests glancing out the window on a winter’s day and being surprised at the white blanket that wraps all the greens and browns in a unified coloring of white. That could not have been what this was.

As I perused the collection, I found it quite baffling how ANY of this had happened! The collection was astounding and diverse. Another of his comments had been that he had never been able to settle into any form “of style” for his art. I now truly came to know this man, not as a self-proclaimed artist, but I began to see the art that this man had brought to each day he had lived. Surely, he had lived in a world of imagination as if each day was a blank canvas; suddenly I could not have been more aware of how ALL this had happened.

Our visit ended by him gifting me a pen and ink, an image he had shown me on his mobile phone at the Ice House and a piece that I had been mesmerized by. Upon my arrival of our second visit together, I had given him one of the six soda bottles from my grandparents’ garage, along with the words I had written and wished he would enjoy reading. Tippie had said, “Now we are even.” but, in my chest I knew how unbalanced the deal was that had been struck.

I had looked through a few easels loaded with art and Bill and I ended up in his art studio where he showed me a few pages of a scrap book that he had complied, cataloging some of his earlier works. It was all impressive. The most impressive thing to me, however, was sitting atop the corner of a short dresser, against the wall of the guest room just beside a padded, wicker chair covered in art. A half-inch thick notebook of what Tippie called his “doodles”. I had hoped, through his word choice, that he was not suggesting them as a “lesser” art, because to me they are the most artful of all; brilliant works of imagination that adorn the pages of a priceless book of masterful visions.

Quite a day this was for me.

The name of one of his “pen and ink doodles” stuck firmly in the corner of my mind:

What a day – a Tippie Doodle Dandy!!!

Tippie Doodle Dandy

When you are young the world seems so small.

Grown-ups ferry you from building to building and place to place. Walls and fences serve to hold the outside world at a safe distance and as children we need not know of the supposed framework holding it all together. Even as a child though… we still catch glimpses of traffic as it passes by.

There’s traffic in the sky
And it doesn’t seem to be getting much better
There’s kids playing games on the pavement
Drawing waves on the pavement
Shadows of the planes on the pavement
Its enough to make me cry
But that don’t seem like it would make it feel better
Maybe its a dream and if I scream
It will burst at the seams
This whole place will fall to pieces
And then they’d say…

Well how could we have known?
I’ll tell them it’s not so hard to tell
If you keep on adding stones
Soon the water will be lost in the well^[1]

The four-line chorus above sends me to a place in my thoughts, an arid plain where dust is blown in gusts and you have to squint your eyes to gain any partial visibility. The small village I see doesn’t look like much, most of the mud-brick structures are near collapse and their occupants sit along the exterior walls, slumped over in defeat as they look to the center where the streets meet. All the best stones they have pulled from their foundations for the building of a wall; the sides of a well that circle ever-upwards toward the heavens. The stones extend high above the roofs of the clay hunts, and all eyes watch as a bare-foot, dark skinned boy climbs a rickety make-shift ladder. His legs wobble as the bindings that lash the struts together creak and snap. On his head the boy balances a bucket on a leather strap, he tilts his nose downward to keep the strap from slipping off his sweaty forehead and the empty bucket moves out from his back and knocks between his small, bony shoulder blades with each..shaky..step..upward. His eyes are fixed on the last rung and a rope dangles over his right shoulder as he carefully moves up the last step. Then the real tragedy sets in as the rope end wags… brushing the dirt at the base of the ladder.

Even if the boy were to lean over the edge, down into the mouth of the well, what hope is there that he could ever reach the water far below the ground? Too many stones have been added and the water has been lost deep below. Lost, in the well.

As a boy myself, I remember playing games, but I also remember the shadows of the planes on the pavement.

I remember Sunday afternoons, after church, driving with my parents over to my grandparents’ house in the city. Though Ma and Pa’s house did not feel like “the city” because they kept things so very simple. Ma had a washer and dryer, yet preferred to let the clothes air dry, outside on the line. She had raised four boys in that two bedroom house… things were always kept tidy and neat. And, as I am sure my father did, I found comfort as a child in the routine and simplicity that is Ma and Pa. We always sat around the same table, ate the same food, and curled up in the same places to take our naps. On nice days we would all be energized and want to enjoy the fresh air of the back yard.

Sitting just beyond the patio, next to the separated single-car garage was a “porch” style swing that would fit three adults or snuggly fit two adults with two kids sandwiched in between. We children had to take turns swinging with whomever was in the swing. When we were small we did our best to touch our feet along the ground and help push the swing higher, but until we were a bit older and longer our efforts were futile at best; our little legs could not reach the six concrete pavers that were set into the grass below. However, we could arch our heads backward over the crook of the green metal swing and stare up into the Gum tree high above.

The Gum could not have been more magical if it had dropped gum balls on us… as in the spring it would drop small round seed casings about the size of a large cherry, stem and all! The Gum balls were bright green and firm in the early spring and grew prickly spines and turned brown as summer approached. The sky itself was barely visible close towards the house where there was another maple tree (off-set several feet from the Gum). The T-supports of the clothes line started there next to the Maple and extended towards the back fence row. How fun it was to run beneath the hanging laundry and to weave in and out past the end post. We ran wildly back into the long yard that opened up to blue skies.

I remember just how quiet it was there, in that closed-in back yard. That is, until the belly of a plane would move from low-to-high into the distance with a roar. The planes were so loud that if you had closed your eyes you would have believed they weren’t more than stones-throw away.

Still, there are those memories, of being a kid, and of eating ice cream sandwiches and rainbow bars in the afternoon sun. Attempting to climb trees with branches so high we could only hope to reach them with a jump. We usually settled into a game of croquet, a game that for us, had none of the typical rules and consisted instead of seeing who could swing the mallet the hardest… knocking a colorful ball to the back fence in the least number of swings. The croquet set that we used was a seemingly ancient one. One that my father had played with when he was young. Among the cob webs of the garage there were other discoveries lining the slatted, wooden walls: old tools and empty RC Cola bottles commemorating the Kentucky Colonels basketball team. I remember fragments of the conversation that we would have on such afternoons and the calming breeze that could be felt… before the traffic in the sky would startlingly come roaring by.

Airplanes will always remain to represent a crowning achievement in technological advancement… I am not suggesting that there were not incremental steps along the way and that air travel would have even been possible without the advancements of other technologies, I am simply saying that planes are impressive. And how about the computer and electrical system advancements that control the traffic in our skies! All these are impressive stones.

But, now it occurs to me that more important lessons may be learned from digging down, rather than adding stones onto the tower of human progress:

Puzzle pieces in the ground
But no one ever seems to be digging
Instead they’re looking up towards the heavens
With their eyes on the heavens
There are shadows on the way to the heavens
It’s enough to make me cry
But that don’t seem like it would make it feel better
The answers could be found
We could learn from digging down
But no one ever seems to be digging
Instead they’ll say…

Well how could we have known?
I’ll tell them it’s not so hard to tell
If you keep on adding stones
Soon the water will be lost in the well

Words of wisdom all around
But no one ever seems to listen
They’re talking about their plans on paper
Building up from the pavement
There are shadows from the scrapers on the pavement
It’s enough to make me sigh
But that don’t seem like it would make it feel better
The words are still around
But the words are only sounds
And no one ever seems to listen
Instead they’ll say

Well how could we have known?
I’ll tell them it’s not so hard to tell
If you keep on adding stones
Soon the water will be lost in the well^[2]

For over five years I have worked at a rather fervent pace in downtown Louisville. My grandparents’ home is only ten or so miles from the tall sky scrapper that I work in, due north of the airport. With an open invite to lunch, I recently did make it back over to their house. Sitting and talking with Pa, I enjoyed asking him questions and digging down. There is a fulfilling quality hidden within such conversations. And on my way back into the office I considered what kinds of walls I had been building. Walls at least tall enough to cast sizeable shadows and thick enough to muffle the voices of the meek. Perhaps, we should all find ways to draw some of “the sounds” around us back into the bucket; back into words… as water from a well.

In the vast gap between question and answer, silence becomes a sound. Perhaps those of us that are the most simple are also the most able to frame these sounds into words; into phrases capable of reaching the wellspring of being that has been lost in the depths, beneath the stone. Such waters offer a refreshing drink for one’s soul.

Before I walk back into my building to sit at my computer, I hold in my two extended hands a draw-knife that belonged to my grandfather’s grandfather. Its design is simple, a sturdy marriage of soft wood and hardened steel. My grandfather’s gift to me is that I will possess something that his father, and his father before him, had held in their hands. A greater gift still -if I could hold something of their heritage in my heart and mind. Today, I find that the stones in the wall… have been little more than minutes, of busyness and of agenda.

Laying some of those stones aside I sit with my grandfather as he remembers a few words that his father left with him: “Sometimes it will bring a tear to your eye just to think about it,” he says, “and Dad said ‘Son in this world we may never be worth much, but we can have a good name.’ and I think that’s about as important as anything that you can have that comes along.”

Pa went on to say “Life is not about how much money you make or how big your house is, it’s about how you treat people.”

While this may seem like common knowledge, how many of us continue spending the majority of our time and efforts paying-off bigger houses instead of nurturing the priceless relationships of people that wish to share in our lives (this author included)?

If we continue pulling stones from places of sanctuary we will leave our souls vulnerable and exposed. And despite each effort to do something great with our lives we will only serve to un-settle ourselves more completely.

“You have to set aside time for things. Otherwise you miss out on the things that are worth the most to you.” -William Thomas Hudson (Pa)

[1] Traffic In the Sky, Song Written By Jack Johnson, 2003 (Universal Records)

[2] Traffic In the Sky continued, Link To Listen: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtJIu0Tylb0

Blue waves of light scatter on the horizon
and ease me into quiet conversation.

A wordless dialogue: soft, pink, radiant and
framed in abstracts of powder white plumes,
the smooth, fair cheek of a fragile china doll.

The morning sun burns rouge as a ringed outline appears.
Masterful strokes of white lay against the gray-blue vastness.
A scene of grandeur painted by the Divine, the grammar of bright star and cloud speak volumes.

First, a golden scepter reclining on its side,
resting atop a plush pillow-cushion that unfurls gentleness below.

As the handle turns upward and the jewels reach heaven,
it seems the gems were not jewels after all but sparkling eyes beneath a brim.

Next, a radiant face shines beneath an adorned brow,
a handsome, pristine head-dress stands quilled; visible rays of yellow-orange feather tips giving wings to my soul.

From this height, the signal of the beacon now becomes known,
ascending the tower of sky, beyond the mist, a faint image now clear.

Finally, a lighthouse of grace upon the coast; a guide for battered ships,
away from the rocks and toward the pass as I journey near.

I shall not forget the wings of heart this morning I have discovered.
In flight, I can soar above the rocks and brush the fragile cheek of heaven.

When night arrives, and I kneel down to embrace my daughter,
it is the bright blue eyes of my china doll, that call me back again; back to the cheek of heaven.