Sound and (Re)Vision

It's been a strange week here in the militantly bucolic Republic of Gumbostan.  A veritable seesaw of angst and elation, laced with a soupçon of contentedness, topped off with a small schmear of being completely in the middle of everything.  The crowning moment was the Mexican standoff in my backyard, between two cats and the rotund groundhog that lives under my shed.  The cats were crouched in the flowerbeds, triangulating on the shed.  The groundhog hardly dared to show his face.  It was so surreal I decided they deserved a toast in the form of a wee dram of Scotland's finest.*

Later, I decided to try a little experiment and turn off all noise-making devices.  More accurately, I turned off the noise-making portions of the devices.  This act of rebellion included the streaming audio on my trusty laptop**, which many of you may know is akin to taking away the cell phone from a securities trader.  I don't often do this.  Silence is something that I want and fear in equal measure.  Without aural input, I am too often forced to face up to the noise in my head.


As anyone who has been there can tell you, the noise in my head sometimes ain't pretty.


Tonight I felt the pull.  I was listening to the radio for a while but something clicked over and I was seized by a sudden desire for quiet.  It must have been the end result of excess input, where the desire for sonic rest overwhelmed my fear of listening to the "freq" in my head.  So off with the radio.  I picked up a book***, some cushions and headed put onto the porch to sit and exercise my eyeballs.


The weather here has been great this week, and today was the best yet.  I know some of my bloggy friends****  have been dealing with rain of Biblical ferocity, so I have been extra thankful that it has been so sunny and comfortable here just outside of Mobtown.  And the a/c is off tonight!  Extra special in the land of wet-hot-towel-around-the-face summer days.


Out on the porch, I sat and read my book, quietly, not unlike Ferdinand***** and his flowers.  The breeze was blowing and it was almost completely serene.  It was then I noticed more of the sounds I normally don't hear because I'm so busy listening to the radio or TV.  Crickets.  Birds.  Leaves brushing on leaves.  The faint sounds of traffic from nearby streets, which really were more soothing than annoying.


Later, inside the house, with the windows open,  I made a pot of tea.  The act itself was very Zen, charged with a 'wabi sabi' vibe running through it.  The simple acts of filling the pot with water and getting out the teabags (it was for a big pot of iced tea) had their own simple and unique sounds.  I especially enjoyed the dry crackle of the paper surrounding the tea bags.  It sounded just loud enough against the low hiss of the gas flame on the stove and the crickets outside.  It sounded like just what I needed.


So as I let the glass go empty, cocking an ear to the wind outside my window,  I felt my mind empty as well.  Not empty as in my brains fell out; empty as in cares and concerns, stresses and worries, thoughts collapsing under their own weight in such a huge pile, they drained away.

"The thirty spokes unite in the one center; but it is on the empty space for the axle that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness that their use depends. The door and windows are cut out from the walls to form an apartment; but it is on the empty space that its use depends. Therefore, whatever has being is profitable, but what does not have being can be put to use."  (From the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, as translated by James Legge.)

This came back to me, in that moment of crumpling the tea bag papers in my hand.  The rasp, the crunch, the dry slither of the material on my fingers.  I tossed the ball of paper across the kitchen, aiming for the trashcan.  Watching it arc into the container, I knew in that instant, even of only for an instant, I had achieved peace of mind.

It was beautiful.

*In this case, represented by the Isle of Skye's gift to humanity, 10-year old Talisker.  C'est bon, c'est tout!  And to my friend Rich, he who bestowed upon me a generous gift in the form of 10-year old Laphroaig:  Just a little comparison tasting, to keep myself calibrated. Cheers!
**Surprisingly, the jonesin' isn't that bad.  I only shake...a little.

***"How to Read a French Fry" by Russ Parsons.  A good read, but it made me hungry. 
****Janie, Stiletto, here's hoping you weathered the storms! 
*****Ferdinand the Bull is probably my favorite childhood book, EVAH.  I have a copy that I read to Wee Lass almost every weekend she is with me, and sometimes she reads it to me.  I am blessed. 

Whisky In the Glass

I've a strong feeling it was drinking whisky what made me realize in part, that I was growing up. Good, hearty whisky, in a glass just made for my hand.

I don't mean the little nips like I used to take out of the decanter my parents had, the one that looked like an old fashioned fire wagon and sat on the end table we used to have in the living room. The bottle was beveled glass, and green-gold in color. It had all the little knobblies on the sides that just screamed 'classy'; classy for the mid-seventies, I guess. The bottle was where the coach would be, and the glasses sat in a little rack that I think was supposed to represent the horses. The whisky? Well, the whisky may have been complete shit, I wouldn't know because, well, how much of an expert on whisky can an eleven-year old boy be? All I know is, that we kids weren't supposed to drink it, so naturally that's what I did. I stole a swig every now and then when the 'rents were elsewhere, sucked it right out of the nozzle on the top, I did. Then coughed and gasped my way back to the bedroom wondering why in the world would anyone drink the stuff.

Yet, I never swore I'd never do it again.

And it wasn't the clandestine drinking I did as a teenager, swigging off a bottle of swiped by a friend, and huddled down between the cars in the school parking lot so no one would see us. Or while perched on the rustic throne of a picnic table at a local playground. Or sitting in the scrub woods of some nearby waste ground we used to use as a bike track. Jim Beam or Jack Daniels was the order of the day, because after all, they were the Dipstick of Masculinity when it came to a bunch of slightly misguided young males with more free time than common sense. You were The Shit if you could chug a few swallows of 'Jack Black' without coughing or puking.

I coughed once or twice, but never puked. I suppose that makes me The Sort-of-Shit. Nah, maybe just a dipstick, who once again wondered why anyone drank the stuff.

There was a gap of many years, ironically enough starting when I went off to college, that I didn't drink whisky. Beer was the order of the day, most days. The occasional shot of tequila found its way to my gullet, but not very often. Then one day about ten years ago, it got all up in my snoot that I like scotch. So I tried it, and found out that it was, most likely, what I had sipped so long ago (when I wasn't supposed to do). I was still trying to understand the attraction. The biting smokiness, the sting of the alcohol, the fumes that sometimes made me cough and shudder. There were some I sampled that only politeness and academic interest kept me from immediately spitting right back out. Additionally I had paid, sometimes a bit steeply, for the 'privilege' and did not want to waste it.

There was this evening where I was sitting at my desk at home, reading and listening to music, feet up. On the desk was a bottle of single-malt scotch that I had received as a gift. I was feeling quite 'old school' with my pour of a finger-and-a-half, and thinking myself quite fine. "Down the hatch!" and the shades of my past grinned in anticipation of the cough and shudder...

...but that didn't happen. Instead, I came to know that I was, whether I liked it or not, a 'grown-up'. I liked it, with nary a grimace or shiver.

In that swallow, I tasted the sting and the smoke, the sweetness and the bite. As it swirled in my mouth and warmed my gullet I realized I liked the prickliness of the whisky. I liked that it wasn't really that easy to drink it, if you expected it to be soft and accommodating. I liked that you have to treat it with respect, and even then it can sometimes reach up out of the glass and smack you. It was a drink that you had to accept on its own terms, good and bad, if you wanted to get full enjoyment out of it. Then came the epiphany. 

Holding that glass, feeling the warmth and the tickle of fumes in my throat, I realized that this acceptance of the thing on its own terms, to get the enjoyment? Well, that right there is a description of life. Life. 

I have gotten better at accepting life on its own terms, the joy and the bitterness, the salve and the sting. It dawned on me, finally, that embracing the contradictions instead of fighting them leads to a fuller and more satisfying experience. 

Not unlike a wee dram of whisky now and again, enjoyed in quiet contemplation. It means I'm growing up.

A question, dear readers: What was your grown-up epiphany?

Water of (gasp!) Life

Doing my best Hemingway imitation (minus the firearms), I am feeling whisky-ish tonight. The Wee Lass is in bed and asleep, The Spouse is catching up on ER via TiVo, and I have a few minutes to kill before I (drum roll, please) FOLD THE LAUNDRY.

Wooo. I am living of the f***in' edge. Still, such domestic obligations give me the opportunity to indulge in one of my vices as an adult. Ten minutes to go on the ol' Kenmore is just enough time to sip a glass of Scotland's finest while twirling around in my desk chair.

Ah, the life of the artiste.

I have on my desk two bottles, one empty and one just over half-full. No, they didn't get that way today. It was a concentrated effort of weeks. It would have been today if I hadn't been out pumpkin and apple picking with the Pearl O' my Heart. Plus grocery shopping.

The empty bottle is (was?) Macallan 12 year old single malt. The other bottle is 15 year old Macallan. One I got for Christmas, the other I got for Father's Day. I am, as you probably said to yourself, a fortunate man. If I get a bottle of 16 year old Lagavulin this year, I will have hit the Trifecta!

Single malt scotch was the stuff I hated as a younger man, could not conceive of why anyone would want to put it in their mouth. Rum or bourbon or Irish whiskey was the hard tipple of choice, on the rare occasions I strayed from beer. But somewhere along the line, I grew up (I think) and started wondering just what in the hell happened to me. 'Once in a lifetime...' indeed. The next thing I knew, I found myself sitting at the bar at the White Horse Tavern in Newport, Rhode Island, a glass of Laphraoig in my hand, and the bartender watching me with a grin, expecting me to spit out the amber liquid at any second. I very nearly did. Somewhere in that mouthful of whisky, though, I unknowingly transformed into an adult. It took a few more years for me to realize it.

So sitting here, listening to the buttons scrape the dryer basket, I wiggle my toes and spin the chair. One last swallow of The Macallan makes it way to my gullet, the fumes rise up into my nose. I don't cough anymore, or at least, not very often. The chair slowly spins to a halt. The dizziness continues from the influx of Scotland's gift to civilization in my veins. Considering that Scotch originated in a country with a reputation for dark, misty winters, I understand the appeal. I think I know why it is made and why the Scots would drink it.

I won't be shearing sheep or scything oats tonight, for sure; but with a wee dram in my belly, folding laundry really isn't bad at all.






Father's Day, 2008.