Starlight Sonnetina

Wise Man, Magi, Philosopher - King;
Though each one was humbled, when heeding The Call.
So they hastened abroad, their oblations to bring
To that faraway town, with its unlikely stall.

Near the town, yet another king (killer ; distracted)
Demanded their presence (he'd heard of the Child),
Yet knew nothing of stars, or of starlight refracted,
Or the love that drew kings through the dark and the wild.

An invasion of sorts, when the border was crossed,
But their mission meant more than the laws guarding lands.
And without giving praise, saving hope might be lost,
So their caravan inched over Judean sands.

Later on, mothers cried in the streets where blood spattered,
While the three brought home news of the one king who mattered.

Redeemed

It's You when I wake
And it's You when I sleep.
It's You when I'm shallow
And You when I'm deep.

From the essence of image
In the furnace of soul,
You arrive without intro
To arrange me as whole.

Incandescent emotion
Fills the void in my spheres;
Just a glance or some laughter
And the fog in me clears.

Archangel, beloved,
You've embraced human form;
And throughout bleak midwinter,
In your space I feel warm.

'Everything but...' (Monday, December, Bletchley JobCentre Plus)

Lost his job -
Made a Claim.
Lost his wife -
Met a Flame.
Lost his kids -
Christmas dull.
Lost his house -
Moved to Hull.
Lost his way -
Took to Drink.
What loss next ?
Kitchen sink ?

The Valley of Death and the Home of Hunger

Roll out of Dar on
A claptrap bush bus
And you're there... or
Better, passing through.

Scraps of life dent
The roadside: Maasai beggar and
Brown scrub, but mostly
The dearth of breath.

Burton and Speke pushed
Through here; undeterred at
The name bestowed by Arab slavers.
Hellbound westward, or

Coastbound east. Two Victorian
Obsessives; slaves, too, in their
Quest for
The Source.

Pleuristic Speke, slung
Between porters, on his hammock.
Race-hate Burton, carried by
His bile, slinging

Cloth and beads at the
Feet of reluctant chiefs. We're
Always in motion, carried forward by
Truth, or a lie.

Why am I on this
Bus? Aimless Mzungu, safe
In passage, while death slings its
Bile across the road, wheel-bound.

Familiar hell-on-earth, like
Dachau, or Dealey Plaza; each a
Passing-through place or a terminus. Entirely
Random - as decreed by killers.

We're off to the Mountains of the Moon, over
The Pass Terrible, so clear the road before
This jerry-can juggernaut does to
Life what drought couldn't.

The Temple Gate Called Beautiful (Acts 3:1)

We gaze across the sea
In an uncertain time
The loons and seagulls flee
As if from serious crime.

The rollers beat the shore
And steal the sand away
I wish that they'd do more
To keep me on this Bay.

The flotsam speaks of wrath
And bonfires on the beach
We filled our pails with Plath
But kept them out of reach.

Then in came muffling mist
From there to what must be
We'll all be on some list
In time, reluctantly.

I don't know where I'll go
When winter kills this scene
But equinoctal glow
Will flare when light is lean.

Under Your Arches

Your arches bewitch me
(I don’t see them much;
But the times that you’re shoeless,
They reach out and touch.)

Then I yearn for that arch
Betwixt waistline and hip;
When I bend down and view it
All my vertebrae slip.

But the arch of your brow
Sends a message of fear;
And your look says it archly:
‘Arch-enemy near.’

And I fear for my health
With the arch of your back;
As you rally your archers
For a bedroom attack.

But McDonalds’ are golden
And yours are magenta;
Underneath Roman arches
We’ll feast on polenta.

There’s an Archway in London –
Shall we go there right now ?
Just to say that we did it ?
Just to stand and say ‘Wow’ ?

October Brings the Cold

What, really, do we know,
Of the shift from life to death;
With our childlike, searching guesswork
On the themes of that last breath?

When I'd heard that he'd departed,
Then the child within me spoke;
Asking questions, shouting answers,
Breathing fire, spewing smoke.

Then I knew I had to grow up,
So I left the house and walked
Down the path to that frail seashore
While the child and adult talked.

But those voices both were quietened
As I looked across the bay;
Contemplating - senses heightened -
There was nothing more to say.

Little breezes teased the surface,
And the ripples laughed and danced;
While the cloudlets hurried eastward
With the seagulls they'd romanced.

And the wavelets kissed the shoreline
Over stones that seemed to sway;
While the lighthouse pointed skyward,
From its home across the bay.

Are these the objects we call lifeless,
Like my friend, soon in his grave?
Or is each infused with life-force
From the memories we save?

Above These Hills

The rainbow smiled its arc ;
And then the sky was dark.
Extraordinary find.
'Till now - have I been blind?

The night rain drowns my skin ;
I stand and let it in.
Extraordinary shroud,
Erupting from a cloud.

And then it's still and black ;
I'm sure that I'll go back.
Extraordinary peace,
Anticipates release.

Memories of a Marathon

Nottingham, 12 September 2010

Andrew:

My friend and fellow runner Tom Bartlett and I had breakfast together in Olney and drove up to Nottingham early so we had plenty of time to get ready and soak up the pre-race atmosphere. As we crossed the start line among thousands of others, I noticed that the vast majority were running the half marathon (13.1 miles) or the mini marathon (2.5 miles). Then we were off, jostling among a throng of runners each with their own goals and story to tell.
Before long we were climbing hills round Nottingham castle, which was a bit of a shock, but there were plenty of people cheering us on. Nottingham’s parks, waterways and historic buildings were a distraction from the pain emerging in my knees, and the shade of the trees provided some relief from the hot sun. At mile 8, Tom’s friends Wendy and Alex took our photo and encouraged us forward, and at the 13-mile race split we lost the half marathoners.
This was new territory for me as I’d never run more than a half marathon before. I still had energy in my legs and for the first time I knew I could do it. His pace-making done (and perhaps realising I was going to be all right), Tom surged forward at his naturally faster pace, and I kept plodding away, refueling on the move with water, sports gels, jelly babies and applying the occasional daub of Vaseline proffered by the St John Ambulance to delay the inevitable chafing.
At mile 18, I passed a woman lying on the ground moaning in agony as she was attended by paramedics and noticed the number of sirens around me increasing. The pain in my legs was just awful but I was determined enough to keep running through it - and overcome the indignity of being overtaken by a banana. Other competitors were stopping to walk but I feared that if I did the same my legs might seize up and I’d struggle to get going again. At mile 19, the ‘motivation station’ announcer saw ‘Andrew’ written on my T-shirt and urged me by name through the infamous ‘wall’.
Now every mile felt like two, and my mile times kept falling. My head was throbbing, my knees grating, my muscles spent and nausea was setting in; I felt as if I was going to throw up and I couldn’t even drink any more water. I was thinking constantly of why I’d decided to this, all the messages on my JustGiving page, the donations everyone had made and the people Advantage Africa helps, particularly the orphaned children in Obambo and Muzinda. In my mind, I started to break up the remaining miles into chunks that I’d done during my training and at 24 miles I knew all I had left to do was run round the block from my home in Olney.
As I neared 5 hours on my feet, the spectators became few and far between and those that cheered me by name became particularly important; I didn’t want to let them down either by breaking into a walk. The 26 mile marker eventually arrived but I was saving every ounce of remaining energy, and all my relief, for the finish 385 yards later.
I crossed the line, stopped running, took my medal and my body submitted to a wobble; a friendly woman in scout uniform grabbed my arm to stop me falling over and sat me down in a chair. Then the emotion came; the sense of relief and achievement as I realised I had actually done it - I had just run a marathon.

Tom:

Doing something eight times does not ensure success on the ninth, and as I laced up my New Balances on the grassy Victoria Embankment next to the River Trent in Nottingham, I mused that this was certainly true of a marathon. Each run brings its unique challenges, even threats, and no amount of training or experience can fully negate these.
However, the sun was shining, the air was cool, the course map showed, mercifully, few major hills, and for the first time since my last run in Boston many years previously, I would be running with a friend.
Andrew and I had not agreed a specific strategy; I think we both understood that we would each have to run at a pace which would enable both of us to cross the final line on the run, and in reasonable shape. Running too fast, or too slow, at someone else’s pace, would jeopardize that. Still, this being Andrew’s first marathon, with his distance experience being limited to a very difficult 16-miler two weeks earlier, I felt a sense of responsibility to at least check how we was doing at different stages of the race.
The course was a “figure eight”, two 13-mile loops, each starting and finishing on the Embankment. A new configuration for me (Boston and London both point-to-points; Belfast, Paris and Dublin all big loops), but one which in an aesthetic sense would provide glimpses of all of the major attractions of Robin Hood’s city. However, there was a challenge in the layout as well, which I would learn about, halfway through.
The first loop passed uneventfully and pleasantly enough, with little uphill jogs by the Castle and on the University campus; keeping a comfortable pace in amongst the throngs of half-marathoners and fun-runners. For the most part I kept ahead of Andrew, occasionally waiting for him at water stations, and at Mile 8, where friends Alex and Wendy were spectating and snapping pics.
We again joined up as we eased along the Embankment, watching somewhat wistfully as thousands veered left into the ‘race village’ and the finish line of the Half, their race now over. Those of us on the long run kept straight along the riverfront, past strollers and sun worshippers soaking in the Sunday afternoon atmosphere, some turning to applaud as we ran past.
At that point, Andrew uttered a few words of encouragement – I glanced across at him and he looked strong, seemingly free of the aches which had plagued our long training run, so I felt comfortable about pushing on ahead, feeling this would help him as much as my running side-by-side with him. I wouldn’t see him again for six miles.
The course then crossed the river and proceeded through a rather dull retail and suburban area, before heading east onto a country lane towards a park and watersports centre. I was feeling comfortable throughout this stage, with familiar complaints in my right ankle and left hip staying relatively quiet .However, I had by that time taken in quite a bit of Lucozade, water, and sports gel, and had the unsettling sensation at times of wanting to eject it all into a nearby hedge, but pushing on nevertheless. I did stop to ‘water’ the hedge twice.
Heading along the country lane into some pleasantly leafy parkland, I noticed increasing numbers of contestants starting to walk. Medical staff on motorcycles would occasionally cruise slowly past, peering at walkers, and others who had stopped completely, talking with a few. A couple of ambulances rolled by ominously, and I passed a female runner lying face down on the grassy verge, surrounded by race marshalls, screaming, ‘I can’t stand the pain anymore!! (Evidently, this was the victim Andrew saw as well)
I decided to block the negatives out by listening to music, so extracted my earphones from where they had nestled deep in my running shorts .(Andrew had worn a money belt for his supplies; I’d never before carried anything in a marathon, and this time had simply stuffed both my mobile and music player into a undersized pouch sewn into my shorts. Big mistake.) Unfortunately ‘deep’ means deep: they had slipped down under my scrotum, where I had earlier swabbed a liberal blob of Vaseline to prevent chafing… so it took me a few hundred yards of distracted earphone wiping on my jersey before the ‘phones were dry enough to plug into my ears without slipping out.
The Doors and the Dan soon took me to another place. I was now about four hours into the run – a time when I had finished my previous marathons – and I was only just entering the final seven miles.
The course followed the embankment of a rowing lake, then doubled back on itself, before rounding the far end and proceeding right back to the opposite terminus of the lake; one of those annoying stretches in a marathon when you can actually see the 2-3 miles of running you have ahead of you.
Snapping out of my rock reverie, I heard the unexpected voice of Andrew: “Hey, Tom!” I looked up. He was running past me in the opposite direction; down the lake as I was running up, so no more than half a mile behind me. Well done, lad. Then the questions: do I stop and wait for him? Press on, in the hope that he will keep going, knowing I’m just ahead?
I fell into pace with a pair of Black ladies, both dressed in dark figure-hugging lycra bodysuits with ‘G-Force’ emblazoned in white on their backs and across their ample chests. Their straightened hair swung loosely around their shoulders and upper backs, and they were focusing intently and silently ahead through designer sunglasses. In an hallucinatory way, I felt like I’d stumbled onto the set of ‘Charlie’s Angels in Cameroon.’
Feelings came and went, as they often do in the latter stages of a marathon. Elation. Delirium. Calm. Despair. My ‘running’ had disintegrated to a shuffle, and there were even stretches where I walked; trying to keep to the ‘walk a minute, run to the next mile marker’ strategy. Ahead of me, a pale, sad-eyed runner was being stretchered into an ambulance.
The course eased back along the river, and I was beginning to hear distant snatches of the announcer’s voice at the finish line, tantalizingly close, across the river. By this point, and for the first time in a marathon, I had abandoned any care or interest I had had in a finishing time of any respectability, and hobbled across the bridge over the Trent with no more thought or plan than to cross the line and sit down.
The line itself was rather low-key, unlike all the other big city finish lines I’d crossed. The final hundred yards on grass, for one thing, and with just a small crowd of politely-clapping spectators. An unobtrusive digital clock perched to one side of the line; I looked away.
After stumbling out of the Kit Tent with my retrieved backpack, I spotted Andrew sprawled on the grass several hundred feet in front of me. A woman in a Scout uniform was trying to help him to his feet. I approached, looked purposefully down at my wristwatch, then back up at them. We all smiled.

Searchlight Moon

Searchlight Moon,
Reveal for me;
I’m under this
Obscuring tree

I woke abrupt
Because the glare
(Your light’s not just
From anywhere)

I’d hoped you’d reach me
On this night,
To guide me through
Where I lack sight

My doubts arrested
Further sleep,
So to the garden
I did creep

And in the garden
Well below,
I drank your
Alabaster glow

At first my gaze
Was on the ground;
The threatening shadows
All around

But boldened by
The backlit scene
I sought the tree
Where I could lean

And stare at you,
Unlike the sun
(Though you both share
The light, as one)

I sense, tonight,
It’s not just me;
She swings her eyes
Above to see

If any more
Is evident
In moonbeam’s sprite-light -
Heaven-sent

Our voices, eyes,
And thoughts don’t touch;
But you, our moon,
Will do as much.

Searchlight Moon,
Entwine our trust;
Reveal that light
Can shine from dust.

Ode to Robbie (on Burns Night)

Through rigs of barley, banks and braes;
You’d often stop near Galloway’s
Soft slender hills to ponder those
Whose lives, like yours, had ebbs and flows.

John Anderson and Duncan Gray;
Will Stewart and Lord Gregory.
Lest these or others be forgot,
Parnassus Hill will fail them not.

From there and elsewhere, you went down,
To Dumfries and to St. John’s Town
To sip a dram of loving kindness-
Overcoming heartache’s blindness.

That love? It was a red, red rose
Once plucked at autumn’s tender close;
And brimming wine in silver tassies
Poured out for unnamed bonnie lassies.

Your passion, Robert, led you to
The scripting of the dreams you knew,
Like petticoats that slowly dry
On Jenny coming through the rye.

You’d not much time to verse those dreams
And fell despite your best laid schemes.
Yet time will never dull your pen;
We’ll rest by Afton Water again.

On Each Side of the Sky

Last night,

(didn’t text ;)

watched the sunset,

and then next,

watched the moonrise :

they were good –

put me in

a peaceful mood.

Hope you’ll see them,

feel them, too,

Next time night light

shines for you.

The Last Country Garden

A brown roadside sign with white letters
Establishes, for outsiders, enough;
The name of the estate and ‘Gardens’ -
Beckoning off the B road
Somewhere between Ross and Hereford.
A mid-afternoon diversion before
The caravan and the kids and
Those demands and distractions.

We’d mutually agreed to leaving
Them in the car with their electronics
While we strolled the property.
Before turning down a single track
Towards the Wye Valley;
A tunnel of fecund trees heralded
Early Summer, but also isolation.
The village was nowhere to be seen.

The car park, a gravel patch next
To crumbling outbuildings, once majestic,
Was empty and available, with but
Three other cars (no teens in them;
Ours would be pioneers, if
Not prisoners. Would anyone care?)
A drowsiness filled the space as
I pulled into mine.

On through a brick arch to
The tea room and the eight quid
Admission and two-sided
A4 describing the gardens.
I pocketed the last glossy
Brochure informing of same,
Already suspecting we’d happened
Upon fallen grandeur.

Then ambling up a bucolic
If tarmac-cracked avenue between
Singular trees to the top-of-hill entrance
To the gardens, a gentle bend to
The left and you asked for
The descriptions; a querulous
Tone to keep me occupied and
Focused; in the moment.

Then a grassy descent to
The first level, ‘The Dell’, with
Its ancient stone cider press a
Central feature. You perked up
Then; revived from an afternoon
Of subtle disappointment… them,
And me, again not showing Care,
Appreciation, Love.

The gardens offered escape; a
Moment to chat about it (the
Horticulture that used to be)
Instead of them, or us. We’re
Both still tongue-tied in our
Avoidance of that which
Grows over us. Cutting back
Seems a long way off.

‘It’d take an army
Of gardeners to put it right’
You murmured, and I
Assented, noting the
Unkempt scene. An army
Marched through our past:
‘Loved ones’, vicars, counsellors…
And a lot of good they did. I mean that.

The garden had suffered neglect,
Disease, disorientation. Yes,
The Dell was just a lawn
Bordered by more interesting trees, so we
Shuffled down a narrow slope,
Onto ‘The Old Tennis Courts’;
Room for two, now traversed by the
Ghosts of Edwardian garden parties.

Uphill behind the pavilion, the manor house;
Lived-in but lifeless, its
Multiple windows a honeycomb of
Empty eye sockets. We played tennis
Early in our marriage, but then
The kids, the jobs, and the
Just-not-inclined. A further downward incline
Led on to ‘The Rose Pool.’

The A4 sheet described what followed as
‘A Sunken Florentine Garden with
A simple cruciform pattern of deep rills.’
At this point print didn’t
Matter; yet again words
Belittled the reality
Of this
Desperate situation.

The rills were browned-under with dead
Leaves beneath several inches
Of turgid water, and the statues
Could have cared less.
Further downhill, behind trees, before us,
The Wye, a turgid rill itself,
Made its way south.
We turned to make our way uphill.

For that slog we needed to pass up
Through four levels of
The Terrace Garden; I moved
Ahead of you while you took pictures.
Each level separated us by
A rose-branched brick wall with
An arched passage to
The next level of plantings.

I turned to locate you at
The level below, your face obscured
By the camera. I moved up,
You moved to one side
And disappeared. These gardens were
Well-tended but still in
Early-summer barrenness.
Then you appeared at the next arch.

Here, near the end, I
Went back in my mind, again, to
Milan. Our first home, its
‘Va benes’ and ‘molto benes’ and
Choked clogged Tangenziale, but
Our terrace with its flower pots and looking
Beyond, the rice fields to the Abbazia
Mirasole, medieval nursery for monks.

Luigi next door blasting
Puccini off his terrace while you
Turned up The Archers on that
Dinky cassette player. Like Mussolinis, we escaped
North to Como, especially Bellagio, with its
Palazzi, terraces cascading with bright
Fiore, and the alpine lake a lavender
Blue. There was potential then.

Back down to town,
We visited that monks' refectory with
Leonardo’s resplendent garden; its
Cracked plaster under desperate renovation
By art history grads on scaffolding
Before spotlights. We could only stare
From the back; what care-
Que vita.

At the top, you joined me
Next to that trim chapel and we entered
The courtyard again. Sometimes journeys
Take us back to where we started but we
Arrive with a different perspective. Still
Deserted, we returned to the car through
A final arch. Left the bored girl and the fluttering
A4s. The cream teas would have to wait.

We found the fruits of our sowing;
Thumbs still on gadgets. Brief
Wan smiles, showing, ‘Hardly noticed
You gone.’ It’s right to leave
Some garden to seed. Fallow, regenerating,
Absorbing sheets of English rain.
It might come back with
Something better than before.

Here It Is

I went in search of Happiness
I heard it was around
And if I listened well enough
I'd hear a Happy sound.

I tried to look for Happiness
I'd seen a glimpse before
But when I ran to see its face
It closed its Happy door.

So then I stopped
I gave up trying
Then it came to me
In simple life
There's no denying
Here: just hear and see.

Island Solo (Outward Bound, Penobscot Bay)

A sturdy craft comes alive under the boards,
As if in recognition of familiar waters.
The night's dark splash is ignited with phosphorescence
And trails away, bubbling in distinctive chords.

The stern red beam of a lighthouse
Asserts an invisible shoreline,
And warns of an imminent landfall
Through ledges, 'bricks' and 'No Man's Land',
Towards ill-defined sentinels of birch and pine.

A granite island looms behind darkness' deceptive vision,
But safe haven promises a gentler welcoming.
Empty moorings and trim wooden shacks
Legitimize at once the navigational decision.

The unwieldy blocks and obelisks are as marvelous as those
At Stonehenge and Easter Island,
For they hold in their gargantuan impassivity a story
And a mystery, perhaps,
Of a time when human spirit and endeavor arose.

But in daylight, the ruins beg a question or two.
Jumbled heaps of stone are scattered about;
Here and there stand unfamiliar sculptings and carvings,
And the ghost of a quarry where industry grew.

Will a future civilization look at these ruins and wonder
At such a chaos of pioneering landscape architecture?
(Or ask why foundations are now choked with wildflower,
Or for what purpose an island's marrow was torn asunder?)

It seems we hack and hew at nature, as at each other,
Not envisioning the questions that may be asked later.
Meaningless blocks, we strew haphazardly on our paths
For others to interpret, if they bother.

Leaving the island before sunrise, the red light is dim,
The phosphorescence gone.
But my understanding has been enlightened
By the granite, and by other builders
Who serve, strive and never yield
In their quest for a reconstructed dawn.

One Night on the Ridge

Immeasurable stars over night's mountains
Challenge the eye to identify patterns
In scattered plentitude, like mist from Roman fountains;
Constellated confusion of a million Saturns.

The face, a pale moon itself, beams upward to seek meaning,
While still maples hide behind night's cloak;
Puffs of breath blur the clarity of each star's gleaming
But re-affirm life... then dissipate, like a comet's smoke.

Stars won't share their sound with us,
But their fires spark our perceptions of time and distance
And stoke our mythologies of a belt, or of a necklace,
Making light the impediment of gravity's resistance.

Our planet glows only in reflecting another star,
As we stand on this chemical stew we call dirt.
Speculating on the light reaching us from afar;
The fastest we know of, yet seemingly inert.

Our miracles are out of reach and comprehension
Yet we crave them no less than when we didn't know as much.
Disbelief and belief: both held in willing suspension,
While spiritual guides provide us the necessary crutch.

It's enough to believe in one another on this humble globe,
Although we know only as much as we know Mars.
We leave it to blind faith to guide each probe,
And hope for a beacon as bright as a star's.

West of Boston

Streaks of sun filter through bare pines;
Proud sentinels from an earlier age.
You turn your eyes upward to those vertical lines,
As dusk tempers another day's languid rage.

Here in nature's heart, your true peace,
The honeysuckle emerges with each warm Spring.
Snow and rain preordain such release,
And give way to May winds' beckoning.

Deep in the woods we find in our lives,
The pine needles offer little comfort underfoot.
Errant bees pester, then retreat to their hives,
As we, too, retreat: to our cities, and their soot.

One hopes, then, for blessing, for those
Who find blessed meaning in a wooded walk;
Who take the time to anticipate the rose,
And leave all behind to hear the pine trees' talk.

Warren Cove

I watch the sea
Come alive on the beach;
It's a newborn child
Testing her reach.

I watch the tide
(Slave to the moon);
Climbing the breakwater,
Fading too soon.

I watch evolution,
Alive in the Cove;
Symbiosis,
'Neath the waves and above.

Fall

The streetlight casts its pallid glow
Upon my lonely sill,
As through my mind the memories go;
I fear they always will.

The plumbing rings its hollow knell
Beneath my empty floors;
I thought I knew her very well,
But she's on distant shores.

High in the night, an airplane hums
Above my earthbound woes;
The bread we had has turned to crumbs,
But why? - well, neither knows.

Love Poem

He did not create
A man to let him hate.
Instead that man was taught
To love without a thought.

So can I love so pure?
To risk, and still be sure?
A man, a child, am I;
Alive, in love, I die.

The paradox persists
(Though modern man resists...)
A song sets it apart:
Just love can break your heart.

An unrelenting force
That battles 'till divorce;
It dons so many guises,
We're used to its surpises.

Were I a jilted spouse
Imprisoned in my house,
I'd try to love the sinner,
If not the sin beginner.

Were I a killer's dad
Left redefining sad,
I'd try to love my boy,
Relinquishing the joy.

Were I a partisan
In Mussolini's Milan,
I'd try to love my nation,
While causing conflagration.

I know not where love leads
But know it grows from seeds
We sow on stony ground.
Not so? Just look around.

Sonneta Pamplonese

Stoned Sangria Sunset, brazen bull breath baiting
The caballeros crowding the tapas night...
Where the only commitment needed is waiting
To stanch the paralytic fear of morning. The Fright.
Running from: dusted destiny on cloven hooves
Through pain-wracked alleys alight with cries
Of challenged machismo, scored by notched grooves
Cut into cobbles where the injured writhe, attracting flies.
Running to: a safe place, a sturdy gate, a saving arm;
A life spared for another year
In which to plan the sprint from here to harm;
From feared impalement upon Fortune's Spear.

Once more the bulls and runners chase across the page,
As I sit in my room, and write... and age.

Near and Fair

Two fields in winter
Equally stark;
One under snow,
The other dirt-dark.

I remember the first
As I stand in the second,
And smile at the snowdrops
Which once to... us... beckoned.

There, the snows of New England
Blanket all down below,
Here the flint fields of Norfolk
Stay bare to the hoe.

Are they really so lifeless,
Or just freezing, half-buried?
Was there time for maturing,
Or were seasons too hurried?

These matter less now
Than the acres of distance,
For the first field lies far
From my vision's persistence.

Will I grow in this field,
Or fall still 'neath a shroud?
(Far above both the plots
Looms a threatening cloud.)

So I turn towards the hedge,
Past the drifts and the mud
And the path to the village,
And the bridge o'er the flood.

Leaving both fields to nature,
Where memories are grown
After snowdrifts and leaves,
From their faces are blown.

Laugharne Lament

I've seen enough of the pelting rain,
I've heard enough of this world's refrain,
I've scarred enough to remember pain,
Yet still I look for more.

I've lived enough to give thanks to life,
I've raged enough to confound a wife,
I've warred enough to have mastered strife,
Yet still I fight for more.

I've felt joy at celestial rises,
Been shocked at Cupid's sharp surprises,
And drowned in booze's many guises,
Yet still I thirst for more.

I've mused with Frost through "Fire and Ice",
(The end days won't be very nice,
And Shakespeare's Witches vowed it thrice,
Yet still I pause for more.)

The selfish "I" who knows no bounds,
Routinely makes his worldly rounds,
Scarce heedful of eternal Sounds,
Yet need I ask for more?

8/98

Headline Poems

My three most recent poems - "Man in Tent", "Tenant" and "Council Worker" - which together I'll call "The Trilogy of Travail", derive from articles I've read recently in the British press.

They are all three the sort of sensationalistic, tragic records which draw people to newspaper reading; as a former reporter (who often used the exalted job title "journalist") myself, I remember the attractions of writing these sorts of stories. I also feel compelled to ask those who would criticise the press for publishing such stories; which came first, the chicken or the egg? Who's holding the mirror, and who's looking into it?

In my brief stint "covering" the Town of Hanson, Massachusetts for the Memorial Press Group in Plymouth, I fortunately never had to cover a tragic death. My colleagues sometimes described the pressures from above (e.g. the editors) in covering tragedies; the expectation that they, the "journalists", would have to go and knock on doors of family and friends of the victim to catch some good quotes for the expected article.

In these poems I've tried to capture the twisted relationship between the press and its readership; beyond that, I suppose my themes are fairly routine and unoriginal - the quest for meaning in life; the day-to-day struggles we all face; where we fit in nature, etc. etc. For these, I have to thank my poetic heroes: Coleridge, Blake, Tennyson, Eliot... and especially Frost who, I believe, towers above the others.

“Council Worker Found Dead at Lake”

Our lust for these stories
It seems will not break.
A tree, a rope, depression? – that’s life.
No note and no motive – let’s talk to the wife.

He worked for the Council,
It said on page five,
And walked round the lake
With his wife when alive.

“A son, a brother, a dad –
Will be missed.”
When he last walked away,
Did his wife say he kissed?

On Facebook’s a page
Where the tributes are glowing
From the mates who once knew him,
But are now left not knowing

(Though it’s well understood
No foul play is suspected.)
Now the wife’s plea for privacy
Must be respected.

So the newsprint will fade
And the paper will rot
And we’re on the next story,
Whether caring or not.

“Tenant Lived With Body
Under Sofa for Ten Years”

Let’s read about the tragic lives
Of weirdos, drunks and “queers”.
Our taste for the bizarre outweighs
Our horror and revulsion
So we soak up every detail
Further feeding our compulsion.

Must I write about it, though,
Instead of reading and forgetting?
Yes, I say to Mr. Murdoch,
I’ll be aiding and abetting.

Thus the facts: a Mr. Derrick
Used to drink with Mr. Pring.
One night D. went out drinking but
“I don’t recall a thing.”

Mr. P. lay on a sofa
In old Derrick’s grubby flat
D. came home and turned it over
Then passed out, and that was that.

Derrick, so you DID recall;
Or was that lager talking?
Didn’t threaten or dismember
But your senses went out walking

For old Pring became a dead man
At some point that fateful night
And drunk Derrick, you did nothing
In the cold, harsh morning light.

Not just that, you let Pring lie there
Undisturbed a decade long
Seeming not to care a firkin
What was right and what was wrong.

True, we’re sorry you have issues
With the voices in your head;
But not one of them made mention
Of the fact that Pring was dead.

Then the coppers came to see you
As the neighbours smelt a smell,
But they thought it was the toilet;
They had not heard Pring’s death knell.

Only later did they find him
With the rubbish in your flat.
He was busy decomposing,
You were “shocked” and that was that.

But we must not be judgemental
At what lies behind the doors;
Life is messy, tempermental:
There are corpses on our floors.

Every Last Joint in Chinatown

Jon Merit was bored, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it because he had been brought up to equate being bored with being boring. The idle brain was the devil’s playground. Work hard, play hard, keep moving, gather no moss.

Now, however, he was just plain bored. To hell with the devil. Ha, ha. As he sat in his cubicle on the fourth floor of an office like so many others in downtown Boston, his mind was blank. Dazedly his gaze drifted from the comforting, televisionistic stultifying glow of his computer screen to the scene below the large window next to him.

Across Essex Street was a large Chinese market, the Super 99… 99 Essex Street. Supermarket. Perfect sense. On the leafless tree out front, snagged shopping bags fluttered like inflated white flags. Baskets of fruit and vegetables lined the front of the store, and through its large plate glass Merit could see the carcasses of small skinned animals hanging like a modern art installation. On the building’s third floor, directly across from Jon Merit’s workspace, were large Victorian windows behind which was a cluttered storage area with dusty-looking cardboard boxes scattered haphazardly around the floor and on top of one another. Merit half-expected to see a gun-toting Lee Harvey Oswald emerge from behind one of the boxes.

That’s how bored he was.

His gaze focused, and he smiled. He had been inside Super 99 many times, and even looking at it made him feel better, less bored. He often went there at the end of lunch hour to pick up next morning’s breakfast, and-

“Hey, Chairman, planning lunch already? It’s only 9:45.” The voice snapped Merit back to the office, and he swung around to see Alan, the press guy, leaning over the thin low wall of his cubicle. Alan was unshaven and heavyset, his jowly head resting on sloping shoulders, looking like it was about to roll off onto Merit’s desk like a bowling ball.

Others in the office had taken to calling Merit “Chairman” because of his love of all things Chinese. They also joked about his empty chair during lunch hour, as in, “Why the empty chair, man?”

“I don’t eat at the 99,” replied Merit evenly. “I only shop there. And I don’t plan my lunches, I just go.”

Alan raised his hands in mock defense and uttered a high-pitched, “Ooooooh! ‘I just go!’ The Chairman, an impulse eater!”

Has it really come to this? thought Merit. Listening to a fat guy talk about lunch at 9:45 AM. Alan had launched into a monotonous monologue, “…don’t get me wrong, I like to go into Chinatown once in awhile, you know, to try something different… but EVERY DAY? I mean, what’s next, Tai Chi in the conference room? Green tea in the coffee machines?”

“Hey that sorta rhymes, and might not be a bad idea,” answered Merit in a more amiable tone. “We could do with a release of the stress that this place seems to thrive on.”

Alan seemed to be not interested in this line of thought, and lumberingly turned away from Merit’s cube with a heavy sigh and slumped off to his own.

‘This place’ was a travel agency, where Merit and Alan were Account Managers, Alan also being responsible for putting a positive spin on the company’s exhorbitant prices and diminishing market share. For his part, Merit had come back to Boston after two years teaching English to Chinese living in the Philippines, and he had never really meshed with its corporate style, panic-driven deadlines, targets and incentive plans. To compound his miseries, his Sino-Filipina wife had abruptly disappeared shortly after securing citizenship, leaving him, amongst other things, to cook for himself.

This turn of events had made Merit briefly hostile towards all things Pacific Rim (he’d already had a healthy antipathy towards anything to do with California), but his first tentative forays into Chinatown, seeking the sort of food his absent wife had once cooked, dispelled those feelings. He wouldn’t admit it to himself, much less to any of his family and small circle of friends, but he was also half-searching for Liucy – thinking she might have disappeared down one of the side streets in Chinatown and into the multiple employment opportunities of the Chinese restaurants there.

After his first seven or eight lunches, Merit had come up with the idea that he would visit and eat in (or take out from) every restaurant and hole-in-the-wall eatery in Chinatown, then write about it. He might even see Liucy again.

So it was that day that he ambled out of his building clutching his well-marked street map, and after a stroll of a few blocks and turns found himself on the lower end of Washington Street.

His goal today was the Empire Garden (also, for some strange reason, called Emperor’s Garden on a sign outside the front entrance), the largest restaurant in this part of Chinatown, and before entering Merit stood and marveled at the garish marquee which extended out over the sidewalk.

Many years ago Washington Street had been the Amazon in a jungle known as the Combat Zone, Boston’s “red light” district. A series of tributary side streets had teemed with second-tier strip clubs and sex shops. Washington was then a raging torrent of sleaze – that is, until redevelopment plans gained a footing. Now, there was nothing more than memories of bustling clubs like the Naked Eye (or was it Naked I? Twenty years had done nothing to Merit’s memory skills but weaken them.) and mammoth, crumbling vaudeville-era theatres which had once shown first-run porn films from the burgeoning “adult entertainment industry” in California.

Merit approached the Empire Garden with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu; walking down Washington Street, curious about what was going on behind the storefronts. Now, though, it was more to do with prawn curry than with porn, hurry.

The marquee blared:

DIM SUM
EXOTIC COCKTAILS
JAZZ

Merit thought: how about those “exotic cocktails”? He remembered the 80s, when the word might have been “Erotic”…He had once slunk under the marquee and into the theater to watch his very first “adult movie”, and the feelings of guilt and shame flooded back. Then, as now, he was out of his depth.

His thoughts shifted to Liucy, of how they would occasionally dine in Chinatown after they had relocated to Boston from the Philippines, the Garden being one of their favorites.

But this was now, he was hungry, and without further hesitation Merit ambled into the foyer and up the grand staircase to the second floor, site of the spacious dining room. He was immediately greeted by a smiling hostess standing behind a sort of lectern.

“Wan?”
“Yes. One.”
“Furrow me, prease.”

Merit dutifully tailed the hostess into the large, carpeted dining room. He recalled that it had been the balcony of the porn theatre (what was now happening downstairs?) The ceiling and walls were a lush red velvet – Merit hadn’t noticed, the last time he had been here – with a garish chandelier hanging from the center, and large framed Oriental paintings of jagged peaks and pale meandering rivers festooning the walls.

The room was crowded with occupied tables both large and small, most ringed with loudly-chattering, laughing Chinese people.

Merit was led to a small table against a wall, like Steve Martin in “The Lonely Guy” accepting the chair offered to him. Despite his aloneness he had a reassuring feeling of belonging here; an Occidental cocooned in his anonymity. Nobody would be coming up to him to ask how Liucy was.

The times he’d been here before with her, he had marveled at how she’d scanned the 167 item menu perfunctorily before ordering for them both in what sounded like perfect Cantonese.

Yet that had been then, and now, at lunch, he felt a bit like a fish – or perhaps octopus, if the menu was anything to go by – out of water. When the smiling waiter glided unobtrusively up to his table, Merit merely pointed to a Smoked Hock and Gai Poo Lo Mein combination and intoned, “thirty-seven and one-hundred-three, please.” The waiter slashed characters onto the pad he was holding, then sidled back away with a gentle bow.

Merit had no idea what Smoked Hock was, but that was part of the fun. No second thoughts, and wait for the surprise.

The day before, he had dined at Wok Wok City, across from his office, with someone he hoped to impress. The other man had sat down with a perplexed expression on his face. Where’s a menu? his roving eyes had communicated.

“It’s dim sum,” explained Merit. “Wait and see.”

As if on cue, a wizened Chinese woman, pushing a three-tiered trolley laden with round dishes covered with metal domes, pushed up to the table and stopped.

“You like noodle? Won ton? Dumpling?”

Merit turned to his companion to explain. “Each trolley has a number of related dishes… boiled, stir-fried, sweet… You just point to the ones you want, the waitress scribbles the prices on the tab on your table, and presto! Instant meal. Very reasonable, too. Each dish only three or four dollars, so I’ll only be paying about twenty bucks for the whole shebang.”

Merit was seated across from Mark Pelltier, editor-in-chief at Boston Beat, a publisher of “local guides for local people”… and Merit was eager to please, therefore the personal pronoun and the assurance that lunch was on him. If all went well, according to his plan, Pelltier would bite at Merit’s proposal for a guide to lunch in Chinatown.

“You know, I’ve been doing the guides for several years now,” began Pelltier, relaxing into his chair as the waitress shuffled and clanged the several dishes the men had chosen onto the table. “But this is my first Dim Sum. Strange, huh?”

Merit raised his chopsticks like pointers, making a point.

“Not necessarily so,” he replied. “If you’re like most of us, you like the feel of a menu in your hand. You like being able to read what the dishes are, even though you may not know what’s in them. So you go to a traditional Chinese joint, where they have menus. On the other hand, with DS he hoped abbreviating would convince Pelltier he was an expert you can see what’s about to go into your mouth. Now, about lunches. Sure, Bostonians are used to Chinatown at night… takeouts and sit-downs, the whole ritual of it… but lunch is still a bit of a mystery. Maybe the Town is just a bit too far from the Financial District, Back Bay, the Hill… Easier to grab a quick bite in a sandwich shop… But a clear, well-written guide could change that.”

Pelltier seemed mesmerized by Merit’s chopsticks, joined by a practiced three-finger grip, and was nodding his head in agreement. Tentatively, he started poking the dumpling on his plate with his own chopsticks.

“So,” he ventured. “You want to write the book that’s gonna show how easy it is to chow Chinese in daylight.”

Merit took a quick sip of tea. “Well, maybe a pamphlet… a map, with notes… a brochure? You’re the expert.”

Pelltier pinched a dumpling between his chopsticks, raised it to his mouth, and began to nibble. Tentatively.

“It could be good,” he said. “But you’re gonna have to do your homework. Visit each place twice, never on the same day of the week, order as many different dishes as possible. Then write it all down in a way that’ll make people wanna see – taste – for themselves.”

He paused, then: “Can you do it? I mean, what qualifies you to write this?”

Merit met his gaze, thinking: is it good news or bad? This guy could walk out of here with a free lunch then disappear. Phone on voicemail, emails unanswered, spur-of-the-moment office visit inaccessible due to security.

Another trolley had pulled up like a docking cruise ship next to the table. Merit inhaled deeply of the pungent aromas, trying to clear his head of any doubt, and suddenly an idea came to him.

“OK, it’s time to play a game; Russian Roulette, Chinese-style.” He was making it up, but hoped Pelltier wouldn’t notice. The other man raised his eyebrows, showing interest. “We each choose three dishes, and ask for extra Tabasco sauce Merit had been startled, on his first visit to the restaurant, to see large bottles of the Mexican condiment on every table to be put on one of the dishes. We take turns tasting each dish, and whoever gets the burn first loses!”

Pelltier frowned. “Hmm. Sounds a little gimmicky, maybe better suited to a guide to Mexican joints. On the other hand, it might be just the sort of diversion that could spice up – pardon the pun – an otherwise ordinary guidebook.”

Merit nodded in relief, glad to see that he and Pelltier seemed to be on the same wavelength. He gestured to a passing waiter and explained the Tabasco proposal. The waiter looked skeptical, impassive, but then turned suddenly, snatched a bottle of Tabasco from a nearby table and with his back to Merit and Pelltier, performed the requested task on one of the trolleys close to their table.

A few minutes later Merit became the loser in the hot sauce game, burning his lips and tongue on an innocent-looking Deep Fried Oyster… but relieved that Pelltier would not be leaving the restaurant with his mouth on fire.

The next day, Merit decided he again wanted company at lunch, knowing that being with another person in a new restaurant would increase the number of dishes he could review. He and Pelltier had left Wok Wok the day before on good terms, with Merit promising to send an excerpt to the editor after he’d reviewed another eatery.

Now he had his sights on a very different lunchmate: Jan, the company president’s secretary. Jan, with the blond highlights and the solid build; the Steer from Revere was what the men in the company called her. Friendly, gregarious, and like a bull when she had a head of steam on. These qualities were much appreciated by the president, a reclusive office-dwelling email-writer.

Merit knew that Jan had a healthy appetite, and would no doubt provide him with the sort of frank, unadulterated review of a series of dishes which would give the guidebook an earthy authenticity. Merit also surmised that she probably enjoyed the occasional Chinese takeaway, but would otherwise enter the New Shanghai with no pretensions or preconceptions.

That morning, Merit had played cautious, sending Jan an email invitation:

“Jan: I’m a man with a plan. Join me for lunch in Chinatown?”

“Sure! : ) Time and place?”

“12:30. My cube. Restaurant to be determined.”

Merit figured Jan’s salary made a free lunch appealing, regardless of what she might think of him. She’d given him a tour of the building on his first day on the job, and they’d chatted amiably – Jan moaning about “low pay and benefits” at the company – but since then they’d exchanged little more than pleasantries on the rare occasions they’d crossed paths in the company kitchen. Otherwise they’d stayed worlds apart.

Merit’s choice of venue - the New Shanghai – was one he thought Jan would appreciate: clean, small, a simple menu. It had a website, which he expected would impress Jan, whose eyes always seemed glued to her computer screen in the office whenever he passed by.

To offset the predictability of their lunch, Merit decided to be reckless with his ordering, choosing dishes he wouldn’t ordinarily consider. While Jan scanned the menu with a hungry look in her eyes, Merit pegged the foods he thought looked most unusual. The thought came to him: another form of Russian Roulette! Order things with no clue what they will taste like!

For an appetizer, he had his eye on A20, Sweet Lotus Roots. He planned to follow that with Shanghai Style Chicken Feet, accompanied by Home Style Tofu.

Jan slapped down her menu and looked at Merit with a mischievous expression.

“My parents and I always ordah Chow Mein and Sweet ‘n Sour Pock,” she declared. “But I feel like trying something else. Whaddya think I should try, Jonny?”

Merit shifted uncomfortably in his seat, both due to the unwanted extension of his name, and because he didn’t feel happy recommending dishes to someone he didn’t know that well. Although he now felt skilled in choosing a wide range of dishes, he also needed, for the accuracy of his guidebook (or map, or pamphlet) for Jan to have a completely spontaneous, unaided eating experience. On the other hand, he was curious to hear what she thought about certain items on the menu that had caught his eye.

“Why don’t you start with the Steamed Chive Ravioli?” he suggested. “You could follow that with the D5, Jelly Fish With Chinese Vegetables, or the P5, Roast Hoof With Chinese Vegetables. Either of those would nicely complement the Ravioli.”

“Jellyfish?!? No way! I got stung by one of those at R. Beach once. And I thought ravioli was Italian…”

“Well, it used to be,” answered Merit. “Countries have always adopted food from other countries. For example, in the vice versa category, we have Italy inheriting noodles from China, thank you very much Marco Polo!”

Jan wasn’t listening, and had flagged a passing waiter to order a Mai Tai. Merit asked for a Tsing Tao.

The service was briskly efficient, and soon the two were passing plates across the table. Jan had opted to start with the 8-Treasure Sweet Sticky Rice, followed by the L14, Three Flavor Delight [“I like the names!”] but she was piling her plate high with Merit’s orders as well.

To his dismay, she then began mixing the different dishes together, creating a mound of gooey brown rice with pieces of meat and vegetables visible throughout. On top of this amalgamation she tapped exactly four drops of Tabasco Sauce, “like Ma and Pa have been doing for years. For a little extra kick!”

With a sigh, Merit reached slowly under the table to his lap, switching off the small tape recorder he’d been using to record what he’d hoped would be Jan’s simple yet illuminating observations about the food. At least she knows how to use chopsticks, he thought to himself, half-heartedly watching her attack the heaped plate in front of her with the two thin implements. A day earlier, Pelltier had given up on the things, using them only to push food onto his fork. Merit made a mental note to himself to include in his writings an explanation of proper chopstick technique, and possibly a comparison of plastic versus wood.

Back at the office, Merit and Jan parted company at her cube, she with a hearty “Thanks!” Nobody who had seen them as they entered the building, rode up the elevator, and buzzed their way through the fourth floor security door so much as glanced at them with the “unusual couple” appraisal; by now, the legend of what Alan had dubbed “Merit’s Manchurian Meanderings” was firmly rooted, as was the understanding that he would be seen in the company of a variety of lunchmates.

In the inner office beyond Jan’s cube, the company President, a bald man in his mid-forties named Jerry Dingley, looked up from his computer and gestured impatiently to Merit to join him in his office. Merit had seen the same look on Dingle’s face during tense staff meetings, and knew it didn’t mean good news.

Once seated in the lone hardback chair facing Dingle’s desk, Merit began to relax, thinking that a reprimand, or even a firing, wouldn’t be so bad, given the encouraging news he had earlier received from Pelltier. Plus, he knew Dingle well enough to know that anything the boss said would be done in an evasive, non-confrontational way. The boss’ routinely slavish attention to the computer monitor in front of him rendered him ineffectual in interpersonal discourse. Hence the other person or people always seemed to have the upper hand, if any hand was to be had at all.

Merit also surmised that Dingle would be understanding of his regular forays into Chinatown, given that the boss regularly dined at an upscale Asian place around the corner called Peking Phil’s. This was Dingle’s restaurant of choice whenever “the suits” were in town, as it was the sort of place where everyone in a party of six or more would find something to like on the menu, which managed to fuse (or possibly con-fuse) every popular Asian cuisine. Menu items included Seared Ahi Tuna, Vegetable Potstickers, Korean Beef and the ever-popular Pad Thai. Merit had avoided the place since an initial visit, however, as it required reservations for lunch – a no-no in Merit’s book of Chinese lunch priorities.

Meanwhile, across a desk clear of all but his beloved monitor, Dingle clearly had something other than Phil’s Chicken Wings in Hot Bean Sauce on his mind.

“Merit, the quarterly sales figures are in,” he intoned grimly, his brow furrowed, “and they don’t look good for your territory and a few others. Any thoughts?”

Faced with such a relatively open-ended question, Merit’s mind began to drift. He pictured Dingle at a single table in the New Shanghai; the boss yanked out of his comfort zone at Phil’s, and forced to order from a menu ranging from A to P, each letter with as many as 20 combinations. Would it be the A20, 8-Treasure Sweet Sticky Rice, with the P5, Roast Hoof with Chinese Vegetable? The boss looks up from his corner seat: perplexed, indecisive. Merit walks in and grabs a menu from a passing waiter, eager to help.

“I inherited some of those numbers from Albrecht,” he replied, hoping the reference to his predecessor would deflect Dingle. “Plus, Spring is a slow quarter for all of us. Are my numbers really that far below the others’?”

Dingle opened a desk drawer and pulled out a sheaf of spreadsheets, slapping the pile down on the desk like he might a menu at the New Shanghai.

“Look, this isn’t about picking clients and their business, like courses in a restaurant,” asserted the bald man. “In some cases, they pick you; in others, you have to go out and find them. Yes, everyone’s numbers are down this quarter, but we had higher hopes for you than for the others when we hired you. You have more worldly experience. Language. Cuisine. There aren’t many in this building who would dive into Chinatown like you have.”

Merit tried to interpret Dingle’s feelings from the flat tone in which he’d delivered this judgement, and decided they were mostly complimentary. However, he persisted in his vision of Dingle at the New Shanghai, now suddenly pushing his chair back, rising abruptly, and storming out of the restaurant – Merit unable to help him.

In real time, Dingle rose up out of his office chair, before placing both of his hands on top of his computer monitor, as if conferring upon it some sort of blessing. He looked at Merit evenly.

“I’ll put it to you bluntly, Jon,” he said in a measured tone. “We’ve… you’ve… got to get your sales figures up, and chop chop. Too late to wait for the end of this quarter – Senior Team are already talking layoffs. We’ve really come to a crossroads here, and need to turn the corner without delay.”

Mention of a crossroads brought to Merit’s mind the busy junction of Beach Street and Harrison Avenue, where there always – day or night – seemed to be restaurant business being transacted. Bags of dried noodles tossed off of small trucks, bags of trash tossed on. Product in, waste out.

Merit then noticed Dingle staring at him, so he sheepishly rose from his chair and two exchanged small talk of mutual reassurance and promise before Merit stepped out of the boss’ office.

Just beyond the doorway, Jan wheeled around in her chair, waving a small cellophane wrapper with what appeared to be a twisted biscuit inside.

“Johnny!” she declared. “You fuhgawt ya fawchin cookie! Ma and Pa and I like to eat about ten each at a time, until we find one that makes sense, but that lousy lunch place only gave us one each!”

Merit stood frozen in place, while she continued.

“I meant to give you yaws out on the street, but you seemed to be in a hurry to get back to the awffice. I awready ate mine; ‘Pleashah and prawfit will be yaws.’ Not bad for a one-outah-one, instead of a one-outah-ten, eh?”

Merit gently took the dangling packet from Jan’s pinched fingertips. He didn’t care, at that exact moment, to compare philosophies and futures with her, so he dropped the packet into his coat pocket.

“Thanks!” he imparted glibly, then: “See ya soon!” before hurrying on his way to his own cube.

Safely seated, he noted half-interestedly that the number of emails in his Inbox had doubled during his lunch break. With an equal level of disinterest he extracted the fortune cookie from, first, his coat pocket, and then its cellophane cell, bit into the sweet biscuit, and pulled out the slip of paper.

Fate will guide you, but luck will chide you.

What the hell does that mean? he thought. Why can’t I just have pleasure and profit, like Jan? Thinking of her drew Merit back to their lunch together, which also made him realize that he was hungry again. Maybe it’s true what they say about Chinese food.

He glanced at his watch. Three hours until quitting time. .. maybe another Chinese after work, on the way to South Station… or would two Chineses in a day be tempting fate?

He had in mind a joint called the Hei La Moon, on the southern fringe of Chinatown. It and couple of other establishments had been ccut off from the rest of the Town by the sweeping hand of the financially-disastrous Big Dig, and was now separated from the Pagoda Gate by a multi-lane access road.

Yet the Hei La still managed to attract large numbers of Asian families, as well as unhurried commuters content to nibble through the last available Pu Pu Platter, or 182 other items, before the train home.

For the more harried, there was also a Chinese version of McDonald’s in the station: the Walkie Wok. But early on in his quest Merit had been put off by the indifferent, slow service, as well as a misleading menu advertising white rice. (When Merit had ordered it, the cashier had charged him for egg-fried rice; maybe the misspelling on the menu board – “Withe Rice” – allowed for what he assumed was a form of deceit.)

Idly, Merit’s gaze drifted back to his computer screen, and to one bold-fonted email in particular. It was from Pelltier.

Placing the cursor over “MPelltier” and hitting the Return button, Merit read:

Jon-
Enjyd mtng u. Also enjyd samples, both DS and your wrtngs. OK to the prjct. Gv me a call.
MP

Merit leaned back with a smile; tempted to hit the Delete button on the remaining (unread) emails, he nevertheless felt the need to fulfill his responsibilties, despite the threat to his job. The cube was, after all, still his.

Suddenly appearing above its hall-side partition like a stubbly misshapen moon was Alan’s head. He didn’t say anything at first, but instead raised two forefingers to the sides of his face and pulled the skin taut, making Chinese eyes.
“You have good runch, Merit-san?” he asked in a singsong voice.

“That’s Japanese,” Merit growled. “And watch out: I know karate, judo, kung fu, and three other Chinese words.”

Alan’s head retreated. “Old jokey, bad jokey,” came his disembodied voice, then there was silence again in Merit’s cube.

He continued to sit still, random thoughts flashing through his mind. Across the street the Super 99 was its usual beehive of activity, the storefront stands of colorful fruit attracting the most attention.

Merit glanced at the spreadsheet next to his keyboard, its rows and columns filled with the numbers which he daily produced and consumed, and which calculated his fate as an employee.

On the other side of the keyboard lay an open menu from the Empire (or was it Emperor’s?) Garden, the inside of its three folds revealing the letters and numbers (A1 through P20), and both Cantonese and English text descriptors, of its many offerings.

Guided or chided? To sit at a table and be offered advice, or to sit at a desk and be told what to do, where to go… and to be treated to the site of Alan’s head at unexpected intervals?

Merit pondered the fact that he had 15 restaurants remaining before the reviewing part of his guide would be finished. Then would come the work of writing: sifting and sorting, assimilating, enlivening, visualizing, editing, proofreading. But that work would come easily to him, unlike the hard graft which lay ahead in trying to reverse the spreadsheet data… to coax it to work in his favor. And this couldn’t be done alone; certain things had to fall into place.

On the other hand, in turning from office to restaurant, he would be giving up his salary, benefits, and regular contact with the few friends he had in the office. He would be trading these in for the uncertainties of the freelance life: selling projects while developing others, networking at every possible opportunity… and could he rely on Pelltier?

All this was roiling in his head when a new email popped onto the top of his screen. “LChu” was the sender, in bold font: Liucy. Her maiden name.

Without hesitation, Merit rushed the cursor over the subject line (“Contact?”) and clicked.

Hey, stranger. I’m here. You’re there. We have a lot to discuss. Meet at the Empire for lunch? – Mabuhay.”

Merit stared with some uncertainty at the last word, a Tagalog multi-purpose greeting which they’d shared so many mornings and evenings after the eight- to ten-hour separations of “sleep and slavery”, as she’d termed them.

He re-read the brief message, marveling at its juxtaposition of Oriental abruptness and directness, and Western chit-chat. Was he still in love?

Now smiling, Merit hit the “x” in the upper right hand corner, then began to move his mouse lazily up and down the mousemat, watching the cursor shift between Liucy’s and Pelltier’s emails.

Review, reply. There were fortunes to seek.

Touching Tanzania
© Tom Bartlett, June 2009

For Molly, Rob, Rosie and Tess
Who Made it All Possible

The pilot said we’d be able to see Kilimanjaro through the right windows (interesting double meaning), so I quickly pushed over from my aisle seat – the plane was half-empty after Nairobi - and looked back and down over the wing. In the post-sunset gloom, what I saw below looked to be a witches’ brew of fluffy cloud and jagged peak. A possible optical illusion, in that the clouds might have been snow, and the peaks, angular cloud formations.

The scene passed quickly behind, and I eased into my seat, exhausted from the lengthy flight. A short time later, we banked to starboard, and I crossed to the other side of the plane to see that we were passing over the coast. The moon lit a silky beam over the ink-black ocean, and from its light I was able to make out the distinct outline of Zanzibar, and then of two smaller islands (which, I learned later, included the uninhabited Mbudya and Bagamoyo) closer to Dar.

As we touched down at Nyerere International, I reflected on the two views I had just had, and sensed in them a foreshadow of the week ahead: times of cloudiness and uncertainty, interspersed with moments of clarity and vision. I also felt an anticipation of the unexpected; a great stand-alone mountain hidden behind insubstantive water vapour, and mysterious islands floating like darkened ships near the shore.

Before I left England my friend Jane, a Tanzanian émigré, came over to prep me. She had earlier hosted two mutual friends at her family home in Dar, and referred several times to their wish to “see the poverty.”

“If you go to see the poverty,” Jane instructed,” be sure not to bring any valuables. Not even wedding ring.”

“I can handle myself, Jane,” I chided. “It’s no doubt the same situation as in places like the Philippines, Central America and in the Dominican Republic. Be wary, move decisively. How bad can it get?”

She rolled her eyes. “Just don’t accept any sweets on buses. They’re drugged. And be ready for random conversations.”

I had spoken with swagger, but in reality had begun to question my preparedness for this whole expedition, and what I was hoping to achieve. Guiltily I realised that yes, I was going to “see the poverty”… but I’d justified this to anyone who asked by talking plans to observe and network in education and training, my professional interests. I hadn’t convinced myself, though. Throughout the weeks leading up to the trip, I had had the nagging feeling that the visit, my first to sub-Saharan Africa, would be nothing like what I was anticipating, and that I would finally have to go with a completely open mind and agenda.

2.

The drive in from the airport with my sister and her family was unsettlingly familiar in its developing-world reference points: semi-darkened, transient-looking shacks lining the perilous road, its sides populated by teetering cyclists and reckless road-crossers. Mainly it was these, the anonymous people scuttling along and across the roadway, dicing with death in their proximity to speeding vehicles, and their lack of any sort of bright or reflective clothing, that caught my attention.

I remember the same scene from El Salvador, and further back from the Philippines; looking out on this run from airport to city, from the safety of a locked car; the barely-avoidable voyeurism of the fortunate, speeding through the gauntlet of the what-might-have-been, there but for the grace of God…

The next day, a Sunday, we were out on one of those islands I’d seen from the plane: Mbudya. In certain ways this was the “tropical paradise” that is replicated in so many of the developing parts of the world: uninhabited, palm-fringed beaches edging into clear warm water.

Yet poverty is never that far away. As my relatives and I were reclining on the beach, we saw a lone fisherman in a sailing dugout beach his craft not far from us. The hull was literally a single, hollowed-out tree trunk, with a ragged brown sail held up by a limb-thin mast. This mini-dhow, one of several which plied the waters around the island searching for fish, seemed to lack a boom, rudder and keel; yet from what I saw of the dugouts beating against the wind in front of us, the fishermen seemed to know just which shift of weight or sail was needed to move forward.

The man near us flashed a bright, apologetic smile, before he set to work repairing his flimsy sail, which seemed to involve merely tying one piece of fabric to another. After a couple of minutes of deliberate, concentrated activity, he was off: pushing the dugout off the beach, grabbing the main sheet (a small length of rope tied to the back of the sail), and shifting his body to and fro as the boat inched forward.

In an entire afternoon on that beach, we did not see a single fish caught. But we saw some amazing sailing.

How could these guys – and their families - survive?

3.

Survival and employment seemed to weigh heavily on the mind of Ibrahim, a security guard/gardener at my sister’s house. He’d agreed to accompany me to Ubongu Bus Station to help me get a ticket for the bus up to Moshi, near Kilimanjaro, and as we walked along the Msasani Peninsula he told me about his family – children in secondary school in a town west of Dar – and asked about the possibility of working in England or America.

“Very bad here,” he moaned, his expressive face downcast as we boarded a ‘dalla dalla’, one of the overcrowded mini-buses that dart around Dar and the surrounding area. “No jobs. I could work in U.K., yes, and U.S.A.? Anything- cleaning? Driving?”

I nodded sympathetically, but knew that his chances were slim. Ibrahim had no family connections in either place, and doors which had been open to the huddled masses before the “War on Terrorism” no longer were; if not closed, they were jammed half-open, allowing only the most determined to squeeze through.

Crammed into the “basi” (twelve seats, but many more passengers) I once again turned to the scene outside to avoid Ibrahim’s probing questions. I didn’t have answers.

We were passing through a relatively prosperous area, as people seemed to be busily occupied in and around the small shops which fronted the road. Yet still there was the open sewer separating us from them, and the shoeless half-naked children playing too close to the road, and the flies and the noise…

Or was that just me in culture shock, looking at “them” through northern eyes? Speaking of eyes, I noticed that Ibrahim’s were red-rimmed and bloodshot; from weeping? Sleeping? Some sort of tranquilizing medication? We rode on in silence.

Ubongu was a scene of utter chaos and overcrowding, with young men moving purposefully towards arriving busses and taxis to push business, or just lounging around in doorways. The van dropped us across the road, and as we disembarked we were immediately accosted by a small group of insistent touts.

“Basi?”
“Where you go?”
“Taxi?”

Ibrahim did his best to fend them off in polite but insistent Swahili as we pushed our way across the road. I had spotted a sign for the Scandinavian Bus Company perched above the single-storey buildings of the station, and decided to make a bee-line.

The touts faded away as they perhaps sensed my determination, and I was soon able to purchase a one-way ticket at the Scandinavian booth for a very-reasonable 24,000 shillings. I would be leaving the next morning at 9:00 AM. I noticed the company slogan was “In God We Trust”, and hoped that that trust included brakes, tyres and drivers.

4.

To play it safe the following morning, not wishing to replicate the dalla-dalla experience too early in the day, I jumped into a taxi soon after seeing my niece off at the International School halfway down the Msasani. In the skewed economics that is perhaps common in the developing world, the five mile taxi trip to Ubongu would cost 15,000 shillings. Same trip in a dalla-dalla? 1,500. Then there was the reasonably-priced seven-hour Scandinavian journey up to Moshi. Where was the sense?

The taxi driver insisted on an extra couple thousand after negotiating us through the thronged gates of Ubongu and around to a gated compound housing the Scandinavian buses. This was clearly a tout-free zone, and I was relieved to be able to relax on a plastic chair under an open-sided shelter before the marathon journey north.

This turned out to be a breakneck excursion through an ever-changing panorama of Tanzanian life and scenery, as we passed over the hilly, overpopulated slums of suburban Dar and into the fertile farmland towards the interior of the country. Heading north, we skirted the hills near Kurogwe and Same (pronounced “Samay”), the vast Maasai Steppe stretching away to the west. The coach bombed along at eighty on the two-lane road, the driver occasionally leaning on his horn to warn road-crossers, human and livestock, of the approaching threat.

It was a trip with an abundance of sensual experiences, made easier by the fact that this bus was a lot less crowded than the average dalla-dalla. I could move around, and look out of different windows, like on the plane. Across the aisle from me was a young British backpacking couple, and they recognized the guidebook I was reading.

“Excellent advice, that one,” remarked John, in an undistinguished London accent. “But a little too political. Who needs it?”

As it turns out, I had just been reading about Tanzania’s failed experiment in socialism and Maoism, and I took issue. “Well, how can you understand a place without knowing its political history?”

Fiona cut in. “Who needs to understand? Why not just experience and enjoy?” John was nodding in agreement.

“Fair enough,” I answered, “But politics helps, at least, to better understand why all those guys out there” (I waved generally towards the touts approaching the bus as it pulled over to the roadside for what appeared to be a security check) “are spending their days selling fruit and souvenirs. Isn’t there a better way to make a living? Evidently not: Nyrere’s plan to decentralize and focus on family and village means a basically localized, subsistence economy.”

Almost as soon as I said them, I regretted my words as just so much white noise. What do I really know about this country and its people? Here I was skimming through Lonely Planet and making judgments.

Meanwhile palms – human, not plant - were slapping the sides of the bus, and other hands were raising bunches of green bananas, dark wood carvings, and plastic-wrapped juice boxes to our eye level. Without warning, the bus engine revved and we pulled away, while our entrepreneurs started a slow jog to keep up.

“Wewe mzungu!”
“Hey, meestah! You buy!”
“Look, look!!”

The dust soon obscured them as we pulled back onto the road and continued our journey north. Later that afternoon, we veered left at a fork, and I noted from my guidebook map that we were now skirting around the southern flank of Kilimanjaro. Straining my eyes to see through the windows next to the sleeping Brits, I tried to make out the great mountain, but she was covered in mist and cloud. A short time later, we turned left again at a roundabout and descended a gradual slope into Moshi.

As we pulled into another chaotic bus station, I braced myself for the inevitable onslaught of sales pitch and tout. Sure enough, no sooner was I off the bus and striding towards what I assumed was the center of town than a young man fell into step next to me.

“Hey, bratha, you look for hotel, yes? I help you.”
“No thanks. I think I know where it is…”
“You go to Lutheran Umoja, yes?”

(How did he know that?? I’d picked the place from the guidebook, as it looked cheap, quiet, and far enough from the station to be out of the range of touts. Now here was one strolling along with me, and he seemed to be able to read my mind. Yet I didn’t have the heart to tell him to get lost; he was young, earnest, conversational…)

“You also want a Kili trek, yes? I can make it, all included, 40,000 shillings. We make deal, you ready in morning, we go.”

(I had planned a trek around the foothills of Kilimanjaro, but I had wanted to do it alone, or at least with someone who wasn’t a tour guide. Mountain geography has always been rather straightforward for me: up to the top, down to the bottom, across a contour line for a stroll along the flank. Who needs a guide?)

After walking a few blocks, mostly on the road, as the sidewalk was cracked and jumbled, as if an earthquake had hit and no repairs had been made, we turned right up a bumpy dirt road, and then into the Umoja compound.

“Thank you, we’ll stop here.” I said. “Do you have a card? I’ll ring you in the morning if I want a trek.” After nearly eight hours on a bus, I was in no mood to stand, chat, bargain; the young man seemed to understand this, as he produced a card, made a short bow, and turned away back down the dirt road.

That night, as I lay on my cot under a shroud-like mosquito net, I reflected on my would-be guide’s working life; if he hadn’t latched on to me, what then? The British backpackers? Their budget seemed a thinner shoestring than mine, and they probably would have given the guide an immediate brush-off.

Yet again I had the thought: how do these people survive? Maybe it’s something to do with the communalism of the Nyere ideal, with families and whole villages supporting individual members. I would have to learn more.



5.

The next morning I was back at the bus station to catch a dalla-dalla up to the village of Marangu, near one of the official gates for the trek to the top of Kilimanjaro. My intention was to hike up to the gate and scout around the area, in anticipation of a possible future climb to the summit.

Before that, however, I had to scout around the bus station to find the right vehicle in the swirling mass of semi-derelict buses and dallas coming and going from the two roads leading in and out of Moshi. Making my way to the central building, I noted the words “Booking Office” in faded paint on a crumbling wall, with an arrow pointing up an adjacent outdoor staircase. At the top of the stairs, however, there was no sign of an office; just a series of closed doors and an inch-deep puddle of rainwater on the floor.

A young boy was standing aimlessly nearby, so I asked with a shrug, “booking office?” He immediately waved his hand beckoningly for me to follow him downstairs, and we descended to a large open space with tables set up for safari tours and long-distance coaches. A couple of suited but bedraggled-looking men seated at the tables looked over at me expectantly, but after I’d scanned the signs I shook my head and said to the boy, “Marangu.”

An older boy sidled over, and asked, “Basi?”

“Marangu,” I replied. “Dalla-dalla.”

“Follow.”

He led me out of the back of the building, younger boy scurrying behind, to where a group of dalla-dallas were idling and filling with people.

The older boy stopped at one, made a sweeping motion towards the open double-doors, then swept his arm back towards me, palm open.

Fishing in my pocket, I retrieved a 500-shilling note – about 20 pence – and placed it in the boy’s hand. The smaller boy was standing next to him, his wide eyes staring at me expectantly.

“For you two… share… together…” I stammered ineffectually. I didn’t have any other loose change or small bills, but figured the note would go far for these young hustlers.

Without comment, the older boy flashed a bright grin, closed his fist over the cash, turned on his heel and dashed away through the parked dalla-dallas. The younger boy took up the chase, but it was already too late. He stopped and gave me one last look over his shoulder as he, too, then bolted away through the vans: a doleful, expressionless look of resignation which I will remember for a long time to come. I’d failed him, as had his elder. But I’d failed him worse.

Crammed against a window in the speeding dalla-dalla, I squinted through the roadside dust and smoke for a view of the majestic mountain passing by to our left. Lush vegetation of palm and creeping vine trailed away uphill from the huts and small shops lining the road, but nothing more was visible higher up. The heights were obscured behind cloud.

At Marangu, a humble sloping village with no discernible centre, I practically popped out of the overcrowded (at our most busy, 23 passengers in a 12-seater) van, banging my head on the door frame in the process. I had no idea where to go; just a determination to walk uphill until the hoped-for gate appeared.

No doubt sensing my hesitance, a thin, bony man started walking beside me, a teenager on his other side. He introduced himself as Moses; the boy, “my uncle”, Marco. Moses looked like a shorter, bonier version of Michael Jordan; bald pate, piercing gaze, athlete’s swagger. We sauntered along the village’s main street until shacks gave way to jungle, always uphill. As we did, I gradually came to the realization that I had probably hired a guide and his assistant for the day, but my excitement at finally being on Kili clouded any thoughts of costs and commitments.

Moses guided us up a side road, leading steeply into the forest. I briefly thought of bailing out, feeling for the first time a loss of security, but he and Marco were so friendly, and I felt strong enough to bolt if trouble arose, that I kept walking.

Throughout the morning Moses, and to a lesser extent Marco, kept a running commentary on the flora and fauna of the foothills, pausing periodically to pick wild strawberries, guavas, coffee beans, peppermint leaves. We chewed and talked, and the heat and humidity slowed us down. I gave Moses my baseball hat as the sweat was sliding down his shiny dome in rivulets and into his eyes. We rested by two successive waterfalls, “Mama” and “Papa”, before reaching the gate signaling the trailhead for the mountain track. After spending some time sauntering around the national park buildings, fending off touts trying to sell us t-shirts, we headed back down to the village.

Before we parted, the three of us sat down in teetering wicker chairs at an outdoor bar and engaged in what was for me an uncomfortable session of haggling over their fee.

I’m fairly sure that to my two guides I was yet another middle-aged American pursuing a Hemingwayesque fantasy on a generous budget. The truth was, I was not exactly pinching pennies or shillings but was still watching my wallet (figuratively as well as literally) throughout this trip. I therefore found myself indignant at both myself and them for not having agreed a price at the start of the day.

It ended with my parting with more shillings than I had hoped, but in retrospect I’m grateful for having had the experience of hiking a part of Kilimanjaro with two people who knew her intimately. What’s more, in the final analysis I suppose that in most travel, one must resign oneself to the reality of having to part with cash, perhaps more cash than one would like. There is also solace in feeling that the local economy is being supported, and that entrepreneurs like Moses and Marco are only doing what any of us would do in their position.

Yet I couldn’t shake the concern I had that so many men and boys were engaged in such a transient and unpredictable form of work. Having been though bouts of unemployment myself, I felt that I understood to some degree the “needs must” approach that so many of these young and middle-aged men are taking; and it was natural that they approach people who were in a position to pay them for their services. Still… in a country and a continent with so much need (over forty million AIDS orphans by 2010, for example), I kept coming up with questions: is their time best spent shoving bags of fruit up at passing coaches, or waiting for a potential customer to get off the next dalla?

I knew these feelings would linger as I waited to board the Scandinavian back to Dar the next day, but looked forward to taking refuge in the familiar shabby interior of the bus. After the dusty, crowded tension of Moshi, I planned to slump into my seat and sleep.

As I was about to board the bus, my way was suddenly blocked by a stocky young man, his short-sleeved button-up shirt tucked tightly into his belt, which rode high on his tummy.

I was about to mumble “No.. no..” in anticipation of some sort of attempted sales pitch, when I noticed something about his face. The eyes… the open grin… Down’s Syndrome; the first I had seen in Africa.

Without any hesitation, the young man stepped towards me and enveloped me in a cushiony bear hug.

“Hijambo,” he slurred. “Gee- bye… gee-bye.”

Hugging him back, the tension and suspicion finally given release, I whispered back, “Hijambo… Salaam… Goodbye, my friend.”

6.

The Scandinavian hurtled south – it all felt like downhill – along the familiar, pock-marked road; through a parched landscape of stunted trees and grass-shack villages fronting empty hills to our left, and the big-sky steppe to our right. Kili faded away behind as a vast mountain of cloud. Looking ahead towards the steppe, I half-expected to see The Man With No Name riding towards us on a horse.

We stopped for lunch at the “Liverpool Restaurant”, a cross between a bazaar and a truck stop, where all of us stocked up on cellophane-wrapped chicken and chips and bags of fresh fruit. In this setting, nobody seemed to mind being hustled; it was all about food, and the jolting journey seemed to have provoked not road-sickness but hunger, and there was good-natured bantering and bartering between touts and travelers.

Hours later, several delays caused by accidents and road repairs meant that we didn’t pull into Dar until well after sunset. Nobody disembarked at Ubongu – the scene was just too hellish, I suppose; bad enough in daylight –but staying on the bus meant an extremely slow procession into the city centre due to what I assumed was rush hour.

I caught a taxi home from the Scandinavian terminus with a driver who knew next-to-no English; he, possibly, veteran of a school system which ignores the English language until secondary school. (Yes, cast off the colonial shackles, Julius, however…) I leaned over the seat from the back to offer the driver a biscuit from a bag I had brought with me, whereupon he silently grabbed the whole bag, dropped it on the passenger seat, and began popping biscuits into his mouth like a druggie with ‘Ludes. Munching precluded talking, all the while hurtling through the traffic-free backstreets on our way to the Msasani Peninsula. Priceless. I was bone-tired, but I was beginning to warm to Tanzania. Unfortunately, this was my last night.

On my final day in-country, I retreated to Bagamoyo to gather my thoughts. Once again, I watched as fishermen battled wind and wave in their dugout sailboats. Once again, I watched as the boatmen who brought us to the island worked as a team to get us out to the pristine sands safely, and with the luxury of cooked fish and cold beer.

When I’d planned this trip months earlier I’d had no idea of the impact these daily working lives – and the other un- and under-employed lives – would have on me. I’d hoped to visit charities, training programmes, schools… but instead spent much of the week just looking out of windows, listening, and reflecting on the roles of men at work and out of work. In just that short span of time, I felt the scales starting to fall from my eyes, in that I was beginning to see a way of working, and of being unemployed or marginally employed, that was vastly different to what we have in ‘the developed world.’ I began to realise that I could not impose snap judgments and values on a culture which is, after all, many millennia older than “ours.”

Yet…yet…yet… I’m left with memories of the miles passing by outside the speeding Scandinavian, and the seemingly endless procession of villages and hamlets, populated almost exclusively by men at repose; shooting pool, or rising from stools to try and hawk something bus-side. I hear the voices next to my head as I walk a bit faster to try to move away; voices so friendly, but invariably trying to sell. Just one exception: that farewell hug in Moshi.

Then I think again of the shocking statistics: all those AIDS orphans. 25,000 children dead every day in the developing world due to the effects of malnutrition and preventable diseases. Where are the men in all of this? Why can’t they help?


7.

My plane lifts off into the night; the overnight haul to Nairobi, Zurich, and on to Heathrow in the morning. This time, I see little out of my porthole but the dwindling lights of western suburban Dar. There are no islands, and I don’t know when or where we pass by Kili. By now, my mind has started to shift from observing mode to planning mode; looking ahead to all that I have to do back in England.

The cabin lights dim as I ponder the working week, and what I need to accomplish at home: lawn, hedge, wash the car… and then a bizarre vision crosses my mind. It goes like this: after I’ve done my chores, I flop down in a chair in the front room, and thumb-press the remote to command the television to work its hypnotic magic. As I stare into the screen, not even registering what I’m watching, a man stops outside my house and looks in at me – but I don’t see him. He is a Tanzanian; it is Ibrahim. He is on his way to work, a night shift cleaning our two village pubs. He smiles as he looks at me, the idle man at repose. As he moves along, he sees through windows other men in similar positions in their front rooms. He encounters one of my neighbours cleaning his car for the second time in a week, largely because he seems to have nothing better to do. Another man further along is trimming his hedge meticulously to a uniform height, stepping back occasionally to view his handiwork, like an artist pondering a canvas. He does this every week. Next door to him, the house is empty, as the owner is down at his allotment. Due to some undisclosed disability, this man has been ‘off work’ for a long time. He has recently announced via Facebook that he is temporarily suspending micro-farming on his allotment so that he can watch Wimbledon for its allotted two weeks.

Ibrahim walks on, smiling that bright, genuine East African smile, and shaking his head. He’s just stepped off a nearly-empty bus from the city centre, and he enjoys walking to the pubs and passing village houses. What’s more, although he has just finished a prior shift cleaning a factory and will be up most of the night scrubbing pubs, his eyes are no longer red.

Drain my ego,
Fill me up ;
Blood wine from
Your loving cup.

Starve my soul,
Then feed me full ;
Bread of life –
Incomparable !

Still my voice,
Then teach me song ;
Hymns of praise
A lifetime long.

Bless with money
(Just enough) ;
Keep me from
The silly stuff.

Teach me love,
In all I do ;
Love that carries
Back to You.

Take my life,
Then make it Yours ;
‘Loss’ could open
Many doors.

A Day Short of Thirty-Two:
Back to the Boss, Belatedly
By Tom Bartlett

When I hit 17, things my parents did and said started to make sense. Those early teenage years had been blurred by misunderstandings, silences, and distances, but when I was just on the cusp of going off to college, things started to click.

Take music, for example. The performing and listening of it has always been a bond between my mom and me, but the piano lessons I had to endure as an adolescent and early teen were by and large a frustrating litany of tangled fingerwork and temporary memory loss. We drifted apart, somewhat, the piano and me; mom and me.

When I started to get serious, in high school, about singing, I came to appreciate how the discipline of the piano had planted in me an appreciation of melody, harmony and rhythm. I think mom, with her long history of playing the violin, might have envisioned this sort of crossover.

I doubt she could have foreseen how Led Zeppelin would affect my future involvement in music, however. For my fourteenth birthday, she had bought me Led Zeppelin 2 on cassette, mistakenly thinking it was a recording of war stories. The grainy picture of a crashing dirigible on the cover was no doubt a giveaway. At the time, I was heavily into stories of World War II escapes and feats of daring (subliminal messages there, I believe), but I was soon to trade these in for hours spent listening to Plant/Page collaborations on a tiny cassette player and on the family stereo, simultaneously playing air guitar and humming along to the riffs. A different type of escape.

I was transfixed by this new music; not so much by the songs themselves, their content, but by the musicianship and teamwork of the band members… how the four parts – vocals, guitar, bass, drums – fit together to make a seamless performance. I also found fascinating the production elements of the album: the sound effects of “Whole Lotta Love”, and the quick transitions from one song to the next, as from “Heartbreaker” into “Living Loving Maid.”

As the years went by, the 70s drifting into the 80s, I started to enjoy a wider range of music, and scored concert tickets with my friends whenever possible. Highlights included (in no particular order) Jethro Tull, ELO, J. Geils, Peter Frampton, Santana, Robert Palmer, Frank Zappa, Boston, and Seals and Crofts. This latter duo were consummate musicians; at times during the show, I found myself marveling at how they were playing and singing at opposite ends of the stage, in perfect sync with each other.

My biggest musical influences during this time were – an odd combination – Steely Dan and the Beach Boys, the former for their albums and the latter for the “live” experience. I never saw the Dan in concert; Becker and Fagan weren’t much into touring in those days… but I caught the Boys in Boston on three separate occasions. I enjoyed all three shows, but by the third I was starting to realize that I was witnessing an oldies act in the making. The defining moment for me came when Mike Love attempted to execute a rock god leap from the drum kit platformonto the stage, only to tumble awkwardly into a heap. Wipe Out; Boys no more.

By 1975 I was turning cynical and jaded towards all things musical – hell, towards life in general, to be honest. I was annoyed with the onset and onslaught of disco, and rock seemed to be getting repetitious and tired. I was 17, and on December 5th was first in my class to be accepted into college, “early decision.” I would be going to the family seat of higher education, Dartmouth College, following four previous generations of males in my family to that most northerly of Ivies. My consequent sense of entitlement and even arrogance (“Who said ‘legacy’?) must have been grating to family and friends, not to mention classmates.

My father was a career diplomat, and with my mother and two sisters had made a mid-70s relocation to Ottawa from DC, while I remained at boarding school outside Boston. I came up to the frozen Canadian capital by bus that Christmas of ‘75, smug in the knowledge that the next four years of my life were settled, to the approval of parents and grandparents, and that I had nothing more to prove as a lowly high schooler. Senior Slump would be a six-month snoozer.

My only plan in visiting a city where I knew nobody apart from my immediate family was to ski, drink perilous volumes of Molson, and hang out in the basement guest room listening to the Dan. On arrival, my parents expressed knowing tolerance of this schedule of activities, with my mother adding only one extra commitment: she had bought me a ticket to see Springsteen.

The Boss had booked a date at the Ottawa Arts Centre on Dec. 20, and my mom had teamed up with another lady at the Embassy whose two sons would be coming along as well. I had never met the guys, but while my previous concert companions had been good friends or potential girlfriends (with the emphasis, always, on “potential”), I figured it’d be better to at least attend with someone else, as opposed to the nerdiness of a solo ticket.

I remember little of the gig, try as I might, apart from first being impressed by the comfort and relative intimacy of the several-thousand seat Arts Centre. I had become accustomed to cavernous, greasy echo chambers like the old Boston Garden, the Cape Cod Colliseum, and Schaefer Stadium in Foxboro, and I was pleasantly surprised to be able to sit in a padded seat, facing the stage (no seats behind the stage!), able to see objects onstage as more than mere specks.

At some point, I must have met up with the two brothers; I won’t pretend to recall how or where. I do remember one having a scraggly beard, and as we settled into our seats, he explained that he had come to Ottawa to “veg out.” This struck me as a reasonable conversational opener, so I responded with something sympathetic but vapid like, “Hey, whaddya know: so am I!”

“No” he replied morosely. “I’m back here for good. To veg out.”

“Oh.” There was not much more to be said. I later learned from my mother that one or both of the brothers were suffering from depression, dementia, or something equally debilitating – this being in the days before such conditions became cocktail party conversation. But sitting between them in those plush seats, waiting for the show to begin, I was nonplussed; after all, I was going to school with lots of guys who seemed to be inhabiting parallel universes… some stoned, some troubled in other ways, maybe because of parents less tolerant than mine.

I also remember little of the actual concert, apart from the typical sledgehammer Brucian start and, halfway through, a magical “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, with an athletic, leaping St. Nick bounding all over the stage, while Bruce chuckled and sang. At one point I was temporarily blinded by a spotlight reflected off of the Big Man’s sax, and throughout the show felt almost physically pinned to my seat by the sonic onslaught of melodic songs, most about small-town Jersey life.

This was shortly after “Born to Run” had exploded onto the scene, and Bruce also had songs from “Asbury Park” and “E Street Shuffle” to draw from… all very regional, very evocative of small-town teenage agonies and triumphs, yet universal in scope. In my arrogant, I’m-going-to-an-Ivy frame of mind, I thought of Joyce’s Dublin in “Ulysses.”

The umpteenth encore ended more than three hours after we’d taken our seats, and the brothers (how could they ‘veg out’ after that? I thought) and I filed silently out of the auditorium and off on our separate ways. I also walked out on the Boss that night, as it was to be many years before I would be in possession of another Springsteen album or concert ticket.

I can’t fully explain the gap in my Springsteen experiences, but I do know that when I headed back to Dow’s Lake on that freezing Ontarian night I was convinced that I had just seen the greatest concert I would ever see in my life: tops for energy and audience engagement, for variety, for longevity, and for any number of other markers. Going back to see the Boss would probably fail to measure up, so why do it? Something in those flawed, striving Jersey characters spoke to me, and spoke loudly. There was redemption, broken but also requited love, hope, promise… and the open road lying ahead, for those, like Kerouac had before, who would make the effort to get out and get on.

Here was I, standing under a ladder of education and expectation, preparing to climb; to move upward through a process laid out for me and paid for dearly, feeling smug and glum at the same time. To escape the prep school insularity and conformity which I, at the time, felt caused these feelings, I would often drive down to Plymouth, south of Boston, where we had a summer home. There I would meet up with my friends from the town, and at night we would cruise the streets and hang out on the beach. There was no boardwalk or carnival, but I suppose in some ways it was a bit like Asbury Park: an empty winter beach, kids pursuing dreams, love, breaking away and breaking down.

But the romanticism and lyricism of Springsteen’s songs did not always protect our situation. My friend Peter crashed his Corolla into a tree one night and died; another night, I was standing next to a car talking with a girl who was standing up through the sunroof. I left, and half an hour later she too was killed in a horrific crash against a tree. Bruce had sung of “suicide machines”, but this was something far worse.

As the Me Decade began, I was observing Bruce from the sidelines, hearing the unending string of Top 40 hits with polite interest, but somehow not becoming an uberfan. I preferred to stay on the boardwalk, E Street, 10th Avenue… with familiar characters like Rosailta, Sandy, the Rat. This dwelling in the past no doubt reflected my lack of confidence and direction at the end of my Dartmouth days. It seems that just getting into and getting through the place had used up all of my initiative, and it would be a long time before I got it back. Songs like “Hungry Heart” and “Dancing in the Dark” and “Born in the USA” did nothing for me; nor did much else. But like a Springsteen character, I kept moving on, persevering, seeking.

Later, in my brief stint as a full-time journalist I regularly scored free concert tickets in return for two- to three-hundred-word reviews for my employer, a chain of community newspapers on Boston’s South Shore. The Dead in Foxboro; the Moody Blues and the Allman Brothers at Great Woods: all remarkable shows in their own ways, but…

In ’84 my good friend Alex made it to a Springsteen show at the Worcester Centrum. He’d won the ticket in a coin toss with his then-wife, and went to the show with a guy he barely knew – shades of my Embassy brothers experience. Springsteen had, in ’84, one of his biggest hits, and one of the bestselling albums of the year, “Born in the U.S.A.”. Alex was living with his girlfriend Kim, had a seven-month old baby, and was on the road working for his father-in-law, and living with his in-laws in the South Shore town of Duxbury.

By the time of the Springsteen tour of that year, Alex and Kim were married… but there was another guy in the picture. (Why does there always have to be “another guy”? In every relationship I’ve had, there’s been “another guy”: ex-boyfriend, special “friend”, interested classmate, whoever. Complications!)

In this case, the guy showed up at Alex’s house one Thursday, expecting him to be away on business, carrying two Springsteen tickets for the sold-out show at the Centrum. Being a reasonable sort, this other guy suggested that Alex and his wife flip a coin to decide who would be accompanying ticket-bearer to the show. Alex won.

My friend Frania, who I met much later, was at the same show. Around that time, I was persuaded by a girlfriend to see Huey Lewis at the old Channel in Boston. She was an uberfan of his. I was not. If only I’d gone to Worcester with Alex…

Fast forward to 2007. I’m living in England, married to Linda, who is British, two kids with English accents, no time or money for concerts; kids annoyed by my backup singer imitations when driving. I’m looking out for trees, though. Out of the blue, Frania scores me a ticket for Springsteen at the O2 Arena in London, ex-Millenium Dome. December 19… 32 years minus a day after that Ottawa show. I’m there, nerdy solo ticket or not.

Like the Arts Centre lo those many years ago, the O2 is slick, clean, even antiseptic. The concert inner-sanctum, a 20,000 seat oval, is ringed by trendy ethnic restaurants and gift shops, all thronged by the concert-going faithful. This ain’t Jersey, I think to myself. I skip by the overpriced gifts, spring for a Murphy’s stout, enter the arena, and take my seat in Section 114, the bank of seats just off stage right, about 40 feet behind the pianist, then as now Roy Bittan.

Unlike the one in 1975, this show becomes etched in my memory, and is present with me as I write this. I mean this in a literal sense, as the bootleg CD of the show (thanks again, Frania!) is playing on my laptop as I type these words. Next to the machine is a review of the show from Backstreets.com, the text supplemented by a photo of the Boss and Miami Steve wearing frilly cowboy hats.

It is now the case, indeed, that every Springsteen show is covered from top to bottom, beginning to end; bootlegged, reviewed, photographed from every angle. Bruce has a back catalogue to match any living “artist”, and the faithful know and sing all the words on every song.

What hasn’t changed is the sheer energy and commitment of the man to the people who pay his wages. The fact that nearly every band member who was playing with him that night 32 years ago is still onstage is impressive enough.

So I sat and I stood and I clapped and I sang… and I also reflected, from my banked seat in the darkness off stage left, on the time that had passed by, and how I had changed in some ways, stayed the same in others. I thought of Peter, and of the girl in the sunroof, and of Alex and our late friend Jim. They had come to Ottawa with me during Spring Break ’76 to go skiing at Camp Fortune, a last pre-graduation fling up north in the Quebec woods. At the end of their visit they were broke and so was I, and they decided to hitchhike back to Boston – bags, ski equipment, and a hope and a prayer. Damned if they didn’t make it back home in three days.

I think the Boss would have approved. Then, as now.

c. Tom Bartlett
April 2008