Perpetual Notion

I am not disposed to talking much about this, nor even to think much on it. Though today is an anniversary, and I do feel strongly that remembrance is the true afterlife. And as such, I can grant her that.

Twenty years ago this day, I was picked up from Stonebridge Elementary by my dad as any other day. We stopped over at Grandma’s house to pick up my sister, Greta May. Pulling around the curve of the driveway we could see that there was an ambulance pulled up to the house. Nether of us spoke, but each of us was thinking the same thing, that something happened to Grandma.

Entering the house, I was pulled aside by my older cousin Shawna. She was probably like ten, but that was older. We always stayed at Grandma’s house on sick days, I think that is what she was doing. Shawna told me how she had gone upstairs to check on my sleeping sister, and how Greta had been turning colors, turning blue. The ambulance had arrived just before we did. Even then that had seemed like a heavy burdened discovery for a ten year old, my cousin.

That much of the day remains clear. I know that my folks went to the hospital with Greta. I went with an uncle to pick up Shawna’s brother, my cousin and best friend, Jakob. The family was converging at the hospital and the school bus was going to drop him off at an empty house, so we went to collect him. My sister was blue in the hospital, I wanted to go see Jakob. He was after all, my best friend. I remember waiting for the bus.

I think it was our living room later that evening, where my parents taught me one of my first acronyms, SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is what killed my sister. It really did not seem to explain much. A baby just dies. Many things are a mystery to a six year old child, but above all is the death of his five month old kid sister.

Twenty years have harvested a disconnect, to where the memory is more fact and less emotive. I have gone a great stretch in which I have neither shown nor experienced any emotional response to this loss. It was out of respect that I write of her today. Yet, somehow in the process of finding my words I have found something else. I have given a voice to feelings I thought dead and faded. To living memory, alive and well.

I have lately come to the habit of starting my day with poetry.

After all has been set for the morning - I have showered, dressed, eaten, and packed up - the last thing I do before leaving the house is to walk over to the bookshelf and pick up The Pocket Robert Frost (when I complete this collection I will move on to Neruda). I crack the pages to where my marker is left and read aloud one poem. I read it to my empty room, an audience of furniture and myself, as I strongly believe that poetry is to be heard and not kept quiet. As such, it hits me three fold. Once, Digested by my eyes upon contact. Twice, grazing my lips on the way out. And third, caught by my ears as though an enthusiastic outfielder.

Frost has done well to set me on a proper morning track. I step out the door with a lyricism not my own, and a rhyme scheme ever shifting.

His words may not be for all, but such options are plenty. I have built this morning diet off of a seventy-five cent purchase at a library book sale. Most assuredly do I endorse the value of this daily investment.

Give it a go.

And the band played on…
The Milwaukee Symphony
Orchestra indeed.

With season tickets
For new faculty status
I see all I want.

Last night was music,
last week Stephanie Tanner.
She conquered the meth.

Max Brooks, soon to come.
To teach zombie survival.
Yes, this we must know.

German recipes.
Of these, I do have nothing
But soon, oh I must.

Tomorrow morning,
a barrel waits with my name.
Its tapped says “O’zapft.”

Munich Olympics,
or the recreation of,
in my own backyard.

So raise up your mass
and shout your dirty limericks
for Oktoberfest!

A boy, any boy. Could even be a man. He comes home from the coffee shop buzzed on his bean juice and needing to kill some time while sleep catches up to him. Okay, read a book. Plopped down in chair, pulling from a water bottle, plucking peanuts from a 5lb sack. Working on the book, some novel of space travel, but making more progress on the nuts. Focused as best as possible on the text, one hand maintains the book while the other cracks shells and dumps content into the mouth, and empties to a lap placed bowl.

Perhaps it is a break in the story, or maybe a notice of something else, but the eyes leave the book to survey the most recent shell. Occupied by the customary two nuts, the shell is also home to one, two, nope… three maggots. Wow, is there a prize for such a discovery? Likely not. More probable is an instantaneous curiosity toward a bowl of empty shells. Only a few pages into the book, but a couple of handfuls into the bag, are these the first maggots? Please be the first maggots. The sack goes in the garbage and queries go in the head.

And as all good stories need a moral… Be weary of midnight snacking.

Bottle of water,
taking space upon my desk,
stickered with colors.

For many months now,
with use come every day,
standing to the test.

Colleague says to throw
this vessel right at the trash
and sip of Nalgene.

This I can not do,
to leave a thing still working.
No, not while it holds.

Cold days and oatmeal.
Rolled oats in the cutting wind.
So soon, yet so fine.

The honey usage,
as garnish to meal of oats,
stands ever needed.

The apple cider,
five dollars by the gallon,
is never too hot.

A pile in office,
for ramshackle made lunch meal,
as brought here from home.

Watching The Office
Fridays in our own office.
Let routine begin.

Certainly with tie,
to end the week looking best,
as it is that day.

And home after work
to strum guitar on the stoop.
Sip from a cold one.

For want of random,
Structure finds merit in… well,
Weekly holidays.

I was starting a response in the comments but then it just kept going… So here it is. If you have not yet read the comments to the Eat Local Challenge post, do so now. Then you may better understand the following post.

To comment from the very beginning of Manipadme’s critique, I am currently operating to my own disadvantage. I am not exercising the perfect solution to our system. Instead I am pushing my diet to an extreme so that when October rolls in, the challenge is over, and I can snap back to my regular eating habits… well, maybe I will not snap all the way back. With hope I will be finding a new balance.

If by religious you mean meditative, then yes. Perhaps I am making things more complex than need be, but I do spend a fair amount of time planning and preparing (meditating on) my meals. Cooking is far more an event than it was a week ago. I have begun to feel like an ancestor of long ago, where I spend hours of the day foraging for food. I have in fact spent hours on meals, and am fortunate to have a schedule that abides.

But by religious you probably mean the group-think aspect. In everyone I talk to about the challenge, I try my best to emphasize the personal approach. Folks can take on the local diet to the extent that they deem reasonable. For me to drink coffee I would only be “disloyal” to myself and my own goals. I am not a week in and I miss coffee. I do not dwell on my loss but instead think beyond coffee. What else can I have? Where else can I go?

The crutches have been kicked out: pasta, rice, oils, spices. I leaned quite heavily upon certain base ingredients. Now that they are purged from my diet I am teetering. I am off kilter and actively searching for replacements. Meals take so much more effort because in a way, I am starting from scratch. I made a salsa last Sunday based on pumpkin. It was good. I also made a more typical tomato salsa, but at least my mind is moving.

To clarify on Just Local Foods, yes they are a business. JLF is a sponsor of the challenge. Though the challenge did not stem from our local co-op, it sprouted in San Francisco. The idea was introduced by A Second Opinion Magazine to Just Local Foods, and they jumped on board. Why would they not? The challenge completely fits the niche that JLF works within. And to consider their partnership to be purely one of profit is a bit dark. Owning and operating a cooperative grocery store in Eau Claire is not a business move for the profit minded. It is a good business and they are ready to expand, but there are other far more lucrative avenues than an employee owned local and organic food shop. They do what they do because it allows them to sleep well at night. Their’s is a business of social growth, as well as profit.

To close this response up, this is an exercise in compromise. I do not foresee living out the rest of my life upon the diet of one hundred miles. The severity of this challenge is opening my eyes to things I otherwise may have never encountered. You mentioned the concept of balance. I am working toward a farther reaching balance than what I knew in August. Life until this month has been the thesis. Right now (Eat Local Challenge) I am operating within the Antithesis. October comes and I will hope to arrive at new understanding, a synthesis if you will.

Thank you Manipadme, for the thoughtful critique.

P.S. Bjorn is correct. I did at one time weigh out my options on the McDonald’s menu.

The month’s last Friday,
with freedom to assemble,
two-wheelers awake.

Same place as always,
we rally at the band shell
right in Owen Park.

Families and friends,
the youth and the not-so-young,
strangers united.

We ask cars to share
or the streets will be taken
by Critical Mass!