Helmet head

I have a principle against putting my picture on my blog, but this is an exceptional occasion, and I think you will be grateful.

As I was riding around the lake today, a little girl and her mother were getting out of their car.

“I like your hair,” the little girl said. Ignoring the amused look on her mother’s face, I thanked her, and she said I was welcome.

I could not suppress my curiosity as I continued around the lake and rode home. What did my hair indeed look like? How much of it was visible? It may be hard to believe, but I had not looked in the mirror back at home as I was gathering it into a ponytail and crowning it with my helmet.

Above is a photograph of my coiffure, essentially as it was seen by my admirer. There was about another hour of high-speed bicycling in a strong wind by the time I got home and took this photo, but I hope that vestiges of the glamour will still be perceptible.

The young lady’s praise is especially valuable to me because she appeared to be of African descent, and I think it’s reasonably likely that she has some experience with impressive hairstyles among her family and associates.

The Flower

Here is a little Easter Herbert for my reader(s). This poem is a longtime favorite of mine. I sort of wish it didn’t turn into a sermon at the end, but it is still a delicious piece of work.

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! Ev’n as the flowers in Spring,
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring;
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivell’d heart
Could have recover’d greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are Thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quick’ning, bringing down to Hell
And up to Heaven in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing bell.
We say amiss
This or that is;
Thy word is all, if we could spell.

O that I once past changing were,
Fast in thy Paradise where no flower can wither!
Many a Spring I shoot up fair,
Off’ring at Heaven, growing and groaning thither;
Nor doth my flower
Want a Spring shower,
My sins and I joining together.

But while I grow to a straight line;
Still upwards bent, as if heav’n were mine own,
Thy anger comes, and I decline:
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone,
Where all things burn,
When thou dost turn,
And the least frown of thine is shown?

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my onely light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.

These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide:
Which when we once can finde and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide.
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

Eternal sunrise

After a disappointing dry spell, On the Bus Today has some great recent entries. I laughed out loud today at “A tale of two journeys,” “Santa,” “Giant,” and “Seat!”

I wish I had had a camera at White Rock Lake yesterday afternoon. I was running before sunset, and the sky stayed pretty the whole time. Not the bright sunset light you see a lot in Texas, but a pale winter sunset. The lake was sapphire-blue, sparkling, and the clouds were amethyst, and the rushes and the grass by the lake were minty green. I was on the shadowy side of the lake and the ground where I ran was in that dead light, cold and pale. There is one place where I run on the grass down a hillside, and I felt like I was in northern England or Scotland in the summer when it’s still light in the late evening, silver-green grass, silver-yellow dead grass, silver-blue sky, none of it quite gleaming but almost, rolling fields of grass, ruins of castles certainly lurking over the next hill. I am in between reading a book on Alaska and a book on medieval Wales, which probably explains my geographical illusions. On the long days in Alaska, when the sun never really rises or sets, are there hours and hours of pretty sunset skies?

I want to do some reflection about 2006. Mostly it’s been a really hard year for me, because of the end of an important relationship. I don’t know how you deal with that. But there were lots of good things too. I wanted to do a post-Keatsmas post back in October, and then a Thanksgiving post after I had some special guests. Then last weekend there was the Party of the Century at my apartment, which was vastly fulfilling. Maybe I will do a couple of entries about those things. I hope the coverage does not disappoint because it’s so late. I am also unveiling a new photo series with this entry.

Remember your word to your servant,
in which you have made me hope.
This is my comfort in my affliction,
that your promise gives me life.
The insolent utterly deride me,
but I do not turn away from your law.
When I think of your rules from of old,
I take comfort, O Lord.
Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked,
who forsake your law.
Your statutes have been my songs
in the house of my sojourning.
I remember your name in the night, O Lord,
and keep your law.
This blessing has fallen to me,
that I have kept your precepts.

Where the fish are

They adorn a women’s restroom (now closed for the winter) at White Rock Lake. The men’s bathroom has similar embellishments.

There’s a steep hill on the south end of the lake where pedaling doesn’t really do any good, so I like to stand up on the pedals and pretend I am a human sail, slowing the descent of my bike. The sidewalk is narrow along this stretch and curves onto a narrow bridge at the bottom, so I only do this if there isn’t much traffic. It’s breathtaking and fun.

Today, though, as I was unfurling myself and swooping down the hill, something went wrong and I almost lost control of my bike. I hunched down against the handlebars and the seat, braked, and swerved a few times to regain my balance. I wanted to avoid two things: plunging headlong onto the asphalt and hitting an oncoming cyclist. Amazingly, I regained control by the time we passed. What a wonderful vehicle a bicycle is. It’s so much more stable than you think. And I always love finding out that my body knows what to do in these situations.

The oncoming cyclist smiled in a concerned way as he passed me and asked if I was OK. I laughed and said something about how it had been a close call, and I continued on, seated. This was a better scenario (for his sake) than if I had died and the poor guy had had to witness that, but it was a worse scenario (for my sake) than if there had been no one to witness the whole sailing disaster at all.

I had another scene of public humiliation last week as I was walking home from work at dusk and singing “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” in full voice. Not just the normal melody part, but the dramatic cadenzas at the end of my high school choir’s arrangement of this song, where you repeat “It’s the most wonderful time” three times, and one of the times the syllable “der” is a step higher than usual, adding a fascinating touch of variety and excitement. I thought I had hit the pitches pretty accurately and was feeling pleased with myself when I heard a shuffling noise to my left, just a bit behind me, and realized a person was standing in their front yard with their dog. I suppose I could have said, “Oh, hi!” but instead I continued singing, a little more quietly, making up more words, until I got out of earshot. This seemed to be the most nonchalant course of action.

I think these humbling occasions are very good for us. I think that not taking oneself too seriously serves one well in life. And it is also good for society in general when we admit our foolishness to each other. It helps us all feel better.

Mystery fish

Here’s a place I’ve never had the chance to show anyone before. I pass by it fairly often myself.

My aqueous friend

I’ve always wanted to write a book where the setting is as important as the characters, where places are sort of characters. Maybe someday I will.

How are places like people? You can’t know a place by one visit. It changes expressions and moods each time you see it. It is a great pleasure to repeatedly walk or run a familiar route and see it change as the seasons change. You can’t say you know a place until a lot of time passes.

Places are unlike people because they don’t move. You can go back to them and you know they’ll be there. You can also write about them, anything good or anything bad, without any ethical problems.

White Rock Lake is a place I have spent many hours of my life. I know it better than I know most people. It has all kinds of different personalities to me. Perhaps in the next few days I will indulge myself with some sketches of these personalities.

Meanwhile, I just found a neat website on the birds of White Rock Lake. There is even a page addressing the great “heron vs. egret” confusion. Does anyone else feel like he scrupulously resists saying that the local egrets are generally white?

Hail, Texas!

Some of you, like me, may have been required to read I Heard the Owl Call My Name in eighth grade English. I forget what the significance of the owl's call was. It was either a portent of death or a signal beginning the rite of passage into manhood. I bring this up because I saw a portent of parallel importance this morning. I saw my first big snake.

What this means, I reckon, is that the Republic of Texas is finally welcoming me without reservation, finally opening up her truest self to me, finally clasping me into her bosom. When one thinks of Texas, one often thinks of big snakes, but I have lived here for two years and five months without a single glimpse of one. It's been difficult.

It was a grand, thick serpent, nosing its way onto the bike path at White Rock Lake. As I pedaled past it returned on itself, folding itself beautifully alongside itself as only a creature with such majestic bendable qualities can do. I have a horrible memory for colors, so I forget whether its underside was a nuclear-moon-mold tint of green or a toxic-oil-spill hue of orange, but I am certain that it differed from the dull matte finish of most of its dark body. It was immensely satisfying to see.

Ah, Texas! Thank you!

Lucky pawns

It's been a long time since I read a book as good as Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Ishiguro has the gift of presenting us with enormously deep and difficult emotions in an understated, tightly controlled, slowly paced manner that only serves to highlight the depth of feeling. The slow clenching in your gut that you feel as you read seems to come from the story and from the characters, not from the writing itself.

Never Let Me Go opens at an exclusive British boarding school, where the three main characters, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy are students. The school, called Hailsham, seems nice enough, almost idyllic, but there are a few strange things. The students are never allowed to leave the grounds and don't seem to have families. And the only classes that are mentioned are things like art, music, and poetry; there is no chemistry or math or history. The students are pushed to be creative, and their very best works are taken away to be put in the Headmistress's "Gallery", a collection that the Guardians at Hailsham never mention but all the students are sure exists.

The book traces the relationships of Kathy (the narrator), Tommy, and Ruth as they leave Hailsham and begin the next phases of their lives, and as they begin to figure out who they are, what the Gallery means, what kind of institution Hailsham actually is. Ishiguro depicts the changing relationships with precision and poignancy; there is the sense, as in real relationships, of tension, uncertainty, and vagueness, and also the sense that understanding and working out these relationships is critically important.

The premise of the story lacks a certain realism if you think about it too much, but as it unfolds in the book you are so drawn in by the realism in the characters and the feelings that it doesn't seem to matter; the situation the characters find themselves in can be understood on an almost symbolic level. What makes this book great is that the lives of the characters, so different from ours externally, make us see our own lives in a different perspective.