“A short poem need not be small.”

I am tapping this out on my iPhone from Florence, having left the laptop in London. My first time in Italy finds me marveling at so much grand art, and wondering if there is still a place in the post-colonial, post-modern, post-financial-collapse world for the enduring opera magnifica.

Though my nickname in the seminary was “Dante”, my own poems often focus on small moments, coaxing the universal from the quotidian. To attempt to expiate like Milton these days just seems somehow naïve.

Is it true? Has the grand just become grandiloquent? The epic apocryphal? What is left worth having writ large? If Signor Alighieri knows, he isn’t saying so far.

And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

There are many ways to settle in to a new place. One is to give them names of one’s own. Inspired by parodies giving alternate names to tube stations in London, I have produced a map whose stations take into account the poetic landscape. This is not intended to be the poet’s tube map, but rather a poet’s tube map–mine, representing my own thoughts and experiences at the intersection between London and the lyre.

Click to view the map.

Photo: Wikipedia

I declared my intention, over and over in my head, to “hit the ground running” upon my arrival in London. After three weeks of pounding the pavement with a heavy laptop on my back during my daily commute, I developed plantar fasciitis, an injury to the connective tissue at the arch of the foot. After a range of treatments, including stretches and shoe inserts, tonight was the first night I could walk home from the tube at a normal pace without pain.

It has been nearly three months since they stamped my resettlement visa at Heathrow Airport. Since that time, I have been putting one foot in front of the other, journeying toward what I hope might one day feel like “normal” life again. Each step has been an act of faith, and often what I thought looked level turned out to be uneven ground. So often, whatever I assumed, culturally or logistically, has been perfectly wrong.

My parents are over to visit, giving me fresh eyes on my new circumstances. Having them here brings a much-needed sense of continuity back to me. Still, the journey ahead is one I must ultimately take on my own–toward an understanding of what brought me here, and how to stand tall on foreign soil, sure-footed in this strange new land.

Each chapter of John Rember’s MFA in a Box can be read in the time it takes to travel between Finchley Central and Leicester Square station on the Northern Line of the London Underground. I know because I read it this way. At least, I read full chapters on the days I could claim a seat. Other days, I read what little I could at the distance of two inches from my nose, using the book as a v-shaped shield against the armpits of businessmen’s suit jackets as they made their way into the The City to plan the next financial collapse.

A recent transplant to London from a rural town in California, I was following the “when in Rome” adage–immersing myself in written ideas to transcend the fact of my animal body crammed in with the warmth and smell of my fellow humans in a speeding subterranean metal box. Each article in the tabloids unfurled all around me had been engineered to be read in the length of one tube stop. By a precise mix of fact and moral opining, they were also designed to provoke an “Isn’t that terrible?” reaction, before being discarded in the overflowing waste bins at the top of the stairs.

I was reading a book about why one should try to write literature. But in fact, MFA in a Box is about much more than this. It is about how to survive, and perhaps even thrive, through writing, in this highly-engineered world.

I met John during my first residency in the Pacific University MFA in Writing Program. It was less than a year after the death of our infant son. John gave a talk that was to become chapter eight, about The Book of Job, and Leviathan, and why one should “go deep” in the process of writing–as “conscious dust” in a cosmos that we can only pretend to control, wrapping our arms around the big human questions because we are human, and questioners, and big and deep at our core, despite our cultural contract that says we should instead keep lacquering the surface.

Here was someone I knew I could talk to, and I found in our conversations what came back to me, in John’s voice, through this book: depth and sensitivity; compassion and quick, wry humor; a willingness to embrace life’s irony, and a fierce commitment to make of one’s life good art. More than once, while reading this book, I found myself smiling–or was it wincing?–with what Rember calls the “shock of recognition.” The narrator in my mind jotted down the sudden change of expression–mine the only upturned mouth in a long row of slackened faces. For all the written attempts at journalistic provocation, I seemed to be the only one in our high-speed, newspaper-lined birdcage who really felt anything at all.

I would emerge onto Charing Cross Road, lined with as-yet-still-surviving small book shops, enter the cafe where the Italian woman at the counter looks down whenever she meets my gaze, and past the homeless man in the “God Loves You” denim jacket, smiling into the eyes of each passer-by to wish them, “Good morning!” He sells copies of The Big Issue, a current events magazine that helps people like him earn their way off the streets. I think of John and his book, comfortable with big issues, and unafraid to look me, as a writer and person, straight in the eye.

My only qualm I have with the book is its title. Rember’s unique mix of philosophy, depth psychology, and artistic vulnerability is anything but “in a box.” Nor is it much like a traditional MFA in itself. Instead, every writer who has honed their craft through an intense period of writing–be that a formal MFA program or something else–should pick up this book from the other side of those newly-won skills, to rediscover them as survival skills, both for writers individually, and perhaps for our world.

Rember’s “why to write” book is a memoir of the creative heart and mind in conflict with itself, which is to say a universal struggle that any artist will recognize. More than this, he emerges triumphant over big issues–family, violence, bearing witness, estrangement, grief. Gilgamesh, “Hansel and Gretel,” Greek mythology and Paris Hilton all figure in to his survey of literature and culture, teaching through the age-old workshop mantra of showing, rather than telling us, what good, deep writing is all about.

More than a review, this is an open thank-you note to John for giving me this life raft of a book, which is about how to live as a writer, go deep in a shallow world, and not only survive but, at least as an artist, thrive.

The direction of traffic, how doors are hinged, and even the way electrical switches turn on or off are all diametrically opposed to what I have come to expect since birth. Yet I must cross the street, open doors, and turn on lights and gadgets dozens of times per day. If I operate unconsciously for even a moment, I get a shock.  But this is only the beginning. It gets, as Alice would say, “curiouser and curiouser.”

Because London predates the advent of city planning, it has grown up organically. Instead of the long grids of streets I would use to orient myself in America, short squiggles of road intersect roundabouts at all angles of the clock face. Anyone who has studied the difference between Cartesian and polar coordinate systems, and calculated conversions between the two, can appreciate the difficulty involved. Navigating London, it feels as though my brain is performing these transpositions constantly. Coupled with the lack of filters about what to ignore, my analytical mind quickly becomes exhausted.

The American journalist James Geary described London as “a labyrinth, full of turnings and twistings just like a brain.” I have discovered that it is a right brain. Just a few buildings away from my new office is the site where William Blake was born. He lamented the “chartering” of streets and rivers in London as analogous to Victorian repression, and held up the figure of Newton as representing materialism and science at the expense of his great loves, imagination and art.

He might be happy to see that, in modern London, so much is still subject to interpretation, imagination, fancy, and whim. In an overcrowded city that long predates the automobile, “making do” and “getting on with it” override the authority of pedestrian crossings and painted lines. Because the roads are not aligned with cardinal directions, street corners are a useless marker, and so instead short segments of continuous road are given different names as they go along. This results in a colorful panoply of street names, even when traveling (relatively) straight. One memorizes various sequences of such streets to get from point to point. With names like “Crooked Usage” and “Buttery Mews,” the results of these mnemonic gymnastics can play out with all of the delight of a memorized poem.

And so, even as my logistical circuitry is being continually overloaded, my creativity is being fed by this great-right-brain of a city. My mantra has become: not wrong, just different. Repeating this, I push (not pull) open the door each day, and set out to learn a bit more.

“… now there was a match-head in my thoughts.”

I have been in London for one week. On my previous three visits, I never stayed for more than two weeks, and often split the time with other parts of England or other countries in Europe. But this time, I am here to settle. My new job starts tomorrow.

And so, I see everything, not through the eyes of a tourist, but those of an immigrant. Instead of laughing at quaint cultural differences, I take note for future reference. When I discover that the way I have been doing things in my homeland for decades, and which I assumed to be universal, works completely differently out here, I have to figure out the new way and adapt.

Walking along the Thames last night, I felt a sense of connection to other immigrants I met. Some may have fled despotic regimes, others no doubt came to seek their fortunes. For many, English is not their first language (and I am discovering it is actually not mine either!) Few leave their families lightly. And abandoning the cumulative comfort of so many small known quantities has led me to feel like an infant here at times, re-learning fundamentals of language and behavior/behaviour.

After a week of apartment-hunting, bank account setup, and other logistics required to survive abroad, an outing in Brighton yesterday with my new colleagues let me see things as a tourist again, instead of just an immigrant. Returning to the Thames that night rekindled the “match-head” that was placed in my thoughts many years ago, when I first encountered London, and found it at once imposing and familiar, both a great city, and one I could call my own.

“You don’t have to dislike a place to leave it.”

American soldiers on D-Day

Last weekend, we drove down to Seal Beach to say farewell to my wife’s aunt. Her parting gifts to me were a bottle of champagne, two sleeping pills for the flight, and a small pin with an American flag on it. She met her American husband in England not long before he shipped off for the D-Day landing on the beaches of Normandy.

I imagine it is always poignant to leave one’s home country. I liken my evolving relationship to my homeland to how I imagine a mother might regard her teenage son. I admire his idealism and energy, robustness and strength, the sense of freedom and possibility. I also notice with chagrin his sense of entitlement and invulnerability. I likewise find it hard to believe reports that he has become a bit of a schoolyard bully, taking advantage of others at times, and behaving recklessly in the hubris of youth.

I love my country, and will miss it. But I am glad for the opportunity to live in the Old World as well. More than politics, it is the people I will miss, and of course the vast open spaces, encompassing nearly every biome on Earth. I will be glad, though, for a more immediate sense of connection with the continuity of human history. London itself has been continuously inhabited for more than two millennia, emerging and reemerging, phoenix-like, from each collapse.

And so I say, “so long” for now to the beautiful and complicated place where I grew to become a man. I am not leaving my homeland due to political or religious persecution, or even necessarily to seek greater economic opportunity in another land. I am going because it is time to go have this adventure. And wherever I go, I will be an American.

My dad and me with our new train set on Christmas day

On Friday, I got up before dawn, as I often do. This time, however, it was not to write, but to listen. I walked two blocks to the clubhouse of a retirement home, where the local chapter of Toastmasters was in session. My father has asked very little of me in the six years we have lived across town from each other in the sleepy hamlet of Ojai, California. Today he wanted me to come hear him give a speech.

I came away both moved and proud, reflecting on our thirty-two years together. At my request, my father has posted the text of the speech, as well as an audio recording of him reading it, on his own website. In the speech, he mentions my losing a son, his almost losing me, and how our experience of the fragility of life has shaped us, and our relationship.

Needless to say, I will miss him when we leave.

Although the timeline is not yet clear for our move, we decided that it was important to reach out now to our community of friends for support. Also, this gives us the opportunity to start to say “goodbye” to so many wonderful people on this continent.

We are especially fond of Ojai, the small town in California we have called home for the past several years. The word “ojai” means “nest” in the language of the Chumash Indians who first inhabited this area. Indeed, it has been a nest for us in which to be nurtured and grow strong. Now we fledge.

I will miss the wonderful friends we have made here, as well as the ten-minute ride to work on my bicycle, along the oak-lined Ojai trail with the California sunshine beaming through. But we have wanted for some time to have more access to Europe, and London itself is one of my favorite cities in the world. I look forward to getting to know both the poetry and technology communities there.

Our plan is to relocate as soon as we reasonably and responsibly can–making a graceful transition from my roles at the David Allen Company, and having time to say goodbyes to so many remarkable people here.

For now, I leave you with the news of our intentions, and the following short video:

New Mexico represents a spiritual home to me much more than the barren Sonoran desert where I spent the remaining eleven months of each formative year. As such, I wanted to bring my wife here more than anywhere. And I brought my adult self, too, as a bemused observer, along with a paperback copy of Christian Wiman’s collection of essays entitled Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet.

This place is dense with evocative glimpses of earlier selves. I have been rifling through internal snapshots like an old-time flip book, hoping the rapid succession of annual impressions might create a trajectory of motion that I could identify as “my development.”

In grandma’s framed collections of family photos that line the walls, I could find no evidence of what I looked like toward the end of my visits here–dyed blue hair, dressed religiously in black punk rock band t-shirts, jeans, and combat boots, with a ring dangling from the center of my nose like a cartoon bull. Still, I recall her shock, and even sadness, the first time she encountered what must have been to her a stark transformation from one year’s grandson to the next.

“I turned out all right,” I reassured her, and my mother, over coffee this morning, “and it helps me to remember that when I see other young people acting strange.”

True, I was disenfranchised then. But I was not rebelling against a loving family or fortunately engaging public-school education; I remained a good son and student, at least until college. Instead, I was manifesting something deeper than hormones or a desire to fledge–a lapsarian sense of separateness that Wiman describes in some poets as “feeling themselves wrong.”

If I had read the first half of Ambition and Survival as a teenager, I would have no doubt simplified his arguments to the all-too-common idea that, if I wanted to be a poet, I should learn to be poor and travel a lot. Instead, I read Emerson growing up, who gave me the impression that all travelers were simply running from themselves. So I spent long hours in meditation and introspection, and felt superior in my small-town way.

Unlike Wiman, I never wanted to be a poet. I wanted instead, from an early age, to master myself, and went through form after form in pursuit of mastery–chess, archery, painting, fiction–trying to find “my thing,” the daimon that would carry me through to transcendence. Like all children, and especially teenagers, I never questioned my survival. Nearly all of my suffering was internal–me pitted against my own laziness, struggling to become “great.”

After the death of our infant son, I returned to poetry, not for any greatness, but out of necessity, discovering what Gregory Orr put succinctly in the title of his book: Poetry as Survival. In his central essay, Wiman touches not only on poetry as a survival skill, but also recognizes the need for poets to transcend this relationship–to bring about in their work “a peace that surpasses understanding,” that they might therefore bring momentary solace to readers as well. Orr likens this to the shamanic tradition in which the wounded become magic healers; Wiman’s Biblical reference to an otherworldly peace springs from his roots in Christian evangelism.

For my own part, I liken this greater impulse toward poetry to the Tibetan tradition of creating sand mandalas. These elaborate creations in colored sand are painstakingly rendered, regarded, contemplated, and then swept back into nothingness as a reminder of impermanence. Yet I imagine the experience for the mandala-maker, and know for myself as one fortunate enough to have once seen an enormous sand mandala on display, can be transformational.

I am grateful to Wiman for looking deeply into himself to bring this testament forward, even as it helps me to retrace my own steps on the journey from ambition to necessity, and beyond survival into a now deep-felt desire to give back what is mine to give into the affirming conversation of poetry.

“I turned out alright,” I repeat to myself here in the upstairs study, surrounded on three sides by views of blue-green pine trees, as another cloud drifts over the roof, spattering the sound of rain. I have the other half of Wiman’s book to get through, and plenty more to think about and write. But for now, I have sequestered myself here long enough. Time to head downstairs, to join the voices around the kitchen table, laughing.

Photo: Per H. Olsen

When I created the “Fatherhood” category on my website nearly five years ago, I knew that becoming a dad marked a rite of passage. It never occurred to me that our son James might only live three days, or how having and losing him in such short succession would change me. No man accurately anticipates the full impact of fatherhood. And as much as I knew the birth of our son would better me, I never expected that by his departure I would also gain in courage, compassion, and strength. Truly, it is a remarkable being, who both by his coming and going can have touched my life so profoundly.

I crossed both the equator and the International Date Line this week to meet another remarkable being–my new nephew. He is my wife’s sister’s child, and, like James, he seems to have inherited his lip line from that side of the family. But unlike our James, his eyes are open, and everything about him is inquisitive and alive. It feels both precious and surprisingly natural to spend time with him–hoisting him up to get a better look at the tropical fish at the aquarium, feeding him spoonfuls of mush, and pushing him through the rainy streets in his waterproof pram in search of great fish and chips.

And so, I embrace a new rite of passage, into unclehood. It has come not without its emotional challenges. This morning, I found myself fuming at an iPod relentlessly holding the day’s photos captive. And I realized, after a few deep breaths, that it wasn’t the recalcitrant contraption as much as the fact that, when we return, photos are all we will have for awhile. Still, I am doing my best to enjoy each moment, letting my paternal-turned-avuncular instincts guide me, and and my infant nephew’s zen-like adherence to the present moment remind me to be fully here–whether examining a leaf or a Lego block together, or taking time by myself in a beach-side cafe to write and reflect, as I am now.

We watched a BBC program last night about the Cuckoo–the bird that tricks much smaller birds into raising its own monstrous young. Watching the tiny reed birds shovel bug after bug into the insatiable infant cuckoo’s mouth, my first instincts were sympathy. The Cuckoo is rightly called a parasite, because it shifts the resource-intensive burden of parenthood onto a different species. And yet, it occurs to me, that no effort of caring is wasted–in nature or society. By the reed birds’ exhausting efforts, the Cuckoos grow strong, and fill the springtime air with their distinctive call.

Parenthood is ultimately temporary. The impulse to contribute and serve finds new forms over time. And, though the Cuckoo is an extreme, and strange example, it shows that there are many ways in which future generations can and will be served. The ultimate Parent–call it God, Nature, or Goodwill–works through us by simple and necessary acts. In my own journey to understand how best to serve posterity, I adopt this mantle of unclehood, not only as new demarcation on my family tree, but an ongoing commitment to education, assistance, and caring–for children big and small. This realization and re-commitment, not to mention time spent richly with family and friends, has already been worth every cramped hour spent in the airplane’s economy seat.

Val

I disciplined myself to take just one book of poems from the shelves that line the walls of our small cottage. I am taking Marvin Bell’s Nightworks. His strong voice and piquant musings are a comfort to me on long trips. If there were something like a break room for great philosophers, where they could congregate, sip coffee, and chat, Bell’s poems capture bits of what we might overhear. This book seemed like the perfect companion with which to cross the dark Pacific.

Between friends, family, and marsupials, I don’t know how much I will be blogging in the next two weeks. But watch out for photos on Flickr, and I’ll be back in the Northern Hemisphere again soon.