An Extraordinary Tale: Part II

Fast forward now 48 years and here we are again in York. It’s a short ride on the Number 10 bus to Nether Poppleton and so we get ready to set off. I looked online for a Chamber of Commerce (didn’t find one) and then notice a Poppleton Parish Council. Remembering the stories of histories recorded in churches, I thought this could be a possibility. Here I wished I’d had Sue Grafton’s detective, Kinsey Milhone, by my side. She seemed really good at finding people! We waited for the bus, due in 14 minutes according to the electronic sign, then 6 and finally 1 and it never appeared! Then it disappeared from the board and said, “Next one: 10 minutes.” Not a promising beginning. 

 

• The Man on the No. 10 Bus: Finally, it did come and we went to the second floor of the double-decker and started chatting with a white-haired man. I ended up giving him a short version of our mission and my hope that the parish council might help. He assured me that this had nothing to do with church records. When I told him the part of the story about visiting the school, he told us where the school was and it occurred to me that they might have some record of Rachel and Jane who went there. The man also mentioned that the library was right next to the school and they might have some records. 

 

So that became step one of our mission. Before getting off the bus in Nether Poppleton, I turned and asked, “By any chance, are you Jim Bold?” Wouldn’t that have been an amazing end to the story! But of course, he wasn’t and had never heard of him.

 

He did illuminate the difference between Nether Poppleton and Poppleton, “nether” being the old English world for “lower.” Hence, the Netherlands or the nether world in poetry and mythology. Of course!

 

Note that had the first Number 10 bus come on time, I wouldn’t have met this man and wouldn’t have thought about going to the school. The first of many, “if not this, then not that.”

 

• The Schoolteacher: We arrived at the library first, but it was closed for lunch for an hour or so. Next door was the school and walking to a gated entrance, I did have a clear memory of the sidewalk where the Mums waited for their kids. But now it was empty, the school gates were locked with many warnings about no trespassing —the end of innocence even in this remote charming English village. We walked around to another gate and rang a bell and an intercom voice told us to push on the gate, but it didn’t work. Over the fence, a teacher noticed us and asked if she could help us. We explained we were trying to find some people and wanted to check in with the office if they might have a record of them. She told us that the school was closed for some vacation, minus a small day care group she was with. When we explained a bit more about the nature of our quest, she suggested we check out the Poppleton Community Center close by. 

 

• The Poppleton Social Center: So that we did and decided to have a little coffee with the unique Flapjack bar we first tried last year in the Cotswolds. (A kind of cross between a granola bar and an oatcake.) We talked to the cashier about our mission and he told us to hold on and came back with a little newsletter with various Poppleton activities and groups listed and pointed us to Julian Crabbe, the head of the Poppleton Historic Society. There was a phone number, though he warned us that Mr. Crabbe was extremely hard-of-hearing. Noticing my hearing aids, he quipped, “Much more than you! Good luck!” One step closer. Sort of.

 

• White-Hair: While enjoying our snack, the thought struck that any white-haired person in the café might possibly know Jim and Karen. So I unabashedly approached many and asked, “Excuse me. Have you lived in Nether Poppleton a long time?” The first three said they were tourists from out of town. Another said she lived elsewhere, but had taught in the school, though she didn’t remember Rachel and Jane. A younger woman at the table next door said they had a babysitter who would have been Rachel or Jane’s age and she called her to ask. Of course, the person called didn’t pick up. 

 

• The Poppleton Facebook Group: She then suggested I join a Poppleton Facebook Group. I logged on and joined one and put out my inquiry. Then she suggested I try a second one, which I did. No response from either yet.

 

• The Library: By now the library had opened and the helpful librarian affirmed they really didn’t have records of the residents. But she graciously complied with my request that she call Julian Crabbe, since my phone didn’t have service. She did and of course, no answer. She did uncover an e-mail for him, so I hadn’t wholly given up hope yet. 

 

• “Where Is Main Street?” So we called it a day and tried to figure out how to walk the 5 miles back to York instead of take the bus. I had some minimal directions on my GPS which told me to turn left at Main Street. When we got to a crossroads, we veered left and there were five white-haired people chatting. I asked if this was Main Street and then explained we were trying to find the walking route to York and they were so helpful and amiable in explaining the directions to us. We thanked them and then turned to set off. Then I paused and asked, “By any chance………?”

 

(Here is where the music in the movie-to-be starts to crescendo and all cameras point to this extraordinary moment.)

 

“ … do you know either Jim or Karen Bold?”

 

One of the women’s eyes lit up and she burst out, “Yess!!!!! Karen Bold! We were in a child-minding group together!! We would watch each other’s children when needed!” Then the man chimed in, “Yes, I believe they got divorced about 30 years ago and each of them moved away. Why do you ask?”

 

When I said, “It’s quite a story,” without hesitation he said, “Come on into my house and you can tell us all about it!”

 

Now note that detail. The same generous impulse when Jim Bold invited us to his house. Still alive and well. “Would you like some coffee?” he said. We politely declined and when I told them the story, joked, “I thought you were going to invite us for ‘tea.’” (see yesterday’s story)

 

They all said they had lost touch with Jim, but Karen still sent a Christmas card every year, so he came back with her address. They noted she hadn’t sent a card this year and that had me worried. But I will write her a letter and see what the Fates have in store. 

 

So there you have it. Short of meeting the Bolds themselves, this was an extraordinary quest wholly dependent on serendipity and the kindness of strangers—alongside how much I care about it and my determination and willingness to talk to strangers— and it all came together beyond my wildest dreams. 

 

And the reader might wonder at the end of it all: So what? Why do you care so much about this? Three things:

 

1)    My musical obsession with tracing a theme through a symphony or jazz improvisation and coming to a cadence that completes it. The simple satisfaction of coming full cycle through a piece of art or life.

 

2)   Curiosity as to whether Jim or Karen remembered us. And still a chance to find out if Karen writes back. Did that tiny blip in the long scroll of life’s brush painting mean anything to them? Whether or not, no matter, just curious. 

 

3)   But most importantly, just to thank them for the simple act of generosity that meant enough to me—and still does— that I remembered it for so long. It’s all part of the philosophy/ values/ ethics and such that I’ve been cultivating my whole life and believe in more and more.

 

And, dear reader, stay tuned. A short epilogue to come!

 

An Extraordinary Tale

I often have felt like I am living out a remarkable story written by unseen hands, with an intricately woven plot masterfully penned in ways that would make Dickens envious. Yesterday was one of the most magnificent and miraculous example of those hands at work, a tying together of threads left dangling for almost 50 years. 

The story begins on October 11^th, 1978, with my soon-to-be wife Karen and I at the beginning of a one-year trip around the world. At the end of August, we drove across the country in her old Pinto car, from San Francisco to my parents’ home in New Jersey. After a visit there, we boarded a Laker flight to London for some $150 each, hitchhiked north up to Scotland and then back South to the city of York. As recorded in my journal: 

 

10/11/ 1978 – Peanut butter lunch under a slight drizzle in a park in Newcastle, a quite friendly tire salesman who let us use his bathroom and gave us directions to a bus out of town. We found it, and rode to the outskirts and the driver gave us the ride for free, as if he never expected us to have to pay. Then a woman walked with us five minutes to show us a good spot and the right road for hitchhiking and within 5 minutes, we climbed up into another lorry carrying frozen sausage pies, the driver telling us what were probably delightful stories, but unintelligible in his thick Scottish accent. We just nodded our heads and smiled. 

 

He dropped us at the cut-off to York and 10 minutes later, we were riding with a talkative, friendly man on his way home from work who asked us if we’d like to stop at his hour for tea before going on to the York Youth Hostel. He lived just outside in a charming village called Nether Poppleton. 

 

We happily agreed and as we entered his house, he told his wife and two daughters, 3 and 4 years old, that he brought some guests for tea. They greeted us warmly and when we finally sat down at the table, we realized the “tea” was “dinner” in England! A most pleasant meal followed and when we suggested we better get going to the Youth Hostel, he said he would be driving to Cambridge in two days and we were welcome to stay with them. His name was Jim Bold, his wife was Karen and the two daughters were Rachel and Jane.

 

An evening of lively talk about English politics, history and geography punctuated by crackers and cheese and all of it thoroughly delightful. The next day off to be tourists in York with its charming car-less narrow streets, open-air market, bright cathedral, delightful museums and famous wall, then back to our hosts, Jim and Karen Bold, for an evening of cribbage, canasta, watching a bit of rugby and British sit-com on TV.

 

The next day we visited the kids’ school, beautiful building and grounds, good materials, pleasant teachers and focused kids. I did some singing with the preschoolers. In the teacher’s room, the teachers were talking in hushed tones and let us know that they were discussing a child whose parents were (gasp!— divorced. They seemed aghast when we shared that that described some 40% of the families in our school! But here in Nether Poppleton, life seemed like the British version of Leave It To Beaver, the husbands off to work, the mums walking their kids to school, back yards with swings, pet rabbits, bicycles. And it worked. 

 

When we finally reluctantly parted, I gave my kazoo to 4-year old Rachel and Karen made a drawing for 3-year old Jane. Off we rode with Jim to be dropped at the cut-off to Cambridge.

 

In 2020, I decided to fill some of the pandemic time writing a book about this extraordinary trip, alternating between those journal entries and my comments so many years later. (A book I’m now determined to publish!) Here is what I wrote about that story: 

 

The kindness of strangers. The tire salesman, bus driver, the woman from the bus, the sausage lorry driver all willing and eager to help. And then the extraordinary generosity of the Bold family, inviting two complete strangers into their home for two days within ten minutes of meeting us. Visiting my folks in New Jersey a few weeks earlier, I had noticed them locking the doors during the day while they were in the house! Nothing had happened in the neighborhood to warrant that beyond the rising epidemic of fear as the basis of the lives we lived. 

 

This was the first example of how trust fulfilled its own possibility to make people kinder, more generous, more happy. And it was far from the last. I don’t remember the names of people who refused help or ignored us or insulted us (and here I’m talking about our life in the U.S.. On this trip, there were perhaps two mild incidents in a year of travel!). But I will never forget Jim and Karen Bold. 

 

And indeed, I never did. So knowing we were going back to York 48 years later on the way to our walking trip in the Yorkshire Dales, I decided we should return to Nether Poppleton to see if we could find them. Read on to discover what happened. 

My Walking Autobiography

As promised, I’m thinking about my history with walking and it’s a pretty interesting lens through which to reflect. Perhaps too personal to be of interest to others, but maybe a model for all to reflect on their own relationship with this most basic and universal human pastime. Turns out to be a (if not, the) central character in my 75-year story: Here goes:

 

• Harrison School: Growing up in 1950’s Roselle, New Jersey, I walked every day to school. Perhaps my mother walked me to and from kindergarten and then my older sister took over, but mostly it was my friends and I walking the half-mile or so to Harrison School. Since they didn’t serve lunch, I walked home at lunchtime and then back, so it was some 2 miles roundtrip. My one year at Abraham Clark High School was a much longer walk, perhaps a mile and a half with lunch included, so that would have been 3 miles roundtrip daily. High school at Pingry Country Day School for Young Gentlemen (which I certainly was not and never became!) was a 3-mile drive one-way. Though I remember once my mother forgot to pick me up and I walked home, it marked the end of my walking school commute. 

 

• Warinanco Park: I was blessed to have a 200-acre park a mere half-block from my house and for all of my childhood, I roamed freely through it all. Played pick-up baseball, football and basketball there (no adult supervision), wandered over to the lake or the stadium or the flower garden. Never thought of it as “taking a walk,” just the free-exploring that marked a kids’ life back in those days.

 

• Watchung Reservation: Once I got my driver’s license, I would often go to this larger natural park and fresh from reading Thoreau, I did feel it as a “walk through the woods.” At 16, the innocence and freedom of childhood was already a cause for nostalgia, so following Thoreau’s advice, I was hoping that nature would restore me sense of belonging and wonder amidst the alienation of teen angst. And it did.

 

• Glen Helen: When I visited Antioch College as a prospective student, the 1,000-acre nature reserve known as Glen Helen adjacent to the campus was a huge selling point. And indeed, once there, many a day was spent walking and wandering through its many wonders—the Yellow Springs (with rusty iron tasting water), the pine forest, the waterfall, the swinging bridge. Sometimes I ventured further into the surrounding farmland and often (I confess), when I was supposed to be in class. But I dutifully followed Wordsworth’s advice: “Come into the light of things. Let Nature be your teacher.” And indeed, these were some of my most memorable “classes.”

 

• European cities: Summer of 1973 was my last quarter at Antioch College and the ending couldn’t have been better: Singing with an early Renaissance Choir in the cathedrals of Holland, France and Italy. In-between rehearsals, performances, museum tours and wine-tasting, I spent all my free-time wandering through the cities of Amsterdam, Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome, with side-trips to Barcelona and London thrown into the mix. I often headed for parks, but in general just loved to follow my nose down side streets and back alleys and see what awaited. It was a practice that has served me in a lifetime of future travels, here, there and just about everywhere.

 

• San Francisco Mondays: My first two years in San Francisco were filled with leisure time in-between volunteering to teach music at a couple of progressive schools, giving jazz piano lessons once-a-week at The Community Music Center (for which I was supremely unqualified, but managed to be one step ahead of my students) and accompanying my sister’s modern dance classes twice a week. That left a lot of time to wander around the city and get to know it neighborhood-by-neighborhood. And I did.

 

When I finally joined the working world at the music teacher at The San Francisco School, I worked there four days a week with Mondays off? And what did I do on Monday? Keep wandering around the city! Sometimes with a book of poetry in my pocket or a journal in a backpack. I got to know the many nooks and crannies of the city’s many parks, with Golden Gate Park at the center. But also got to know the diverse neighborhoods— the Latin Mission, the Italian North Beach, Chinatown, Japantown, the then-black Fillmore, Russian Hill (with very few Russians that I knew of) and beyond. I learned where to treat myself to tacos, sushi, piroshki, dumplings, pizza, Thai miang-kum, Vietnamese bun, English fish and chips and more. 

 

• Michigan Outlet/ Sugar bowl/ Baldy: Since 1976, my wife and I and later kids and later grandkids would go every summer to her folks’ “cottage” on Lake Michigan near Frankfort— and still do. We have our ritual activities and they always include certain walks— the one to Old Baldy where we scamper down the enormous dune and then walk the beach back to the Watervale Resort where our cars are parked, the long beach walk in the other direction to the Elberta Lighthouse, the shorter beach walks to the outlet and Sugar Bowl dune. Of course, swimming is a main attraction and bike riding figures into our schedules, but walking and hiking are right there in the center. 

 

• Backpacking and Calaveras: My first backpacking trip was part of a class at Antioch called “Man and Nature” (sorry that even radical Antioch didn’t see the gender issue in the title). But in fact, it was the teacher and five male students who set off for the Adirondacks equipped with a compass, sleeping bags, pots and pans and a map or two to embark on an adventure for which we were ill-prepared. But we came out alive and backpacking became a steadfast part of my adult like. First alone, then with my wife, then with my wife and kids. The last backpack trip I took was in 2022 with my daughter Talia ( 38 years old), my granddaughter Zadie (9 years old) and me (71 years old). It was Zadie’s first and what I suspect was my last. The walking wasn’t bad, but sitting on hard granite rocks for some of the day kind of did me in.

 

Meanwhile, my wife and I helped lead 20 school camping trips to Calaveras Big Trees between 1980 and 2000 and these 5-day excursions pretty much involved a hike each day, from anywhere from 2 to 5 miles. 

 

• Stairway walks: Later in my San Francisco life, my wife and I discovered Adah Bakalinsky’s Stairway Walks and delighted in not only finding these hidden routes tucked into various neighborhoods but loved reading her comments that miraculously mostly held-up. Things like “Notice the large ceramic pot with the flowering _______ on the front porch”—and sure enough, there it was!

 

• World travel: One year before we got married, my soon-to-be wife and I took a trip around the world—three months in Europe and seven in Asia. We both agreed on walking and wandering as our chosen travel life-style and that we did—in England, Scotland, Italy, Greece, India, Indonesia, Japan and other points in-between. 

 

As we continued a lifetime of travel on every continent (except Antarctica), walking continued to be a central presence in getting to know a place. 

 

• Palm Springs: Much of that travel and camping and backpacking was with our two daughters, from their early childhood up through today in their 40’s. So no surprise that the walking traditions continued with the grandkids and this is especially true of our annual December trip to Palm Springs, complete with hikes to Palm Canyon, the Ladder Hikes, the mountains above Palm Springs and more. Fortified with snacks and treats and promises of post-hike ice cream, beginning the tradition of telling stories to grandson Malik starting when he was 4 to keep him moving and then in the last few years, him telling stories to me, we build memories together step-by-step and happily so.

 

• Pandemic: We are so fortunate that we live about the same distance from Golden Gate Park that I did from Warinanco Park growing up—literally a half-a-block. For the 44 years we’ve lived here, the park has continued to be our back yard to walk through without having to take care of the plants. Never was this so needed as during the pandemic and we took full advantage of being outside during this difficult time of isolation. We also renewed our exploration of neighborhoods, helped by new books like Gary Kamiya’s Cool Grey City of Love and Why is the Golden Gate Bridge Painted Orange. Many times we paused and thought in wonder, “If someone dropped us here blindfolded, neither of us would have any idea where we are!”

 

Post-Pandemic: Since I retired from my school at the beginning of the pandemic, I now had more hours of my own to fill the day. I still did work at schools and travelled and taught, but when I was home, I walked each day for some 4 to 6 miles. Some just to continue to enjoy strolling through the nearby park and other neighborhoods, now accompanied by an Audible book, some with an errand as a goal and choosing walking over driving (but occasionally biking) there. As much as I enjoyed listening to the Audible books, it did distract me from being wholly present to the here and now, so I often make sure at least some part of the walk is device-free to allow my own thoughts and observations to arise. As Rebecca Solnit affirms in her own walks (and quotes other lifetime walkers), moving on our two bi-pedal legs is often that criss-crossing between recollecting the past, planning the future (for me, many good workshop ideas arise while walking) and being fully in the here and now listening to the birds, smelling the flowers, watching the rippling of water, smiling and occasionally talking to strangers. 

Today: And so here we are again, my wife and I, 75 and 76 years old, having walked 6 miles yesterday around the York Wall and 8 miles from Nether Poppleton to York, soon to embark on a walking tour organized by a group called Muddy Boots. Three sunny days so far in our U.K. experience, but rain predicted for each of the walking days, so the muddy boots—well, shoes— prophecy may yet live up to its name. 

 

At the end of this reflection is the inconvertible truth— walking has been my constant companion in every phase of my life and happily so. Grateful for the good health and good legs that allowed it all to happen and continue to bless me with its gifts. May it continue, muddy boots and all!

 

Suitcases Up Steps

Somewhere around 11^th grade, I suffered from an inexplicable bout of insomnia for a few months. Never knew why it started or how it ended, but I do remember that it was sheer torture. I’d lie awake just on the edge of sleep, some way too-conscious mind way too conscious of the fact that I wasn’t sleeping and then getting frustrated and angry, which I’m sure didn’t help. Luckily, it stopped and never was a problem again. 

 

Until last night. Of course, it was jet lag and no surprise that I awoke at 2:00am, but a bit of a surprise that I was up for 4 hours with that same maddening feeling of almost asleep, but not quite! Then I clearly finally dozed off and when I heard some sounds from my wife in our curtain-darkened room, imagined that it was 8:00 or 9:00 am. Imagine my shock when I saw that it was 12 noon!!! Our check-out time! We got a half-hour reprieve and were out on the streets ready for the train trip to York, our next stop. 

 

As any long-time reader knows, I like to notice the things that are different about one place from another and in both the subway and train station, here’s one: No escalators!!! And why not? So many people dragging heavy suitcases up fifteen steps or so, so it’s not as if there’s not a demand. And yes, there is a lift (translation: elevator), but it’s nowhere near as convenient or user-friendly as a simple escalator. These days, I don’t feel like the U.S. can give a single word of advice to any other culture, but I think “escalators in train stations” is something the world —well, at least the U.K.— might consider. 

 

A two-hour trip to York and for the second time in two days, went to our Premier Inn and were not in their records, only to discover that the Premier Inn we wanted was literally a second nearby hotel, around the block in London and two doors down in York! Kind of like Starbucks in downtown San Francisco. 

 

Our Premier Inn has a broken lift, so there we were again lugging our suitcases up steps. Luckily, we got a room on the 1^st floor! Quickly settled in and hit the streets around 6:00 pm. Plenty of light, because York is a fairly northern latitude and we’re only three weeks out from the Summer Solstice. (I’m writing this at 10:00 pm and it’s only just now twilight.)

Looking for a snack, we decided on a Thai dinner, though promised each other that we’d go to the Fish and Chips place tomorrow that serves it up in newspaper, a “when in Rome” commitment. After dinner, we walked up the steps to the Medieval Wall that surrounds part of the city and started to circumambulate. Perfect 75-degree temperature (no converting from Celsius here!) for an evening stroll, looking down at the gardens of the row houses below. Came to the end and descended to walk towards the City Centre (British spelling—again, when in Rome…) and it was evocative of another city we loved visiting on our bike trip two years ago—Ljubljana in Slovenia. They both have a river running through it with walks along the side and outdoor restaurants and pedestrian-friendly streets. 

 

This is what I love about Europe. The taste of antiquity in the air in these old town neighborhoods with buildings/ castles/ churches/ walls as old as a thousand years, the people-friendly and winding meandering streets, the outdoor restaurants and cafes serving quality food, the diners having conversations (though phone addiction is creeping in). My wife just read two books about how cars have shaped American culture—one called Carrmeggedon and the other Life After Cars and both suggesting what San Francisco is beginning to do— pay attention to car-free roads in parks, slow streets, pedestrian malls, bike lanes and more. 

 

In Rebecca Solnit’s book mentioned in the last post (whose subtitle I neglected to mention– A History of Walking), she notes: 

 

“…(in the United States) public space is designed to accommodate the privacy of automobiles, malls replace main streets, streets have no sidewalks, buildings are entered through their garages, city halls have no plazas, and everything has walls, bars, gates. Fear has created a whole style of architecture and urban design, notably in Southern California where to be a pedestrian is to be under suspicion in many of the subdivisions and gated ‘communities.’ “

 

Yep! I have felt this so strongly traveling around the country giving workshops and being put up in chain hotels on strip malls with chain mega-stores and taken out to dinner at chain restaurants. How can the aesthetic experience I’m hoping to give in the workshop be fully absorbed when we live like this, surrounded by sameness everywhere and character nowhere? I remember once in Grand Rapids asking if I could walk to the movie theater in a nearby mall and they looked at me like I was an alien from another planet. I did anyway, without a sidewalk with cars zooming by. 

The next morning I was so starved for something that felt real, that seemed to be a neighborhood, that I started to walk away from the main road (again, no sidewalks). Finally, I stumbled on a park-like green space with a sign announcing future ‘development,’ walked up to a tree, looked around not surprised to find nobody there and basically took off my shirt and dropped my pants to hug that tree and try to feel like an authentic human being again in close contact with an authentic part of nature. Really! I did that! I was that desperate.

 

Talking about recalibrating our culture to accommodate walking and biking and such seems so trivial in the face of the major blitz, bombardment, onslaught we are suffering in the hands of the Moloch monsters we’ve somehow elected. And yet. It’s all connected. The AI saturation bombing is yet another attempt to render the body wholly —and the mind and the heart—irrelevant. 

In the face of that all, the simple act of walking in our bodies, in our own thoughts, in company with the natural world, is both a needed personal healing and profound collective act of resistance. When that simple step can go further yet to organize our architecture and paths and sidewalks and roads around this landslide vote for quality of life, then real change can begin. Europe remains so impressive in its ongoing commitment to withstanding the onslaught. Still no skyscrapers in Paris, the empty Salzburg fields that were there when I first visited in 1990 still there, the activity around city riverfronts in Ljubljana where people stroll and dine and sip coffee or savor a glass of wine— they seem to be holding steady. Not so in China, where they razed the colorful hutongs and chose the Las Vegas glitz and towering buildings and endless malls, as did Tokyo in its own way. And so on.

 

That’s my first day report—well, my second report, as Be Here Now was written on the train. Tomorrow an adventure to see if I can complete a loop that happened 48 years ago, when my wife and I visited York for the first (and only until now) time. To be continued…

Be Here Now

If the reader will indulge me, a short rant and vent before moving on to the praise of this wild and precious life. 

 

As noted in the last post, I miraculously cleared the deck before leaving on my trip so I can be more wholly present and embrace the notion of “vacation.” But we (certainly I) have organized my life around being perpetually “in touch” and “available” through the ever-expanding possibilities of e-mail, text message, WhatsApp, Facebook, Facebook-messenger and having done so, feel obliged to check in in case I miss anything “important.” So the first e-mails I saw were two people signed up for the Jazz Course saying they’ve dropped, having heard of one more the day before I left and two more the week before that. That’s 5 out of 20 people casually letting me know, “Oh, by the way, I’m not going to make it.” More and more, I’m seeing people treat commitment as a casual “maybe I will, maybe I won’t” and that not only disturbs me culturally, but makes it almost unworkable to run courses like I do and depend upon them meaning it when they sign up. Of course, accidents and family crisis and health crisis are real and understandable, but in the past, that accounts for maybe two or three people out of 100 sign-ups. This is now 5 out of 20! 25%!

 

I need all 20 and then 5 more to make our budget and needless, to say, this was NOT what I wanted to hear and it really threw me to the floor. On top of the fact that in order to check messages in those multiple mediums, I have to scroll through the junk mail of the next bad news in my home country of not-Canada. Of course, I don’t read them, but hard not to notice the headings and do I have to stay connected with this shit when I’m just trying to re-learn how to be more fully present in the here and now? It’s really bumming me out. 

 

But having released my complaint in language, I’m working on letting it go and turning my attention to Ram Dass’s timeless advice: “Be here now.” What does that actually mean and how might I pay attention to it more fully? A few thoughts: 

 

BE— Be wholly present in the fullness of your being. 

HERE—Locate yourself in space.

NOW—Locate yourself in time. 

 

In reality, we are constantly criss-crossing between past, present and future. We are here at the same time we are there. We are present in our own being at the same time being inhabited by others speaking through us or at us or colonizing our thoughts with their thoughts or (the best of choices), enlarging our thoughts with their provocative thoughts.

 

All of this has always been possible in a mind made boundless by imagination, jump-started by stories around the dinner table or campfire, then given more energy by literacy—books that can instantly transport you to other lands and inhabit you with other thoughts and carry you to other times. Books that you can choose. Books that are your ticket to distant places and times. Books that are wholly your choice as to when and if and why to buy one and how much you’re willing to spend. (Not the price of the book, but the time invested.)

 

Now the choices have amplified exponentially. You’re in one restaurant with one friend at the same time you’re FOMO’ing yourself to the other restaurant with other friends. Your connection to place is broken by heads-down looking at the tiny screen, your possibility of savoring the moment stolen by the endless distraction of games, videos, social media posts singing you to your be-here-now-doom and no one is tying you to the mast or plugging your ears. 

 

Rapid transportation is another way to catapult you out of the here of the body’s slow movement through place and in the body's time— planes, trains and automobiles that offer little by way of savoring the journey, just getting through the miles between here and there to begin your “real” life or vacation in the new places. The faster it moves, the less you are “here.” 

 

Yet trains that are not “faster than a speeding bullet” can have their own romance (as the old Hitchcock films, the Before Sunrise film, and my own train travel in Europe capture). Boats that likewise glide more leisurely through water (Now Voyager film and my boat ride to Formentera) and cars that sing out “Road trip!” (On the Road, my first trip to California, my pandemic RV trip to Michigan with the kids and grandkids), autos that meander the back roads and bypass the super-highways, have their own sense of hereness and nowness. 

 

Keep slowing down and the pleasures increase— the bike ride, the canoe or kayak trip, and best of all, walking— not destination fast-paced hiking or head-down rushing to the next subway stop, but true meandering and wandering . 

 

And so on the verge of a 5-day semi-organized walking trip in the Yorkshire Dales and the good sense to bring Rebecca Solnit’s book Wanderlust, I’m ready to renew my love of walking. Stay tuned for my Walking Autobiography, my musings after each day’s walk and my sense that the best resistance to the world demanding my attention with its distractions is to refuse it—or at least limit it to one short e-mail check a day and that’s it. Wish me luck!

 

(And please sign up for the Jazz Course!)

Up and Away

I’ve never been a big fan of the saying that “God gives you just the right amount of trouble that you can handle,” but it is true that She gave me exactly the number of things I could check off my list before taking off for six weeks of travel. With a flight at 8:00 pm at night, I woke up and got to work on laundry, packing, sending out invoices, paying all bills, whittling e-mail to zero, packing up a box and two envelopes of books and sending them off at the Post Office, eating all the perishables in the refrigerator, calling my two daughters and sister, booking a flight to China, voting by mail, buying a plug adaptor and yet more. The one snafu was my haircutter being closed (on a Tuesday? Why?) and having to scramble to find another, which I did. 

 

So off we arrived at the airport and I had some creeping sense that something was going to go wrong and sure enough, suddenly the U.K, demands an ETA before you can enter. With no line ahead or behind us, two helpful travel agents walked us through the application on our phone and we were able to board the plane, some $56 poorer. But then the guardian angels made up for it by giving my wife and I a whole row of three seats each and the rare luxury of a horizontal flight, without having to pay the $10,000 or so (I kid you not!) that first-class people had to pay. 

 

A few first impressions upon arriving in London: 

• Dickens and Conan Doyle wrote of London as cold, bleak, grey and foggy. Coming off the Heathrow Express train and out into the air at Paddington Station, it was a hot 90 degrees and sunny.

 

• Cobblestones are charming until you have to wheel a suitcase over them for several hundred yards. 

 

• E-sim is an easy way to keep access to your phone while traveling— up until the moment (after you’ve paid for it) you try to install it. 

 

• We are exactly in the place where we met our Australian friends Margie and Paul last year and wandered around the charming (and surprising) neighborhood of Little Venice.

 

• The waiter at our dinner pizza place asked if we were from Canada. When we told him U.S., he said with a smile, “Well, I just wanted to give you a chance to pretend.”

 

• That restaurant had a first for this “half-a-bottle-of-beer-and -then cork-it- until-tomorrow guy" (me)— you could get a pint, 1/2  pint or 1/3 pint! The latter was perfect for me and cost a mere 2.8 pounds. 

 

• The bill at the end had a Table Service charge, so no need to leave a tip. And the charge was 12%. Yeah!

 

So back in the land of Mind the Gap and Look Right (for cars when crossing the street that could hit you). Both metaphors for our Canadian I mean, American, experience. Having to daily mind the gap between our American promise and our dismal reality and to look to the Right to avoid their dangerous careening vehicles. 

 

Happy to say, we’re in the U.K.!

 

Homage to a Colossus

Raise high the roof beam, carpenters—another giant has passed from our midst. Yesterday, Jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins ascended to the world of the Ancestors at 95-years-young.  Back when he was 26, he recorded one of his best-known albums Saxophone Colossus, a title that suggests he was somehow aware that he was indeed destined to become a “colossus,” an old Greek word referring to “any extraordinarily large, towering statue, or metaphorically, a person or entity of immense size, power, or influence.” That well describes Sonny’s long and varied career. I suggest listening to that album—or any of his albums —to properly honor and pay homage to this American genius. 

 

For my own tribute, I changed slightly the words to Bobby Hebb’s hit song Sunny and they seemed to fit well. Sing it out loud if you will. 

 

“Sonny, yesterday our life was filled with rain, 

Sonny, you played for us the jazz that eased the pain,

Now the dark days are done and the bright days are here
My Sonny one shines so sincere
Sonny one so true we love you. 

[Verse 1]
Sonny, thank you for the sunshine bouquet. 

Sonny, thank you for the love you've brought our way
You gave to us your all and all

And helped us feel ten feet tall,

Sonny one so true we love you. 

[Verse 2]
Sonny, thank you for the truth you let us see
Sonny, thank you for the facts from A to Z
Our life was torn like wind-blown sand
A rock was formed when you joined the band.  

Sonny one so true we love you. 

[Verse 3]
Sonny, thank you for that smile upon your face

Sonny, thank you, thank you, for those notes that flowed with grace.

You're the spark of nature's fire,
You're our sweet, complete desire,
Sonny one so true, yes, we love you.”

 

R.I.P., Sonny Rollins.