Life in a Southern Town

Recently, at a rehearsal for an upcoming concert of Händel's Messiah, I engaged in a brief but very friendly introductory banter with a woman who looked to be in her mid-sixties. She was warm, friendly, and very southern in her lil-darlin' approach, and I was warm, friendly and candid in my warm yankee return.

She asked me if I was a student at the university. (We rehearse in a music room on the campus, as our director is also the choral director there.) I answered that no, I was actually a faculty member. She thought I was too young to be a faculty member and added that if I wasn't careful some young local girl was gonna snatch me up 'cause I was so good-looking.

I informed her that that was highly unlikely as I was gay.

Without batting an eyelash, but with the smile noticeably less bright on her lips, she said, "You're not from around here, are you?"

I believe her response sums up better than any example could the way southerners think: in order to be from here or live here with even a modicum of success, one must hide everything novel, odd, out of the ordinary, or anything that might approach the appearance of impropriety. In other words: hide everything that will give the neighbours something to talk about.

This also sums up why I hate the South so ardently. Oh, it's a lovely place. Lovely trees. Lovely scenery. Lovely homes. It's really just the people I hate.

And the mosquitoes.

The Eternal Wisdom of Bill Watterson

Winter is the favoured playground of Bill Watterson, the creator of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. It is in the snow that Calvin comes into his most mischievous and devious self. While others might wish to breathe in the peace and utter calm of the season, it is Calvin’s aim to break the silence with a war cry and shower of snowy missiles.

The Pooh Connection

A. A. Milne must also have held the snow and all things wintry in as much esteem as I. The proof of this lies in The House at Pooh Corner, where the tubby little cub has made up a comforting little hum to hum to himself as it snows. He decides to teach the hum to Piglet, and they set out then to teach it to Eeyore as well. This is how it goes:

The more it snows

(Tiddely Pom),

The more it goes

(Tiddely Pom),

The more it goes

(Tiddely Pom),

On snowing.

And nobody knows,

(Tiddely Pom)

How cold my toes

(Tiddely Pom),

How cold my toes

(Tiddely Pom),

Are growing.

While on their way to visit Eeyore, Piglet becomes ever more covered with snow and suggests - quite timidly, “because he didn’t want Pooh to think he was Giving In” - that they return home to practice the hum a while. Pooh agrees that it is a very good idea, indeed, but that they must practice it outside, because “it’s a special Outdoor Song which Has To Be Sung In The Snow.”

I wonder if I know any Outdoors Hums for Snowy Weather.

Travels of an American Traveler

I recently visited Spain for the first time. (Okay, it was back in mid-March, but I’m just now getting round to posting this.) Many things were as I expected them to be while others were not. For example, I fully expected to find myself besieged by second-hand smoke wherever I went. And so I was. Bars, restaurants, cafés, doctor’s offices, bookstores, subways, nurseries ... the list was endless. The official estimate is that one in three Spaniards smokes. A sad truth, to be sure, but hardly surprising as all Spaniards - boys and girls alike - are given a pack of Camels and a lighter on their first birthday. On their second they are taught how to roll their own.

Now, something that I did not expect was to hear anyone complaining about the smoke. To be accurate, I only heard three people complain the entire time I was there, and in a country with a population of just over 40 million, it seems that those who would rather live without smoke are in an extremely small vocal minority.

Anyone who has heard that Madrid is a place to party all night has definitely got his facts straight. Since most madrileños do not even contemplate heading out for pre-dinner drinks and tapas (lovely little appetizers that go quite well with a red Rioja or a sparkling Cava) until well after 8:00 p.m., it is not surprising that someone could easily find himself rocking up to his flat at 5:00 in the morning to grab a quick shower and a change of clothes before heading back out for a strong cup of coffee and some churros on the way to work.

My friend Kathleen (my partner in crime while in Spain - pictured at the right) and I became two such people one ill-fated evening in Madrid as we agreed to meet her friend Lorenz (a fun German bloke who now resides in Madrid) for some drinks at a small corner pub around the corner from our hotel (the unremarkable Hotel Liabeny) in the city centre. Several smooth glasses of red wine later (from the region of Navarre, in the north) and we headed out the door, on our way to meet Chris (a bloke whom Kathleen and Lorenz knew from work in Manchester, England) and his lovely wife Barbara.

Now, the Madrid tradition is to hop from pub to pub, sampling the wine and tapas, gabbing about local politics and other savoury issues of importance, and soaking up the ambient cigarette smoke into your lungs and your clothing. (I still have a black jacket that reeks of smoke from that night.)

We ended up at a lovely bar that only a place like Spain could produce. You had your choice of a front room or a back room, both dimly lit and featuring a man strumming his gypsy heart out to the sounds of flamenco. The front room was only sparsely populated, but the back room was full from wall to wall, with people assembled to hear the flamenco stylings of anyone who wished to regale his fellow pub-goers. The guitarist was paid by the pub, but the singers were not professionals. They were - in the strict sense of word - amateurs: lovers' of their art. They contorted faces and pain-racked voices lent testimony to the melancholic content of the cante jondo, the songs that they sang. One such singer was a local diva (a local diva who had obviously recently been ridden hard and put away wet). We drank, we clapped in tempo, we drank some more, we applauded the talent of other patrons. One beautiful young woman was so moved she stood and danced oh so quietly in place, her hands and arms skillfully twisted over her head.

A Snowy Silence

I can think of no greater peace in the world than that of a snow-filled landscape. There is something about snow that muffles all sound, that hushes even the most raucous of nature’s creations. As a young man I would wander in the fields behind my father’s house to steep myself in snowy silence. Like a sunbather soaking up the midday rays, I would lie on my back in a drift of snow and let the silence penetrate my skin. I would listen for the wind in the naked branches of the forest, for mice under the snowdrifts, for the flap of a raven’s wings. And through it all there was no one. Just me. We lived on the top of a large hill in upstate New York. To the west our closest neighbours lived half a football field away; to the east the closest lived a whole football field away. Behind the house lay a quilted network of fields and woods; a stream crazy-stitched itself across it in spring. And I could wander undisturbed, no brothers, no father, no troubles.

I think that Robert Frost must have felt the same. His poem “Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening” captures the sense of awe that a snow-filled woods inspires in a weary traveler caught out on a cold December day:

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

My Belovéd

I have often heard it said, from a varied assortment of sources, that in a relationship there always exists a lover and a belovéd. This duality, so the party line goes, is omnipresent and eternal. Recent events and musings of a personal nature have made me examine this assertion again, and I have begun to wonder whether it is as true as so many think it is.

Another way to approach this concept is to see it in terms of the pursuer and the pursued. There is one who takes a step forward - toward the belovéd - and another who takes a step back - but (and this is key to the survival of this dichotomy) not away from the lover. It is a dance. A tango. The belovéd, predominantly a male figure throughout history but not so today, leads with his left foot, stepping vigorously forward, toward the object of his desires, who, generally a female counterpoint (but again not so today), takes a matching step back with the right foot.

It is no accident that dancing involves two people facing each other, facing each other off. He looms; she rises to meet. He advances; she slips furtively to the side, and backwards. But she is not running from him. No. Remember: she is facing him. Enticing him. Luring him. Calling him to follow her. They keep stepping, moving, circling. If she were truly fleeing, her back would be turned and she would be wearing footwear more suitable for sprinting than for the foxtrot.

True Grits

Should someone in your vicinity begin to muse - spontaneously - about what little boys or little girls are made of, before he can begin to quote the old rhyming recipe about snips and snails or sugar and spice, you should ask him where the little boy or girl in question comes from. Because if said child should hail from the south, the recipe invariably will have to be expanded to include grits.

People say that in the south cotton was King. And in the minds of many surely tobacco had its heyday. But grits are the true regent of the southern realm, and don’t let anyone ever tell you any diff’rent.

Most people (myself included) that were raised north of the Mason-Dixon line probably think or thought at one point that grits are breakfast food, something akin to Cream of Wheat or oatmeal (or porridge, to our Aussie and British kin). While it is true that grits are eaten at breakfast, they’re not just for breakfast anymore. Cheese grits are a common accompaniment to lunchtime fair, and many is the table that has been graced with grits in the evening alongside fried okra, fried squash, fried hushpuppies, fried catfish, or collared greens (not fried, but certainly fried if southerners could figure out a way to make it palatable).

I have come to enjoy grits a great deal ... at breakfast only, I’m afraid. With a pat of butter. Alongside my southern-fried steak and country biscuits smothered with sausage gravy. It don’t git no better ‘n this.

Happy Thoughts

I was struck recently by the happy thought that a complete stranger could have such a significant and (more importantly) positive effect on my life. Actually, they are two complete strangers. A couple. And they have no idea what joy they have quietly brought to me.

I think that most of us never do take a moment to ponder the myriad ways in which a complete stranger can have this effect on us without ever meaning to. The other person - or persons - is just going about his daily existence, unaware of the inspiration he is providing. It is easy to think of the negative effects that Others can have on us. And by and large those Others are all complete strangers. Grocery clerks, department store clerks, Post Office clerks (it seems that all clerks might as a rule be evil), taxi drivers, fellow passengers on public transport, fellow passengers in an elevator, fellow pedestrians on the street or in a mall, customer service representatives. These people we encounter on a daily basis wield uncommon power over our lives: one wrong move or ill-placed word and they can ruin a whole day, forcing men and women from all walks of life to sink to dark and despairing corners of our psyches, conjuring up Mephistophelian tortures and punishments and casting spells of wicked intent.

But the couple of which I am speaking uses its powers for good. Quiet, unassuming good. They are a man and woman, each somewhere in his/her 70s. They seem to have been married for at least 50 years. The right side of the man's face is paralyzed and hangs somewhat on his skull, lending him a slightly sad and humble look. His wife's face bears the lines of many years of laughing and crying and worrying. There is a long story to be read there.

I first encountered them about three months ago at a coffee shop which I began frequenting. They were obviously regulars, bringing their own coffee mugs out of which to sip their morning brews. I go to the coffee shop about four times a week, Fridays through Mondays usually, and occasionally on Wednesdays, and no matter the day, there they are, sitting quietly across a table from each other, reading. Each day it is something different: a novel, a magazine, a newspaper. And what is so pleasant and intimate is how they will each share a line or two of what they are reading, and the other listens and then responds. After so many years together they still have the ability to engage each other, to share new knowledge, to listen to each other. It’s inspiring.

Of course, I could be misjudging them completely. They could have just met six months ago via an Internet chatroom and so everything they do is new and fresh to the other. They could have fallen into a horrible coffee-dependent rut after only six short months, and they are looking desperately for a way out but want even more desperately not to hurt the other’s feelings and so they pretend to be interested in everything the other says.

But I hope that my first instinct is the right one.

Beginnings

At the behest of a friend of many years, I have at long last relented and decided to post a Blog. Had someone told me just two years ago that he was about to "post a blog", I would have thought that he was about to ship off via the U.S. mail some arcane Scottish dish involving the insides of pigs and sheep. And yet here I am, about to do something very similar: serve up a dish of my insides for the whole world to see. Tra la, tra la.