December 19, 2006

Over time we become inured to the horrors of the world we inhabit. In a year when the Dawgs lose to Kentucky, Sylvester Stallone is making a new “Rocky” and President Adams attempts to declare dry tailgating zones, sometimes you feel like you’ve taken your moral compass into a room full of magnets – you just don’t know which way to turn. But even in circumstances like these, some acts are so egregious, so malevolent and so contrary to any cultural norm that they fall outside even today’s expanded pale.

A perpetrator committed such an act very recently, attacking the fabric of our society with a pair of serrated shears. I fear that the culprit was one of us. The act occurred right on my doorstep . . . no, it was not a burning bag of dog crap. It was much, much worse.

Maria (left) and Fred (right)

Some of you may recall last year, when I sent out a plaintive email decrying the kidnapping of Maria, the flamingo who lived in my yard. I loved Maria platonically and Fred, her companion, loved her carnally. Fred and I – especially Fred – were devastated by the loss. I called for anyone to reply with information concerning Maria’s abduction, but no one produced a shred of evidence. I know there were doubters of my email – recipients who mused, I bet Jeb just lost the flamingo, or it blew away in a stiff wind – and I say now that I bear no grudge against you. The horror of Maria’s now-disfigured condition has outstripped my resentment of misplaced skepticism.

Yes, Maria is back. The perpetrator returned her to my yard during the night of December 14. But the Maria who reappeared in my yard next to Fred had a gaping hole in her side, no head and only one leg. The physical dismemberment, mental trauma and emotional beating Maria endured have changed her. Now she collects water when it rains, flaps around in the wind and Fred intimates that there have been other changes as well.

Maria has received the finest orthopedic and cosmetic care known to medicine, but the damage is permanent. Perpetrator, beware – Maria will be filing actions for battery and false imprisonment, and Fred, who has shown no renewed interest in Maria despite his long frustration, will be suing for loss of consortium. Their odds for recovery are deemed excellent.

I am too distraught to sue, and for a law student that’s saying something. I have been disillusioned by the occurrence of such a soul-stripping crime on my own doorstep, and disillusioned by what a shallow asshole Fred is being about the whole thing. I’m glad we’re on Christmas Break; I just don’t think I could handle Athens anymore. Every time I see Maria’s new wooden head and green foreleg I just break down.

December 19, 2006

orthopedic surgery

cosmetic surgery

July 20, 2006

It was comfortable and cool in Wal-Mart’s well-ventilated fishing section when I selected my $19.99 rod, reel and line combination. When I got down to the shore to pull the canoe out of the weeds, rod and bailing bucket in hand, it was about 96°F and the air didn’t seem ventilated at all. But, I thought, no sportsman can look for perfection. If I wanted to find fish in air-conditioned comfort I would be better off at Kroger.

So I set off on the fortuitously named Lake Butler, a few miles northwest of Orlando. But for the powerboats and multimillion-dollar homes, I would have felt an early European explorer of the Spanish main. Between houses, the shores of Lake Butler are shaded by expansive canopies of hardwood trees that fork near their bases and keep forking as they grow, such that the canopy of a single tree might cover half a football field. Long beards of Spanish moss hung from the branches and would have swayed gently in the breeze, I assume, if there had been any breeze. Closer to the ground, impossibly broad leaves were in fashion. I passed one plant taller than I am which had only seven leaves, each the size and rough shape of an elephant’s ear. If it had rained I could have stood under a single leaf and remained dry. Lush vines with leaves like oblong dinnerplates climbed some of the hardwoods, and frisbee-sized lily pads crowded the surface as far as 30 feet from shore.

I paddled toward Bird Island. It was the only unique terrain feature in paddling range of my leaky canoe and thus an obvious destination. My buddy Ben Snyder, who lives on the lake, had said that on weekends kids anchor their boats off of a sandy beach on the far side of Bird Island and get wasted, but since it was noon on a Thursday I figured most of the beer cans had probably washed away and Bird Island might be a good place to catch bream. I put my heel on top of the canoe’s leaky spot and pointed the bow at the island’s near edge. Bird Island was not a pure fishing attraction, but it would suffice.

I think the world is full of purists. A purist isolates a thing he likes – wilderness, for instance – and seeks its undiluted essence. To a purist, anything foreign which exists alongside the essence he seeks is an unwanted corruption. For example, I have a good friend who guides fishing trips on Montana’s Madison River, a famous and therefore often-fished trout stream. But my friend favors the nearby Smith River, saying that “you can float for half a day and not see a single house.” To him, the Madison, alongside of which there are a handful of houses and barns, is too crowded. My friend is very nearly a purist – instead enjoying the beauty that the Madison River offers, and seeing the buildings alongside it as enrichments rather than blemishes, sometimes I worry that he focuses on the few homes that intrude upon the wild essence he seeks. He bemoans the buildings instead of enjoying the pastoral charm of the land through which the Madison flows.

As I rounded the end of Bird Island, I saw the beaches Ben had told me about. There was a sandy strip of shoreline about 200 yards long interspersed with cypress trees so weighted with Spanish moss that I wondered how they could survive at all. I paddled hard on the right to turn the canoe toward the beach, then picked up speed and headed for the island. An osprey took off with a loud, high-pitched protest as I drew close. I drove the canoe ashore. Sand scraped against the hull and the canoe came to rest among the driftwood, in the shade of a mossy cypress and beside a broken red folding chair that someone had left behind.

Purists have chosen a very narrow route to happiness. If one exalts only in an undiluted essence, one is likely to be frustrated because our world is one of mixtures. The healthy way is to enjoy those mixtures instead of pining for a world of discrete essences. I once took a date to see the county music band “Alabama,” and she complained that their song repertoire had grown less traditional and more poppy. “This isn’t county,” she said. And while she may have been right, she would have done well to enjoy the music for what is was instead of recoiling from it because of what it was not.

Blends of essences we perceive as naturally distinct often prove fertile. Before my date and I were born, county music arose as a blend of Applachain folk and delta blues. Barn swallows nest under the eaves of suburban homes, deer browse on primly maintained flower beds, and rock doves, rechristened “pigeons,” thrive in urban centers all over the world. New systems form when old systems mingle.

I climbed out of the canoe and picked up my fishing rod. Bird Island was undeveloped. So far as I could see, it was unoccupied by anyone save me and the several herons who also prowled its shores for fish. I unhooked my lure from the rod’s first eye and reeled in line so that the lure dangled a couple inches below the rod tip. I waded in. As I waded deeper the water around my feet grew pleasantly cool. I picked out the far edge of a patch of lily pads and flipped the bail, getting ready to cast.

Then I heard the roar of a nearby boat motor and looked up. The roar came from the oversized outboard of a glittering bass boat headed straight for my beach. As he neared the shore, the boat’s beer-bellied operator cut throttle and coasted toward a cypress tree about 30 yards away. The prow of the boat dropped in a foamy splash and sent waves in every direction. When he drew close to the cypress tree the driver threw the throttle in reverse and roared to a stop. His wife tied the boat to the tree. The driver killed the engine and turned on his radio. Pop music blared across the water.

As the waves lapped against my legs I glared at him. I couldn’t help it. The purist lives in me, too.

The shoreline of Lake Butler. Windermere, FL, a suburb of Orlando.

Big leaves were all the rage. Ben's house in Windermere.

May 12, 2006

I woke up this morning with a headache, so I chugged the glass of water on my bedstand and went outside to pee. It was already a gorgeous day, skies clear, seventy degrees, slight breeze. I stretched the booziness out of my joints, then walked across the backyard to the smoker. I knocked a beer can out of the way and opened it up. There was a half-eaten piece of pork on the rack, still glistening with marinade. I thought, breakfast. I picked it up and ate a couple bites, getting marinade all over my chin. I wiped it off with my forearm. I put the pork back on the grill and walked into the kitchen, picked up the milk carton, took a couple swigs, put the carton back, belched and thought, yes. Yes, I love my life.

May 6, 2006

As I sit here by the window, eating sunflower seeds and reading civil procedure, I look outside at my bird feeder and the noisy finches that surround it. They flap and chirp around the feeder, snacking on sunflower seeds and raising hell, boys chasing girls and girls chasing boys in these amorous days of early summer. As I spit into my cup I have to wonder, which of us is wiser?

January 3, 2006 (2)

On the Fine Sport of Fjording

Some who have never participated in the sport have remarked on the apparent irony of going fjording in southwestern Georgia. “There are no fjords in southwest Georgia,” they might protest, or “you hillbilly, the word is ‘ford,’ not ‘fjord.’” To these misguided people I suggest a moment’s imaginative contemplation guided by the beacon lights of luminaries John Steinbeck and John McPhee.

Steinbeck, in Travels with Charley, understands that a journey’s need for a destination is purely formal. He writes,
In Spanish there is a word for which I can’t find a counterword in English. It is the verb vacilar, present participle vacilando. It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere but doesn’t greatly care if he gets there, although he has direction. My friend Jack Wagner has often, in Mexico, assumed this state of being. Let us say we wanted to walk in the streets of Mexico City but not at random. We would choose some article almost certain not to exist there and then diligently try to find it.
Where you’re going may not matter nearly so much as how you fail to get there. The word “destination” should be read with care, or at least an open mind.

John McPhee imparts similar wisdom about the futility of semantic formalism to the reader of Coming into the Country, a book about McPhee’s canoe trip in Alaska. I cannot quote McPhee exactly, but when describing his packlist, McPhee mentions his snakebite kit. He writes, approximately, “Of course, there are no snakes in Alaska. But what if one should suddenly appear? One would not want to be unprepared. My snakebite kit comes from Lynchburg, Tennessee.”

A destination may not mark the end of a journey and a snakebit kit may be wholly unrelated to reptilian venom. Language is not so simple. Language is a Miss to be studied, understood and revered. A speaker should learn her rules, although she is complex and ever-changing, and master them as best he can. But although language requires attentiveness, she demands interpretation. Sometimes the rules of language change and what were once canonized boundaries may be disregarded and the speaker may reach delicately, or boldly, beyond etched lines so long as the result is mutually pleasurable to speaker and listener. Sometimes ford may become fjord. Invention is as important as lawfulness. A speaker using only the sequences and techniques of his predecessors leaves an unsatisfied partner.

January 3, 2006 (1)

I brought four pairs of pants for the weekend. I thought that would be enough. I was wrong.

Ben and I brought 25 people down to Kolomoki on New Year’s Eve. On the first day, I took nine people horseback riding while the others went Jeep riding with Ben. My crew rode down past the lake, past the dog cemetery, through the woods and along Jack Slayton Road, which bounds Kolomoki on the south, then back to the barn. My horse sweated through my jeans. One pair of pants down.

Earlier that day, Ben had built a tepee of split pine in the fire pit. The tepee was as tall as I am. After nightfall and a few rounds of whiskey, we doused it with five gallons of gasoline and diesel then lit the incendiary stack with roman candles. The flickering tongue that erupted reached twenty feet above the rocks and its orange reflection shone off the lake next to it. Then we brought the fireworks out from the kitchen. Some of the rockets were very pretty. Appreciatively, we watched them explode. Then whiskey was produced. Our contented contemplation was short-lived. The boys and I started shooting fireworks at each other. The epidemic spread and the girls joined in, mayhem ensued and the illuminated circle around the bonfire was thick with layers of firecracker smoke and the acrid scent of burnt gunpowder. I was standing beside the lake lighting a bottle rocket when Ben tackled me into the water, boots, hat and all. Including pants. Two pairs down.

On New Year’s Day we took a group of eight riding. It was an adventure. I confused “Green,” a big red horse with a white spot on his head who can be ridden by any guest, with “Bentley,” a big red horse with a white blaze who requires an experienced rider. Ed Adams, one of our guests, was not an experienced rider. I told Ed he was riding Green. I was wrong – Bentley ran off with Ed, crow-footed with Ed and eventually fell down and threw Ed, who tumbled into the clay. Ed got up and brushed off his pants. He shook the dirt out of his hair. “I’m alright,” he said. He started to mount Bentley again. Then he looked at me. “Is this horse okay to ride?” We put Ed on “Black” and rode well past dusk. We rode through the woods and then through the swamp, thick with mist where the bare trees stood starkly against a dimming sky, then up into the fields of South Lane and back along Arlington Road. When we got back I unsaddled Preacher and rode him bareback into the pasture. His sweat soaked through my Carhartts. Three pairs down.

That night we took everyone out in the Jeeps to find the ford across Spring Creek. The ford is tough to find, especially at night, and the attempt to locate it is one of our most cherished, and raucous, sports. The sport is called “fjording.” That night, after much yelling, cavorting and many wrong turns, we crossed the ford, but the fjording continued. We stopped in the fields of South Lane for high-fives and a beer break for the passengers. I was standing in front of my Jeep flirting with someone much cuter than I am when Ed form tackled me into a mud puddle. I skidded through the wet Georgia clay, mud in my hair, mouth and ears. Ed was laughing at me, and I was grinning muddily, when someone jumped on Ed. ‘Twas not long until everyone, boys and girls, were gleefully involved in the most enthusiastic mudwrestling melee Kolomoki has ever hosted. Not a single white shirt returned to the Lodge. Four pairs of my pants headed for the washer.

Return from fjording and mudwrestling. Kolomoki Plantation, January 2006.