Life's Little Elections

In explaining how to write an argument, I tell my students about the Toulmin model of argumentation. I talk about the 3 most common claims: claims of fact, claims of value, and claims of policy. Given the fact that my students aren't supposed to use outside sources, I often steer them away from claims of fact. I also steer them away from claims of value. I tell them I don't want them trodding down the same path as those who are trying to argue evolution versus creationism or gun control or abortion or stem cell research or wolves...all those have been argued to death.

Additionally, I try to explain that it hardly ever works to try to argue a matter of personal taste. For instance, there will always be the die-hard Pepsi fans and Coke fans. There will always be those who wear Nike as opposed to Reebok or New Balance, and you won't convince them otherwise. There are truck fanatics out there who wear their preference. Surely you've seen the Calvin and Hobbes stickers in which Calvin is pissing upon some brand name he doesn't like.

The point is, it's hard to convince someone to dislike something they like. And vice versa.

So having laid this foundation in which I try to encourage my students to deal mainly in claims of policy, it was a bit disappointing to have a student turn in preparatory work for his essay, an essay arguing that Spring is the best of the seasons.

Sigh.

It's not that I disagree, and because he is a farm kid whose argument stems from an agricultural standpoint, I'm even more biased and preferential. Nonetheless, I had to ask the student to start over. I had to ask him to offer up another, less subjective argument.

I wonder what kind of a world it would be if we philosophized on the level of Montaigne. What if we were in the habit of starting essays on whatever happened to strike us at a particular moment?

That student had written a meditation on Spring. And despite the fact that I couldn't allow him to do so as a means of demonstrating that he'd learned anything about classical argumentation, I think everyone should at least internally take stock of their preferences, their values, their rights and wrongs, their vote in life's little elections.

Today was the sort of day where I might have cast my vote for winter. Cold clearly won. It kept me in bed until 11 a.m. It held me hostage in the kitchen most of the day where it became my goal to cook things that would warm the insides of those I care about. It was the sort of day where the cat laid on top of technology, which whirred beneath him and kept him warm. It included a neighborhood walk wherein I saw a gentleman performing all manner of ninja kick in order to rid the undercarriage of his car from icicles. It was a walk in which I shuffled along, alternately unsure of my footing on top of ice or plunged deep into a snowy park. I marveled at the ghost of activity--the footprints of man and dog and bird once here but now gone. I enjoyed the quickening of my heart, the chill not quite fended off by coat and gloves. And I was all in favor of my rosy cheeks and the opportunity some don't have--to come inside out of that cold.

Yes, winter. I stand whole-heartedly behind it. Today, anyway.

Lions, Tigers, and Bears...Oh My

It is said that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. And I'm pretty sure that the way to a girl's heart is via anything adorable, be it baby or furry, or if you're lucky, a furry baby.

Or maybe that's just me. I'm a sucker for a good kitten or puppy YouTube video. In real life, I sense the presence of animals, honing in on them like a heat-seeking missile. And I can't leave them alone. I must 1) squeal with delight, 2) talk to the owner about every last detail of his/her pet, and 3) love up on the animal. Likewise, if I see an animal without a proper human guardian, then I'm all worried and can't stop thinking about it.

So Tobe scored mad boyfriend points for deciding that we should go on a date to Spokane, Washington's one and only zoo dedicated to big cats: Cattails. Located just off the Newport Highway, Cat Tails is tucked into a stand of pine trees, and it's about as far from the animals' typical habitat as you can get. The driveway is fence-lined with blown up pictures of the sorts of big cats housed in the zoo itself. There was also a banner announcing that you could spend Thanksgiving at Cat Tails, where they apparently have a turkey toss. I imagine that being initially fascinating for spectators and then becoming a bit too grisly for the young and the squeamish. It also brought out the first fascinating debate between my boyfriend and me: are the turkeys frozen? Do they literally toss them at the animals? If they're frozen might it not result in a concussion if mis-thrown? Most certainly it would be a Thanksgiving to remember.

For $8, visitors get to walk within 8 feet of the animals. Visitors can wander around on their own, or they can take a guided tour. We happened to arrive shortly after a group of children and their stroller-pushing Stepford mothers (the zoo's blog promotes that "infants that cannot possible escape from the stroller or infant seat" get in free). We could have broken away from the crowd of little ones, but we decided to tag along.

It was snowing, and I couldn't stop thinking that the majority of these animals weren't meant for snow. A tiger from India is not supposed to know cold like this. And the cold made for finicky cats. The tour guide called our attention to a bobcat. We all peered into the 10' x 10' enclosure and saw nothing. The tour guide remarked that it was cold outside and that this particular cat was old. Eventually the old girl came out and rubbed herself along the chain link. She struck me as stiff, humped up against the cold, and bored.

Over and over, we heard similar stories of origin from the tour guide. The key theme in most stories was hubris or God-Complex. Men thought they could have a wild animal as pet and then eventually realized they were in over their heads. The cute cougar or tiger cub later grew up and became harder to handle. Over and over, she told stories of human ineptitude. She told of animals confiscated from places where animals were in small, dirty, "excrement-filled" cages. I wondered how much of this the small children were taking in. I didn't hear any of them gasping in horror. I didn't see any of them looking for comfort from their mothers. In fact, I'm not sure how much the kids were taking in except that I could hear the words "cute" and "pretty" being tossed around liberally.

The children did notice some things. When the tour guide asked if there were questions, it seemed the children most often noticed physical troubles. One noted that a spotted leopard had a "ouchie" on the end of its tail. The tour guide explained that sometimes they get bored and worry the same area too much until they make a sore, or the hair falls off. There were too many stories about things falling off. None was more disturbing than the cougar with the stubbed tail. When one of the children pointed out how the cat seemed to be lacking in the tail department, the tour guide told the story of how it had gotten frost bite on the tip of its tail. The frost bite perhaps bothered the cat. The next morning, it had chewed of 8 inches of its tail.

Among the things I'll remember: wondering what it would be like to be a tour guide, my back turned to these beasts, feeding them chunks of chuck roast on what looked like a dull skewer. I wonder if I would be tempted to call them cutesy nicknames like she did. I wonder if I would be comfortable clanking my keys against their cage in order to get the animals to make an appearance.

I will remember the black bear whose nose seemed like an ant eater's. I couldn't get over its range of movement. They found him in the Spokane area in an orchard. I remember two boys having a snowball fight. I remember the white tiger taking everyone by surprise by sounding a growl that no one expected from cats gone docile in captivity. I remember 3 Siberian siblings pacing their cage in unison. It looked like Vegas showgirls or can-can girls, and I expected them to put their paws on each other's shoulders and kick and perhaps to don a top hat. I remember the flocks of birds in the tiger cages and wondered if the cats ever killed birds. I marveled at how the birds didn't seem nervous. I noticed the tiger sleeping who opened one amber eye to gaze at us. I will remember the huffing sound of the lion and how his mane reminded me of an 80's hair band. I will remember the dreadlocks hanging from his belly. I will remember Tobe's plan for his own zoo. He said he wouldn't have any animals at all. He would simply lead people through, and when they asked where the animals were, he'd make excuses...that they were sick or sleeping.

It's crazy, but it just might work.

Life Is Good

There's nothing like a visit to a nursing home to make you realize life is good.

Is that mean?

It's true. You are out here and not in there (for long). It's a locked facility. The keypad lets you in and keeps them from leaving.

Once inside, you note that it's the Cadillac model, not like where your mom worked. You'd walk there after school and wait for her in the TV room, where you'd sit on a scratchy plaid couch and twitch a bit when residents sat beside you and found no good reasons to touch your young skin. The selling points back then were the quarters in your pocket, the soda pop machine, and the potential for TV remote domination. You'd find Benji or Lassie and nurse your bottle of Orange Crush until your mom got off shift.

Then you'd walk down the waxed hallways and try not to stare at the grown ups gone the way of babies. They were all sitting out in the hallways in their wheelchairs, airing out, as it were. Those who couldn't sit upright laid in wheeled contraptions that reminded you of big city flower carts. There was all manner of moaning and drooling and palsied hands. When you left, the smell of overcooked vegetables and urine clung to your mother's polyester uniform--a smell it took you years to disassociate from her.

You're a grown up now, and supposedly mature--

It's a straight shot to his room, but it's also a gauntlet of sentimentality--touches meant to say this is home (now). Outside each room, there is a locked curio cabinet. A time capsule. When I teach my students how to write profiles, I teach them about dominant impression. I teach them to interview an individual and boil down all the data into a dominant impression--the one overarching characteristic of the individual. A stereotype. That's what the curio cabinet displays do. They are memorial to the person this person once WAS. What would my wall decoration look like? What will it all boil down to at the end of my days?

It boils down to a big screen TV that no one is watching, blaring. It is a single bed. It is a son-in-law remembering to trim the hair inside your ears. It is veal parmesan displayed beneath a glass dome outside the cafeteria and not remembering that's what you had for lunch. It is a dish of pumpkin pie with coconut sprinkled on top, uneaten and congealing. It is the lone man in the dining room still chewing. It is the dog you no longer own but who remembers you still. It is the woman with the barrettes in her hair, who scuttles along in a walker with tennis balls on the legs. The woman fears the dog and loves it. She says, "You love me, don't you?" to the dog, who cannot sit down and whimpers at the end of his leash.

It is a tour of the last resort, of sorts. Here is an empty movie theater that will play Top Gun at 6:30. Here is bingo. Here is the mailroom, the library, the vastly underutilized computer room. Here is arts and crafts. Here are photos of the Veteran's Day ceremony. It was beautiful. Here are the chairs gathered around a piano for singing. Here is an in-house coffee shop with a latte and popcorn machine. Here is the game room, with its ski poles and fishing nets tacked up just so. Here are the pool tables, poker tables, shuffleboard. Here is the place where only the family plays games. Grandkids play Wii casino games. Here is a self-serve ice cream shop, where the treats are for residents only, please. Here is an ice cream sandwich that someone unreels for you, and it feels awkward in your hands and sets you to worrying a napkin in your hand. Here is the place where your grandfather remembers you were once married and and not to this girl. You are the new girl he keeps trying to place. Here is where he says, "So it didn't work out, huh?"

All this, and then the long walk down that hallway with its locked door. This is where he wants to go along, and you say you'll be back tomorrow. Outside you've never seen anything as beautiful as a sky threatening snow. You are thankful for knowing November and all its idiosyncrasies, its balm and briskness, its temperamental leaves and sunshine. You give thanks for the giants on the hillside--windmills churning what isn't visible into precious energy.

There Shouldn't Be Any Sensation...

After all, I am not clay, and there'll be no laying on of hands. He is over there, in his stiff chair, and I am here beside the mirror image of a girl with too many flaws to be offering up her body for the sake of art.

I don't know how to do it, but take my cue from the other thick figures in the fat stack of notebooks. Some--the notebooks and not the women--are so old they're held together with silver duct tape that, itself, is coming apart. Maybe the women, too.

Who were they? And where are they now? Where can I be? How long can I stay?

Heavy. If it weren't for these pillows, I might fall through the mattress. Vulnerable. I am thin as the skin on the inside of the wrist. You could daub perfume here, and the heat would set the scent on fire. I am a pulse with a voice who isn't using it right now. What would I say? There's discomfort in the draping over. I draw my knees up and am acutely aware that doing so will gather things I don't want gathered.

I am acutely aware.

I more than care about this man. That scary L word is a lozenge on my tongue. His black cat is settled into a sliver of light all magical-like. The windows are slightly parted, almost silent lips. The birds and lawnmowers that wake us have gone away, but there is the ganga cough of a neighbor and kids teaching themselves football while their parents play poker in kitchen chairs they've moved out on the fire escape.

The first time I took off my clothes, I tried to hide behind Bob Dylan. His grizzled mug stared up, and his nasal songs didn't sooth me. Today there will be no music, only the scratch of pencil across paper and the occasional sharpening. I think how delicate--those pencil shavings look like tiny skirts--petticoats edged in yellow. I'm trying too hard. They don't look like that at all. They are the remains. Or the beginning, depending on how you look at it.

How is he looking at me? I asked once, a stupid question, I know, and he talked about being more interested in negative space. He said he'd know just how to draw my proportions if he paid more attention to the painting behind me. It made sense.

If I had any talent at all, I'd draw him drawing me. I'd capture that question-mark eyebrow.

I'd incorporate the whole morning, with its coffee breath and hunger. Each day we spend together is a halo we wear above our heads. It's not that different from the cafe decorated with black and white portraits. We ate and looked each other in the eye and held hands across worn wood. Tab paid, we grabbed peppermints from a bowl beside the register, walked out into the noon glare with starbursts on our tongues, and that sweetness lingered, telling us all we needed to know.

"Tell me a story..."

When he asks, it's as though the bedroom is a blank page. In the jungle damp sheets, we try to disentangle--return to our single selves. We grow shy, and he tucks an unruly hair strand behind my ear, which is all that is needed to clear my vision:

You are never so alive as you are when you are young and unsupervised. I was a ward of the neighborhood. You could find me outside, learning the fine art of the BMX bike from David, a teen who probably shouldn't have wanted to hang out with a little girl. Or I might be picking dandelions bouquets with Jody and selling them door to door to makes some quick candy money. Or maybe I was in Charlie's backyard, eating canned peaches on saltine crackers and pretending they were fancy sandwiches at an English tea.

I don't recall who I was with when the cemetery seemed like a good destination. A playground, really. I can only remember that the town was on edge that summer because women had gone missing. People were on the lookout for vans. Parents went on safety lesson rampages doling out stranger mistrust and curfews, which is probably exactly why we'd broken free and were exploring.

Where the cemetery butted up against saw mill and golf course, in some remote corner still free of marble grave markers, there was a knoll of grass and shade trees that seemed just right for resting after our child gang adventures. I don't remember who discovered the black garbage bag, and honestly, I'm not sure if I really looked inside or if I took someone else's account and made it mine. At that age, the blood one sees is contained to skinned knees and elbows or a steak your dad (if you have one) throws on the grill. This wasn't grocery store meat. There was too much of it. It was too messy and writhing with maggots. I don't think any of us were old enough to make excuses or meaning.

An adult would have a backlog of cruelty to draw from. In the file cabinet mind, they would pull the folder for poaching, reason that a hunter may have killed something out of season and dumped the innards where they wouldn't offend. An adult would know that sometimes household pets breed and are too many and too much to handle and so are dispensed with. This was no burlap bag of kittens thrown into a river or a box of puppies left roadside.

An adult might have thought to call the police. But we were children who squealed and dared each other to have a closer look. To touch 'it'. We were children who rode bikes with banana seats, tassles on the handlebars, playing cards tucked in the spokes. We could hear our mothers calling. I'd pretend to hear mine. Lunch was almost ready, and our hunger would erase what we had or had not found.

The Man Next to the Best Man

I'm too far from sea for shipwrecks. Here, the yachts knot themselves in circles, so the party never ends. It's just a matter of stepping to the next vessel when company gets old or the alcohol runs low. Elsewhere, skiers trail behind small engines, drone during the most important part of the wedding ceremony. At a certain time of day, they seem to glide on sunshine instead of water. All eyes are on the bride and groom, but he--a groomsman and my date--looks out on the lake in the same way some fortune tellers look into a cup of tea to read the leaves.

Where is he?

The day before, I'd accompanied him to the tux store for the final fitting. I sat on a couch and waited. Frat boys with faux hawks spilled out of dressing rooms, already high on the idea of sowing their wild oats. I busied myself looking at the technicolor vests and posters of grooms serenading their brides on guitar. A little boy with bed hair ran around the room as him mom and dad got ready for their big day. He had red hair and skin so pale I thought I could see through it.

When he came out, the woman looked down at her clipboard. She noted his weight loss from the initial fitting. He required new pants, and the woman cinched his vest as tight as it would go. He paid the lady and left with a body bag draped over his arm. "Are you all right?" he kept asking.

He's the one who wasn't eating. And I kept thinking, I wish it was as easy to make him happy as it was for the mother of that pale-skinned boy. When he'd fallen and skinned his knee on the tux store carpet, all it had taken was a box of animal crackers in the shape of a cage.

I had nothing of the kind in the car. No remedies. I imagined feeding that hurt, that gauntness like we had fed the car earlier, stuffing it with backpacks, tents, sleeping bags, and a box full of booze that rattled and chinked when we took corners too quickly.

And it seemed the drive was all corners if that was possible.

When we arrived, he unpacked a bottle of tequila first. He took a pull and grimaced a bit until it turned smooth behind his lips. "Ready?" he asked. And we walked hand in hand down that gravel path to where it was all happening. The camp had been double booked, wedding party and bible camp. Activities were oddly parallel. In some cabin, foal-legged pre-teens were turning yarn into eyes of God, while the women were arranging sunflowers in blue vases.

Beneath a neon cross, children were pledging their love for God and their crushes on fellow campers. And we had our own neon. We called it the moon, and we swam beneath it the night of the wedding. He was no longer looking out across the water to avoid
it. He was wincing across sharp rocks until he'd reached the deep with me--the deep where the rocks turn smooth, where the water turns inexplicably warm, where the past is as distant as the shore, and in the arms of the right person, shipwrecks are the stuff of children's books: the pirates are on some page you've already turned, and treasure glints on some future page.

DEER LODGE

DEER LODGE

Temperatures low in the high country,
deer wintered here, still do
in the natural salt lick
of Warm Springs mound,
stepping over abandoned tracks
oozing tar in the Big Sky sun.
Once these rails would take you
to Chicago,Milwaukee, St. Paul--
I can still feel the pull of it and yet
they made a home of it.
The Cattle King and his million acres
whispered and some heard.
It wasn’t a hard life unless
you landed in the castle.
Sandstone ghosts still
adhere to the code of silence,
working in groups by day
and confined at night.
I don’t need to walk inside.
I know the soft brick and lack
of light,30 below, oil smoke, the rank
of too many bad men in one place.
Idleness bred insurrection,
so he made them build their own walls.
I can testify, fresh air changes a man.
I was falling asleep at the wheel,
so we pulled over at the edge of Deer Lodge,
where the horses seemed wilder
than they were. It is not a lie
that they ran in tandem
as we kissed. It wasn’t the sun
that caused the heat
that became unbearable. We fled,
got locked up next to a Volkswagon bug
with rust in the shape of starbursts.
And who knows how long
we would have stayed beneath that sun
if it had not been for the old man
returning from a stream that probably
always run clears. I swear he carried
his pole like a rifle. He’d had no luck.
Caught, we were shy. And I wish
we’d taken him at his word.
He’d said, “Don’t let me stop you.”
But damned if our separate homes
weren’t calling.