Centuries

For reasons to be disclosed at another time, my cycling goal this summer is built around “century” rides – day trips of 100 miles.

And because of that, I am thinking a lot this summer of my friend, Steve, “the first friend I almost killed on a bicycle.”

I met Steve 30 years ago. He was a leading musician at the church that hired me to be their pastor for worship. In August, 1985, Steve picked me up on his motorcycle, to take me with him to the Twin Cities summer choral music workshop. We stopped at Hiawatha Falls – with Steve there was always time for beauty and sight-seeing. I asked Steve if we shouldn’t take our helmets with us as we walked to the Falls. He seemed a bit puzzled . . . why wouldn’t we leave them on the bike? Well, I was on notice that I wasn’t in Chicago anymore!

 

But it was a different kind of bike that created a bond with Steve. And while we never rode together enough to suit me, Steve was my cycling buddy for a decade. He would call and ask “Can you come out and play?” That meant, ride! Then he would swing by my place across town and lead me on another adventure in the still-rural parts of Dakota County, Minnesota.

I had done a little touring with my brother, Lew. We didn’t carry much, because Lew’s wife and children camped with us along the way; we just had to ride. But Steve introduced me to touring with gear. And again, we did not get out together enough to suit me. But it was enough to teach me the basics. And it always felt safe to go with my unflappable, indefatigable, cheerful cycling buddy. I remember especially two three-day camping trips. Lots of stories; fond memories; a taste and a hunger for more.

Steve introduced me to the concept of the “century ride.” Three times we rode the Headwaters Hundred together—a century ride out of Park Rapids, MN, that crosses the headwaters of the Mississippi and rambles the surrounding lake country. 

The Headwaters is held the fourth Saturday of September, and/so the weather is quite unpredictable. I think in my three trips with Steve, we got a little bit of everything.

Of course the day that stands out in my memory is the day I almost killed Steve. We were in Itasca Stake Park, on a one-way road through the beautiful autumn woods. 

I was enjoying the downhill way too much for safety; Steve was pretty close on my rear wheel. (Our pastor, Roger, wiser and more cautious, was far enough behind Steve to avoid any potential hazard.) I hit a patch of leaves, and my front wheel turned under me; I went down, hard.

As I fell, I looked up and back and called out, “Steeeve” . . . Steve shouted, “Chuuuck,” and went over me. They call it a 360—he did a complete turn over me and landed on the dirt and leaves of the road’s shoulder, within inches, really, of the slightly raised asphalt edge. Roger rolled to a stop behind us. We got bikes off the road, and within moments faster, more intense cyclists roared by.

Steve was in trouble. It became clear that he was not going to get back on his bike. The next details are fuzzy for me. Somehow we got Steve to a place with an emergency vehicle . . . or did they send a vehicle to where we were? I should remember that detail. I do recall (to my discredit, I think) that once Steve was in the care of medics, and on his way to the hospital, Roger and I decided to finish the ride. We had more than half the ride left.

When we finally rolled in at the end, we met Jackie, Steve’s wife, and learned the extent of Steve’s injuries: broken collarbone, punctured thorax, and—well, something else I also can’t recall at the moment. He got home (a 4-hour drive usually, I have no idea how Jackie drove it the next day) and his recovery took 8–10 weeks.

This always amazes me. Steve remained a faithful friend, and still chose to ride with me. We only had a couple of years after that before I moved to Wheaton. Was it our last century ride together? I can’t even say that for sure. It definitely was not Steve’s last century. He made the trek most Septembers, and even got out on the course with grandchildren.

Steve’s final, fatal illness did not keep him off the bike. Last week was the second anniversary of his home-going. We had talked about me getting up to the Headwaters that September; it wouldn’t be the full ride for him, but another chance for us to ride together on this beautiful route. Steve’s family found a recumbent cycle so Steve could ride nearly to the end. His joy on his final ride, on his street, was lovingly captured on video; it distilled all the joy he got from and brought to cycling.

This summer, as I plan to ride six centuries, Steve is constantly on my mind. Among all the things I learned from him on the bike, that joy of riding, his smile under a bike helmet, is the most enduring.

Photo Credits: all photos from Google images. I cannot attest that the one with cyclists on an autumnal road are from Itasca State Park; I can say it is not the area of our wipeout. The Looney Valley Lutheran Church and its sign are one of my enduring memories from the second trip Steve and I took together. I love that name for a church. Also, as we rode through Looney Valley, the area farmers were harvesting corn, and waved us down to share their hot-dog lunch. Great day on a bike, great human experience, fun to see Steve work a crowd of strangers.

That old New Oxford Book of English Verse

. . .  has got its spell on me.

In January I set out to read through this 945-page, 884-item anthology of English verse (1250–1950). A manageable 3-pages per day would give me ample time, accounting for vacations that I would not travel with a large hardcover volume, busy days when I couldn’t sit down to read at leisure, and days when I just plain forgot to pick it up. There was the occasional panic—that the days had passed and I wouldn’t hit my marks. But when I came back to it and read a little, and did the math on completing it this year, I always magically still needed only 3 pages per day to finish.

I think my math skills are not all they might be.

In any case, just before Christmas I finished the anthology. Much of the last hundred years’ poetry was tough slogging. But a lot of it was timely: the poets of World War I, coming up in my reading on this centenary year of The Great War, for example. I was reminded of earlier flings with poetry and poets, and now especially wish to revisit T. S. Eliot.

There must be a comparable anthology of American verse—though not, of course, dating back to 1250—so I’ll look that up and keep it on hand. I don’t think I’ll undertake another year of reading through a collection. But I’d like to think poetry will occupy a more significant role in my reading and reflection than it has for many a year.

Wendell Barry beckons, as does Dante in that John Ciardi translation that came out around the same time I picked up the NOBEV. The poetry and drama of Antiquity forced its way into my year of reading poetry (fascinating to me that classical references continue well into the 20^th century); and well look, there on my shelf is an anthology of the same, so I don’t have to go to my grave ignorant. Or ignorantly . . . as the ars moriendi poetry has taught me.

In a year of writing, editing, and teaching, words have provided a great adventure. Poetry keeps the wonder in the adventure. Excelsior!

Now, that was a year!

In the year since my last birthday, I . . .

Finished writing my MA thesis

Took on a second adjunct teaching job

Edited, my thesis

Took on an interim church choir job

Defended my thesis
. . . and edited it some more

Took my first selfie

Accepted a one-year teaching appointment

Prepared to teach a full course load

Prepared to direct a college band

Received a bound copy of my thesis

Pulled off my first photo bomb

Visited adult kids in Kentucky, San Francisco, and Boston

Officiated my son's wedding

At rehearsal, Covenant Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Began to teach music full time

Took on a guest chorus master post with a symphony chorus

Somewhere along the way squeaked by last year's cycling miles

Ran my personal best 5K and won the 35+ division in the same event

Stayed married to the most patient woman in the world.

I can't wait to see what the coming year brings!

Fall break

I've written elsewhere about why I'm not writing much anywhere . . .

But I am reading. A lot. And (so far, so good) I am more or less on track reading through The New Oxford Book of English Verse. This morning again my reading took me to another art. This cross-over from poetry is no real surprise, but it is a pleasure to come across it unlooked for.

There is of course the famous "colossal wreck, "Ozymandius" (Shelley), and Keats' "Grecian Urn," each dealing with artifacts from antiquity. And my favorite memory of a poem read aloud in a high school lit class, "My Last Duchess" (Browning). The inspiring work of art in this poem is a painting by the fictional Fra Pandolf. My friend Randy declined several times to read this aloud, and when finally he gave in to the teacher's persistence, he read it in a sing-song voice that completely undercut the underlying menace of the poem. Randy had (has!) a rich baritone voice, and clearly our lit teacher wanted him especially to read this poem. Randy finished, the teacher glared, there was a tense silence, and then she said, "You have just destroyed the most beautiful poem in the English language." Or maybe she said, ". . . my favorite poem . . ." Randy later remarked, "I told her I didn't want to read it!" Coming across the poem again this year (No. 616 in the anthology at hand) I found myself reading it aloud in a pirate accent. Oh, the brain, what won't it do to us?

But more recently, and more to the point, I have come across poems previously unknown to me, and from them taken side trips into other arts. The first was whilst still in the Browning section, No. 624, "A Toccata of Galuppi's." I assumed that Baldassaro Galuppi, like Fra Pandolf, was a fiction created by Browning. With my musicology background, I am embarrassed to say that I had not heard the composer's name before. Well, here he is, and Browning has given me a gift beyond his words. Not that I'll spend much time with B. G., but the poet's description of early 18th-century Venice, complete with a stodgy old Baroque form to bore a poet . . . and probably everyone else in the room!

This morning it was James Thomson, "The City's Queen" from the larger work The City of Dreadful Night. Early in this section it is clear that the poet is looking at a work of art, and then in the third stanza he writes, "but all men know/That solemn sketch the pure sad artist wrought/Three centuries and threescore years ago/With phantasies of his peculiar thought." OK, so that sounds like something that exists (compared to Browning's Fra Pandolf painting on the wall). Sure enough, the "pure sad artist" was Albrecht Duerer, and the painting (identified by name in stanza six) is "Melancolia."

So, it's a good start to a short fall break from teaching. I got to stay indoors on a cold, gray, drizzly morning,read a little poetry, see a little Renaissance art, and be thankful for an undeserved life of leisure pursuits.

Shakespeare ars moriendi

Elsewhere I mused earlier this year about an old Christian practice of preparing for the end of life. Ars moriendi is "the art of dying," and this idea has popped up across the first five centuries of the Oxford Book of English Verse. I suspect that, beginning in the early eighteenth century (where my read through this anthology now has me) this theme will diminish, and then disappear. Oh, no doubt death itself will be a theme; but a practiced anticipation of death, probably not.

Earlier in these sporadic posts about my poetry reading adventure this year, I mentioned the final Shakespeare sonnet in the Oxford Book. Here it is, another serious look at life through the Bard's sonnets:

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
   My sinful earth these rebel powers array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
   Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
   Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
   Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
   And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
   Within shall be fed, without be rich no more:
       So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
       And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.

(That second line, "My sinful earth these rebel powers array," is apparently disputable. Alternate readings include - Fooled by these rebel powers that thee array and Why feed'st these rebel powers that the array. I don't see that the alternate readings much change the tone or direction of the sonnet.)

I don't think we would accuse Wm. S. of being morose or puritanical. As noted earlier, it seems he had a pretty impressive grasp of the Bible. Here, we find him in a reflective mood, and I imagine him contemplating weighty matters after another successful run of a new play.

I regret the bifurcation in our modern culture, which seems to separate cultural achievement and classic Christian spirituality. Why does it seem odd for a poet of Shakespeare's range to also sound like a man serious about his eternity?

Poems for after work

I love my wife.

Now there's an adventure!

Every so often she apologizes that after work she changes out of her office attire (very nice, very professional, and very attractive) into relaxing or project clothes. Not, be it said, into what the old movies called, "slipping into something more comfortable."

She means well, but really, I always say, "why wouldn't you?"

My adventures in poetry recently provided other ways to respond to my Karen:

John Donne, from The Undertaking
But he who loveliness within
   Hath found, all outward loathes;
For he who colour loves, and skin,
   Loves but their oldest clothes.

Ben Jonson, Simplex Munditiis
Still to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed,
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art's hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.

Give me a look, give me a face
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all the adulteries of art;
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

Jonson's title means something like "elegant simplicity" - you see it in the 2nd line of the 2nd stanza "makes simplicity a grace." Granted, Jonson's lines may well suggest that trope of "slipping into something more comfortable," but it need not, after all.

I'm enjoying the ways poetry illuminates life! And thankful for the clarifying ways of thinking and speaking about common, daily things.

Serendipity

Today's readings came together in a surprising way.

My walk through The New Oxford Book of English Verse has me in William Shakespeare this week. At three pages a day (this will get me through the volume in a year), the Shakespeare section - the longest so far - will have taken a full week. Brilliant! Today I finished the last of Oxford's twenty selected Sonnets.

The following sonnet (152 of the Oxford poems, Sonnet 129 in the Yale Shakespeare complete collection) jumped out at me especially because of my morning Bible reading. Let me introduce you to the Sonnet by way of the lurid, tragic story from 2 Samuel 13:

Now Absalom, David's son, had a beautiful sister, whose name was Tamar. And after a time Amnon, David's son, loved her. And Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar, for she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her. But Amnon had a friend, whose name was Jonadab, the son of Shimeah, David's brother. And Jonadab was a very crafty man. And he said to him, “O son of the king, why are you so haggard morning after morning? Will you not tell me?” Amnon said to him, “I love Tamar, my brother Absalom's sister.” Jonadab said to him, “Lie down on your bed and pretend to be ill. And when your father comes to see you, say to him, ‘Let my sister Tamar come and give me bread to eat, and prepare the food in my sight, that I may see it and eat it from her hand.’” So Amnon lay down and pretended to be ill. And when the king came to see him, Amnon said to the king, “Please let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight, that I may eat from her hand.”

Then David sent home to Tamar, saying, “Go to your brother Amnon's house and prepare food for him.” So Tamar went to her brother Amnon's house, where he was lying down. And she took dough and kneaded it and made cakes in his sight and baked the cakes. And she took the pan and emptied it out before him, but he refused to eat. And Amnon said, “Send out everyone from me.” So everyone went out from him. Then Amnon said to Tamar, “Bring the food into the chamber, that I may eat from your hand.” And Tamar took the cakes she had made and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother. But when she brought them near him to eat, he took hold of her and said to her, “Come, lie with me, my sister.” She answered him, “No, my brother, do not violate me, for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do this outrageous thing. As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the outrageous fools in Israel. Now therefore, please speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you.” But he would not listen to her, and being stronger than she, he violated her and lay with her.

Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred, so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, “Get up! Go!” But she said to him, “No, my brother, for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other that you did to me.” But he would not listen to her. He called the young man who served him and said, “Put this woman out of my presence and bolt the door after her.” Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves, for thus were the virgin daughters of the king dressed. So his servant put her out and bolted the door after her. And Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the long robe that she wore. And she laid her hand on her head and went away, crying aloud as she went.

(During my reading this morning, I wondered for the first time: who was David's biographer? Has anyone done a profile of the biographer? He would be nearly as interesting as his subject, I think!)

So, with that story in my head, an hour or so later I opened to this sonnet:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
   All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
   To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

(Sonnet 129, William Shakespeare)

I just love the serendipity. And though I've read through the Sonnets at least once - and know several by heart - I was struck as if for the first time by the utter seriousness of this (and others). Indeed, the last of the sonnets in the Oxford anthology warrants a separate post of its own, with a serious question about just who this Shakespeare guy was, anyway. For today, I have to say Shakespeare knew the human heart, and I have to assume he also knew his Bible. Did he perhaps write this sonnet with Amnon and Tamar's story in mind? Maybe not - but don't they work together?