Big Chill

It’s insanely cold outside the window today.

The rhododendrons tell you all you need to know, there’s no need for a thermometer. The elegant, bronzy leaves of the miniature variety of rhody that peeks endlessly into our living room windows have winced into tight little curls until they look like pine needles. It’s winter, baby.

Winter is always late coming along the coast here in Massachusetts. The ocean water stays warm for a good long time. I’ve gone sailing in December in Sippican Harbor, and since the air and water temp were close together, there was nothing of a test of hardihood about it. Just a pleasant, windless sail.

The ocean ain’t warm anymore, and the weather we’re getting now wouldn’t care if it was lava. The earth turns and cools, and the polar weather comes down like an invasion; it pushes any last vestige of mildness in front of it like a plow, and shoves it to Portugal, for all I know — I know it ain’t here. I tried opening the door that faces northwest today to let the shivering cat in, and I had to push hard against the air to let it in. It wasn’t wind, it was pressure, pure and simple. An invisible glacier, moving implacably.

The interior delights trump all now. A fire in the evening. A pool of light under the swing arm lamp. A club chair and a little table, warm with the glow of the woodgrain itself, the sunlight of the tree’s life captured and held in its medullary rays. A hot cup of something on a little missal of a book. The tick of the baseboard heat.

Late at night, if you awaken, you can hear the not-too-distant bog groan as it tries to shoulder the load of ice it’s inherited. The moonbeams come in the window, and you can feel the cold of outer space on them. They illuminate, but do not warm, like a candle in a crypt. Then there is the faint sigh of the one you’re devoted to; or the indistinct rustle of the hot little heads that dream down the hall, as they shift in their nests of blankets, snug amongst their stuffed talismans of childhood.

It’s delightful to be warm in a cold world

Gypsy Davey

“The sun’s gonna pass the light at the point, and it’s still hot as August. Let’s have another song to chase the afternoon away, Davey.”

“I don’t know all those songs, the ones you want. I got one’s too long, but I’ll run at it.

Come all ye young sailormen listen to me, I’ll sing you a song of the fish of the sea.
Then blow ye winds westerly, westerly blow; we’re bound to the southward, so steady she goes.
Oh, first came the whale, he’s the biggest of all, he clumb up aloft, and let every sail fall.
Next came the mackerel with his striped back, he hauled aft the sheets and boarded each tack.
The porpoise came next with his little snout, he grabbed the wheel, calling “Ready? About!”.
Then blow ye winds westerly, westerly blow; we’re bound to the southward, so steady she goes.

” Oh, that’s grand, Davey, keep on in.”

Then came the smelt, the smallest of all, he jumped to the poop and sung out, “Topsail, haul!”.
The herring came saying, I’m king of the seas! If you want any wind, I’ll blow you a breeze.”
Up jumped the tuna saying, “No, I am the king! Just pull on the line, and let the bell ring.”
Next came the cod with his chucklehead, he went to the main-chains to heave to the lead.
Last come the flounder as flat as the ground, saying, “Damn your eyes, chucklehead, mind how you sound!”
Then blow ye winds westerly, westerly blow; we’re bound to the southward, so steady she goes.

“Oh, there’s a clincher comin’, I can feel it.”

Then, up jumps the fisherman with a big grin, and with his big net he scooped them all in.
Then blow ye winds westerly, westerly blow; we’re bound to the southward, so steady she goes.

“Oh Davey, that is grand. Sing one for the girl. She’s got the moon and stars in her eyes, and you in her hair. Her father’s off the banks, and won’t be home for days. Give her one to keep her here or it’s all buoys and no gulls. “

“É bonita, para certo. Mas um pai pode ver sobre um oceano.”

“Sing it, we’ll watch for the sails. If he’s riding low, he’ll have fish, and then money; and he’ll buy us all a round. If he’s riding high at the gunnels, it won’t matter if you’re friend or foe. He’ll have the olho evil. Sing it.”

It was late last night when the boss came home
askin’ for his lady
The only answer that he got:
She’s gone with the Gypsy Davey
She’s gone with the Gypsy Dave

Well I had not rode to the midnight moon
When I saw the campfire gleaming
I head the notes on the big guitar
And the voice of gypsies singing
That song of Gypsy Dave.

There in the light of the camping fire,
I saw her fair face beaming
Her heart in tune with the big guitar
And the voice of the gypsy singing
That song of Gypsy Dave.

Have you forsaken your house and home?
Forsaken you your baby?
Have you forsaken your husband dear
To go with Gypsy Davey?
For the song of Gypsy Davey?

Yes, I’ve forsaken my husband dear
To go with Gypsy Davey
And I’ve forsaken my mansion high
But not my blue-eyed baby.

She smiled to leave her husband dear
And go with Gypsy Davey;
But the tears come trickling down her cheek
To think of the blue-eyed baby-
The pretty blue-eyed baby.

Take off, and leave your buckskin gloves
Made of Spanish leather
Give to me your blonden hair
And we’ll ride home together
We’ll ride home again.

No I won’t take off the buckskin gloves,
Made of Spanish leather
I’ll go my way from day to day,
And sing with Gypsy Davey

“I’ve noticed Davey, that the girl never ditches a gypsy and runs off with any bankers in your songs. “

“Someday maybe I’ll buy a pencil, or get some money, and it’ll all be different.”

I Looked Down, And There It Was

It’s a hoary old joke my friend tells. The man of few words, in a restaurant slightly more elegant than he’s used to. The waiter asks: “How did you find your meal?” He answers: “I looked down, and there it was.”

Everything appears now, through a process so complex that no one can fully understand even a small portion of it. Persons that say they understand the machinations necessary to place the most mundane thing in front of a great many people well enough to regulate the whole affair, with an eye towards improving everything, are spouting nonsense. If a man walked up to you and confessed he didn’t know your name, but claimed he could list all the atoms in your body, would you hand him your wallet? How about your skin? All day long, I hear the groundskeepers telling me they should be the quarterback. And I can’t help noticing the grass has gone to seed, and the hash marks are crooked.

You look down, and there it is, all day long. There is a large chance that if you’re reading this, you have never participated in the actual making of anything in any meaningful way. And as the world gets more complex, we all get further and further removed from the ultimate source of all of our prosperity. How far removed? To the point where it gets obscure enough that it can be blithely strangled in its crib, on the supposition that it can be improved by infantile wishing, followed by fiat.

See the man on the sleigh, bringing the sap back to the shed to boil? He knows the tree like a brother. He knows the woods like a mother. He knows fire like a caveman. He knows commerce like a loanshark. He knows cold like a gravedigger. He knows sap like you know the alphabet. And he doesn’t have the slightest idea what you’re about, because you labor in a vineyard far removed from his — where the meaning of your efforts is likely always obscure, as all intellectual pursuits must be.

Remember always what you don’t know about him, lest one day, you look down, and there it ain’t.

Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Read Here

Can you tell me the way to Hope Street?

They tell me the road to hope is long, and fraught with peril, sir.

(Stunned silence. A moment of recognition. Wry smile.)

Yes, but at least it’s paved now.

The cobbles are made from the hearts of policemen, sir. They are only mortared loosely with good intentions.

You have the gun, so I defer to your judgement. The way?

Go back up the hill and turn right, if you want to find Hope. Abandon hope, all ye who stand here in the middle of the street with a policeman in the sleet.

Would you like a cup of coffee, officer?

I’d like a gold-plated Republican job and a roast turkey with a side order of another roast turkey, and a whiskey and an upholstered woman with a fireplace and access to more whiskey, thank you. But I’ll settle for a cup of coffee, if that’s what you meant.

I’ll need to cross the street to get it. Will you stop the traffic?

Sir, I’ll hold them here until the ammo runs out, then go hand to hand with the stragglers, if you’ll bring a sinker with the joe.

Done, and done.

Are those your lawyers, sir?

Spring is coming, officer, if we keep this up.

Go. I’ll cover you.

Robert Gordon Orr Oh Yeah

Football’s on today. I like football. I used to like hockey.

Sports are gladiatorial and gentlemanly at the same time. At least they’re supposed to be. The professionalisation of all manner of athletic endeavor has corroded the meaning of them in large measure. You can get rich riding a bike now. Skiers in “amateur” athletics have to pee in a cup, because the pile of money they can grab for simply wearing a patch on their clothing makes even a mundane competition worth cheating at to win. All children’s leagues are de facto minor leagues for paying athletic gigs at this point.

The idea that a few extraordinary talents might scratch out a living at doing what they did anyway for the love of sport and competition is in the rear view mirror, and back over the horizon. If you want to find inspiration, and perhaps discern the framework of a worthwhile worldview in sports now, you’re going to have to fashion it yourself out of the few scraps of decency and effort you might be able to glean from any particular tilt. It was not always so.

All things have a trajectory. They develop, then fade away, or perhaps ebb and flow over and over. But sometimes there is an apogee, and you can see it right away — this is it, it’s all downhill from here– and you know you’re looking at the pinnacle of the thing.

We need something Scandinavian for this guy, when he goes. Some sort of pyre, made from the remnants of the sport he was unarguably the best at ever. They really should have just given up trying after he retired, because we will never see his like again. And he’s as pleasant a person as any walk of life has ever produced.

Despite the choice of music, the fellow that made this mashup did a great job, and we need to forgive him for the Carly Simon – he’s trying to make a point here.

I saw Bobby Orr play dozens of times live, and hundreds of times on a dreadful black and white television the size of a porthole. I felt like a Free French fighter listening to Churchill on the wireless. Orr will save us.

People still try to tell me from time to time, that _________ was a better hockey player than Bobby Orr. I try to explain to them, that Bobby Orr isn’t the greatest hockey player that ever lived. He is the greatest athlete to ever participate in any organized competition. It’s kinda pointless to tell me about another hockey player. Orr is playing in a Pantheon league, and winning in it. His competition is Thorpe, and Brown, and Ruth, and Robinson, and a few others who aren’t just great; they define whole swathes of the landscape in and out of their sports. He’s like walking into a pawn shop and seeing the Statue of Liberty in there.

He was better than everybody else at everything. Look at the picture at the top. The series was a rout — four straight against the Saint Louis Blues. It was a foregone conclusion with him on the ice. Bobby Orr scored the goal, and the defenseman seen behind him sent him flying through the air, Orr’s face aglow with the instant recognition of the top of the mountain.

There was nothing left to do, for all the rest, but to try to trip him. He’s never faltered, though.