Readingsby Rick Dietrich Ducking AwayI write this on a beautiful day in early March. The sun is shining. The birds sing in the trees. A male cardinal flew across my path as I walked to work this morning. God's in his heaven, and all is right with this world. Or is it? I have been thinking lately about the fall, not the season of decline but our Decline, the result of our first parents' expulsion from the garden. And, what were we expelled into? I have a stack of notes here, including the originals and my crabbed translations of poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Josef Freiherr von Eichendorf, and Annete von Druste-Hülshoff. But, it's just too nice a day. (Lucky for you, dear reader.) In a few minutes, I am going to get up from my desk and go on another walk. In the meantime, I am writing an e-mail of introduction to the ambassador of Burkina Faso, the Honorable Jimmy Kolker, for my great, good friends Gerald and Bonnie Stephens. I went to college with the ambassador; and I am asking him to pretend to remember me, if he and the Stephenses cross paths. Later in the morning, I am going to take our fourteen-year-old dog, Tip -- who allows the use of the adjectives "decrepit" and "lively" in the same sentence -- I am going to take Tip to the vet to be boarded for a week, so Robin and I can drive to Charlotte, NC, to fly to Philadelphia to fly to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, where our older son Christopher works as a Peace Corps volunteer. A typical day in the life. This is by way of saying what you already know: there are no typical days. There are only beautiful days, whether of sun or snow or rain and wind, full of sorrow at friends leaving the hemisphere. (My two best friends from college live in California and Beijing.) And full of new possibilities: go south, young man, and find an island. This is what the German poets tell us (especially the Romantics): the world, even at its most threatening, at its strangest -- the capital of Burkina Faso is Oaugadougou -- the world is hugely, impossibly beautiful. In one of my favorite books as a child (a Little Golden book), Donald Duck runs away from home. Of course, he finds in the course of running away that home is the best place after all. But I didn't like the book for its sappy moral. I liked it because Donald wrapped what he needed in a big handkerchief, which he tied to a long stick, which he carried on his shoulder. I just liked the looks of that: Donald walking down the highway with that stick over his shoulder. I liked it so much that when I ran away, I insisted on having my stuff wrapped up in a handkerchief-or, when I couldn't find one big enough, in one of my mother's scarves (yes, she helped me) -- and finding a suitable stick for my shoulder. But what else did I find? Not that home is always the best place, but that it's hard to get too far away from it, when you're not allowed to cross certain streets. Is that the moral? You're probably looking for one about this point. Well, don't. Or write your own. Or look back at the paragraph three above this one. In the meanwhile, what am I reading? As well as I can: The Red and the Black, John Ashbery's Your Name Here, Juvenal, the prophet Zephaniah. And soon, I hope (as well as I can) the town of Esperanza. More from there ... next time. << Previous | Contents | Next >>
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