dedalus_1947 | Entries tagged with writing

Standing on the waters casting your bread
While the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing
Distant ships sailing into the mist
You were born with a snake in both of your fists while a hurricane was blowing
Freedom just around the corner for you
But with the truth so far off, what good will it do?

Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune
Bird fly high by the light of the moon
Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman

You’re a man of the mountains, you can walk on the clouds
Manipulator of crowds, you’re a dream twister
You’re going to Sodom and Gomorrah
But what do you care? Ain’t nobody there would want to marry your sister
Friend to the martyr, a friend to the woman of shame
You look into the fiery furnace, see the rich man without any name
(Jokerman: Bob Dylan – Infidels, 1984)

Fittingly, it was on June 16^th, Bloomsday, that I finished reading James Joyce: A New Biography, by Gordon Bowker. I found the book so captivating I read it at the same speed I normally reserve for good novels or great science fiction. I was fascinated and also troubled by what I learned of this eccentric artist. Who would have believed that a Joyce fan like me had NEVER read a comprehensive biography of one of the most lauded authors in English Literature? I plead guilty with no defense. I loved the stories in Dubliners, and was captivated by the hero in the novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but I never got around to investigating the author. I was always satisfied with the many autobiographical items embedded in his works, and the tidbits of information I picked up from peripheral sources like magazine articles and travel books. I have to admit that since my introduction to Joyce in college, I was always more interested in him as an artist than as a man. As far as I was concerned, his work WAS the man, and I particularly loved his fictional alter ego Stephen Dedalus. Well James Joyce the son, brother, man, husband, and father, whom I discovered in his biograph, did not reach the lofty pedestal upon which I had placed his fictional character. Joyce may have been an exceptional artist and genius, but he was such a flawed and weak man that my opinion of him was greatly challenged.

While Joyce became my idealization of an artist, he was never my favorite author. My favorite novelists were a pantheon of American writers I discovered in high school, beginning with Herman Wouk, Harper Lee, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.D. Salinger, and John Steinbeck, and increasing in college with the addition of Ernest Hemingway and Joseph Heller. Two notable teachers – Mr. Thomas McCambridge, in high school, and a forgotten professor in college influenced this pantheon. Both teachers rhapsodized about the writers of The Lost Generation who became my lynch pins to literature. Joining these writers in my literary Olympus were their iconic characters: Jay Gatsby, Atticus Finch, Holden Caulfield, Tom Joad, and Jake Barnes. Of these American novelists, I would put Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby at the top of the list. Gatsby was clearly the favorite of my teachers, and he became the subject of my first REAL book report in high school.

Book reports have to be the most boring type of writing that exists, because it is simply a means by which a teacher checks on a student’s completion of a task – the reading of a book. If I were assigned a book to read, I would read it for fun and enjoyment, and then write the report by paraphrasing the synopsis on the side covers of the book. However, Mr. McCambridge challenged that approach when he assigned Gatsby. He explained that Fitzgerald had a message just for me in the book, and it was a message hidden in clear sight. The story had “a theme” which the author was expressing through his words and descriptions, and it was my job to discover it by following the clues. Gatsby was the first book in which I highlighted the words as I read, and it struck a chord with me on two levels. First, the words became important because Fitzgerald’s style was so approachable and engaging, and his descriptions were lyrically beautiful. Secondly, his central character called forth that uniquely American desire which I shared, to strive and achieve the unobtainable, which he expressed wonderfully in his last page:

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… and one fine morning --- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

It was only later in college, while reading the Norton Anthology of English Literature that I discovered the wonders of the English language in all its many expressions, and came across James Joyce and Stephen Dedalus.

In the quarter system of UCLA in the late 1960’s, a semester or, to be more accurate, a “tri-mester”, consisted of a 10-week period of time to complete a course. For The American Novel, this meant a delightful reading list of 10 novels, filled in with lectures three times a week. The English Lit course, on the other hand, covered the entire 20^th Century using the Norton Anthology. The novels on the Required Reading List of this class had to be decreased and carefully selected. The only book that affected me the same way as Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, was Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Until that course, I’d only heard about Joyce in terms of his being a member of “The Lost Generation”, and the author of a notorious book called Ulysses. Along with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein, Joyce was simply another expatriate living in Paris after WWI. It was this course, with its emphasis on English literature that finally showcased Joyce; first through his short stories in the Dubliners, and then his first novel, Portrait of the Artist.

Reading Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist was an epiphany. From my professor I learned of Joyce’s epiphanies embedded in his stories, and his revolutionary use of the inner monologue, or stream of consciousness in his writing. I found his portrayal of Dubliners even more stunning, because they were so radically different from the stereotypic characterizations I’d seen of the Irish in movies and television. His characters were deeper and more complex, hiding the dark malevolent secrets we all shared. However, it was in Stephen Dedalus, the artist in Portrait, that I found the mirror to my own youthful conflicts and aspirations. Reading about Stephen’s education in Catholic schools, his struggles with sexual temptations and religious repression, and his desire to be free, were reflections of my own life. I identified with Stephen more than any other fictional character I had read about, and I envied his courage at rejecting the values and teachings of the Irish Catholic Church, the shackles of Irish nationalism, and courageously pursuing the creative life of the universal artist. The last lines of the novel on the eve of his self-imposed exile from Ireland thrill me to this day:

“Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead”.

So what would I say of James Joyce now, after having read a very comprehensive biography on his life? Was he the Stephen Dedalus character he created in Portrait and Ulysses, or was he someone else? Should I write about what he was, or what he wasn’t?

Well, to begin with, as a self-portrait, Joyce’s portrayal of Stephen was broadly accurate. Joyce was a gifted student, trained under Jesuit supervision. He became a recognized literary talent in Dublin and wrote for newspapers and periodicals, and he worked as an English tutor and teacher for Berlitz, the famous language school. He was a particular genius at words and language, with an ear and musical gift for song. However, rather than gravitating toward Irish nationalism, as many young Irishmen of his generation, Joyce found inspiration in the creative views and artistry of Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian author and playwright. That was the first surprise for me. Ibsen, not W.B. Yeats, the driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, was his guiding artistic star and model. Although he would only write about Dublin and Dubliners, Joyce, like Ibsen, would become a “man without a country”, a universal artist of the world, and not a parochial Irish author.

The biggest letdown was learning that in many ways Joyce became his father’s son – a failed businessman and spendthrift who was barely one step ahead of eviction and bankruptcy. Joyce always lived beyond his means, borrowing money from his brother, relatives, friends, and loan sharks, and never worrying about repayment. In many ways Joyce was a gifted conman. With his talent and charm he won the confidence of friends, siblings, artists, publishers, and wealthy patrons who recognized his exotic genius, and then Joyce exploited them unmercifully, without question or qualm. Oddly enough, this story has been told in many versions and languages – the self-centered, artistic genius who never sees beyond his art, and other people are simply a means to produce it. That’s Joyce in a nutshell.

My last shattered illusion was the hope that Joyce was a more prolific author than I suspected, and a comprehensive biography would finally unearth a treasure trove of unknown works to me. Well, surprise! My own thumbnail bibliography of Joyce’s work was pretty accurate after all:

Dubliners, 1914 – Portrait of the Artist, 1916 – Ulysses, 1922 – Finnegan’s Wake, 1939

The only writings I was unaware of were the early book reviews and essays he wrote while in Dublin, an early version of Portrait called Stephen Hero (1904-06), poems, a collection of poems called Chamber Music (1907), a rarely performed play called Exiles (1915), and a pocket book of poems, called Pomes Penneyeach (1927). Much of the material that he would include in Finnegan’s Wake was serialized in magazines and periodicals over the 15 years he struggled with it, and simply called it a “Work in Progress”.

More than anything else, what I learned from this biography was what Joyce WAS NOT. He was not a romantic Irish nationalist, not a prolific writer, and not a hardworking, self-sufficient, dependable man. What was he? He was clearly a genius of the English language who played with it like an improvisational master. He was an artist who created words and descriptions and took them to the outer edges of what readers and critics found acceptable. In essence, Joyce created his own language, making up rhyming words and run-on sentences that seemed to have no meaning unless one had the codebook. Many readers of the serialized portions of Finnegan called him a fraud, and claimed that he was mocking them with nonsensical, make-believe words, limericks, and impossibly intricate sentences, and calling it “literature”. In a fashion, Joyce did play with language like a trickster, or joker. He reminded me of a 20^th Century representation of that universal trickster of myth and legend: the coyote of Indian legends, Loki of Norse mythology, and Maui of Polynesian myths. Joyce too was “a clever, mischievous person who achieved his ends through the use of superior intelligence and trickery. A trickster who tricked others simply for their amusement, to help them survive in a dangerous world, or to demonstrate the absurd chaos that the world needs to function”. Then again, others found a unique beauty in his words – a beauty I HEARD when I employed an audio book to listen to a reading of Ulysses. Without a doubt, Joyce’s work is best HEARD than read. Joyce plays language with an ingenious, whimsical style, like a jazz artist improvising his music.

I suppose there is one benefit to having waited almost 50 years to learn these facts about Joyce and how he lived his life. At 69 years of age I’m a lot less judgmental than I was at 18 or 20. Especially after having spent the last 8 years listening to incarcerated men tell me of their flaws, failings, and addictions. Joyce would have fit right in with these imprisoned men. He was a selfish, egoistical, and impulsive conman. He was a manipulator and scoundrel. At the same time he was a child of his time and place, living under the dual oppression of the Irish Catholic Church and British Imperialism. At his core Joyce was Irish and that always came out in his stories, descriptions and writing. But he was foremost a genius of the world and an artist of the English language. He was an artist of the genre that included Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh – he was obsessed and self destructive, left ruin in his wake, but created truth and beauty in his art. I can’t be disappointed that Joyce never lived up to the qualities he projected onto his creation Stephen Dedalus, or his other characters. They were fiction, and he was real. I can’t confuse the artist with his creation. I should just enjoy his art.

Bit by bit,
Putting it together…
Piece by piece –
Only way to make a work of art.
Every moment makes a contribution,
Every little detail plays a part,
Having just a vision’s no solution,
Everything depends on execution.
Putting it together,
That’s what counts.
(Putting it Together, from Sunday in the Park with George: Stephen Sondheim – 1985)

I’ve been having some trouble getting back into writing. In fact, I’ve written only 2 blog essays so far this year, down significantly from eleven pieces in 2014 and twelve in 2013. Of course those numbers pale in comparison with the year right after my retirement (2010), when I wrote 36! I’d like to say that 2010 just happened to be a remarkable year. But the truth of the matter is that I was reorienting myself from a busy career as a middle school principal to a new reality in which I needed to find replacement activities. So, I went on regular camera safaris to photograph sites and people in nearby cities, neighborhoods, museums, colleges, and at sporting events – and wrote essays about them later. I volunteered to substitute at Kathy’s school, and became their unofficial event photographer. I joined my high school friends in trips to Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, Joshua Tree National Park, Kelso, Death Valley, and other locales. I also took my camera to family events, parties, graduations, and holidays, to record the occasions. I took up projects and new commitments. I volunteered as a chaplain in the Jail Ministry of the Archdiocese, I began the long-term task of converting my brother-in-law’s vinyl music collection into digital form, and I baby-sat my new granddaughter Sarah two-days a week. All of these activities and experiences were carefully noted in my mind and became sources for later blog essays. I was a “present and mindful” participant in all these events, and a natural desire to digest them, review them, and write about them flowed naturally. That zest for active observation started changing year by year.

I’d like to say that I “outgrew” my passion for writing over the years, but that would be a lame excuse, and misleading. The truth is I became lazy and started looking for justifications to do less and less. Volunteering at the jail in Castaic and babysitting twice a week were too strenuous and draining, I whined to myself, so I deserved more and more time off. Camera safaris required too much planning and energy, and were exhausting, so I needed rest. Writing became an arduous task that I kept putting off and avoiding. Writing took too much time and effort, I moaned. So I substituted binging on Netflix TV series or spending solitary afternoons at local movie theatres. I deserved taking it easy, I told myself over and over, and I was retired! At the same time I assuaged my growing guilt with the idyllic notion that some external, inspirational event would shake me out of my literary lethargy and get me back into writing. Something like that happened after the death of my Aunt Espie and my father-in-law. Those events slammed into use, forcing me to process their impacts by writing. It occurred to me only after my drama-less encounter with a “Stranger On a Bus”, that I was depending on these external face-slaps to prompt me back into the “practice” of writing. I was foolishly expecting the muse of Inspiration to overcome my slothful and indulgent habits and create an imperative to write and resume the struggle of creating something on paper that never existed before. It was only last week, as I sat in front of a blank page in my writing tablet, that I finally wrote the long avoided question: “What do I write about today?”

That’s a hard question to answer when one has been dodging it for years, depending on external events to inspire an effort. Writing had stopped being a practice for me, and became a therapy to deal with emotional experiences. I’d created a bubble for myself these last few years of retirement: avoiding all types of strenuous and energetic activities, eating and drinking what and when I chose, and limiting my stressful responsibilities to family commitments. The “hardest” thing I’d done for the last 3 years was driving to and from Gardena on the 405 Freeway, two days a week, to babysit Sarah and Gracie – and even that “hardship” was offset by the joy I experienced by spending so much time with my granddaughters. So what was I going to do? Writers write. Writing is a practice that must be performed, I thought to myself, gazing down at the question in front of me. If I was determined to resume the regular practice of writing I had to address that question: “What should I write about today?”

My writing guru, Natalie Goldberg, in her book Writing Down the Bones, insisted that the “practice” of writing could only be sustained if it is approached fearlessly and without consideration of its intrinsic merit or quality – as long as the writing is honest. In that case, truthfully, the only topics that have obsessed me, since returning from our vacation after the death of Kathy’s father, have been dieting and exercising. There I’ve said it! I admitted publically the answer I wrote to the question above. Arghh, who likes confessing that they are dieting and going to the gym?

Dieting with Weightwatchers and exercising at 24 Hour Fitness are the two hardest and most obtrusive factors in my life right now. They have taken me out of my three-year somnambulist existence and introduced discipline and hardship, and they were the topics that popped into my mind when I asked, “What should I write about?” Thankfully, Goldberg also counseled that all writing (especially when laced with complaints, self-pity, and whininess) doesn’t have to be “good”. The writing process is about practice, she insisted, not publishing, and the product doesn’t have to be “your best”. The point is to write. My greatest fear about writing about dieting and exercising is that it will sound whiney, self-aggrandizing, and pompous. How does one approach an essay on dieting and exercising? Hopefully one can find a voice that communicates humor and effort without sounding self-righteous.

That was as far as I got during my writing practice that day before I left for the gym. As I rediscovered in my last essay, Stranger On the Bus, the point of any encounter or experience is for the writer to be open to its reality and metaphoric possibilities. I can’t approach writing practice, Weightwatchers, and 24 Hour Fitness as obstacles to be overcome and vanquished, otherwise I’ll miss the creative opportunities they offer. Losing weight, getting fit, and writing is about taking it easy, day by day, step by step, and piece by piece, until it all comes together. That is my plan and my hope. I’ll keep you informed.

Sunrise doesn’t last all morning.
A cloudburst doesn’t last all day.
Seems my love is up, and has left you with no warning.
It’s not always going to be this grey.

All things must pass.
All things must pass away.

Now the darkness only stays the nighttime.
In the morning it will fade away.
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time.
It’s not always going to be this grey.

All things must pass.
All things must pass away.
(All Things Must Pass: George Harrison – 1969)

I thought I had become immune to the fearful talk and doomsday forecasts from journalists, authors, and publishers about the future of print. I was aware of the paradigm shift going on throughout the media, and how newspapers, magazines, and book publishers were struggling to find new advertising and market strategies, while competing with digital online providers like Amazon and iTunes. But I’d become satisfied just watching this contest from the sidelines, waiting for the confusion to end, the dust to settle, and a winner (or winners) being declared. The struggle reminded me a little of the brief videotape wars of the 1980’s, when VHS and Betamax battled for video supremacy, only to both become obsolete with the appearance of optical disc storage (DVD) players. Then, of course, there was the drawn out music wars that began in the 1960’s with single and long play vinyl records battling audiotapes of various types for control of the business. Eventually both formats were vanquished by the development of compact disc (CD) players in the 1980’s, which replaced them with digitized music that could be heard on many different devices – like computers, MP3 players, iPods, iPads, and Smart Phones. Yet all of these enterprises seemed lightweight and trivial when compared to the print media, because they primarily provided visual and audio entertainment, and not vital educational, intellectual, historical, and cultural content and information. I suppose I always believed that despite these constant digital incursions, nothing could ever replace the printed page. We would always need books, magazines, textbooks, and newspapers. Well this last Christmas season, I was once again slapped awake to the transitory nature of all things.

I was getting in some last minute shopping for Kathleen on Christmas Eve when I dropped by Barnes & Noble in Woodland Hills. As I walked in the wood framed, glass entrance of the bookstore, I thought I could rest there for a while with a cup of coffee to review my shopping list before searching for a gift. However, instead of the cozy embraces of the bookstore café, decorated in gentle forest colors, and surrounded with wall posters of famous authors and neat racks of glossy magazine covers, I was greeted with devastation. I had entered what appeared to be the pillaged remains of a ransacked warehouse. It was a husk of a store with half-filled shelves, strewn with books in no particular order, or piled up in the corners. Sagging, gaudy signs draped across the walls and shelves announced 50% discounts and declarations that “All Must Go!” It took me a few minutes to realize that our only local bookstore, the last surviving, big chain bookstore in Woodland Hills and Canoga Park was closing, and it would be gone by Christmas.

For a long time I hadn’t much cared for nationwide, chain bookstores like Crown, B. Dalton, Brentano’s, Borders, and Barnes & Noble. Those national conglomerates had driven practically all of the independent bookstores that once decorated the literary landscape of Los Angeles and Southern California out of business with their cutthroat shipping and pricing tactics. But book buyers are fickle and memories are short, and anger at their harsh business practices quickly faded with the ease of shopping they provided – especially as many chains adopted the people-friendly strategies of legendary bookstores like The Earthling in Santa Barbara, or Book Soup in West Hollywood. Soon Borders and Barnes & Noble Bookstores were offering cafés with coffee house environments where readers and writers could drink, chat, read, and work. Some stores even offered the extensive selections of published material that once could only be found in college bookstores, and the convenience of having music and film material in the same building made them popular with the non-readers as well. Up until two years ago, two nationwide bookstores, Borders and Barnes & Noble Booksellers serviced Woodland Hills and Canoga Park, in the West San Fernando Valley. Now there are none. So, sulking in a somewhat depressed and nostalgic mood at the end of the year, I concocted a plan as Kathleen and I talked about going someplace on New Year’s Eve. We were looking for a friendly and scenic locale where we could window-shop, meet and mingle with lots of people, and enjoy a late lunch before bidding the old year goodbye. When we decided to go to Santa Monica and walk around the 3^rd Street Promenade, I wondered if the huge, three-story Barnes & Noble on Wilshire Blvd. was still in business. If it was, I decided to make a pilgrimage to one of the last surviving chain bookstores in Southern California.

Barnes and Noble remains the largest bookseller in the United States. The company still has 18 viable stores in the Southern California area – from Santa Ana, in Orange County, to Calabasas, near the border of Ventura County. Rather than sitting idly by, waiting for obsolescence, Barnes & Noble has boldly charged into the digital publishing arena and the e-reader battles against Amazon and Apple. According to David Carnoy of CNET, Barnes & Noble currently controls 25% of the e-book market, and looking to expand it. I own a Nook e-reader myself, and I’m planning on buying an Apple iPad Mini in the near future. I love the convenience of the e-reader and its immediate access to literature. Instead of having to travel to a brick and mortar store to buy a book, I can download one on any impulse or whimsy (as long as I have a Wi-Fi connection). I can read a review or an article about an interesting book or author, and immediately download the book on a trial basis. I can explore earlier works by an author I discover, or trace other writers of the same genre. My e-reader actually stimulates more reading and purchasing than when I went to bookstores. And yet I love bookstores. I loved browsing the shelves, scanning the titles and authors, handling a book, and paging through its leaves. Every time I find myself in a bookstore, I reconnect with memories of other times, in other places, and in other parts of the city when I was young with lots of time on my hands and very little money. I remember my dad taking me to explore the used bookstores around McArthur Park in Los Angeles, and the area around Sawtelle and Santa Monica Blvd in West L.A. He would give me a couple of bucks to spend and leave me to the wonderfully tireless task of choosing, eliminating, and buying my own novels. I remember when my Uncle Charlie first took me to Pickwick Bookshop on Hollywood Blvd to buy Christmas gifts when I was in high school. I recall spending hours roaming through the seemingly endless bookshelves of Martindale’s Books in Santa Monica when I was in college, and visiting Dutton’s in North Hollywood with Kathleen when we were dating. With those memories in mind, I entered the only remaining bookstore on the 3^rd Street Promenade on December 31, 2012.

As I walked around the store I was immediately attracted to enticing displays of fabulous books and memories of times spent reading them. Two tables held the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and George Martin, highlighting the books that were the current inspiration for movie and television screenplays (The Hobbit, and The Game of Thrones). A turntable rack hung with bookmarks of all styles and genres caught my amused attention with their depictions of superheroes, cartoon figures, and fairy tales. How much longer would bookmarks be practical? I asked myself, thinking how necessary they seemed when I was a child. The store abounded with classical literature. There were paperback works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte Bronte on sale, at 50% off their listed prices. Even leather bound versions of To Kill a Mockingbird, The Sun Also Rises, and Huckleberry Finn were marked down. The store also offered a music and video department on the 2^nd Floor that was tastefully decorated with poster-sized prints of iconic musicians and artists. The last section I inspected were the shelves dedicated to Literature Studies and Poetry. This was the place where one could spend hours pulling books and reading portions of essays and poems. After a while I couldn’t take any more. I wasn’t going to buy anything. I was still trying to get rid of the countless books I’d collected over the years, trying to free up more space on my bookshelves and cabinets. I didn’t need one more volume added to the multitude I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet. At this point in my life new books would have to fit in the digital library of my e-book, and not on a shelf. Luckily it was about that time that my daughter Teresa arrived with her husband and daughter Sarah to join us for lunch. Sarah’s boundless energy for watching and mimicking street performers, and touching everything she saw in stores, quickly dispelled all thoughts of bookstores and print. Shepherding her around the promenade and mall kept us all busy for the rest of the day.

At the end of our visit to Santa Monica, in the fading light of day, we walked by one store that caught everyone’s notice. A huge, white apple glowed from a three-story, glass façade, and it seemed to beckon all to enter. Beyond that crystal entrance laid a vast enclosure of electronic and digital wonders, enticing people to walk in and peruse the treasures. Within that gleaming cavern lay the future. Paper publishing and print media will go the way of cuneiform, hieroglyphics, and papyrus. Those methods of communication, learning, and entertainment will soon wither, become archaic, and die. We are at such a turning point in our culture right now, and we are watching the slow death of the old giving way to the new. It is sad but inevitable, because all thing pass.

While writing this elegy about bookstores I started a list of neighborhood shops that have closed or disappeared. I’d invite you to share your own favorite old bookstore, new or used, and where it was located. I remembered the following:

Martindale’s on 3^rd Street, Santa Monica
Pickwick Bookshop on Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood
Campbell’s Bookstore on Westwood Blvd, Westwood.
Dutton’s on Laurel Canyon Blvd, North Hollywood, and one in Brentwood
Either/Or Bookstore on Pier Ave, Hermosa Beach
Midnight Express on 3rd Street, Santa Monica
Papa Bach on Santa Monica Blvd, West Los Angeles.
Acres of Books in Long Beach
The Earthling Bookstore on State Street in Santa Barbara

“Somewhere along here
I became conscious of the feeling…
that comes when you first notice
your life turning into a story.”
(A River Runs Through It and Other Stories – Norman Maclean: 1976)

When some people learn that I’m a retired middle school principal, their questions sometime follow an annoying pattern:
“So how do you spend your time?” they ask, suddenly very curious of my method for holding back what they perceive is the specter of boredom and apathy.
“Well,” I begin, innocently debating whether or not to be circumspect or candid in my response. “I babysit my granddaughter two days a week”, I say, usually deciding on an honest approach. “I volunteer at the county jail another day, and I do chores around the house. I also spend time writing, taking photographs, and working on a vinyl music project”.
Now if I heard that response, I’d probably be curious about the vinyl music project, but that is not the case with most people. A larger number of questioners tend to focus in on my writing.
“Writing,” they exclaim, “that’s interesting!”
My ears perk up at that particular word, which I’ve come to suspect, when said in a slightly exaggerated manner, is actually code for, Writing, isn’t that what we all learned to do in the third grade? The next predictable question is, “What do you write about?”
“Oh, I keep a journal,” I reply, hesitantly, fearing that we are now spiraling down a dreaded rabbit-hole with this line of questioning, “and I write a blog.”
“Oh, a blog,” they respond in a raised tone that seems to translate into, Oh God, not an Internet blogger! Just what the world needs – another opinionated, narcissistic writer spouting his views and beliefs on the Internet. “That’s great”, they continue, soothingly, “but are you thinking of writing a novel or a book?”
That question signals the end of a viable conversation for me, and I try changing the subject to something about them.
“No,” I might say, if I was talking to an educator, “I don’t think I’m ready for a book or novel yet, but I have been doing some reading about the new superintendent and his plans for next year. What do you think of him, and how is your school reacting to his ideas?” If the person is not in the teaching profession, I’ll switch to a story or news item I heard mentioned on NBC’s Today Show, or Fox’s Good Day L.A. Those two shows always give me something to discuss, instead of my writing, or why I’m not working on a book or novel with all of my free time.

I’ve been writing a blog called The Dedalus Log for about six years now. I don’t consider it a web log in the classic sense – that is, it’s not a series of short, concise, and humorous commentary about my life, current events, and popular culture. At first, I suppose I started writing the Dedalus Log more as a form of mental health therapy rather than art. It was a way to express my feelings and examine my reactions to the events I was facing in 2005: being reassigned to a new school as principal, after 10 years at one site; dealing with professional struggles and conflicts with staff and parents; and anticipating my pending retirement. As time went on this motive for writing changed, and I started using my blog as writing practice, a method of exercising my writing skills by creating, polishing, and posting long essays about my life, friends, and family. I fended off the occasional bouts of self-doubt over my abilities, and slowly started believing that I was getting better, and that one day, I might be ready for the ultimate challenge – writing fiction.

Ah, fiction, that lofty, literary genre sometimes referred to as creative writing. Since my American literature days in high school and college, I was evangelized to believe that real authors created art by telling stories and writing fiction. Journalism, and non-fiction were merely stepping-stones to the Holy Grail of literature - a novel. Even though I enjoyed well-written history books, and esteemed readable authors like Barbara Tuchman, William Manchester, and David Halberstam, they couldn’t compare to my pantheon of novelist-heroes, Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, or John Steinbeck. I just assumed that if I kept practicing, I would eventually evolve into a fiction writer. But nothing happened! Over the course of six years, I experimented with dialogue in some stories, and even tried writing a blog from a third-person perspective once, but the desire to write a fictional tale never came. Whenever friends or relatives who read my blog asked if I was thinking of a novel, I just said I wasn’t ready – but that was only a half-truth. I was beginning to doubt my ability to tell a story. My biggest clue was the fact that I can’t tell a joke. Oh, I enjoyed hearing a good one, and I loved to laugh, but I never succeeded at making one up, or remembering and repeating one I heard. My daughter Prisa, who witnessed my futile humorous attempts all her life, explained it this way:
“Dad, you’re only funny when you don’t mean to be”.
The sting of truth is sharp, especially when it comes from the mouths of babes. I was beginning to suspect that my comic flaw signaled a bigger truth – what if I could only tell stories when I didn’t mean to? Is that what I was doing in my essays and personal narratives? Adding to my concern was the growing realization that I actually liked my style of writing. Personal essays were a natural and comfortable genre for me. I probably would have remained a closet essayist, maintaining the pretense of being a novelist-in-training, if I hadn’t read a story by Norman Maclean and heard Sarah Vowell speak in a BookTV appearance for her latest book.

I loved Robert Redford’s movie, A River Runs Through It, when I saw it in 1992. It was a poetic tribute to fly-fishing, and a compelling story about the two sons of a Presbyterian minister, who struggle with family, responsibility, and death in Montana of the early 1900’s. As often happens when I’m intrigued by a movie, I eventually read the semi-autobiographical novella by Norman Maclean, on which the movie was based. It was there that I learned that Maclean, who taught Shakespeare and the Romantic poets at the University of Chicago for 42 years, only began writing the stories of his youth after he retired. He published A River Runs Through It and Other Stories in 1976, at the age of 74. His only other work was the posthumously published Young Men and Fire, a non-fiction account of the Mann Gulch forest fire tragedy of 1949. Norman Maclean became the model and testament to the quixotic idea that I could write when I retired – and even dream of being published. However, it wasn’t until this past summer that I finally got around to reading the other two short stories in his collection, and was shocked into stillness by two passages that helped clarify the relationship between real life and stories. In USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky, Maclean wrote:

“Somewhere along here I became conscious of the feeling… that comes when you first notice your life turning into a story.”

“I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature – not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.

These passages struck a chord with me, because they helped explain what I was trying to do in my essays, and assured me that I was on the right track. I wasn’t writing fiction or making up imaginary stories. I was simply describing the real actions and honest events of the people around me, and sometimes they turned into stories. I’ve always harbored the belief that our lives could be seen as stories, if we had the ability to step back for a moment and examine them. The best example of this was when I discussed childhood incidents with my son and daughter, and heard them narrated back to me as stories. Writing always helped me create a distance between human actions and their consequences, and it gave me the time to understand what was happening and see the story it told. We remember stories better than a timeline of the events, fears, and reactions that constitute our life, and, as Maclean pointed out, the ones we remember best sometimes become literature.

Although Maclean’s passages about life and story were encouraging, I still harbored the uneasy sense that non-fiction was a second rate genre, until I happened across Sarah Vowell. Many of you may not be familiar with Sarah Jane Vowell. Wikipedia describes her as “an American author, journalist, essayist, and social commentator. She has written five nonfiction books on American history and culture, and was a contributing editor for the radio program This American Life on National Public Radio (NPR) from 1996-2008, where she produced numerous commentaries and documentaries, and toured the country in many of the program’s live shows. She was also the voice of Violet in the animated film, The Incredibles.” I first heard her unique, pixie-like voice on an episode of This American Life, and was immediately charmed by her insightful commentary and self-mocking humor. I again heard her on NPR when she was publicizing a book she had written on the Puritans called The Wordy Shipmates. Last month I happened to catch her latest BookTV appearance in Austin, Texas, where she was promoting her book on Hawaii, called Unfamiliar Fishes. During the Question and Answer period there was an interesting exchange that shed some light on my hang-up over the superiority of fiction over non-fiction. The dialogue went something like this:

– I’ve read and love all your books, but have you ever entertained the idea of writing fiction?

– No, I’m not a liar. That question comes up a lot. It’s such an insult to non-fiction. Just because something is true doesn’t make it boring. What I love about non-fiction is that it doesn’t need to be plausible, because it’s already true. Fiction is too easy. Could you imagine this: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, writers of the Declaration of Independence, originally friends and then life-long, bitter, political enemies, dying within hours of each other, on the same day – July 4^th. You can’t make this stuff up! Fiction, humph!

I had never heard a more personal and enthusiastic defense of non-fiction. Vowell’s words put a glow on the rest of my day. She saw a world where real people and real events were infinitely more interesting, funny, and suspenseful than imaginary ones. I couldn’t help agreeing. I think that with the help of writers such as Vowell and Maclean I may eventually get over my fiction complex, and let my writing find its own course.

I had a friend was a big baseball player

Back in high school,

He could throw that speedball by you,

Make you look like a fool, boy.

Saw him the other night, at this roadside bar;

I was walking in, he was walking out.

We went back inside, sat down, and had a few drinks;

But all he kept talking about was

Glory days – well they’ll pass you by,

Glory days – in the wink of a young girl’s eye,

Glory days, glory days, glory days.

(Glory Days, Bruce Springsteen, 1982)

“Hello?” I asked in an overly loud voice, in the direction of the speaker phone attached to the window shade of my car. “Hello?” I repeated. “Hi Tony, this is Ed” said the disembodied voice of my brother from the speaker.

“Hi Ed, what’s up?” I said.

“I’m calling to make sure you’re still going to the game today”.

“Of course” I replied, “I’m on my way now. I should be at Art’s house by 5 o’clock. Where are you?”

“I’m just leaving Monrovia, but I should be there by 5:00. I’ll call back when I get off the 605 Freeway in Artesia”.

“Great, I’ll talk to you later.” I pushed the face plate of the speaker to disconnect the call. About 10 minutes later, the speaker again emitted a high pitched “beeeeep”, signaling that another call was coming through. This was immediately followed by a robotic voice, in a faintly British accent saying “call from: four-one-nine-two-five-five nine”. I pushed the face plate again and said, “Hi Prisa!”

“Hi Dad, are you still going to the game?”

“Sure am, I’m on Interstate 5, heading for the 710 freeway. What about you?”

“I’m leaving my apartment now” Prisa replied, “but I’ll be taking surface streets to Art’s house. Artesia Blvd is a straight shot to his house. I’m hoping to be there around 5 o’clock”.

“Great, I talked with Ed, and it looks like we’re all synchronized to arrive at Art’s at about the same time”.

“Ok, then; I’ll call you if you’re not already there. Bye”

After I said goodbye, I was struck by the suspicion that my brother and daughter were in a conspiracy to make sure that I followed through on my intention to come to the soccer game today. I had cancelled on two previous occasions, and I was the last of my brothers and sisters to watch a Chivas USA soccer game, at the Home Depot Center in Carson. Since purchasing season tickets, my brother Arthur had begged me to be his guest. Even my daughter Prisa and her fiancé Joe had gone to a game. I had declined every one of Art’s entreaties. All my reasons were logical – the distance was too great, the starting time too late, or a prior engagement conflicted with the date; but they were all excuses. I simply didn’t want to go, and I couldn’t explain why – even to myself.

Art had been a devoted soccer fan since high school. Before the advent of local professional teams, he was attending matches of touring Mexican and European teams that visited Los Angeles from time to time. When Major League Soccer (MLS) attracted two franchises (first the Los Angeles Galaxy in 1996 and Chivas USA in 2004), he was the first person in line to buy Chivas season tickets for their new facility in Carson. Art told me they were the best seats in the house, but I was not inclined to believe him until evidence started trickling down from family members.

“They are REALLY good seats!” my sisters, Stella and Gracie, exclaimed in amazement. “Honestly, you have to go just to see his seats!”

My curiosity to visit the Home Depot Stadium and see these wondrous seats for myself finally overcame my mysterious case of ambivalence. When Art once again sent an email inviting me to a Galaxy - Chivas game, I said “Yes”.

I have a peculiar relationship with the game of soccer; a relationship that sometimes confuses people who know me - especially people who knew me in high school. I find the sport slow and boring, even at the professional level. I rarely go to games or watch them on television. The only exception is the World Cup playoffs. This is the month-long tournament which occurs every four years, when the finest soccer athletes of each country compete on national teams to determine the best team on the planet. It is the only authentic “World Series”. I saw my first World Cup while I was attending summer school classes at the National University of Mexico in Mexico City in 1966. I loved being part of a nationwide drama; watching one’s team compete, and then supporting a foreign favorite when your team is eliminated. In 1966, the Cup was decided in an epic match between England and Germany, with the British winning on a controversial overtime goal. Every four years, I get caught up in the excitement of the worldwide tournament and watch as many games as I can. At other times, I’m disinterested. My indifference has always confused Art. We were on the same soccer team in high school, and had played together for two years.

“Tony” he would exclaim, in surprise. “How can you not love the game? You were a two year letterman on the team that won the CIF Championship!” It was puzzling to him, and to me.

Albert Nocella was the first person to mention the idea.

“Tony” he began one day, as we took our seats in Father Salvador’s Religion class, sitting across the aisle from each other. “Wouldn’t you like to be a letterman, wearing one of those sweaters?” He nodded towards a tight group of 4 students, wearing thigh-length, thickly woven, white cotton sweaters with the bold school letter “B” emblazoned above the left pocket. They were crowded around Father Salvador’s desk, laughing and joking.

“Sure” I replied enviously, still believing in the mythology that lettermen always got the girls and popularity in high school, “but there’s no way. I dropped football after spring training, I’m not good enough at basketball or baseball, and I hate running – so cross country and track are out. There is no varsity sport I can letter in”. The bitterness of those last 9 words blackened my mood. In my sophomore year, I had forsaken the dream of playing a varsity sport and earning a varsity letter. I had fallen back on my Plan B – to win accolades and fame through scholarship. That year I made a concerted effort to earn the highest grades and be noticed by teachers and students for intelligence. For the first time, I received A’s in History, English, Spanish, and Religion, and B’s in P.E. and Math, and was invited to join the California Scholastic Federation (CSF). This was the Letterman’s Club of academics, where only the smartest students in the school were admitted. There I discovered that they were not all nerds and geeks. In fact many of these honor roll students played on “the thinking man’s sports” of cross-country and track. These were solitary, non-contact sports that allowed opportunities for reflection, thought, and individual achievement. I did not miss the irony of having gained entry into an elite scholastic organization, only to be surrounded by CSF students wearing letterman sweaters.

“No problem” continued Albert in a whisper, so Father Salvador wouldn’t notice, “I think I’ve found a sport we can letter in”.

“You’re cracked” I mutter in ventriloquist style, trying not to move my lips, as Father was telling us to open our books. “What sport can WE letter in?”

“Soccer” he hissed at me. “We try out for Father Amador’s soccer team”.

“Soccer!” I said, in a surprised loud voice. “I can’t play soccer!”

“Mr. Delgado”, interrupted Father Salvador, looking at me from over his lectern, “am I intruding on your discussion? Would you like me to wait until you’re finished?” he added sarcastically.

“Sorry, father” I replied, “I was asking Albert about his mother’s health. She has been ill, you know”.

“I did not know, but let’s not bother Mr. Nocella during a stressful time. Let me provide the solace and you pay attention”.

“Yes, father. Sorry, father”, I said opening my religion book and shielding my face.

“I’ll talk to you at lunch” came Albert’s whisper on my left.

Father Amador had been our foreign language teacher the year before. He was the shortest and most frail looking young priest in the Piarist Order at St. Bernard High School. It was his first year of teaching and he didn’t have a clue how to handle American high school boys. All of the priests of this Iberian religious order were either from Spain, or the province of Catalonia (Catalonia, they always explained, might be IN Spain, but it was not really part of it). St. Bernard was the first beachhead of their teaching mission in the United States – and their future looked tenuous. Of the nine priests who occupied the residential house on the school campus, only two or three of the most eccentric were successful at relating with American teenagers. The rest lived in an imaginary religious-cultural bubble, dependent on the fickle cooperation of their adolescent male students. Father Amador was the weakest teacher in the house. He struggled valiantly at gaining our respect, but rarely succeeded. Albert and I had been in his sophomore Spanish class. Spanish was my “easy A”; it was my first language and I spoke it fluently, but, I had never received formal instruction in reading and writing until then. My goal in class was to avoid antagonizing my teacher so he wouldn’t raise my performance criteria too much higher than my non-fluent companions. Albert, despite 4 years of Spanish by the time he graduated, never learned more than 4 or 5 stock phrases (“Hola, Paco, que tal”, and “Mis albondigas estan discompuestas” were his favorites). Albert’s expertise lay in his ability to seduce teachers into getting off the subject and talking about themselves, and their interests. Amador and Nocella were an ideal match; Father didn’t want to teach, and Albert didn’t want to learn. The rest of the class just sat back to watch and listen (occasionally volunteering a question or two if Albert hesitated or faltered). It was during one of these off-topic discussions that we discovered that Father Amador had been a soccer star in his “preparatoria” (high school) and seminary in Spain. He loved talking about a sport no one knew anything about, and his early struggles at coaching the first-year team at Bernard’s. Neither the team nor the sport registered a blip on the school’s athletic radar screen, until the yearbook came out in June. Soccer was given four pages of pictures (more than cross-country, swimming, and track), and two sophomores on the team had won varsity letters, John Mahler and Danny Burke.

I found Albert at the far end of the breezeway during lunch. He was already in an animated conversation with two other students in our homeroom, Rick Villasenor and Bill Dennis.

“You’re crazy, Nocella” I repeated in Catholic school fashion, addressing him by his last name only. “We’re juniors. It’s too late for us to make a varsity team in a sport we never played”.

“Hear him out, Delgado” interjected Villasenor. “He makes sense”.

“Yah” added Dennis, an intense, dirty-blonde haired student, who only spoke in short, choppy, sentences.

I knew both of these boys as fellow classmates and failed varsity athletes. We had played softball on opposing parish teams in grammar school, and we still enjoyed playing all the seasonal sports during P.E. and lunch. However, we had given up on football for various reasons (see Forever, Not for Better), and were not talented enough to play beyond the JV level in the other serious sport programs. Our dreams of playing a varsity sport were coming to an end in our junior year.

“Okay” I said, “I’m listening”.

“Tony, I’m telling you, it’s a wide open sport. I talked to Burke and Mahler, and the team is desperate for players. They said nobody knows how to play the game – everybody is a beginner. There is only ONE team, a varsity team, and everybody who tries out is on it. Do you know what that means?”

“We could earn a letter before the end of the year” I answered in a hushed voice, not believing the possibility. All four of us looked at each other, not needing further elaboration. We loved sports and loved to play them, but found ourselves shut out of an exclusive club called “Varsity”.

“I think we can learn how to play this game” finished Albert. “Come on, Tony” he urged. “What can it take? You can kick a stupid ball around, can’t you?”

“Let’s talk to Mahler” I countered, seeking more time to consider. Albert was convincing - temptingly so; but Albert wasn’t a jock. He had never played an organized sport outside of Little League baseball, least of all football. Villasenor and Dennis had played freshman or JV football; they knew the rigors of training and the difficulties of perfecting skills and techniques. The issue was whether soccer offered a real avenue to PLAY and therefore LETTER on a varsity team. We would learn this from John Mahler. He was a unique individual, a varsity football and soccer player with credibility with all the jocks and non-jocks on campus because of his sportsmanship, honesty, and lack of pretense. Everybody liked and trusted Mahler. We found him among a group of football lettermen, walking out of the food shack near the center walkway.

“Hi Mahler” said Albert, walking up to him. “Can we talk to you about the soccer team?”

“Sure” Mahler said, nodding to his friends to go on without him. “What do you need?”

“Albert is trying to talk us into going out for soccer” I said quickly. “None of us know anything about the game. I want to know if we have a real chance to make the team and play, so we can earn letters.”

“If that’s a question, the answer is yes” Mahler said simply. “We need players, lots of them. Every position is open. Last year’s team was filled with senior football players who didn’t know what they were doing. They played the game like rugby, and they drove Father Amador nuts. Me and Burke were the only guys who learned how to play the game. This year, we have a new coach, but only two returning letterman. If you show up and practice, you can play. If you play, you can letter. We want guys who’ll put in the time and effort”.

“Okay” I said, looking at the other boys to see if they had questions. “When are tryouts?”

“They start on Wednesday after school at Westchester Park, on Manchester Blvd. The football field will be available when football season ends. Until then we practice at the park”.

“Thanks, Mahler” added Villasenor, “See ya”.

That was how I decided to play soccer in the fall of 1964.

My first year of soccer was an exploratory venture into maturity. I took full responsibility for the logistical and procedural requirements of joining, practicing, and playing a new sport. My Mom and Dad provided the funds, resources, and support, but I made all the arrangements (although Albert was always eager to give me advice, and keep me company). The first issue was transportation. I was one of 2 or 3 students who had driver’s licenses in their junior year of high school, and I inherited the task of driving my twin siblings, Art and Stella to school. I realized immediately that Stella would have no choice but to wait for us after school, if BOTH Arthur and I were playing soccer. So, despite my reluctance over playing on the same team as my brother, I talked him into joining. Actually, he jumped at the chance. I had never bothered to explore Art’s yearning to play a high school sport and earn a varsity letter. He was a very good Little League baseball player, but didn’t have the weight to play football. I always assumed he had given up on sports to concentrate on art and his grades. I discovered that soccer offered him the same opportunity it offered me. Once my transportation problems were resolved, Albert mooched a regular ride home from practice. It was only then that I entertained the sneaking suspicion that his efforts at convincing me to try out had been motivated by his need for a ride. Once it was clear that all three of us were on the team, I drove to an athletic shoe store on Pico Boulevard, near Vermont. It was the first time I had driven into an unknown part of the city, with a car full of student players, to buy our own equipment. It was liberating.

Three years of playing Pop Warner football, and one failed season of spring training (see Forever, Not for Better), had given me an analytical perspective on organized athletics. I could examine the sport, and my play, in a surprisingly objective fashion. Like any sport, the basic skills of soccer were not difficult to learn. The rules were new and unusual, but the physical mechanics of kicking, stopping, passing, and controlling the ball were simple. It is only the fluid and thoughtless execution of these techniques that is hard. Physical conditioning and practice are the essentials of any sport, and the scrimmages and games are always the fun part – the reward. We had a few natural players on the team, children of immigrants who learned the game as infants. These native players, along with those gifted individuals who mastered the essential skills the quickest, made up the starting team: an offense composed of a five-man front line (two wingers at the ends, two forwards, and one center striker); and a three-tiered defense, composed of 3 half backs, 2 fullbacks, and a goalie. Mr. Cooper, a retired British, semi-pro soccer player, was our coach. He was excitable and emotional in his language, mannerisms, and moods, but he was an encouraging and understanding man who realized that he was dealing with a squad of novice adolescents. Once he had identified the obviously superior players for most of the positions on the first team, I detected that he was looking for players with “the proper attitude”- players who demonstrated more aggressiveness than technical mastery. When I came to the conclusion that I was average in my mechanics, but on par with everyone else, my first-born-son compulsion to overachieve kicked in. To win a starting spot at the only halfback position available, I decided to distinguish myself from the competition. I concentrated on performing two finesse skills that few players had mastered: headers (striking the ball with the top of one’s forehead to redirect or shoot the ball at the goal) and throw-in’s (throwing the ball back into play, in a rigid, straight-armed fashion, directly over your head, without bending the elbows). Both techniques were awkward, and few players could do them correctly. The week before our first game, with the starting lineup still in question, I put forth a burst of supercharged energy and aggression, and caught the coach’s attention with my willingness to head the ball at every opportunity, and throw it in as far as I could. The ball was rocketing off the top of my head and forehead, and I could reach Burke at his center position in front of the goal with a throw-in from the sidelines. I made the first team and started the next three games.

Mastering basic mechanics and winning a starting position did not mean I knew what I was doing, or what was going on around me. I did not. I was going through the motions without visualizing a strategy or outcome. All my thoughts and actions were directed at avoiding mistakes, and that never made for fluid and effortless play. With each game I became more uncomfortable and less certain of my position and play. I was envious of Albert, my brother Art, and the other rookies sitting on the bench. They were slowly improving their games at a natural pace, watching and studying the matches being played. I concluded that I overachieved myself into an untenable situation and needed to sit down and reassess it. I needed, therefore, to find a way for the coach to reach the same conclusion without actually telling him. Teenage-thinking was impossible to explain to an adult, especially a coach: “Oh, Mr. Cooper, even though you think I’m good enough to start, I disagree. So I’d like to bench myself for a spell, until I feel more confident about my level of play”. That scenario would not work. On the morning of the game against Pater Noster High School, I told my mother I felt ill and unable to attend the game. It fell on my brother to inform the coach that I wasn’t able to play. I reasoned that if my “aggressive attitude” had gained his attention, demonstrating a clear lack of it would achieve my desired goal. A senior halfback by the name of Bjelejac (bee-gel-jack) was promoted to my position and I never started another game that season. I welcomed the demotion. I had been performing way over my head, with no feel or understanding of the game. Sitting on the bench and evaluating the actions of other players, without any performance anxiety, was a huge relief. Practices became more enjoyable, and competing against the first team in scrimmages was a delight. I could try any maneuver I saw or learned – sliding tackles, scissor kicks, over-the-head and backward kicks, and shots on goal from the top of the penalty box. Albert and I were finally having fun with this new sport. Our only worry was the varsity letter. I reasoned that I had amassed enough playing time during the first three games to acquire one, but Nocella was worried. He needed to insure his letter by playing to his off-field strength - humorous interactions with teachers in class. He began steadily lobbying the Team Faculty Moderator (or Piarist Assistant Coach), before school, during class, and after school in practice. Father Salvador, our religion teacher, had taken the position after Father Amador left (disappeared, was more like it), and Albert engaged him relentlessly until he surrendered on the issue. There was no way Albert ever had more than 5 or 10 minutes of game time the entire season, but he provided an indispensible ingredient for a successful program: he radiated loyalty and commitment to the team, with a flair for fun and humor at practice and on the bench. The day after we received our letters for varsity soccer, Albert submitted his application to the Letterman’s Club and made arrangements for me to drive him, Villasenor, and Dennis to a tailor shop in Inglewood to order our sweaters. On the drive back, a remarkable transformation occurred – this group of selfish, self-serving, and mercenary juniors looked at ourselves and realized that we had become a TEAM in the course of the year.

I don’t recall who first thought of it, or how it grew in the re-telling, but of the original eleven juniors who went out for the team in November of 1964, seven of us developed the absurd notion that we could win the League and CIF Championship in our senior year. The ridiculousness of that idea astounds me even today. Arthur once admitted during HIS senior year in soccer that the new coaches who replaced Mr. Cooper and Father Salvador described the 1966 team as “a bunch of kickers who managed to score a goal once in awhile”. I was offended at the time, but eventually realized that they were right. We had no business dreaming of championships, we barely knew how to play the game; but the more we talked after our first season, the more we came to believe that we could do it, and the more we played.

In those days, there were very few club teams at the high school level, especially in soccer. Sports were divided into seasons, and seasons came to an end. Mahler and Burke, as the longest tenured members of the team, took the lead of translating our impossible dream into practice. A core group of juniors (and my brother, who was a sophomore) made a commitment to play (practice) every Saturday or Sunday, until the new season began in November of 1965. This habit would keep us in shape and allow us to perfect our mechanics. The coaches could not ask this of us, but we could demand it of ourselves. The key to this plan was the “annoying pestering” from key individuals – Burke, the co-captain and trainer, Villasenor, the catalyst and motivator, and Nocella, the cheerleader and “fixer” (if there was a problem, Albert could fix it). I’m sure many difficulties and inconveniences arose in the course of the spring and summer, but I only remember it as fun. It was as if the crew of a ship had hijacked the vessel and taken it for an adventure cruise; suddenly, we were in charge of our own team. We communicated at school and by phone. We had driver’s licenses, automobiles, and all the necessary equipment. All we needed was a grassy field to play on, and people to match up against. If we were short the minimum number of players, we recruited friends, family, and strangers. We signed up new team members over the summer, and discovered a freshman from Ireland. When we got together on Saturday or Sunday, we played 11 on 11, 8 on 8, or 4 on 4; whenever we had less than 6 players, we would shoot on goal (with each of us alternating at goalie). Necessity forced us to play every position, so our mechanics became more natural and spontaneous. More important than honing technique, every weekend gave us the time to talk and figure out this sport that we had started playing only 4 months earlier. There were no adults telling us what to do, or what we should work on; we were soon-to-be seniors diagnosing our own progress, and prescribing our own solutions. Swigging Cokes or Pepsi after a practice, we would kick back on the grass and compare ourselves to Salesian High School, the best team in the league. They were the team to beat. However, even though many considered them “the Brazilians” of our league, we found some weaknesses. They were short in stature, lacked weight and strength, and had a tendency to show off their finesse dribbling and over-passing. We were oafish and clumsy in comparison, but, we also had some advantage. We had the best goalie in the league (John Mahler); big and strong defensemen who were very comfortable blocking and tackling in the American style of football; and a maniac center striker (Dan Burke) who would never quit until he scored (or assisted in the goal). Our strategy, as it evolved over the summer, was simple, to force every team to play our American style of soccer-football; we were a defense-oriented team, with a counter-punching, forward pass offense.

When the coaches returned in November of 1965, they discovered a predominately senior team of players, who were well conditioned, confident playing their positions, and focused on one mission – to take league and win the CIF Championship. Our first game was against Salesian, so we would find out soon enough if there was merit to our summer long dreams. I had also won back my starting position at right halfback, playing next to Villasenor. Contrary to my first year, I knew I could play the position and believed I was the best available athlete. I never kidded myself as to the level of my ability. I played soccer the way I played football, methodically, skillfully, and dependably. I had been blooded and beaten in battles, and I knew my own measure against opponents. If I could put a body on my man, deny him the ball, and kick, head, and pass well enough to get the ball to my teammates, I could play this game.

We played Salesian on a grey and overcast Saturday morning on the soccer fields of Loyola University (it would not be called Loyola-Marymount until 1975). We had visualized this game all summer and fall. With the opening whistle to start the match, we played a tight man-to-man defense, marking our opponents, staying with them at all times, and denying them the ball. Our forward line would double up on these men as often as possible to steal the ball or force it loose. Our counter-attacks were a series of swift, outlet passes to our wingers, who would fast-break down the sidelines and then center the ball towards the middle. In the meantime, our forwards would streak down the center of the field, filling the lanes, and receive the centering pass and score. We knocked the Salesian players off the ball and off their game from the start, and their frustration and anger grew as the game progressed. They yelled at, and criticized each other, and complained of their lack of hustle. We just played our game and supported each other. We broke a 1 to 1 tie in the second half, and played intense defense for the remainder of the game. We never tired, and our resolve never waivered. When the ref blew his whistle to end the game I blinked in disbelief. We had done it; we had beaten the best in the league. We had imagined it, talked about it, and rehearsed it all summer. We were on our way to a magical season that ended on February 19, 1966, against San Gabriel Mission High School, for the CIF Championship. We played our same style of soccer and won 2 to 1.

Prisa, Eddie, and I arrived within 2 minutes of each other at my brother’s home. Arthur and five yapping mini-dogs greeted us at the door, and he then proceeded to guide us through the wonders of his favorite professional soccer team, Chivas USA. He loaded us with a cornucopia of booster paraphernalia and promotional gear from his season-ticket stash, and he gave a running commentary on the team, its strengths, weaknesses, and prospects for the year. He lived only a short freeway distance from the home stadium at the Home Depot Center, and we left quickly so he could show us around. The stadium still maintained its newly constructed look. He and his wife, Elia, were such well known boosters that we were ushered through the VIP entrance, and allowed access to the box-seat hospitality pavilion. His seats were everything he had promised, and I had heard about. They were slightly above ground level, and adjacent to the stadium tunnel where all the players, celebrities, and entertainers entered and exited the field. Arthur could lean over, shake hands, and chat with all the players, coaches, and trainers. He appeared to be on a first name basis with all of them.

“You really kept up your interest in the game, didn’t you?” I asked, rhetorically, looking around the stadium in wonderment.

“Yeah, I guess I did” he replied. “I’ve always liked the game, even though I didn’t play much after high school. The Galaxy has more recognized stars like Beckman and Landon Donovan, but Chivas has stronger Mexican and South American support. The Latino fans make the games more enjoyable to watch – they really get into it. What about you; why don’t you watch or go to games?”

“I’m not sure” I said “After high school I never played again. I enjoy watching every sport other than soccer. I suppose, soccer was just a means to an end. It let me play a varsity sport, be a letterman, and win a championship in high school – but I never loved the game”.

“How is that possible?” pressed Arthur. “Bernard’s never had another year like your senior year. The team was never the same after you guys graduated”.

“You know, Art” I realized. “I don’t remember ‘the good old days’ of high school with a lot of fondness, but I did enjoy playing on that team. We haven’t been together since our 20^th Reunion in 1986, and Frank Cuozzo and Terry Harwood never came back from Vietnam. Being together, dreaming together, and playing together, made that senior year special. Everything coalesced for us that year”.

“So soccer was fun” Art summarized.

“No” I corrected, “The team was fun; but it only lasted a season”.

We watched an exciting game that Chivas led 2-1 going into the last 2 minutes of play. It was during the added-on time, that Galaxy scored a desperation goal. The game ended in a tie.

There are places I’ll remember

All my life, though some have changed.

Some forever, not for better,

Some have gone and some remain.

All these places have their moments,

With lovers and friends I still can recall.

Some are dead and some are living;

In my life, I’ve loved them all.

(Lennon-McCarthy, In My Life: 1965)

I’ve found that most people my age recall their high school days in idyllic terms. I’ve never understood this. I mistakenly assumed that, in attending the same catholic school for four years, my high school friends and acquaintances shared the same adolescent feelings about these times. Yet, as I shivered at remembered scenes of embarrassments and humiliations, school mates and friends blissfully described these times as the best years of their lives. In the invitation of my silence, they tried to convince me of the superior education they received, the high quality of teaching, and the fulfilling social and sporting activities they participated in. At the conclusion of these conversations, I often doubted that we attended the same high school. These thoughts of high school came to me while I was writing my last essay about driving down Venice Boulevard (Rolling Home) and describing my years playing Pop Warner football. The high school scenes that came to mind did not fit the travelogue essay I was writing, so I saved them for another.

Looking back at the boy I was during high school, I would describe myself as an uncertain and insecure “nerd”, struggling to distinguish himself and achieve some chimerical prize in the social, academic, and athletic arenas in which we competed. I wanted to be recognized and envied: “There goes Tony. I wish I were as handsome, popular, smart, and athletic as he is”. At the same time I was afraid to be singled out, differentiated, or separated from the safety of a group. I wanted to be like other kids; kids who looked the right way, did the right things, and knew what to say in all occasions. It was a confusing time. My day to day existence never ceased being a private struggle of making mistakes, forgiving myself for having made them, and then trying to avoid making them again. This was difficult to do because I kept them hidden and secret. Miraculously, by a confluence of accident, good luck, and hard work, I reached a truce with myself in my senior year. In that fourth year, I achieved a modicum of individual distinction, group acceptance, and personal satisfaction as a student and athlete – but I could never forget my lower-classmen days, especially my freshman year and football.

In the summer of 1961, I decided to skip freshman tryouts and remain for a final year in the Pop Warner football program. I was in the odd situation of being the only high school boy on my team, since everyone else went to public junior high schools. The core of the team had been together for three years. We were veteran and experienced ball players who knew that this could be our championship season. I had no interest in breaking ranks with my comrades to join a new team. I assumed any sportsman would understand this decision; especially since football was just a game. Unfortunately, my high school did not. In my freshman year, I learned two lessons about high school football: Team loyalties are not respected when they conflict with its football program; and football is not a game in high school.

A clue to the importance of football in high school was the tradition among upper classmen in lettermen sweaters of cornering freshman boys and asking if they were going out for football. The question was couched as a compliment, such as “You have great hands; are you going out for the frosh team?” Or, “With your size and strength, you’d make a great lineman; are you going out for football?” The “right” answer was “Sure, I can’t wait!” This response, with an added dose of naive enthusiasm, would get you past this roadblock. Answering “No” was a sure provocation to a hostile interrogation, laced with humiliating homophobic insults and innuendo. “What’s wrong with you, are you a pansy? Do you still play with dolls? You don’t look like a fag to me!” Coaches who taught freshmen classes also posed these question, albeit without the explicit homosexual references. I’d been forewarned of this fall ritual by one former teammate who had moved on to catholic high school. However, it didn’t help, and I mistakenly tried walking the tightrope of honesty and sport machismo. When I was “braced” by lettermen or teachers, I told them I WAS a football player, but I was passing on freshman ball to complete a third year in Pop Warner. Instead of understanding and respect for this loyalty to my team, I received a semester-length dose of negative attention for my choice. It was the worst possible fate for a freshman, in a new school among strangers, to be singled out and made the target of mockery and derision by “jock” teachers and lettermen. I was called a “Pop Warner pansy”, a “homo”, and a “traitor” in hallways and the lunch area. I had to run more laps, and do extra push-ups and sit-ups than my fellow freshmen in P.E. This treatment continued until I showed up for spring football in April.

Spring football is a gathering of novice and veteran football players so they can be inspected and judged for their ability to play junior varsity or varsity football. The coaches hoped to weed out the weak and uncover the strong. At first I thought I had something to prove: I would demonstrate my seasoned skills and fierce attitude; I would show that I was not a “faggot” and I could play this game. Since I had not gone out for the freshman team that fall, I was relegated to the beginners group until I showed my mettle. I took the setback in stride. I devoted the first days to showing the neophytes how to buckle their pads and wear their uniforms, and translating the gridiron curses that were screamed at them by volunteer upperclassmen coaches. The adult coaches talked about team spirit, courage, and commitment; but, after three years, I knew that at its essence, football was about guts, attitude, and rules. There were rules of behavior and etiquette on the field and off the field. Beginners practiced and improved their skills, but real players had to show a willingness to accept and deliver punishment and receive pain without hesitation or sign of distress. I had done this for three years, and I believed I could continue at the high school level.

On one particularly cold day of practice, the linemen paired off for tackling drills. I was facing a mountainous classmate named Alex Schumacher, a freshman beginner who was nicknamed “Big”. He was 6’- 1’’, and weighed about 210 lbs – hefty advantages to my 5-9, 160. We were 5 yards apart when he was given the ball and commanded to run forward. My job was to hit and stop him, lifting and driving him off his feet, back into the ground. The collision was sufficiently loud and thunderous to cause all eyes on the field to turn towards us; but instead of seeing me drive him up and onto his back, the coaches saw us collapse to the side. An unstoppable force had struck the unmovable object, and there was no momentum left. Grasping the instructional opportunity of this moment, an assistant coach ran up to us and yelled in my face. It was a two-man litany I was familiar with:

“Delgado, do you call that sissy effort a tackle?” He screamed.

“No sir” I yelled back, through my mouth piece.

“What do you want to do about it? He barked.

“I want to do it again, coach!” I yelled enthusiastically.

“Good, line up! Do it again! Only this time plant him into the ground.” He commanded.

Schumacher was on his feet, still holding the ball, and moving his helmeted head from side to side as we spoke. He never said a word. He had no lines in this scripted dialogue, so he just stood there, confused, waiting for directions. “What are you waiting for, Shumacher?” the coached yelled, turning toward him and taking the ball away. “You heard me, let’s do it again. Line up – only this time I want you to run over him”.

We separated again. I took my stance, bit down on my mouth piece, and leaned forward, visualized my action. Spring forward, with driving legs, and impaling my right shoulder into his thighs, while wrapping my arms around his knees, pull them back towards me. The keys to a successful tackle off the line are hitting the ball carrier low and maintaining forward momentum by driving your legs like pistons. I’d done this hundreds of times. By putting all the pieces together I would hit him, drive him back, and drop him down. Unfortunately, I knew what all the coaches knew, and the watching veterans suspected, about this pairing – it was a mismatch. Halfbacks and fullbacks did not come in Schumacher’s size, bulk or weight. My only hope was to act confidently and decisively and pray that Schumacher would realize that he needed to let himself be tackled. However, Alex was new to football. He truly believed it was his job to run over me. He knew nothing of lineman etiquette during tackling drills. The purpose of the drill was to practice form and intensity, not to score touchdowns. I was demonstrating the proper bravado and determination; he was supposed to be the tackling dummy.

“Go!” The coach screamed as he jammed the football into Schumacher’s stomach.

I charged off my mark, staying low and staring at the target of his stomach. I hit him with a resounding crunch before he had taken 2 steps, and followed the impact with a long strenuous grunt, “Aarrgghhh!”

Silence ensued, as all eyes watched the mammoth Schumacher, absorb the blow. My shoulder and helmet appeared to be pasted on his waist and thighs, and my legs kept driving, but there was no movement. I finally yanked the arms encircling his legs toward me and twisted him to the side, as though I was wrestling a giant heifer to the ground.

The coach was instantly hovering over us, yelling: “What do you call that, Delgado?”

“A candy-ass tackle, coach,” I replied immediately, looking up at him from the ground. I was hoping that by giving him an honest but humorous response, he would laugh and move on to the next pair. But he wasn’t going to let me off the hook yet.

“Damn right”, he responded. “That was the sorriest, most candy-assed tackle, I’ve ever seen! Where did you learn how to tackle like that? Oh wait, now I remember, Pop Warner football. What do you want to do about this, Delgado? Do you want to quit?”

“No sir!” I yelled back at him at the top of my lungs. “I want to go again, coach!” I lied, hoping that the force of my words would sound convincing. It must have worked, because for the first time I saw what appeared to be the beginnings of a smile on his grizzled face. I hoped he was seeing the absurdity of my situation, the size of my opponent, and realizing that I was only demonstrating false bravado.

“Good, then line up and knock him on his ass!”

That was not the response I wanted to hear. Perhaps my acting was better that I thought. Now I had no recourse but to try one more time. Since Alex was not cooperating with me, I needed a new plan. I jogged back to the line of tacklers and took my three point stance. If I couldn’t drive him back, then I had to drop him. The only way to do that was to knock his feet out from under him. This was the last-ditch, failsafe maneuver performed by undersized safeties when facing hard-charging fullbacks who had broken through the defensive lines of linemen and linebackers. It was a risky maneuver, because by launching oneself at a ball carrier’s feet, and turning themselves into a low-flying missile, with their helmet as the warhead, the tackler lost sight of his target. A quick back could simply leap over the blind, low flying obstacle and make the tackler look foolish. No self-respecting lineman would try such a ploy, leaving it for the likes of safeties, punters, and kickers. I had seen it done, but I never practiced the maneuver. I kept telling myself that Schumacher did not know enough to leap over me.

“Go” shouted the coach, pushing the ball into Schumacher’s stomach for the third time.

I flew off my mark, tunneling all my attention at the space between his ankles and knees. On my third step I launched myself, lowering my eyes to the ground, and visualizing the contact of my helmet and shoulder pads against bone and sinew. I felt a jarring collision that shivered through my neck, shoulders, back, waist, and thighs. I felt a wide blow to the stomach, followed by the collapsing avalanche of a mountain on my back. Everything went black until someone rolled me over.

“He’s not breathing, he’s not breathing!” Schumacher was yelling frantically in my face, and looking around in panic.

I was trying to inhale, but my lungs and mouth found no traction. I was grasping for air in an airless vacuum, and everyone moved and sounded as though they were under water. The wind had been knocked out of me. I’d seen it happen a few times in practices, and I’d experienced it once – I think. I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t care, because I couldn’t breathe. I tried saying “Pull up my belt; pull me up by my belt!” but no sounds emanated except more gasping. I’d seen coaches and other players treat this condition by lifting the belt of the winded player and raising his stomach. This action allowed air back into the diaphragm and lungs. However, no one was moving toward me and I was beginning to panic. Finally the head of the coach appeared in front of me, and I felt my midsection being raised up. “Whoosh”, the air seemed to rush back into me, and I started breathing again.

“Are you okay, Delgado?” The coach asked, staring into my eyes.

“Yes, sir”, I replied, marveling at how good air tasted after being blown out of your body. I sat up and felt my body expanding and contracting with air.

“Take five and get some water”, he said, patting me on my helmet.

“Do you want me to try it again, coach?” I asked, praying that he would finally call a halt to this ludicrous game we were playing.

“No”, he said, grimly, patting my helmet again. “I think you’ve done enough for now. Go get some water”.

I got up slowly and removed my helmet as I went jogging off to the water fountain. My stomach was sore, so I just rinsed my mouth and spit out the water. I was more interested in deep gulps of air than water. Two minutes later Schumacher came lumbering up to the fountain.

“I’m sorry, Tony”, he said through the face guard of his helmet.

“Shut up, you asshole” I muttered, softly, making sure no coaches heard. “Thanks for trying to kill me”, I exaggerated for good measure.

“Jeez” he whined. “I was only following directions. I didn’t mean to hurt you”.

“It’s a tackling DRILL you idiot!” I said, accentuating every word. “You’re not supposed to score touchdowns. You’re supposed to hold the ball and be tackled”.

“I’m sorry”, he repeated soulfully.

“Come on”, I said, putting my helmet back on. “Let’s get back to practice”. As we jogged along, I shook my head from side to side, in dreaded anticipation. Was I the only person who saw the absurdity of the drill and its mismatch? The tackling episode had been filled with potential for levity and humor, but the coach treated it as a tragedy of some sort. I was in the middle of a slapstick comedy sketch, but nobody was laughing. I couldn’t because my stomach was too sore, and no one else seemed to get it.

When Schumacher and I returned to our section of the practice field, the coach was directing the linemen to form a wide circle around him.

“Okay, okay, okay” he said, clapping his hands together in rhythm with his exclamations. “The drill is called ‘Bull in the Ring’. You each have a number. We start with one man in the middle, whose job it is to stay there as long as possible. The object is to knock the man out of the ring. I call a number, and the man with that number charges and drives the bull out of the ring. Get it? Who’ll go first?”

Even as I stepped forward with raised arm, shouting “Here coach!” the self-accusations reverberated in my mind: “What are you doing? Are you crazy? What are you trying to prove?” It was too late.

“Delgado, great; I knew I could count on you. Get in the middle of the ring, and be alert and ready”.

I ran to the center of the circle and took a wide, crouching stance, with arms up and out, and legs driving into the ground. It was a stupid drill whose only purpose was to demonstrate toughness and determination. Some coaches called it an open-field blocking drill, claiming it increased alertness and reaction time. I’d come to the conclusion that it was simply another game, a test of strength, fatigue, and spirit. I figured I could use my experience and balance, as well as my strength, to stay in the ring for a decent length of time.

“Five” shouted the coach, and Cavanaugh, a tall end came charging at me. He ran upright, so I slipped under his arms and slammed my shoulder into his chest and stomach, keeping my legs driving. “Eleven”, and the next player sprang at me. On and on the random countdown continued, and with each new opponent I managed to stay balanced and low, matching blow for blow, and push for push. I think I survived seven or eight attackers when my shoulders, arms, and legs began to ache and my reactions became labored. I wasn’t popping my pads into the on-rushing chests with enthusiasm, and my movements slowed. I was weakening, and it would only be a matter of time before I was pushed out; but I wasn’t ready to give up yet. When Number 3 came careening at me like a runaway locomotive, I stepped aside and shoved him in the same direction he was moving. His momentum sent him crashing to the ground, and triggered a verbal firestorm from the coach.

“What the hell are you doing, Delgado!” he screamed, running up to my position in the middle of the ring.

“I’m staying in the ring, coach” I replied, with more conviction than I felt.

“That’s not staying in the ring, Delgado – that’s chicken shit. You’re supposed to pound him out of the ring or be pounded out. You can’t be dancing around my ring. You’re not a ballerina, and I don’t want any candy-assed chickens in my ring!”

Perhaps it was the implausibility of a candy-assed hen that sent me over the edge. I again imagined I was back in that absurdist sketch on the tackling field, only this time I wasn’t accepting his humorless line of thinking.

“I thought I was on defense, sir”, I stated defiantly. “So I used my hands”.

“You what?” he exploded, his face turning into a rich tomato color. “You thought you were on defense? Are you being a smart-ass? Who told you to think? I don’t want you thinking on my field; I want you following orders and showing me some guts”.

“Sorry, coach” I dead-panned. “I thought I was on defense”. I wasn’t admitting my error, and I wasn’t giving him any new openings. I certainly wasn’t volunteering to repeat the drill. I’d already managed to knock the wind out of myself once and I had no intention of doing it again; but I never expected his response.

“You quit, and I can’t stand quitters” he shouted hysterically, grabbing hold of my face mask. “Get out of my sight, Delgado. You make me sick. Take five laps, and then pack up your Pop Warner, smart-ass attitude and hit the showers. You’re done for the day. Get out of here. I don’t want to see you”.

During those laps around the field, I subjected that coach to every hellish torture and degradation a 14 year old could imagine. I called him every curse word I knew, and muttered every obscenity I could think of with each crunching step. By the time I reached the locker room I was finally under control, and during the shower I considered quitting. With water dripping over my head and shoulders I came to the sad realization that this was not the way I learned to play the game. There was no laughter or levity during these practices; there were no encouragements or gentle prodding. I’d entered the new dimension of high school football, and I’d entered it late, with a reputation for having chosen Pop Warner football over freshman ball. These coaches were attempting to tear down the players and then build them up; and I was being too analytical, too critical, and too judgmental. I didn't belong here. I heard the clattering of cleats against cement before the rest of the players joined me in the locker room. No one directed a word to me. Although I sat in classes with many of these players, we were still virtual strangers. I had crossed a line of some kind on the practice field, and they were afraid that contact with me might contaminate them. I was alone and afraid to tell anyone what had happened.

Loneliness is a strange sensation when one is surrounded by two parents, two brothers, and two sisters, and crowded into a modified two-bedroom, one-bathroom home; but during my adolescence I felt it the most. No one seemed to know what I was experiencing in a co-institutional (girls attended the same high school, but they were educated in separate classes, by lay women or sisters) catholic high school as a freshmen. I was given no forewarning of, or frame of reference for the conflicts I was encountering. No one gave me the advice and warnings I offered my younger siblings when they entered grade school, high school, or college. That night I managed to bury and repress all thoughts of practice as I watched television. I actually welcomed the distracting aching muscles and fatigue I felt. I slept an exhausted and dreamless sleep, and awoke determined to quit. The rest of my day in classes was spent contriving the rationale I would offer to my coaches and parents for this decision. At 3:25 that afternoon, carrying my helmet, pads, and uniform over my shoulder, I walked silently to the block house that acted as our locker room. I told the head coach that I had spoken with my parents and they wanted me to devote more attention to my class work and grades. I don’t know if I was convincing, or if he had already decided that I wasn’t worth the effort, but he did not try to change my mind. He accepted my gear and wished me luck. That night I lied to my father and said that the demands of spring football were aversely affecting my class work, homework and grades. I told him that I needed to quit and concentrate on my course work. It was an argument that he could not, and did not, argue with. I sealed my fate that freshman year, and my football career came to an end.

How does it feel?

To be on your own,

With no direction home,

Like a complete unknown.

Like a rolling stone?

(Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan: 1965)

When I saw the familiar exit sign on Interstate 405, I knew a decision had to be made. “Which way do I turn at the end of the off ramp?” I thought. I was driving to the December meeting of the Middle School Principal’s Organization (MSPO) of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The meeting was to be held at Mark Twain Middle School. This was the public school which was attended by most of the kids I played baseball and football with as a child. I’ve traveled this road hundreds of times in my life: practicing freeway driving with my dad in 1964; driving home from classes at UCLA in 1967; and driving home from work on the swing shift at ADT Alarm Company, in 1971. After all those years, one would think that this was an easy question to answer, no? No; in fact it is a conundrum of Dylanesque proportions (Bob, not Thomas). This crossroad of Sawtelle Boulevard and the 405 exit always challenged me to find the best direction home. Turning left, puts me on Washington Place, which (when followed westward) takes me directly to my mother’s home. Turning right places me on a street, which (while a little out of the way) is a more historic route. While I usually took the quicker and more familiar course home, on this occasion I turned right. I decided to treat myself to a nostalgic journey down the boulevard named after the beach community where I lived from childhood through adulthood - Venice, California.

Today, Venice Boulevard is an expansive, four-lane, double highway that runs from Figueroa Street in Los Angeles to Pacific Avenue in Venice. I first traveled this road in 1959 when my father drove the entire family to see his new work place, and the house we hoped to buy in Culver City. At that time, the boulevard was a narrow, two-lane street, separated by a wide expanse of abandoned railroad track running in between. My father reanimated those tracks with stories about how he and his two younger brothers rode the trolleys of the Pacific Electric Railway to the beach. He called it the Red Car, and it was part of the legendary electric train system that operated in Southern California during the first half of the 20^th Century. The line started in South Los Angeles and ended in the city of Venice (which was later incorporated into Los Angeles), with its famous promenade, beach, pier, and huge, indoor, saltwater swimming pool. In between these terminal points, the route traveled through the communities of Culver City, Palms, and Mar Vista. Culver City was the most prominent stop.

Home of three major studios, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), Hal Roach, and Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO); Culver City was the mecca of the Hollywood film, movie, and television industry from the early 1900’s to the 70’s. While MGM, with its impressive, overhead billboard of a roaring lion, was certainly the largest studio, RKO was the most storied. The studio produced such movie classics as King Kong and Citizen Kane, and it had a series of notorious and memorable owners. Joseph Kennedy, Howard Hughes, and David O. Selznick, owned and operated this studio. In 1957, RKO was purchased by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez (stars of I Love Lucy), and renamed Desilu Studios. It was finally sold to Paramount Television Studios in 1967. Until our move to the Westside, I assumed that movies and television shows were produced only in Hollywood. I couldn’t believe that I would soon be living so close to this magical industry and the stars that worked there. As time went on, despite my pretended indifference to the celebrity star system, I never lost the habit of rubber-necking whenever I drove by the studios in Culver City. I was convinced that all the stars who worked there, also walked to work, strolled along the streets, and frequented the shops, restaurants, and churches of that city. Unfortunately, despite all my years of looking, I think I only saw the back of David McCallum’s head (He was the co-star of the popular 60’s television series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.).

My knowledge of this street really started at my father’s workplace. He was a photographer at Mauri-Bardovi Photography, a commercial studio on Venice Blvd, just south of Cattaraugus Ave (I remember the street because I mispronounced it “cataracts”, ignoring the sound of the fourth vowel in favor of an ocular disease that rolled off my tongue). He worked there for nine years, eventually becoming the manager after the death of the owner and founder. His first duties were general photography and detailing (or “opaquing”) negatives. This intricate, doctoring of negatives, allowed only the non-opaque parts of a negative to develop and print. I still remember walking through that building on my first visit. The brand new, state-of-the-art studio seemed to be an unwinding honeycomb of workstations, darkrooms, printing labs, drying rooms, and large, open spaces. These open areas were cluttered with lights, stands, partitions, cables, tripods, and cameras. To an eleven year old novice, the studio was a disorienting maze of darkness and light as I walked from room to room, and lab to lab. It was scary and wondrous at the same time.

When I accompanied him as a helper, my father would disappear into a dark room with rolls of encased camera film and, guided by eerie red illumination, reappear in minutes with dripping spirals of unwound negatives. The unspooled rolls were then hung up like long, narrow socks on clothes lines in a walk-in cabinet. Once dry, the next step of the process was the most elaborate and creative. My father took the dry negatives into a wet lab to “print” and develop the photos. In those black and white days, images were projected and “imprinted” through light onto chemically treated photographic paper. By hand, these prints were then passed along and submerged in a series of flat chemical tubs until the pictorial images materialized and were locked in place. Until my initiation into this process, I thought photography consisted of posing or staging the subjects you wished to record, and snapping the shutter. I believed that the creative use of light and shadow was at the beginning of the photographic sequence, never imagining that the true masters of this artistic medium also manipulated them at the end. My father’s real skill as a photographer was demonstrated after the rolls of negative film were dry. He would use them to produce quick “contact proofs”. He studied these temporary prints to find the best negatives and determine the timing and lighting needed to produce the right picture. It was my job (as his eldest born helper) to dry the prints. So I would carefully lay the chemically treated photos onto a wide canvas conveyor belt that moved around a huge warming drum. They emerged, crisp and glossy at the other end of the conveyor, ready to be stacked and boxed. When I wasn’t bored or sleepy, I marveled at the simplicity of a black and white palette and the fine photos my father could produce by his attention to detail.

Just down the street from my father’s studio, heading west on Venice, near National Blvd, was another famous locale. My siblings and I recognized it immediately when we first drove past. We had already been branded by its distinctive Olympic trademark label and trucks. The Helms Bakery, and its fleet of open-cabbed bakery trucks, with their distinctive nautical whistles, was the pastry pied-piper of our time. To children in the late 50’s and early 60’s, the cookies, cakes, and doughnuts of the Helmsman made him the equal to the Good Humor Ice Cream Man. Mothers also appreciated this service because the Helmsman provided convenient staples that every kitchen needed. It was a rare confluence of interest which did not survive the increasing number of family automobiles and the swelling expansion of large, neighborhood supermarkets. Helms was already reducing its fleet and collapsing routes when we moved into Venice. Soon after, the trucks stopped rolling and the bakery closed. For years the last remaining symbols of the company were the bronze statue of The Helmsman at the Wheel, which was across the street from the Helms Olympic Foundation, and the original trademark Helms Olympic chevron sign atop the old bakery on Venice Blvd. The sign and foundation are still there, but the sculpture was moved to Chace Park in the Marina del Rey. The original bakery was converted into a huge furniture warehouse and showroom, and another section was turned into a jazz club called The Jazz Bakery which still operates.

Down from Helms Bakery is the intersection of Venice and Sepulveda Blvd. Sepulveda is the longest street in the city and county of Los Angeles. It runs an impressive 42.8 miles from Rinaldi Ave in the northern end of the San Fernando Valley to the city limits of Hermosa Beach. For the purposes of this story, it marked the boundary between Culver City and Palms, and led to the house we never bought. I don’t remember much of the house, other than it being yellow and immediately opposite the freeway. I do recall that it was located near Tito’s Tacos, a small, walk-up Mexican restaurant, on the corner of Washington Place and Sepulveda. Whenever I passed this taco stand, I saw long, serpentine lines of men and women waiting to purchase their simple fare of tacos, tostadas, burritos, tortilla chips and salsa. The only comparable sight was Tommy’s Original World Famous Hamburger stand, on Beverly Blvd in Los Angeles. The long lines at Tito’s Tacos continue to this day, and despite this visual testimony to its popularity, I never ate there. I probably would have, if we had moved nearby. However, when the bank determined that our house’s location was too close to an expanding freeway, the sale fell through. Soon after, my parents found a new house in Venice, and we bought it.

I always considered the 405 Interstate the border line of “The Westside”. Every thing west of the San Diego Freeway was the official “Westside”, and all the communities to the East were not (despite their proximity to the freeway). I’m sure citizen of Culver City, Palms, Cheviot Hills, Westwood, Fox Hills, and Inglewood would challenge this assertion, but they’d be wrong. The east-west divide occurs at the 405. Everything changes when you cross the freeway, traveling toward the beach – the weather, the residences, the people, and the traffic. Just as you can feel and see the thermometer change when you drive through the Sepulveda Pass from the San Fernando Valley into West Los Angeles at Mulholland Drive; you experience the same sensation when crossing the 405. The cold, wet, marine layer overcast, which is a common feature of beach life, rarely extends past the San Diego Freeway, and people dress, act, and look different on the eastside. I’ve also noticed that first-time visitors to these beaches exclaimed that they could smell the ocean after they crossed the 405.

As I traveled westward on Venice Boulevard, every street I passed, from Sawtelle Blvd to Walgrove Ave, was a virtual portal to memories of the past. Each road led to stories, people, and experiences that affected me and shaped my life. McLaughlin Ave was the route I took to UCLA when I commuted by motor scooter as an undergrad, and on bicycle as a graduate student. I would drive the family car when it was available, but with 3 and then 4 siblings attending the same college at different hours of the day, and with different courses, it was never convenient. We depended on personal means of transportation. The Santa Monica “Big Blue Bus” was the best option, but it took a long and circuitous course to the university. I preferred a solitary method because I could set my own schedules and explore new neighborhoods and routes whenever the notion struck me. When I took my scooter or bike, I always chose the flattest route to Westwood. I avoided the “Sawtelle Hill” by riding around it on Palms Blvd, then connecting with Sawtelle, and taking that street all the way to Ohio Ave in Brentwood. Ohio Ave was the southern border of the Federal property that contained the Veterans Administration complex, the Medical Center, the Federal Building, and the National Cemetery. Ohio took me to Veterans Ave in Westwood; and that street led me to Westwood Village and UCLA. Most days, I enjoyed the long commute in the fresh clean air, because it cleared my mind and gave me time to think about things. I also became familiar with the local sights, neighborhoods, and communities of the Westside: the Nisei (second generation Japanese-American) community along Sawtelle in Palms, the used book stores on Santa Monica Blvd, and the variety of theatres, shops, and restaurants in the Village. Centinela Avenue in Mar Vista was another such portal.

Whenever I cross Centinela on Venice Blvd, I always look toward the southeast corner of the intersection to see the remnants of Bruno’s Ristorante, the Italian restaurant that stood there from 1969 to 2000. The original building still stands, along with its HUGE billboard sign; but it now houses a Christian enterprise called The Vineyard Christian Fellowship. Bruno’s was the first “real” restaurant we dined at as a family of eight (6 children and 2 adults). Prior to that occasion, we only visited “family diners” such as Norm’s or Denney’s. These were convenient places, but I couldn’t shake the idea that they weren’t very classy, and one shouldn’t take a serious girl friend to dinner there. Bruno’s, on the other hand, presented a readable and moderately priced menu, with the upscale décor of a welcoming Venetian palazzo. I always felt comfortable and secure there, and took girls I liked and wanted to impress on dates. It was one of the first restaurants I took my wife Kathy when we began dating. Centinela also served as our backdoor route to Santa Monica. If we wanted to avoid the traffic and congestion of Lincoln Blvd when driving to that city, Centinela was the better path to take. The most graphic memory I have of that route is when I drove my father to the Santa Monica Airport to recover the studio car. This was the day his boss died in a helicopter accident. He had been scouting aerial sites for a photo shoot when the engine failed. Miraculously, the pilot avoided hitting any pedestrians, cars, or spectators, when the helicopter lost power and crashed. The pilot and my Dad’s friend and boss died on a street in Palms. Once my father answered my questions about the crash, he remained silent for the remainder of the trip to the airport.

Mar Vista was an apartment haven for young people and college students in the 1960’s and 70’s. It’s affordable, single and double room residences attracted large numbers of UCLA, Mount Saint Mary’s, and Santa Monica College students, who couldn’t afford the higher rents of Santa Monica, Brentwood, and Westwood. Despite my geographical proximity to Mar Vista, I actually spent more time with friends in the South Bay area, and the cities of Manhattan, Hermosa, and Redondo Beach. The South Bay tended to attract students from Loyola, Marymount University, and El Camino College. My high school friends (see Tres Amigos) lived in Hermosa Beach. A friend’s apartment offered the perfect counter-balance to college, home, and life (especially if one still lived at home with his family, like I did). Once or twice a week, I would drop by Jim, Greg, and Wayne’s, or John’s apartment to talk, play cards, listen to music, and share the problems of school and home. The addition of beer, wine, and food would escalate these innocuous visits to a higher level. Given the right circumstances and motivations, these spontaneous visits could generate viral invitations to more friends and soon an all-night party ensued. Those youthful days seemed endless. As time passed, and prices rose, however, many of these apartments on the Westside and South Bay were eventually converted into condominiums and sold off to older, permanent residents. If I took Wade Street at Venice and traveled south for a mile or so, I would arrive at Mitchell Ave. My brother Eddie had his first apartment on that street, and when he bought a nearby condo, my youngest brother Alex joined him as a roommate for awhile. My sister Gracie even rented an apartment nearby, before she moved to San Francisco. A little further south from Wade on Venice Blvd, I arrived at the jewel of the boulevard, Venice High School.

The permanent image I have of Venice High School is of manor-like grounds, with lush, green grass, beautiful gardens, and towering, gleaming white, Art Deco buildings. The focal point of this picture was a dramatically posed sculpture of a woman, pointing skyward. The scantily clad statue rose above two crouching figures and was positioned in the middle of a rose garden, between a double walkway, that traveled from the sidewalk to the Main Building. It was a captivating sight, which raised my opinion of the design and planning that went into the school construction of that age. I later learned that the sculpture was of Myrna Loy, a famous motion picture star of the 30’s and 40’s, who attended Venice High in the 1920’s. The school was first established in 1911. In those days it was called Venice Union Polytechnic High School. The original buildings were severely damaged in the Long Beach earthquake of 1933. The Art Deco style was used in the reconstructed school that we see today.

I never attended Venice High School, but I became intimately familiar with its grounds, athletic fields, and football stadium. For three seasons, from 1960 to 1962, I played Pop Warner Football at Venice High School. We practiced three to five days a week on the small eastside playing field, and we played on Saturdays in the football stadium. It was the site of my training and initiation into a ritual sport that I grew to love, play, and leave behind. When I went out for football, I knew absolutely nothing about it. I was aware that my father played football in junior college, because I’d found an old photograph of him in pads and uniform. We also watched some of the early NFL games on television; but that was all. I’d learned the rudiments of baseball by playing on the streets and playgrounds of Los Angeles. By the time I joined a Little League baseball team in Venice, I was 12 years old, with unrefined skills, and many bad fielding habits. However, when I signed up for Pop Warner football, I committed to learning a sport from the ground up, under the tutelage of knowledgeable and dedicated teachers and coaches. The Venice Athletic Association, the sponsoring organization, was a mature version of Little League. Players were made responsible for equipment, playbooks, and practices, and they addressed all adults as “Sir” and coaches as “Mr.” or “Coach” (we had been on a first name basis in Little League). My football coaches were the first teachers to illustrate the principle that football skills such as blocking, tackling, catching, passing, and scrimmaging had to be learned correctly. Skills could only be mastered by meticulous discipline, attention to detail, and practice; practice, practice, practice. Games were the easy part; they were the reward after 5 grueling days of exercise, drills, and scrimmages. I discovered that playing the game well was not about individual talent; it was about practice and working as a team. The benefit of playing on the same team, with the same players, and consistent coaching for 3 years was physical, intellectual, and technical improvement that I could witness and experience. The first time I was sent into a game for a series of plays was a blur of lights, bodies, huddles, and collisions. Players spoke in garbled words that I could not comprehend, and everything moved too fast, except me. I was stuck in quicksand with a filmy bag over my head. After my first series of downs I returned to the safety and calmness of the bench, and stayed there when the offensive unit returned to the field. I did not realize that I was supposed to stay in the game until THE COACH took me out. Three years later, as co-captain of the defensive unit, each down was a slow, elongated interval between actions which allowed me time to analyze and reflect. Each play flowed as if it was in slow motion, giving me time to think, react, and recover.

The corner of Venice Blvd and Walgrove Avenue was my final milestone. It marked the northwest boundary of Venice High School, and signaled a change of direction from my westerly migration. I turned right and headed north on Walgrove. This would be my first visit to Mark Twain Junior High in over 45 years. I’d passed it countless times in my youth. This was a familiar path because I had taken it many times when a football practice or scrimmage was held at Penmar Playground, in North Venice. On those occasions, the players who weren’t driven by their parents, would meet at the high school and then ride their bikes up Walgrove Ave to Lake St. Along the way, we’d pass Mark Twain, with its distinctive mural entrance. It was the school all my Pop Warner teammates attended before they matriculated to their respective high schools as 10^th graders. Playing football for three years with public school students had been an educational experience for me. These boys took courses and talked about subjects that didn’t exist in my school. They dressed for P.E., showered in locker rooms, and took shop classes. They also used more colorful and expressive words when cursing and swearing. I don’t recall any racial or pejorative name calling and put-downs, but I do remember anger, with some pushing and shoving. We were experiencing many new feelings and emotions in those days. Playing on the same team for three years had taught us to deal with anger, successes, and failure. The contact nature of football, with its strict rules, transcending folklore, and rigid penalties, allowed a fair and physical means of resolving disputes, and expressing joy and despair. We would practice during the week, play a game on Saturday, and then, win or lose, get on with the rest of our lives at school, home, or play. Football was a sport that was sensible, balanced, and enjoyable, and the coaches and boosters of the Pop Warner program emphasized and practiced those values.

I drove past the front of Mark Twain Middle School on Walgrove and turned right on Victoria Ave. The street took me to the P.E. field on the north side of campus, and the parking that had been reserved for member of the visiting organization. I was curious to see what the school actually looked like from the inside. As I walked through the hallways and along the outdoor arcades, I though of my old teammates and the game we played. I was struck by a thought about endings. My playing days ended with Pop Warner football on the fields of Venice High, while most of my teammates continued playing at their respective schools. Our lives divided, like intersecting highways, and I never saw them again.

Rapeseed (Brassica napus), also known as rape,

oilseed rape, rapa, rapeseed, and canola, is a bright

yellow flowering member of the family Brassicaceae,

the mustard or cabbage family.

(Wikipedia)

That’s how I started my original blog - with a clever definition of the “rape blossom” or rapeseed. It was meant to create an image in your mind of a yellow flower, in a panoramic field of solid yellow. I would also insert a photo of such a meadow, to give you a pictorial reference as well. Then I was going to quickly begin describing a presentation I made at school to the parents of fieldtrip group who were going to Washington D.C. You would read the dialogue of what I said about the trip, and my assurances of the safety of their children. All of this was meant to set up the real story I wanted to tell – a story about a rape; a rape that took place at my school over two months ago.

Things happen at schools, and they occur at three levels of perception and reality. There is the world of the students (and even that world is divided into grade levels and classes), the adult world of teachers and staff, and another adult world of parents and family. They are usually peaceful and harmonic worlds, with a natural gravitational pull centered on the education of children that allows these worlds to move far and near, with occasional intersections. However, an act of sexual violence or physical force has a way of stabbing straight through these planes of existence – wounding and smashing them together.

When I write personal narratives for this blog – I go where my mind leads, and write what occurs to me. It’s like a prose journey that I start at one place, never knowing where it will end; it’s a trip without a destination, until I arrive. For the first time in writing this blog, I realized that this story about a rape wouldn’t fit; the narrative journey would go too far. There were too many complex characters to introduce, too many plot twists to guide, and too many shocks and surprises to spring. They wouldn’t fit into one blog. My blogs are too long as it is! This one would have gone on, and on, and on. So I stopped. I haven’t stopped the story, I can’t stop that story. That boat left the harbor and won’t stop until it reaches its destination. I’m compelled to write it; I’ve been haunted by that story for months. I just can’t write it here.

I’ve come to a demarcation line in my blog: do I write stories or personal essays? There is a big difference between a personal narrative about an event, and a story about an incident that deeply affected the lives and emotions of everyone involved. I started an essay about a rape at school that was leading me toward an extensive short story which needs to be fictionalized. There was no doubt in my mind; the piece was not a topic for a subjective personal essay. This story was simply too real, and thereby too complex and ambiguous to be told as FACT. This story had to be told in a manner that would preserve anonymity while pluming the depth of the people involved and their actions. It would be the only way to find some meaning in what occurred. So, my resolution was to write this essay about my epiphany on the differences between story and essay, and continue working on the story. Will I ever post it? I don’t know. I’ll have to see what it looks like when it’s done.

Most editors are failed writers -
but so are most writers.
~T.S. Eliot

It is impossible to discourage the real writers -
they don't give a damn what you say,
they're going to write.
~Sinclair Lewis

There's nothing to writing.
All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

A word is not the same with one writer as with another.
One tears it from his guts.
The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.
~Charles Peguy

I felt like a wet-behind-the-ears freshman standing in the cellar hallway of the Engineering Building of California State University, Northridge (CSUN), waiting for the professor to arrive, on the first day of an upper division class. I tried acting cool and aloof to the tensions that were welling up inside of me. After 18 years free of the temptation, I even longed for a cigarette as a prop to feign indifference. Other hesitant students arrived, gazing at the room number, the posted sign, and then silently took their places along the wall. We were a motley display of wallflowers; a jumbled frieze of young, old, and middle aged strangers waiting along the wall in the Fall of 2003. Except for an occasional question, “Is this Extension Course X605”, no one talked. We just caught brief glimpses of each other as we pretended not to look. There were about 25 of us, standing about and praying for the teacher to arrive quickly, so we could get started. I’d experienced these insecure feeling before, many, many years ago in my first days at UCLA, UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) and CSUN; but this was different. This time, my discomfort was not due to lack of age or experience with universities, or college classes. I was 55 years old, a middle school principal, with a BA in History, MA’s in Latin American Studies and School Administration, and 35 years experience as a teacher and administrator. My insecurity, and, I believe, that of my fellow companions, was coming from a lurking fear of pending trials. We had registered to take a Writing Workshop from a published author. We didn’t know the rules, procedures, or protocols for this type of class. How did these workshops operate? How much were we expected to write? Who judged the quality of our work? Were we good enough? Our common desire was obvious; we wanted to improve our writing. The unspoken question was how would our work be evaluated, or criticized? Until that day, all my writings had been personal or professional. I made private entries in my daily journal and I could produce clear and concise business memos. My work hadn’t been judged since I submitted my Master’s thesis in 1975. I didn’t know how my literary efforts were going to be treated, and the uncertainty was killing me. I recalled those forgotten fears of criticism, when I recently read the personal essays of a very interesting blogger I discovered online.

Since registering on LiveJournal three years ago, my blogs have become progressively longer (my brother Tito would say “long-winded”), more varied, and less and less like the short, diary-like musings of the genre. Although I enjoy the timely reports of certain family members and friends, most online blogs don’t interest me. I enjoy the rare exception that tells a lengthy story, describes characters, uses words in novel ways, and contains subtle themes. I find those blogs engaging, and worthy of reflection. This is the type of writing I am trying to post in my online Dedalus Log, and I was convinced others wrote them as well. Kathy calls this narrative style “personal essays”, or “personal narratives”. I was intrigued by her terms, and I wondered if they really represented a recognized genre I could access and read. So last week I decided to investigate them online. After entering the words personal essay in a search engine, I found a quick hit on Google titled The Art of the Personal Essay , by Dervala. The posting quickly answered my questions about blogs and genres by stating “If you’re getting tired of blogs – and Christ knows, there’s fluff in these navels – I recommend Phillip Lopate’s anthology, The Art of the Personal Essay”. It was a great sentence, with great imagery; it was gripping, clever and straight-forward. I read all of the blog, promised myself to buy the recommended book, and linked to the Dervala website to find more essays and information. Eureka, I had done it; found a blog I could relish and savor! I was a happy man for about three hours; engrossed in a story world of chickens, weddings, and Ireland. Then slowly, over the course of the afternoon, the first small fissures of critical judgment began appearing in the fault lines of my enthusiasm. Beginning as a questioning tremor, my thoughts gradually gained seismic force as I found myself judging the style and content of this new blogger: How good was she? What is with her fascination with chickens? Little things, petty things, were coming to mind; spurred by a creeping mist of envy. That’s when the memories of the writing course I took in 2003 came to my rescue.

Dick Wimmer began the class the way he starts his novel, Irish Wine: the Trilogy(Penguin Books. 2001), the required “text” for the course. He described writing as a thrilling car chase of ceaseless pursuits, driven by a passionate necessity to create something that never existed before. He believed that the desire to write grows with the writing, and that with practice, it becomes as natural as breathing. He spray painted symphonic allusions and impressionist metaphors throughout his provocative course introduction. His demands were simple, and rules short. In the 7 weeks remaining, we were to produce a short story (or a goodly portion of one) by writing a single-page, and reading it in class each week. As little as that may seem now, the pressure of producing, and reading aloud, one page of written material a week resulted in restless nights for me, and over half of our classmates dropping out. The remaining 10 students stuck it out to the end. Even though a mandated syllabus was distributed on the first day, listing the weekly topics, lectures, and assignments, Wimmer never followed it in the succeeding meetings. I must admit that watching him “work”, from my perspective as a professional educator and school administrator, set off a cacophony of pinball machine klacks, dings, chimes, and alarms in my mind. As a teacher, he never really “taught” in a didactic manner, the way one remembers their Western Civ class, with a traditional stand-up lecturer. In fact, Dick didn’t WORK at all; he seemed to assume the role of head writer in a T.V. series writing team of neophytes. He would walk in, dressed in white Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and wearing sock less loafers. He lounged back in his chair, listened to us read our weekly creations, and then ask questions. He never gave overt suggestions, or recommendations, and he never criticized or critiqued our work. About the only DIRECTED action he took, was asking an Irish émigré student to read a selection of HIS stories, so we could hear the effect of his brogue on the words and descriptions. It took me a long time to fully appreciate Dick’s approach to writing and what he was offering us in his class. In essence, we practiced his two major tenets: 1) Writers write, they don’t go to classes to learn how to do it; and 2) Writers don’t criticize other writers, they learn from them.

By the end of the course, I produced a naively ambitious, short story, and learned that the point of reading and listening to the works of others is to learn from them, and grow as a writer; not criticize, teardown, and diminish their efforts. I especially liked the work of one student in the class, and I assume he found something intriguing in my work as well. He struck up a conversation about my story one night after class, and a casual friendship developed. Steve is a bear of a man, with the soul of a poet, whose stories got my full attention the first time I heard and read them. His rhythmically flowing narratives and colorful similes were vivid and fresh. He could string words and phrases together in such a natural way that I was compelled to see, smell, and hear the sights, sounds, and actions he was describing. When he read aloud, his soft, smoky country accent also reminded me of other American writers who evoked uniquely southern images: warm Georgian nights on backyard verandas; forests of gossamer-like Spanish moss swaying from ancient elms in Savannah orchards, and reverential drinking reunions of old high school buddies, hoisting shots of 40 year old sipping Bourbon. But appreciation wasn’t the first emotion I felt at reading and hearing Steve’s unique style of writing and expression – my first response was envy. I wished I could write like that, and sound like that. I wanted to combine words, and use them the way he did. However, this wasn’t a corrosive jealousy that consumed and poisoned me; it was a prod to do better.

Thinking of my old writing course and the people I met there, gave me a much better perspective on my feelings about Dervala’s writing. I’d broken Dick Wimmer’s second tenet because I’d forgotten the purpose of professional jealousy. I believe this type of envy is the correct emotion to feel as a writer when confronted with better (or different) writing. It’s the magnetic attraction drawing us to the true North of real talent. If I’m envious, the writer must be very good, and there is something in their style and technique that I want to emulate and absorb into my own. Dervala’s writing is very good. She has that free flowing narrative style that is comfortable to read and picturesque in its clarity. I plan on reading many more of her blogs (personal essays), and hope to learn from them. Her techniques are easier to spot than the elaborate efforts of more polished essayists – like Joan Didion. Didion is great! I’m envious of her too.

Every now and then, an embarrassing question bubbles up from my unconscious, and it occurs to me: Is there anyone out there reading my blog?

This query rises up at unguarded moments of my day, like, when I’m jogging, driving, or cycling. These are activities that allow my mind to wander, or jump from thought to thought, without any filtering devices at work. The question always catches me by surprise, and shames me, because I know I shouldn’t care. I should be writing for myself; to practice this skill that I have ignored so long. I need to write for the sake of writing, and not worry about being read. But I, obviously, do care. My unconscious harbors this lurking curiosity about my readership, and their opinion of my work.

This is not an issue with my private journal. The three pages I fill each morning are my private thoughts, and they get me started and ready for the day. In those uncensored pages, I never think about who might be reading my journal. On the other hand, my blog is available to a huge audience, the World Wide Web. When I decided to begin an online journal, I gave up control of who might be viewing my blog. Anyone in the world can log on, or no one. It all depends on who is interested in what I have to say.

My blog seems to be evolving into anecdotal compositions about people, events, thoughts, and activities that make up my life. These essays do not seem to, readily, elicit commentary or response. I’ve had a total of four comments to four separate articles: Greg, my brother-in-law, Greg, my high school friend, Beth, my sister-in-law, and another blogger who linked to my piece on cataract surgery. These comments have been short, concise, and appreciated.

I know that people are aware of my blog, because I invited a specific number of family and friends to view and read it. Some replied to the email invitation, but most did not. Occasionally, when speaking with people whom I invited, the topic of my blog will come up in conversation. So far, most people respond by saying, “Oh yeah, I saw it, but I haven’t had a chance to read it”. I’m not really bothered by the indifferent response, since I remember doing the same thing when I received invitations to a blog, or website. The only blog I regularly read is my son’s.

To assuage my guilt over this issue, I’m hoping that my curiosity represents a natural progression in blogging. Since beginning my blog on December 20, 2005, I have gone through four, of what I believe are five, identifiable stages in the course of a blog experience: 1) Decision, 2) Fascination, 3) Consistency, 4) Curiosity, and 5) Satisfaction.

Deciding to register and begin a blog was a crucial moment for me. It took years of journaling and reading my son’s blog to make me comfortable with the idea. My son’s modeling was critical because his blog gave me a visualization of what this new medium was, and how it functioned. The decision to act came from the imperative to write SOMETHING. I had dabbled in fiction, but found the genre difficult and time consuming. It took incredible discipline to outline, develop, and compose a short story. Fictional tales did not come flowing out of me, like the true stories I described in my journal. It was on a particularly boring day at work, while the rest of the traditional school world was on Christmas vacation in 2005, that I was seized by a compulsion to write. I did not have a journal or notebook available, and I did not want to THINK about how to find one. I just took action, by going online and registering with LiveJournal. The blog eventually became my vehicle for compulsive, or impulsive, writing.

My next stage was a period of fascination with my blog. I played around with it, for weeks and weeks. I experimented with the design, format, and content. I would spend hours and hours searching, altering, and uploading “userpics”, photographs, and pictures to decorate my blog. I also tried out various types of writing styles and forms, hoping to find the ones that felt suitable to my needs and wants.

The point at which I stopped being a dilettante diarist and pursued writing that was more serious and consistent came when I became a paid subscriber to LiveJournal. At that time, I was “posting” on a weekly basis, and I liked what I was writing. The articles dealt with topics I found interesting or important to me. I also noticed that the quality of the stories, and my ease at producing them, was improving steadily with practice. It was during this confident phase that I sent out the formal email invitations to my blog.

I think that I am currently in my fourth stage of blogging, and I’m hoping that this curiosity about who is reading my blog will pass as the others have. In fact, my main motive in devoting an entire essay on this subject is a type of exorcism. I want to drive out this inquisitiveness and move on to the next level.

I am predicting that the final stage of blogging will be satisfaction with the progress of my work. I see this level as an awareness of the writing process that I’m practicing, and a determination to push forward. I also see this as the transitional axis where the previous 4 stages renew themselves and spiral forward, with more energy. I’ll know more about this phase when I get there.

So, I return to my original question: Is there anyone out there reading my blog? Of course, the answer is, Yes! I’m not sure who, or how often, but there are people who log in to check on the progress of my stories and writing. In fact, this weekend my mother told me that Gracie, my youngest sister, had introduced her to my blog. Therefore, I know that I now have my most dedicated reader (other than Kathy, who proofreads most of my “posts”). I also know from experience that she will be my most ardent and enthusiastic booster and proponent. My mother may not comment on what I write, but she will read every word, many times. Mom’s are great that way.

The popularity of Web Logs (blogs), Web Diaries, or Web Journals has really surprised me. Technorati, an internet search engine for searching blogs, has tracked nearly 60 million blogs, as of November 2006. 60 million blogs! Did 60 million people write diaries and journals before the advent of the internet? “Ordinary” dairies and journals always seemed such archaic, personal, and difficult objects to maintain. The fact that so many people, especially young people, write public journals and diaries on the World Wide Web astounds me. Why do they do it? Why would people open themselves up to such public scrutiny? What is the purpose or function of Blogs? How do they differ from diaries and journals?

I once thought that only young girls, princesses, and British politicians or generals kept diaries; people like Anne Frank, Princess Anne, Winston Churchill, and the Duke of Wellington. Diaries seemed to be “girly” endeavors, or one practiced by eccentric foreigners, not manly Americans. Real men performed actions, women and Brits wrote about their hopes, dreams, and events they wished to memorialize. Although I must admit, I secretly envied people who kept diaries. I assumed that they had important things to say, report, or remember, while I did not.

I tried keeping a journal in 1966, the summer after my graduation from high school, and a diary in 1974, when I was finishing my post-graduate studies at UCLA. I failed at both attempts. I did not last more than two weeks at either endeavor. I would forget, have nothing to write for that day, or just lose interest. Making daily entries in a diary or journal seemed to require more discipline and devotion than I was willing to expend. I also believed that something important had to happen in order to record it, and most of my days were pretty ordinary and mundane. When I experienced truly exciting and remarkable events, I was usually too busy or too tired to report them. It was not until after I married Kathy, that I began to change my attitude toward journals.

It was in the days that we were settling into our first apartment, that I discovered Kathy had written many journals. Throughout high school and college, she had produced a variety of different journals. She had journals with her reflections, prayers, drawings, favorite sayings, or moving quotes. Kathy seemed to use journals as tools to explore herself, the world, and the people around her, through writing and art. She always seemed to have one in progress. I really admired her ability to do this, without pressure, constraints, or demands. She did not make journaling seem hard. Although she did not induce me to adopt the practice at that time, Kathy certainly planted the seeds that began to grow over time. Later in our marriage, Kathy again opened my eyes to the possibilities that journaling offered when I saw how she used it with her students, and our own two children, in class.

Kathy resumed teaching in 1989, after a 10-year child-care hiatus. She also decided to teach in the same school our children attended. Eventually, Kathy would teach them, at different times, in her eighth grade class. Therefore, during that period, I was more attentive to, and knowledgeable about, the activities they, and other students, performed in school, than I would normally be. One of the things Kathy did to promote thinking, reflection, and creativity in her students was to have them write journals. She would have them write on a regular basis to a variety of wide-ranging prompts, personal, religious, academic, or reflective. She would sometimes bring them home and share them with me. Although we were forbidden to read the journals of our own children, the writings of their classmates were always illuminating and insightful. I was amazed at how readily 13-year-old children were willing to express their feelings, desires, and emotions on paper. The fact that their teacher read their journals, and that some topics required her intervention, did not inhibit them from being honest and candid about any subject or prompt. Sometimes this journaling process allowed students to reveal and confess self-destructive, shameful, or wounding experiences of the past and present. They were calls for help, which Kathy was obligated to report, and help rescue. However, despite my appreciation of the writing process and the therapeutic and creative benefits journals could offer, I was still not interested in beginning the practice until 1996.

It was during that particularly stressful and combative year at work, that I read two books that changed my perspective about my profession, journaling, and me, Management of the Absurd, by Richard Farson, and The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. Management of the Absurd helped me to accept that my job as a principal was impossible. It was impossible to perform to all the demands and expectations heaped upon me by society, laws, politics, parents, superintendents, teachers, and myself. Trying to meet the expectations of all of these people was crazy, and trying to master, the 161 hours a week demands of the job was absurd. Although Management of the Absurd pointed out the paradoxes in leadership, and the illusions of mastery and control, The Artist’s Way provided a method for personal growth and creative expression within this absurd world called education. I learned to journal while reading The Artist’s Way, and I continue the practice to this day.

The Artist’s Way is a manual that espouses the belief that all human beings are creative, and they have a physical and spiritual need to express it. When this imperative is blocked, depression and unhappiness descend upon us like a black cloud of despair. The main tool in combating this artistic block, and stimulating creative recovery, is the Morning Pages. Morning Pages is the simple practice of filling three pages of writing, each morning, on a daily basis. “There is no right or wrong way to do morning pages. These daily meanderings are not meant to be art. Or even writing. Pages are simply the act of moving the hand across the page and writing down whatever comes to mind”. This is a stream of consciousness practice, which necessitates writing. Morning Pages was my introduction to journaling. All that I had seen and learned from Kathy came-together and made sense with this practice.

I have been faithful to the practice I began in 1996, although I have deviated, sometimes. On occasion, I have halted for periods, or changed the setting to Afternoon Pages, Evening Pages, and even, Traveling Pages, but I have never stopped. Journaling has become as normal to me as breathing, and as necessary. Cameron described Morning Pages as a meditative process, and I have found it to be true in my journaling. For me, journaling, like meditation (or jogging, for that matter), is a focusing practice which allows me to differentiate between thoughts of actions and emotions, without clinging to the feelings or attitudes they engender. It also makes me aware of how my impressions and feelings are rooted in the past or the future, but rarely in the present, in the now. It helps me connect with myself, and my spiritual dimension. At this point in my life, I find that I journal because I must, and do so when I can.

I always assumed that my children also kept some type of journals. They had learned the skill from Kathy and other teachers in grade school, they practiced in high school, and they had seen us modeling it at home, through the years they were in college. I was surprised to learn that they did not keep traditional journals, but Tony did maintain a blog. Kathy, of course, was the first to discover this fact and then questioned them about blogging. They were both knowledgeable and very matter of fact about this new medium. While Teresa did not, Tony did maintain a public, internet journal, through a private internet server, on the World Wide Web. This was his means of reflecting on his life, actions, and intentions, and sharing it with friends, and the world. He had the means of “locking”, or restricting, access to his more private or confidential entries, but for the most part, all of his writings were for public viewing. I, of course, did not get it. I had spent years just getting to the point where I felt comfortable writing about me to myself, and now my son was sharing his life with the world. I could not understand it, but I accepted it as another manifestation of our generational and digital divide. At the same time, this new type of journal, the blog, intrigued me.

Tony was a consistent blogger. He had been posting his writings since college. Once he gave Kathy and me permission to read them, I was fascinated. They gave me a new and different insight into my son. I could read what he was doing, thinking, feeling, and worrying about. Tony was also, remarkably honest. We could track his moods through his postings. For a boy who never responded to my emails when he was a freshman and sophomore in college, Tony was now willing to let everyone in on his writings. As time went on, I became more and more curious about this new type of journal. I compared how and what I wrote in my Pages, with what I read in Tony’s blog. They were different. I wrote my journal to me, and for me, and for no one else. Tony wrote his blog to others, about himself, his thoughts, and ideas. After reading Tony’s blog for about three years, I decided to try blogging for myself.

While taking a writing workshop in 2003, I found that my journal served as a great incubator for ideas and themes that I developed into stories. These stories were meant for others to read. It seemed a natural progression, and I did not think much of it, at the time. However, once the workshop ended, my story writing stopped. The only writing I was doing was in my journal. Nothing else was forthcoming, but a nagging desire to write to a broader audience than myself. So, on one particularly boring day in 2006, I logged onto LiveJournal, and opened an account. I had entered the blogosphere, and I have not left.

What have I learned in my journey from diaries to blogs? Human beings are creative, and they have an intrinsic need to express themselves and communicate to others. Blogs satisfy both of these imperatives. They can be written as private diaries and journals, or for a public, or controlled, audience. Blogs can be stories, essays, reflections, photos, videos, audios, paintings, or drawings. They also offer the unique opportunity for response, or commentary, from their readers or viewers. This is dialogue, something diaries and journals rarely offer. Blogs strike me as online derivatives to the journals students wrote in school. Young people were eager and able to write, draw, or paste on (almost) any subject, with the knowledge that it would be shared with an outside reader or viewer. The fact that the reader was a teacher did not inhibit their expression. Blogs give people the freedom to express, communicate, and share without constraint. It is an ever-evolving form of creative and artistic expression and communication.

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The Dedalus Log

Flights of Fancy

Entries tagged with writing

Jokerman

Putting It Together

All Things Pass Away

Turning into Story

Wink of a Young Girl’s Eye

Forever, Not For Better

Rolling Home

About A Rape

A Personal Narrative

Who Is Reading My Blog?

Diaries to Blogs