Love | The Gad About Town

A Streetlight

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Mark Aldrich

At once sarcastic and tender, W.H. Auden’s “The More Loving One” offers a night sky empty of stars:

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time. —”The More Loving One,” W.H. Auden, 1957

I might very well like a starless sky and call it sublime or subtle in its black-on-black nuance, the poet states, and I do not mourn the sight of a supernova, which is after all the explosive death of a star, and I may not notice the absence of one should it simply blink out, but in all matters, “If equal affection cannot be,/Let the more loving one be me.” In all matters attracting my human attention, be it the night sky or my partner’s dimples, let the more loving one be me.

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I did not know how much I love color as a perceptual reality until my spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) became symptomatic and walking became something that I had to concentrate on while doing.

At night, I started to experience something called “freezing of gait,” which I would also sometimes experience upon coming to a door. I understand it now, but for a couple of years, I experienced terror, simply because I did not understand what was happening. For most of us, walking is partly an improvisation in which the brain perceives differences in the environment—the room on the other side of the doorway, a nearby divot in the field, a slope—and reacts quickly, without thought. The walker changes course, or almost stumbles and pops back up, or stumbles and gets back up. The feet adjust.

The walker with a neuromuscular condition such as an ataxia or a spinal cord injury or SMA has to “think” his or her walking; it is a process of planning a step and executing it and then repeating it, starting with the thought. Each stride has at least two parts to it, and one of them is conscious thought. “Leg: Move.” All of the information the world presents to a “normal” walker with good eyesight is processed silently and rapidly, and the walker walks. When I was first affected by SMA, all of the same information threw me into a freezing of gait response: every doorway to the outdoors presented me with too much information; the world of the outdoors at night was worse with its absence of information. It was a living nightmare and at least now I usually have such nightmares only when asleep.

The night, though. Every so often I still have the freezing moments: at night, with its gift of the absence of color, that huge absence of information. Streetlights cast shadows that appear as chasms, and then my oh-so-ginger step across reveals a half-inch drop. An actual dangerous break in a sidewalk, but a well-illuminated one, may look flat and safe and result in a fall.

It is the nighttime’s lack of color, color which the brain uses to notice spots at which I need to make changes about my next step, that freeze me. I thought I was alone in this, but I am not; “freezing of gait” is not my expression and is a common phrase—when I first read it, I almost cried because I recognized the description and I finally knew I was not alone.

The idea in Auden’s poem probably meant little to me when I first read it years ago. A starless sky? Okay, I can imagine that. But other than the word “Love” in the title, how is this a love poem? “Let me be the more loved,” could have been my personal motto. Give me more presents than I give you and let’s call today good. Love something that can not love me back? I never owned a pet rock. “Let the more loving one be me”? Pshaw.

Blue does not know it is “blue,” and green does not know how many examples and variations it offers. They need perceivers, and that simple fact of perception is Auden’s “love”; for me, I love the varieties of shades and nuances of color, and so do my so-far unbroken legs and arms. I love my girlfriend’s dimples, too.

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The WordPress Daily Prompt for October 26 asks, “Imagine we lived in a world that’s all of a sudden devoid of color, but where you’re given the option to have just one object keep its original hue. Which object (and which color) would that be?”

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(Im)mortality

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Mark Aldrich

“The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men. As far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.” —G.K. Chesterton, “The Flag of the World.”

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The suicide is committing, from his or her terrible and terrifying and terrified point of view, genocide. Humanity-cide.

Martin Amis, in his memoir, “Experience,” paraphrases that quote and then contrasts it with a more nuanced and empathetic passage from Nabokov’s “The Eye”:

“

I saw now […] how conventional were my former ideas on presuicidal preoccupations; a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one’s watch, since, together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny.

I am grateful that I am many years removed from any moments of despair in this life, but I remember that I was not going to leave a note because a note was an act of a living man and I was already not among the living. An impending suicide attempt tints every mundane act with an unholy glow, an outsider’s perspective that one briefly, ruefully, wishes one had had “in life.” The simplest acts also acquire sarcastic, rueful, air quotes: “This is the ‘last time’ I will have to fight with this stupid broken shoelace.” Any step in the dance of the living—eating a sandwich, say, or washing a fork—feels like a betrayal to the mission, which is a stifled soul-sickness and grants everything an omnipresent green calm.

It can last a split-second or it can last years, and a shorter period of time does not make it easier, and is just as exhausting perhaps; I pray that I am the only person in the world who has felt it, but I know that I am not. I would not be writing anything today if I was not many years removed from it. A writer, as Nabokov reminds us in “The Eye,” is hyper-alive. Maybe make that simply, alive.

The twinned quotations in “Experience” about the saddest reality (Amis has many twins in his work) come in a chapter about expanding love and family: a woman with whom he had an affair in the 1970s had a daughter but never told Amis and subsequently committed suicide when the daughter was two. He knew about his lover’s death but not the girl and finally met her when she was 18.

Their mutual discovery is that love is not a zero-sum game, in which a loss is always balanced by a gain, that love instead can only increase, well, that discovery is a hard-won insight, the sort that only comes from a deep, shared loss. (If a terrible loss leads to a worthwhile insight, doesn’t that imply all of life really is a sort of zero-sum game?—Pretend Editor.) Their families increased in size and complexity but not complications, and the missing woman is a part of it all.

Love can only increase. Unlike hate, which can be remedied and is somehow itself always a zero-sum proposition, once love is felt, it leaves a permanent mark on the landscape. Maybe it is the inner landscape.

All funerals are terrible, by definition, but some more so than others. A quarter-century ago, a co-worker of mine was shot and killed along with her mother by the father of her child, in front of the child. (It was an unobserved-by-CPS weekend custody handover. I hope people lost jobs over it.) A group of us went to the services and were greeted at the door by an older man who looked like he was allergic to suits; it looked like he had been consumed by this one all the way up to his neck and the suit was taking a rest before finishing him off. Two, twinned, coffins lay up front, closed from view, angled to fit in the small chapel.

I shook the man’s hand and he took my shoulder. His face was wet and unattended to by a handkerchief. Not knowing how to act or what to say to anyone, I solicitously asked who he was, assuming and hoping he was as distant as distant could be from the tragedy to ease my own sense of discomfort. “I am the father and the husband,” he replied with a “the” for each lost one and the beautiful expression of one who knew, not felt, knew that his dearest loves now loved him all the more completely from a different plane of existence.

I do not share that confidence, but I see its beauty.

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The above image from a Pinterest collection by Vanessa Longoria.

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The WordPress Daily Prompt for October 20 asks, “At what age did you realize you were not immortal? How did you react to that discovery?”

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Matt Coleman, Some Memories

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Mark Aldrich

I wish you could have known Matt Coleman. Many did, but not enough. There was not enough time. “Matt’s heart was so big, it surrounded him,” one colleague wrote.

I am grateful that I think this about so many people that I have met, those clauses like “You ought to know,” or “You should have met,” but frustrated that I have not said it out loud often enough.

A person’s end should not be what the world knows of them, and three years ago today, August 11, 2011, my friend Matt Coleman was murdered. If you type “Matt Coleman Mendocino,” or variations that include the names of the small towns in that beautiful county in California, you will see some of the eye-catching news headlines from the time. This is because the murder was a national news story for a month, not because of my friend’s prominence, but because his dead-eyed killer shot and killed one other man, and the manhunt that followed in the redwood forest stretched on for 36 days, ending with the shooting death of the murderer. Three families lost loved ones that terrible month: the family and friends of Matt, the family and friends of Jere Melo, and the family of the murderer. The killer suffered from untreated schizophrenia, as it turned out, but this gun-filled story took one more gun to conclude it.

At least one book has been published about the sad tale, told from the point of view of law enforcement. In it, Sheriff Tom Allman of Mendocino County recounts Matt’s memorial service, and it sounds like the memorial was a fitting tribute to the Coleman I knew: “Boats of flowers were floated down Big River and many positive things were said about the deceased. It struck me as very odd that nobody was angry. … I was so struck by the community’s love for Matt Coleman. He had no enemies. As I left, somebody asked me if I thought the killer was at the funeral. ‘I doubt it,’ was my reply.” (From “Out There In The Woods.”) I am certain that the sheriff learned that day something that I believe: That Matt Coleman’s last conscious thought was an offering of love and empathy.

There was sadness at the memorial, I am sure. Despair or anger, no. Matt was a generous spirit and the most generous gift he offered was that all who met him became more generous, too. I believe I have met that quality only once and I realize now how lucky I am for that one moment in time.

Matt was a land steward, a passionate environmentalist who worked for the last six years of his life as coordinator of volunteers for the Mendocino Land Trust, which meant that he knew the forest, knew the ocean, and knew the land between. There are many stories about his 24-hour-a-day dedication to the land and waters, about him stopping whatever he was doing when he would spot an invasive plant species and remove it.

Invasive species or not, Matt was always at his best as a student, learning what brought the species of plant or fish into the part of the world that he was a part of, understanding the natural history, teaching others about humbly understanding. Look at him in this video, shot by Aron Campisano a few years ago as part of a film he is making about invasive species:

Matt loved to teach, he loved to coach, he loved to do; he loved being.

Before Mendocino, there was New Paltz. In my 1990s in New Paltz, New York, Matt Coleman and others (John, Sean, Mat, others like Gerry and Dan) were the big brothers I never had and taught me a lot about being a writer, an actor, and about being a man.

Coleman, mid-grin. This is the look I saw when he threw me over his shoulder.

One day, a few of us were walking as a group up Main Street in New Paltz, and Matt, a bear of a man, slowed his stride—he always walked very quickly and purposefully—and I slowed with him, probably to continue belaboring whatever point I was belaboring. He grabbed me and tossed me over his shoulder like a duffel bag, a bag of me, and took off running. To our eternal comedy credit, we did not break off whatever conversation we were engaged in. The others followed, laughing. I was the one out of breath when he let me down at the top of the hill that is Main Street in New Paltz.

Matt had an extensive collection of books but not in his possession. Upon finishing a book, he gave it away or left it somewhere. More correctly, Matt had an extensive collection of books in his memory banks and he could grab a quote at will. His reading was extensive, legendary among friends, and he never showed it off. He was a journalist and loved great writers like John McPhee, Edward Abbey. If he was a fan of someone, his enthusiasm was total, unembarrassed, and loud. I am certain Elvis Costello heard Matt from inside the Beacon Theater one night while we were waiting to be let in.

He had one of the greatest screams I have ever heard.

Coleman, mid-roar.

While preparing this post, I returned to Gifford Pinchot’s “Eleven Maxims to Guide Foresters.” Pinchot was the first head of the U.S. Forest Service and a two-time governor of Pennsylvania, and his mansion, Grey Towers in Milford, Pennsylvania, is now a historic site. Matt and I visited it once because I lived near it at the time and yet, strange to Matt, had not been to it. I enjoyed the house and its history, and Matt patrolled the grounds; Grey Towers is like a zoo for plant species and Matt impressed the rangers with his practical knowledge. (This is why I thought of Pinchot in connection with Matt.)

Pinchot’s Eleven Maxims are:

1. A public official is there to serve the public and not to run them.

2. Public support of acts affecting public rights is absolutely required.

3. It is more trouble to consult the public than to ignore them, but that is what you are hired for.

4. Find out in advance what the public will stand for. If it is right and they won’t stand for it, postpone action and educate them.

5. Use the press first, last, and all the time if you want to reach the public. Get rid of the attitude of personal arrogance or pride of attainment or superior knowledge.

6. Don’t try any sly or foxy politics, because a forester is not a politician.

7. Learn tact simply by being absolutely honest and sincere, and by learning to recognize the point of view of the other man and meet him with arguments he will understand.

8. Don’t be afraid to give credit to someone else when it belongs to you; not to do so is the sure mask of a weak man. But to do so is the hardest lesson to learn.

9. Encourage others to do things; you may accomplish many things through others that you can’t get done on your single initiative.

10. Don’t be a knocker; use persuasion rather than force, when possible. Plenty of knockers are to be found; your job is to promote unity.

11. Don’t make enemies unnecessarily and for trivial reasons. If you are any good, you will make plenty of them on matters of straight honesty and public policy, and you need all the support you can get.

Matt is inscribed in many of these lines. “Don’t be afraid to give credit … use persuasion rather than force … .” Matt probably quoted these to me at the time, but I did not know. Later that day, we drove north of the Catskill Mountains and a bald eagle swooped at my car. “Dude! Did you see what that was?! How great was that!” It remains my one bald eagle sighting to this day. His voice is pinned to the memory. And many others.

He was “Clawman Treefeller” in our group of friends; he was Coleman; he was a verb (any missing lighter had been “Coleman’ed”); he was Matt.

Matt’s generous spirit, immense playfulness, and epic inquisitiveness brought him from Brooklyn to the woods of Northern California. His humble nature led him not to chase fame or glory but to a life restoring the lands near Mendocino, pathway by pathway. It is that beautiful brief life and that ever-giving, often hilarious spirit that some of us on two coasts celebrate today, August 11, simply because our path crossed his.

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The Community Foundation of Mendocino County established an endowment fund in 2013, the Matthew Coleman Fund for Environmental Education and Conservation. An “endowment fund” is one in which the funds that are donated are not only applied to the cause but are also invested to earn interest and keep the fund alive. Here is a brief video: