May Be Poison

So, I don’t usually write this kind of commentary on my blog, but I am feeling tightly wound tonight after attending my son’s unexpected (well, to me anyway) orchestra recital. Really, it was a lovely concert, and I only have good things to say about how the kids are progressing, but some evenings just need further reflection. Let’s start back at 3:30 this afternoon, when X walks up to me with a permission slip in his hand and says, “I have a concert tonight.”

Oh, we laugh about it at the time (har, har), but in reality I had already determined that I would spend the evening catching up on chores and doing laundry (did I mention that my laundry pile seems to multiply exponentially each day). So, after swatting him with a folder and gathering my things to walk out the door, I start rearranging tasks in my mind that I can put aside for later. The phone rings as I am walking out of the classroom.

“Do you have any work for *Bob? I’ve got him in detention for two and a half hours and he has NOTHING to do!”

I’m thinking, why am I the one who has to find work for this kid? Of course he has work, he has a 43% in my class, but I don’t have his make-up work!

I don’t say that; instead I say, “Well, I’m walking out the door, but I’ll grab some worksheets that he is probably missing and he can work on those.”

Off we go! I throw the worksheets to Bob, who has been waiting by the door downstairs, and X and I dash for the car. Drive, drive, drive - we are home. X hops out of the car to check the mail and I park in the carport. As he walks up the driveway, I can see that he has one of those small white postcards from the bank in his hand; the kind that, upon pulling the perforated edges apart, reveals an overdraft. What the duck! I rip open the postcard thinking that I couldn’t possibly have overspent when I just deposited a money order from you-know-who in Cali not five days ago! Sure enough, a $70.00 charge for two items. Oh, the bank was kind enough to cover the check and ATM withdrawal that came in ON THE SAME DAY that my deposit was registered, but in their infinite fiscal wisdom they saw fit to register the withdrawals BEFORE the money order was registered. It’s a money order. Money orders can be cashed like…well…money. If I deposit a money order it should register immediately, like…MONEY. I look at the statement online. Yep, there’s my money order deposit, then the check and ATM withdrawal, then the $70.00 the bank took out to shaft me. Crap!

We go inside, and X starts on his homework as I call the president of the bank to complain. She’s looking into it. Um, yeah.

“Let’s go get dinner,” I say after X has worked on his Algebra and Latin for an hour.

Now, you may not think that going out to dinner is the most financially responsible decision after finding out you have just been charged $70.00 at the bank, but hell if I am in a mood to mess up my already messy kitchen further; and, after all, we do have a concert to attend tonight. After scrambling for the proper attire, we grab the double bass, which rides in both the front and back seats of our car, and head into town for dinner.

Yum, dinner, fine and dandy…moving on.

We arrive at SHS at 6:00 P.M. and X takes off with the bass that is, incidentally, taller than he is at this point in his development. I am left to park and twiddle my thumbs for what I am led to believe is one hour before the concert begins. There are not many people in the auditorium when I arrive, but it begins to fill up after I find a seat in the sweet spot. I cross my legs, look around, text Kat up in D.C. for a bit, and settle in to read a bit of Anna Karenina. Reading, reading…”My son is up there!”…shake it off…reading… “You know he’s been doing this since fifth grade”…Russian name, Russian name, rea…”Oh, yeah, that’s great. My son…blah, blah, blah.” Reading? “Blah, blah, blah, HI SON!” READING! I want to cry.

And then the 6th graders come onstage to tune…for 25 minutes. Twenty five minutes of tuning. TWENTY FIVE MINUTES OF TUNING! I hear scales; I hear squeaks; I hear giggles; I hear scratching bows; I hear stomping feet, clattering chairs, and stands being shifted about. One boy is merrily twirling his cello at the front of the stage; another is sticking the end of his bow in the ear of the girl sitting next to him. Squawk, squawk, squawk, squawk, squawk, squawk, squawk, squawk, squawk…that is a scale. Can you tell? No? I can’t either.

OK, I’m not going to rag on the 6th graders anymore, because once they actually start to play they sound very decent for their level of training; so, I’ll shift my ire to the family sitting behind me. They come in quietly enough, all ten of them; but then the babies get restless and start yammering and jawing in thick twangy accents. Mawmaw and Pawpaw start yakking loudly to one another about the youngun’s gettin’ restless; they compete with the 6th graders onstage for decibels as they argue over whether they should take the kids out because THEY are making too much noise, or whether they will miss too much if they leave, or whether the kids should be allowed to sit near each other since they’ll probably get in a fight. They do this through the sixth grade concert and continue into the seventh grade concert.

Seriously. I am a patient person. Those of you who know me know that I am a patient person. But tonight I wanted to turn around and scream, “YES! For god’s sake take the blabbering babies out of the concert. And YES! It means you will miss some of it. DO YOU REALIZE THAT YOUR CONVERSATION IS LOUDER THAN THE KIDS’ CHATTERING AND THE CONCERT ONSTAGE?”

You know I don’t do this though. Some of you would, but I don’t. I get up and go to the bathroom. Ah, quiet, solitude; all I need is today's Post. I return before X goes onstage and sit across the auditorium, on the quiet side of things. X and his group play and I am proud of them. Three years of hard work as a group, and they are sounding like peas to soup.

I am at home now, relaxing. I’ve checked Facebook and cracked open one of my last bottles of Magic Hat. The heater is running next to me. Tig is chasing hand shadows on the floor. X comes in to tell me that my beer is poison. I debate it; tell him to find the statement on the bottle that says it’s poison. Right there, where it says, "May cause health problems." Pish-posh, so it "may" be poison. I'll take my chances tonight.

Some evenings just need a bit of reflection.

In a home

By A.E. Bayne


There is a Chippendale chair
and a cat
with wily whiskers wavering.

There is an afghan
and a book about the vastness of the sea.

There is rapid rain on the roof, tapping a tinny tempo,
and empty stew pots,
and an empty icebox.

Once there were heavy footsteps climbing the stairs;
now, silence.

In all of these familiar spaces there is absence
that only makes the heart weep and wander,
and days when I sit solemnly
trailing the bending arcs of trees,
lavish limbs leading,
folding and folding.

There is laundry to be sorted and selected,
and shoes rejected by the door where you left them last.

And there is time,
immeasurable time,
interjected.

I am not that poet

By A.E. Bayne

I could die here tonight,
overlooking the brackish back lot behind Riverby Books,
listening to Dylan get stoned on the turntable downstairs,
his vocals popping off the broken boards beneath my boots.
I am a cliché with my tablet full of lines and rhymes,
and yes, I could die here tonight.

I should be the poet to match this scene:
self-important in my cable knit with leather patches;
reclining reticently in a wing-backed chair
with worn padding, brush-stroked
in your grandmother’s favorite shade of mauve;
Eyes distant, ponderous,
and the arm of my glasses crooked casually into the corner
of my pensive pursed lips.

I am not that poet,
but I could die here tonight.

I once knew a guy...

By A.E. Bayne

Certain people impact our lives without even meaning to do so. They are not people with whom we share childhood memories, become close friends, nor good neighbors; rather, they are those who drop into our lives, seemingly from the ether, and blow our minds, cascading us forward toward a new way of thinking or understanding. They have come into my life, these unlikely guides. There was the rebellious nun, Sr. Helen, who saved my soul after a serious bout of clinical depression during my freshman year in high school. In Blacksburg, it was Tim, a graduating college senior, so terrified of what lay ahead of him that he teetered in the moment by talking with me for four hours about Buddhism on a knoll overlooking College Avenue. Later, Rebecca, the chain smoking psychic, taught me about grieving one evening over beading and beer. Then, there was this man.

I once knew a guy named Jimmy Kola, a man with considerable charisma seasoned with a hint of insanity. Jimmy was a shaman of sorts, playing surf music for the local college radio station into the wee hours of the morning, and eeking out a living by trading his jewelry and doing odd jobs around town. He was a person whom I understood immediately would be an adventure in the knowing.

To the casual observer, Jimmy looked like a resplendently bejeweled and wildly hirsute counterculture hippy: the Green Man incarnate. A highly decorated soldier of the Wastelands, Jimmy wove bracelets up his arms and hung heavy contraptions of copper and clay from his neck. Multicolored tribal beads and copper twining linked the piercings that perforated his earlobes to his prominently bushy beard. On any given day, one might watch him pedal his battered and buckling bicycle barefoot through the center of town. I never saw him with shoes on, even when he came into the co-op for food. Jimmy’s clothes were always a mish-mash of textures and styles: one day a faded flannel shirt and dirt smudged chinos; another, a dashiki and shredded denim shorts. Whatever the fashion, he was instantly recognizable, even as he remained on society’s fringe.

Jimmy ran with the Kola family, jewelry makers by trade, a nomadic group. Legend had it that the family had been living out of authentic teepees in the mountains of West Virginia, but Jimmy ended up in Kent after hooking up with a cat named Jexo who ran a local art gallery, drum circle and children’s theater. Sometimes Jexo would take off for Maine or Canada to pick blueberries with the migrant workers, and Jimmy would join him for the extra cash and commradare. Or maybe it was the other way around, being that Jimmy was the nomad of the two. Jimmy’s family travelled through Kent from time to time, but most often he maintained an active social life with people from the co-op and shops in town.



I first met Jimmy while working behind the counter at
Kent Natural Food Cooperative. Already a familiar member of the co-op’s inner circle, he padded in on dusty feet one day to collect profits for his jewelry that was on display. The jewelry in the case had ensnared me on my first visit to the co-op, intricate pieces wrought with a heavy hand and an eye for detail. Copper coils deftly encircled rough agate and crystal stones, snaking back and looping through subtly mottled earth colored beads. The pieces were not gaudy, yet they had presence. Perhaps it was the natural elements; or perhaps it was the hand that crafted them, for Jimmy oozed a kind of sensual natural grace and wisdom. In any case, I was inspired by the jewelry, wanted to purchase a piece for myself, and was awed by the man who had dreamed and designed the artistic loops and twirls that gleamed under the glass countertop.

We didn’t talk about anything significant during our first encounter, though I did let him know that I admired his artwork and would like to eventually buy a piece for myself. The hair on Jimmy’s face shifted about and I knew that he was smiling appreciatively. He took the money from his recent sale out of the cash register and bought a few sparse groceries, some hummus and fruit, a little bread. I watched as he stopped in the back room to chat with Brian and Amie, both of whom knew him well.

The next time Jimmy came in, he struck up a conversation with me about organic fruit versus farm grown fruit. He told me about how satisfying it was to work with the migrant farmers harvesting berries, though the work was difficult and the hours long. I noticed how toned and sinewy his leg and arm muscles were, likely due to the physical labor of pedaling around town and working with the copper in the jewelry, in addition to laboring during the harvesting season. Eventually, and after numerous visits, Jimmy’s magnetism became such a potent force for me, that one day when he came into the co-op I nearly fell on the floor in a swoon. To me, he was simply dynamic.

Jimmy was the last person I saw when I left Kent. My soon to be ex-husband had travelled back to town after an extended trip to his future home in Arizona to help me pack up the moving van that would take my son and me to Virginia. While he and Xaviar were inside packing and cleaning, Jimmy rode by the house and circled the street in front of the driveway two times. I waved to him. He raised his hand lazily and continued down the street toward the center of town.

Now, I realize that none of this seems especially riveting or life altering, but knowing Jimmy for this brief time left me with something that I carry to this day: I am a wild woman at heart. For many years, my untamed self fought with tradition, enraging me and causing me deep and silent distress. Insecurities and self-doubt ripped through me on a daily basis. And while most of the people that I met while I lived in Kent helped me realize my true self through their examples of alternative and cooperative living, it was Jimmy Kola, in all his weird organic beauty, who became locked in my mind as the ultimate example of how to be true to one’s self. I keep two bracelets and a necklace that Jimmy made because they remind me of whom I really am, even as I traipse around in this other world.

RIP Earl Bayne - March 15, 2000

By A.E. Bayne

Your decisive marks grip me for a glimpse of you.
Finding those things you left at inconsequential moments,
thoughts in mid-sentence.
What were you thinking when you picked up the pen to write that note?
What were you going to buy with that last dollar you carried;
A lifeline to the material, the physical?
What were you dreaming when you were dying?
Sometimes I see you in my words.

The Truth about Snow

By A.E. Bayne

Cooling our fiery tempers,
the snow slows nerves to a dull throb,
forcing us home in retreat from its chill and icy sting
through the slowed cyclical traffic crawling the corridor.
We bundle together; and then
we rush outside,
rubbing our faces in the drifting banks by the juniper bushes,
pinkening our cheeks, jaundiced by fluorescent brightness.
Awed in each other’s eyes and tearing from the white wind, we exclaim, “My God!” tasting the frosty feast.
Tacitly we act together, touching with no burden today,
no choice to be made.
The snow has made it for us:
to stay and act in company,
quietly conspiring.
Asking why we don't do this more often,
we make promises we can’t possibly keep.

Learning to Breathe

By A.E. Bayne

Sometimes I am just not ready for a thing to happen. I have been in such a hurry for life to move me forward, out, away, beyond, that I have forced a thing, a next step, when it is not its time. And so, I have been unhappy with my lot, and have sought to change those things which I cannot. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the way I’ve lived my life, not horribly, but rushing, always rushing away from the present without first learning the lessons to take me forward.

So, I ask myself what is terrifying about today? I woke at five, sweating and restless, not quite ready for this warmer weather under my flannel sheets. I spent the early morning enjoying toast with strawberry jam and jasmine green tea, and then later making boiled eggs and the same toast for Xaviar. Six forty rolled around the clock face and Xaviar headed out to catch the bus over to the high school for his morning Latin class. I took a quick shower, but lingered in my room while picking out an outfit and brushing on my make-up. I left the house around seven fifteen with plans in my mind to teach three separate lessons to my eighth grade students about Anne Frank and WWII, the erosion of Jewish rights in Nazi Germany, and a model of intolerance. Roughly twelve minutes later I was traversing my hallway at school, dropping in on three colleagues to chat before reaching my own classroom door.

Homeroom and the first three periods went smoothly; I even had time to grade papers while the kids watched part of an Anne Frank documentary. So far, so good!

I brought an enormous Granny Smith apple for lunch that threatened to break my apple slicer with its girth. Winning that battle, I lightly salted half of the sliced apple and tucked the other half away for later. My colleagues and I chatted about various students, all the “he said, she said” drama of the eighth grade microcosm, and tuned out the din of the noisy lunch room behind us. We rolled our eyes as children squealed when helicopters flew close to the top of our building. Upon leaving the lunch room, I checked my mailbox and found a flyer for a traveling theater group that reenacts Edgar Allan Poe’s life and poems. This is the year of his 200th birthday, which is impossible; yet it is comforting to know that people still care enough to keep his memory alive.

Back in the classroom, I finished teaching my final two classes for the day and took a breather for a quick five minutes to check my email, both work and personal (oh, I know, so bad). It was time for hall duty, so I grabbed a bundle of papers to grade and headed downstairs to the desk in front of the library. Not quite, “Stop! Who goes there?” I chatted with Rocky, our technology specialist, whose name always makes me think of the Beatles’ song, and made plans with him to reserve an I-Book cart so that my students can make poetry podcasts in April. I graded enough papers to fell Skyline Drive; most were fairly well done, and some will go back for corrections. Such is the way of the hormonally challenged eighth grader.

I stopped in the library after duty to tell Cindy, our librarian, about the Edgar Allan Poe theater group, and she reminded me that the author, Roland Smith, will be visiting our school in two weeks. He has written many adolescent novels, including most recently Elephant Run and Peak. She mentioned that we are also going to take him to dinner on the Monday evening prior to his visit to the school, so even better. She also reminded me of the upcoming book talks from Rhonda, a librarian from the public library in town. She always has the kids on the edges of their seats. The future looks bright!

I returned to my classroom with time to grab the flyer for the theater production and start downstairs to see Jane, our bookkeeper, for a chat about English department funds; but my fellow eighth grade language arts teacher, Linda, had questions about an upcoming test that we are trying to publish to the LAN server so the kids can take it on the computers. We figured it out and I still had time to run down to see Jane to talk cash. “Looks good,” she said, I would just need to get the principal’s John Hancock. He’ll be back tomorrow.

I jogged back up the stairs because it was time for the kids to arrive for afternoon homeroom and bus call. Turned the projector on…quieted them down…”Yes, you may go see your math teacher”…”No, I do not have any candy for you”…”Off the desks!”…”Second load can go to their lockers now”…”OFF the desks!” I talked to a student about her grade in class; I talked to another about a teacher who was “unfair”; I talked to a boy about how he hadn’t seen his father since 2006. I chatted with the last two students about what fun live theater is to watch, and then waved to them as they left the room for the day. I smiled, a lot. It may be the last one they see for the rest of the day.

I breathed.

Xaviar arrived. He read; I entered grades for an hour. We left the school and headed toward my mom’s house to help her unhook all of her Verizon Fios boxes so that she can send them back to the company. She asked for help because technology has always made her nervous and she thinks she will break the boxes. She offered me jewelry that would go in her yard sale next weekend. I took a few pieces.

We called for pizza from Primavera – two for one deal. We headed home for pizza and salad on the porch, only to arrive to find Dusty sitting in the middle of a bag of trash that I left in the laundry room that morning. “Oh, Dusty!” My fault for not removing it. She trotted outside, ignoring me. I picked up the mess, then we ate, after which Xaviar headed inside to watch an episode of Star Trek: Next Generation. I checked Facebook (mindsuck that it is) and cleaned up the dinner dishes (what few there were), then put a load of Xaviar’s clothes into the washer for tomorrow. Then I grabbed my notebook and headed outside to think about what it is from which I am running.

I’ve been asking myself this question a lot lately, to the point where I don’t even like to make plans too far in advance so that I can live more wholly (holy?) in the moment. As I read back over my day that I have recounted here, I realize just how beautiful each moment of it was. My son, the kids at school with their reactions and sorted tales of woe, my supportive colleagues, my mom, my messy dog - hell, even waking up was a moment to relish, rather than one from which I should run (back under the covers?).

Now, I’m kicking back on the porch, watching the hairs prickle and stand on my arms as the sun warms them and the wind through the screens chills them. I’m listening to the dry leaves shush each other like a frenzied gaggle of librarians, and I notice there is an enormous branch hanging from the maple tree over my bedroom and resting on my roof. My body jerks to get up, to fix it now, to rush forward to the next thing, but I remain seated and let the rolling wind calm me once more.

Aztec Brick in the Living Room