Catching a Trout

There’s something primal about catching a trout on a dry fly (especially one tied yourself): The stalking of the rising trout, the matching (or at least resembling) whatever’s being risen to, the soft cast just upstream of the rise’s dimple, the attacking gulp of the deceived fish, the play up and down the stream of the catcher and the caught, the shared adrenalin in the taught line singing above the water, the apparent final surrender before one last flop at the net to break off, a thankful near-distant release, a dance of shared understanding for both hunter and hunted. Another day left to do it all again.

Game 6

I missed last night what might have been the best World Series game in a generation. Or at least I missed the last few innings, which made it perhaps the best World Series game in a generation. Up until that point, the 6^th game between the St. Louis Cardinals (my team, if only by proximity) and the Texas Rangers (not my team, if only because they were once owned by George W. Bush) was, unlike the previous five games, sloppy, and suspenseful only in the sense of wondering who would fuck up last and lose it. (St. Louis had three errors that should have been five, and Texas had two that should have been three.) But in the top of the 7^th, Texas took a 7-4 lead on back-to-back home runs, and it was nearing my old-man bedtime of 10:00 p.m., so I decided St. Louis didn’t have a chance and went to bed. But the Cardinal Allen Craig hit a homerun in the bottom of the 8^th, and then in the bottom of the 9th, with two outs and two strikes, third baseman David Freese (who had had a routine pop fly bounce of his glove, then his head in an early inning) hit a triple, scoring two runs to tie the game, taking it into extra innings. In the top of the 10^th, the Rangers went ahead again with a two-run homer form Josh Hamilton. If I would have still been up, I would have gone to bed then. But in the bottom of the 10^th, the Cardinals’ Lance Berkman, again with two strikes and two outs, drove a single to score two runs and tie the game again. The Rangers didn’t score in the top of the 11^th. But Freese came up again and, with a full count, hit a line-drive homerun into straight-away center to win the game. Pandemonium greeted him as he touched home plate, the crowd was hysterical, his teammates ripped his jersey off him.

But I was asleep through all of this. I recount it only from what I’ve read in the papers and seen on TV today. This is another price of being old. But I doubt I was the only one. The game didn’t end until 11:40 CDT (12:40 EDT). It will be interesting to see how this game goes down in World Series history. If the Cardinals lose game 7 tonight, then it will probably fade into an afterthought. But if they win, it will no doubt go down as one of the best games in World Series history. And being over 60, retired, and having no shame, I’ll claim in my limited future to have stayed up for every thrilling moment of it.

Peter Eltringham

I was on the island of Caye Caulker, a last-weekend getaway after a six-week teaching gig at Sacred Heart College in San Ignacio, Belize, walking down the sandy Middle Street (there are only three streets on Caye Caulker – Front, Middle, and Back – all sandy), when out of nowhere I heard my name called out. I had only been on the island once, for three days, over a month before, and there was no one who lived there who knew me, or at least knew my name. I had assumed I was alone. To say the least, it was a Twilight Zone sort of shock. But when I turned to the voice, on a balcony of a rooming house, I saw Peter, a British writer for Lonely Planet, who I had met a couple of weeks before when I was on another weekend getaway in Placencia. We had met on the balcony of the restaurant of the resort where I was staying. I had just finished lunch after my arrival, and he stopped me when he saw I was wearing a t-shirt from the Happy Lobster restaurant, which I had bought several weeks earlier on my first stay on Caye Caulker. Peter was a big fan of both Caye Caulker and the Happy Lobster and invited me to join him and his wife for a drink as they finished their lunch. (They weren’t staying at the resort, but had come by for lunch because they liked the restaurant.) I met them the next day in town at the Lobster Festival (the reason we were all there) and spent some time with them walking around the food booths, but had forgotten them within days of my teaching. So it was a surprise when he called out my name from nowhere on Caye Caulker. We walked up Front Street, bought wonderful tamales from the bicycle basket of a vender, and met for dinner that night at the Happy Lobster. Peter had written several Central American travel books for Lonely Planet, but was partial to Belize. He was planning on moving to San Ignacio, he said, because it was his favorite place in C.A. Of course I never heard from him again. It was just a brief encounter, one of many over years of travel. But one that’s always stayed with me because of the shock of hearing my name shouted out on a sandy street on an island where I knew no one knew me. As I began writing this (with only the purpose of relating an interesting remembered travel experience), I googled Peter to find out his full name (Peter Eltringham), only to find that he died a couple of years ago of throat cancer. I’d only been with him, briefly, twice, and we’d never had any contact after that. But it was odd to read of his death. Not like a friend had died. At best we were passing travellers in two accidental encounters. But he was also a memory for me. And apparently memories also die.

Homecoming Parade

We went to the University of Iowa Homecoming Parade last night for the first time in I don’t know how many years. For my first three years in Iowa City I lived on the corner of Iowa Avenue and Dubuque, and all three years watched the parade from a second floor fire escape (perfect vantage point). For several years after my wife and I married we’d take our kids down to the parade for them to collect bags of candy and beads around their necks (until they entered high school and had better things to do on Friday night). That was 20 years ago. Back then, the parade was fairly simple – a couple of police cars and fire engines at the start, the local high school bands, various politicians (especially during election years), the UI Alumni Band (a crowd favorite), some fraternities and sororities, an assortment of local cultural and social groups (the Shriners were always a hit), and the Hawkeye Marching Band taking up a triumphant rear. The marching band still is a presence at the end of the parade, the alumni band is entertaining (gray hair and paunches), and there are still the police cars and fire trucks, and a few politicians (though not many). But the bulk (at least half, if not more) of the parade consists now of local businesses, passing in trucks and vans, logos on the sides, t-shirts on the employees trotting along – essentially using the parade as little more than free advertising. There was only one high school band. There were no fraternities or sororities. There were no Shriners. The homecoming parade is becoming – has become – another of the all too many venues for crass commercialism (that might be redundant). It’s been a trend I’ve railed against for years. But I fear it’s a losing, if not lost, battle. There’s not a jot of our lives anymore that’s not stained by the blight of marketing. At least there’s still the marching band to bring up the rear of the parade, loudly playing the fight song, free of advertising logos and jingles. At least this year.

Gifts For Those Who Have Everything -- But Want More

The obscenely wealthy must surely be feeling oppressed in their penthouses and mansions and yachts as protests against their extravagances and unpunished corruption and immorality have spread across the country and the world. But just in time to give these suffering souls some hope, the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog (officially The Christmas Book) has been released. And talk about hope. Wouldn’t it perk you up to put on your wish list a Johnnie Walker Private Scotch Tasting Fantasy Gift, where “a top-notch event planner” would show up at your house and conduct a private tasting for you and 20 of your friends of the whole of the JW line – Red, Black, Green, Gold, and Blue. And each of your guests “will leave with a custom-engraved bottle of Johnnie’s premium-blend Blue Label for their personal enjoyment.” And all for just $5,000. Or maybe you’d prefer a custom-made table-tennis table, designed by artist Tom Burr – it doubles as a contemporary work of art – “perfectly sculpted from a distinctive choice in material – black rubber – turns ordinary sporting equipment into the sublime.” And only $45,000. But maybe you’d like to “escape to a serene place all your own”? Then you should ask to find an 18-foot-diameter yurt under your tree, complete with antique pillows, linen wall coverings, and a custom, handcrafted crystal chandelier, all “installed on your estate in the blink of an eye” for only $75,000. And maybe you should augment the yurt on your estate with a pair of custom dancing fountains, “two . . . amazing underwater robotic nozzles dancing as a couple, just for you.” Only $1,000,0000. (And if you tack on another $500,000, you can have a “guest choreographer” from the Fountains at Bellagio in Las Vegas come out and get your fountains really “Dancing In the Streets.” ) And of course you’ll want to have some getaway transportation, so why not ask for a Ferrari FF, with 651-horsepower V12 engine, a top speed of over 200 mph (useful in that bypass around those economic inequality protests), and an interior featuring “soft-touch semi-aniline leather with matching custom luggage set.” And only $395,000 (excluding “taxes, title, licensing, and registration fees plus delivery and handling charges”).

So who says life isn’t good? It sure is for at least a few of us.

What Is Art?

Probably 20 years ago, driving home from work, listening as I recall to an NPR broadcast from the Washington Press Club, perhaps in a speech of a director or administrator of some arts organization (I wish I could find credit), I heard a definition of art that I have carried with me ever since and passed along as often as I could to my students:

Art is that which rewards continued attention.

I’ve refined the definition (and perhaps complicated it a bit), but retained the gist:

Art is that human communication which rewards continued attention.

To explicate: Art (the subject) is that (existential verb and relative pronoun) human communication (for the sake of definition, art should be human creation and interaction, not nature (though that can be nice too, in its own way)) which rewards (relative pronoun and a wonderfully pregnant verb that takes in all kinds of positive response, from information to insight to pleasure to shock to humor) continued attention (it might be lingering in front of a painting, re-reading a passage in a poem or essay, or coming back, maybe again and again, over years to a work, to get something more from the experience). What I like about the definition is that it excludes the ephemeral, the momentary, the soon forgotten. The pleasure of art is in the contemplation, whether over minutes or over years, the expansion of meaning, the layering of understanding, the slow movement to what it means to be human.