Michael Munas' Journal

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"Weight" Until
If I wait until I have the time, I may never have it.

Accomplishment is tough. My axiom is that things usually take about six times the effort you first envision.

I remember sitting in dark smelly bars in my twenties, listening to folks that were sincerely going to do many grand things with their lives. It seems that it is just fine to dream about the big picture, but if we choose to ignore the small or mundane daily routines/tasks, nothing much in a larger sense ever gets done.

When my workshop in the garage is cluttered, I don't really want to be there. It's tough stepping over the mess and it drains my enthusiasm quickly. But if I spend a little time to organize and make it a bit neater, I miraculously find tons of hidden energy -- energy which is almost always rooted in and founded by motivation.

It has little to do with how much sleep I've had or if I've already expended a gagillion calories that day.
* * *
"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
~ Albert Camus

Nineteen seventy-something or another
Even though you may have never been, I'd spend hours trying to imagine you into life -- or at least,
enough so that I could feel the softness in your shoulders.

Real men pour over 401k's, deer hunts, and fantasy-football picks; but those scores, like cuneiform, have never meant anything to me.

This is the scent that I cannot describe which forever marks me.

Somewhere around licking the beater, mixing bowl and spoon
When my mom would make pies, she would usually cut the leftover pie crust into strips, sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on them, and then roll them before baking. They weren't particularly soft or chewy -- actually rather dry and crumbly, but they were delicious.

My Serbian grandmother (Baba) used to take her leftover bread dough and make fried bread for us. It was as close to heavenly as food can get.

The Edge of a Field
We drove into the gas station and heard the familiar ding-ding as we ran over the signaling hose. I remember going inside and how it smelled of curing enamel, Go-Jo hand cleaner and motor oil. My dad gave me a dime for the candy machine. The well-worn dispenser had a hammered-metal muted green finish and a mirror on the front with the word "Candy" written in a deco-script on the face.

I miss the mechanical sound it made when pulling the handle and the dropping thud as the bar fell into the tray.

More, I miss the tangible feeling of that love I knew and to this day, I never learned why the mirror was there. I once thought my dad knew and could do everything. I was safe with that comfort but, in reality, he was just as frail as me. It didn't matter though, because the distance drawn on my chest is carved into my skin like fence posts at the edge of a soft field.

"Ploughed Field", Caspar David Friedrich, c1830

Golda and Lyndon
Could they have been brother or sister...or even one-in-the-same?

I'm showing my age here.

The Snows, Then

I've been noticing more hornet's nests this year. This one I saw on a bike ride yesterday and there are many more scattered everywhere. Maybe it is simply that I haven't been paying much attention. I don't know.

If I've learned a new word that is interesting, it seems to pop up everywhere -- in books, magazines, on the internet, etc. With all my senses and very often, I cannot remember ever seeing it before then.

What I'm missing now and were the snows really deeper?

Maybe, if I want them to be.

What was it that Ram Dass wrote?
Wearing my dad's army coat and a straw hat, I'd sit for hours alone in front of the Corner Deli or on the steps of the Belmont County Courthouse, simply watching cars pass and usually wondering about a girl.

In 1977, I smoked Vantage cigarettes (and other things) and ate as much "Home Pizza" with extra cheese as often as I could.

And then you end up growing into a whole new life -- actually, several of them.

I'd like to say, I miss how it was but not so much as to debase what is, in any substantial way.

I like being here.

A Perfect Circle
When I was younger, I craved an ever-evolving set of interests. I wanted to be the best at so many things -- now I yearn more for balance in my life.

I realize I cannot master or even pursue every notion that passes through my heart or head. Instead, I know I must choose which ones to develop to some level of proficiency and temper these personal interests with the needs and interests of those around me. I am not alone in this world and nor do I ever want to be.

So many folks wait for what they perceive to be the optimum circumstance, person, material, brush stroke, or word -- as if there is going to be another lifetime that will magically present itself.

If I had a No. 2 pencil, if I had the best lighting, if I only had the time.

When it never arrives, what happens?

No one cannot draw a perfect circle and though it is close, even this fellow is not able to do so.

Thanks to what I learned from my father, I know will never achieve anything in perfection.
In balance, I want to be somewhat good at several things, and strive to be a wee bit better at a few.

It's not so much what is actually in the box

My mom would carry me to the living room couch on mornings before school. For breakfast, she usually made cinnamon toast and a cup of scratch cocoa. It didn't matter that it was practically all sugar. She always made my school lunch and then when I started working in the coal mine, she packed my dinner bucket.

In my mind, it was a delicate tether to home and a tangible reassurance of her love. When I drank the dusty chlorine-flavored municipal water from the bottom compartment of the bucket, I felt it.

* * *

"The perfect gift for me will always be a box." ~ Concrete Waffer

Do you still have your pants?
I went to the dentist for a cleaning/exam on Thursday evening. I cleaned gutters and used my Cyclone-Rake on Friday. I worked 8-1/2 hours at the hospital and then did grocery shopping on Saturday. I bicycled 20 miles with two intense climbs and raked more leaves/mowed on Sunday. I've been doing yoga every day for several weeks now but my knees still don't want to straighten in a forward bend. Even though I am addicted to it, I have limited my cheese intake substantially as my total cholesterol count in September was 197. Cutting down salt and exercise has helped lower my blood pressure -- it now is typically 120/75. I'm 53 and still not on any medication and I can bore the pants off just about anyone.

Sometimes, it's easier to see when you're not looking directly

When I was little, I didn't really know anything about the Doppler Effect. I only knew that it made that sound when something like a car, train or truck went by me.

I couldn't even begin to identify the variation in pitch or any of the mechanics but I genuinely felt its nature and this became imprinted in me -- without concept, words or explicabilty.

I suppose we don't always have to know.

For a reason akin, this has always been a treasure to me:

Study is like the heaven's glorious sun
That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks:
Small have continual plodders ever won
Save base authority from others' books
These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights
That give a name to every fixed star
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
~ From: "Loves Labours Lost", Act 1 Scene 1, W.B. Shakespeare

Mostly the Lesser

I have arguments with myself and seldom win
mostly the lesser person never does.
It takes entanglement to realize
that I will know much less
than more him
forever.

Push
I was listening to Lilias Folan the other day and she mentioned several of the important things which the study of yoga had brought into her life. She said that rather than her giving up cigarettes when it all began, that they instead gradually gave her up.

It seems like we forever are actively trying to push the bad from our lives, and we fail more often than we'd like.

I thought, at first, that I would begin this to improve my bicycle handling and flexibility but I believe there may be much more here.

* * *

I love my life: the opportunities and what it has brought to me. I have more energy than I would have ever expected or imagined possible. Nearly every day I feel this.

I've been called manic but I can't find a slot where I'd fit into the classic DSM-IV. I really don't know what I am in this regard.

The Country Kitchen Buffet

I hope in my writing that I never settle for simple documentation on what I've eaten in a day.

When we are young, we seldom make a fuss or express concern over who has the best green beans or mashed potatoes, but with age our lives become more sedentary and often can quiet to such a point that what we can easily become consumed by the ritual of eating.

I suppose in the coming days, I'll be tempted to revel in a menu, but for now the foraging sounds of shuffling feet and scraping teeth will keep me at a safe distance and I will continue to rage, rage...

* * *
"I think about this moment and what I am going to do." -
-- Jack LaLanne

Where folks go
I wrote this several years ago and it reminds me of the precious times I spent alone when I was young. It could have just as easily been a cardboard box I once had or a hideaway shelf in my mom's linen closet(or "press" as she called it).

Where the boughs of the pines hang so low
to reach the almost-touching carpet of needles
I lay for hours, safely between two quiet horizons
singing my wishes to tinder-dry blackened twigs
and whitened pine-sap, dried in graceful contrast

Silly boy, what are you thinking?

There are things we wish
There are things we miss
But in wishing and missing
We are yet and always:
Almost touching

I like this poem
First Gestures
by Julia Spicher Kasdorf

Among the first we learn is good-bye,
your tiny wrist between Dad's forefinger
and thumb forced to wave bye-bye to Mom,
whose hand sails brightly behind a windshield.
Then it's done to make us follow:
in a crowded mall, a woman waves, "Bye,
we're leaving," and her son stands firm
sobbing, until at last he runs after her,
among shoppers drifting like sharks
who must drag their great hulks
underwater, even in sleep, or drown.

Living, we cover vast territories;
imagine your life drawn on a map--
a scribble on the town where you grew up,
each bus trip traced between school
and home, or a clean line across the sea
to a place you flew once. Think of the time
and things we accumulate, all the while growing
more conscious of losing and leaving. Aging,
our bodies collect wrinkles and scars
for each place the world would not give
under our weight. Our thoughts get laced
with strange aches, sweet as the final chord
that hangs in a guitar's blond torso.

Think how a particular ridge of hills
from a summer of your childhood grows
in significance, or one hour of light--
late afternoon, say, when thick sun flings
the shadow of Virginia creeper vines
across the wall of a tiny, white room
where a girl makes love for the first time.
Its leaves tremble like small hands
against the screen while she weeps
in the arms of her bewildered lover.
She's too young to see that as we gather
losses, we may also grow in love;
as in passion, the body shudders
and clutches what it must release

Fifteen-Minute Recess

With rust-smelling hands on the cold, rough bar
here settled wishes for a lasting hand of warmth
reflected and cast from the sunshine of her in late winter
(long shadows wound around the howling metal)
I wonder if she, would remember the yearn
or would it matter that a favorite flannel and faded denim
were the whispers of desire without ever knowing

Holding a radio over my head
I couldn't skip in the second grade but Miss Shrieve insisted that I could and she pressed me until I cried. I still didn't skip but I was satisfied knowing that I could gallop.

I used to play a triangle in the second grade rhythm band and I've liked it ever since.

But I still do not skip very well.

In the Days of Western Electric and Bakelite...
Phone booths were a great escape from folks, angry dogs, rain, and snow. In some odd way, they had a strong clubhouse feel to them. I remember their aluminum frames, glass panels, colors and door handles in reasonable detail. They are the same type of booth that was used for shelter by Tippie Hedren in "The Birds" -- all black and white and such in time. There was always interesting graffiti to read. Some of it was vulgar but some of it spoke of adoration. Secretly, I hoped I might one day see my own initials scrawled next to a girl's.

Even so, I always checked the coin slot for change.

In a seldom-used corner of the basement at the hospital, in the original wood-paneled lobby there is built-in phone cabinet. It is beautiful, with dark-grained wood and a vintage Bell System logo decaled on the window. There isn't a phone in it anymore but it still has a wooden seat.

I like that they've not been able to find a way to adapt it or rework it into anything more technologically or aesthetically modern.

It would be fun to sit in it. Maybe I could pretend to tell fortunes for 25 cents.

.

A Drop in the Bucket
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

~ From: "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower", Dylan Thomas

Sometimes, when I see the folks grow near to dying, I have to remember that we are all relatively close to such a thing and even if I turned my head away, the distance would never become any greater.

* * *

I go around among these sights, among the crowded hospitals doing what I can, yet it is a mere drop in the bucket. . .the path I follow, I suppose I may say, is my own.”

~ From: "Drum Taps", Walt Whitman