by Clint Martin
Strumming Some Hums
“But it isn’t Easy,” said Pooh to himself, as he looked at what had once been Owl’s House. “Because Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.”
– A.A. Milne
*
Sitting on the couch. Sipping coffee on a pre-sun Sunday morning. Aside from the yellow dog by my feet and the black cat over on the rug, my other awake company is a nimble gnat. It’s just drifting around, bobbing by my body, and I’m really not paying it much attention. I’m just letting it do its thing while I scribble lines into my notebook. Just letting it do its thing…its thing…when barely parted lips inhale a breath as soft and silent as the little gnat’s wisps of wings and sip. The gnat is gone. Disappeared. Vacuumed right out of the air as if my face were the Death Star, my breath the tractor beam, and the gnat the Millennium Falcon. With miniscule effort and zero intent, I had sucked that little starship of a gnat straight into the back of my throat. I stop scribbling and chase the tasteless bug with a slurp of coffee.
Washing the four bird feeders in our backyard is less satisfying than washing the car. Within minutes, within 120 seconds, the surfaces I lovingly scrubbed and refilled with sundry seeds are dotted with blips and bleeps of fresh white thank-yous.
Pandemic’s got me thinking about pauses. About time-outs. About how for a minute, it’s kind of like we hit pause. Like we actually decided to stop. It may not have been our favorite moment. But that’s because of the isolation. The point here is that we did. We did pause. For a few months we weren’t focused on producing or flying or driving or buying or deforesting or polluting. Just surviving. And in that time, skylines returned and stars sparkled again, and both Mount Rainier and the Himalayas appeared in the distance. So that’s got me thinking. Got me wondering, what if we decided to pause intentionally? What if we all just agreed to a time out. Not a forever one, but one long enough to really consider what’s important to us. A pause to seriously consider just how much we need to produce and fly and drive and buy and deforest and pollute. What if we took the time and thought long and hard about all those activities and took inventory of all our stuff? What if we spent a spell concerned solely with food and water and shelter and let all the other things just sit on the back burner for a month? A season? A year? Think of the thinking. Plus, we wouldn’t have to isolate at all. We could convene and commune and converse and consider. Again, we could sing and dance, play and paint, but this time together. Perhaps this still wouldn’t be enough to halt climate change. But damn, at least it’d feel like we were doing something. And who knows? This time, we might enjoy it.
My son has left for college. He feels way farther away than the fifteen-minute drive would suggest. He feels like he took so much of this house with him. Not any of the physical stuff. But the good stuff. The energy and the spirit and the soul.
I’m thinking about becoming a dragonfly. Sprouting wings and flying around and helping people all day long. I got this transformational idea from a tarot card I pulled at the end of my writing group’s last gathering. The card said I was readyto be a dragonfly, but first, I need to put down the two bags—yes, the card specified two—the two bags I’m still carrying. Apparently, the bags are too heavy for flight. So, what am I holding onto? I sit with the question, and I think more and more one bag may be filled with the regret of not listening to my soul sooner. I heard my soul’s chit-chat while in college. I heard it again after leaving my first teaching job. But I out-logic-ed it. In both cases, I packed away my spirit and took the practical path. After all, that’s what Dad wanted. I’m thinking I haven’t flown since.
Words on the page. Words on the page. Just dropping some words on the clean page. Plop.
There’s a party this afternoon. Will I know anyone there other than the host? Will I be able to enjoy myself? It is a pool party after all. There’s a chance I’ll feel too self-conscious about my bitty bit of beer belly to I dive into the pool. Maybe the best way to get over my hang-ups is to have a beer before we go. That way I can shed some of the seriousness and worry. Ah, what the hell. I’ll have two beers before departure.
Imagine we were a tribe. Like a real tribe. Like a whole entire neighborhood of neighbors who argued and said stupid stuff but who also laughed and worried together. That’s the principal thing: together. Imagine if we were a whole fleet of folks strung together arm-in-arm to form a safety net. A net each of us could land in. A net each of us was a part of.
What if I am just a riff? What if I am just a rhythm, a pulse? What if I am a sound that others like me can hear? What if the Universe is strumming away? Noodling away on some cosmic harp and I am one resulting note of one singular strum? What if I am a sung sound? A sound sailing through the sea of this star’s scenery? What if I’m all resonation and vibration? What if I am echo? What if I reverb and am sometimes out of key? A bit off-beat? What if there’s other times when my rhythmic riff is so dead on, it brings ears to their knees? Makes the mind’s eye open way wide and turn blue with the crystalline of a joyous tear? What if you’re a riff? And the two of us duet together? What if we embrace our small sound in the Universe’s symphony? Wilder still, what if we never imagined ourselves as music? Or forgot to think of ourselves as rhythm? Or sound? What if we just thought of ourselves as solid bodies and never orchestrated our song? Crazier yet, what if we never even listened?
Driving through the park on my home from my writing group, baggage on my mind, I slow my ride considerably to ease over the first of several speed mounds. As I brake to a near stop, a mighty black dragonfly zips across my windshield.
I’m quite grateful the dorm’s policy is no pets. Not even little fish. Because of the force of that rule, my son did not take the tank with the three neon tetras that’s been co-habiting his bedroom for nearly two years now. And because he didn’t take them, the three tiny tetras give me a daily excuse to step into my son’s vacated bedroom. And for the thirty seconds it takes me to cross the carpet, lift the lid, and drop in a few fishy flakes alongside a sincere good morning, well that’s thirty seconds each day I still get to feel like my boy’s dad.
Taco night is an easy night. Twenty minutes tops and it’s ready. And no one ever complains, ever whines, aww tacos. Must be why each week has a taco night.
Three Big Ass fans slowly spin from the peaked ceiling. The fake field is a perfect and uniform green, and the two teams of adults stretch and smile as they warm-up on their respective sides. I’m in the bleachers. I could play too. If I didn’t have to run. Once, maybe twice up and down the indoor soccer field and my chest would be burning. Feeling fire. It’s not that I don’t exercise. I do. I ride my bike through the park almost every day. But I don’t run. A bit too much work. So I’m watching instead. Watching my son and some strange adults do the running from the bleachers. Wondering why they felt the need to make the blue plastic seats textured like wood.
I could watch inchworms for days. Well, maybe not days. But at least for a couple feet. The way they kink and crawl and never take the curve out of their back. They’re especially entertaining when they anchor their butts and go all giraffe-neck as they wobble in search for the next leaf or limb. Yes, little inchworm, we can’t measure your adorableness.
For a brief bit of time, a leaf is homeless. No longer lingering on a limb; not yet grounded to the ground. While this is but a brief moment in the life of a leaf, I’m thinking it’s during this span between tree and earth that the leaf is having the time of his life.
I walked into Liquor Barn this afternoon. Not a big deal except that immediately behind me was Mr. Mac. Mr. Mac, the principal at the high school where I got my first teaching gig right out of college. Back when I was a young man, rather green and mostly unaware, I had traded the wings of my soul for health insurance and a pension. Still, I’d accepted the teaching position and packed away some of my deepest dreams. I made it a bit longer than three years, but then I left. And it was not a joyous departure. Furthermore, I hadn’t seen Mr. Mac since the day I handed him my see-ya-later letter. But I sure had thought about him. I sure had thought about how miserable and stressed he had made me feel, how unsupported and disconnected I felt in his presence. For years after, off and on, I rued and stewed as I reverberated through email replies, hallway conversations, meetings in his office. And as I recapped each, I sure as shit thought about what I would say to him now, scream at him now. In detail I imagined the apologies I would tractor beam from his face the next time we crossed paths. But of course, time inched along. Eventually, I landed someplace else. Inevitably, I stewed less and less. I even reached the point where my former boss rarely flitted across my mind. And in the few times he did, he wasn’t any bigger than a gnat.
But then this afternoon happened. This right-after-lunch time when I saw him walking into the Liquor Barn. When immediately my innards were electrified. When instantly my belly re-echoed the same fishy feelings I used to feel upon seeing his name in my inbox or hearing his steps outside my classroom. It’d been nearly two decades but on this regular Tuesday, here he was. Seemingly just as inevitable as that resignation letter. But now, a once long dreamt of opportunity with nothing to lose had arrived. This was my chance…if I wanted. After all, it was my decision. Fight or flight. My choice. My option because he hadn’t recognized me. I was wearing my mask after all, plus he was behind me. If I just kept walking, it’d be easy to keep him from seeing my face, easy to keep right on keeping on. And even if he caught a glimpse of me, the last time we interacted my college son was barely holding his own head up, so a favorable chance he wouldn’t recognize me anyway.
With so many feelings and memories rocketing around, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, couldn’t make any type of well-conceived decision. Partly out of uncertainty and partly leaving it to fate, once I crossed the store’s threshold, I went right. Toward the beer. My natural path. Two steps behind me, Mr. Mac went left. Flight. Fine. My insides calmed a bit. But even as I selected my beer, questions flew around my head. Should I approach him? What should I say? Is it even worth it? Is he worth it? How will I feel if I run out of here and never see him again? Will I regret it? Don’t I always?
I headed toward the register. But halfway there, I decided to grab a bottle of bourbon since I was on my way to meet my two brothers. The three of us were going to a concert that night. Dave Matthews Band. Oh shit. That’s the same band we saw the night I handed him my letter. Instantly, I felt myself back at that concert, recalled how I couldn’t hear, didn’t dance, wouldn’t sing that night because my thoughts were consumed with the last three years and the new son at home and the disappointed wife and the no job tomorrow and how so much had changed so freaking fast. Then I heard all those early versions of the imagined words and messages I wanted, needed, should’ve said to my former principal. With all those discordant feelings restrummed inside my being, I bumbled down the bourbon aisle. The bottle I wanted was in sight. But as I reached for it, looking all self-assured and righteous, my silver-haired former boss rounded the corner. Of all the aisles in this big ass store. I took a breath. He hadn’t noticed me. But now, with Mr. Mac perusing the bottles to my right, I gave in to the universe’s current. I set my two six-packs of beer down and waited.
Once the force of my closeness pulled Mr. Mac’s head and then eyes in my direction, I squared right up to him. Faced him full-on, pulled down my mask, and squeaked as best I could, “Remember me?” His icy blue eyes squinched, but I didn’t give him time to consider. I told him my name. “Oh hey, Clint…” slipped from his still polished politician’s voice. But before he could say anything else, my eyes staring straight down his soul, I raised my right arm and thrust my cupped hand atop his left shoulder. I gave it a small squeeze. The way you do when you mean business.
And then…I paused. For a beat. A whole beat of just silence and staring and my hand firm on his shoulder. And in that momentary hiatus, something happened. Some part of me went soft. Not in a running-for-the-hills way. More like, a stepping to the side way. A making room for a bigger, stronger side of me way. At first, I wasn’t sure which side to pay attention to—the soft or the big. So, for another beat or half beat, as I was stranded in some liminal place, I had to turn to my gut to speak. And the first words it found were, “Man, I’m sorry.”
Wait, what? An apology? Really? But before I could admonish or feel disappointment, before more words followed or flowed, the soft side of me found his place in the conversation. He was now the shoulder beneath the big one’s tender squeeze. It may have looked like I was talking to Mr. Mac, but I wasn’t. Not really. This man didn’t need to hear my words, didn’t require any apology. But the twenty-five-year-old me did. And he was listening. So big me repeated the words I’m sorry. Then told him how sorry I was for the way things had ended. Explained how over the years I’d come to understand how naïve and unripened and even angry I had been. And how all those fiery feelings had gotten in the way. Sure, the situation could’ve been handled differently, could’ve been handled in a much more supportive way. But it wasn’t. And it never would be. But that’s all in the past. The journey has swept us onward. Now we can look back and view it with a bit more wisdom and a lot more compassion. Maybe we can even look back and forgive. Hopefully laugh. How about we cackle together at our own ignorance as we move forward, as we soar ahead into whatever weather the world offers next?
I ended by telling my young counterpart that despite the way things went down, I was still rooting for him. Told him I was and would always be a fan, was and would always be wishing him the absolute best.
Then I took my hand off his shoulder, my insides feeling quite in-tune. So on key in fact, I barely heard my former boss thank me for coming over and saying that. For I was floating now, winging onward so fast I almost missed hearing him say I’d made his day, barely heard my own whir as I whizzed over to the register, paid for my stuff, and zipped to my ride. Like a dragonfly.
Author Clint Martin (he/him) lives occasionally in Iowa but mostly in Kentucky. When not writing or teaching, Clint enjoys meditating, identifying the birds in the backyard, and learning about cool things like plants and space. His work has appeared in various places such as Kenyon Review, Sagebrush Review, The Write Launch, and Motherwell Magazine. You can follow him on Instagram @clintdmartin.
Artist Rebecca Nestor (she/her) is a stay at home mom in Oregon. She has a passion for creating works that are relatable and engaging. Follow her on Instagram @rebeccaelainenestor.
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