I nearly forgot (not really): I finished the trail!
victory hang above the terminus on Springer Mtn
My days of skimping have given way to a new project: skimming.
Though I always try to be thrifty and de-possessed of my self, material goods, and unhealthy attachments, I can no longer skimp like I could on the trail. Alas, I’ve inherited new responsibilities and goals. Already I’m surrounded with goods, garbage, clothes, ads, words. Material abounds. I’m going to keep blogging, post trail, with a new project: to confront and submerge myself in these materials in order to see what floats to the top. Then I’ll skim off the fat–the trashy trash, the wordy words.
What junk don’t we need in order to see more clearly? What words and phrases need paring down, unclogging, or burning off like warts from the surface of our language, so that we can speak more cleanly with each other? My theory is that this blubber of language will float to the surface; it is the stuff that floats most closely to our ears, the stuff that is most readily accessible to loose tongues, most tempting to lazy minds and greedy senses. It is everywhere. If we would but pause for a moment, it would rise to the top and thus be easily skimmed. If we don’t, it remains unrecognizable as we drink it in, clogging up clarity with pop-wisdom and poop-merchandise.
Look for the new format and new posts soon.
For now, I’ll end my AT journey with a scribbling I wrote this past week. For those of you who don’t know, my grandma passed away while I was celebrating atop Springer Mountain. Literally I was at the terminus when she stopped breathing. I spent last week in Indianapolis and now I’m back in Chattanooga working at Rock/Creek Outfitters for the holidays. Here is my final reflection:
So Grandma is dead now—
Finally.
(Can one “be” dead?)
At least I can say it with finality—
(What else makes us confront finality so?)
She has “let go,”
“Had one foot in each world” and made her choice,
Said the nurse from Hospice,
A sweet lady (I’m told).
What an odd bag of spiritual phraseology
Tossed together with precise instruments.
They are precise alright, Hospice,
Had it down to a science—
Months, days, hours, (minutes?)—
A job well done. Well, done at least. That much is certain.
I take back what I said about odd.
Faith and science, that’s not so odd.
That’s where we’re heading now anyway,
Not because we’ve all thought it through
And expanded our conclusions, nets, theologies,
Done some gymnastics and decided:
The two are (im)perfectly compatible—
Certainly not because we’ve realized language is to blame again,
For drawing lines and distinctions,
For creating edges and fractures
Not necessarily real, but necessary—
But because we haven’t thought it out,
Believed instead, in a culture that looks to science for security,
In precision, which takes the problem of language to an extreme,
Breaking down, breaking down again,
Further, further still (in search of what? A hollow exactitude?)
But to believe in precision still requires a dose of faith,
So let’s retain the other-worldly phraseology.
Nevermind that to live unthinkingly requires a lot of faith
(let’s not call it trust since we tend to trust no one)
Even if you don’t care a lick about precision.
Then we’re at the Cracker Barrell
(you can’t argue with that)
To break her favorite waitress the news.
Turns out she already knows,
That kind of attention earned her four stars on the apron.
Might as well try the Sunrise Sampler while we’re here,
Exchange some tears with this Patti,
And some coffee.
Cut up the pancakes like she would for grandpa,
Who died with Alzheimer’s,
Or, as my mom pronounces it, “Old Timer’s”—
That’s on the menu too, next to the Sunrise Sampler.
I have to silently curb my cynicism
About this franchise and its grand illusions,
Allusions to a bucolic past.
Were those washboards and farm instruments on the walls
Leftover from the depression and decades of disuse
Or manufactured in China?
Do they call it the Old Timer’s breakfast
Because the food is old?
(Nothing get prepared in house, only packages opened and heated).
I have to curb this because Patti’s tears are real
(you can’t argue with that).
An Irish Catholic, grandma went to daily mass,
And then Cracker Barrell—daily.
She had giftcards of course,
Being frugal and a pack rat
Like so many other Depression babies.
(Hey, I think, we’ve got a depression too,
Bloating right in front of us. Where’s the thrift?)
Once I’ve kicked the cynicism,
I realize the food is appropriate
Because grandma wasn’t only influenced by depression
But also by the 1950’s:
She had seven children during that time.
When we’re cleaning out her assisted living apartment,
I pack up the TV trays—
What a revolution in cooking!
My focus returns to the meal, and I think:
If Cracker Barrel can accommodate the sampler platter of emotions
Associated with death and remembrance,
Then swallowing faith with science is gravy.
–MKS
