Vaughn's space

I was 19 at the time, and that would have made Michael something like 11 years old. He was still a member of "The Jackson Five" then, before he would become a solo act. His song at the time went like this, "You and I must make a pact; we must bring salvation back; where there is love, I'll be there." Yes, "I'll be There." I thought it a beautiful song and it resonated with me. Me, a white boy not long out of public housing in Southeastern Pennsylvania, where I was a minority in a largely African-American neighborhood, and where I  was in love with the Rhythm and Blues of the day. And in that context, Michael and his brothers seemed like bubble-gummers. Compare the young Michael's voice and songs to Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman" and Otis Redding's "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay." Not even "in the Midnight Hour" with the wicked Wilson Pickett and a few beers was I going to easily acknowledge Michael and his brothers as accomplices in my soul-searching life. Please, I was a small arms expert marksman with an M-16, and here I was in the U.S. Air Force, freshly arrived in a theater of war, looking to make my bonafides as a man so I might return to my neighborhood with the credibility sought by most of my blue-collar friends: a veteran of war, someone deserving of the space and conversations I would occupy with my fellow veteran returnees. I would never return to the neighborhood, but plugging into the zeitgeist of the Vietnam War -- even if we would all suffer an exclusionary status with the world at large -- I found a lifeforce that took me to another place in life, to education and to the pursuit of story-telling -- for the sake of news and for the sake of moving people emotionally and politically, and sometimes legally, for the better good. I find those skills useful these days in helping people sort out their lives and live better lives.

 

But back to then, and to Michael, and to "I'll be There." I remember listening to the song as I cut my teeth on hard liquor and slot machines and a sense of adventure as I began my year in Southeast Asia. So much would transpire, and I would change greatly in that year. Death and grief. And an introduction to the vicissitudes of life, even in one year. I would never forget a sense of innocence and pure adventure at the beginning, and that would be captured in Michael Jackson singing, "I'll be There." As my life perspective changed that year -- from having a sense of nobility and adventure to viewing the world in hard, fragile but courageous reality -- I would think back to the beginning of my experience in Southeast Asia and to Michael singing "I'll be There." Today, on his death, that is the song I remember most by him, and it still comforts me. God, how life changes. And, yet, how so much of what we were in our innocence remains to the end. I remember Michael in his innocence, and I remember being better prepared to face evil by listening to a song in which his innocence resonated with mine. Thanks for seeing me through, Michael.

I feel as if I have to write something in memory of them. They inspire me, even if my writing seems uninspired this day. I give thanks to Gary Neiman, who I last saw in the days before we returned from our leaves in York, PA, to military duty. He was off to Vietnam; I was off to Maine. He was a few weeks from death. Vietnam, of course. 1969. I would go to the war, too, in less than a year. To Danang, then more permanently to Udorn, Thailand, and a tour with the Air Force Aeorspace Rescue and Recovery Service, devoted to the rescue of pilots shot down, usually in their missions to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Remember, too, Wendell "Puddy" Day, a year ahead of me in school. Unstoppable, it seemed, on the football field. A running back turned Marine sniper. Buried in Gettysburg National Cemetery. Also remember James Manor, my one-time roommate, KIA on 27 March 72. The helicopter, an HH53 Super Jolly Green, in which he was flight engineer exploded in the sky over Cambodia. Remains unrecovered. I wear a KIA/MIA bracelet on my right wrist in his memory. Young people, usually my psychotherapy clients, puzzle over it, although some, suprisingly, know what it is. "Isn't that...?" they usually begin. Yes, I say, encouraged that those yet to be born back then have some regard for the history and the culture of the time. I've written about these three on something called "The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund" virtual wall, a detailed online record of those who died, where and when. I have also lit candles for them in cathedrals. I am this Memorial Day also remembering a colleague of mine who died last week, suddenly, though she was sick with heart failure last autumn. She never looked better than the day before she died. She had returned to work earlier this year. She seemed happier than ever. She was more pleasant than ever. We shared interests in a few things that resonate strongly with me. Northern California, for one. She had grown up there, partially in Martinez, CA, birthplace of Joe DiMaggio, something she had not known until I told her. I'm not sure she was impressed. She would spend her vacations and holidays with family in Northern California, in San Rafael, Marin County, and another spot nearby. She would bring gifts back from her trips, usually the products of the rich growing fields and vineyards of Northern California. Let us live our lives most fully, in part by giving breath to the memories of those who we have known and valued so that they will not be forgotten. I hope I have said enough, but, then, I don't think enough could be said. If there is a place where the dead can be aware, please, just know that I remember and respect you all.

I've often said that I think Manhattan's Central Park is one of the most beautiful spots on the face of the Earth. I don't make the claim casually. I have seen many beautiful places in the world. Not that it takes touring the world to know beautiful ground. As a child, I recognized the beauty of the land around Gettysburg battlefield without having yet seen the world outside the borders of a few Pennsylvania counties. How horrible that such a peaceful setting of farm fields, woods, rock outcroppings and the Blue Mountains beyond should have once been defaced by killing spits of small arms and cannon fire, and smoke billowing over a slope of farmland littered with the dead and wounded. Poor Pickett. Why name the debacle for him; his superiors for whom the foolish bloodbath should be named were not his equal in courage. And yet they are honored in ways in which the young Pickett never has been. A place on a pedestal just might too often be more sentimental than meritorious. Pardon my digression. 

 

During the summer at Gettysburg, crickets and cicadas sing in hot, humid afternoons, and the thickly leaved trees and blue sky calm the spirits of those who go to Gettysburg to escape contemporary battles of their own. Cherries ripen in the trees and wheat and other crops grow in farm fields, laid out now as they were then. A farm house and barn are well kept. Life flourishes everywhere, overshadowing death. Peace rules the canvas even as artillery pieces -- the Napoleans -- reflect the sun off their polished metal. Monuments to the fallen cast black shadows, but shadows that carry the breeziness of shade rather than the gloom of death. If you focus on the valor of men of both sides, your spirit will be lifted at Gettysburg. You can talk about that over a Yuengling's as my brother-in-law and I did one recent but far-too-long-ago year by now. Oh, Yuengling's. Such good Pennsylvania brew. And you can, over one or two more frosted mugs, express disbelief that such beautiful and life-giving ground should have become a killing field. 

 

All these many years removed from childhood, after seeing many other grandly beautiful pieces of ground, I find my childhood estimate of Gettysburg to be validated. Uniquely different in history, geography, topography and climate, many natural scenes compare to the grand beauty of Gettysburg. San Francisco Bay. The Mediterranean Coast. China Beach. The approach by helicopter to Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base at sunset, over rice paddies in the dry season, as rising smoke and ash from burning chafe blend with golden light to spice the scene like tendrils of flavor nuance a complex wine. Ahead, in Udorn, lay a city where the coming night could be intoxicating, where little was to be denied. You could find remove and peace from the war, if you wanted, or action of one degree or another. Wild West dis-inhibition, if you wanted. Or soothing Singha beer and nourishing Kobe beef by a pool, if you'd rather. Consider Wake Island on a moonlit night, escaping the noise of an airfield and the refueling of a plane, to visit the Marine memorial on the beach, the water silvery with moonlight, the waves crashing phosphorescent on the sand. Another setting where beauty mixes with death memorialized. 

 

I say this in an attempt to prove my bonafides for knowing good ground. And Central Park is great ground. From the air, as seen from the window of an airliner twisting and turning over the Hudson in its holding pattern into JFK, Central Park lies crisp and rectangular as a postage stamp below. It is a stamp of common ground accessible to all amid real estate that excludes all but some of the world's wealthiest people. Those who are free to share the park could never afford the living space around it. One human being, Olmstead, and the many who paid him, had a brilliant idea, and it is one of the better examples of a visionary coming together with the mega-rich to develop a lasting common ground for all: the rich, the poor, those of any social or ethnic background. 

 

My hotel is on Central Park South, just across from the park, flanked by The Plaza and the Ritz-Carlton up the street. As I push through the revolving door, I hear the blare of traffic as well as the clip-clop of hooves from the horse-drawn carriages that are a signature of New York City and Central Park. Across the street, these carriages line the sidewalk, waiting for the many who will enjoy the park from their high seats. The smell of horse manure isn't in the least offensive. Part of the ambience, if you please, the odor diluted this day by chill morning air and a slight wind. But better to go by foot, I believe. I cross the street and enter onto one of the many footpaths that wind through the park. At once, I am removed from the traffic that is relentless and insistent on having your attention. Ratso Rizzo aside (from the movie "Midnight Cowboy"), you don't want to mess with the flow of New York City traffic. It holds sway, and it reminds you of the true meaning of pedestrian. The park is a refuge from it, and I feel tension release the instant I enter it. I am in a woods now, and it is welcoming. Hilly and sloping lawns. Towering trees. Bare brown in March. Moss cloaking exposed roots and low trunks, a certain Fifth Avenue couture spun by the moist earth of the East. Huge dark mounds of rock push up through the ground like icebergs, providing a glimpse of the bedrock that is the island of Manhattan. Here and there children watched by a parent or a nanny conquer these heights. Squirrels nearing the size of small dogs scamper everywhere. Two of them seem to be posing for a class of grade school children as they surround them with cameras. And actual dogs? Dogs are everywhere. Big breeds. Small breeds. Exotic and regal breeds. Mutts. Fetching balls. Sniffing every inch of ground. Offleash and chaotically free. Onleash and prim. New York dogs. As diverse as the humans who bring them here. Most people in the park are meandering. Some running or speed-walking. Those with a purposeful stride are in the minority here, though, of course, they are here. This is Manhattan.   

 

A chattering flock of crows catches my attention. They are obnoxious. They are moving erratically, zig-zagging. The reason becomes apparent as a more graceful fligher emerges from their dark cloud. It is a Red Tail Hawk, and they are harassing it. I'm reminded of something Churchill once said, "When the Eagles are silent, the Parrots will jabber." The hawk is clearly bothered but not losing its cool. It moves to avoid them, but with an effortless panache. This goes on for about five minutes. I lose sight of the hawk in a tree, the crows still chattering. Then against the golden light of the morning sun, I see the silhouette of outstretched wings glide speedily downward and low across an open lawn. The crows are left behind in the tree, crowing as fools are known to do.

 

I wonder if this hawk could possibly have been the world-famous Pale Male. He nests on a ledge of a posh Upper Eastside apartment building. A few years ago, some exorbitantly rich and uptight tenants, irritated by Pale Male's growing nest and what dropped from it, tore it down. A clash of human interests ensued. Somewhere, Mary Tyler Moore emerged as one of Pale Male's many advocates. Ultimately, the ledge was equipped with a fixture designed to entice Pale Male back and to hasten his rebuilding of a nest. Such is charm. The fools who opposed him were left to crow.

 

I know I am probably not substantiating such a grand statement; that is, Central Park is one of the most beautiful settings in the world. There is so much to be said about it. There are remarkable features and legends: the lake named for Jackie O. The Dairy and The Castle. You can read about them elsewhere, or maybe I will flesh out this blog and tell you about them myself. I hope my small slice of description gives you some idea of why I esteem this great natural setting on an island dense with urban development. As seen from the ariliner gliding down the Hudson, the towering apartment buildngs and hotels surrounding Central Park look like high walls hemming it in. Truth is, only people are hemmed in by those buildings. Like Pale Male, they take their escape in the park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is that time of year when the view from my back yard brings a Spring bounty of beauty and reminders. The beauty is in the sky and its presentation this time of year. It is baby blue with whispy clouds so gossamer that, in the warming temperatures, they struggle against evaporation, shifting forms as the high wind and rising heat shape them one way, then another, searching for the perfect artistic presentation. Like an artist sculpting metal, nature's hammer is forceful while, from where I sit in the greening grass, receding snow and rising crocuses, it seems to work so gently. My back yard scene reminds me of similar scenes along the Virgin River in Southern Utah this time of year. Why the name Virgin? Well, the Mormons who named it might have a more precise explanation for that title. It is not a wide river, and if you are from the East or the Pacific Coast, or Alaska, you would see its width and volume as that of a creek, not a river. But the Virgin is fierce. It gorges with snowmelt this time of year and thrusts like silver needle and thread through the soft red rock of Southern Utah just north of the Arizona border and about 150 miles or so northeast of Las Vegas. Why I think of that scene here in my back yard, along the urban belt of Salt Lake City, is explained by the sky and the warming temperatures around me. The sky is much like that above Zion Canyon, the now-national park of towering red rock monoliths cut so ruggedly yet magnificently by the Virgin and its constant force and Spring-time thrusts of swollen snowmelt.

 

Viewed from my backyard, the sky, the clouds and the black veins of naked tree branches revive memory of days spent in Spring nearly 25 years ago, sitting on a rock in Zion, above the cresting Virgin, reading a book by Wallace Stegner, the great writer who shaped so many other writers -- Larry McMurtry, Ken Kesey, Robert Stone -- and yet was so dismissed by Eastern reviewers, despite his one-time acknowledgement by that establishment with the awarding of a Pultizer Prize for fiction. The memory of that time 25-plus years ago is made more vivid by this dismal economy we are experiencing. Back then, I found Zion and went to it because I was searching for solace at a time when I had been laid off by the dying United Press International wire service and had found work at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. It meant a considerable paycut, it meant I would not transfer as offered to the San Francisco desk to edit national and international stories, and I thought it meant an irreversible setback in my career as a journalist. What I discovered in Las Vegas was a wealth of dynamic people, riveting stories, the freedom to write as I wanted, and, a few hours drive through the deseret away, Zion and the Virgin River. And Wallace Stegner. His words in the the book, "One Way to Spell Man," which grew largely out of his letters to a young writer who wasn't being published, spoke to me of more important considerations in life than being a Congressional or political correspondent for a wire service or a newspaper. Stegner spoke of experiences much deeper than those I aspired to in journalism, and everything he said was shaped by his love for scenes like those I would view from a rock above the Virgin in Zion.

 

Today, as I sit in my back yard, viewing the Western sky in all its enormity and complexity, I am reading another book that carries great advice and solace. It is Thomas Moore's "A Life at Work: The Joy of Discovering what You Were Born to Do." Moore, a former monk, university professor, and forever a writer and psychotherapist, writes, like Stegner did, of the deeper meanings and greater rewards to be found in a life of examination and purpose, if not one of fame and fortune. Those of you who read this, I would wager, have not heard of the Virgin River. Yet I am confident in saying that it is a force that has deepened and sculpted a landscape in ways equal to or greater in beauty than those vast landscapes shaped by the Mississippi, the Columbia, the Susquehanna or the Delaware. And there is as much meaning to be taken from the Virgin as there is the Tiber, the Rhone, the Seine, the Thames or the Yangtze. And each year, round about this time, I take that much meaning and more from the Western sky as viewed from my back yard.

Dateline: June 24, 1995. Nice, France, On the beach below the Promenade des Anglais

 

It is morning, just after 6 a.m. I have walked to the beach, passing brasseries full of hungover teens and twenty-somethings who had partied hard along the promenade. It appears humans and the weather have happily worn themselves out during the night. On the pebbled beach, the waves are gentle now. Last night, they still roared, the remnants of an afternoon storm that had blown for hours, then moved on from this curving bay along the Mediterranean. They would rise from the royal blue sea and turn azure as they foamed toward land. Now, they stroke the shoreline, one not of sand but smooth, rounded black pebbles. As the waves recede, the thousands of pebbles they've lifted in their surge settle and roll, making a soothing rattling sound, like the rain sticks sold by The Nature Company, or the changing arrival and departure boards of European airports and train stations. A baby's rattle to a man contemplating the next chapter at midlife. The sky looks scrubbed, as if the friction of the wind had drawn color from just below its skin. The real source of pastel pink and blue is the sun, still weak on the horizon. Up high in the scene, swirls of clouds take the pastels, while billowing clouds out on the water's horizon stand out in shades of light and dark gray, in bas relief against a slate sky. Turning back toward the city, and the towering palms and old casinos lining the boulevard, I see the hills above the city, a luminescent olive in this early light. A band of clouds just above the city keeps the sun from shining full. Shafts of light like flashlight beams squeeze out briefly and ignite like a match head on the far side of the bay. A terrace of white housing on a point of land curving out to sea glows golden. The piercing reflection of sun off windows suggests every one of these houses is on fire from within. A plane lifts off from the airport near these houses and climbs onto the canvas. On the opposite side of the bay, a large sailboat is at full sail but not covering much distance. Near me, two figures huddled beneath a blanket at water's edge stir from sleep and throw pebbles to scatter pigeons overrunning them in their search to eat what last night's party crowd dropped or what the sea has washed up. I turn the collar of my knit Polo shirt up. It is cold, and the blue blazer keeps me barely warm.