Aristotle called it eudaimonia, a kind of happiness that is long-lasting and deep. Whitman called it being strong and content. St. Paul called it a peace that passes all understanding.

The only walk today is down to my favorite restaurant in town, a Thai place, where I order my usual (they do not even give me a menu any more) and a lovely Pinot Noir. I have the place almost to myself, and my friendly waitress who is always smiling ensconces me in the corner booth where couples or foursomes should be. I enjoy my perch in the corner where I can see everyone, but they have to make an effort to see me. It is me, my Pinot, and my Epictetus (the Enchiridion), and I could not be happier. Soon enough, however, a father and son are seated on one side of me and an older man and younger woman on the other. I do not mind because I am still alone, almost invisible since I produce no energy and they bring abundant amounts. Something is troubling the father, and he expresses it with various instructions to the waitress. (God bless waitresses; they put up with so much shit it is unbelievable.) The son returns from the restroom and puts his hand on the father’s shoulder and holds it there a moment. It is a touching, pregnant gesture, and I can feel the weight of it even where I sit. The older man is hitting on the younger woman. She is leaving for Berlin in the morning, and he offers to go with her. He tells her at least four times how good she looks. His voice is tense with erotic energy, and she returns it but with much more reserve, as women do.

I eat half my meal, box the rest, finish my wine, and head home. Leaving the restaurant and looking at the full moon lighting my way, I am overcome with eudaimonia, strength and contentment, peace. It bubbles up like a fountain, and I catch myself smiling as I walk. I know the source: it is me. Solitude is sacred. It strips away the patina of society’s layers and leaves you with nothing but yourself. And that is a fearful prospect, but it is also the source of all that is us. Solitude is not loneliness, and it is not egotism. Whitman is often falsely charged as an egotist, but read the poetry. He celebrates and sings himself, but the self he sings is connected to everything and everyone in the universe. To embrace solitude is to find out who you really are, to burn away the dross that has accumulated and is smothering you. It is to be most gloriously free and, at the same time, most beautifully connected to the world. It is a kind of mysticism I guess, but if it is, it is the best kind: simple, elegant, practical, and true.

Tonight I prepare for a new journey where I celebrate and sing myself, solid and sound, strong and content. It a night brimming with life and happiness. All is most well.

For over two years I have walked and driven this town, and I did not even know there was a Coolville Country Club. It is just as well, I suppose, since I hate country clubs. They reek of privilege, power, and inauthenticity, their immaculate greens and buildings echoing everything bad in Western culture from colonialism to greed. Unexpectedly, I found the country club tonight. Expectedly, it rests on the highest point in Coolville and is surrounded by the kind of homes you would imagine are built adjacent to a country club. It reminds me of Glasgow, Scotland, one of the most underappreciated cities in the world, where the highest point is a memorial to the nineteenth-century industrialists who brought that revolution to Glasgow through shipbuilding and whose soot still stains the buildings downtown. Meanwhile, the lovely and lowly Glasgow Cathedral sits below, itself covered in soot and grime from the rapaciousness of those who are memorialized at the top.

Since the other night when my friend Donna challenged me to do her walk instead of mine, I have been enjoying the unexpected landscapes and vistas I have discovered in my town. Donna is an athlete and is in incredible shape, as I thought I was until we did her walk, which involves a gut-wrenching climb to the highest point in Coolville. At least she thought it was the highest point, until I unexpectedly found another, and another, and another, as I lose myself in a town that I thought was familiar.

Last night I kept climbing until I hit the country club, then I turned right on Canyon Drive, which seemed like a good road to walk based only on its name. It was. Canyon winds its way along the edge of the country club but also retains some of its canyon characteristics. The road quickly becomes very narrow and curvy, and I was shocked to see a man who had a separate garage just for his golf cart mowing his own lawn. Even more unexpected, he waved at me as I passed. I thought then that Canyon Drive was going to be good.

One of my favorite things to do is to get lost in a wilderness or in a city. Lostness means that you have given up control and are open to surprises but also danger. I once was lost for three days in the aptly named Savage Gulf Wilderness in Tennessee, and it was by no means a pleasant experience. In addition to running out of food and water, I was tracked by a bobcat. So I am not advocating a kind of recklessness that invites trouble, but I am advocating a kind of recklessness that opens you up to the unexpected, and that may involve trouble. But it is hard to find trouble in the higher elevations of Coolville around the country club. The worst you are likely to get is a kind of get-off-my-lawn trouble. Still, it was fun to intuit my way up Canyon Drive, waiting to see what was around the many turns, and wondering how long I would end up walking because I had chosen to get lost.

Eventually, I see houses on a ridge, and I guess correctly that this is Sunset Drive. As I crest the end of Canyon Road at Sunset, I am treated to an unexpected view of the valley below and the mountains behind me. Those California hills that seem so barren and even ugly are anything but when you are up close. There is a stark life and beauty to them as they roll out before you like a baker’s confection, their colors given depth by the setting sun. Behind me the ten-thousand-foot peaks cradle a full moon that is just rising, and I smile from deep inside as my heart and lungs pump from the exertion of the climb. It is good.

I turn toward the west and the setting sun, my body adjusting to going downhill instead of up, as it has been for the past three miles. I wonder about the people who live on this ridge. If I look right (north), I can actually see the San Andreas fault, and as I walk I imagine these houses sliding off the ridge to the north or south and the owners on the news providing the clichés that feed the beast. I note the clouds hanging around the mountains, then look to see if there are any others. There aren’t. I look again. Could that be a fire? As darkness descends with me, I come out of one of the many turns on the road and see a glow in the mountains. It is a fire. I stop for a moment, stunned by the unexpected drama before me. In the west the sun is burning the sky with one of those spectacular shows that only the West provides. Slightly to the north, the Cajon Pass is on fire. The colors are exactly the same, and what I thought were clouds was smoke from the new fire. It is a fearful symmetry, as Blake would say, and I marvel at it as Blake did his tiger.

Darkness now and I descend toward the cemetery, one of my favorite places in Coolville. It is a good place for philosophical conversations with friends, especially after beers and billiards, and I recall with fondness those memories as I walk past the ghosts. I zig and zag my way back toward the town center and my house, and against the darkness now I see that the fire has spread. What began as a small, orange blaze is now covering several acres and spreading east with the winds. An elderly couple coming up from town ask if I have seen the fire. I tell them I have and that it is growing. They talk as locals do with a concern that is born of a relative certainty of their safety, more like an interesting development in sports than a viable threat. We pass each other and move on.

By the time I turn onto my street, I can smell the smoke. It is thick and fresh. Unexpected. Something is being lost in those mountains. And something new is appearing. It will take time before we see the new. For now, there is only smoke and ash. No, not just smoke and ash. There is also hope for the unexpected emergence of something new.

Sundown Lights

May 6, 5 P. M.—THIS is the hour for strange effects in light and shade—enough to make a colorist go delirious—long spokes of molten silver sent horizontally through the trees (now in their brightest tenderest green,) each leaf and branch of endless foliage a lit-up miracle, then lying all prone on the youthful-ripe, interminable grass, and giving the blades not only aggregate but individual splendor, in ways unknown to any other hour. I have particular spots where I get these effects in their perfection. One broad splash lies on the water, with many a rippling twinkle, offset by the rapidly deepening black-green murky-transparent shadows behind, and at intervals all along the banks. These, with great shafts of horizontal fire thrown among the trees and along the grass as the sun lowers, give effects more and more peculiar, more and more superb, unearthly, rich and dazzling. Walt Whitman, Specimen Days

There were clouds in Coolville tonight as I began my walk. I stared at them the entire way as the sun reflected off of them in the east and the moon profiled them after dark. Early in the walk, the moon hid behind a bank of clouds, and later, as I finished the seven-mile walk, it seemed as if the moon had smashed them, and they lay in pieces across the sky. I walk every night now for at least five miles, sometimes, like tonight, for more.

I walked when I first moved here before my job began, excited to be in a new city on a new coast with a new job, a job that seemed too good to be true and was. I’ve always found myself in walking. There was a walk in Montgomery, Alabama that passed through several worlds, elite whites to poor blacks, and one little girl who was always playing in her driveway and spoke to me precociously whenever I strolled by. Those Alabama walks contained dreams of escaping the South, and I feared I never would. There were walks in Virginia with the dog where I ruminated upon everything from my partner’s MS to applying for the job in Boston. And there were walks in Boston along the Merrimac River in the cold and snow, and in Nashua, New Hampshire while I was staying at the Extended Stay Hotel because my house had sold earlier than I expected, and I still had to work at Prestigious University. In between have been walks late at night in LA, San Francisco, Istanbul, Budapest, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, and of course Coolville. Walking makes me solid and sound, as Whitman put it. It is a kind of mediation where I walk out my thoughts and fears, and I’ve had plenty of those of late. I walk to remind myself that I am larger, much better than I thought, that I have survived losses more ruthless than I could have imagined, and that I will survive once again. I walk to imagine walking elsewhere, Ashland, Oregon with Vivien and Taylor, Memphis with my friend Milton, New York with my friend Mary, and Boston with my other friend Mary. I walk to remember that I am alive and to be grateful. And when I walk I marvel at the weights people put on their lives: houses far too big (especially as the elevation increases in Coolville), cars and boats, garages full of the detritus of their lives, even spouses and children who ensure that they keep working and filling their garages and driveways and living rooms with more and more stuff because that is the measure of a man these days. Maybe it always was.

I also walk to get lost, as I do this evening. The happy accident, Zen Buddhists call it, and I find it again tonight. Rather than turn off of Sunset Drive and back toward home, I continue west into the sunset and discover that I am on top of a ridge that separates Coolville from the adjacent valley. Down below are the railroad tracks that I have walked with Vivien and Monique. On the other side is Coolville proper, proper Coolville, proprietary properties held by proper people. I walk among them as a ghost, peering into their dimly lit living rooms, most illuminated by giant televisions. As I walk, I recall a poem by Mark Strand:

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

And so I—Aristaeus, Slayer, Aeneas, Odysseus—will, as ever, keep moving, keep being solid and sound, keep making things whole.

It was my first election in California, and I have to say it is a different experience watching the results appear in the afternoon instead of the evening. But it was also the day of our weekly community meeting, and we set up a television in our lobby and watched it with the sound turned off as we did the business of The Buffalo Center. My director’s report was simple: “I love you all, I am proud of you all, and I am honored to be your director.” It was a portent of things to come.

Though we all wanted the meeting to be over so that we could watch the returns, somehow we managed to meet for an hour and half. When you get sixty-some intelligent and earnest people in a room and give them the freedom to express themselves, they are going to do just that, whether it is about academic policy, who cleans the kitchen, or the process they are engaging in at the moment. At one point, during a very serious discussion, the CNN hologram appeared, and those who saw it could not help but laugh. CNN’s attempt to be cool provided a much-needed balance to our heavy discussion topic, and eventually we all laughed at the silliness of it all, even those involved in the weighty discussion.

Finally, we were free of ourselves, and we turned the television up and gathered around it like a fire on a cold night. During the meeting several people had mentioned the need to be considerate of others during the evening, that not everyone shared the same political perspectives, and that some people might be disappointed at the end of the evening. But every single person who gathered around the television, including those in the other building who watched The Daily Show instead of CNN, was hoping for real change. So we were all for Obama, but we were not partisan. We wanted hope. After the cynicism masquerading as patriotism, after the fear-mongering masquerading as national security, after raw seizing of power masquerading as democracy, we wanted hope. We got it.

After each state that rolled in as blue, a might cheer went up in the Buffalo Center. States that came in as red were not booed but met with resignation. I did feel compelled to point out that my area director was from blood-red Kansas, and he responded that he had lived in New York for many years. The room was filled with anxiety and anticipation. Would they find a way to steal this one? Were the polls dramatically, tragically wrong? Had we been hoodwinked again by the promises of democracy offered by craven power brokers? 

My friend Fyodor was in No Cal working and did not have access to media, so I kept texting him the results. At 207 for hope and the west coast still not called, I began calculating electoral votes: California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii. The numbers were there. I looked around the room. Other people knew it too, but we could not say it. Speaking our hopes aloud might be blasphemous; it might be premature at best or arrogant at worst. Could it be? Would our long, national nightmare finally be over? Were we about to “live out the meaning of our creed” as Dr. King said nearly twenty-five years ago?

As 8:00 PDT approached, I wandering over to the other building to watch The Daily Show with those buffaloes. As Colbert raved about the importance of electing our first Hawaiian president, we waited with bated breath for the announcement. Finally, Jon Stewart broke into Colbert’s dissertation to announce that Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States. We broke into cheers, but it was The Daily Show, so many people cried out that we should turn to CNN to be sure. I thought it was an interesting moment for irony and truth. These post-postmodern students wanted a reliable narrator for once in their lives. I tried to reassure them that it was true, but they would not believe me. 

I walked back to our other building, and in the darkening night, I could see my friends, my students, my fellow buffaloes all standing and cheering. Upon entering the room, I was greeted with hugs that took my breath away. Tears and laughter, shock and disbelief, exhaustion and excitement all filled the room. We sat down and watched Senator McCain give his concession speech, and the buffaloes applauded him several times, and for good reason. But when President-Elect Obama walked onto the stage in that great city of Chicago, we all lost it, and I am losing it now as I write this. To see that family appear in front of the United States as the first family is something I will never forget as long as I live. We all began crying and clapping and screaming our joy to the screen. It was truly a sacred moment.

We cheered and cried our way through the victory speech, and I have to say that I shuddered through it as well. I kept waiting for the shot to ring out and steal our hope away. Grant Park looked so open, so unable to be secured from cowards and liars that fear mingled with my hope and joy. But soon enough I was lost in the words of a great orator and a great statesman, and all I felt was joy and gratitude that America transcended its cynicism and hatred and elected a man of the world who can bring us back to respect in the world. At the end of the speech, the Buffaloes, who are environmentalists, activists, feminists, and party to all causes progressive, broke into “America the Beautiful.” I began weeping uncontrollably and could not sing. Then I looked over to the corner, and I saw my advisee Margaret, weeping into her hands and shaking. As the other buffaloes sang about amber waves of grain, Margaret and I held each other and wept, believing and not believing what had just happened and feeling for the first time (maybe ever for Margaret) that the future was one of hope.

Of the many sacred moments I have been able to experience in my life, this is a highlight on the sacred journey. These moments are rare, as anything sacred is, and it will pass, especially as we get to the tiresome and sometimes dirty business of running a nation. But on a Tuesday night in Southern California, people from across generations, genders, and social status, wept and screamed and cried and sang together in a chorus of hope.

I have been waiting almost thirty years to hear someone correct Ronald Reagan’s original, cynical question “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Finally, we have it right. From Barack Obama’s speech:

The question in this election is not “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” We know the answer to that. The real question is, “Will this country be better off four years from now?”

It is the difference between a solipsistic view of the good and a social one. It is the only difference that matters.

Frank is a good guy who came by my office a couple of weeks ago just to chat. He is one of those people with whom you know you have a connection, but in the ebb and flow of life and work, you never seem to make it happen. Recently, Frank wrote me and said we should go hear Cubensis, a Grateful Dead cover band, in Huntington Beach. It was last Tuesday night, and he wanted to leave at 8:30. That’s an hour to the bar, two hours or more there, and an hour back. We both had to work the next morning, and I was hesitant to say yes, but I did in the end because sometimes you just have to do something fun the way you do your work—plow ahead no matter how you feel. So I agreed, and after a long day, Frank showed up at my place at 8:30, and we headed toward the beach in his convertible. Two middle-aged men going to a Grateful Dead cover band concert in a convertible in southern California. The clichés hung over us like the smog in the valley.

But we were no cliché. We had a tremendous talk about life, work, and women on the way west, and by the time we found the Marina Bar and Grill, we were in fine spirits. The bar itself was worth the drive. There were certainly clichés there: old hippies with gray ponytails and tie-died shirts, young hippies with exposed bellies and tattoos, two college professors looking for trouble on a weeknight in California. We did not find any trouble, but we found Craig, the lead guitarist for Cubensis. He was affable and fun, but he had to see to a friend who was carried out of the bar by the bouncer (too many drugs of too many varieties). We spoke about the band playing at the Buffalo Center and speaking to Frank’s class, which is on The Grateful Dead. He left us with a quick turn when he heard his bandmates begin playing.

At the first chord the dance floor was full of clichés, but it was hard to be critical because everyone was having such a good time. Smiling, happy, people sang every word to every song and let their bodies channel the music. And the music was good. I know of maybe one or two Dead songs, but the ones I heard covered were terrific. At one point the band sang C.C. Rider, and I said to Frank that I didn’t know that was a Dead song. “It isn’t,” he said, but if they ever covered it, this band will do it.” Interesting. Everyone was in a great mood, and so was I, and I only had a couple of Fat Tires.

At the break Craig came back to close the deal with us, and we shook hands. Frank saw a woman he had danced with from a previous concert, and called her over. It took him a minute to remind her of who he was, but she eventually repeated some things back to him that convinced him that she in fact had remembered him. They laughed and shared stories of the evening. Then she turned to me and said, “And I remember you too.” I smiled and looked at Frank before I turned back to her and said “You do?” “Oh, yes,” she said, “you were at the House of Blues, and we had a terrific time. It was awesome.” “Yes, it was,” I said smiling. 

Frank and I winked at each other and decided it was time to head back. We had another good talk during the drive back, and I was in bed by 1:30. Not a bad night for a cliché like myself, with just a touch of grey. Rock on.

I grew up in the South. I never even met anyone who was not white and Protestant until I went to college. I never expected to be able to do what I did today in my lifetime. It was a profound moment, perhaps a sacred one as well, and I share it with you now.

Official California mail-in ballot

Before

 

After

 

 

I am still basking in the glow of my weekend in Nashville, and I marvel at this group of people I was privileged to hang out with. They are all former students from Parochial College in Alabama, and despite the limitations of that little college, they took from it what they could and made their lives full and fun. Besides their maturity and good will, what strikes me most is that they are still engaging the issues we talked about in classes those years ago. It is almost as if we had a long class last weekend, only we added a wedding and bowling. We actually picked up specific conversations that had begun in particular classes from Parochial College and continued them. At one point, Jon asked me if I remembered George. I said I didn’t. He said “Yeah, he sat on the east side of the classroom about four seats back, and when you said x he said y.” “Really?” I asked, genuinely surprised that Jon had remembered this. But he did and could recite entire conversations from the classes. Jon is especially funny because he was a business major, but he never went to his business classes. He ended up hanging out in my classes and participating in the discussions. If he had credit for attending my classes, he would have a graduate degree by now.

But I know why Jonathan came to my classes: his friends were there, including the intelligent and compassionate Mechelle, who would later become his wife and at whose house we could crash over the weekend. I can still see Mechelle’s face looking up earnestly as we were discussing some thorny theological or ethical issue. She has an acute sense of justice that is tempered with empathy, and it makes her a beautiful person who lives in the difficult area between those two virtues. She has my deepest respect, and we had yet another good but difficult talk last weekend about living with loss and finding belief in a world without mercy but also with hope. Joy Harjo: “Help us not to give up and this land of nightmares that is also a land of miracles.”

Brian was there to play the music. A brilliant musician, he is also now a father and takes great pride in his role. He is absolutely convinced that Asher is the best looking child on the planet, and he may be right. He readily acknowledges that Asher’s good fortune comes from his mother, not him, and he beams as he introduces me to him. I actually spent a lot of time with Brian as we waited in the shade while the photos were taken. Then when it was time to go to the reception, Brian said the restaurant was east. We walked across Centennial Park to come out on West End and no restaurant. I whipped out the iPhone and discovered that we had, in suits and ties, walked across the width of Centennial Park on a hot October day in the wrong direction. But the opportunity gave us even more time to talk, and it was good. We spoke of life and choices, of beauty and meaning, of guitars and cities. I felt like I was walking with an old friend, and I guess I was because I learned that he is thirty-two. Jesus, you’re old Brian.

Valerie, the bride, is a smart ass. She takes great pleasure in this and is frankly quite good at it. I decided not to mention this in the vows because everyone knows it and loves her for it, so it would be redundant. When I moved from the Philosophy and Religion Department at Parochial College to chair the English Department, I became Valerie’s advisor because she was an English major. She was immediately suspicious, and her first words to me were “Can you explain why you’re now my advisor?” She had a number of classes with me, and I never convinced her that I am a real English teacher. Maybe I”m not. But if you get to know her, you know that she kids the people she loves, so I guess she loves me a lot. Seriously, she is one of the best readers I know and has a giant heart to go along with her native intelligence. And she’s married to Nate who helps her be nicer. Just don’t ever say “Flower box” to her.

Lane, who has a girl’s name, is my brother, my comrade, my good friend. He can drink you under the table or debate Puritan theology with you, and he can do both at the same time if you want. He can talk equally convincingly about the differences between ninjas and pirates or the emergent church in the age of the Internet. We have known each other since the first stories were ever told around a fire, and we will see each other in the next world as well. I’ll probably have to buy him a beer there.

St. Mary of Boston. I’ve written about her before. A force of nature, brilliant, beautiful, and bold, St. Mary is also a little obsessive. Jonathan downloaded iBowl on her iPhone, and she spent the entire afternoon of the wedding day ignoring estate law and playing this bowling game. She convinced herself that she could actually spin the ball, and we all watched her put imaginary english on the throw as she held her iPhone with two hands. Reports were made on every strike and spare, and we were all told repeatedly of her brilliance at bowling. But the best part of the evening was when Mechelle downloaded the game on her iPhone (it was also an Apple weekend) and immediately racked up a score of 262. Mary and I thought this was a fluke, beginners luck, a bug in the program. We had been hoodwinked, bamboozled. We hadn’t landed on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock had landed on us. It was just plain wrong. Meanwhile, I couldn’t break 160 on this stupid game, so I suggested that we go to an actual bowling lane. We did. The wedding party in Nashville on a Saturday evening. It was on. St. Mary found that actual bowling was quite a different thing from holding a button on an iPhone, and she got served pretty good. That only made her want to iBowl more, though, and all the way back to Coolville, I received emails from St. Mary with her newer, higher scores. The last one was prefaced, “Not to be a jerk, but . . .” Uh huh.

So this is the song of my friends, my former students with emphasis on the former. I came back to Coolville refreshed in a way that I had not felt in some time, and grateful that I have these people in my life. I myself am good fortune, but it helps to have good people in your life who love and respect you. So my friends (Insert John McCain gesture here, blink rapidly, smirk accordingly), I miss you already, but thank you for a great weekend. Because “to be with those I like is enough,” and I like you all so much. I am happy to call you friends.

An unseasonably warm afternoon in Nashville, Tennessee. We are lounging around Mechelle and Jonathan’s living room. St. Mary is studying estate law, Lane is reading on the web instead of his Jonathan Edwards biography, Jonathan is almost asleep in his tuxedo, Mechelle is humming with the music and reading a novel surrounded by three dachshunds. This morning we all got dressed up and went to Centennial Park near Vanderbilt University to celebrate the marriage of Nate and Valerie. It was simple and easy and fun. I had the honor of being the officiant at the ceremony because I have been ordained in the Church of Dudeism. So by the power vested in me by The Dude, I performed the following ceremony. Congratulations Valerie and Nate.

Valerie and Nate

Family and friends, welcome to the wedding of Nate and Valerie. They are happy that you are here to share this special moment with them, and they have decided to keep the ceremony itself quite simple and brief. The celebration of their marriage, however, will continue throughout the day, and they invite you to join them in these less formal ceremonies as well. And now to the formal ceremony of marriage.

[Nate places ring on Valerie’s finger]

Nate, do you take Valerie to be your lawfully wedded wife? Do you promise to love, comfort, honor and keep her, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. And forsaking all others, be faithful to her so long as you both shall live?”

[Valerie places ring on Nate’s finger]

Valerie, do you take Nate to be your lawfully wedded husband? Do you promise to love, comfort, honor and keep him, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. And forsaking all others, be faithful to him so long as you both shall live?”

When viewed from outer space, the earth appears fragile and lonely, a blue orb hanging in the immense darkness that threatens to engulf it. This is our home, and our lives here are also fragile and lonely as we navigate our way through the uncertainty and fear that accompany us on our journey here. We find our way through the mazes of childhood and adolescence, adulthood and old age, stopping along the way to reflect, to learn, to cry, to laugh, to suffer and to love. It is a hard journey to be sure, but it is uniquely ours as human beings on this planet, and we travel through this land of nightmares that is also a land of miracles. To be alive and on this planet is miracle enough, but when we find a fellow traveler, someone who has traveled the same paths, experienced the same losses and joys, and shares our story, we have found something more than a miracle—we have found the sacred. All our journeys are better with a companion, and when we find someone who is willing to undertake the journey with us, the world is full of possibility and meaning, and we are at our best as men, as women, as human beings on our fragile and beautiful home. Today we celebrate this very moment with Valerie and Nate and witness and affirm that they have found the sacred in each other. And we invoke that old traveler Walt Whitman who wrote:

Fellow traveler! I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precise than money,
I give you myself, before preaching or law; 
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live? 

Valerie and Nate, by the power vested in me by the state of Tennessee, I now pronounce you husband and wife.

 

Lane, Mary, Mechelle, and Jonathan

malaise |məˈlāz; -ˈlez|noun

a general feeling of discomfort, illness, or uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify : a society afflicted by a deep cultural malaise | a general air of malaise.ORIGIN mid 18th cent.: from French, from Old French mal ‘bad’ (from Latin malus) + aise ‘ease.’

A general feeling: nothing specific to point to, although there are always candidates, and we usually point to them because it is easier than dealing with a general feeling. We like to identify causes because they help us to provide explanations, and explanations are stories that help us get through the malaise. “Oh,” we say to ourselves, “I’m feeling this way because of x that happened last week or y that didn’t happen.” When this happens on a cultural level, myths are made. Stories evolve to explain causes that “are difficult to identify,” and we like them so much we use them even if at some level we do not believe. It is sometimes more important and easier to be the victim of circumstance than to have “a general feeling of discomfort.”

Work is work, by which I mean not play, as it sometimes is. We have had some serious issues to deal with at the Buffalo Center, and we have risen to the occasion every time, but at some point you want to have a break, to be free of care rather than careful, to be afoot and lighthearted. There are moments that make things bearable. Friday I had cleared my schedule and planned to plow through the one hundred plus emails that had accumulated during the week, hoping to get my box back down to zero, which is my usual practice. Some of these messages required a few moments thought and few more moments writing; others, like the one I wrote earlier tonight, require careful crafting and can take up to a half hour. But I was not to get through any messages on Friday, and that was a good thing.

First of all Frank stopped by. He has been at the Buffalo Center for a long time, and we keep meaning to connect because we seem to have a lot in common. We spoke for about an hour about administration, students, gender, and The Grateful Dead. It was one of those nice and easy conversations that flow naturally like a stream and leave you refreshed and lighter. We decided to see a Dead cover band at the beach sometime soon, not because I am a Dead fan (I’m not) but because it is not work, and it is rare for two men to be able to simply hang out and have a good time. Following upon Frank is Yukio, a former director of the Buffalo Center who never gets out, but he turns up in my office just to talk. I had to cancel a lunch with him last week, and I think he is a bit worried about me. We talk easily as is his way, and I introduce him to some new buffaloes. They have heard his name and are pleased to meet him. We have a lot of myths here at the Center, and it is good to see one of the gods come down to visit. I turn back to my computer then I remember Sappho, a Buffalo Center senior, needed a car today to run errands, and I had offered her Penelope. I called her and told her I was on campus if she needed Penelope. “Are you in your office?” she asked. I said yes, and she was there in a matter of seconds. We all live and work together, so my office, like the others, is in the residence hall, so it was only a matter of her coming downstairs to see me. It turns out she did not need Penelope, but she wanted to talk. We, too, had one of those amazing conversations where you feel not only lighter and happier but also that you have learned something. Sappho spent last semester in Argentina, and she is now working on a paper on the cultural significance of the tango. It is a brilliant concept, using this dance as a site for the negotiation of all kinds of gender and political issues, and Sappho is exactly the right person to do it because she always brings everything back to the reality of experience. She is brilliant, and we talk of home and other good things. She, too, is a wanderer who is restless. Now I have spent over two hours at my desk and not answered a single email, but I have had three really good conversations. I turn back to my computer and Lisa comes in smiling. Lisa is my co-teacher for my class this fall, a second-year buffalo who is smarter than she should be at her age and just too cool for words. We have been teaching together for about four weeks, but we have never really sat down and talked. We finally did and agreed, among other things, to go to Canada if Obama does not win this election. We are not going to move to Canada; we are just going to drive to the border and take a photo of us holding a sign that reads “We protest.” Then we will come back to the Buffalo Center and be sad, you betcha.

Today I went down to the coffee shop to work, and Sappho came in shortly thereafter. She was frustrated working on a paper, and I was frustrated trying to get through my emails. Sappho sat next to me, and we frowned. Scout called and needed help with a web site, and it was great to hear her goofy voice. At one point I was chatting with a friend in Europe, emailing Monique, and talking on the phone with Scout. It was almost technology overload, but it was fun to be connected. Sappho broke through and started making slips of paper that had her main points for her paper. She laid them out on the table at the coffee shop and showed me. “What does it mean?” I asked. “I don’t know, but I feel like I have accomplished something,” she said happily. So we were both happy and smiling and decided it was time to leave. I came home and actually answered a number of emails, finally.

Just as I am about to go out to dinner to the best place in town, Casa Guatemala, Marsha calls. She is my advisee and is working on her “contract,” the narrative and course listing that will be her education at the Buffalo Center. “I think I’ve finished it,” she says happily. “Wonderful,” I say, genuinely pleased for her because this is a hard thing. Imagine not having an undergraduate curriculum and having to make your own then run it by a committee of faculty and students, and you have to do all of this by the first semester of your sophomore year. This is a big deal. She tells me she will bring it in tomorrow. I smile and hang up. As I open the door to Penelope, I call Marsha back. “We should go to Casa Guatemala to celebrate, don’t you think?” I say. She agrees completely, and when I go by to pick her up, I see Angie and Carson along with Carson’s roommate, a graduate of Prestigious University. As we get back in the car the iPhone rings, and it’s burningsteady. She leaves me a message castigating me for not returning her call for seven months. It has not been seven months, but it has been a while. So I call her back, and she sounds wonderful because she is wonderful. And she says “Why aren’t you writing?” I tell her about malaise as I sit down at the table with four other buffalos, and we laugh like buffalos, and one of us smells like a buffalo. So here you are burningsteady. Thanks for making me laugh. Thanks for making me write. That general feeling of discomfort is still there, but things are a little brighter now because I got to tell this story. And it helps that my belly is full of enchiladas.