poet, interviewer, musician, traveler
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A memory of taking my older son to the bus when he was in first grade.
darkness, whispering
he seems too small
to withstand
the yellow
metal embrace
it gathers him in
and he disappears
lost behind the vinyl
seats tall as walls
I try to wave
but he doesn’t see me
so I walk back home
in the pre-dawn
darkness, whispering
softly, to no one,
that’s my little boy
Listen to this poem by pressing the play button above.
Miso Soup
(for Jennifer)
the only thing better than the taste of the sushi
is the lingering aftertaste
mixed with miso shiru and warm ocha
a sensation so rich
it’s almost another meal in itself
I always order one extra piece of unagi
and remember walking into Meiji Jingu
holding your hand
you gave me a book on Zen —
I was into that then —
and I gave you an atlas of our world
so we could choose the next destination
we sat in the kaitenzushi-ya in Shibuya
and watched the endless parade
of plates, daring us
in Nikko, we took a photo in an unexpected
tram car that was right there on the sidewalk
then climbed up all those stairs
to see the sanzaru
there were many little tremors and
the one big one
that had us scurrying for the doorjamb
just as the shaking stopped
and yes, there were cherry blossoms —
there always are —
right outside our bedroom window
and the cleaning man came by each week
and always seemed surprised to see us
we gave him our maple tree
(and you gave me its cousin years later)
I savor these moments and roll them around
on my tongue, heavy with the dusky taste
of shoyu and the tang of vinegar in the rice
Listen to this poem by pressing the play button above.
I am not an Indian
My great-great-great-great grandmother
was a full-blooded Blackfoot Indian.
People say full-blooded not because
they have any proof,
but because it sounds wild, native.
If you do the math, that makes me
1.5% Blackfoot, and not very wild at all.
Say what you will about Ward Churchill;
he was right that all our accomplishments
as a country, all our technology, all our freedom,
all our music and poetry and art and dance and theater,
is being created on land that we stole from people
whose names we don’t even remember.
In college, my roommate’s best friend
paid less for his tuition because he was
above some arbitrary threshold
of Native American ancestry.
Not full-blooded, but bloody enough.
He was generously allowed
to learn quote-history-unquote
in a government building on the very land
his ancestors occupied before they became
little more than discount coupons for the state.
Another branch of my family has lived
in New England since 1638.
We never owned slaves, you’ll hear them
attest proudly, and it appears to be true.
Less lauded is my some-number-of-greats
uncle John Flanders, who served
with distinction in the army of Gen. John Sullivan,
helping to rid upstate New York of the Iroquois.
Sullivan’s troops burned and shot and hung and scattered
the people of many nations, including the Cayuga.
The army destroyed their town of Coreorgonel, and in its place was
established Ithaca, now a haven for higher education and
an oasis for studiers of organic farming and
Native American spirituality.
Living at Coreorgonel were the remnants of the Tutelo people,
who’d been forced from their homes
on the border of West Virginia and Kentucky,
and who were taken in by the Cayugas. It has been
112 years since any human being spoke the Tutelo language.
Sitting on a stage at the Tokyo Film Festival, director Chris Eyre
(of the Cheyenne-Arapaho, remember them?)
was asked by a member of the audience whether he preferred
to be called “Indian” or “Native American.”
“We have so many other problems to deal with
that we don’t have much time to worry about
what we’re called,” he said.
Listen to this poem by pressing the play button above.
Entrances & Exits
Jason Lee Borders entered the world
on a late-summer afternoon in 1973,
sharing his father’s middle and last names
and containing a small flaw in his DNA
that he also shared with his father,
who, unlike Jason Lee Borders,
wasn’t strong enough to resist the genetic revolver.
Instead, he held it to his temple and pulled the trigger,
and a wash of alcohol broke through the levy
and swept the borders away.
Before the little boy drowned,
his mother crept through the window
and ran with him into the night,
gene still intact, waiting.
Jason Lee Gustavson entered the world
in a courtroom in 1979
after the requisite paperwork had been filed;
a new identity, a new life,
another in a long string
of relocations and reorientations.
By this time, even at his tender age,
he’d made one of the few choices
to which he’d remain true,
deciding early on
to leave his father’s revolver tucked in its padded box
in an unlocked drawer of the old oak dresser.
As it turned out, though,
his father wasn’t the only parent with a gift,
and generations of overflowing bathtubs
in the brains of his maternal ancestors
were slowly leaking through his own skull,
surrounding his spongy gray being
with a dark fluid that obscured light and memory.
Jason David Crane entered the world
at a kitchen table with his grandparents
in 1994 after a late-night session of salsa music.
They’d gone through all the family names
when his grandfather suggested the family
for whom an aunt had washed the laundry.
As a gesture to the father
whose name he was leaving behind,
Lee became David
and he became a man.
Jason-Lee-David-Borders-Gustavson-Crane
entered the world and left the world and
entered the world and left the world and
entered the world. His bathtub overflowed
and he sank beneath the water,
one hand clutching the smooth porcelain side.
I wrote this in Oakland, CA, in October 2008 while getting ready for my sister-in-law’s wedding.
Tomorrow the Wedding
for Amy & Michele
Tomorrow the wedding
today hauling cans of soda,
bottles of beer.
Phone: the Italian groom
carrying a bouquet of balloons
back to the apartment.
Meanwhile…
eastern family, recently landed,
descended from the pure blue.
Our temporary hilltop home,
where we sit silently
on the sun-warmed porch,
looking out over Oakland
at the glittering bay beyond.
A poem about seeing my biological father and grandmother for the first time in 30 years.
Sixty-Seven Unopened Videocassettes
Thirty years and fifty percent of my DNA
have brought me to a double-wide with a steep driveway,
tucked away in an enclave of trailers not far from the iron banks of the Ohio River.
She asks me to call her “nanna” because all the children do.
He’s missing most of his teeth — waiting for a new set of dentures.
I have no hook on which to hang this porch conversation,
this three-decade history lesson and game of tag.
So we talk about tobacco farming, long-haul trucking,
and spying on the Russians from within a cigar tube deep beneath the Mediterranean.
I learn about great-uncles and great-aunts and an extra uncle,
only to learn that money and land and other tragedies have driven wedges into this family, too.
I want to walk into the dining room like Antwone Fisher,
but the table is given over to Charlie Brown and Linus —
Christmas decorations awaiting transfer to their holiday destination.
There are sixty-seven unopened Star Trek videocassettes,
a bathroom crammed with history books,
lighters from the Navy,
a robe almost like the one I wear,
and an old shaving cup with a worn brush.
No matter what happens, I’ve erased the most terrible vision —
awaiting the end with the moisture of regret dampening my cheeks.
“The next time you come, darlin’, we’ll have chicken and dumplings.”
Long Haul
(for my father and his father)
it wasn’t easy keeping all those wheels on the road
another late-night diner and a nap in the cab
hauling one of the damned things was hard enough
it took a man to pull two
it wasn’t easy to raise seven of them
the boy was first and then six — six! — girls
you’d think we would have stopped trying
to make him a brother
and since he was a solitary boy even then,
he would put on his suit and walk down to the little church
that was happy to have an usher
an extra boy to pass the hat for what little there was
he wrecked the car, I made him replace it with college money
I wasn’t teaching him a lesson about responsibility
I was trying to hang on to my boy
the one who’d always had his eye on the horizon
and then later, when he was home from the service
we’d go down under the church to drink at the Legion hall
thick smoke in the air, cheap beer on tap
looking down the barrel of a one-stoplight life
it took a man — and I knew it — to leave
to drive and keep driving until he’d built a better life
to be more than I was and to do it with dignity
and I never told him, but I was proud
(Thanks to David Faust for letting me use a photo from his collection of St. Johnsbury trucks. That’s the company for which my grandfather drove.)
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Memorex Hummingbird
by Jason Crane
Memorex hummingbird hovers above the nectar cup;
animatronic woodpecker hunts for scuttling food.
Nature or Disney ride? Who can say?
Disconnected as we are from snow falling off branches.
I hold the binoculars steady and point out the Blue Jay
as it pecks the last leaf on the winter elm,
and through those lenses peek the unspoiled eyes of my son.
He shouts, “I see it!” and is rooted to the spot,
A sapling full of the coursing energy of the yet-to-come.
A small sampling of people for whom I’m thankful. Not complete and in no particular order, but worth writing. I may add to it, too.
Jennifer: 14+ years of putting up with me. I don’t know how she does it. Or, for that matter, why.
Bernie & John: It’s incredible to be unconditionally loved by your kids. Plus, they’re fun to wrestle with.
Mom, Dad and Gretchen: What haven’t we been through? Actually, skip that question, because I’m finding out that this year there are quite a few new and unpleasant answers. They’re always there, though, and that’s amazing.
Linda, Todd & Sarah, Tammy, Dick, Denise & John, Lynne & Mike & Jack & Grace, Jill, Jimmy & Karen: Couldn’t ask for a better family.
Carol, Amy & Michele, Sandy & Carol Jr. & Autumn, Dorothy & Ethan, Kit & Sue, et al: Couldn’t ask for a better second family.
Bernard & Dorothy Flanders: My debt to them can never be repaid.
Jeff & Leeann & Jake: They know how to be friends, which is a hell of a lot rarer than you might think. And one of these days, Jeff and I will have a very successful show together. Probably a strip-tease show.
Kevin & Jen & Momo: My oldest friend (and his wife, who would probably be disturbed to learn that she’s my second- or third-oldest friend). Uncompromisingly honest and loving people with a real cute kid.
Josh & Jen: Smart, funny and wonderful. Josh is always expanding my world, which is just about the highest compliment I can pay.
Team RocBike: You couldn’t ask for a better gang to ride with, blog with, and be positively influenced by.
The musicians, promoters and record labels who’ve made The Jazz Session possible: What can I say? “Beyond my wildest expectations”? Yeah, that about covers it.
Chuck & Bobby D: Never were two guys more accepting of my crazed need to wave at everybody. Plus, they pick good tunes.
Jo & James: Even kinder than they are talented. And they’re supremely talented.
Sue & Jenny & Katie-Kate & Elinor: Love ’em, love ’em, love ’em. (And miss ’em, too!)
Tom & Susan: Beautiful people who made Raymond Street just barely tolerable.
Satoru: Pops up when I least expect it, and is always welcome when he does. One of those people you know will be there when you need him.
Otto: He understands and inspires.
The members of the Rotary Club of Albany: Nice people doing nice things, as Harry Shearer would say. Except in this case, it’s true.
Leave a CommentYesterday I posted this uncharacteristic message as my Facebook status:
“Hey, all you opponents of gay marriage: F*CK YOU! (What? That’s not helpful? Oh, sorry. But, uh, f*ck you bigots anyway, OK?)”
This, as you might imagined, generated quite a few comments:
Dean Bowman at 1:36pm April 23: What about opponents of marriage?
Heather Dingman-Glenn at 1:40pm April 23: The majority of students at my school feel that all rights should be equal and are open to all kinds of relationships. However, I would say the boys have it worse than the girls. This is a high school where the majority of the parents are military.
Jason Crane at 2:48pm April 23: @Dean: I’m with you, man. State recognition of unions for legal purposes, and then let folks follow religious practices if they choose, with no state sanction or recognition whatsoever. (Unless, of course, you were just being funny.)
Wendy Ramsay at 2:59pm April 23: Snaps to that!
Julie White at 3:23pm April 23: Ideally, I think that the majority of the rights that come with marriage should just be given to people as basic human rights–you know, like health care, adoption for anyone who’s a fit parent and wants to make a family with anyone else–but as long as we live in a state that thinks that monogamous committed relationships should be rewarded, then … Read Morelet’s at least be equal about that. But in Julie’s utopia, no one kind of human relationship (as long as it’s consensual and doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s rights)would be privileged over another (I know, dream on)… off my soapbox…but this is why I actually have a hard time with the gay marriage issue…a lot of ambivalence.
Jason Crane at 4:07pm April 23: @Julie: Right on! Although I don’t think any of those rights should be given. We’ve already got them. I think we need to stop letting the corporate state take them away. But that’s just me being a punk. And shamelessly stealing from Utah Phillips.
Brenda Yarger Abel at 4:27pm April 23: Wow! Way to promote tolerance.
Jennifer Cornish at 4:59pm April 23
I’m strongly opposed to asshole marriage. Letting assholes get legally married just sullies it for the rest of us. It’s just sick. I mean, there are all kinds of statistics showing that assholes are behind the majority of domestic violence attacks, robberies, burglaries, bombings, wars and crappy BSG season finales. And I’m pretty sure that being … Read Morean asshole is very strongly correlated with being a pedophile. I mean, how can we let these people get married and (GOD FORBID) have kids? It’s like they ruin marriage for us decent people who just want to raise our non-asshole kids to be non-assholes. I’m not saying they should be discriminated against for being assholes. I mean, people can be however they want to be in the privacy of their own homes, but when public schools teach that it’s ok to be an asshole, that’s where I draw the line. Once we let them get married, they’re going to turn the rest of us into assholes too.Jason Crane at 5:14pm April 23: Amen!
Jason Crane at 5:59pm April 23: @Brenda: It’s always hard to tell if someone’s kidding or not on this here Facebook. But in any case, I’m kinda over being tolerant of intolerance.
Jennifer Cornish at 7:57pm April 23: Is tolerance of bigotry ‘tolerance’? Interesting question.
Brenda Yarger Abel at 10:12pm April 23: Is it not possible to oppose gay marriage, without being intolerant of those who support it? Since bigotry, by definition, is intolerance of anothers beliefs religion or opinion, it would appear that the one F-bombing those who disagree would be a better example of the bigot.
Jennifer Cornish at 2:30am April 24: I think that by saying ‘Fuck You’ to gay-marriage opponents, Jason is being less of a bigot than those people fighting to take away the right for responsible, consenting citizens to get married and live their own lives in peace. I wouldn’t try to actively take away a bigot’s right to be a bigot. 🙂
Jason Crane at 7:13am April 24: Thanks, Jenn. You’ve said it better than I could have. I’m just tired of having people’s religious views imposed on my supposedly secular government. Discrimination and bigotry in the name of religious opinion are still discrimination and bigotry. No excuses.
Many people who are smarter than I have made the following point more intelligently, but here goes: You don’t get to shout “intolerance” when people oppose your bigotry. If you try to deny people their civil rights based on your religious preferences, then you are a bigot, and no one — absolutely no one — is bound to respect your point of view or shy away from denigrating it.
One CommentSoftware journalist Bruce Byfield has an interesting post today about free software evangelism and why he keeps his mouth shut at parties.
I tend to feel — and act — this way regarding most evangelism. It’s usually not fun to have political discussions at parties because people have so few facts at their command. Maybe it’s my personality, but I find it very hard to have “discussions” between entrenched positions where there is no hope of movement.
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We had 15 or so folks at the house today for John’s third birthday party. After the party, a dozen of us headed to El Mariachi in downtown Albany for some great Mexican food.
Toward the end of the meal, my 6-year-old son Bernie had to go the bathroom. I took him to the bathroom and he entered the toilet stall, locking the door behind him.
When he finished going to the bathroom, he tried to open the door. I could see the handle moving, but the door didn’t open. After about 30 seconds, he started to panic. “I can’t get the door open, Dad!” He said. “Go get someone!”
I asked him what the lock looked like, and tried to calm him down by getting him to describe the mechanism to me. It didn’t really work, though. He was really in a panic and asking me to get someone. The stall and the door went all the way to the floor, so there was no way for him to crawl out.
I looked up and noticed that there was a two-foot space between the top of the stall and the ceiling. Next to the stall was a urinal. Not knowing what else to do, I climbed on the urinal and waved my hand over the top. Bernie climbed onto the toilet and reached up for my hands. I grabbed him and he tried to climb up the wall of the stall while holding my hands. I had no leverage at all, and I couldn’t exert much force to pull him up.
Bernie slipped back and almost landed in the toilet bowl. We decided to try it again. This time he got a little more traction on the wall and was able to climb up high enough for me to get my hands under his arms. Together we got him on top of the wall. I put one arm around him and yanked him off the wall at the same time as I jumped down off the urinal. We landed on the floor together and instantly started laughing at the ridiculouslness of the whole thing.
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Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, which seems like a good time to mention that back during the Civil War, two of my cousins were jailed by Abraham Lincoln for sedition. You can read the entire story in the March 2006 issue of Flanders Family News. (This links to a PDF file. The story starts on Page 9.)
Enjoy!
By the way, lest you interpret this the wrong way — I’m a big fan of Lincoln. But how could I pass up this story?
Leave a CommentBookshelves
All our bookshelves were made by our fathers,
crafted by calloused hands from woods
soft or hard, fine-grained or no,
fashioned in damp basements or dusty barns
on Saturday afternoons while Black Magic Woman
or Love Me Do played on what used to be the nice radio.
The bookshelves are, like all fathers’ creations, imperfect,
slightly wider at the front,
fitting some books better than others.
In one, there is a pair of hearts carved,
delicate filigree surprising
from a splitter of logs, a man of the earth.
The bookshelves are a framework, intended
by our fathers to be filled with thoughts
of our own choosing, maybe with a gentle nudge
from a “doctor of books.â€
But it is we who must encumber the wood
with our own words, we who must choose
which volumes to stack or lean,
we who receive the hard or soft legacy
cast in simple wood by complex men.
In 2008, I was a panelist on the Parents Panel of the Albany Times Union newspaper. That meant writing a monthly article and occasional blog posts. Here is part 1 of my look back at 2008 from a family perspective:
2008: A look back at my year in parenting (Part 1)
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