Archive Fever: Writing and thinking with oceans, memory, and attention.

Today is my son's 17th birthday. I’m watching him swim deliberately, doggedly. He, as always, is swimming his heart out. We are at a swim meet in Greensboro, North Carolina. Greensboro Aquatic Center. Lane 3. The same pool he’s raced in countless times. The same town my mom once called home—briefly and begrudgingly—when she attended what was then the Woman’s College of UNC. She was a Wilmington girl. A coastal soul just like me who missed the ocean every day she spent inland. Greensboro never really clicked for her, and I have to admit, I’ve inherited that discomfort. I used to think I hated this place. I still don’t love it. But it's complicated—because every time I come here, I remember things. I learn things. My mom used to talk about how proud she was to go to the Woman’s College—at the time ranked just behind Vassar. She loved what it stood for: women pushing forward, making space for each other. But she was also fuming when the college went coed (years after she graduate...

For over a year I think, in a variety of subconscious and conscious, ways I’ve been waiting for some fucking epiphany to appear (dictation said “help heal” proposed for epiphany) .Tonight, I finally think that happened. After leaving a toxic job, marital and familial devastation, plus a cross-country move I felt what seems so normal to me my whole life. A thunderstorm and a threat of a tornado that never comes... frogs and hopes of lightning bugs and everything North Carolina. Rooted in place. Everything in its right place.   We sat on the porch as a family and I’m not sure my wife or my son was content or less anxious or happy… I’m pretty sure they were not. But in my bones something finally reconnected. They both went back to their computers or games and I realized that that’s my  strong connection between place and felt experience was what was happening. I have not had that in so long.  I remember a Hal Crowther essay decades ago in The Independent ....I don’...

    I write this post in-flight back home to Portland, Oregon where forest fires have decimated nearly one million acres of Oregon forest in the past week.   The air quality in Portland is beyond hazardous to breath and the city is under a declared state of emergency.   On my flight, I am also wearing an N95 mask to help protect myself and others from the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.   The United States continues to reel from its reckoning with racial injustices and societal division.   Not being able to breath is both literal and metonym in these surreal times.   I am not really sure what I am flying back to.   My wife and son have evacuated the city due to the toxic air quality and Portland has been shut down for months on end due to COVID-19 and nightly protests.   It’s been hard to sort through the delirium of my existence in a place that was once a welcome refuge and beacon.   I feel trapped by nostalgia and m...

One of the aspects of living on the West Coast that I still can't get enough of is the sun setting over the Pacific.  I grew up in southeastern North Carolina, seeing sunrises over the Atlantic...possibly taking them for granted.  The sun's daily greeting and parting salutation are different, but equally magical, experiences.  Both can be preceded by (sunrise) or followed by (sunset) a green flash.  I've never seen one at sunset, and long for that...enough to make me chase sunsets ad infinitum.  Here's a photo from last week in Cannon Beach, Oregon.  It intimates so many points of happiness and connection.  We did not see a green flash, but it does feel like we go right in matters of the heart  which is a supposed blessing of the green flash.

FIRST DRAFT (30 minutes) My mom took this photo Winter 1984.  This was the first winter that I surfed and I'm holding my first surfboard, a Dick Brewer (shaped by Gary Linden).  The year before, had started surfing and was hooked.  I surfed every day, whether there were waves or not...I was in the ocean thanks to my mom, grandmother, and the parents of my surfing mates.  I had sat the previous winter out, due to not having a full suit.  As the fall turned into early winter, the water got colder and my Piping Hot 2 mm vest no longer kept me warm; I wanted/needed a full suit.  I couldn't sit another winter out.   During the summer and fall of 1983 my parents were fighting, probably due to my dad's gambling and unwillingness to get a job, as that would interfere with his bar and poker time.  My dad hated that I was a surfer for a variety reasons, mostly due to his ego wobbling under the weight of his son not being devoted to a "real sport...

Green Paths and Golden Rules "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."  -H. D. Thoreau I spend a lot of my day on a school campus of some sort, be it grade school or university.  I've been doing so for my whole life basically, either as a student, teacher, or administrator.  For the past five years I have been spending time on school campuses as a parent, which is pretty cool when juxtaposed with my role as university professor/administrator.  Increasingly, one of the characteristics that I thrive on when I'm on any campus is its relationship to nature.  Here are just a few pics I snapped today. What I like about all of them is that they are the path I take to either teach or drop off a young scholar.  The peace, tranquility, and inspiration I derive from moving through these spac...

 So, I'll tell you this: there is arguably no better city in North America to sample world-class coffee, beer, and wine than Portland, Oregon.  I have spared hyperbole, here.  Theses are true words.  As the good ol boy says, "I kid you not". Last night I had a hot date...sizzlin' if you will.  I took a risk and visited unfamiliar ground for the start to our evening.  The venue: a highly rated wine bar, TeSoAria , in North Portland (aka NoPo).  Beyond simply dropping the four letter up down up down capitalization schema for gentrifying neighborhoods, I flag you (the imagined reader) to this for future reference.  Largely, you should go there or imagine going there.  They have great wine and fine curation.  The envrions are cool, hence you'd be in situ cool to boot.  But, I digress. In the course of the evening, we ran across the winery's, relatively famed, Bull's Blood .  Admit it, this is linguistically enticing.  ...

It is hot and dry in the Pacific Northwest.  There is a record drought and acres of forest are burning.  More than a quarter of a million sockeye salmon are dying because the rivers are so hot .  There is toxic algae in the Willamette River.  And,  the city that, just this past weekend, held a big float celebration to show it has cleaned up its river has issued a health advisory.  Things don't seem to be going so great for the environment in the magic kingdom of Ecotopia. The term motivated inference refers to contexts where people's beliefs are biased by their goals   (great academic piece here ).  In such situations, like climate change, it is difficult for individuals to consider problems that contradict their individual or collective sense of identity.    Climate change poses such an instance;  Portland sets forth a particularly frustrating conundrum.  In what many have heralded as America's greenest city, en...

Humility and hubris are two different, and quite incommensurable, qualities.  The recent media (feeding) frenzy, if you will, with regard to shark attacks has me reflecting on how we respond to the environment we live in and are a part of.  My home state of origin, North Carolina, has experienced a lot of attention this summer for its shark activity .  And, most recently, there was the shark attack at Jeffrey's Bay where world champion surfer Mick Fanning experienced an intense close encounter of the great white kind.  Fanning's remarks and reflections were quite humble, however there has been some more insanely hubris-laden commentary shared in media.  Folks have actually called for shark decimation or hunting in an effort to rid the seas of sharks. Fear and hubris aside, it often seems we've lost our ability and inclination to situate ourselves in relation to the natural world.  We've lost our humility.  We've lost our way to make sense of our...

What does it mean to come face-to-face with a hero?   Not anyone’s hero, but your hero.   And, what indelible mark, if any, does it make when this happens?   Maybe the myth and infatuation unravels with disappointment or realization that your hero is a fatally-flawed mortal.   Such meetings may change lives, or they may simply be another pedestrian interaction.   Fundamentally, though, these meetings hold potential to make us look deeply into who we are and what we aspire to be, or what we have to resuscitate. I met one of my heroes last week, and it changed my life.   The meeting summoned from the depths a lost self…a self that I’d sidelined and subjugated for well over fifteen years, dating back to my mom’s death in 1999.   As I reflect, I can see that in the two years prior to my mom’s sudden death, hurdles and hiccups in her life and mine had begun to create a context where I   was losing my self .   Of course, at the time I did ...

Father’s Day…I’m glad it’s here.   I love my family and especially my son.   He’s gives me the greatest gifts, with none of them being material.   Well, of course, he does give me great material gifts but the ones I cherish most are the soul soothing heart expanding ones…the gifts of love, experience, and reminders of what it means to see and experience things anew.   Watching and being with him enables me to thrill with delight all of life’s gifts, which include the exhilarating ones as well as the scary, intimidating ones.   If I really allow myself to drop into my heartspace--which is hard for people to do, especially men—my son teaches me a lot about humility.   It’s a gift my dad never gave me and one that I did not (or was not encouraged to) experience as child. Thomas Merton wrote that "pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real".   I like this, a lot.   Pride, namely false pride, is something that can’t inhabit  ...