eno

i pity the frog who comes within arm's reach of emerson.

we fished the eno this evening; or rather: i fished; emer frogged.

but at first we waded; or rather: i waded, flycasting with one arm while holding emer in the other. then we came to a gravelly spot on a bank that was hopping with frogs. "down." i put him down. soon he had a frog in each hand, which is, by the way, the definition of heaven when you are two years old and a boy.

i left him to his frogging and waded out to fish a little. caught a few bream, or "brim," as they say around here.

emerson soon came wading out into the river, singing and happy as could be, waving a stick in one hand and frog in the other. then the stick became a spear that he jabbed at imaginary fish, and soon he lost his balance, slowly tilting back onto his bum, now in water up to his neck with terror in his eyes and a whimper in his throat. i scooped him up. he still had the frog in his hand.

i waded back upstream, dripping wet, casting (one-arm) here and there. we reached the other bank by where the car was parked, but emer wasn't ready to go. he was having too much fun throwing his frog in the river and watching him swim back to shore for another toss. boy, how he'd laugh.

a couple more brim to poke in the eye and let go, a few more toss-and-swims for the frog, and then he was ready to say good-bye to the frog, to the river reflecting the setting sun, and then on back to home, asleep before we got there, dreaming, no doubt, of ketching frogs.
-sept. 3

saxapahaw

i fished the haw river today, just downstream from the bridge at saxapahaw. i parked at the rivermill and crossed the bridge. saw three giant turtles bobbing their heads in the current, in the wide of the river. took a dirt road down to the riverside. a frog hopped in front of me, crosswise, into a puddle in the road. a little root-worn trail led down to the riverbank. i tied on a cork popper and caught a handful of hefty bream: green sunfish, mainly. stepped out onto a boulder in the stream to cast. the exposed tops of rocks around me were speckled with the carcasses of large black flies with tan splotches on their laid-flat wings. looked like caddis. they were cemented to the rocks, as if for some purpose, by cement of their own make. i opened my flybox and found a stonefly pattern that looked like a good match. tied it on. caught a few more. moved upstream. caddis fluttered in swarms from the hedge along the bank when i brushed it. a watersnake slid meandering s-curves through the water. a blue heron, or perhaps it was a sandhill crane, took to flight and two canada geese waddled out to midstream, and on down. i sat on a rock in the sunlight under the bridge. opened my flybox. figured i’d go back to a popper, a bigger one this time. but first i phoned home. emerson had just woken up from his nap; olivia awake too. so i broke off my fly and wound in my line. made my way upstream until i found a little trail leading to another trail leading to the road, bridge, rivermill.

as i was leaving saxapahaw, i noticed that people were gathering at a greenlawn amphitheater in the middle of town. i saw a sign that said festival parking, watch for pedestrians. so i drove home to carrboro, gathered up the missus and the kids, and we headed right back out to saxapahaw where we listened to lizzie jones play her guitar and sing as emer waved a rope-loop-on-2-sticks-dipped-in-a-bucket-of-suds and made giant bubbles in the air and ’livi smiled and laughed at everyone and everything in saxapahaw.
-august 14

update: the large black fly carcasses, with tan splotches, that looked like caddis: I looked them up in a book on caddisflies, and they are indeed caddis: macrostemum zebratum, commonly known, to vulgar fishers, as the zebra caddis. i was down on the stream again today, same spot, and saw a bunch of live ones, as well as another specie of the same order: smaller, and whitish-tan in color, fuzzier looking (caddis are, after all, classified as trichoptera, greek for "hair wing").

-august 21

river

the river draws me.

much more than flies lure fish, the river lures me.


i know of nothing more therapeutic than fly-fishing. standing in the river with the cool flowing all around me washes my worries away better than any strawberry-misted litany of New Age affirmations ever could. it is total release. baptism. the river washes me clean.


when i'm not fishing, i dream of catching fish. the river swirls and eddies in my head. a trout rises. i see a flash of gold as i set my hook in the jaw of the german brown that took my nymph. i play him through the ripples, land him in an eddy, lift him out of the cold clear and admire the golden-brown worm-tracks that meander all over his back, the orange blue-rimmed rose-moles that stipple his side, the golden sheen of his underbelly. perhaps i gut and bag him. or maybe i slide him back into cool flow, a shot of gold released.


the influx of mind is a river. for me it's the provo, the soda butte, the lamar...

my stream of consciousness is laden with trout.

chicago

I have good vibrations for chicago. At least, that's what Rubee told me.
I met Rubee at a subway station in chicago last march. I was headed to O'hare later that day and had already checked out of my dorm room in Hyde Park, so I had all my stuff with me: backpack, bed roll, side bag, and a few other accessories. I was leaning against a pillar waiting for the train.
"That's what I like to see," Rubee said to me as I was perplexing over a subway map. "A traveling man."
He was dressed all in black in what was obviously religious garb of some sort, though I couldn't quite place it. He wore a black turban on his head and wore a long shirt that split at the waist and hung down to his knees in two skirt-like flaps in front and in back, sort of like Hari Krishna often wear. He had spiked, silver piercings in each nostril and several below his lower lip. He wore dark glasses, even in the subway tunnel.
"I'm trying to get to Northwestern," I replied.
"North, on the purple line," he replied.
He gave a flick of his wrist, cooly motioning me over to him so he could show me on the map. I took a seat next to him on station bench.
"Are you a student?" he asked.
"Yeah," I replied. "I'm checking out different grad schools and want to see Northwestern while I'm in Chicago."
That seemed to catch his interest and he inquired further. He perked up when I told him I'm studying U.S. religious history and am interested in religious studies generally.
"Studying religion, huh? My man, my man."
He spoke slow and smooth. Every word was chosen and articulated carefully, weighed and balanced before it was deemed satisfactory and let go. I had to strain to hear at times; he spoke softly, regardless of background noise, with a detached, laid back sort of cool.
I glanced down at the map.
"Have you been to the Bahai temple?" I asked.
"Oh yeah," he replied.
"Is it worth seeing?"
"One of seven in the world; only one in North America. You should go."
A distant rumble grew louder in the tunnel and soon the train pulled up. We boarded together. The train was packed so we stood in the doorway. I grabbed a ceiling ring and braced for departure. He stood cooly and swayed slightly as a the train took off.
"Chicago is a great city for religion," he told me. "There's folks of all stripes here."
"I've noticed."
"The parliament of religions was here during the world's fair in 1893," he told me. "Religions from around the world all converged here in chicago."
"Except mormons," I added.
"Really?"
"Yeah, they applied, but were denied a seat."
"I didn't know that," he replied. "You Mormon?" he asked.
"Yeah," I replied.
He looked surprised.
"Mormons would have a hard time in this city," he told me.
He seemed to be looking me over, as if this new revelation warranted a new assessment. "But I think you should study here; you have a good vibe for chicago."
"Maybe I will."
"This is my stop," he said as he handed me a business card.
I looked down at the card: "Rubee Blackriver, yoga instructor."
"Yoga, huh?" I said. "I just talked to wife twenty minutes ago and she was doing yoga."
"Cosmic," he said. "Give me a call, and visit the Bahai temple."



Bahai Temple, Chicago

contemplating potato bugs

“Do you think potato bugs think,” I asked my Dad as he was programming a sprinkler clock. “I mean, is there any sense or reason to their wanderings, any pattern or purpose, or do they just go in circles with no direction?”
“I don’t think they think anything,” he replied.
I arched my self over the bug and put my head against the concrete to get a profile of him. “He’s got one white leg and the rest are grey.” I blocked his way with a wire. His little feelers probed about in front of him and detected the obstacle and he turned to go around it. “I don’t think they have any eyeballs.” I bumped his side with my finger and he sped up. I bumped him a little more gruffly trying to get him to roll into a ball and succeeded only in flipping him over. His legs were all a wiggle as he flexed himself in and out of a ball and arched his back trying to flip over. I thought he must be getting exhausted so I flipped him back over. He must be brave because he didn’t roll up into a ball and play dead like the ones in the backyard do. He looks like a little tank. I suppose his plated armor gives him confidence.
“You don’t think they have any intellectual abilities?” I asked again.
“Nope.”
“You don’t think he is wandering in circles pondering the meaning of life?”
“Nope, the Book of Mormon says that the potato bug is the stupidest of all creatures.”
“oh.”

consecutive madness

I eat my lunch at 12:34 PM every day. I’m usually feeling a bit tired by then, having been up for five hours and eight minutes already and only having gotten four hours and twenty-two minutes of sleep. The sleep depravity is due to a condition I have. I can only do things at those points of the day, or night, when the ordinals on a digital clock are in consecutive order. Thus, I go to bed as 12:34 AM and arise at 4:56 AM. If I just can’t drag myself out of bed that early, I’ll stay there until 9:10 AM (9:10 is stretching the rules, I know, but sometimes I have to), but then I’m late for work because I can’t start my car until 10:11 (stretching it again) and can’t clock in until 12:34. It throws my whole day off and ticks off my boss. So I usually arise at 4:56, without fail.

So why don’t I just go to bed at 9:10 or 10:11 or 11:12? Well, I guess I could, since I sometimes justify sneezing or using the restroom at those times, but every time I’ve tried it in the past, I can’t sleep—I just lie there feeling guilty. So I wait, standing by my bed wake-weary with blood shot eyes and drowsy head, until 12:34, and then I can rest my head with an easy, ordered conscience: all my ducks in a row.

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