I just finished Greg Keeler’s latest book Trash Fish. I read it for several obvious reasons; Greg is a local fly fisherman, he is an MSU professor in the English department, and my dissertation work is on fly fishing literature. For less obvious reasons, I took a poetry writing class from Greg during graduate school, his book has a cool picture of a sucker with the reflections of what appears to be kids with fishin’ poles underneath the golden pariah, and the back jacket says it’s about “truths about passion, relationships, and the flaws of human nature.” In multiple ways, I have been drawn to this book for months, including the MSU bookstore display with stacks of copies during spring semester. Then, I tried to justify purchasing the book for my composition course this fall themed “The West”, but couldn’t reconcile Keeler’s fishing book on relationships with my course on intricacies of where we live. Therefore, I bought it last week out of my own pocket, or debit card.
Friday I read 162 pages of the book, and at times when Greg refers to himself as Greg, I couldn’t help but wish it was fiction, and I could tie it into my PhD work somehow. Throughout it I also saw Greg, the tall thin guy who responded to students’ poetry with a laid back “Yeah” and nothing else. After several weeks he brought his guitar in, and I might have been high, but I remember laughing, and laughing! He was a professor I admired, because he wasn’t stuffy, arrogant, negative or high culture. He is real.
My friend Robyn was in the class, and after a brief stint as a job placement specialist, (I shall check and see if that is the real title) she is returning to education as an online college writing instructor. I am excited for her, and loved listening for what she might create in the quiet Tuesday Thursday class absences. Somehow Keeler developed an environment that made me long to hear his “yeah” and I don’t think I was alone in that expectation.
But what really touched me about Greg’s book was his ability to delve into the pain that makes life ache. He lost people close to him from cancer. His wife, a passionate, loving woman became a different woman because of her disease. Like many men, as his wife’s sexual interest declined severely with her disease and age, and as his age encroached, he escaped to his youth when he could attract the likes of Muffet Hemingway.
What is critical in this book, what is critical in my own life, and I think a debilitating aspect of American Culture, is out inability to accept ourselves as feelers, and embrace the feelings of others. Doing this makes me vulnerable. To admit I feel sadness makes me weak. To acknowledge that I am not strong, and stoic, and I am affected by others and my environment, makes me unavailable to others who need me. But, the feelings of others, especially the painful, sad, angry feelings cause me to retreat. Where do I go? Fishing. Smoking. Drinking.
Where do I feel the most joy? Fishing. Smoking. Drinking. Being with Bianca, who doesn’t challenge me. Yet. Do I want to feel attractive like Greg wanted to feel in his book. Yes. Do I feel that way all the time? No. Do I feel that way often? No. Rarely? Yeah. Where do I feel successful then? As a teacher of college freshmen, I feel incredibly successful, but I challenge myself always to be better. To improve what I do. To embrace students as they are now, and teach to a world as I think it ought to be is all I can do, and I hope I do it well. Why don’t I strive to be a better feeler of my family’s emotions?
Where else do I feel successful? Catching trout. Not carp, tarpon, snook, redfish, salmon, steelhead, blue gill, bass, or crappie, but just trout. I fished for the rest, and failed. But trout. I can build the fly rod, tie the flies, find the water, find the fish, and catch them. I can play god and let them go or club them over the head and eat them for dinner or give them to my neighbors as a peace offering for my bullying flame-point Siamese cat.
But where do I fail the most? With those who need me to be vulnerable and show I love them even when it might not be reciprocated. Who does this include? My wife, my son, my mom, my step kids. However, my dog shows undivided love. He is never ever ever angry with me, and imagine this, he is my best friend. Does Duke challenge me? Yeah, when we drive and he whines too much. Does he bite me? No. Does he call me names? No. Does he destroy things I have worked hard for? Mmm, no. He doesn’t. If I had him when he was a puppy-probably. My life is the constant longing for the bumper sticker that reads “God, please help me be the person my dog thinks I am”.
I don’t say that to trivialize this topic. Greg did nothing in his book but make the significance of his actions appear flawed. Who is the saint, the hero, the angel in his book? The woman who continued to love him throughout it all. Who are the saints in modern myths? Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. These people loved unconditionally without violence toward their enemies. They forgave. Judy forgave. “So what did Greg do when he realized the depths of Judy’s despair? Did he rush to her side to comfort her? Did he accompany her to marriage counselors? Did he drink and smoke and drink and smoke? Did he start taking prescribed medications? Yes he did all of the above” (207). He adds “She didn’t want to be with anyone but me. Her insides might have been twisted all funny, but her monogamous brain was painfully intact, and even though my state was the reverse of hers, her strength still brought me to tears” (238). Sometimes I am this failed man. But like Greg, I want to get it.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Thirdspace: not this or that,but both, and.
Thinking about Edward Soja’s thirdspace and the relations between regionalism (critical) and the west as always real and imagined space. Only the leisure class of white upper middle class Americans can hop from one reality and imagined space to another. For example, an Atlanta CEO sees the west all day in his imagination at his desk as a place to escape to; it is still edenic, even with the obvious, gaping maws of toxicity in the city of Butte. However this CEO of upper class America can look past the scars and see what it allows him to do. He can see the west as a retreat from concrete and race and poverty and overcrowding. And when he goes there, he can afford to purchase that escape at a fee. The more one spends, the further insulated one can be, and when he is there in that leather recliner in a rented 3000 square foot cabin, sipping Big Sky micro brews or scotch, there is nothing but the myth and the imagination. He bought the myth, and it happens every day in western places like Bozeman, Missoula, Ft. Smith, Big Sky, and other much written about, and therefore mythologized cities throughout Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado, Northern California, and the Pacific Northwest. Susan Kollin has written a lot about the mythical status of Alaska as well.
The single dad working in a fly shop for $9.00 an hour and paying $230 a month in child support doesn’t get the insulated fantasy. He gets the labor part, but he gets to watch others live the dream, and he might sit on his stool at the register and imagine one day living that dream. He might fantasize about being a guide, on the river every day, in the sun, hooking up these guys with nice fish. Or, he might determine that he is where he needs to be; fishing in the evenings after work, after the guides are all home and the summer orange glow of 8:00 caddis hatches and spinner falls sit over the willows, is what it is all about. He’s in the know, and he appreciates this place for its gifts that don’t require AmEx.
Others live in poverty, working at Wal-Mart, or suffering from mental illness, roaming the streets of Bozeman with 44 ounce Cokes and headphones. Another rides his bike miles throughout the city collecting aluminum cans in the ditches, which he cashes in for less than a dollar a pound.
So how did this executive get where he is, and what did it take for him to negotiate the business world? Part of this is being born into a culture that emphasizes education, and possibly better educations than others have access to. He probably was told that good schooling opens doors. The more education the better, and this starts in private schools in New England, or Texas, or Southern California. In these institutions he learns to socialize and network, and make ties with professors and peers, and their parents. One parent is friends with Leigh Perkins (maybe that’s going too far, but maybe not) and they take the boys to an Orvis camp one summer. A love of fly fishing stirs within him, an appreciation for nature, and trees, insects, and water.
But the career push calls, and the higher he goes, the more he can buy. He appreciates good rods and cars, and drink, and the career push allows him to keep living it. He lives it more and more and gets deeper into the competition of the workplace and long days leave him zapped on the weekends when the family wants his attention. Eventually, a wealthy corked corporate manager is about to pop, and this month’s issue of Fly Fisherman arrives, and a trip to the Big Horn is described, with blue river pictures and thousands of acres of golden fields spread out around it. He calls and books a trip.
Those in poverty can’t escape it. They haven’t learned the navigation skills, they haven’t learned to read and write effectively. They can’t see past tonight’s dinner.
That is what Neil Campbell and Edward Soja and Susan Kollin and others are talking about.
Who gets the opportunity to declare himself or herself a bum? John Gierach, who I am gaining more appreciation of, published a collection of essays called Trout Bum. The Drake magazine has a trout bum contest where the entrants have to prove how much of trout bums they are through writing e-journals and sending .jpgs to the editor. The even send in digi-video clips of themselves being bums. They are from the same classes. Young middle and upper middle class college age kids in SUVs or Subaru’s. Middle aged guys on a two week bender, and the occasional group of hotties that were probably hired to beautify the pages.
But bums can’t choose to be bums, most of the time, and the homeless don’t have the ability to negotiate different classes of Americana. No way can I lease a Gulfstream to go visit another state. Nor could I rent a Toyota Sequoia for two weeks. My checkbook and my credit limit that! However, I could go down, intentionally, and have at times. I lived in my brother’s dining room for 6 months with a cardboard box for a dividing wall. I even had sex in there.
I have camped for months, haven’t showered for days, haven’t cut my hair for a year, or my beard, and I slept in the dirt at a lot of Grateful Dead shows. But I could always go back up a little way. I could recreate and climb vertical rock because I was bored and needed a challenge. I ice climbed and spent a week in the Olympic Mountains eating granola and Powerbars for the same reasons. And no one doing these things with me were black, or Native American, or rarely Mexican or Hispanic. They were white. A lot Irish, a lot of kids from back east, presumably to enjoy this life before they have to commit to the eastern life. Their money goes further out here. We could afford beer and pot, and gas to drive to Califorrnia to dance for 3 days.
We imagined where we lived as a place to embrace and we chose to work as little as possible to enjoy it as much as possible. The CEO imagines it as a place he needs to work incredibly hard for so he can go here and enjoy it as much as possible. This is a paradox, and each sees the other’s as a paradox, if they think about it at all. Often those metacognitive and othercognition opportunities arise in our lives, and we think about our thinking, and we think about the way others think. I had a wealthy man who just signed an AmEx receipt for over $6000.000 look me in the eyes and say “You must really live the life.” I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or choke, and I think I just looked down at the til, and made sure his receipt was in the right slot.
Pt. II
Other examples of real and imagined, or ideological space “Jackson always understood that space was ideological and that in analyzing its uses, meanings, and designs on could understand the wider political climate of the age” (Campbell 63). Yeah, like the notion of statehood. Many of these borders and boundaries are ideological, not geographical or representative of a culture’s values. On a micro scale, the contemporary reservation in Montana is another ideological, or political distinction. All one needs to do is go search Montana tribal maps, and a clear picture what was initially determined as tribal land, and what is now tribal land, is purely a result of conflicting values and dominant white capitalistic power. http://www.wimssite.nl/?pagina=hobby&onderwerp=125
Another map of 1922 Montana will help you reflect on how quickly whites realized the value of tribal land (http://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/35/00/3526/3526.pdf)
Our common perception of blocks in a city, and in a bigger square, sections in the western ranch world, all are representative of humanities artificial shaping of space, and rarely can we imagine space without these lines lurking in the back of our minds. “As the crow flies” exists as a phrase because of man-made as well as topographical structures. Within fences and section roads and ravines, our western landscape is divided and extended.
In Campbell’s article he refers to Homi Babba’s and Kathleen Stewart’s work as a descendant of Jackson. He talks about seeing the side of the road as a place that tells history of America. I think back to my dad’s experiences as an avid runner in the “country”. He used to comment if he picked up all the cans (primarily beer) he could buy himself a new pair of running shoes every 6 months.
Our roads are lined with detritus of our lives, including valuable $.05beer cans. What does this say about our driving habits, or those of our passengers, or our commitment to the environment, or our health, or our pocketbooks? Without looking in these margins, the history of our behavior would disappear in the muddy floods and rapid grasses of decades. All of these scholars listed in Campbell’s article are working in a 50 year Jacksonian tradition of reframing regionalism “in order to bread down this sentimental, nostalgic vision and to reassert its more radical potential” (70).
The banks of rivers, or the put ins and take outs of stretches of floatable river, would be great places to explore the fringes of fishing culture in the west. What is the detritus we leave behind? Fly fishermen leave strike indicators, boat anchors, sandals, flies and tippet and split shot in willows and submerged limbs. Other river goers leave Styrofoam worm containers, red and white bobbers, Rapallas wrapped in tree limbs and willows, beer cans, escaped or flattened innertubes, and the common super tanker pop cup. In some areas frequented by kids and urbanites, condoms, cigarette butts, bottle caps and firework remnants. Our rivers are more than sanctuaries for fly fisherman, local or not.
The single dad working in a fly shop for $9.00 an hour and paying $230 a month in child support doesn’t get the insulated fantasy. He gets the labor part, but he gets to watch others live the dream, and he might sit on his stool at the register and imagine one day living that dream. He might fantasize about being a guide, on the river every day, in the sun, hooking up these guys with nice fish. Or, he might determine that he is where he needs to be; fishing in the evenings after work, after the guides are all home and the summer orange glow of 8:00 caddis hatches and spinner falls sit over the willows, is what it is all about. He’s in the know, and he appreciates this place for its gifts that don’t require AmEx.
Others live in poverty, working at Wal-Mart, or suffering from mental illness, roaming the streets of Bozeman with 44 ounce Cokes and headphones. Another rides his bike miles throughout the city collecting aluminum cans in the ditches, which he cashes in for less than a dollar a pound.
So how did this executive get where he is, and what did it take for him to negotiate the business world? Part of this is being born into a culture that emphasizes education, and possibly better educations than others have access to. He probably was told that good schooling opens doors. The more education the better, and this starts in private schools in New England, or Texas, or Southern California. In these institutions he learns to socialize and network, and make ties with professors and peers, and their parents. One parent is friends with Leigh Perkins (maybe that’s going too far, but maybe not) and they take the boys to an Orvis camp one summer. A love of fly fishing stirs within him, an appreciation for nature, and trees, insects, and water.
But the career push calls, and the higher he goes, the more he can buy. He appreciates good rods and cars, and drink, and the career push allows him to keep living it. He lives it more and more and gets deeper into the competition of the workplace and long days leave him zapped on the weekends when the family wants his attention. Eventually, a wealthy corked corporate manager is about to pop, and this month’s issue of Fly Fisherman arrives, and a trip to the Big Horn is described, with blue river pictures and thousands of acres of golden fields spread out around it. He calls and books a trip.
Those in poverty can’t escape it. They haven’t learned the navigation skills, they haven’t learned to read and write effectively. They can’t see past tonight’s dinner.
That is what Neil Campbell and Edward Soja and Susan Kollin and others are talking about.
Who gets the opportunity to declare himself or herself a bum? John Gierach, who I am gaining more appreciation of, published a collection of essays called Trout Bum. The Drake magazine has a trout bum contest where the entrants have to prove how much of trout bums they are through writing e-journals and sending .jpgs to the editor. The even send in digi-video clips of themselves being bums. They are from the same classes. Young middle and upper middle class college age kids in SUVs or Subaru’s. Middle aged guys on a two week bender, and the occasional group of hotties that were probably hired to beautify the pages.
But bums can’t choose to be bums, most of the time, and the homeless don’t have the ability to negotiate different classes of Americana. No way can I lease a Gulfstream to go visit another state. Nor could I rent a Toyota Sequoia for two weeks. My checkbook and my credit limit that! However, I could go down, intentionally, and have at times. I lived in my brother’s dining room for 6 months with a cardboard box for a dividing wall. I even had sex in there.
I have camped for months, haven’t showered for days, haven’t cut my hair for a year, or my beard, and I slept in the dirt at a lot of Grateful Dead shows. But I could always go back up a little way. I could recreate and climb vertical rock because I was bored and needed a challenge. I ice climbed and spent a week in the Olympic Mountains eating granola and Powerbars for the same reasons. And no one doing these things with me were black, or Native American, or rarely Mexican or Hispanic. They were white. A lot Irish, a lot of kids from back east, presumably to enjoy this life before they have to commit to the eastern life. Their money goes further out here. We could afford beer and pot, and gas to drive to Califorrnia to dance for 3 days.
We imagined where we lived as a place to embrace and we chose to work as little as possible to enjoy it as much as possible. The CEO imagines it as a place he needs to work incredibly hard for so he can go here and enjoy it as much as possible. This is a paradox, and each sees the other’s as a paradox, if they think about it at all. Often those metacognitive and othercognition opportunities arise in our lives, and we think about our thinking, and we think about the way others think. I had a wealthy man who just signed an AmEx receipt for over $6000.000 look me in the eyes and say “You must really live the life.” I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or choke, and I think I just looked down at the til, and made sure his receipt was in the right slot.
Pt. II
Other examples of real and imagined, or ideological space “Jackson always understood that space was ideological and that in analyzing its uses, meanings, and designs on could understand the wider political climate of the age” (Campbell 63). Yeah, like the notion of statehood. Many of these borders and boundaries are ideological, not geographical or representative of a culture’s values. On a micro scale, the contemporary reservation in Montana is another ideological, or political distinction. All one needs to do is go search Montana tribal maps, and a clear picture what was initially determined as tribal land, and what is now tribal land, is purely a result of conflicting values and dominant white capitalistic power. http://www.wimssite.nl/?pagina=hobby&onderwerp=125
Another map of 1922 Montana will help you reflect on how quickly whites realized the value of tribal land (http://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/35/00/3526/3526.pdf)
Our common perception of blocks in a city, and in a bigger square, sections in the western ranch world, all are representative of humanities artificial shaping of space, and rarely can we imagine space without these lines lurking in the back of our minds. “As the crow flies” exists as a phrase because of man-made as well as topographical structures. Within fences and section roads and ravines, our western landscape is divided and extended.
In Campbell’s article he refers to Homi Babba’s and Kathleen Stewart’s work as a descendant of Jackson. He talks about seeing the side of the road as a place that tells history of America. I think back to my dad’s experiences as an avid runner in the “country”. He used to comment if he picked up all the cans (primarily beer) he could buy himself a new pair of running shoes every 6 months.
Our roads are lined with detritus of our lives, including valuable $.05beer cans. What does this say about our driving habits, or those of our passengers, or our commitment to the environment, or our health, or our pocketbooks? Without looking in these margins, the history of our behavior would disappear in the muddy floods and rapid grasses of decades. All of these scholars listed in Campbell’s article are working in a 50 year Jacksonian tradition of reframing regionalism “in order to bread down this sentimental, nostalgic vision and to reassert its more radical potential” (70).
The banks of rivers, or the put ins and take outs of stretches of floatable river, would be great places to explore the fringes of fishing culture in the west. What is the detritus we leave behind? Fly fishermen leave strike indicators, boat anchors, sandals, flies and tippet and split shot in willows and submerged limbs. Other river goers leave Styrofoam worm containers, red and white bobbers, Rapallas wrapped in tree limbs and willows, beer cans, escaped or flattened innertubes, and the common super tanker pop cup. In some areas frequented by kids and urbanites, condoms, cigarette butts, bottle caps and firework remnants. Our rivers are more than sanctuaries for fly fisherman, local or not.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
It All Started with A Lemonade
It all started with a Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Erica bought a 12 pack, and while unpacking some groceries in our Madison camp this summer, she said “You should just have one.” So I did. It was my decision. Nearly 45 days later, Louis showed up in front of our new home and as usual, I piled two rod cases, my red River’s Edge fishing bag, and, unlike before, a cube of Coors Light. “That’s a lot of beer.”
“Yeah, I sorta jumped off the wagon with both feet.”
“Well that’s OK” Louis said, as he popped open the cooler. “I don’t think any of us really thought you were an alcoholic to begin with.” I find it funny that so many people have told me that. My dad, my brother, some friends. Anyway, the issue wasn’t the beer, but the quantity, so I put 16 back in the fridge, and brought the rest, not with intentions of drinking all of them, but with intentions of sharing.
When we got to the boat ramp below Highway 89 bridge, Eric went to load his lunch and saw all the beers. He made a comment about how he didn’t need to bring all this beer because it looks like there is plenty.
“I jumped off the water wagon man.” Eric seemed to ignore this, but when Louis said “Yeah, he tried to bring a cube” Eric looked at me and said “seriously?” I felt bad for him for some reason. “Is that ok with you?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s been fine.”
He was pretty quiet, and I jumped in the rower’s seat with a beer and we started off down the Yellowstone. After about an hour, the talk turned back around to my drinking. Eric and Louis asked about my marriage, and if Erica was in Denton this week because of my drinking. “No, Cole has work to do, and she needs to help her mom out while her dad is out of town.”
“Is she OK with you drinking?”
“Are you getting wasted?”
“Do you drink every day?”
“I remember you said you thought you had a problem because you were isolating and drinking alone.”
The questions kept coming as we anchored next to the high bank below Sheep Mountain’s access road. I answered them honestly; one of the most significant issues with my drinking is not beer 1, 2, or 3, it is 4 through infinity. Once I hit a point, to hell with everything; I just want to drink. I have learned that reaction is described as an allergy to alcohol. Once an alcoholic drinks, a craving (crazing) develops that is nearly impossible to shut off.
Then Eric said “I just remember how proud of yourself you were that you quit.” For me that was the clincher. I just sat in the back of the boat as we talked, and I thought this is what really friends do. They don’t let me just fuck up my life and go on with their own. They ask the hard questions and they listen for the answers, and they share their observations and experiences. They asked me if I had people to call if it gets out of hand. They said they were always there to answer the phone if I called. We didn’t cry or hug or get all mushy. Hell we were fishing for the first time together all summer!
The rest of the day we ate lunch, fished from the boat hard, prepared for a massive thunderstorm that skirted us. We saw bald eagles and osprey and pelicans and swifts. We talked about Louis’ new baby boy and names for Eric’s first son due in a week. We even caught a few trout.
“Yeah, I sorta jumped off the wagon with both feet.”
“Well that’s OK” Louis said, as he popped open the cooler. “I don’t think any of us really thought you were an alcoholic to begin with.” I find it funny that so many people have told me that. My dad, my brother, some friends. Anyway, the issue wasn’t the beer, but the quantity, so I put 16 back in the fridge, and brought the rest, not with intentions of drinking all of them, but with intentions of sharing.
When we got to the boat ramp below Highway 89 bridge, Eric went to load his lunch and saw all the beers. He made a comment about how he didn’t need to bring all this beer because it looks like there is plenty.
“I jumped off the water wagon man.” Eric seemed to ignore this, but when Louis said “Yeah, he tried to bring a cube” Eric looked at me and said “seriously?” I felt bad for him for some reason. “Is that ok with you?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s been fine.”
He was pretty quiet, and I jumped in the rower’s seat with a beer and we started off down the Yellowstone. After about an hour, the talk turned back around to my drinking. Eric and Louis asked about my marriage, and if Erica was in Denton this week because of my drinking. “No, Cole has work to do, and she needs to help her mom out while her dad is out of town.”
“Is she OK with you drinking?”
“Are you getting wasted?”
“Do you drink every day?”
“I remember you said you thought you had a problem because you were isolating and drinking alone.”
The questions kept coming as we anchored next to the high bank below Sheep Mountain’s access road. I answered them honestly; one of the most significant issues with my drinking is not beer 1, 2, or 3, it is 4 through infinity. Once I hit a point, to hell with everything; I just want to drink. I have learned that reaction is described as an allergy to alcohol. Once an alcoholic drinks, a craving (crazing) develops that is nearly impossible to shut off.
Then Eric said “I just remember how proud of yourself you were that you quit.” For me that was the clincher. I just sat in the back of the boat as we talked, and I thought this is what really friends do. They don’t let me just fuck up my life and go on with their own. They ask the hard questions and they listen for the answers, and they share their observations and experiences. They asked me if I had people to call if it gets out of hand. They said they were always there to answer the phone if I called. We didn’t cry or hug or get all mushy. Hell we were fishing for the first time together all summer!
The rest of the day we ate lunch, fished from the boat hard, prepared for a massive thunderstorm that skirted us. We saw bald eagles and osprey and pelicans and swifts. We talked about Louis’ new baby boy and names for Eric’s first son due in a week. We even caught a few trout.
Monday, August 2, 2010
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