Take a peek into my life

An on-line journal
(November 27, 1999, through December 24, 1999)

As humans we are nothing if we aren't part of something bigger than ourselves.
Earlier
December 24, 1999
I woke the other night thinking about my father, and I was filled with such sadness I couldn't go back to sleep.

My father hasn't been doing so well lately. His memory is failing him. Because he fought ferociously his whole life, he is fighting this with all that he has, but age is an adversary that none of us can defeat. This is a battle that I know he is going to lose, and that saddens me.

My father and I have not always gotten along well. My first memories of him were ones of bigness. He walked through the house, and the lamp, the window, the coffee table shook.

His bigness was not only one of size, but a bigness of will. In my father's house, there was no drinking, no dancing, no going to movies and no swearing. This was my father's law, and those who broke my father's law faced the consequences -- we all knew this, my brothers and I.

I have never outgrown that impression that he is bigger than me, more powerful than me -- that he is someone dangerous to be near. This remains true even though, lately, there seems to be very little dangerous about him.

It was not until I was 18 and was ready to move out of the house that I first tested my father's will.

The day that my father learned that I could think for myself was a very difficult one. He had given me a Volkswagen my senior year. I felt somewhat guilty about it because I knew my father's law, and I was not totally in compliance. It was not that I was doing anything bad (I never did anything really bad.), but in my father's house there were sins of omission as well commission, and there were sins of thought as well as deed. In my heart, in my mind I was feeling that I no longer wanted to follow my father's law, and I knew that this was leading to a confrontation, and I knew that when the confrontation came, the Volkswagen would be leverage that was going to be used against me. How could I keep the car, a gift from my father, if my father and I didn't agree with each other? The guilt, I knew, would be incredible, and I hated guilt.

Guilt was, really, what my rebellion was all about. I was tired of feeling guilty. I was a very pitiful teenager -- I felt guilty about everything. If I saw a woman in a bikini I felt guilty because I wanted to look at her again. Then if I met her later, I would feel ashamed of my sinful thoughts of her, so I would avoid her, which caused me to feel that I was unfriendly, which was another thing that I felt guilty about. For a teenage boy with the usual teenage drives, there were so many items in my father's list of things to feel guilty about that guilt was turning me into a wreck. I was awash in hormones, trapped in a puritanical household, and I knew that the Volkswagen would become one more item on the list of things about which to feel guilty.

I came up with a solution -- if the car became a problem, I would give it back. My independence was worth more to me than the car.

I don't recall what started the confrontation when it came. It could have been about something as simple as whether it was OK to wear white ties to church. These were popular at that time -- all the young men wore them, and my father thought they were terrible.

My father distrusted anything that was new and unpredictable. Black, narrow ties were, therefore, good because all the adult men wore them. Wide, white ties were new, and therefore, they were highly suspicious. I didn't have strong feelings one way or another about white or black ties, but I was interested in the principle, and to be honest, I was looking for a fight.

It could have been about ties, it could have been about hair length or any of a number of items on my father's list -- one day the inevitable fight came. I remember I got excited and stood up to express myself. "Mervin, sit down!" my father's voice boomed.

Suddenly the fight was not about white or black ties, or hair length, or whatever. It was about whether I should stand or sit. I continued to stand, looking at him.

"Sit down I tell you," he stood up, looming over me. I knew there was a chance that he might grab me and slam me into the chair. He had the physical strength. It was a very frightening possibility. I remained standing.

He backed off a little bit. Apparently this was not going to his liking.

He explained to me that as long as I lived under his house, I would follow his rules. He meant, of course, I would follow in thought as well as deed. Then came the ploy I had been expecting -- he brought up the car.

"We have given you that car, and . . . "

I cut him off.

"If that is why you gave me the car, then you can have it back."

This stopped him. He stared at me for a moment as if I was something that had just crawled out from under his bed.

"OK," he said at last. "Mom, on Monday we'll take the papers down and put the car back in our name. "

My mother fidgeted. She seemed rather unhappy about this conversation, but she didn't say anything.

I began dishing myself up a bowl of oatmeal as Dad continued to watch me. It was breakfast time.

Then came the retreat.

"No, you keep the car," he said, returning to his chair. "That is not why we gave it to you. "

This was a turning point for me, but it was not the last time we butted heads. Our battles have continued off and on right up to this day. My father has been, perhaps, one of my most stalwart adversaries. He has also been, at times, a powerful advocate -- even my rescuer.

When my car stalled and left me beside the road, he came to get me. When I came home for the summer while I was in college, he gave me a job. When my first wife left me with two children and no way to care for them, it was Dad who took me in, kept a roof over my head, gave me and my kids a place to live while I put my life back together.

My Dad has been powerful in his disapproval, but he has also been powerful in his support. This is why the problems Dad has been having cause me to sit up in the middle of the night with a knot in my stomach.

My father's will has been a tough thing to push up against, as I struggled to become my own person. My Dad's law was harsh, and with the law there was guilt, which was a terrible burden to labor under. But his law was also one of the forces that brought order to my life. Even though I haven't followed his law for years, it was one of the stars by which my course, right or wrong, has been set. Without it, there is one less thing guiding my life.
Later; Earlier
December 11, 1999    

Nightmare

Copyright 1999

Mervin Mecklenburg
Earlier ; Later
November 29, 1999
I am angry at the Montana Arts Council. I confess that my anger is totally unwarranted. The arts council owes me nothing. It is not the council's fault that the community of artists it serves has no influence in the part of the state where I live. It is not the council's fault that Montana is a vast landscape with no resources, and therefore, the council's mission to reach out to the whole of the state has failed. It is not the council's fault that creative writers in eastern Montana do not understand the benefits of belonging to an arts community. Therefore, a scattering of them work in solitude across eastern Montana, failing to come together to learn from each other's efforts.


I overstate things, of course. There are a few towns where writers do get together -- places such as Circle, Montana. As a whole, though, writers out here have little contact with each other. I know where some of them live -- I have even met one or two. Mostly, they write in isolation in places with names such as Westby, Scobey, Fairview, Broadus. They remain in isolation because miles of prairies and badlands lie between them.


My first contact with a real community of writers was in Eugene, Oregon, where I attended graduate school. Immediately after I arrived in town, I went to a poetry reading, which was a treat for me because I hadn't been to many. The woman who read said something that astounded me: "I depend upon my community because my community nourishes me."


My first reaction was to disbelieve her -- I had never been in a community where I felt nourished. In eastern Montana, I was always at odds with my community. I had always felt that my urge to write things down was weird. I kept it secret. I lived in fear that someone might discover my journal and actually read the strange things I wrote there. In fact, I never even told my parents, when I was an undergraduate, that I was a creative-writing major. I didn't know how to tell them.


After all, when I looked around, I saw no one who was writing as I was writing. There was no one to reach out to.


During my time in Eugene, I became very familiar with the benefits of belonging to a artistic community. I had some successes. I won some poetry awards, had a few poems published and gave some readings. I learned that a true community supports every level of artist -- from rank beginner to master. I learned that in a true community there are opportunities, and there is leadership. I even played a role in that leadership. I became president of the Lane Literary Guild, an organization in Eugene that serves writers in Lane County by organizing readings, holding workshops and writing contests.


Then something unexpected happened -- I came back to eastern Montana. How that came about is not important, except that my life had turned sour. Divorce and bankruptcy had left me with two children and no means to care for them. A person who is in trouble returns home, and for me eastern Montana, in spite of its lack of nourishment, was home.


Since returning here nearly 10 years ago, I have made numerous efforts to get a community of writers going. At one point, I placed an ad in the newspaper, seeking other writers. A fellow from a neighboring town actually answered the ad, and for awhile we met in restaurants. He showed me his stories written in tight, crisp prose. I don't know where he's at now -- we have lost contact.


I taught creative writing for a short time at the local community college. I met, for awhile, with a group of communications professionals. They brought copies of their press releases for critique, and I brought my poems. They smiled at me politely and said, "This is very nice Merv," then set the poems aside.

I gave a reading -- everyone said it was wonderful. I placed poems in online workshops, where the comments were either so vapid as to be meaningless, or so cutting I hesitated to do it again.


But, as of yet, no community has emerged to nourish me. The nourishment that I have found has come from emptiness. The emptiness of a blue sky. The emptiness of the badlands, vast and terrible in their ruggedness. The emptiness of the prairies as they roll away toward the horizon.


This has fed the urge to write, so I have continued writing. But my poems have no audience; therefore, they have ripened on the tree until I'm not sure that they are palatable. I think of my days in Eugene with longing, remembering when I could pick up the phone and call a friend who felt the same way about writing poems as I did, and I feel angry. Angry at myself for not doing better. Angry at myself because my poems are not better poems. Angry because I allowed myself to return to a place where I am not nourished as I should be. Angry at myself for the love I feel for this empty landscape I live in, and for the love I feel for the people in that landscape who care nothing for what I do.


Naturally, it is not good to feel angry at one's self. Therefore, I've decided to remain angry at the Montana Arts Council.
Earlier; Later
November 28, 1999
Warm weather has caused the buds to swell in eastern Montana, even though it is November. The extension agent has expressed concern that if a storm comes, and the tender buds are frozen, the apple trees may not survive.


That's the way out here. If the weather is kind, it is mearly softening you up so it can knock you out later. Sometimes it acts kindly for a decade at a time before the death blow comes.


People who have lived off the land here have seen it many times. The first farmers arrived around the beginning of the century and proceeded to tear the ground up so the moisture could run deep. They grew wheat with stalks taller than a man, but then a drought came, and that ground that they had joyfully ripped up turned into a powder that the wind lifted into a huge cloud. Its shadow covered the land. Whole towns disappeared in the economic disaster that followed.


Recently I wrote an editorial piece about how environmentalists and ag producers are not really that far apart, they just speak different languages. Producers, I argued, are natural environmentalists because if they don't take care of the land, they suffer the consequences. I sent it off to be published, and the editor said he liked the piece, but he had a criticism. Not all producers love the land, he said. Not all of them take care of it.


I realized, after I thought about it, that eastern Montana may be unique in this regard. Out here, you do take care of the land because if you don't, either this year or the next, the land will take care of you, and you will be out of business. Most of the producers in this area have been in the business for at least three generations, and they are getting up in years. They have been around long enough to remember the drought of the 80s, the last time a dust cloud shadowed the land. And if they don't remember the "dirty 30s," as they are called out here, they heard the stories from their fathers and grandfathers -- stories about dust drifting as if it was snow, and Mormon crickets devouring any green that was left.


There is, thereforer, a conservation ethic in eastern Montana, an unspoken rule that if you make your living off the land, you take care of it. Almost every rancher has some sort of grazing system that makes best use of his grass. Almost all of the farmers use chemfallow, minimum- or no-till farming, or some other technique that reduces erosion on their land. Elsewhere, the conservation ethic may be less strong, which could be what the editor was reacting to.


I took a walk this evening. The air was crisp and pleasant, like a cool March evening, not at all like November. I sat in the park for a few minutes, looked up at the stars. Then I walked home and prayed for snow.
Later
November 27, 1999
Several years ago a poet came to Circle, a town in a nearby county, and because events such as this are rare in our part of the world, I decided to go and take the reading in.

It was a long drive to get there through the dark. The headlights illuminated the road a short distance ahead, which curved out of sight, then disappeared over a hill as the car rose and fell in the high places and dips of the highway. The stars, far from the streetlights of town, gleamed brightly overhead.

In eastern Montana it is easy to feel isolated. A yard light near a distant farm house might shine distantly on the horizon, but other than that you are the only one around. You are alone and part of nothing bigger than yourself unless you feel some affinity for the stars. Unless you can claim that the prairie grass is somehow related to you, and that you are associated somehow with the occasional deer that jumps out in front of your car, its eyes reflecting back at you the terror of your oncoming headlights as you roar past, you are alone.

When I finally arrived, I discovered that there were four of us in the audience -- myself, and three ladies. I won't call them old because old implies that they were ineffectual and feeble. There was nothing ineffectual about these women. They were gray headed and weathered like branches that had been left out in the rain and snow. They exhibited the toughness that life in rural eastern Montana requires of a person. A willingness to accept bad weather, hard work and whatever else comes along. And like me, they had a love of language, otherwise they would not have bothered to come out on this dark night to see what this poet had to say.

I had never met them before, and yet they were familiar to me. Because I have lived here most of my life, the same eastern-Montana weather that has shaped them has shaped me. When they talked of cold winter mornings and how the prairie wind howls forever, I knew what they were talking about.

Unlike the women, the poet was definitely not from eastern Montana. He had a long braid that hung down the center of his back, and a gentle way of talking that might put off folks out here on the prairie, but it didn't put me off. He reminded me of some of the friends I associated with in graduate school.

I had never met him before, and yet he was familiar to me. The same forces that had shaped him had shaped me. I too had sat up late at night in coffee shops and talked about Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath. I too had struggled with words, polishing them, changing them, finally sending them out, praying that the editor who received them would find them a place -- only this poet had been more successful at his efforts. And when he spoke with yearning of the music in Theodore Roethke's poems, I knew what he was talking about.

Because there were so few of us, we sat down at a table. I happened to sit on the end, the three ladies sat on one side, and the poet sat on the other.

The poet spread his poems out on the table where we could all see them. I could tell that some of what he said was new and strange to the women. They nodded appreciatively, however, and spoke of things from their world. And for a single moment in what has been, for me, a very schizophrenic existence, it was as if the two halves of my life came together. On the one side was the tough, practical existence that had shaped me as a child and continues with me to this day, on the other side were artistic sensibilities that I was exposed to for a few glorious years when I was a young adult.

There were instances in the conversation when the two halves agreed with each other. The poet talked about how exposed and lost he felt on his way out here. How the huge empty landscape of eastern Montana had made him feel small and insignificant, "like a dot." We all knew what he meant. To live in eastern Montana, one must not only come to terms with that feeling of insignificance, one must embrace it.


Goto Top