Mapping Melaise -
CDC:
This county-by-county map shows the percentages of residents who reported “frequent mental distress” (FMD)—defined as 14 or more days of emotional discomfort, including “stress, depression and problems with emotion,” during the previous month. Three days of mental distress is considered average, the researchers say.
Footnotes1
— Greg HarrisThere2 is3 a4 lost5 poetry6 in7 boots.8
— Stephen9 Graham10
(1) The words “foot” or “feet” do not appear in this footloose ramble, except in this footnote and, if any reader presses the point, in the title. However, the ground-level importance of feet should not be missed. If footless, we would also be bootless and neither title nor guiding sentence could bear much weight. So, though this essay be “foot”-less, we hope it stands on its own two feet. Or own ten feet, so to speak. Our guiding sentence first appeared in the British author Graham’s now mostly forgotten book, “The Gentle Art of Tramping” (1927). Among its motley of practical advice, we find: “One cannot with advantage wear dead men’s boots.” It is a pleasantly sunny read with an occasional ghost from his experiences in the Great War. One of its minor pleasures is its complete absence of footnotes.
(2) THERE is not a directional marker. As in: here or there. As in: over there in your left boot is that lost poem you wrote 17 years ago on Mt. Nebo. Nor does it belong to a half-hearted word of solace. As in: there, there, now, don’t take it so hard. THERE is here for a grammatical function most of us care not a fig to know (for the few: it’s a pronominal expletive — nonprofane variety). In the deeper grammar of boots, THERE appears just to be along for the hike and barely gets noticed. For your sake, I wish THERE was a directional marker. Then, right now you could stroll over there to your old left boot — abandoned, yet never tossed (in thanks for a job well-done) — reach in, and pull out that juicy plum of a poem you truly lost somewhere on Mt. Nebo in that once upon a time summer. That lost poem is the best poem you ever wrote, maybe it’s the only poem you ever wrote. You’ve mourned it ever since, like you’ve mourned the biggest trout you never landed. There, there, now.
(3) IS tells us a lost poetry in boots is neither a figment of imagination nor mere wishful thinking. Lost poetry emphatically IS — as much as boulders & blisters emphatically are.We shouldn’t have to be told this but we really are thick much of the time. Of course, it’s possible to get sidetracked right about now by the seeming lack of poetic promise in blisters. Indeed, while boulders might glint with lost poetic potential, surely blisters, at first glance, just don’t appear to partake of the right stuff. But it’s the second glance (or fifth or last) that matters. The author of our guiding sentence tells of “lines written after taking off my most cruel boots.” After all, not all poetry is fresh mountain water and hawks soaring in blue skies; sometimes, it’s a stagnant pool and vultures giving you the eye. That’s just the way it IS. Listen: boulders & blisters & boots. Hear how they so sweetly alliterate? There IS the inkling of good poetry here, whether lost or found.
(4) A could have been omitted. So the sentence might have read: “There is lost poetry in boots.” This revised version would be crisper, tighter, faster — in keeping with the crisper, tighter, faster age in which we now live. Some might consider it to our author’s detriment that he wrote our guiding sentence over 80 years ago and hence could not take advantage of our newer, crisper, tighter, faster writing style. However, this misses the point entirely. The A serves both to intentionally slow the sentence (if ever so slightly) and as an unswift kick in the Achilles’ heel of a heedlessly speeding age. In an amphetamine time, even the slightest halt may be beneficial, even lifesaving. Live longer: Talk with more A’s in your gait.
(5) LOST. What did our author mean by LOST? He is not referring to that lost poem you wrote on Mt. Nebo 17 years ago. He is referring, surely, to some LOST opportunity, a chance not taken, to think or say or write the spontaneous rhythm of a singular moment. Perhaps, you are a person of actions, not words — a person of miles and heights, not desks. What has been LOST is what you have never thought, spoken, written — at least, not yet. Of course, if you are a person of miles and heights, you have probably already flung aside these pages, laced up your boots, and are heading out the door. But if you are still reading, then you are just a mixed bag of gorp like the rest of us. The puzzle is: How do we find what has never been? We, theoretically, could have LOST and could still find that mislaid Mt. Nebo poem. But how do you find a LOST opportunity? This dilemma is flakily artificial.You find it by reaching into your metaphorical left boot and picking it up again — that is, you find it by recalling, by retrieving what has been misplaced. Admit it, you never wrote that Mt. Nebo poem at all.You wanted to, but heat & horseflies followed by 17 years of busyness and inattentiveness pushed it so far away you only vaguely recall the urge now in fleeting pang-filled blips of memory. Until now. Friend, what has been LOST until now can still be found. It IS (3) waiting, waiting, waiting for your return, waiting like some LOST Last Chance Mine waiting to be refound. For — dear reader — this indeed may be your last last chance — what if tomorrow you unpoetically die in a tragic car accident en route to the airport for a flight to Cuzco & Macchu Picchu? Find it now, cast aside the penny loafers and tie on the old BOOTS (8). (6) POETRY is not synonymous with the poem (I once knew a short-order cook who worked a grill with poetic grace). A poem, of course, is not excluded. After all, our author is obviously fond of poets and once spent several months with poet Vachel Lindsay hiking the Glacier region of Montana & Canada (see “Tramping with a Poet in the Rockies,” 1922). But startlingly, the very author of our guiding sentence about a lost poetry in boots, says: “Boots are, of course, not a poetic subject.” What impertinent waffling trick is he contriving here? He means that POETRY has a broader range. Some of you smugly equate POETRY with sappy verse and the instant you saw POETRY in our guiding sentence headed for the woodpile to split dry kindling. But please reconsider, grant sap a second chance: Sap is the juicy heart of a living plant, and a sapless plant is a dried-up specimen fit only for a display case in a natural history museum. POETRY is walking with juice, talking with juice, splitting kindling with juice. !Ah!, who dares to say what POETRY is?! All answers just get sappier. Only a zealous cartographer foolishly tries to map the contours of POETRY (I once knew a shortorder cook who worked a grill with poetic grace).
(7) IN. Significantly, the author does not write “of boots.” As in: a poetry about boots. As in: Ode to Boots. As should be now evident to the reader, IN is not a spatial marker. As in: 8 ball in the corner pocket, in jail, in the left boot. IN connotes immersion. As in: a baptism IN fire. IN is the fiery rhythm IN the heart. IN means beneath the skin, beneath the blister. The author writes of distress caused by “thinness of soles.” It applies equally well to thinness of soul. IN is the soul of soles.
(8) BOOTS is both literal and metaphorical. Just as we breadlessly break bread when sharing an orange among friends in the sparse shade of a paloverde, so we may be temporarily bootless (even unshod) and still be immersed in BOOTS. BOOTS says: going, out there, further, beyond. BOOTS is not primarily about destination. It need not be about getting anywhere in particular, though a destination is a handy motive for putting on BOOTS in the first place. Metaphorically, BOOTS is about the going, the going, the going. Literal BOOTS accompany us.
(9) STEPHEN is the given name of the author of our guiding sentence. While his given name might have been of significance to the author, it adds nothing to the drift of our sentence. Therefore, the reader may guiltlessly skip this note and go immediately to the next (take caution if wearing boots — skipping in boots is a mite awkward).
(10) GRAHAM (1884–1975) wrote “The Gentle Art of Tramping” almost entirely in the Dalmatian village of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik in Croatia). A book as forgotten now as old boots, out-ofprint, it was a gentle act of rebellion written in the deathly shadow of WWI. In August 1914 on the frontier of Mongolia, his-never-tobe- completed 6,000-mile walk across Russia was interrupted with the news of the outbreak of war. He served on the Western Front and was awarded “my three war medals — the war medals all soldiers received.” In “The Challenge of the Dead” (1921) he tells of revisiting the devastated Belgium town of Ypres, where three desperate battles (1914, 1915, 1917) left an estimated 743,000 dead: “This … is a terrible place still … there is a pull from the other world, a drag on the heart and spirit … one is ashamed to be alive.” But he goes on living another 50 years, always writing eloquently about war and living and walking. True walking leads to true places where “the civilized world has been removed like a table that has been cleared, a table cluttered with papers and dishes.” In walking, he cleared away the debris of life. In writing, he makes the reader want to live, to taste the sweet juice, to walk forever away from Ypres, to put on BOOTS (8) and never take them off.
— Greg Harris has been writing for the Gazette since its first incarnation in the ’70s. Though he is a mountain person at heart, he lives in Illinois, where he works for a Catholic mission.
Artist Brian Dettmer dissects books to expose the beauty of their anatomy. Using an X-acto knife and tweezers, Dettmer pulls away carefully selected layers of books, revealing a complex view of their internal organization. (via Brian Dettmer: Adaptations)
nyc garden (via tashian)
Seriously. Position statements? That’s just bullshit.
(via m a v)
If it came with the dog…
The Appalachian Trail 2008 Northbound on Vimeo (via Vimeo)
My email:
Dad, et al,
I was cleaning out my junk the other weekend, and realized I had quite a few hankies. I pulled them all out, realizing I’d amassed quite a few from just going back to TLH and borrowing some while sick. I think the total county was just under 30. I kept seven, and will be bringing the rest back :)
So if you’ve ever thought “Didn’t I used to have more hankies?”…you did!
Dad’s reply:
Please wash them first. Thanks Love Dad
