Revelers—Prepare Thyselves!

Once again in darkest night
Burn hosts of hopes and 'bird so bright.
Gather 'round the glowing embers,

Farewell the year and its December!

Cowabunga, Dudes!

“Dude,” said Hawk. Which is appropriate, I suppose, given his Ninja-Turtley nature when sporting his new quilted vest. That and the surfing theme of “our” yoga studio, ocean earth wind fire, which not only landed in the Top Five of Fox 29’s recent Best of the Philly HOT LIST but is also soon celebrating its 2nd Anniversary Cowabunga Bash Week.

All next week, October 12–18, all kinds of fun events are taking place, beginning with Monday evening’s special class at the John James Audubon Center. For a schedule, go here. It’s hard to believe the studio’s already two and Hawk’s already one. Everyone’s growing up! Dude!

The Best of What’s Around: The Philly HOT LIST

Over the years, Phoenixville has become the place we go when we want to walk about in an urban setting. Recently, many of the establishments we frequent on the revitalized Bridge Street have been nominated as Best of the Philly HOT LIST sponsored by FOX 29. I'd have you vote for the whole block if I could, but since that option's not available I've provided handy individual links for your use (you do have to register). That goes for my international friends, too.

And make it quick. Voting closes on Friday, September 11.

Artisans Gallery & Café. Long-time readers will recognize Artisans as a frequent locale in these pages. Run by the mother-and-son team of Rosie and Rich Holck, Artisans provides great coffee and light fare in a warm setting festooned with local art. It’s also home to barista and local treasure Joey, who really does have red hair. Vote here.

Black Lab Bistro. The brave restaurant that helped ignite the rebirth of modern Phoenixville. This was our one destination when the town was still on the seedy side. The menu is varied and daring, and will likely satisfy fans of the burger as well as those who favor quail or gnocchi in their dishes. Vote here.

The Colonial Theatre. An old-time movie house and the closest and coolest place to catch indie and foreign fare. Vote here.

Hipster Home. If you aspire to a modern house filled with eclectic housewares, or, for example, prints of French anatomical sketches, this is your stop. Vote here.

Kimberton Whole Foods. A few miles away in historic Kimberton, this is where all the cool kids go for their local, organic, often biodynamic foodstuffs, including grass-fed beef, Fair Trade tea and coffee, and raw milk. You know you want to. Vote here.

ocean earth wind fire. You won’t find a cozier yoga studio in the area, for good reason: it’s also the home of owner/teacher Susan Madden-Cox. Enjoy a variety of restorative and flowing classes taught by excellent teachers, including Jenifer, as well as live music on Friday nights and the occasional fire-pit gathering. Located next to newly founded Balder Park and Iron Hill Brewery. Vote here.

Wolfgang Books. Located atop Hipster Home and reached only by climbing no less than 26 precipitous stairs, Wolfgang Books offers a mix of used and new books, from T.E. Lawrence: The Selected Letters to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and everything in between, in a spacious room with hardwood floors and filled with the haunting scent of old paper. Bonus tip: During Phoenixville’s annual Firebird Festival in December, visit the enclosed porch for the best view of Bridge Street decked out for the holidays. Vote here.

Visiting The Visitor

Saturday is Yoga Day, which means that I take Jenifer's Sweet & Slow class and someone takes Hawk for a walk about Phoenixville. Last Saturday, however, no grandparents were present for the Hawk Walk, so I wrapped the wee bairn on my chest for a stroll around town, planned some shots for the documentary (more on that later), and then settled in at Artisans. Here, in ordering my non-decaffeinated tea (Rooibos!), I had the good fortune to strike up a good and lasting conversation with the fellow next to me in line. This elegant African-American man was taken aback, in a good way, by this "Euro male" using an indigenous technology to transport his son.

Within minutes our conversation had expanded to cover our travels, heritage, the borrowing of tribal face paint in a spring fashion collection from a designer on the Iberian Peninsula, and the Mythopoetic Men's Movement. At some point we veered into our respective work, and I mentioned that I was considering attending a talk by actor/writer/director Tom McCarthy at Penn the following week.

It so happens that my friend works at Penn, near the Kelly Writers House where the event would be staged, and we arranged to meet beforehand.

Part of the aforementioned "considering" involved the fact that I typically don't go into Philadelphia more than a few times a year, a training excursion last fall being a rare and notable exception. It's not that I don't like the city (though I confess to grumbling about its dreariness, which Jenifer claims is my invention) but that I don't particularly like driving in/into/out of it.

In any case, on Wednesday afternoon I begin my journey. Soon I am motoring along the Schuylkill Express, a narrow strip of tar betwixt river and rock. It helps to imagine yourself doing a trench run on the Death Star, because that would be more fun and less stressful. If ever there was need for a monorail (or flying cars!), this would be it.

A roadside accident ensures my late arrival, but soon enough I'm past the mess and looking for the South Street exit. A well-placed sign, however, tells me the exit is gone, not there, destroyed by the Empire. It appears the bridge is out.

I phone my friend. He picks up and advises me to take the 30th Street exit. I do this, or do it as much as I can while remaining a dozen stuck cars back from the sign. I continue and, per his advice, check in every so often to update him on my progress.

I ring him again and tell him I've reached 30th Street. "Good," he says, "here's what you're going to do." His next bit of advice staggers me: "Now you will stop the car and ask someone on the street for the directions." What?!

I disregard this advice, not out of macho pride (as I later relate to him), but out of something else, whatever the opposite of macho pride must be. There is nowhere to stop, and cars are behind me, and the pedestrians are scattered and likely to regard my panicked look as indicative of something other than idle bemusement. No, I will not stop the car on 30th Street.

(I should point out that this portion of the trip was improved considerably by its being next to the train station, a monumental monolith so mindblowingly massive it recalls Jim Burns's vision of the Temple of St. Alia-of-the-Knife in Frank Herbert's Eye. I didn't know modern-day earth people made buildings this large.)

The rest of the drive goes without incident, as I orient myself on the grid that is the city's layout (a big shout-out to Ben Franklin here) and arrive safely in the parking garage. Soon I am in my friend's office, where he shares with me a sampling of the inspiring community outreach work he conducts for the university, and then we are off to the event. As we walk across the quad, my friend tells me that someone using the pedestrian portion of the South Street bridge apparently had the misfortune of putting their foot through it, and thence was it deemed in need of repair.

My friend drops me off at the Kelly Writers House, a really cool cottage, and I find a seat way up front, as the room is packed with Penn students. Within minutes Tom McCarthy is introduced by Penn's Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve, writing instructor, novelist, and writing partner of John Leguizamo.

Like most of the industry folks I've met, Tom is humble and witty, and his talk is a fun account of his journey as a writer and director, and how his training as an actor informs his writing. He's probably best-known for writing and directing a pair of critically acclaimed indie hits, The Station Agent and last year's The Visitor, starring Richard Jensen. I do not admit to being behind in my Netflix queue, but I am able to follow along all the same, and especially appreciate the anecdotes about the hilarious notes he's received from development executives.

I ask Tom about his writing process and whether he actually has a discernible method. He describes it as something like this:

You're going along and you think maybe you've missed your exit. But you're not quite sure and so you put on some speed, looking for it, looking for it, and then you finally acknowledge that in fact you did miss your exit and you have to go all the way back to the beginning and start over.

Hmm. Perhaps that is as good a method as any: create a plan, set out when you feel the time is right, anticipate the inevitable roadside construction, and keep on trucking. And don't get out of the car.

Feeding the Fire

Saturday night the Firebird went up again, gloriously, as several thousand moderns gathered ‘round, transfixed by its healing spell. As I swayed from foot to foot, a sleeping Hawk under my coat and wrapped against my chest, I heard someone behind me say, somewhat obviously, “I feel like a savage performing an ancient ritual.” Fortunately, this casual comment failed to incite a reaction from the fundamentalist forces of antagonism that earlier in the evening—or so I’d heard while waiting in line at Artisans for my three-shot Americano—had protested the glorious event for its purportedly pagan character. I wondered whether Christmas trees occupy a place of honor in the living rooms of these latter-day crusaders.

It’s rare these days to witness, much less participate in, any kind of public ceremony that doesn’t involve spectator sports. Indeed, in an age where commonality with your fellow person is most likely to be sought and found in one of your neighborhood’s three Wal-Mart Superstores, a civic event like the Phoenixville Firebird Festival is positively magical in its ability to draw so many in.

Unlike those odd family heirlooms of behavior wherein the original intent is lost and/or willfully forgotten and your Christmas Day feast consists almost entirely of cold cuts on potato rolls and you persist in perpetuating this behavior because you’ve persisted thusly since 1971, the Firebird Festival was founded with a grounding in myth and a memory of decades of local economic decline. Also, people like burning things.

Jenifer laughed at her own childlike glee when, after the morning’s class, she described the day as her favorite of the year. This time we were even more excited than usual simply because it would be Hawk’s first time ex utero. We would also be contributing to the town’s rebirth in our own small way by working a table promoting our friend’s yoga studio.

We set up shop in the lobby of the Colonial Theatre, a smaller version of similar turn-of-the-last-century movie houses such as the Embassy Theatre in Wellington or the Paramount Theatre in Austin. We situated ourselves by an olde-tyme Santa sleigh and a restored Wurlitzer organ and got down to the business of selling yoga, which boiled down to answering children’s queries about the contents of the festive little holiday-themed boxes occupying our table. The answer was “yoga” or, what amounted to the same thing, “nothing,” since the boxes were intended to deliver gift certificates or class cards. Oddly, none of the children was satisfied by our answers, though more than one attempted to cart off a box all the same.

On the off chance I’d have some free time, I took my notebook and conjured a plot point concerning medieval European politics. With all the yoga talk and ancillary burrito eating, however, I didn’t get around to catching up on a primary source I’d chanced upon in a used bookstore in East Stroudsburg (home, incidentally, to the Frank Frazetta museum, which may well be the objective of a future field trip—I’ll keep you posted). I shouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose, since Hawk, 15 weeks old and already a precocious flirt, was bound to be the major attraction.

As the burning time approached, we packed away our gear and headed down to the site. The streets were filled with people eagerly awaiting the countdown and soon enough the sky was filled with smoke from wood saturated from the week’s heavy rainfall. Within minutes flames licked the mighty Phoenix and the intentions of thousands soared heavenward.

Afterwards we followed the flow back up Bridge Street, walking back to Jess’s house for her “Pyro Postlude.” For the first time in recent memory, we found ourselves at a genuine party filled with interesting people our own age. Jenifer and I certainly had no idea what we’d find when we moved to the area from a university town, and it took us some time to get our bearings and discover the awesomeness lurking beneath the surface. Usually, however, this awesomeness found expression in folks a decade or three our elder. And now, on Firebird Day, another layer of Phoenixville opened to us.

Later, I walked to retrieve the car to spare Hawk the cold. The streets were mostly empty now, but the lights still shone with yuletide cheer. I scraped ice from the glass, then circled by the fire site to see the remnants of the blaze. The fire was still going, now surrounded by a small circle of stalwarts. I imagined our friend Henrik, chief Bird Builder, was among them, and envied these few in this moment. I smiled, though, too, for I have had my share of fire-talk; and I thought to myself, or maybe I said it aloud, “There’s good medicine.” It takes only a few, or perhaps not even that many, to change the world.

Firebird Is Coming

A friend of mine, a small-business owner, insists the world is burning. And it is, I suppose, what with the economy and all, but then the world is always burning, one way or another.

Here at Holy Embers we like the glow of fire, especially the sea of flame that welcomes you at dawn, as the red sky did this morning. But my favorite fire is that of the burning bird at Phoenixville’s Firebird Festival. The fifth installment of this annual community ritual happens this Saturday, December 13. If you’re local, or even if you’re not, head on over and join those who have helped pull a failing steel town from the ashes and forge it anew. You can find the schedule of events here. (Note to friend: it's free.)

The Blessing

A voice in the dark: “Ryan.” Only it isn’t dark, not entirely. The bedroom is lit with the eerie glow of the new alarm clock/radio’s blue LED, the sort of light cast by the TV that’s left on by grandmoms when they can’t sleep, only without the flickering.

“Ryan.” There it is again, that voice. Jenifer’s voice. I leap out of bed—which you can do when it’s only eight inches off the floor—and into action. The heartrate soars, adrenaline courses, the klaxons are blaring—DIVE! DIVE!—and I am the personification of power and puissance, I am a ninja, I am the wind, and I am fumbling with epic mightiness to fix a sock on Hawk’s flailing foot—and then Jenifer’s voice cuts in again and points out in no uncertain terms that my efforts are “strictly tertiary concerns” (I apparently having vaulted right over those of the primary and secondary orders) and that my attention is needed on the more immediate and urgent task of changing the wee bairn’s diaper.

Yes, of course, I answer, perhaps not in those words. I’m not sure, really, what I say, only I brave the beacon of Mínas Morgul (so I have come to call the ever-watchful blue LED; and, yes, I know in the movie it’s green) and haul baby Hawk into the bathroom for another stint at natural infant hygiene, otherwise known as “elimination communication”; for Jenifer has developed (and I to a lesser extent) the ability to detect his waste elimination needs almost before he does. Sometimes we miss (hence the diaper), but more often than not we anticipate in time and thus enjoy Hawk’s happy attention rather than his unhappy wrath. This, as you can imagine, is exhausting.

And I wonder why I find myself already a week out from the final day of the Screenwriters’ Conference of the Austin Film Festival. The conference was the first time I was away from little Hawk since his birth eight weeks (already!) before. During the summer Jenifer and I had decided that the conference would be sufficiently far away in time that my going would not be an issue; in fact, Jenifer insisted I go.

For weeks the trip loomed large in my imagination as I looked forward to the epic anchor point of the year, the screenwriter’s New Year; and if my departure was less grand than that of Húrin son of Thúrin, or of Hector’s taking leave of Andromache, each famously dandling their sons on the eve of their doom, then my return home was a triumph neither of those heroes could lay claim to. I had survived the foreign campaign unscathed and returned to hearth and home restored by the effort. During the conference, Hawk was never far from my thoughts, but upon seeing him again I was completely surprised by how overcome with emotion I was. How had he grown so much in only five days’ time? What had I missed? What new superpowers had he manifested? I felt reborn from four days of paneling and partying, but nothing could compare with Hawk’s evident transformation and the incessant march of his metabolism.

I had returned to the new world, the one without order or plan, the one that demanded an abandoning of expectation and preference for structure and predictability. In this world, as I have suggested, things tend to take longer to accomplish and at times risk not being done at all. So it was with our planning for Hawk’s baby blessing.

Jenifer and I had struggled to come up with a location and format for the event. When asked what a baby blessing was, I’d joke that it was a christening without the Christ, but really what we were after was a gathering of our closest friends and family that was reverent but not overly programmed. We felt that it should have a sense of ritual about it, should be led by a qualified facilitator; we didn’t want to just wing it. Here Hawk would be officially introduced to our community and we wanted to get it right.

Jenifer’s father joked that, knowing us, we’d enlist an East African shaman to conduct the ceremony. I wish I’d been there to see the look on his face when Jenifer reported that our first choice was, in fact, Malidoma Patrice Somé, noted shaman and elder of the Dagara tribe of West Africa. Unfortunately, his schedule was booked.

On to Plan B: The Great Quentini, a local performance artist known for his unconventional drum kits (fashioned from junkyard scraps), irreverent but heartfelt spoken-word pieces (on the importance of chlorophyll), and genius for unusual hats (carved from foam). But he, too, was unavailable.

I mentioned our dilemma to my local men’s group and one of the guys suggested we require everyone to bring their own blessing. YES! We would have everyone else shoulder the load. Perfect!

That left the location to find. We wanted an outdoor site and had originally dreamed of holding the event atop the nearby Hawk Mountain for obvious reasons, but with October you never know what kind of weather you’re going to get and we had mobility concerns to take into consideration for a couple of our guests. For a time the leading contender was Wayne’s Woods (named for General “Mad Anthony” Wayne) in the Valley Forge National Historical Park, but here there was no guarantee of freedom from crowds.

In the end we held the blessing at ocean earth wind fire, the yoga studio where Jenifer works and our home base in Phoenixville. Jenifer and Hawk and I took our place in the backyard and the gathered joined in an effortless circle. My mother started to Jenifer’s left, presenting a cross-stitch wall hanging announcing Hawk’s birthday, and then each member of the circle in turn presented his or her gift to Hawk. Each gift beautifully bespoke the giver’s individual talents: testaments, artwork, performance, poems both original and carefully chosen.

Just as the city sounds penetrated our patch of greenspace, we made no effort to block out the external world or the public atmosphere of failures and bailouts, the sense of crisis in the air. The world has always been ending, but with such folk as were gathered about us it will always begin anew. These extraordinary people, our community, had witnessed and supported our growth as we pursued our callings, and now Hawk had heard the call. Perhaps Tom, in identifying what was required of each of us, put it most simply: “Never be afraid to be great.”

Afterwards Hawk’s two families spent the remainder of the afternoon at Chanticleer Garden, followed by dinner in downtown Wayne. The day had been perfect, the weather beautiful, and finally the time came for our families to part ways. Jenifer and I decide to take “the back way,” as we often do, and here that means a passage through Valley Forge Park. But Hawk’s cries of hunger mean that we have to stop for a feeding, and Jenifer and I smile at each other as we recognize that the only stopping place is the great Arch. This stone monument is one of my favorite places, a sanctuary.

We are alone, the three of us, at this sacred spot. I think of it as the spiritual epicenter of the land, where General Washington and his men braved the harshest of winters during the Revolutionary War. At the edge of the field are the darkening trees of Wayne’s Woods, and as I collect photos Jenifer and Hawk remain at the Arch under the silent watch of the deer and a burning sky.

Darkness falls and Hawk finishes. Only it isn’t dark, not entirely. We get in the car and, guided by moon and stars, find our way home.

A Summer Shower

Shawna over at Shouting at the Wind recently asked whether her fellow writers are actually writing and what goals they’ve set for themselves. I dashed off something of a jujitsu non-answer, saying that these days I’m working on goal-free livin’. That’s an honest answer, if a partial one: on the one hand, yes, I’m concerning myself less and less these days with hard-and-fast deadlines when it comes to completing the various stages of the current opus, recognizing that when we allow it time is not so much a steady march as a wandering, though purposeful, exploration of a balmy summer day; on the other hand, the extended process of writing a movie is never far from the frontal lobe. But there’s a bigger fish to fry, too, and that’s the impending (though timely) arrival of my first child.

Thus, I’m excited to be about a sixth of the way through a new draft. A Real Draft, as opposed to previous outpourings of the ongoing iterative development methodology. It’s going well, swimmingly, in fact, and that’s probably because I’m not hammering at it every last second. But I’m also taking the time to prepare the house, read up on the baby literature, and enjoy my oh-so-busy social calendar. Please join me, then, as I set the flux capacitor to the second day of summer . . .

Earlier that day, which my traveling buddy the Kid had pointed out was already in fact “tomorrow,” I had returned from my field trip to New York City. There would be no rest, however, as I was to play second fiddle to the first, Jenifer, or rather the one within. We would be hosting a shower to celebrate the baby, and there was work to do.

Actually, my part involved showing up and waiting for my parents to arrive. I also bought four bags of ice (not enough) and poured them into a large bucket. In truth, however, much of the preparations had already been made, and we were fortunate to be blessed with so many helpers. So we waited while our guests made their pilgrimages to Phoenixville, to the backyard of our friend Susan’s yoga studio, ocean earth wind fire. Apparently, there is a fifth element, a cloaking device, that prevents otherwise high-functioning adult humans from missing the building, or in some cases the town, and so I sat and drank my Artisans house blend as they cranked their Google machines, GPS devices, maps of seven seas, and other assorted amulets. Previous weeks had seen frantic e-mails expressing great consternation over the coordinates to be plotted in the navicomputer; if at all possible, a friend explained, he would prefer to avoid coming out of hyperspace in the middle of the Cheesecake Factory several towns away, a likely occurrence since he had charted no less than four Phoenixvilles in a 50-mile radius.

But the guests arrived without incident, chief among them my parents, Bearers of the Cake. This was a confection built to exacting specifications by Martín and his staff at the House of Clarendon, an English-style bakery in Lancaster, and no one would dare cut the thing without my parents’ consent or exacting methods (which involved, among other things, a tape measure and dental floss).

Soon the afternoon was full with greetings and well wishes and plain old good conversation, as old friends and new mingled and enjoyed the garden, the music, the food. After a course of quiches, raw veggies, and mixed fruit, the Cake (chocolate pound with Bavarian crème filling) was dispersed throughout the gathered, accompanied by a trio of homemade artisanal gelato: strawberry, pistachio, and a very fresh and herbal mint. And the people were happy.

And so were we. Jenifer and I made our rounds individually and later reflected on our day, our friends and family. They had come for us, for the baby, this new person who occupied the most darkly shaded area of a sprawling Venn diagram of fellowship. These were our people and they would be the little one’s people, if only for a time, and we found ourselves deeply moved by both their generosity and their acknowledgement of our part, however small—or, perhaps, however grand—in the unfolding human story.

On the Move

This entry would have reached you sooner if I hadn't been accosted in Artisan’s Gallery and Café by a passionate Phoenixvillean who, having overheard my conversation on politics with Jenifer and her visiting parents, asked who we were going to vote for in the Presidential election. We made the mistake of eye contact and were soon regaled with a sweeping, epic tale of Saskatchewan agribusiness intrigue. Apparently, when the prospect of mad cow disease loomed large in Canada, the parliament cut federal subsidies to the railroad industry and forced our newfound companion to reroute her beef through Montana and USDA inspection prior to its return to Ottawa, and me to wonder how folks who come up with their best ideas while piloting freighters across the Siberian Sea end up in southeastern Pennsylvania.

You can see why a story like this could hold a person up, and I’m skipping the parts about guerrilla grain trading in Russia and the revolutionary role of beef futures in the rodeo circuit. True, afterwards I did also grab a burrito at Qdoba, see Baby Mama at the multiplex, and pick up a handful of items at the supermarket, including a watermelon I attempted to hold in my lap while driving home until Jenifer pointed out that it had made the journey from Honduras just fine and wouldn’t mind rolling around on the floor of the Prius.

That all these happenings found their way inside an otherwise ordinary five-hour stint on an average Saturday may give you an idea of the fullness of the past month. It may also give you the idea that I’m suffering from schizophrenia, but I assure you that upon learning—on this same Saturday—of the plot of the fanciful and apparently unendurable musical Carousel and quickly deducing that its thematic point of view is best described as “there’s always a carny in heaven looking out for you,” I think my emotional state compares quite favorably, thank you. Besides, this April was no August, to be sure, but then that may be due to a new and welcome prevailing sense of calm. A breakdown, then, of recent mentionables:

1. I ran the Cherry Blossom. On my first day in Marketing, I was asked if I would join the crew on its annual pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. CUT TO: me running the Credit Union Cherry Blossom 5K. This event is really a sideshow to the world-famous Ten Mile Run, but was much better suited to my minimal and lately erratic cardio training. I told myself I would just “have fun” (code for “don’t be so hard on yourself”), but then the old instincts kicked in and I ended up placing seventh with a time of 22:22. The Wraith of my college distance-running days was long gone, but for a Clydesdale I did okay. All things considered, I pretty much rule.

2. We toured historic Philadelphia. This, in itself, is nothing particularly noteworthy, of course. However, in Washington, Jenifer and I made a new friend from corporate who would be in Philadelphia the following weekend in preparation for the company’s annual spring conference. Dan wanted to see the city from the ground. After a day of viewing important artifacts including the Liberty Bell, a statue of Robert Morris (who at the age of twenty-two was wealthy enough to fund the Revolutionary War), and several of Benjamin Franklin’s privies, we made one of our last stops at the historic City Tavern. Here Dan and I imbibed a sampler consisting of the home brews of Messrs. Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, as well as an ale of the era. I finished perhaps only 9/16ths of the assortment before feeling quite liberated. In some respects, I am still very much a lightweight.

3. I successfully discharged my civic duty. The very week of the aforementioned spring conference, I was also scheduled for jury duty selection. I was happy to participate in this aspect of government, and even happier to receive $9 for reading First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently. Good book, that.

4. I delved deeper into the Norse epic. There will come a day when I report the triumphant conclusion of this effort, but for now I am content not to concern myself with such mundane notions as time and progress and to remind myself, as I did in D.C., to have fun. What were once delays are now fruit, and they are free to roll wherever they want.

Brüder

Ed. note: In June 1999, my grandfather Alex M. Brand included a version of the following story in the tribute life-history album we presented to my father on the occasion of his retirement from teaching. The story was later published on April 9, 2000 as a special to the Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Sunday News in the “I Know A Story” column, under the title “In ’50s, young bicyclist had scare in Berlin.”

. . . . .

A Jan. 5 newspaper report stated a Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Policeman handcuffed a 9-year-old boy he had stopped for not wearing a bike helmet. At age 81, I am reminded of how another policeman handled a graver biking offense (against the German public order) almost 50 years ago in West Berlin, at the time an “island in a Soviet sea.” In this case, my son Teddy, also 9, was the malefactor, and the year was 1953. I was an undercover U.S. intelligence team leader. Teddy’s mother and I were living among the German populace in Dahlem Dorf, a residential and diplomatic suburb of West Berlin. Teddy joined us there, and soon acquired a very personable German playmate, Erwin (pronounced “Air-veen”), also 9. Erwin was actually a refugee “Volksdeutscher” (German by blood) whose family had fled the then-Yugoslavia with the German defeat in World War II. At supper one evening, where Erwin was our frequent guest, I inquired as to the events of their day. The story tumbled out, in excited, alternating German and English, that they had been riding their bikes through a nearby park when a very solemn-looking policeman stopped them and informed them that they were breaking the law. He read from a pocket-statute book he carried: “It is forbidden to ride bicycles in a public park where there is not a Radweg (bike path). Bicyclists must dismount and walk their machines through.” With great solemnity he informed them that they were under arrest and were to proceed with him to the nearby Revier (precinct) Polizei station. Needless to say, the procession drew much amused attention from the many passersby. Teddy said that his great concern was how he would explain his predicament to his father. He and Erwin gloomily pushed their bikes up to the long flight of steps leading to a forbidding stone building, looking every bit a dungeon. As they turned to ask the Polizist what to do about their bikes, he suddenly smiled, and, recognizing Erwin as both villain and interpreter, lectured him and Teddy on bicycle-riding priorities, and the “Public Ordnung.” He ended with: “Und jetzt (and now) you brats, Hau ab! (‘beat it!’), and don’t do it again!” As Teddy exclaimed, “and Pop, we didn’t wait, we ‘Haued ab’ all the way home!” Another time, about a year later, Teddy was less fortunate. He and Erwin were observed by a park attendant to be riding their bikes somewhat eccentrically on a Radweg. The attendant admonished them as to their “reckless driving.” The matter would have ended there, but for Teddy’s brashness. Teddy was, by that time, quite fluent in street German. I had drilled him in his conduct when and if approached by strangers. To Erwin’s dismay, as he related it to us, Teddy asked the civilian official “Hast du ein Ausweis?” (Do you have an ID?), using the familiar “du” (for “you”) instead of the formal “Sie,” which is mandatory address in German by juniors addressing elders. Erwin said he knew all was lost when he heard this gaffe from his pal. The startled, or perhaps bemused, official produced not one, but two IDs. Teddy commented that he couldn’t read them, but they had his photos and “Stempels” (stamps), so he guessed they were OK. Perhaps as a result of such disrespect, this august public servant proceeded to give both bikes an inspection complete to the most minute detail — Teddy said it took an hour, but perhaps it only seemed so long to the boys. The official filled out two forms that listed the defects found on their bikes, with the order that certificates would have to be submitted within a week to the local police that the bikes had been brought “up to snuff.” He then lectured the boys, and again, “Hau ab!”

. . . . .

Last week my father and his childhood accomplice, Erwin, met for the first time in over 50 years. They had found each other through the Internet. Erwin, my father learned, had recently retired from a 40-year career as an industrial insurance claims adjuster. A flurry of e-mails ensued and Erwin soon learned that my parents were planning a Scandinavian cruise this spring. They would be stopping briefly along the northern coast of Germany, near Rostock. This was a fine excuse for Erwin to drive the three hours from Berlin to meet my parents in the Baltic port of Warnemunde, but soon his plans blossomed even further, and within a few short months he was in the States for the first time. For a week my parents and Erwin toured the local sites, including Amish Country and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Before moving on to Niagara Falls, New York City, and Washington, D.C., however, Erwin made the trip with my parents to Phoenixville. My mom joined Jenifer and me for a yoga class, leaving the two old friends to hang out at Artisan’s Café, and when we joined them it was clear that they were having no trouble catching up, and that for them time had no meaning. At one point, Erwin turned to me and smiled, explaining, “We are old now, and we may not have liked each other.” After lunch we visited the expansive Valley Forge Historical National Park. Erwin and I discussed Napoleon and European battlefield tactics, the history of Prussia, and the use of mercenaries, such as the Hessians employed by General Washington during the Revolutionary War. Erwin’s knowledge of both European and U.S. history was formidable. He even corrected my pronunciation of the name of the Saxon antagonist of my Norse historical epic. I was pleased to be able to share with him one of my favorite local places. I also shared with him the story of my first visit to Germany. The day after I graduated from high school, my sister and I were on a plane for Hamburg, where we would be part of an exchange program. For part of the trip, however, we traveled to West and East Berlin, going through Checkpoint Charlie during its last days of operation. (We even shook hands with Henry Kissinger in the Pergamon Museum). But the highlight of our Berlin excursion was our discovery of my father’s old house in Dahlem Dorf. Here was the home base of Erwin and my father’s adventures, of which my grandfather had told at many family dinners. There was the balcony from which they gazed at the stars through the old telescope. At that moment, the stories gained a place. And now, 18 years later, all the characters were assembled.

. . . . .

One more story. It was winter in Berlin and my father had a special kind of sled. Erwin wanted to try it out, but being shy and not knowing my father asked a girl nearby what the new kid’s name was. “Teddy,” she replied. Erwin was dumbfounded. “Like the bear?” he asked. That couldn’t be right, he insisted, but the girl introduced the two, and the rest is history.

Phoenixville Rising; Or, Press 5 for Transformational Character Arc

in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni — “We enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire.”

This is the annual post in which I write about how cool my local community is, how a group of “culture creators” is reimagining a former steel town, and how a sense of genuine pride is spreading throughout the land. The Firebird Festival is a big part of Phoenixville’s renewal, perhaps the most crucial part, because it is a gathering that points to a bright future and the artistry already present.

This year the event held a special meaning for Jenifer and me since we’d come to know some of the chief architects of the project. Artist Mia Bosna gave the invocation and led the procession down Bridge Street with her Drumming for Sanity ensemble. Lynn Miller, who recently played at Jenifer’s Friday night class, sang jazz to the burning of the ’bird. And Henrik Stubbe Teglbjaerg, one of the Firebird’s builders (see if you can spot him in the pic), will be playing singing bowls in a future class.

Other highlights included the Great Quentini, a performance artist who stomped like an oversized Micronaut Acroyear in front of the Firebird; buskers singing, telling stories, and twirling fire; a didgeridoo and singing bowl ensemble; and at the Colonial Theature the continuing adventures of Fumblefingers the Elf (on vacation in the Caribbean, so I’m told) . . .

As I sit at the dining room table, reflecting on these good feelings, the phone rings. I dash upstairs. The phone is not on the hook. Where is it? It’s still ringing. Back downstairs.

I scramble around the living room. From the bedroom, a smooth corporate voice explains that U.S. Representative Jim has decided to hold his town hall meeting in households throughout the region. He’s here! Live! In my house!

Before Representative Jim begins, however, the velvety robot continues, intoning, “Press 2 if you would like to be placed on our do-not-call list.” I would if I could find the phone, oh, yes, how I would.

There it is!—on the coffee table. I press 2, but the unit is dead. It’s been lying in this state since yesterday. I press 2 many times anyway, because that is how any grown man solves an insoluble problem. It’s the intensity of the repetition that will assure success, I’m sure of it.

But then Representative Jim begins his Live! interruption, welcoming me and all my compatriots in such a friendly, political way. “Hey, Mister,” I manage to cough out, having reached my lactate threshold, “I’m writing, Eivør is singing, and together we are creating culture in our little corner of Montgomery County—”

But Representative Jim rambles on in his down-homey way, deaf to my consternation.

Back upstairs, where I place the handheld unit on the receiver. I watch the little red recharge light blink on and try to come to terms with the sober reality that it is probably I who represent the half of my household that is telecommunicationally challenged. Indeed, when actually placing a call I am usually praying to the lords of electricity that I have enough phone points or whatever activating mechanism the consortium of Comcast, Dr. Who, and the ghost of Alexander Graham Bell has decided is required to carry my voice through the space-time continuum. I just thank my lucky stars Representative Jim didn’t have my cell phone number, or I would have lost precious time scouring the house for the orchestra playing in my pocket.

But then a new thought occurs. What kind of resources, I wonder, would it take to call all the houses in the area so that I could read my blog to them LIVE!? No, not my blog, the week’s pages. Yes, that’s it. I could set up an easy and convenient telephonic survey to gather metrics on my progress (these people, after all, being future audience members).

CUT TO:

ME: Sir, on a scale of one to five, with one being lowest and five being highest, how would you rate the scene you just heard in terms of structure?

SIR: Uh . . . two?

ME: I’ll put that down as a five.

BACK ON HOLY EMBERS:

Maybe I should call Representative Jim back. With his understanding of the sprawling matrix of digitality and my penchant for oiling the engines of social change (it’s on my résumé), why, we could skip the focus groups and go straight to the source. Take the pages to the street and get honest reactions, pure and simple. And, why not? Any pages rated three or lower get sent up in that big bright ’bird.

Happy New Year!

You Are Burning Me, Part 3

I really did not intend this entry. And it has nothing to do with Eivør, Faroese ballads, or inspiration. Consider it more of a PSA for writers and other layabouts. See, I was sitting and relaxing "while enjoying the new look and revitalization of Downtown Phoenixville" at a pleasant local café-slash-gallery, about to take my first sip of a steaming hot clay mug of coffee, when the handle decided to snap. Gravity did the rest, and I was soon enveloped in a cloak of liquid pain. About as much fun as a meatloaf piñata.

Life happens, of course, just usually not in such a swift and scalding manner. Also, I do my best not to scream like a little girl if I can help it.

To his credit, the barista was equally swift in his aid, and soon handy antiseptic burn pads were placed on the affected areas. I believe I shall soon recover without any lasting effects, and with any luck the next batch of Holy Embers will be both more intentional and true to form.

Pancakes and Cigarettes

Welcome to the next installment of Things I Did Several Weeks Ago (or More). Today we review the 2006 Firebird Festival in Phoenixville , PA. When we first moved into the area nearly eight years ago, Phoenixville was an old steel town just beginning to recover from a 20-year economic and social depression. Apparently, the drug dealers and prostitutes had just been cleared out, but the streets still felt far from safe.

Over the past several years, however, the town began perking up, using state grants to help develop new businesses and improve the physical space: soon a new park sprang up, as well as benches and streetlights lining the main thoroughfare. A group of local cultural creatives initiated the Firebird Festival as a year-end ritual to mark the symbolic death and rebirth of the town named after the mythic creature.

Jenifer and I met our friend Adam at the Steel City Coffeehouse, where local band SpiritGrass was already rocking. We quickly absconded to the Colonial Theatre, a grand old-fashioned movie house, for a marionette show about Santa’s elves called Fumblefingers Wants to Fly. The narrative throughline fell apart somewhere in Act II, and by the end it had become painfully clear that the writers had failed to do the deep character work. What was Fumblefingers’s motivation?

Nevertheless, the children were enthralled, and I was reminded of the scene in Amadeus where the common folk sing along with Mozart’s popular entertainment. Afterwards, we enjoyed an overpriced dinner at Iron Hill Brewery, a local upscale chain, and then made our way to Wolfgang Books. We missed a storytelling session, but were happy to browse through the books and look down on the brightly lit street from the shop’s well-appointed reading room.

Next was the main event. We gathered at the justice building, where we joined a procession led by Mia Bosna and her drum corps. Mia is an amazing artist who conducts workshops in shamanic journeying, and it was quite apparent that her inner 10-year-old was alive and kicking. We marched and hollered and clapped our way down to the parking lot where the huge wooden phoenix awaited us.

A fire twirler held our attention as we waited for the lighting of the huge wooden structure. Finally, the burning began, and soon flames were licking the head and wings until it took on a powerful, almost demonic presence, like the Balrog in Fellowship. I recalled Bhagavan Das’s tongue-in-cheek injunction to “find the flame; and burn, baby, burn.” I’d found it alright, and soon I was reflecting on the past year and the new.

2006 was a banner year for me. I logged enough air miles to circumnavigate the globe, visiting Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, as well as Los Angeles twice; worked out with a two-time World’s Strongest Man; met screenwriters Michael Blake and Shane Black; starred in an exceptional yoga instructional video; meditated with Bhagavan Das; conducted an exhaustive and illuminating ethnographic study of Scandinavian pants, made it to the second round in the Austin Film Festival’s screenplay competition; studied shamanic journeying; renovated my condo; and wrote blog entries of the highest quality. Heck, I even got a promotion at work.

Somewhere in there I did some screenwriting. In the words of Sean Bean, “I’m very pleased.”*

Yes, I am indeed wonderful – and generous enough to record all these wondrous doings for your reading pleasure. In truth, though, the point of this list is not to exercise my ego but to revel in the fact that I did something. Not too long ago I was just another phased-out fanboy trying to run down Wave 9 of Hasbro’s Star Wars action figure collection and come to grips with Episode I and What It Meant for Humanity.

Recently—meaning perhaps a week or two ago—Cecil, veteran checkout guy at Kimberton Whole Foods, asked me how I was doing. Rather than recite the above list, I said that things were going well and that I was working on my stories. (Working on my stories? How lonely high school goth chick is that?) I painted the big picture and he asked, “Do you think you have much chance of success?” I looked him straight in the eye and answered, “I wouldn’t be doing it if I thought I didn’t.”

2006 wasn’t all hearts and flowers. It was the most stressful and challenging year thus far at my day job. And so I shared the Cecil story with a friend of mine I’d met several years ago in a screenwriting class. He now runs a very successful nutritional supplement company, but the early days were trying.

When he started his business, he couldn’t afford to fly, and since he wasn’t married, he’d make three-week road trips, his trusty Volvo loaded with samples. He’d work his way to Fargo, North Dakota, drive down to Colorado, and then work his way home. He’d stay in Red Roof Inns and eat at pancake and waffle houses for $3. He couldn’t afford a typewriter with memory, so on Friday nights he’d find a Sears and buy a $500.00 memory writer, do all of his letters and paperwork, and then return the unit for credit on Sunday night. He was overstressed, smoked like a chimney, logged 300,000 road miles in three years, and amassed $45,000 in credit card debt.

And yet, he knew he would be successful. He knew the power of setting your intention, of creating a world of abundance, of being open to possibility, opportunity, and the allies along the path who will see you through the difficult stretches. He knew that the ashes and crumbs of the present would someday be a fond memory, the beginning of a new and beautiful dream. “Life,” he told me, “was good.”

*10 points for identifying the source of this quote.