Country Mouse

Bold for the Autumn Day 2

“Let’s make the first stop on your road trip a city,” Danielle naively said to herself a few weeks before departing for New York City.

Without thinking anything of being in a city I headed to Brooklyn, New York to visit my long-time friend Alex. I liked the drive, it was one I did in various combinations during my AAU basketball days for tournaments in Philly, New Jersey and Brooklyn.

Can’t take the hoop out of the city.

New York City driving abruptly woke me up from my nostalgic trip.

I’ve been to New York City plenty of times, and cities generally give me a bit of anxiety, but this time in particular I felt totally overwhelmed by the constant noise, proximity to other humans and constant stimulation. I didn’t give myself much time to ease into it either. I’ve become too accustomed to quiet, to the wind, rain and occasional train through Orono, being the only sound to tempt me awake.

I wasn’t too far from home though. The people in Brooklyn are funny. I saw more people dressed like Mainers than I see in Maine. The difference is they all are clean cut, their red and black flannels are immaculate and their beards are trimmed to perfection. I saw a guy in Carhartt overalls coming out of a cafe. But what people from NYC lack in their “lumbersexual” style is the practicality bit. It rained pretty much the whole day and out of all the people I saw I only counted four with rain coats on. Yet under their umbrellas, which more times than I’d like to admit hit me in the head, their wool hats and leather boots looked good. “A” for effort New York.

I spent my day in the city moving between parking bans, riding the subway, visiting The Strand (a huge independent bookstore), Central Park and Wassail (a bar devoted to hard cider).

The Strand is so great it almost has a “Literary Journalism” section.

Waiting for my train.

My teacher, Lou Mroz, who I spoke about in my last post was a strong advocate for pizza in NYC, many people may remember one of his sayings: “two slices as a coke.” So in honor of Lou I made sure to have two slices.

Two slices for Lou.

Earlier in the day I was listening to a song by Connor Oberst the lyric goes, “there are hundreds of ways to get through the day, so just find one.” Later in the day it dawned on me that Central Park was probably going to be my way. I found the park relaxing and rainy. Of all my trips to NYC I had never visited the park before. I partially wanted to see it because Frederick Law Olmstead the guy who designed the park also designed UMaine’s campus. I was surprised by its sheer size and also by how hard it was, even there, to be alone. None the less, it provided the reprieve I needed.

The bridges were a nice break from the rain.

Apparently Olmstead liked malls. There’s one here and at UMaine.

It’s been a weird realization that I can come and go when I please. When I was feeling overwhelmed in the city it dawned on me I didn’t have to stay. I’m happy I challenged myself to still spend time there and visit different parts of the city alone, but I’m also pleased I listened to what I wanted and left when I needed too. I decided to get a head start on my driving for today and stopped in Delaware for some sleep last night.

A taste of some street art that was all over Brooklyn.

Breakfast in Brooklyn.

I’m going on an adventure!

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Bold for the Autumn: Day 1

I like observing change.

Over the past two years I’ve run the same path along the Stillwater River almost everyday. I like to watch the last remnants of winter melt, freeze and melt again—revealing fragments of fiery leaves on their way to decomposition, still littering the forest floor. I like to watch small bits of green poke through those leaves and unfurl in the longer and warmer days. I welcome the beavers back. Or perhaps they welcome me back slapping their tails against the water in the newly melted river—the beavers most likely trying to scare me away. As spring progress and the trail is painted in green starting from the ground and working up, I watch one plant species grow strong and tall just to be overwhelmed by another in succession. I like losing myself in these small transformations. What I’ve failed to acknowledge is that in the years since I’ve been running I’ve been changing too. Just in less obvious ways.

I’ve always been a proponent of acknowledging change when it happens, but that takes dedicated time. It’s important to recognize who we’ve become and reflect on what we’ve experienced. Only when we take time to do so are we able to know what we need in the present moment to be happy. In the past four years, and in the last month especially, my life has changed in big ways, and small but often more important ways. Until now I’ve been too busy to take the time that I need to process. I’m lucky at this point in my life I have the flexibility to decompress and embark on a month long solo-drive across the United States.

My desire to go on a road trip began at the beginning of high school with a book and a person. The book being, Into the Wild and the person being my high school social studies teacher Lou Mroz. Into the Wild inspired me to take an adventure. I felt constrained by societal norms around me and Chris McCandless’ taught me I could escape them all by going out on my own and living off my own will. In my one-track high school brain I couldn’t understand the book’s final message that “happiness is only real when shared.” I’ve since learned differently, but my passion for taking an adventure alone persists.

After reading Into The Wild, I began talking to my high school social studies teacher, the late Lou Mroz, about the various trips he’d been on to Alaska and otherwise, as well as transcendentalism and feminism. I became intrigued by Ralph Waldo Emerson but often found that some of his philosophies contradicted my desire to set out to “find myself.” As Emerson writes in the essay “Self-Reliance,” “He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things.” I talked about these contradictions in my own morphing philosophies with Mr. Mroz.

As I graduated high school and moved on to a collegiate career in basketball, I felt more and more constrained by the life I was living. Mr. Mroz’s words always stayed with me however and the idea of a road trip became more of a distant but elaborate plan—a way to escape after I put in my four years.

In the meantime, before he retired, Lou Mroz gave students a handout with four philosophies one read:

“The greatest gift that we are given is life, no one knows for sure if there’s an after life. One thing I know for sure, I know what sorrow is and I know what happiness is, we have the power, we have the power to be happy.”

This sentiment was shared with me during my years as his student and stuck with me. I quit basketball and began reconstructing who I was and figuring out what I needed to be happy. A process that probably took two years.

After graduating and tying up a few loose ends, I realized I had the time to take my cross-country adventure. The night before Mr. Mroz passed away I thought to email him the next day telling him I was finally doing it. But I know his spirit will be with me on this journey.

Another Lou Mroz philosophy was:

“Find your passion, find what you enjoy doing it and go for it.”

Today, I’m taking a journey for me. It’s the first time in a long while I’m making a personal decision where I don’t feel like I’m escaping something. Although I’m alone I know I have people to share with and I want to share with them.

Still, I have a long history of making plans I fear and never try.

This is one of them.

Road trips, backpacking adventures, articles to write, people to talk to. On one hand I’m self-aware enough to know these plans will teach me something and I create them. In the past I’ve been too scared to just go for them.

Yet recently certain permutations in my life push me to test my limits and as silly as it sounds, face my fears. Last month I took my first backpacking trip and before graduation I finished the longest and most in-depth piece of writing I’ve ever attempted. I feel more comfortable in who I am. For the first time in a while, I feel like I have strength derived from inside me not from what I do. With the support of people like Jackson, who is always helping me face my fears, and Tyler, who know how to ask the right questions at the right times, I’ve learned I’m capable of all the well-laid plans I made for myself. Strength wasn’t just randomly bestowed upon me, but it’s something I’ve been gaining over time with hard work. I realized I’ll never be fully ready for anything. The best I can do is, as Lou Mroz said, “go for it.”

So now I will go.

Bold For the Autumn is a blog I’ve kept for over two years now, mostly devoted to poetry. When I came up with the name I felt like it combined being “bold” something I had to be to make the decisions I was at the time, with my favorite season. As this is a summer of adventures for me it seems fitting to keep that name. I’m making bold decisions until my life settles down for a little bit in the fall.

You can follow my journey here and on Instagram and Twitter.

New Chapbook

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This month I self-published my first chapbook titled Ribcage. The book features 16 original poems from my four years as an undergraduate. I collaborated with Jill Pelto for the cover art.

Copies are available upon request for donation only. Email dwalczak25@gmail.com for details.

April Poems

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In April I wrote a series of Indeterminacy poems inspired by John Cage and my studies of Black Mountain College.

The following are the ten poems I wrote:

Facts

are not important to John Rice but

Rather how you hold them.

Caress them in the quiet house until

leaving

is no longer an option.

Stop

aim in the direction in front of you an

arrow. To create as an act of worship

there are gods before you.

shooter bow target

[centering]

without the other none can fully exist.

The deer stay alive.

Two months

or less to decide

how my Education has

experienced me.

Dewy said Conclusions are not endings

but pauses.

Still must “ready” come before

forward?

Aim forward, change.

Aim forward

change. Relax.

Consider it all

an experiment.

In the hospital

systems fail

in phases.

95.

He keeps time

still

wearing a wristwatch.

The country of Nepal now requires hikers

to bring 18 pounds of trash

off Mount Everest

The frozen artifacts include:

but are not limited to

air canisters

food scraps

hats

gloves

Human bodies

the conquering of

The Tallest mountain

in the world

is complete.

There is a garbage

dump at the top of the world.

They say, “Don’t meet your heroes.”

Bob Creely’s biographer

was disappointed wrote

a scathing review.

Perhaps he could not see it

because he was not

looking close enough.

Where does boredom reside?

The internet creates a

closeness

to those who

match our needs but

intimate distance.

How many kisses are sipped

through laptop screens

ignored by the next

scroll?

Which is more important

the content or form?

Every morning it is someone’s job

turn the world

on.

If something is boring

do not look

longer

look closer

multiplicities you can not

imagine

reveal themselves.

One afternoon two music students

were rehearsing John Cage’s “Living Room Music”

“Let’s add a horn,” one student

said. “It sounds better that way.”

The second student, a purist of sorts, was

concerned, “It sounds better because it’s pitched.”

“Listen,” the second student said.

“There is music always around us.”

From the hallway the bickering

murmured melodies.

The other day

a young girl went to the

hospital with an awful

rash.

Her skin was flush red.

The doctors couldn’t figure out
what was wrong.

They later discovered an allergy to

Red Dye 40 cannot be treated with

pink Benadryl.

You cannot fix the

problem with what makes you

sick.

There are thirty people in the

Black Mountain College course

at UMaine

Poets

Dancers

Philosophers

Teachers

and those who’ve yet to

shed their cocoons,

if at all.

The people they talk about in class

are now foundations.

“Careful,” the professor says,

“If one of you becomes famous

we will be footnotes in your

history.”

10.

In the early days of Black Mountain College they

used found materials because in the Great

Depression creative expression was

sparse and expensive.

At one point some artists made machines intended

to break.

There is beauty in malfunction.

Today, they make cell phones

Among other things

to break.

That way nothing is permanent.

You can always buy a new

tomorrow.

March Poem

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Postponed Wilderness

Danielle Walczak

The largest stadium in the world is
empty today.

It’s snowing and
a girl carries her iced coffee to class in both a
plastic and Styrofoam cup.

Sliced in half an onion looks like a topographic map
snow banks are mountain ranges.

When the snow melts it reveals our trash in the median.

We mediate a river in order to direct telephone poles
that were once trees, down it.

Before a bridge a river is chaos.

In spring never underestimate the river’s ability
to rise.

In 2014 the United States congress voted down
twenty-five acts of “proposed wilderness.”
Gaining the ever so telling, not of nature,
but of us, title
“Postponed wilderness.”

Postponed wilderness.

A river is chaos before a bridge.

In Arizona the largest stadium in the world is empty today.

An artic tern flies 7,700 miles a year to have two homes.

The whale uses the coast as a guardrail.

The monarch sacrifices its life to fly away.

Teachers are begging their students to stop being so apathetic.

In autumn we set the blueberry fields on fire
later a family feud will be settled in Maine
it’s hunting season.

In October we drain rivers to make snow.
In March we wish it away
Make the snow
Clean the roads
Salt the earth
Repeat
Repeat

It’s hunting season and rain
selects rocks to weather
we select caffeine or booze
to smooth the edge of inbox entropy.

Every outdoor speech, protests and march, invades the doorstep of the homeless.
They are putting spikes under bridges to lock them out.

Chair lifts are shifting backwards on mountains.
Gravity tests those who push her limits.

I want to wear a crown
but I’ve yet to be convinced I’m made of sand.

We are all made of the same material
different forms.

The seas are rising!
The mountains are rising!
Submit
Submit.
Submit.
The weeds are rising.

February Poem

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He feels rhythm in washing machines

Danielle Walczak

My flannel sheet never felt

thicker

than when you said you didn’t

want it between us.

[But let’s rewind].

Your first word was moon and

that was all I ever needed to know about you.

Starting an off-kilter metronome of sorts

rhythm is not in you but around

you find it in the quietest places

bringing it inside.

It’s February now and

Orion buckles us together

packed under blankets of snow.

Delicata dreams we’ll eat hash in the

morning.

Butter my toast

take a walk with me.

Now, the sun is out but setting

smoke stacks — heat illuminated by

clear cold

light, from buildings, from our mouths

from I.V.s, I am warmer with

you inside me.

“Let’s listen to that track again,”

maple syrup slow [snow]

you tell me appliances

play in B flat.

I am warmer with you inside me.

I am not leaving tomorrow but soon.

In a shadowy kitchen, near a constellation poster

I am burning, not allergic

sipping tea with both hands next to you.

I am not leaving tomorrow but soon.

Constellations move, more so do we.

So buckle us a notch closer

we can stick warm stones in our pockets,

carve DNA into the mountains

So they,

We can’t forget how to sing.