Jan Wiener's Own Story

It has been 44 years since Jan handed me a copy of his newly published book, The Assassination of Heydrich.

In the months before, I had seen him writing in longhand in a school notebook and when I asked him what he was writing, he answered, "My life in Europe during World War 2 and the death of Reinhard Heydrich who was known as Hitler's Hangman." I had to admit I had never heard of Heydrich -- but I read Jan's book on the night he gave it to me. I couldn't put it down. It was chillingly brave, noble, painful, eerie, ironic, and sometimes, sparely poetic, just like Jan himself.

Knowing Jan -- for many of us who lived at The Windsor Mountain School in Lenox, Massachusetts -- was a great honor. Equally great is the honor of working on this reprint and update of his classic book. We did very little to it. Zuzana, Jan's wife, added a timeline.
I added a small memoir.

The story of Jan's escape from the Nazis, his amazing railway adventure getting to Italy, and his subsequent imprisonment there all seem like fiction. That he lived to tell the tale and was a navigator for more than thirty R.A.F. missions over Berlin is yet another spellbinding story, one that I heard little by little, and one night at a time, at a bar in Lenox during the 1970s. "This should be a film," I told him. And so it was, later on.

When I read The Assassination of Heydrich today, I am struck by the insistent, soft cadence of Jan's spoken voice. It's in his every statement. Those who took his Modern European History course know that voice well, and will hear it again in his prose. For me, it brings back one hundred nights at Heritage House on Housatonic St., Lenox, Massachusetts.

Here's to an incredible storyteller and devoted friend. 

Even if you have already done so, I suggest that you read what he wrote again.

We need to hear it now more than ever.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Assassination-Heydrich-Hitlers-Resistance/dp/1617203726/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1344538385&sr=8-2&keywords=the+assassination+of+heydrich+Wiener

George the Horse

This horse with no name is a roper's horse, a sweet-tempered show animal used to rodeos and working with calves. He's not built large enough to hold a steer. He crow hops sometimes. He has the roughest, bumpiest trot I've ever encountered, but it quickly slides into the the smoothest lope I've ever felt.

I breathe his warm breath into my lungs, and return it. Circular breathing.

I call him George because Jim does but also because I have a lifelong friend, a parrot named George. And now I have an 80 year old writer friend named George and a literary agent named George, and I am thinking of calling myself George instead of Gerald just to confuse everyone. Just kidding.

It starts raining on our ride in the high timber above Sapello Canyon. George wiggles his muzzle at the drizzle. I watch his unshod hooves clomping in the red earth heading down into the draw where the tall grass grows. George gets a little dancy at the sight of so much lushness and goes into his famous lope, so easy that you could hold a beer glass in hand and not spill a drop.

I could have him for a month's pay at the writer's trade, but back in Florida where we live, George would be out of work, and if there's anything this horse loves it's working.

On the way back to the barn he sees a funny-looking stump, sidesteps, crowhops once, then the easy canter. I understand why my mother was a rider at age five, my wife, too. My brother's all horseman. I ride when I can and dream the ride when I cannot.

Time Capsule

My father used to say: "Where does the time go? Into a little dark hole in the ground."

Yesterday I looked at my grandmother's writing desk built before 1900. For nine years now the drawers have been swollen shut, but with the AC the ancient walnut cabinetry shrunk just enough for me to get into the desk and see what was there.

Our granddaughter was staying with us in 2004 and she'd taken over the old desk, and made it hers. All her stuff was in it. She's in college now and I didn't think she'd mind if I took a peek at her "secret things." This is what I found in the cubbies and drawers:

A deck of playing cards whittled at by silverfish
A bunch of bird feathers
Some stones in a plastic bag
A container of Elmer's Washable Glue, still soft and gooey
A set of Batman and Robin cards

And then the real time capsule treasure!

A Numi box inside of which was a nine year old's note to her grandparents on the day she went home to Miami with her mom. Summer was over. Inside the box was a nine year old, unread note that said:

Take this little box
to remember
while I'm gone.
Love,
Shai

Some things don't go into that little dark hole in the ground.

Snorting Debby at High Tide

Debby, second storm of the season, was big and fat and sat over us, dark and gray for one whole week. She's on her way out now, but still blowing foam and little bits of mad spittle. I confess to loving storms but I never want to see another bad boy like Charley. He hurt us. I've written about him before, but Debby's another matter. She's, well . . . let me tell you.

Before a named storm comes to our barrier island, I always ask Lorry if we know anyone by that name who's caused us trouble. We've always loved Charleys, so he took us by surprise, tearing the island a new one for several hours before he squashed the town of Punta Gorda flat.

Debby? "We don't know any bad Deb's," Lorry said. She proved to be rather mild -- a good storm to sleep through with the odd pelt of sporadic rain -- the sudden rush followed by the weaker flutter of pelter drops. I like to swim in stormy weather and I like drinking Dark and Stormies -- ginger beer and rum with a twist of angostura bitters. But what is it about storms?

I like listening to the rain drum on the metal roof of the lanai. I like listening to the rain toads squeak like mice under the shefelera trees. I don't mind the lights going out once or twice. And to tell the truth, a full outtage for a spell isn't bad either. I cook on the grill by lantern light. How long is a spell? Could be eight hours or more. On occasion, a week or two. I don't like those much. But when push comes to shove, we bathe in the lily pond. Lorry and I amuse our tribe of soft-shelled turtles who bite the bubbles of goat's milk soap.

Debby brought more rain than we'd seen in ten months. I caught up on a little reading. Then Debby got rough and snorted down our chimney. That brought a family of chimney swifts into the kitchen. We put them back where they belonged. The rain stopped. The heat came on. The bees swarmed at the front of the house. An armadillo herd glittered and dug worms in back of the house.

We ate fried mullet for lunch and watched live mullet move in the canal. Mullets have faces like angelic puppies. I've never wanted to kiss one. But then I've never known a snorting Debby. "It's all good," my dad used to say, "if you like it." He also said, "I like to hit myself over the head with a hammer, now and then, because it feels so good when I stop." That explains why we like storms in Florida.

Why Las Vegas? Why Write?

Each July for the past five years, we have been pleased to do a writing workshop for writers of all kinds, dispositions and backgrounds. Not to mention ages.

Part of the experience is generated by the place itself. Old Town Las Vegas has been in more movies than most towns of its size, starting with Easy Rider and, most recently, Paul.

The first jail in Las Vegas was in back of the Plaza Hotel where we have our workshop. How strange: to think that Billy the Kid slipped out back, through the bars, off into the hills where he met a woman, who had a child, whose grandson attended classes with Loretta and me at Highlands University in 1966. That was Jim Bonney.

Place is one thing, writing is another. We come to write not necessarily about place but spirit of place. That could be what is in our heart. And it could be what is stored away, out of reach, in the lower brain stem where primal memory is stored. We talk a lot about memory. Some of us are writing memoirs. Reaching back somewhere. For something.

I guess the whole thing could be summed up by Norman Mailer's question to Jean Malaquais, "Why do you write?"

The answer: ". . . the only time I know the truth is at the point of my pen."

At one of our workshops we asked people to write thank you letters. One was directed to "the person who saved my life." One was a message written to "the one who ruined my life."

Once we asked our writers to write an outline for a book called "The Spiritual Lives of Inanimate Things."

Our basic premise has always been that everyone has a story to tell. And everyone has the means to tell it. Sometimes all we need is Dumbo's feather to fly up, up and away.

http://greenriverwritersworkshops.com/workshop.html

Lorry, Gerry, Alice

Green River Workshop July, 2011

Las Vegas, New Mexico

The Logical Poet

It was the poet John Ciardi who once said of children's writing -- "Just as I am ready to conclude that everything in their minds is a non sequitor, it turns out to be its own logic of perception."

Sun, sun, do you know
You are beams in the flames . . .

So said the 7 year-old whose "logic of perception" was simply that you could talk to the sun.

An 11 year-old said,

The clouds are stuck and scared to move
For fear the trees might pinch them.

The logic of perception is that everything is alive and conscious of everything else.

It's a party, said the 4 year-old child of my friend Catya,

The fingers of the sun
Touch the trees
The fingers of the sun touch the leaves
Together they go dancing
Through the breeze.

Does it really matter what age the poet is? This logic of perception is from a Japanese journalist, screenwriter friend of mine (age 40?) who said in this morning's email,

It is a warm hearted
good sad book of honesty
that smells dead rotten mouse of heart a bit.

And from poet Bob Arnold who writes of his son's . . .

5 Year Old Logic On A Winter Night

Under quilts he
says he is too hot

folding down the bed to
a sheet & one blanket

he looks up & says
he is too cold

Yes, you can talk to the sun and read a good rotten mouse heart of a book, and you can be any age, at any time and you can love your life so much that you even love the logic of not being born, and yet be there too.

End Of Story

Looking out at the hillside
Across the river and over the
Trees from our home Carson asks --
Did we climb that mountain?

I say, No, but mommy and I did.

Nodding, he decides, Oh, yeah,
We climbed that before I was born.

The proof is in the pudding and the logic. And the logic states that all things are possible when you believe in them. Go ahead, talk to the moon. She's listening.

The Unlikely Poet

The Unlikely Poet -- Every One of Us

Who is the unlikely poet?

The one least likely to write a poem.

In this case a fifth grade girl who, according to her reading teacher

doesn't like reading or writing.

It happens. The poem just bursts forth, and when you see it, it's joyous.

"Poets like to tell you how they write because they themselves do not know how it is done." That's from poet David Kherdian.

I don't know what DD, the unlikely fifth grade poet, would say about this. But here's her lovely poem --

Blue, blue like the

sky sweet like

the ocean blues

just like crying

eyes of tears

sweet just like

the blue night skies

so just sweet of

you 

Another fifth grader, as unlikely as can be, because she said this poem while doing hop scotch on a sidewalk. I wrote it down while she hopped and scotched, and then I asked her: "Did you write that?"  

Her answer: "Did I write what?" 

"That poem." 

"What poem?" 

Anyway, it came in three and four-line jumps, as her feet tapped the beat on the cement street--

be cool

be rule

be bright

be light

be calm

be cool

be fool

be bop

be hip

be scat

be cat

Meeow!

I once had a conversation with Mr. Rogers about how "Anyone is a poet." 

He preferred: "Everyone is a poet!" 

Sometime after this, I was walking with my wife in the sunny streets of Manhattan when I heard a very small man say loudly into his tiny cell phone --

Sure I saw it

but what

do you want

me to do

about it?

I laughed and he looked at me, and walked by. I said to Lorry, "That guy looked like Danny DeVito, and she said, "That was Danny DeVito." 

So -- for Fred Rogers and DD and Danny -- and for the nameless hop-scotcher of New Port Richie, this is for you -- "Everyone IS a poet!"