Gina at SOU

Gina has arrived and is settling in to her new home - Southern Oregon University. She has a great roommate named Jasmine; is excited to be in a fantanstic town, Ashland; and is looking forward to getting on with her college education. Big Frank has to admit that the whole process was reminiscent of his going away to college - it is a real watershed moment and a strange one too. Think about it - when else do you ever get randomly housed with a complete stranger? This is probably the only time in one's life. There are some many other changes at this time and Gina is determined to make all of them to her advantage. Being a college student allows one, in fact you could say that you are almost required, to investigate the big questions of life and what it is that you are going to do with your life. It's probably the only time in your life that you are given the time and resources to do it. Big Frank is confident that Gina will figure it out.

Coyote How

Coyote How

By Big Frank Dickinson

The dishes sit in the sink unwashed;
The bed unmade with naked exposed sheets
That sprawl with wrinkled ridges, remnants
Of last night’s battle with rest.

The pile of bones glisten in the rising sun;
The grass bedded down in circularities
That hold the shape of the departed, signs
Of last night’s heavy sleep.

Thoughts piled up preclude thinking
Although the mind keeps busy
Sorting through these like the shuffling
Of papers that could be tossed.

A single thought drives the coyote forward
Into the day with purposeful stride
Sorting through the trail of scents,
All to be tossed, but one.

Unanswered phone calls, e-mails unsent,
Someone’s birthday passed; bills unpaid.
The drafts of journeys long abandoned;
And lists of interests long postponed.

The coyote has one call and he’s answering.
Yesterday is as gone as all previous.
There is only one draft and it is
Being composed of the present interest.

Women and Trains

Here are two poems that center on women and trains. In one, the train takes a woman away and it seems that in her leaving one romance she finds another – in Valparaiso (perhaps). In the other as the freight train rolls away, an old woman follows her cats down the stairs to the toilet.

Romance

A woman down our street went away and became
the sound of a train on a rainy night,
lingering like a scarf in the trees.

To Chicago, some said, but all traces
vanished. Years later a card came—
Valparaiso, but faint, and maybe not her.

Now, whenever it rains, like children
we listen at the window. We know some friends
won’t ever come back, really.

But the sound of a train is ours, and Valparaiso.

-- William Stafford

Late Nights in Minnesota

At the end of a freight train rolling away,
a hand swinging a lantern.
The only lights left behind in the town
are a bulb burning cold in the jail,
and high in one house,
a five-battery flashlight
pulling an old woman downstairs to the toilet
among the red eyes of her cats.

-- Ted Kooser

Gina Goes Away To College

Big Frank takes his daughter to away to college in three days. Gina will be going to Southern Oregon University, where she’ll be studying theater – at least that’s the plan right now. This is an exciting time for Gina; moving away from home; thinking about her life’s plans for a career; making new friends; and learning to live away from home and her dad. It will be an adjustment for her, and an adjustment for her dad.

Big Frank may now be entering the empty nest syndrome, a psychological world that that is characterized by a certain sadness, wistful retrospection, some lonliness, and copious amounts of free time. This is the first time in 25 years with no children around for Big Frank, and that has got to entail some kind of adjustment. It’s interesting to note that most articles on this indicate that it is mothers/women that characteristically suffer from this – not men. There is a lot of information on the web on the syndrome, including blogs devoted exclusively to this. Big Frank was reading through this and discovered the odd fact that some ‘empty nest’ parents in Florida have been buying campuchin monkeys to care for when their children leave home! Well Big Frank has no plans to try to replace Gina with a monkey!

In the Dump

The Dump of Unwanted Desire

By Big Frank Dickinson

Everything in this dump is a vestige
of desire used all up and thrown away.
Look at those smiles on the dumpers faces;
So pleased to let go of this crap and be gone.

Couches, one-eyed dolls and rusty old knives
Stacked among bits of cardboard and plastic.
Who would ever know they had once been desired;
Assured of the difference they’d make.

Well, they made no difference whatsoever.
Is the ache that spawned them gone also?
Is there a dump of unwanted desires?
Or are they recycled and used again?

What about lust, unrequited love, and hate;
Are they deposited in the same way?
As cardboard, plastic and unwanted junk;
Stacked in distant heaps dealt with by others.

Or do our desires have a life of their own.
Bubbling up in an endless stream,
Then latching onto us and having their way.
Perhaps it’s they that choose us not the other way round.

Then they release us in search of the new
Abandoning us in a heap of old yearns:
Left in a pile of unplugged emotions:

Tender feelings hardened next to hate gone out.

Riding the Shinkansen

Big Frank will be returning to Japan in October. He’ll be flying there, of course, but while in Japan will be traveling between Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka via the Shinkansen. These trains are sometimes called bullet trains and are part of a high-speed set of railway lines that cover over 1,500 miles linking most of the major cities in Japan. The trains travel at speeds up to 188 mph – with test speeds of 275 mph. Obviously streamlined design is important when trains travel at such high speeds. The design of the engines of these trains has changed over the years, but are all uncommonly beautiful. I’ve included a photo that Big Frank took on a previous trip.(E1 series on the left and E2 series on the right). These are very safe trains - no fatalities from derailments or collisions ever (even during earthquakes)! However, one person was killed by the closing doors. All aboard - but watch those doors!