WEBVTT

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A little change in pace.

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Sometimes people ask me, why
do you write so much prose?

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Doesn't it get in the
way of your poetry?

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And of course, it does
to a certain extent.

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Can't do both at the same time.

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But I think ultimately, in
the long run, one at least

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hopes enriches the other.

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Where else would I
get lines to steal,

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if I steal, if I didn't
have books to review, huh?

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So I thought I'd read a short
piece of prose on windmills.

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I hope it's not too sentimental
and full of schwarmerei.

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I've tried to anchor it
a little bit in history

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and relate it to our own city.

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Maybe some of you
who drive on Campbell

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noticed that to the West,
no, the East of Campbell

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there's a windmill.

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It used to be.

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Maybe they pulled it down.

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I think they pulled it down.

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In a neighborhood between
Speedway and Grant.

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And I remember the first time
I saw it really shocked me,

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because it took me back to
all the windmills in my life.

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Sometimes things
once most familiar

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can shock us more than anything
else when they reappear.

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If my favorite
dog from childhood

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came scampering
up the front walk,

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she'd knocked me
off my psychic pins.

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I suppose it's that
way with most of us.

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Take windmills.

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The other day, as I was
walking back from the drugstore

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through our perfectly sane
and urban neighborhood,

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I noticed one, rearing
over row of mulberry trees

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a few blocks away, flashing
its circular hand at me.

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What it was doing
there I have no idea.

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Perhaps its owner, an
appropriate technology freak,

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had rescued the old arrow
from a junkyard where it lay,

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a former starlet rusting each
year further into its demise,

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carting the prized jumble
of struts and gears home.

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Over weeks of delighted
work he polished them up,

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re-erected the delicate
structure toward its past glory

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while his skeptical
wife watched.

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Now he sat smugly inside
while the well-greased machine

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hummed water through its house.

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His house.

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It always helps when something
for nothing comes with art.

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Or so I imagine, more
likely, since wells

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are rare in the city.

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Some tinkerer had done
this for private pleasure.

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Creating a whimsical centerpiece
for his backyard garden.

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Perhaps, after all, it
whorled connected to nothing.

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Still, he had chosen wisely.

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Pointing authoritatively
he can explain its workings

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to his visiting grandchildren.

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At night he can lie
in bed listening

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to its comforting
thrumming and feel

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all is right with his world.

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Maybe art connected to
nothing is the best of all.

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In any case, one glance and
my psychic legs buckled.

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They did so, partly because
of the windmill mythology

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that most of us pick
up along the way.

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Undoubtedly, this
mythology predisposes us

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to carrying windmills
around in our heads.

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A mystical summum
bonum out there

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in the gauzy fringes
of our consciousness.

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A mythology,
furthermore, grating

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into nostalgia for
something that in fact

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never really existed
in most of our lives.

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All the better, that makes the
most unassailable of nostalgia.

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For instance, we know
that there are windmills

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by the ocean in Holland
faithfully pumping water

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to save the placid
country of cows and cheese

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from floods, while
children in wooden shoes

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watch surrounded by tulips.

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Now, that's certainly
unassailable.

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An ultimate good for our
largely chaotic world.

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We know also that a deluded but
well-intentioned Don Quixote,

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hyperventilating on
romanticism, tilted that down.

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And that adds an essential
chuckle to our romance.

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And last, granting us
our historical nexus,

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scholars assure us that it was
the windmill, ranking right up

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there with barbed wire
and the six gun, that

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marched across the Great
Plains and made settlement

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of the arid lands possible.

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There are other things about the
whirling blades in our heads,

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having counterparts in a quite
practical reality that we

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may or may not know.

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That windmills first
turned in Persia,

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as early as the 10th century.

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Looming assertively,
we can imagine,

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over peach orchards
and Persian rugs

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to further gifts from an
irrigated desert land.

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That Europeans so
loved their windmills

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that they wove names--

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Michael and The Dog, I
find especially endearing--

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into their thatched sides.

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That in fact
benevolent windmills

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became so essential to life
that they outnumbered churches.

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Just think of it.

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Thousands and thousands
of windmills whirling

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across the landscape
from hilltop

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to hilltop, as far
as the eye could see.

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I find this a bit spooky.

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Dutch landscape paintings
of the 18th century

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almost always include a
prominent windmill, sails

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tensely still over the flat
scenery of minuscule cattle

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and somber polders.

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Sometimes taking up as
much as 3/4 of a canvas

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is the sky, vaguely congealing,
getting ready to do something.

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What else can the artist do
with such Euclidean landscape,

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one might ask?

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But of course, there's
more to it than that.

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In the symbology of
the day, the windmill

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was the human soul,
partly waiting

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to be moved by a divine wind.

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To be inspired, that
is, breathed into,

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as if arms, once set
a whirling, will in

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turn revivify the tiny figures
held frozen over plow or butter

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churn.

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Thus the link between
men and landscape

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charged with divine potential.

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Call it what you will that
gives Dutch religious life

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its intensity, but that most of
us, living without windmills,

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can only wish we could imagine.

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Yet, I should
confess at this point

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that my direct experience with
nonpolluting grinders of grain

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and lifters of water
has been limited.

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I'm not one to take a
wrench-in-grease bucket

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and set some farmers bladed
cattle trough pump aright.

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Admittedly, my experiences
are almost accidental,

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but that too can make
relationships all the more

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keen.

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Years ago, as a teenager
working in an isolated ranch

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alone, and more caretaker than
cowboy, I found the windmill.

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My one transcendental
connection to a wider world

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beyond the limited horizon
of mesquite scrub and cactus.

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Scrambling up to its
platform after sunset,

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I could see a dew drop of
green light shimmering.

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Ah, another wracked soul out
there, maybe 15 miles away.

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The windy nights, me in
my flying Dutchman mode,

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when the galvanized
blades really

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started ripping only
inches from my ears

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and the whole antique
tower started to vibrate.

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I felt I might take off
into a sky blossoming madly

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with desert stars.

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Be taken, as it were,
bodily into heaven.

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A decade later, only
slightly more sobered

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and living in a Midwestern town,
I fell in love with a windmill.

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It was a dilapidated foolish
affair in the neighbor's yard.

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Unused and leaning dangerously
over his back fence,

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as if yearning to run off and
start a new life elsewhere.

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Day after day it filled my
second story study window.

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Its own perfect portrait.

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When a monstrous crane came
out of nowhere unannounced

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and in one bite
lifted it away, I

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said nothing, but
sorrowed over the changed

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view, as one does for a lover
who has lost a front tooth.

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So when recently hiking
across England's South Downs

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I emerged from a youth
thicket to face twin hilltop

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windmills named Jack and
Jill, I felt a breeze

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stirring my bones.

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I couldn't help but
declare with Emerson,

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who thrilled on another
bright April afternoon,

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this world is so beautiful that
I can hardly believe it exists.

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And passed on.

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A cowardly act?

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Perhaps.

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But I give myself
this one luxury,

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my relationships with windmills
are neither rabbinical nor just

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lyrical.

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I carry them pure,
adventitious in my mind.

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Passed on as I did the other
day when our neighborhood

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windmill was gone from its
place over the mulberries.

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A structural defect?

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A clause in the building code?

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Maybe I'd imagined
it all to begin with.

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I didn't ask.

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Didn't ask any more then.

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I didn't rush to pound
on the owner's door

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the first day I saw it, to get
the lowdown on this project.

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It didn't matter.

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Nothing can replace that sight.

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