The Sound-Track Goes with the Screen

They moved me to a different office
again. Nothing personal, although
they must admit I've been an unyielding
piece of grit (I said grit) in the academic
machine. Sometimes a crow

comes to the ledge outside the small
wood-framed window, three brick
stories up. Crows always know
where I am. This one looks like
a private investigator.

The office doesn't have a door.
I put up a three-panel screen
instead.  Film noir. It suggests
I can tell fortunes during office hours.
The other people up here aren't

in my department; rather, I'm
not in theirs.  What is my department?
In this tepid exile, I seem to thrive.
I prepare for class, read, write poems,
eat bananas, look online for art,

music, Oakland Raiders updates,
and arcane information. Lately
I've been listening to the wind's
long moans in the duct system.
The sound track goes with the screen.



hans ostrom 2017

Oakland's Okay By Me, There, Gertrude

(image: vintage photo of Jack London Square, Oakland,
California [with vintage automobiles])


It seems as if I've had more students hailing from the East Bay Area of California in general and Oakland/Berkeley specifically in classes than I used to. I enjoy talkling with them about that region.
*
I went to college at U.C. Davis, not Berkeley, but I still spent a lot of time in the East Bay, and I have good memories of Oakland. There's a sense in which one is supposed to be more fond of San Francisco than of Oakland. --Nothing against San Francisco (except the baseball team perpetually breaks my heart), but I happen to be more fond of Oakland. I'm not entirely sure why.
*
As noted, memories of friends, events, and places play a role, of course. Also, I became a fan of the professional football team, the Raiders, by happenstance: the only television-signal we could receive in the Sierra Nevada canyon I grew up in was from an NBC affiliate in Sacramento, and NBC broadcast the American Football League games, whereas CBS broadcast the venerable NFL games. Essentially, the TV signals at the time had to carom off peaks; why one signal from Sacramento arrived at our aluminum antenna and the other didn't remains a mystery, but the mystery led to my "following" the Raiders.
*
Let's see: I accepted a prize in a statewide poetry-contest in Oakland. That was a good night. The first poem I ever read on the radio was for a recorded show on KPFA, whose home is technically Berkeley, I think, but that's close enough for poetry, radio, and horse-shoes. . . .I knew some people in Oakland-proper, in the Oakland hills, in Berkeley, and in nearby El Cerrito. . . . .As far as I know, I was probably the only white person in a movie theater in Oakland one afternoon, long ago; most of the rest of the audience was African American; it was an instructive, valuable, valued, pleasant experience. . . . . The Oakland Museum is splendid. . . . .Trees, birds, people, bookstores, water, places to eat, places to listen to music. . . . .All of these things count. . . .
*
*
As to Oakland itself, whatever that means, I just feel a certain connection to it that I don't feel to some other cities. Gertrude Stein, who lived in Oakland for a while, apparently felt little or no connection to it because she observed, famously, of Oakland, "There's no there there." Well, there you have it. Or maybe not.
*
*
Oakland Is There


Gertrude Stein famously said a lot of famous
things fashioned to be famously remembered
tenderly such as, of Oakland, California, U.S.A.,
"there's no there there," but after she left
and eventually went to Thereville, France,
the There of Oakland that had actually always
been There remained There in her absence.
*
See, Oakland had and has persons, places,
and things--the stuff that composes the There
of any place from Paris to Bangkok, Vladivostok
to Lesotho, Aberdeen to Montevideo. Gertrude
wanted more, or less (who knows?) from Oakland.
--Some irony to that since she possessed the
Oaklandish visage of a stevedore or boxing promoter,
a face with angles and planes in which Picasso
found a lot of There to paint in the portrait he painted.
*
Gertrude wrote some inlandish Oaklandese
sentences and hit some of them right on the
button, and then she died. Oakland's still there.
So is its There, which was there all along, and
will be, and is, and is there, and so there.
*

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Are You Ready for Some Football? Yes and No.

'Tis the season for football in the U.S., little rectangles of grass lit up on Friday nights in innumerable towns, suburbs, and cities, littler rectangles of pixels and High Resolution lit up with college and professional football on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Thursday--oh, heck, every day of the week.

I played football in high school. I was a second-string quarterback as a freshman, and my longtime friend Ronn English and I still cherish a black-and-white photograph of us: I have just pitched the ball to him, "sweep right," our classmate Rick is blocking for him, Ronn is about to take off, and I'm about to turn and look for someone to block. Such moments and photographs make all the endless practices and physical pain seem, briefly, to be "worth it," but upon further review, I'm not sure, nor do I think many football players are, even the very wealthy, although at the time, of course, to play seemed like a terrific idea. The ratio of moments-actually-enjoyed to moments-of-exhaustion-pain-and/or-boredom amounts to too small a fraction, and the more scientists learn about concussions (among other injuries), the less football seems like a net-gain.

As a junior and senior, I played safety, the furthest position back on defense, responsible for defending against the pass and for tackling anyone who has escaped defensive linepersons and line-backers. (I'm sure a conventional football fan would just love my use of "lineperson," but in fact women are beginning to play high school football.) Mostly I remember the collisions, my body meeting the body of someone running with the football. Velocity and mass, muscle and bone. I also remember the hard fields, which turned to dirt and mud in autumn; --also the odd co-mingled sounds of the fans, the cheerleaders, the grunting players, traffic far off in the night, a referee's whistle, coaches yelling, the echo in the helmet....

The following poem, "High School Football," first appeared in the South Carolina Review. The poem about high-school-football in the U.S. is James Wright's "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" (and yes, we have no apostrophe in Martins). Last year a visiting poet-and-professor said he might teach Wright's poem and mine together, and of course I was cheered by that prospect; it's not everyday that a poet has a poem put in the company of one by James Wright. Experiencing that comparison felt every bit as good as intercepting a pass, something I did, officially, only three times over two eight-game seasons. The poem:

High-School Football


We stuffed our crotches into hometown pants.
Clacked on concrete out to mud and grass.

Hit each other. Bled. Got dizzy.
Sweat, got knocked down, got up,
got down, puked, hit each other, bled.
We were having fun.

I swear reasons existed then
for playing. Honest I swear
there was a girl on the goal line
promising a slow dance. A referee
waited to whistle me into manhood.

We were not good.
Often we had to buy the ball back
from the other team. Once were down
forty points before the game began.
Our coach sold real estate at half-time.
Our cheerleaders hung us in effigy.

We pounded each other
until no one was left on either team.
The pads and helmets and shoes
went on grunting and blocking and tackling.
Fans stayed to see which set
of equipment would win.

We could hear that Homecoming crowd
roaring in the stadium
as we loaded the cars. We drove
to the bus station, took
the midnight express out of there.

(first published in the South Carolina Review, Winter 1985).

I became a fan of the professional Oakland Raiders in a highly circuitous, even accidental, way. I grew up in a canyon of the Sierra Nevada, pre-cable, and the only television-signal that made it into the canyon was that of an NBC affiliate in Sacramento. NBC broadcast games played in the brand-new American Football League, and Oakland was the AFL team from California, so I became a fan of that league and that team by default. Oakland's owner, Al Davis, a former English major, became an interesting cultural figure; he is self-admittedly obsessed with football; he has even said that he has led "a tunnel-life." He is the first NFL owner to have hired an African American coach and a Latino coach, and the first to have hired a woman executive. A colleague and friend who grew up in Ballard (Seattle) before the Seahawks existed is also a longtime Raider fan--and a New York Yankee fan. Apparently he has chosen well, considering the "world championships" (American overstatement at its best or worst) both teams have accrued. The Raiders have fallen on hard times, but the Yankees persist, in part because of a robust bankroll and a determined owner. Capitalism and professional sports seem to be happy companions.

I don't really watch football on TV anymore, not in a sustained way. I glance at it. I leave the TV on, so it becomes a virtual campfire. Occasionally I'll walk past it or sit down for a few moments and catch a few plays. The cat will be asleep nearby. The only televised sport my wife is interested in watching is professional tennis; she claps and cheers.

You don't have to be Kafka to realize that such apparently meaningful spectacles of sport (such as football games) are, in fact, absurd, but there is still some kind of creature-comfort to be had from watching football, at least for many men (and some women), partly because old memories visit, partly because a football-play is a little drama performed in (usually) less than 12 seconds, and partly because the game and the game-as-broadcast are so highly ritualized. And there are good memories of specific players, the Oakland Raiders being known as a haven for cast-offs, eccentrics, tricksters, and not-so-gentle giants. Ultimately, football on TV is a visual lullaby.

Goodnight, James Wright, wherever you are; and let us say a prayer and/or hold a good thought for Kevin Everett, injured terribly in a professional football game two weeks ago.