Remembering Paul Bennett

I went walking in the woods today, as I am apt to do in April. I walk with my gaze to the ground, looking for the morels that either are not there or that I do not see. There is a smallish copse of trees at the bottom of the neighbor’s lawn, and having finished looking there, I emerged into a cleared gas-line right-of-way. From this cleared area, I looked up the hill at the former home of my old friend, Paul Bennett, built by him when he first came to Granville to teach at Denison.

I think of Paul every so often. It’s nice to know that Paul had famous friends – Eudora Welty and Gary Snyder are two – but I prefer to remember Paul’s affection for his neighbors and their children, and his great love for his black-and-tan hound, Rudy.

The neighborhood children loved Paul, and when it was Halloween, gladly visited Paul, despite the fact that they knew they would receive no candy, but…an apple.

Paul’s dog Rudy (a black-and-tan hound, because Paul would have no other kind) was a neighborhood favorite. He visited our house almost every day, and I’m sure, many others. He was looking for sociability, and maybe treats, as well. Paul worried about Rudy running on Burg Street, and sure enough, he was eventually hit by a car. Paul gathered him on a trash can lid to take him to the vet, and Rudy was thereafter on house arrest – unless he could escape. One warm afternoon I had removed a brown sweater-vest I had worn in the cool morning and left it on our porch. Rudy snatched it and carried it off. I’m sure he thought that was very funny. If someone said they had seen Rudy, I would always ask if he was wearing my sweater.

The Whiteness of the Whale

And every day, and every day. Every day, he hovers over the blank Great White Page, sharpened yellow Mongol in hand, and in no way mars the whiteness of that page. What to write? He thinks of nothing, and he thinks of everything, and he thinks none of it worthy of that white, perfect page.

He walks in the woods. As back pain and time allow, he walks in the woods. There are things worth seeing there, like the brown creeper and Swainson’s thrush. The brown creeper, foraging for minute morsels on beech bark, demonstrates cryptic coloration, and is almost missed. The thrush skulks in last year’s fallen foliage. Towering from behind to above the untouched-journal-page chalkiness of the Sycamore branches, the clouds are billowing, bright and white. The lowest branches, eighty feet or more above the forest floor, cradle a hawk’s nest that he has known to be there for several years. Apparently it is vacant. There are spring beauties, the earliest dutchman’s britches, trout lilies and bloodroot. There are mushrooms of dubious palatability, but no morels.

Downtown, he goes to the supermarket. As a painter of pictures, he prefers the produce section. He admires the vellum-colored winter squash, and the parchment peaches of… where? Perhaps New Zealand, grown alongside the Fujis and the Galas? Milk is needed, and something to cook for dinner. Pasta fagioli, a favorite of his, is not, because of the beans (the white cannellini beans), a favorite of the family. Stir-fry is labor intensive, on a day when he is not; spaghetti it is.

They go, he and his wife, to the library. She believes reading is diversion, and reads three books a week. Hundreds of printed pages, produced at an appalling rate. He believes it is enrichment, and might read two heftier volumes a month. He seeks uncommon stories, told by uncommonly good craftsmen. He reads to find out what they are up to – not the characters, the authors. So while he can’t decide on even one, she has picked out four books. He has some at home, because they are worth owning. And off they go.

And then home, and dinner is cooked and eaten. His wife retreats to her favorite chair with her new books, and he returns to the den, takes up a yellow pencil, and opens a notebook to a blank page. Well, the pages are all blank, are they not? 

So he decides to read instead, to fill the tank that never empties, to find out what they are up to – not the characters, the authors. How, then, does any writer ever summon the courage to put words on paper? How do they do what they do?  How does any one of them ever hope to convey an idea that can compete with the Whiteness of the Whale? Well, they don’t hope to, or even imagine that they can. But they somehow do it anyway.

Field Guides

Red-eyed Vireo
"See me? See me? Over here!"
In creekside beech trees

Hunt morels uphill
Wouldn't want to fish downstream
It scares the wary

Two Haiku

Yesterday, Morning
Rufous-sided Towhee "trinks"
Today, Afternoon

Rude interruption
Of cars driving by disturbs
Chickadee chatter