Prompted by this poem: https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poet-laureate-projects/poetry-180/all-poems/item/poetry-180-005/thanks/

Gratitude comes in many forms, doesn’t it? I haven’t been to war but I have had moments that are like memory tattoos. They color my skin in such a way that I don’t notice them all the time, like looking in the mirror and not seeing the dent in the tip of my nose. It has always been there, I got it from my father and when I do see it, I think of his nose and the dent in the tip of it.
Moments like having a friend, who was shoveling leaf litter off a roof, finding an almost perfect apple buried in the litter. I was below, aiming his shovel-fulls of debris into a green bin. When he found the apple, he commented on it and tossed it off the roof towards me. I could have let it fall but I reached out with my left hand and caught it and in the same movement tossed it, dead center, into the green bin. It all felt very choreographed, balletic, perfect. I was impressed with myself. But there is something otherworldly about things like that, where some mystery takes over your life and saves you, over and over. Catching the apple and tossing it into the bin didn’t save my life in the same sense that seeing the sun glinting off a sniper’s bayonet saves the life of a soldier, but the instinct is the same. As animals we are bred to survive and ‘think fast’ is one of the best tools we have.
And yet. And yet. This young man was finding this beauty in war. The glint, the glitter, the flicker of light caught his attention and he ducked or shot first or somehow, he was saved and saved again, by this unknowable insight we all have to a greater or lesser degree.
I am not a war monger. War is unbelievably horrific.

I was looking through a notepad I keep next to my desk for odd notes. Today I saw a note: 6 million missing in WWI. Not just dead but missing.

The first note on the note pad is: Drill Powered boat.
It is apparently possible to use a battery powered drill to turn a propeller fast enough to drive a small boat quickly across a lake. The charge on the battery doesn’t last very long, but I am sure there will be a $40 version of it on sale online soon. Just take a 6 pack of batteries along.

Anyhow, we all have things to be thankful for and that is the message here, so:

Thanks for all the things I did even though I was scared to do them.
No thanks for all the times I was scared for no reason.

Thanks for the imagination to see other worlds and to see the invisible in this one.
No thanks for imagining that the worst case was the only possible outcome.

Thanks for my eyes to see the splendor.
No thanks for the things I cannot unsee.

Thanks for the smell of summer evenings, heat scented trees, orange blossoms.
No thanks for the smell of a 3 day old suicide.

Thanks for the numbness to survive my childhood.
No Thanks for the numbness that has been a barrier to my life, all my life.

Thanks for the tea leaves brewing in my cup.
No thanks for the tea leaves that look like fruit flies.

Thanks for rivers and floods and deltas and rapids and just thanks for water in all its manifestations.
Thanks for deserts that are quiet.
Thanks for the sound of sand drifting down a sand dune.
Thanks for the wide silent river at flood when you can hear the pebbles and rocks of the bottom tripping downstream.

Thanks for the bones of this Earth
There is really nothing I can think of now to say No Thanks about.
Just
Thanks for it all.
Even the unreasonable
irritating
frightening
disgusting mess
of it all.
Well, there is a No Thanks lurking in the background.
No thanks for taking it all away.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

By Lewis Carroll
 
When I was a kid I didn’t get Lewis Carroll. Maybe it was the age that he came into my orbit but he seemed nonsensical to me. I know, that’s the point, but I was at the age where I was struggling to make sense of the world and his nonsense was scary and vaguely insulting of my efforts to understand. I was not included in the joke, I was the butt of it.
I was much more attracted to Winnie the Pooh and Tigger.
We had a set of 45’s and a book by Disney records, possibly the first records I ever listened to. Jimmy Stuart read the Pooh books and if I remember correctly, there were actors doing the characters voices.
“Rum tum tiddly um tum tum! Did you turn the page?” That was how you knew to turn the page of the accompanying book. Golly, I wish I could find that. It’s probably in some attic someplace waiting for… Waiting for the record player to be reinvented, probably.
The part I remember best is the story about Tigger. He appeared and no one knew what he was or where he came from. There was a guessing game about that. Then they tried to figure out what Tiggers eat for breakfast. At some point Tigger says, politely but in a muted and almost David Attenborough stalking a real tiger voice said, “Excuse me, there is something crawling on your table.” Whereupon Tigger leaps onto the tablecloth and after a furious fight wrestles it onto the floor. He pops up his head and says, “Have I won?”
That phrase became a family joke. Whenever we were struggling with something, Mom would perk up and say, “Have I won?” It would always break the tension of being frustrated by some task my brother or I were working through. She also started using it when things were going so wrong that there was no possibility of a solution. When she gave up, she would ask, “Have I won?” It became a funny way in my family of admitting defeat, once again, by the absurdities of life.
I can still hear Jimmy Stuart’s voice and Kanga’s ultra-motherly voice comforting Roo and adopting Tigger.
I’ll have to spend some time on youtube to see if there is a copy of it someplace. That would be fun.
When I became as adult as possible, Alice in Wonderland really caught my imagination. The strange world she was wandering in, sliding in and out of nightmare, actually seemed to explain life to me. Things happen. Pansies talk, grinning cats disappear, Caterpillars smoke opium and pontificate. It all made sense.
I know that’s ridiculous but I accepted Alice because I admired her willingness to keep going. She was tough and yet, she filled a corridor with her tears. Then she got interested and progressed through the story. It was a weird Pilgrim’s Progress for me.
These days, there is all this completely absurd stuff going on, the prime example being Trump, our Queen of Hearts, screaming, “Off with his head!” and making bizarre pronouncements, just because he can. And all his followers a pack of cards. At some point someone is going to say, “Who cares for you?” (Alice had grown to her full size by now) “You are nothing but a pack of cards!” and it will all be revealed to be a dream; we will wake up with our head in the lap of a beloved sister and Dinah, the cat, will be napping nearby.
Of course, that’s a children’s tale and not productive politically but I still can’t get over the feeling that we are wandering in Wonderland or have stepped through the Looking Glass and as soon as we find a way back to sensible reality, everything will be fine.
I do know better, but I can hope, can’t I?
Have I won?