The Tao of Dirty: On Maryland's Heat

“My theory of technique, if I have one, is very far from original; nor is it complicated. I can express it in fifteen words, by quoting The Eternal Question And Immortal Answer of burlesque, viz. ‘Would you hit a woman with a child?—No, I’d hit her with a brick.’ Like the burlesque comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.” –e.e. cummings, 1926

The Mare-lin mug came to Chestertown this morning, showed up without question, severely, certainly, without a moments chance or warning. We were sitting around outback under the Chinese Chestnut swatting some minor nats but other than that oblivious even to the slow creeping seasons—forgetful of the fact that by this time last year we were swamped and muggy by even the first of May—when bam, next thing you know it, literally over night it went to swamp here, full on soup like only I think we know on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

I. Love. The Heat. Here is a small known fact about me: I love it, I love the heat, the sweat back of your neck the moan when you arch your back cuz of the cement-bone sludge-muscle feeling the slow moving creek of air the stretch it takes to wipe the sweat from under your shirt always wet and the sweat on your brow and round your face always always dripping down. I hate it too, don’t get me wrong, the way the water does nothing but soak your mirror when you get out of your shower no sense in drying cuz if you aint got air your gonna stay wet—I hate the bloodboiling redface I get walking out to my car or outside to get the mail. But I love it too, I love it sooooo, see? I love the drama of it—the very Quintessential Life it draws out of me.

Maybe it comes from this summer sense I’ve always got about me, that barefoot beachhugging thing I was born with, that need to be by the sea. And spending so many summers there, downtown dirty Ocean City, where to be there in the mix of things to really be there is to be dirty. The dust and grit of the always everywhere sand. The bareness of things: Me next to the ocean on instincts and cycles alone the way only a fancy free eighteen year old can be, learning the tides that move and grow you that draw you open, raw and unafraid to every part of the you of who you are. I’ll never forget the place off the boardwalk where I first lived barefoot next to the dirty sand and the brown Atlantic sea. Pungent scent of boy on the air, re-circulated from the window fan, dense from the closed windows in the ninety degree heat to keep the stench of pot and drugs inside. The outback alleyway with the condoms the fratboys who lived above us at night threw over their shoulders, out the upstairs windows and away and me and how I’d go out there angry at them little bit of clothes on all redfaced and scream. The rubber kiddie pool on our front porch that led out the street, tepid water and the beer cans floating there and me. The flea-stuffed couch, spilled bong water and stains on the greasy carpet, sweaty skin stuck with dog hair, empties of bottles in the corners and stacked on the tables and no empty counter space to be found. The fan just made the heat hotter and at night, long after the pier shut down and the of-agers were out getting their bar on at the clubs through out town—we’d open that place up, let the funk-air all out like a balloon slow-leaking or maybe more like a tire suddenly gone Pop! So you could hear the great whoooosh of air and relief that comes. And up til then you think you’re in a state of neglect but really it’s just the tension you feel that ever perennial state of necessity us humans don’t like of stagnation, the Art of Building Up. And woah we would let it goooooooooo, on acid maybe or half-drunk on the forties we claimed for free when the clerk wasn’t looking cuz he was out back with my boy Kevin getting stoned while we were raiding the back fridge for beer our pockets full of weed…We would come home to 6th Street and open up that place and in that moment it was as much our dirty little pad as it was all the Oneness of the sea…And often, many nights we would free ourselves to that, too, to that energy, that explosion, run legs pumping in the 3am dark all the way down to the white flash of oceancaps that marked the end of the beach and jump in, and wash out, because to be so dirty is to be So clean….

I lost that somewhere—that rope to my past. Cling on to anything too tight it chokes you, my doom forever has been my sentimental melancholy. And of course, intrinsic to the passion of moments is a willingness to ride it with the awareness of always being able to let it go. I worry too much these days, get all concerned with am I doing the right thing. We call this maturity, to be adult! To worry! I do believe the primary principles are love and openness and tolerance, and perhaps this has given me a well-deserved measure of calm. But wow I fool myself too much, fall too easily into so much mulling-over that I’ll easily give over the legs I claim to stand on because I want to be that Well. So the heat, the summer, is good for me, reminds me we all got some funk, too, to give.

I think cummings would agree. He’d say Cut all this bullshit (if he were present day colloquial,) and be willing to be you. Learn for you. Knowledge, he thought, was good but what mattered was the wisdom that comes from experience, and this comes only from the individual human heart. So he probably wouldn’t shy away from saying at the end of the day, admittedly: yeah, if I’m going to admit to living, then I’ll admit to humanness and nothing more.

Awareness of our imperfection—perfect as it gets. I find freedom in that, of the purest kind. This secret lust I get out of the sudden coming heat. The way it makes me feel miserable and pent up, but helps me remember suddenly: So this is what it feels like To Be Alive.

Poem for the day by e.e. cummings
for Kevin (and Chaucer!!?)

Honour corruption villianly holiness
Riding in fragrance of sunlight (side by side
All in singing wonder of blossoming yes
Riding) to him who died that death should be dead

Humblest and proudest eagerly wandering
(equally all alive in miraculous day)
merrily moving through sweet forgiveness of spring
(over the under the gift of the earth of the sky

knight and ploughman pardoner wife and nun
merchant frere clerk somnour miller and reve
and Geoffrey and all) come up from the never of when
come into the now of forever come riding alive

down while crylessly drifting through vast most
nothing’s own nothing children go of dust