My Third Place is Hide and Seek

Communal gathering spots have never held much interest for me. I don’t find inspiration in crowded coffee shops or large arenas. Some would argue that these social gathering spots are the anchor of community life and as such facilitate and foster interpersonal interaction and group consensus. That may be true for the majority of folks but not all of us.

Aside from home (often referred to as one’s first place and the workplace (often referred to as the second place), many folks have a third place or third space for their social gatherings. It’s where they go to socialize among like-minded souls of a similar bent. But my experience has been that group mindset can be wrong as often as it is right. Like-minded souls can still foster perpetuate group-think no matter the logic. 

I’ve always been suspicious of going with the flow if for no other reason than the fact that alternate views can often be so much more stimulating. Or perhaps I just chose to make up my own mind.

 

My prejudice toward the ‘old men at the coffee shop’ is legendary. I’ve come to see those old codgers as relics well past their prime who seem to be unhappy with anything and everything around them. They talk ‘at’ one another but never ‘to’ one another. They listen only to the extent that they are waiting for a chance to butt in. There are seldom any new ideas exchanged. It’s just the same old same old rehashed and regurgitated back out again. This may not be a fair criticism but I have yet to find any example to prove me wrong. 

Probably my greatest criticism against group-think is the absence of fresh thoughts and ideas. I need a third place to find my inspiration. What I keep looking for are those pockets of time and place that lend themselves to creativity. 

Many folks think that creativity comes from chaining oneself to their desk and just focusing on the computer screen until inspiration hits. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s moments like that when you need to escape your present reality and create a new one. You need to do anything and everything to distract yourself from the task ahead. By unchaining your mind from the restraint of forced thought, you unleash your subconscious powers. Einstein is quoted as saying that “Creativity is the residue of time wasted.”

Jonah Lehrer, who was recently fired from the New Yorker for making up quotes from Bob Dylan, has nevertheless written an interesting book entitled: “Imagine: How Creativity Works.”

In his book, Lehrer describes how Dylan, being burnt out in his role as political folk music icon, put away his guitar and retreated to upstate New York to paint and write. Yet within a short period of time, he found that he couldn’t stop writing lyrics, churning out 25 pages of lyrics in a short period of time.

Dylan’s moment of insight came out of the blue when he least expected it. Yet I would argue that, in fact, he had set himself up for something new to happen simply by stepping away from the old familiar and exposing himself to something new. 

For myself, it might be on a long distance run, a multi-city bike tour, Hiking the canyons around Palm Springs, a quiet coffee shop or my own morning coffee ritual on the patio. It might even be at the library reading magazines or looking at a picture book.

My ‘third place’ is that neutral ground where I can get away from my roles at home, with the kids, the grandkids, friends and associates and just get to be myself. It is a state of mind located almost anywhere but the old familiar. It can be the high desert, the ocean or the mountains surrounding Palm Springs. Anyplace I can hunker down with my reading or writing material.

It’s that cauldron of unexplainable unexpected elements that come together and become a recipe for creative thought. More often than not, it’s totally unplanned. It might be a song I’ve heard for umpteen times but all of a sudden an image appears in my minds-eye and a story is suddenly born.

Fortunately, inspiration can be found anywhere and everywhere my mind finds it. It’s not the shell but the contents that fascinates me the most. It’s anyplace I can explore, investigate, probe or visit that becomes ripe for creative interpretation. It can often be in the most vapid, esoteric works of art. The non-digital, unplugged works of art fascinate me the most. Over time I’ve come to realize that my ‘third place’ can be found in books and film and music. More often than not, literature of almost any kind takes precedence of other forms of stimulation.

But the best place for my imagination to run wild with my grandchildren. Unencumbered by monetary and social restraints, we’re free to pretend to our hearts content. I’m perfectly adapted to such silliness as I proudly attested to in RidingShotgun with Peter Pan. The old adage of ‘acting your age’ doesn’t apply here.

I’ve engaged with my grandchildren here and in Colorado in silly, nonsensical play of every kind. We’ve flown to the moon and chased pirates across the living room floor. We’ve hidden under a blanket and told scary stories. We’ve gone snipe-hunting on a golf course at night and heard bears and lions and elephants all around us. We’ve chased sharks around the pool and dove for treasure lying on the bottom there. We’ve engaged in a hundred thousand silly unremarkable exercises of horse-play and pretend skits that expanded and grew and nurtured and matured their imagination when they weren’t looking. 

Creativity came under a blanket of stars and on the top of the San Jacinto’s. It came in a handful of squished play dough and scratched across a piece of paper. It came anytime and every time silliness and ‘why not’ was left free to run with wild abandon. 

We went day-dreaming in the middle of the day and found inspiration there. Tall tales kept bursting forth from the little people there. It set my mind to wondering…

And even an old codger can learn from the most uninhibited of us all.

I Found Susan's House

Ever since I posted one of my first blogs entitled: “Looking for Susan’s House,” I’ve been thinking about that early morning bike ride and my quest to find Susan’s place. The search was as much revisiting my past after forty-four years as it was finding an old rundown duplex in a sketchy part of town. 

The feedback to that initial blog was very positive. It almost felt as if my readers had also heard the same Sirens call as I did in that first blog. Of course, I have no idea what I would have said if I ever met Susan again.

“Hello, Susan, how are you? I’ve had a good life…I hope you have too.” 

No, I think I would worry about her answer. As resilient as she was and as much as attitudes were changing back then, it was still a tough road for many immigrants and Hispanics to travel.

So this fall, I returned to my meandering route through that neighborhood bordering the University of Minnesota. It was just part of a much larger circuitous bike ride that particular morning. There are still a lot of good memories lingering back there in the hood even after all these years.  Once there, I thought I’d give my search for Susan’s house one more try.

I was about to give up my search for a second time when I rode past an old red brick row house and immediately recognized it as the spot where I used to turn left to go to Susan’s house. Even after forty plus years, the memory of that trail marker still stood out like a homing beacon. Now I knew exactly where Susan’s house was.     

 

Only it wasn’t.

A large apartment building now took up a good part of her old block. Not surprisingly, at some point back in time, a developer had come along and put up an apartment building where Susan’s house used to stand. Any sign of Susan’s home or her neighbor’s homes had been erased forever. 

 While I didn’t find Susan’s house, I did find something more profound. Just as Susan’s house had disappeared under the guise of progress and development, so too had most of the other vestiges of my existence back in that neighborhood. Everywhere I rode, the old buildings were gone or had been refurbished into something else.

From my first apartment to my first job, my first second (volunteer) job and so forth, the old familiar was now gone. Even the venerable village of Dinky town, famed for Bob Dylan’s coffee house start, fraternity panty raids and late night romantic liaisons had morphed into something totally different.

 

Dinkytown (c. 1960s)

Dinkytown (c. 1970s)

What had been once a rundown artistic bohemian neighborhood had slowly evolved into a sad morass of fast food chains, a U of M t-shirt shop, a drug store turned fu-fu restaurant and a poor excuse for a coffee shop (c. 2013). 

 Even more development is now threatening to wipe out the last remaining vestiges of edgy urban living. All in the name of progress.

  I still have a great fondness for my first apartment building. That whole period in my life was really a preamble for things to come from career choices, traveling, friendships, writing and finally love and family. The building, like my apartment inside, was nothing to brag about but it provided me a place to sleep, a place to write and a place to experience life on so many different levels.

 My unit on the second floor of that rundown relic had been carved out of a once spacious master bedroom. One hundred years earlier the building had probably been someone’s elegant home on University Avenue. By the time I moved in, it was a chopped-up, divided, subdivided and probably illegal set of apartments for whoever could afford the cheap rent. 

 There was a group of Paki’s downstairs. They were all graduate students who were probably as suspicious of me as I was of them. I hadn’t been educated on race relations back then and that probably didn’t help my cautious nature either. I don’t know who lived on the other side of my living room wall but the nighttime noises indicated it was either Charley Harper or one of his protégés. The front of the building housed a strange assortment of folks who came and went with such regularly they might have been renting by the evening or weekend. 

Before

After

                         

The overall mantra of the place seemed to be “Say Hi,” don’t ask questions and ignore what’s going on unless you think the place might burn down. In retrospect, I think I was nuts to live in such a dump but it suited my lifestyle back then and my frame of mind. I thought of my place as bohemian chic. Visitors might have had a different impression. Shortly after I moved out, they tore the building down and left it an empty field.

Having found the spot where Susan and I once sat on her creaky front porch and waxed philosophically about life and love and the future, I thought I would venture back on campus and find the spot of my first job after college and Europe. It was working as a writer for the Minnesota Department of Public Health. What a surprise, that too was gone. The old building overlooking the Mississippi is black dirt now and the operation has moved to the other side of campus.

Site of old Public Health Building

New Public Health Building

 My boss was Mrs. Ford. She was a warm-hearted cranky old woman who smoked unfiltered camels like a sailor and loved to talk about the good old days when her husband, a college professor and department head, was the big man on campus. Sadly for Marie, those days had long since passed and so she spent most of her waking hours reminiscing about campus events where she was one of the star attractions. She also wasn’t too fond of young men who had mustaches and sported longish hair. We got along well because I listen to her stories and she was always trying to make me over. 

The Newman Center on campus was the quasi-hippie hangout and folk mass center for those of us struggling with the residue of twelve years of Catholic education. We were a motley collection of wandering minds that were just starting to ask a lot of questions that the high-ups couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. 

 At mass, I was so cool in my pressed jeans, white turtle neck sweater, herringbone sport coat and love beads that Susan gave me. It was a little bit hippie, a little bit chic and thorough mod. The camaraderie, warmth and genuine friendship we felt at the coffee clutch after mass was some-thing I’ve never experienced in another Catholic setting ever again.

There was someone else in my life at that time. Someone who had captured my imagination, my mind, my sexuality and my sensuality. Rainbow images filled my mind whenever I heard her name. It was ‘Suzanne’ who took me down to her place by the river. But she had already been claimed by this Canadian named Cohen. So I and the others paid tribute to her every Sunday at mass and dreamt wonderful dreams about that mysterious woman. To this day, that song can make my toes curl. Another classic by Cohen ‘Hallelujah’ does the same thing to me.

New Newman Center

 It didn’t take long for the folk mass to gain in popularity before the archdiocese decided to move the entire operation off campus. With that move, they lost whatever magic they had in attracting those cafeteria Catholics like myself. It was never the same after that.

After a couple of months on at the Public Health Department, I ventured down Como Avenue to the studios of KTCA; Twin Cities public television. They weren’t hiring at the time but they were glad to use my volunteer services in the evenings. That worked for me. I learned the craft of television from the ground up. It became my first real job where I never felt like I was working and it was where I met my future wife. 

Old KTCA Television Station

TPT Television Station

 That building is now another local station and Twin Cities Community Television which became Twin Cities Public Television which became KTCA which finally morphed into TPT moved to their new building in downtown Saint Paul back in the late 80’s.

As significant as that old television building was in my life, even more prominent was a bar on the West Bank. That den of loud music, sweet-smelling haze and questionable characters figured prominently in my novel “Love in the A Shau.” On the surface the Triangle Bar was a rundown three-two bar with mediocre music, cheap beer and loud crowds that came to see, be seen and smoke a joint in the corner.

Triangle Bar (c. 1960s)

Former Triangle Bar Building today (c. 2013)

During its heyday, the Triangle Bar was the flash point for the burgeoning music scene centered on the West Bank. Since they didn’t card, the bar attracted a lot of U of M students. I’m guessing the term ‘jail bait’ was first coined there. Not me, I either went there alone or with Susan.

But beyond the surface of that melting pot of hippies, junkies, college drop-outs, undercover cops and other assorted flotsam from civilization, came a wonderful collection of lost souls and seekers. Every night brought another stimulating conversation with some colorful character who usually gave a false last name, lied about their background but presented fascinating suppositions on life and love and war and college and our future in general. It was a true college education outside of the classroom. The bar died in the 70’s along with the whole hippie scene.

That period in my life which I’ve euphemistically labeled my lost years encompassed a lot of lost real estate, friends who have come and gone, several women I truly cared about and ultimately marriage and a lifestyle that has sustained and nurtured me for many years. The loss of those buildings was probably the most visible manifestation of my own change and evolution

.

I never really had a goal in seeking out Susan’s house for a second time. It was just an excuse for exercise and a nostalgic trip back in time. It’s always interesting to wander back to that neighbor-hood north of Dinky Town and see the continuing changes there. But, like attending the Minnesota State Fair, traveling back there once every ten or fifteen years is just about right. 

Deep down, I never really expected to find anyone or anything there from my past.  Still, I’ve got a couple of pictures, fragmented memories and just enough foolishness left in me to think of it as a great period in my life. A time when I was young and dumb and poor. What better ingredients to fertilize the mind of an aging writer. 

Oh, the stories I could tell.

The Mysterious Language of Women

There are two genders (generally speaking) and only one language between them. No matter what country or nation we’re talking about here, there is a verbal way of communicating between the sexes. So why is it so hard for the two species to understand one another?

Women have this strange way of communicating to their male counterparts. It’s a confusing vocabulary some might compare to a foreign language. Except in this case only one of the parties can truly translate what is being said. Over the generations, women have created their own set of hieroglyphics composed subtle words, sighs, gestures and body movements that only their own kind can understand. When verbal language is combined with body language the challenges to find true communication can get even more complicated.

The language of women is rich with subtle hints of the real meaning behind opposite words. It can be a conflicting web much like a matrix where ‘no’ can mean ‘no’ or ‘yes’ or ‘maybe; but let me think about it first.’ ‘Yes’ can mean ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘maybe; let me think about it first.’ You would think ‘maybe’ would be the standard fallback when commitment isn’t desired or an option…not necessarily so. ‘Maybe’ is wide open for interpretation depending on the mood of the woman.  

If cornered in a losing argument, women often fall back to old reliable standards like ‘Just because’ or ‘Just let it go’ or ‘Drop it!’ Each of which can be a genuine roadblock to continue the discussion or argument.

For those of us desperate to figure out just what she meant, there are a number (no surprise here!) of web sites devoted to help the hapless male decipher what the woman is really saying.

Secrets of Women’s Language – Keywords and their meaning

Men’s Guide to Women’s Language

Decoding Women’s Body Language –AskMen.com

I love the description of this last web site. “Unlike women, who are adept at the art of prevarication, most men say what they mean and mean what they say. Their speech is straightforward and to the point.” (For those of you not in the know like myself, prevarication means to deviate from the truth.)     I rest my case!!

Before I was married, I was in two relationships. One was in high school but that didn’t count since I was about as clueless as the lowest mammal on the plant. The second one was in college. I was a little more adept by then in the language of women but not to a great extent. In both instances, there were probably dozens and dozens of subtle hints of impending doom dropped along the way that I never saw. I’m guessing even a dictionary on the Language of Women wouldn’t have helped me back then.

The cliché ‘Only women understand women’ is probably correct on many different levels. Romance novels written by women are speaking to other women. Most men wouldn’t get it. There has been great literature written about women’s issues that have withstood the test of time. The trouble is that they’re not letting men in on the secret.

Yet for all their success in coding or decoding the mystery of communication, women still have some missteps to correct.

TheHuffington Post recently listed 23 things every women should stop doing. Strangely enough, I think some of these criticisms would fit nicely into their inability to communicate without the need for a code-breaker across from them. Just a couple of those flaws include:

Stop apologizing all of the time

Research shows that women do say ‘sorry’ more often than men. There’s no need to quality everything you do. A mistake is just that…now it’s time to move on.

           

Stop putting your looks down

Nothing good will ever come from it. Physical appearances are so subjective that one never knows what is considered attractive to the male species. Heck, they don’t even know themselves.

Stop feeling like an impostor

Start taking your accomplishments at face value. Understand that you did it because of your talent and skills and perseverance. The same as any male.

Stop comparing your real life to someone else’s virtual one

The ‘Real Housewives’… and those sisters are not the real world. That’s a made-up world engineered for the highest ratings and mindless time-consumption. Your real life, as boring as it might seem, is more realistic than theirs.

Holding on to regrets or guilt

Guilt and regret are two emotions that equate with self-poisoning. They do nothing but bring harm to yourself and don’t affect anyone else. So why feel it?

                               

I guess in the end, women are women and men are men. They’re two entirely different species with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. Language will probably always be that missing link that both parties will have to work on strengthening for better communication. For some of us, only time has been that constant teacher in the challenging task of translating just ‘what she meant.’

I’ve only had a couple of serious arguments with my wife over the last forty-two years.  I usually know what caused it and so for her to get mad at me is like falling leaves, silent and unexpected. 

Even retreating back to my standard refrain of “What did I do?” usually doesn’t get me out of the losing end of an argument with her. In truth, about 99% of the time, I know why she is mad and she’s probably right.  And yet she didn’t have to say a word to get her message across.

Amazing!