Musings of a Manzman

A Poem for the Season

2011-12-17T05:57:00.000-08:00

Film Critic

Old man, keeper of livestock,
meets a young couple, travelers,
she pregnant, all poor. They talk.

His father said, he says, that
everyone receives one great
blessing, one time in one’s life.

He has come to accept
that his exists only in the
constant hope of receiving his.

Humble, he imagines not
the coming summons to be
witness at the coming birth.

Only one star for this flick,
but such a Star this Star!
Greatest story ever told.

An Otherwise Unexceptional Morning

2011-11-30T03:31:00.000-08:00

Apologetics

Yes, I know this is the third time I’ve
worn this shirt to the office this week
but I haven’t sweated and it’s not too
bad and it’s casual day and there won’t
be hardly anyone there anyway and
what? oh? ok so women notice these
things but I’m only working with Victoria
and she’s Venezuelan so it won’t translate
and anyway I’ll just tell her that my wife
never says anything about it so
how am I supposed to know

David M. Orchard

Drought Years

2011-11-13T20:34:00.000-08:00

Day of Rain

By the river named for the arms of God,
Can God be blamed for this bone-dry sod?
To take God to task seems so vain,
Is it too much to ask for a day of rain?

They say they saw the Virgin
rise up from fields of cane
the dry days ended
the day that Mary came.
Who’s to say it can’t be so
Cause that’s the day it rained
Must be true, the story they told,
of the day that Mary came.

These days of dry dirt hoe’n
watching the poor crops die
look up from the row your sow’n
look up for help from the sky
Can’t eat our seed corn, can we
if we want to plant next May
can’t hang the shoats too early
we will if the rains stay away

They say they saw the Virgin
rise up from fields of cane
the dry days ended
the day that Mary came.
Who’s to say it can’t be so
Cause that’s the day it rained
Must be true, the story they told,
of the day that Mary came.

David M. Orchard

Sonoma 1968

2011-11-13T20:18:00.000-08:00

For Which That Place

Her arms around my neck
my arms ‘neath back and knees,
inhaling oak and eucalyptus
and summer-dried grass
and the breath of her and me,
I carried her along black
basalt fences down the path
to within few short yards
of the crossing snake

Naked she weighed maybe
105 pounds and if so
with shoes maybe 107 in my
arms which might tell you
how she was dressed
and what she added to the
views of the hills and valleys
and vineyards from which
she came and for which
that place is famous

Startled I dropped her and a
few weeks on she dropped me
and a few years more she
was with a San Francisco guy
who said he would take her
to Europe or somewhere
but took her virginity and
his old girlfriend instead and
I was sixteen and one regret
since is I killed that snake

David M. Orchard

Cyanide in His Pocket

2011-11-13T19:44:00.000-08:00

Not Meeting Thomas W. Ferebee

His son, Tom Jr, told us about
his father at a banquet for
geologists, one of whom
had been a slave in a
Ruhrgebeit coal mine,
the evening of the morning
I finished Manchester’s
“The Arms of Krupp.”
I was stunned to meet that
man one generation removed.

My father or Uncle Wayne or
most any of our men at arms or
mothers or younger brothers or
nurses at Pearl Harbor or
marchers at Bataan or
how many Chinese or Filipinos
would have done the same
if able, if chosen, if there,
if given the command.

But it was he among
them who, through myriad
lifeline events, actions, choices
and some kind of fateful
lottery simultaneously occupied
that moment, that place,
that duty, that nexus of
before and after. He was
the one, obedient, competent,
immensely deadly.

He once visited his son
at our office. I missed it.
I was out and did not
shake hands with the man
who pulled the trigger on
Hiroshima. He was 26
when those people died.
I wanted to ask, “Did you cry?”

David M. Orchard

Scars

2011-09-01T20:29:00.000-07:00

Maybe a Poor Suggestion
(A Short Fiction)

She had three vivid scars on her upper left arm, this girl who appeared alongside me where paths converge on my favorite trail. The proximity, the scars, were impossible to ignore. A conversation was inevitable.

In all other ways she was young, pretty, and toned, without tattoos, without pieces of metal stabbed into visually awkward places. But, welted and slightly ragged, the scars stood nearly straight and nearly parallel upon her dark-complected skin, inclined front to back like one-half of a sergeant's stripes and about where a sergeant would wear them.

"Impressive scars," I began, impulsively. "My son would envy them. He would offer to buy them. Then he could make up stories about them even if the truth was perfectly adequate."

"The truth is I made them myself," she replied after a pause.

"No," I, shocked, said, "Nah...no!"

"Yes, one at a time."

"Well," I said, "I've been around, and I've seen plenty of things, and I've known some girls, even some hurt girls, and I've never seen or heard of anything like that."

"There are others."

"Others on you or others on others?"

"On others, for the time being."

"Well, look at them," I said, anxious to plant a seed of reason. "I think they are perfect just as they are, perfect, impressive as I said, you wouldn't want to take anything away from them, you know, maybe not detract from their...from from them."

She smiled. We walked together, awkwardly. All else dimmed and diminished while my being contracted into a universe of no more than one thousand cubic feet occupied by only her and me, and in it I feared the what of in what's presence I walked.

Then she said, "I'll think about that."

"Good idea," I replied.

"Maybe I will sell them. Then I could make others and sell them too, sort of like a farmer."

Blood and sanity drained from my brain from the horror of what I had said. God, it was just a line! Forward and insensitive line yes, but just an ice breaker, just a whatever! Could she be making a joke to match mine, could she be serious, this girl who I knew not and whose thoughts and emotions were beyond knowing?

It came time for us to diverge. I had known, or rather not known, her for less than five minutes. There was nothing to be done.

"Thank you for your thoughts," she said.

"Take care...seriously," I replied, and then as she turned away, "I'm sure there isn't a market you know, certainly not my son I hope. It was a joke you know. I don't know about these things," and again, "You take care.

Her answer came with a flash of mute wounds on young skin above a flexed arm below an almost smile.

David M. Orchard

Forty Years Almost

2011-08-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

The Her of When We Chose

Someone will have to explain what
this being married is all about
I tell her one morning while lying
next to her for reasons only
temporally connected to those
of the first such awakening forty
years almost ago while beside
touching and seeing but not
looking at the her of when that
one choice happened soon and
always thereafter to be followed
by all these unspoken non-choices
about staying or leaving ever since

One day I dream the bell rings and
I open the door and here's a
Here's Johnny guy with a film crew
and smiles and a band and a spangled
sign that says I've won the big prize
the million dollar answer to my
million morning question and
I jump and shout I won I won
so tell me what now tell my why
and the Here's Johnny guy
says yeah we'll tell you on TV
we'll schedule it soon you bet you'll see
and I rise and tell her that no one
will ever explain her to me

David M. Orchard

Mermaid

2011-08-20T08:44:00.000-07:00

Russian River 1966

Remembering that swimming girl
who emerged just an instant
then submerged just a few feet
from his boat on that Boy Scout float
and the question of where
the clear view of her breast
achieved in just a glance
left him among the oft-recited
virtues "...brave, clean, and reverent,"
and briefly toying with the
futile notion of finding her
and asking whether she ever
or still wondered just how much
of what that boy-in-the-boat saw,
he sighs and settles for the hope that
Heaven contains possible impossibilities
for introductions and thanksgiving

David M. Orchard

A Bit of San Francisco History

2011-08-02T15:51:00.000-07:00

Sum of Her Thoughts
(San Francisco, 1983)

Theresa Hill received a rare gift
the gift of enforced idleness
the gift of time, slowly passing time
to contemplate and consider
to weigh hopes, fears, circumstances
the choices to regret or make again
those things that carried her there
those that would take her beyond
the present, the past, the yet-to-come
to sum some things, to resolve

all of this...

in the long, late hours
beyond her shift at the Condor Club
while suspended atop the piano
while embraced by and below
poor crushed-to-death Jimmy Ferrozzo
while counting the multitudinous seconds
between closing time and the arrival
of the janitor

David M. Orchard

Visitor from the Silk Road

2011-04-25T20:01:00.000-07:00

The Beauty of Xiaohe
(Houston 2010)

I have been in love with her, with the idea of her
ever since I first heard of the tall Caucasians
deep in Asia, deep in now unlivable desert
an out-of-place race older than the oldest Biblical geneologies
much older therefore than my necessarily
one-sided affections

A caption on the display stated that she was much loved
That was an archeologist's surmise, that was my surmise
Prepared to rest for the ages, fine face uncovered
dressed in rich textiles and feathered felt
(not the ugly wrappings and eviscerations of Egypt)
she was much loved indeed

I want...I want the privilege of time travel
to visit her perhaps one year before her death
to walk among her people and circumstances
to be at her burial, to tell her then that ahead of her
lay an unfathomable journey, to tell her how much
I looked forward to seeing her again

David M. Orchard

No One Will Like This, Especially Mark

2011-04-22T05:37:00.000-07:00

Depth of Field
(short semi-fiction)

Abraham lost vision in his right eye when he was a child. It was an accident while playing with some kind of bungee. I expect it was one of those black rubber types with S-hooks at each end. One hook was stabbed into a box that functioned as a sled. He was doing the pulling, another kid the sledding. The hook pulled loose. In the recoil, it beat the odds with a that-sucks direct hit on Abraham's cornea. Within a few weeks the lens clouded over from a traumatic cataract. Until he came here, he never imagined it might someday be repaired.

Occasionally, starting well before Abraham came, I have walked around with one eye closed trying to experience vision without depth of field. If I, like Abraham, had some years of binocular vision before losing it, would my brain remember that these things I see are not flat, are not constantly turning their height-width infinite flatness to meet my gaze at exactly 90 degrees while simultaneously doing the same thing for any other one-eyed gazer? Would I know, as I walk among them, that they aren't nimbly adjusting to the direction from which I observe, instantaeously presenting their two-dimensional facade, hiding nothingness behind themselves? Could there even be an among amongst them?

My trials last but a few moments. It is uncomfortable, and sometimes I trip. I don't find the answers.

I do these experiments knowing that I nearly lost my left eye one night long ago on a wildfire. I think about that, about pulling a hose up a hill and banging off a tree while my safety goggles dangled unhelpfully beneath my chin. The tree had a small broken branch, just the butt end of it sticking out about six inches. It hit squarely on my orbital bone, leaving a bleeding wound that is now a fading scar that no one other than I will notice.

"Squarely" is an appropriate descriptor in this case, a descriptor of the impact of a thin, rigid object on a rounded bone on which "square" was a tiny area combined with a tiny range of impact angle. A little lower in space and higher in angle and it would have scraped down my cheek. A little of the opposite and it would have gone into my eye. I think the latter could not have been pleasant.

I imagine the reality of lying there on that dark but burning hillside. I imagine my crew has moved up the hill and lost track of me. Part of me will never see them again. I am aware that an ambulence is no closer than hours away. Shock possesses me, that nauseating, cold, horribly sickening and helpless condition that I had experienced on an earlier occasion. I lie shocky, wounded, blinded, trembling, and miserable in the midst of a wildfire beneath an unremarkable tree with an insignifant broken nub of a small branch on just another brushy California hillside up which I have failed to ascend. Maybe my eye isn't altogether destroyed. Rather, is simply displaced, still serviceable and attached to the optical nerve but now hanging against my cheek. And maybe--it's a fire afterall--it hangs there hissing and melting and marring my otherwise uniform facial burns. And maybe...

Such places my mind can go...such places. It's good that I can call it back, that it will return when I call. Maybe that means I am sane.

But where does it go when it goes? I can't imagine the dimensions of imagining. Dimensions shaped out of something from non-physics, describable only in uninvented mathematics, warped time-space-mind places containing uncontrolled thoughts, self-guided images, fears, and fantasies concocted from random rememberings and inventions, driven perhaps by fragments of the genes that, if whole, would make me a fabulous writer, a science fiction writer, even if I were illiterate.

It wouldn't have mattered if I had lost that eye. Uniocular vision or not, my mind paints flatness with depth of field, scenic overlooks, points of view, the possible and the impossible, all ephemeral, untouchable, and elusive, things and places and actions and feelings that flee across consciousness and change when considered.

Heisenberg must have understood that.

We will see to Abraham's surgery this coming fall.

David M. Orchard

Devastating Lyrics

2011-04-22T05:18:00.000-07:00

This Street, That Man, This Life
(Michael Timmons, Cowboy Junkies)

This street holds its secrets like a cobra holds its kill
This street minds its business like a jailer minds his jail
That house there is haunted, that door's a portal to hell
This street holds its secrets very well

That man wears his skin like a dancer wears her veils
That man stalks his victims like cancer stalks a cell
That man's soul has left him, his heart's as deadly as a rusty nail
That man sheds his skin like a veil

Lord you play a hard game, you know we followed every rule
Then you take the one thing we thought we'd never lose
All I ask is if she's with you, please keep her warm and safe
And if it's in your power please purge the memory of this place

This life holds its secrets like a seashell holds the sea
Soft and distant calling like a fading memory
This life has its victories, but its defeats cut so viciously
This life holds is secrets like the sea

Encounter with a Fisherman

2011-03-21T13:31:00.000-07:00

Not Meeting George H. W. Bush

I have always wanted
to meet a president
and to catch a tarpon
in reverse order because
the first is unlikely
and the second possible
given perseverance and budget

But there we were, HW, forty-one,
buying a rod for bonefish
two grey-suited men watching
and two sales staff consulting
and me, that's all,
among hushed aisles
of gear and tackle

I saw Kennedy from afar
when he was campaigning,
on my way with Dad to
my first ballgame at Candlestick.
We heard the speech at SFO.
Cepeda hit a solo shot for a 1-0 victory.
I wanted to meet McCovey and Mays.

I shook hands with Neil
when he was already a n'er-do-well
and I saw HW and W
from the distance of 19 rows
when W was governor
on the first night of baseball
at Enron Stadium

Uncle Wayne believed that he
and HW were the two youngest naval
pilots ever to earn their wings
and Bradley believed HW
to be the most successful man
of his generation
and I believe both of them

But, in the quiet of those aisles,
in the presence of such a man,
I declined the assistance of a salesman
and didn't ask the security detail
for permission to approach.
I chose not to bother him.
I will, someday, intrude upon a tarpon.

David M. Orchard

The Meaning of Rocks

2011-03-04T20:16:00.000-08:00

Low Gap Road

There are rocks along Low Gap Road,
chaotic, crushed by tectonism and displaced
by distances equal to the width of deep time oceans
with Eagle Rock looming above and embedded within
soft melange and rare, beautiful eclogite
among serpentine outcrops,
their stories rendered onto a map
of one inch equals two thousand feet
by a graduate student

There are rocks along Low Gap Road
immediately east of the eponymous gap,
polished and inscribed pieces of Sierran granite
displaced by hundreds of miles
and placed in a neat and shady grove
alongside others, mostly marble,
all standing above citizens of this place
whose stories exist in family memories
or, for some, simply in the inscriptions

There are rocks along Low Gap Road
that mean something to me

David M. Orchard

Really Good Lyrics

2011-02-16T12:18:00.000-08:00

Elton John and Leon Russell

Eight Hundred Dollar Shoes

You had your grand illusions and wrestled with your fate
The winter of your discontent came twenty years too late
If it was love and I was there I've forgotten where it lives
We both stepped off a frozen rock onto a burning bridge

You came like an invasion all bells and whistles blowing
Reaping the reward of the fable you'd been sowing
I saw you across the landing descending marble stairs
Like Caesar crossed the Rubicon you seemed to walk on air

Yea I've seen your movie
And I read it in your book
The truth just flew off every page
Your songs have all the hooks
You're seven wonders rolled in one
You shifted gears to cruise
You came to town in headlines
And eight hundred dollar shoes

Oh the bellboys are crying and money's changing hands
Your cloak and dagger legacy's gone home to no man's land
the marquee lights are flickering and your poster's fading fast
Your being here just melts away like ice cubes in a glass

Yea I've seen your movie
And read it in your book
The truth just flew off every page
Your songs have all the hooks
You're seven wonders all in one
You shifted gears into cruise
You came to town in headlines
And eight hundred dollar shoes

Oh you came to town in headlines
And eight hundred dollar shoes

It's Been Cold in Houston

2011-02-13T04:49:00.000-08:00

Ice Storm

When the ice comes here
upon the collision
of Gulf and arctic air
and splits oaks into thirds
and bends pines to its will
by the force of accumulation,
lift ice from leaf to see its mask,
its perfect cast of blade, vein,
petiole, and bud, the
impermanent fossil
of the cold but not yet dead

David M. Orchard

He Knew How to Wear a Stetson

2011-01-13T06:48:00.000-08:00

Not Meeting John Connally

I knew of him, vaguely.
The principal of my sixth-grade school
announced only the death of the president
and not the survival of the governor
and the newsmen shouted,
"Kennedy dead! LBJ sworn in"
with "Connally wounded!" coming
below "Jackie and Nation Mourn!"
and, anyway, everyone was too stunned
to listen beyond those first four syllables.

Archtexan in his latest years,
impeccably dressed as always
as if the bankruptcy hadn't happened
as if falling oil and real estate
hadn't required that his friends pay
thousands for, let's say, an ashtray,
as if he hadn't been too close to Nixon
and indicted (but set free),
he rode an elevator with me.

I don't know why he was in the building
but I rode maybe ten times
in the confined space of otherwise
unremarkable 38-floor ascents and descents
with the man who was dying but survived
while Jackie held John F K's head
while he was dying and then dead.
Aware that I could not add to who he had been,
was, or would be, I was silent and
I did not ask, "Sir, may I shake your hand?"

David M. Orchard

Remarkable Rocks

2010-12-02T11:05:00.000-08:00

In 1988, I published a paper and gave talks on an oil field in Montana. It was interesting geology, and I did good work on it. That was the last time I have published technical work, until now.

This paper has been accepted for presentation at the American Association of Petroleum Geology (AAPG) Annual Conference this coming April in Houston.

These are fantastically interesting rocks formed in a reef environment by sponges, algae, and microbes, plus occasional corals and some other things you have never heard of. Also, most examples of this type of rock in this formation do not produce oil and gas because they lack pore space to hold the fluid. This one, however, is porous and is one of the wells that I am responsible for.

An Exceptionally Well Preserved Calcisponge-Dominated Reef Facies in the Upper San Andres Formation (Permian), East Vacuum Grayburg San Andres Unit, Lea County, New Mexico

David M. Orchard, ConocoPhillips, Houston
Gregory P. Wahlman, Wahlman Geological Services, LLC, Houston
Govert J. Buijs, ConocoPhillips, Houston

An exceptionally well-preserved calcisponge-dominated doloboundstone reef in the Guadalupian (Permian) high frequency sequence G9 (upper San Andres) is present in core from the distal margin of the East Vacuum Grayburg San Andres Unit (EVGSAU 0524-007, W/2SENW, Sec 5, T17S R35E), Lea County, New Mexico. The reef grew on the shelf-margin to upper slope immediately seaward of crestal shelf-margin shoals.

The basal 108 feet of the core is massive doloboundstone, and three overlying thin doloboundstone intervals are interbedded with skeletal dolowackestone, dolopackstone, fusulinid dolograinstone, and dolorudstone (reef talus). A karst fracture in 30 feet of the interbedded sequence is filled with anhydrite, breccia clasts, geopetal internal sediment, and fusulinid dolopackstone.

The biota of the boundstone comprises abundant calcareous sponges, common thrombolitic microbial encrustations and masses, moderately common Tubiphytes, sparse fistuliporid bryozoans, rare Archeolithoporella red algae, and a sparse associated reef fauna of bryozoans, corals, brachiopods, and crinoids. Guadalupia and Lemonea are the most abundant calcisponge genera. Smaller calcisponges include common Amblysiphonella and Discosiphonella (Cystauletes), sparse Cystothalamia, and possible Sollasia. Massive to tabular forms of Guadalupia and Lemonea occur throughout the reef, and branching forms increase downward.

Rapid dolomitization occurred very early during diagenesis and preserved the depositional fabric of the reef. Framework cavities are typically lined by isopachous rims of bladed to radiaxial layered cements. Geopetal laminated dolomitic mud, silt, and very fine-grained peloidal packstone directly follow these cement rims in many cavities. Finally, the cavities were filled by medium-crystalline anhydrite, which was probably precipitated relatively early during paragenesis. Coarse anhydrite, sparse void-filling medium- to coarse-crystalline dolomite cements, rare calcite cements, and minor pore-lining bitumen are later diagenetic features.

The boundstone has six percent average porosity, and average permeability is 26 millidarcies. The distribution of calcisponges and other skeletal grains and the patchy distribution of pore-filling anhydrite control the pore system. The reef facies is a minor contributor to the dominantly dolograinstone San Andres reservoir. The well produced 59,000 barrels of oil and 39,500 barrels of water from 1994 to present from doloboundstone and fusulinid dolograinstone of the San Andres and sandstone and dolostone of the lower Grayburg.

More on 30 years in oil and gas

2010-11-18T06:57:00.000-08:00

Here is but one consequence of my career...

A pound a year
every year of my career
slowly gained
upon a frame
sufficiently tall
to hide from all
that alas
the man's gained mass

It turns out to be an exact equation.

30 Years in Oil and Gas

2010-10-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

I started my career on August 16, 1980, which means that as of this past August I have been an oil man (of some sort!) for 30 years. My career has been anything but linear.

Tomorrow I will be a panelist at a ConocoPhillips career development seminar for staff who have between eight and 16 years with the company and who are considered to be primed for leadership. I was invited to participate because I am one of the many geologists who have, intentially or not, made a career change.

Here is what I am going to say.

First of all I appreciate the invitation to be here today. I have really enjoyed the thoughts and memories that preparing for today has engendered.

In the late 1980s, I sat where you are sitting now, looking at the probability of a solid career and advancement in a large multi-national company, the probability of making a great deal of money, and the enjoyment of the extraordinary adventures that exist in oil and gas. That career went off the rails a few years later when, after 12 very enjoyable years, I was laid off.

Many others went through this in those years. A currently newsworthy example of a geologist who made adjustments in his career is John Hickenlooper, who came into the oil business in 1981, worked in Denver for Buckeye Petroleum for 5 years, left the business in 1986 when the industry collapsed, opened a very successful brew pub a few years later, became mayor of Denver in 2003, and as of next week may be the governor of Colorado. A less optimistic career adjustment is implied in the quite-stale joke that you have probably heard, which is, “What do you call a guy with a pickup and two lawnmowers? That would be a geologist.” That’s not very funny but it contains some truth.

My version of pushing a lawnmower was managing and editing the translation of Chinese geological literature for three years. But I also got to go dogsledding and get very very drunk with senior executives in Nokia’s cell phone business somewhere north of the Arctic Circle in Finland. I will leave it to you to figure out how an experience like that found its way into the career of a petroleum geologist.

Mr. Mulva’s message and other statements in this symposium’s brochure emphasize preparing you to be leaders in the company’s future, while also helping you develop and control your options.

Those two things can happen---you and the company might achieve mutual benefit in your remaining career. You already know that you will be very well rewarded for doing your part in that bargain.

But, to do that within the company you might (or probably will):

• Have to reinvent yourself to keep up with and take advantage of the changing needs of the company
• Take on unexpected roles or take what’s available and not necessarily what you want
• Win over competition that you don’t even know exists

Or you might leave the company, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Since the involuntary circumstance happened to me, I’ll comment on that.

In your career, these can happen.

• The vicious and frequent commodity price cycles might hurt you. They will most certainly threaten you.
• Mergers and acquisitions might hurt you. They probably will threaten you.
• National and international politics might hurt you.
• Some person might hurt you
• You might make a career misjudgment
• You might make a professional mistake
• You might make a personal mistake

Some aspect of all of those things affected me leading up to the lay off and subsequently, and I expect to encounter them again.

You heard a summary of my career. After the layoff I couldn’t find a job. I had one interview in 11 months. On a personal level, my father was dying, and I took inspiration from the fact that he started his adult life in 1938 as a hobo. If he could ride a freight train in a search for his future, I decided I could be brave and start a business. That ended up being Manzanita, which was for me and my family a wild and difficult ride. I was and am proud of what it became, but after 13 years I increasingly felt that both Manzanita and I needed a change.

In 2005 the market came back to me as a geologist. This time, I laid myself off and started consulting. In June of 2006 I was hired here. I was very lucky--that wouldn’t have happened in this industry either a few years earlier or a few years later. I am very thankful for this job. I get to be a geologist again.

So, what can I offer you from this seat on this panel? Mostly they are things that will sound like platitudes, but platitudes become reality when stuff happens. So here is my list, and it applies whether you stay pretty much on track or you seriously derail:

• Stuff happens…get over it and move on
• Adversity is opportunity
• Control what you can control; everything else is context
• Be willing and ready (I might even say eager) to reinvent yourself

And here’s one that many people are hesitant to do:

• Ask everyone you know and everyone you meet for advice. You will be amazed at the help you receive.

And finally most importantly, and I know this is moralizing, but it has been a lesson that I have had to learn over and over again:

• Focus on “Who” you want to be more than “What” you want to be. Focusing on “Who” implies a focus on character and behavior. Everything good starts from there.

I will be happy to answer your questions and if you ever need help, call me. I’ll do what I can.

Valle Vidal

2010-06-12T10:23:00.000-07:00

Does a Tree Really Fall?

It is hard to beat Jim Wikins out of the tent on the mornings of our treks. Maybe he rises habitually early at home as well. I wouldn’t know. But he is the one who makes coffee while the rest of us are still in our bags. Maybe he just needs caffeine that much. All I know is that we appreciate it.

Things happen on those treks, and others, when we are out, out of doors, like the snakefight I found in the creek, or the fire whirls that overtook our truck, or the rattler that swam the Platte, or the lizard that dragged another by the head, or the wind so strong that pebbles bounced into our faces and big men rolled on the ground, or the way John Turmelle found comfort in the Pleiades on his day/night of agony, or the coyote and the cattle.

I was second up that morning in the Valle Vidal. Jim, with his cup, stood against a fence nearby our tents overlooking a long valley of pasture. I joined him to listen to the bugling of elk, and we looked to see them. My eyes were clear then, and the atmosphere clearer. The far end of the valley was far indeed, and the animals grazing there were to us small black dots. Jim suggested they were cattle, not elk. I agreed and added that a coyote was approaching them at a trot from the left. He said “Couldn’t be,” and raised the glasses and said, “Oh,” and we still talk about it.

Yes, a tree really does fall in the woods. But you have to be there to see it before it counts. You have to be there before you can tell the story.

This happened

2010-06-11T04:04:00.000-07:00

Half Moon Bay, Fall 1974

I'm just saying that a thick but sleek
gray-above white-beneath
shark of eighteen measured feet
rose in Pacific waves
near Half Moon Bay
on a calm October day
not twenty-five feet beyond and below
the ledge from which the boy could throw
bait to greenling and cabazon
and hung around
simply hung around
for as long as it takes
for eighteen to become eight
(I would claim an even ten)
and the boy to breathe again

Short fiction

2010-05-05T16:46:00.000-07:00

One Thing in Common

“I think I will swim to Mexico,” he said.

“You already did,” I replied. The Rio Grande at the mouth of Santa Elena Canyon was quiet that day, and sound carried. He was 35 feet from me reclining on a sand bank. We didn’t have to raise our voices.

“That was an action. This is a thought.”

“Yes, I see the difference. What are you thinking.”

He threw a rock into the river. “It is there. The border.”

“No, I think it’s a little closer to you.” I tossed a rock in his direction. It hit the bank near his feet. “More on your side of the river.”

“Is this a border dispute?”

“Well, it’s important where the line is. It’s precise, legal. And you are not legal now being over there and all. You need to know where the border is when you escape to this side.”

“When I escape to that side I want to emerge wet from the river with the courage of an illegal. I want to cross for the first time. I want to feel that.”

“Now’s your chance.”

“Yes, but it spoils things, you being there, with credit cards and car keys. Will you leave?”

“Should I go back to camp and wait for you there? It is a few miles, and it is still hot.”

“Yes, that will do. I’ll wait until you are out of sight. I would have to do that.”

“Well, try not to be too long. Your mother is waiting there for us. She will worry about you.”

“If I were really making this crossing, mi madre would worry about me. I share that with the man I will pretend to be,” he said.

“The water bottle is empty. I will leave it here for you,” I said.

UPDATE: Latest in the quest for...

2010-03-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

Rejected again, with grace and style. The quest continues...

...the adjective "published" as in "Orchard is a published author of some renown." Although the wounds inflicted by the rejection of my Poetry Magazine submission are still raw, I have cast aside self-doubt and again entered the fray, not this time in poetry but rather in the burgeoning new literary field of nanofiction.

It turns out that certain people write very short fiction, and certain magazines and websites accept short (300 words), shorter (250 words), and shortest (55 words) stories, each of which is supposed to have fully developed character(s), plot, and resolution.

Well, I have been sitting on one of those, a real winner this time, and off it went to nanofiction.org for publication in the NANO FICTION magazine. They answer in six months. That's a long time to hold my breath, but (insert sucking sound).

Here it is, inspired by a Billy Collins' poem and the fact that it was me in the bear suit and duck pond. Well, OK, the duck pond is an embellishment. I ran to the fairgrounds' bathroom, dungarees billowing smoke with each stride. So below is nano sort-of fiction. I guess.

The Smokey Bear Story Turns Gritty

Suddenly, it was back, the long suppressed cigarette-in-the-pants incident, the shame of cooling his butt in the duck pond in full view of the children. And the Great Bear snapped.

With that memory came all of the other insults he had endured in the long career of a professional man-bear caricature. They came as fuel to the flames, Santa Ana winds to the nascent conflagration. The silly cartoons, the inane slogans. “Only you can…” “Oh no you can’t! You can’t even take a proper dump in the woods without your mommy along to wipe up.”

And don’t forget the recent bureaucratic struggles over his rightful pension and the outright denial of a post-traumatic stress diagnosis. As if any cub with third-degree burns and a dead mother lying in the ruins of the forest could be snatched from his natural home by a man in a stupid rutting hat, the same stupid rutting hat that he had been forced to wear ever after, and not have just a bit of “P-rutting-T-rutting-S?” But no! “Rutting bureaucrats.”

Enraged to the point of unnatural calm, the bear raised himself. He stripped out of his uniform, the dungarees and the rest, and proudly displayed his long concealed bruinity. With the detested hat top-down on the ground, he squatted and in it left, as it were, a perfectly phrased and punctuated farewell note. Then, lifting a jerry can of gas with one hand and a half dozen USFS-issued fuzees with the other, he strode toward the mountain with grim determination and awful purpose.

The Old Man and the Old Man

2010-02-21T18:35:00.000-08:00

When we are on long drives together, Phillip and I find joy in asking each other, "How does it go?" By that we challenge each other to quote the final passages of Norman Maclean's, "A River Runs Through It," which are lyrically melancholic and beautiful. Neither of us sounds like Robert Redford, and neither of us ever gets it quite right, but I know the geologic meaning of timeless, and I have found fossil raindrops, and he and I share an appreciation of fly fishing, Rocky Mountain canyons, families (even when tragic), and words. Here it is:

Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut in the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

I wrote this, and you will find Maclean in it:

Fishing Still

He fishes still, he always will
as he did among the waters of bays,
his river, the islands,
trolling the temptations of tackle stores,
casting for keepers and memories

…for the boy's bass that broke the hook and
disdainfully displayed a broad white belly

…for the brown in the Platte below Decker
that took his streamer with such a jolt

…for the shark that leaped high in the air
and landed in a framed picture on the gameroom wall

…for gentle bluegill, tiny cutthroat that softly took
flies on farm ponds, beaver ponds

…for the big blue cat that he lost on the eve
of his first daughter’s birth

…for the old man's marlin—-for the old man's
trout that rise "in the Arctic half-light of the canyon"

It is different now, but the same
No tackle nor beach, no bay, no stream
This bench will do, this park, this place,
for casting among memories for keepers
for practicing patience and prayer.

But who is the other old man, the one of the marlin? That of course is Santiago of Hemingway's, "The Old Man and the Sea." I bet Phillip doesn't know (until now) how it ends. Here it is:

That afternoon there was a party of tourists at the Terrace and looking down in the water among the empty beer cans and dead barracudas a woman saw a great long white spine with a huge tail at the end that lifted and swung with the tide while the east wind blew a heavy steady sea outside the entrance to the harbour.

"What's that?" she asked a waiter and pointed to the long backbone of the great fish that was now just garbage waiting to go out with the tide.

"Tiburon," the waiter said. "Eshark." He was meaning to explain what had happened.

"I didn't know sharks had such handsome, beautifully formed tails.

"I didn't either," her male companion said.

Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming of the lions.

Chronic muser

2010-02-10T20:31:00.000-08:00

Seven Weeks ‘Til

Succumbing to vanity, to hope
I sent four poems to Poetry Magazine
the first I’ve sent anywhere
a very long shot
May as well start at the top, or not

I read some of the authors' bios
This guy, “…his latest volume of
poems was published…with a MFA from …”
and this lady, “…received the….medal for
… and…and…and” and this
bit of criticism, “…an outsider’s ear
detects a jog-along reliance on conventional
prosody…” and this bit of braggadocio
rightitude, “Every time I write a poem, it
is an act of resistance to the state, the
myriad hierarchies of control, and the human
urge to conquer our natural surroundings.”

Man, I don’t belong there-- no honors, no
accolades, no idea of what she’s talking
about, no respect for an oh-so-righteous
suffers-for-his-art who, (dare I profile?)
has never had to meet a payroll.
I have a killer valentine poem, “Wouldst
thou be my sow?” that will never
accompany a box of chocolates and an
ode to Lady Godiva, “…but that breast 'neath
falling hair would look the better were it bare.”
Not, I know, the portfolio of someone who knows,
“…how important a poet’s
posture, and posture alone, has become
to contemporary estimation.”

Any room there for a too-late-bloomer?
They answer in eight weeks
Phillip said he won’t consider himself a
writer until he is rejected by New Yorker
Seven weeks ‘til I’m a poet!

David M. Orchard, 2010

Geolliegist

2010-01-11T20:55:00.001-08:00

Professor Ollie Orchard examining matrix-supported conglomerate in Franciscan melange, Low Gap County Park, Ukiah, California. Ollie's student, Abraham Kamara, on leash.

Where the River Flows

2010-01-08T00:25:00.000-08:00

We are in Ukiah doing a major clean up of our barn, shed, and attic. This includes going through lots of papers, family photos, etc., left behind by my parents.

Growing up, I always knew that my dad wanted to write, and among the papers are notes of his on family remembrances that he wanted to develop further. But I was very surprised to find two poems, including the one below, typewritten and signed "Merle P. Orchard, 1942." He was 22 years old then and a soldier and proud of having learned to type. There are no typos in the poem.

I have read it several times, and I'm puzzled as to how he could write this at a young age and no others followed. And, why did he never show it to me. And what inspired it (other than Housman)? And where did the "Come leave it all..." quote come from. And could he really have written, "Hard pressed clay and the clean black coal--But ashes must scatter when the fire takes toll." And did Jim and Al really exist? And why isn't he here now to answer all of this? Damn. Damn. Damn.

Where the River Flows

In the bright crisp air of early spring
When the robin appears and the meadow-larks sing,
It is then the whisper of a lonely call
Haunts my hours, "Come leave it all
And hurry back where a light breeze blows,
And spring comes softly where the river flows."

Spring comes softly where the river flows--
Soft like the flush of a fragrant rose.

My thoughts go back to a magic day
By a willow tree where three boys play;
Truant lads, no time for school
When the grass is green round the swimmin' pool
And a cloud ship races through a calm blue sea,
No school for those two bold pals and me.

Ghost-gone phrase that tugs and tows--
"Spring comes softly where the river flows."

How my mundane tasks grow irksome now
As I think of those days of long ago--
A letter from Jim with Hawaiian seal
Says that he's safe and is feeling well--
But the other one, Al, went down at sea
When his cruiser was sunk by the enemy.

Hard pressed clay and the clean black coal--
But ashes must scatter when the fire takes toll.

The ashes must scatter but the river flows on
And the earth is soft neath the meadow lawn,
And a million stars must still be there
Where we walked at night--a thrill too rare.
Ghosts and the echoes of a day gone by
Are calling me back to a thrilling sky.

Ghosts and the echoes of a day gone by--
Where the spring comes softly neath a spangled sky.

But Reality smirks with a harsh grimace:
Ah, the grasses may blow where the willows lace,
But the charm has died with your fading youth
For the years are bitter and death is truth--
For where are your dreams of those tender years--
Wind-swept castles by a moat of tears.

Taunting voice that laughs and goes,
"You can't go back where the river flows."

Merle P. Orchard, 1942

A.E. Housman

2009-12-19T20:59:00.000-08:00

My father’s favorite poet was A.E. Housman. I have his small red volume of A Shropshire Lad. It lives in my sock drawer. It was published in 1922, and Dad’s volume is “A Wartime Book” dated January, 1944, when he was a soldier. I don’t know where and when he bought it, but he was young then and I wish I knew. Since I also read and was stirred by these poems when I was young, they are a still-meaningful connection between him and me, but of course he read them as a child of the depression and a soldier in a World War and I read them as a dreamy child of what he and my mother had made possible for me and my sisters.

I always assumed that Housman was so melancholy because World War I had so devastated his generation of British youth. That must have been part of it, but I recently learned that he was homosexual, had fallen deeply in love with a schoolmate, and with no hope of reciprocation had resigned himself to a life of resignation.

Much of Housman is lonely, sad, and sweet:

With rue my heart is laden
For many a friend I had
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad

By brooks to broad for leaping
The lightfoot lads are laid
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade

Some is whimsical, with an edge:

The grizzly bear is huge and wild
It has devoured the infant child
The infant child is not aware
It has been eaten by the bear

And then there is this devastating verse:

When shall I be dead and rid
Of the wrong my father did?
How long, how long till spade and hearse
Put to sleep my mother’s curse?

In the front of his book, Dad pasted the following:

I pass this book along now,
It’s covers brightest red,
To delight my stalwart David
Who’ll read it in his bed
And pass it on to Phillip,
A strong lad he will be
And pleasure seek from Housman
Just as you and me.

And I have written these, and a few others:

Cemetery II

Black flint, the only rock around
For Surrey's walls and cathedral grounds
In famed Cretaceous chalk is found
In quarries among the green-clad Downs

Walls which with these flints are faced
Define the confines of this space
And frame the final resting place
Of lads who lost their fatal race

From elsewhere come other rocks
Limestone of Bathonian stock
Fit as well for building blocks
Of walls that bound graveyard plots

But Surrey flints are the only stones
Proper for these resting bones
Of boys who fell along the Somme
And to green-clad Downs came home

Cemetery III

Within these flinted chapel walls
Upon the soldiers' marble stones
Lie the wilted leaves of fall
Thin quilt o'er English bones

Leaves and lads becoming earth
both are blown away
Leaves will have a spring rebirth
The boys are here to stay

Widow's Walk

At seventeen he brought her home,
along a path of stone and chalk
Newly wed she could not know
that path would be her widow's walk

They swore their love to eternity
On the path through aspen wood
One month beyond virginity
Scarce a month 'fore widowhood

Young in love they could not see
Fate's unyielding clock
Time defined as brevity
A path become a widow's walk

Donkeys for Jesus

2009-12-19T15:39:00.000-08:00

I wrote this to Stan nearly two years ago in response to some of his articles. "The Nativity Story" was on television yesterday, which reminded me of my note, and since Christmas is involved it seems like a good time to post it (with a few edits).

*********

Dear Stan,

I feel fairly glorious today, for no particular reason. I'm at the office, I "get" to do geology, I feel good about things, and even the Houston road construction mess wasn't able to thwart my quest for a good kolache.

One your recent writings, "Cane Juice" reminded me of coming upon a cane grinder on a rural road in Venezuela. Our driver saw it in front of us and asked if we wanted to stop, which we did. What was on offer wasn't alcoholic, simply sugar juice on ice. The crusher was quite a contraption, but it did its job quickly, and the results were handed to us in small plastic cups. I wondered if I could get sick from drinking it, but ended up enjoying it with no aftershocks.

"Vessel of Life" makes mention of a donkey, which as you will see below is on my mind today. You know that we had two donkeys in Ukiah, which I enjoyed more than the horses. Here is a poem by G.K. Chesterton.

The Donkey

When fishes flew and forests walked,
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood,
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry,
and ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
Of all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour,
One far fiercer hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears
And palms beneath my feet.

Now, tell me, will you ever see another Chadian donkey burdened with a heavy load and waiting for a drink from the last draw from the well without knowing what is on its mind?

I found that poem in Garry Wills' "What Jesus Meant." Wills is a historian and professor of Greek who has written several books on Catholicism, all of them quite critical ("Papal Sin"). Yet he remains Catholic ("Why I am Catholic"). He is a mainstream author, and his books are on the NYT bestseller list. He and Thomas Cahill ("Desire of the Everlasting Hills") have given me much food for thought, and it fits with criticisms that you and Marie share about the organized church. Marie asks me why the church puts up barriers to participation. Her present issue is that Sam isn't baptized, and instead of rushing this obviously deep believer to the font, they first require a period of instruction. And why do the priests still wear robes? And why, and why, and why? And you have some or all or more of the same concerns. So does Wills, in spades.

Both Wills and Cahill pound away about one great thing. That is, Jesus didn't ask that we build great buildings for him, or wear fine clothes, or oppose our enemies, or punish our criminals, or any such thing at all. Jesus said that he is present among us in the poor, the shunned, the dirty, the imprisoned, the sick. He asked us to serve and love him by serving and loving them. That's it. That's all. Everything else is tapestry.

So, why am I Catholic, in an organized church that builds great buildings and piles heirarchy and rules upon Christ's simple directive? I've told you most of this before.

When I was at Branner, Jeff Siemon came to visit me as a representative of Campus Crusade. (I think he is now in the NFL Hall of Fame.) After that visit, I sat in the window, asked myself who I was to turn God down, and prayed that if He is real, let me know and I will follow. (I have since reformulated that thought to this: If Jesus volunteered to die on the cross and in so doing to take all of my sins, and those of all the world, and those of all time and put them aside for good, who am I to turn down that offer. If, when I die, it turns out differently, I will deal with that then.)

Marie, Samuel, and I went to Stations of the Cross last night. Beforehand, Marie once again asked why. But there, in the ceremony, with all of the above thoughts in my head, I felt right. This morning Marie said that she had as well. The "letting me know" part of God's response to my Branner prayer has been subtle but real. If, after all these years, I find myself doing Stations in a fine building with a fine priest at St Edith Stein parish as a member of the Roman Catholic Church and feeling at peace and in the presence of holiness, then I'm happy to believe that this is where I've been lead.

Back to the donkey, prefaced by another digression. I recently saw the very end of a movie that came out a short while ago about Mary and the nativity. In the scene where Mary and Joseph approach Bethlehem (there is that donkey again!), they meet a shepherd and sit with him for a while. The shepherd relates something that his father told him: that everyone, one time, receives a special blessing. He--a lonely, resigned, and humble old man--had concluded that his blessing was simply the hope of receiving one. In his humility he could not have imagined that he was about to be present at the manger. All shepherds, all lonely, resigned, and humble old men, have a share of that. It has something to do with "one body" and infinity. We were all there, just as all donkeys walked an hour on a path of palms.

These things I believe, and they are profoundly beautiful.

Your friend, Dave

Random (1)

2009-12-11T21:10:00.000-08:00

A few years back, I started receiving random emails with goofy message lines. I sent a bunch of them to Phillip to maybe write something funny about them, but he didn't, or didn't as far as I know, but I saved them, and here you go. Have fun!

exception marx
afoul
adsorb
fetus
escherichia
hinterland amerliorate (Bettye Matthews)
chantilly tangerine
vowel sledgehammer (Colleen Campbell)
I think you're meant to sprinkle salt on it (Chancellor T. Patchworks)
acerbity
report chiropractor (Houston Pacheco)
stargaze millennia
aristocrat burn
brandywine coworker
lobular sabbath
orchestrate jonquil
yam cornea (potatos have eyes!)
clasp canvasback (Matilda Heller)
bowstring hobo (Rickie Maldonado [Ward.Hearn@loneeagle.com])
ceremony hyaline
immeasurable obstetric (Timothy Sanford [Benito.Zapata@americainter.net])
diffusive plumbate (Shari Mack)
sally hydrocarbon (Eric Burton)
chiffon booze
doghouse tapeworm
linemen convulse (Robin Dudley)
algecide accommodate (Andrew Dowdy)
Nihilist grandstand
Noontime termite (Pedro Polk)
Deniable beehive (Imelda Darby)
Emboss inorganic (Ramiro Howard)
euthanasia abigail (Judson Adair) one girl I wouldn't want to date
rancorous carmichael (Marlene Rudolph)
bum cowpea (Rickey Decker)
doric backlash (shari Hana)
Violet Flowler (radish dunlop)
Nestor Epps (mcmillan agememnon)
Galen Simmons (convocate atheism)
Eels F. Theocratic (Pleased to meet you!)
Approvingly K. Exhibit (Would You Believe It?)
Subornation Q. Villainy (Cialis and Viagra)
Swerving J. Resonating (Cialis)
Rubbing L. Breathable (You don't know me from Adam)
Poop Q. Charwoman (What's up?)
Playground A. Captivates (We haven't been introduced..."
Disjointedly J. Shucks (Hallo!)
Expropriades D. Spiderier (I've heard a lot about you)
Tumult O. Cartilages (Hallo!)
Selflessly A. Eyewitnesses (Well well!)
Pangs Q. Powerhouses (Wakey wakey!)
Temple M. Coefficient (And a very good morning to you!)
Apples H. Avoirdupois (Hi)
Aggressors A. Sorbonne (Good morning, campers)
Folksy T. Bulldogging
Underground Q. Bunnies (viagra)
Directorship G. Dissolution (viagra)
Scrutiny S. Buffers (You would, would you?)
Anions M. Decks (Well, I never did!)
Seismograph P. Experience (How's tricks?)
Cursing F. Flagstones (Viagra)
Landworks B. Logic (Don't be like that...)
Impulsive L. Firestorm (Let's be having you)
Moustache D. Weathercocks (better sex)
Carom O. Halfpenny (adieu)
Saluting O. Fagot (cheap codeine)