Raising Cain

By B. Frank

The Monkey Wrench Dad, by Ken Wright (Published by Raven’s Eye Press, 2008. 240 pages, paperback, $18.95 ISBN-978-0-9816584-0-7)

 

A fellow traveler recently paraphrased a dimly remembered proverb, “The world is run by one million rich people, with rules enforced by ten million fools.” I’d debate a few particulars. There are more wealthy (10.1 million millionaires world-wide, according to Merrill-Lynch, via the Associated Press), a veritable host of fools (Iraq alone has over a half-million occupation-force trained “Iraqi Security Forces,” the U.S. military just announced), and only societies can be controlled. Individuals resist, and the only thing any fool can run into ruin is our common habitat. The world spins on, regardless.

Another similar-minded traveler has recently published a collection of stories written along the way through parenthood. In these, he documents hopes, fears, joys and a heaping parental dose of just how he has moved by the motto, “To be a free human being, be a human doing, no matter what.” He calls it the code of the Pirate Buddha. Ken Wright is a neighbor on my home range, and we’ve handed each other a beer in a few dives and hot tubs, so I can’t claim impartiality in this review, but what I read is a manifesto for raising individuals, instead of more millionaires and fools.

Wright is a fellow “Friend of Abbey” (neither of us knew the cantankerous rabble-rouser, but both walk a few of the same trails), so some of his rants have the familiarity of old flannel on a frosty morning. But this book is more than an elegy for  a paradise “discovered” by yet another escapee, “far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,” a la the English poet Thomas Gray. Wright has packed his book with humble stories of the proud reaction, rejection, defense and adjustment strategies that he defines as “monkey wrench parenting,” evidenced in anecdotes about his children Anna and Webb. A sampling from his “Days of Last Resort”:

“So even though it drives some insane, Purgatory on a powder day is still mostly just lots of grinning, snow-covered, happy, hillbilly locals. Like us.

“At the top of the lift we gather to tighten our boots and coordinate on our first descent. And here a funny thing happens: Webb and Anna appoint themselves our guides. Sarah and I can’t help but share a knowing glance as we stand there while the kids take it upon themselves to discuss the best plan for staying ahead of the tide of our fellow powder-run seekers.”

Along with skis, Wright’s other steeds of exploration into the nearby faraway of this region include: a Chevy van, a canoe, a pickup, bare feet, a skateboard and a pair of tele-skis in a dream of corn-snow bacchanalia. To me, these outdoor epiphanies form the heart of Ken Wright’s parenting style, and of his contribution to the literature of this fantasy of paradise that some of us call home. An excerpt from “San Juan Shangri-la,”:

“We climbed farther, higher, steeper. I was winded and worked and wonderfully happy when we reached the top and stopped and looked around. Ahead stood a horizon of great, glistening peaks like quartz shards. Then I noticed that there were, on every slope, others like us, like slow-moving blips on a radar screen wending their way up or meandering down in free-falling turns, unreeling behind them sine-wave shaped mountain-side line art.” 

Wright is admittedly uninformed on the affairs of women. Most stories are of explorations of philosophy with men, or with his son, such as in “The Little Things,”:

“We return to our camp and share a fire under the stars, sipping sodas, and chatting, and often not-chatting, just enjoying the silent space. Finally, we crawl into our sleeping bags in the van. Before we fall asleep, Webb looks up at me with his dirty face (and therefore, by operational definition, a happy face), and states, ‘Dad, we like the same kinds of fun, hunh?’” 

This book is a work in progress, from an individual practicing what he calls ‘bum-ism.’ Like most bums (“ski-bum, bar-bum, surf-bum, river-rat,” multi-job-locavore, etc.), the book is eminently likeable, even with its flaws of omission and commission. There are repetitive passages and unexplored paths. I would like to read what he sees in the changing (and unchanging) gender roles we are placing on the next generation, and the ever-widening have/have not gap that is ripping the social fabric of our home range; but I believe Ken Wright’s most interesting work as a writer will come once this job of producing and raising individuals is finished, when the deadlines and compromises of parenting and publication (these pieces have all appeared in regional magazines) have given way to his passion for examining the truth he finds on his travels, nearby and faraway. For now, these stories will make some grin, and others grimace, with the philosophies that are guiding a few of the young locals who will have to stay ahead of the tide of seekers. I hope the lessons will serve young Webb and Anna, and the readers well. 

From the essay ‘My Life Among the Tribe’:

“We were there to remember.

“Because it’s easy to forget. It’s easy to forget in that so-called ‘real world,’ and in that bigger, louder, more pressing and much more depressing mediated world that comes in through our TV and radio and the internet and the pages of newspapers and magazines. When that tsunami of news and stress and information and demands washes over all that’s right around, it’s easy to forget that you still can choose between good things, no matter what, even when so much seems to be going so bad. Because if you’re looking out there, toward our institutions and leaders and businesses, for goodness, then you have forgotten the nature of economics and politics.

“And of goodness.

“You have forgotten that good things are not given, they are chosen.

“And you have forgotten that only then — only with the abandon that comes with those choices — can you harvest the fruits or see the value of things that can only be forged over time. Landscape into Place. People into tribe.” 

Wright finishes the essay ‘Bumism’ with this, “Wherever you are, there you go. That’s what the bum knows.” Good point, Ken. Go, do – be pirate Buddhas.