David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Finding Irony (and Golf) in an Every Day Place

After a hiatus of more than half a decade, we’re lucky to have golf back near my home in Canton, Connecticut.  No, it’s not on the iconic rolling meadows along U. S. Route 44 that had been the Canton Public Golf Course.  That once bucolic site is now the Shoppes at Farmington Valley, a retail Mecca peppered with upscale stores.  Rather, golf has gone inside and high tech at Canton Indoor Golf Center.  The new venue features a delightfully playful and glowing black light, pirate-themed miniature golf course.  It also has eight high-definition golf simulators and an undulating putting green, as well as a bar and restaurant.

Falafel, Architecture, and a Fifteen Minute World Tour

There are few things as insistent as cravings for particular foods.  Whether it’s as rarefied as the desire for a madelein pastry in Marcel Proust’s epic multivolume novel Remembrance of Things Past or as down home as a hankering for grandma’s chicken soup or dad’s barbecue, the hunger for particular foods at odd moments is often hard to resist.  So when I yearn for falafel, one of my favorite delicacies, I have no choice but to head for Tangiers International, a tiny, informal place that trumpets having “specialty foods for all people.”

In Praise of Dandelions

I like dandelions.  I willingly let them grow in my lawn.  These days, when the sprightly yellow floral buttons are popping up in nearly every yard, it’s not a popular position to take.  It may even be considered radical and dangerous.  But perhaps there’s a bit of subversive iconoclast in me.

Even if you frown at their presence, it’s hard not to admire dandelions.  Though they prefer moist soil and full sun, dandelions persist in inhospitable places such as roadsides, dry rock outcrops, and pavement cracks.  Unlike many plant species, this Eurasian immigrant seems to meet the challenge of human development and suburbanization with every success.  Perhaps the spacious lawns of our suburbs best imitate the sunlit meadows that are their favored habitat.  In fact, the further distant you are from the handiwork of man, the less likely you are to see dandelions.

Listening Point

Everyone needs a listening point.  Everyone needs a place where they can be wholly within themselves and both contemplate the grand mysteries of the universe and mundane conundrums of daily existence.  The term “listening point” was coined in the title of naturalist Sigurd Olson’s 1958 book that is a paean to his special place, a bare glaciated spit of rock at the water’s edge in northern Minnesota.  Each time he went there it “opened great realms of thought and interest” where he saw “the immensity of space and glimpsed at times the grandeur of creation.”  He christened his spot “listening point” because “only when one comes to listen, only when one is aware and still, can things be seen and heard.”

Slice of Pie, Slice of Life

I haven’t had a cake on my birthday in a couple of decades.  It’s not that I abhor getting older (inasmuch as the alternative is unattractive), or that I am a Scrooge about celebrations.  The fact is that while cake may tantalize my sweet tooth and fill my stomach, pie alone satisfies my soul.  As the annual tally of years grows each April, I increasingly find that only a pie befits the day, lit candles and all.  I typically wouldn’t obtrude such a quirk of personal taste upon other people, except that this seems to be a season of high interest in pies generally.

Finding Graffiti

Graffiti is almost always startling, regardless of whether I like the particular image.  Even when it’s disturbing or ugly, I’m usually intrigued by the bright swaths of color and unusual, flowing shapes.  Perhaps it’s the juxtaposition between the artwork and the illicit canvass that most grabs my attention.  I’m no fan of the serious damage such artistic vandalism can do to private or public structures and favor rigorous enforcement of the law, but I nevertheless admire the seething, raw energy many of these painters express.  It seems to me that there ought to be places where graffiti is welcome—on a wall or other structure set aside for the purpose—so long as it doesn’t offend whatever local standards a community wants to maintain.  Like the boulders sometimes set aside for painting on college campuses, these places could be painted over and over again by whoever has the urge.

Hunting for Doors

We use them every day, but they’re so familiar as to be hardly seen.  Fabricated for very practical  purposes, doorways are a necessary part of any building.  But in their design and construction they  convey messages that go well beyond the simplicity of their workaday purpose.  So on a whim last week I walked around my neighborhood to see what I could learn by some careful and conscious looking at doors.

Bringing the Outside Indoors

I enjoy spending time outside.  So it’s no surprise that I like bringing the outdoors inside.  And the best way to do so is with a few carefully selected objects accidentally found along roads, on out-of-the-way trails, at riverbanks and tidal wrack lines, or while bushwhacking over ledges and through thickets.  Such odds and ends typically have little value except to the finder for whom they are infused the joy of discovery, the memory of adventure, and the intimacy of having had something in hand.  I display these small wonders on shelves, mantles, tables and almost any flat surface I can find at home.