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Ray Rasmussen
After a few weeks, I adjusted. After all, my teacher was a glorious blonde--my first love. She might not have really been beautiful, but to this day I remember her with whatever passes for lust at age 6. It is perhaps because of her that I more readily accepted the first responsibilities of my life which consisted of lining up, paying attention, sitting still, not fighting in the schoolyard and not crying. If I broke any of the first four rules, I had to lay down on a large sheet of paper in the cloak room–punishment by isolation. If I broke the fifth rule–I was punished mercilessly by my schoolmates who might have been the models for the children in Golding’s "Lord of the Flies." Between that time and now, sometime in the last 50 years, I made a transition from being an irresponsible boy who was given everything--board, bed, clothing, presents, hugs–to being a Dad to two daughters, who along with his wife is responsible for everything–food, shelter, clothing, transportation, emotional support, health problems, security and on and on it goes. Despite all the talk about men being irresponsible, I am now fully wearing the mantle of responsibility--well, okay, maybe not fully. And, I don’t complain about the burden … I just do these things as a regular part of life. Despite my steady development in the arena of responsibility, I have always lagged the expectations of the women in my life by a considerable margin. Maggie, my first girlfriend, vintage 17-years-old was my next important teacher. At the precise moment when I had finally succeeded in unhooking the complicated mechanisms that held her bra in place and gazed upon her pert, creamy breasts, she asked me whether I loved her. I did what any man would do in such a circumstance and said "sure" and continued eagerly with the business of sampling those strawberry nipples. I soon after left home [and her] for college never to return except in fantasy. It was our first lesson in that particularly troublesome area of responsibility called commitment. Maggie, who was married only a year later, must have learned to secure something more substantial than "sure" in exchange for her delectables. And, I learned to say something more convincing than "sure" when engaging in my struggles with bras of various sizes and shapes.
One of my few mentors was a man 20-years older to my then 35. We were eating at a restaurant and I noticed him looking closely at a young waitress. I wondered aloud whether the thrill of the look diminished with age. He laughed and told me that it only gets better–that each year a man can find beauty in more and more women–that every woman his age and younger had become a target of his look. As he predicted, my look has expanded dramatically. It is only my astoundingly high birthday number and an occasional glance in the mirror that reminds me that I am something else than that boy who so recently stood weeping at the kindergarten window. While I’ve assumed the mantle of responsibility in deed, I don’t feel particularly responsible or mature inside. And the issue of commitment has been an ongoing nightmare–as I sense it is for many men and women. I wandered through this profound transition period of about 50 years not unlike a blind man feeling his way with inadequate sensory instruments. The journey has been primarily one of bumbling along, stumbling from here to there, floundering with this or that philosophy, languishing in overlong periods of intense loneliness, and sometimes falling into lush, sensual pleasures with a woman who for reasons unknown to me wandered into my life. During the journey, several things stood out … the birth of my daughters, my loves [for my wife’s sake, it would be nice to say "love," but that wouldn’t be true], some outstanding moments in wilderness, the rush of whitewater from the cockpit of a kayak, the motley gang of irresponsible boy-men with whom I paddled Canada’s wild rivers, several painful betrayals, this victory and that loss in my wilderness work, an occasional break though in the classroom, a glimpse of understanding–small moments all, the stuff of life.
One of the literary works touched me during the long transition years was the haunting rhythms of Kipling’s poem Mandalay. Recently I reread the poem and tried to understand its attraction to the me who first read it at age 30. By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy
at the sea, Stepping into the shoes of that 30-year old lonely man, I can now readily understand the appeal of a girl who has nothing better to do than sit and think o’ me. I know her well still. She’s young, beautiful, lithe, and she exists just to make love with me--as do all those women who look out of the pages of Playboy Magazine with longing in their eyes for just me, their special guy. She's my 17-year-old girlfriend, Maggie, but without the demand for commitment. And, she lives in paradise. Consider her attributes: 'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little
cap was green,
When the mist was on the rice-fields an'
the sun was droppin' slow, Okay, I’ll grant you that watching elephants a-pilin’ teak in a sludgy, squdgy creek wouldn’t be fun forever or even more than once, even if your girl is a singin’ ‘Kulla-la-lo’ and restin’ ‘er cheek again’ your cheek. So what is it that still draws me to the poem? Kipling provides further insight with a glimpse into the 10-year English soldier's--the older man’s--psyche: An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the
ten-year soldier tells:
Mandalay is a cleaner, greener land because I’m a tourist there. I’m not responsible for much beyond making love and war. I want to be soldier-tourist languishing on life’s beach ... not the responsible, leather wastin’, drizzle walkin’ beast of burden that I've become. Thus, Kipling's wistful conclusion: Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where
the best is like the worst, Or, in my case, at least for a few weeks of each year, ship me somewheres east of 50, where I can foolishly rush through whitewater with my buddies, where we can raise hell around the campfire and where we can find of group of Supi-Yaw-Lats for love making on the beach. Ship me to a Mandalay beach where I can drink without fear of that chiding woman with beefy face and grubby ‘and who doesn’t understand me. Ship me far far away from that horror called the family vacation where the bored, fighting, screaming kids have to be catered to every moment of the day. Ship me to a place where I’m not reminded daily that men are irresponsibile, unloving, unwilling to commit. Ship me back to that place where my boy-buddies and I were in our primes … when we were immortal. And, don’t tell me that I’m having a mid-life crisis!!! For the temple-bells are callin', and
it's there that I would be-- Someone said that our responsibilities define our lives ... that a life without responsibilities is a dead man's walk. For the rest of the weeks of the year, I’ll accept those responsibilities because I’ve found that to be true … that my responsibilities as a teacher, environmentalist, father, husband, lover, friend are the things that define living–things that prevent life from becoming too much like a "blasted English drizzle." As for that more difficult issue of commitment, I now realize that unfortunately there is no "Supi-Yaw-Lat," that all women are human beings albeit with different needs and sensibilities than men, or at least men like me. People in every type relationship, friends, lovers, spouses and even work partners, face the difficult task of negotiating their levels and types of commitment. The high divorce rate, profound feelings of betrayal, and harsh words used on ex-partners are indications that few of us get it right. As a young man, I had heard Kipling's Mandalay read at a poet's gathering. The reader's accent was British-thick and the wonderful rhythms of the poem flowered in my mind and remained in my memory. In thinking the poem now as an older man, I've written Mandalay and me. It's a bit difficult to feel the romantic tug of Kipling's poetry from that era when England was at the height of its colonialism and knowing Kipling's feelings about colonialism and the "white man's burden." And, Burma, renamed Myanmar, has been subject to a brutal military dictatorship for many years. That the soldier's Supi-Yaw-Lat was likely a prostitute is another off putting aspect of this poem. Yet, Kipling, in my view, is simply using he images and sensibilities of his time to effectively evoke the middle-aged man's whimsy for other places, for earlier times with fewer burdens, themes which likely will appeal to any man (or woman) burdened with today's responsibilities and themes which appear in contemporary poems. ~ Ray Rasmussen Email
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One
of my earliest memories is of a hand–a large, warm, secure hand
way up there in the air above my shoulders. I’m pretty sure that
it was my mom’s hand leading me to my first day of kindergarten.
My next memory is one of looking out a window through a shroud of tears
at the her retreating form. 
Like
many men, I have had few mentors to guide the transition from feckless
youth to responsible man. My father was Bergman’s introverted Dane–so
I never learned whatever lessons of life were his to teach. Strangely,
I do remember a ride I took with him and a friend of his. At one point
in the ride, his friend shouted, "Wow, look at that!" I was about 12
at the time and look as I might, I could find nothing in the landscape
worth seeing, no hot rod, no kids, no airplane, no accident … nothing!
It was only much later in life when I found sense in that memory. I
was sitting with a friend at an outdoor restaurant and he said, "Wow,
look at that!" as a particularly shapely woman waltzed by. 
In short, I’ve done far worse than the blind
person who seems to ably and smoothly make the transition to the other
side of the street without bumping into anything or becoming road kill.
What power I have over this lovely creature!
She lives in a land full of Burmese men, yet it is me who captures her
with my manly kisses. Sure, in my more advanced responsible state, I
realize that she’s a prostitute and that like other women in her
country she too wants a secure male with whom to raise a family, and
that she would within weeks be making subtle demands for whatever level
of commitment she thought was within her power to negotiate. She’s
not at all unlike Maggie and every woman friend I’ve had since
her. Still I want her! For:
Like Kipling's 10-year soldier, my life has been
filled with wonderful women who can’t seem to understand the male
me, the me who likes war [or at least war movies] and its modern irresponsible
substitute--death defying sport, the me who enjoys looking at women
and, when it works out, making love with them.