You're Pregnant and not telling people

S: Do you know why I'm happy?

M: Because you're married to such a good-looking person who also happens to be incredibly humble.

M: I guess one out of two ain't bad.

S: Yeah, you are pretty humble.

M: Ouch, my overweening pride.

One of the best periods of time when you're expecting is the time period when you're not telling other people that you're pregnant. You do this because as you learn and incredibly high number of women miscarry. However, it is a strange time when you feel as if you're keeping a secret from everyone you talk to. And, the main point to grab onto is, you pretty much feel better than them. I obviously missed my career calling to be in the CIA. Really, it's hard to get that sort of pleasure of knowing something that other people don't. Thus, when friends say things like, "Oh man, wait until you have children. You'll change your tune." You can laugh with them, and also at them because you're about to have kids and your tune is going to stay however the hell you want it.

I guess this time really showed me that Alex Trebek comes off like such a d bag because he's always so pleased to be holding so much information that others don't have. How smug would I be in that same situation? At least as smug as Alex Trebek. Especially if I had that sweet stache he sported for a bit. The odd part about keeping it from other people is that you become convinced that they'll find out anyway. You have whole bookshelves converted from Dostoevsky to "What to Expect when you're expecting" and "Baby Bargains," and "You're pregnant but not telling any of your friends." And you sort of think that people will notice these things that you're acutely more aware of. I suppose it's like a physical blemish, which people tend to regard as catastrophic on there own person, but hardly noticeable on others.

Ie "You'll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do."

Anyhow as it turns out the only way that people ever figure out that your little couple is expecting is if you stop drinking. S doesn't actually even drink all that much, but apparently turning down a couple of glasses of wine is a sure sign that you're expecting. I have no idea how people found out during the Prohibition era. I bet a lot of children were just born into the world without anyone even noticing that the mother had ever been pregnant. It was probably really tough on everyone, especially the fathers who couldn't drink cognac in the waiting room while the child was being born. The real problem of course is that indelicate question, "Are you expecting," that can only be asked when the answer is a certain yes. Any violation of this rule results in an immediate revocation of friendship/acquantinship privileges.

I think the process of not telling people was both thrilling and hard on S. For me, it brought me back to the little league diamond of my youth. Blue-billed cap turned low, shading my eyes. The sun a hot red flare in the sky. In the outfield, the kids are picking at grass and watching gophers near the chalk of the foul lines. I stare in at the batter, waving his piece of metal behind his head. My cleats dig in to the rubber, and I gaze in at the catcher to get the sign. I nod. And in that moment before I throw the pitch, between the head nod and the wind up, the catcher and I share that quiet secret. Push off the plastic, step into dirt, and release.

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The thing I miss the most about three day weekends is hearing about the oil spill on NPR every morning. Each day I leave the house, slip through the thin morning light, slide into my car and flip on the radio. I don't care anymore what the weather man tells me. I'll be damned if I'm wearing anything but a t-shirt and jeans. I'll be damned if I ever have to wear anything else. Some people just weren't made for looking nice. Besides, how am I supposed to impress my lady when I dress up if I'm dressed up every day?

And every morning, as if I'm trapped in that movie "Groundhog Day," I turn on NPR (mainly because I'm a typical east coast, big city liberal who enjoys socialism, vegetarianism and the eastern monastic tradition) and listen to somebody talk about a hole that we've made in the center of the ocean. I mean, scientifically speaking, (one of my favorite ways to speak) won't the whole eventually get emptied of oil, and then the water will backfill the whole, creating some sort of drain effect in the ocean that will leave it entirely devoid of water? I mean, that's science right?

These mornings, which turn out to be every morning, are the longest. The sun is barely making an impression on the day but already the grey streets are lined with trash and choked with cars. People mill about at the bus stop on the corner, a mother walks briskly with her cute child. And I drive in a car and listen to someone on NPR tell me that we cannot stop the flow of oil into the ocean. "The ocean is large," I say, to no one in particular. "There are always more fish in the sea." I say these sorts of things to remind myself that I too am driving in a car on this morning that is this morning and every morning.

"Plug that damn hole already!" I yell at the radio, picturing sea lions, (though I don't think they've washed up yet) yelping on the shore, their soft brown eyes filled with black film. Someone in the left land is driving slowly, and I step on the gas to get past them. "Speed up, you jerk!" I yell.

"I don't understand why they can't fix this thing?" I say, and everyone nods in approval. "Why is the government so impotent?"

In the summer the price of gasoline in the city approaches four dollars. At the pump I cringe at the needless expense and think back fondly on the days when it was only 1.50.

We agree on two things this summer that the price of gas is too high and that the hole in the ocean needs to be plugged. We don't understand why these things can't change.

In fourth grade we learned about the water cycle. Our teachers told us that the soap suds that we washed down our city drains went straight into Big Chico Creek. Everything is connected, they told us, and we believed them, waiting patiently for our grades. By summer we've forgotten everything except the code to Contra up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, b, a start.

We saw this dude last night at A Prairie Home Companion covering this song.

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Who took that picture of you? She asks angrily on the phone.

I took it myself, I answer.

Oh, she says. The lighting wasn't very good. We can fix that.

In the evenings I usually dream of lands undiscovered. The other night I woke from a dream of children. In the dream, a small boy, blue eyes, soft brown hair, is crying in the arms of an aunt. She hands him to me, and I struggle to keep his head upright. For some reason, I am not wearing a shirt, and I am conscious of the warmth of his small skull against my chest. I take him from the kitchen, cradling him in my arms. I walk around the hallway, past rectangular shapes of light, that are reminiscent of the hallway and skylight of my childhood. And I am cooing to the child and running my hands across the smooth face and the blue veins of my son. And after a while, I forget that I am holding him and he forgets to cry. And I continue to walk in circles as his large brown eyes close and he drifts into sleep. And I walk him back into the kitchen and pass him off, relaxed, into the arms of another aunt, whom I recognize. We both smile.

Little Golden Books and other things

The world is now a strange and terrifying place where a myriad of things compete for our interest on a daily basis. I read a statistic in Harper's that the average worker gets distracted once every fifteen minutes and it takes them, on average, twenty minutes to get back to the fugue state of accomplishing solid work. Like most people over the age of thirty I blame the internet. Who could have known that it would turn into this universe of its own? A universe comprised of inanity and incredible depth. A place where you can go to learn about the history of gnosticism, and have, after a half an hour or so, a basic grasp of its tenets, or you could read an article about 21 ways to make him hot. No. 18 Leave him alone sometimes. The point is that the degree of choice that we have on the Internet is kind of astounding. We are always literally seconds from abasing or edifying ourselves.

Which of course brings me to the eighth best-selling book of all-time "Scuffy the Tugboat." I f-ing (word not used at age three) loved Scuffy when I was growing up. Who wouldn't? Scuffy is a story about a little boat who desires to leave the bathtub where he floats around in the company of a little boy. The boy's father, perhaps single in this story? very progressive is a toy store owner and is identified as the man in the polka dot tie (Why are men in these stories all described as wearing yellow hats or polka dot ties? Why can't it just be Jack, the toy store owner? I suppose by calling him the man you're giving him a bit more of an archetypal feel. Though one could argue that this book, written in 1946 is clearly speaking to the marginalization of the worker, not even given a name, but a job only, which lead to Marxism and the rise of McCarthyism. But that's only so that flagging English Departments can soldier on in this era of data).

Here is a nine minute movie about Scuffy that no one, myself included, will ever watch.
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Scuffy eventually gets out of the tub and out into the bright world, where he travels downstream seeing cows and small boats, and larger ships, until he almost reaches the sea. The reason this book is so amazing is because it shows you as a young child that the desire to grow up is a good and natural thing and that encountering the world at large is both scary and necessary. And though you're excited for Scuffy you're also secretly a bit scared about the world that he has entered, which you've avoided as well. And the reason that Scuffy is an absolute classic is that right before he enters the ocean, read adulthood, teens, first grade, whatever, the man in the polka dot tie and the boy pick him up and take him back to the tub where he lives happily ever after. Read: mom and dad will keep you safe. This book is pretty much amazing and nothing like that book "Ping," which as far as I can tell in retrospect is about racism against Chinese people and not eating ducks. Okay, thematically you could actually link it quite closely with Scuffy, but despite the fact that it's in its seventeenth printing I don't think it's as much of a classic, primarily due to the shoddy characterization of the Chinese duck keeper.

Here is something that everyone in the Internet has already seen.

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The reason that Scuffy is so relevant, and Ping to a lesser degree is that we find ourselves in that very situation now as adults. We are no longer children, but we have the freedom, read American wealth, to behave as if we are. We can enter into wonderlands that require nothing of us, we can retreat from the world and live out our days in the bathtub of our youth. And I can understand the impulse. The big wide ocean of the world can be a soul crushing kind of place, and it takes a hell of a lot effort to counter that childish impulse.

The good news for me of course is that we're about to have a child and I can pretty much resign from life and put all my failed hopes and dreams on a drooling infant. By that I mean I can read them Scuffy the Tugboat, and they will understand that it will always be safe at home.

Here is a brilliant essay about getting old and the fact that we can't take nature with us into that vast universe of the internet.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/05/0082931

Note: I'd be interested in hearing of other classic favorites from people. Excluding, The Little Engine that Could, The Little Red Caboose, which as far as I can tell is the exact same story told about an engine and a caboose. Both classic. And the Runaway Bunny, which I, as a mama's boy loved, but turns out, according to my sister, to read as a sort of creepy and intrusive, read, classic overly involved Jewish mother, parenting book.

Some things that I wanted to share

Uhmmm. It took me a while to construct the blog from last night. I didn't actually recall offhand the story of Absalom getting his bejeweled hair stuck in a tree. Though, now that I've written that, how the hell could someone fail to remember diamond dust hair getting stuck in a tree? My mistake. Anyhow, it's important to focus right now on the writer Robert Walser. Yes, he lived in an insane asylum for the latter portion of his life, but before that he wrote some good books and also some letter. One letter that Walser wrote to his sister was quoted in the latest Harper's. This letter pretty much sums up a lot of the themes that I blog endlessly about. I'll let the words do the work, and I'll let you do the extrapolating. By extrapolating I obviously mean some sort of mix of Foucault and Derrida with a little Harold Bloom thrown in. No.

Robert Walser from a letter to his story

"As for me, I’m valiantly studying French, go to work each morning, come home insane in the evening, expect letters, don’t write any myself but still expect, every evening, at the very least three letters. They should be lying there when I open the door, white, dazzlingly white, with the dear stamps upon them, the sweet postmarks and all the rest. And when there aren’t any, I get perfectly stupid and can’t work, and then I say to myself quite sensibly: you never write any letters, but you expect them! You blockhead!

It isn’t precisely that I expect letters, but now I’m always expecting something as dear, as tender as a letter. Every evening there ought to be some uplifting little surprise for me, just like a letter.

But one can live quite well without excitements, can’t one, only one ought to be endowed with a bit less poesie and the like, should one not, should one not? What a babbler I am, am I not, am I not?"

This letter aptly sums up some major themes if you read it closely enough and think about it for a moment. I loved it.

And because I like to share things that I love: A passage from "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" that is both funny and sad.

"From the line, watching, three things are striking: (a) what on TV is a brisk crack is here a whooming roar that apparently is what a shotgun really sounds like; (b) trapshooting looks comparatively easy, because now the stocky older guy who's replaced the trim bearded guy at the rail is also blowing these little fluorescent plates away one after the other, so that a steady rain of lumpy orange crud is falling into the Nadir's wake; (c) a clay pigeon, when shot, undergoes a frighteningly familiar-looking midflight peripeteia -- erupting material, changing vector, and plummeting seaward in a corkscrewy way that all eerily recalls footage of the 1986 Challenger disaster.

All the shooters who precede me seem to fire with a kind of casual scorn, and all get eight out of ten or above. But it turns out that, of these six guys, three have military-combat backgrounds, another two are L. L. Bean-model-type brothers who spend weeks every year hunting various fast-flying species with their "Papa" in southern Canada, and the last has got not only his own earmuffs, plus his own shotgun in a special crushed-velvet-lined case, but also his own trapshooting range in his backyard (31) in North Carolina. When it's finally my turn, the earmuffs they
give me have somebody else's ear-oil on them and don't fit my head very well. The gun itself is shockingly heavy and stinks of what I'm told is cordite, small pubic spirals of which are still exiting the barrel from the Korea- vet who preceded me and is tied for first with 10/10. The two brothers are the only entrants even near my age; both got scores of 9/10 and are now appraising me coolly from identical prep-school-slouch positions against the starboard rail. The Greek NCOs seem extremely bored. I am handed the heavy gun and told to "be bracing a hip" against the aft rail and then to place the stock of the weapon against, no, not the shoulder of my hold-the-gun arm but the shoulder of my pull-the-trigger arm. (My initial error in this latter regard results in a severely distorted aim that makes the Greek by the catapult do a rather neat drop-and-roll.)

Let's not spend a lot of time drawing this whole incident out. Let me simply say that, yes, my own trapshooting score was noticeably lower than the other entrants' scores, then simply make a few disinterested observations for the benefit of any novice contemplating trapshooting from a 7NC Megaship, and then we'll move on: (1) A certain level of displayed ineptitude with a firearm will cause everyone who
knows anything about firearms to converge on you all at the same time with cautions and advice and handy tips. (2) A lot of the advice in (1) boils down to exhortations to "lead" the launched pigeon, but nobody explains whether this means that the gun's barrel should move across the sky with the pigeon or should instead sort of lie in static ambush along some point in the pigeon's projected path. (3) Whatever a "hair trigger" is, a shotgun does not have one. (4) If you've never fired a gun before, the urge to close your eyes at the precise moment of concussion is, for all practical purposes, irresistible.

(5) The well-known "kick" of a fired shotgun is no misnomer; it knocks you back several steps with your arms pinwheeling wildly for balance, which when you're holding a still-loaded gun results in mass screaming and ducking and then on the next shot a conspicuous thinning of the crowd in the 9-Aft gallery above. Finally, (6), know that an unshot discus's movement against the vast lapis lazuli dome of the open ocean's sky is sun-like -- i.e., orange and parabolic and right-to-left -- and that its disappearance into the sea is edge-first and splashless and sad."

On Hair

Story 1 The strength Estimated relationship to the truth: 30 percent.

It's probably time to talk about hair. I have a friend who once wrote the definitive essay on hair, but I'm writing the not definitive blog post on hair. It is my belief that fiction and "real life" aren't all that different, that we play characters all day. The good worker, the respectful son, the bad-ass driver. We play a cast of characters so vast that on a daily basis I find it disappointing that we are not awarded Oscars for best-supporting actor in the drama of our life, which brings me back to hair.


A long long time ago I had long hair. Pictured above. Now, if you're asking yourself, as you no doubt are, why in the world did Andrew cut off all that beautiful hair? I imagine that you probably did use the word beautiful. Well, the answer isn't as simple as it seems.

When people ask me why I recently gave myself a buzz cut I tell them one of three stories. Typically, I gauge my audience, try to figure out what will be the most pleasing to them before going ahead. The convenient part is that all three of the stories that I tell are the truth, or parts of the truth. There is no complete truth. How very post-modern.

Samson and Delilah

At some point during the book of Judges, a violent book if ever there was one, Samson is accosted by a lion and he rips the lion in half with his bare hands. Later he slays an entire army with only a donkey jawbone, though presumably a large one. Amidst all this slaying, Samson has a father-in-law and wife who are burned to death and rules over the Israelites for twenty years. Of course, that is not the real story of Samson. The story that many of us heard in Sunday school involves a beautiful woman, Delilah, with whom Samson falls in love.

Delilah, cheap harlot that she is, takes a bit of money in order to learn the secret of Samson's strength. Samson, wisely, lies to her about the source of his strength. Which, as we all know, arises from his lustrous hair. Delilah, still with visions of money dancing in her head, finds out Samson's secret and has his hair cut off.

Conclusion to be drawn

I can only assume that Stephanie was engaging in a similar plot. Though, according to me, the power of my long hair lay not in super human strength that would allow me to go on donkey jawbone rampages, but attracting the fairer sex.

The 90's

Every guy that looked like a bad ass in the nineties had some variation of that particular haircut.



The first story goes as follows. My wife wouldn't cut my hair. This story is pretty much true. Once she mentions the possibility of me getting my hair cut I turn into a kid in the grocery store near the candy. I basically can't think of anything else, and I badger her until she cuts my hair roughly four weeks later. During this time I throw no less than three minor fits when I don't get my haircut. Thus, when faced with continuing a martial argument that we've been having for seven years, when the hell are you going to cut my hair? I decided against it and buzzed my hair.

Story Number 2 Estimated Percentage as it relates to the truth 30 percent.

Vanity

Absalom

The story of Absalom takes place in the Bible as well. Absalom is King David's third son and he is described thusly:
But in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him. And when he polled his head [cut his hair], (for it was at every year's end that he polled it: because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled it:) he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels after the king's weight.

I know what your'e thinking, that's a lot of shekels. You're right. The following was purloined from Steve Wells blogger post. I didn't have the strength to do all the research.

And how heavy is 200 shekels? Well one shekel weighed about 11.5 grams. So Absalom's haircut trimmings weighed in at 2.3 kilograms.

How does this compare with normal human hair? Well, an average head hair has a diameter of about 0.01 cm (100 micrometers) and grows 12 cm per year. And an average head has about 100,000 hair follicles on it. If we assume that hair has a density of 1.5 g/cm3 (If anyone knows a better value, please let me know), we can estimate the weight of an average person's yearly hair production.

weight = pi * (.005 cm)2 * 12 cm * 100,000 hairs * 1.5 g/cm3 = 141 g
So an average person produces about 0.14 kilogram of hair annually -- less than 1/16th that of Absalom.

Although, that's a bit of a mislead. The point is that Absalom had some nice looking hair and everyone was pretty much in love with him for it. However, this beautiful hair leads Absalom to revolt against King David. In the ensuing battle Absalom's, admittedly gorgeous hair, gets caught in a tree, and he is left suspended there, still alive, while the rest of his men escape. Shortly thereafter he is stuck with a bunch of spears. Why? Because he was vain about his long ass hair, that's why?


Conclusion to be drawn

The second story that I tell people, sometimes immediately following the first, is that I cut my hair because I can't stand myself when I have long hair. I get so damn vain, I'm like Absalom, trotting around the house with jewels in my long locks, tossing it in the mirror. I just couldn't put up with the idea of me paying so much attention to so much beautiful hair.

Story 3 Takes the last 40 percent and truthfully maybe 50, who the hell knows. Note: Insert heck if offended.

A strange kind of change.

Rapunzel

Rapunzel as told by the Brothers Grimm isn't the happiest little fable in the world. When the witch discovers that Rapunzel has been letting down her golden hair for some local hoodlum the cuts it off, and lures the suitor up the side of the castle to claim his blushing blond. At this point in the Grimm version, she knocks the offending lout off the ramparts and though he isn't killed, he's blinded by some thorns and wanders around the world for a number of years blind and sad. And yes, he eventually finds Rapunzel, but I'm not sure that the happily ever after they are granted is the complete truth.

Moral to be learned.

Don't grow your hair long because a witch might cut it off and use it to blind your lover.

Back to the Bible from the good old King James version

"Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?"

Well, you can't be any clearer than that. You could intuit that Samson's power was really derived from a relationship with God and that Abaslom's vanity extended beyond his luscious hair, but this is pretty clear. Having long hair makes you look like a d-bag. That's the NRAV.


Actual conclusion to be drawn.

I saw a picture of this guy and thought he looked good. And I thought, wait, if he can pull it off, maybe I can. As it turns out Matthew Fox spent some of his early career as a male model. I spent that same period of time wearing braces and singing to "How do you talk to an Angel" alone in my room. So, I'm not certain that my idea actually works as planned.



This is the same reason that you shortened your hair in the first place.



To which you kind of just have to say, oh well, maybe next time. And I end up convincing myself that next time I'll try to get the same hair cut as someone a little less attractive so that I can feel good about myself. I'll go in and get the Screech hair cut, and think, man, I am really pulling this off better than that weirdo. Update: I failed, which is why I'm reposting. I saw this guy with an awesome faux hawk the other day, and was thinking, I can probably pull that off. Luckily, mid cut I realized that I couldn't and came up with something salvageable. Maybe I am learning as time goes by. Maybe I should have just given myself an awesome faux hawk.









Story 4 Percentage relationship to the truth 0.

You really only tell this one to people you play sports with or who only know you casually. You tell these people that it is a summer cut and they nod dutifully.

Hold On

S: I'll put my shirt down. I'm sorry I disgust you.

M: Thanks.

S: What?

M: Nothing.

The oddest sorts of things often send me into tailspins. Unfortunately I don't mean that circa 1990's television with a stupid but friendly fearless pilot, who was also a bear. And you know what? I hated Kit Cloudkicker. I know that I was supposed to identify with him because he was a young person who enjoyed x-game like sports and perhaps wore his hat backwards, but he was also a whiny b. And even at ten I didn't like that. Nor did I care for slow-witted Baloo or that tight wad Rebecca Cunningham. I pretty much disliked every character on that show and watched it after school every day for about three years straight. I don't know what this says about human nature, but it's probably not a good thing.


Anyhow, the oddest sorts of things sort of depress me. Today it was "The Harpsichord and the Clavichord an encyclopedia." I've got nothing against either the Harpsichord or the Clavichord, which to my knowledge is not a real instrument but something needed to go on the cover next to the Harpischord because who the hell would purchase a three volume set of encyclopedias about the Harpsichord alone? The point is, that the encyclopedia, and probably the surrounding thousands of books about a million different things that I know nothing about made me feel a bit inadequate. And it is at this point that I start having fantasies about reading a book a day and learning what Heidegger meant exactly, and hell, maybe whittling. If only I was smarter.

Which then immediately brought me to a comment made recently by a friend. I was reflecting on the fact that only children are often more gifted scholars because of the prolonged (hopefully) engagement of the parents with the child on an adult level. I made a comment of something to the effect that we should have an only so they could be smart. Her answer was, "I don't really care if my kid is a genius or not."

And, of course this is all in the matter of about a minute, the mind moves rather quickly, I started to reflect on the fact that intelligence does very little to make people happy. It's a bit of a dead end. Perhaps I should want my child to not be intelligent first, but to be a good citizen, a contributing member of society, someone who could whittle and woodwork and talk offhand about constellations and strata of clouds and maybe help some other Boy Scouts earn merit badges. Unless the kids didn't deserve them, in which case I'd want my honest citizen to rat them out. Or would I? Wouldn't I want my child to know when to speak up and when to shut up and make friends. Isn't that a part of growing up as well?

On my way back into the office I pass a table where two girls have been talking about math for the past four hours. One of them says something about price change, and I think to myself how happy I am when I'm engaged in something, and what a tragedy it is that I'm so horrible at math. Perhaps that is a career in which intelligence and happiness can be wedded, mathematicians are so buttoned down. But then I remembered that movie they made about John Nash that was based on the book that was based on him going crazy, and I lamented that even in math I couldn't have found a safe place.

And really, (again this is in about a minute's time) I remembered back to the night before when S and I sat on the couch watching Jeopardy. Alex Trebec (that needlessly smug bastard) was asking questions about books. And one of the questions was about the book about a mathematician gone mad, and I yelled out, "Prime, it's Prime," an oddly boring movie staring Gwyneth Paltrow. And when the contestant got the question right, and then the next three, all of which were about memoirs written in the last fifteen years I just kept saying over and over to the television as if it would listen, "Those aren't even books. Those aren't even books. Where is Tolstoy?" As if Alex would listen to me closely, and for once hear the correct answer, "That brings you to negative 6,000 and you now have control of the board."
M: I'll take calculus for 500.

I remember taping this video off VH1 when I was fourteen. It was important.

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What?

S insisted on calling the baby something sort of cute primarily because her currently pregnant sister did a similar thing. Anyhow the decided upon name was sprout because it met all the requisite qualities of cuteness. Unfortunately for her I don't enjoy being told, well anything. Ergo; I took to calling the unborn little thing after the guy pictured above. I'm unclear on why this isn't a good name to call a baby as I find the little critter to be absolutely adorable.

S: I wish you wouldn’t call it scrat.

M: I just think sprout is kind of girly.

S: What if it's a girl?

M: Who said I wanted her to be girly?

Incidentally I'm hoping for a girl for reasons I've probably already stated.

Here is a poem that I didn't write.

The Conversation
By Jane Hirshfield
A woman moves close:
there is something she wants to say.
The currents take you one direction, her another.
All night you are aware of her presence,
aware of the conversation that did not happen.
Inside it are mountains, birds, a wide river,
a few sparse-leaved trees.
On the river, a wooden boat putters.
On its deck, a spider washes its face.
Years from now, the boat will reach a port by the sea,
and the generations of spider descendants upon it
will look out, from their nearsighted, eightfold eyes,
at something unanswered.

In the meantime we've discovered a brand of food that goes by the name of Sprout and clothes that have sprout emblazoned across them. Curiously we have yet to find a brand name food called Scrat with that strange rodent clutching an acorn. Sometimes capitalism just doesn't make sense.

This story kind of hit the mark for me in the Atlantic fiction issue. Of late, I've been into family sorts of stuff.


Some Random Fiction

We stood on walls smoking cigarettes waiting for the pretty girls to pass us by. The sky was every shade of blue that you could imagine that summer, and when the mood was right, near sundown, I'd often fantasize about painting it. Of course, we didn't have shi- to do because as Ray said, "Ain't no pretty girls in this town."

Instead we brought boxes from home and played cards in the alley, betting the cheap sums we got for sweeping floors for old men that moved like birds, their frail hairs like feathers in the wind, guys who's wives were so long dead or run off that they imagined often that they were still there and had imaginary arguments with piles of bones. Crazy old Irish types with hair growing in their ears and along the mottled skin of their knuckles. Pale faced waxy bastards who nipped off the bottle at lunch out back, keeping watch over the blank cement parking lot lined by tires and pockmarked by trash, a couple of nondescript trees pushing up through cracks in the pavement.

"Get back to work you lazy bastards," they'd yell if they saw us shirking duty to study them like the anthropologists that we'd never be.

Years later we took a road trip out west, on a beach somewhere in CA with Tony and Ray, we stood at the edge of the cement where it met sand and admired all the pretty girls walking dogs or just lying out in that gd beautiful sun, purer than we ever could have imagined. It was then that I first heard the cry of a seagull, and I swear to you, it's the most mournful f-ing sound in the world, it reminded me of those old men in the parking lot at lunch mumbling to their dead wives ghosts. I picked up the football and tossed it to Ray who was running a fly pattern towards that immense green ocean keeping time with his feet on the shore. We were home.

Lost

At the conclusion of Lost I was perusing various Lost information and came across this comment,

"The finale was earnest and hopeful, and like all things that share those qualities, it likely will attract mockery in some places."Robert Bianco

I agree. Watch the ending expecting all questions to be answered and you will be disappointed. Watch it from a scientific viewpoint and you may be disappointed. Watch it from a critical religious perspective and you will be disappointed. Watch it while trying to deconstruct it and you will be disappointed. Watch it like you watched the backyard of your childhood, before you knew better to believe in anything beyond your own island of the mind and you might love it.

I have to admit that I rather loved the ending. I could complain about a cavalcade of unanswered questions, but I think that would be missing the point. The point of the story was character above action in the end. And I have to say that at the end of my life I don't think I'll look back fondly on a crossover dribble or a ninety seven on a reading test, I'll think back on the people that I have loved or not loved well enough. And it's the latter half of that sentence that brings me to the ending. I cried. Not nearly as much as S, but I did. Because who wouldn't want to think that it's going to be that way?

I thought it was both beautiful and sad because I was so caught up in the story telling that I was almost jealous that it had happened for them, and I still had to wait and see and try to believe and doubt and fall short and fail and wake up in the middle of the night and wonder about all this, life: how all the pieces are supposed to fit together, whether I'm doing the right thing day in and day out, wondering I guess about man's search for meaning.

I hope this all makes sense and that you know exactly what I'm talking about. All that I've ever wanted in life is to find something beautiful and share it with you. I've dreamed of a long train ride through the mountains, overlooking the coast, a cup of tea tucked between our warm palms, and talking all afternoon about something that we both love, while the train barrels into the side of a mountain, but we don't even notice the darkness because their is so much we still need to say and the train can roll on forever.

I suppose Lost has all the trappings of good story telling, making me care that much about a fictional world. I think good art can do that. I think it can remind us of what it means to be human.

One Person Away From You
Fiction
When I woke the next morning, I was a proactive person. I lay in bed for ten minutes, counting shadows on the walls. Five. The number of spider webs—long abandoned—moving slowly in the air conditioning. Four. I wondered if the spiders were all dead or gone for only a season, like you. I wondered if you’d all moved out together and were living in a house of silk—filled with the husks of flies. It is a hard business being proactive.

Our neighbor’s alarm clock blared through the walls. She pushed snooze three times before she got out of bed. I rose with her. In the bathroom, I listened for the thin sound of water on tiles before turning the nozzle. We took a shower together. I moved around the apartment with her, waiting for the bang of the cupboard so I would know when to have cereal. She slid open her closet door; it glided smoothly along the rails. Ours got jammed on the carpet, and I frantically tried to slide it back on track. I was afraid she’d leave me behind.

We looked into our closets together. We started to take our clothes off hangers and lay them on the bed. We both chose long skirts because it was too hot for pants. Hers was white, and mine was eggshell. We put on short-sleeved shirts with funny ties around the middle. They were in fashion because you said you liked them. We put on sandals, even though our toenail polish was too chipped to pull it off. I imitated all of her movements. In this way, I got ready for the day with our upstairs neighbor, who you always thought was beautiful.

I waited for her door to open before I stepped into the hallway. I fumbled with the key, and she almost got on the elevator without me. She was wearing a business suit. I looked at her strangely. Somehow, she had forgotten to wear a skirt. “Goodbye Lindsey,” I said, when she got off the elevator at the lobby. She smiled back and nodded. She doesn’t even know my name.

Dating-Horse Racing

If you're married, you'll discover that it's not the easiest thing in the world to go on a date. This is only partially true. However, trips to Home Depot, or dates where you compare the price of various contact solutions at Target sometimes don't quite hit the spot. You're always trying to scrimp and save because you've got no money and a baby is on the way et al. You're pretty much up a nice creek but with only poo paddles. I figured out how to make it work today.

Wake up early. If you're going to take your wife out on a date it's important to wake up early. You need the element of surprise on your side. It's important to catch her at a moment when she's still a bit tired and hasn't thought of how unkempt the wood floors are and how much the tiles could use a good scrubbing. These are the sorts of things that might take root on a Saturday, and once they are firmly entrenched you will find yourself taking out the garbage and mowing the lawn, and emptying out the ashes from last night's BBQ. It is Saturday and these things are unacceptable.

If you start whining about the day and sighing frequently your chances may improve. Being forlorn about the status of the world is a great way to enjoy your Saturday. Help her with the dishes in the morning to show that you're prepared to help but just not too enthused about doing it all day. Eat the same breakfast as her even if you don't want eggs. Bag up the leftovers in tupperwares like she likes, even though you know it will be thrown away in a day or two. Talk slyly about the impending baby, don't force it, but make it clear that you know that things are going to change that your Saturday's are going to start at 5 A.M.

After a certain point, she'll relent. Maybe because you remind her of her father or maybe because you've got a bit of what she likes to call boyish charm but someone else might just call it selfishness. Now that you're going to the tracks it's important that you prepare lunch, pack the bag and try to think of every eventuality. Bring some fruits and vegetables. Don't just pack the kind of stuff that you'd want. You have to make her think that it is her day. Try to stay downstairs as long as you can, even though you know she's upstairs puttering around. She's no doubt paying bills or worrying over your financial future, so it's important to not walk up those stairs until you're sure that you're going to be late and that she knows it.

When you walk into the room try not to sound too accusatory. Say something like, "Do those bills have a post time?" She doesn't know what post time means, but she's a smart girl, so she'll get gist. Say something like, "Don't bring your purse," to show her that you've been thinking ahead about how this whole trip is going to go. Say, "You just can't trust people at the track," so she'll think that you are knowledgeable and will keep her safe.

On the ride over try not to let her know how giddy you are. Have a discussion with her about literature but try to bring it around to how nice it is to be outside and doing something on a Saturday. Point out the high quality of the air blowing through the car window. Try and remind her that it is good to be alive on days like today. At the tracks, make all the bets. Don't let her choose anything. You did the gd research and now is your time to shine. Let her keep track of them though because she's a hell of a lot more organized than you.

Try to find a spot in the sun that she might like. Don't worry that you don't have sunglasses or a hat. You are a man, and you don't care about things like that. Win five of the six races, but have an embarrassing moment when the two of you are cheering for the wrong horse because you temporarily forgot that you bet on the 3 instead of the 4. Root like hell for the 4 horse and watch it get beat down the back stretch. Look in the program and tell her how foolish you feel. Thank her for being so organized. Cry inside a little for that moment that you lost. The exhilaration of watching over 1,000 pounds of purse muscle tearing up chunks of dirt in the lengthening shadows, watch them move like light through water, like carousels of your childhood dreams. And the heart thumping when you win. Slap hands, exchange a high five. Don't be afraid to take a picture or two even though everyone else at the track is drinking beer and smoking. You're on a date.

And the best part about being on a date at the tracks is you have a chance to win your money back. What other date have you been on that allows you to make the price of dinner? On the way home let her pick the restaurant but throw a minor fit when you come across something that you wanted more. This is not good practice, but the day has been so damn good to you, almost all the horses winning when they were supposed to win, that you cannot believe that things will not continue. Be magnanimous. Eat at some chain restaurant in the suburbs that reminds her of family. Join hands across the table as if the two of you are still young. Say, "I've had a good day," and then close your damn mouth for a minute and enjoy the moment.

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men-Nicholas Sparks

Sparks on Cormac McCarthy winner of the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship:

"Cormac McCarthy? "Horrible," he says, looking at Blood Meridian. "This is probably the most pulpy, overwrought, melodramatic cowboy vs. Indians story ever written."

Even hearing a passage about a sunset in which "the mountains in their blue islands stood footless in the void like floating temples" doesn't sway him.

Any he thinks are overrated?

"I don't like to say bad things about others."

Except McCarthy? "He deserves it," Spark says with a laugh.

Sparks on Sparks:

Asked what he likes in his own genre, Sparks replies: "There are no authors in my genre. No one is doing what I do."


Sparks on Domination:

"There's a difference between drama and melodrama; evoking genuine emotion, or manipulating emotion. It's a very fine eye-of-the-needle to thread. And it's very rare that it works. That's why I tend to dominate this particular genre.

Sparks on why he's the heir to Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare and Hemingway:

“I write in a genre that was not defined by me. The examples were not set out by me. They were set out 2,000 years ago by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. They were called the Greek tragedies. A thriller is supposed to thrill. A horror novel is supposed to scare you. A mystery is supposed to keep you turning the pages, guessing ‘whodunit?’

“A romance novel is supposed to make you escape into a fantasy of romance. What is the purpose of what I do? These are love stories. They went from (Greek tragedies), to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, then Jane Austen did it, put a new human twist on it. Hemingway did it with A Farewell to Arms.”

Sparks on writing screenplays:

It didn’t, because they’re very different animals, I guess. Screenplays are very easy to write quite frankly — I don’t find them very challenging at all.

Sparks on how to come up with novel ideas:

Well the inspiration for the story was, like most of the novels, after finishing a novel, I immediately start thinking about the next novel that I’m going to write and I try to make it different.

Sparks on inside lingo and dealing with Miley Cyrus:

Nope and nope. They get involved once the production starts. How she’s going to play the role, how she’s dressed, costumed — it’s called costuming although it’s just what they wear."

Some of Cormac McCarthy's writing:

“Far back beyond the mountain a thin wire of lightning glowed briefly.”

Excerpt from the New Yorker in which James Wood sights his elegant diction:


the stars “fall all night in bitter arcs,” and the wolves trot “neat of foot” alongside the horsemen, and the lizards, “their leather chins flat to the cooling rocks,” fend off the world “with thin smiles and eyes like cracked stone plates,” and the grains of sand creep past all night “like armies of lice on the move,” and “the blue cordilleras stood footed in their paler image on the sand like reflections in a lake.”

Quotes from The Judge in Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy:

"It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be....
War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god."

"The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
Toadvine sat with his boots crossed before the fire. No man can acquaint himself with everything on this earth, he said.
The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of this world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate."

"And the answer, said the judge. If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons.
The judge looked about him. He was sat before the fire naked save for his breeches and his hands rested palm down upon his knees. His eyes were empty slots. None among the company harbored any notion as to what this attitude implied, yet so like an icon was he in his sitting that they grew cautious and spoke with circumspection among themselves as if they would not waken something that had better been left sleeping."

Nicholas Sparks Quotes:

"Love is like the wind, you can't see it but you can feel it"

"Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can't get any better, it can."

"We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has only happened once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it."

"You are the answer to every prayer I've offered. You are a song, a dream, a whisper, and I don't know how I could have lived without you for as long as I have."

Case Closed. Nicholas Sparks= Writer with a giant capital W. Cormac McCarthy=his bit-h.

Today is the greatest

Lia: No. I came in early. I had fun. I don't think work has to be this eight hour sink hole right in the middle of your day.

M: You're funny.

Things to remember before giving birth:

I need to talk about the merits of cross-ventilation. Every father in the history of the world has expounded upon the advantages of cross-ventilation to his little children. They come and gather round his feet and learn how opening one window on one side of the house, and another on the opposite side creates a wondrous breeze that they can all ride to Never never land. Though, at the rate they were going, with the AC bills and all, they'd probably just have to settle for that crappy beach two towns over. Twice recently I've walked around the house and opened it up to beauty of cross-ventilation and I've felt a little bit older and a little bit wiser each time.

S: Are you using salicilyic acid?

M: Yes.

S: Do you want our baby to have two heads?

M: (Pauses). I guess we'd probably be famous then.

It's also imperative that I start to bald slightly and begin wearing large glasses. Why? Because that's what real dads look like. Do you think somebody is going to let me coach the soccer team all clean-shaven wearing some hip shirt? No. They are going to let the guy with the mustache and glasses coach the team because he clearly knows his shi-. Everything I ever learned about sports was taught to me by men with mustaches.

The glasses are also an important part of the get up because they kind of scare kids. They say, "Look in my eyes kid. Oh wait, you can't because I'm wearing these large creepy glasses that are reflecting the sunlight right back at you. What happens when I take these off? That's right, I look like some sort of alien inhabiting the body of what used to be a dad. Do you want me to take these off or are you going to do a good job hitting the ball off the tee? Are you crying? Are those tears? I knew you'd take after your mother. You don't see me crying when I have to take out the trash. I just do it. Now go hit that damn ball into outer space. I know you can do it buddy. Though, to be honest, I'd settle for a dribbler down the first base line. I think you could beat it out. You run like a gazelle my boy, a short impaired gazelle. I kid. I kid. See how it has a double meaning...

I guess the other key component is to start slightly balding. Slightly balding suggests to children that you have lived some life that those full head of hair bastards haven't. Look at all the great thinkers in history, Socrates=bald Shakespeare=bald. Benjamin Franklin=bald Thomas Jefferson=probably bald under that giant wig Isaac Newton=I've no idea but for the sake of the argument let's go with bald. Jesus=Not given enough time on earth to start balding. Mikhail Gorbachev=bald. I could go on all night, but I think my point has been made. Bald=smart=respect.

Fiction

“That man has no rhyme or reason,” his mother had muttered on the day he received the gun some months ago. A wind was pushing in from the Northwest, whipping the window with streaks of rain that maneuvered in wavering lines along the glass like ants headed off to some strange war. She watched as the boy ran his hands over the grooves in the walnut where a sight could be affixed. The tea kettle was humming, but she sat in rapt silence, still watching. The boy knew next to nothing about guns. Not many people in his town carried them, but he knew that the gift had been special, a thing shared between men.

Today was a day when we were men who had not worked

Oh to write a line as wonderful as Denis Johnson did at the end of that wondrous short story! Oh well. I was not destined for such success. Instead, I was destined for a job sitting in front of a computer for a solid six or so hours a day. Normally this does not provide any major hurdles. It is what it is. However, this morning my computer was affected by some mad crazy identity erasing virus that appeared thusly:



Naturally my virus protector came up and said, "Hey. You there. I've quarantined this nasty virus and if you'll just restart your computer everything will go back to normal. Nothing to see here folks, just move along." And I, stupidly, took the virus protector at its word. And when I attempted to log back into my computer it acted like a girlfriend who has been in some fall and now has amnesia when you walk into the hotel room.
"Linda?" Hey, it's me Paul. Oh my gosh it's so good to see you!"

Her brow furrows. "I'm sorry, Paul..." she says in the sort of way that you know that she's got no earthly clue just who the hell Paul is, and now you're crying on the hospital floor and maybe someone starts playing some violins in the background. That's how my computer treated me. Like that poor SOB Paul.

The next step is to call someone from OIT. After they arrive be sure to play stupid and say something like, "I don't know it just quit working." Hide the fact that it said you had a virus in case you can get this whole thing fixed without ever telling anyone about the whole virus problem. This because everyone knows that their is no possible way to get a computer virus if you were doing only strict work all day.

Of course, after a little while it becomes clear to the OIT guy that you in fact have a computer virus. And you're standing in the room waiting for him to ask the question. Should you try to jump it?

a) Who doesn't enjoy a little bestiality at 10 A.M. Am I right OIT guy. Leviticus anyone?

B) I've got this great video I want to show you. You may want to turn away at the 1:02 mark.

C) Do you think I could have gotten this on that trip I took down to Mexico?

D) I think our new lending system gave me that virus.

E) I've never used this computer during work hours for anything except official business.

F) Isn't trojan horse a funny thing? Have you read Homer? I love his work? Do you like Chaucer OIT guy? I think he's silly.

G) Isn't the world a crazy place. It's amazing to think we can have our whole day come to a stand still because we clicked on a certain screen. What do you think the old timey equivalent was? Like when a horse brained you or something. Pause. What do you think of chain mail as fashion statement?

H) Isn't it strange that this computer picked up this virus at random. I actually think I noticed my co-worker's computer sneezing yesterday. Don't quote me on that.

I) Why do people make computer viruses OIT guy? Did you read that Atlantic article about Conficker? Me too. That shi- is crazy.

J) Do you think if the two of us were on a desert island that we'd kill each other or fall in love first? What? Oh. You find it easier to focus without the interruptions. Both I'd say.

K) If I had to do life over again...I wouldn't? Do you like jokes?

L) What do you think about the whole slave/master relationship we've got going with technology? Troublesome? Worrisome? Mildly interesting to talk about for six seconds.

I decide that the best course of action is to hover awkwardly until he asks. "Were you on any "different" web sites. What does he mean by different? Anyhow, I confess to him that I haven't been on any web sites that I haven't been on before. I'm very careful with my phrasing in case of a later jury trial. Which, my answer is true, but I also don't admit to checking anything except strictly work related things.

But now I'm standing there feeling like some sort of liar. I know I wasn't on any sketchy web sites but OIT guy probably doesn't believe me, and he has this computer virus deleting my profile and suggesting that I'm probably lying. This is an uncomfortable situation to be in. It's probably best lightened with a bit of vodka, but the American job has gotten way too boring for that.

a) Offer him a drink.

B) Make a joke about Dancing with the Stars.

C) Accuse him of downloading a virus onto my computer.

D) Mention that during work approved lunch breaks you occasionally check hotmail.

In this case B wins out, and it's also actually the correct answer as I bet on it every week. The down side of this whole scenario is that I couldn't get any work done, and I felt guilty for something I both had and had not done. I do not frequent sketchy sites but in an employer's eyes, perhaps anything that is not an Excel spreadsheet or a lending system is sketchy. It's tough to be guilty, but not as guilty as you look.

This blog didn't quite have the literary feel of the last one, so I'm going to go with something a little more upbeat.

Good?

Some nights you stand in the kitchen and play the music low while you wash dishes by the window. You know that you're supposed to use the small yellow sponge, sliced in half to avoid excessive mold, to wash the dishes. But instead you use your hands, small and calloused. You rub your palm over the dishes first, then begin using your fingernails to get at the smallest bits. You know that this isn't the way that you're supposed to wash dishes, but you do it anyway. Sometimes, it's just too much damn trouble getting things to come clean.

The rain has gone silent for a while, though the pansies have lifted up there gaze as in praise to the now absent god of rain. The birds are chirping outside the window in a manner that brings to mind Disney movies. The roses are beginning to droop, but the street is scrubbed clean by these spring storms. On the drive to Baltimore you have a discussion about the future, which is always tied to the past.

"I think you can be whatever you want to be," she says. "It's all a matter of encouragement and desire."

You wait a moment, keep right onto 95 before answering,

"I want to be Thor, the god of Thunder," you say. "I want to be able to pick and choose where lightning strikes."

She smiles and asks you to try again.

In the evening you stand in artificial light, the dishes clean and scattered across the counter in a manner you know she'd never allow. You think back to the warm water passing through your hands, like grace, onto a small glass bowl shaped like the world, with a blue top so much like the sky. You said to yourself, as your nails brought everything clean, that you were going to be a good father. Assuredly, this was going to be something that you were good at. You know that you've looked forward to it for so long. And you look back in your life, as a driver in some rear view mirror, catching sight of all the other promises you've broken to yourself and you wonder if this one will be broken too and how many times. Seventy times seven.

The dishes are done, and the voices of women talking about babies drift down the stairs where you are sitting in front of a bright screen in the dark. And you think that if you can just convince yourself this one time that being good is not a one time thing, that it is a thousand small moments stitched together, only a few of which will even last in either of your memories, that it will be okay. That you will be good.

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Twins?

Okay, let's just get the cat out of the bag. Incidentally, why did we have the cat in the bag? Were we planning on killing it or something? Cats tend to like boxes, but I'm not sure they are as fond of bags. Couldn't the cat just have clawed it's way out of the bag. Maybe we should give it some space when we let it out.

The point is that one of the hardest thing about having a pregnant wife is that you cannot engage in what the French call making love. Incidentally, do not do a search on the online slang dictionary for other terms to describe what we're going to call making love because it goes on for pages. And you suddenly start feeling really old and out of touch with the language, and simultaneously really happy to be old and out of touch with the language. Blaze? Really? That's a fire my friend.

Look, I know it's true what all the books say. That you're supposed to fawn on her, and remind her that she is still a wonderful and attractive woman in those stretchy pants, and that you've always wished, since you love her so much that there was bit more of her and that you consider it a real blessing. And also that you really like those big shirts she wears and her propensity for falling asleep at nine P.M. Don't get me wrong, all that stuff is true.

I think it's important to remember to use the word glowing in conjunction with their person about five times a day and to rub their belly and say how it reminds you of a bowling ball, and that you've always wanted to date a woman who was a good bowler.

But look, none of those reasons really matter. It's more of a scientific problem but really a problem of finances.

The reason we're abstaining is that neither one of want twins. I know that people always say that you learn to love them both and you make it work, but I just don't know if we have the floor space, and we don't have a bunk bed. So we're abstaining for now, because S doesn't really want twins either. It's science. Look it up. Just take a cold shower buddy, you've already got one on the way.

The Insider's guide to pregnancy

This post is going to be a little bit indelicate, so be sure to hide the women and children. Also, don't tell anyone where you've hidden them because that person could go and find them and you'd have ruined what really could have been a pretty good game of hide and go seek. Unless the women and children enjoy reading, then maybe it's best to keep an eye on them and maybe read them some choice passages that they might enjoy despite their age or gender.

Look, I had a recent incident in which a person stood in front of a large group of people and said something along the lines of, "Hide the women and children and also grandparents and other folks who are easily offended," and then proceeded to read something that was fairly offensive to me even though I am not a woman or a child or a grandparent. The passage was about a fairly graphic encounter of the sort that you'd really only want to read or hear if you were by yourself and even then you might start looking around your house and trying to scope out some good spots, like behind the bookshelf, or inside the old chest, to hide women and children in in case they were around while you were reading this passage. Then again, maybe you should just let them find their own hiding spots. At least the women, that is. Because in my experience, children are sometimes not as good at hiding themselves and should probably just hide with the women.

Question? Are you absolved of anything you read/say if you offer up that sort of caveat at the beginning? Or should you having to give that sort of caveat, hide the women and children, be a good indication that you probably shouldn't read/say what you thought you were going to. And that maybe it wasn't even worth it to make all those kids go looking for hiding places under folding chairs and making all the women, who are just hot and busy and tired and like worried about a grocery list and paying bills, find hiding places. Maybe you just shouldn't say it?

Question? Have you ever read Tristram Shandy? This is only slightly related to what this blog post is eventually going to be about, and it has very little to do with women and children. Mainly because women and children probably wouldn't enjoy a book like Tristram Shandy because it has so many digressions that they'd probably start wondering about places where they could hide themselves if someone was ever walking around and asking them to read Tristram Shandy.

Anyhow, the annoying part about Trirstram Shandy is that Laurence Sterne, who is neither a woman nor a child, and to my knowledge not an expert at hiding, never gets to the expressed point of the novel, which is really annoying, you just wish he'd get to this big moment that you've been promised. He just keeps going backwards, telling you story after story, digression after digression, kind of like a child sometimes does, where you just keep hoping that they'd get the point and stop meandering around wasting your time with this dumb story and that really it would probably just be better if they were hiding somewhere, perhaps with women, who probably could give them something to shut them up and stop that useless story.

Honestly, I was just giving you all that time in the previous paragraphs to hide your women and children. I was afraid that if I didn't write all these paragraphs that your women and children might not be in good spots, or they'd still be attempting to hide, which sometimes happens when kids play hide and go seek because they often cheat and turn around too early.

This brings to mind another thing: dids are always cheating at things. And sometimes you have to teach them a lesson by cheating yourself, and that is the lesson that cheating doesn't make you happier, but it does make you a winner. That's the sort of lesson that some people might say you might want to hide the women and children from, but I think that's just the sort of lesson that they need to learn.

I hope little Geoff found a good spot. He was sort of wedged between the book case and the wall, but he was only a foot or two away from me, and I could see him right away. And I said, "Hey buddy, can you find a better spot? Because I can see you from right here while I'm typing."

Patience is a virtue.

I'm not sure it's the same kind of virtue as say, hiding women and children from vikings, but it might be. Anyhow, the really exciting thing that....

Day

7:00 A.M. Wake up. The night prior I had complained vociferously about not being able to use the car to go to work on the grounds that I'd be exhausted. Granted S takes the metro every day and wakes up at 6:30, but she doesn't need her beauty sleep like I do. I go to hell in hand basket real quick. Actually I have to go in something much larger, it's really more like a large scale laundry basket and even then I'm a bit cramped on the journey.

I just think generally speaking that men are more selfish. It doesn't occur to me when I'm making myself a sandwich at 2 on a Saturday that S might be hungry as well. I mean, I know that I'm hungry how the hell should I know what's going on with her? Apparently you are supposed to ask though.

7:30 A.M. Proceed to doc's office. The trees and bushes are no longer in full bloom. They look like an emptying house when the main guests at the party have left town and everyone is a little too drunk. Sure they've got a few more blossoms to toss onto the street, but they've already had their best times.

After much debating it is decided that S will not wait for me to finish my appt. and that I will ride the metro one stop to Tenleytown, which I'm not sure who it is named after, nor does it in any way shape or form approach being a town. And I secretly wish that the name made more sense like the Presidio or Pacific Heights in San Francisco, instead of being Tenleytown, named after the proprietor of a tavern.

The building is a monolith, rising sleek and grey, vaguely reminding me of both NASA and every large office dwelling in every major downtown of the United States. The doors are twenty feet high and made of reinforced glass, which the sun doesn't really reflect off, so much as melt into. Though perhaps it's different at midday.

The elevators at the building are sleek and fast. They shoot from floor to floor in a manner that would make the Jetson's proud. When I board the elevator there are three of us. On the way up to the tenth floor, the man to my right begins knocking his fist against the side of the elevator tapping out a beat that he compliments with subtle noises that he both creates and bobs his head to. I have one of those moments when you are trying to decide if it is incredibly annoying that someone is tapping out a beat in a public location where we all just desire anonymity in some insanely strong way. Though, by the time we reach the tenth floor and are on the way to the thirteenth, he doesn't tap out a beat at all. And I find myself disappointed that he doesn't, and wishing, as I often do, that I was the sort of person who would start making a beat in the elevator because he didn't give a crap what others say or thought but just really enjoyed the sound.

"Have a good day sir," he says to me as I exit.

8:00 A.M. Stand in line at the doc's. Become uncomfortable standing next to another woman waiting for it to open and go hide myself around a corner and in order to help the disguise I stare for an inordinate amount of time at a fire extinguisher as though I've never seen one before. As if the fire extinguisher was a piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or I'm trying to learn to read English. The lady notices nothing. In the mean time another patient arrives and when the door opens he dutifully logs himself in as arriving second. And I can't, (though I secretly wish that I could) tell him that I was there first because I was standing around the corner by the elevators admiring the fine white lettering on the glass case around the fire extinguisher. I'm only mildly annoyed at him.

The nurses speak to one another with a little bit of slang, complaining about the ups and downs of being in what sound like needy families. Then, when they turn to talk with the patients, the grammar is clean and precise and the intense voice modulations are manicured down to a pretty fair monotone of whiteness that Dave Chapelle mocked so well.

The first two patients, including the guy who unwittingly cut, are in and out of the office in the amount of time that jiffy lube promises a crappy oil change. I exchange smiles with them as if we have somehow shared in something, this slight inconvenience to our morning.

When I am called back the nurse tells me to take a seat in room 1. I sit dutifully down in the patients chair, I've learned after twenty some odd years of appointments that it makes them uncomfortable when you sit in one of those more comfortable chairs that are reserved for parents of children. They like you to be sitting on the construction paper, uncomfortable, trying not to shift too much for fear that people in the hallway will hear you shifting about and know that you are there. It's entirely illogical re: the fear that someone will hear. If you actually fear that they won't know your physical body is present you've probably got some deeper issues.

The room smells exactly like every other sort of medical office, dental, optometrist et al, something that according to my father-in-law, a doctor, probably has something to do with the disinfectants that they use at night. And it's strange, but when I worked a few months in a hospital years ago, this smell was wholly absent, replaced by a slight stench that accompanied so many bodies in various states of decay that even that disinfectant couldn't cover.

For a while the nurses talk to one another, and then they come in to let me know that they're not sure if their office does the test or if it is the other office up the street. And I smile and nod, at the woman, who is friendly, with a large smile, and dreadlocks died blond, roots still dark. This, even though I know that S has confirmed the appointment the day before and that they do in fact give the test and that my time is just being wasted. I smile not out of any altruistic leanings or understanding that the world is a tough place to be for those in any kind of service industry but because I am often incredibly passive in social situations, deferring and smiling away in a manner that always suggests that I'm a pretty laid back guy and that I can understand that things aren't always as easy as they seem. A fact which leads some people who know me very well to be surprised at what a royal impatient dick I can, and usually am, if I know you well enough to be comfortable. That is not exactly a sparkling attribute.

The nurse and I exchange a couple more items in the next half hour. I give her the information as best as I can making sure to mention that I am getting the same test as my pregnant wife, so that she will work harder to make sure that this happens and perhaps imagine me and my pregnant wife cuddling with a baby. Without explanation the first nurse, no dyed blond hair arrives and takes my blood. I can't really understand her, so when she asks me to make a fist I just hold my arm out dumbly, and when she tells me to stop making a fist I initially just make the fist tighter until she says it again, more audibly, "stop making a fist."

And as I get ready to leave I say something like, "I'm sorry this was so hard to sort out," but she interrupts me after "I'm sorry this" to ask me some relatively innocuous, though business related question. A question that makes it clear to me that this is not the morning where I have managed to charm the nurses, but that I am just one more patient who needs to move along so that she can get to the next one.

The clouds are still low and grey, but the rain seems like a memory and the capacious distance between earth and sky is filled with a kind of viscous warmth that you know is just going to be hell by afternoon.

Pools?

Things that I swore I'd never do: Change a diaper. I just don't see the point. The good Lord gave my wife two hands, and I'm not the biggest fan of poop. Okay, I've long held, and probably already told the known world about it, this plan to buy one of those large kiddie pools

Obviously we'd shoot the dog first to clear some space for the infant. Anyhow, that sturdy blue pool is more than enough room for a child, who can't even walk yet, to roll around in and drool in and such. But, here's the key, when they poop, the kid doesn't wear diapers in this pool an added benefit of freedom for them, I just take a bucket, fill it with water and douse them. And there you have it. I don't ever have to change a diaper I have a happy and well adjusted child who knows way before other kids that kiddy pools are fun though a little bit strange. I don't really see the downside. And I've had this idea for years, maybe even before I was married. I'm probably going to sell the rites to this idea to QVC. It's a child toy and a baby changing table all wrapped up in one piece of cheap blue plastic!
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I love Odell.

Then again, I also said that I would never clean my bathroom and in the interest of not being divorced I decided to amend my ways. I've also at one time or another threatened to: drive the car off the road in an attempt to teach S a lesson. Not sure what the lesson would have been, perhaps, never drive the car off the road it's a dumb idea.
I also claimed during my teens that I'd eat fast food every night for dinner when I could finally afford to. This was long before Fast Food Nation and Food Inc. and all that junk. It was just the heady days of the early nineties when food was cheap and we didn't ask any questions. I kind of miss those days. I wish someone would release a documentary about how satisfied the cows are to be giving their lives in order to feed the world's dominant species and how it is a good and wholesome thing to make food available really cheaply because all sorts of people in the world are starving. And then they could show some people working in those giant sized warehouses cutting cows apart with chainsaws but really having a good time, talking about who was the best at carving things up and how well they were treated, and humanely. And that they were proud to be doing this thing, and that it was good, and made them feel good. Although, I guess the chances of that movie being made are pretty low because all the media are liberal pawns. NPR I'm looking at you.

But I guess life isn't really about following through on all the threats you make, even though they feel so good at the time. (Insert family guy video here) Peter: I'm going on a hunger strike until you give the workers those benefits! (A few seconds pass) Peter: Are you going to eat that stapler?

See, who the hell needs television when you can just write out all the funny-one liners without that annoying video.

"And I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose the Audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests."

Too true my man. Now lets all go out and smash some televisions and then read Victorian books by candle light. Who is with me?....

I guess I'll go clean the glass off the floor.
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